“What's the matter?” she said.
“I cannot be with you,” he said. “My fate is sealed.” He looked so melodramatic she almost laughed.
“What do you mean, your fate is sealed?”
“I have behaved too badly in this life.”
“But everything that happened was understandable. Think about the circumstances—the war, your aunt. And you couldn't help it that you didn't feel more passionately about Michi-san. Feelings can't be forced.”
“I should have stood by her.”
“Maybe that day Ume spilled the wine—but you would have parted anyway, don't you think?”
He poured another cup of sake and drank it down. “In 1961 paper written after our parting there is a haiku. ‘Night after night / this solitary body digs a trench / in the futon.’ This is proof I caused her death.”
“It doesn't sound like proof to me. She was in a state of grief, but she lived on—four more years.”
“Only for Ume. Then she can no longer live.”
“You've got to get rid of your guilt.” She reached for his hand. “Please. Let me help you.”
He shook his head. “It is not possible. You can never understand.”
“I want to be with you.”
He said nothing, staring down at the table.
“You won't even look at me.”
She jumped up and hurried out of the restaurant. It was raining, a sudden downpour. The street looked desolate, grimy concrete buildings, trash washing by in the gutter. She ran toward the bus stop, the rain plastering her hair against her face, soaking her clothes. There was the light of a taxi in the distance; she stepped into the street and frantically waved her arms.
At Sango-kan, she changed clothes and went downstairs to knock on Mrs. Ueda's door. “May I please talk to you?” she said. “It's urgent.”
Mrs. Ueda led the way down the hall and they sat down at her table.
“I'd like to ask you a frank question,” Barbara said. “Do you think Nakamoto sensei took her own life? Sumi mentioned finding a pill bottle.”
Mrs. Ueda looked out the window, into the darkness. The rain had stopped, but Barbara could hear it dripping from the eaves. “I would call her death a hastening of the inevitable. She felt that she was ill with leukemia.”
“Did she have tests?”
“I believe so, yes. What I recall her saying is that she had exact symptoms of her daughter Ume, extreme fatigue, for instance. She spoke of the many hibakusha who have died of this disease. Therefore I was not surprised when she was found to be—no longer living.” She paused. “I think she feared to be a burden without family to take care of her. Though of course . . .” Mrs. Ueda turned away, coughed into her hand. “We women of Sango-kan would have cared for her.”
“So—again, please forgive my bluntness—do you think this had anything to do with Seiji Okada?”
“Maybe he would like to feel himself this important. But her death was in an ultimate sense the result of illness caused by radiation.”
The next weekend Barbara went to Seiji's house. In her furoshiki was a book on Chinese porcelain he'd lent her, the excuse for her visit.
It was a brisk day, with the first touch of real cold in the air. The sky was deep blue and the leaves in the woods were beginning to show color, tinges of scarlet and gold. She passed a mother holding onto her son's jacket as he threw sticks and handfuls of grass into the Tamagawa Canal. She lingered, watching the little boy's boats move along the sluggish current, then crossed the road that led to Kokubungi and walked quickly through the darker part of the woods.
At Takanodai, she walked slowly down the street and looked in the restaurant, which was open, but empty of customers.
When she walked into the studio, Seiji was working his pottery wheel with one foot and shaping a blur of clay between his hands. At first he did not see her. Then he looked up and abruptly took his foot off the wheel. There was the sound of the wheel going around and around until he put one hand out to stop it. The clay had slumped to one side.
“I'm sorry,” she said, “I've ruined your piece.”
“It is no matter.” He stood. “I am surprised to see you. But very glad,” he added.
“I've brought your book,” she said, holding it out to him.
“Thank you.” He looked down at it. “Shall we have tea?”
They walked to the teahouse by the back path, just as they used to do.
“I apologize the room is not fresh,” he said. He took the cushions outside to dust them off, then put them back in place. The table they'd used for translating was no longer there. The charcoal in the brazier was not lit, as he hadn't been expecting to make tea, he said. “I will prepare in kitchen instead.”
She sat on the cushion listening to him move about in the kitchen, the clink of utensils, the sound of running water. It was chilly without the warm brazier, and she had on only a light jacket. She thought of the jacket he'd given her to wear the first time she came, its warmth and the softness against her neck.
He brought out the tea already made, one bowl for her, another for himself, no shared bowl as in earlier days. “I am sorry not to have cakes or other refreshment,” he said.
He sat opposite her. She turned her tea bowl in her hands, admiring it in the way he'd taught her. They drank the tea silently. She noticed that although he'd washed his hands there was still clay caked beneath the fingernails.
“Seiji,” she said, putting down her bowl. “I've learned something important about Michi-san's death. She did have leukemia—Mrs. Ueda told me. Mrs. Ueda said she had only hastened her death— and only for that reason.”
He looked down at his tea bowl, running one finger around the rim. His mouth was twisted in a curious expression, something between a grimace and a smile.
“So what I'm saying is—she didn't die from some other grief.”
He said nothing.
“It wasn't your fault,” she added.
“Had I stood by her, she wouldn't hasten death.”
She looked around the room—the tokonoma with its scroll and arrangement of stones, the low door, the pine tree framed there— then back at him. He hadn't moved, still sitting with his head bowed, his jaw clenched. He wanted his version of the story; he'd never give it up.
She stood. “I guess I'd better go now.”
They went out the low door of the teahouse and stepped off the platform into their shoes.
“Goodbye, Seiji.” She took his hand. “This is—” she could hardly speak, “very sad.”
“May I see you, now and then?”
“I'd like to, but—I don't think so, this way.” She turned and walked quickly away before she could change her mind.
The next few days, she could hardly get through her lectures: Hawthorne again, and original sin. In conversation class, the students wanted to talk about Vietnam, now that the fighting had intensified. To keep up with them, Barbara forced herself to the library each day to read whatever she could find about the war. At night, she drank herself to sleep with plum wine.
Rie sent her a story she had published in a Japanese literary journal, along with a translation. It was based on her father's life, a fictionalized version of what she'd told Barbara last summer. Barbara called to congratulate her, and asked her to come visit.
“Is something the matter, Sensei? You do not sound well.”
“Seiji,” she said in a low voice, “it's over.”
Rie came the next day, and stayed for a week. She went to classes with her; in the afternoons, they rode bikes, read, and went grocery shopping. They went to Kamakura, walking the hilly streets, visiting temples Barbara hadn't seen before. They stood before the huge bronze Buddha, then Barbara showed her the view Michi had liked best, where they could see his shoulders “humbly bearing all our troubles.”
On the train going back to Tokyo, Rie said, “Maybe you and Okada-san will make it up as before?”
Barbara shook her head. “He's caught in the pas
t.”
“But this must not be the case for you, Sensei.”
After Rie left, Barbara returned to a Zen temple in Kamakura where Rie had introduced her to the priest; he invited her to join in zazen meditation. She began going there on weekends, spending two nights, getting up before dawn each morning for the meditation. Sitting in the dark silent hall with other people brought her some moments of peace.
In early November she went with Junko and Sumi to an antiwar demonstration at a temple in downtown Tokyo. There were speeches, singing, and at the end a long dance in a snake-like line. A Japanese man announced over a bullhorn that “there is an American GI here, showing his support of us.” Barbara spotted the American, a man about her age. After the ceremony she ran up to him and introduced herself. He wasn't a GI, he told her, but a conscientious objector, working with wounded and orphaned children in Vietnam.
She asked him what conditions were like there. At first he didn't answer.
“I understand if you don't want to talk about it, but I would sincerely like to know,” she said.
He looked at her, his eyes dark and intense. “Do you have any idea what napalm can do to human flesh? Right before I left there was a kid with his chin melted to his chest by napalm. He died in my arms.”
The encounter haunted her for days. One evening she sat at her desk in the Western-style room, trying to grade papers. As she looked out at the trees receding into the dusk, she imagined Seiji holding the child with melted flesh. She put her head down on her desk and sobbed.
At Thanksgiving, she went with Junko to stay with her family in Kyoto. Junko's large, old-fashioned house made her think of Miss Ota's, and how happy she'd been there. Her room opened onto a garden. In the mornings she sat on the tatami, looking out at the shimmering, wine-colored maples, and tried to meditate.
Barbara and Junko played with her young sister Chiyo, throwing a bright string ball with her in the garden. Chiyo sat in Barbara's lap and read to her from her first English book. It was a comfort to hold the little girl, the solid warmth of her, the hair and skin that held the fresh scent of outdoor air. Chiyo cried and clung to Barbara when Junko said they'd be leaving tomorrow. Barbara promised that she'd write to her; they could be pen pals, even after she went back to America.
“Dear Michi,” Barbara wrote in her journal the next day. “I dreamed we were in the ocean, lying on a raft I'd made of seaweed string. It was a deep mat like tatami but it was also edible. I'd used up all your recipes on it, but I could tell you didn't mind.”
When the holiday was over, time seemed to speed up. In December Barbara worked on the final exams, made travel arrangements and bought gifts. She spent days combing the department stores for presents to take home and to give here. In one store she saw an exhibit of contemporary tea bowls. Seiji's name was not on the list of exhibitors, but it should have been, she thought; his work was as fine as anything on display. She resisted the temptation to call him.
Mr. Doi had a farewell party for her three days before her departure. The whole faculty and many students were there. The surprise guests were Rie and Mr. Yokohagi. “We have come from Hiroshima to bid farewell,” Mr. Yokohagi said in his carefully rehearsed toast, “but we would have traveled even further miles than this.”
Miss Yamaguchi had made a card, which she read aloud. “At first we think you are a little kooky”—on the front of the card was a colored drawing of a small star-shaped cookie—“but now we think you are Far Out! ” On the inside of the card was a drawing of a star shining in the sky. Everyone laughed, though no one as much as Miss Yamaguchi.
Mr. Doi offered a rendition of the ending lines from A Midsummer Night's Dream, which had been cut off prematurely in their production last February: “If we these shadows have offended / Think but this, and all is mended / That you have but slumbered here / While these visions do appear. / Gentle Jefferson, please not reprehend / If you pardon, we will mend.” He bowed, red-faced, to the applause. Barbara looked around at the room full of people; it was going to be wrenching to leave them—Rie and Miss Ota, especially, and Mrs. Ueda, Junko and Sumi, but everyone, even Mr. Doi.
After they had returned from the party to Sango-kan, Junko followed Barbara up to her apartment. “I have something for you in private,” she said. “First, Sensei, I must tell you a sadness. My parents insist I must agree to arranged marriage after graduation. But last night I have spent together with my boyfriend. We have made our pledge to meet once a year, on July 7th, the Feast of Tanabata, like Weaving Maiden and Herd Boy.”
“It's like the story you wrote.”
“Yes—I am recalling what you said, that I must obey my heart. Now here is my gift, a calligraphy I made this morning. It is my interpretation of a haiku by Issa, which says, ‘What solace, the River of Heaven, seen through a tear in the paper door.’”
“There's no chance your parents will change their minds?”
“I've always known they would choose this for me. But one night a year, I can have joy. Remember me as happy, Sensei, for I have both loved and wept.”
The afternoon before Barbara was to leave, the workmen Sato and Murai were in her apartment, packing her things for shipment. Her trunk and the crated tansu would be sent to North Carolina, but she was going to stop in San Francisco to retrace Michi's steps. It was even possible that Michi had missed some lead in the phone directories, or in Little Osaka. In her carry-on suitcase were a few bottles of plum wine to take to Michi's relatives, wherever she should find them, and the roll of Chie's and Michi's papers, with her translations. Ko, or Ko's children, would want to hear it all.
Mrs. Ueda knocked on the door. “Okada is here,” she said.
Barbara hadn't bought him a gift. But there was a haiku she'd composed for him last summer and written in calligraphy on rice paper; she'd found it in her desk today, rolled up and tied with a ribbon. She picked it up and ran downstairs.
Seiji was waiting in the drive, a wooden box in each hand. He looked pale and did not meet her eyes. “Will you take a walk?” he said.
They went first to the plum orchard. The trees were in bud; she was going to miss the blooming. She looked at Seiji standing silently beside her. She would never see him again.
They walked to the athletic field and sat on a bench at the edge of the grass.
He handed her one of the boxes. She untied the ribbon and lifted the lid: inside was one of his tea bowls. She held it in her hands turning it side to side. It was black with splashes of brown and gold, shining in the winter light.
“It's gorgeous—I love it.”
“Will you break it?” he said with a smile.
“Never.”
She opened the other box: a tea bowl from Hāgi, the delicate pink of a shell. She looked at it silently.
“Please remember us in Hāgi,” he said.
“Oh Seiji, I wish I could stay.”
“In some other world.”
“Why can't it be that world?”
“It can't . . .”—he stopped himself, made a wry face—“be helped.”
She put the little scroll of paper in his hands. “For you,” she said.
He untied the ribbon, unrolled the paper and sat looking at it for several minutes.
“It's my attempt at haiku. Can you read it?”
“Not entirely,” he said with a little laugh.
“Let me translate.” She took it back and read aloud, “From your lips / I came to understand / The language of plum wine.”
She gave the paper back to him. His fingers trembled as he held it. “This will be my treasure,” he said. She watched as he rolled up the paper and carefully retied the ribbon.
They stood and walked along the edge of the field.
“I believe you will be happy,” he said. “I am hoping this for you.”
She touched his arm. “What about you?”
“I have my pottery. Always, there is ceramic.”
“I think you'll be successful. I envy you—I wish I had some a
rtistic gift.”
“You have a vigor for life,” he said. “A passion that is rare, I think.”
“But you also have passion.”
He looked away, into the distance.
“I wonder if some day, when your memories are further behind you, you might find someone. . . .”
“A woman?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe someone . . . now and then.”
“Ah.”
“But no one like you. Never.” He turned from her, then took off running, his head down, across the field.
Plum Wine: A Novel (Library of American Fiction) Page 31