Inside, the memorial service was different too, chiefly because half the guests appeared to be twenty and under. Young women clutched each other and cried, too young to hide their emotions behind handkerchiefs. It seemed like a group, and I imagined most of them had gone to Tokyo International Girls School with Emi. One girl caught my eye, because she wasn’t as painfully thin as the others; she was plump, in fact, and the loose black dress she wore, which reached to mid-calf, only made her look larger. She sat alone on a carved rosewood chair, her reddened eyes darting toward the living room door as each person entered—as if, I thought, Emi might suddenly show up and change everything.
The grown-ups in attendance were, of course, colleagues of Emi’s parents. I recognized the chairman of one of Japan’s automobile manufacturers, as well as various politicians. Mr. Harada was at the center of them all, grave-faced, wearing a black suit and his old-fashioned black-rimmed spectacles. He was a blur of motion, nodding and bowing to the callers. It hit me that the same kind of mob scene would have taken place a few months later, for the wedding. But then, everyone would have been smiling.
Feeling sick, I turned away and focused my attention on the Haradas’ house. Like many upper-class Japanese homes, it had a number of square rooms that could be transformed into larger spaces by opening sliding wood-and-paper screens. But in this house, unlike the other Japanese homes I’d visited, the tatami flooring was covered with Oriental rugs—antique rugs, I realized, as I stooped down to pick up a card that I’d dropped on purpose, in order to get a close look. I couldn’t tell a Tabriz from a Kerman, but I could guess that these rugs cost a lot.
The rugs also provided a buffer layer so that the Haradas could use non-Japanese furniture, like the great walnut dining table stacked with kouden envelopes and overseen by two unsmiling men in black suits, one of whom I instantly recognized as the chauffeur. I turned away quickly and studied the framed photos of the family with notables. I identified Japan’s last prime minister and the host of the most conservative television news program. I thought about what was missing—regular family pictures. But maybe the Haradas didn’t think it was right to place casual family snapshots on the same level as their most honored contacts.
I squeezed my way into the kitchen, where half a dozen women wearing aprons and head scarves were arranging trays of food. Everything was rose marble; the appliances were stainless steel, typical in the West but unusual in Japan. Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to affix photographs to the fridge, which I knew from experience was resistant to magnets. But here, in tiny frames, were the kind of family pictures I’d been looking for: a young father holding a chubby toddler girl on his shoulders. A round-faced schoolgirl in a black uniform standing by the Great Buddha of Kamakura. A plump teenager making rabbit ears over a friend’s head, as the two posed in front of the Sphinx.
I could see Emi’s big eyes and smile in each girl, but I was stunned by how chubby she’d once been. It was hard to believe, given the Pocky Stick frame she’d shrunk into. Had she developed an eating disorder—and if so, when? Surely it had happened before she’d met Takeo, I thought, remembering the recent school photograph of Emi that had appeared on the television news. She’d been thin then.
One of the caterers asked me what I needed, and I answered vaguely—too vaguely, because I was instructed in no uncertain terms that if I wanted something to eat, it was available in the dining room.
I went out, trying to steer clear of the chauffeur, yet somehow inspect the quality of the Haradas’ art and antiques. The problem was that there was almost too much to take note of: a ceramics collection that contained Korean celadon, Chinese blue-and-white and Japanese modern and antique pottery. I was drawn to a simple tea bowl made of a reddish clay that reminded me of the ibex vessel, and I gently lifted it to examine the bottom. Decoding pottery was, for me, much easier than decoding a newspaper; after about ten seconds’ study, I had figured out that the bowl had been shaped by Kazu Sakurai, a famous Kyushu artist whom the government had recently named a living national treasure. I put the bowl down carefully, and after I was sure it was settled back into its place, I turned to go into the next room.
Yasuko Harada—Emi’s mother—was regarding me with an uncertain expression. I hesitated, not knowing whether I should make some kind of explanation. But before I could do anything, two women descended on Mrs. Harada, bowing and murmuring. My opportunity was lost, but maybe that was a good thing. What could I possibly have said?
I walked purposefully into the next reception room, where a white brocade-covered coffin rested at the foot of a dais constructed in front of the tokonoma, the ceremonial alcove that was the focal point of the room. A type of altar had been made around a three-by three-foot framed photograph of Emi. Around it stood a sea of floral wreaths that all had identifying tags showing which company had given them.
I gazed at the portrait of Emi in a stiff brocade floral kimono, a kimono that I knew was typically given on a girl’s eighteenth birthday. This “coming-of-age day” kimono was expensive—usually costing between 5 and 15 million yen. In Emi’s case, I guessed it had been even more.
The young, sad girl I’d noticed when I’d entered the house was standing near me, looking at the picture of Emi. Then she knelt next to the coffin, folded her hands in prayer, and whispered something. In the end, she peered into the little window through which Emi’s face showed. She got up rapidly, and backed off.
I had been avoiding looking at the corpse, but I did look now. Emi’s eyes were closed, her long lashes lying neatly against her fair skin. She looked like a beautiful young girl asleep. I found myself having the same reaction as the other girl, leaving quickly. It was too sad to linger over this sleeping beauty who could never wake up.
“Did you know her from high school?” I asked the girl, when I caught up with her in the next room over the hors d’oeuvres table.
“Not really. I just started at Waseda, and she is—was not—in college.” The girl had been aiming her chopsticks toward a piece of deep-fried tofu, but suddenly changed direction to a piece of sashimi. Was it guilt, because I was standing near her?
“That tofu looks good,” I said mildly.
“Yes, but too oily.”
Just as I’d thought. “So, how did you know Emi-san?”
“My family lives nearby. We attended primary school and junior high together. Then she went away to Turkey, and came back last year. Her parents sent her to Tokyo International Girls School. That’s where those other girls are from.” She tilted her head toward the other room.
Often, when Japanese families took their children with them to live abroad for a while, they felt that they could never again enroll the children in a traditional Japanese school. At such a school, discrimination against a child who spoke English too well, and had gotten used to certain freedoms, was too likely. I imagined that the Haradas might have thought this way—but it didn’t quite jibe with what I’d expect from a family conservative enough to arrange a marriage for an eighteen-year-old daughter.
“How interesting,” I said. “Well, you must be a true friend to have stayed in touch. My name’s Rei Shimura. What’s yours?”
“Nagasa Fumiko.” She bobbed her head. “I would like to think she remained my friend, but I don’t know.”
“How so?” I asked gently.
“Well, Emi-san used to look more like I do. She became so—slim—in Turkey. And I think she was a little embarrassed to be seen with me.”
“Oh, no, you’re a lovely person—I envy your skin.” I’d had to think fast.
Fumiko shook her head. “Everything had to be perfect for her. Not just the face, but fashion, slimness, manners. Even before she became engaged to that ikebana headmaster.”
I noted the way she spoke about Takeo—rather flatly, with no special enthusiasm. Maybe she thought the arranged marriage was a bad idea. I wanted to ask her about it, but suddenly there was a swelling of noise in the next room, a raising of voices and th
e sound of someone male, shouting in poor Japanese. “Please. Just to see—”
The hubbub rose, and Fumiko and I exchanged glances. There was a sound of something breaking in the next room. I waved at her to follow me. If something was happening between people, maybe she could provide an explanation.
In one corner I saw a caterer bent over a smashed cocktail glass, and a huddle of women around her, trying to help. But all the action was heading out of the room toward the entryway. A beautiful foreign boy with dark curly hair, wearing a black shirt and black jeans, was being hustled out of the house by three smaller Japanese men, including the chauffeur. The boy’s full lips were twisted in a grimace and his eyes blazed with wetness—tears? I was stunned. The sight of such naked emotion made me want to draw back, as if I’d intruded.
“He’s here,” Fumiko murmured.
“Is that one of Emi’s old friends?”
She shook her head.
“Then who is he?” I persisted.
“I’m sorry.” She looked at me, and I saw a mixture of sorrow and panic on her face. “I have to leave.”
“I didn’t mean to—” I started to say, but Fumiko had pushed her way through the crowd as if she couldn’t get away quickly enough.
“Do you understand anything about what happened?” I asked Tom, when I’d squeezed my way through the throng to where he was standing.
“I don’t exactly know. I saw that foreigner talking to the other young people. Then those men asked him to leave, and he tried to resist.”
“Those were the men who guarded the kouden envelopes,” Norie interjected. “Maybe he was trying to take some money. Now, Rei-chan, tell me, are you enjoying yourself? The house is so beautiful!”
I looked at her. “It’s hard to have a nice time at a funeral.”
“True, true, it’s terribly sad, but the food is lovely. And I’ve gotten the chance to meet some nice young friends of Emi-san’s, a few of whom are thinking of enrolling to study ikebana in one of our holiday mini-courses.”
“Really.” My thoughts about the boy who’d been thrown out vanished.
I was making my way back to the mourning room when I spotted Takeo Kayama, looking right at me as he wove his way through the crowd.
I gave him a warning look and shook my head slightly, but he continued in my direction. I’d known he would be at the memorial, but I’d assumed he would use good sense and stay away from me. Well, I had some choices of my own, and my choice was not to talk to him.
I made it through the doorway before he did and, spying hall stairs carpeted with an Oriental runner, hurried up them. Nobody would think of going into private living quarters during a memorial. I crouched against the wall under a painting by the French artist Balthus of an Asian nude, despite the barking dog behind a nearby closed door.
A Balthus painting, come to think of it, was a very significant personal asset. I turned around in my crouch and tilted my head back so that I could study the oil painting of the Japanese-looking woman who was standing at a mirror, her robe open, with a malevolent-looking dwarf peeking through an opened door at her. It looked like the cousin to a very famous Balthus painting, which showed a half-dressed Japanese woman reclining in a bathroom with Turkish tiles, gazing at herself in a hand mirror.
How could a civil servant afford an original painting by Balthus? I tried to memorize the details of the painting to check against the Art Loss Register, a website devoted to tracing stolen art. It had to be a real Balthus, didn’t it, if there was a motion sensor above the frame?
My examination was suddenly interrupted by the soft waterfall sound of a flushing toilet. Before I could change my position, a door opened halfway down the hall from me. Mr. Harada came out. As he headed toward the stairs, he caught sight of me and stopped.
25
I bowed, but Mr. Harada was staring intensely. I wondered whether he remembered me from the auction house, and if he had even heard anything about me from Emi.
“There are dogs up here. You must not go inside,” he said firmly.
“I was actually looking for a bathroom—”
“There is a facility downstairs,” he said stiffly. “Any of the caterers can show you.”
I was lucky that he believed that I only wanted to go to the bathroom. Quickly, I bowed my head again and apologized. Then I went into a short recitation of the words people used, at funerals, to convey sympathy for a terrible loss. At the end, I said, “I’m so sorry about your daughter’s passing. She was much too young.”
“She was our greatest treasure,” he said, keeping a wary eye on me.
“Yes, there are many beautiful things in art and nature, but nothing as lovely as a child.” After I said it, I felt a rush of pain. My private pain, the one I tried not to think about.
He nodded. “That’s right. I’m sorry, I didn’t hear your name.”
He was trying to place me. I hesitated, remembering Tom’s worries about liability, but also his desire to apologize. “I’m Shimura Rei. I’m here with my family, who are connected to the ikebana school—”
I didn’t finish, because Mr. Harada had raised his hand to someone in the hall downstairs and moved on as if I didn’t exist.
I spent the next fifteen minutes glued to my aunt, ducking behind her every time Takeo entered the room. I noticed that Mr. Harada motioned to Takeo several times, bringing him into one circle of men after another. The two of them had a strong relationship, it was clear. I noticed the way Takeo held Mr. Harada’s arm, almost supporting him at times. Mr. Harada hadn’t been exactly warm to me, but why should he be, under the circumstances? I saw now how shaky he was, and I was glad Takeo had moved on from pursuit of me to concentrate instead on his intended father-in-law.
It turned out that I was wrong about Takeo. When it was time for my aunt, Tom, and me to locate our shoes among the dozens visitors had left stacked in the shoe cabinet, Takeo descended on me again.
“Help.” I heard his voice in my ear as I was bending to put on my shoes. As I turned to see him we bumped foreheads. It hurt, but that wasn’t half as bad as my realization that Aunt Norie was right behind us, witnessing the encounter.
“Help me, Rei,” Takeo repeated softly in English, as if to make his words less likely to be understood.
I could imagine the kind of help he wanted. Well, I wasn’t delivering it again. I jammed my feet into my shoes and launched myself out the front door. Our taxi was waiting. I planned to get into it, lock the doors, and wait for the rest of my party to assemble.
But Takeo ran out after me, not even bothering to find his own shoes. He closed the distance between us, and once we were outside the house’s gate, he grabbed my arms and faced me in the warm orange light of the funeral lanterns.
“Use some sense.” I shook off his hold. “Your fiancée is lying in a box inside the house and you’re trying to chase me down.”
“Because I need to talk to you about—what happened with Emi.”
The taxi driver had seen me, and had swung the black door open automatically for me; I bounded in, but unfortunately Takeo followed. I jumped out on the other side, so I was standing on the street, and he followed me out again.
“If you don’t want to talk here, give me your cell phone number. I’ll contact you later.”
“I don’t have one. My phone was stolen.”
“Stolen! So you’re having strange problems too.”
“I may have my own problems, Takeo, but let me tell you, they’re nothing compared with what could happen. We mustn’t attract attention.”
“Nobody can see with the taxi blocking us like this.” Takeo ran a hand through his hair. “It’s about Emi. I’m facing legal troubles because of the way she died, and I don’t know what to do.”
“You are?” I felt a twinge of worry mixed with guilt. I knew that the whole nightmarish scene inside had been caused by my own rash actions.
As if sensing he’d hit on something that affected me, Takeo spoke again. “We have to t
alk. You’re the only one who can help me, at this point.”
“All right, I’ll talk to you,” I said quickly. “But I don’t know where we could possibly meet. I can never go back to your house in Hayama, and please don’t suggest my aunt’s house, because she really wouldn’t approve—”
“If you are with your aunt in Yokohama, let’s meet at Sankei-en. Behind the big teahouse, there’s a forest trail. I will be waiting there tomorrow at eleven.”
“Good-bye for now,” I whispered and climbed back into the taxi just as its door swung open for my relatives.
Norie immediately wanted to know what Takeo had wanted. I told her that I was too upset to talk. The driver muttered as if to himself about the crazy younger generation.
We caught our train, and an hour later we were home. It was nine o’clock. Uncle Hiroshi had come in the door a few minutes earlier and was impatient for his supper. Norie started cooking, and I used the time to ask Tom about what had happened with Mr. Harada. We were downstairs in the corner of the dining room, where I had busied myself setting the table. Tom was leafing through a fax that had come in on the telephone-fax set up on a side table.
“So, how did the apology go?” I asked.
“It was fine,” he said shortly. “He seemed more jumpy and distracted than angry. I suppose that’s natural, given the situation.”
“Did you actually admit that you were the one who said St. Luke’s couldn’t take her?”
“I told him I was in charge of emergency services that day, and the rooms were full. I said that we organized the taxi that took her to Hiroo Hospital.” Tom picked up the second paper. “Looking at this medical note, it made sense that we sent her to Hiroo. It’s one of the few hospitals in Tokyo with a unit for treating drug overdoses.”
“A drug overdose?” I caught my breath.
“Technically, she died because her heart stopped. In fact, she lost consciousness before she crashed the car.”
The Typhoon Lover Page 18