Toddler Hunting

by Taeko Kono

  They all said good night, and that was that.

  Then, last week, they had visited the Saekis and the episode had come up in conversation. Each had teased the other three for being too cowardly to see it through to the end. But just as Fukuko and Murao were leaving, Saeki had remarked: “It’s only nine o’clock — are you running away?”

  “No, no,” Murao replied. “I have to leave early tomorrow. I’m seeing someone off at Haneda.” This was the truth.

  “Sounds suspiciously like an excuse,” Saeki teased.

  “I don’t need excuses,” Murao answered. “I’m not a coward like you.”

  “All right. Should we make a date?”

  “Yes,” Murao had replied. “You come to our house. You shouldn’t drink too much this time, and don’t come too early.”

  They had ­half jokingly agreed upon a date, which was supposed to have been tonight.

  The sound of running water met their ears, as the road started to slope down. The houses on the left petered out, giving way to a low railing that ran alongside a canal. They came to a bridge, and crossing it, they walked on, now following the course of a meandering stream.

  The water grew louder and they saw another bridge. Splashing underneath it, the level of the water dropped away sharply, falling in a rushing cascade. On the opposite bank a giant mercury lamp shone cool and white, lighting up some of the small shrubs and trees growing along the foot of the bridge and a large wooden gate.

  “That must be the back entrance of that restaurant,” Murao said, his face caught in the light falling over to their side of the stream. The restaurant was noted for its magnificent gardens.

  The realization dawned on Fukuko: “Oh, so the fireflies came from here.” They walked on, catching glimpses on the other side of traditional buildings through the trees.

  They came to another bridge.

  “What’s that?” Fukuko pointed beyond the stream, looking up at a steep bluff with a single large building like a hotel on top.

  “I wonder,” Murao said.

  At the foot of the bluff were dim yellow lights, like those on a playground, and crossing the stream, they discovered exactly that. Trees and bushes covered the stream bank and the sides of the cliff, but in between them was a long stretch of ground with two slides and a double swing. Fukuko had an urge to try them just when Murao called her over.

  “Looks like we can get up this way!” He went to the foot of the cliff where some round stones marked a path leading up through the trees.

  But when the two of them started up the path, they found the stones, zigzagging around thickets and bushes, were arranged as a maze. Every time they came to a bend they faced a choice of two or three paths forking off in different directions. Though they’d choose the one that most looked as though it would go up the bluff, before long they would find the path winding down, then up for a while, then down all the way, so they had to retrace their steps and start again.

  Finally, the tall building was directly above them. They couldn’t be too far from the top, but then they had to double back several times.

  “I need to rest,” Fukuko said, out of breath, as they went around a bend.

  “We’re almost there!” Murao called. He went right, left, then straight ahead, and reached the top. Then he turned around and stood with both hands tucked in his sash, gazing out. “Come and take a look!” he called, and making one last effort, Fukuko scrambled up and joined him.

  “Oh, this was worth the climb!” she cried, when she turned around.

  Directly below lay the dark playground and the stream, and beyond these, stretching out to the hills on the other side of the plain, were lines of countless twinkling street lights. There wasn’t a single neon sign, but they could see a few yellow lights, the same size as the white ones, scattered in, each and every one shining stunningly: it was a beautiful night scene.

  Over to their right an illuminated clock showed 11:20, and they heard the ­far-off sound of a tram, probably the last one for the night.

  “It’s too late to catch that home,” Fukuko remarked.

  Murao grunted.

  “If we don’t hurry,” she added, “the trains won’t be running.”

  “Who cares,” Murao said. “We can always take a cab.” He looked behind him at the building. “Or stay the night here. Or sleep outside — it’ll be nice and cool.”

  Silent now, Fukuko leaned up against the railing, gazing out at the lights.

  Next they found themselves on a narrow dirt path behind the tall building, which was encircled by a fence. At the end of the track stood two neat little houses, beyond which they could see a wider road.

  They headed that way, and turning right on the paved road, they found themselves facing the front of the building they’d just been standing behind.

  “Well, it’s only an apartment block!” said Murao.

  They turned left — home lay in that direction, whether or not they caught a cab. After a few minutes, houses came into view which were even more stately than the ones they had glimpsed by the stream. The sound of their geta rang out clearly on the pavement, but everything else was absolutely hushed and still.

  As they crossed the next intersection, they saw that the opposite ­left-hand corner was illuminated as brightly as a stage set. They stopped in their tracks to gaze at what stood there: a modern ­two-story house, still under construction. A powerful light was fixed to one of the lower eaves to prevent the theft of the various ­stacked-up building supplies.

  “What a nice house!” Murao said and crossed the road.

  The roof sloped up and down over various wings of the house. The ­second-floor windows were gaping holes, but the doors on the ­first-floor balcony were fitted with sheer panes, each with “­g-­l-­a-­s-s” scrawled a little too energetically in white paint across it.

  Murao leaned forward to peer inside, then beckoned to her.

  “Come on,” he said, “it’ll be useful, for future reference. One day, I’ll build us a house like this.”

  Fukuko crossed the road, stepped up onto the balcony, and picked her way to him through the building materials. She put her face against a section of the window free of white paint and looked inside. With the balcony lit, she had no difficulty seeing into the room, even with the reflections. The size of the room was perhaps twelve tatami mats.

  “The stairs look like imitation stone,” said Murao.

  She could see them, narrow, with banisters, going up toward the left along the opposite wall. There were two doors, ­half-open: one below the staircase, and one in the ­right-hand wall, but it was too dark to tell what lay beyond them. To the left was a fireplace made of the same stone as the stairs, a gas point sticking out at one corner. The lamp hanging from the ceiling was still wrapped in paper, and the floor, perhaps yet to be laid with finished planks of wood or varnished, was covered with muddy shoe prints.

  Nobody had ever lived in this ­half-finished house, Fukuko realized: such places have their own peculiar atmosphere, different from that of an old abandoned house. An abandoned house would be creepy and cold, too frightening to enter. But this one almost seemed to taunt her with its own strange vitality. There was nothing hateful about it, but she felt an urge to scrawl graffiti on the broad doorframe of bare wood, or throw a wooden clog through an empty ­second-floor window.

  “Let’s go,” Murao said.

  “All right.” Fukuko gazed at the dazzling balcony: “What a waste of electricity, but it’s probably worth it.”

  They returned to the road, which some railway tracks cut across just two blocks farther on.

  “Let’s catch a cab up there,” Murao said. He’d seen cars on the main road ahead, going along full speed now in the absence of trams. When they gained the road, however, hardly any taxis were to be seen in the heavy stream of traffic. The few that did come along were
occupied. One cab approached with a red vacant sign, and they stood on the edge of the pavement waving, but it went right by.

  “It’s because of our yukata,” Murao said, after more empty cabs had passed. “They must think we’re only going a short way.”

  “How far is the station?”

  “About a mile and a half.”

  “Well, we’ll get a cab there.”

  “Can you walk that far?”

  “I think so — we can still try to wave one down on the way.”

  Walking along the main road, here and there they saw red lanterns under the eaves of drinking establishments, and ­stand-up neon signs on the street, but all the stores were closed.

  “It’ll take a good thirty minutes.” Murao looked at his watch. “We’ll get there about half past.”

  “Half past one?”

  “Half past twelve. It isn’t even midnight yet.”

  “I bet those two haven’t even got home,” Fukuko mused.

  But what if the Saekis had come over to their place tonight? What, she wondered, would they all have been doing now? Calling each other “cowards” again? How shocked Utako would have been, holding out her arms to embrace Murao, only to have him grab them to pin her down. With that lithe, supple body, one yank and her wrists would be crossed at the base of her spine and bound firmly. And how would Saeki have reacted when she, Fukuko, asked him for the same? Would he refuse, embarrassed? What would he do when she begged him? The more details Fukuko put into her fantasy, the more desire she felt for the man walking like a shadow, almost invisible but ever present, at her side.

  “That’s the third bus stop we’ve passed,” she heard Murao remark.

  His words returned her to the streaming traffic, the honking cars, the rows of shuttered shops, and the sound of their own wooden geta on the road.

  Up ahead, suspended over the middle of the road, she saw a blinking orange traffic light. Behind it loomed a stately Buddhist temple gate. The temple was a famous one, though Fukuko had never visited it. Three tram routes intersected there.

  “Good timing!” she said. “Shall we rest at the temple? We’ll be able to get a drink of water.”

  “But the gate’ll be shut.”

  When they drew near, however, it was wide open and they headed up a long gravel path.

  “A splendid place,” Fukuko remarked, looking up as they passed under the wooden gate.

  They emerged in the spacious ­pitch-dark temple grounds. Only three or four wooden buildings had any lights on, apparently offices and storehouses. To their right lay an unlit massive concrete building like an assembly hall and directly in front of them rose the sweeping black roof of the main sanctuary.

  The stars had disappeared, but the cloud cover reflected the pink glow of the city, so in fact the night was brighter. Or perhaps their eyes had grown accustomed to the dark — they could discern vague outlines in the grounds.

  They advanced up a stone path around a corner of the main temple building.

  “There’s no water, is there,” Murao said. “Buddhist temples don’t have places to wash your mouth and hands before praying. Only Shinto shrines have the dragon waterspout and a row of metal ladles.”

  “Yes, but this is such a grand temple, there must be water somewhere.”

  They walked on for a while. From the corner of the main hall, the temple’s rear gate came into view, and a few yards away was a round wooden pavilion. Beside that stood a small post with a faucet.

  “Didn’t I tell you?” Fukuko hurried forward to have a drink. “There’s even a little place to sit,” she said, as he took his turn. Looking inside the pavilion, however, she saw the seat was covered with dust. Even after wiping her handkerchief over it, she couldn’t bring herself to sit down.

  They decided to try to exit on the opposite side of the temple. As they walked over, a light in the far corner appeared — it came from a small house.

  “That must be where the gravekeeper lives,” Murao said.

  He had seen the cemetery to the right beyond the hedge.

  “I’ve heard the graves here are really old,” she replied, “I think one belongs to a noble lady from Tokugawa times, or somebody.”

  When they got nearer, they found a gap in the hedge. Through it, they saw the dark rows of gravestones stretching away into the night.

  “I think the famous graves are deeper in,” Fukuko said. “If it’s not too far, let’s have a look at the noble woman’s.”

  “It’s so dark,” Murao grumbled, “we won’t be able to see a damn thing.”

  But they were already heading toward the entrance. As they went in, Fukuko felt her blood run cold — something white lay across the path. But it was only a notice board that had fallen over. Graveyards at Night are Dangerous, she read, by the faint light of the house. Do Not Enter.

  Fukuko realized that she’d been in a particular mood for some time now, a mood that would keep her walking beside Murao into the night, walking on and on until they became the perpetrators — or the victims — of some unpredictable crime.

  Full Tide

  ­Michi-shio, 1964

  The children had gotten their mother to help them change into travel outfits: their hats on, they were all ready to go. But their mother was now busy getting herself dressed, and told them as she tied on her sash: “Now, all of you go and say goodbye to Grandma Hotta.”

  A merchant family, they had always lived in the section of the city that was traditionally home to the wholesale trade. From now on, however, they were going to live in a new place in the suburbs, away from the family business. For a long time the girl had been hearing from her parents how nice it would be to live in their own house, on the city outskirts where the air was clean. And now, finally, it was happening: it was summer, and the girl was just ten years old.

  The house they were moving to had been built on a plot of land an hour away from their business — her father intended to commute every day. With her younger sister, she would switch schools, and her brother, who wasn’t in school yet, would start kindergarten in their new neighborhood in the spring.

  A few days before, after attending her primary school’s final assembly and closing ceremony before summer vacation, the girl had felt strange as she walked out the gate and realized that she wouldn’t be back next fall. But she didn’t feel too sad — the family shop would stay where it was. She was bound to come this way occasionally. Her friends seemed to take that for granted. “When will we see you again?” they asked when she said goodbye. “Can you come visit over the holidays?”

  She was, in fact, longing to start her new life in the suburbs. She’d already visited the area a few times with her family — it was right on the sea, with mountains close by, and in between the sea and the mountains was a river with sandbars and beautiful grassy banks lined with rows of pine trees. At the foot of the mountains was a park with a slide said to be the highest in Japan. “Just one more time,” the girl remembered begging her parents, as they tried to persuade her to leave. She had scampered back to the slide which rose steeply above her in the ­late-afternoon spring sunshine — and, thinking back on it, the girl felt a fresh stab of nostalgia. The strap of her rubber swimming cap smelled of the sea, and she recalled her mounting excitement as she walked along the grassy bank, smelled the salt air, and listened to the pounding of the surf get louder and louder.

  But the girl had not seen her new house yet.

  “What’s it like?” she couldn’t help asking her parents. Apparently, it wasn’t creaky and dark like their old house — and it was only a stone’s throw from the sea.

  “You’ll be able to go to the beach in your swimsuit and robe!” her father told her.

  The girl’s eyes opened wide: “Really?”

  It didn’t matter one bit that they would leave the streets where the girl had lived all her life. She fel
t a little anxious about going to a new school in the fall, but that was still more than a month away. Her whole heart had been longing for the day of their departure and the idea that they would have to go say goodbye to Grandma Hotta hadn’t even crossed her mind.

  But when her mother told them to go, the girl stood up immediately, took off the hat she had been trying on in front of the mirror to see if the elastic strap belonged in front of her ears or behind them, and flung it aside.

  “Remember to tell Grandma that you’ll write. And that you’ll come back and visit from time to time,” her mother added, glancing at her back in the mirror, her hands busy with the knot of her sash. “And don’t forget to say, ‘We hope that you stay well!’ ”

  The girl nodded obediently, and beckoned her brother and sister.

  “Go through the front today,” their mother called.

  Grandma Hotta was an old lady who lived all alone, just three doors down the street from them. She had suffered a series of terrible misfortunes, the girl had heard. She and her husband had once run a wholesale paper business, but had gone bankrupt, soon after which her husband and her only child, a daughter, had died. Now she lived at the end of a small alleyway, in a tiny place, consisting of the kitchen and one ­two-mat room of her former residence. The rest had been sold off and made into the accounting office of a ­copperware dealer. Despite her poverty, however, the neighbors still acknowledged the old lady’s previous status as the wife of a prosperous shopkeeper: they called her “O-ie,” “O-ie-san,” or, in the local dialect, “O-e-han.”* In the girl’s family, too, the ­grown-ups always referred to the old lady as “Hotta no O-e-han.”

  It was possible to enter the old lady’s house from the back of their own. At the end of the garden, by the little cottage where the children often played, was a wooden warehouse built up against the family storehouse: at its far end was a sliding door, and opening that, they would find themselves right inside Grandma Hotta’s house. The door was usually kept closed and locked, however, with a bolt on the old lady’s side.