Yôko Ogawa: The Gift of Numbers aka The Housekeeper and the Professor

Just then, a black-and-white photograph fell from the pages. Root picked it up. It showed the Professor seated on a clover-covered riverbank. He was young and handsome, and he looked completely relaxed with his legs stretched out in front of him. He was squinting slightly in the bright sun. His suit was much like the one he still wore, but, needless to say, there were no notes on his jacket and he seemed to radiate intelligence.

A woman was seated next to the Professor. She leaned timidly toward him, the toes of her shoes poking out from under her flared skirt. Their bodies did not touch, but it was clear that they shared a bond. And in spite of the years that had passed since the picture was taken, I had no doubt that the woman was the Professor's sister-in-law.

There was one more thing I could read. At the top of the cover page, a single line in Japanese:

"For N, with my eternal love. Never forget."

An Enatsu card, we soon realized, was not an easy thing to find. The main problem was that the Professor already owned all of the Enatsu cards from his playing days with the Tigers-that is, before 1975. The later cards all mentioned that he'd been traded, and we had no intention of giving the Professor a card with his hero in a Nankai or Hiroshima uniform.

We started our research by combing through a baseball card magazine (the mere existence of which was news to me), and reading about the types of cards out there, the price range, and the places you could find them. We also learned what we could about the history of baseball cards, the culture of the collectors, and how to protect them. Then, over the weekend, we made a tour of all the nearby shops listed in the back of the magazine

The card shops tended to be in aging office blocks, next to pawnshops, private detective agencies, or fortune-tellers. The dingy elevators were enough to depress me but once we got in the shops, Root was in heaven. The world inside the Professor's tin opened up before him.

At first, his head was turned by each new discovery; but once he had calmed down, we focused on looking for a Yutaka Enatsu card. This section, as we might have guessed, was always among the largest. The shops organized their cards much as the Professor had his cookie tin, with a special place reserved for Enatsu next to other stars such as Sadaharu Oh and Shigeo Nagashima, separated out from the rest of the players who were filed by team or era or position.

I started at the beginning and Root at the end, and we checked every Enatsu card in each shop. It required stamina, like hunting in a dark forest without a compass. But we refused to be discouraged, and we gradually found ourselves perfecting our technique, so that we were able to get through the trays of cards more and more quickly. Lifting a card between thumb and forefinger, we would check the front. If it was obviously one the Professor already owned, we would drop it back. If it was one we hadn't seen, we would check to see whether it met our requirements. We soon found that every card was either already in his collection, or showed Enatsu wearing the wrong uniform. It became clear that the black-and-white cards from the early years that the Professor had collected were extremely rare and quite expensive. Finding a card worthy of his cookie tin was not going to be easy. We flipped through hundreds of Enatsus in several shops. Our fingers would meet in the middle of a bin of cards and we'd realize that we'd come up empty once again.

The shopkeepers never made us feel uncomfortable, even though we spent hours looking without buying anything. When we showed up in search of Enatsu cards, they happily brought out everything they had; and when we were disappointed, they encouraged us to keep looking and not give up hope. At the very last shop on our list, the owner listened to our story and then told us he thought we should try looking for cards that had been used as prizes by a certain candy company back in 1985. The company had always included baseball cards with its candy, but in 1985 it had been celebrating its fiftieth anniversary and had commissioned a run of premium cards. That was the year the Tigers had won the championship, so their players were especially well represented.

"What are 'premium' cards?" Root asked.

"They made all kinds-some had real signatures by the players on them, others had holograms, and some had actual slivers from game bats embedded in them. Since Enatsu was already retired, they did a reissue of the glove card. I used to have one, but it sold right away. They're incredibly popular."

"What's a 'glove card'?" Root wanted to know.

"They cut up a glove and attach scraps of the leather to the card."

"A glove Enatsu actually used?"

"Sure. The Japan Sports Card Federation certified them, so they're genuine. They didn't produce many, and they can be tough to find, but don't give up; there's bound to be one floating around somewhere. If I get one in, I'll give you a call. I have to admit, I'm something of an Enatsu fan myself." He tipped back the brim of Root's Tigers cap and rubbed him on the head-just like the Professor.

The day of the party was approaching. I saw nothing wrong with looking for an alternative present, but Root wouldn't hear of it. He was determined to find a card.

"We can't give up now!" he insisted.

I have no doubt that his primary concern was to make the Professor happy, but it was also true that he had taken a fancy to the whole idea of card collecting, and he had begun to think of himself as a hunter in search of that one elusive card somewhere out there in the great wide world.

The Professor also seemed to be planning for the party in his own way. He had taken to checking the calendar whenever he was in the kitchen. Occasionally, he would go over and trace the circle I'd drawn to mark the eleventh, fingering the note on his chest the whole time. He was remembering the party, but he had no doubt long ago forgotten about the little matter of the Janaruobu .

The Professor never found out that we had looked in his cookie tin. I had been momentarily mesmerized by the inscription on the thesis-For N, with my eternal love. Never forget. The handwriting definitely belonged to the Professor, for whom "eternal" meant something more than it did to the rest of us, eternal in the way a mathematical theorem was eternal…

It was Root who brought me back from my daydream.

"Mama, slide the ruler under so I can put it back in." He took the thesis out of my hand and returned it to the bottom of the tin, careful not to disturb or dishonor the Professor's secret.

A moment later, all the cards were back in place, and there was no sign that the collection had ever been touched. The tin itself was undamaged, and the edges of the cards were neatly aligned. Still, something was different. Now that I knew about the thesis and its dedication, the tin was no longer a simple container for baseball cards. It had become a tomb for the Professor's memories. I set it carefully back on the bookshelf.

I hadn't really thought anything would come of the last shopkeeper's suggestion, but somehow I was disappointed when he failed to call. Root made some final efforts, sending off a postcard to the readers' exchange in the magazine and asking around among his friends and their older brothers. Not wanting to be caught without a present, I had quietly arranged a backup. It hadn't been easy to figure out what to buy. I'd thought of pencils and notebooks, clips and note cards, even a new shirt. There were very few things the Professor really needed. The fact that I couldn't discuss the choice with Root made it all the more difficult.

I decided on shoes. He needed a new pair, ones that he could wear anytime, anywhere-mold-free. I bought them and hid them away in the back of the closet, just as I had with Root's presents when he was little. If we did find the card in time, I would slip them into the Professor's shoe cupboard without saying anything.