A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding

by Jackie Copleton

  ‘Was she real?’

  ‘Oh, I suspect she was only imagined, but she seemed so real at the time.’

  ‘She was a comfort.’

  ‘It’s silly, but I still think she’s going to come back one day. Like it was a game of hide-and-seek that just got out of hand.’ We looked at one another, his blasted flesh, my soured spirit, and I felt an impulse to hold his hand but I did not. ‘So how am I to convince you that I am your grandson, eh?’

  ‘It is true that I had a grandson and his name was Hideo Watanabe. He would be forty-six years old, but . . .’ How could I tell him that Sato appeared to have intertwined a missing boy and an injured one, melded them to ease his conscience, soothe his own loss. ‘Can I ask, when were you told that you might have a grandmother alive?’

  ‘In my teens. Father told me how he had been close with Grandfather when they were young, how he had worked with Yuko during the war. He learned you had moved abroad. In the chaos of the occupation, a search for you proved impossible.’

  ‘We moved a couple of times when we came here, yes, in 1947 and 1956, but wouldn’t there have been some trail to follow?’

  ‘Maybe my parents thought you would find us?’

  ‘And Sato gave Natsu the letters?’

  ‘She didn’t say.’

  ‘Has she read the letters?’

  ‘I don’t know. Mother gave me the package shortly before she died. She told me the letters were for you and, should I find you, to tell you they were sent in good faith.’

  Natsu had burdened me with this final duty: to seal her adopted son’s identity or destroy it. Everything he believed himself to be, everything he had imagined his life to be, rested with me and those letters. He was looking to me to join the pieces together and make him whole – the irony of the request. How could he expect me to fill in all those years? The Hideo I had known was not this man. He never would be.

  Suicide

  Shinju: The most usual case is that of a man and a woman committing suicide when they believe that their love for each other cannot be fulfilled in this world. Other cases may involve a family suicide as the result of the parents’ financial failure in business. Some people might also resort to a family suicide to protect their honour.

  Kenzo’s office was little more than a cupboard crammed with shelves of books and a writing desk, a chair and a chaise longue. One window looked out on to the trunk of a pine and bushes, black with lack of sunlight. Mrs Goto led Shige into the room. She asked if he would like tea or coffee. He shook his head and sat down on the chaise longue, then got up and walked to the window. Yuko stood hidden in the shadows upstairs. She watched her father come from the direction of the kitchen and close the door behind him. Yuko went to a dark recess beside the office and listened through the wall. The alcove had been a place where she liked to hide as a child.

  Shige said he had come that day to ask an important question. He spoke with humble intonation. He wondered if Kenzo would pay him the honour of listening to his request. There was a scrape and a cough, and a ‘certainly’. Next Yuko heard a squeak of leather, and she imagined Shige leaning forward. He said he had enjoyed the privilege of spending time with Yuko over the past few weeks. He said he realised Kenzo might have hoped for a suitor more equal in status to him, but he was ‘very fond of Yuko’. Kenzo’s voice grew bigger as he told Shige, welcoming to hear as this was, fondness got them nowhere. It was a start, but not an end. There was another squeak of leather. ‘Mr Takahashi, please do not think me presumptuous, but I come here today to ask whether you would have any objections if I asked Yuko to marry me?’

  Yuko knew this question had been coming, for weeks now, but still its arrival left her breathless. ‘I feel an actor in my own life story.’ There was a sound of a drawer opening and the thud of an object on the desk and then something lighter, followed by the glug of liquid. Yuko pictured her father passing a glass to Shige as he said such rites of passage must be marked with good malt. They toasted each other’s health. ‘So, let me understand. You want to marry my daughter?’ Silence followed, which perhaps was some gesture of agreement. ‘And how does she feel about you, I wonder?’

  Kenzo’s voice grew smaller as if he were looking away from Shige. ‘You seem a good man. You have a brain, I can see that. I will not embarrass you and ask about love. I was very much in love with Yuko’s mother. That young love, as if the world would end if we weren’t together, you know?’ Shige said nothing. ‘The question I must ask, as her father, is this: is there more to this declaration of yours than love? We are practical men, you and I. As employees of Mitsubishi we find ourselves at the forefront of our nation’s imperial and domestic ambitions. The years ahead will be busy ones with much opportunity for both of us.’

  ‘I do understand a union with Yuko offers more than just her beauty and kindness, but sir, I assure you, if you will forgive my frankness, it is her love not my own advancement that I seek.’

  ‘As I said, you are a practical man. I would only hope you had considered the other benefits of marriage to my daughter. But, of course, romantic fool that I fear I am, I’m glad it is not your priority. So, how should we advance this personal matter of yours? Should I ask her to join us here?’

  Shige said he’d like permission to take Yuko out, just the two of them. A clink of glasses and Kenzo told him to wait in the hall. She fell back into the darkness as the door opened. Kenzo wished Shige luck and told him he would bring his daughter to the front door.

  ‘I waited for Shige to leave the study. The grandfather clock ticked away the seconds as I walked from my hiding spot to the kitchen corridor, turned and then headed back toward the hall, pacing myself against those metronomic clicks. Shige looked around and I said hello. I sounded shy, an uncertain child’s voice in an adult’s body.’

  A noise of footfall came from upstairs and Kenzo came halfway down the stairs. ‘Ah, Yuko, Watanabe is here. I understand you have an excursion. Is that not right, Watanabe?’

  ‘Father retreated back upstairs and Shige managed to look at me. “I thought we might visit Inasa Cemetery.” He knew it was one of my favourite places to sketch. How could I say no?’

  They took a taxi, sitting in silence. Yuko watched Shige fidget. His expression hovered somewhere between unease and despair. She tried to smile to reassure him but her dry lips formed more of a grimace. ‘We must have looked unlikely lovers.’ They arrived at the entrance and Shige paid the driver. He walked in front of Yuko through the wet mud and grass toward the gravestones inscribed in Dutch. They stopped by a tomb cut into a slab of hillside with an iron railing across the entrance. He touched one of the metal posts and his fingers came away stained with rust. He apologised, called the place morbid, but Yuko told him she found it fascinating. Shige rubbed his forehead and said with a weak smile that they were walking in the oldest foreigner cemetery in Japan, but she probably knew this.

  ‘I’m not sure whether practicality or kindness made me ask if he had brought me here for a reason. We had been circling the only question that mattered between us since our first meeting on the Dutch Slope. Maybe when I heard the question, I would know the answer. He cleared his throat and moved toward me. We stood face-to-face. “I wanted to bring you here because I knew you liked it, but it seems wrong somehow. All these dead people.” I said it was a fine spot and he seemed to consider this for a while. When he spoke he addressed his feet. “We have spent these past weeks together. They have been most enjoyable. And you know, of course, how I feel about you.” I told him I did not. He seemed confused. “You must know that I admire you.” We were friends, yes, I assured him. He stared at me. “Well, yes, friends, but I see you as, well, more than a friend.”

  ‘“A sister?” I was not teasing him. I had to be sure. This time I needed a guarantee that I was more than a convenience. How could I know I had his heart as Jomei had captured mine? False words were no good to me.

&
nbsp; ‘He glanced away, appalled. “No, no. You need me to say it? That I love you? I’m no poet, Yuko. My words are clumsy.” He took hold of my hand. “I am happy when I see you, I miss you when you are gone. You make me see my own failings but also how I might better myself. Is that not love?”’

  Yuko could not say. Her understanding of love had been something different, more brutal and demanding and cruel in the way that one day it was there, the next gone. She thought of those doomed lovers who chose to leave this world rather than one another. Could she? No, she loved life too much to reject it. She had spent her young years capturing the beauty of living: the tensed muscle of a horse, a bird in flight, a mother and child walking hand in hand. Small moments of a glorious whole. She could not turn away from existence however much pain it caused her. And she told herself this: if Jomei was turmoil, Shige was calm. His presence soothed her as did his words. He spoke plainly and in good faith. ‘I trust him. I am lucky to have found Shige. He will give me freedom that I cannot imagine with my parents. I can see how life can be: a home, a job, a family. Could Jomei have given me any of these? Besides, if he had cared for me, he would have found me again. Shige is a precious gift when I thought my heart dead. Move forward, Mother says, and so I will. It is too painful to live in the past.

  ‘I looked into Shige’s eyes, still so physically shy with him. I pressed his fingers as encouragement and the world drew closer. Everything is in focus, even now, hours later. The shadow of a leaf falls across his face, a robin calls somewhere behind him, the damp fungus and soil scent the air. Shige lifts my hand up. He unfolds my fingers until my palm is open in his own. He lowers his mouth until his lips brush the surface of my life line and love line. He stands back up and I see the pulse of blood beat in a vein in his neck. So much life, just there. I raise my head and with one more beat of our hearts his mouth is upon mine. We stay that way until I am breathless and must pull away. His question talks around the proposal but I know what he is asking. “Do you want to live in the same grave as me?” I answer yes, and we smile and kiss again and I think, at that moment, in Inasa Cemetery, we are both happy with all that the future might bring. And the truth must be faced: Jomei is gone.’

  The Pearl Divers

  Ama: Japanese women working outside the home is not a new phenomenon, especially in farming and fishing villages. Among them the most conspicuous workers, far more famous than their male counterparts, are women divers known as ama. They dive into the sea to collect shellfish such as awabi (abalone) and sazae (turban shell) or edible seaweed. When they appear from the water, they let out a deep breath, making a whistle-like sound called isobue (beach whistle).

  Before we settled down to married life, Kenzo took me away for a vacation to a ryokan just outside Hirado, in the north-west tip of Kyushu. The city’s history reminded me of Nagasaki. Sakikata Park had once been the site of stone warehouses constructed by Dutch traders before they were forced to Dejima. A white castle, three tiers of grey roof, looked out to the steel waters of the Korea Strait. We took a sailboat with other tourists around the coastline and anchored in a bay that teemed with blue fire jellyfish drawn there to mate. On another day we hired a car and drove to a nearby fishing village. We walked down to the coarse sand littered with white cockle shells and empty horn snails. I took off my yukata and sat in a black bathing suit and wide-brimmed cream straw hat to shield my face from the sun. Kenzo wore black swimming trunks. We stared at the sea, too hot to bother with conversation. A group of pearl divers arrived, wrapped in short kimono jackets, carrying wooden buckets, black nets and masks. They busied themselves collecting driftwood and dry seaweed to build a fire. As the flames took hold, they stripped down to small white cotton briefs decorated with printed bluebells, daisies and pink moss, unembarrassed by their tanned breasts, whether young or old. They chatted and giggled as they spat onto the glass of their masks and tied knives around their waists with rope. We watched them run into the breakers with the buckets, which they used as buoys. They disappeared beneath the water, for minutes it seemed, then rose with a whistle of dead air and dragged their catch from the pull of the tide. Later they warmed themselves by the crackling fire. I envied their lack of self-consciousness, the freedom and strength of their bodies, their acceptance of this hard job in freezing seas.

  On the final night of our stay, Kenzo and I lay naked on the rumpled sheets of the futon, our bodies entwined and wet with sweat. An oil lamp by our side cast shadows over the tatami mat and sliding doors that led to a courtyard of walnut seedlings. Kenzo reached for something under the bedding. ‘This is for you.’ He placed a polished teak box in my palm and I prised its lid apart. Inside was a pendant shaped like an open oyster shell. A white pearl nestled near the hinge. I slipped the gold chain over my head and the oyster fell between my breasts. I thought of the diver who had found it, the fire in her aching lungs as she rose to the sea’s surface, the joy when she found that gleaming gem amid the oyster’s flesh. I thought of the girl I had been and the woman I might become. I felt I did not deserve Kenzo, his love, his faith, his loyalty. I worried that some terrible part of me would ruin or damage this pearl of happiness he offered. I made a silent promise to be a good wife, a good mother, freed by marriage if also contained by it. I was the grit in the oyster, growing layers of worth and value, if I tried hard enough.

  Seventeen years later, here we were, preparing to hold the betrothal ceremony for the child I had pledged myself to protect in that ryokan. Yuko was worried about the expense and the burden the ceremony would place on her future in-laws. She had tried to tell Shige the formality could be avoided but he had insisted. When she argued there was no need, he was Christian after all, he would not hear of it. Shige’s parents had taken the ferry over from Iōjima and they would be joined by Mrs Kogi and their son. We knelt on the floor of the living area and waited for Mrs Goto to let us know all four had arrived. I slid the screen back. They walked barefoot across the floor, careful not to step on the edges of the tatami mat, and we took our places in the alcove. Kenzo and Mr Watanabe sat at the head of our party, followed by me and Mrs Watanabe then Yuko and Shige and finally Mrs Kogi settled nearest the entrance.

  Shige, dressed in a suit, led the introductions, his face flushed with the effort. His father, Katsu, wore a dark blue yukata. His face was lined and brown from his life outdoors; his fingers were grazed with rope burns and old scars from fishing knives. He said little but his gruff voice had the quiet authority of a man who had fought raging seas and searing hot days and knew as a result of these encounters that nature was all that he had to fear. Shige’s mother, Sonoko, wore a pale blue kimono, which had once been beautiful but the silk had lost its lustre; the odour of dust and sea damp clung to the threads. They presented gifts wrapped in hexagonal envelopes, white on the outside, red underneath. The rice paper was knotted with gold threads and decorated with designs of the crane and turtle, signs of longevity. Inside the packages there was dried cuttlefish to symbolise pregnancy, seaweed to represent a child-bearing woman, a piece of hemp to wish for the couple’s hair turning grey together, a fan for prosperity, and money. The final gift was a tea plant, impossible to transplant and thus a wish that the marriage would last forever.

  The formalities dispensed with, we dined on trays of yellowtail and tuna sashimi and squid and shrimp sushi delivered from a nearby restaurant. Kenzo poured sake and plum wine and we began to relax. The men talked of Japan’s activities overseas, the increasing number of members of the armed forces appointed to positions usually held by civilians, such as ambassadors. They noted these developments without expressing an opinion that could be viewed as negative. We women spoke of the wedding, the minutiae of where to source the food, the most suitable restaurant to hold the reception, the best material for the dress, and the name of a good seamstress. I watched Yuko for signs of unease or doubt, but either she was indeed excited or, like me, she was learning to hide how she truly felt. The alcohol had made us all gid
dy and giggly, even Mrs Kogi. As the night drew to a close, Sonoko admired my necklace and I explained it had been a wedding gift from Kenzo. She smiled, her cheeks rosy with plum wine. ‘The pearl divers on our island have a song to celebrate a good catch.’ She looked coy. ‘Would you like to hear it?’ Kenzo clapped and said, ‘Sing, you must sing.’ She closed her eyes, a tremulous soprano filling the hot room.

  ‘Hear our song of the sea, Susano-o

  Quiet the angry storm, Susano-o

  Keep our fire warm, Susano-o

  Make the oyster grow, Susano-o

  The pearl is my child, the shell my heart, Susano-o.’

  She finished singing, touched her cheek and smiled at Yuko. We applauded and Kenzo cheered. I discreetly moved the sake away from his reach. Perhaps embarrassed by the silence that followed, Sonoko turned to my daughter.