“All I’d have to do is take the cash I collect from other factories. It’d be so easy.”
“Don’t do it—that’s robbery. If you were caught, your life would be ruined. You mustn’t ever steal.”
“My life’s ruined already.”
Then it came to me. “Why not stay here?” I said. “You could work somewhere nearby in the daytime and study at night for the high school equivalency test or the college entrance exam or whatever.”
He stared at me for a moment, then slowly looked around the little room as if he were seeing it for the first time. I am a fairly well-organized person, so everything was tidy. The table was new, but the room contained a variety of other things that brought the Utagawa family vividly to mind: their wedding gift of the Western-style chest; the low writing desk, the dresser, and the full-length mirror Mrs. Utagawa had left me; and some familiar objects from their main room—a clock, a vase, a painting Grampy had done in oils of Mount Asama.
“Live here with you, you mean?”
“That’s right. If it’s too cramped, you can always sleep in the kitchen.” I laughed.
The first time I ever saw Taro, he was nine and I was nineteen. Now, ten years later, we were nineteen and twenty-nine. But he was like a younger brother to me, one far closer than my real brothers, so there was no awkwardness between us.
“All you would have to pay is your board.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
His face slowly lit up, showing some of his old animation. It was the first time he hadn’t looked dismal since he’d come in.
“And when you’ve saved up enough money, you can find a boardinghouse or rent an apartment on your own.”
After that we walked over to the stores in front of the station and I did some shopping, taking advantage of Taro’s presence to pick up a few heavy items. Finally, I stopped at the fish shop and splurged on some tuna sashimi. Standing next to him to make supper in the kitchen, I saw that despite his size he was as deft as in the old days and not at all in the way.
When we had eaten dinner I saw him off at the station. “Explain things properly to Mr. Azuma,” I told him. “Don’t just run off without a word. He did bring you up after a fashion; you owe him that much.”
“He might not like it.”
“Yes, but he took your money. He can’t complain.”
“I’m leaving even if he does.”
When I returned to my apartment, I felt so happy that I found it surprising.
Floor cushions I had two of, but there was just one full set of futon and quilts. I could let him use one slim mattress and a quilt, but I only had a single rice bowl and set of chopsticks. After New Year’s, when I got back to Tokyo I could stop off somewhere after work and pick up this sort of thing, bit by bit. As I made plans my heart sang, far more so than when I was about to get married. Before I knew it, my mind spun with ideas, looking even further ahead. Yes, if I took in some sewing he might not have to go out to work at all, or at least would not have to work much. If he could focus on his studies, next spring might be too soon, but surely the year after that he could pass the equivalency test and, beyond that, start college. This way he’d be able to get on with his education with minimal loss of time. Even as a college student, he could take a part-time job and commute. Plans for the future rose in my mind one after the other. Tuition at the national universities was low at the time, even by my standards, so none of this seemed far-fetched.
Back in Saku for New Year’s I must have been preoccupied with what would happen after I returned to Tokyo, since my little sister, home with her two children, gave me a sidelong look and said archly, “What’s going on, Fumiko? You’ve got something up your sleeve, don’t you?”
Then one Sunday a week or so after the holidays, Taro dropped by my apartment again. Though not quite cheerful, he was much more composed than on his last visit, and since he had brought no luggage I could tell immediately that the situation had changed.
The news that he was leaving had evidently dumbfounded the Azuma household. They were under the illusion that, since they’d brought him up out of obligation, Taro himself was obliged to do as they wished, and the idea that he might not go on living under their roof had never occurred to them. His brothers, both furious, would have beaten him up again if their parents, after the initial surprise and anger had subsided, hadn’t sized up the situation for once in a more grown-up way. After all, as Mrs. Utagawa had well known, Taro had already made himself useful at the age of nine; he now got more done than their other two sons combined. The adults calmed the older boys down, and O-Tsune, though privately mad as a wet hen, pulled herself together. That evening they sat and talked with Taro, and the conclusion they arrived at was that they would pay him almost as much as a live-in worker; that he would only work during designated hours, from eight in the morning to six in the evening; that he would have Sundays and holidays off; and that he would no longer be stuck at the end of the hallway but would have a corner of the warehouse for himself, a place where he could sleep and study as he pleased. Point by point, they yielded to all his demands. Fortunately for him, O-Tsune had a good head for figures. For the first time, it sank in that he was old enough to go out and work somewhere else. She must also have realized that it was impossible to keep someone of his caliber with them unless he was given the pay and treatment he deserved.
Taro quit night school after New Year’s and began studying on his own. His new routine was to go to the public bath around 6:00 P.M., eat supper as soon as he got back, and go to sleep around seven. He then got up at one or two in the morning and studied. His brother’s wife brought him meals on a tray, covered with a cloth. The food might be cold or skimpy, but he was able to eat three meals a day away from the family. His brothers, once they began to think of him as outside the family circle, seemed to be resigned to the new arrangement and so far were causing no trouble. By the time he was ready for college, he would have set aside some savings, and there were also scholarships to be had, so if he left the Azumas and worked part-time as a tutor, or at worst if he took a leave of absence for a year or two and concentrated on making money, he should be able to graduate from the faculty of medicine within a reasonable time, even though it was a six-year program.
Perhaps for the first time in his life, Taro realized he was fully capable of standing on his own two feet.
“I see.”
Rather than be happy for him, I felt thrown off course by this unforeseen development.
“Anyway, I’ll try it for a while, and this time if they don’t keep their promise I’ll leave there and move in here.”
“I see …”
It must have been the disappointment. I could think of nothing to say, and only fiddled idly with the teacup in my hands.
“What’s wrong?”
Taro seemed unable to understand why I should be downcast. I’m sure he saw it in simple terms, and was glad he wouldn’t have to impose on me when I was only just able to make ends meet. I myself wasn’t really sure why I was so bitterly disappointed, but it felt as if a gaping hole had opened in my chest, where the wind moaned through.
“I’ve been thinking.” I looked up as I said this. Maybe it had become second nature for me to hide my feelings. My voice sounded strangely dry to my ears. “I thought you could come here to my place and then just devote yourself to studying. I thought you could even go to college from here, get a part-time job.”
He looked at me in surprise. I went on.
“It would be so much easier.”
“But …”
“And then, even if it was a six-year program, you could finish it almost without any delay.”
His mouth hung open, but no words came. I forced myself to sound cheery.
“Someday when you’re rich and famous, you can pay me back.”
“But Fumiko …” He closed his mouth for a moment. Then he said in a low voice, “If you did that, you’d have no future. You’d be unable to marry again.”
“I have no kind of future anyway.” After I said this, a different thought struck me. He might be put off by the prospect of having to shoulder responsibility for me. “Besides, I’ve had enough of marriage. I’d rather go on as I am than remarry.” Forcing myself to sound cheerful again, I added, “You could marry Yoko.”
Taro had been staring at me, but now he looked down at the tabletop. For some time we were quiet.
“Did you write to her?” I asked finally.
“Just the other day. Sent it general delivery.” He was still looking down.
“So she knows?”
“Yeah, pretty much everything.”
“And did she write back?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
He turned his gloomy gaze out beyond the window, into the distance. I had done the laundry that morning, so my washcloths, stockings, aprons, and so on hung on the line, and framed beyond them was a patch of pale cold wintry sky.
“That she’ll wait for you?”
Without answering this, he said, “Before she starts college she’s going to New York with her mother on spring vacation.”
Then he was silent. Neither of us said anything until, as if on cue, we both laughed in a rueful way. “Going to New York on spring vacation” was such a far cry from our own lives that it sounded faintly ridiculous.
“If she doesn’t marry you, that’s all right too,” I said. “Someone far better suited to be your wife will come along, Taro, someone who will appreciate you more than she does.”
He looked down again. After a while he raised his eyes and said that as long as the Azumas kept their promise, he would stay where he was. So maybe he did dislike the idea of living with me indefinitely and being tied down. Or maybe he just didn’t want to be in my debt, period. Ever since he was a little boy, he had never allowed himself to take advantage of people’s kindness. He had never even taken old Mrs. Utagawa’s kindness for granted.
The monotonous ticking of the old clock from the Utagawa house echoed in the silence. To me it had never seemed a disconsolate sound, but that day it did.
As Taro was about to leave, I handed him a small envelope.
“What’s this?”
“A spare key.”
“You had one made for me?”
“Yes,” I said, and smiled. “When things get to be too much for you, when life piles up on you, come back anytime.”
THE SECOND “MISCONDUCT” had far more serious consequences.
The cold eased up and the next thing I knew, it was spring. One Saturday around the end of March, as the season was building toward its peak, I received a phone call at work from Yoko. The second incident followed from that contact. After the two weeks of spring vacation in New York, she had come back to Japan ahead of her mother to attend the entrance ceremony for Fuji Women’s University. She was staying in Seijo with her aunt Fuyue and grandparents and would be leaving for Sapporo in two days’ time, she said, but Grampy had given her some spending money and the following day, Sunday, she wanted to take me out for lunch if I had time. Yoko had no sense of direction, but she insisted that if she just followed the signs she would be all right, and so we arranged to meet in Shibuya, by the statue of the faithful dog Hachiko.
She was dressed head to toe in an outfit straight from New York, waiting in the crowd looking rather full of herself. Exactly what made her stand out I could not have said, but the overall effect was quite sophisticated. From a distance you might have taken her for a film actress or someone of that sort. She was attracting glances. This was just when the miniskirt had begun to be popular overseas, and in her moss-green sheath with its high collar and high hem, big gold hoop earrings, and matching bracelets, she looked definitely stylish. Her curly hair too had been tamed and waved, and looked quite unlike her usual mop. I supposed her appearance was a mark of her pride in having been to New York, together with an effort to look her best for her first trip to Tokyo in quite some time. The previous summer in Karuizawa she’d been so determinedly scruffy that I never dreamed she could look so attractive. But I reminded myself that she was now eighteen, an age when it’s almost a sin for a girl not to look pretty.
It felt strange having Yoko treat me. A bowl of noodles would be fine, I said, but she insisted that, now she was here in Tokyo, she needed to satisfy a craving for genuine Edo-style sushi, without spending a fortune. She wouldn’t hear of doing otherwise, so we went into a place I often passed on my way to and from work.
After ordering, Yoko brought out two little boxes wrapped with crimson ribbons, small enough to hold in the palm of her hand, and declared, “Here, Fumiko, these are for you! An Elizabeth Arden compact and lipstick. This one is from everybody, and this one is from me.”
She then plunged into all the news from New York. Her uncle Hiroshi had managed through a travel agent to hire a shiny black limousine with a Japanese chauffeur for her and her mother. They had gone out in style every day to see the sights of Manhattan—everything from the Empire State Building and the Metropolitan Museum of Art to Chinatown. Her aunt Harue was taking lessons in oil painting from a Japanese artist in Greenwich Village and must have inherited Grampy’s talent, as she was really pretty good. Mari and Eri were students at Manhattanville College, which would allow them to transfer directly to Tokyo’s Sacred Heart, the present empress’s alma mater, when they returned to Japan. Her sister had been accepted into Juilliard and, although their mother wasn’t to know, already had an American boyfriend, a cellist. In any case Yuko was much freer now that she was out from under her mother’s thumb. On and on she went, the words tumbling out.
Thin as she was, Yoko had always had a good appetite, and she polished off the sushi in less than fifteen minutes. It was when we were brought some fresh tea that the topic of Taro came up.
Her animation abruptly faded and a quite different, much graver mood took its place. There was a short silence. Here it comes, I thought, and I was right.
“Fumiko,” she said and looked straight at me, leaving her mouth open. She seemed almost angry with me. “What the Azumas did is just terrible.”
“Well, that’s life.”
“It’s awful.”
“Yes, but it happens.”
She kept looking fiercely at me, but finally said more hesitantly, “Actually, I thought I’d go and see him after this. I brought along his address in Kamata.”
Now at last I understood why she was so dressed up. At the same time, I knew I would have to go with her. It was worrying enough to think of this pretty, doll-like creature wandering in the hubbub of that factory town with a lost, no-sense-of-direction look written all over her. Worse yet, the thought of her coming under the prying eyes of the Azuma family, people who had called her a “nympho,” made me shudder—less for her sake than for Taro’s.
“I’ll take you.”
“Would you really? That would be wonderful.”
Apparently she’d been expecting me to say this. She smiled brightly, looking relieved.
She had told her aunt Fuyue that she was going to go shopping after lunch, so before we left she would need to pick something up, she said. Then she asked casually, “Has he changed?”
“He’s grown up.”
“Hm.” She thought this over before asking, “What about me, have I grown up too?”
“Well, you are eighteen now,” I answered a bit curtly, thinking that she was fishing for compliments. Perhaps I was wrong. She put down the teacup she’d been holding in both hands and looked straight at me.
“Taro is really grateful to you. More than you know.”
“Is he?”
“Of course he is. Thanks to what you said he’s now able to go on with his studies, even if he did decide to stay with that hag. Why wouldn’t he be grateful?”
I avoided her eyes and looked at the tabletop. She went on, oblivious.
“And anyway, after Grandma died, you were the only one who was kind to him. I know it meant a lot to him.
”
Her voice caught, choked with sentiment. Looking back, later on that day, how very sweet and innocent that sentiment came to seem.
“HOW COULD I ever marry someone like that? He looks so rough, and his speech is rough too, he’s so … oh, I don’t know, he’s just a total stranger. I couldn’t do it! How could I upset Mama and Papa to marry him? What would Aunt Harue and everyone say? Or Uncle Masao and Aunt Yayoi? They might not say anything, they’re so nice, but what would they think? And Masayuki—just the idea of what he’d think is so embarrassing I could die. What happened is … I saw it in a flash. Our future. I saw it, all of it, way into the future. There’d be … nothing. Everything would be so small … and narrow … and limited, I couldn’t breathe!” From the moment we got on the Yamanote Line, tears welled in her eyes. The other passengers looked on in surprise as she got out tissues and blew her nose, big tears rolling down her cheeks.
“I don’t want to be rich,” she said. “I’m happy just the way I am.”
“What do you mean, just the way you are?”
“The way our family is, I mean.”
“Yoko, dear, your family is rich.”
“No, we’re not.”
“Compared to most people, you are.”
“Then I don’t care, I could be poorer than this. And though maybe it’s better to have a college degree than not, it doesn’t really matter to me in the end.” She shook her head petulantly. “But that I couldn’t bear.”
The hair that had been so prettily waved earlier in the day was back to its usual frizz, and in the course of all the walking and crying she’d done, her makeup was gone. To top it off, her nose was red from being blown.
She shook her head again forcefully, setting the gold hoop earrings swaying, and repeated, “I just couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t bear what?”
“Oh … I don’t know how to explain it.” She went on, half to herself. “It’s the look on his face as he kept droning on about the same old things. It was unbearable! When the equivalency test is going to be, how many subjects the University of Tokyo needs for its entrance exam, how tough it is to get into the science and physics department or whatever you call it. Also, how much the tuition costs and how much he’ll need for living expenses and on and on and on about stupid things that I just couldn’t care less about! All of it!”
A True Novel Page 46