As in the front room, time in the kitchen had stopped.
She’s tight with money, Yusuke concluded after he’d looked around. Although the woman could hardly be called elderly, the cottage had that fossilized air common in houses where old people live. Miserliness offered the most plausible explanation, and would account for the dilapidated state of the place.
Yusuke had an aunt and uncle in Yonago who were famous in the family for being stingy. They apparently had ample savings but never bought anything new. To this day, when he went along on the annual visit to their house at New Year’s, it always felt like a trip back to his childhood. His mother told him that their house felt exactly the same as when she was a child, even. She blamed yet defended her brother: “They’re very careful with their money,” she would say. But Yusuke thought that living on so little when there was no need to should be called miserly, not frugal.
Water from the tap drummed on the tin below.
The scrape on his arm didn’t hurt, but it was bleeding more than he had realized. He tried rinsing the blood off but it kept streaming, red and abundant. Reluctant though he’d been to look, now he was unable to look away. He didn’t even notice when a door down the hallway opened.
Then Yusuke sensed a presence. When he turned and saw a man staring at him, he nearly jumped. How long had the guy been standing there? His face was intense, wild-looking. He seemed utterly out of place in this decaying house. Not just this house—maybe anywhere.
“Oh, Taro, I didn’t know you were there,” he heard the woman say as she came in from the front room. She went over and explained briefly what Yusuke was doing in the house. The man didn’t take his eyes off him.
Yusuke’s own eyes remained fixed on that face, in which there was no softness, no spare flesh; probably like the rest of him. The watching man had a presence that was disquieting, one that seemed to push away the air around him.
Yusuke bowed his head in greeting.
The man was too young to be the woman’s husband, not young enough to be her son. Anyway, he looked nothing like her. He gave Yusuke one more sharp glance before disappearing through the open doorway and down the hall.
Yusuke, startled by the man’s sudden arrival and equally sudden exit, turned off the faucet and wiped his arm with the towel. While he felt offended that his greeting had been ignored, he couldn’t help being impressed by the impact the man had had on him. With someone like that in her house, it was no wonder the woman looked at Yusuke with such utter indifference.
When Yusuke returned to the front room, he saw a first-aid kit lying on the table. The woman, now with her glasses on, motioned for him to sit next to her as if she had already forgotten the other person. She quickly set about applying an antiseptic and wrapping his arm with gauze. She was much kinder than he had imagined. And more capable. Yusuke felt both nervous and embarrassed about having this lady take care of him, but she seemed quite accustomed to looking after other people and did it with ease. When she was nearly done bandaging his arm, she turned her face toward him and asked whether he’d come to Oiwake to see the folk dancing for the annual Bon festival.
“Not really.”
She smiled a little. “In the old days, people used to wear their summer yukata when they danced, but not anymore.”
As she finished tying the gauze bandage, she murmured, as if to herself, “Oh dear, there’s quite a bit of blood on the shirt too.” Looking down, he noticed that there was indeed some blood just above his belt, and probably on his jeans as well.
The woman put away the first-aid kit and gestured for him to sit across from her at the table. Then, taking the teapot in her hands, she held it under the spout of an electric kettle and poured in some hot water. Like the microwave oven, the kettle was new.
“So you need to go back to Middle Karuizawa?”
“Yes, I do.” In case she assumed he had a house of his own there, he added, “I’m staying at a friend’s cottage for my vacation.”
The woman didn’t respond; she only peered into the teapot, checking that she had put in enough water.
He explained that because of the congestion during the peak holiday season in Karuizawa, he’d headed in the opposite direction on Route 18, coasting down one slope after another until he ended up in Komoro, two towns away. Now he was on his way back.
“Oh my, you went all the way to Komoro?”
She was gently tipping the teapot back and forth to coax a rich, even color out of the tea leaves.
“That’s right.”
“Do you have a map?”
Yusuke took out the simple map that he had been using and placed it on the table. “This is where we are in Oiwake,” she told him, pointing at one spot. She turned the map so that he could look at it the right way around. They were close to the edge of a town called Miyota but not that far from Middle Karuizawa.
With his index finger, he traced his route on the map.
“This doesn’t show any smaller roads, so I couldn’t figure out where I was. No matter which way I turned, I just couldn’t find a road going in the right direction. I was completely foxed.”
It was after watching the folk dancing and having a bowl of ramen and some fried dumplings nearby that he had decided to avoid continuing alongside the traffic on Route 18 and try a detour to the south.
“You know what it is?” The woman lifted her finger from the map and looked up at him. “There aren’t any roads besides the ones on this map.”
She went over to the built-in bookshelf on the far side of the room and brought back a large folded map, spreading it out on the table in front of him. Peering over his shoulder, she explained the area to him: “You see, there’s a valley that runs through Oiwake but no road crossing the valley in the direction of Middle Karuizawa. So if you try to avoid the main road and take a detour, you end up going as far south as the railroad tracks. My advice is to get back to the main road, though it will take some time. But at least you’ll have the moonlight to guide you.”
The woman put away the map and sat down again. Taking her reading glasses off, she said, “Here, do have some tea. It’s roasted hojicha, the brown tea.”
“Thank you.”
“Once you’re on the main road, it’s uphill most of the way, but the road is paved.”
Yusuke, with a wry smile, told her of his predicament: that he would have to walk the bicycle all the way back. “Oh dear,” she said, looking surprised. “Well, that won’t be an easy trip. It will take you at least two hours.” She glanced at the wall clock. “Why, it will be the middle of the night by the time you get there.”
He took a few sips of tea before standing up. He knew he’d overstayed his welcome. “What good is a broken bicycle?” the woman said as she stood up herself. She may have been surprised at his bad luck, but there was little sympathy in her voice.
As he headed toward the porch, backpack in hand, he heard her ask, “What about the light on your bicycle?”
“It’s broken too.”
“You ought to take that with you, then,” she said, pointing to a large red flashlight hanging by the window. “It’s just a cheap Chinese one. There are hardly any lights between here and the main road. If the moon clouded over, you wouldn’t be able to find your way.”
“Thank you. I’ll be sure to return it.”
“Oh no, don’t bother. It’s only a flashlight.”
She said this so casually that Yusuke, who’d been sure she was tight-fisted, was rather taken aback. He thanked her and took it.
The woman pulled the curtain open, her left hand resting on the edge of the screen door, and began drawing a map in the air with her other hand showing how to reach Route 18. She broke off when she saw he wasn’t paying attention, fixing him with a stare.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I can’t find my key.”
He was sure it had been in his pocket.
“Your key?”
“Yes, the key to my friend’s house. Maybe it fell out when I
took the handkerchief out of my pocket.”
He knew he should have kept it in his backpack, and felt both embarrassed and annoyed with himself.
“I see,” was all she said.
Waving the flashlight, he told her, “I’ll use this to look for it,” and stepped out onto the front porch.
The moon was still high. He went back to the road, pointed the flashlight toward the spot where he’d crashed his bicycle, and saw that, hidden beneath shrubbery, there was a low wall of black lava stones. No wonder the impact had been so strong, he thought. The moon shone brightly through the treetops, highlighting the shapes of individual pebbles. He followed the gravel path from the gate to the front of the house, but still no key. The brilliance of the moon made him feel all the more as if he had actually been bewitched by a fox, like someone in a folktale.
“Did you find it?” the woman called from inside the screen door.
“No, I didn’t.”
When he went back in, he saw that the man was standing by the door to the front room, apparently discussing something with her.
“I’m not sure what I should do. Without the key, I won’t be able to get in.”
He felt obliged to explain that the house belonged to his friend’s parents and that he had arrived with this friend, who had then been summoned to Tokyo for some emergency, leaving him there alone.
“Maybe there’s a caretaker?” the woman ventured, but Yusuke had no idea.
“And you don’t know the name of the management company?”
Yusuke was now starting to feel like a fool. It had never occurred to him that there were caretakers or management companies for summer houses.
Conscious of the man’s gaze, he asked if he could use their telephone to call his friend in Tokyo: he would know the people looking after it or if an extra key was hidden somewhere. An old wooden cottage would be easy enough to find a way into, but his friend’s house was new and solid. Not only that, he’d felt responsible as a houseguest and conscientiously locked every window and door on his way out that morning.
The man went on standing in the doorway, not saying a word, his silence intense. Yusuke took his datebook out of the backpack and dialed his friend’s cellphone. After hearing it ring a few times, he got the answering machine but saw no point in leaving a message. Next he tried his friend’s home number, only to hear another high-pitched, prerecorded message. The family had probably all gone to the hospital to see the ailing grandmother.
“Even if you leave a message, it might be quite a while before your friend calls you back,” said the woman.
“That’s true.”
Yusuke’s brain felt fogged, ineffectual. The man’s gaze bore down on him, deepening his confusion. After an uncomfortable silence, the woman said, as if to clear the air, “Why not wait for a bit and try calling again later?”
She glanced at the wall clock. It was a little before ten.
Yusuke looked toward the man. There was something about this person that drew one’s eyes to him. He seemed to be glaring at the woman, apparently trying to signal that he wanted this late-night intruder to leave. Yusuke had no way of knowing whether he was angry with him or the woman, but he could sense hostility beneath the surface. He remembered the strange atmosphere surrounding the house before he entered it—a force field that seemed to repel the world outside. He was convinced that it somehow emanated from this man. Though Yusuke himself was protective of his own time and space, the man’s reaction seemed out of all proportion. Yusuke almost forgot his own predicament, staring at him. On her side, the woman looked back defiantly, her narrow eyebrows raised. Just as Yusuke was about to say that he would start on his journey anyway, she pressed, “As I said, you should wait here a while longer and try calling him again. We’re usually up until around midnight anyway.”
The woman spoke in an emphatic tone, as if quietly declaring war on the man.
Later, when Yusuke looked back on the evening, he realized that was the crucial moment. He wasn’t sure whether, at that point, she had already decided to let him stay the night. But he was certain that the woman had made up her mind to be nice to him, if only to defy the man. Before Yusuke could say anything, the man wheeled angrily around and vanished into the rear of the house again.
Yusuke still felt at least as much at a loss as before. Although he was the obvious cause of the confrontation he’d just witnessed, he also knew that he had managed to get entangled in something complicated between the two that had nothing to do with him. He was bewildered, but also curious. He would have liked to know more.
Acting as if nothing were amiss, the woman carried a handful of fabric in from the tatami room and dropped it on the table. The smell of camphor wafted through the air. As though on cue, the wall clock began to chime ten.
When the last chime faded, the woman said, “Sit down and make yourself at home.”
“Well …”
“You can try calling again in thirty minutes.”
Her voice remained decisive.
“Well … Thank you.” Persuaded, Yusuke finally sat down. He kept wondering about the man, but the house was silent after the clock stopped chiming.
“Perhaps you’d prefer green tea,” the woman said as she reached again to pour hot water into the teapot.
“Either is fine with me.”
Though Yusuke’s voice revealed his lingering discomfort, hers was calm, in keeping with the matter-of-fact look on her face.
“People around here let children drink strong green tea even before bedtime. And they always have pickles with it. But I’ve spent so many years in Tokyo that I’m not used to it anymore.”
Yusuke felt mildly surprised to learn from this that she was not from the big city. He had assumed he was in the company of a person born and bred there and wondered how it felt for a local to return to the area in the summer.
“So you’re from this area?” he asked.
“Yes, originally. I grew up in Saku, which is just over that way,” she said, gesturing with her hand. “Nowadays, it’s turned almost into a city, but it used to be real country.”
Yusuke was not sure if the area where he grew up was “real country” too, yet it seemed appropriate to say, “I’m not from Tokyo either.”
“Is that so?” She smiled lightly and, after putting her reading glasses back on, asked, “Where are you from?”
“Matsue.”
“Matsue, in Shimane Prefecture?”
“Yes, near Izumo.”
“Ah, Izumo, as in the Grand Izumo Shrine,” she said, nodding.
The woman picked up some fabric and scissors and began taking apart what looked like a yukata, a summer cotton kimono. The veins on her hands had started to become prominent, as one would expect at her age.
His eyes followed the movements of her hands. Perhaps it was the expression “real country” that revived a distant memory. Unexpectedly, those slender hands had conjured up another pair—a very different pair, with sturdy fingers rough from working in the fields. They belonged to his grandmother, his father’s mother.
When he was in his first years of primary school, he used to spend his summers with his grandparents, who lived deep in the mountains of Susa. His grandmother’s knees hurt, so she no longer worked in the fields; she spent the entire day on the sunny wood-floored veranda outside the tatami room. She always sat there, her back bent, her legs tucked under her, stitching, undoing old seams, and stitching anew. He liked watching her wield the tiny sewing scissors with her thick, reddened fingers as she targeted one thin thread after another, snip, snip, snip.
A whiff of camphor would drift in the air, and he could hear the sound of the annual high school baseball games coming from the corner of the room nearby. The television was always left on. When he dozed off, he would wake to find she had covered him with a light blanket. After his last summer there, his parents got divorced, and for Yusuke, who went to live with his mother, the memories of summers far up in the mountains eventually g
rew hazy. Only fragments remained, like dreams from a previous life: large clay stoves on the earth floor of the kitchen, the cows and goats they kept, the old house with nothing but tatami rooms. Nonetheless, his memories of his grandmother were embedded in him, and even now he found it soothing to be in the presence of a woman who was no longer young.
Eyes still cast down, the woman asked, “Are you a student?” He could see that she didn’t dye her hair. There was quite a bit of gray.
“No.”
“Are you working then?”
“Yes.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m an editor on a literary journal.”
“Ah, that’s why you’re so well-spoken for a young person,” she said.
Older people often complimented him like this.
The woman’s Japanese had become much more familiar than it had been. Perhaps she always spoke rather formally when she met people for the first time. Once she decided he probably wasn’t a blueblood, she too seemed to feel more at ease. Yusuke thought he even detected a trace of condescension in her voice.
“Have you been working long?”
“This is my fourth year.”
“Still pretty young then. In what year of the Showa period were you born?”
“The forty-fourth. Nineteen sixty-nine.”
“So presumably your parents are still in good health—in fact, they must be younger than I am, aren’t they?”
For a brief moment, he didn’t know how to properly respond.
“They’re both alive and well. They got divorced when I was small, though, so my present father is not my real father.” But why was he telling a stranger such personal things? By the time he realized what he was saying, the words had already slipped out. What’s more, the tone of his voice made it clear that he and his stepfather were not on the best terms.
The woman stopped her needlework, lowered her glasses, and looked at him. She parted her lips as if she meant to make further inquiries but checked herself. After a moment, she remarked instead, “It was like that with me. I also had two fathers.”
This time it was Yusuke’s turn to take a good look at her.
A True Novel Page 15