Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

The Shigemitsus, next door, also spent their summers in Karuizawa.

Other than a cluster of trees between the two villas for privacy, nothing marked the property line, since the two families both wanted to make the most of their outdoor space. Still, they respected each other’s privacy; and, though they could hear one another laughing there, they didn’t set foot in each other’s gardens in the morning. In the afternoons, the older generation would play a game of bridge on the porch of either house. But the children always played together. There was a tennis court, which hadn’t had to be turned into a vegetable garden during the war like the one in Seijo, but needed constant weeding. Here the children tried to play tennis. Luckily, they were mostly girls, four out of five, so things were fairly quiet.

Yoko was something of an outsider among the five, probably because she didn’t go to Seijo much and was the youngest. She also wasn’t very agile, maybe because she spent so much of her time sitting on the floor next to her grandmother. My first summer in Karuizawa, this all resulted in her getting hurt. She used to carry a teddy bear around with her when the other children were leaving her out. On one of those days, Masayuki grabbed the bear and ran with it; Yoko, naturally, ran after him to get it back. Calling back to her, he made fun of the clumsy way she ran, continuing to run farther and farther ahead. Yoko was so intent on catching up that she tripped over a tree root and fell flat, hitting her forehead on a rock. The cut turned out to be deep, and she had to be taken to Karuizawa Hospital to get stitches. Masayuki’s mother, Yayoi, who came with me, was so upset that she looked as though she might pass out. The doctor prescribed rest, so when Yoko got home, she was put to bed in her room in the attic. Wearing a bandage around her head, she stared unhappily at the ceiling.

On the evening of her second day there, Masayuki came up to see her. I was feeding her some rice porridge when I heard a voice behind me: “Yo-ko.” He had tiptoed up the stairs. In the dim corridor I could just make out the wispy figure of a boy. Apparently, after resisting his mother’s appeals, he had finally agreed to apologize. Stepping into the room, he said in an undertone, “I’m sorry,” and then turned and darted down the stairs, his footsteps clattering. Yoko looked as if she had seen an apparition. I suppose she was shocked that the only son of the Shigemitsus should deign to visit her. I still remember the sight of him, standing like a shadow of himself in the dim light. It was as if some messenger had silently materialized, descended from the night sky.

Eventually, the wound on Yoko’s forehead healed and only a faint white scar remained.

The two families used to have lunch together on Sundays. It started later than usual, at one o’clock, and was called Sunday lunch , in English. It was always at the Shigemitsus’, served on the porch or in their dining room, but prepared by all of us, in the Shigemitsu kitchen, under the Demon’s supervision.

Foreign travel before the war was all but unheard of, and of those lucky few who went abroad, none came back without having mastered some aspect of the “higher culture” they’d been exposed to. The person returning from the West inevitably became a kind of teacher—even women; even maids. So, in London, while Mrs. Shigemitsu learned dressmaking, the Demon learned how to cook Western meals. The weekly cooking lessons she gave Yayoi and the three sisters back then evolved into the whole business of preparing Sunday lunch at Karuizawa. Without a full staff after the war, they all agreed on having nothing elaborate, but it was elaborate enough, especially as there were sometimes up to twenty people. Chizu from the Saegusas and I worked under the Demon on those days; the way she ordered us around gave me a glimpse of what she must have been like back in the days when there was a big staff and she was the head maid. After Sunday lunch our employers put their evening meal together themselves; they called it, again in English, supper —which basically amounted to putting out the leftovers. Instead of the usual day off every two weeks, in summer we maids were off from the end of Sunday lunch until Monday noon. It was after those lunches that the Demon sat down with us in the servants’ hall and told her stories about the two families.

The Saegusas sometimes invited neighbors over, but, as they were always saying, “The good people are disappearing one after another,” so there were guests only two or three times a summer. The sisters divided humanity into two groups: those who “fit in” and those who didn’t.

Before the war all three rooms in the attic were used by maids. They were a bit of an oddity in that their windows, doors, walls, and ceilings were in the Western style but the floors were Japanese, with tatami mats. After the war, two of the rooms were converted into children’s rooms: Eri and Mari had the big one in the middle, Yuko and Yoko the one on the east end. The one remaining maid’s room, on the west end, was shared by Chizu and me. The children’s rooms had bedsteads with straw mattresses on iron frames, while Chizu and I slept on futons laid side by side on tatami, the way maids always had.

Sharing a room with Chizu, I almost immediately came to know everything about her. We shared an old dresser, and on the small desk we also both used, my half didn’t have much of anything, but lined up on Chizu’s half were bottles of Shiseido lotion, face cream, lipsticks, and other cosmetics; the extravagance of it was rather a shock to me. She also had a pile of thick magazines full of pictures. Every night before she went to sleep, she would take a last look at a photograph of some man in the magazine, kiss him, and say in English, “Good nigh’, darlin’.” To see her lay her short, plump figure on her side with a thud and poke out her lips to peck was like watching a hippopotamus kiss; it was embarrassing. Her figure, though, was to my advantage, since most of the hand-me-downs from the sisters came to me. Having been with the Saegusas well before I started, she used to pass on lots of silly gossip, saying that the Demon, who was over sixty, was a virgin, or that Hiroshi, Harue’s husband, seemed to have a mistress, and so on.

Old Mrs. Utagawa and Takero didn’t stay at the Saegusas’ house; there wasn’t an annex then, and it was crowded already without them. Instead they stayed at the Tsuruya, a traditional inn on Karuizawa’s main street. Mrs. Utagawa only came for ten days or so in summer. She’d have breakfast at the inn, then walk to the Saegusa house, even though it was quite a distance for her, and walk back again usually after afternoon tea. Once in a while she’d join them for supper and then take a taxi back, but she never stayed overnight. Takero, being always busy at the university, generally got to Karuizawa after his stepmother and stayed at the same inn for a few days during the Bon festival. He seemed to feel uncomfortable with the Saegusas, especially Harue, so he only went there once or twice.

“You know, I wonder about those people. I wonder how they can eat so much greasy food.” I used to hear old Mrs. Utagawa say this to him, when I accompanied her back to the inn. “It’s as if they’re foreigners.” The two of them would keep their dinners simple, sticking to things like soba noodles.

“It’s odd,” Mrs. Utagawa said one day, looking up at him. “They seem to think anything and everything that comes from the West is better. Are they right? Are things from over there really better?”

Ever the scholar, Takero answered thoughtfully. “Well, as far as medicine is concerned, yes. Western medicine is generally more effective than Chinese. I suppose you could say that the West is more scientific.”