Before the Coffee Gets Cold

by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

‘That’s why . . .’

  Nagare looked at her with his narrow eyes. ‘OK,’ was all that he could reply. ‘Kei, darling . . .’

  This was the first time that Kohtake had seen Kei upset like this. As a nurse, she understood the real danger that she faced in attempting to bear a baby with her heart condition. Her body had already become this frail while she was still just approaching the morning sickness phase. If she had chosen not to have the baby, no one would have blamed her, but she had decided to go ahead.

  ‘But I’m really scared,’ Kei muttered in a trembling voice. ‘I wonder if my child will be happy.

  ‘Will Mama’s baby be lonely? Will that make you cry?’ She talked to the child as she always did. ‘I might only be able to have you, my child. Will you forgive me?’

  She listened, but no answer came.

  A stream of tears flowed down her cheek.

  ‘I’m scared . . . the thought of not being there for my child is frightening,’ she said, looking directly at Nagare. ‘I don’t know what I should do. I want my child to be happy. How can such a simple wish be so terribly scary?’ she cried.

  Nagare gave no reply. He just gazed at the paper cranes on the counter.

  Flap.

  The woman in the dress closed her novel. She hadn’t finished it: a white bookmark with a red ribbon tied to it was left inserted between the pages. Hearing the book close, Kei looked over at her. The woman in the dress looked back at Kei and just went on staring at her.

  With her eyes fixed on Kei, the woman in the dress gently blinked just once. Then she smoothly got up from her seat. It was as if that blink had been meant to communicate something, yet she walked behind Nagare and Kohtake and disappeared into the toilet as if she was being drawn inside.

  Her seat – that seat – was vacant.

  Kei started walking towards the seat as if something was pulling her there. Then once in front of that seat – the one that can send you to the past – she stood staring at it.

  ‘Kazu . . . could you make some coffee, please?’ she called weakly.

  Hearing Kei’s request, Kazu poked her head from the kitchen and saw her standing next to that seat. She had no idea what was on Kei’s mind.

  Nagare turned round and saw Kei’s back. ‘Oh, come on . . . You’re not serious?’ he said.

  Kazu spotted that the woman in the dress was gone, and remembered the conversation from earlier that day. Fumiko Kiyokawa had asked, ‘Could you visit the future too?’

  Fumiko’s wish was simple: she wanted to know whether or not in three years, Goro had returned from America and they were married. Kazu had said that it could be done but that no one decided to go because it was pointless. But that was exactly what Kei wanted to do.

  ‘Just one look is all I want.’

  ‘Hang on.’

  ‘If I could see, for just a moment, that would be enough . . .’

  ‘Do you seriously intend on going to the future?’ Nagare asked, his tone gruffer than usual.

  ‘It’s all I can do . . .’

  ‘But you don’t know if you can meet?’

  ‘. . .’

  ‘What’s the point of going there if you don’t meet?’

  ‘I understand that, but . . .’

  Kei looked pleadingly into Nagare’s eyes.

  But Nagare could only produce one word. ‘No,’ he said. He turned his back on Kei and withdrew into silence.

  Nagare had never before stood in the way of Kei doing anything. He respected her insistent and determined personality. He didn’t even argue strongly against her decision to put her life on the line to have a child. But he objected to this.

  He wasn’t just concerned with whether or not she would have her child. He thought that if she went into the future and discovered that the child didn’t exist, the inner strength that had been sustaining her would be destroyed.

  Kei stood before the chair, weak but desperate. She couldn’t walk away from her decision. She was not going to retreat from her position in front of that chair.

  ‘I need you to decide how many years into the future,’ Kazu said suddenly. She slid beside her and cleared away the cup that the woman in the dress had been drinking from.

  ‘How many years? And what month, date, and time?’ she asked Kei. She looked directly into Kei’s eyes and gave a small nod.

  ‘Kazu!’ Nagare shouted with all the authority he could muster. But Kazu ignored him and with her trademark cool expression said, ‘I will remember. I will make sure you can meet . . .’

  ‘Kazu, sweetheart.’

  Kazu was promising her that she would make sure her child would be there in the cafe at the time that she chose to go to in the future. ‘So you don’t have to worry,’ she said.

  Kei gazed into her eyes and gave a little nod.

  Kazu had a feeling that the deterioration in Kei’s condition over the past few days wasn’t down to the physical changes from the pregnancy alone, but that it had also been caused by the overall stress of the situation. Kei wasn’t afraid to die. Her anxiety and sadness stemmed from the thought of not being there to see her child grow up. This weighed heavily on her heart, and was sapping her physical strength. As her strength faded, her sense of anxiety grew. Negativity is food for a malady, one might say. Kazu feared that if Kei continued on this course, her condition would continue to weaken as the pregnancy progressed and the lives of both mother and child might be lost.

  A glimmer of positivity returned to Kei’s eyes.

  I can meet my child.

  It was a very, very small hope. Kei turned to look at Nagare sitting at the counter. Her eyes locked with his.

  He was silent for a moment but with a short sigh, he turned away. ‘Do as you wish,’ he said, turning on his stool so that his back was to her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said to his back.

  After making sure that Kei was able to slide in between the table and the seat, Kazu took the cup that the woman in the dress had used and disappeared into the kitchen. Kei inhaled deeply, slowly lowered herself into the seat, and closed her eyes. Kohtake held her hands together in front of her as if in prayer, while Nagare stared silently at the paper cranes in front of him.

  This was the first time Kei had seen Kazu defy Nagare’s will. Outside the cafe, Kazu rarely felt comfortable talking with anyone she hadn’t met before. She went to Tokyo University of the Arts, but Kei had never seen her with anyone you might describe as a friend. She normally kept to herself. When not in university, she helped out at the cafe, and when that was finished, she retired to her room, where she would work on her drawings.

  Kazu’s drawings were hyper-realist. Using only pencils, she created works that appeared as true to life as actual photographs, but she could only draw things she could observe herself; her drawings never depicted the imaginary or the invented. People don’t see things and hear things as objectively as they might think. The visual and auditory information that enters the mind is distorted by experiences, thoughts, circumstances, wild fancies, prejudices, preferences, knowledge, awareness, and countless other workings of the mind. Pablo Picasso’s sketch of a nude man that he did at age eight is remarkable. The painting he did at age fourteen of a Catholic communion ceremony is very realistic. But later, after the shock of his best friend’s suicide, he created paintings in shades of blue that became known as the Blue Period. Then he met a new lover and created the bright and colourful works of the Rose Period. Influenced by African sculptures, he became part of the cubist movement. Then he turned to a neoclassical style, continued on to surrealism, and eventually painted the famous works The Weeping Woman and Guernica.

  Taken together, these artworks show the world as seen through Picasso’s eyes. They are the result of something passing through the filter that is Picasso. Until now, Kazu had never sought to challenge or influence people’s opinions or behaviour. This was because her own feelings didn’t form part of the filter through which she interacted with the world. Whatever happened, she tried not
to influence it by keeping herself at a safe distance. That was Kazu’s place – it was her way of life.

  This was how she treated everyone. Her cool disposition when handling customers wishing to go back to the past was her way of saying, ‘Your reasons for going back to the past are none of my business.’ But this was different. She had made a promise. She was encouraging Kei to go to the future, and her actions were having a direct influence on Kei’s future. It crossed Kei’s mind that Kazu must have her reasons for her out-of-character behaviour, but those reasons were not immediately apparent.

  ‘Sis.’ Kei opened her eyes to Kazu’s voice. Standing next to the table, Kazu was holding a silver tray upon which was set a white coffee cup and a small silver kettle.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine.’

  Kei corrected her posture and Kazu quietly placed the coffee cup in front of her.

  How many years from now? she prompted silently with a small tilt of the head. Kei thought for a moment.

  ‘I want to make it ten years, on 27 August,’ she declared.

  When Kazu heard the date, she gave a little smile.

  ‘OK then,’ she replied. 27 August was Kei’s birthday: a date that neither Kazu nor Nagare would forget. ‘And the time?’

  ‘Three in the afternoon,’ Kei replied instantly.

  ‘In ten years from now, on 27 August, at three in the afternoon.’

  ‘Yes, please,’ Kei said, smiling.

  Kazu gave a small nod and gripped the handle of the silver kettle. ‘Right, then.’ She resumed her normal cool persona.

  Kei looked over at Nagare. ‘See you soon,’ she called, sounding clear-minded.

  He didn’t look back. ‘Yeah, OK.’

  During Kei and Nagare’s exchange, Kazu picked up the kettle and held it still above the coffee cup.

  ‘Drink the coffee before it goes cold,’ she whispered.

  The words sounded throughout the silent cafe. Kei could feel the tension in the room.

  Kazu began pouring the coffee. A narrow, black stream flowed from the small opening of the kettle’s spout, slowly filling the cup. Kei’s gaze was fixed not on the cup but on Kazu. When the coffee had reached the top, Kazu noticed her gaze and smiled warmly as if to say, ‘I will make sure you will meet . . .’

  A shimmering plume of steam rose from the full cup of coffee. Kei felt her body shimmering as if it were steam. In a moment, she had become as light as a cloud and everything around her had begun to flow as if she were in the middle of a film playing on fast-forward.

  Normally she would have reacted to this by gazing at the passing scenery with the sparkly eyes of a child at an amusement park. But such was her mood right now that her mind was closed even from appreciating such a weird experience. Nagare had put his foot down in opposition, but Kazu had stepped up to give her a chance. Now she was waiting to meet her child. Surrendering to the shimmering dizziness, she brought to mind her own childhood.

  Kei’s father, Michinori Matsuzawa, also had a weak heart. He collapsed at work while Kei was in grade three at elementary school. After that, he was frequently in and out of hospital, until he departed just one year later. Kei was nine years old, a naturally sociable child who was always happy and smiling. And yet at the same time, she was sensitive and highly strung. Her father’s death left her in a dark place emotionally. She had encountered death for the first time, and referred to it as the very dark box. Once you climbed inside that box, you never got out. Her father was trapped in there – a place where you encountered no one, awful and lonely. When she thought of her father, her nights were robbed of sleep. Gradually, her smile faded.

  Her mother Tomako’s reaction to her husband’s death was the opposite of Kei’s. She spent her days with a permanent smile. She had never really had a bright disposition. She and Michinori seemed an unexciting and ordinary married couple. Tomako had cried at the funeral but after that day, she never showed a miserable face. She smiled far more than she had done before. Kei couldn’t understand at all why her mother was always smiling. She asked her, ‘Why are you so happy when Dad is dead? Aren’t you sad?’

  Tomako, who knew that Kei described death as the very dark box, answered, ‘Well, if your father could see us from that very dark box, what do you suppose he would be thinking?’

  With nothing but the kindest of thoughts for Kei’s father, Tomako was trying her best to answer the accusatory question that Kei was asking: ‘Why are you so happy?’

  ‘You father didn’t go in that box because he wanted to. There was a reason. He had to go. If your father could see from his box and see you crying every day, what do you think he would think? I think it would make him sad. You know how much your father loved you. Don’t you think it would be painful for him to see the unhappy face of someone he loved? So why don’t you smile every day so that your father can smile from his box? Our smiles allow him to smile. Our happiness allows your father to be happy in his box.’ On hearing this explanation, Kei’s eyes welled up with tears.

  Hugging Kei tightly, Tomako’s eyes glistened with the tears that she had kept hidden since the funeral.

  Next it will be my turn to go into the box . . .

  Kei understood for the first time how hard it must have been for her father. Her heart tightened at the thought of how devastated he must have been, knowing that his time was up and that he had to leave his family. But by finally taking into account her father’s feelings, she also understood more fully the greatness of her mother’s words. She realized that only a deep love and understanding of her husband would have allowed her mother to say those things.

  After a while, everything around her gradually slowed and settled. She transformed from steam back into bodily form, changing shape back into Kei.

  Thanks to Kazu, she had arrived – ten years in the future. The first thing she did was to look around the room carefully.

  The thick wall pillars and the wooden beam crossing the ceiling were a lustrous dark brown, the colour of chestnuts. On the walls were the three large wall clocks. The tan walls were made of earthen plaster with the patina left by more than one hundred years; she thought it was wonderful. The dim lighting that coloured the entire cafe with a sepia hue – even during the day – gave no sense of time. The retro atmosphere of the cafe had a comforting effect. Above, there was a wooden ceiling fan, rotating slowly without a sound. There was nothing to tell her that she had arrived ten years into the future.

  However, the tear-off calendar next to the cash register showed that it was indeed 27 August, and Kazu, Nagare, and Kohtake, who had been in the cafe with her until moments ago, were now nowhere to be seen.

  In their place, a man stood behind the counter, staring at her.

  She was confused to see him. He was wearing a white shirt, black waistcoat, and bow tie, and he had a standard, short-back-and-sides hairstyle. It was clear that he worked in the cafe. He was standing behind the counter for one thing, and he didn’t appear surprised that Kei had just suddenly appeared in the chair, so he must have known about the special nature of the seat she was sitting in.

  He did not say anything, just kept staring at Kei. To not engage with the person who had appeared was precisely how a staff member would behave. After a while, the man began squeakily polishing the glass he was holding. He looked as if he was in his late thirties, maybe early forties – he just looked like a standard-issue waiter. He didn’t have the friendliest of manners, and there was a large burn scar running from above his right eyebrow to his right ear, which gave him a rather intimidating air.

  ‘Um, excuse me . . .’

  Normally Kei wasn’t the type to worry whether a person was approachable or not. She could begin a conversation with anyone and address them as if they had been friends for years. But at that moment she was feeling a little confused by everything. She spoke to the man as if she was a foreigner struggling with a second language.

  ‘Um, where’s the manager?’

  ‘The ma
nager?’

  ‘The cafe manager, is he here?’

  The man behind the counter returned the polished glass to the shelf.

  ‘That would be me, I guess . . .’ he replied.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m sorry, what is it?’

  ‘You are? You’re the manager?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of this cafe?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yep.’

  That can’t be right! Kei leaned back in surprise.

  The man behind the counter was startled by her response. He stopped what he was doing and came out from behind the counter. ‘What – what’s wrong, exactly?’ he said, clearly rattled. Perhaps it was the first time someone had reacted in such a way to learning he was the manager. But Kei’s expression seemed over the top.

  Kei was trying hard to make sense of the situation. What had happened during these ten years? She couldn’t work out how this could be. She had so many questions for the man in front of her, but her thoughts were a jumble and time was of the essence. The coffee would go cold and her decision to come to the future would have been in vain.

  She collected herself. She looked up at the man, who was peering at her with concern.

  I must calm myself . . .

  ‘Um . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What about the previous manager?’

  ‘Previous manager?’

  ‘You know. Really big guy, narrow eyes . . .’

  ‘Oh, Nagare . . .’

  ‘Right!’

  The man at least knew Nagare. Kei found herself leaning forward.

  ‘Nagare is in Hokkaido right now.’

  ‘Hokkaido . . .’

  ‘Yes.’

  She blinked in amazement, she needed to hear it a second time. ‘Huh? Hokkaido?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She began to feel dizzy. It wasn’t going as she had planned. Since she had known Nagare, never once had he mentioned anything about Hokkaido.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Well, that I can’t answer,’ the man said as he rubbed the skin above his right eyebrow.