Her younger sisters exclaimed in agreement.
“It’s true. It’s all in the faces.”
“Isn’t it odd how you can tell?”
“I know. You can tell immediately that they were all dirt-poor peasants once, walking around with buckets of manure.”
“Such horrid faces.”
“And that’s how all our politicians look these days too.”
The three old women were talking as if they had forgotten their guest, with a frankness a person would normally reserve only for family or very close friends. Yusuke seemed hardly to exist to them. And yet, for all that, he sensed that this particular conversation did in fact require his presence as audience. Indeed, he felt it was only because they happened to have him as audience that they had revived an old, worn topic. Yusuke wondered what they thought of him. Did they take him for one of their own kind because he’d graduated from an elite university and worked for a well-known publisher? Or did they enjoy daring to be outspoken, not caring even if he happened to be on the wrong side?
As Yusuke sat mulling this over, an old memory floated into his mind. It was from shortly before his parents separated, so he must have been in third grade. His father’s parents, who lived in Susa, had come on an extended visit to Tokyo, taking him along. One day, Yusuke was with his grandmother on a suburban train as they headed back to the house where they were staying with relatives. The train was not too crowded, and the two of them had found seats diagonally across from each other. When the seat next to Yusuke emptied, he cupped his hands around his mouth, called out, “Grandma! Grandma!” and pointed at the empty place beside him. His grandmother answered loudly, in her country way, “Alrighty, I’m a-comin’.” She took hold of the bag on her lap with fingers rough and swollen from working in the fields, and stood up. Just then he noticed that the other passengers were looking on curiously. Though he was fond of her, he’d felt acutely embarrassed at the time.
But it had happened ages ago. The embarrassment was long since gone. There was only warmth in his memory of her now.
He wondered how the three sisters would have reacted to her.
The three rattled on, mixing that inhibiting formality of theirs with deliberately blunt asides for theatrical effect.
They lamented how, once the Bullet Train station was completed, the old station, with all its charm, would be torn down; how the large-scale shopping mall planned for the south side of the new station would necessarily attract even more out-of-towners; how the Kinokuniya food store, where they had been buying things for ages, would soon be taken over by one of the local chains of giant supermarkets—in other words, one story after another about how the world was going to the dogs.
Yusuke listened to their talk with a certain interest, only adding an occasional accommodating word or two.
With the conversation so lively, none of them had noticed the sound of slippered feet pattering toward the porch. Abruptly, as though fallen from the sky, a girl appeared from the dining room. Yusuke caught his breath; the old women also stopped talking.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” the girl said, ducking her head in a quick bow. It was as though the Present had suddenly appeared to banish the Past. Skinny and long-limbed, she wore a navy-blue apron and cotton work gloves. Her black hair was straight and shoulder-length. Yusuke realized that the girl must be Ami, that she had been cleaning somewhere in the house, and that the gong Fumiko had rung was meant also to summon her.
Putting her knife and fork down, Harue let the vivacity in her voice fall away.
“You cleaned inside the closets too, I hope?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“In all three rooms?”
“Yes.” The girl glanced briefly at Yusuke, apparently curious about who this stranger might be. “I also took a look up in the attic, and found a dark stain on the ceiling of the west room. There might have been a leak when it rained. The floor looked a bit stained too.”
“Oh dear,” Harue exclaimed with a frown. “The west room—which room would that be?”
Fuyue promptly told her, “The one we kept as a maid’s room.”
“Oh, that one. Fumi used to use it. Tell Fumi about the leak, and ask for a big bowl or something to put under the water stain.” After a pause, she murmured as if to herself, “There’s no point in getting it fixed. This might well be our last stay.”
While Yusuke was puzzling out the significance of this remark, the girl excused herself with another quick bow. She headed toward the kitchen, where he supposed she and Fumiko would have their meal. The three sisters watched until she disappeared.
“An admirable girl,” Harue said, returning to her brunch, the tone in her voice suggesting little admiration.
“She is Fumiko’s granddaughter.”
“We’ve known her since she was a tiny baby,” Fuyue said, holding her hands apart to indicate how small she’d been. “They’re not related by blood, but Fumiko has raised her like her own child.”
“The girl has always been very good at drawing, even when she was little.”
“And recently she’s been doing strange pictures—like something by de Chirico. I suppose she likes that kind of style.”
“She’s still a student.”
“At Waseda University, in the Department of Science and Engineering. Studying environmental something or other.”
“She’s very smart.”
“She plans to go on to graduate school.”
“Is that what she said? I thought she wanted to study abroad.”
“She’ll probably do both.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
After a short silence, Harue said pensively, “As we were saying before, I suppose you must admit that young people these days have become quite pleasant to look at—Ami included.”
“I agree. They all look the same, but they’re much prettier than the past generation.”
“And taller too.”
“Yes.”
“It used to be that all the locals really looked like peasants.”
“It’s so true. When we were young, it was hard to believe they had anything in common with us.”
“And it wasn’t just us. Do you remember that scene in Tatsuo Hori’s novel The Beautiful Village?”
“Which one?”
“Where the man hands out money to the children in the village.”
“I don’t remember it.”
“You don’t? Well, it didn’t leave much of an impression on me when I first read it, but then I reread it about ten years ago and was quite shocked. The children didn’t run errands for him or anything. The man just gives them baksheesh.”
“As in India.”
“Exactly.”
“We’ve come such a long way.”
“That’s right. Now you have country children going to graduate school and studying abroad. Amazing.”
“And I’ve seen local people driving around in Mercedes-Benzes.”
Realizing once again that they had started to talk amongst themselves, Natsue the middle sister turned to Yusuke and asked: “Have you read The Beautiful Village?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“I’m not surprised. The younger generation doesn’t read novels like that anymore now, do they?”
Her elder sister, ignoring this attempt at courtesy, continued her line of conversation: “But, you know, Fumi has always been presentable. She cut a nice figure too.”
“Well, of course. She’d worked for the Occupation Forces,” Fuyue remarked. “Besides, with the war over, it was the new age. Everything began to change.”
“She didn’t have any accent either.”
“At first she did,” Natsue pointed out. “But, being her, she hardly said a word when she first came to work for us. At least, not until she got rid of her accent.”
Yusuke tried to picture what Fumiko might have looked like as a “presentable” young woman. He imagined her in a white blouse with a collar tight around her neck and a
plain navy-blue skirt.
After turning the record over, Fuyue came back and asked, “By the way, do you remember that woman who lived with us when we were little, the one who was so ashamed of her accent that she wouldn’t talk at all?”
“I do. Her accent was horrendous, but then so was her face.”
“Not just her face, her figure too. She was so short that her legs were only about as long as our arms.”
“And remember how she used to accompany Grammy on shopping trips? They became famous around the Seijo neighborhood because they made such an odd-looking pair. What was her name?”
“Shige. Grammy used to sing out ‘Shi-GE,’ remember?”
“That’s right. Now, where did she come from?”
“Sado Island, wasn’t it?”
“No, no, no. The one from Sado was Chiyo—who got so excited when she was given some sugar that she put it on her noodles! She’d hardly ever tasted it before.”
“She really did that?”
“I remember her! Chiyo was the one who slept without any clothes on, and the other maids got upset and told Grammy. Chiyo said that back at home the family all got under the covers naked together to keep warm at night. What a peculiar custom! That girl was very pretty, though, with a perfect little doll’s face.”
“I have a very distinct memory of when she left us to get married. Our family provided almost everything for her.”
“So Shige may have been from Gunma, then.”
“No, we never had anyone from Gunma. Most of them were from Niigata because of Grammy’s family connections.”
“Then where was she from?”
“Maybe from ghastly Saitama?”
“No, Saitama’s not right either. Hisa was the one from Saitama, but she worked for us much later. Remember? She’s the one who paid a visit to us after the war, and she’d had plastic surgery, which made her eyes look like a foreigner’s. All of a sudden she’d become so modern, with her high heels and whatnot. We were all flabbergasted!”
“Yes, that’s right!”
“It was so-o hilarious we went nearly out of our minds!”
All three burst into ringing laughter.
For a while, the old ladies chattered on about where the maid Shige might have been from. But then, as if suddenly remembering his presence, Harue, with less haughtiness than before, asked Yusuke, “How about you? You must be from Tokyo.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Kyoto, then?”
“No.”
Discomfort was written on their faces. Yusuke felt it inadvisable to remain silent. “I’m from Matsue,” he volunteered.
“Matsue?” Natsue took over, smiling with her dimple. “Oh, yes, a place famous for the tea ceremony. Very respectable, very nice.”
Her comment sounded so forced that it made the other two start giggling. Yet the moment she stopped laughing, Harue announced, as if she were challenging some invisible enemy: “What’s wrong with talking about the maids we used to have when we were young? We’re not on national television, for heaven’s sake, where everything is so sanitized! While I’m still alive, I want to be able to speak my mind freely, at least when I’m with my own family. I’m tired of always worrying about what other people think.”
“Since when have you cared what other people think?” said Fuyue.
Harue turned to their guest. “In any case, the world has changed completely. Women don’t work as maids anymore. Why, even the word ‘maid’ has become taboo. It’s not allowed now on television or even in the newspapers.” She continued with a look of utter scorn, “Were you aware of that? I just cannot believe something like this is going on!”
Before Yusuke could reply, Fuyue interjected, “Yes, it’s ridiculous. Even if you’re talking about the old days, you have to say ‘housekeepers’ instead.”
“But they were maids, in every sense of the term, not housekeepers,” Harue stated categorically. “Democracy is a good thing. I have nothing against it. I just don’t see why we should have to censor our own language—especially if we’re talking about the past.”
Her already indignant eyes practically gave out sparks.
“In the old days, every family had maids. So by not using the word, are we meant to pretend they didn’t exist?”
“That’s the Japanese way,” replied Fuyue. “If you don’t use the word for it, then it never existed. The fact that there used to be all those women in service is something they think we should just blot out.”
“Which is so maddening!” Harue said heatedly, not even attempting to mask her irritation. “All those young girls worked their hearts out. Are we supposed to just forget about them?”
After a brief silence, Fuyue spoke up again.
“But you know, Harue, dear,” she said. Her voice was soft, as if trying to mollify a child, and deep, as if trying to understand it herself. “These people who want to suppress the past—a lot of them honestly believe they’re doing it out of kindness. They think those women would rather not remember what their lot in life was.”
Harue pressed her lips tightly together.
Fuyue continued in the same tone, “If that’s the case, people like us are really in no position to protest, are we?”
Harue glared at her as if her irritation prevented her from speaking. After a moment she sighed and said: “I suppose you’re right,” and, sighing again, repeated, “I suppose you’re right.” But apparently not convinced, she added, “Even so, if the Japanese people go on like that, we’ll end up knowing nothing about our own past.”
Then she turned toward the house.
“Fumi still calls herself a maid, and she seems fine with it.”
Fuyue said, in a whisper, “That’s because she’s proud.”
“Yes, of course. That’s it,” Harue nodded heartily, able to agree with this, at least.
“Such a competent maid too,” Natsue added irrelevantly. The others looked at her, in mild surprise, and smiled wryly. Realizing her blunder, she put on the same wry smile herself, embarrassed.
“What were we talking about?” Harue asked.
“I don’t remember.”
“We started out saying how much Karuizawa has changed.”
“That’s right,” said Harue, the agitation fading from her eyes. She looked over at Yusuke. “I do hope you will forgive us for these digressions.”
“Old people are so easily distracted,” added Fuyue apologetically. In tacit agreement to focus on their guest, the sisters then assailed Yusuke with inconsequential questions—How old were his parents? What did his father do for a living? Where did he live in Kyoto when he was a student? Unfortunately, never good at talking about himself, he gave only brief replies, so the conversation lost the momentum it had had and the meal drew toward an end without it reviving.
As in Oiwake, red dragonflies danced through the air, though autumn was still weeks away. It was very quiet. Just as Yusuke noticed this, Fuyue seemed to realize that the record had ended. She tossed her napkin on the table and pushed her chair back.
“What else would anyone like to listen to?”
“Too early for Callas. I only listen to opera at night.”
“I’ve had enough of piano music. But I don’t feel like a full orchestra, either.”
“Yes, your highnesses. We are demanding, aren’t we? How about some chamber music, then?” said Fuyue, moving toward the parlor.
Harue, her eyes following her movements, exclaimed as if she had just remembered something: “I know! Put on that record—you know the one I mean?”
“But are you sure?”
“Yes. Do put on that record!” Natsue chimed in, also turning toward her younger sister.
Fuyue, with a quick glance at their guest, replied with slight vexation, “We just got here. Isn’t it a little too soon to listen to it?”
“What’s wrong with playing it now? We have a guest with us today,” said Harue, who turned back to look Yusuke straight in the face with a theatrical smile.<
br />
“All right, all right,” Fuyue conceded reluctantly, and disappeared inside.
Soon, from a distance, a barely audible sound traveled through the air. Indeed, it was so faint Yusuke could hardly tell that the music had started. At the same time, he noticed a look of indescribable sadness come over Harue’s face. It seemed oddly out of character on that aged face, making him stare down at his empty plate, feeling he had seen something he shouldn’t have. Soon, through the cool summer breeze, he began to make out the melody more clearly, the stringed instruments overlapping one another.
Back on the porch, Fuyue picked up her crumpled napkin and, turning toward Yusuke, announced that they were listening to Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet.
No one said a word, each lost in their own thoughts.
So this is the sound of a clarinet, Yusuke thought as he heard a mellow, lingering sound mingle with the violin and other strings; it seemed to rise through a long, dark passage to light and then go rolling across an expanse of fields. Now rising higher or ebbing low, it drew other layers of sound along, undulating in waves large and small.
With his daily life filled with noise, Yusuke had learned to shut out sound of all kinds; here, for the first time in a long while, he let music fill his ears.
For a while, no one spoke.
Fuyue finally broke the silence. “It’s the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II today.”
“Fifty years today,” echoed Natsue.
“There was a big headline in the newspaper about it,” the eldest, Harue, said distractedly, not quite her usual self yet.
Natsue went on in a sentimental voice, “That means that we have been using this place for more than fifty years. It’s no wonder we are all worn out, just like the house.”
At the words “worn out,” she unconsciously pushed her soft, sagging cheeks up with her fingertips.
“Was this house built before the war?” Yusuke asked her.
“Yes, it was. We renovated the upstairs and added on to the downstairs and the front. Only the parlor and the dining room are original. You see, in the old days, the place was much better cared for because we had staff. At this point, we simply cannot keep up with the repairs.”
A True Novel Page 22