A True Novel

by Minae Mizumura

  Under these circumstances, what happened in fall 1986, a few months after that evening when Yoko sang the lullaby, was hardly a surprise. Taro bought an old mansion in America, and plans for its reconstruction and landscaping were naturally entrusted to Masayuki’s architectural firm. The mansion was situated on an inlet on the north shore of Long Island, near Manhattan. It was a grand but dilapidated Romanesque-style residence known as Windrush, built early in the twentieth century by a millionaire—American nouveau riche, Taro said—who hired artisans from Italy for the task, even importing Italian marble. When Taro heard that Windrush was available, he talked it over with Yoko, and she talked it over with Masayuki, and Masayuki flew all the way to New York to have a look at the place, and Taro decided to buy it. I gather that Windrush was a place well and truly shut off from the world, situated so that you could get a full view of it only from the sea at the end of the inlet. The mansion itself was of course sprawling, and the sadly neglected grounds, with cypress trees from Italy that had withered and died, were large enough to get lost in.

  “Even if we three live there, it’s so big that Masayuki and Taro will never have to meet, so we can live there in our old age,” Yoko said. It would be like retiring to a monastery, she told me, half joking and half serious, after she heard Masayuki’s description. “You could come and spend your old age there too, Fumiko.”

  “What would I do in a place like that?”

  Yoko grinned. “Why, praise the beauty of God’s kingdom,” she said—a mocking reference to her mother’s one-time flirtation with religion. Then, serious again, she stared off at something distant. “Our Karuizawa house is like a gatekeeper’s lodge, he says.”

  One reason for picking out an old mansion like Windrush was that Masayuki had always said he would rather tinker with the design of an old place than come up with a new design of his own.

  Once the purchase was concluded, their planning picked up speed. Yoko knew nothing about the tea ceremony, but she declared, “I want a Japanese teahouse where I can invite Americans. Then I can get Grandma’s hanging scrolls and incense burners out of storage and use them.” So they decided to uproot a teahouse in Japan and reconstruct it there. Then, in order to include a building of Masayuki’s own design, they also decided to put up a small outbuilding on a promontory on the inlet.

  The scale of the project was unimaginably lavish, not just to me but to the three of them as well. Once the decision to buy was made, things moved quickly, but the project, including landscaping, took a full three years and was not finished until just before Yoko died, done in collaboration with an architectural design firm in New York that specialized in the restoration of historic buildings. Masayuki went several times to oversee it in person. He and Taro, who never saw each other after they grew up, exchanged a stream of faxes. They were all swept up in a carnival mood: every possible idea was tossed around, with Masayuki making sketches and architectural models, and Yoko, supposedly as interior designer, sticking in her comments. Looking back, I think that might have been when the three were at their happiest.

  WHEN DID IT all start to come apart? That is something I do not know, but I suppose it comes down to our inability, our human inability to make time stand still. As someone who bears direct responsibility for Yoko’s death, I know I have no right to entertain such thoughts. Yet I cannot get over the feeling that time itself was unwilling to allow the happiness of those three to go on.

  THE FIRST SIGN might have come when the Saegusa sisters caught on to their three-sided relationship. Because she had her daughter, Miki, to consider, even Yoko actually exercised some caution, which may be one reason why the relationship stayed hidden for so long. Not that the sisters weren’t suspicious. Probably when they learned that Taro had bought the Oiwake cottage, the idea that he and Yoko might be together again had already cropped up in their minds. After I moved to Tokyo their suspicions must have deepened, without going beyond the realm of suspicion. Then, early in 1990, just at the start of the new year, twice in a row the sisters happened to catch Taro and Yoko together. Both times it happened in Shibuya’s Tokyu complex of buildings.

  Fuyue told me about it later. The first time, the three sisters had gone to Bunkamura Orchard Hall to see a ballet or something. After the show they went to the basement for a late supper at Les Deux Magots cafe, paid the bill, and were just going through the glass doors when, lo and behold, there they were, the two of them, Yoko and Taro, riding down the escalator. The Bunkamura basement is a stylish place with a distinctive interior. There is a large open space with a big long escalator, twice as long as most, so you can’t help seeing who is on it. Yoko and Taro spotted the three sisters at the same moment that they themselves were seen, but they couldn’t very well jump off midway. They simply rode on down to the bottom and nodded in greeting before disappearing somewhere, away from prying eyes.

  Even greater than the sisters’ surprise at catching the two of them together had been their shock at how impressive Taro looked, dressed in a classic black suit. They gaped, unable to take their eyes off him. To put it in Fuyue’s words, he looked like “a prince from another planet” who had just arrived on earth. All the way home in the taxicab, Harue was out of sorts, and the reason was plain. Even earlier, she must have considered my working for Taro as showing a want of respect for the Utagawas, and now she had plain evidence that Yoko was involved with him again—and this when she was married to Masayuki. At the same time, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if in her heart of hearts Harue found it hard to forgive Taro for turning into such a fine-looking man.

  The next day, Natsue waited till Masayuki had gone to work and then, apparently put up to it by Harue the night before, telephoned Yoko and started making the usual fuss: “What did you think you were doing? Just who do you think you are, young lady?”

  Yoko quickly cut her off. “Mother, it’s our business.”

  “What if Masayuki finds out? Then what will you do?”

  “When I say ‘our’ business, that includes Masayuki. He knows all about last night.”

  Natsue didn’t know what to say. Yoko repeated, “Honestly, it’s our business,” then added, “ ’Bye, Mother,” and hung up. When Harue heard about this conversation, she turned pale and never referred to it again. But less than a week later, the three of them ran into Taro and Yoko in Shibuya again.

  This time it happened at the Salvatore Ferragamo shop in the Tokyu department store itself. When the three sisters went inside, they caught sight of Yoko and Taro looking at neckties, and they immediately turned around and left. The next day when Yoko came to Seijo to look after Grampy, Harue glared at her but said nothing. Since she herself had had a lover—her art teacher in New York—she was in no position to criticize anyone on moral grounds, even privately. Only when Yoko came to say goodbye did she let her know that they knew: “Last night you were out with that boy Taro again, weren’t you? We went to Ferragamo too.”

  Whether or not it was an act, Yoko answered in the most ordinary way imaginable: “Yes, we were looking for a birthday present for Masayuki. It’s almost his birthday, you know.” Afterward Harue was apparently fit to be tied, ready to explode with anger. This all happened while Yoko’s mother-in-law, Yayoi, was in the hospital after being hit by a bicycle at New Year’s—which was just as well, actually, or Harue might have said something indiscreet. Even then, Yayoi was the sort of person to mull things over in the privacy of her own thoughts and would never have said anything to Masayuki, of that I’m certain.

  From then on, it was just one thing after another. A few months later, in May 1990, Grampy, who had been in and out of the hospital, died. Around the same time, Yayoi’s uterine cancer returned, apparently triggered by stress from the bicycle accident. The young cyclist had sprinted away, leaving her with a fractured femur that needed surgery. Once the cancer came back it spread right through her, and within six months, in November of that same year, she was gone too. Her death meant that the Shigemitsu family, like the
Saegusas before them, would soon face the problem of land inheritance tax, but that wasn’t all. A more immediate problem was Masao, now a widower. He had always seemed to live on nothing but mist. Leaving him on his own was impossible, and since he had no desire to leave Seijo anyway, Yoko and her family ended up selling the Nogizaka condominium and moving to Seijo, along with Masayuki’s architectural firm.

  Looking back, that was never a very good idea. When Grampy died, the Saegusa sisters had all the structures on their property torn down and asked Masayuki to design something new: a stylish three-story building for the clan, one that would fit into that exclusive neighborhood and not look like multiple-family housing. The project was completed in spring 1991, a few months after Yoko and her family moved to Seijo. The Saegusas, who had been living in scattered rental apartments during the construction, all moved into the new house, including Natsue, who had been in a condominium near the station. Except for summers in Karuizawa, Yoko had always lived apart from the rest of them, first in Chitose Funabashi, then Sapporo, then Nogizaka, but from now on they were in awkward proximity. Moreover, sadly enough, though she had moved to Seijo for her father-in-law’s sake, he soon developed pancreatic cancer and died early in the winter of 1991. He was seventy-four. For a man, that’s close enough to a full lifespan, but his death coming so soon after Yayoi’s made it seem as though he had willed it to happen. With him gone, I have no doubt that Yoko would have preferred to leave Seijo. For one thing, she was so used to living in her own world that social life was not easy for her. And then there was her involvement with Taro, which the Saegusa sisters looked on so unforgivingly. But Miki was thrilled to be living next door to her cousins. Yoko always felt guilty that her own fragile health had made Miki an only child, and seeing how happy her daughter was in Seijo must have made it difficult to suggest moving. Before long Miki fell in love with Mari’s second son, whose nickname was Nimbo—a nice enough young man in both character and looks, but no scholar. With Miki in love, it became even harder to consider moving, since that might have been taken as a deliberate attempt to quash the romance.

  IT WAS THE summer of 1992 when I found out that all was not well with Yoko, whom I had thought supremely happy. That turned out to be her last summer in Karuizawa. It was also when Taro took over the Karuizawa property.

  “Aunt Harue always acts as if she owns the whole world,” Yoko would say with a mocking smile. Sometimes the smile would have a tinge of sarcasm. “What if she knew this all belongs to Taro! I’d like to see her face then.”

  She was never small-minded, and I’m sure she was genuinely glad for their sakes that the three sisters were able to go on using their Karuizawa villa. But having been tormented by Harue for so long, deep down it must have given her a kick to know that it was thanks to her—or rather thanks to Taro, whom they had once treated as a servant boy—that their holiday was possible. I felt the same secret pleasure; she and I were partners in that.

  That summer Yoko’s sister, Yuko, came back to Japan for the first time in a while, together with her daughter Naomi. On her way to the United States to see Taro, Yoko had taken to stopping off in San Francisco, and the two sisters were much closer than they had ever been, though how Yoko explained those frequent trips abroad I have no idea. She had Yuko and Naomi stay in the Shigemitsu villa, not the Saegusa one. The Saegusa attic rooms had been neglected for so long they were no better than storerooms, but with her parents-in-law now gone, the other house had plenty of unused rooms for guests. I worked in the Saegusa household, and from the sound of Yoko next door singing to her sister’s piano accompaniment, I could tell how much she was enjoying not having her aunt around to say snide things like “Now how about a little Callas to cleanse the palate?” During their stay, Yoko was so busy entertaining them and doing things with them that her underlying vexation barely showed.

  The day after they went back to San Francisco, Yoko opened the door to the Saegusa kitchen, darted her eyes around the way she used to do as a child, and came in, having made sure I was alone. She sat down at the big table, reached for a pillowcase I had just ironed, and folded it as she talked.

  “I envy Yuko,” she said.

  In my eyes Yoko would always be a child, but glancing down at her hands as she folded the pillowcase, I saw they were the hands of a housewife, well accustomed to dishwater, with prominent blotches and veins. But she dressed much more carefully than ever before. Perhaps in that respect, being loved by two men made the difference. That day she was wearing a thin linen sweater with a gauzy scarf of gold silk. She somehow looked prettier than when she was young.

  When I didn’t react to her remark, she repeated it. “I envy Yuko.”

  “Do you?”

  “She has more freedom.”

  She seemed envious that Yuko lived at such a great distance from the other Saegusas.

  “And she’s got a career.” While her hands folded my ironing, she went on murmuring, half to herself: “I was lazy and never applied myself, so I’ve got nothing like that.”

  “You have your interior design work, don’t you?”

  “Nobody takes it seriously. And they’re right not to.”

  So she knows, I thought, but I kept my head down and went on ironing.

  “I wish I had some work that made me feel I was born to do it.”

  As times changed and more women entered the workforce, Yoko seemed to regret that she had reached her forties with no skills to speak of. Since she had not been given the same education as her sister, I thought this was not entirely her fault, but I didn’t say so.

  Yoko sighed. “Actually, I don’t care so much about myself. It’s Miki, really. If only she were more like Naomi!”

  It seemed to embarrass her to run down her own daughter, but I too could see that among the grandchildren Naomi stood out. Unlike her brother Ken, who looked American, Naomi had more Japanese features and wanted to keep up her Japanese language skills. That’s why she had come back that summer, which gave us a chance to get to know her better. Of course, she was a beauty, with a mother like Yuko and a father who looked “like Gérard Philipe.” Even more striking was her figure, which was different from Japanese women’s. If she had grown up in Japan, she would certainly have attracted more attention than she cared for. Eri’s daughter, incidentally, was a tall girl who hoped to become a fashion model—an aspiration her grandmother disapproved of. “What is the child thinking? How vulgar! Why, she’s no different from all those common girls!” But the girl in question couldn’t have cared less what her grandmother said and went about wistfully comparing her measurements with Naomi’s, sighing and saying, “Oh, you’re so lucky!” As for Naomi herself, she wore baggy jeans and cinched her wavy brown hair in a simple ponytail. Usually she could be found in the shade of a tree with her glasses on, reading a book, or sitting at the porch table in front of her computer. She was still only twenty-one, but she had skipped a year of high school and graduated from college a year early, and in the fall she was to enter the medical school of Johns Hopkins University out east. Her goal was to become a medical researcher. Whether this had anything to do with her memory of the Utagawa grandfather whom she knew as a little girl, I don’t know. She also liked collecting insects as much as any boy, and in Karuizawa she would often put on a straw hat and go roaming around the hills by herself, looking for them. Even though she was attached to Japan, the people her age streaming along the Karuizawa Ginza in droves seemed to baffle her. I suspect she felt as if they were from another planet. As a child she’d played happily enough with the Saegusa grandchildren, taking the part of a kindly elder sister, but I could see an emotional gap opening up between them as time went by. She seemed in fact to feel closest to my granddaughter Ami.

  In stark contrast to Naomi, Miki fit in naturally with Harue’s grandchildren.

  “I wonder what mix of genes goes into the making of a child,” Yoko said with a guilty little laugh that turned into a faintly bitter one. “I mean, what happened to Masayuki�
��s genes? It’s as if they disappeared.”

  Yoko took things seriously in her own way, and I think she tried to be a good mother. I saw her with Miki only while they were in Karuizawa, and as far as I could tell, she was making every effort to be neither too lenient nor overprotective. She was a far more conscientious mother than Natsue ever was. But as Miki got older, Yoko seemed at a loss how to deal with her. She had difficulty accepting that her own daughter blended in so easily with the Saegusa grandchildren. It would have been one thing if they felt strongly about each other, but aside from Nimbo, with whom Miki was romantically involved, her cousins didn’t seem to mean much to her except as young people of her own generation; yet she was with them from morning to night, always doing things with them, talking about silly things like hairdos, eyebrow plucking, ways of wearing socks, and what kinds of little purses, datebooks, felt pens to get … it seemed absurd even to me. For a girl in middle school to obsess about this sort of silliness was understandable, but seeing a daughter about to enter college so preoccupied with it—especially with Naomi around by way of contrast—was bound to be disheartening for Yoko.

  “I wonder if it’s all my fault,” she said.