Inheritance from Mother

by Minae Mizumura

  Mitsuki spent the day reading Madame Bovary and dozed in the afternoon. After she woke up, it occurred to her that she had gone an entire year without napping. She hadn’t had the time, for one thing, but her nerves would never have allowed it either. Her nap that day was sheer nectar.

  That evening, the hotel furnished them with a semiprivate room in the French restaurant. In gratitude for Takeru’s heroism, the hotel was picking up the tab. Kaoru and Takeru were already seated when Mr. Matsubara and Mitsuki arrived.

  Seeing them, Kaoru said with unconcealed merriment, “So again today Takeru has shown he has his uses after all!” The girl’s mother, she went on more seriously, had apparently been deeply touched by Takeru’s kindness and overcome with relief. “This morning a nurse telephoned the hotel asking to have him come pick them up if he could, and of course he did.” The mother then begged him to wait in their room until her brother and his wife came for them in the late afternoon.

  Takeru, looking slightly embarrassed, took over. “She and her daughter are a pitiful pair.”

  While they waited, the daughter had slept, and the mother had talked ceaselessly in a low voice. She said that years ago her husband had died in a car crash, ramming his car into a guardrail. Her daughter, their only child, was in junior high school at the time. Her parents took them in. They weren’t rich by any means, but her father’s pension stretched far enough. In a few years the daughter started college. Then just after her twentieth birthday, she began behaving strangely. She was diagnosed with a difficult-to-treat brain disorder whose name Takeru hadn’t been told—something perhaps inherited from the father. She dropped out of college and went on medication. Then her grandfather died, leaving the three of them dependent on a meager survivors’ pension. On top of that, the grandmother’s Alzheimer’s began to take its toll. The strain of caregiving combined with financial worries brought the mother to the verge of a nervous breakdown. She could hardly eat or sleep. The grandmother had a care manager who offered to arrange a two-week stay in a nursing home for her so the mother could get some rest. While filling out forms, the mother had decided she simply couldn’t go on. She would take one last trip with her daughter and then end both their lives. Her mother’s future care she could entrust to her brother and his wife.

  She’d chosen Hôtel du Lac because it was where she’d spent her honeymoon. Since coming, she’d seen her daughter innocently enjoying herself despite the haze induced by the medication and so had been wavering; but hearing the psychic’s prediction had strengthened her resolve to go ahead with her plan. Her determination had peaked last night amid the storm.

  As suspected, she had intended for them to drown in the lake.

  “But if you think about it,” said Takeru, “there’s something about Lake Ashinoko that doesn’t let you in.”

  “Yes,” said Mitsuki. “All those thickets in the way, for one thing.”

  “Very true.” Mr. Matsubara chimed in so readily that she suspected he, like her, may have looked on Lake Ashinoko with melancholic eyes more than once.

  Takeru continued, looking as if he could see the surface of the lake. “The one place that looks like a jump-off spot is through that big red torii by Hakone Shrine.” The only place with a pier. “But even there, out on the end of the pier, it’s somehow not inviting.” The pier was too low, the waves too close. Popular suicide spots must have some sort of geographical formation that lures people to their deaths. Just standing in such a spot makes people feel an invitation to be freed from everything now, this very second…

  As he started up his engine to go look for them, Takeru had imagined the mother standing on the end of the pier with her daughter and then suddenly getting the urge to flee. If they had headed back to the road, he figured they would have seen the steep stone steps leading to the shrine precincts and might have climbed them, and so he drove to the shrine. He shone his flashlight where there were no electric lanterns and soon found the shivering pair.

  “I simply cannot believe that Takeru saved those two women,” said Kaoru seriously.

  Takeru turned to her with a sardonic twist of his mouth. “I didn’t save them from their unhappiness.”

  Kaoru thought for a second. “But you saved me.”

  As if to keep the conversation from becoming overly sentimental, Mr. Matsubara said in a humorous tone, “He saved this hotel, too!” Everyone laughed. “Anyway,” he went on, “when people reach the point of exhaustion there’s no telling what they’ll do.”

  “Very true,” Mitsuki agreed, her long silver earrings swaying as she nodded.

  Today she was wearing a long scarf, like Kaoru. It was her favorite, black silk finely streaked with silver. When she peered into the mirror to put on her makeup and applied silver earrings as a finishing touch, she had felt festive for the first time in quite a while. Giving herself a final check, she had thought, Not half bad—again for the first time in quite a while.

  Just then the elderly couple came up to them. “We heard you all were leaving tomorrow, and we just wanted to say thank you and goodbye.” They bowed deeply. Everyone but Kaoru laid down their napkin and scrambled to their feet, upon which the couple bowed again. The husband made a separate bow to Mr. Matsubara. “Thank you very much,” he said, patting his breast pocket. “I’ll be sure to give this person a call.”

  “By all means do,” responded Mr. Matsubara warmly.

  Everyone looked inquiringly at him, but he said no more. After the couple left, bowing till the very end, and they were seated again, all eyes turned to Mr. Matsubara. He looked embarrassed.

  “Out with it!” Kaoru commanded.

  “I just gave him a little advice, that’s all.”

  That afternoon, he had spotted the elderly couple having sandwiches in the lounge, and since they were already on nodding terms he had gone over and introduced himself, then joined them. He’d urged them not to take sole responsibility for the debt and given them the name of a friend of his who was a lawyer. If usury was involved, they had legal recourse. Anyway, there were a number of other siblings and besides, the youngest brother had grown children, although he hadn’t heard from them since the divorce. The remaining debt was actually not that huge; considering all the eldest brother had done for them, the others ought to chip in, and the estranged children could be prevailed upon too. If the family tackled the debt together, it could be repaid.

  “Fortunately he agreed,” concluded Mr. Matsubara.

  “You did a wonderful thing,” Mitsuki was the first to say. The words came from her heart. Mr. Matsubara had surely lived his life offering help to needy people he met in passing. Wakako must have been proud.

  “Bravo! Vous avez bien fait!” Kaoru raised a glass of red wine to Mr. Matsubara, and everyone followed suit. What thoughts flitted through each one’s mind? The toast offered in the hotel in the mountains of Hakone as the night deepened was aimed equally at all four of them.

  BACK FROM THE REALM OF CLOUDS

  The next morning, the four were gathered at the front desk at checkout time. As Mitsuki was arranging for her suitcase to be sent to her apartment, Kaoru’s voice rang out brightly.

  “We’re Japanese, after all, so let’s exchange business cards.”

  Why would Kaoru have a business card? Mitsuki wondered, but it turned out she meant everyone should exchange cards with Takeru. Mitsuki seldom used her cards, but she took out a worn old one from the back of her wallet. Her address and phone number for both work and home were on it, but not her email address. The contact information would soon be useless, but she handed it over without comment. Takeru’s card, which he had apparently printed up himself, listed his occupation as “unemployed.” Seeing her laugh, he laughed too, his handsome features lighting up.

  Takeru and Kaoru waved from their car, taking it for granted that Mr. Matsubara would drive Mitsuki to the station. As soon as they were out of sight, he turned to her and suggested an early lunch. She agreed, and they set off for the café in the annex
, which looked out on the lake. The rush of pleasure she felt embarrassed her, though she walked along with outward composure.

  The menu at the lakeside café was very limited, and she had been there only once before. As she took a seat by the window, Mitsuki reflected that this was the first time she had ever sat and looked at Mr. Matsubara straight on, and also this would be his first straight look at her. When had she started to avoid sitting where the sun could strike her in the face? As luck would have it, that day she was in a seat lit all too well by the slow winter sun. Had Wakako been younger than her? The same age? Hoping that Wakako had been her elder even if only by a year, Mitsuki studied the menu.

  Their conversation was desultory. It was hard to have a more involved conversation when she didn’t know if she would ever see him again. The question of whether meeting again would even be appropriate—a question he might be asking himself too—inevitably cast its shadow. Even so, his calm enveloped her, and the time they spent facing each other was as warm as if she were basking in a patch of spring sun. She told him how struck she’d been by the nearness of stars in the night sky here; he told her in turn about the nearness of the sun he’d watched sink below the horizon of the flat Egyptian desert. When the bill came, he stopped her from reaching for her wallet and took out his credit card as a matter of course.

  Before they stood up, Mitsuki mentioned casually, “By the way, I haven’t gone through the legal formalities yet, but I did send my husband a letter of divorce.”

  “Good for you.” He smiled and held out his card. “If I can ever be of help, call me.”

  Mitsuki took the small white card in both hands and then gave him a name card of her own in return. Writing her email address on it might seem a bit forward, so she refrained, which meant her card would soon be useless. But she could still contact him. The small white card in her fingers, though light, felt heavy.

  The start of her solitary life.

  She declined the offer of a ride to the station; she felt like walking to the bus stop and taking the bus instead. She had often studied the tourist map provided by the hotel and knew that if she kept going on the stone path around the lake she would come to the bus stop at Moto-Hakone Port. The hotel shuttle bus hadn’t taken long to cover the distance, so it couldn’t be far. Soon after passing the giant red concrete torii on her right, reflected in the lake, she came to a hut selling fishing tackle, followed by shops selling marquetry boxes, steamed buns, and other souvenirs. Few people were around, but she saw more and more signs of life. Places to eat offered soba noodles, ramen, sweets. Signs advertised SASHIMI RICE BOWL and other local treats at bargain prices. She felt as if she were gradually descending from the realm of clouds back to the earth.

  Eventually she was well and truly back on earth. Ten days before, when the shuttle bus had come to pick her up, the pirate ship landing area had been shrouded in darkness and mist, as eerie as the dock for a ghost ship, but now in the light of day a number of shiny tourist buses were parked nearby, and the area was bustling in a perfectly ordinary way. The convenience store across the street was doing a thriving business. The fantastic night scene of ten days ago had vanished. Thrust back into the everyday, Mitsuki looked at the shining tourist buses and the noisy throng, feeling as if she had awakened from a long dream.

  According to the timetable, the last bus heading to the station had just left. Resisting the impulse to get in one of the waiting taxis, she only gave them a sidelong glance and wandered aimlessly until it occurred to her to take a walk on the old highway. No one was waiting for her at home anyway. The Old Tokaido highway, planted on both sides with cedar trees four hundred years ago, ran through Hakone, and she knew that a bit of it had been preserved as a historic site. She spread out her map and found that the starting point was close by.

  Five minutes later she was standing on a peaceful road lined with giant cedars that cut off the rays of the winter sun. The trees towering on left and right were far taller and larger in circumference than she could have imagined. The trees and the deep-green moss covering their trunks brought home to her the passage of four centuries.

  She felt in the surrounding air the loneliness of the old highway that had suddenly fallen into disuse after steam locomotives came along. In the old days, how many men and women of all ages must have walked here? As she in her turn walked along the old highway, the warmth of the afternoon sun and the wintry chill of the air balanced each other so well that she wished she could follow the road wherever it might lead. If she could only do that, she felt as if she would enter a time without past, present, or future, a time when she herself would disappear. All too soon the cedar-lined stretch came to an end and turned into an ordinary road. Mitsuki had no choice but to return to the present, go back, and face her life.

  On the way, she saw a woman coming toward her with her arms bent at a ninety-degree angle, swinging them front and back as she approached at a good clip. She was about Mitsuki’s own age—someone else who wouldn’t make a good heroine in a novel. She was wearing a beat-up sweat suit and dingy sneakers. Her expression was resolute and unflinching. Undoubtedly she lived in the neighborhood and was doing her daily routine of walking for exercise. Somehow it seemed to Mitsuki that this woman was building up her strength not to care for an elderly person but rather to live out whatever time she had left. With that solitary figure, at once admirable and pathetic, imprinted on her mind, Mitsuki took the bus, the Romance Car, and the subway back to her place in Suginami Ward. The day after she returned, she began hunting for a condominium.

  She spent the next five days tramping all over the city. In the morning she would search the Internet, and in the afternoon she would visit real estate offices and be shown inexpensive properties by unenthusiastic realtors. She quickly gave up on the idea of living near her sister and started looking instead into more familiar areas: first Suginami and Setagaya wards, then gradually farther west. She began with an upper limit of 15 million yen, intending to save as much as she could, but along the way she raised it to 18 million, a little more than half of her inheritance. If the place was new and in a good location, that much would buy her a single room with a dinky kitchen and bath and a token entryway. If it was old and inconveniently located, she could have much more space. She was willing to live in an old building, but she did want a certain amount of convenience without sacrificing too much space. She found some places that were not bad deals, objectively speaking, but somehow couldn’t bring herself to see them as her final abode in this life.

  Perhaps the green foliage of Silkworm Forest Park near her home had spoiled her. On the way from the station to a prospective apartment, the ugliness of the road often set her face like stone. When the agent pointed out the building from a distance, her jaw clenched even more. By the time they entered the building, climbed the common stairs, and reached the common corridor, she would have lost her sense of who she was and feel as if she were living the life of a stranger. The feeling would intensify when she stepped inside the apartment, which almost always had yellowish flooring, wallpaper whose resinous surface rejected the touch of her fingertips, white fluorescent ceiling lights, and kitchen and bathroom fixtures in strangely garish colors. A small space pitilessly encapsulating Japan’s 150 years of hideous modernization. If she spent a little more money, renovation was possible, and, as she had described rapturously to Natsuki over the telephone, fabrics could be transformative. But she couldn’t seem to work up enough enthusiasm to plan how she might make any of the places livable. Besides, once her bookshelves, china cupboard, and desk were installed, how much room would really be left for pretty fabrics? “Pitiful!” Her sister’s shriek echoed in her ears.

  Worst of all, the view from the window—facing close-by concrete walls, windows, a parking lot—invariably made her want to cover her eyes. She would have to give up on organdy lace curtains and hang heavy lace ones instead. There was no other choice.

  On the night of the fifth day, she flung herself down on her s
ofa, exhausted, and realized that all her efforts had served only to reinforce three points that had been self-evident from the start. First, she’d lived a privileged life until now. Second, she was no longer young. And third, she wasn’t yet old, either.

  She thought of “Happy Grampy,” who came back to his wooden apartment every night with a plastic basin tucked under one arm. She had no way of knowing what sort of life he may have led in younger days, but now if he were given the chance to live in a one-room condominium with kitchen-dining area in a reinforced concrete building, he might well jump for joy. Mitsuki, however, couldn’t escape a sense of having come down in the world. If she were only younger, then wherever she might live there would always be the blessing of hope, but her youth was gone. And yet she had altogether too many more years to live. The pretty things that she wanted to keep at hand, filled with memories, would have to fight for space with bulky appliances and other necessities.

  She decided to see what she might be able to discard and forced her weary self to her feet. Inside the library that doubled as storage space, her eye fell on her mother’s paulownia chest in the back of the room. She’d completely forgotten about it. Going closer, she pulled on the flat handles of a drawer, and the faint scent of aloeswood rose from the Golden Demon kimono that she’d brought home and put here. The chest was nice, but it would take up space in her new apartment. Should she persuade Natsuki to take it, although her sister had never shown much interest in kimono? That way Natsuki could have the original pair. Or should she keep it herself, abandoning the idea of buying a cupboard to hold her mother’s china? She was unable to decide. One thing she couldn’t do without was bookshelves. As she stood enveloped in the aroma of aloeswood, wondering what to do, the thought came to her that this was December 28—the very day when, one year ago, she’d found the tissue case like a little flower garden in Tetsuo’s desk drawer. It was also the day of her mother’s final fall and fractures.