Jasmine

by Noboru Tsujihara

  “All set now? I’ll leave her in your hands then, Mitsuru. Call me if she needs to go to the toilet. Just bring the tray back to the usual place.” Her rubber-soled shoes squeaked on the linoleum as she walked away.

  Seated in her wheelchair, Yasuko craned her neck towards the door, listening intently to the receding footsteps.

  “That woman has a huge gap in her front teeth, did you see?” she said in a low voice. “When she smiles, it looks disgusting.” Spittle formed a tiny web in the corner of her mouth. “Watch out for her. She steals things.”

  “Mom—”

  “Oh, yes, she does! That’s not all she does, either. Late at night she sneaks in here and tries to strangle me.”

  Mitsuru turned her face away and let her gaze wander out the window. The sun had dipped quite low in the sky. The quartet was starting the second movement, Andante in D minor. The leisurely siciliano rhythm floated through the room. Mitsuru got up and walked over to the window as if reeling in her line of vision.

  From the time she was quite small, she’d always believed that no one in the world was as good as her mother. Words she’d learnt in a college philosophy course, from Socrates, came back to her: What harm can one person do to another? A good person cannot be harmed.

  Mitsuru felt sad for her mother. What made her even sadder was that somewhere inside she wanted to believe these accusations and distrust Nurse Sakiyama. She felt the stirrings of a notion that it would somehow be better if the woman actually was a thief.

  “There, it skipped!” Yasuko burst out. Mitsuru had heard it, too. The old woman’s eyes danced happily, while Mitsuru, feeling suddenly drained, leant her forehead against the wall.

  During the coda, for two or three seconds there’d been no sound. An illusion? She and her mother had both heard the music jump. Mitsuru held herself perfectly still, savouring the moment.

  Negotiating the steep, curving descent in low gear, with her hands kept fairly loose on the steering wheel, Mitsuru thought about the time she’d just spent listening with her mother to the entire “Haydn Set”; it had been like a pool of water in the forest, still and deep. She couldn’t say what exactly, but something seemed definitely to have come to an end.

  Back in her apartment, she made a cup of coffee, then sat down on the sofa with it and rubbed the corners of her eyes.

  The intercom buzzer sounded. A package for her. She pushed the button to unlock the door at the entrance. Her room was on the ground floor, but getting there from the entrance took a couple of minutes because you had to take a roundabout route, skirting an inner courtyard.

  It was the nice young man from that delivery service, the one with the zebra logo. He handed her a large envelope with the address printed in a window. The name of the company meant nothing to her. She wasn’t wearing her contacts, so without checking the address, she opened it and took out the contents. Documents for a loan application. Taking her glasses out of a drawer, she looked at the packet again. She could make nothing of it. Puzzled, she inspected the address. Not for her after all. The name wasn’t hers, the address wasn’t hers. She lived in Hiratacho, Ashiya, but the envelope was marked “Higashi Nada Ward, Kobe.” That was across the way; the narrow street she lived on was the dividing line between the two cities. She promptly called the number of the delivery service printed on the address slip.

  About thirty minutes later, the delivery man was back, out of breath and full of apologies. He had a package for her from Aki. Somehow the two had gotten mixed up. Hers she could smell – it had the delicate fragrance of jasmine.

  “Sorry, I opened the envelope,” Mitsuru said.

  “It’s all right. I’ll tape it up and explain what happened.”

  The young man was tall and slim; she remembered once watching him admiringly as he bounded up the steps toting a heavy-looking cardboard box with ease.

  “That smells good,” he said.

  On 29th December, the night before she left for the ski resort, Aki had called to say there was a change of plans about going to see the puppet play on Awaji Island. Something must have come up at work, she’d assumed; but no, actually he would still be going, he said, hemming and hawing awkwardly.

  “So what’s she like, this person you’ll be seeing the puppet play with?”

  “Mumble, mumble,” said Aki distinctly, to which she gave a little peal of laughter.

  “I’ve picked up some good jasmine tea. I’ll send you some,” he said.

  “When were you in China?”

  “Last week. Shanghai. Flew over, sailed back.”

  “You mean you were here in Kobe and never came by? That’s bad. What kind of a brother do you call yourself? It’s funny, five years ago you went over by boat and took a plane back. What was it, something about your father again?”

  “No. Tell you all about it next time I see you. How’s Mother?”

  “The same. You know.”

  The tea Aki had sent was a rather rare variety called Peony Rosette. Long, downy tea buds were hand-tied in small bundles using thin white thread, overlapping in layers like the petals of a peony to form a ball. Infused with hot water, the rosette would slowly open like a bud, swaying in the cup until deep within it one white jasmine flower appeared.

  The following Saturday, around noon, Mitsuru went shopping at the co-op by Ashiya Station. On the way back she drove along the left bank of the Ashiya River and turned at an intersection under the expressway. Right in front of her, the driver of a small truck veered to avoid a cyclist who had jumped the red light, slamming on his brakes. The truck scraped against the pedestrian barrier and smashed its left front fender against the steel pole of a traffic sign before stopping. The cyclist, a middle school boy, never looked back, fleeing on his bike into the pine trees nearby.

  The truck belonged to a parcel delivery service – one with a zebra logo. When the young driver stepped out of his cab, Mitsuru had a start of recognition. He was trying to make a call on his cell phone, but having no luck. Mitsuru got out of her car and walked up to him.

  “Uh, hi there,” he said, scratching his head with embarrassment. “I can’t get the office on my cell phone.”

  “Maybe it’s broken. Here, try mine.”

  Using hers, he got through right away.

  “It was the kid’s fault, running the red light,” she said.

  “Yeah, but I should have been more alert.”

  “I’ll be a witness for you when the police come, if you want.”

  “Thanks a lot. That’d be great.”

  Before long a police car arrived on the scene. A support team from his company also came and transferred the packages scheduled for delivery to another vehicle. To both the police and the company representative, Mitsuru gave a clear account of what she’d witnessed, so the investigation wrapped up quickly and the truck was soon hauled off. Mitsuru was impressed by the calm, frank way the driver handled a difficult situation. There was more to admire about him than just his style in delivering packages.

  She waved goodbye, got back in her Mini Cooper, and drove off. In the rear-view mirror she saw him standing with his head bowed in her direction. She adjusted the mirror slightly and began to whistle.

  The next day was Coming of Age Day, the national holiday for young people whose twentieth birthday fell during the current year. It was also a Sunday, but Mitsuru went to work anyway. The deadline was fast approaching for goods for a new station building and plaza that her company was working on in conjunction with a construction company. Although not herself a designer, Mitsuru was knee-deep in work, acting as a liaison and drawing up estimates.

  Monday was a substitute holiday, making up for the one that had fallen on Sunday, but once again Mitsuru went to work. She didn’t get home, exhausted, until eight that night. Shortly afterwards, the intercom buzzed.

  “It’s Uchiyama from the Zebra Parcel Service. You have a package.”

  “Come on back.”

  “I’d prefer to wait here.”

&n
bsp; Why did he sound so stiff? The apartment building had a reception room just off the entrance hall, and she told him she’d meet him there.

  The package he had brought her was his personal gift to her. “You really helped me a lot the other day. Thank you.”

  “Not at all. Is everything straightened out now?”

  “Yes, I even managed to get all the packages delivered with no more trouble.”

  “You weren’t hurt, were you?”

  “Not a scratch.”

  “That’s good.”

  “I’m from Izushi. Ever hear of Izushi soba noodles?”

  “Of course. They’re famous.”

  “These were handmade at noon today. Please try them. There’s sauce and horseradish to go with them, too.”

  Diffidently, he held out a large bundle wrapped in newspaper and string. He’d gone home early that morning and gotten his mother to make the noodles, then turned around and headed straight back to Kobe.

  “Hey, thanks! What a treat. And this is for you,” said Mitsuru, taking out of her pocket a little Ziploc bag containing five rosettes of the tea from Aki. “From the package that got misdirected the other day. It’s jasmine. All you do is put one in a big glass cup and pour hot water on it.”

  “Great. Thank you very much.”

  Uchiyama had other deliveries to make, so with a quick bow of his head he was out the door. Abruptly, there came the sound of a truck driving off.

  Mitsuru had had dinner out, but she boiled up some of the noodles anyway, added the sauce, and happily slurped them down. Delicious. She put the rest in the refrigerator, wondering what to do with so much. Enough there for ten – no, fifteen people, easily. Maybe she’d better share them with the neighbours.

  She took a bath and got into bed to go through the photos from her ski trip, just back from the camera shop. While looking at them, she decided: I know, I’ll have everybody over for a soba party!

  26

  The outdoor performance of the puppet theatre began at 10:00 a.m. on 16th January in the compound of the Hoshinji temple, near Fukura harbour. At precisely 7:05, just as the sun rose, drumbeats from a large taiko drum had announced the grand event, the rhythmic tattoo resounding across the southern end of the island for the first time in some thirty years.

  Li Xing was there!

  Wind whipped wildly around the great roof of the temple’s main hall, causing the dozens of streamers to flap, but around the stage and seating area scarcely a breath of air stirred. This was due to the carefully planned layout of the temple compound, fitted snugly in a small valley to the northeast of a hill shutting out the sea.

  Around the edge of the compound were stands selling oden stew, grilled chicken on skewers, cotton candy, and masks. The stage building was made of logs and enclosed by straw matting, with reed blinds laid across the roof. At the entrance was a signboard with gold lettering reading “Japan’s Finest, the Supremely Talented and Accomplished Puppet Troupe Founded and Managed by Uemura Gennojo.” Paintings and prints depicting earlier performances were crowded together on display. Roughly five hundred viewers filled the pit and the stands.

  It was around one-thirty when Aki and Li Xing passed through the entrance, the gatekeeper calling out a rousing welcome. Inside, families were sitting on rush mats, eating picnic lunches; junior high and high school kids were in the standing-room area, the boys in high-collar tunics and the girls in middy-blouse uniforms; men, with beer or saké in hand, and city folks, with their opera glasses, were seated in the gallery. Places were not reserved, so Aki and Li Xing, as latecomers, had to be content with squeezing in at the back.

  Through the buzz and murmur of the crowd, they could make out the distant twang of the shamisen and the rhythmic singing of the chanter. The central stage was even further away, but as Aki and Li Xing focused on the puppets, the action took on such immediacy that it seemed to be taking place right in front of them. And as they were drawn in, the vocal and instrumental accompaniment also took hold.

  These Awaji puppets were cast in a different mould from the refined and seductive world of sewamono, domestic plays in bunraku, the Osaka puppet theatre. The torso and head were a good deal larger, the face paint and costumes brighter, the eyes bigger and more mobile. Princesses and maidens had oval faces with lovely features, but female heads known as dakki and menketsu could transform themselves in a second – the former into a frightful demon, the latter into a ferocious, man-eating fox.

  Both the Awaji puppet theatre and bunraku contained scenes of savagery: heads getting chopped off and flying through the air, a fox ripping open a woman’s belly with its teeth and pulling out her bloody entrails. The use of dolls made possible the juxtaposition of extreme cruelty alongside fairy-tale enchantment.

  A famous section of the “Morning Glory Diary” was now underway. While searching for fireflies on the Uji River, Miyuki, the daughter of a samurai, met and fell in love with a man named Asojiro. Later, rejecting the suitor urged on her by her parents, she fled her home in search of her beloved. Her constant weeping out of longing for him ended in her going blind. She became an itinerant koto player, taking the name Asagao, or Morning Glory, and gradually wandered further east. At an inn in Shimada, she came face to face with him, but he had changed his name and was not able to reveal his identity. Unaware of whom she was performing for, the blind Miyuki plucked the strings of the koto while singing the poem Asojiro had written for her in Uji:

  “The dew-fresh morning glory,

  struck by the sun’s cruel rays, longs for a shower of rain.”

  Yes, good sir, I thank you. I come from Chugoku,

  and I lived for a time in the capital.

  One year ago, firefly-hunting on the River Uji,

  I met a man and fell in love.

  The time we shared was brief as a summer’s night.

  Our troth we pledged and then, unwillingly,

  we were forced apart.

  With no word of his whereabouts, I could not rest at home,

  and journeyed from the capital in search of him.

  I left Osaka and Omi behind,

  wandered aimlessly to Mino and Owari.

  Tears of longing ruined my eyes.

  Sightless now am I,

  sad as a water-bird roving overland…

  Not that Aki could make out all the words, by any means. Li Xing understood the gist of the story from his explanation, but she had even more trouble trying to pick up the words of the classical text. At one point, however, she caught his arm and asked excitedly, “Is Miyuki Chinese?”

  “Ah. Because she said, ‘I come from Chugoku,’ you mean? But the word doesn’t mean China here, as you’d expect. It’s the name of a region of Japan, it’s Hiroshima.”

  For some reason she was disappointed.

  The face of the puppet Miyuki was beautiful; yet, studying Li Xing’s profile, Aki told himself that hers was much lovelier. The thought made him feel intensely happy.

  Next was the famous scene from “Cherry Trees along the Hidaka River,” in which Kiyohime, the spurned heroine seeking revenge on her former lover, suddenly takes on the face of a demon; she then transforms herself into a monstrous serpent and swims across the river.

  Aki and Li Xing left at the intermission and descended the long stone steps of the temple. Below was a stream – just a lazy trickle – and beside it a flagstone path. As they set out on the path, a gust of wind picked up Li Xing’s hat and carried it off. Aki gave chase, finally retrieving the thing after it snagged on the branch of a camellia bush. The branch next to it was covered with pink buds, and impulsively he broke one off and stuck it in the ribbon on the hat before returning it to her. The wind was still strong, so she removed the bud and wore it as a corsage, tucking the hat under her arm. The wind was blowing off the sea. Buffeted by it, they held hands for the first time.

  They’d arranged at the hotel for a car to pick them up around three-thirty. The driver, a man around forty, had been a devotee of the local pupp
et theatre since high school. The best part came after the intermission, he told them; why were they leaving now?

  Back at the hotel, Aki and Li Xing sat side by side in chairs on the terrace of their little villa. They had come back early to see the green flash. Conditions had to be just right. Ideally, you needed a wide view of the sea’s horizon to the west and clear blue skies, with no clouds or boat traffic to block the view.

  “Cold?” asked Aki.

  “No, I’m fine.”

  Like Hoshinji Temple, the villa had been constructed with an eye to avoiding the sea wind; to the west, moreover, it afforded an unobstructed, ninety-degree view of nothing but the sea. They talked about the puppet theatre for a while. Then Aki checked the angle of the sun and looked down at his watch. It was not yet dusk, but a faint, fluctuating lustre filled the sea, which had begun to change colour. The air was so sparklingly clear that it seemed thin.

  “Nearly an hour till sunset. At this rate, we may really be able to see the green flash. I think there’s a good chance.”

  “I hope so.” Li Xing turned her clear eyes on him.

  Silence stole over them. Behind the privet hedge separating their villa from the next, a bird sang out shrilly. Li Xing started, then hunched her shoulders. “Things take their own course, don’t they?” she murmured, as if roused to speech by the bird’s outburst. “Even if something’s realistically impossible, we go on hoping against hope, wanting it to work out. Five years ago, when I decided to run away with you into the heart of China – in that boat through the creeks at night – it was like that. We made it as far as Zhouzhuang, and then I heard from Yin Dan that Liu Hong had been arrested. I loved you – but with him in jail, I felt that my only choice was to be alone. There is no law that a woman can only live in tandem with a man, anyway. So to keep from letting either of you down, I decided I would live on my own. It was a hard decision, a lonely one, but I made up my mind to leave. Even though you were right there, close beside me… so close that on the other side of the wall I could almost hear you breathing.”