Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

Finishing her rice, my mother said, “There you go again. You always look at everything on your own terms. That’s not how the world works.”

I didn’t hide my dissatisfaction, but I kept quiet. It had nothing to do with me anyway. My father went upstairs to watch television in the main bedroom, and Taro Azuma was no longer on my mind when my mother and I started washing the dishes and I listened to her tsk-tsking about my sister. “What does she think she’s doing, going around in those miniskirts, half naked? She may think she looks ‘cool,’ but no decent Japanese boy would go near a girl dressed like that.” My mother didn’t want her daughters to become too Americanized, and she fretted constantly about Nanae, who was now living in a dormitory at the conservatory.

I HAD ALMOST forgotten the story about the private chauffeur when one evening I heard a car pull up in front of our house. Lifting a slat in the venetian blind, I peered out and saw a long, shiny car parked by the curb; a figure in profile, tall and thin, was opening the car door for my father. By the streetlight, I could see that the man was wearing the billed cap of a chauffeur. He disappeared into the front seat and drove off before I could get a glimpse of his face.

That tall, thin figure was Taro Azuma.

When I ran downstairs to meet my father, he told me, “I was out with Atwood. That man, Azuma, was driving the car.”

Mr. Atwood lived a little farther out on Long Island, so I guessed he’d given my father a ride home after they had dinner together in Manhattan.

“Papa, was that a limousine?” I asked excitedly as he was hanging up his coat in the hall closet.

“Yes.”

The effects of the drinks he’d had at dinner were noticeable as he reported, with particular satisfaction, the way the interior of the car was equipped with a wireless telephone and a minibar containing whiskey, gin, and other kinds of drinks. Being a grown-up, however, his interest in limos only extended that far. I hopped up the stairs after him, just in time to hear him tell my mother as he slipped off his necktie, “You know, that Atwood driver’s got a brain in his head.” His favorite saying was “A man with no brain is no use to the world,” so these were high words of praise.

Sometime later, when the subject of the private chauffeur had faded from memory, my father came back again in the limousine. Atwood had left from LaGuardia Airport on a business trip and apparently told Azuma to give my father a lift home. The two Japanese men, driver and passenger, must have started a conversation as a matter of course, and, on arriving, my father invited him in.

Dressed in a navy-blue uniform, Azuma sat stiffly on the sofa in the living room. “I don’t drink,” he said, and didn’t touch the glass of Budweiser that I brought out on a lacquer tray we used for guests.

“That’s very sensible,” my father cheerfully told him in a tone of approval. He had already taken a long swig of his own beer, and almost at once his neck and face flushed red. “After all, you’re making your living driving a car.” As though keeping his distance, Azuma’s response was at best reserved, if not guarded.

Being still a young girl, I felt flustered in the presence of this strapping young man. What a contrast he was to my father, laughing sloppily with his face flushed and round behind his glasses, drunk on beer and his own talk. Azuma acknowledged my presence with only a glance. I skipped back into the kitchen, returned to the living room with a cup of tea, then quickly withdrew again. Azuma not only ignored me but also my mother. My mother tended to monopolize guests, getting deep into whispered conversation or breaking into peals of laughter. That night, though, she followed me into the kitchen as soon as she’d exchanged a few words with him and, pouring some tea for us, sat with me in the breakfast nook to talk about nothing in particular. Some guests we would leave in the living room with my father and not give another thought to. Others distracted us.

“I wonder why he looks so serious,” she said in a hushed voice.

At that moment, my father entered the room, smelling of beer, and asked in that voice he used when in a good mood, “Those Linguaphone tapes you used to listen to. Where are they?”

The tapes were the large old reel-to-reel kind.

“I put them away somewhere. I’m not sure exactly where, though.”

“Will it take long to find them?”

“I suppose not,” she said, sounding slightly peeved, and put her teacup down. “Shall I get them out?”

After a few minutes, she came downstairs again, stopping in the living room on her way back to the kitchen.

“Your father loves acting like a big shot. That’s his way,” she told me.

He had bought a whole set of tapes for her soon after we arrived in the States, but it didn’t take her long to realize that she could make do with a few English phrases — “ This , please ,” “ Oh, great ,” “ Thank you ”—and stopped listening to them. So they were now being handed on to this visitor.

“Weren’t they really expensive?” I asked a little grudgingly, though I’d never even touched the tapes, intent as I was on not learning English and on rejecting a country that, looking back on it now, had always been pretty nice to me.

“I’m sure they were, but if that young man can find some use for them, I’m happy for him to have them. It’s better than letting them just sit in the closet and collect dust.” She stood up and put her apron on, returning to her usual hospitable self. “He doesn’t drink, so maybe I should cut up some grapefruit for him.” She bent down to peer into the refrigerator. Once nicknamed Slimhips, my mother was rather vain about her figure. She looked elegant in a kimono, but her quite understandable pride in this was wasted on her daughters, who never really learned to appreciate the too subtle variations in Japanese women’s body shapes.

Azuma stayed for about an hour. When we heard our collie, Della, barking, we hurried out into the hall to see him off. There he stood, clutching his driver’s cap awkwardly in his hands. I noticed how tawny his skin was for a Japanese—and how lustrous.

“You’re still young, so you’ll be able to learn a lot.”

“I hope so.”

I assumed they were talking about the Linguaphone tapes, but my father’s next words told me otherwise.

“It’s quite an education, to spend time around rich Americans.”

Azuma smiled, apparently making an effort to be obliging. Something about his smile made me uncomfortable. This is someone you’d be better off keeping at arm’s length, I thought. I felt uneasy about my father’s taking such a liking to him.

“And besides, that’s about the only job you can take right now, because of your visa.”

“That’s true.”

“Whatever you do, make learning English your top priority. Study really hard, as if you had to memorize the whole lot.” My father motioned toward the tapes with his chin.

“Yes, sir.” Taro Azuma put on his cap, bowed, and took his leave.

Through the tall, narrow windows on either side of the front door, I watched the car’s lights recede into the distance. Silently they moved away, floating into the darkness.

AS I LEFT the living room with a loaded tray after clearing up, I heard my father filling my mother in on our visitor. “That guy doesn’t even have a high school diploma.”

“He doesn’t?” I said in surprise, entering the kitchen.

“That’s what he told me. Both of his parents died when he was little.” He sounded sympathetic. He too had lost his parents early on. “His uncle raised him. He’s had a rough row to hoe.”