The Briefcase

by Hiromi Kawakami

  “We were young, Sumiyo and I.”

  “You’re still young.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Sensei, I’ve had enough of these glasses of saké.”

  “Shall we go down there and dig for littleneck clams?”

  “We can’t eat them raw.”

  “We could build a fire and roast them.”

  “Roast them?”

  “You’re right, it’s too much trouble.”

  Something made a rustling sound. It was the camphor tree murmuring outside my window. This was a pleasant time of year. It rained often, but the rain-slicked leaves on the camphor tree gleamed lustrously. Sensei smoked his cigarette somewhat distractedly.

  This place is a borderline. Sensei seemed to have moved his lips, but in fact, I couldn’t tell if he had spoken or not.

  “How long have you been coming here?” I asked, and Sensei smiled.

  “Perhaps since around when I was your age. Somehow I just had to urge to come here.”

  Sensei, let ’s go back to Satoru’s place. I don’t want to stay in this strange place anymore. Let’s hurry back, I called out to Sensei. Let’s go back.

  But how do we get out of this place? Sensei replied.

  A flurry of voices rose up from the tidal flat. The camphor tree outside the window made a rustling murmur. Sensei and I stood there in a daze, to-go glasses of saké in our hands. The leaves of the camphor tree outside my window murmured, Come here.

  The Cricket

  LATELY, FOR A while now, I haven’t seen Sensei.

  And it’s not because we ended up in that strange place together—it’s because I’m avoiding him.

  I don’t go anywhere near Satoru’s place. I don’t take evening walks on my days off either. Instead of wandering around the old market in the shopping district, I hurriedly do my shopping at the big supermarket by the station. I don’t go to the used bookstore or the two bookshops in the neighborhood. I figure if I can manage not to do these things, than maybe I won’t run into Sensei. Should be easy.

  Easy enough that I could probably manage not to see Sensei for the rest of my life. And if I never saw him again, then maybe I could move on.

  “It grows because you plant it.” This was a phrase often repeated by my great-aunt when she was alive. As old as she was, my great-aunt was still more enlightened than my own mother. After her husband, my great-uncle, passed away, she had numerous “boyfriends” who doted on her as she dashed around to dinners and card games and croquet.

  “That’s how love is,” she used to say. “If the love is true, then treat it the same way you would a plant—fertilize it, protect it from the elements—you must do absolutely everything you can. But if it isn’t true, then it’s best to just let it wither on the vine.”

  My great-aunt was fond of wordplay and puns.

  If I followed her theory, and didn’t see Sensei for a long time, then maybe my feelings for him would just wither away.

  Which was why I’ve been avoiding him lately.

  IF I LEFT my apartment and walked for a while alongside the big main road, then followed a street that led into a residential area before reaching the riverside, if I walked about one hundred meters further, there on the corner was Sensei’s house.

  Sensei’s house was not on the riverfront; it was set back about three houses from the water. Up until about thirty years ago, whenever a big typhoon came through, the easily overflowing river would flood the neighborhood up to the houses’ floorboards. During the era of rapid economic growth, there were large-scale river improvements that enclosed the riverbank in concrete. The wall was dug quite deep, which also widened the river.

  It used to be a swiftly flowing river. The water moved so fast you could barely tell if it was transparent or muddy. There must have been something inviting about the current, because occasionally people would throw themselves into it. Most of the time, though, instead of drowning they would be carried downstream and then rescued, to their dismay, or so I heard.

  On my days off it had been my habit—not necessarily with the intention of running into Sensei—to stroll along the river on my way to the market by the station. However, if I was trying not to see him, then I ought not to stroll at all. This put me at a loss as to how to spend my leisure time.

  For a while, I tried taking the train to go see a movie or going downtown to shop for clothes or shoes.

  But I simply felt out of sorts. The weekend cinema that smelled like popcorn, the stale air of a brightly lit department store on a summer evening, the chilly bustle at the register of a big bookstore—it was all too much for me. I felt as if I couldn’t breathe.

  I even tried taking weekend trips on my own. I bought a book, Suburban Hot Spring Hotels: Travel Without an Itinerary, and proceeded to visit several of these places “itinerantly.”

  Times had changed—nowadays, hotels didn’t seem to consider a woman traveling alone unusual. They briskly escorted me to my room, briskly instructed me where the dining room and the bath were located, and briskly indicated when checkout time was.

  I had no other choice, and once I had briskly used the bath, briskly finished my dinner, and briskly taken another bath, there was nothing else to do. I briskly went to bed, briskly left the next morning, and that was all there was to it.

  Up until now, I thought I had enjoyed my life alone, somehow.

  I quickly lost interest in the “itinerant” travel, and seeing as how I couldn’t take evening walks by the river, I sprawled around my apartment, thinking to myself.

  But had I really enjoyed living life on my own until now?

  Joyful. Painful. Pleasant. Sweet. Bitter. Sour. Ticklish. Itchy. Cold. Hot. Lukewarm.

  Just what kind of life had I lived? I wondered.

  While I contemplated these things, I became sleepy. Since I was already sprawled on the floor, my eyes soon grew heavy.

  Resting on a cushion I had folded in half, I slipped off into sleep. A gentle breeze drifted in through the screen door and washed over me. Off in the distance, I could hear the hum of cicadas.

  But why was I avoiding Sensei? I wondered, on the verge of sleep, the stray thought arriving drowsily, like in a dream. In my dream, I was walking on a dusty white road. Where was Sensei? I looked for him, the cicadas’ call raining down on me from above as I kept walking along the white road.

  I couldn’t seem to find Sensei.

  That’s right, I had put him away in a box. Now I remembered.

  I had wrapped Sensei neatly in a piece of silk cloth with French seams and put him into a big paulownia wood box, which I then tucked away in the closet.

  I couldn’t take Sensei back out now. The closet was too deep. And the silk cloth was so nice and cool, Sensei would want to stay wrapped up in it. He would just keep dozing in the dusk inside the box.

  I kept stride along the white road while I thought about Sensei, lying in the box with his eyes open. The cicadas bombarded me from above with their maddening drone.

  I SAW TAKASHI Kojima for the first time in a while. He told me that he had been away on a month-long business trip. He had brought me back a heavy metal nutcracker “as a souvenir,” he said.

  “Where did you go?” I asked, opening and closing the nutcracker.

  “Here and there around the western part of the States,” Kojima replied.

  “Here and there?” I smiled as I repeated his words, and Kojima smiled too.

  “Towns whose name I’m sure you’ve never heard of, sweetheart.”

  I pretended not to notice that he had called me sweetheart.

  “What kind of work were you doing in these towns that I haven’t heard of?”

  “Oh, well, this and that.”

  Kojima’s arms were tanned.

  “Looks like you got some American sun,” I said, and Kojima nodded.

  “But if you think about it, there is no such thing as American sun or Japanese sun. There’s only one sun, of course.”

  I sta
red distractedly at Kojima’s arms while snapping the nutcracker open and shut. There’s only one sun, of course. I could imagine my mind spinning off from his words and getting all sentimental, but I stopped myself.

  “Lately, you know ...”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ve been itinerant, this summer.”

  “Itinerant?”

  “Yes, itinerant, going here and there.”

  How genteel, I envy you, Kojima said without hesitation.

  Oh, yes, quite genteel, I replied, just as readily.

  In the ambient lighting of Bar Maeda, the nutcracker shone dully. Kojima and I each drank two bourbon and sodas. We paid our bill and climbed the stairs. Standing on the top step, lightly but formally, we shook hands. Then, lightly but formally, we kissed.

  “You seem like you’re somewhere else,” Kojima said.

  “Like I said, I’ve been itinerant lately,” I replied, and Kojima tilted his head.

  “What does that mean, sweetheart?”

  “The ‘sweetheart’ bit sounds quite odd to me.”

  “I don’t think so,” Kojima said.

  “I do,” I retorted, and Kojima laughed.

  “Summer will be over soon.”

  “Yes, soon it will be.”

  We shook hands again, formally, and then went our separate ways.

  “TSUKIKO, IT’S BEEN a while,” Satoru said.

  It was already past ten o’clock. This was about the time for last call at Satoru’s place. I hadn’t been there in two months.

  I was on my way home from a farewell party for my boss, who was retiring. Even drunker than usual, I was feeling uninhibited. It’s been two months, everything should be all right, my inebriated mind told me.

  “It’s been a long time.” My voice sounded more high-pitched than usual.

  “What can I get you?” Satoru asked, looking up from his chopping block.

  “Chilled saké. And edamame.”

  “All right, then,” Satoru replied, looking down again at the chopping block.

  There were no other customers at the counter. The only other people were two couples sitting quietly across from each other at the tables.

  I sipped the chilled saké. Satoru was silent. The baseball scores were on the radio broadcast.

  “The Giants came from behind, huh,” Satoru muttered, as if to himself. I scanned around the bar. There were a few forgotten umbrellas in the umbrella stand. It hadn’t rained at all for the past several days.

  A chirping rose up from the area around my feet. I had thought the noise was part of the sports broadcast, but now it seemed like the sound of an insect. Chirp, chirp, it called. Then it would stop. Just when you thought it was done, the chirping would start up again.

  “There’s an insect . . . ,” I said when Satoru handed me a steaming plate of edamame.

  “Must be a cricket. It’s been there since this morning,” Satoru replied.

  “You mean here inside the bar?”

  “Yeah, it seems like one got in somewhere around the concrete drain.”

  The cricket’s chirping was almost keeping time with Satoru’s voice.

  “Sensei said he had a cold. I wonder if he’s all right.”

  “What?”

  “He came in last week, in the early evening, with a hell of a cough. And I haven’t seen him since,” Satoru said, chopping on his block.

  “He hasn’t been in at all?” I asked. My voice was unpleasantly shrill. It sounded to me like someone else talking.

  “Nope.”

  The cricket was chirping. I could hear the thumping of my own heartbeat. I sat and listened to the sound of blood coursing through my body. The palpitations gradually quickened.

  “I wonder if he’s all right.” Satoru glanced at me. I remained silent, not answering him.

  The cricket kept chirping, then it stopped. My racing heartbeat, however, did not subside. It echoed loudly inside my head.

  Satoru kept chopping away with his knife on his block, interminably. The cricket started up its chirping again.

  I KNOCKED ON the door.

  This was after I had paced around in front of Sensei’s gate for more than ten minutes.

  When I went to ring the bell, my fingers froze like ice. So I went around the garden and tried to look in from the veranda, but the rain shutters were closed up tight.

  I listened through the shutters for a sign of life, but there was no sound whatsoever. I went around to the back where a light was on low in the kitchen, and I felt somewhat relieved.

  “Sensei,” I called out through the front door, but of course there was no reply. How could he reply if he had no voice left to call out with?

  “Sensei,” I said several more times, but my voice was swallowed up by the night’s darkness. That’s why I was knocking on the door.

  I heard footsteps in the hall.

  “Who is it?” a voice asked, hoarsely.

  “It’s me.”

  “‘It’s me’ is not an appropriate response, Tsukiko.”

  “But you know who it is, don’t you?”

  During this exchange, the door screeched open. Sensei stood there, wearing striped pajama pants and a T-shirt that said I ♥ NY.

  “What’s the matter?” Sensei asked with perfect composure.

  “Um.”

  “A lady doesn’t go visit a man in the middle of the night.”

  He was the same old Sensei. The moment I looked him in the eye, my knees went weak.

  “What do you mean? You’re the one who invites me over here whenever you’re drunk.”

  “I’m not the least bit drunk tonight.”

  He spoke as if we’d been together all evening. Suddenly I felt as if the two months I had been distancing myself from Sensei never happened.

  “Satoru said you were sick.”

  “I had a cold but I’m quite well now.”

  “Why are you wearing that strange T-shirt?”

  “It’s a hand-me-up from my grandson.”

  Sensei and I held each other’s gaze. Sensei’s beard was unshaven. His whiskers were white.

  “By the way, Tsukiko, long time no see.”

  Sensei narrowed his eyes. But he didn’t look away, so neither could I. Sensei smiled. Awkwardly, I smiled back.

  “Sensei.”

  “What is it, Tsukiko?”

  “You’re just fine, aren’t you?”

  “Did you think I was dead?”

  “The thought might have crossed my mind.”

  Sensei laughed out loud. I laughed too. But our laughter fell silent as soon as it converged. Please don’t say the word “dead, ” Sensei, I wanted to plead. But Tsukiko, everyone dies. And what’s more, at my age I’m much more likely to die that you are. It stands to reason. I had no trouble imagining his response.

  The specter of death always loomed over us.

  Come in for a while, Sensei said. Have some tea, he said as he led the way inside. The small I ♥ NY logo was also printed on the back of Sensei’s T-shirt. I read it aloud while I took off my shoes.

  So, you wear pajamas, Sensei? I would have thought you wore nemaki, I muttered as I trailed after him, referring to Japanese-style sleepwear.

  Sensei turned to face me. Tsukiko, please refrain from commenting about my clothing choices.

  Yes, I answered quietly.

  Very well, then, Sensei replied.

  The interior of the house was damp and quiet. A futon was laid out in the tatami room. Sensei took his time making the tea and he took his time serving it to me. For my part, I lingered over my cup, drawing out the minutes.

  Several times, I called out, “Sensei,” and each time, Sensei would reply, “What is it?” I wouldn’t say anything in response, until the next time I called out, “Sensei.” It was all I could manage.

  Once I had finished drinking my tea, I took my leave.

  “Please take good care of yourself.” I bowed politely at the front door.

  “Tsukiko.” This time Sense
i was the one to call my name.

  “Yes?” I raised my head, looking Sensei in the eye. His cheeks were sunken and his hair was tousled.

  “Get home safely,” Sensei said after a moment’s pause.

  “I’ll be fine,” I replied, rapping on my chest.

  I CLOSED THE front door to prevent Sensei from walking me to the gate. A half-moon hung in the sky. Dozens of insects were chirping and buzzing in the garden.

  I’m so confused, I muttered, leaving Sensei’s house.

  I don’t care anymore. About love or anything. It doesn’t matter what happens.

  In truth, it really didn’t matter. As long as Sensei was fine and well, that’s what was important.

  This was enough. I would stop hoping for anything from Sensei, I thought to myself as I walked along the road by the river.

  The river flowed along, silently, to the sea. I wondered if right now Sensei was nestled in bed, in his T-shirt and his pajama pants. Was his house locked up properly? Had he turned out the light in the kitchen? And checked the gas?

  “Sensei,” I breathed his name softly, in lieu of a sigh.

  “Sensei.”

  The air rising off the river carried a crisp hint of autumn. Goodnight, Sensei. You looked quite nice in your I ♥ NY T-shirt. Once you’re all better, let’s go for drink. Fall is here, so at Satoru’s place there will be warm things to eat while we drink.

  Turning to face toward Sensei, who was now several hundred meters away, I kept on speaking to him. I walked along the length of the river, as if I were having a conversation with the moon. I kept talking, as if forever.

  In the Park

  I WAS ASKED out on a date. By Sensei.

  I find it awkward to use the word “date,” despite the fact that the two of us had gone on that trip together (though, of course, we hadn’t actually been “together”), but we had plans to go to an art museum to see an exhibit of ancient calligraphy, which may sound like the kind of thing students would do on a school trip, yet nevertheless, it was a date. Sensei himself had been the one to say, “Tsukiko, let’s go on a date.”