Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

It wasn’t long before I published my first novel.

THE NEXT PLACE I taught at was in the Midwest, at the University of Michigan. The town, Ann Arbor, froze all winter, and it was in the frozen heart of winter that I arrived. Though slightly outside the snowbelt, where the snow might be deeper, Ann Arbor had a winter more severe than any I’d experienced in my life. The university arranged for an apartment that was only a five-minute walk from the campus and just across the street from a little grocery store, so I didn’t need a car this time around. It was so cold, however, that I did need a down coat to cover me from neck to ankle, fur-lined snow boots, and big mittens. On my way to classes, I felt and looked like a penguin. No weekend walks that winter—and winter seemed to go on forever.

Nonetheless, spring did arrive, on schedule. As soon as Easter break began, I flew to New York, mainly to see Nanae, who came to pick me up at LaGuardia Airport in her still shiny Accord. She seemed pleased that her little sister was in the same country again, though the accumulated fatigue that had struck me when we last parted was now even more pronounced. She complained of not feeling well. I suggested that she see a doctor, but she merely said, “Doctors cost lots of money here.” And so when Mrs. Cohen called to invite us over, the night before my departure, she grumbled about it at first: “Her house is way too far!”

Mrs. Cohen was still on Long Island, but farther away from the city, in a larger house, where she lived alone with her husband, their two sons having grown up. He joined us for dinner that evening. As is often the case in America when men are present, the talk turned to current events. Despite her initial grumbling, Nanae made an effort to engage in conversation with Mr. Cohen about the Gulf War, the next presidential election, and so forth, to my own relief, since I could barely remember the names of either the places or the people involved, my only source of news being the radio I listened to while working in the kitchen. Soon Mr. Cohen heaved his enormous self up and settled in front of the equally enormous television in the family room to watch a basketball game. All at once the dining room became a cozier place and, with cups of green tea in our hands, we could have a relaxed, all-woman chat in Japanese.

Mrs. Cohen said, looking at me as if I were some rare kind of animal, “Minae, I heard you published a novel. I’m so impressed!”

I would have responded with some self-deprecating remark, as modesty dictated, if she hadn’t immediately brought up another subject.

“Since you spend most of your time in Japan now, I’m sure you know the magazine Enterprise Japan ,” she said, looking at me with some excitement. I told her, remembering the self-satisfied grin of some CEO or other on one of its garish covers, that I’d seen the magazine advertised in the subway. Apparently an Enterprise Japan reporter had visited Mrs. Cohen several weeks earlier and asked detailed questions about Taro Azuma.

“You’re joking,” I burst out, refusing to believe the Azuma I knew was bracketed with the world of Enterprise Japan , however rich he might be.

“No, I’m not. Can you believe it?”

The magazine was putting together a special issue about Japanese who had succeeded abroad. Azuma was at the top of their list. The journalist had requested an interview, to be accompanied, he hoped, by a double-page spread of photographs, but Azuma had declined, so people who were acquainted with him had been approached.

“It seems he’s the most successful Japanese businessman in America, though hardly known in Japan. They told me he’s made more money than Rocky Aoki—you know, the one who started the Benihana restaurants?”

Even we knew who Rocky Aoki was.

“Isn’t that something?” Mrs. Cohen asked with apparent pride, studying first my face and then Nanae’s. I couldn’t detect any of the slight resentment I’d last heard in her voice. She now seemed simply, even too simply, privileged to have known this renowned individual.

“Yes, it really is,” Nanae agreed. I added that our father had known from the very beginning that he stood out from the rest.

“From what I hear, he’s now worth hundreds of millions of dollars—and has been for quite a while,” she told us.

The amount was too large to get our heads around, either in dollars or in yen.

“What’s more, he’s started to spend his money,” she continued. “He bought a huge old mansion with lots of land. I can’t remember how many acres.”

“Really?” we cried out together.

Mrs. Cohen gazed at us happily. The place he had bought, it turned out, was one of the mansions on the Gold Coast of Long Island, not too far from the park where we used to have our company picnics every June. A wealthy industrialist from the city had built the house in the early twentieth century, but, as the property continued to change hands, both the house and the grounds had fallen into disrepair, and Azuma was now restoring them.

I was mute with envy as I heard the story. Wealth was nothing but an abstract notion; a grand house on the Gold Coast, however, was painfully real. Why should someone like Azuma get involved in a project so culturally sophisticated—restoring a historic building? I may have been even more dismayed than envious, thinking of my cramped, ordinary apartment in Tokyo, with its four concrete walls always within arm’s reach. I remembered our standing next to each other on the edge of that same shore, gazing out to sea. That day, I had thought I was the one with a future; I’d even felt guilty about it.

“They say the place is gorgeous, like something in the movies.”

“No …!”

“And he’s building an annex, close to the water.”

“No …!”

“And even a Japanese teahouse too!”

Mrs. Cohen had heard all these things secondhand; it had been years since she last saw him. Her source was a Japanese cabinetmaker living in Manhattan who was helping to build the teahouse. Since the teahouse and adjoining Japanese garden were integral to the plan, he’d told her, Azuma had gone so far as to hire an architect from Japan to oversee the project.

“Well, what do you say to all this?” Mrs. Cohen asked, clearly relishing the reaction she was getting. I could see why she had been more insistent than usual in her invitation.

“What can anyone say?” answered Nanae.

“And he’s also started doing good works.”

“How so?”

For a couple of years, Azuma had been hosting a Christmas party to cheer up Japanese people who no longer had anywhere to go back to and were stuck in New York indefinitely, barely making enough to live on. What’s more, he didn’t limit the invitation to them but included people from other parts of Asia, hiring not only Japanese chefs but Korean and Chinese ones as well. Together they prepared such a feast that, after eating more than their fill, guests were encouraged to take food home with them.

“He makes charitable donations too,” she told us, “so I guess he’s turned into a philanthropist.”

“Now, that truly is something,” I said, sincerely impressed.

Mrs. Cohen didn’t hesitate to correct my naive view of the world. “It’s more a sign that he’s joining the club of rich Americans.”

Nanae’s eyes brightened. “Another thing rich people do is collect art.”

“That’s true.”

“Do me a favor, will you? Next time you see Mr. Azuma, tell him about my fabulous sculptures. Please?”

“Of course, I will—if I ever see him again, that is.”

“Tell him it’s a good investment.”

“Sure.”

THEN IT WAS time for us to head back to Brooklyn.