A True Novel

by Minae Mizumura

  The days passed by in a whirl with plenty of work for me to do, and that was my salvation. Because I was busy, when I did have time to myself I didn’t waste it. I read whenever I could, and attended lectures on literature, history, and economics at Setagaya Citizens College. In the summer I showed up in Karuizawa as usual, but I couldn’t very well let Taro’s affairs slide all summer long, so little by little I put a limit on my time there, going only for the week the three sisters arrived, for example, the week they had guests, or the week they went back to Tokyo. Still, helping in Karuizawa was an important, not-to-be-missed annual event for me. During those intervals, since I stayed in the Oiwake cottage, I also used to visit my eldest son and his family in Miyota and go to Saku to see my mother, who was now a widow and still living with my brother’s family. This gave me a chance to take her out to see Aunt O-Hatsu too, and to be greeted by the old familiar voice saying, “Well, if it isn’t Fumiko.” With Ami, my granddaughter, I retained a close tie though we were no relation by blood, and when she got old enough to ride the train by herself, she would come down to Tokyo for the weekend sometimes and sleep in my tatami guest room. I had my health, I had people I could call family, and I had work that was more than domestic service. I also had money of my own. I even had time to myself. Though my life was nothing out of the ordinary, I had achieved a degree of happiness beyond anything I ever expected.

  One day when Yoko met me at a coffee shop, she looked me over with amusement and said, “Fumiko, look at you—you’re a real career woman!” using the English expression that was becoming popular among working women. That morning I had felt a special surge of excitement. As I put on my lipstick before leaving for work, I peered at myself in the bathroom mirror and said gaily, feeling quite youthful, “Look who’s got herself a career!” Yoko must have picked up on the mood I was in.

  Sometimes I thought how pleased Uncle Genji would have been about this new life of mine. I remembered my first day off from my job with the Utagawas back in Chitose Funabashi, when I went to Ueno Park and sat weeping alone on a park bench, convinced that I had nothing to look forward to. Had I known then that all this lay ahead of me, I wouldn’t have cried that way—or so I thought. But sometimes on weekend evenings as I leaned against the balcony railing, looking out vaguely at the scenery, I would feel so desolate that I didn’t know what to do. When the wind brought the distant sound of the Odakyu Line to my ears, I even had a fleeting impulse to hurl myself under the wheels of the train. At times like these, rather than try to distract myself, I found the best thing was to go on leaning against the railing, looking up at the slowly darkening sky as car after car went by on the railway line.

  9

  Windrush

  TIME MARCHED ON. Two of the Saegusa sisters, Harue and Natsue, were now in their late sixties. They went on dyeing their hair, using bright-red lipstick, and dressing stylishly, but they took to referring to themselves mockingly as the Three Witches. Yoko was now in middle age, and she had her share of the usual problems. As her daughter grew, she became harder to deal with, and Yoko’s mother, with Yuko abroad so much of the time, became more and more dependent. But all of this was nothing compared to the burden of looking after sick members of the older generation.

  First, her mother-in-law, Yayoi, developed uterine cancer. Surgery was fortunately successful, but the treatments dragged on until Yayoi’s husband was so worn out and worried that he fell ill himself. Yoko had to look after both of them, often sleeping at their house in Seijo. Around the time they both finally recovered, the Saegusas’ Grampy lost the use of his legs and started to need care of the sort the three sisters couldn’t provide around the clock. Mari and Eri, who lived next door, announced that they’d had enough of nursing him, and so Yoko had to continue commuting to Seijo. The Saegusas hired another housekeeper to help, but unlike the way it was in the old days, there were limits to what they could ask her to do, and I’m sure Yoko was also involved in helping Grampy relieve himself.

  What was strange was that none of this left any mark on her. Even as she grew older, her life left no sediment behind. It was as if she had a protective membrane, making her seem to be living in another world, separate from the one at hand. Inside that separate life was a radiance that, wherever she was, made everything around her somehow brighter. Her happiness certainly seemed to bring both Taro and Masayuki under its spell. How the three of them could keep up that three-cornered relationship was beyond me. Looking at them, I used to feel a sense of wonder and disbelief.

  DURING SUMMERS IN Karuizawa I constantly saw Yoko and Masayuki together. In contrast, I had few opportunities to see Yoko with Taro. When I first moved to Tokyo, Yoko would telephone once in a while when he was in town and invite me out to dinner with them, but Taro was always so self-conscious and awkward during the meal that I took to excusing myself as often as I could, and so the invitations tapered off. There was nothing more I could do for the two of them, and I had no wish to interfere in their time together. Seeing them individually was of course another matter. I saw Taro as his assistant, and when he was out of the country, Yoko, perhaps feeling sorry for me living alone, would call up. “Fumiko, let’s go out and get something good to eat,” she’d say, so I saw her too. But as time went on, meeting as a threesome became rarer and rarer. Still, there was one evening I recall when the three of us did have dinner together, in Taro’s luxury apartment in Yoyogi Uehara.

  Taro had just flown in that afternoon. The day before, I had laid out on his desk all the documents he needed, but one more arrived from the law firm and I decided to stop by his apartment. Since this was several hours after his plane had landed, I slipped the document into his mailbox thinking he and Yoko might already be inside, and turned to leave. At that same moment the two of them stepped out of a taxi and came in at the front entrance.

  They were arm in arm.

  “It’s our Fumiko!” Yoko said to Taro, stating the obvious, her voice echoing in the high-ceilinged space of the granite entranceway. She withdrew her arm and tugged hard on the sleeve of his coat. I remembered her doing exactly the same thing to her grandmother when she was a little girl, yanking on the sleeve of the old lady’s kimono when she wanted something.

  “I know what! Let’s eat together tonight, the three of us. There’s plenty of food here.” She glanced at the shopping bag Taro was carrying in his other hand.

  Automatically, I looked at Taro’s face. Just as I thought, he seemed uncomfortable. Before I could open my mouth to say no, Yoko looked up at him and said, “You know, come to think of it, we three never have had dinner together at home. It’s funny, isn’t it? Let’s eat here tonight, just us. It’ll be nice, we can take our time and relax … I left word with Masayuki that I’d be out late anyway. All right?”

  Her words were a bit girlish, but she spoke straightforwardly, without any coyness. Taro gave in. His face cleared and he said, “Sure, if Fumiko is willing.”

  I hesitated momentarily, but for a woman who lived alone to turn down the offer might have seemed needlessly disobliging. “All right, then,” I said. “I gratefully accept your kind invitation.”

  “Goody!” Yoko clapped the tips of her fingers together, just the way she used to do.

  I never expected the evening to be so delicious in every way.

  “You’re tired, so just sit and rest,” Yoko told Taro, but he joined us in the large kitchen. Though she looked impressively domestic in an apron, all she actually did was transfer a variety of store-bought foods from plastic containers onto serving plates. “Taro’s practically a vegetarian, which is a real bother,” she said, so I thought she would at least boil or stir-fry some fresh vegetables for him, but no; she just reached into the bottom of the shopping bag and kept pulling out side dishes such as spinach with sesame and seasoned kyona leaves, all with the label of Nadaman, an old, exclusive Kyoto restaurant. According to her, at home she cooked almost every night, so when she was out with Taro she never went to the trouble. He didn’t s
eem to mind. “Today we’re having Japanese food, so let’s go back to ‘life on the floor,’ ” she said, laughing. Instead of using the dinner table, she spread everything out on a low coffee table in the spacious sitting room—all the side dishes, some sushi wrapped in bamboo leaves, and pickles from Kyoto. The plates and chopstick rests she laid out looked quite elegant. Her good taste was obviously inherited, a family thing. The three of us went back and forth between kitchen and sitting room, trading little jokes along the way. Neither the surroundings nor the food was remotely like the old days in Chitose Funabashi, and yet it felt like an extension of those happy times.

  Yoko was in especially good spirits. No sooner were we seated than she jumped up—”Oh, I forgot something!”—and brought back a bottle of red wine and a pair of wineglasses. “This is the only bottle left,” she said, “but it should be just enough for you and me, Fumiko.” She handed it to Taro to uncork and pour, then raised her glass to mine in a toast. “Tonight I’m going to see you get blotto for once, Fumiko!” After just one sip, though, the area around her own eyes flushed red. By the time the flush had spread from her throat to her fingertips, she was chattering away even more than usual. Her mood was catching. As the wine took effect I found myself babbling too, and even Taro, who didn’t drink, let down his usual defenses. The content of our conversation was forgettable, but it wasn’t what we were saying so much as the fact that the three of us were together, having a good time, that made us so happy, each in his or her own way. By the end Yoko was doing imitations of the Three Witches, her red face all scrunched, rolling on the floor and laughing till the tears came. Taro and I were rolling about too.

  After the meal, we felt washed out—it was like the mood after a festival. In a completely different voice Yoko said, “Taro, you’re tired.” This wasn’t a question. She said it in the gently scolding tone a mother uses to a child.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Oh, yes you are.”

  In fact, instead of his usual direct flight from New York he had come on a long, roundabout route, stopping on business in Tel Aviv, The Hague, and London before arriving in Tokyo. He had bags under his eyes.

  “While we do the dishes, you take a little nap.”

  “I’m not sleepy.”

  “Now, now. When we’re finished I’ll bring you some nice cherries for dessert, so go ahead and lie down, close your eyes and get some rest.” She twisted around and patted the sofa they were leaning against. They were sitting on the carpet with their backs against the sofa and I was across from them, also on the carpet, my back to an armchair.

  “I’m okay.”

  “Be a good boy.”

  “I’m okay, really.”

  “Come on. Be good.”

  Tipsy as I was, I listened to this conversation with my ears pricked up. Yoko spoke to him in a way I had never heard her do before, a gentle, soothing way. Did she speak to him this sweetly as a child when the two of them were alone? I wondered. Or had she picked it up only after they met again as adults? Taro looked embarrassed. He shot me a glance and told her a little gruffly, “I said I’m okay.”

  Yoko wasn’t bothered by this and simply said, “What am I going to do with you?” She got up and knelt down on the sofa, placing herself directly behind Taro, then reached up and flicked the switches on the wall to turn off the lights. The soft recessed light that was trained on the coffee table went dark, as did what looked like some antique Chinese lamps on the end tables. The big room was lit only by one dim lamp, made in a modern style with handmade Japanese paper.

  “What are you doing?”

  “If you won’t sleep, I’ll ‘grandma’ you.”

  What she said made no sense to me. I thought I must have heard it wrong, but she said the same thing again.

  “Okay? I’ll ‘grandma’ you.”

  Taro seemed to know what this meant, since he tried to sit up and get away, but she was already holding him down by the shoulders. While she tapped them lightly and rhythmically with her fingertips, she leaned forward and whispered, “Good boy, sweet boy,” breathing the words in his ear. Whether it was the effect of her fingertips or her whispering, Taro soon lost the power to resist, his whole body unable to move. The moment this happened, she slipped her hands around in front of his face, fingers together, and blindfolded him.

  For a bit there was silence.

  Then—how on earth was she able to produce a voice so haunting? The sound of an old woman whose lilting voice was a memory; the voice of a woman twice her age, low and broken. She sang a lullaby, a song full of sadness, the kind of song a woman who never bore a child might sing to a child who never had a mother.

  Nennen korori yo okororiyo

  Boya wa yoi ko da nenne shina.

  (Hushabye hushabye

  Good little boy, go to sleep.)

  She sang it slowly, very slowly, with her eyes closed, rocking slightly forward and back. When she had sung it three times, she gently lifted her hands from his face. For a time no one spoke. Taro’s eyes were still closed. I was sitting with my arms around my knees, staring into the darkness. I felt transported into the past—a past beyond their childhood and deep into my own—a time before I could remember, though one in which a vague sadness had already taken root.

  SEEING YOKO AND Taro as children, I never imagined that one day the kind of serenity I saw that night would ever come to them. Adulthood alone could not have done it. I believe the delicate balance they achieved was thanks largely to Masayuki. An outsider like myself was unable to see this till the very end, and yet even so I must have begun to sense something as the years went by. That would explain why an exchange between Yoko and me that took place not long after their curious three-sided relationship had begun often came back to me later.

  “What Taro does is actually helping humanity,” Yoko declared one day, out of the blue. “That’s what Masayuki says.”

  She said this expecting me to approve. But at the time I was still unused to their relationship, and my first reaction was the usual mixture of skepticism and dismay: just what was going on with these people?

  It could have been her father’s influence. Yoko always did like to go on about what would or would not be of service to mankind—the prerogative, or possibly the sheer nerve, of someone who has enjoyed a privileged upbringing. The amount of money involved was never very much, but she joined a program called the Foster Parents Plan that helped educate poor children around the world; she also responded to the year-end appeals for donations to charity by NHK, the national broadcasting service; and she regularly contributed to Doctors Without Borders. I’m sure she didn’t think for a minute that any of this alone qualified her as a benefactress herself—but benefiting mankind was a principle she believed in. The richer Taro became, the uneasier she undoubtedly felt about his wasting his life making money when by rights he might have been doing something more humanitarian. But Masayuki made her see how wrong she was. Raising capital to mass-produce newly developed medical devices allowed them to become widely available at affordable prices, thereby directly benefiting humanity; so, ironically enough, Taro was useful to a far greater number of people than he could ever have been by merely becoming a good doctor. Her husband’s comment helped soothe Yoko’s conscience, and Taro’s too.

  “That’s what Masayuki says,” she repeated, in the same reverent tone she had always used in childhood. She made it sound as if whatever he said was the pure and simple truth. “He says Taro’s work is in a completely different category from a useless field like architecture.”

  Hearing this overstatement attributed to Masayuki, I felt obliged to protest. “Architecture is a form of art, so why should it be useful?”

  “Yes, but he doesn’t mean ‘useless’ that way, he means it really has no value.”

  Back when he was studying in America, Masayuki had still believed that architecture could be used to beautify the world. But as time passed he increasingly felt that the more architects went on designing build
ings in their own styles, to suit their own tastes, the uglier the world became. He had come to think that in a country like Japan, where history and tradition got thrown out the window and architectural principles were lost, the architect was a blight on society.

  As I listened to Yoko prattle on enthusiastically about his way of thinking, it slowly dawned on me how unconventional, despite his mild exterior, her husband really was. He was someone willing to go to extremes. In his effort to be fair to his wife’s lover, he was willing to be unfair to himself. A faint sense that this idealism of his was what held the three of them together occurred to me then for the first time.

  Whether it was because Masayuki was like that or because Yoko trusted him so completely I don’t know, but over time, as the threesome continued, I could clearly see Taro beginning to change. The intense gloom that used to come over him sometimes began to dissipate. The clearest indication of this shift in character was a different attitude toward money.

  “I was such a money-grubber, I’m still an uneducated boor.” The first time I saw Taro after he came back from America, he said this with a dour look on his face, mocking himself. In his eyes the funds he’d gone to such trouble to accumulate weren’t something to be proud of but actually had a certain taint to them. Yet gradually he found a way to “sanitize” them, at least in his own mind. It’s apparently an article of faith among rich Americans that charitable donations are a way of returning a portion of their wealth to society. Perhaps because of something Yoko may have said, at some point he started donating money to charities left and right. When I heard about this, I thought of the old Buddhist term for pious donations: jozai, “purifying money.” Taro’s wealth also gave Yoko’s family a good deal of financial leeway, and from little remarks she let drop I got the impression that money was freely available to her. Taro’s money was his, but it also belonged to Yoko and Masayuki and, even more so, to society in general. I think this generous attitude benefited Taro most of all.