Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

“You mean the, uh … Well, I took the bike to the repair shop, and it should be ready tomorrow.”

“Great.” Kubo looked him straight in the face. “And how about you? Did you manage to have some fun?”

“Sure.”

“You look a bit the worse for wear.”

“Not at all. The day before yesterday I went on a big tour all the way to Komoro and back, and yesterday, after coming back from Oiwake, I had a long nap, and today I took the train into Karuizawa.”

“Oh yeah?” Kubo said, staring doubtfully at his face.

Kubo had reason to be skeptical, as even Yusuke could hardly consider the events of the past few days particularly relaxing. They had certainly taken his mind off work, but rather than feeling refreshed, he found the idea of resuming his normal life even less appealing.

Unable to decide whether he should keep it all to himself or share it with Kubo, he answered in a deliberately offhand way. “Yeah, and over in Karuizawa, I met that same woman, the one who helped me out in Oiwake. It turns out she’s a maid.”

“A maid?” Kubo looked surprised, but then laughed, apparently finding it somehow funny.

Yusuke told the story in the order in which it had occurred and as succinctly as possible: he had run into the woman this morning on the main street in Karuizawa; she was helping out some old acquaintances at a villa in Old Karuizawa; she had taken him to that villa; he had ended up being invited to something called high tea the day after tomorrow; and, the final touch, he had been told to bring Kubo along as well. Yusuke himself could not understand why he—someone painfully shy—had been so swiftly befriended by strangers. He expected Kubo to make some comment.

Kubo, however, only responded with a laugh: “ High tea? Is that what you said, high tea ?”

“Yeah.”

“What the hell is that? Is it different from afternoon tea?”

“Well, I’m not really sure, but it seems to start at five o’clock, and they serve a light meal.”

“Then why’s it called tea? Why not dinner?”

“I have no idea. It’s some English thing.”

“Wow.” Kubo laughed again, his white teeth showing against his tanned face. “Any good-looking girls?”

“Nothing but.”

This caught him off guard, but he soon noticed that Yusuke was smiling.

“You’re kidding me.”

“No, it’s the truth. Three beautiful women. All absolutely stunning.”

“Are you serious?”

“Sure.” Then, grinning, he added, “Except they’re kind of old.”

“Mature.”

“Yeah.”

“Like how old? Going on thirty or something?”

Yusuke let out a loud laugh as the image of the sisters with their air of paper-thin fragility passed through his mind.

“Older than that?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So they’re really old?”

“Correct.”

“I’m guessing close to forty?”

Kubo was looking up at him, head cocked to one side. Yusuke was enjoying this.

“You’re way off. They are actual old ladies, definitely in their seventies.”

Kubo’s eyes widened in shock. “Think I’ll bow outta that one, thanks.”

“There’ll be at least one genuine girl there too. I guess she’s about twenty.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“No, I promise.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Yes. Not as pretty as the old ladies, but still pretty. She helps out there.”

After a brief pause, Kubo said, “Thanks anyway, but I still think I’ll give it a miss.”

Ignoring this, Yusuke added, “The house is interesting. It’s kind of run-down, but it’s one of those really quaint-looking ones, Western-style.”

“Old Western-style house, huh?”

“There’s another one on the same lot that’s similar, but it looks even older.”

“Really?” Kubo said, apparently trying to picture them. “So they’ve had them since before the war?”

“Yeah, it seems like it. They’re pretty impressive. The cottage in Oiwake was quite an antique, but so are these, though in a completely different way.”

After staring at him for a while, Kubo said, “All the same, I think I’ll pass. I just don’t have your taste for weird things.”

He flopped onto the sofa, stretching his legs out on the coffee table. Remote control aimed and ready to go, his eyes shifted to the television screen.

“I can’t believe they show this kind of crap on TV in the daytime.”

It must have been either a detective or drama series. A woman with long hair was struggling against a man inside a car. Without the sound, they just looked silly as they grimly fought each other. Dismissively, Kubo held his arm out and pushed the button. The scene changed to a television studio full of women, probably housewives, all holding up sticks on which were round cardboard signs with TRUE on one side and FALSE on the other. The program host, a grinning middle-aged man, must have just made some joke that had the audience writhing with laughter. A closeup of dozens of painted lips filled the bright screen.

“What’s amazing,” Kubo said, “is that people are willing not just to appear on these shows but to watch them too.”

On the next channel, an underwater camera showed a shark as it swam closer and closer, flashing its sharp white teeth, until, suddenly turning in a streamlined arc, it sped away. Kubo continued pressing the button on the remote, but there were so few channels that they quickly ended up back at the first one.

The telephone rang.

Kubo switched the TV off and went to answer it. From the obvious delight in his voice, Yusuke guessed that there was a woman on the line. Even in high school, Kubo had never been ashamed to put on a totally different face when he was dealing with women.

“Great. I’ll see you in a bit, then. Thanks a lot.” He hung up and said, “My big brother’s wife.”

Kubo sat down on the couch again and explained that his brother, with his family, who had left Tokyo by car soon after he had, had just arrived. His sister-in-law was on her way over with some of the fruit from gift baskets given to his grandmother in the hospital.

“She’s coming here?” Yusuke said, bracing himself.

By way of reassuring him, Kubo said, “Don’t worry. She won’t stay long. Their place is barely a five-minute drive from here. I think I told you before that my brother and his wife would be staying there. It’s a lot bigger.”

Kubo’s parents had bought one of the plots in the Mitsui Woods development in the mid-1980s, just before land prices started skyrocketing, and soon built this house. Then his brother had gotten married and invited his in-laws to visit Middle Karuizawa. They fell in love with the area and decided to buy a plot themselves so they could have a summer house of their own. That was why their place was so close by. At the time, the whole Karuizawa area was undergoing a construction boom.

“My mom is so weird about it, though. My brother’s in-laws built their house only a few years after we did, but Mom looks down on them as if she’s been doing this summer villa thing for decades. They’re much, much richer than my folks.”

“They’re rich?”

“Yep. They own some restaurants and a bunch of other things. My mom never approved of that to begin with, because it’s not as respectable as working for a big corporation or something. But it’s been a lifesaver for my brother. He and his family live in their own place, but they pay no rent.”

“Hmm …”

“After the economy started to go sour, the family ended up in the hole, but financially they’re still in a different league from a corporate employee like my dad. Of course, their debt must be in a whole different league too.”

Kubo yawned and, cradling the back of his head in his hands, languidly faced the blank television screen.