Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

“Yoko says you should hurry,” I repeated into the phone.

The voice in my ear trembled with disbelief and joy. “Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“I’m on my way,” he said, unable to hide his emotion. “Tell her I’m on my way.”

AT KARUIZAWA HOSPITAL, where Yoko was taken to the emergency room, she was diagnosed with nothing more than a bad cold. However high the fever, a cold was still a cold. And it was December 28, the end of the year, just the time when they were most understaffed. The hospital was unwilling to admit her, but we prevailed on the doctor and head nurse to let her stay until she had gained enough strength for the trip back to Tokyo. Taro’s money might have had some effect, but it also helped that there were few other inpatients. When the arrangements were made, I took Taro’s rented car back to the Shigemitsu villa, driving nervously along snowy roads, and picked up the things she would need: nightgown, slippers, teacup, chopsticks, toothbrush, mug, towel, and so on. By the time Masayuki arrived from Tokyo, the evening was well advanced. Taro was holed up in the dark waiting room on the first floor, and I was alone in the sickroom with her. Masayuki knocked on the door but made no move to enter, probably thinking that Taro might be inside. When I went to the door and opened it, he stood there looking haggard. Remorse flooded through me. The words of apology I’d said in a daze over the telephone I now repeated in all earnest. Whether he heard me or not, I don’t know. He took in the fact that I was the sole visitor in the room, but he was focused only on the bed. Yoko was asleep, having been given a sedative. He stole over to her side, careful not to wake her.

“She has a cold,” I said in a low voice to Masayuki’s back. “Her fever is high, but it’s just a cold.” Then I closed the door and went outside.

The Prince Hotel was full, even its suite, for the New Year holidays. Since it was too much trouble to look around for other hotels, Taro and I slept at the Oiwake cottage from that night on, lighting kerosene stoves for warmth. Luckily, we had wrapped the pipes in Nichrome several years ago, so there was running water in the house even in midwinter. I called my son in Miyota as soon as we arrived. This was the time of year when I was usually preparing to head there for the holidays, but I knew I was needed in the hospital, not only to take care of Yoko but to coordinate Taro’s and Masayuki’s visits. I told him that my plans had changed and I would be home later, after the first week of the new year. I didn’t mention that I was in Oiwake, a stone’s throw away.

I had not stayed in the cottage with Taro since the summer before old Mrs. Utagawa died. It felt strange. I decided to sleep in the maid’s room behind Takero’s study, the way I used to, and was lugging futon and quilts from the closet in the front room when Taro came out of the study looking annoyed. He practically ordered me to sleep in the front room, before quickly disappearing into the study again.

I had arranged my futon and was lying down with the musty, cold quilt drawn up to my nose, staring up at the yellow light dangling from the ceiling, when a wave of emotion spurred me into action. I threw my coat around my shoulders and marched to Taro’s study, knocked on the door, and barged in.

He was sitting in the dark, looking out the window.

“It’s all your fault!” I cried out.

I had meant to apologize when I knocked on the door, but completely different words came out. He looked at me, startled.

“It’s all your fault for being so reckless and obsessed!”

He seemed annoyed, but said nothing.

“Masayuki is only human. He reached the point where he couldn’t take it anymore, that’s all.”

“I’ve always, always, been patient. I hardly ever get to see her.” His voice was low, as if he were holding himself in check.

“Well, you should be patient!” To cap this, I shouted, “After all, you’re not the one she married!” And added, “Anyway, stop blaming me.”

He opened his mouth to say something, but I went out, slamming the door behind me, so what he might have said I’ll never know. I’d wanted to apologize for not having searched the attic properly, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it. Even afterward—even after Yoko died—I’ve never been able to do so … to this very day. I was afraid I might fail to apologize as sincerely as I desperately wanted to.

Taro has never brought the matter up.

I gather that when Yoko arrived in Karuizawa, she went straight to the Saegusa villa and up to its eastern attic room, where, after crying her eyes out and staring at the ceiling all night, she was so exhausted that, as the sun came up, she took a sleeping pill and consequently never noticed that Masayuki and I had come. She did the same thing the next night, and got snowed in, and caught a cold. All this time, she kept the electric heater on, which made the air in the room so dry that she might have been better off without it.

But why that attic room? Was it because it was where long ago Masayuki had come to say he was sorry for making her fall down and hurt herself? Did she feel that if she stayed in that room he might appear unexpectedly, the way he did then, like a little messenger sent down from the night sky? Or was it because she somehow wanted to go back to those early years when she was so often neglected and had to nurse her own loneliness—to those years when not even Taro had entered her life? In any case, as her fever soared, she slipped into a delirium. What she had wanted to tell Taro on the third night by calling New York, I don’t know. She may not have known herself—probably it came to her through the haze of fever that she didn’t want to end up dying if she could help it.

AND SO SHE went into the hospital with what at first was just a bad cold. It was as if the three of them had been granted a final, blissful reprieve. On the first night, Masayuki telephoned Natsue and arranged that no one from Seijo should visit. The story he gave her was that Yoko had gone to an antique store in Komoro on business, decided on the spur of the moment to spend the night in Karuizawa, and then got snowed in, catching a cold and running a fever. Since I fortunately happened to be visiting my family in Miyota, I was on hand to help out, and so nobody from Seijo needed to come. She would be back in Tokyo in a few days, but until then he would be grateful if Natsue could look after Miki, who was due back from her skiing trip the next day. The people in Seijo may have had some dim suspicion that something had happened between the couple, but no one dared ask. Natsue pretended to take everything he said at face value. “If Fumiko is there, that’s a big relief,” she said, and as far as Miki was concerned, “Of course I’ll look after her. You two take some time together for once and don’t worry about a thing.” She sounded good-natured. Had she known that Taro was there too, making a happy trio, she might not have been so accommodating.

Yoko had a private room on the northwest corner, with a view of Mount Asama. Masayuki and Taro came and went by turns. I worked out in advance the times they could come to see her, to prevent them running into each other. When it was Taro’s turn, he and I would show up together. No one would ever have taken us for a married couple, but at least he was accompanied by a woman, which helped camouflage the strangeness of having two men pay constant sick calls alternately on the same woman. The time of year meant that the university was on vacation and the office was closed, so Masayuki had nothing better to do than come to see her. Some of the nurses looked star-struck at the alternating appearances of these two dashing men. I personally found it a bit ludicrous that two busy grown-ups should spend all their time taking turns coming to see her in the hospital, getting nothing else done—even granting it was New Year’s vacation. I never thought that this would be the end.