Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

Suddenly a shiver ran through him. The handlebars twisted to the left, and his body went flying off the bicycle. He had ridden into a hedge.

He picked himself up carefully, brushing away bits of twigs and dirt, and was relieved to find that he felt no real pain. He must not have broken any bones. He was sure, though, that the bicycle had not been as lucky. When he pulled it upright, he saw that the lamp was broken and the front fender bent. He looked at his Muji watch by the light of the moon: nine-fifteen.

Yusuke took a handkerchief out of his jeans pocket and wiped the sweat off his forehead. Only then did he notice the penetrating trill of crickets, their cry ringing through the calm of the night air. In the mountains, autumn arrived early, ignoring the dictates of the calendar.

Beyond the hedge, a light came on. Someone had turned on the porch light of what seemed to be a summer house. He could see the person pull open a curtain, look out, and hurry outside. It was a woman. Perhaps to keep the mosquitoes out, she hastily shut the screen door behind her and then turned toward where Yusuke stood. Now that there was some electric light, he could see the outline of a meager gate—two wooden poles—just a short way in front of him. Passing through the gate and around a parked car, he made his way toward her.

Before he reached the steps, he paused, bowing slightly.

“I’m sorry about this,” he said.

The woman stared hard at this figure that had appeared out of the darkness. She looked slim, her hair casually pulled back. From a distance she seemed to be quite young, but as he drew nearer he realized she wasn’t either young or old. Like his own mother, she was of that age that left people guessing. The porch light shone from behind her, making it difficult to see her face clearly.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I got lost and then somehow ran into that hedge.”

“It is rather difficult around here at night,” she said. He could barely make out her words.

“I was trying to get back to Middle Karuizawa.”

Yusuke felt uncomfortable as she stared. His collision with the hedge had already created an awkward situation, but with this lady coming out of her country house, there was some additional unease. Like most young people, he prided himself on thinking he was beyond being impressed by the wealthy. Besides, in this day and age, the owner of a cottage in the country might just as easily be an ordinary middle-class company employee with a second mortgage. But especially in this area, the summer house crowd struck him as rather different, their lives filled with luxuries and pleasures unknown to him.

“How do I get to Middle Karuizawa from here?” he asked.

She did not answer the question. She was instead gazing at his left arm: “Young man, you appear to be injured.”

He followed her gaze and saw by the porch light a dark red stain from his elbow to his wrist. Like many men, he had a strong aversion to the sight of blood. He hid his alarm and muttered, “I’m fine. Really, I am.”

Along with the tension and confusion he already felt, her peculiar way of speaking—like a character in some old-fashioned novel—echoed in his head.

She observed him for a little longer, then said, “Please do come in. I’ll show you the way on a map.” Yusuke hesitated. The woman’s words were perfectly polite, yet there was a cool detachment in her voice which paradoxically he found inviting, being shy. He did as he was told.

“The road is narrow. Bring the bicycle into the driveway. If a car comes by, I dare say it would be quite dangerous,” she added before walking briskly into the house.

I dare say it would be quite dangerous —Yusuke repeated the quaint phrase to himself while he headed back to the road. He could feel his wound throbbing as he dabbed at it with the handkerchief he’d taken out of his pocket.

The handlebars turned out to be bent as well, forcing him to struggle with the bicycle as he wheeled it in from the road. When he managed to steer the stubborn thing up to the porch and inspect it under the light, he discovered that the chain had slipped off too. He bent down and attempted to wind it back on, only to give up after a few tries. The thought of dragging the bicycle all the way back to Middle Karuizawa made his arms and legs, already heavy from the day’s fatigue, feel even heavier. At least he hadn’t wrecked a brand-new bicycle.

All was still. He could see no other lights. Perhaps the cottage stood alone in the woods or no one was staying in the houses nearby. After surveying the surroundings, Yusuke took his first proper look at the house. It almost made him gasp.

Though he had dimly taken in its appearance, he hadn’t realized how modest it was. Not only was the house small, it was old and dilapidated—so much so that it looked on the verge of collapse. Years of rain and wind had darkened the walls. The entire structure had started to decay, to dissolve into the ground, making it difficult to tell where the house ended and earth began.

Earlier, on his way back from Komoro, he had wandered around Oiwake on his bicycle and seen a number of empty, neglected cottages like this, but the house before him seemed, if possible, even more forlorn, with its yellow light seeping palely through a thin curtain.

Yusuke couldn’t help feeling a bit superior as he compared this shabby building with his friend’s summer place, made of imported Scandinavian materials—doors, windows, roofing—in a newly developed resort area in the hills. That house and its location were doubtless what a corporate executive like his friend’s father was expected to own.

He wondered about this woman. What did her husband do? Maybe he was a poorly paid college teacher with neither inherited money nor extra income. Or possibly a novelist whose books didn’t sell very well? Since Yusuke worked as an editor for a literary journal, the idea of writing as a profession came readily to mind. He knew that scholars and writers tended to spend their summers in the Oiwake area because property here was more affordable than in Karuizawa, or even Middle Karuizawa. Was her husband inside the house? The woman seemed old enough to have grown-up children and even small grandchildren, but he heard no family sounds from inside—in fact, he heard nothing. It was as if the place had been forsaken by the world.

Lit by moonlight, the yard around the house was also perfectly still. A thin scattering of pebbles covered what presumably was a path, which someone had weeded, but otherwise the area had been left to grow wild. Tall pampas grass rose in large clusters, the striped fronds shining silver and ghostly in the moonlight.

A sense of apprehension stole over him.

There was something about this place: it seemed to belong to a different time, a different realm. Perhaps because he had wandered all day long past rural scenes that were redolent of an older world, the house reminded him of a folktale he’d read as a child. A traveler seeking shelter at the end of a long day’s journey sees a faint light in a distant field and walks toward it, until at last he reaches a hut where a woman reluctantly lets him stay the night. In the morning, though, he finds only a pile of bleached bones on the floor and hears the wind howling through the bamboo latticework of crumbled walls. This weathered mountain cottage also seemed haunted, as though some unseen presence were warding off the outside world.

Yusuke took a deep breath, trying to calm his nerves. As he felt the mountain air flow into his lungs, he realized that he hadn’t breathed so deeply in all the four years since he’d started working. Yes, he had made the right decision to get away from Tokyo. This was his third day since arriving in Nagano on Friday. Even only a day ago, the working world still cluttered his mind—images of steel office desks and the weekly schedule tacked to the wall. But today he had woken up early and bicycled all day; and at last city life was in retreat. With a full week of vacation still to go, his ordinary routine now seemed remote, and he felt as if these seven days could last forever.