Mr. Awashima had gone into a building on the corner. Beyond the entrance, there was a carpeted area one step up. After bowing in greeting to the woman dressed in black who was standing at the reception desk, Mr. Awashima removed his shoes and placed them in the shoe cupboard. The rest of us followed his example. There weren’t slippers available, so we all stepped onto the carpet in our socks.
There were chairs lined up in front of a long table, like in a conference room, and people who seemed like dealers were eating in groups of two and three. In front of each duo or trio were rice balls from convenience stores, white Styrofoam deli containers filled with deep-fried chicken, cans of tea, and suchlike. Takeo’s stomach growled audibly.
‘Please do as you like until we begin,’ Mr. Awashima had said in a low voice, and had then walked off in the direction of someone he recognized.
The room where the swap meet would take place was about forty-five meters square. There were white floor cushions lined up along the walls, leaving the inner square completely empty.
Mr. Nakano was looking around restlessly. Sakiko quietly took a seat on a cushion midway along one side. I sat down as well, leaving a cushion in between us. Takeo sat down next to me. Sakiko’s hips and legs were slender, and when she sat on her heels like this, she seemed even more petite. She was almost a head shorter than Takeo and me.
There was a general stir in the hall. Mr. Nakano was wandering around aimlessly. Takeo got up from his seat suddenly and followed Mr. Nakano.
‘Hey, Hitomi,’ Sakiko whispered.
Yes? Sakiko’s voice was low, so I tried to reply in a similarly muted tone.
‘Are you going to quit?’
What?
‘You’re going to quit working at Haruo’s, aren’t you?’
No, I haven’t . . .
I had not yet told anyone about the fact that I was ready to quit working at the Nakano shop.
Why do you say that? I asked Sakiko, keeping my voice low.
‘I don’t know, I just had a feeling,’ Sakiko said. Her voice was mysterious—I could hear her perfectly even though she was whispering.
A feeling?
‘Maybe it’s because I’m thinking of quitting too.’
I cast a glance at Sakiko’s face. The light in her eyes was brighter than usual.
When you say quit, quit what?
‘Haruo,’ Sakiko replied succinctly.
But you said before, you wouldn’t break up, didn’t you? I asked, my voice even lower. I could see Mr. Nakano and Takeo on their way back.
‘Yes. But at last I think I’m ready to quit him.’
At last? I retorted, before I could stop myself, but right at that moment, Mr. Nakano sank down onto the cushion between Sakiko and me with a thud.
Sakiko turned her face towards Mr. Nakano and smiled. It was a gentle expression. Her smile was soft and full, like that of the statue of a goddess from the Kamakura period I had once seen in her shop, the Asukado.
The items were placed on large rectangular trays, and the trays themselves made their way around. Once you had finished looking, you set the tray in front of the dealer beside you. One by one, like an assembly line, we looked at plates and lamps and etchings.
‘This looks like you, doesn’t it?’ Sakiko said to Mr. Awashima, who at some point had come over and was now sitting, Indian style, on the other side of her.
‘Hmm, I do like it, but ones like this are awfully expensive now, so they just don’t sell,’ Mr. Awashima said, his voice low, as usual. Still, he picked up the item that Sakiko had described as ‘him’ from the tray, an intricately colored glass that fit perfectly in the palm of his hand, and regarded it more closely.
‘Is that a chip?’ Mr. Awashima said as he nodded to himself.
Takeo was handling each of the items as they made their way around. These expert dealers, Mr. Awashima included, held everything casually and informally; Takeo alone was treating the goods with the utmost care.
‘It’s better to do it that way, of course,’ Sakiko said in a gentle voice. The nape of Takeo’s neck instantly turned deep red.
Mr. Nakano, on the other hand, didn’t touch any of the items that came around; he limited himself to peering down at everything, keeping his face right above the trays.
‘If there is something you want, please let me know,’ Mr. Awashima said to Mr. Nakano. Each time they spoke to one another, Sakiko, sitting between the two of them, pulled back and leaned on her arms behind her.
‘Despite the bitterly cold weather, I hope that everyone is keeping well,’ the auctioneer said, by way of introduction. Immediately after this brief greeting, the auction started. Not that I thought it would begin with a gong or a taiko drum, but since they had said it was so high class, I had thought it would kick off with something that felt more ceremonious.
‘So simple, isn’t it?’ I whispered to Takeo, who nodded in agreement.
Yeah, it seems pretty much the same as the regular markets. Only thing is that it’s in a building instead of a shack.
It had been so long since Takeo had spoken to me familiarly or without apologizing, I flinched. I felt a momentary surge of happiness. You idiot, I thought, while still thoroughly enjoying the feeling.
‘It’s starting,’ I said, unsure of what to say, although Takeo seemed similarly tongue-tied. Idiot, I thought to myself again.
The swap meet began with an item whose opening bid was 3,000 yen. The auctioneer’s voice was hoarse, and the way he spoke, it was hard to hear the beginning and end of his words.
Five thousand yen, 7,000 yen . . . the price rose briskly. Takeo was intently watching the auctioneer’s hands.
Today has been pretty flat, overall, Mr. Awashima murmured. There had been a few items that sold strongly, but lots more where the opening bid was 10,000 yen, with only two people calling out offers, so the bidding didn’t go higher than 17,000 yen.
When the price had jumped steadily into the tens of thousands—or hundreds of thousands—of yen, the second-hand dealer standing diagonally behind the auctioneer would slowly move his head up and down in assent.
‘Sold!’ the auctioneer would say. After watching for a short period of time, I worked out that this nod was a signal that the selling price had been decided.
There were plenty of dealers calling out bids, but there were also items that only inspired sluggish offers. Five thousand yen, 7,000 yen, 10,000 yen, 11,000 yen, 15,000 yen—it was like the price had to be teased along.
A voice called out something.
What did he say? Takeo asked Mr. Nakano.
‘It means one-six-five,’ Mr. Nakano replied, without looking at Takeo or taking his eyes off the auctioneer.
‘One-six-five?’ Takeo repeated.
‘In this case, it means sixteen thousand five hundred yen,’ Sakiko said, looking directly at Takeo’s face as she spoke.
‘It means that we’ve moved up to the level where, once the bidding reaches ten thousand, it jumps straight up to sixteen thousand five hundred yen,’ Sakiko continued her explanation. Takeo’s mouth was agape again.
‘If it reaches a hundred thousand, that means one hundred and sixty-five thousand.’
No way! Takeo said, his mouth still hanging open.
After the call that we had reached this level, the bidding crept to a halt. Too sluggish, Mr. Nakano grumbled. But we’re in a recession, and things don’t sell, Mr. Awashima replied, shaking his head. The second-hand dealer seemed dissatisfied with the final price, his brows knitted in a frown.
The auctioneer looked back over his shoulder, awaiting instruction from the second-hand dealer. When he saw the dealer make a slight wave of his hand in front of him, the auctioneer curtly called out, ‘Fault!’ and the item was withdrawn.
After the paintings had been sold, the auction moved on to porcelain and ceramics. It’s
Rosenthal, you hear, Rosenthal china. Service for five. Wait, what? Service for four. Like the one before, only for four. That’s how it goes today, it seems. The auctioneer’s pitch was light and witty.
Once the china was done, next came sundry items. Pink and blue decorative lamps, a set of two small framed portraits of aristocrats with their hunting dogs, and wine racks with wine glasses, all tightly displayed on a tray. That’s right—enough to outfit two hotel rooms! the auctioneer called out.
Thirty thousand yen, he called the opening price for the ‘hotel lot’ in his hoarse voice, but the bidding went nowhere. And just what kind of hotel does he think these will be used in? Sakiko asked Mr. Awashima with a laugh. A super luxurious one, of course, Mr. Awashima replied in his low voice. There was something similar about both of their voices. Even when they spoke in whispers, their words were very easy to make out.
‘How much usually moves through a swap meet for Japanese things?’ This time it was Mr. Awashima who asked Sakiko a question.
‘At last week’s meet, I heard they turned over about sixty million,’ Sakiko said.
‘That’s amazing,’ Mr. Awashima said blandly, not seeming all that amazed.
Mr. Nakano had started to lean forward. Any time now, Mr. Awashima said. I’m counting on you, Mr. Nakano turned to Mr. Awashima and bowed slightly. On one of the trays that had come around earlier, there was a bottle that looked like it had been daubed with soot, perfectly uninteresting as far as I was concerned. But something told me that this was Mr. Nakano’s sought-after jug.
It will be just a little longer, Mr. Awashima said. Mr. Nakano bowed his head again. He appeared to have completely forgotten the fact that when he went to the markets, he himself engaged in sharp tactics for the sake of a mere thousand or even five hundred yen.
The auctioneer laughed as he said in a sing-song, ‘What shall we do?’ The price of the item went up. It was a paperweight decorated with a pug dog. You must buy this adorable dog and take him home, he said. Sixty thousand yen, a voice called out. In the end, the pug paperweight went all the way up to 150,000 yen.
And next, at last, was Mr. Nakano’s jug. When it had been passed around on the tray before the auction, a man and a woman—presumably a couple of buyers—who were sitting on two cushions next to Takeo had spent a long time holding and examining the jug.
‘Changing lots!’ the auctioneer called out. They had finished with the pug paperweight and the dealer’s six other items that had followed. It seemed it was finally time for the second-hand dealer who had brought the bottle Mr. Nakano has his eye on—now it was his turn.
Twenty thousand yen, the hoarse voice rang out. Mr. Nakano leaned forward in earnest.
The body and the neck had turned soot black, but when you turned it upside down, the bottom was rough and uneven and shone like a mirror. If you looked closely, you could see iridescence.
‘Like the surface of a black pearl,’ Takeo said.
‘What a clever way of describing it!’ Mr. Awashima said, beaming as he looked at Takeo.
Mr. Nakano had won the jug for 70,000 yen. As expected, the buyer couple who were sitting beside Takeo had bid quite fiercely for it but, as Mr. Nakano explained to us in a still slightly excited tone once the meet was over, it was entirely the result of Mr. Awashima’s superior expertise as a merchant that he was able to acquire the jug for a bid far lower than he had anticipated.
‘That’s a gin bottle, you know,’ Sakiko said softly.
Gin? Mr. Nakano said dreamily.
‘I love gin,’ Sakiko said. It was a perfectly ordinary thing to say, but my heart started to race. Mr. Nakano muttered a half-hearted reply.
As he patted the top of the box-shaped bag that the jug was in, having been bundled in newspaper he had brought with him in addition to bubble wrap, Mr. Nakano repeated once more, Gin, you say? Sakiko was smiling. Mr. Nakano looks happy, Takeo said with a touch of envy.
Looks happy, I almost murmured Takeo’s words myself. Hurriedly I looked down.
What Sakiko had said to me before the auction began had been reverberating in my head this whole time.
At last, I think I’m ready to quit him.
A moment later, I looked back up and glanced at Sakiko. She winked at me, still smiling. When she closed her right eye, the right side of her lips turned up along with it, so that even though she was smiling, she looked as though she were crying.
Are you okay? I said without making a sound, only moving my lips.
Sakiko nodded. Fine, she replied, also only moving her lips. She drew in her smile and winked again. The right part of her mouth still turned up in exactly the same way, but now that she wasn’t smiling, this time her expression looked, conversely, like a grin.
‘Good luck to you too, Hitomi!’ Sakiko said, speaking aloud. Her voice was louder than usual.
Taken by surprise, Mr. Nakano looked at Sakiko. She returned his gaze, staring him straight in the face. Mr. Awashima and Takeo were talking non-stop about something. The skin on Sakiko’s cheeks was glowing with an inner light. Just like the bottom of the gin jug, they reflected a dusky and beautiful radiance.
It was about a week after the Setsubun holiday in early February when Mr. Nakano announced that the Nakano shop would close temporarily.
It had been snowing on and off since the morning. It’s called kazahana, when the snow is so fine like this, it seems as if it drifted in on the wind, Masayo said. Takeo went outside and stared up at the sky. He was still just standing there out the front, looking straight up above him. The boy looks like a dog, Masayo laughed.
Mr. Nakano had shown up late in the afternoon, when the snow had already stopped.
‘Employee meeting!’ It was a strange command from Mr. Nakano.
I had just been wondering why Takeo had been there since the morning even though there weren’t any pickups. Mr. Nakano explained very simply about the shop closing. He wanted to make a slight change in the kind of merchandise he carried. And to do so required money. He would temporarily lease the storefront to someone else, and for the time being he would only be doing business on Tokizo’s website. He wasn’t able to pay severance, but he would give us the month’s wages plus a fifty per cent premium.
Mr. Nakano had lost a little more weight since the beginning of the month. The other day I heard from Masayo that Sakiko had told him she wanted to make a clean break. It seemed to me that everyone—men and women, old and young—loses weight when a love affair is over. I have wondered about this.
Well, then, Mr. Nakano said, and the meeting soon broke up. Masayo, Takeo, and I looked at each other in turn. Masayo’s favorite scarf, dyed from trees and grasses, which she had been wearing since she started dressing more smartly, was wrapped several times around her neck that day. Her skirt was long and brown, worn with ankle boots, also brown.
‘Hitomi,’ Masayo said.
Yes? I replied.
Masayo curled her lips for a moment, as if there was something she wanted to say, but in the end she didn’t say anything except for repeating my name once more. Yes? I replied again. Why don’t you take the basket woven from akebi vines? This was all that Masayo said to me before falling silent once again.
I left the shop with Takeo. Mr. Nakano didn’t say anything. He just stood there in the same pose, with the same unlit cigarette in his mouth, at the front of the shop where he and Masayo had seen us out. When we turned the corner, I looked back and could see the pom-pom on Mr. Nakano’s hat. The color of Mr. Nakano’s hat that day was the same brown as Masayo’s skirt.
What will you do now? I said.
Takeo tilted his head and eventually replied, What about you?
The two of us walked along beside each other in silence. I tightened my grip on the old supermarket bag I was carrying the akebi vine basket in. The kazahana snow had started to fall again.
PUNCH BALL
/> For a moment, I didn’t know where I was.
Pale sunlight was streaming through the gap in the curtains. The sound of the alarm clock on the bedside table gradually intensified. It went from an intermittent ringing to a continuous whir, until I finally reached over to turn it off.
In my not-yet-awake haze, I ruminated over the fact that the place where I found myself was no longer in the same neighborhood as the Nakano shop. I now lived on the third floor of a tidy white building in an apartment that was even more cramped than the previous one but which was very conveniently located, a five-minute walk from the train station where I could transfer to the private rail line.
I moved here more than two years ago.
Slowly I got out of bed and, blinking repeatedly, I shuffled towards the bathroom. I splashed my face with water and brushed my teeth. I had left the cap off the tube of facial cleansing cream that I’d used last night. I looked around and saw that the triangular cap had fallen into a far corner of the washbasin. I picked it up and screwed it back on to the end of the tube.
I took out a can of tomato juice from the refrigerator. I opened the top with a clink and drank it straight from the can rather than pouring it into a glass. I forgot to shake it up, though, so the first sip was watery, and then suddenly it got very thick.
Drops of water fell from my bangs. I finished drinking the tomato juice, rinsed out the can and placed it upside down on the rack, and then went to peer into the small mirror that was next to the bed. The tips of my ears were tinged with red. I touched them with my fingertips. They were cold.
I opened the window and the wind rushed in. It was a cold, midwinter wind, full of moisture. I hastily closed the window and got dressed, pulling on a long-sleeved shirt, tights, a heavy skirt, and a thick sweater. From the top shelf of the closet, I took out the beige coat I’d bought at a flea market the week before last and tossed it on the bed.
The Nakano Thrift Shop Page 19