Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

From the top of the stepladder, Taro turned and looked down at the room. He was holding the brocade drapes in his arms, puzzled. Harue’s remark made no sense to him. But then, seeing her satisfied gaze sweep the room, he understood, and a smile came to his lips—the sort of smile people wear when confronted by human folly—a detached, dismissive smile. Not boyish in the least, either, but completely mature.

As Harue turned to look back at him again, she unfortunately caught sight of that smile. Worse yet, when they saw her frown the others followed her line of sight, and so everyone in the room saw it.

That was all there ever was to it, but I do believe that that single incident turned Harue permanently against him. Afterward Yoko’s sister Yuko came into the kitchen and murmured in my ear, “Doesn’t Aunt Harue know he’s in love with Yoko?”

Afraid that if I said something amiss it would get back to Natsue, I gave Yuko a noncommittal look. Her face was very like her mother’s, but its expression could not have been more different. When had she become so grown-up, I wondered.

Later, Taro rode his bicycle back to Oiwake through the evening gloom. Many years were to pass before he set foot on that Karuizawa property again.

SUMMER ENDED, AND Mrs. Utagawa went back to Tokyo stretched out on the back seat of a car driven by Harue’s husband, Hiroshi. Dr. Matsumiya examined her and found there were already signs of dropsy of the belly. Counting back, I realized she had been able to use the Oiwake cottage for only five summers.

The old lady knew that her disease was mortal and, before it was too late, shortly after returning to Tokyo she gave her will verbally to Takero and Natsue. In part, it referred to me. She asked them to let me have things of hers that I might want at such time as I married: her low writing desk; her full-length mirror, its frame carved in the Kamakura style; her paulownia dresser. Takero of course had no objection, and Natsue, too, readily agreed. She was sentimental by nature, and there were tears in her eyes as she knelt by her mother-in-law’s futon, nodding.

Mrs. Utagawa’s other request referred to Taro. He had a good head on his shoulders, she said, and had done many things for her. Over the years she’d grown fond of him, and although of course she shouldn’t have gone ahead and done this without first consulting them, she had promised to help him financially so that he could go on with his schooling. He was applying to a municipal high school not far away, one that would cost very little in the way of either transportation or fees, and she asked that her funeral be kept simple and her savings used to help him go there. Even after that, she wanted Takero and Natsue as far as possible to go on helping him to get an education. She avoided using the word “university,” perhaps afraid that Takero would balk at the extent of the commitment involved and say no. When she was finished, he was silent for a moment before saying quietly, “All right, Mother.” Natsue chimed in, “We can easily come up with the money, don’t worry,” her eyes filling again with tears.

But as it happened, Mrs. Utagawa had not finished making her final wishes known. One afternoon around the beginning of November, I had been busy unstitching some of her old night yukata and sewing them into diapers. As I sat beside her, folding the diapers, she suddenly said, out of nowhere:

“Don’t breathe a word of this to Takero or Natsue.”

She had been staring up at the ceiling, but then turned her head toward me and looked at me. “If Yoko wants to marry him … if she says she’s willing, then I want you to do all in your power to make it happen.”

She had been thinking about Taro the whole time.

“It’s a great deal to ask, I know.” She turned her face up again and closed her eyes. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “But otherwise, it’s just too cruel.”

When I had finished folding the diapers I went and sat alone on the sofa, stunned and at a loss. Once Mrs. Utagawa passed on, what excuse would Taro have for coming over every day? What could I do for him on my own? I had no idea. In the lingering afternoon sun, the Formica table and vinyl-covered chairs stood out with strange clarity, along with the clock, vase, sugar bowl, and other objects on the built-in shelves. For a moment I felt as if I were seeing them with Mrs. Utagawa’s dying eyes.

MY FEARS PROVED unnecessary. At the end of the year, well before the old lady died, the Utagawa family was swept by a sudden breaking wave that changed everything. Though I had never dreamed such a thing could happen, I myself had no choice but to leave the family’s service. It all began with Takero’s promotion. He was an associate professor at the University of Tokyo, specializing in immunology, and early in December he learned that he had been offered a professorship at Hokkaido University in Sapporo. For a long time he had not been on good terms with the senior professors in his department, and he was eager to leave. Talks with Hokkaido had been ongoing since spring. He kept this to himself, however, until the professorship could be signed, sealed, and delivered.

Knowing her, he assumed Natsue—who would object even to a move to nearby Yokohama—would bitterly oppose moving to the northernmost island, and at that point he doubted his chances of getting the offer position anyway. When and if it became official, he would try to persuade her, and if she resisted he would simply go alone. Sure enough, when the time came, she refused to accompany him.

“Why should someone like me, born and bred in Tokyo, have to go all the way to a godforsaken place like Sapporo? Isn’t your stubbornness the whole problem to begin with? You know very well I’ve got my work here with Primavera. A woman’s career means nothing at all, is that what you men think?” She was furious, as expected, and I worried about old Mrs. Utagawa, listening to their raised voices as she lay on her futon in the back room.

But in a week or so, word came of a different promotion, this time for Harue’s husband, Hiroshi. He was being transferred to the New York branch of Mitsubishi Corporation for several years, with his family. The arrangement was still informal, but definite nevertheless.

The evening she came home after hearing this news, Natsue sat with me and cried like a baby. “Why does Harue get to go to New York while I have to go to Sapporo? It’s not fair.” But already she seemed resigned. Whereas before, Harue had been deeply sympathetic (“How awful! Sapporo, really!”), as soon as talk of her own impending move came up, she changed her tune and began urging her sister to accompany her husband to Sapporo. Since she and her family too would be away from Tokyo, the timing was right, and nothing was so important for a man as knowing that things at home were under control so that he could focus on his work. Besides, if she let him have his way now, someday later on she would be better placed to have her own way, Harue argued seriously. She even offered to let Yuko, soon a third-year high school student, stay with them in New York. This was a great comfort to Natsue. Yuko and her cousins Mari and Eri had always done everything together, and if one of them had to stay behind, it would be terrible. What was more important, Harue’s offer meant that Yuko could start studying the piano abroad, and at little cost to the Utagawas. Since Yuko was so serious about her music, Natsue had long been thinking of sending her abroad but had no idea how to come up with that kind of money. Should she ask Grampy Saegusa for help? Would that even be enough? Then this suggestion came along. Though the thought of her favorite daughter going overseas made Natsue feel desolate, this arrangement solved the problem neatly.