It was six months before I found out the truth. He had a long-standing relationship, going back six or seven years, with his boss’s wife. When he learned that rumors about the two of them were circulating, he rushed into marriage to cover up the affair, taking it for granted that someone like me would have no choice but to stay quiet even if I found out about the other woman.
WHILE ALL THIS was going on, around the start of the rainy season in early summer I received a bulky envelope from Yoko: a short two-page letter for me and, enclosed with it, a long letter addressed to Taro. According to her, they had been corresponding ever since she went to live in Sapporo, and even though she heard from him barely once or twice a month and the letters he wrote were innocent, nothing she couldn’t show her parents, her mother complained that this was still too much to be getting from “a boy like that.” Anyway she had a favor to ask. Would I please hand the enclosed letter directly to Taro within the next few days? It contained some money that he needed, and she knew from him that his stepmother was opening his mail without permission. There wasn’t a word about how things were going in Sapporo or any proper reference to my marriage, just a line tacked on at the end: “How are you two lovebirds getting along?” Very silly indeed.
Considering all that I owed her parents, I ought to have ignored this request. Yet I also had in mind the request that old Mrs. Utagawa had made toward the end. I wavered, but two or three days later I went over to the house in Chitose Funabashi around dinnertime, when I thought Taro would be home, and caught him just as he was coming out through the gate. Although it was only three months since I’d last seen him, his shoulders had broadened and his cheeks looked sharper, as if because he no longer needed to hide how grown-up he was getting to be. He seemed altogether a different person. I expected him to pocket the letter, but he opened it on the spot, giving me a glimpse of sheets of stationery and thousand-yen bills. He was quick-witted, and probably opened the letter in front of me in case he needed my help with something. But as he read, his face stiffened. I dared not ask him what the money was for. We boarded the train together. He said he had to work part-time two nights a week, three hours at a stretch, at the factory along the Koshu Highway where Mr. Azuma worked.
“It’s to pay my board.” The ironic lift of his eyebrow showed his annoyance.
About my married life he made no inquiry, but neither did he make any silly comment about it as Yoko had done. He got off the train at Gotokuji and walked away from me, a person somewhere between a boy and a young man.
Soon summer was upon us, with the Bon festival holidays just ahead. My husband, who apparently didn’t get on with his elder brother and sister-in-law, said there was no point in our going to visit his parents in Kashiwa, and offered to go with me if I wanted to visit my family in Saku. I instantly lost all desire to go there after hearing this. If I went at all, it would be to steep myself in the atmosphere of the old, familiar villa in Karuizawa, but I doubted whether I could take off on my own and leave my husband with my parents. The thought that he might insist on going along to Karuizawa to pay his respects gave me the shivers, and so I abandoned all thought of going back. For the first time in a decade I spent my summer in Tokyo. Oppressed by the heat, the humidity, and the lack of space, I kept the fan going as I sat nose to nose with my husband in our tiny apartment. With the 1964 Olympic Games scheduled for the fall, Tokyo was full of construction projects, and the constant noise and dust made the summer feel that much more sticky and gritty.
THIS EXPLAINS WHY it was well into the fall before I learned about Yoko and Taro’s first “misconduct.”
A postcard came from Fuyue saying that the Utagawa family had decided to sell the property in Chitose Funabashi, land and all, and would I please come over to help her decide which furnishings to discard and which to send to Sapporo? And so one fine autumn day I met her at the station.
I knew that the Utagawas had been living in a rented house in Sapporo, but now, it seemed, they were planning to build a place of their own. Since professors at Hokkaido University were considered prominent figures locally, it wouldn’t do to get a cheap sort of place like the Chitose Funabashi house; but they didn’t have enough savings to build something suitable, so Natsue had immediately suggested putting their Tokyo property up for sale, since it had no sentimental value for her anyway. Next year Yuko would be graduating from high school in New York; in order to send her to an American conservatory, even with Grampy’s promise to help out, they would still have to scrape together their share of the dollar-based tuition. That also contributed to the decision to sell.
It was daytime when we arrived, too early for Taro to be there next door. I went out behind the house and called to O-Tsune from the veranda to let her know we’d come to clear the place out. All her old insolence was back in the thin, sneering smile on her face when she emerged. Her behavior, which gave me a jolt, had something to do with the “misconduct” I heard about on returning to the main house.
“I wonder if the Azumas will leave without giving any trouble,” I said when Fuyue and I sat down side by side on the sofa in the chilly main room, still wearing our coats. One of the two rental houses was already empty.
“Oh, they will, all right,” said Fuyue. “They signed a pledge to leave whenever asked to do so. They’re not actually entitled to a single yen, but after Taro’s misconduct, now they’ve even come into some money.”
“Misconduct?” I looked at her in surprise and confusion. “Money?”
“That’s right. Takero has already given it to them.”
“To the Azumas?”
“Yes, didn’t Natsue say anything about it to you?”
“No, ma’am, she didn’t.” I shook my head with a vague sense that the inevitable had finally happened. I looked around the room. I felt that the ghosts of Yoko and Taro when they were little were still there, loath to leave this place where every nick in the posts and walls was familiar. I heard Yoko’s excited chatter in the distance, followed by the sound of footsteps running down the corridor.
The alleged misconduct had taken place that summer in Karuizawa. With her sister and cousins all off in New York, and Masayuki studying at a cram school in Tokyo for the summer, young Yoko had the place to herself. She passed the time lounging about reading novels, working in the garden, going for long walks, and, after starting singing lessons in Sapporo, accompanying herself on the piano. Then one day she left for a walk and didn’t come back, even after dark. Natsue’s natural instincts must have come to the fore, for it suddenly dawned on her where her daughter was. She had Fuyue drive her over to Oiwake, and the moment they got out of the car, Yoko came flying barefoot onto the porch. Natsue charged straight at her, sending her staggering, with Taro standing stock-still just inside the house.
“Shame on you—acting like a bitch in heat!” Those were ugly words, coming from this well-mannered woman. Hysterical, she started to beat the girl until Taro rushed out and grabbed her by the arm.
Yoko was hysterical too. “It’s not his fault,” she cried out in tears. “I invited him here in a letter.”
When I heard about the letter, I realized that the one I’d brought to Chitose Funabashi that day must have specified when the two should meet up in Oiwake, and had contained Taro’s train fare. Yoko had apparently kept quiet to her mother about the role I played—less to protect me, I’m sure, than to keep me in reserve for possible use in the future.
Later, after removing her husband’s dictionaries, the good dishes, and the relatively new bedding, Natsue had the telephone, water, gas, and electricity cut off at the Oiwake cottage and shut it up. With old Mrs. Utagawa dead, there was no point in keeping it going anymore; until Harue and her family returned to Japan, even if Takero joined them, the house in Karuizawa was large enough for everyone.
“That child never did know how to behave,” Yoko’s mother would grumble about her.
Judging from their appearance when they were found, Yoko and Taro had not been intimate
, but it was clear that if they were left on their own, it was only a matter of time.
This “misconduct” also provided the Utagawas with a ready excuse to sever all ties with the Azuma family. They had been on the point of disposing of their property in Chitose Funabashi anyway. In line with the original agreement, there was no need to offer any compensation for forced removal, but to honor his mother’s dying wish, Takero handed over a sizable sum of money for Taro’s further education, at the same time instructing the family to vacate the house and make sure that Taro had no further contact with Yoko.
Fuyue laughed and said, “Takero is so conscientious, they ended up throwing good money after bad.”
When her father told her that she mustn’t have anything more to do with Taro, Yoko apparently had a fit. “Papa, you’re the one who said people aren’t born higher or lower than each other!” To which he replied that that was not the problem; the problem was that any young man who would arrange to meet a fifteen-year-old girl behind her parents’ back could not be trusted. This was a perfectly reasonable answer, but how could she possibly see someone like Taro except behind her parents’ back? Anyway, once they had discovered how big a role he played in their daughter’s life, Natsue and Takero must have been relieved to be able to cut their ties with the Azuma family, even if it did mean “throwing good money after bad,” since there was no telling how Yoko would have acted later when Taro went on to high school and university. Takero was a fair-minded person, with a strong sense of responsibility too, so I’m sure he wondered whether the steps he was taking were unfair to Taro, but as a father he naturally had to give his own daughter’s interests priority.
Natsue blamed Takero’s mother, saying it was her fault for letting Taro practically live in their house the way he had. The point could also be made that Natsue herself was no less at fault for turning Yoko over to old Mrs. Utagawa and practically living in Seijo. But as someone who knew both women, I can say that without a doubt, the arrangement contributed greatly to each one’s happiness during all those years. In addition, the way Natsue gravitated to Seijo wasn’t only due to the general decline in the family fortunes but also to Takero’s being so wrapped up in his work and so seldom at home. All in all, it was hard to know where to lay the blame.
“The ties have been cut,” Fuyue said to me, “but if the Azumas do make any claims, I hate to ask, but could you step in and handle it, Fumiko?” She also made another request: when it was time to turn the family’s unwanted belongings over to the secondhand dealer, she, Fuyue, would be there, but she hoped I would be around when the Azumas left their place.
They moved out on a Sunday toward the end of the year. When I arrived, the Azumas had just begun loading their things into a vehicle borrowed from the subcontractor. It was not even a regular truck but a battered Daihatsu Midget—a three-wheeled minivan, so popular that at one point it was everywhere on the city streets and even I knew its name.
When O-Tsune saw me she smirked and said, “That girl of theirs is mental, isn’t she?” She said it straight out, without any pretended deference. She must have felt she’d had all she was ever going to get from the Utagawas.
“She’s a nympho, that’s what.” This comment from the eldest boy caused some jeering laughter.
The other brother got into the act. “Taro’s got a big one, like a horse.”
Silently Taro helped load the van. Next to his brothers I could see that tall though he was, his build was still slim and boyish. If those two brutes took him on together, he wouldn’t stand a chance. The memory of him years ago with his arm in a sling came back to mind.
He saw me but kept his lips pressed tight, avoiding my eye. He was trying to load a big carton onto the bed of the van by himself.
I went over to him and told him, “If anything happens, come to me,” and for the first time he looked me in the face with a strained expression.
Mr. Azuma alone said a proper sort of farewell, and handed me the address in Kamata where they were going.
AFTER NEW YEAR’S, when the plum buds were tinged with color and spring was in the air, I got a divorce. I had found out about the other woman not long before. When I was alone I often used to open the drawer in the paulownia dresser old Mrs. Utagawa bequeathed to me, take out the bankbook I kept secret from my husband, and look at it. He had married me trusting me to keep quiet if I ever discovered what was going on, but once he realized I was bent on divorce, he seemed afraid I might make a fuss and call attention to the situation, so everything was settled swiftly. Our marriage lasted less than a year and was childless.
Once divorced, I felt that I’d paid my dues to society. Rather than pain, there was only a sense of liberation. Now, finally, I could live my life as I chose. I took with me only the things that were mine to begin with and rented a small flat—one four-and-a-half-mat room and a cramped kitchen—in a humble, two-story wooden building in the Sangenjaya area of Tokyo: Evergreen Apartments No. 2. Even after being stung for key money and the security deposit, I had enough left to live on for a few months, but in any case I soon found an opening at a company that manufactured measuring instruments, with an office in Shibuya. The company was small, and I was already twenty-eight. Assuming they were unlikely to check up on what I wrote about my background, I fiddled my educational record on my résumé, putting down that I had graduated from Saku High School. For my work experience too, I exaggerated the size of Uncle Genji’s restaurant and said that I had worked there in the office. My handwriting is good, if I may say so, and that got me noticed. Also the interview went well, and I was hired more or less on the spot. With my smooth telephone manner and a decent wardrobe from the Saegusa sisters, no one had any reason to doubt me. I couldn’t help feeling a bit amazed that I had actually pulled off this deceit, being a cautious sort of person, but honesty would only have led to tedious, physically tiring jobs, and I chose the lesser of two evils. Earlier, I had worked up enough courage to tell my uncle about the divorce. Seeing me in tears, he blamed himself for not seeing through someone who turned out to be such a rat, and promised to do all he could to help. He approved of my falsifying my work record and agreed to be my reference.
THAT SUMMER, I went back home for the Bon festival holidays and visited Karuizawa for the first time in two years. Fuyue came out on the porch in an apron and rubber gloves and cried out, “Fumiko!” before ushering me through the dining room into the kitchen, where she brought me up-to-date. She and her parents were the only ones staying there that summer. Harue and her family were still in New York, and Natsue and her family had decided not to come: the new house in Sapporo was under construction, and with Takero absorbed in his research as usual, even during the summer, Natsue needed to be around for consultation with the workmen on a myriad of little things. Yoko wasn’t allowed to travel by herself, after the previous summer’s “misconduct,” so none of the Utagawas would be putting in an appearance. But though their house was relatively quiet, the one next door was lively for a change. Masayuki was now a student at the University of Tokyo and looked even more like his late uncle Noriyuki than before. He cut such a striking figure that he turned heads, and girls from neighboring summer houses came by on various pretexts. The Demon was undoubtedly hard at work sorting out which of them were from “good families.” As for my news, I had sent a postcard informing everyone of the fact of my divorce and nothing more, so Fuyue only heard the details on this visit and seemed angrier at my ex-husband than I was.
Knowing my way around the Saegusa kitchen, I joined in and helped while we chatted. So many people had migrated from the countryside to Tokyo that farming villages no longer had any hands to spare, and maids were becoming scarce in Japan. With Harue and the others off in New York, fewer people lived in the Seijo house in Tokyo, and after Mie, the “pocket pinup” girl, quit her job, they had switched to a housekeeper who had a family and commuted from home. She came with them to Karuizawa only for the first few days; the rest of the summer they had to fend for them
selves. “It’s all the harder because Grammy still wants to sit back and live a life of leisure,” Fuyue said, adding, “It’s such a help, Fumiko, to have you come and pitch in!” As I was leaving she invited me to come back again the next day if possible, which I decided to do. At home I had to tiptoe around my mother, who in turn tiptoed around my stepfather, and being a woman, I had to do kitchen work wherever I was anyway. I felt more at ease in Karuizawa; I enjoyed myself more. Moreover, since I was no longer a maid but someone who was “kindly helping out,” I was also treated differently. In part it was because Fuyue was lonely, I’m sure, that I was invited to have meals and tea with the three of them, her and her parents. Before I took my leave at the end of the day, she slipped me an envelope of money. But, Fuyue being Fuyue, she wasn’t like her sisters: as we worked around the house together, even though I knew my services were hers to command, I began to feel that we were half friends. From that summer on, my relationship with her shifted to another level.
IN TOKYO, LIFE settled back into its monotonous routine. My emotions were steadier than when I was married, but six days a week I was shut away inside an office. My only luxuries were paperback books and the occasional movie. With the image still fresh in my mind of my parents and grandparents toiling in the fields at home, hardly able to straighten up and stretch, I couldn’t complain. Yet once the excitement of living alone in Tokyo wore off, there was nothing glamorous about ill-fitting rain shutters, stained ceilings, and tatami mats turned brown by the sun. At night, lying on my futon feeling the vibrations of trucks going by on the street outside, I couldn’t help being depressed at the thought of living that way for the rest of my life. The smell of urine from the shared toilet at the end of the hallway, which no amount of scrubbing could reduce, was another constant irritant.
THE FOLLOWING SUMMER, I talked to Fuyue on the telephone and arranged to go to Karuizawa for two nights. While there I saw Natsue and Yoko for the first time in a long while. It had been well over two years, I realized, since I had seen them off for Sapporo. As soon as she laid eyes on me, Natsue dimpled and exclaimed with pleasure: “It’s been so long! How nice to see you again! The housekeeper we have in Miyanomori is the slowest old thing. I’m always saying how much I wish we could have someone like you, Fumiko, but I’ve simply given up hope.” This didn’t seem like empty flattery. Yoko greeted me with a quick, rather shy smile. She was in her last year of high school, all of seventeen, but she seemed neither to have matured as a person nor to have become the least bit more feminine or pretty. Cast as a delinquent ever since the “misconduct” of two years ago, she may have made a habit of sulking for days on end. She looked untidy, as if she never so much as splashed water on her face or combed her hair in the morning. The Shigemitsus, who would otherwise have been next door, were spending their summer vacation in New York; with the other young people all in America, Masayuki included, it probably wasn’t much fun for her to be left on her own. Her mother had wanted to take her to New York, but the Saegusas had asked them to postpone the visit, since they didn’t have room for that many at one time, so she had given up the plan.
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