Taking into consideration my prior contribution to the company, and for fear of the emotional distress that a demotion would cause, I was given the position and benefits of a deputy director. The others in the department were also given section-head or assistant-manager level compensation. The depart mental director explained to me that this was due to the compassion of the executives, who thought that we would remain blind to the reality of our situations if given these titles. The director didn’t harbour any antipathy toward the ‘naive compassion’ of the executives. As far as he was concerned, compassion was compassion, and we should be grateful for it. ‘It’s a real luxury,’ said the director in a preachy tone.
The assistant manager-by-title told me later that the director was trying to be like the head of a religious organisation he frequented when he said that. He would talk endlessly about how it was a ‘real luxury’ for the company to ‘assign a girl’ to a department with no real work, and how it was out of the president’s respect for the chairman that the department would remain untouched tor at least one year after his passing. So even though our department might not last long, ‘we must be grateful and never take the kindness shown us for granted.’ I didn’t need to be told not to take our situation for granted and I had no intention of doing so. But we had no work, because in reality the business development department managed the built-to order projects and they ‘didn’t want people who had lost their minds getting in the way’.
Our director accepted the way things were done. So in the end, all we had to do was to kill time and refrain from acting important. As a result, the person who acted the most self-important was the female contract employee, Yoshiko Takamatsu, who was the youngest at thirty-one but who would scold the director, saying, ‘You never use the tea saucer, no matter how many times I tell you.’
‘Mr Taura!’ It was Yoshiko Takamatsu calling out my name in a grumpy voice one afternoon in early March.
‘Yes?’
‘How many times do I need to call your name?’
‘You called my name that many times?’
‘Yes. “Mr Taura”, “Mr Taura”, I said.’
‘That’s twice.’
‘No. I called you once again after that.’
‘What is it?’
‘Phone call.’
‘For me?’
‘Would I call your name if it was for someone else?’
Of course not, but it was very rare for me to receive a phone call. It wasn’t that the people around me treated me coldly, but rather a case of me avoiding people myself. I found phone calls to be a nuisance.
‘Hello?’
‘Mr Taura?’
Anger was a rare emotion for me around that time, but the nausea that rose to my throat when I heard that voice was something very close to it. I couldn’t believe that she would even think of calling me. After moving beds that day, I’d made no attempt to go near or learn about her. I felt that no matter what I did, I would end up hurting her. The woman I had seen at the hospital was unmistakably an old woman. I had momentarily been hit by a terrible feeling of disgust when I found out, but once I’d had time to think about it, I’d decided that it wasn’t her fault she had aged. I was even able in a way to understand why she would want to take advantage of the partition to pretend she was younger than she was. It must have been a worse experience for her than for me and I didn’t want to do anything to aggravate the situation. I felt that even just asking after her health would do so. That to have no contact with her whatsoever, to forget about her, would help her save face. But at the same time, though I wasn’t about to ask where she was from and what her background was, I was curious about how old she actually was — being clearly over sixty yet pretending to be, and sounding, much younger. I kept this curiosity to myself, however. There was also a part of me that felt a slight sense of satisfaction in taking what I thought was the most mature course of action. When l’d left the hospital in mid January, I didn’t even know if she was still in the hospital. And when I stood outside the hospital and looked up at the window of what had been my room, I avoided shifting my glance to room 513.
I had done this out of consideration for her, and I had thought that she must have sensed it at least a little. But to give me a call? That wasn’t something I’d be able to do if I was in her position. I’d be far too embarrassed.
‘Taura speaking,’ I said, trying to keep my voice void of emotion.
‘My name is Miyabayashi. We were together at the hospital.’
How insensitive of her to choose those words, ‘we were together’. Didn’t she have the sense to avoid words that might allude to what had happened?
‘Hello?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you remember me?’
Her voice was young. So even after having seen what she looked like, I couldn’t imagine that she was an old woman after hearing her voice again.
‘Hello?’ she said in her young voice.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you… remember…?’
‘I remember. Of course,’ I said, as if to push her words back. How could I possibly forget? I had been dragged into it and she’d even made me come. How could she think that I could have forgotten?
‘Well, I’m calling from a public phone in the Mitsui building.’
What did that have to do with me?
‘And I was wondering, if you were going to finish work at five, if I could see you.’
It was already past four.
‘I’m afraid that I have to work late today. If you will excuse me, I’m in a meeting.’
I ended the call abruptly.
‘There was a time when I used to say that kind of thing,’ said the section head-by-title with a nostalgic expression.
‘You shouldn’t have,’ said the director. ‘You mustn’t avoid meeting people. You should meet them, even if you have to make yourself.’
‘Yes, but this was a special case.’
‘A debt collector, perhaps? said Yoshiko Takamatsu. You could see in her expression that she thought she’d said something witty.
‘Are you in debt?’ asked the director.
‘Of course, I am. With a company loan and a mortgage, just like everybody else.’
‘But people don’t come around collecting on those.’
‘I simply meant that it was someone I needed to avoid.’
‘Are women to be avoided?’ Takamatsu shared her unwelcome opinion.
‘Certainly,’ said the section head-by-title. ‘With the exception of you, of course.’
‘Was it a woman?’ asked the director. ‘If that’s the case, you have to see her.’
‘As the deputy director’s proxy, I’ll volunteer to see her instead,’ said the assistant manager-by-title.
Everyone politely laughed and I looked over at Imori, who was looking glum. I found myself almost automatically suppressing the disgust I felt at everything around me.
Then, at twenty past five, I got up and left the office.
I was the last one to leave, so I locked up and gave the key to the landlord, who had an optician’s shop on the first floor. I didn’t need to leave it with him, but if I didn’t then I couldn’t be late the next morning. Not that that had ever happened.
Our office was in an old four-storey building that stood between the Koshu Highway and the Shinjuku high-rises. We were renting the third floor, while the main department of our head office was located in a skyscraper elsewhere.
I headed for the station, all the while slightly worried in case the woman had been waiting for me on the street (that was why I had delayed my departure), but there seemed to be no sign of her. Why on earth did she want to see me? I just couIdn’t understand women. Sometimes I had felt my wife was unbearably ‘other’ or alien to me. But if it had been my wife in such a situation, she would never have suggested a meeting. If anything, she would have harboured hatred towards the man.
The woman had said that her family home was in Yokohama, just outside
Tokyo, and I wondered who lived in her family home. That’s where she must have been visiting. Her reason for being in town.
I had to use the pedestrian bridge. I could have avoided using it, but that would have meant taking the long way round. The section head-by-title had once said that you could tell how young you were by which route you chose, and our office spent half a day arguing which route meant you were younger. I had argued, despite having no firm reason, that you were younger if you chose to use the pedestrian bridge and had stuck by that position ever since. The assistant manager-by-title, on the other hand, had claimed that ‘stairs were tough on old people’. He might have been right. Perhaps a flat route would be easier even if it were longer.
It wasn’t a particularly busy bridge, but at a little after five a stream of pedestrians would generally form on it. I walked along with the flow of people towards Shinjuku.
‘Mr Taura.’ A woman’s voice called from behind. She was right behind me. I didn’t stop. I kept walking as if I hadn’t heard her.
‘Mr Taura.’
It would have been only natural to turn round and I noticed a man walking next to me shoot me a glance. But I didn’t stop. I kept walking. Maintaining my pace. The woman stopped calling my name. But I didn’t sense her stopping. She was probably walking right behind me. What was she up to? What did she think she would get out of meeting after all this time? Couldn’t she sense how I felt? As I walked down the stairs I was hit by a burst of rage. What was she thinking? If she’d left it as it was, it might even have become a sad but beautiful memory. I quickened my pace a little, and when I reached the bottom of the staircase I turned round. Immediately behind me was a middle-aged man. I looked to see who was behind him, but I didn’t see anybody like her. Again, I felt I’d been teased and I quickly moved away from the stairs, away from the glances of strangers.
As I stepped away, I thought I glimpsed a woman in the corner of my field of vision. I turned round and looked up to see a woman in a kimono standing on the right corner at the top of the stairs. People walked past her and down. She watched me silently, oblivious to the flow of people. My mouth may have dropped open a little. She was not an old woman. She looked like she was in her forties. She bowed. I bowed back. But it wasn’t an old woman, so it couldn’t have been the woman from that time. She was definitely looking at me, though; she’d bowed at me and the voice that called my name was the same as the one that night. She began descending the stairs slowly. Did this mean the old woman was going to appear from behind her? Maybe not; she was alone. And there was no grey in her hair. But hair can be dyed. And how about her skin? That can be disguised with make-up, too. Though it’d take a pretty heavy application to transform that lady into this one. And anyway, she didn’t seem to be wearing that much make-up.
‘I’m Miyabayashi,’ said the woman.
It was the same voice as that time.
‘Right…’
‘I’m sorry for waiting for you without your permission.’
‘That’s all right.’
Face to face, I realised she was slightly smaller than me. Although her skin was nothing like the aged skin I remembered, she had small wrinkles at the corners of her eyes.
‘I’m Taura…’
‘I’m sorry, I… please excuse me.’
She bowed her head again. After my thoughts had left her skin and hair, I realised my anger had melted away. In fact, it had begun to fade as soon as I saw her at the top of the stairs. I was surprised by the pleasant appearance of this woman approaching in her elegant, striped kimono and, though I didn’t know anything about kimonos, I thought she looked very refined and that she exuded no sense of working in the bar business with which kimonos are often associated. She didn’t appear to be particularly gaunt, but after seeing her face I did wonder a little if she was perhaps just a bit too thin. But with her big eyes and lips I imagined she’d have given the impression of being a sharp woman when she was younger. There were, however, little traces of middle-age weight gain here and there that lent a slight softening effect to her appearance.
‘If you could spare just a little time for me,’ she said, ‘perhaps we can go for some tea.’
Declining her offer didn’t even cross my mind.
‘At this time of day, the closer we go to the station the more packed places are going to be. We should maybe backtrack a little.’
We began walking back towards the cluster of skyscrapers. I knew a few places that probably wouldn’t be that crowded even at that time of day, and there were also a few right behind my office, but I found myself choosing a nice place in one of the skyscrapers that I had been to just once before.
I searched for words as we walked. There were plenty of things to talk about if I asked questions, but those that came to my mind seemed somehow inappropriate to ask while walking. ‘How long have you been here?’ I asked, thinking that this would not be intruding too much.
‘It must be about a month now.’
‘That long…’
‘I’m not going back home.’
The way she said ‘not going back home’ made it seem that she still had a home to go back to. I felt that I might be intruding by continuing the conversation, so I didn’t, and we continued to walk in silence. I found myself wondering if an illness could transform such a beautiful person into an old woman. It was hard to believe that anyone could regain their youth to this extent in just three months after recovering from an illness.
I occasionally matched my steps to hers and slipped glances at her. Sometimes she would keep looking forward and sometimes she would shoot a quick smile back. It couldn’t be true. No matter how many times I retraced my memory, the person I had seen that morning was an old woman. Her hair was thin and grey, and I couldn’t possibly forget the deep wrinkles in her ashen skin. The two couldn’t possibly be the same, could they? Perhaps it was her daughter. It was not unusual for mother and daughter to have similar voices. And there was nothing about the woman walking next to me, other than her voice, that resembled the old lady at the hospital. It was true that I had caught only a glimpse of her face then, but it wasn’t as if I had heard about her from someone else, or that I’d had a premonition about her. Although only a glance, I had seen with my own two eyes that she was old. If the woman next to me suddenly fell ill, would she turn into that person again? It was especially hard to believe that a lumbar fracture could do that. Was this some kind of trick? But what would anyone have to gain from fooling someone like me?
‘It’s on the third floor,’ I said.
‘I see.’
‘The second floor is a shopping promenade, but the third floor is mostly offices, so I thought the place might be quite empty.’
I pushed the heavy door open.
‘You’re right,’ said the woman in a small voice.
It wasn’t a big place, though it was luxuriously appointed.
There were only three groups of customers and it was surprisingly quiet compared to the stores on the second floor.
‘Just one floor makes such a difference,’ I said.
‘It certainly does.’
She faced me and gave me a nod in which I somehow sensed someone older. But she couldn’t have been older. I was forty-eight. And she couldn’t have been older than forty-two or forty-three, although it is hard to tell the age of a beautiful woman. Who knows, she might actually have been around the same age as me, I thought. Entranced by her beauty, I didn’t want to think that there was any plot or deception behind this. Then, after ordering coffee, I told her what had been on my mind. ‘I should have said this earlier,’ I told her, ‘but when you called I was in a meeting. So please forgive me for having been on edge.’
The woman gave a slight bow in response. ‘No, I should apologise for calling you at work.’
‘I’m just curious,’ I said. ‘How were you able to find me?’
‘You mentioned at the hospital that you worked at your company’s Northern Japan branch office.’
&n
bsp; ‘No, I meant how you called out to me on the footbridge. You didn’t see me at the hospital.’
‘I saw you.’
‘When?’
‘When you were leaving the hospital. I saw you from the window.’
But it must have been a fifthfloor window.
‘And you could recognise me from that?’
‘Not only that.’
‘I don’t mean to press you, but…’
‘I went to your home.’
‘In Kitami?’
‘Yes.’
Kitami was a small station near the Tama River on the Odakyu Line. l had built a home about a fifteen-minute walk from that station six years ago.
‘Yesterday I saw you come home.’
‘So it must have already been night-time.’
‘It was light enough to tell what you looked like.’
‘So why didn’t you say something?
‘That would have been an inconvenience for you, would it not?’
It was true that I didn’t really want to have to explain the situation to my wife. But it didn’t seem normal to come to my house and see me, then leave without saying a word.
‘The forsythias in your garden were blooming nicely.’
‘Yes, they are. Thank you.’
‘And such a nice house.’
‘You’re too kind…’
My wife didn’t like the prefabricated homes of our company so we had spent a little more on our house than we should have. It was built of wood and had cost about 30,000 yen more per square metre than a prefab house would have. I didn’t think our company’s homes were all that bad, so I was a little hurt when my wife said that she didn’t want a prefab house. But at the same time, I felt that by choosing a prefab home, I would be leaving a mark of my achievements in the form of a home and so decided to go along with my wife. Now I couldn’t care less.
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