The Sweetest Fruits

by Monique Truong

  Late September at the outset of a Tokyo autumn, and yet the old cherry tree outside your writing room had burst into bloom. I have been called a woman with an oak heart, but even I knew that the sakura had shown themselves to you one last time. A fitting farewell, Yakumo. The poets of long ago would have been pleased by their gesture.

  According to the San’in Shimbun, at the tail end of August you began your four-day journey westward via train, jinrikisha, and then on foot once the mountain paths narrowed. Your traveling companion to Matsue was a graduate from the illustrious Imperial University in Tokyo, a young man identified as Manabe Akira, whose English-language skills, it was reported, rivaled Matsue’s own Nishida Sentarō’s. You arrived in the city on August 30, and you began teaching on September 2. The city and I read that your teaching days were five hours long and that you taught twenty-four hours per week. One newspaper even reported that your salary was second only to the prefectural Governor’s. We were assured that your fellow teachers and students thought very highly of you. “Lafcadio Hearn is too good a man to be in so isolated a place,” I remember reading. I had not thought of my hometown as an “isolated place” before you, Yakumo. At school, I had learned that we were a city of forty thousand, a number equal to the fish in the whole of the Sea of Japan, I had imagined.

  The San’in Shimbun reported that the prefectural Governor honored you with invitations to view the horse races, the competitions of weaponry, the sumo tournaments, the Noh performances, and many of the formal gatherings at the Governor’s official residence. Nishida Sentarō was identified as your interpreter and your peer at these events, though illness had prevented the head teacher from being present on several recent occasions, it was noted.

  Some in Matsue were more impressed by the accounts of your visit to the Izumo Shrine in Kitzuki. The ancient pine trees of Kitzuki must have shuddered in unison at the sight of the unfamiliar race, it was written. You were the first Westerner, according to the papers, to be granted admittance into the sanctuary of this Shintō shrine. Nishida Sentarō was credited with writing the letter of introduction to the shrine’s high priest, which had gained you access. It was Manabe Akira who had accompanied you there because the head teacher was once again too ill to travel.

  The women and girls on my lane fussed over that detail when I read the article aloud to them. “Herun-san” and “Nishida-san,” the newspapers had dubbed the two of you, forgoing the honorific “sensei,” which otherwise would have followed the names of teachers, to suggest the modern nature of the friendship, perhaps. Foster Mother, in particular, was concerned about the frequent mentions of illness in connection with the head teacher. “Twenty-seven is young,” she said, as she threaded the eye of a needle. Foster Mother meant that men, unlike women, do not age at the same headlong pace, and that I at twenty-two was fast approaching the end of youth.

  None of us on that lane had seen Nishida Sentarō in person, except for Oman, the maid at the Tomitaya. “Nishida-san attends the monthly poetry evenings at the inn, and now he is there several times a week to drink and dine with Herun-san,” she told us.

  When you, Yakumo, came into contact with Oman at the inn and then at your birdcage, she was fifteen years old. I do not have to remind you that she saw the world through much older eyes. This happens to girls of beauty. They flower early.

  “Nishida-san is very handsome,” Oman often said, with not a hint of color in her cheeks. She complimented his smooth pale skin and his high cheekbones, touching her own by way of example. She praised his deep voice. “Commanding but not harsh,” she said. “The maids would all listen at the edge of the room dividers whenever it is Nishida-san’s turn to recite his poems. He rarely stays afterward for the entertainment, the real reason for those poetry nights,” she added. “He rarely partakes unless his favorite maiko is there, and she is never there these days because she has a new patron. The postmaster, the other maids say.” As usual, Oman’s cheeks were the color of fresh snow. Modesty did not show itself upon them.

  Oman would have been the New Foreign Teacher’s rashamen, but for me.

  There is no need to feign ignorance, Yakumo. We are past the time when such truths can wound.

  I knew the word for the mistress of a Westerner long before we met. Their stories, from the open port cities of Yokohama, Tokyo, Ōsaka, Kōbe, Nagasaki, Niigata, Hakodate, and Kanagawa, had reached us even here in “isolated” Matsue.

  I also had eyes older than my years, though beauty was not the cause, and I saw Oman’s glow when she told us stories about Nishida-san. But when she spoke about Herun-san, she touched the neckline of her kimono, at the point where the left side of the garment crossed the right. When she shared with us that Herun-san had rented the merchant Orihara’s garden pavilion, foster Mother and I exchanged glances. Would it be a dwelling for one or two? we wondered. Upon describing to us the arrangement that Herun-san had made with the inn, Oman was proud to note the additional pay that she was now taking home to her household of seven.

  Oman’s Father and Mother were said to be poor in girls, in that there were five daughters and no son. Oman, the youngest, was the last of the sisters to work outside of the house. She never attended a day of school nor did any of her sisters. Foster Grandmother, when she was still with us, used to remind me that Oman’s Father belonged to the foot-soldier class. “Their kind lived south of the Ōhashi River,” foster Grandmother said. “Only the true samurai houses, the Shiomi, Koizumi, Inagaki among them, were allowed to live within the shadows of Matsue Castle,” she declared.

  We all live on the same lane now.

  I never disrespected foster Grandmother by stating this truth aloud, for it should have been evident to her when she was alive.

  Oman, catching the look between foster Mother and me, added that Onobu, another of the inn’s maids, shared the workload with her at the garden pavilion. “Herun-san feels sorry for Onobu because of her own bad eye,” Oman explained, as she again touched her kimono. “He even gave the landlady Tsune money to take Onobu to a modern doctor, but the landlady kept it instead. When Onobu’s eye showed no improvement, Nishida-san asked the landlady what had happened to Herun-san’s money, and she lied to the head teacher’s face.”

  “The modern doctor could do nothing for Onobu, as her eye is a curse, the landlady Tsune told Nishida-san,” Oman said. “The following week the head teacher informed the Tomitaya that Herun-san would be leaving,” she added.

  Oman was usually more discreet about the topic, referring to the blind eye only as Herun-san’s “condition.” The newspapers had written about it but only in passing. An article had noted that Herun-san’s students thought him a heroic figure because he sometimes wore an eye patch when teaching. He must have lost the eye in a battle or a duel, these students speculated.

  I was grateful to Tsune for speaking so bluntly about your left eye, Yakumo. As with the paper lanterns at Matsue Castle, I could imagine the storm cloud. When I saw it in person, I thought of the moment before the summer rains, a natural occurrence, and that thought kept me calm as I stood before you, as your right eye appraised me, as the thick disk of glass that you held up to it magnified the unblinking orb.

  We all live on the same lane now?

  Foster Grandmother’s voice echoed in these ears.

  We all live on the same lane now?

  She meant to mock me.

  We all live on the same lane now?

  I would be twenty-three years old within days.

  We all live on the same lane now?

  I have two households to help feed.

  We all live on the same lane now?

  Dignity and honor, foster Grandmother, do not fill empty bowls.

  We all live on the same lane now.

  I lowered the eyes. I willed the shoulders to slope. I whittled away the thickness of the arms and legs, thankful for the three layers of silk brocade that hid them. Fos
ter Mother had lent me her formal kimono, the only one that she had not sold, for the introduction.

  The face refused to change. It remained, as it is today, plain.

  When Tsune and I entered the garden pavilion, I had swept its interior with the eyes. The tatami was new and green, its rice-straw-and-sunlight scent floating above the smell of pipe tobacco, which also inhabited the room. The kotatsu at the room’s center must have been burning charcoals all night, as the room felt as temperate as a spring day. Around the hem of the kotatsu’s thick quilt covering were untidy stacks of newspapers and books. I saw only one zabuton there. Where does a visitor sit or kneel in this dwelling? I wondered. A large hibachi sat nearby. Two heating sources for one modest room, I noted, and began out of habit to calculate the cost of the charcoals needed to keep them both warm.

  Poverty reduced everything to a number. I have been reminded of this of late, Yakumo.

  I have not had to deprive the children of heat or other comforts. That is not what I mean to suggest. Foster Mother and I have had to reduce the household expenses but in ways that the children have hardly noticed. Foster Mother sews all of their clothes now, except for the boys’ private school uniforms, which must be purchased as they are imported from England. Rest assured that their education will always be the first priority within this house of Koizumi. Foster Mother also prepares all their meals, making certain that once a month they enjoy a Sunday supper of beefsteaks, buttered English peas, and steamed carrots, sliced crosswise like coins. Kazuo, same as you, compliments foster Mother’s beefsteaks and says that they are even better than those at the restaurant Takoya. We do not dine there as often these days. Kazuo claims not to miss the Occidental dishes there in the least. Iwao and Kiyoshi chime in to say the same, though Iwao was seven and Kiyoshi was only four the last time we all dined there as a family. Suzuko was not even one then, yet she nods her head now in agreement.

  Suzuko is not like her brothers, Yakumo. Remember how she would babble when she was in your arms? She is less of a mountain brook now. The high fever that almost took her from me three years ago took some of her away with it. Foster Mother tells me that I have raised only boys and assures me that girls can grow up more quietly. There are days when Suzuko does not say a word. There are days when she does not even look up when I say her name. I remind myself that you were like this as well, that you were often elsewhere. Suzuko is often elsewhere too. I hope that she is not lonesome there, Yakumo.

  This house of Koizumi is not the same without you. To deny these changes is to deny that you are the heart of this house.

  We have tenants now, Yakumo.

  The small house at the edge of the property where the household’s handyman had lived is now rented to a young couple, a department store deliveryman and his wife. The income it brings in is not much, but it does pay for the school supplies for the boys. The royalties from the book by your Elizabeth pays for their private school tuition. The royalties from all of your books, Yakumo, take care of their other needs. Mr. McDonald—Kazuo and the boys call him by his full naval rank “Paymaster Mitchell McDonald, U.S.N.,” after which they always add “Papa’s American friend in Yokohama”—makes certain that the payments are received here in Tokyo, and he does not hesitate to cablegram your publishers in America and in England whenever they are delinquent, which is often the case these days.

  We have only one maid for all the household chores now, Yakumo.

  Though the same as before, I am the only one who dusts and cleans your writing room. No one is allowed to touch your books, your papers, or your high desk and chair. The oil lamp, the lotus-leaf-shaped dish for your worn pen nibs, the small tabletop hibachi for lighting your pipes, the conch shell are all where you left them. How the maids used to jump whenever you blew on that shell—Pa-wo! Pa-wo!—two extended blasts, as if a steamship were departing from the other end of the house. The student houseboys would laugh and tease them for never anticipating your call. How cross you were with me, Yakumo, whenever I would dispatch a maid to your writing room before you had the chance to Pa-wo! Pa-wo!

  I was that maid once.

  Of course, I knew when that hibachi had grown cold.

  What I did not know was when that seaside memento would cease to fill the rooms of this house.

  Almost fourteen years we had together, Yakumo.

  Less than one in Matsue, three in Kumamoto City, less than two in Kōbe, and eight here in Tokyo. A garden pavilion and then a house in the shadows of Matsue Castle, two houses in Kumamoto, three in Kōbe, and two in Tokyo. The only one that you owned is this one, and you left it just two and a half years after entering its garden gate. Tallied, these numbers suggest a brief, nomadic life, sheltering under rented eaves, lacking in land, weak in roots.

  Numbers are poor storytellers.

  Every city and every house was a home, Yakumo, because we were each other’s country. You thought it was called “Japan,” but that was the country outside. The country inside was founded by two unlikely travelers. In Kumamoto City, that country added to its populace, sending for foster Grandfather, foster Father, and foster Mother. Then Kazuo arrived to become its first native-born. The other three children claimed their citizenships in Tokyo. When you departed, I was left an exile in the country outside. I miss what was once under the eaves of this house, Yakumo.

  At first, the garden pavilion was the foreign land, as far from Matsue as I had ever been. I, as novice travelers tend to do, located and clung to what was familiar there. On the morning of the introduction, I was consoled by a bush warbler in a large hinoki cage. A gift from the daughter of the prefectural Governor, Tsune had told me. The bush warbler was singing a mating song because the little fellow had been duped by the warmth of the pavilion into believing that spring was already here.

  I knew what I would do first, if I were to stay. I would slide open a shōji window, the one nearest to the little fellow’s cage, and allow in a thread of cold so that he would know that winter was still in Matsue.

  Yakumo, you needed no reminder. You had on an overcoat, a “seaman’s” because of its double row of buttons as I would later learn. Underneath it, you wore a padded kimono, a pair of Western suit trousers, white tabi on your feet, leather gloves on your hands, a knitted scarf around your neck, and on your head a hat—national origin indeterminate—with a wide soft brim the color of a maitake. I would have thought you addled if I had not known of your sensitivity to the cold.

  “The New Foreign Teacher,” Tsune had told me, “has been flat on his back for weeks with a fever and a rasping cough. He complained that the pavilion was drafty and that Oman’s and Onobu’s visits were not frequent enough to keep the kotatsu, the hibachi, and him warm. He asked for a live-in maid, but Oman cannot be spared at the inn,” Tsune claimed. “Also, he wanted someone older. Someone who can read and write, he specified. Both are unusual requests for a foreigner,” Tsune said.

  “There has been a misunderstanding,” I informed Tsune. “I do not know the English language.”

  “Read and write Japanese,” she said.

  “Yes, Japanese. How unthinking of me,” I replied. “May I ask you a question?”

  This was the moment when Tsune volunteered the storm cloud, Yakumo, though your left eye was not my question or my concern.

  “Do you have some English?” I asked her.

  “Of course. I know how to say ‘thank you, please, sorry, yes, no, good, bad, eat, drink, hello, goodbye, man, woman, big, small, and the bill,’” Tsune rattled off.

  “And the New Foreign Teacher, he has some Japanese?” I asked.

  “He knows how to say thank you, please, sorry, yes, no, good, bad, eat, drink, hello, goodbye, man, woman, big, small, and shrine,” Tsune replied. “He has been in Japan for about five months, so the New Foreign Teacher is not a quick learner,” she said, laughing.

  “Shrine?”

  “Yes. He enjo
ys visiting them, even more than most Westerners. The jinrikisha men who wait outside the inn all know this about him. He waves his favorite one over and says ‘Miya!’ and expects that the man will take him to a new one each time. The New Foreign Teacher will expect the same of you.”

  “Expect what of me?” I asked.

  “You will be his live-in maid. You and he will negotiate any additional tasks that he will require of you. Do you understand the arrangement?”

  “I understand the arrangement,” I replied.

  “He is eager to meet the daughter of a great samurai,” Tsune added. “Samurai are still important to foreigners,” she said, unable to hide her contempt.

  “I see. I will try my best then.”

  “You will have to! There are many who would want this position. If I had more time, I would offer the New Foreign Teacher a choice. But he wanted someone immediately, so I could find only you.”

  “How do you speak with him?” I asked, ignoring yet another of her insults.

  “We point. We draw pictures. We playact,” Tsune answered. “It was easier when the Imperial University man was still staying at the inn. Now, if it is a small matter, then one of the students from the Normal School will drop by with a message or a request. For matters of importance, the New Foreign Teacher sends Nishida-san over. For this arrangement, Nishida-san has not been involved. The New Foreign Teacher knows he can trust me. This is a small matter, anyhow.”

  Tsune was an arrogant woman.

  I was an observant one.

  I knew immediately that you did not trust Tsune. I did not trust her either. We were in agreement from the beginning, Yakumo.

  “Koizumi?” you asked.

  I nodded, confirming Father’s house.

  “Shiomi?”

  I nodded again to confirm Mother’s house. I raised for a moment the downcast eyes.

  Behind the handheld glass, your magnified right eye was gentle but dull as rusted cast iron. I knew that look well. I had seen a man’s disappointment before.