When she arrived at the apartment, she was startled to find Seiji already there. He was at the table, poring over one of the papers. He jumped up when she entered. “You have come early,” he said.
“So have you.” She glanced at the paper on the table. “I've brought lunch.”
“Ah, very nice.” He made a little bow. “Thank you. I am reading to become a better translator. This is my surprise for you.”
“And here is a surprise for you.” Speaking in Japanese about the o-bento and the warm weather, she set the boxes of food on the table. He applauded, and she went into the kitchen to make tea. When she came back he had put away the paper and cleared the table of everything but their lunches.
She poured tea and raised her cup in a toast. “Here's to a happier day,” she said in Japanese.
“Kampai,” He took a sip of the tea. “You are very pretty,” he said, also in Japanese.
She said the words for new dress, then stood up and twirled around.
He laughed. “Kirei. Beautiful woman.”
She knelt beside him. He kissed her, running his hands down her sides, and said something she could not understand.
“You'll have to translate, I'm afraid.”
“Even more beautiful without dress,” he said.
“I think I'll keep it on for a while,” she said, laughing. “It's cooler today, isn't it?”
After they had eaten and cleared the table, Seiji took out the 1954 paper. “I have been too hasty,” he said. “There is something here which will interest you.”
“About Ko?”
“Indirectly,” he said. “More about Nakamoto. It is very heartfelt.”
He read through the part he'd already summarized, so she could write it down, then said, “Here is the part I mentioned. Nakamoto when still in California says ‘One day when I was in despair, Ume came into my lap. As I stroked her head, it struck me that when I became mother . . . I am . . . discovered . . . it is hard to say correctly . . . I find a mother in this way.’”
“When I am a mother, I find a mother in myself ?”
“Yes, exactly.”
She thought of the night she arrived at Sango-kan, Michi reaching out to take her hand, then running back and forth between apartments, bringing her everything she might possibly need.
“Yet Nakamoto scolds herself. She says she has been a selfish woman to put search for Ko ahead of her care for Ume. That is reason why when she first returns to Japan she goes immediately to Hiroshima, to take Ume to Red Cross Hospital. Here is what she writes: ‘Doctor explained to me that many babies in mother's stomach at stage of three months or so development when bomb dropped are born with this form of retardation called microcephaly. He says there is nothing to be done for her but patient caretaking. There is an organization of such parents in Hiroshima called Mushroom Club and he has introduced me to them. At their meeting I was greeted with much warm understanding. I think I should stay in Hiroshima but Ota sensei has kindly arranged for me to have position at Kodaira, in spite of incomplete degree. Incidentally I discovered that my friends from Fukuyama have moved to Tokyo. . . .’”
“Isn't that you?” Barbara interrupted.
“Yes, my mother, aunt, and myself. My mother has invited Nakamoto to stay for time being, as there is no room in Ota sensei's apartment. She says it is like colony of hibakusha in Tokyo, so this is making her more at home.” He looked at her. “And that is the end.”
They both laughed. He took her hand. “Now I think we should enjoy ourselves, not work so hard.”
“Kojima is still here.”
“We can be quiet.” When she began to laugh, he kissed her. “This way I can keep you silent,” he said.
They stayed in the apartment all afternoon, until after Kojima had gone, and took a bath together before going out to walk in the early evening. They had dinner at a nearby restaurant, then walked back to Kappabashi Street, unlocked the door of the florist's and went upstairs.
“Very pretty dress,” he said, reaching behind to unzip it. They took out the futon and lay down.
After they made love, they lay with their arms wrapped around each other.
“It feels so comfortable here now,” she said. “I feel at home with you.”
“I am the same,” he said. “But I hope you can understand me. I must make ceramic to support my family. I cannot desert my work entirely.”
“Yes,” she said, “I understand.”
Her time with Seiji fell into a rhythm; they met at the apartment a couple of times a week, did some translating, went for a walk, and after Kojima left for the day, took out the futon. They rarely spent the night, but he promised that they would spend a week together soon, on a travelling holiday, “anywhere that Kirēkitsu decides.”
When she returned to Sango-kan, Barbara lay in the slight indentation in the tatami where Michi's tansu had been, and read over the day's translations.
In 1955 Michi returned to Hiroshima with Ume to see the doctor at the Red Cross Hospital. “It is very strange to see modern buildings sprouted up out of ash, yet to know that bones continue to wash onto shores of the rivers.” Thinking about the trip at New Year's Michi wrote, “Tonight as every night I am thinking how I am responsible for having caused Ume harm. If I had not been so foolish as to keep up search for many days in poisoned city and gone instead to Kaidahara with Father, perhaps Ume would not be as she is, a child of four or five, though ten years in age. It seems that more than once I have made error of searching in futility, only at this time the consequences have been of very grave order.”
“But she had to search for her family in Hiroshima,” Barbara had said.
“Yes,” Seiji had said. “She must do this. But I think it is difficult for foreigner to understand guilt of hibakusha, especially hibakusha who has survived without any harm to her own body.”
Inside the next paper was the picture of him sitting at a table with Ume and Michi. Michi was watching Ume as she ate her noodles. “Was this at your house?” she had asked.
“At a restaurant, I believe.” He had glanced at the picture, then set it aside.
There was no mention of Seiji in that paper, nor in the next one. In both entries Michi wrote of her classes, and her efforts to write about Commodore Perry. Visits to Hiroshima with Ume were noted, more briefly than before.
The dignified picture of Seiji in front of his tea bowls was inside the next paper. Michi-san had written about the event, the fine day, the crowd come to see his work. “There were many who bought tea bowls, and he has also had essay published in two journals of craft and art. In both cases his fine technique and taste has been praised.”
“Michi-san must have been so proud,” Barbara had said. “Were the essays in Japanese?” He nodded. “Will you read them to me?”
“Perhaps so, someday.” He had put the picture inside the paper and began to roll it up.
“Is that all Michi wrote about the exhibit? I think you're too modest.”
He had shaken his head, smiling, and did not answer.
It was toward the end of July when Seiji and Barbara read the 1960 page, which Mr. Wada had already translated for her. She felt uncomfortable as Seiji unwound the paper from the bottle, composing her face to look surprised and touched, as though hearing the section about Ume and then the tanka poems for the first time.
As he translated, Barbara kept her head down, transcribing once again Michi's description of helping make the New Year mochi cakes. “‘I went to my room to rest on futon. Ume lay down beside me, her face against mine. At moments such as these I cannot think of her as retarded. Understanding crosses between us like electrical current.’”
“Very moving,” Barbara murmured.
“Yes,” he said with a sigh, and picking up the paper, began to slide it around the bottle.
“Did you read the whole page?” Barbara asked. She'd re-read Mr. Wada's translation of the haiku on the train that morning.
“Yes,” he said.
&nbs
p; “Are you sure?”
“Of course. Why do you question this?”
“I don't know—it just seemed so—brief.”
He shrugged, and turned to replace the bottle in the tansu.
Looking at his back, the muscles beneath his thin cotton shirt, she thought of the 1949 paper about Hiroshima: Michi pierced with joy when Ume was born and Seiji helping them. “In this moment he has become a man.” He might have been leaving out other parts all along.
“I'm really tired today,” she said. “I think I'd better go now.”
“Right away?” He looked startled.
“Yes, I forgot I have to stop by Shinjuku for an errand—another dress I'm having made.”
“I see,” he said, frowning.
“Maybe you won't mind,” she said. “You can get to your responsibilities sooner.”
He did not reply. They walked downstairs without speaking.
“Goodbye,” she said, after they went out the door. “I'll take the subway to Shinjuku—it will be easier.”
She could feel him watching her as she walked down the street, then she heard the sound of his truck starting, screeching off in the other direction.
She found a seat on the train to Shinjuku and opened her translation book. There was the poem:
White cloud of feathers
Captured by the trees. . .
Suddenly, two birds break free into the air.
She compared the two paragraphs of narrative. They were much the same, except that Mr. Wada's version contained two sentences that Seiji's did not: “I suggested to Kondo-san that we buy mochi from shop and she was very sharp to me in her reply,” and, after Michi went to rest in her room on the futon “I can not help but cry.” They were inconsequential sentences; he must have been translating carelessly. Or maybe there was some strong taboo about revealing any little thing about the family. But he'd left out the poem. It didn't make sense.
Barbara got off the train at Shinjuku and took the subway back to Asakusa. Kojima-san was still in the shop, squatting beside a tub of chrysanthemums. He looked up at her, open-mouthed. “I have forgotten something,” she said and ran upstairs.
In the room, she opened the middle drawer of the tansu and took out the 1960 page. It did look shorter than she remembered. Maybe he had erased part of it. She held the paper up to the light; there were no marks that she could see. Still, she'd have Mr. Wada have a look at it again, along with all the other pages Seiji might have censored.
There were voices downstairs. She held her breath. A man's voice, a woman's. Then Kojima-san, welcoming them. Customers. She took out the 1962 paper, then all of the other pages Michi had written— 1949, the 1950s, the 1960s—and rolled them into one sheath. She started toward the door, then looked back at the tansu. It was even possible he could have decided to edit some of Chie's writing. She sat down beside the chest. It was her tansu; these were her papers. She removed all the remaining papers, then, holding the thick roll on the left side of her body, so Kojima couldn't see it, she hurried down the stairs and back to the subway station, where she boarded the train for Higashi Koganei.
27
The Wadas were eating dinner when Barbara arrived. Mrs. Wada insisted that she join them, “just soba noodles, good for the health in our hot weather.”
“Thank you, but only a little—I'm not very hungry.” Mrs. Wada went to the kitchen and Barbara put the sheaf of Michi's papers on the tatami beside her. “Would you have time to look over some writing with me afterwards?” she asked Mr. Wada.
“I believe so,” he said, though he glanced at the large roll of papers with alarm.
“I'm sorry to come so suddenly—but it's an emergency.”
“Eeh?” he said, turning to look at the papers again. When his wife returned with soba noodles and sauce for Barbara he spoke to her in Japanese, gesturing several times toward the papers.
Barbara ate enough noodles to be polite, then laid down her chopsticks. Mrs. Wada tried to hurry her husband along, scolding him in Japanese, and making motions for him to eat more quickly, but he continued to consume his noodles at a slow, deliberate pace. Finally he rose, nodded at Barbara and headed toward the study. Barbara picked up the papers and followed. “Everything okay,” Mrs. Wada said, patting Barbara on the arm. “Okay, I hope.”
“Yes, okay,” Barbara said. “I'm sorry to be troubling you.”
Mr. Wada took his place at his low desk and folded his hands before him. Barbara sat across from him and looked through the roll of papers for the 1960 and 1962 pages.
“Could you please read this one for me?” she said, handing him the 1960 paper.
He put on his glasses, smoothed out the paper before him, then glanced up at her over his glasses. “This is urgent, you say.”
“Yes. It's hard to explain, but I would be very grateful if you could help me. Could you please tell me—is there a haiku on this page?”
“The haiku poem?”
“Yes, yes, the haiku poem.”
“An emergency involving haiku, very interesting.”
He went through the paper, following the calligraphy with one finger. She had never seen him read so slowly; it was maddening. Finally his fingertip reached the last character. He looked up at her. “No haiku,” he said.
“You translated this page for me before—do you remember?”
“I do, yes.”
“There was a haiku before.”
“Yes. Very strange.” He shook his head. “No haiku now,” he said.
“Could they have been erased?”
“This would not be possible.”
“Will you please read the paper?”
“I have just read. No haiku.”
“I mean, please read it aloud. I'd like to hear what is there.”
As he read aloud, Barbara followed along in her notebook with the version he had translated before. The two sentences about Mrs. Kondo's anger and Ume's crying were missing. “It's not possible,” she said aloud.
He leaned forward to peer at her notebook. “We have some mystery, I think.”
She gave him the 1962 page; the poem was also missing from that page, along with Michi's final comment, that she felt like a demon mother.
On the edge of tears, Barbara fumbled through the rice papers until she found the three sheets from 1949. “Please read me the last few lines,” she said, flipping through her translation book to Michi's story about Hiroshima.
“Let me see...‘I took my meals with the Okadas next door. Mrs. Okada has been unfortunately blinded in bombing and I was able to be of some assistance to her. Mr. Okada was missing, also young daughter Itsuko. Some days Okada's son Seiji and I went through the city together, in search of our lost relatives.’ These are final lines.”
“There's nothing about the birth of Ume?” she said, “or about Sei-san becoming a man?”
“No.” He looked up at her, his eyebrows raised. “There has been some mixup—or perhaps some mischief ? Maybe fox at work?”
“Fox—why did you say that?”
“It is our Japanese superstition. We have many sayings and ancient stories about fox, snake, badger, and other mischief animals. There are fox stories I have translated in Noh. Are you familiar with the ‘Little Swordsmith’ story?”
“No—please, Mr. Wada, this is important for me to figure out right away. Is it possible to tell the difference in Japanese handwriting? To tell if different people have written different pages?”
“Yes, particularly when the writing is made with brush as these are—grass writing, as we call it.”
“Then I have a big favor to ask you. Could you look at all the pages and compare the handwriting, and tell me how many writers there are?”
“Examine all these papers? This will take a great deal of time, I am afraid.”
“Wouldn't it be possible to just look at a little bit of writing on each page? It's not necessary to read it—just to compare the handwritings. Please—as I said, it's of great importance.”
He studied her closely. “You wish me to do this at the present moment?”
“Yes, if you can. Please.”
After a long exhalation, he said, “I will try my best.”
She slid the papers across the table. He unrolled them, holding down the edges as he stared at the top page. Then he stood, calling to his wife; the papers curled back up again. When Mrs. Wada appeared he asked her for “O-sake, kudasai,”—honorable sake please. He went to his bookcase and brought back a volume of his Noh plays which he set before Barbara. “Here you will find one of my translations of play about fox—‘Little Swordsmith.’ Perhaps it can amuse you while I am completing my task.” Shaking his head, he began to thumb through the pages.
Plum Wine: A Novel (Library of American Fiction) Page 25