Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

Yusuke took another deep breath and started toward the house.

He stepped up onto the front porch where the woman had stood moments before. The house appeared to have no entrance hall. When he peered in through a gap in the curtains, a room like any other lay before him, neither large nor small, furnished with a small wooden dining table and chairs in the center, a rattan rocking chair close by, and a low, carved table bearing a telephone and strewn with newspapers. Everything suggested a simple style of country vacation, yet something seemed odd. He knew what it was the instant he stepped inside. He had slipped back in time.

From the ceiling, a lamp dangled from an electric cord bound with black fabric, the old-fashioned kind with a shade that looked like a milky glass dish turned upside down over a bulb that glowed yellow. So modest was its light that, instead of brightening things up, it seemed to bring darkness out from every corner of the house. The pendulum of a wall clock swung back and forth with a faint, steady click.

It was not just that the room had nothing new in it. Its faded stucco walls, the uneven, knotty floorboards, the wooden columns with dark nicks, small and large—all belonged to a Japan of a generation earlier. Though he was too young to have actually lived in that Japan, it was somewhere he knew from the coarse grain of old black-and-white photographs, newsreels, and movies. The air in this house had been frozen in that time.

An odor once familiar to him filled his nostrils. The room just inside the front door had a wooden floor, but both rooms off to the left were made in the traditional style, raised a step up and covered with tatami straw mats. In the nearest one sat a tin-lined tea chest with its lid off. Once he saw the chest, he knew what the odor was—the smell of camphor mothballs.

The tatami room had the same hanging lamp, suspended over a floor cushion where he guessed the woman had been sitting. To one side lay a pile of cloth, while on the other was a pair of glasses. The woman, though, was not there.

She stood farther down the dark corridor, expressionless, watching him.

Yusuke was well built, with broad shoulders. He was used to having women his mother’s age gaze up at him approvingly. Sometimes they would even stroke his arm and say, “My, my, young people nowadays are so good-looking,” which he found embarrassing. This woman was different. She looked at him with complete indifference, as if staring at a wall. She merely gestured toward the kitchen beyond the front room, and when Yusuke went in and stood at the sink, she handed him a small towel and left, saying only, “This may be of use.”

No man had come out to greet him. Yusuke wondered if she was a widow. Her attitude suggested that she regarded him as an intrusion, which suited him, since he disliked being around strangers himself. He would just ask for directions and leave.

The kitchen was small and dark. It was also damp, years of humidity having seeped into the walls, ceiling, and floor. The same kind of lamp with black cord and milky white shade hung drearily from the ceiling. As he stood beneath its small circle of light, the word “postwar” occurred to him. Yes, that was the word. Though he was vague about exactly which years it referred to, the term evoked the Japan of the years before his birth, a country still shabby and poor and slightly ludicrous when outlays of money were made, like a peasant woman getting all dolled up. Little money had gone into this kitchen, sparing it that comic effect, but it reeked of postwar frugality from every corner. There was a tin-lined sink on one wall and, opposite, a low cupboard whose sliding doors framed frosted panes. Next to it was a small Formica table on which an electric rice cooker sat, a type hardly seen anymore, with a white body, Bakelite handles, and a thin aluminum lid. The only evidence of the present day was a microwave oven, which looked fresh out of the box.

As in the front room, time in the kitchen had stopped.

She’s tight with money, Yusuke concluded after he’d looked around. Although the woman could hardly be called elderly, the cottage had that fossilized air common in houses where old people live. Miserliness offered the most plausible explanation, and would account for the dilapidated state of the place.

Yusuke had an aunt and uncle in Yonago who were famous in the family for being stingy. They apparently had ample savings but never bought anything new. To this day, when he went along on the annual visit to their house at New Year’s, it always felt like a trip back to his childhood. His mother told him that their house felt exactly the same as when she was a child, even. She blamed yet defended her brother: “They’re very careful with their money,” she would say. But Yusuke thought that living on so little when there was no need to should be called miserly, not frugal.

Water from the tap drummed on the tin below.

The scrape on his arm didn’t hurt, but it was bleeding more than he had realized. He tried rinsing the blood off but it kept streaming, red and abundant. Reluctant though he’d been to look, now he was unable to look away. He didn’t even notice when a door down the hallway opened.

Then Yusuke sensed a presence. When he turned and saw a man staring at him, he nearly jumped. How long had the guy been standing there? His face was intense, wild-looking. He seemed utterly out of place in this decaying house. Not just this house—maybe anywhere.

“Oh, Taro, I didn’t know you were there,” he heard the woman say as she came in from the front room. She went over and explained briefly what Yusuke was doing in the house. The man didn’t take his eyes off him.

Yusuke’s own eyes remained fixed on that face, in which there was no softness, no spare flesh; probably like the rest of him. The watching man had a presence that was disquieting, one that seemed to push away the air around him.

Yusuke bowed his head in greeting.

The man was too young to be the woman’s husband, not young enough to be her son. Anyway, he looked nothing like her. He gave Yusuke one more sharp glance before disappearing through the open doorway and down the hall.

Yusuke, startled by the man’s sudden arrival and equally sudden exit, turned off the faucet and wiped his arm with the towel. While he felt offended that his greeting had been ignored, he couldn’t help being impressed by the impact the man had had on him. With someone like that in her house, it was no wonder the woman looked at Yusuke with such utter indifference.

When Yusuke returned to the front room, he saw a first-aid kit lying on the table. The woman, now with her glasses on, motioned for him to sit next to her as if she had already forgotten the other person. She quickly set about applying an antiseptic and wrapping his arm with gauze. She was much kinder than he had imagined. And more capable. Yusuke felt both nervous and embarrassed about having this lady take care of him, but she seemed quite accustomed to looking after other people and did it with ease. When she was nearly done bandaging his arm, she turned her face toward him and asked whether he’d come to Oiwake to see the folk dancing for the annual Bon festival.

“Not really.”

She smiled a little. “In the old days, people used to wear their summer yukata when they danced, but not anymore.”

As she finished tying the gauze bandage, she murmured, as if to herself, “Oh dear, there’s quite a bit of blood on the shirt too.” Looking down, he noticed that there was indeed some blood just above his belt, and probably on his jeans as well.

The woman put away the first-aid kit and gestured for him to sit across from her at the table. Then, taking the teapot in her hands, she held it under the spout of an electric kettle and poured in some hot water. Like the microwave oven, the kettle was new.