Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

I heard a sharp intake of breath.

“All right.”

That was all. The line went dead.

I sank down on the sofa and covered my face with my hands. I don’t know how long I remained still. Even though the heat was on, I could feel the air in the room becoming steadily colder. When I raised my face, the dull Tokyo sky was dancing with snowflakes again.

FROM MIDDAY THAT day until the next morning, the Asama super-express train stopped running. It was around noon when I left Ueno station in bright winter sunshine. As the train emerged from each successive tunnel, the scenery turned whiter. In Karuizawa station a taxi driver opened his window to ask where I wanted to go, and only when I told him the house number and he was sure the place was accessible did he open the door. The car crawled through the snowy landscape, a landscape transformed since two days before. The sky that had then hung low and gray was now sparkling and clear. At intervals the breeze shook snow loose from branches, flinging it into the air, where it shone like crystal in the bright sunlight.

The roofs of the two villas were covered with snow.

As the taxi drew closer, I saw that the back door to the Saegusa house was standing wide open. The door was old, and no longer opened and shut smoothly; unless you locked it, the door’s weight always swung it open. I looked from the taxi window at that gaping door without any surprise. It was pure coincidence that I arrived just after Taro, who drove directly from Narita by rental car, yet somehow I had known all along that it would turn out this way. The unchained gate, the curving tire tracks in the snow, the silver car reflecting the winter sunlight, the wide-open back door—nothing I saw surprised me.

SNOWY ROAD IN OLD KARUIZAWA

Midway up the first flight of stairs I could already hear a shrill voice. As I climbed higher, the sound grew louder and louder. By the time I reached the open door to the room at the eastern end of the attic, it was almost ear-splitting. When I stepped inside, things were scattered about on the floor: an old electric heater, a blanket, plastic bottles, a boxed lunch, instant noodles. At the same time, a murky, freakish atmosphere hit me with full force. It felt as if I were being dragged feet first into a hole that gave a glimpse of the darkness below.

Yoko lay on her back, her hair bedraggled, shrieking something. It wasn’t this that shocked me. On top of her lay Taro, still in his heavy overcoat; neither was this such a surprise. What did startle me—what shocked me to the core—was that overlapping with Yoko’s screams I heard Taro crying in despair. It was so long since I had heard him cry like that … As I listened, it came back to me: the last time was after the “elopement,” when he came to stay with me at Evergreen Apartments No. 2. He had cried that same way, utterly inconsolable, like a little child. The memory came back vividly, unconnected to the scene in front of me. Sadness filled the very air, a vast, all-encompassing sadness that enveloped me and made me feel that now, perhaps for the very first time, I truly understood these two.

Was the impossibly heavy burden of sadness they each bore something innate and inescapable? Or was it something they had acquired long ago by picking up on old Mrs. Utagawa’s forebodings about their future, back when they were children too small to comprehend what the future might hold? A sadness that, once absorbed, had only grown over time, harbored deep in their hearts? Now I understood. On its own, the love they shared was hopeless and could only be illicit, and somewhere inside Taro knew it too … How long did he stay there like that? It might have been five minutes, or ten. However short or long it was, he couldn’t drag Yoko up from her sorrow but was being dragged down with her, unable to do anything but dissolve in tears. Normally almost too capable, now he was foundering, pulled down by her despair at being deserted by Masayuki … I watched in utter helplessness as he went on sobbing.

Yoko had gone quiet and was staring at me with wide, bloodshot eyes. From beneath Taro’s weight, she raised her head and said, “Fumiko …” She hadn’t the presence of mind to see anything strange in my sudden appearance. “Masayuki said he wanted it to be over. Fine, he said, let it be over.”

Then, overcome, she began wailing again. The sound grated on my nerves, as if her lungs had gone into spasm. With her eyes, nose, and lips swollen from so much weeping, her face looked awful: blotchy red, except for an area around her eyes, which was muddy and dark, an indication of high fever. I noticed the peculiar smell of a room whose occupant is feverish. Taro, whether or not he was aware of my presence, continued crying shamelessly.

“It’s not true, though,” I said.

Yoko, apparently unable to take in the meaning of this, raised her head again. Her bloodshot eyes stared up at me, wide open but unfocused. I continued, “The day before yesterday, Masayuki and I came here together to look for you. He looked next door and I looked in this house, but unfortunately I was too lazy to come all the way up here. That’s what happened.”

“Masayuki came?”

“Yes.”

“To look for me?”

I nodded. Yoko seemed only slowly to take in what I’d said. Her raspy, convulsive sobs came at greater intervals, and eventually quieted down. The lessening of sound in the room only made Taro’s crying stand out more. I kept my eyes on the long figure in the heavy overcoat lying facedown on top of her and simply added, “Taro knows it.”

Yoko stared at his dark, shiny head, so close to her own. He was still weeping, though feebly now. After looking at him awhile longer, she raised her free hand and began gently stroking the black hair in front of her. “We need to call Masayuki right away,” she whispered in his ear. It was the same tender voice she’d used with him before, her private voice. She went on stroking his hair, then repeated, “We need to call Masayuki right away,” and tried to shift him off her, but he was too heavy, and she was too weak. Giving up, she let her head drop back on the bed and said again, looking vacantly up at the ceiling, “We need to call him.” At this point Taro finally pulled himself together, as though regaining, for both of them, the will to live. Propping himself up, he swept back her matted hair and wiped the sweat off her forehead with a finger. “Let’s get you to a hospital,” he said huskily. A moment later he was on his feet beside the bed.

Downstairs the telephone began to ring. “That must be him,” said Yoko, turning her head toward the sound. But I thought it was unplugged. Confused, I ran down to the second floor and picked up the receiver. Just as Yoko had said, it was Masayuki. I learned afterward that toward dawn, her mind in a haze, she had gone downstairs and plugged in the telephone to call Taro, without knowing what exactly she wanted to say. He was by then flying over the Pacific. The phone had been working ever since. That Masayuki, driven to distraction with worry, should have called the Saegusa villa just then was another coincidence that in retrospect seemed almost eerie.

I myself was hardly able to think straight, and when he heard my voice come on the line I think Masayuki was thrown. After two or three halting exchanges, Yoko came down the stairs, supported by Taro. “Masayuki!” she shouted, grabbing the receiver and starting up the same strangled weeping as before. “You said let it be over. If it’s over, fine, you said.” Crying in bursts, she sank to the floor, where soon all we heard was that wordless, gasping, keening sound. There was nothing for it but to pick up the receiver and tell Masayuki in a few words how events had unfolded. My failure to search the attic was so hard to defend; I made excuses, but in the end all I could do was apologize. I could sense Taro behind me listening as I babbled into the receiver, explaining how after going back to Tokyo I had become increasingly concerned, and how I decided this morning as soon as the trains were running again to come back to Karuizawa to double-check—only to find that Taro had arrived just before me. The two of us were in the process of taking Yoko to Karuizawa Hospital. As I spoke, I saw that Yoko no longer had the strength to sit up. Still wrapped in Taro’s coat, she lay on the floor like a rag doll. “Tell him to hurry,” she said, her eyes rolling back till the whites showed.