We met in a coffee shop in Shibuya, and no sooner had he sat down across from me than he bowed so low that his forehead grazed the tabletop and said, “We’ll take good care of you.” Nobody had ever said this to me before, and never did I dream anyone would. At the time, I let the words go by, but that night when I got back home I sat down without turning on the lights, put my elbows on the table, and cried. All the pent-up loneliness and frustration of the five years I’d spent working alone in Tokyo after leaving the Utagawas spilled over.
It was the second marriage for us both, so after my name was officially entered in his family register, we just had a simple ceremony at the house, attended only by the immediate family. Other than that, all I did was send out postcards announcing my marriage and change of address. I didn’t send one to Taro: I had no intention of seeing him ever again. Since I was his one remaining tie to Japan, I felt sorry for him, and I also felt guilty; but I had made up my mind not to become entangled in other people’s lives anymore.
The Shigemitsus, Saegusas, and Utagawas all sent unnecessarily generous gifts of money, but it seemed to me best at that point to end relations with them too and make a fresh start, so I sent only short thank-you notes. What was funny was that my husband’s family name was Tsuchiya, the same as mine, so that even after I remarried I could go right on being Fumiko Tsuchiya.
And so, after having spent the greater part of my life in Tokyo, I found myself back unexpectedly in the place where I grew up. The mulberry fields were gone, replaced by acres of lettuce—a vegetable that was in high demand after everyone in Japan began eating salads. Only Mount Asama was the same as in my childhood, shifting in appearance moment by moment. After setting out for Tokyo at Uncle Genji’s urging when I was a girl of fifteen, I found myself leading the same sort of life as if I had never gone anywhere. True to his word, my husband took good care of me. Where his first wife had been “Ma,” I was promoted to “Mother.” “Go ask Mother,” he would tell his sons whenever anything came up. On evenings when I’d concentrated too hard on my sewing, after the boys went to sleep he would rub my shoulders as I lay on the futon. Somehow he even thought I was pretty. Having got myself such a kind husband, I felt grateful, and yet in the morning light and the last glimmer of dusk, when I caught sight of Mount Asama, the knowledge that, after all that had happened, I had ended up back in my hometown tugged at my heartstrings. It felt as if all my years in Tokyo were for nothing. After a few months, those years started to seem not just wasted but unreal.
LOOKOUT POINT IN SAKU
Soon it was summer, and a postcard came from Fuyue. Since I was only a stone’s throw from Karuizawa, she hoped very much I would drop by after they arrived. But I had already resolved to cut my ties with them. Telling myself it would be enough just to phone them to say hello when the time came, I filed the postcard away in the back of my desk.
As it happened, they were the ones who phoned me. “Fumiko, we just got in!” Fuyue sang out in that party voice that all three Saegusa sisters had, and the next thing I knew Natsue had grabbed the receiver and was saying with even greater gaiety, “Fumiko, are you very busy? You live so close by now, you must find time and come on over just as soon as you can.” I mumbled something, and then it was Harue on the line. “Fumi, what are you up to this minute? Nothing so very important, I’ll bet. I’m right, aren’t I? In that case why not come over right now for a short visit? We’ll pay the taxi fare.” Mixed in with the gaiety was that domineering note so characteristic of her. The bright chatter and even the impetuosity and self-absorption were strangely comforting, bringing back a vivid memory of the time when I first called at their home in Seijo with my uncle Genji and the sight of those women looking so beautiful in the warm spring sunshine made my heart swell with emotion.
An hour later I was standing in front of the lava stone gateposts, looking at the two Western-style houses.
My husband and the boys were understanding, and our family’s shaky finances were a factor too. The next day and the next, I took the train to Karuizawa, and ended up helping out all season long, for the basic reason that the money in the envelopes I brought home came in very handy. The eldest boy, though good at schoolwork, had given up on going to college, but I wanted him to go, and since his father had discouraged him only to keep from burdening me, we had decided recently to do all we could to help him continue his education.
THE KARUIZAWA THAT I came back to with a fresh approach was special to all the summer inhabitants of the two villas. Harue’s family, having returned to Japan the previous spring, had summered in Karuizawa the year before, but this year Yuko was also back for a visit after graduating from Juilliard, and so for the first time in six years everyone from the two families was together again. That might have been one reason I was so keenly aware of the passage of time. The oldest members of the group, the senior Shigemitsus, had grown quite feeble, and members of the younger generation were needed at the afternoon bridge sessions to make up the numbers. The Demon was in her mid-seventies and she too had lost a lot of her pep, so the traditional English-style Sunday lunch which had always been held at the Shigemitsus’ place was now held at the Saegusa house instead. Not only that, but though Harue had once pooh-poohed everything to do with America, her stay in New York had made her a convert, and she switched to something called Sunday brunch, a light meal in the American style. In Harue’s absence Fuyue had taken charge, so I wasn’t treated the same way as before. “Fumi, you eat with us today,” Harue would also say, and I had my lunch or tea right at the table with them. Her generation was getting on, but the young ones were in the full flower of youth.
The happiest of those young people was Yoko’s sister Yuko, whose engagement was celebrated that summer in Karuizawa. Her father made a point of coming down for the occasion, even though for many years running he had taken to remaining behind in Sapporo, where he said the summers were just as pleasant. Yuko’s fiancé was the American she had fallen for soon after entering Juilliard. He was a cellist but also wanted to compose, and, while I don’t pretend to understand such things, he was interested in Asian music—Indian and Indonesian, but Japanese music as well. When he arrived in Japan slightly after Yuko, he was surprised to find that the Saegusa house in Karuizawa contained recordings of nothing but Western classical music. Harue and Fuyue grumbled about having to speak to him in English but agreed approvingly that he looked a little like the French actor Gérard Philipe, a heartthrob of their generation. Natsue wasn’t wholly content, since the daughter on whom she had lavished such affection and money would now be living permanently in the United States, but Yuko was so radiant with joy that she could hardly complain.
Yoko was the exact opposite, spreading an air of gloom.
“Fumiko?”
One afternoon she came to see me, choosing a time when I was off alone in the kitchen, having brought out the silver to polish. Most of it consisted of things the Shigemitsu family had kept hidden during the war, not donating them to the army, and had passed on to the Saegusa family.
“Have you heard from Taro?”
“No,” I lied. The moment I said it I felt a twinge of guilt as it crossed my mind that when I married and changed my address I had deliberately refrained from sending him a postcard. If he sent me a Christmas card this year, it would go back to him stamped “Address Unknown.”
“Oh …” She bit her lower lip. “I wonder if he’s still alive.”
“I’m sure he is,” I said, polishing the sugar bowl with a cloth. “He’s young, and young people don’t die all that easily.”
Not listening, Yoko went on half to herself: “It’s been nearly two years now since he went to New York. How many times do you suppose I’ve been to the post office since I got well?”
She was looking at me, but she didn’t seem to expect an answer.
“Every single time, I ask if there’s anything for me by general delivery. They all know me by sight—it’s so embarrassing.” She sighed and then said, again
half to herself, “Why doesn’t he write?” Her eyes were on the row of gleaming silverware, unseeing.
“I wonder.”
“Why doesn’t he?” she repeated. She was so lackluster that I couldn’t help being reminded she’d been taken to see a psychiatrist.
“I feel as if I’ve disappeared, myself.” She sounded even more remote. It was as if while she was standing there her spirit had gone off to wander some far corner of the earth. I was concerned, but the moment I opened my mouth to say something, she came to and took up the petulant tone she used with Taro.
“I will never, ever forgive him,” she said in a low, firm voice, and bit her lip again. “Never. Not as long as I live.” She put up a good front, but she may finally have begun to understand what it meant to be loved that much by someone like Taro—in a life she was given only one chance to live.
AGAINST A BURST of green leaves under the summer sun, with fine linen and dishes on the table, and bright laughter everywhere—amid all this, Yoko looked sullen and abstracted, her mind elsewhere. Yet something unexpected was happening to her even then. Masayuki, the heir to the Shigemitsu family, had fallen in love with her. That was what I first saw in Karuizawa that summer, an undreamed-of development that became reality.
Harue miscalculated badly.
Before our eyes Masayuki’s attitude toward Yoko was undergoing a change. As far as I could remember he had never paid her much attention, but one day I realized that he would seek her out wherever she was on the grounds, go up to her, and engage in long talks. At Sunday brunch he sat where he could see her face. When the others ignored her, he would casually start up a conversation. Around Taro, Yoko was a little tyrant, but in front of Masayuki she was meek, and even when he addressed her she often thought it must be someone else he was talking to, and remained absent in manner. Then, when she realized the remark was aimed at her, she would break into a smile. Thinking back, that was the first summer the two of them had been together in Karuizawa in five long years. The first time after the Utagawas moved to Sapporo—the summer of her first “misconduct”—Masayuki was going to cram school and didn’t come to Karuizawa. The year after that, the Utagawas were building a house in Miyanomori, and Natsue didn’t send Yoko to Karuizawa. The third summer, Masayuki and his parents were away in New York, and the fourth, Yoko had been at a low ebb after the “elopement” and stayed in Sapporo. And so, that summer, a girl who had been fourteen the last time Masayuki had seen her was all at once nineteen. She compared unfavorably with other young women in appearance, but since he had never known her very well before, she undoubtedly came as a refreshing surprise.
Harue’s miscalculation came ironically into play.
When had Harue become so fixated on it? When did she make up her mind that Masayuki belonged to her girls? Back when the war had just ended and all three women—herself, her sister Natsue, and Yayoi—had babies in Karuizawa at around the same time, was she already dreaming of such a thing? Or did the notion arise after she watched Masayuki grow into the spitting image of Noriyuki, his uncle who’d died in the war? Or was it that Masayuki himself had turned into the sort of young man every mother wanted for her daughter? There’s no telling how far back it went, but Harue definitely wanted him to marry one of her girls—if not Mari, then Eri—and in fact based everything on the firm expectation that he would do just that. Everyone around her, me included, was vaguely aware that she lived with this assumption. Of course, Natsue hoped the same thing for her daughter Yuko, so there was always a certain undercurrent of competition between the sisters. But Yuko quickly found a boyfriend on her own, forcing Natsue to abandon the dream. With Yuko out of the way, Harue must have been convinced that Masayuki was destined for one of her girls.
Had he gone on living next door after he graduated from university, Harue probably would have let things slide. But this was just when the political strife at universities was at its peak. The previous summer Masayuki had given up on the idea of doing graduate work in Japan and decided to pursue his studies in America instead, thus exiting the stage just when her daughters were at their most marriageable. She was determined to see him engaged to one of them before he left, or if not formally engaged, at least openly committed, and so she swung into action. But the more she tried to push him into the arms of either Mari or Eri the less interest he showed, possibly a natural response for any young man. He began to avoid the sisters and seek out Yoko’s company. This irritated Harue so much that, in addition to promoting her daughters, she began to pick on Yoko in a roundabout way. That was her downfall. By midsummer there was Harue on one side, being mean to Yoko at every turn, and Masayuki on the other, being nice as pie.
If they were getting up a game of doubles at tennis and Yuko was away with her fiancé, Harue would send for a girl from one of the neighboring villas, on the grounds that Yoko played badly. At Sunday brunch she talked of nothing but New York, so that Yoko would be ignored and her own daughters stand out. She even brought up Taro’s name when people came over for tea, and repeated her pet line: “The rickshaw-puller’s boy, a chauffeur! Isn’t that rich?” Yoko was used to being ignored or left out of things, but when her aunt started up this sort of talk she would flush bright red, and Masayuki’s clean-cut features would turn pale in response. Now and then Yuko would accompany Yoko on the piano while she sang, and compliment her: “Your singing’s really improved, you know. With a bit more coaching you could easily have made it to Juilliard.” But Harue, a great Maria Callas fan, would wear a look of undisguised boredom the whole time Yoko sang, wandering in and out of the room for no reason and starting a random conversation with whoever was around.
One moonlit evening at high tea when Yuko asked Yoko to sing something and she started to perform, all but Harue among those there listened attentively. The second the applause died down she looked around and said with a sweet smile, “Now, everybody, how about a little Callas to cleanse the palate?” She may have found Yoko’s singing genuinely unappealing, but her spiteful remark propelled Masayuki out of his chair and over to Yoko’s side to comfort her publicly. Fortunately, Yoko seemed not to have heard what Harue said and just stood motionless in the pale moonlight, as though spellbound.
Masayuki felt defiant, I’m sure. And his defiance was fueled by his natural gentleness. No one as clever as Harue could have failed to realize along the way that the meaner she was to Yoko, the more someone like Masayuki would sympathize and be drawn to her. I think seeing her long-cherished dream disintegrate before her eyes made it impossible for Harue to avoid the impulse to be mean. Why Yoko, of all people? That thought surely added to her frustration. Had it been anyone else, she might have been able to bear it—so why did it have to be Yoko? Not only did Yoko have less to offer than her own daughters in every respect but, as was common knowledge, she had caused that “elopement” scandal.
Damaged goods.
No one said the words out loud, but two years after the scandal, that was what everyone thought when they looked at Yoko that summer in Karuizawa. Perhaps out of girlish prudishness, Mari and Eri avoided her company. Also, now that the storm had blown over, her mother was going around saying that she’d gone through what no mother should ever have to endure. Even though Yoko was her own daughter, she acted as if she were some incomprehensible burden suddenly thrust upon her.
From Masayuki’s perspective, however, Yoko’s involvement in the scandal only increased her appeal. No matter how friendly he was with her, neither her mother nor she herself suspected him of any underlying interest; the idea that he might love her was something Yoko couldn’t imagine and didn’t want. To a young man as eligible—far too eligible—as Masayuki, this must have felt like a breath of fresh air. And to think that she’d caused such a fuss because of Taro, of all people; that she was miserable, haunted by memories of someone like him; and that romance with anyone, even someone of Masayuki’s caliber, was the farthest thing from her mind … Surrounded by girls keen on marrying well, how different, how spe
cial she must have seemed! Harue’s inability to forgive Yoko would soon extend toward Masayuki as well, showing just how frustrated she was with reality’s continual disrespect—its utter unwillingness to conform to her wishes.
That summer, the only ones who saw their marriage coming and were afraid of it were Harue and me. I felt as if I were standing in for Taro, and that the qualms he would have had were mine as well.
It was the summer of 1969.
FROM THAT TIME on, for years I made it a habit to spend an entire month helping out at the Saegusas’ house in the summertime. And that also became the one time of the year I always looked forward to. To enjoy helping with someone else’s chores made me feel slightly guilty toward my own family; it looked a bit odd even to me. Yet that was the truth. At the time, for me Karuizawa was a place where I could breathe deeply, on my own in a crowd. Being able to head off there with a fairly clear conscience, since it helped the family budget, was a great boon to me. And the financial advantages did not end with the money in the envelope marked “A Token of Thanks” I received at the end of summer either. Since my marriage, I had started doing clothing alterations for the neighbors to supplement the family income, but Harue gave me a little push: “You can’t make good money doing alterations, Fumi. You should design your own clothes and sell them. With your sophistication, all you’d have to do is model them and they’d sell.” Well, it wasn’t long before I was getting more orders for dressmaking than I was for alterations. Primavera might have finished its historical mission in Tokyo, but out in the country fashionable clothes were still hard to come by. The sisters let me borrow old Primavera patterns and copy dress patterns that Harue had bought in New York department stores. So in summer I helped out in Karuizawa, and the rest of the year I took in sewing. That became the framework of my life.
A True Novel Page 49