The Sweetest Fruits

by Monique Truong

  You were in this elsewhere, Yakumo, because you had given your last lecture at Tokyo Imperial University.

  Teizaburō, the translator, still bristles with anger over your treatment. “How could the most prestigious university in Japan have severed its connection to the most distinguished Western writer of Japan?” your former student posed to Shigeyuki, the scribe, the last time they were both here at this Ōkubo house.

  “Money,” Shigeyuki replied, his one-word answer uncharacteristically blunt. “The replacement, Sōseki Natsume, was hired as a lecturer for a fraction of Herun-sensei’s salary. Even we at the sleepy Institute had heard about the outrage.”

  “Ah, not for long, not for long,” Teizaburō assured him. “The rumor is that Sōseki will ask for a pay raise or leave altogether. Who would have imagined that he would make a name for himself by writing a novel in the voice of a cat? Absurd and a fad is what I say, but he has published five more books since, each better received than the last. I, frankly, am astonished.”

  “What would Herun-sensei think about this Sōseki?” Shigeyuki asked.

  Neither had an answer. I think you would have liked the cat, Yakumo.

  Without the university professorship, you no longer had a reason to go beyond the Ōkubo garden gate. Koizumi Yakumo at fifty-three sought refuge in the country inside. From your writing room, you looked westward, back toward the far shores of your youth, exhausted by the waves that had carried you away.

  Pride had left your body, Yakumo. As with the men of the house of Koizumi before you, this was the same as your spirit departing. When pride had left Setsu at twenty-three, when it rose up and coiled toward the Matsue sky, the body that remained was no longer tied to the land, a winged maple seed afloat. For you, Yakumo, the body that remained was a husk, separated from the grain, weightless. Your back stooped. Your hair snowed. Your gait slowed. Your eye twitched. Your cheeks hollowed. Your mouth filled with blood. A burst blood vessel, Dr. Kizawa, the family doctor reported. Your voice silenced for months. Your daily walks lost to you as well.

  The heart that belongs to Suzuko was already within this body by then, but the roundness of her was not yet visible to your eye, Yakumo. A fourth Koizumi, even if a son, no longer seemed a reason for celebration. But when Suzuko joined the household later that autumn, you held her in your arms and called her “Aba, Aba,” kissing her on both cheeks.

  Foster Mother and I looked at each other, but we both held our tongues. Later, with Suzuko asleep in her arms, foster Mother worried that the misfortune could not be undone.

  “It was Kazuo’s first word,” I reminded foster Mother.

  “Yes, but—” she began.

  “Iwao’s and Kiyoshi’s too,” I added.

  “It was probably every baby’s first word in this country,” she said. “You know that is not why I worry.”

  “Herun-san is only giving Suzuko a suggestion, an early tutorial,” I assured her. “He cannot help but to teach—”

  “Saying ‘Aba’ to a newborn is not a lesson,” she objected.

  Foster Mother was right, Yakumo. Saying goodbye, even if it was in the singsong prattle of babies, is a self-inflicted curse.

  “Herun-san has no plans to travel,” I said to foster Mother, choosing the image for the end of life that seemed most fitting for you, Yakumo.

  I doubted foster Mother even more after you made your announcement. She had worried needlessly, I assured myself.

  “Waseda University, Sweet Wife!” you declared at the beginning of 1904, the 37th year of Meiji. Your voice was rid of its waver, a moth that had lived inside your throat for months.

  “You have good news, Husband?” I asked.

  “Yes, good and new!” you answered.

  “Tell me, Husband.”

  “Only four hours a week, two lectures on English literature every Wednesday and Saturday, and the Waseda’s campus is closer to Ōkubo by jinrikisha.”

  “It is very good news, Husband!”

  “The dean of Waseda looks like Nishida-san. A good omen. I will invite him to the house, and you will see, Sweet Wife!”

  Suzuko, babbling in these arms, decided at that moment to offer you her first word, the same one chosen by her three brothers. We both heard her, Yakumo. You rejoiced, repeating “Aba, Aba” back to her, believing your lessons had resulted in an unqualified success. “Little Suzuko knows her name,” you cooed.

  I was silent as Papa and daughter blithely bid each other, “Goodbye, Goodbye.”

  When August arrived, you, Kazuo, and Iwao boarded the train to Yaizu. The evening before, you and the boys sang for Kiyoshi, Suzuko, and me a rousing rendition of the national anthem, which you proudly had taught to all of the children when the war had begun earlier that year. Kazuo and Iwao, each with their agave-leaf sword, marched around the room, saluting you in turn. You called them brave and bold like their countrymen who were at war.

  “Japan is coming into its own,” you said to me. “Neither the West nor the East can threaten our nation,” you declared.

  Japan was again at war with a foreign enemy. First, China was our enemy. This time it was Russia. As with the Koizumi men before you, you found meaning in war. You looked at the list of battles, the ships lost, and the territory won, and you saw the character of a man, of a nation, and of a generation. I did not, Yakumo. I looked at Kazuo at ten, Iwao at seven, and Kiyoshi at four, and I feared for the wars that would come for them.

  I took Kazuo aside that evening and asked him to write to Mama every day. “Do not let Papa see,” I began. “Let it be a surprise when I show him at the end of the month how diligent you have been at practicing your Japanese characters, Kazuo. Tell Mama, if Papa is tired or crossed. Tell Mama, if he does not finish his meals. Tell Mama, if he is restless at night or sleeps late into the morning,” I instructed. Kazuo nodded his head, his serious face intent on fulfilling what was being asked of him. I looked at him and wished that he were older. Children should not have to care for their parents, I knew.

  These worries soon subsided, as every day I received not one but two letters, one from Kazuo and the other from you.

  You wrote at sunrise, “I miss you. I wish I could see your face now. Do I still have to wait?”

  Nishida-san could not have written a finer letter, Husband.

  You had been eager for Yaizu, but you were just as eager to return to Tokyo. You had asked me to order a new haori and hakama for you to wear at your first lecture. The older Waseda professors did not wear Western suits, and this, you felt, gave you permission to discard yours as well. “I am old enough now,” you claimed. You meant that you are Japanese enough now, Yakumo.

  You would return from that campus with your hands on your chest, tugging at the cloth of your haori. I wanted to send the household’s jinrikisha man to Dr. Kizawa’s house, but you refused. You insisted that a pour of whiskey would make the pain go away. It did, until a week later when it returned with a force that made you nod your head in agreement when I again insisted on summoning the family doctor to this Ōkubo house.

  “A new kind of sickness,” you told Dr. Kizawa in Herun-san’s language, which I repeated to him in Japanese. You were still seated at your high desk, attempting to write a letter, when he arrived. “Sickness of the heart,” you diagnosed, without looking up at the doctor’s face. Dr. Kizawa enjoyed your company, in health and in sickness, Yakumo, and did not take offense. He asked about your Waseda students and suggested that they were the source of your discomfort. I repeated his joke to you, and you smiled and raised your eye to greet his. He asked you to lie down on the tatami, and he listened to your heart. He listened for a long while. I had the urge to push him aside and listen to it too. Dr. Kizawa looked up at me and said that the cherry tree, outside your writing room, was in full bloom. You heard “sakura” and understood the subject of his remarks. You and I looked out of the windows. We had not
even noticed them, Yakumo.

  “Snowing,” you said.

  “Snowing,” I repeated.

  Dr. Kizawa left instructions for you to rest, eat a light meal of broth and soft tofu, and to halt your teaching for a month or two. To me, he said to send for him immediately once the pain returns.

  “Returns?” I asked, as I walked with him to the front door.

  “Yes,” he replied, his face showing me what he had hidden from you.

  Death is the ending to all of our stories, Yakumo, and yet its arrival can still manage to surprise and unsettle, like a child’s cry in the forest.

  Seven days later, on the twenty-sixth day of September, 1904, the 37th year of Meiji, you awoke at six thirty in the morning, earlier than usual, to birdsongs rising from the bamboo grove. I helped you dress in your yukata and tabi, and you took your morning meal in the writing room. As you sipped your bowl of broth, you told me that last night you had dreamed of a faraway place. It was not a country where you had been before, but it was familiar to you all the same. There were blackbirds there, the sky dotted with them, as if they were gathering. Perhaps you had followed them to that place or they had followed you. You were on a mountainside, green with low trees, the underside of their leaves flickering silver, flowers wild with the color of morning light, nearby an unseen sea. You said that the breezes there carried with them the scent of butter, thyme, and honey. You closed your eye and took in a deep breath, as if these scents were here in Ōkubo.

  I breathed in as well. I smelled only bread toasting.

  Kazuo and Iwao were at the table for their morning meal, waiting to see whether Papa would join them that day. Foster Mother encouraged them to begin without you, and they did, taking heart in her suggestion that, perhaps, Papa will join them tomorrow. Kazuo then came to the writing room to wish you “Good morning, Papa,” before he and Iwao headed to school.

  “Pleasant dreams. The same to you,” you replied and kissed Kazuo on both cheeks, as if he were Suzuko or me. He pulled away from such an open show of affection, and he looked over at me to explain your words and your action. I had nothing to offer him, except to signal with the eyes that it was time for him to go.

  You spent the day in your writing room, looking out at the garden. The cherry blossoms had dropped their petals overnight, transforming a small patch of Ōkubo into a silver world. You asked me to walk with you out to the West Indies.

  “Tomorrow, Husband,” I replied.

  “Yes, tomorrow,” you agreed. “It is too cold today, Sweet Wife.”

  It was not, Yakumo. I shivered all the same.

  You joined us at the evening meal, your first with the children since Dr. Kizawa’s visit. You pushed away your supper, uneaten, and asked for a small glass of whiskey instead. “With water, if you must, Sweet Wife,” you said. You laughed, like a boy of ten and not a man of fifty-four, at Kazuo’s stories about his classmates and their efforts to learn the game of cricket. Iwao wanted to entertain you too, but his story got him a mild scolding instead, as it was about his teacher who had mocked a student for stuttering. “A monster!” you cursed Iwao’s teacher. Kiyoshi climbed onto your lap, like an overgrown house cat. Suzuko contributed to the conversation by repeating her first and most favored word, until foster Mother hastened her away.

  “Pleasant dreams, Papa,” the boys said to you, as I helped you to your feet.

  You wanted an hour alone in your writing room, before you turned in for the night. “I want to write a letter,” you explained.

  “But I am right here, Husband,” I teased.

  “You are, Sweet Wife, you are,” you replied, smiling.

  Yakumo, when I returned to check on your progress, you were slumped over your high desk. The piece of paper in front of you was blank, not yet touched by the nib of your pen. “The sickness is back,” you whispered, your face an apology.

  Upon arriving at the house of Koizumi, Dr. Kizawa had nothing to listen to. Your heart had joined your spirit, Yakumo.

  Your body became ash and bones, and their destination was Zōshigaya Cemetery, which will be mine as well. We will call that village of the dead the last shared country. We will wait there for many years, if the gods are merciful, before the children will join us, one by one.

  Until then, Yakumo, your memory lives with me here in this Ōkubo house.

  I have kept all of your letters, even that final pristine sheet. I tell myself that I was its intended recipient, that “Setsu” was the name on the tip of your pen. I will lock the letters away until there is no one left who is fluent in Herun-san’s language, until what is lost will render your words and mine immune to judgment and ridicule. How many generations will it take, Yakumo?

  The pages of this second telling will keep your letters company. I must learn from your example, Yakumo. What was once fact—because you alone claimed it to be—can lose its lacquer, chip and blister over time. What was once opinion—or the echo of the prevailing winds—can take on the weight of conviction. What was a matter of taste can reveal a lifetime of foibles and faults. What was a term of affection can disclose a failing of character. What was love can be read as mere proximity.

  Rest assured, Husband, the third telling of how Lafcadio Hearn became Koizumi Yakumo will withstand Kazuo’s scrutiny, Iwao’s, Kiyoshi’s, Suzuko’s, and their children’s and their children’s children. It will go into the world as the Reminiscences of Lafcadio Hearn by Koizumi Setsu and feed the houses of Koizumi and Inagaki, my aim since the age of twelve.

  These pages that I have shown you tonight, Yakumo, they are still weak with truths. I will shore them up by removing more bones.

  ELIZABETH BISLAND

  (1861–1929)

  . . . .

  NEW YORK, 1906

  It was while Lafcadio was living in the house by the Ōhashi bridge that he married, in January, 1891, Setsu Koizumi, a lady of high samurai rank. The revolution in Japan which overthrew the power of the Shōguns and restored the Mikado to temporal power had broken the feudal structure of Japanese society, and with the downfall of the daimyōs . . . fell the lesser nobility, the samurai, or “two-sworded” men. Many of these sank into as great poverty as that which befel [sic] the émigrés after the French Revolution, and among those whose fortunes were entirely ruined were the Koizumis. Sentarō Nishida, who appears to have been a sort of head master of the Jinjō-chūgakkō, in special charge of the English department, was of one of the lesser samurai families, his mother having been an intimate of the Koizumi household before the decline of their fortunes. Because of his fluency in English, as well as because of what seems to have been a peculiar sweetness and dignity of character, he soon became the interpreter and special friend of the new English teacher. It was through his mediation that the marriage was arranged. Under ordinary circumstances a Japanese woman of rank would consider an alliance with a foreigner an inexpugnable disgrace; but the circumstances of the Koizumis were not ordinary, and whatever may have been the secret feelings of the girl of twenty-two, it is certain that she immediately became passionately attached to her husband, and the marriage continued to the end to be a very happy one. It was celebrated by the local rites, as to have married according to English laws, under the then existing treaties, would have deprived her of her Japanese citizenship and obliged them to remove to one of the open ports; but the question of the legality of the marriage and of her future troubled Hearn from the beginning, and finally obliged him to renounce his English allegiance and become a subject of the Mikado in order that she and her children might never suffer from any complications or doubts as to their position. This could only be achieved by his adoption into his wife’s family. He took their name, Koizumi, which signifies “Little Spring,” and for personal title chose the classical term for Izumo province, Yakumo, meaning “Eight Clouds”—or “the place of the issuing clouds”—and also being the first word of the oldest known Japanese poem.


  * * *

  . . . .

  In . . . [a former samurai’s] house, surrounded with beautiful gardens, and lying under the very shadow of the ruined Daimyō castle, Hearn and his wife passed a very happy year. The rent was four dollars a month; his salaries from the middle and normal schools, added to what he earned with his pen, made him for the first time in his life easy about money matters. He was extremely popular with all classes, from the governor to the barber; the charm and wonder of the life about him was still unstaled by usage, and he found himself at last able to achieve some of that beauty and force of style for which he had so long laboured. He even found pleasure in the fact that most of his friends were of no greater stature than himself. It seems to have been in every way the happiest portion of his life.

  * * *

  . . . .

  Unfortunately this idyllic interval was cut short by ill health. The cold Siberian winds that pass across Izumo in winter seriously affected his lungs, and the little hibachi, or box of burning charcoal, which was the only means in use of warming Japanese houses, could not protect sufficiently one who had lived so long in warm climates. Oddly too, cold always affected his eyesight injuriously, and very reluctantly, but under the urgent advice of his doctor, he sought employment in a warmer region and was transferred to . . . the great Government College, at Kumamoto, situated near the southern end of the Inland Sea. . . .

  Matsue was old Japan. Kumamoto represented the far less pleasing Japan in the stage of transition. Here Hearn remained for three years, and at the expiration of his engagement abandoned the Government service and returned to journalism for a while. Living was far more expensive, the official and social atmosphere of Kumamoto was repugnant to him, and he fell back into the old solitary, retiring habits of earlier days—finding his friends among children and folk of the humbler classes. . . .