Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

“Yeah. I really don’t know what the difference is.”

The waiter came to take our main order; he had a perfectly Japanese face but spoke to us only in broken English, so it was impossible to tell if he was Korean, Chinese, or, for that matter, Mongolian. Restaurants like this were having more and more difficulty hiring Japanese people, who by this time expected higher pay.

Nanae puckered her lips and blew out a puff of smoke, saying in English, “Maybe he’s gay. He’s just too good-looking to be straight.”

“I don’t know. But he’s had girlfriends.”

“Then why isn’t he married, for God’s sake?”

If Nanae hadn’t been with Henryk at this point, she might have entertained the possibility, at least that night, of falling for Azuma. Yet what good would that have done? She wasn’t brazen enough to make an open play, particularly to somebody as rich as that.

“You know, when you first met him, you said that there was something vulgar about him. Remember?”

“That was then.” She turned to look over at the sushi bar. “He looks so different.” She sighed. “So … content.”

It was just as she said. The turbulence he’d been unable to hide was gone, replaced by a jauntiness equally hard to suppress.

“So is that what happens to people when they’re successful?” Nanae murmured, almost to herself.

“I wish I knew.”

Our parents’ only aspiration for us was to see us settled in a decent marriage. Even their investment in Nanae’s piano lessons, or my stay in Paris, was only a way of preparing us for a good match. We ourselves grew up expecting nothing much else and had only the vaguest idea of what “success” might actually mean.

Once again, as if to herself, she said, “I wonder if it doesn’t make him a bit scared, to be quite so happy. He looks cool but somehow silly too. Men do look dumb when they’re too happy, don’t they?”

We both laughed. Azuma’s contentment was that obvious.

It was the weekend, and the small sushi place, its walls decorated with the autographs of Japanese celebrities on squares of paper, was busy with a constant flow of customers. I noticed that several of the Japanese there spotted Azuma and were speaking in low voices about him. Before long, the waiter brought the sashimi over in a wooden vessel shaped like a fishing boat to show it was a special treat. Thrilled by the sheer size of it, enough for five people, I applauded softly.

“I thought rich people were supposed to be stingy, but look at this!”

“It’s difficult to tell, though,” Nanae said, breaking apart a pair of chopsticks. She having been at the conservatory, the ways of the wealthy were one thing she knew slightly more about than I did. “Rich people do spend when it’s to their advantage.”

“Well, then, why is he spending his money on us?”

“You got me there.”

We giggled, but she added, more seriously, “You wonder, though. Don’t you think it’s impossible for a really good person to get rich?”

“I guess so,” I agreed; then, after some thought, “But maybe it’s still possible to get rich without being a bad person.”

Busily savoring one slice of sashimi after another, we speculated about how much Taro Azuma was worth—a few million, at least. Ten million, maybe—at which point he materialized at our table to say goodbye. Flustered, we stood up this time and thanked him.

As for the extravagant treat, we were unable to finish it, however hard we tried; so we had the waiter wrap it up with the sushi we’d ordered ourselves. Nanae gleefully stroked the top of the brown paper bag and said, about her cats, “If I open this in front of my babies , they’ll go crazy. They won’t let me eat! They hardly ever get to eat fresh fish.”

“So have it in your bedroom with the door closed. They’ll never know.”

“I couldn’t do that. We always eat together as a family. You just don’t seem to understand .”

NOT LONG AFTERWARD, I finally went back to Japan. It was not without a guilty conscience that I left my sister with her two cats in America. Around the same time, my mother’s boyfriend happened to be transferred home, and she returned to Japan as well. I, naturally, no longer felt comfortable with her, but there were things we had to work out as a family; neither of us was willing, for financial and emotional reasons, to let the family dissolve entirely. My mother and I agreed that we couldn’t expect Nanae—more spoiled and helpless than her younger sister—to be burdened with all the miscellaneous chores that came with having a father in a nursing home, so we decided to move him back too, and got him into a comparable place, to the far west of Tokyo. He had to share a room with seven other men, but that was all my mother could afford. My mother herself rented an apartment, since buying a decent condominium in Tokyo was out of the question, let alone a proper house, even the ordinary kind we used to live in before our exodus to the States. My parents, who had spent generously on their daughters, were improvident by nature; they had been further encouraged in this by the expectation that the pension they’d be getting in U.S. dollars would allow them to live comfortably once they were back in Japan. By now a dollar was worth less than a third of what it had been when we left the country. I cried bitterly at night, thinking about my father, who deserved better.

One day, I noticed that there was no smell of the earth in Tokyo now, either.

Back in America

I DIDN’T THINK I would ever live in America again after I returned to Japan. A few years later, however, when I was working part time teaching students to read and write English at a Japanese university, which was about the only way I could make a living back home, an offer came from Princeton to teach modern Japanese literature. This was the result of an academic paper on literary theory that a kind professor in the States had solicited from me and arranged to be published. Theory was a subject which I, like many others, felt much too ill-equipped to deal with, but I had tried my best. Schools never suited me despite the ridiculously long years I had spent in them. And the timing was bad: an idea for my first novel was finally beginning to take shape. I felt honored, yet I could not make up my mind to go back. Then Nanae said, in an international call, “You have to take it. It’s not the kind of offer you get every day.” The tone of her voice made me realize how guilty I’d been feeling about leaving her behind on her own. My mother encouraged me to go back too, tacitly agreeing to take better care of my father while I was away. For her, I was the daughter who helped around the kitchen and, once out of the kitchen, did nothing but read novels while munching on rice crackers. She was surprised that someone like that could become a college professor; I suppose she was proud, like any other mother. I packed all my things again and left.

As it happened, the stint at Princeton turned out to be only the first of several jobs at American universities.

I HADN’T USED a car in years, so I started my second life in America by learning to drive again. Princeton, though only an hour and a half from Manhattan, was semirural; you needed a car even for buying groceries. School would start in September; I got to New York toward the end of August, and Nanae gave me driving lessons.

“ You’re doing just fine ,” Nanae reassured me in English from the passenger seat, puffing on her cigarette. Acting the big sister and rising to the occasion, she managed to seem unconcerned that her life depended on my uncertain driving skills. Also, she was in a good mood, pleased about my return to the States. Her hair was a little shorter, only down to her shoulders, because “long hair doesn’t look good on women my age,” but she still smoked, showing off her long fingers.