CEMETERY
As soon as this occurred to me, I sat right down and wrote a letter to Taro. He had told me to call him collect if anything came up, but in those days I found making overseas calls rather intimidating. I soon got a call from Taro.
“Fumiko, how about working as my assistant?” he proposed. He said the word assistant in English, which sounded to me like “sistan,” leaving me baffled for a moment. He was proposing that I rent an apartment in some convenient part of Tokyo and work for him. Thanks to the booming economy, he was traveling to Tokyo in search of investors more frequently these days, and because staying in hotels all the time was becoming a nuisance, recently he’d been considering renting a condominium. Ideally, I would move into my own place and keep the condominium shipshape so that he could live there whenever he was in town. It would be nice if I did some office work for him too, he added. The legal assistant who used to handle his affairs at Nakada Associates had quit to take care of her elderly parents. Though a succession of temporary workers had taken her place, they changed so often that it was hard to get anything done that required continuity, and he had been thinking about hiring someone as his personal assistant anyway.
Taro was doing all the talking, unlike his usual self, and I just listened. “Some office work too,” he had said. But I knew this was only to make me feel less beholden to him. He wasn’t expecting anything more from me than what a maid does, and even then there wouldn’t actually be much work. He just needed reasons to give me enough of a monthly stipend so that I could live in the big city by myself.
He seemed to be waiting for me to say something, but I had no idea how to react. Dinner was over and I could see the grandchildren on the tatami floor squabbling over what television program to watch, but I felt entirely detached from the scene, as if I weren’t really there. Eventually my common sense told me that I shouldn’t take advantage of Taro’s goodwill to that extent.
“If you want a place to live in Tokyo, Taro,” I said, “I could come down from Oiwake from time to time to keep it up for you.”
“Come on, Fumiko.” He sounded exasperated. “Why not go to live in Tokyo yourself? Have a place of your own there, and go back to Oiwake whenever you feel like it.”
I fell silent again. For the past few years, I had been content just to have him take me to a stylish restaurant two or three times a year. Tokyo was far away, and for the past seventeen years I had never thought of living there again. Yet something deep inside me stirred as I heard him say this.
My daughter-in-law, kneeling on the tatami, finished stacking dirty dishes on a large tray; she stood up, hoisting the heavy load, carried it past me, and disappeared into the kitchen.
“You always wanted to live in Tokyo alone and in style, remember? You could even take classes.”
“What do you mean, classes?”
“I don’t know exactly, but you know, culture centers or hobby courses or whatever—schools for ladies of a certain age with time on their hands.”
I smiled despite myself.
“How much would you be paying me?”
“As much as you want.”
“A million yen a month,” I joked.
“Done.”
After a pause, I answered. “All right, let’s do this. Fix it so that after taxes, health insurance, and the rest, my take-home pay is a hundred fifty thousand yen a month. I don’t want to live in poverty in Tokyo, after all.”
“A hundred fifty thousand yen?” Irritation was obvious in his voice. “Look here, Fumiko. That would be what people call living in poverty. At Tokyo prices it would barely cover the rent!”
“I have my husband’s monthly pension of a hundred thousand yen. I’ll put that toward the rent.”
“Don’t be dumb!” I could imagine his angry face on the other end of the line. “It’s stupid! Please. There’s no reason to pinch pennies like that when that kind of money means nothing to me.”
“But there wouldn’t be any actual work for me to do.”
“There’s a lawyer here I see only a couple of days a month, and him I pay the equivalent of several hundred thousand yen.”
When I didn’t answer, Taro spoke in the particular, slightly nasal voice he always used when pleading for something. At such times he was deadly serious, but the softness of his voice invariably caught me off guard and distracted me from what he was saying.
“Fumiko, for once in my life I want you to let me do something to make you a bit happier.”
I was quiet. At the other end of the line, Taro too said nothing. The fleeting thought came to me that, at international rates, this mutual silence was a terrible waste of money, but I didn’t know how to answer him. After a pause I said in a voice slightly husky with emotion, “All right, then two hundred thousand yen a month. Any more than that I cannot accept. It’s just not proper to take that kind of money from someone who’s not family—who’s after all only an acquaintance.”
I could picture him gritting his teeth.
“Promise you won’t pay me more than two hundred thousand yen a month.”
“What about inflation?”
“We’ll worry about that when the time comes.”
Before hanging up I got him to agree that I would go on working summers in Karuizawa as always.
At first my family tried to dissuade me, but I gently stressed that this was not the sort of job that involved either daily commuting or hard physical work, and that I wanted another try at life in the city while I was still healthy and not yet even fifty. They were well aware that it would be easier on everybody if I did move out, so they eventually gave in. And since in small towns people talk, I took the trouble to spread the word among relatives and neighbors that, though my son and his wife had actually tried to prevent me from going, I was leaving of my own free will.
Since the Miyota family house and land were too small to divide, I had renounced any rights to them. My late husband’s younger two sons did likewise, as was customary in the countryside. But I left my name on the family register in the town’s public records. When my health declined or there was any change in my working relationship with Taro Azuma, I would of course be back, everyone assumed, and the arrangement would only be for the interim, probably less than ten years. I knew that my husband would have wanted me to see how his children and grandchildren were getting on, and I intended to come back for the Bon festival and New Year’s, to do what I could to maintain family ties.
TARO MUST HAVE told Yoko about the deal, for she telephoned me soon afterward.
“Leave the hunt for a Tokyo apartment to me,” she said, so I reminded her that the rent had to be no more than a hundred thousand yen a month. In no time she came up with a place in Gotokuji, which she picked because it was convenient for the Odakyu and Tokyu Setagaya Lines and would be familiar to me. It was a two-bedroom apartment with a main room that included living and dining areas and a kitchen workspace, over a total area of sixty-two square meters, located on the southeast corner, on the fourth floor of a five-story building a five-minute walk from the station. She sounded like a real estate agent as she rattled off all this information. Moreover, it was not a standard rental apartment but a personal property that the owner was renting out, so it was solidly built, and a hundred thousand per month was a real bargain. Because it was undergoing renovation, it would not be available for another couple of months. Still, it was an unbeatable deal. Her enthusiasm left me little choice. I had no sense of the Tokyo market anymore and no idea if the rent was high or low, but I decided to take it. “Now let me pick out the furniture,” Yoko said in that same bossy tone. She was a professional interior designer, after all. “Not too expensive, now,” I warned her. Which did I prefer, sleeping in a bed or on the floor, she wanted to know, as one of the bedrooms had a tatami floor. I immediately said I would prefer a bed. She laughed. “What a modern girl you are, Fumiko.”
“I’ve slept on futons all my life,” I commented. “Time for a change.”
&nb
sp; The only items of furniture I took with me were the ones that old Mrs. Utagawa had given me, less because I needed them than because I couldn’t bear to part with them. Beyond that, all I really needed were my clothes and some personal things, so I only packed a few cardboard boxes and sent them ahead. My daughter-in-law offered to leave the children with their father and help me move in. She shouldn’t have bothered when I had so few belongings, I thought, but rejecting her offer would have been rude, so one weekend we went up to Tokyo together. Yoko was there in the apartment wearing an apron, all ready to help, having likewise left her daughter in her husband’s hands.
The apartment was astonishing. The only way I can describe it is to say—however silly it sounds—that it looked like something straight out of the glossy photographs in a magazine spread. Everything was brand-new—not just the walls and floors but the fitted kitchen and bathroom, all white and modern and stylish. As for the living-dining-kitchen area, which was easily larger than ten mats in size, one entire wall was taken up by built-in cabinets. Though I was hardly qualified to judge, the materials and workmanship seemed to be of a high quality. Standing in the middle of the room, my daughter-in-law declared it was “just like New York.” I was none too sure about that, but it still made me gasp in amazement. Unable to believe my eyes, I went around opening and closing the cabinets over and over again.
An explanation came later when I saw Yoko off at the station, leaving behind my daughter-in-law, who was going to stay the night. “Let’s talk about it another time,” Yoko said. “After you’re settled in.” She kept trying to change the subject, but I squared my jaw and kept pressing for an answer. Finally I got her to reveal that the apartment had actually been bought by Taro’s company and completely renovated at considerable expense. A place like that would normally cost at least two hundred thousand yen a month, since there were maintenance fees as well, but because this was company-owned housing, all I needed to pay was a hundred thousand yen each month to Nakada Associates—utilities included. I also learned that Taro had deliberately chosen a smallish place, thinking that otherwise I might back out of it.
I wasn’t sure whether it made me happy or sad to have him do so much for me. I had pressed Yoko relentlessly until she told me everything, but once she did, I had no more to say. I walked unseeing along the busy thoroughfare near the station, until we were at the crossing.
“Fumiko, you’re like a big sister to him.” Yoko stood beside me and turned to look me in the eye. In time with the jingle of the warning bell, the light of a red crossing signal blinking on and off was reflected on her face. As the train roared past us, she shouted, “I know he’s always wanted to look after you. But you were married, so he held back, out of consideration for your husband. You’ve got to let him do at least this much for you.”
The next evening, after my daughter-in-law had gone home to Miyota, I leaned against the balcony railing and looked out absently at the scenery. The wind was blowing. Sometimes it carried the sound of a train on the Odakyu Line. What a difference from twenty years before, when, after my divorce, I had rented that tiny four-and-a-half-mat walkup in Evergreen Apartments No. 2! There in winter I would sit huddled in the kotatsu trying to get warm, and in summer I would head off to the public bath, dripping with sweat, to freshen up. True, Japan itself had become wealthier, but my good luck was out of proportion to the country’s prosperity. And yet, there was this loneliness. It felt like there were suddenly a gaping hole in my chest. There was nothing more I could ever do for Taro and Yoko—nothing. From that point on, they would be the ones doing things for me. I never dreamed that this turnaround would make me feel so lonely.
FOR TARO, YOKO found a luxury apartment for expatriates in Yoyogi Uehara. It was only available as a rental, which meant he could use it as a tax write-off. As my first job, I handled the paperwork involved. Yoyogi Uehara station was on the Odakyu Line as well, but it also linked up with the subway line that led directly to Nogizaka, where Yoko lived. The neatness of this location showed an astuteness that struck me as uncharacteristic for Yoko, and I rather suspected that Masayuki’s brains had played a part in it.
I SOON ORDERED postcards printed with my new address to announce the move. On the card I mailed to the Saegusas I added a note saying that one of these days I would drop by to say hello. Almost immediately I got a call from Fuyue. “What’s this all about, Fumiko?” she wanted to know. Before I could say anything, Harue came on the line, shoving Natsue out of the way, as it were: “Fumi, you could have knocked us over with a feather! Moving here to Tokyo out of the blue—what on earth is going on?” She seemed unlikely to let me go unless I told her the whole story, so I explained that just as I was starting to feel awkward about living with my stepson’s family after my husband’s death, Taro happened to offer me a job in Tokyo as his assistant, to do various chores for him. She listened quietly, with occasional grunts. I had no idea what she might be thinking. Then abruptly she said, “Well, do come and see us sometime,” and hung up.
A little while later, I visited them in Seijo. The three sisters, by this time in their sixties, gathered noisily in the parlor. Three pairs of eyes lined up, alive with interest. Ever since Taro had bought the Oiwake cottage, they had suspected me of being involved, and now they must have thought they had proof.
“How very convenient that this offer should have come along just after your poor husband died.” The sarcasm in Harue’s voice was ill concealed as she said this, looking me full in the face. “But what kind of ‘chores’ do you actually do?”
“Oh, just a little more than what a maid usually does.”
“That boy Taro mostly isn’t even in Japan, is he?”
His business contacts here were increasing all the time, I replied, so he had plenty to do in this country. She then pressed me for particulars about the nature of his work, but I had only recently arrived in Tokyo and couldn’t give a satisfactory answer. Besides, I wanted to avoid talking about him with these women if I could help it.
Harue kept up her interrogation a while longer but finally gave up, throwing herself back in her armchair with exaggerated force. “Oh dear!” she sighed. “He’s taken Oiwake, he’s taken Fumi … if we aren’t careful, he’ll make off with every last thing we own …” Then she asked me quickly and casually, “So what about this summer?”
Outside, the hydrangeas were at their peak. One month more and it would be time to go to Karuizawa.
She no doubt thought she was being offhand, but her eyes were all too earnest. All of a sudden I saw that Natsue and Fuyue had the same look in their eyes. For perhaps the first time in the thirty years I had known them, I felt a vague pity for the three sisters, and at the same time I was glad that in their self-seeking way, they needed me. I sensed that I was needed not only as a source of labor but as a kind of emotional ballast.
THE NEXT TIME Taro was in Tokyo, he came over just once, to check out my apartment. He planted himself in front of the window, legs spread wide, and looked out over the jumbled cityscape with buildings of every color, shape, and size.
“It’s so ugly,” he said.
“You think so?”
“Ugly and sordid.”
I always appreciated the fact that there were no high-rise buildings around, so I had an unobstructed view of the sky.
“At least the inside is nice,” I said.
He went on, ignoring this. “They say Japan is rich, but it’s just not true.”
He wasn’t asking my opinion, so I said nothing but kept my eyes on his tense profile.
“Materially rich but spiritually poor, everyone says, but whenever I hear that I think, ‘Oh yeah?’ If Japan were really materially rich, that would be one thing, but all its surplus money has done is fill the country to overflowing with ugliness.”
He spun around with a grin. “Then again, surplus money is what keeps me in business.”
I OWED MY own good fortune to that surplus money. My move to Tokyo came in the spring of 1986. Luc
kily for me, during the next three years Taro continued rounding up investors in Japan, where there was an abundance of money. He ended up coming back to Tokyo far more frequently than he had first anticipated, which meant a corresponding increase in work for me. I started heading into the office of Nakada Associates a couple of days a week. Most of my work involved communicating with clients, so although back in Miyota I had never so much as touched an answering machine, soon every day I was using not just that but a fax machine and copier too. I actually went to a language school and learned to read basic English with the help of a dictionary. Soon I knew my way around a computer too. In no time my bedroom became a bedroom-cum-office, lined with an array of office machines. I’d expected to be given nothing but housemaid’s work, but now I was working really and truly as an assistant. I suppose I had certain abilities that I myself had never suspected in all my fifty years, including that time I worked for a manufacturer of measuring instruments. The more I was given to do, the more I showed the makings of a first-rate office worker. It got so that when anything connected with Taro came up, the people at Nakada Associates would say, “Let’s ask Mrs. Tsuchiya.” Taro was impressed, and wanted to raise my salary. When I declined the offer, he scowled and accused me of being “a tough nut to crack.” But besides my net monthly income, I was also getting paid for my nominal caretaking of the Oiwake cottage, so my actual monthly income was 250,000 yen a month, a princely amount. As for the rent for the apartment, which was set low for me on purpose, my husband’s monthly pension covered it perfectly. No reasonable person would feel entitled to more.
A True Novel Page 56