A True Novel

by Minae Mizumura

  But there was a fly in the ointment, as far as he was concerned: his one son, Takero, as well as being socially awkward, wanted only to continue his laboratory research. Natsue had been aware when she married him that he had no intention of following his father into the clinic and eventually taking over, or of going into politics. She knew that, as a researcher, he would never have an income like his father’s. Even so, the couple expected the clinic itself to continue doing well, and some of the profits from it to trickle down to them, once the war was over.

  Not long after Natsue moved out to Karuizawa as a young bride, it all changed. Takero’s father had a massive heart attack, without warning, one day as he was getting out of the bath, and after remaining in a coma for two weeks, he died. This calamity was followed by another one: bill collectors descended, one after another, on the Utagawa household. Without Takero knowing, his father had borrowed huge amounts of money to subsidize his political activities and to support his extravagant personal habits. He’d also helped other people get loans by letting them use his name as a guarantor. Things might have turned out differently if Takero, as heir, had agreed to take over the clinic, but he was bent on continuing his research. The bill collectors must have taken advantage of his financial naïveté: they offered to trade his father’s debts for the clinic and house. In the wink of an eye, the clinic was sold to another doctor. All he got to keep was some furnishings, a few antiques in the storehouse, and three houses across the road that the family rented out. His father had promised to set up the newlyweds in a house of their own after the war, but when Natsue came back from Karuizawa with her baby, she found herself living with Takero’s stepmother in one of the rental properties, a small two-story place, which the previous tenants had vacated during the war to escape the bombings.

  With this turn of events, Natsue saw no reason for them to stay in Kichijoji. She insisted that they move closer to her parents’ house, where they’d be able to get some practical and financial support. Her husband agreed to this, partly because he felt sorry for her and partly because it was painful for him to see the clinic in someone else’s hands. To start with, they looked for land in Seijo, but even after selling off their property and all their things and getting a loan from Grampy, buying a plot of land in that area meant they would have no money left to build a house. Natsue resigned herself to their building something inexpensive with just enough rooms to get by on, in Chitose Funabashi.

  That, I finally understood, was why Natsue said the words “Chitose Funabashi” in such a resentful way that day. “They tricked me into this marriage,” she used to say. “I wouldn’t feel this way if the clinic had burned down in the bombings, but to have it taken away to pay off creditors! Besides, how could he be so extravagant when he was so deeply in debt!”

  My own impression—if it’s fair to say so—is that Natsue by nature wasn’t strong or persevering enough to cope with the disaster that hit her husband’s family. She had married a man very much in love with her, and had always assumed—almost as a birthright—that she should have a happier life than other people. In this she had Harue to thank for encouraging the attitude she took.

  HARUE AND NATSUE shared a degree of closeness that was unusual even in close sisters. Perhaps because they grew up feeling that they were special, theirs was a kind of intimacy rarely seen among ordinary people. They also had confusingly similar names, they were born only a year apart, and they resembled one another in face, figure, and voice; it was natural that, as children, they were often mistaken for twins. The first time I ever saw them together side by side, I found their alikeness almost comical.

  All the same, you couldn’t find another pair of sisters who were more different. Contrasting personalities aside, it was their differing abilities that set them so far apart. Harue was dominant not only through strength of character—she was simply smarter, if I may be so blunt. Siblings often compete with one another, but there was almost no rivalry between these two—because, I think, the difference in intelligence made competition unnecessary. Naturally, Harue was conscious of this difference. I believe she not only coddled her younger sister but took her under her wing and protected her. From an early age, Harue must have decided to continue helping her throughout their lives, to compensate wherever Natsue fell short. The other side of the story was, of course, that she expected more out of life herself than she thought Natsue would end up with.

  Yet in marriage—perhaps the most important factor in a woman’s life—her younger sister ended up with a far better husband than she did. Natsue herself must have been proud in the beginning of having made a more desirable match. But that wasn’t because she understood the man’s true worth. Harue, on the other hand, fully understood Takero’s worth from the start. In comparing her sister’s marriage with her own from then on, she must have resented it and was never reconciled to it.

  I believe Harue regretted her own marriage even before the ceremony took place: the man who’s about to marry me has no idea how lucky he is, she thought; he’s not even close to being seriously in love. She must have deplored her choice—both hated and pitied herself for throwing away her future in the desperation that followed Noriyuki’s death, when she was still young. The conviction that “Noriyuki would have chosen me” was probably at its strongest in Harue, who considered herself far above her sisters. As she’d seen it, Yayoi Shigemitsu would marry and leave the family while she herself would join it by marrying Noriyuki, leaving her sister Natsue to marry a man who would take the Saegusa name. It would not surprise me, anyway, to know that Harue had this kind of self-serving dream. But reality betrayed her. Worse, a sister she inwardly considered rather silly had a man who more than made up for his lack of refinement by loving her so deeply. On top of that, he probably loved her precisely for the qualities Harue didn’t have—for her guilelessness and for not having it in her nature to think so much of herself. Being as sharp-sighted as she was, Harue surely saw all this. So she had to have known that Takero would never fall for her. For her part, Natsue believed that Takero wanted to marry her for her looks, never suspecting there could be better reasons, which made her as innocent as ever. But Harue, confronted with Natsue’s marriage, must have felt quite uneasy. Also, she’d always taken charge of her docile sister, and control was being taken from her.

  Then, with the senior Dr. Utagawa’s death, it turned out there was no money.

  “You are so unlucky, dear,” Harue would have said. “What a pity that it had to end up this way, with the Utagawa Clinic gone. I’m sure Takero is socially very respectable, but he doesn’t earn much, does he? Besides, you have to live with that mother-in-law of yours. Poor you!”

  A doctor teaching at a university could add to his income by doing clinical work as well, but Takero, aside from his teaching, spent all his time in the laboratory, so he only had his salary. And it really was bad luck that Natsue had to live with her mother-in-law: they had nothing in common. They might as well have been born in different countries and lived in different cultures. I’m sure Harue did feel sorry for her sister when she said, “What a pity.” But she saw an opportunity in Natsue’s misfortune to pull her away from the Utagawas. That was the backdrop to Harue’s inviting her to work at Primavera with her when she started the dressmaking school.

  Primavera was born out of Harue’s conviction that their daughters should grow up with the same kind of luxury they had grown up with. The postwar years were difficult ones. In trying to think of ways to make some money for themselves, Harue fell back on the dressmaking plans that had been thwarted by the war. Luckily, they already had two sewing machines; when they were still girls, Grampy, who liked to spoil his daughters, noted their excitement about learning dressmaking from their neighbor Mrs. Shigemitsu and decided to buy each of them a Singer sewing machine, an imported product not many people could afford at the time.

  Primavera was a much bigger hit than anyone anticipated. After years of deprivation, women in Japan longed for beautiful t
hings, especially if those things suggested Europe or America. It was perfect timing, since there was still no ready-made clothing of decent quality available. Almost as soon as Primavera opened, they were flooded with students willing to commute from stations far along the Odakyu Line to take lessons. Unexpectedly, it turned out Natsue had as much of a gift for dressmaking as her sister. By the time Yuko, her older girl, became a first grader at Seijo Academy’s elementary school, Natsue was already helping out every day. The two sisters would often go to Maruzen bookstore, which sold imported books and journals, buy Vogue or some such fashion magazine, study a glossy picture, and whip up a dress pattern from it. They knew how to alter the design to fit Japanese figures. They had a good sense of color too. What’s more, the dresses looked splendid when they showed them off by wearing them. Before long, the sisters decided to use some of their better pupils to turn the clothes into merchandise. When I met them for the first time, they had just begun consigning their first dresses to a shop near the station. Customers loved them, and in no time their clothes were being sold in boutiques in the Ginza and Aoyama, the heart of fashionable Tokyo.

  Primavera turned out to be a perfect answer to “unlucky” Natsue’s needs. The income earned from the little business definitely helped bolster the family finances, and life at the Utagawas’ was much more prosperous than I’d feared from the first sight of that modest building in Chitose Funabashi. And that wasn’t all: Primavera gave Natsue a convenient excuse to get out of the house and go back to Seijo on a daily basis.

  “If I don’t work, we’ll never be able to make ends meet.”

  Her comment, which she often made as she went out happily each day to commute to Seijo, told only half the story. Primavera, in addition to being a respectable camouflage for minimizing her time with the senior Mrs. Utagawa and maximizing her time with her sisters, was also something her husband seemed to accept. This, I’m sure, was because he felt guilty not only about his inadequate salary but about the little time he spent at home himself. What’s more, he was perfectly aware that Natsue’s absence made his mother feel more comfortable.

  Of course, Natsue being Natsue, she saw no limits to what she could do, allowing herself to be carried away by the freedom her home in Seijo gave her. Rather than reproving her little sister for this behavior, Harue encouraged it. At the same time, Harue carefully regulated the division of Natsue’s time between the two houses, to make sure that her sister’s marriage didn’t fall apart.

  THIS WAS THE household I entered when I became their maid.

  My work there was shockingly easy. In the mornings Takero headed off for work with Yuko, who had to commute to Seijo. Next, Yoko left for the local kindergarten. About an hour later, Natsue went off to the Saegusas’. Yoko came home at around noon, while second grader Yuko didn’t get home until the evening—she spent time with her cousins Mari and Eri in Seijo after school, when they all did their homework, practiced the piano, and had dinner together. Yuko only came back to Chitose Funabashi after that, with her mother. Probably at Harue’s insistence, Natsue made a point of getting home before her husband on days when she knew he’d be back earlier than usual. But usually it was already around half past eight by the time we saw them.

  That’s why it was just the three of us—Mrs. Utagawa, Yoko, and me—who were at home in Chitose Funabashi most of the day. My duties were quite different from what I’d had to do on the base: Mrs. Utagawa had to instruct me in everything, but there wasn’t, in fact, very much to do. Natsue wanted all the household conveniences her own family had, so, contrary to my first impression of the place, the Utagawas had all the latest in electrical appliances, including a refrigerator and washing machine. With only an elderly woman and a little girl at home, there was no great amount of cooking or laundry to do. Vendors came door-to-door every day and took orders, so even shopping was made almost effortless. The place was neither large nor built with the best materials, and with no one to make it dirty, cleaning was straightforward too. Mrs. Utagawa spent most of her time in her own tatami room, kneeling on a cushion, her head bowed over some sewing; Yoko played close by, sitting the way little girls often do, with knees on the floor in front but legs bent away behind to each side, in a W shape, her skirt spread out in a little circle over her splayed legs.

  Other rooms went mostly unused.

  The house was quite wide from west to east. In the western half were the Japanese-style tatami rooms, including the sunny eight-mat one with south-facing windows for Mrs. Utagawa and one for the children. These served as sitting rooms during the day and became bedrooms in the evening, with futons and quilts brought out from the closet. The darker, north-facing rooms included the maid’s room, a bathroom, and a separate toilet. In contrast, the eastern half was all in the Western style, with wooden floors. On the first story was what the family called the main room, which included the kitchen, a dining area, living area, and, at the far end, a playroom with an upright piano, all open to each other. Guests hardly ever visited, so there was no formal place for entertaining. On the second floor were Takero’s study and the master bedroom. The latter had a double bed and a three-way mirror, both familiar to me from the American lieutenant’s house at the base, but fairly uncommon in Japanese houses at that time. Though the house had some tatami rooms, the place looked basically modern, with only a few pieces of old furniture from the Utagawa Clinic remaining: the late Dr. Utagawa’s big desk and a heavy bookcase in the study; a paulownia chest for kimonos, a low Japanese desk, and a full-length mirror in old Mrs. Utagawa’s room. Also in Mrs. Utagawa’s tokonoma alcove were heirlooms the family had refused to part with—hanging scrolls and incense burners.

  Living in a very small house in the yard visible from the north-facing windows was another servant, an old man named Roku who did most of the heavy work. Before then he had hauled a rickshaw for the Kichijoji clinic—he was the man who brought Taro into the picture later on. But at the time, I had no idea who he was and simply thought of him as the nice old man who was always there to help. He did chores such as splitting firewood, weeding the garden, and putting shelves up in the house.

  In the end, even Mrs. Utagawa’s headaches turned out to be only sporadic, so the old lady could have managed the household alone. They must have hired a maid because Natsue felt uncomfortable about leaving her mother-in-law—a woman who, when her husband was alive, had maids of her own—to run the place by herself. She was also probably concerned about what other people would think. And then there were the summers in Karuizawa.

  I HAD NO way of knowing before my first full year at the Utagawas’ that the summer vacation was the busiest time for maids. I had assumed I would remain in Tokyo to take care of Takero when the children’s schools closed for the summer. Instead, I was sent off, with all sorts of luggage, to Karuizawa.

  They needed as many hands as possible.

  The first thing we did was clean the big old house. Though they had a local workman who looked after many of the summer homes in the area, he only did a rough job of cleaning, not enough to really make it livable. The cupboards were full of nasty dead bugs with ballooned-out bodies and long antennae and legs. Mildew covered the furniture and the curtains. Futons and quilts had absorbed a year’s worth of humidity and were cold and clammy to the touch. Once we had cleaned up the inside of the house, we moved on to the garden. Local gardeners would already have given it the once-over, but each year there were new things that needed attention. And there was also the unpacking—and, after that, the first shopping for what would be a big crowd. Work kept the three Saegusa sisters busy when they were in Tokyo, so they had their hearts set on making the most of summer—without the bother of looking after their husbands—and enjoying a chance to relive the “good old days” in Karuizawa. They would use the best china, even at breakfast; a vase of flowers was a must at every meal as well, plus music coming from the drawing room. Because they no longer had a full staff, their desire for the same standards they enjoyed before the war m
ade their time there hectic sometimes even for themselves—which I couldn’t help finding funny.

  The women did not go in for sports much, apart from joining Harue’s husband sometimes for a round of golf. What they spent most of the day doing was a combination of study, work, and play, though it would be hard to say where one left off and the other began.

  Harue and Natsue would pull out copies of fashion magazines that they hadn’t had time to read in Tokyo—“These foreign women are so gorgeous! It’s maddening”—and pore over the captions and articles, with French and English dictionaries in hand. In a corner of the parlor was a mannequin, which was usually covered with a velvet cape. This they would drape with various fabrics. When they had to, they made trips back to Tokyo; and sometimes they had a young woman who worked for them in the city come up to Karuizawa—the same one who was at the children’s table when I first visited Seijo.

  Fuyue spent her days practicing softly on an upright piano in another corner of the parlor. “What a rotten tone!” she always complained about the piano, which was slowly falling to bits from the humidity. She also went for German lessons at the home of a Swiss lady in the neighborhood because Grampy had promised to pay for her to go to Germany to continue studying music.