During the Occupation, the authorities had requisitioned the house, so the Shigemitsus and the Demon had squeezed into the storage room and maids’ rooms in the attic. But even with the Occupation over, they still rented out part of the first floor and the whole second floor—furniture and all—to an American couple. Evidently only the Americans used the front door.
“They’re a couple of hicks,” she said as we walked down the hall. During the Occupation, they’d had a captain in the house, who had been to one of those famous American universities. The captain and his wife would invite the Shigemitsus into their own living room and serve them tea and play bridge with them. But the present occupants were a couple from Montana who didn’t even speak proper English. It was impossible for the Shigemitsus to socialize with them.
Listening to the Demon as I walked along behind her and Uncle Genji, I wondered what she would make of the pair I worked for at the base, who rarely, if ever, picked up a book.
Behind two heavy oak doors on one side of the house was a vast room with a high ceiling. Thick curtains hung from the windows, so even though it faced south, it was quite dark. In the middle there was a silver-blue rug, on which stood a low wooden table with elaborate carvings on all four sides. Around the table were delicate-looking chairs with silk cushions, the same blue as the rug. A pair of brick-colored leather armchairs were placed near one corner. The room itself left a strong impression on me, but other details are vague because just a few years later, not only the room but the whole house was demolished, so that day was my first and last sight of it. It was easy to see that its owner had a passion for architecture and all things English, and even someone like me could tell that it was of an entirely different order from the hastily built structures on the base.
There was a fireplace on the north wall. The mantelpiece had some ceramic and bronze sculptures on it, with a framed photograph leaning against the wall in the middle. In front of it was a vase filled with small, bright flowers from the garden.
The Demon lowered her voice and said, “He looks just like him.”
“Who does?”
“Miss Yayoi’s little boy. The little master looks just like his uncle.”
I was mesmerized, unable to take my eyes off the photograph. It was of a noble-looking young man, the likes of whom I had never seen before. He was a perfect example of what the scion of a distinguished family should be. They say that he deliberately chose to pose in a dress suit for this photo, taken before he left for the front, rather than in uniform. The picture seemed to say that the young man considered his own death in action a certainty, not just a possibility.
The Demon apparently noticed my reaction to the picture, but kept on talking to my uncle.
“It took them quite a while to have this child, and then look what happened. They lost him, along with everything they owned. I thought that was the end of the Shigemitsu family. But now Miss Yayoi’s little boy looks more and more like him, so …”
When Uncle Genji lit a stick of incense just in front of the photograph of the dead young man, the scent—for me, redolent of Buddhist temples—filled the air around us and mingled with the pungent, Western smell of pipe smoke and black tea leaves.
All of a sudden, she turned to me and asked, “So your name is Fumi, is it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“Just the right age.”
They were exactly the same words Mr. Ando had used. I had to keep myself from smiling.
She then turned to Uncle Genji and said, “The family that’s interested in hiring her doesn’t have much standing.”
“You mean the one next door?”
“It’s not a family you would have heard of.”
The coincidence between her comment and Mr. Ando’s no longer struck me as funny. It felt odd. The condescension in her voice only confirmed an impression of her I had formed then as a snobbish and rather disagreeable sort of person.
“Anyway, there are three daughters, and the middle one’s maid just left to get married. So she doesn’t have anybody right now.”
A birthday party was being held at the neighbors’ house, and they and the Shigemitsus were waiting for us to go there for tea, the Demon said. She let us out by the kitchen door and led the way through the back garden.
I heard the sound of laughter coming over the hedge, and some kind of Western classical music. I noticed that there was a gap in the hedge just wide enough for a person to slip through. The Demon explained that, in the final months of the war, everyone in the neighborhood cut holes in their hedges so that they’d be able to escape from fires by running through the openings and their neighbors’ yards. Evidently these families still had a use for the gap after the war had ended.
The shadow of the Shigemitsu house extended just to the hedge, so that the moment I passed through the opening I stepped out of shade. Suddenly, the world was radiantly filled by the May sun.
White freesias, pink tulips, yellow gladioli (I only learned their names later)—all these flowers in every color glowed in the early summer sunlight. It was a large bed; I learned that it had once been a tennis court and, during the war, a vegetable garden. On the lawn beyond this flowerbed was a scene of almost perfect happiness. A group dressed in light summer clothes was sitting on white rattan chairs while little girls with big ribbons in their hair flitted among them like butterflies. This gathering of the beautiful, the privileged, and the happy seemed to make the air shimmer.
The sense of liberation from the past I’d felt when I arrived at Seijo station swept over me again.
That moment probably determined the whole course of my life. I was still young and, for better or worse, all too impressionable. I’ve known the people I saw sitting in the garden that day for forty years now. During those long years, there were many times when I felt I couldn’t go on being with them. I think it’s only owing to that moment in the May sun that I’ve remained connected with them to this day.
A woman in that lively gathering—Yayoi, I guessed—spotted us and detached herself from the others, coming over quickly. She looked more like a young girl than a wife and mother, with her legs so slim in their stockings, below a cotton dress.
“George! How wonderful!”
“Miss Yayoi, how have you been?”
She came up close and clasped Uncle Genji’s hand in hers. I wondered whether this was a custom she’d picked up in London. Obviously she had fond memories of him from the ship, but it also seemed to me a demonstration of a singularly affectionate personality.
But I was staring at her almost awestricken—a woman who’d grown up in London! She had large, brownish eyes that curved down slightly, in a face that seemed to come out of an illustration in a young girl’s novel. She seemed almost unreal to me, perhaps because her skin was so white, or because her hair was the same brownish color as her eyes.
Just then a boy of about six or seven, with the same brownish hair, came flying over and stopped by Yayoi’s side.
“I’m so glad you’re well. You haven’t changed a bit … Masayuki, say hello to our guests.” She put a hand on the back of the child’s head and gently pushed it forward, reminding him to welcome us with a bow.
“Say hello to Uncle George. He’s the man who worked on the big ships that I told you about.”
My uncle squatted down so that he was eye to eye with him. “How old are you?” he asked.
The boy studied his tanned face for a second. Then he said in a clear voice, “I’m seven!” Though he was small, his features were clearly defined. Just as the Demon had told us, he looked amazingly like the man in the picture. As if he wanted to show off how fast he could run—you know how boys do this—he went racing off again. Yayoi called after him happily, “Masayu-u-uki! Be careful!” Then she turned her soft brown eyes on me.
“And what is your name?”
“Fumiko Tsuchiya.”
“Fumiko, is it?”
“I do hope you’ll be able to spend the afternoon with us.”
I’d never had a woman like her speak to me so graciously. I didn’t know what to say, when an older lady appeared. Instead of bowing, she too extended her hand and greeted my uncle by name—then smiled politely in my direction.
“Mrs. Shigemitsu, how nice to see you,” said my uncle.
“I’m so glad you’ve survived it all.”
Yayoi’s mother was about the same age as Mrs. Ando, and a grandmother, but she struck me as more modern-looking even than the young people I saw in Tokyo, with her salt-and-pepper hair cut in a bob, and a stylish gray-and-white-striped dress.
“I lit some incense for Master Noriyuki just now.”
“That was very kind of you,” she said, tears welling up. My father’s death at the front felt remote to me already, but at her advanced age, her son’s death apparently remained fresh in her mind, as if it had just happened.
“It was terrible for me, but even worse for my husband,” she said, nodding toward where he sat. “He was devastated.”
“Hey! Good to see you,” called an older gentleman, waving from his rattan chair. This presumably was Yayoi’s father. He wore a cheerful red scarf around his neck and was chewing on a pipe. “How are you, George?”
With the entire Shigemitsu family gathered near him, Uncle Genji told them about losing his wife and daughter in the Tokyo bombings. Unlike the Andos, the Shigemitsus seemed to feel his own pain and to grieve with him. Tears came into Mrs. Shigemitsu’s eyes again. I understood why they had made such an impression on him.
After that, I was introduced to their neighbors, the Saegusas. Surrounded by their parents, both impressive figures, and a gaggle of little girls who clung to their knees the moment they saw strangers coming, were the three sisters: all lovely women, like flowers in full bloom. I met them in May 1954, so Harue was thirty-three; Natsue had just turned thirty-two; and the youngest, Fuyue, was twenty-eight. They were spectacularly, conspicuously, in their prime.
That moment, though, I didn’t know their names, or who was the eldest and youngest. They were just three beautiful faces lined up together—which somehow seemed to increase their attraction not by three but thirty. The tag “the Three Graces” seemed to fit them perfectly. The clothes they wore also seemed special, unlike other women’s. I couldn’t exactly tell what was different about them. They had dressed up for the birthday party, but not knowing that, I thought these people always dressed like this for leisurely afternoons in the garden. In point of fact, they had only recently been able to have full use of the place again. Though the Saegusas’ house had not been requisitioned by the Occupation authorities—it wasn’t grand enough—they were so hard up right after the war that they rented out part of their house and its annex to Americans and their Japanese “wives.” For quite a while, they too, like the Shigemitsus, had to use the service entrance. But I only found out about all this years later.
“Ah yes, the purser on your ship back from Marseille. I see,” replied Mr. Saegusa on hearing from Mr. Shigemitsu who we were. He greeted us warmly. Everyone there called him “Grampy.” Well-built, with a square face, he radiated energy. His black hair, sticking out from under the gray beret that sat at an angle on his head, was unbelievably shiny and thick. Across from Grampy was “Grammy,” who was dressed in a mauve kimono and had her hair pulled back in an elegant chignon. She was stunning—not surprisingly, considering what her daughters looked like. Unlike Grampy, she had an air of languor about her. With her long body virtually draped over the lawn chair, she greeted us only with a graceful bow of the head and a smile. Grampy and Grammy were still middle-aged, so they were a good deal younger than Mr. and Mrs. Shigemitsu.
Harue, who even then was the boss in the family, snapped shut the ivory fan that she’d been waving around distractedly and said, “Shall we have tea now?”
“Darling!” Yayoi called out, and then louder, “Time for tea!”
A man who had been sitting by himself looked up from the book he’d been reading, the first time he’d taken his eyes off it since we arrived. This was Yayoi’s husband, Masao, the Andos’ third son. Though he was not related by blood, he looked strikingly like Yayoi’s dead brother, whose picture we’d just seen inside. It was no wonder that their son, Masayuki, looked so much like his uncle.
“Darling!” called Harue, purposely imitating Yayoi.
Out on the far side of the lawn, a man who had been swinging a long stick about replied, “Coming!” This was Harue’s husband, Hiroshi. At the time, I had no idea what he was doing with the stick. He was, of course, practicing his golf stroke with a club. While most Japanese around then were skinny, Hiroshi already had a belly on him.
“Time for tea!” called out Harue, imitating Yayoi again.
Everyone laughed. Yayoi was embarrassed. “That wasn’t very nice,” she said, walking away. But she was smiling. Thinking about it now, I’d guess that the three sisters were always envious of how well Yayoi and her husband got along.
I could barely tell the sisters apart, and I can’t say I even noticed that there was only one husband present, though there were three of them. I didn’t really take in, either, going into the Saegusas’ house, how much more ordinary-looking it was than what I’d seen next door.
In the dining room to the left was a large table covered with a white tablecloth and laid with Western-style china. The table wouldn’t seat everyone, so Grampy and Grammy, along with Yayoi’s and Harue’s husbands, sat in chairs in the adjoining room, and the children were put in the alcove beyond. The sisters treated Uncle Genji and me as guests, so we were taken into the dining room and seated at the table. Before me were things I’d never seen in my life. A teapot with a gold rim, in a gold-and-blue design; matching cups and saucers and cake plates; white napkins; and delicate silverware, the tiniest little teaspoons. In the middle was a homemade strawberry shortcake and a celadon vase filled with white freesias.
At the house on the base, they never had afternoon tea, and their tableware was nowhere near as refined. I felt dazed—especially with the three sisters chattering away as they poured the tea.
Usually I pay close attention to what’s around me, but that day it was as if it all went to my head. Once in a while, the Demon would emerge from the kitchen and sternly inspect the table, and there was a chubby girl, also in a smock, shuttling back and forth between the dining room and the parlor with a tray. I barely noticed their comings and goings, just as I was almost unaware of the well-dressed young woman in the alcove beyond the parlor, taking care of the children at their table. I felt so lightheaded I was practically in a trance. Looking back, I can’t help realizing, though, that that tea was the first and last time the sisters treated me as a guest.
Harue started slicing the cake, with its topping of fresh strawberries. She turned to Uncle Genji and said, “You know, this is a birthday party for me and my younger sister. I was born in late April and she in early May. So this is a birthday cake. No candles, of course,” she said with a laugh. “Here, Natsue,” she continued, “pass these around, would you, please?”
“I understand from the Andos that you have a summer house in Karuizawa,” my uncle remarked.
“That’s right,” she told him, her large eyes widening further. She turned toward Yayoi’s parents. “Before the war, Mr. Shigemitsu let us have part of their land there.”
She had barely finished the sentence before he said, “I hope you don’t mind my asking, but would you be Miss Harue?”
Everyone sitting at the table seemed startled, but I might have been the most surprised. The sisters had been introduced simply as the Saegusas, without any mention of their given names.
Uncle Genji looked around the table, proud of this little coup. Then he explained that when he was working on the ships, he’d heard from foreign passengers about three beautiful and talented sisters in Karuizawa named Harue, Natsue, and Akie. When he heard one of
them here referred to as “Natsue,” he concluded that these must be the very same young ladies. He’d guessed that the one with the earlier birthday was Harue.
“You did make one small mistake. I’m Fuyue, not Akie,” Fuyue said with a little pout, pretending to take offense. “I would rather have been Akie, the autumn girl, but I was born in December.” She had assumed the duty of serving the cake, since Natsue, the middle one, was so surprised by my uncle’s story that she’d stopped passing the plates.
“I beg your pardon.”
“No need to apologize. Fuyue is a rather odd name.”
“Not at all. It’s quite a romantic name.”
Uncle Genji looked from one to the other, frankly admiring them. “I remember one passenger telling me that he wished he could take one of the sisters home with him,” he said. “He was a foreigner, with blond hair.”
“Oh, my, it might have been Peter,” Natsue, the middle daughter, said. A big dimple showed in her smiling cheek. She cocked her head to one side and looked at her elder sister.
“If it was someone blond, I suppose it could actually have been Peter,” Harue allowed.
“When did you meet him?” Natsue asked.
“Maybe 1940 or ’41. It was just before the war started.”
“Then it was Peter,” she said, laughing with delight.
“They live up to their reputations, don’t they?” Yayoi smiled as she passed a slice of cake to my uncle.
“With you among them, it would have been a stunning group of women.”
Grammy, who had been listening to the conversation in the dining room, came over, looking marvelous standing in her mauve kimono.
“Why don’t you show them the photo album, Harue?” she suggested.
“Good idea. Fuyue, go and get it for me, will you, please?”
Even then, the two elder sisters were already using Fuyue whenever they needed something. Fuyue came back with a thick, leather-bound album and put it between Uncle Genji and me. The album turned out to be full of pictures of their youth in Karuizawa. (Later, as they faded, occasional glimpses of their younger days must have seemed insufficient to them—they removed some of the pictures and had them framed, to hang near the mantelpiece in their Karuizawa house.)
A True Novel Page 28