Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

SUMMER IN OIWAKE

Before midwinter, when the ground froze, the foundation work was done. My stepfather kept tabs on the workers’ progress until the job was finished. Then Mrs. Utagawa began making bedding. She collected some old kimonos that she said had become “too flamboyant” for her—though they seemed plain enough to me—and started to unstitch them, getting Taro to help. When Natsue saw what they were doing, she also brought out some “too flamboyant” ones of her own, although she added generously that I was welcome to them if they looked like something I could wear. Of course, they were far too glamorous for me, and I’m sure I would never have had the courage to put them on, so they became bedding as well. Taro took to studying the layout of the Oiwake cottage almost daily. The seriousness with which he did this made it seem as if it were his own house that was being built.

One Sunday in late December 1958, I took Taro to the top of Tokyo Tower, which had just gone up. He stared out at the city spreading endlessly below under a gray sky and then pointed off into the distance. “Oiwake’s that way,” he said. I remember how stunned I was by the strength of his attachment to, or longing for, a piece of land he had yet to lay eyes on.

BY THE FOLLOWING April, just as the entire country was swept up in the excitement of the crown prince’s wedding, the Oiwake cottage was nearly complete. Taro and Yoko entered the fifth grade. Yoko’s sister and her cousin Mari started at Seijo Academy’s middle school together, and Mari’s sister became a sixth grader at its elementary school. Masayuki Shigemitsu, who was clever, was accepted at a prestigious national middle school attached to the University of Education.

“They say it’s a school for kids who are so smart they’re practically geniuses,” Yoko reported to Taro in the admiring voice she always used when speaking of Masayuki. But Taro had no reason to be glum. “If you took the exam you’d get in too,” she continued, her voice sounding perfectly sincere.

Yoko was convinced that she was Taro’s superior in every respect except for athletic ability and intelligence, two areas where she conceded him the advantage. In fact Taro was regularly at the top of his class, and the bullying had stopped. Even so, his classmates gave him a wide berth, and boys still didn’t invite him to play with them. His own reserve was no doubt partly to blame, along with the aura of poverty he had. But the main reason, it seemed to me, was the old rumor that he wasn’t Japanese. O-Tsune took every opportunity to bring it up, telling anybody who cared to listen, so the rumor never had a chance to die a natural death. Meanwhile, the hard time his brothers gave him had left him with an instinctive dislike of other boys, so he had no interest in joining in their games anyway. He seemed to want nothing other than to be with Yoko.

I do wonder what was going on in Mrs. Utagawa’s mind at the time. I doubt that she had gone so far as to consider the idea of Yoko and Taro marrying one day, but from around the time she set out to build the Oiwake cottage her attachment to Taro seemed to deepen. There is something mysterious about relations between people of the opposite sex. She considered herself his protector, yet somewhere inside she was leaning on him, relying on his ability—almost like a lover. He was still shorter than she was, but she used to say admiringly, as if he was bigger than her, “In times of trouble, a general—that’s you.”

He didn’t know what exactly this meant, but he knew it was praise and so he beamed with pleasure.

TAKERO MADE A couple of trips to Oiwake to sort out various details, and by early summer the cottage was ready. I moved in first, in mid-July. My presence would be needed in Karuizawa once the holidays started, so I had to get the cleaning and unpacking done in Oiwake beforehand. Then, on the very first day of summer vacation, Mrs. Utagawa arrived with Taro in tow. The two of them were not the only ones to show up that day, either. After Taro had looked excitedly around the cottage, inside and out, he took off for the main road, exploring, and while he was gone we had a surprise visit from the three Saegusa sisters. On their way to Karuizawa by a later train with their parents and children, the three had decided to have a look at the new summer house and had traveled on to Oiwake station. From there they took a taxi and dropped in without a word of warning. Natsue had a quick look around the place and said in a loud voice to Mrs. Utagawa, “Mm, it’s certainly well made for a house so small.” To me she added in a hushed aside, “There’s something rather lonely about it, isn’t there?” Harue, the eldest, declared it “just perfect for Takero,” and the youngest, Fuyue, said that it was “nice and rustic, nothing cheap about it.” The taxi was waiting, so they descended on us like a typhoon and then were gone. By the time Taro came back, only a faint trace of perfume lingered in the air. “Gracious! What a whirl they do live in!” said Mrs. Utagawa. I stayed over that night, then took the bus to Karuizawa the next day.

Yoko was eager to visit the new cottage right away, but Natsue suggested she wait a little till everyone was settled in, and so two days went by, then three, until she stopped asking, perhaps because she’d got used again to the pleasures of life in Karuizawa. She may also have realized that sooner or later she would be going to Oiwake by herself for several nights, and decided that in the meantime she should make the most of being with the other children. Her visit kept getting put off for one reason or another, and as it happened, she first saw Taro in Karuizawa instead.

It was the first Sunday lunch in August. As usual, I was working alongside Chizu in the Shigemitsu kitchen, under the Demon’s direction, when Yoko came in and tugged at the sleeve of my smock.

“Grandma’s coming today, isn’t she?”

“Yes, she’ll be here.”

This had been decided quite some time ago.

“If Grandma’s coming, then will Taro come too?” She was whispering, standing on tiptoe to reach my ears.

“I wonder.” I tilted my head doubtfully.

It seemed likely to me that she would bring the boy with her. If it were only a question of his helping her on the way, she would probably leave him at home, but given his longing to see Yoko, I just didn’t think her capable of setting off without him. At the same time, I thought she must be feeling uneasy. I myself felt a vague anxiety—or, rather, a premonition of disaster—about his showing up in Karuizawa and had tried to avoid thinking about it. He wouldn’t be able to play alone with Yoko. Neither could I imagine him playing with the other children. The Shigemitsu and Saegusa families would never approve.

I asked Yoko a question of my own. “If Taro comes, what will you do?”

“There’s so many things to show him! There’s lots here in Masayuki’s house and over in ours too, and there’s Foggy Pond, and the monster mushrooms that came up after the rain yesterday, and huge golden dragonflies and the mist when it’s getting dark …”

She looked up at me as she eagerly ticked off the attractions on her fingers. I suppose she was getting bored because the older children often left her out of their games.

“They’ve got huge golden dragonflies in Oiwake too, you know.” My tone may have been a bit harsh, for she closed her mouth and looked at me blankly. “Anyway,” I went on, “when Taro comes he probably won’t be eating with you and the others, but here with me in the kitchen.”

“How come?”