The Part of Me That Isn't Broken Inside

by Kazufumi Shiraishi

  I didn’t. I haven’t heard of or seen any of them.

  The father looked glum for a moment; he must have thought that I was a buzzkill.

  Well, I suppose that figures. These days, there must be so many places where you can have fun over there. Back in my day, it was just after the postwar period and there was no money to spend and no places to go, so I really couldn’t have fun even if I wanted to. Once in a while these places popped up, where they’d serve cheap booze to students, but they used to get so crowded there was hardly elbow room in them.

  Yukio Mishima, whom Eriko likes, I replied, also touches on those days in one of his essays. If I’m not mistaken, he was born at the end of the Taisho era, so he belongs to the generation just above yours, Fukasawa-san. Anyway, he said that in his case, the dire circumstances had worked in his favor. They spurred him to devote himself to literature, and so he was happy. But he was angry with the students of later years—meaning, of course, the students of the Showa 40s, or the late sixties and early seventies—complaining that they had no passion. He ended the essay, though, with the utterly dull conclusion that youth, in any age, is bereft of idealism.

  The conversation came to a halt and I poured myself some beer and drank two or three glasses in a row, at the same time marveling at the splendid-looking sofa, sideboard, chandelier, and photorealistic paintings hanging on the wall in the spacious living room adjacent to the dining room. The coffee table was lined with plenty of food, which Eriko’s mother had apparently spent half a day preparing.

  But it’s rather rare, Eriko’s father said, to see someone advancing into journalism from law school.

  I repeated what I’d already explained to Eriko. It wasn’t particularly because I was interested in joining the mass media, or because I liked books. I didn’t mind working anywhere, actually, but I’d heard during a certain lecture, from an assistant professor of literature, who was frequently contributing to a business magazine in those days, a rumor that the company I’m working for now pays the highest salary in Japan. And so I ended up taking the company’s employment examination. That’s really the only reason.

  Hmm, I see, the father said, sounding impressed, before going on to ask, I don’t mean to pry, but how much are you making?

  While it’s only been eight years since I joined, I make a little north of ten million yen a year.

  That’s great! The father then began to lament that the manufacturing industry was struggling to survive due to the current recession, and that his own company was bearing the brunt of the bad times. We then talked for a while about the economic relationship between Japan and the United States. In the course of this discussion, I elaborated a little on the concept of a key currency; about the fact that Phileas Fogg, the main protagonist of Around the World in Eighty Days, had the advantage of being able to shop around anywhere in the world with Bank of England notes; about how in 1931 that became impossible, when the pound abandoned the gold standard; about the emergence of America; about the war; about the story of how Mr. Joseph Dodge talked down GHQ’s New Dealers; about the fact that the dollar against the yen was thirty yen weaker when Dodge and Hayato Ikeda fixed the exchange rate in the course of a confidential talk; about the trap of overseas credit obligations a hegemonic nation always falls into; about the contradictions of America’s guns-and-butter policy during the Vietnam era; about the Nixon Shock in 1971 and the inside story behind the Plaza Accord that transpired when Noboru Takeshita was the Minister of Finance; about the surprisingly tarnished reputation the former vice finance minister for international affairs, who was nicknamed Mr. Yen, suffered within the ministry; about the fact that the financial authorities have absolutely no faith in the role of the Financial Services Agency, with their current plan for administrative reform built on the erroneous assumption that taking away the right to draw up budgets would help reinforce cabinet functions; and about the fact that, at present, it was pointless to believe in the scenario that, with the advancement of interbank trading, the junk loans of Japan could trigger a worldwide recession, because the United

  States, for these past several years, has been planning the construction of a system that could prevent any financial panic from occurring, even if the Japanese economy were excluded from the global money market; and about the fact that this system was nearing completion already.

  The father was listening to me with enthusiasm, and he, in turn, gave a detailed account of the recent achievements of his company and about the price fluctuations of his products. Eriko and her mother, who were on the sidelines, so to speak, looked relieved, seeing that the two of us had finally started to warm up to each other. However, I didn’t find Eriko’s father’s stories all that interesting, so, in fact, I was hardly listening to him at all.

  We finished eating and moved to the living room. The father fetched a vintage brandy, saying that it was special liquor, and poured some of it into my glass. As expected, he was seated in front of me, appearing quite relaxed.

  Well, well, he began, I’m ashamed to tell you this, but last night I wasn’t able to sleep that well. When Eriko came home for New Year’s and suddenly mentioned you—saying, ‘Daddy, there’s someone I really want you to meet’—I was dumbfounded, to tell you the truth. If I may say so, that’s because I’ve always thought that this daughter of mine wasn’t the type to easily fall for someone.

  The father then said, with a tip of his glass, But I’m absolutely relieved she’s fallen for someone like you. He smiled, as if he were slightly embarrassed. Then the mother, who was seated next to him and who hadn’t talked that much, added while nodding, Ordinarily, we’d have invited you here only after our Eriko had first paid a visit to the home of your parents. Just like Eriko, her mother had very pleasing features. But perhaps because Eriko is our only child, whom we had in our late years, we too, as her parents, may have become rather spoiled, and have therefore ended up reversing the order of the protocol, just for the sake of allaying our curiosity. Please accept my humblest apologies for such an impropriety.

  In reaction to this expected development I took a look at Eriko, but she had her face turned toward her parents, with a glass of brandy in her hand. I was silent for a while and waited for the mother to go on, but she was only smiling without appreciating the state of mind I was in; I was at a loss as to how I should respond to this demure mother. I considered telling her that she was too kind, that she was making much ado about nothing, but such words didn’t seem suited for the occasion. It was obvious why Eriko’s father and mother were waiting for me to show up today, and I too had half-acknowledged the reason before coming here. So essentially, I had no choice but to meet their expectations. Everything is determined by circumstances. That’s life. If they wished it, so be it; I didn’t particularly mind settling down with Eriko, and in reality, it was nothing earth-shattering. When I thought of it like that, I felt at ease, at least for the time being. In order to be honest with yourself, you need to just let yourself go, like smooth running water. That’s all there is to it.

  Please don’t trouble yourself over such a thing, I said. I don’t even have parents, after all.

  Eriko’s parents looked at me at the same time, surprised.

  How old were you? the father asked without hesitation.

  I lost my father when I was a year old. Apparently he left the house, abandoning my mother and me. Since then I’ve never met him. As for my mother, she died just this Monday.

  Now it was Eriko who was surprised, growing paler by the moment.

  When you say Monday, do you mean this Monday? the father asked, after staring at me for a while with a dumbfounded look.

  That’s right. She had uterine cancer and was being hospitalized and released repeatedly for nearly three years, but it was no use in the end.

  Eriko’s father was at a loss for words, wearing a weird expression, and when he turned to his daughter, as if in a panic, he asked, You didn’t know?

  Eriko attempted a nod, but it turned out
more like the jerky gesture of a sudden hiccup. The mother, covering her mouth with her hand, raised her refined-sounding voice to say, Oh my!

  You were telling me you’d returned home to Kyushu, but that’s why you … Eriko’s voice was trembling. The disgusted look she had on her face at the time made her look just like her father, I thought.

  Without pausing, I began to convey all the interesting details about the funeral, about my funny classmates who rushed over to help, but the three of them weren’t even nodding. They had fallen silent, sitting there with their probing eyes transfixed on me.

  When I finished talking Eriko’s father offered a formal condolence and said, I see, but you speak of your mother as if she were unrelated to you.

  I wondered what to do, but couldn’t think of anything other than to laugh out loud and ask for another glass of brandy, if it was all right.

  The father poured the liquor, fell silent again, and then let out a moan before asking, So you didn’t like your mother then? He locked his eyes on mine, looking like a vile drunkard with his cheeks all red. Deep down, I was quite angry about his rude question. You don’t often find people who dislike their mother. If you do, you’ll most certainly find a legitimate reason behind their animosity.

  Why do you ask such a thing?

  But I’m right, aren’t I? Otherwise, how could you come all the way here to meet us, the parents of your fiancée, just five days after your mother died?

  I immediately tried to tell him, in a loud voice, that he was an ass. But I felt Eriko’s piercing gaze on me, and when I turned to her, she was subtly shaking her head to the side, again and again, with a desperate plea in her eyes. I closed my mouth, looked up at the ceiling, fixed my eyes on the light of the chandelier, and thought hard about something else to say.

  I was just feeling lonely, I finally said, without much thought, in a feeble tone, sighing. Is that wrong? Is it unreasonable to have such an emotion?

  As expected, something hard inside the father and mother dissolved rapidly, all at once.

  I fear my curiosity got the better of me, and so I ended up rather rudely asking you such a strange thing. Please forgive me, the father continued. We parents, as human beings, are such inferior creatures, aren’t we? We wonder, rather foolishly, whether someone’s capable of truly loving our daughter, when he can’t even love his own blood relation. It’s silly, isn’t it?

  I fully understand your feelings, sir, I responded. But you know, Fukasawa-san, I’ve always thought that people with strong, affectionate ties to their blood relations tend to be surprisingly cold to others.

  Come to think of it, you could be right, Eriko’s mother chimed in blandly.

  We went on to kill time looking at photos of Eriko’s childhood days, and when it was past eleven, Eriko and I went upstairs.

  22

  IN THE TEN-TATAMI MAT room reserved for me on the second floor, the bed had already been made.

  I let my body sink into the soft and fluffy futon, set the alarm on my cell phone to go off two hours later, and then fell asleep.

  Within those two hours I had a brief dream. I was seated on a sofa, wearing a black, double-breasted suit, in a large room that resembled a school principal’s office. For some reason I had a red bow tie on as well.

  I heard knocking on the door.

  When I said, Come in, a mother and her child entered, ushered in by a middle-aged woman wearing a uniform-like blue smock. The face of this woman was indistinct, but the mother and child brought in were Tomomi and Takuya.

  Principal, the middle-aged woman called me. At that moment I realized I was the principal of a nursery school. I then wondered—in the dream—whether this woman was one of the childcare specialists working there.

  I went on to understand, from the explanation the woman offered, that we were going to have Takuya under our care from tomorrow, and that Tomomi had dropped in to pay a courtesy visit. I urged the three of them to have a seat on the sofa, and then went on to elaborate at length to Tomomi the particular rules of the nursery school, of which I had no recollection after I woke up.

  Subsequently, the thread of my talk, which also remains hazy in my mind, led into a discussion about the circumstances of Tomomi getting separated from her husband and consequently having to work herself. Upon hearing Tomomi say divorce, the middle-aged childcare specialist interjected by turning to Takuya with a smile and saying, Oh my, what a bad mother! I most certainly saw Tomomi change her friendly expression for a moment to scowl at the childcare specialist.

  Tomomi then stared at my face, as if to blame me for the remark made by the woman, before saying in a renewed, affable tone, And so, Principal, I was told by this teacher to be sure to come pick up Takuya by half past four, but is there any way you could somehow extend this to six?

  Let’s see now, I answered, in your case, your child is under our care from seven in the morning. And taking into account the type of work you do for an insurance company, we’ve determined that half past four is an appropriate time for you to pick up your child.

  But that gets in the way of my work. There are many customers who visit in the evening, and since I just started this job, I have a hard time creating specs. Couldn’t you please somehow allow me to pick up my child at six, just like other parents?

  I was bothered by Tomomi’s imposing manner. Nonetheless, there are rules in place, which we must observe.

  What’s the big deal? Are you biased against single moms?

  No, that’s not it, but the size of our staff of childcare specialists who clock in from the morning is modest, and our hands are actually tied; we’re only barely managing to run the school right now. But setting aside such reasons, let me point out that this divorce of yours, if I may say so, was entirely up to you and your husband, so you’ve brought this upon yourself; you’re suffering the consequences of your own misdeed. For this reason, you really can’t expect everything to go your way, and more importantly, you ought to be thinking a little more about Takuya’s welfare.

  In reaction to these off-the-cuff remarks, Tomomi blew up and began to rant with a ferocious intensity. I’m having a tough time making ends meet. Working only until four isn’t enough for me to raise my performance grade. And since I don’t have any relatives in this town, there’s no one around to take care of my boy in the evening. Right now I’m trying to get by with only around 150,000 yen a month—that’s 100,000 yen in salary and 50,000 yen in welfare payments. You public servants have no idea how hard it is for someone like me! Just the rent sets me back fifty, sixty thousand yen, and food and clothing expenses are no joke either. You can’t lump my household together with households where both parents work.

  Tomomi’s eyes filled with tears, as she went on to give a breakdown of her monthly expenses and complain about the fact that her ex-husband hadn’t been sending her any alimony.

  Although I was listening to her story in a daze, I was able to appreciate how difficult it was for a single mother to live on around 150,000 yen a month in this city, so I was seized by pity, and, in the end, simply overcome by

  the sight of this rather attractive mother, in the bloom of her womanhood, going to pieces in front of me.

  Once Tomomi’s impassioned speech came to an end, I removed a wallet from the inside pocket of the double-breasted suit, pulled out all the ten-thousand-yen bills inside it, folded them, and then held them out before Tomomi’s eyes.

  Well then, I said, please take this money to support yourself this month. But in exchange, you need to pick up your son at half past four. If you do, you’ll see this money again next month.

  Even before I was finished, I could see the color draining from her face, as she bit her lip and turned ghastly. Strangely enough, I was thinking, in the dream, that this was the first time I’d seen Tomomi look that way.

  Tomomi’s enraged face filled my field of vision, as if in a freeze-frame, and in that instant, the folded bills in my hand were knocked out of my grip by her right hand, and my
cheek slapped fiercely. Without understanding why I had to meet such a terrible fate, I let out a groan, unable to endure the stinging pain in my cheek.

  And then I awoke, crying out loud as I sprang up from my futon bed on the floor.

  My cell phone’s alarm was going off.

  I was sweating bullets and my whole body felt hot as I reflected on how terrible the nightmare was.

  Turning the light on, I took out a blue towel from the bag I’d kept by the pillow and stuffed it underneath my pajama top to swab up the sweat.

  While catching my breath, I wound the towel around my neck and crossed the edges before tucking the towel under the collar. I sat cross-legged on the futon and surveyed the room, feeling the stillness in the air. Exposed to the coolness of this air, my body temperature gradually lowered. There was a calendar hanging on the wall, featuring a photograph of mountains taken by Yoshikazu Shirakawa. The peaks of a tall mountain range of some distant land, awash in the vermillion glow of the sunset sky, were looking down on me.

  I was then struck by the notion that I was experiencing this room I found myself in at the moment, and the current flow of time itself, in the abstract, in much the same way I was experiencing the mountain range of a foreign land in the abstract, never being subject to the terribly cold winds that must have been raging across the summits, where the air must have been incredibly thin. This surreal sense of pristine isolation, which made me believe that everything and anything around me has never really existed from the beginning, was, as always, leading me to a peaceful place.

  The bottom of the photograph was lined with the dates of July and August. I looked at July. I wondered what today’s date was. Since I believed it was a Friday, my eyes landed on the twelfth. I then wondered when it was that mother died and scanned leftward until I began murmuring in my heart that it was the eighth. Deep inside, I chanted July eighth several times and suddenly realized something. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t realized it until this very moment.