Made in Japan

by S. J. Parks

  ‘The bath. We’ll collect the kindling and get it going for later.’ Miho had been to the isolated spot before. No lights. No stores for miles around. Her progress under the weight of the food bags was slow.

  He wrapped his knuckles on the empty drum. ‘No hot. No cold. No running. Unbelievable.’

  Miho chose not to tell him that all the water would come, bucket by bucket, from the hillside stream.

  He walked towards the house mumbling, ‘We could have saved the petrol.’

  They had accepted Mochizuki’s offer to stay at his country Minka before they had worked out how far it was from the city and Josh was already beating himself up for agreeing to it. Mochizuki had been so enthusiastic. He loved the place. It was his retreat, and Naomi, he had said, should make some sketches of the roof trusses. He seemed perfectly content she would be away for the weekend with Josh. It unnerved her that he wasn’t jealous. That he had been instrumental in arranging their weekend. She wondered what was he doing just then.

  Josh was quick to be riled; overtired and overworked. While it made him less loveable, it didn’t stop her from feeling guilty.

  He had made it quite clear that a trip to an isolated farmhouse was not his idea of fun, and had only been persuaded because Sam was keen to go, when Miho had sold him the idea. The isolated farmhouse was so tranquil that Mondays didn’t exist up there. There would be nothing to do but watch insects watching the bamboo grow. Josh had whimpered and complained it would be a hijacking, but Sam convinced him it was important to get out of the city sometimes. Besides there was a game this weekend they could watch on TV. It began to rain lightly. Nobody had told Sam that there was no furniture save the mattresses and a couple of cushions, and that there wasn’t a TV for miles.

  Naomi stepped up from the low entrance hall. The roofline was a steep pitch of about 60 degrees to cope with snow in the winter. Ash stood in the hearth of the square fire pit, bordered with zabuton cushions. She filled the kettle from a pipe over the stone sink and hung it on a hook in the mouth of a carved fish, suspended over the unlit fire. She lay winded on the cushions while the boys complained as they walked round the old beamed house; Josh was incensed when he found that the bamboo pipe fed straight from the hillside.

  Sam whooped to see a small fridge at the back of the kitchen connected to the only power supply in the house. Though they were without light, or a means to cook other than the empty hearth, the chiller was thoughtfully stocked with Asahi beers.

  Miho was at the stone sink unpacking food.

  ‘Josh?’ Sam threw a can towards him and he opened it immediately, as if in doing so it could change the whole course of the weekend. The effervescence ran over his hands, covered the tatami matting. He yowled.

  ‘Jerk.’ Sam laughed.

  ‘Can I have a hand setting up the fire?’ Naomi asked.

  ‘Or we could do without tea? Josh suggested.

  She watched Josh downing the cold beer, his head cocked back, and his eyes swung round to rest on her and in his silence she could hear blame. It had all been her idea. She was sure that this was all he knew. It was the wrong weekend with the wrong people and she still felt nauseous.

  Naomi and Miho prepared the food they had brought as the boys walked the bamboo woods around the house.

  Miho leant against a red pine pillar surveying the lack of furniture, then drew open the large, unpainted, room dividers.

  Naomi watched; no blossom and no dragons, as Miho dragged a couple of futons from the cupboard to make a low chair and backrest. She had a sudden urge to tell her – to tell Miho that she was having an affair with the architect. Miho had first introduced him. Instead she tore at a pack of unopened buckwheat noodles. She hesitated. Perhaps the time would never be right. Her instinct counselled silence.

  When the men returned from the woods all four of them lay back in a mess of arms and legs on the makeshift futon. She could tell them all and rely on the safety of numbers, but then Josh interrupted her thought.

  ‘Jesus Christ. What were we thinking? Miho, I thought you said it was owned by the one of the heads of a kabushiki kaisha?’

  ‘Yes, and Mochizuki has some share in it too.’

  They chased a large, black centipede from the thatch heading behind the divide and threatening the bedding, keeping score as they found more and shaking them into empty beer cans until they were convinced it amounted to an infestation.

  Despite the slow, light rain, Miho and Sam left to collect wood. Josh swung his arms round her as if turning to the consolations of sex and he drew her slowly over to the futon. They lay together for a heartbeat. The open pore on his cheekbone, a chicken pox scar, once so familiar, had become ugly to her.

  ‘They’ll be back in a minute,’ she objected.

  He let her go as if she were suddenly toxic and the tension strained to breaking point. When it broke it was as if she had been catapulted to the furthest margins of the room, physically thrown aside, though they hadn’t even exchanged words.

  He took up a newspaper and fell into an ominous silence. As she removed her sketchpad from the rucksack she offered to draw him but he groaned and turned away. So she turned to the beam formation over her head and thought of the other man.

  Sam’s laughter broke the still air as he and Miho came running back for shelter, stripping off their wet clothes at the threshold, at the onset of heavy rain. They were so happy. How could they be so happy?

  Miho stripped to her tiny bra and Sam used his shirt to rub her dark, wet, hair dry. She pulled him by the hand and led him to the back of the house where she could pull the room dividers and screen off and separate the only room in the house.

  Josh looked at Naomi accusatively.

  That evening, as they ate on the floor around an open fire of kindling, Josh announced that he couldn’t stand to spend another day at the farmhouse and was going back to Tokyo. Sam, he suggested, should come because the baseball game had to be a better option than this. The girls could get the train. Naomi’s protest was water thin. It would be easier without him. Josh was her familiar stranger now. Though by not telling any of them it rested on each one of them equally, it should be easier to be in Miho’s company and a relief from the troubled relationship.

  Miho tried but the boys would not change their minds and they left promptly the following morning, excited at returning to the comfort of Sam’s apartment. After dutiful goodbyes, Naomi wondered how many days she and Josh had left.

  Miho got her to collect bamboo from the slopes around the house. It was physical and Naomi cut her hands more than once on the sharp edges of the dry fallen leaves. The air was fresh and she loved being outside.

  ‘You like working for the architect?’ Miho lay a section of hollow trunks across Naomi’s arms, long and hollow like the first rolled plans Mochizuki had handed her at first visit to the temple.

  ‘I love the teahouse project.’

  ‘He’s so much in demand it’s amazing he can find the time to work on that little building.’

  When he spent long afternoons with her at the teahouse, Naomi thought, he didn’t count time.

  Miho looked at her searchingly. ‘You find him attractive?’

  A confession right now would leave her vulnerable. ‘I don’t really get past the grey temples.’ She hid behind his age. It was a pleasure to recall the image of his silver temples and she smiled. ‘I am so grateful you found me the job. He’s a great guy, Miho.’ Naomi squeezed her arm appreciatively.

  ‘This Friday,’ Miho told her, ‘when I picked up the key at nursery school where Kazuko and I work. She asked about you …’

  ‘Kazuko gave you the key?’ Naomi asked. So Kazuko had arranged it all? Miho’s friendship with her was probably stronger than she realized. So this idea was not his. Did Kazuko suspect their closeness, she wondered, and hope to send her back towards Josh? This was a contrivance of his wife’s. He might be jealous.

  Naomi found the wood lay heavy in her arms.

  ‘Where
do we drop these?’ she asked, cutting short talk of the Mochizukis. She was now wedded to this woman’s husband as physically as his wife. There was no telling when the tipping point had been, when the balance had shifted from admiring him and sharing his values. He had been as a sensei to her and taught her a great deal. She was now at the point where she felt attached as if part of him, and she could not live without him.

  Back through the thin leaved forest, they returned to their large metal bath.

  Through the smoke of the bonfire they filled the tub from coopered bamboo buckets, working hard as they fed the fire below, and in between they sketched and dozed, waiting for it to heat. By late that afternoon it was warm and inviting.

  ‘Genuine Japanese bath,’ Miho said, gesturing to invite her into the steaming waters.

  Miho first washed in the cold stream before taking the wooden steps.

  Naomi hid her nakedness behind a small towel as they sat under the open sky.

  ‘You and Josh?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Naomi let her words trail away on the steam.

  Miho understood. Any one could see she and Josh were in trouble.

  ‘I was in Gifu on business. Saw the cormorant fishermen,’ Naomi began.

  ‘Gifu? On business? That dodgy tourist “Soapland”?’ Then as if regretting the criticism she continued.

  ‘The fishing is real clever. Many times the fishermen steal the catch and the birds never learn that they are being used. They never learn.’ Naomi met her insistence with silence.

  ‘You ate the river fish?’ Miho asked.

  The thought of Gifu dinner was too strong for Naomi’s stomach just now and she started to get out.

  ‘And when does the teahouse complete?’

  ‘Rains have delayed the programme.’

  ‘We have many different words for rain here.’ Miho gazed up at the blue, evening sky. ‘We have words for driving rain, chilly rain, autumn rain, night rain and many more.’

  ‘We have just one word for rain.’

  ‘No, this can’t be the case. There is more than one type of rain. There is more than one type of trouble.’

  Naomi was not to be drawn.

  ‘Tenkyu,’ Miho said after a little while. ‘That is rain from a clear sky.’

  ‘Doesn’t look likely.’

  ‘You never know.’ Miho scanned the sky. ‘And you never have monsoons?’

  ‘No.’

  Naomi’s replies had become too short and she would not be drawn out. ‘You and Josh will come good,’ she told her.

  As Miho got out in search of tea, Naomi very much doubted it.

  Chapter 67

  Spiral had been completed a few years earlier by Fumihiko Maki and the focal point was the wide cantilevered spiral ramp, rising from the restaurant and suspended in air like the rising fortunes in a game of snakes and ladders. The mid-morning brunch had been put in the diary at Josh’s insistence. Eventually the waiter could be spotted descending from the upper floor.

  ‘Chawanmushi,’ Kazuko said decisively.

  The listed options were difficult for Naomi: fried egg, eel, fried rice. Full English. She felt nauseous just running down the list and couldn’t bring herself to eat a thing. She was pregnant, she knew now for certain, and from the dates it was most likely to be the architect’s. ‘You go ahead.’ Naomi bought time to pour over the menu.

  Josh, in deference, signalled that Mochizuki should order before him.

  He rubbed his hands together in anticipation of a feast. ‘Option American,’ Mochizuki concluded swiftly.

  Kazuko reopened her menu to review his choice.

  ‘No, Kun. You don’t want the maple pancakes. It comes with that aerosol cream we just don’t like.’

  Mochizuki looked at Naomi. Another woman was telling him how to live and had influence over him.

  ‘No. I’ll take it.’

  ‘Waa,’ Kazuko complained and, turning to the waiter, told him to bring the pancakes without the cream. ‘Come on,’ she told Mochizuki point-blank, ‘you don’t need the cream.’

  ‘Just a second.’ He took out a cigarette from the soft camel packet and hung it on his lip in an effort to remain silent. He flicked at his lighter several times as the waiter progressed to Josh who said, ‘Full English for me.’

  Naomi’s biliousness would not pass. It was all an agony.

  Mochizuki took the cigarette from his lips and countered his wife with renewed enthusiasm. ‘Yes. I’ll change. English Breakfast for me also.’

  The Mochizukis sat stiffly before her like two chess pieces. She and Josh sat on the other side of the board but only she and Mochizuki knew they were playing.

  ‘Well,’ she demurred, ‘I really don’t think I want anything.’

  It was Josh’s turn to rile a partner.

  ‘Come on, you have to have something.’ He had accused her of being reluctant to arrange the meal with the Mochizuki’s and now he would think she was sulking.

  ‘Did you eat already?’ Mochizuki asked, attempting to smooth the waters. If she had had breakfast, brunch appeared all too soon. He was kind.

  ‘No. No,’ she protested – Josh knew it to be the case.

  Keen to step out of the limelight she elected to go for the buffet.

  Josh was appeased and ordered a Bloody Mary, and then, in an attempt to lighten the mood, he insisted everyone join him and ordered three more of the same.

  The buffet provided a cornucopia of nauseous options. Naomi was overheating but managed to circle the table once before coming away with a small bowl of plain white rice.

  Josh clearly disproved of her choice as she rejoined the table. The buffet was a flat fee. Mochizuki again led the diversion with a ranging survey from his seat, taking in the roof of the building, offering a critique on the architect Fumihiko Maki.

  ‘Maki is managing the space pretty good,’ he concluded.

  ‘It’s new,’ Josh offered

  ‘It’s been around four years,’ Mochizuki corrected.

  If he knew, she thought. If only Josh and Mrs Mochizuki would leave the table and take a stroll up to the gallery and leave them alone, she could ask him how it would end. She could ask him what the game plan would be; where the affair would take them. What should she do? For now, while the secret remained hers alone, the less he knew the smaller the size of the issue. But she wanted to share it with him.

  He assessed the structure with an educated eye.

  ‘Maki is professor at Washington right now. He brings eastern and western elements together.’

  Me too, she thought grimly, conscious now she could bring only limited energy to the conversation.

  ‘The Metabolism group,’ she offered from her college books without further elaboration, raising the free-thinking group Maki had once belonged to.

  ‘Yes, just so,’ he said. He understood; the situation was difficult for her, just not how difficult.

  Josh looked at her untouched vodka.

  ‘You’re not drinking?’ He was willful.

  ‘I just don’t fancy it.’ He looked at her as if she were deliberately contrary.

  He signalled to the waiter as she opened a line of conversation, in the hope he would run with it.

  ‘Josh is working on wind-farm investments just now,’ she told Kazuko.

  ‘It is good to hear about increased investment in alternative energy. Way back in seventy-nine, the US advised that CO2 would alter the climate and changes could be substantial.’

  ‘Well, the banks are listening,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ Kazuko enthused. ‘I’m going to the Netherlands in November; they’ll discuss stabilizing greenhouse gases.’

  Mochizuki hid behind an adopted form and joked, ‘Yes, and as my wife is saving the planet, I have to make my own dinner.’

  Kazuko glanced swiftly at Naomi without meeting her eye but with sufficient time to gauge how she had received this hollow lament.

  The chawamushi appeared and was placed in front of Kazuko.
It remained untouched while she waited politely for the arrival of the other meals.

  Naomi overcame her revulsion to reach for the Bloody Mary and took the smallest sip. Why was Mochizuki playing up to his wife, she wondered, making it so difficult for her? Did he hope to throw Josh off the scent? He must already know that Josh didn’t suspect them. Naomi thought this was not the moment to excuse herself and willed herself to sit for a moment longer. It was intolerable that Josh had insisted upon them all meeting.

  ‘Next year in Bergen,’ Kazuko continued blandly, ‘they will talk targets and timetables but we need intergovernmental action.’

  Naomi could give little consideration to the slow inexorable degeneration of the planet when her immediate world threatened to implode. The tomato hit her stomach like acid rain.

  Kazuko took her slight grimace to be an insufficient interest in a subject close to her heart and concluded she was wasn’t polite; the girl owed Kazuko more than she knew. Did she know how much she had control over her husband? The girl might think the whole affair was clandestine. It looked very much as though the boy did not suspect he was kakkorudo. A cuckold. Of course not. And the little English girlfriend would return to him and after a while they would return home to London and the kakkouddo would be her ticket back. Soon it would be time; she had planned it this way.

  The smell of hot savoury meat signalled the arrival of the English breakfasts.

  Kazuko was immediately irritated by Mochizuki’s choice of the greasy Western cuisine. She picked up her teaspoon and, turning, offered him the small, soft gingko nut that she had found hidden in her egg dish. To her great satisfaction he ate the trophy obediently from her spoon like a child. ‘The gingko for longevity,’ she pronounced, with a delighted little laugh.

  ‘The Ginko tree,’ Mochizuki threw back, ‘is very old species. Just like me.’

  Kazuko smiled at him indulgently and then observed Naomi, looking at her untouched bowl.

  ‘Every grain of rice you leave will give you a freckle, Naomi-san. You should eat more.’

  ‘Nice people,’ Josh said as they walked back to the metro station on Omotesandō. And she struggled to answer.