The Sweetest Fruits

by Monique Truong

  I know you think it inappropriate for a family altar, but I have placed the photographs here, yours at the center and foster Grandfather’s and foster Father’s to the left and to the right. In front of foster Father is his preferred wagashi, the small crab-apple-shaped one that you were also partial to when we were all in Matsue. It breaks with tradition to offer him a confection every day, but that was his preference in life. But, Yakumo, what is tradition in this novel house of Koizumi? Foster Grandfather has his daily bowl of rice and you your daily bread.

  I still order a loaf twice weekly from Takoya, the Occidental restaurant at Shimbashi Station, for Kazuo, Iwao, and Kiyoshi. Unlike her elder brothers, Suzuko has not developed a taste for toasts and soft eggs in the mornings. The two younger boys follow Kazuo’s lead in every respect, and he at fifteen now has an appetite that astonishes me. Iwao at twelve is growing taller by the day. Kiyoshi at nine remains my dear one, a tender shoot. Suzuko is six and remembers you only as her “photograph Papa.” I tell her that for the first year of her life you called her “Aba, Aba,” followed by kisses on both cheeks. She looks very much like me these days, Yakumo, except that she has your nose. The boys all wear theirs well, and perhaps Suzuko will grow into hers. “If your husband’s nose was good enough for him,” foster Mother reminds me, “then it is good enough for the children.” She misses you too, Yakumo.

  I hesitate each time. I know that you disapprove.

  Too Western, I can hear you objecting. Too bare on the tongue, as you would say. You prefer that I call you “Husband” or “Papa,” not “Yakumo,” your Japanese true name that took the place of “Lafcadio.”

  But Koizumi Yakumo, you are Western, and I, Koizumi Setsu, am Japanese. The children are the sweetest fruits of a grafted tree.

  I know you are aware of the occurrences, minor and momentous, that take place underneath the eaves of this house, more so now as your work here is done. It is a great comfort to me all the same to share the household matters with you. I hope that it gives you solace as well.

  Tonight, I stand before you, not to confess—because one cannot confess to something that is known—but to ask that you understand why I have been remiss of late. The reason for my nighttime absences, Yakumo, is a story. The story is about Lafcadio Hearn and how he became Koizumi Yakumo. You already know of its first telling, incomplete and rushed, that I sent to your Elizabeth for the pages of her book.

  Tonight, these pages that I share with you are the second telling of that story. Their facts you will recognize but, perhaps, not their stings. Before I lock them away, you should know what they have revealed.

  Rest assured, Yakumo, there will be a third telling, redacted and final, to take their place. That story will go into the world where it will stand sentry, as I do now, to your memory.

  I have missed—What was the French that you used to say? Was it tête-à-tête?—yes, I have missed the ritual of our nightly tête-à-tête, Yakumo.

  Once the children are asleep, I light the lamp in your writing room and we begin. These lips do not move, nor do yours. We hear each other’s voices all the same. The language that we use—understood nowhere else but within this house of Koizumi—was devised in Matsue, during a winter so cold that it was said that Matsue Castle itself shivered underneath its heavy cloaks of snow.

  The frigid winds had blown in from the Sea of Japan, entered the Nakaumi Lagoon, and met there the Ōhashi River and the wide expanse of Lake Shinji, leaving in their wake sheets of ice, glistening pieces of paper floated by the gods. On the first day of the first month of the 24th year of Meiji, I had looked out at the city of my birth, more water than land, and I saw what the poets of long ago had called “a silver world.” On that same day of the first month of 1891, you had looked out at the same city, and you saw a new world, which you insisted was still an old one. How unchanged could Matsue have been, if you were already among us, Yakumo?

  Within weeks, I was introduced to you in your “birdcage,” as you so often called it in jest. In that two-story pavilion tucked into the merchant Orihara’s vast gardens so that he could drink in the views of the river and the lake along with sips of tea, saké, and the light of the moon, you were its curiously plumed tenant.

  If that moment could be lived again—if you and I could have another lifetime together that begins tonight—I would introduce myself to you in this way:

  I was born in the 4th and final year of Keiō, which was not even a full year.

  On the opposite coast, Edo was reborn as Tokyo, and that autumn the 1st year of Meiji began. The eastern capital would soon send more changes, insistent and unrelenting as the sea, across the island of Honshū.

  In the 6th year of Meiji, another new calendar arrived, this one from the Far West.

  Thus, on the first day of school, I learned that I was born in the year 1868 on the sixth day of February.

  I learned that mere weeks after my birth the samurai of Izumo Province flanked the snowy road leading up to Matsue Castle, without their swords and upon their knees. Their surrender to Emperor Meiji’s army was lit by paper lanterns, the teacher stated. It was a detail that stayed with me because the lanterns were not important to the event or to the lesson at hand. That was the impression of an eight-year-old girl. But with the passing of years, I have come to understand why the teacher had lingered on those flickering sources of light.

  I have never dared to ask within my own families whether Father or foster Father were among those who had knelt. Was it daytime but the sun’s rays were dampened by cloud cover or was it sundown or a moonless night? No matter the answer, I could see the paper lanterns with their everyday glow. I could see the lights and the long shadows. How fragile those lanterns must have looked in the hands of the battle-worn men. I could see their faces, straight lines, their backs, straighter still. In the days that followed, these men would cut off their topknots and no longer wear their swords in public, as both would be forbidden as remnants of the old way.

  I learned that two years after their surrender, the city of Matsue by Imperial edict garrisoned a modern army, whose recruits carried rifles upon their shoulders and marched under the overseeing eyes of a Frenchman on horseback.

  I learned that the word “modern” meant improved, from the Far West, and over the seas.

  I learned that modern streetlights, with flames fed by coal gas, were installed on the streets between the Ōhashi Bridge and the Tenjin Bridge to encourage the to-and-fro of a modern workday, extended now into the Matsue night.

  I learned that modern buildings were constructed of bricks, red as camellia blossoms, with windows paned with clear glass. I learned that these structures housed institutions of progress and change, the new public schools, the new public hospital, and the new post office, among them.

  I learned that all children, boys and girls, were required to attend four years of school, which were now public and free. I learned that many never did, as their labor was needed at home, in the back of shops, on fishing boats, and in the nearby fields of rice and barley. For those children who could be spared, we read in the modern textbooks the names of Plato, Cicero, and Franklin, a man who, same as my brothers, liked to fly a kite.

  When my classmates and I were eight years old, we were learning these facts and more. We had been born at the borders between two eras, and we saw with our own eyes what it meant to be a part of the old one.

  The Ōhashi Bridge was where the worst-offs found themselves. Many of the men who had knelt were now seated on the bridge with their swords, their armors, and their formal haori and hakama spread before them. Silent in their dignity, they were selling without offering. When no items of worth remained, these men sat, silent in their hunger. They were begging without asking. Some chose an honorable death and left wives and daughters on the Ōhashi Bridge to beg and sell their own honor for a handful of rice. Unlike Father, these men could not set aside their code of conduct.
They saw only grubbiness and humiliation when they had to feign parity with the lesser men of the mercantile class.

  Foster Grandfather and foster Father would have been on the Ōhashi Bridge but for foster Mother. She sewed for the wives and daughters of those lesser men, like the merchant Orihara’s, who paid a premium to have their kimono and yukata cut and pieced by a member of the house of Inagaki. Foster Mother sewed until her fingers stiffened with repetition or cold. Each pull of the thread was another grain of rice, each pull of the thread was another grain of rice, she mouthed to herself as she worked, her lips parting to reveal her blackened teeth, a vanity of the married women of her former class that she had refused to forfeit, a vestige of the old way forbidden since the 3rd year of Meiji. To open her mouth was to risk punishment, foster Mother understood. A woman’s fate remained unchanged, she knew.

  Foster Mother pulled and pulled while foster Father planned for business venture after business venture that would fail, and foster Grandfather reread the works of the poets of yore. His most favored poem was the very first tanka, whose subject was Izumo, the Province of the Gods, the Province of his beloved Matsue. The tanka began with what you would choose as your Japanese true name. I remember you repeating its meaning aloud. “Yakumo” is a poem in and of itself, you marveled, your eye shining, lit by its own sun.

  Mother would have been on the Ōhashi Bridge but for me.

  Born into the house of Shiomi, Mother came of age attended to by thirty servants. Sixty hands and sixty feet labored in her stead. By the 3rd year of Meiji when she was without them, she at the age of thirty-three was a body without limbs.

  Before my birth, it was agreed that if I were a female, I would live in the house of Inagaki, as these distant relatives had no child of their own, and Father and Mother already had two sons and one daughter. The house of Koizumi could spare a daughter to a lower-ranked samurai house, it was thought. Within a decade of my birth, Father and Mother would have two more sons. The house of Koizumi is rich in sons, it was said. But upon Father’s passing, these sons did not become Mother’s limbs. I did.

  In 1879, the 12th year of Meiji, the life of the mind for me came to an end. Upon completing the seventh grade at the age of eleven, I received from the prefectural government fifty needles and thirty skeins of silk threads. As I had completed the seventh grade two years ahead of the other girls, I was also awarded another thirty skeins of silk threads. Altogether, they were weightless in these hands.

  Foster Father or—if I am to speak only the truth tonight—foster Mother, as she was the sole earner then, could not afford for me to remain in primary school for the final three years, which would have required the payment of fees. For the girls whose families could indulge them, they would have the newly opened Normal School for the young ladies of Matsue to look forward to upon their graduation.

  Setsu, you can use the needles and threads to sew your lips shut, your eyelids closed, a dark hood for your empty head.

  Setsu, you can use the needles and threads to sew your blood into the fabric of other people’s garments.

  Setsu, you can use the needles and threads to sew for every single grain of rice that you will swallow.

  I wept when I heard this fate. Disappointment sounded like the voice of a bitter old woman. I feared that a fox spirit or a jealous ghost had entered this body. I feared that the voice was, in truth, my own. I wept until I remembered that the voice belonged to foster Grandmother, who three years ago had departed this world. The ghost was not jealous but stubborn and blind. In life, foster Grandmother never acknowledged the demise of her class, that the men had been defeated, that the women were degraded, that the seat of power in Matsue was no longer in the fortified castle but in the modern bank. She had berated the house of Inagaki for allowing me to attend public school, bemoaning my lowered marriage prospects because I, a highborn girl, would be exposed to the eyes of commoners on the city streets, like a lowly maid. In death, foster Grandmother remained unwavering in her assessment. The future she saw for me was bleak with blood and cloth.

  If I had continued my schooling and been among the first female graduates of the Normal School, I would have not met you, Yakumo. Or I would have but as a novice teacher at the Middle School or, perhaps, the governess to the daughter of the prefectural Governor, introducing my young charge to the fundamentals of the English language.

  I had no foreknowledge of my life or the existence of yours, so I could not soothe Setsu at eleven. Even if I had known, she would have not believed me or she would have only wept more.

  Setsu at twelve wiped away the tears. She was no longer a child. She was a wage earner in Father’s textile mill, a rare business started by a former samurai who had not failed. I can still see her seated at the handloom. There were rows of them, each with a highborn girl, pumping the pedals with her feet and legs, sending the flying shuttles back and forth with hands and arms that Mother soon would not recognize. The repetitive movements would make these limbs thick, branches that could hold the weight of a man, not sprigs bending to the weight of their few blossoms.

  At eighteen, Setsu understood that it was not public school that had hindered the prospects of marriage. It was a body that resembled that of a young man’s, arms and legs muscled, shoulders strong and straight with not a hint of the elegant slope that had conveyed the leisure and languor of the women of her former class. Unlike Mother, she had not been betrothed at the age of twelve. She, instead, had been weaving a kimono’s worth of cloth per day.

  Setsu at twenty-two stood before you on a late January morning in 1891, the 24th year of Meiji, because Father had passed away, five years ago. The textile mill departed with him, leaving unpaid debtors behind to mourn. A year before Father’s death, First Brother had abandoned the physical house of Koizumi, and Second Brother left it for the family tomb. Third Brother now spent his days catching and releasing birds, keeping the favored ones in cages not nearly as well crafted as your “birdcage,” Yakumo. Youngest Brother at fourteen was still a boy because Mother doted on him, an overgrown songbird. Married long ago, Elder Sister was a member of another house, as was a daughter’s fate. Mother would rather waste away than beg on the Ōhashi Bridge, its iron pillars reaching up from the river’s depth, its wooden span painted a bright coat of white, the modern incarnation of a previous bridge that had served Matsue well for three hundred years.

  Do you remember why the former bridge had endured, Yakumo, despite the strong currents and the frequent storms? It was the first story of old Matsue that I would tell you. Your fellow teachers were too ashamed to share such lore with you. Too Japanese, they thought.

  A young man was buried alive in one of the bridge’s middle pillars. He had disobeyed an edict from the daimyō about the proper attire required of all men who wanted to cross the bridge on its opening day. A single human sacrifice, Yakumo, had kept the whole structure strong.

  It was for the best, I know.

  If I had recited that litany of misfortune, you would have placed some coins into the hands of Tsune and waved us both away.

  Prior to the introduction, Tsune had explained to me what to expect. She called you the “New Foreign Teacher,” as if I did not know your name from the newspapers. She said that you had stayed at the Tomitaya, her family’s inn, upon your arrival in Matsue. You were very content there, she boasted. You moved into the merchant Orihara’s garden pavilion two months ago, but you kept an arrangement with her that brought two of the inn’s young maids, Onobu and Oman, to the pavilion four times a day. They delivered your meals, heated the water for your morning and nightly use, and performed all the household chores. The tip of Tsune’s tongue touched the corners of her mouth, as if she had eaten something salty, which told me that she was profiting handsomely from the arrangement. How much will she receive for this one, I wanted to know.

  Tsune said a storm cloud was inside your left eye, but your right one was clear. Your
nose was typical of Westerners, large and high, and yours ended in a particularly sharp point. Your hair was not the color of straw or, worse, of a sea urchin’s inside. Charcoal black with the beginnings of gray, she said. Your facial hair was confined to your upper lip, which she admitted was difficult for her to look at, as it reminded her of a dusky caterpillar. Tsune glanced at this face, which as you know, Yakumo, never gave away my thoughts, and she must have decided that she was not presenting the New Foreign Teacher in the best light. So she added that you towered over the men in Matsue, but not all. Nishida Sentarō, the head teacher of the Middle School, for instance, was of equal height. Tsune’s comment was meant as a compliment to you both: Nishida Sentarō is as tall as a foreigner, and the New Foreign Teacher resembles, at least in stature, Matsue’s most esteemed young teacher and bachelor. The two are close friends, she whispered, as if it were a confidence that she alone knew.

  I had read the articles in the San’in Shimbun and the city’s other newspapers announcing your arrival and the details of your life to date in Matsue. The city and I knew that you were brought there by the prefectural government to teach the English language to the boys at the Middle School and to the young men at the Normal School. Their previous teacher was a Christian missionary, whose years in Matsue did not generate nearly as much interest as yours would. We read that you arrived in Japan on the Abyssinia, which had docked at the eastern port of Yokohama on the fourth day of April, 1890, the 23rd year of Meiji, in time to celebrate the Sakura Matsuri. You traveled then to Tokyo to meet with other Western academics of renown at the Imperial University, according to the papers.

  The cherry blossoms had opened for you.

  I mouthed this to you as you departed on your final journey, Yakumo.