Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

The sister-in-law looked over at Kubo and Yusuke as they sat there next to each other on the couch.

“You guys should come too. They’re starting about three and going on all night.”

“But we’re not invited.”

“It doesn’t matter. If you come with us, they won’t mind. The party’s full of people who don’t know them as well as we do.”

Last year, there had been such a huge crowd at the party that the next day the owner had called her to ask who everyone was, she confided with a certain satisfaction. You could see how thrilled she was by the special attention given to her family. Though they were newcomers in these parts compared to Kubo’s family, they were making rapid social headway.

YUSUKE AND KUBO borrowed flashlights and walked back to the house. It was a moonlit night, like the one two days ago. With the paved road so smooth and wide, it hardly felt like mountain country. At every corner, there was a street sign mounted on a low lava-stone wall. Yusuke was amusing himself by shining the light on names like Titmouse Lane, Kingfisher Drive, or Turtledove Way, when Kubo spoke up.

“I think my sister-in-law kind of has a thing for me.”

Yusuke had had that impression too.

“Well, what can you do? Can I help it if I’m more of a hunk than my brother? But,” he said more seriously, “I’m starting to feel kind of uncomfortable about it. I mean, I can’t do anything about it, right? I couldn’t do that to my brother. I guess I’ll have to make do with the kid sis.”

Yusuke had no idea what to say to this, so he just smiled and kept walking. It wasn’t as if Kubo expected him to say anything anyway. When he shifted his eyes away from the paved road to the night sky, he saw the moon moving along with him.

After the two had walked in silence for a while, Kubo asked, “Are you going to go tomorrow?”

“I don’t know yet,” he said vaguely, still gazing at the moon.

“It’d be fun to see how the rich live.”

“Right.”

For an instant, the urge to race the moon, as he used to do when he was a child, skipped through him.

“I’ll decide tomorrow,” he said eventually, though really he had already decided. He would go to Oiwake.

NOTHING REMAINED OF the charred ogara ; an evening storm had washed it away. But the flowers of the two thistles that had been next to it were bigger and hardier-looking, as if filled with new vitality.

Walking the bicycle, which he had picked up from the repair shop on his way, Yusuke passed through the gate. When he stepped onto the porch, he heard Fumiko calling out a welcome, sounding as if he came there every day. He leaned forward and peered inside, only to find the same tin-lined tea chest lid propped open, and Fumiko still surrounded by a pile of fabric. She looked up without surprise.

“Have a seat out there; I’ll join you in a second.” She half rose and started tidying the pile.

“Is Mr. Azuma here?”

“He left for Tokyo this morning.”

She did not seem to mind that he hadn’t called first. Yusuke so disliked talking on the telephone that he often went to extremes to avoid using one, at least when he was not at work. He had decided that if Azuma was at the house when he arrived, or Fumiko wasn’t there, he would just come back some other time. He was surprised that she was not surprised in the least.

He chose the same seat where he’d sat for breakfast on his first, accidental visit.

Cicadas were still humming loudly. The rustling of the leaves in the high branches, and the flickering of the sunlight across the porch—everything remained the same. He felt as though he had been sitting here like this since the moment Fumiko had suddenly begun to cry. Or even longer, since before he was born.

He heard a roar above them and, when he looked up, he saw a large helicopter flying across the blue sky again.

“The Occupation Forces …”

As he whispered these words to himself, Yusuke felt for the first time that the postwar years had become a reality for him.

“I’M AFRAID THERE’LL be a lot of digressions.”

“That’s all right.”

“A lot. Really a lot.”

“No. It’s okay.”

THE WOMAN JOINED him on the porch and began.

IT’S NOT THAT I feel as if I’ve lived all that long. It’s just that I can’t recognize myself in the child I was. Somewhere along the way, when I was still young, my life took a different turn, but I kept on going without realizing it. Then one day when I finally looked back, I saw that the path I’d started on before the turn had somehow disappeared. I can summon up hazy images of a girl in a padded jacket—the kind people in the country used to wear in winter—dragging her little sister along by the hand, and carrying her little brother on her back. But it’s hard to see myself in her.

Of course I do have some childhood memories that are still quite clear.

First, of Mount Asama. No matter where we were, we could always see it—from out by the well, in the paddy fields, on the road to school, in the schoolyard. Asama on a cloudy day or in the rain; Asama in the snow or beneath a clear blue sky. How can I describe it on a clear day? With each moment, the face of the mountain changed color until, at sunset, it glowed a smoky purple. Even as a child, I felt blessed to have it nearby, a mountain so imposing—and so ancient that just thinking how long it had stood there was overwhelming. When spring finally arrived, you could see its snowcap melting; threads of water showed silver as they flowed down the mountain’s folds.

And there was the Chikuma River. Just as you could see Mount Asama from everywhere, you could hear the river from virtually anywhere. Its sound, so faint sometimes that you had to strain to hear it, was oddly reassuring. At night, before falling asleep, I used to listen for the river, and when I caught the sound, I’d pull my cold quilts up to my face, relieved. Apparently this River of a Thousand Bends got its name because, from its headwaters through deep valleys in the south, it constantly changes direction. Reaching Saku, where I grew up, both its incline and its angles become gentler than higher up. Even so, I could always hear it murmuring.

Behind our house was a creek that branched off from the Chikuma and, when summer came, there were rice-fish and whirligig beetles in its clear water. I used to crouch down and scoop up some of the water to drink. I can still feel the chill of it on my palms and in my mouth. I can also remember the earth smell of a potato just dug from the ground, the mealy stench of the night-soil pit, and the musty odor of the hardened dirt of the kitchen floor, tamped down by generations of footsteps.

MOUNT ASAMA

CHIKUMA RIVER

These are my memories, but they just don’t seem like mine. The sensations remain vivid, as if engraved on me, but … how shall I put it? I feel my mind has changed so much that they’re no longer part of who I am now. I can see no link between the world of my childhood and my adult life. I suppose every adult feels he’s different from when he was a child. But for someone like me, who moved into an entirely different world when still quite young, it’s as if a deep gap divides my past and my present.

I HAVE AN aunt named O-Hatsu. Of those I thought of as “the grown-ups” when I was little, I lost one, then two, and now they’re almost all in their graves except O-Hatsu, the wife of my mother’s eldest brother. She’s still quite fit at ninety, fit enough to chew her food with her own teeth. Apparently she grew up in a house without a bar of soap, let alone tooth powder. Her family didn’t have electricity until she started elementary school, and she’d never seen a train until the tracks of the Koumi Line were laid in Saku. It’s exactly as if she were born in the Edo period. These days, you only have to drive for five minutes to find a sparkling clean convenience store, with bright lights above shelves stocked with everything you could possibly need. Land that used to be fields of mulberry bushes is now crisscrossed by smooth, wide roads lined with video rental stores and fast-food restaurants.