Later, Taro rode his bicycle back to Oiwake through the evening gloom. Many years were to pass before he set foot on that Karuizawa property again.
SUMMER ENDED, AND Mrs. Utagawa went back to Tokyo stretched out on the back seat of a car driven by Harue’s husband, Hiroshi. Dr. Matsumiya examined her and found there were already signs of dropsy of the belly. Counting back, I realized she had been able to use the Oiwake cottage for only five summers.
The old lady knew that her disease was mortal and, before it was too late, shortly after returning to Tokyo she gave her will verbally to Takero and Natsue. In part, it referred to me. She asked them to let me have things of hers that I might want at such time as I married: her low writing desk; her full-length mirror, its frame carved in the Kamakura style; her paulownia dresser. Takero of course had no objection, and Natsue, too, readily agreed. She was sentimental by nature, and there were tears in her eyes as she knelt by her mother-in-law’s futon, nodding.
Mrs. Utagawa’s other request referred to Taro. He had a good head on his shoulders, she said, and had done many things for her. Over the years she’d grown fond of him, and although of course she shouldn’t have gone ahead and done this without first consulting them, she had promised to help him financially so that he could go on with his schooling. He was applying to a municipal high school not far away, one that would cost very little in the way of either transportation or fees, and she asked that her funeral be kept simple and her savings used to help him go there. Even after that, she wanted Takero and Natsue as far as possible to go on helping him to get an education. She avoided using the word “university,” perhaps afraid that Takero would balk at the extent of the commitment involved and say no. When she was finished, he was silent for a moment before saying quietly, “All right, Mother.” Natsue chimed in, “We can easily come up with the money, don’t worry,” her eyes filling again with tears.
But as it happened, Mrs. Utagawa had not finished making her final wishes known. One afternoon around the beginning of November, I had been busy unstitching some of her old night yukata and sewing them into diapers. As I sat beside her, folding the diapers, she suddenly said, out of nowhere:
“Don’t breathe a word of this to Takero or Natsue.”
She had been staring up at the ceiling, but then turned her head toward me and looked at me. “If Yoko wants to marry him … if she says she’s willing, then I want you to do all in your power to make it happen.”
She had been thinking about Taro the whole time.
“It’s a great deal to ask, I know.” She turned her face up again and closed her eyes. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “But otherwise, it’s just too cruel.”
When I had finished folding the diapers I went and sat alone on the sofa, stunned and at a loss. Once Mrs. Utagawa passed on, what excuse would Taro have for coming over every day? What could I do for him on my own? I had no idea. In the lingering afternoon sun, the Formica table and vinyl-covered chairs stood out with strange clarity, along with the clock, vase, sugar bowl, and other objects on the built-in shelves. For a moment I felt as if I were seeing them with Mrs. Utagawa’s dying eyes.
MY FEARS PROVED unnecessary. At the end of the year, well before the old lady died, the Utagawa family was swept by a sudden breaking wave that changed everything. Though I had never dreamed such a thing could happen, I myself had no choice but to leave the family’s service. It all began with Takero’s promotion. He was an associate professor at the University of Tokyo, specializing in immunology, and early in December he learned that he had been offered a professorship at Hokkaido University in Sapporo. For a long time he had not been on good terms with the senior professors in his department, and he was eager to leave. Talks with Hokkaido had been ongoing since spring. He kept this to himself, however, until the professorship could be signed, sealed, and delivered.
Knowing her, he assumed Natsue—who would object even to a move to nearby Yokohama—would bitterly oppose moving to the northernmost island, and at that point he doubted his chances of getting the offer position anyway. When and if it became official, he would try to persuade her, and if she resisted he would simply go alone. Sure enough, when the time came, she refused to accompany him.
“Why should someone like me, born and bred in Tokyo, have to go all the way to a godforsaken place like Sapporo? Isn’t your stubbornness the whole problem to begin with? You know very well I’ve got my work here with Primavera. A woman’s career means nothing at all, is that what you men think?” She was furious, as expected, and I worried about old Mrs. Utagawa, listening to their raised voices as she lay on her futon in the back room.
But in a week or so, word came of a different promotion, this time for Harue’s husband, Hiroshi. He was being transferred to the New York branch of Mitsubishi Corporation for several years, with his family. The arrangement was still informal, but definite nevertheless.
The evening she came home after hearing this news, Natsue sat with me and cried like a baby. “Why does Harue get to go to New York while I have to go to Sapporo? It’s not fair.” But already she seemed resigned. Whereas before, Harue had been deeply sympathetic (“How awful! Sapporo, really!”), as soon as talk of her own impending move came up, she changed her tune and began urging her sister to accompany her husband to Sapporo. Since she and her family too would be away from Tokyo, the timing was right, and nothing was so important for a man as knowing that things at home were under control so that he could focus on his work. Besides, if she let him have his way now, someday later on she would be better placed to have her own way, Harue argued seriously. She even offered to let Yuko, soon a third-year high school student, stay with them in New York. This was a great comfort to Natsue. Yuko and her cousins Mari and Eri had always done everything together, and if one of them had to stay behind, it would be terrible. What was more important, Harue’s offer meant that Yuko could start studying the piano abroad, and at little cost to the Utagawas. Since Yuko was so serious about her music, Natsue had long been thinking of sending her abroad but had no idea how to come up with that kind of money. Should she ask Grampy Saegusa for help? Would that even be enough? Then this suggestion came along. Though the thought of her favorite daughter going overseas made Natsue feel desolate, this arrangement solved the problem neatly.
This was a time when the very word “America” had a glamor that is simply impossible to imagine today. Once before, Hiroshi had been posted overseas, to Hong Kong for two years, but when that happened Harue had used Primavera to beg off going with him. When talk of Takero’s going to Sapporo first came up, she joined Natsue in asking indignantly, “What about Primavera?” But no sooner did she get wind of the move to New York than she made up her mind to quit the business, leaving it in the hands of her best pupil, the young woman who sat at the children’s table when I first met the Saegusas and who occasionally visited them in Karuizawa.
One Sunday morning near Christmas, matters resolved themselves, as Natsue told her husband she would go with him. Takero beamed with pleasure.
“Primavera has fulfilled its historical mission,” he said, using the English phrase.
“What does that mean?” she asked, so he repeated it in Japanese.
This was just when Japan was entering a period of rapid economic growth, and department store racks were lined with stylish clothes produced in bulk at affordable prices. The next day Natsue repeated her husband’s remark to me. “It’s true,” she said, “Primavera has fulfilled its historical mission.” It amused me that she found saying it in English more persuasive. To me the words seemed to apply to my own life as well.
“So he’s going to be a full professor.” Mrs. Utagawa expressed pleasure at the news before adding wistfully, “I would have liked to go to Sapporo too.”
At the start of the new year, 1964, Dr. Matsumiya predicted that her end would be quick, but she held on over a month longer. Her death came in early February. When they interred her cremated remains in Kichijoji, Taro was allowed to go alon
g.
No one was thinking about Yoko. Everyone just took it for granted that she would simply accompany her parents north. Only when another professor who had made the same switch of universities—and had pushed hard for Takero’s promotion—mentioned that Fuji Girls’ High School would be a good choice did they take the younger child into consideration. “That’s right! Something must be done about a high school for Yoko.” Takero went with her for the entrance exam, using it as an opportunity to scout for a house to rent. The ferry between Aomori and Hakodate alone took four hours, and that was after a twenty-one-hour train ride from Tokyo. When Yoko got back, she was limp and gray with exhaustion.
Only she and I know how devastated Taro was by the news. As the day of departure drew near, even she was increasingly somber, and when her mother wasn’t watching she would slip out to the back yard to exchange a few words with him, even at night. Unlike most boys, once he started crying Taro had a hard time stopping, a trait she usually found exasperating—but now that they faced separation, for once she was patient and consoling.
The Utagawas left for Sapporo in time for the start of the school year in April. Taro secretly tagged along as far as Ueno station. I saw his face peering out from behind a distant column, looking like death. Yoko seemed not to notice. She was an ungovernable child, and if she had spotted him there’s no telling what she might have done amid the crowd of people there to see the family off, so I pretended not to see him.
Taro successfully entered Shinjuku Municipal High School. This must have irked his brothers no end, as both had joined the workforce straight out of middle school. But Takero, as head of the Utagawa family, had handed their father a full year’s school fees in a lump sum, including the cost of commuting, and he also had authority as their landlord, so Mr. Azuma made them simmer down.
I GOT MARRIED. Starting with the fish seller, I had had my share of proposals, including one from an office worker in a business suit, but I turned them all down until, before I knew it, I was all of twenty-seven, well past the usual marrying age in those days. I had been with the Utagawas going on eleven years, ever since I was seventeen. The family did show some concern, but I was good at making myself useful, and besides, I always made a face when the subject of marriage came up, which was how I had managed to stay single so long. Now, however, postponing matrimony any longer would have obliged the Utagawas to take me with them to Sapporo, since they were unwilling to leave me on my own in Tokyo and I would not hear of going back to Saku. Taking me along would probably have meant looking after me for the rest of my life, a considerable financial burden—not to mention the additional burden of knowing that being in their employ had made me miss my chance at marriage. Times had changed after the war, and neither responsibility was one that any family would have been comfortable taking on. Once it was settled that they were all going to Sapporo, they began to ask around on my behalf.
“Fumiko would make any man a superb wife!”
Left to myself, I would rather not have married at all. After over a decade with the same family, I was not the same Fumiko who had first come here from the country. The sort of man I would have liked to marry—the sort whose company I might have enjoyed—would not have given me a second glance. Even if a likely mate did exist somewhere out there, what chance did I have of meeting him? I was never one to paint a rosy picture of marriage to begin with, but the older I became and the more I understood of life, the less romantic I was. Rather than marry, I would have preferred to make a go of it alone in Tokyo, even if that meant just scraping by. But my refusing to marry at that late date would only have caused a problem for the Utagawas, and that I couldn’t allow. Whether marriage offers are generally available for the asking, or whether this one came along purely by chance, I don’t know, but a suitable offer did come along quite quickly.
He was a company employee three years older than me. Dr. Matsumiya down by the station had seen the way I looked after old Mrs. Utagawa, and he recommended me to a frequent visitor to his clinic as soon as he heard from Natsue that they were on the lookout for a husband for me. The man in question had graduated from high school in Chiba and was working for a fairly large pharmaceutical company. Just his being an office worker was enough to make him good husband material by the standards of the day, and for someone without a college education he had a very promising future, having caught the boss’s eye, apparently. Moreover, his people ran a futon store in Kashiwa, and his elder brother and sister-in-law were living with his parents and would eventually take over the business, so there would be few if any in-law problems for me to worry about. On top of it all, he was good-looking, not slow-witted, and well-spoken. I suppose because he was involved in sales, he had a smooth, persuasive way of talking. Anybody could see he was too good a match for someone like me. The only problem was that I myself wasn’t particularly drawn to him, nor was there any apparent reason why he should find me to his liking. Thinking about it later, I could see that not knowing why in the world he would choose me did secretly bother me from the start. I decided to go ahead with the marriage anyway, partly because I felt obliged to marry quickly and partly because he seemed like someone I could introduce to the Saegusa sisters without embarrassment. I must admit I had my share of vanity. However strongly I felt I owed it to the Utagawas to marry, I entered the marriage with shallow motives.
Things moved along at quite a clip. The matter was settled while Mrs. Utagawa was still alive, so I had my hands full. By then she was as willful as a child, and some days her mind was unclear, but when I reported to her that I was now engaged, she sounded like her old self. “I see,” she said. “Congratulations.” Then, in a phlegmy voice, staring up at the ceiling, she asked, “Do you have enough money saved up?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I have a long-term savings account.” I thought she was worried about the money I would need for the wedding, but I was wrong.
“Fumiko, this may sound like meddling, but it’s a good idea to set aside some money for yourself that no one else knows about. There are two kinds of people in this world, those who have something to fall back on and those who don’t, and which one you are makes all the difference.”
That, I think, was the last coherent exchange I ever had with her. It might not have been the sort of advice that would occur to a woman who had had an arranged marriage and raised a family in the usual way, and I felt as if she had dashed cold water on my prospects, but from that moment on, any intention I might have had of proudly showing my future husband the savings I had accumulated over the past decade began to fade.
“Getting married? You, Fumiko?” Taro looked incredulous. He may have thought that I existed solely for him and Yoko.
Our formal marriage interview came at the end of the year. For us to make our final vows by the end of March, before the Utagawas left for Sapporo, seemed like rushing things. My fiancé had no objection, though, so I hastily got ready and we had a simple wedding ceremony in mid-March. The guests on my side included Harue and Fuyue from the Saegusas, the entire Utagawa family, my parents, and my siblings and their spouses, who came down for the occasion. Uncle Genji, by then in his mid-sixties, with a head of white hair, came accompanied by his husky-voiced partner. Before the wedding, we visited his house in Soto Kanda to pay our respects. All my uncle did was laugh and say he’d figured I was never planning on marrying at all. Perhaps no longer as sharp as he’d been in his younger days, he was pleased that I seemed content with my choice. My parents insisted on doing something for me after all this time, and so they paid for our honeymoon. I wore a rented bridal kimono and, for the reception afterward, a Primavera cocktail dress. After a four-day trip to the seaside resort of Atami, the first thing I did was go back to the Utagawa house to help with the move. I saw the family off to Sapporo, then moved my own things into the apartment my husband had rented for us in Iogi. As part of my dowry, the Utagawas bought me a fine chest of drawers—Western-style—at a luxury department store that had recently opened.
They also told me to help myself to any of the furniture they weren’t sending along to Sapporo, but our apartment was so small—just two tatami rooms, one six-mat and the other four-and-a-half-mat, and a tiny kitchen—that all I took were the things that Mrs. Utagawa had bequeathed to me. Even so, those items added to all the stylish clothes in my trousseau amounted to quite a pile. My husband was bug-eyed when he saw what a person of property his new bride was.
That husband of mine turned out to have problems after all. Ordinarily he was pleasant enough, but it took less than a month for me to discover that when he was drunk and alone with me a change came over him. He became mean and spiteful. Certainly I tried the best I knew to be a good wife. I took in mending from the neighbors to help out, picking up the basics from a pile of how-to-sew manuals that Natsue had given me when she didn’t need them anymore. On my own, I made do with simple meals of hot tea over cold rice so that I could give him an extra side dish for his evening meal. He seemed happy enough, but for some reason, whenever he had too much to drink, all trace of contentment would evaporate and complaints would come pouring out instead. As the sake took effect he would pick away at what he saw as my faults: I was only a middle school graduate; I talked in a fancy, “stuck-up” way; I somehow looked down on him. This last point had never crossed my mind, but as soon as he said it I realized he might be right, though how on earth had he figured it out? I’m ashamed to say that when he accused me of this I felt myself smiling—which of course only made him madder.
Once he started drinking, he couldn’t stop. One night, past two in the morning, I decided I had listened to enough. I laid out my futon and pretended to go to sleep, but shockingly, he threw a cup of cold water in my face and just went on with his badgering. Luckily he never resorted to actual violence, but it was plain from the first that he had no interest in making our marriage a genuine partnership. In the daytime I used to wonder what prompted him to marry me in the first place.
A True Novel Page 43