Strange Weather in Tokyo

by Hiromi Kawakami

  “So, then, well.”

  “Yes?”

  “Would you consider a relationship with me, based on a premise of love?”

  Excuse me? I stammered in response. What do you mean by that, Sensei? I’ve been in love with you, for a while now, I blurted out, forgetting any and all restraint. I’ve loved you all along, I told you. Sensei, you already know that very well. So what, then, do you mean by this “premise”? I don’t get it.

  A crow on a nearby branch cawed loudly. Surprised, I flew up off the bench. The crow gave another caw. Sensei smiled. He wrapped his palm around mine again, still smiling.

  I clung to him. Wrapping my free arm around Sensei’s back, I pressed myself against his body and inhaled the scent of his jacket. It smelled faintly of mothballs.

  “Tsukiko, with you so close, I’m embarrassed.”

  “Even though you were the one holding me just before.”

  “That was the decision of a lifetime.”

  “Yes, but you seemed pretty natural about it.”

  “Well, I was married before.”

  “And you must not have felt embarrassed to be like this.”

  “We’re in public.”

  “It’s dark now, no one can see.”

  “They can see.”

  “They can’t.”

  With my face in Sensei’s chest, I had been crying just a little bit. So that he wouldn’t notice my tears or hear them in my voice, I kept my face pressed firmly against his jacket and muffled my words. Sensei calmly patted my hair.

  A premise of love, yes, certainly. I was still muffling my voice. Let’s have a relationship with that premise, I said, muffled.

  That’s very fortunate, Tsukiko. You’re such a lovely girl, dear. Sensei’s words were also muffled. How did you like our first date?

  I thought it went pretty well, I replied.

  Then let’s do it again, Sensei said. Darkness fell quietly over us.

  Certainly, it’s good to have a premise of love.

  So, where should we go next?

  Maybe Disneyland would be nice.

  Desney, you say?

  It’s Disney, Sensei.

  I see, Disney, right. But I’m not so good with crowds.

  But I want to go to Disneyland.

  Then let’s go to Desneyland.

  Didn’t I tell you it’s not Desneyland?

  Tsukiko, dear, you are a real stickler.

  Darkness surrounded us as we went on talking to each other in our muffled voices. The pigeons and the crows must have returned to their nests. Enveloped in Sensei’s warm and dry embrace, I wanted to laugh and I wanted to cry. But I didn’t laugh and I didn’t cry anymore either. All I did was be still there in Sensei’s arms.

  I could feel Sensei’s heartbeat faintly through his jacket. We remained there, sitting quietly in the darkness.

  The Briefcase

  Unusually, I found myself at Satoru’s place while it was still daylight.

  It was early winter, so for it to still be bright out, it must have been before five o’clock. I had been out on a call and decided to come straight home, without going back to the office. I had finished what I needed to do more quickly than expected and whereas, once, I would have had a look around a department store or somewhere, I decided to head to Satoru’s place and see if Sensei would meet me there. That’s how it was now that Sensei and I were in an “official relationship” (Sensei’s words). Had it been before our “relationship” started, I never would have called Sensei—though I probably still would have come to Satoru’s and whiled away the rest of the daylight by myself, enjoying my saké as I wondered, with heart racing, whether Sensei would show up or not.

  It wasn’t a huge change. The only real difference was whether to sit and wait or not.

  “When you put it that way, it makes waiting sound pretty tough, don’t you think?” Satoru said, looking up from his chopping on the other side of the counter. When I arrived he had been out in front of the bar watering. He told me that he was still getting ready to open—the curtain outside wasn’t even up yet—but he invited me in anyway.

  Have a seat over there. We’ll open in about half an hour, Satoru said, placing a beer and glass in front of me along with a bottle opener and a little dish of miso paste. You can open it yourself, right? Satoru said as he diligently maneuvered his knife on the chopping block.

  “Sometimes waiting is a good thing.”

  “You think so?”

  The beer entered my system. After a little while, I could feel a warmth along the path it coursed through. I took a lick of the miso paste. It was barley miso.

  I excused myself in advance, and took my mobile phone out of my bag and dialed Sensei’s number. I debated whether to call his home number or his mobile phone number, but decided on his mobile.

  Sensei picked up after six rings. He picked up, but there was only silence. Sensei didn’t say anything for the first ten seconds or more. Sensei hated mobile phones, citing the subtle lag after your voice went through as his reason.

  “I don’t have any particular complaints about mobile phones, per se. I find it intriguing to see people who appear to be having a loud conversation with themselves.”

  “I see.”

  “But so then, if we’re talking about me agreeing to use one, that’s difficult.”

  This was the conversation we had when I suggested that Sensei get a mobile phone.

  Whereas once, he would have flatly refused to carry a mobile phone, because I had insisted on the idea, he couldn’t reject it out of hand. I remember a boy I dated a long time ago who, when we would disagree, would go straight to outright denial, but Sensei wasn’t like that. Is that what you called benevolence? With Sensei, his benevolent nature seemed to originate from his sense of fair-mindedness. It wasn’t about being kind to me; rather, it was born from a teacherly attitude of being willing to listen to my opinion without prejudice. I found this considerably more wonderful than just being nice to me.

  That was quite a discovery for me, the fact that arbitrary kindness makes me uncomfortable, but that being treated fairly feels good.

  “So there’s nothing to worry about if something happens,” I reasoned.

  To which Sensei widened his eyes and asked, “Something like what?”

  “Anything.”

  “So then, what?”

  “Um, for instance, you could be carrying something with both hands full when suddenly it starts raining, and there aren’t any public phones nearby, and now it’s crowded with people under the shop awnings, and you have to get home quickly—something like that.”

  “Tsukiko, in that situation I would just get wet going home.”

  “But what if the thing you’re carrying couldn’t get wet? Like some kind of bomb that would ignite if it got wet.”

  “I would never buy anything like that.”

  “What if there were a dangerous character lurking in the shadows?”

  “It’s just as likely that there would be a dangerous character lurking somewhere when I’m walking down the street with you, Tsukiko.”

  “What if you slipped on the wet sidewalk on your way?”

  “Tsukiko, you’re the one who falls, aren’t you? I train in the mountains.”

  Everything Sensei said was right. I fell silent and cast my eyes downward.

  “Tsukiko,” Sensei said softly after a moment. “I understand. I will get a mobile phone.”

  What? I asked.

  Sensei patted the top of my head and replied, “You never know when something might happen to us geezers.”

  “You’re not a geezer, Sensei!” I contradicted him.

  “In return . . . ”

  “What?”

  In return, Tsukiko, I ask you not to call it a cell. Please refer to it as a mobile ph
one. I insist. I can’t stand to hear people call it a cell.

  And that’s how Sensei came to have a mobile phone. Every so often I call it, just for practice. Sensei has only ever called me from it once.

  “Sensei?”

  “Yes?”

  “Um, I’m at Satoru’s place.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes” is all Sensei ever says. This might not be so unusual, but on a mobile phone, it becomes remarkable.

  “Will you join me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m so pleased.”

  “Likewise.”

  At last, an utterance other than “Yes.” Satoru grinned. He came out from behind the counter and went to hang the curtain outside, still grinning. I scooped some more miso paste with my finger and licked it. The aroma of oden cooking filled the bar.

  There was one thing I was concerned about.

  Sensei and I had not yet slept together.

  I was concerned about it in the same way that I might be about the looming shadow of menopause that I already felt or about worrisome gamma-GTP levels in my liver function when I went for a checkup. When it comes to the workings of the human body, the brain, the internal organs, and the genitals were all part of the same whole. I became aware of this because of Sensei’s age.

  I may have been concerned, but that’s not to say that I was frustrated by it. And if we never slept together, well, that was how it would be. But as for Sensei himself, he seemed to have quite a different attitude.

  “Tsukiko, I’m a bit anxious,” Sensei said to me one day.

  We were at Sensei’s house, eating yudofu. Since it was the middle of the day, Sensei had prepared yudofu in an aluminum pot for us to eat while we drank some beer. He made it with cod and chrysanthemum greens. When I made yudofu, tofu was the only ingredient. As I sat there, my head a little fuzzy from drinking in the daytime, it had occurred to me that this was how people who didn’t know each other developed a familiarity.

  “Anxious?”

  “Er, well, it’s been a long time since I was with my wife.”

  Oh, I exclaimed, my mouth half-open. I was careful not to let Sensei stick in his finger, though. Ever since that time, Sensei would quickly poke his finger into my half-open mouth if I let my guard down. He was much more playful than I had realized.

  “It’s fine, if we don’t do that,” I said hurriedly.

  “By ‘that,’ do you mean what I think you mean?” Sensei’s expression was serious.

  “Not ‘that,’ per se,” I replied as I readjusted myself, sitting on my heels.

  Sensei nodded gravely. “Tsukiko, physical intimacy is essential. No matter how old you are, it’s extremely important.” He had assumed a firm tone, like back in the day when he would read aloud from The Tale of the Heike at his teacher’s podium.

  “However, I don’t have any confidence that I’m capable of it. If I were to try when I was feeling insecure, and then if I couldn’t do it, my confidence would be even more diminished. And that is such a formidable outcome that it prevents me from even trying.” The Tale of the Heike continued.

  “I sincerely apologize.” Sensei bowed deeply, concluding The Tale of the Heike. Still seated on my heels, I bowed too.

  Uh, why don’t I help you? I wanted to say. We could give it a try soon. But, feeling the pressure of Sensei’s solemnity, I didn’t feel like I could say this to him. Nor could I tell him I didn’t give a damn about that. Or that I would rather he just go on kissing and holding me like always.

  Since I couldn’t say any of these things, I poured some beer into Sensei’s glass. Sensei opened wide and drank it down, and I ladled some cod out of the pot. Chrysanthemum greens clung to the fish, creating a lovely contrast of green and white. Isn’t that pretty, Sensei? I said, and Sensei smiled. Then he patted the top of my head, as always, over and over.

  We went to all kinds of places on our dates. Sensei preferred to call them “dates,” using the English word.

  “Let’s go on a date,” Sensei would say. Even though we lived close to each other, we always met up at the station nearest the location of our date. We would make our separate ways to the station. If we ever ran into each other on the train on the way to meet up, Sensei would murmur something like, Oh-ho, Tsukiko, what a strange place to see you.

  The place we went most often was the aquarium. Sensei loved to see the fish.

  “When I was a little boy, I used to love to look at illustrated guides to fish,” Sensei explained.

  “How old were you then?”

  “I must have been in elementary school.”

  Sensei had shown me a picture from when he was an elementary student. In the faded, sepia-toned photograph, Sensei was wearing a sailor hat and squinting his eyes as if it were too bright.

  “You were cute,” I said.

  Sensei nodded and said, “Well, Tsukiko, you’re still cute.”

  Sensei and I stood in front of the migratory fish tank that held tuna and skipjack. Watching the fish go round and round in one direction, I was struck by the feeling that we had been standing there like this for a very long time, the two of us.

  “Sensei?” I ventured.

  “What is it, Tsukiko?”

  “I love you, Sensei.”

  “I love you too, Tsukiko.”

  We spoke these words to each other sincerely. We were always sincere with each other. Even when we were joking around, we were sincere. Come to think of it, so were the tuna. And the skipjack. All living things were sincere, on the whole.

  We also went to Disneyland, of course. As we were watching the evening parade, Sensei shed a few tears. I did too. Each of us, though together, was probably thinking of different things that made us cry.

  “There is something wistful about the lights at night,” Sensei said as he blew his nose on a big white handkerchief.

  “Sensei, you cry sometimes, don’t you?”

  “With few exceptions, geezers are easily moved to tears.”

  “I love you, Sensei.”

  Sensei didn’t reply. He was watching the parade intently. His profile illuminated, Sensei’s eyes appeared sunken. Sensei, I said, but he didn’t reply at all. Once again I called Sensei, and there was no reply. I squeezed Sensei’s arm and gazed out at Mickey and the little people and Sleeping Beauty.

  “I had fun on our date,” I said.

  “I did too.” At last he replied to me.

  “I hope you’ll ask me out again.”

  “I will.”

  “Sensei?”

  “Yes?”

  “Sensei?”

  “Yes?”

  “Please don’t go away.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  The parade music grew significantly louder, and the little people leapt around. The procession finally began to recede. Sensei and I were left in the darkness. Bringing up the end of the line was Mickey, swinging his hips as he slowly walked along. Sensei and I held hands in the darkness. Then I shivered the slightest bit.

  Should I tell the story of the only time that Sensei ever called me from his mobile phone?

  I could hear background noise, which was how I knew he was using the mobile phone.

  “Tsukiko?” Sensei said.

  “Yes?”

  “Tsukiko?”

  “Yes?”

  In a reversal of our usual roles, I became the one who said only “Yes.”

  “Tsukiko, you really are such a lovely girl.”

  “What?”

  That was all he said before abruptly hanging up. I called him right back, but he didn’t answer. About two hours later I called Sensei at home, and this time he answered, his voice perfectly serene.

  “What was that, before?”

  “Nothing, I just suddenly thought of it.”

 
“Where were you calling from?”

  “By the greengrocery near the station.”

  The greengrocery? I echoed.

  I bought daikon and spinach at the greengrocery, Sensei replied.

  I laughed, and Sensei laughed too on the other end of the line.

  “Tsukiko, come quickly,” Sensei said suddenly.

  “To your house?”

  “Yes.”

  I grabbed a toothbrush and pajamas and face lotion, throwing them into a bag and scurrying over to Sensei’s house. Sensei stood at the gate to meet me. He took my hand as we went inside to the tatami room where Sensei laid out the futon. I put sheets on the futon. It was like an assembly line as we made the bed.

  Without saying a word, Sensei and I collapsed on top of the futon. It was the first time Sensei had embraced me passionately and deeply.

  I spent that night at Sensei’s house, sleeping beside him. In the morning when he opened the rain shutters, the berries on the laurel trees gleamed lustrously in the morning sun. Bulbuls came to peck at the berries. Their warbling song echoed throughout Sensei’s garden. Shoulder to shoulder, Sensei and I gazed out at them.

  Tsukiko, you’re such a lovely girl, Sensei said.

  Sensei, I love you, I replied. The bulbuls warbled their song.

  It all seems like so long ago. The time that I spent with Sensei—at first faint, then deepening in intensity—passed me by. Two years from when we encountered each other for the second time. Three years once we began what Sensei referred to as our “official relationship.” That was all the time we shared together.

  And it hasn’t even been very long since that time.

  I have Sensei’s briefcase. Sensei left it to me.

  His son didn’t much resemble Sensei. He had stood silently before me, bowing, and at that moment something about his stance reminded me vaguely of Sensei.

  “You were very kind to my dad, Harutsuna, before he died,” his son said, bowing deeply.

  When I heard him speak Sensei’s name, Harutsuna, my tears welled up. And I had hardly cried up until that point. I was able to cry when I thought about him as Harutsuna Matsumoto, like a stranger. I was able to cry when I realized that Sensei had already gone away somewhere, before I ever came to know him well.