Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

While they chatted away, it was my job to serve green tea and snacks—crunchy rice crackers or tangerines, a bigger and thicker version of the mandarin oranges we had back in Japan. Friendless creature that I was, I was an eager audience for their conversation, particularly when it came to Taro Azuma, whom most people seemed to find “weird.”

“He’s not at all like other Japanese,” said Mrs. Cohen. “He’s gone ahead and rented his own place,” she added with approval.

Back then, Japanese companies with branches in the States paid decent salaries only to senior executives, representing their public face, while the rest of the employees, particularly the single ones, got wages consistent with Japan’s modest economic status. With the high rents around New York, it was not unusual for two or three of those employees to share an apartment, especially when they first arrived. Everyone knew Azuma was a local hire and paid even less. Everyone assumed he would move in with someone else. Instead, he found himself a cheap basement room in some old lady’s house. The place was in a suburban neighborhood fairly close to us, but far away from where most of the other employees lived. The yellow Corvair he’d been given was what made it possible.

“His landlady is an unbelievable talker,” Mrs. Cohen reported.

This old lady, a widow from Ireland originally and now the owner of a suburban house, had worked from childhood, starting out shucking oysters in a freezing alley behind some restaurant in Manhattan. When she answered the telephone, her hello had the deep hoarseness of a witch; hearing her voice alone would scare most Japanese away.

“He seems to prefer it that way. He doesn’t want people bothering him. One reason he goes to those night classes, I think, is because it gives him an excuse not to socialize.”

“I see,” my father said approvingly, being a bit of a misanthrope himself.

“He used to go along for a round of golf once in a while, but he got fed up having to say no every time the others wanted to go out for a drink afterward. You know, Mr. Mizumura, he doesn’t drink?”

“That’s right, he doesn’t, does he. I wonder if it’s because he can’t hold his liquor.” My father seemed to find it strange that Azuma hadn’t taken up drinking after he quit his job as a driver.

“I wonder too.”

“It is a bit unusual.”

“So, we thought he’d pretty much given up golf …”

“Who cares about golf, anyway?” Loathing his lot as a corporate employee, my father loathed golf too, a game epitomizing the corporate culture.

Mrs. Cohen ignored his reaction.

“But, then, the other day, when I asked him if he wanted to join Dave and me on the course, he gladly came along.”

“Is that right?”

“He’s got no money, but he’s somehow keen to get good at it. And, the same with English, he’s a fast learner.”

“Still, why waste time on a thing like golf?”

Again, she ignored his reaction.

“He seems to be very athletic.”

Mrs. Cohen was Azuma’s greatest supporter in those days. He too seemed to feel comfortable around her, as she was something of an outsider in the Japanese community, having married an American. Besides, for someone who didn’t want his private life to be a subject of speculation, a person as uncomplicated as Mrs. Cohen must have suited him well. The two kept in touch for quite a long time, and it was mainly through her that we heard news of him after he disappeared from our lives.

“YOU KNOW THAT guy Azuma? He’s really strange.”

I used to hear this sort of thing when my parents weren’t around from two characters, both in their mid-twenties, both camera repairmen, nicknamed Yaji and Kita (no one called them by their real names, Yajima and Kitano). They stuck together like the two travelers in the old picaresque novel Shank’s Mare , whose names they shared. And they were both single.

“With only Papa around, it’s the same as having no man in the house,” was a refrain of my mother’s, and asking them to do some little chore for her became a favorite habit. “You wouldn’t mind coming over, would you?” she’d cajole, and soon they’d be painting the ceiling or pruning the apple tree in the back yard. My mother’s requests took into account the presence of a daughter who, secure in the knowledge that these men would flatter her with the attention that was a young woman’s due, lingered in front of the mirror trying on dresses and fixing her hair before going downstairs. But there was a good reason why my mother singled out these two. They were the most good-natured of the bachelors—too good-natured to actually be appealing to a girl my age. The sight of them side by side in polo shirts, the weekend uniform for company men, only accentuated their narrow shoulders and left me little to choose between them. It was sometimes genuinely difficult to tell them apart.

These two filled me in on Azuma’s habits at work, like his listening to English on the radio with a single earphone.

“Also, his pockets are always stuffed with little cards that have English words on them.”

Nanae’s flash cards .

“Having a serious guy like that sit next to you is a real downer. The rest of us have a hard time cracking jokes anymore.”

“And yet he listens in on all our jokes.”

“Yeah, laughs at ’em too.”

That was about the extent of their complaint.

“I TELL YOU, Mrs. Mizumura, the guy’s crazy,” declared Irie, his loud voice dominating the room. He was in his early thirties, one of the so-called New York bachelors who left their wives back in Japan; he worked in the microscope division. My mother liked him, probably because he was quite masculine. There was a wildness about him that working for a Japanese company had not completely tamed, as his rough way of speaking showed. Whenever he visited us, she was gay and bouncy. I myself found it difficult to leave the living room and lingered as long as I could, for even I recognized that he had the kind of appeal the too affable Yaji and Kita lacked. He talked more openly when my father wasn’t around.

“Sometimes I wonder if Azuma’s really Japanese. I mean, he never eats rice. He practically lives on yogurt. Yogurt! Can you believe it?” Irie was sitting on the couch, a can of Budweiser in his hand.

“How would you know what he does and doesn’t eat, pray tell?” my mother asked a bit coyly, sitting on the carpet as if it were a tatami mat, resting her elbows on the coffee table and her cheek on her laced fingers.

“Well, one weekend, some of the young guys at work raided his place. They were curious to find out what it was like, the place he lived in.”

“And?”

“Seems the old lady there lets him use her kitchen, and he has his own shelf in the fridge. And you know what they found on it? Yogurt and nothing but.”

“No, really?” she said, wide-eyed.

“That’s not all. Guess what the guy does when he wants some meat.”

“I have no idea,” my mother said, shaking her head with a smile.

“You know those packets of hot dogs? He takes one out and holds it under the hot water faucet. That way he doesn’t have to wash any pans.”

“ Eww , weird!” I shrieked, forgetting that I wasn’t supposed to be part of the conversation.

“Isn’t it? Weird is the only way to describe it,” he said, facing in my direction and pretending to turn a hot dog around under a faucet.

“Yuck!” My mother made a face, and asked in a tone that was half amazed, half horrified, “Why would he eat such awful stuff?”

“For one thing, he doesn’t have much money. But I bet he also thinks cooking is a waste of time.”

“Really? Why?”