“What’s amazing,” Kubo said, “is that people are willing not just to appear on these shows but to watch them too.”
On the next channel, an underwater camera showed a shark as it swam closer and closer, flashing its sharp white teeth, until, suddenly turning in a streamlined arc, it sped away. Kubo continued pressing the button on the remote, but there were so few channels that they quickly ended up back at the first one.
The telephone rang.
Kubo switched the TV off and went to answer it. From the obvious delight in his voice, Yusuke guessed that there was a woman on the line. Even in high school, Kubo had never been ashamed to put on a totally different face when he was dealing with women.
“Great. I’ll see you in a bit, then. Thanks a lot.” He hung up and said, “My big brother’s wife.”
Kubo sat down on the couch again and explained that his brother, with his family, who had left Tokyo by car soon after he had, had just arrived. His sister-in-law was on her way over with some of the fruit from gift baskets given to his grandmother in the hospital.
“She’s coming here?” Yusuke said, bracing himself.
By way of reassuring him, Kubo said, “Don’t worry. She won’t stay long. Their place is barely a five-minute drive from here. I think I told you before that my brother and his wife would be staying there. It’s a lot bigger.”
Kubo’s parents had bought one of the plots in the Mitsui Woods development in the mid-1980s, just before land prices started skyrocketing, and soon built this house. Then his brother had gotten married and invited his in-laws to visit Middle Karuizawa. They fell in love with the area and decided to buy a plot themselves so they could have a summer house of their own. That was why their place was so close by. At the time, the whole Karuizawa area was undergoing a construction boom.
“My mom is so weird about it, though. My brother’s in-laws built their house only a few years after we did, but Mom looks down on them as if she’s been doing this summer villa thing for decades. They’re much, much richer than my folks.”
“They’re rich?”
“Yep. They own some restaurants and a bunch of other things. My mom never approved of that to begin with, because it’s not as respectable as working for a big corporation or something. But it’s been a lifesaver for my brother. He and his family live in their own place, but they pay no rent.”
“Hmm …”
“After the economy started to go sour, the family ended up in the hole, but financially they’re still in a different league from a corporate employee like my dad. Of course, their debt must be in a whole different league too.”
Kubo yawned and, cradling the back of his head in his hands, languidly faced the blank television screen.
“But you know, watching my mom since she became a mother-in-law has got me thinking that maybe the females of the species are all hellcats.”
His legs still up on the coffee table, he started rotating his ankles first to the left, then to the right. Before long, he was also stretching his neck muscles by pulling his head first to one side, then the other. He was never able to sit still.
“And I got to tell you, my brother’s wife is really sexy. Pretty and well stacked. And you know what else? She’s got a little sister who’s single. And she’s not bad either. Nice face, nice body.”
“Hmm …”
“Yeah, but somehow the older one is more of a fox, you know what I mean?” he added, half to himself. Just then the doorbell rang. The all-too-familiar sound made Yusuke feel for a moment as if they were back in Tokyo. Next they heard the door swing open—it wasn’t locked—and as Kubo started for the front hall, a woman wearing a bandana appeared in the living room and said hello.
“The roads were unbelievably crowded, even before we got off the highway. I suppose we should have expected that during the Bon festival.”
She held a baby in one arm and a heavy-looking grocery bag in the other.
“I told your mom that I’d be glad to stay in Tokyo to help out with Grandma at the hospital. But since this is Ken’s one and only real vacation, she suggested I’d better be out here with him. Plus, with this little one, I wouldn’t have been much use anyways,” she said, looking at her baby’s face. She then turned toward Yusuke and bowed her head in greeting.
Kubo introduced him. “This is my friend Yusuke Kato.”
“Nice to meet you.”
Her bare arms and legs were smoothly tanned, as was her midriff, showing between her tank top and cropped white pants. She looked as if she played golf or tennis every day, even in Tokyo.
Grinning, Kubo gave her the once-over.
“Putting on a little weight, Ruri? You’re beginning to look kind of stately.”
“Mind your own business.” Ruri turned away from him and put the grocery bag down on the counter.
“Here’s the stuff—you’ll find things like melons and mangos in it.”
“Thanks for bringing it over. Hey, we’ve got some iced green tea. Want some? It’s homemade, not the commercial kind.”
“Wow, Hideki, I am impressed. And—hey—you’ve kept the kitchen so clean too,” she said, looking around the room. “Ooh, and even bread from Asanoya.”
“I didn’t do any of it. This guy did. He likes to mess around in the kitchen, and he doesn’t seem to have a girlfriend. Must be gay.”
“You’re so rude. I think it’s cool. Girls go for men who know how to cook, in case you haven’t heard.”
The sister-in-law shot a smile of approval in Yusuke’s direction.
The baby, still in her arms, started to fuss.
“Yesh, yesh. Good girl, what a good girl. For a baby, she can really focus. Look how she keeps looking at you. She doesn’t let her eyes wander.”
Kubo had filled a glass with tea and held it out to her.
“Thanks,” she said, and, after taking a couple of sips, handed the glass back and announced that she had to go. Looking first at Kubo and then at Yusuke, she asked, “What are you guys doing for dinner tonight? You don’t have a car, so you can’t really go anywhere.”
“Yeah, but I’m sure Yusuke here will make us something.”
“If you want to, why don’t you join us for dinner? I called that restaurant, Ceryle, from a rest stop, and they said we could probably get two tables if we eat between five-thirty and seven. We can all sit together. If you two came, there would be how many adults? Let’s see: you two, Grandpa, Grandma, my little sister, your brother, and me, so that’s seven. And one child—oh, plus the baby,” she said, making a funny face at her. “So we’d be fine.”
Kubo hesitated for a moment and explained to Yusuke, “Ceryle is just down the hill—you remember, the French restaurant next to the property manager’s. But it’s not one of those real fancy French places.”
“Why don’t you come? It’d save you having to cook for yourselves.”
“What do you want to do?” Kubo looked at his friend as if trying to read his face.
“Either way is fine with me.”
“Are you sure?” Aware that Yusuke was not fond of going out with a crowd, Kubo was willing to let him decide.
“Sure,” Yusuke said. It didn’t much matter to him whether he was in a crowd or alone with Kubo; his thoughts were of what he’d seen and heard since the night in Oiwake. Besides, Kubo liked company.
“Let’s go, then.”
“Great,” the sister-in-law said. “We’ll come by and pick you up about five twenty-five.”
“That’s okay. It’s only a short walk.”
“But we’ll be passing by anyway.” She took the baby’s chubby hand in hers and waved it at them as she said, “Bye-bye.”
YUSUKE SPENT THE entire evening with a crowd of people.
The French restaurant was at the bottom of the winding mountain road; it took the group only three minutes to arrive in their two German cars. It was a log chalet and looked fancy enough to Yusuke. The sister-in-law’s family appeared to be regulars, since they were on easy
terms with the waiter, dressed in black. Yusuke, who felt insufficiently interested in the menu to study it, simply ordered a set dinner with a main dish of sea bass à la poêle. First came an hors d’oeuvre, an homard something—a piece of lobster that he could easily have consumed in one bite, but that he cut up into smaller pieces before eating. The waiter then laid a large plate in front of him containing a sea bass fillet elegantly garnished with a mélange of red, green, and yellow vegetables. It tasted fine, but, as with every other time he’d had fish prepared in a Western way, he felt certain that a piece of salt-grilled fish, eaten simply with soy sauce and grated radish—using chopsticks—would taste better. When it came to paying, the sister-in-law’s father took care of it, hardly noticing, with his credit card. The group complained of having had to dine in such haste that they didn’t get to enjoy the wine; so they decided to have another round of drinks at the in-laws’, and Yusuke went along with them. The two-story house, including a spacious attic, was not only larger but much more lavish than Kubo’s parents’ place. It reminded Yusuke what an extravagant era the eighties had been.
With so many present, including children, the conversation meandered from the father-in-law’s high blood pressure to the older child’s having to take an entrance exam for kindergarten, and eventually to Kubo’s brother’s liver condition. Before long, though, the assembled company settled on the topic of a certain family who had a summer house in Minamihara to which they’d been invited for a party the following night. Its previous owner being unable to pay the inheritance tax, the buyer had managed to get the whole tract at a bargain price and, after tearing down the old villa, had built a sumptuous residence with a heated swimming pool in the basement. All the exterior walls, down to those of the bicycle shed, were of polished granite. Even the contractor had been surprised, saying he hadn’t worked on a project this expensive since the economic bubble burst. The new owner was the founder of a national chain of discount clothing stores.
“Even with the economy as bad as it is, there are still people making big money. That’s what fascinates me about the business world,” Kubo’s brother said to his father-in-law. He was just a corporate employee, but he seemed to have hopes of taking over his wife’s family business.
Apparently, this was the second time they had been invited to a party at the house in Minamihara. The year before, nearly a hundred people had shown up. Arranged around the heated pool were ice buckets full of Dom Pérignon. The guests had raved about it for months afterward. At a time when people were forgoing summers here, and when those who did come spent less and less, this was an unheard-of display of luxury.
The sister-in-law looked over at Kubo and Yusuke as they sat there next to each other on the couch.
“You guys should come too. They’re starting about three and going on all night.”
“But we’re not invited.”
“It doesn’t matter. If you come with us, they won’t mind. The party’s full of people who don’t know them as well as we do.”
Last year, there had been such a huge crowd at the party that the next day the owner had called her to ask who everyone was, she confided with a certain satisfaction. You could see how thrilled she was by the special attention given to her family. Though they were newcomers in these parts compared to Kubo’s family, they were making rapid social headway.
YUSUKE AND KUBO borrowed flashlights and walked back to the house. It was a moonlit night, like the one two days ago. With the paved road so smooth and wide, it hardly felt like mountain country. At every corner, there was a street sign mounted on a low lava-stone wall. Yusuke was amusing himself by shining the light on names like Titmouse Lane, Kingfisher Drive, or Turtledove Way, when Kubo spoke up.
“I think my sister-in-law kind of has a thing for me.”
Yusuke had had that impression too.
“Well, what can you do? Can I help it if I’m more of a hunk than my brother? But,” he said more seriously, “I’m starting to feel kind of uncomfortable about it. I mean, I can’t do anything about it, right? I couldn’t do that to my brother. I guess I’ll have to make do with the kid sis.”
Yusuke had no idea what to say to this, so he just smiled and kept walking. It wasn’t as if Kubo expected him to say anything anyway. When he shifted his eyes away from the paved road to the night sky, he saw the moon moving along with him.
After the two had walked in silence for a while, Kubo asked, “Are you going to go tomorrow?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said vaguely, still gazing at the moon.
“It’d be fun to see how the rich live.”
“Right.”
For an instant, the urge to race the moon, as he used to do when he was a child, skipped through him.
“I’ll decide tomorrow,” he said eventually, though really he had already decided. He would go to Oiwake.
NOTHING REMAINED OF the charred ogara; an evening storm had washed it away. But the flowers of the two thistles that had been next to it were bigger and hardier-looking, as if filled with new vitality.
Walking the bicycle, which he had picked up from the repair shop on his way, Yusuke passed through the gate. When he stepped onto the porch, he heard Fumiko calling out a welcome, sounding as if he came there every day. He leaned forward and peered inside, only to find the same tin-lined tea chest lid propped open, and Fumiko still surrounded by a pile of fabric. She looked up without surprise.
“Have a seat out there; I’ll join you in a second.” She half rose and started tidying the pile.
“Is Mr. Azuma here?”
“He left for Tokyo this morning.”
She did not seem to mind that he hadn’t called first. Yusuke so disliked talking on the telephone that he often went to extremes to avoid using one, at least when he was not at work. He had decided that if Azuma was at the house when he arrived, or Fumiko wasn’t there, he would just come back some other time. He was surprised that she was not surprised in the least.
He chose the same seat where he’d sat for breakfast on his first, accidental visit.
Cicadas were still humming loudly. The rustling of the leaves in the high branches, and the flickering of the sunlight across the porch—everything remained the same. He felt as though he had been sitting here like this since the moment Fumiko had suddenly begun to cry. Or even longer, since before he was born.
He heard a roar above them and, when he looked up, he saw a large helicopter flying across the blue sky again.
“The Occupation Forces …”
As he whispered these words to himself, Yusuke felt for the first time that the postwar years had become a reality for him.
3
Fumiko
“I’M AFRAID THERE’LL be a lot of digressions.”
“That’s all right.”
“A lot. Really a lot.”
“No. It’s okay.”
THE WOMAN JOINED him on the porch and began.
IT’S NOT THAT I feel as if I’ve lived all that long. It’s just that I can’t recognize myself in the child I was. Somewhere along the way, when I was still young, my life took a different turn, but I kept on going without realizing it. Then one day when I finally looked back, I saw that the path I’d started on before the turn had somehow disappeared. I can summon up hazy images of a girl in a padded jacket—the kind people in the country used to wear in winter—dragging her little sister along by the hand, and carrying her little brother on her back. But it’s hard to see myself in her.
Of course I do have some childhood memories that are still quite clear.
First, of Mount Asama. No matter where we were, we could always see it—from out by the well, in the paddy fields, on the road to school, in the schoolyard. Asama on a cloudy day or in the rain; Asama in the snow or beneath a clear blue sky. How can I describe it on a clear day? With each moment, the face of the mountain changed color until, at sunset, it glowed a smoky purple. Even as a child, I felt blessed to have it nearby, a mountain so imposing—and so ancien
t that just thinking how long it had stood there was overwhelming. When spring finally arrived, you could see its snowcap melting; threads of water showed silver as they flowed down the mountain’s folds.
And there was the Chikuma River. Just as you could see Mount Asama from everywhere, you could hear the river from virtually anywhere. Its sound, so faint sometimes that you had to strain to hear it, was oddly reassuring. At night, before falling asleep, I used to listen for the river, and when I caught the sound, I’d pull my cold quilts up to my face, relieved. Apparently this River of a Thousand Bends got its name because, from its headwaters through deep valleys in the south, it constantly changes direction. Reaching Saku, where I grew up, both its incline and its angles become gentler than higher up. Even so, I could always hear it murmuring.
Behind our house was a creek that branched off from the Chikuma and, when summer came, there were rice-fish and whirligig beetles in its clear water. I used to crouch down and scoop up some of the water to drink. I can still feel the chill of it on my palms and in my mouth. I can also remember the earth smell of a potato just dug from the ground, the mealy stench of the night-soil pit, and the musty odor of the hardened dirt of the kitchen floor, tamped down by generations of footsteps.
MOUNT ASAMA
CHIKUMA RIVER
These are my memories, but they just don’t seem like mine. The sensations remain vivid, as if engraved on me, but … how shall I put it? I feel my mind has changed so much that they’re no longer part of who I am now. I can see no link between the world of my childhood and my adult life. I suppose every adult feels he’s different from when he was a child. But for someone like me, who moved into an entirely different world when still quite young, it’s as if a deep gap divides my past and my present.
I HAVE AN aunt named O-Hatsu. Of those I thought of as “the grown-ups” when I was little, I lost one, then two, and now they’re almost all in their graves except O-Hatsu, the wife of my mother’s eldest brother. She’s still quite fit at ninety, fit enough to chew her food with her own teeth. Apparently she grew up in a house without a bar of soap, let alone tooth powder. Her family didn’t have electricity until she started elementary school, and she’d never seen a train until the tracks of the Koumi Line were laid in Saku. It’s exactly as if she were born in the Edo period. These days, you only have to drive for five minutes to find a sparkling clean convenience store, with bright lights above shelves stocked with everything you could possibly need. Land that used to be fields of mulberry bushes is now crisscrossed by smooth, wide roads lined with video rental stores and fast-food restaurants.
A True Novel Page 24