Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

“Thistles,” said Yusuke.

“No, not the flowers. Over here.”

Her finger was pointing at something next to them. He saw a small, blackened pile on the ground, perhaps the burnt remains of some straw.

“Last night I lit the ogara right here.”

As the previous night’s conversation came back to him, she crouched down and spread out the ashes with her fingers.

“Have you ever lit one of these fires, to welcome the spirits of the dead?” she asked.

“No.”

“I had forgotten that there was such a custom myself.”

Wiping her fingers on her apron, she stood up.

With that, Yusuke said goodbye. Though he had wanted to, he did not tell her about the tall figure in a white shirt he had watched from behind the night before, running up this narrow road. He somehow felt his restraint might earn him another meeting with the woman before he returned to Tokyo.

Fumiko stood at the gate, motionless. Whether she was seeing him off or just staring into the distance, lost in thought, he could not tell.

THE BICYCLE RENTAL shop, which doubled as a repair shop, was located close to the main road. The old man in a straw hat was crouched by a bicycle when Yusuke walked in. He looked over at the one Yusuke brought in and said, “Very busy this week. Can’t fix it right away. You’ll have to come back to pick it up the day after tomorrow, in the afternoon.” Abrupt though his manner was, he was nice enough to tell Yusuke that the bus that ran between Komoro and Karuizawa would stop there in half an hour. Yusuke’s initial impulse was to wait for it, but he changed his mind and asked the man if he could call him a taxi. He realized he was already beginning to lose touch with his working life in Tokyo, where taking a taxi was not that unusual.

BICYCLE RENTAL SHOP

Traffic was heavy on the main road. As he watched the slow-moving cars, waiting for the taxi to arrive, he noticed license plates from virtually every prefecture. Plates from Gunma, Niigata, Omiya, and such nearby places were no surprise, but he was amazed to see ones from faraway spots like Ehime, Tokushima, and even Oita, in the outer islands. For a while, Yusuke kept track of where they were from, wondering both at their perseverance and at the absurdity of spending so much of their precious summer vacation driving. Eventually, however, it became boring, and he looked elsewhere.

The long, gentle curve of the deep green mountain ridges made a wavy line against the blue summer sky. Among them Mount Asama stood out, distinct, with its reddish bare earth visible near the top. Apparently, wind was blowing high above, as white summer clouds flowed past.

He found it difficult to imagine himself going back to Tokyo and his job after the week was over.

This was his fourth summer since he’d started working for a major publisher. Though he was pleased to land such a competitive position, in taking the job he had given up the prospect of graduate school, so as to avoid being a further burden to his stepfather. He had several reasons for choosing to work for a publisher: he would not have to get up early, wear a tie to work, or lose contact with books. Which is to say, he thought he could earn a living without compromising his student habits. Once employed, however, work was work, and much of his life needed adjusting. Having been a physics major in college, he was assigned to a science magazine. Then, in his second year, when the economy turned sour, the publisher scrapped the magazine and he was transferred to, of all things, a literary journal. He had been quite keen on translated novels in middle and high school, but he had never laid hands on anything as dull as a literary journal. To make matters worse, he was ill-suited by temperament to such work, since he disliked having to meet people. Sometimes encounters with authors were engaging, but, more often than not, he could barely endure them. Every time he heard the “authorities” on cultural trends—people often not much older than himself and not necessarily as bright—pontificating to the editorial staff about the latest fad, it made him feel thoroughly out of place, like a stranger in his own country. One time, he had to help the publisher’s star novelist move into a new house, which he didn’t take kindly to. The fact that none of the other editors seemed to share his indignation only added to his sense of isolation. That must have been when it started. Something that had been smoldering inside him began to rise to the surface.

“Hey, you look totally burned out. Are you okay?” a friend from school had said with a worried look when they met after work one day last year. Wise guys often have a caring side to them, and he was that kind of person. Not long afterward, in early summer, the friend called and invited him to his parents’ place in Nagano Prefecture during the Bon festival holidays in August.

Yusuke had first met this friend, Kubo, in preparatory school in Kobe, where Yusuke was a boarder. When Kubo’s father was assigned to a post in Tokyo, Kubo moved into the same dorm, and the two shared a room for two years, until graduation. They went to college in different places—Yusuke in Kyoto and Kubo in Tokyo—but after Yusuke found work in Tokyo, their friendship revived. Yusuke had shied away from accepting the invitation to his summer house that year mainly because he didn’t relish having to socialize with the whole family.

When Kubo called him this year, though, things were different.

“My grandma’s in the hospital, so my mom can’t leave Tokyo,” Kubo told him. “And if she doesn’t go, my dad’s not going either. Plus, my older brother will be over at his wife’s place near there. So it would be just you and me.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. We can totally relax.”

He had decided to go. The chief editor would no doubt complain, but Yusuke had not taken a full week of summer vacation since he started working. His team would not be affected as long as he worked through the night for a day or two, before and after the vacation.

“Besides, you really need a break,” Kubo insisted on the phone.

The August holidays soon came around. Kubo picked Yusuke up at work on Friday and they made it to Nagano the same evening. They spent Saturday cleaning the house, putting the bedding out to air, and shopping at a supermarket larger than any Yusuke had ever seen in Tokyo. They stocked up for the whole ten days. That night, however, Kubo’s parents called to say that his grandmother was not doing well. Kubo decided to go back to Tokyo at once but urged Yusuke to stay and enjoy his well-deserved vacation, and having the house all to himself. The next day, after spending the night alone, Yusuke had left for his bicycle trip to Komoro, and it was on his way back that he had his run-in with the hedge.

THE TAXI STAYED on the main road for a while before it turned left onto another busy road, and then, a little farther along, took a right turn. After crossing a bridge, it went up a smooth, winding drive lined on both sides with large summer houses in a range of styles, but each making the most of the mountainous terrain. Maybe because the houses were built, on the whole, along Western lines on decent-sized lots with landscaped yards, it didn’t look like Japan. Yusuke had the impression of being in an American suburb, the kind shown on television or in movies. He felt a strong sense of displacement, staring as if at something unreal as the orderly scenery unfolded outside the taxi window.

The same sense of displacement continued as he went into Kubo’s house. He had been away only one day and yet he felt as if he had returned from a long journey. The house was spacious and full of natural light. He was struck by the clerestory windows along the top of the high-ceilinged living room. Other details that had gone unnoticed now pressed for his attention: the solid insulated glass, the glossy hardwood floors, the gleaming kitchen cabinetry. All cried out “today.” Yet, whatever that “today” was, it no longer seemed real to Yusuke.