The Briefcase

by Hiromi Kawakami

  “Hot saké, please,” Sensei called out, and I ordered a bottle of beer. We were promptly served, a hot saké bottle and a half-liter bottle of beer, along with a saké cup and a beer glass. We each poured into the appropriate vessels for ourselves and said cheers.

  “So, in other words, a karmic connection refers to a bond from a previous life.”

  A previous life? I said, slightly raising my voice. We were connected in a previous life, you and I?

  “Everyone’s connected somehow, perhaps,” Sensei replied serenely, taking care as he poured saké from the bottle to his cup. A young man seated next to us at the counter was staring at Sensei and me. I had caught his attention when I raised my voice a moment ago. The guy had three piercings in his ear. He wore gold studs in two of the holes and, in the first hole, a dangling earring that swayed with a particular shimmer.

  I’d like hot saké too, I called out my order to the counter and then asked, Sensei, do you believe in past lives? The guy next to us seemed to be eavesdropping.

  “Sort of.” Sensei’s response was unexpected. I thought he would say something like, Tsukiko, what about you, do you believe in past lives? You know, it’s awfully sentimental.

  “Past lives, or fate, that is.”

  Daikon, tsumire, and beef tendons, please, Sensei ordered.

  Not to be outdone, I followed with Chikuwabu, konnyaku noodles, and I’ll also have some daikon. The young man next to us asked for kombu and hanpen. We left off our conversation about fate and past lives while we focused on eating our oden for the moment. Sensei, still off-kilter, brought to his mouth the daikon that he had cut into bite-size pieces with his chopsticks, while I hunched forward a little to nibble on my piece of daikon.

  The saké and the oden are so delicious, I said. Sensei patted me lightly on the head. Lately, I had noticed that, from time to time, Sensei had taken to this gentle gesture.

  “It’s nice to see someone who enjoys eating,” he said as he patted my head.

  Shall we order a little more, Sensei?

  Good idea.

  We chatted as we ordered. The young man beside us was quite red in the face. What appeared to be three empty saké bottles were lined up in front of him, along with an empty glass, so he must have had beer too. He radiated drunkenness, as if his heavy breathing could reach all the way over to us.

  “You two, just what are you?” He blurted out suddenly. He had barely touched the kombu and hanpen on his plate. Pouring saké into his cup from a fourth bottle, he exhaled in our direction, his breath reeking of alcohol. His earring glimmered brilliantly.

  “What do you mean by that?” Sensei replied, pouring from his own bottle.

  “That’s a pretty good setup, you know, for you two,” he said with a smirk. There was something peculiar about his laugh though. It was as if he had somehow swallowed a frog and now he couldn’t seem to laugh from his gut anymore—his strangely menacing laugh sounded like it was caught in his throat.

  “And what do you mean by that?” Sensei earnestly asked him in return.

  “You’re much older than she is but still, you’re all cozy together.”

  Sensei nodded magnanimously, as if to say, Ah, yes, and looked straight before him. You could almost hear a slapping sound at that moment. I do not deign to speak to the likes of you. Sensei may not have uttered the words, but it was clear that was what he was thinking. I sensed it, and the guy must have sensed it too.

  “It’s perverted, really. Act your age!” He seemed to realize that Sensei was not going to respond to him anymore, yet, nevertheless, that only encouraged his vehemence.

  “Are you doing it with this old man?” he said to me, looking past Sensei. His voice echoed throughout the odenya. I glanced at Sensei but, of course, he was not going to break his expression over such a comment.

  “How many times a month do you do it, huh?”

  “Now, Yasuda, that’s enough,” the owner of the odenya tried to cut him off. The young man was considerably drunker than he initially appeared to be. His body was twitching as he swayed backward and forward. If Sensei hadn’t been sitting between us, I surely would have slapped the guy in the face.

  “Shuttup!” He now turned to shout at the owner, and tried to douse him in the face with the saké in his cup. But he was so drunk that his aim was off, and he spilled most of it on his own pants instead.

  “Fuck!” he shouted again, using a towel the owner had handed him to wipe off his pants as well as the area around him. Then suddenly he fell flat on the counter, and immediately started to snore.

  “Yasuda’s been a terrible drunk lately,” the owner said to us, waving one hand and bowing his head.

  I see. I nodded vaguely, but Sensei didn’t nod at all, he simply said, in the same tone of voice as always, “Another bottle of hot saké, please.”

  “TSUKIKO, I’M TERRIBLY sorry.”

  The young man was still passed out on the counter and snoring. The owner had tried repeatedly to shake him awake, to no avail. If he wakes up, you see, I’m sure he’ll go right home, the owner said to us before going to take a table’s order.

  “That must have been awfully unpleasant for you, Tsukiko. I’m terribly sorry.”

  Please don’t apologize for him, Sensei, I was about to say, but I held my tongue. I was livid with anger. Not for myself, that is, but for Sensei being put in the position to make such a ridiculous apology.

  I really wish this guy would hurry up and leave, I whispered, gesturing to him with my chin. But he refused to budge, and just kept right on with his absurdly loud snoring.

  “That thing really sparkles, doesn’t it?” Sensei said.

  Huh? I muttered, and Sensei pointed at the guy’s earring with a grin and a snicker. You’re right, it certainly does, I replied, somewhat dumbfounded. There were times when Sensei really puzzled me. I ordered another bottle of saké too, and drank in its warmth. Sensei just kept on with his chuckling. What could he be laughing at? Dejected, I went to the bathroom and did my business vigorously. I felt a little better, and by the time I sat back down next to Sensei, I had settled down a bit more.

  “Tsukiko, look, look at this.” Sensei held out his hand and gently uncurled his fingers to reveal something sparkly, there in his palm.

  What is that?

  “Just what you think—look, it’s what was on his ear.” Sensei’s gaze trailed over to the still-snoring young man. My eyes followed his, and I saw that the sparkliest jangle that had been hanging from the guy’s ear was gone. The two gold studs were still there, but at the edge of his earlobe there was nothing but an empty hole that seemed to gape a bit now.

  Sensei, you took it?

  “I stole it.” His expression was perfectly innocent.

  Now, why would you do that? I reproached him, but Sensei was quite unperturbed. He shook his head.

  “The author Hyakken Uchida wrote something like this,” Sensei started in.

  If I recall, there is a short story called “The Amateur Pickpocket.” There’s a fellow who gets boorishly rude and impolite when he drinks, and he always wears a gold chain that dangles from his neck. His rudeness itself is bothersome enough, but the sight of this chain becomes more and more offensive to another fellow, so he steals it. Just like that, he takes it. Do not assume that because the boor was drunk it was an easy thing to do—the one who stole it was drunk himself, so it was an equal task.

  “That’s the gist of it. Hyakken, he’s really quite good.” Now that I thought about it, Sensei used to always wear this same ingenuous expression during Japanese class. I remembered it well.

  Is that why you stole it? I asked.

  Sensei nodded vigorously. “You could say I was following after Hyakken.”

  Are you familiar with Hyakken, Tsukiko? I figured Sensei would ask me this, but he did not. I thought I might have heard his name before, but I wasn’t sure. The logic of the story was nonsense, though. Drunk or not, it was wrong to steal. Yet the scenario was strangely apt. And what
made sense about it seemed particularly fitting to Sensei.

  “Tsukiko, I didn’t do this in order to teach that fellow a lesson. I stole the earring because I found him annoying and I wanted to. Make no mistake about it.”

  Oh, I won’t, I replied warily, and gulped down my saké. We each finished off another bottle, then paid our separate bills, as usual, and left the odenya.

  THE MOON SHONE brightly. It was almost full.

  Sensei . . . Sensei, do you ever feel lonely? The question popped out as the two of us walked side by side, both facing forward.

  “I felt lonely when I hurt my butt,” Sensei replied, still looking ahead.

  That’s right, what happened to your butt—er, I mean, your backside?

  “As I was putting on my pants, my foot got caught and I fell over. I landed very hard on my butt.”

  I couldn’t stifle my laughter. Sensei laughed a little too.

  “I suppose it wasn’t loneliness that I felt. Physical pain inspires the worst kind of helplessness.”

  Sensei, do you like mineral water? I moved on to another question.

  “This conversation is jumping around, isn’t it? Let’s see, well, I’ve always enjoyed Wilkinson brand soda water.”

  Really? Is that so? I replied, still facing forward.

  The moon was high in the sky, with a few thin clouds. The first signs of spring were still a ways away, yet spring felt closer at hand than when we had entered the odenya.

  What are you going to do with that earring? I asked.

  Sensei thought for a moment before answering. “I think I’ll keep it in my bureau. I’ll take it out sometimes for amusement.”

  In the bureau where you keep the railway teapots? I asked.

  Sensei nodded gravely. “That’s correct. In the bureau where I keep commemorative items.”

  Is tonight a night to commemorate?

  “It’s been a long time since I stole something.”

  So then, Sensei, when did you learn how to steal?

  “In a previous life, sort of,” Sensei said, letting out a little chuckle.

  Sensei and I strolled along. There was a faint promise of spring in the night air. The moon glimmered in gold.

  The Cherry Blossom Party, Part 1

  I WAS APPREHENSIVE when Sensei announced, “I received a postcard from Ms. Ishino.”

  Ms. Ishino was still the art teacher at our high school. When I was a student, she had probably still been in her mid-thirties. She always used to whisk through the corridors wearing her artist’s smock and with her luxuriantly black and wavy hair pulled to the back. Slender, she seemed to brim with vigor. Equally popular with girls as well as boys, her classroom after school would always be chock-full of the quirky and peculiar students who were in the art club.

  Ms. Ishino would be shut up in the art prep room, and when the aroma of coffee drifted out to the classroom, the art students knocked on her door.

  “What is it?” Ms. Ishino would answer in her husky voice.

  “Please, Ms. Ishino, let us have a coffee klatch,” one of the art students would say through the door. He spoke in a deliberately bewildered tone.

  “All right, all right,” Ms. Ishino would say, opening the door and handing over the entire siphon full of coffee to the students. Those allowed to partake in the coffee klatch were the club president and vice president, along with several other seniors. Lowerclassmen had not yet earned the right. Ms. Ishino would emerge from the prep room to drink coffee with them, clasping in both hands an oversized Mashiko-ware mug that she had fired herself in a friend’s kiln. Then she would straighten her shoulders a bit and take a look around at the art club students’ work. She would sit back down in a chair and finish her coffee. She never added cream. Students would bring their own non-dairy creamer or packets of sugar, because Ms. Ishino always took her coffee black.

  A classmate of mine who was in the art club had raptly proclaimed, Someday I hope to be like Ms. Ishino . . . So I had peeked into her classroom a few times out of curiosity. Nobody seemed to care if people who weren’t in the art club hung out there too. The place was warm, reeking of paint thinner and a hint of cigarette smoke.

  “She’s so cool, isn’t she?” my friend would say, and I’d mumble and nod, Yeah, well. But the truth was that I hated things like “handmade Mashiko-ware.” I didn’t feel particularly strongly one way or another about Ms. Ishino’s appearance, just her big hand-thrown coffee mug. I didn’t hold anything against Mashiko-ware in and of itself, per se.

  I took Ms. Ishino’s art class my first year in high school, but that was it. I have a vague memory of doing charcoal sketches of plaster figures and watercolor still lifes. My grades were below average. While we were students there, Ms. Ishino had married the social studies teacher. She was probably in her mid-fifties now.

  “It’s an invitation to the cherry-blossom-viewing party,” Sensei said a few moments later.

  I see, I replied. The cherry blossom party?

  “It’s an annual event. They do it every year, a few days before school starts in April, on the embankment in front of the school. Tsukiko, how would you like to join me at this year’s cherry blossom party?” Sensei asked.

  I see, I repeated myself. Cherry blossom parties are nice. But there was nothing nice about the tone of my voice. Sensei, however, paid no attention as he stared fixedly at the postcard.

  “Ms. Ishino has always had such fine penmanship,” he said. Then Sensei carefully unzipped his briefcase and slid the postcard into one of the compartments. I watched absentmindedly as he zipped it back shut again.

  “Don’t forget, it’s on April 7,” Sensei reminded me as he waved from the bus stop.

  I’ll try not to forget, I replied, as if I were a student again. It was somewhat of a careless phrase, insecure and childish.

  NO MATTER HOW many times I heard it, I could not get used to the name Mr. Matsumoto. That was, of course, what everyone called Sensei. His full name was Mr. Harutsuna Matsumoto. Apparently the other teachers called each other “Mr.” or “Ms.” Mr. Matsumoto. Mr. Kyogoku. Ms. Honda. Mr. Nishikawahara. Ms. Ishino. And so on.

  Even though Sensei had invited me, I had no interest in going to the cherry blossom party. I figured I would get out of it by making some excuse about being very busy at work or something. But the day of the party, Sensei showed up outside my apartment to pick me up. It was very unusual behavior for Sensei. Unusual, but nevertheless, there he was—standing tall, wearing a spring jacket, and carrying his briefcase.

  “Tsukiko, did you bring something to sit on?” He stood outside my building as he asked me various things. He made no move to come up to my place on the second floor. When I saw Sensei’s smiling face, as he waited for me with complete assurance, I simply couldn’t bring myself to make excuses. Resigned, I hastily stuffed a stiff plastic sheet into a bag, threw on whatever clothes I found randomly scattered about, and slipped into the same sneakers that I had worn on the mushroom hunt with Satoru and Toru (and had yet to clean off) before bounding down the stairs.

  The scene on the school’s embankment was already in full swing. Current teachers along with retired teachers, as well as a number of former students, had laid mats and sheets over the entire bank, lined up bottles of saké and beer, and set out food they had brought, and everyone was laughing merrily. It was difficult to tell where the center of the party was. After Sensei and I put down our sheet and greeted the people around us, still more people continued to arrive, each of them laying out mats they had brought. The cherry blossom party guests seemed to steadily spread out, like a plant’s leaves unfurling as its bud blooms.

  The space between Sensei and me was quickly filled by an elderly gentleman, Mr. Settsu, and then the space between Mr. Settsu and me was occupied by a young teacher, Ms. Makita. She was joined by other former students—two women named Shibasaki and Kayama and a man named Onda—but I soon lost track of who was whom.

  Before I knew it, Sensei was standing next to Ms. Is
hino, talking animatedly as he drank saké. He was holding a skewer of chicken with teriyaki sauce that he had bought at a storefront in the shopping district. Any other time, Sensei would stubbornly insist on salted skewers when he ate yakitori. But apparently he was capable of flexibility under certain circumstances, I thought, growing reproachful as I sipped saké by myself in a corner.

  FROM ATOP THE embankment, the schoolyard grounds seemed to reflect back in white. The school was quiet, the new term having not yet begun. The buildings and the schoolyard were unchanged since I had been a student here. But the cherry trees that were planted all around had grown considerably taller.

  Suddenly I heard someone say, “Hey, Omachi, not married yet?” and I glanced up. Without my noticing, a middle-aged man had come to sit near me. Looking me in the eye now, he took a sip of saké from his paper cup.

  “I’ve been married and divorced seventeen times, but I’m single now,” I quipped in response. His face was familiar but I couldn’t place him. He was dumbstruck at first but then he let out a chuckle.

  “Well, then, that’s quite a remarkable life you’ve had.”

  “Not at all.”

  Deep within his laughing face, there was a faint semblance of what he had looked like in high school. That’s right, we had definitely been in the same class. I remembered how when he laughed his face seemed to change completely from when he was in repose. But what was his name? It was on the tip of my tongue, yet I couldn’t recall it.

  “As for me, I was only married and divorced the one time,” he said, still chuckling.

  I had drunk about half of the saké in my paper cup. There was a flower petal floating in it.

  “It wasn’t easy for either one of us.” Even through his quiet laughter, a warmth showed in his expression. I remembered his name—Takashi Kojima. We had been in the same homeroom for our first two years in high school. Both of us had similar numbers for attendance call, so that when they assigned seats according to these numbers, we were always seated near each other.