Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

“I couldn’t imagine you not saying a word to us about it if you did know. But I couldn’t very well ask you over the phone, which is why I had to come over to make sure.”

“I never dreamed of such a thing.” The words were for herself rather than Fuyue.

Fuyue went on watching the rise and fall of her shoulders before saying gently, “Taro has taken care of everything. The apartment in Tokyo is in your name, and he’s provided you with enough cash to pay the gift tax too. It’s none of our affair, so the lawyer hasn’t told us this in so many words, but apparently that’s how it is.”

Fumiko was making a valiant effort not to break down and cry. Looking at her, Fuyue opened her mouth to say something but seemed to think better of it. The three of them were plunged into silence. In the lamplight, only Fumiko’s shoulders seemed to be moving.

Fuyue glanced at Yusuke. Apparently she had not forgotten he was there after all. “Mr. Kato, how did you get here?” she asked. “Car? Taxi?”

“Bicycle.”

“Then I’ll give you a ride home. It’s raining so hard, you should leave your bicycle here and come and get it tomorrow.”

Her tone of voice, though not as commanding as that of the eldest sister, left no room for argument. She promptly stood up, purse in hand, and headed for her raincoat hanging on the wall.

“What about your tea?” Fumiko removed her hands from her face, letting them flop onto the tabletop, and looked at Fuyue. Her face was deathly pale.

“No, thank you. My sisters are waiting for me to get back, so I’d better be going.”

“I see.”

“Will you be all right by yourself?” Fuyue asked, buttoning her raincoat.

“I’ll be fine.”

The lawyer would be in touch in the morning, Fuyue told her, then added in a different tone of voice, “Anyway, congratulations. Harue and Natsue are still in shock, but in time they’ll see what a good thing it is that the land is in your hands. So much better than having it go to complete strangers.”

Still in a daze, Fumiko was gazing ahead at nothing. Yusuke wasn’t sure if he should leave her like that or not. At Fuyue’s urging, he half rose, then turned toward Fumiko and asked in a lowered voice, “Would you like me to stay?”

Her eyes finally found their focus. “It’s all right,” she said, looking at him. “Since you have a ride, you should go on home.” She gave him the barest trace of a smile before adding, as if wrapping something up in her own mind, “Thank you for everything.” Her gaze was fixed on his young face.

“No, thank you . Can’t I at least clear the table before I go?”

His glass noodle dish now held only water from melted ice, but in the one on Fumiko’s side, some noodles lay uneaten on the bottom.

“It’s all right. I’ll take my time cleaning up.” Using the table as support, she pushed herself to her feet.

Fuyue slipped on her shoes, opened the door, and stuck her head outside. “It’s letting up,” she murmured, and stepped out onto the porch. She turned to look at Fumiko and said from under her open umbrella, “I’ll call you tomorrow,” then went down the steps and was gone.

Yusuke wasn’t sure what to say. Since he was leaving someone else’s bicycle there—“a piece of junk,” admittedly, but it still didn’t belong to him—he would have to come back before returning to Tokyo. But knowing that Fumiko had opened up to him precisely because she expected never to see him again made it difficult for him to say, like Fuyue, that he would call her tomorrow. He took the shoehorn she handed him and squeezed his feet into his wet sneakers. “I’ll be going, then,” he said, purposefully vague. After a polite nod of his head, he plunged out into the rain. Fumiko’s face as she stood in the open doorway and saw him off remained unreadable. After descending the steps and going a few more paces, he turned to look back at the figure standing there, so thin and alone. He had a feeling this was going to be their farewell.

When the car drove off he turned around again. The little cottage was not only screened from view by the rain, but hidden as well by the trees and bushes, so that only a glimmer of yellow light showed. The next time he looked back, even that was gone.

For a time Fuyue said nothing. Probably she was focused on her driving. In the dark and the rain she had to navigate a narrow, twisting road that was unlit and unpaved, with only her headlights to rely on. After they came out on the main road, she broke the silence.

“You must have heard quite an earful,” she said abruptly.

“Yes, I did, actually.”

“Stories about the past.”

“That’s right.”

“And about Yoko.”

“Yes.”

Looking straight ahead, Fuyue gave a slight nod. With a glance at the clock on the dashboard, she tilted her head in Yusuke’s direction. “Do you have a little time this evening?”

“Uh … Well, yes.” Then, in case this sounded impolite, he added quickly, “Yes, I do.”

“Would you mind joining me in a nightcap?”

Unsure how to interpret this, he again murmured a yes. She might be planning to drag him back to the Karuizawa villa to make him listen while she and her sisters poured out their woes, but in that case the wording of her invitation was strange. He couldn’t make out what she had in mind.

She added, “I’d feel more comfortable going somewhere I’m familiar with, so would it be all right if we went to the Mampei? I’ll see that you get home safely afterward.”

“Oh, yes, fine.”

Yusuke felt himself growing tense. Apparently he and this woman—“old lady” seemed unkind, but she was well past middle age—were to go out drinking together. He remembered the night he’d stumbled into the Oiwake cottage and first heard her voice on the telephone, an affected voice of indeterminate age inquiring, “Is that Taro?” He never imagined at that time that things would develop to the point where he would be sharing a late-night drink with the owner of that voice. It seemed the bizarre sequence of summer nights that had started then was to go on, whether he wanted it or not.

Fuyue said nothing more as she drove, facing straight ahead. After a little while she reduced the speed of the windshield wipers and commented, “It’s not stormy anymore.”

The bar in the Mampei Hotel was off the lobby to the left, and around a corner to the right. It was marked with a hanging sign that read simply BAR in English. On entering, they saw a wooden counter lined with bottles of wines and spirits, and standing behind it a bartender dressed in black. The room was small and dimly lit. It was also rather old-fashioned. Against one wall was an upright piano, apparently well used. The place was surprisingly empty for a holiday weekend. Fuyue’s eyes picked out some seats at the back of the room, and she murmured a suggestion that they take those. Holding herself erect and walking with a spring in her step, she signaled her wishes to the bartender with eyes and chin.

At the back was a little recessed space, apparently a remodeled terrace or sunroom, with a low, slanting ceiling. Perhaps to appeal to foreign guests, the bar’s decor had a flavor of traditional Japan, with wooden wainscoting and, instead of wallpaper, a sort of wickerwork similar to that found in tea ceremony rooms. The window blinds too were suggestive of sudare reed screens, but the floor had a tacky crimson carpet, and hanging from the ceiling was a crystal chandelier. Unless you knew this was the bar of a famous old hotel, it might have seemed a forgotten place at the edge of town. Yusuke looked around curiously, wondering whether it had existed back when Fumiko’s uncle had first worked there as a busboy and what sort of clientele patronized the place back then.