by S. J. Parks
Chapter 81
She had heard enough. ‘You must leave now, Kazuko.’ And it was easier to get rid of her than she thought.
She rose without a word of objection. She must have said everything that she had come to say. They both knew of his past, though Kazuko obviously believed she was bringing her news. There was nothing she could tell her that she did not know already.
‘I must not forget.’ Kazuko lifted her heavy bag from the floor. ‘I have come to give you something. ‘
They faced one another.
‘I have a gift,’ the older woman said. She stretched across the slim pillow to retrieve the faded, red, bound book. ‘Here. This is for you. A gift.’
The Japanese always wrap gifts, Naomi thought.
The book was worn at the corners and a cascade of kanji fell across the top left cover. She did not know what it read.
‘Open the cover,’ Kazuko urged her, and it was as if she did not have the will to refuse.
‘On the frontispiece is a handwritten dedication in Japanese,’ she continued.
‘These are haiku poems,’ Kazuko told her. ‘It is a book of haiku poems.’
Both women knew his love of haiku. Naomi was thrown back to the very first summer lunch with Mochizuki at the viewing platform, to his talk of Bashō.
Kazuko indicated the frontispiece of dark-blue washi paper.
‘The inscription is from him. Shall I translate? Kite wheeling in the lifting sky—’
But Naomi shut the book quickly and flung it aside, stung that he had shared this very poem.
Kazuko retrieved and brandished the book.
‘Let’s open it. See the pages marked.’
She ran her hand along the head of the book and it fell open at the well-marked page.
‘Here are two poems: butterfly and moon viewing.’ Her voice was harsh; she intended to be cruel. ‘See the next page. He marked his favourite poems for me,’ Kazuko taunted.
Naomi lifted her hand in protest as if scorched. Kazuko let the haiku poetry book slip to the floor.
‘We are not so very different, you and I. This man, my husband; we both admire him, and perhaps we both love him. He gave this to me when we first decided to live together. He wooed me with his love of poetry. You too?’
And with that salvo she left Naomi to contemplate his sincerity, his poetry and the truths he told.
Chapter 82
Ed’s apartment, Tokyo, 2012
Drink had no part in her decision to stay and she was grateful for this. In his company Hana felt entirely relaxed now. She nursed a mug of coffee and she and Ed talked long into the night. They laughed about Peach Blossom Nikki. He was sympathetic to her Kafkaesque search for information on her father, buried somewhere deep in a bureaucratic language she didn’t speak. He promised her answers and guaranteed that with the help of the Japanese lawyers in his office they would find out.
It was late and as he gathered cushions they argued politely over who would take the sofa. He was sort of quaint and she liked it.
He touched the bedside light panel and showed her his room. There was an irresistibly huge soft bed. He had personalized the space with worn trainers, and in the corner was a pile of dirty sportswear. She paused on the threshold of this inner sanctum.
‘You might lose me in here,’ she said, beginning to walk around the spacious room but tripping over an open grip bag at the end of the bed. ‘Weekend case?’
He seemed keen to show what was inside as if she might mistake it as belonging to someone else.
He unpacked it. ‘Water. Couple of tins of tuna.’ She was amused to see him checking the sell-by date.
‘Planning a camping trip? Or is it nightly cravings for tinned food?’
He held back from an answer playfully.
Warming to the game he drew out a helmet and sitting beside her on the bed put it on her head for size.
‘Potholing passion?’ She gave him a cheeky grin. ‘A fetish?’ and then lay back laughing till the plastic helmet fell off and rolled on the floor.
He picked it up and moved over to her gently. ‘No regulation earthquake kit?
She shook her head.
‘I guess travellers don’t.’ He fumbled in the bag. ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘I have two.’ And he brandished another hat.
She took it from him and placed it on her head, laughing at her own reflection in the darkened window before throwing it aside and falling back on the bed.
It was an awkward moment, then he broke it
‘Bathroom.’
Pristine light across the marble floor revealed a navy towel, limp with overuse. It smelt of him and she wondered how this could already be familiar. It was the only towel. And then saw the lipstick on the marble sink top. Did a woman share his bathroom? It might have been left that night? She abandoned further thought.
The bedroom lights were low and he was dozing, fully clothed on top of the duvet. She flipped the light and stripped to her underwear, getting under the covers to lie beside him. Through his gentle breathing he stirred and his hand came to rest lightly on her arm.
‘Stay,’ he mumbled, barely awake. With a small thrill she realized she would like nothing better.
In the morning he was up first and ready for work. He kissed her goodbye.
‘I’ll see you tonight?’ He was quite confident about it. ‘Stay here today.’ And he left her in the expanse of his apartment to sleep.
She turned over. It was as if all the time she had been in Japan she had been waiting to reach this place of sanctuary. She drifted off – there could be no nicer place to be.
It was late morning; still no light penetrated the wall of the blackout curtains as she finally opened her eyes to the unfamiliar shapes across his room. Coming round hazily she identified the doorbell. She clung to the white duvet in modesty as if dragging an enormous kimono with her she shuffled sleepily to the door of the apartment and expected to see, perhaps, the daily cleaning lady? After a beat she recognized the piano teacher.
‘Hello.’
‘I let myself in. I have come to get my suit,’ she said, walking past Hana, as if quite at home,
Hana trailed after her, duvet in tow until they reached the bedroom cupboards.
Pointing to the large walk-in wardrobe behind the headboard, the arrival said, ‘Can I?’
‘Yes, sure.’
The girl picked up the curtain remote and dawn broke as they opened.
Officiously she tossed the remote on the bed and headed for the walk-in wardrobe. She obviously had a lot to do and time was short. She emerged regally from the walk-in, holding a suit and a pair of shoes.
‘I’m gonna get my lipstick.’
From the bathroom Hana heard the shriek of a woman possessed. Clearly all composure lost. A word emerged.
‘Paizuri!’ It was blood curdling.
This was the mild-mannered mouse she met last night? Hana had no idea what it meant. But it took her no time to calculate that she was very pissed off.
When the Japanese girl returned to the bedroom they stood at a face-off. Hana wanted no part in a confrontation she didn’t understand and over someone she barely knew. She sounded ready to tear her hair out. Nothing. The piano teacher said nothing. But her look said it all. Slowly smoothing the suit over her arm she turned on her heel and brushed passed. In a slow, dignified manner, she made for the lift. A large silence followed her out of the room. Thank God. Hana could breath again with the closure of the lift doors. She hung about but they didn’t reopen.
Alone on the king-sized bed she observed would easily have accommodated all three of them. Extremely dramatic though it was, it was nothing to snigger about and she must be in a mild state of shock. She rested her head against the headboard, as she would have done after a nasty fall.
Getting up she stumbled over the large bag at the end of the bed where the sunlight fell on the protective foil cape and the yellow helmet. She looked out the window at the refuse men down below, em
ptying the bins. Last night’s promise now left her exposed and it was as if she had woken from a dream.
Chapter 83
Nuclear meltdown, Level 7, release of radioactive material
1989
Josh had hosted a delegation from China and the contract was ground-breaking; the animosity between the two countries was such, they rarely sought one another out as business partners. The Japanese economy had so far outstripped that of China that it was a delicate source of discontent and a great incentive for change. He had thrown himself into work of late and picked up on any lead, no matter how slim.
Miho had agreed to meet him at five when he would take a break from hosting the clients he had been seeing that day, before collecting them from their hotel and taking them to dinner. He consoled himself; this group were no worse than the garlic kimchee-riddled visitors from Seoul the previous week. He was usually the first in the firm to offer his services to corporate visitors; since Naomi had left him, he volunteered whenever he could.
Miho didn’t often visit this plaza in the business district. Swept with huge tides of lunchtime traffic it was dead in the intervening hours between flashpoints. It was easy to find Josh in the atrium and she pretty quickly made out the crumpled man, chin in hands. He was sitting under a pot-bound tree, with his back to her when she approached. When he greeted her, his kiss was so light it was as if he had never left his chair. He looked exhausted. A bit of an apparition of his former self.
‘She has left,’ he told her redundantly.
‘I know.’
‘And is she happy?’
Miho was reluctant to admit to him she had not seen her for a while. She had nothing but old news.
He came quickly to the point. ‘What I want you to do—’ Miho tensed – it wasn’t going to be easy ‘—is to go and tell her I will have her back.’ He said it quickly as if it choked him to say so. His feelings embedded a long way inside him.
She found it valiant coming from Josh, whose brilliant mind left him a bit arrogant. It was unexpected. She had seen little advantage in trying to bring them back together but this gesture from him was large.
Finally she owned up, cutting clean. ‘I can’t do that, Josh, and in any case I haven’t seen her for a fortnight.’
The light music from the plaza atrium cushioned his silence. She could only imagine what was going on inside him. After an interlude during which a virtual destruction might have occurred as his defenses blew; but then again he might have been low enough not to expect a thing. He said, ‘Where is she?’
‘The temple at Shimo.’ Miho slid her arm round his shoulder. She registered his resistance. It might be that he was clinging on against an urge to get up and run, his deracination now complete. She held him until she felt him brace against the strength of his emotion. It took a while. Josh came back. He managed to wipe away his own concerns and he turned to her. It was less painful for him to debate her loss. Sam’s departure. He missed him too.
‘Sam’ll miss you,’ he said. ‘Can you get out to him soon?’
‘He’ll let me know when’s best. Maybe in the spring I’ll go join him.’
It would be no comfort to him if they survived, Miho thought without pleasure. This outcome had not been in his game plan.
‘We were all so …’ he said, searching for the just description but gave in, unable to come close. ‘So … together.’
‘We were, Josh,’ she said, stroking him on the back in consolation. An act of friendship without empty words that might revisit the scene of their mistakes. She couldn’t give him comfort or protect him from the fallout but she could give him Naomi’s address.
The temple where she was teaching was not far, but for days he could not bring himself to go. Josh neither knew what he would do when he got there nor what he would say. Finally this inconclusiveness held him to account and he needed confirmation. Bright snow and sharp air fought the rheumy sunlight, the temple grounds where she lived were vacant and chill. What was it now, about three or four months? She would show very pregnant and she would wear it like an insult. A yakuza child. He had prepared himself for that.
He came to the lodgings to find her in. She opened the door of the thatched outbuilding, lying somewhere way behind the twenty-first century towards the thirteenth, her heavy, wadded jacket was in keeping and beneath it her condition remained hidden so that when he first set eyes on her he couldn’t tell. She looked like a woman from the fields.
‘You look very tribal. Where’s the yak?’ he said in the most awkward moment of his life.
She didn’t get it for a moment and then, hanging on the doorframe, she laughed and in the light her breath filled the air.
She smiled without embarrassment, confident and self-justified in a way he hadn’t expected in front of him.
‘Are you coming back?’ he asked immediately. ‘You don’t belong here. You never will,’ he threw out.
She smiled a wan smile that was maybe close to exhaustion. Whether this was because of the life she had chosen or the very thought of explaining it to him was as closed as the affair had been to him.
Her response was immediate. ‘No, Josh, no, I’m not.’
‘What? You are crazy,’ he shouted. He’d lost it when he had promised himself he would not. And irritated by the situation as much as this outburst of his he turned and marched furiously down the hill. He had raised his voice – as people would not often do round here. He had displaced a monk from the teahouse who he saw running in her direction as he left. He hoped he might be going to comfort her.
Chapter 84
Kazuko was often drawn to visit the temple where she watched the girl unobserved. Today, with widening eyes, she saw Naomi hurry barefoot from the classroom across the open courtyard to her room. Midway across, ankle deep in snow, she kicked it playfully, into the air. It was taunting exuberance. Without shoes, months pregnant and running in the snow. How careless could she be? The door slammed hard against the frame in defiance of the muffled blanket of sound that had fallen over the whole temple. Kazuko considered the lunacy of the scene and was, moments later, rewarded by the sight of Naomi re-emerging in a large coat, a hat and short snow boots. The girl bent awkwardly to collect a handful of snow and compacted it between her hands before she lifted her head to contemplate the bright steel sky.
Kazuko shrank back from being seen. Naomi gently nudged the ball of snow across the ground, stooping to coax it ahead of her. Her belly must be cumbersome Kazuko thought. Round and round Naomi circled until the ball she rolled was the size of one the larger meditational stones in the gravel garden. She began the process again.
Kazuko turned up the collar of her coat and shoved her hands, frozen at the thought of handling all that snow, down into her pockets, searching for a warmth that was unlikely to emanate from anywhere inside her. The girl eventually made a small snowman and was clearly delighted as she clapped her hands and took congratulatory steps back to look at it. In thanks the snowflakes grew larger and began to fall thick over the whole compound.
The funematsu pine began to lose its shape, like an aging woman, beneath uninterrupted snow. Delineation between the pond ice and the path grew faint. At the heavier snowfall Naomi gave in graciously and turned to go back inside. Kazuko, her curiosity, sated for this visit, turned for her car. She passed the small field of votives to Jizo. Many, many times before, she had come to pray to the god of unborn children for a deliverance from her barren hopes. Many times, according to custom, she had stooped to tie a small red bib around the dead weight of the cold stones, as a gift to Jizo. The army of ranked stones were becoming buried under indiscriminate white drifts. Piteous immutable and as hopeless her prayers. In places small pieces of crisp red were still visible, and the carpet of snow was spotted with gashes of frozen fabric. Jizo, the patron of travellers too. An unwelcome thought. Impulsively she tugged and ripped a bib from one of the taller stone cairns. As she left she took the long route back towards her car.
The
following morning Naomi emerged to see that someone had tied a red bib around the small snowman she had made. They must have come before the last snowfall, because there were no tracks. The god of the underworld and guardian of small souls. Who had done this? If they had intended to unnerve her, they had succeeded.
Sunlight shot the frozen ground on Hakuin’s way to the large meeting room; he shivered in his thin robes but wore a woollen hat, covering the head he would shortly bare for the weekly razor. He passed the English girl’s rooms. He noted that the snowman he had seen her build now wore a garish red bib and he took sudden offence at the sight. Who had done this, he wondered, looking for tracks. He pulled at the sodden cloth, hoping he might remove it before it offended the girl. He stopped short of pushing over the amorphous mound but would return the bib to the Jizo stone piles and tie it to the largest sutra where he knew it belonged.
Chapter 85
At his home office, under the collected paper hauntings of invoices, half-approved plans and various scribbling’s of seminal ideas, Mochizuki found the matches on his desk. He spotted a new Dharuma doll had been added to the clutter. Another of her meddlings, he supposed. Kazuko had encircled one eye on the papier-mâché doll and the other remained blank in the tradition where a wish is made to the god Dharuma and once it is fulfilled the face is completed. He would challenge her about this. He called to her.
‘What are you doing here? You’re not superstitious? When did we ever bother with this mumbo jumbo?’
Kazuko, having waited upon him at supper, was just finishing the washing-up.
Seeing that he was nearing the end of his first cigarette and about to light a second from the first, she stopped him. Waving a tea towel at him, she signalled that he should join her in drying the crockery from supper.
They stood side by side facing the fading light in the garden.
‘So what are you doing with the doll?’