In spite of everything, Sentaro’s sweet bean paste showed signs of improving. A number of customers had remarked on how much better it was. He had cut back on drinking and was getting up early again to make the bean paste. Recently, as he stood over the copper pot every day, Sentaro consciously tried to emulate Tokue’s methods: he divided up the time and regulated the heat and water much as she had. There were days when he sensed he might be a little bit closer to her standard.
But the world was not such a forgiving place that this meant a recovery in sales. In business it was understood that customers who leave – for whatever reason – don’t come back. Sentaro was experiencing this first-hand. Even the owner was saying they might as well be done with dorayaki and start selling okonomiyaki savoury pancakes or some such thing instead. Not so long ago Sentaro would have agreed with her; now he did his best to politely fend off her suggestions. For the last few years all he had wanted was to escape the grind of this work – standing over a hot griddle every day – but now he could not bring himself to agree to close down Doraharu. He didn’t really understand the reason why. All he knew was how strongly he felt about not wanting the shop to close.
The day the letter arrived a cold rain had been falling since morning. Sentaro looked up after he finished making the bean paste to notice it poking out of the letterbox. The envelope was addressed in a familiar handwriting to Sentaro Tsujii, care of Doraharu.
Dear Sentaro,
How are you? I hope you are well. The weather has turned very cold and wintry, hasn’t it? I’m still trying to shake off this cold, and am in and out of bed with it.
How are things at Doraharu? After seeing you I had a feeling that it might be getting you down, so I was a bit worried. I still think of you and the shop.
Remember how you always used to ask me what I was doing while I was making the bean paste? I used to put my face up close to the adzuki and you’d ask if I could hear anything. Well, Listening was the only answer I had, but I thought if I said that it’d confuse you, so I didn’t explain.
One thing I can do in Tenshoen is sniff the wind and listen to the murmur of the trees. I pay attention to the language of things in this world that don’t use words. That’s what I call Listening, and I’ve been doing it for sixty years now.
When I make sweet bean paste I observe closely the colour of the adzuki beans’ faces. I take in their voices. That might mean imagining a rainy day or the beautiful fine weather that they have witnessed. I listen to their stories of the winds that blew on their journey to me.
It’s my belief that everything in this world has its own language. We have the ability to open up our ears and minds to anything and everything. That could be someone walking down the street, or it could be the sunshine or the wind. I realize I may have seemed like a nagging old woman to you, and I regret that for all I said I couldn’t pass this vital message on to you.
When I walk through the woods at Tenshoen I think of Doraharu, you, those sweet young girls, and Wakana. Ever since I became estranged from my sister I don’t know anyone else living out in the world. Now that I’m not sure how much longer I have left, I feel as if you and Wakana are my family.
Maybe that’s why, when I thought about you, I heard whispers in the wind that blew from the other side of the hedge, and I felt in my bones it might be a good idea to contact you.
I suppose that rumours must have spread about me, and you are probably still having a hard time as a result. If that’s the case, I made a mistake in not quitting sooner than I did. I try to live a blameless life, but am crushed at times by peoples’ lack of understanding. Sometimes you just have to use your wits. That’s something else I should have told you.
But now, you and I both have to get over this. It’s sad, but it can’t be helped. Please take pride in yourself as a professional confectioner and do the best you can to get through this.
In any case, I feel sure that you are capable of creating your own dorayaki. I’ve been making sweet bean paste for a long time but that doesn’t mean you have to do everything the way I do. It’s important to be bold and decisive. When you can say with certainty that you have found your style of dorayaki, that will be the start of a new day for you. I firmly believe this. Please have the courage to go your own way. I know that you can do it.
Yours sincerely,
Tokue Yoshii
P.S. Marvy is doing well. He loves green-leaf vegetables and eats a lettuce leaf every day. The only thing that worries me is he’s started saying that he wants to go outside. I don’t know what that’s all about. Please come and see me again with Wakana. Let’s talk about it then.
Sentaro read the letter over and over again. He even forgot to turn the griddle on. Tokue’s voice echoed from each character written in that distinctive wavy handwriting. He felt as if she were standing right there, speaking to him.
Since there were no customers in sight, Sentaro ran to the convenience shop to buy writing paper.
Dear Tokue,
Thank you for taking the trouble to write when you are still not well. I read your letter here in the shop many times. I don’t remember feeling so heartened in a long time.
‘Listening’ is a good word. I like it. Now I know what you were doing when you had your face up so close to the beans. You were looking at each one, and drawing on fifty years of experience to bring out the potential of every single bean. I knew you were looking at them carefully, but I thought you were only concerned with getting the heat right, and rinsing the right number of times to remove bitterness, things like that. I never dreamed you were listening to them whisper about where they were born and brought up.
If anyone else but you had told me this I would not believe it. Mostly because I’ve never actually listened to language in the way you describe. But then I didn’t even listen to my own mother, which is something I never spoke of before.
There was a time when I couldn’t go out into the world either, but for a very different reason than you. As a rule, I don’t tell people about it, but I think it’d be good to tell you now. A few years before I started working at Doraharu I broke the law for no particular reason. I went to jail as a result and spent time looking up at a small patch of sky.
My mother came to see me several times. But we never exchanged more than two or three words. She passed away before I got out. By the time my father found her she was already dead, of a stroke.
Of course I said the necessary apologies to my mother, but that was all. We weren’t speaking much at the time so I couldn’t tell her anything or hear what she had to say. The thought of that is painful even now. It weighs heavily on me. I gave up on my own mother and I’m still a failure. Sorry to go on so much about myself, but this is who I am.
However, after spending all that time making bean paste with you, I feel like I might have changed a little. Up to now all I could think about was paying off my debts so I could leave Doraharu, but now I feel attached to the place. You’re the one who brought about that change in me. That’s why I believe in you and your sense of things. I still can’t feel it myself, but I like the idea that everything has its own language, and that we can be sensitive to it.
The fight at Doraharu still continues. A few customers have good things to say about my bean paste, but I’m still a long way off being able to pull in customers with it. To tell the truth, I’m in a very bad position right now. I’m afraid the wind might have blown word of my worries in your direction.
The other day when we came to see you I had another favour I wanted to ask you besides the canary. But I was so overwhelmed by everything I heard and saw that I couldn’t bring it up.
I know it’s selfish of me to mention this when I ought to be worried about your health, but I still need you to teach me something. I can more or less make sweet bean paste now by copying what you do. But when it comes to going beyond that and making my own kind of dorayaki, I have no idea what to do or what direction to take. If I could make my own style of dorayaki, like
you said, maybe a time will come when customers start lining up again. It would save Doraharu and would be a new start for me too.
The other thing is, I’d really like to learn more from you about confectionery in general. I have a feeling that if I could, some things might become clearer to me. Can I please come and visit you again at Tenshoen?
I’ll also have a chat with Wakana about the canary. She’s in her last year of middle school at the moment though, and might be busy with exams coming up. I can’t make any promises right now about when we can come to see you together, but I will make the time to come by myself. I hope to talk with you about a lot of things when I do.
Well, I’ll stop here. I’m sorry this letter is all about my troubles and failings.
The weather is getting much colder now, so I hope you will take good care of yourself and not let your cold get any worse.
Yours sincerely,
Sentaro Tsujii
21
The new year arrived, bringing rain mingled with snow. Not once did the sun show its face for three days straight.
Sentaro kept the shop open nevertheless. There seemed no point in drinking festive spiced sake alone so instead he set to work making bean paste in the dark of early morning and opened up the shop earlier than usual. He thought he might be able to sell to people making their way to the other side of the station in order to pay the traditional shrine visit during the New Year period.
Yet sales were poor, as he feared they might be. When the owner came to check the books very early in the new year, she sighed pointedly and muttered again about turning Doraharu into another kind of food shop. An okonomiyaki shop might have been just a spur-of-the-moment thought when she first brought it up, but increasingly she seemed genuinely taken with the idea and asked Sentaro if he would still work for her if she did that. Sentaro gave no sign of agreement.
‘Let’s give dorayaki a go for a bit longer,’ he told her. ‘After all, the boss started this shop – we should respect his memory. Besides, I still have a debt left to pay.’
She nodded ambiguously and pursed her lips. ‘If you want to stay in business it doesn’t matter what you sell. We all have to make a living.’
Sentaro recognized there was some truth in that, but still could not agree. It was business, too, to commit to providing a certain standard of bean paste, even if it didn’t go well. He didn’t feel that a business – of any kind – should be run with an anything-goes kind of attitude.
And there was something else too, something far more important to Sentaro: Tokue’s sweet bean paste. He was determined to carry on making it, because if he did not, it would disappear from the world. Apart from its merits as a bean paste, Sentaro thought of it as testimony to the life of a remarkable woman called Tokue Yoshii.
In mid-January Sentaro received a winter greeting card from Tokue, the same day he had an argument with the owner about the future of Doraharu. Dorayaki didn’t seem to exist in her mind any more. As usual Sentaro maintained that they should be patient a little longer but could not explain his basis for saying that.
Naturally he was frustrated too. When he thought of all the customers who never came any more he felt like cursing them. But seeing Tokue’s handwriting on the postcard again made him feel slightly better. She wrote that she had been ill and in bed over the new year period, and she apologized for not sending a New Year greeting card, and finished up by saying that she was better and asked if he would like to visit again. ‘When you do, I’ll revive the Confectionery Group with Miss Moriyama,’ she wrote.
‘I’ll go,’ Sentaro said to himself when he read this, standing alone in the kitchen. ‘I don’t have many customers anyway.’
Tenshoen was as quiet as ever. With the trees now bare of leaves, the stillness seemed to penetrate even more keenly. A biting cold wind blew through the grounds beneath a clear, sunny sky.
He followed the same route as last time to the shop where he was to meet Tokue. The deserted path was cloaked in silence; he met nobody along the way. Reaching the shop, he passed through entrance and his feet stopped. ‘Tokue…’ He was shocked by the alteration in her appearance.
Miss Moriyama, who had given them the tuile on his previous visit, was by her side.
‘Hello,’ he said as he approached the table, ‘it’s been a while.’
Sentaro was shocked by Tokue’s appearance and tried not to let his agitation show. Though it was only just over a month since they had last met, she looked as if years had passed. She returned his smile readily, but her eyes were hollow and her cheeks sunken.
‘Tokue, you’ve had a rough trot with that cold, it seems.’
‘Yes, I have. It’s been hard going. I couldn’t eat…’ She ran her fingers through her tousled white hair that stood up in waves like the bark of a palm tree.
‘She was very poorly for a while. At one stage I thought I’d have to call you.’
Miss Moriyama contorted her own disfigured face into something resembling Munch’s Scream, to illustrate how gaunt Tokue had been.
‘Oh, get on with you. I’m better now.’
‘Sorry. But I thought you were going off after your husband for a while there.’
‘Not for a while yet. I have to finish teaching the boss here how to make the Confectionery Group’s sweet bean paste.’
Despite her gauntness, Tokue’s voice had a surprisingly bright spring in it.
‘Are you really all right?’ Sentaro said, peering at Tokue’s face.
She waved her hand as if to shield herself from his searching gaze. ‘I’m better now. But it was hard over New Year, so I kept to my bed.’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t realize earlier,’ he said.
‘Oh, don’t worry about that. I’m just glad you’re here now.’
Miss Moriyama stood up and left the table, giving them a few moments alone. She came back a short while later holding a tray with both hands. ‘Here we are,’ she said, putting the tray down. On it were three bowls with steam gently rising from them.
‘I heated it up on the stove out the back.’
Sentaro looked in the bowl. ‘Oh, this is…’
‘We’re doing a rerun of New Year,’ said Tokue, putting her hands together in a gesture of thanks for the food.
‘It’s sweet bean soup, the Confectionery Group’s specialty.’ Miss Moriyama sounded cheery, too.
The sweet bean paste that Sentaro knew so well glistened inside the bowls, each sparkling bean bound to all the others in a thick soup. The rich, sweet aroma wafted over to nearby seats.
‘Mm, smells good,’ came a voice from another table.
‘Please, start.’ Miss Moriyama placed a bowl in front of Sentaro.
‘Eat while it’s hot. I think you’ll find it to your taste even if you don’t have a sweet tooth,’ Tokue encouraged him.
Sentaro had never actually managed to consume a whole bowl of this traditional sweet New Year’s dish before, but after the first mouthful, his face relaxed.
‘This is really good!’ The words tumbled out spontaneously. The sweetness seemed to melt away the tension in his cheeks and neck, and was followed quickly by a feeling of relief.
‘Toku, dear. Don’t forget the rest,’ Miss Moriyama said.
‘Oh yes, that’s right. Sentaro, try this as well.’ Tokue took a small plastic container from her bag and tipped the contents into a dish.
‘This is good. It’s Toku’s special homemade salty kombu.’
‘Salty kombu?’
‘It’s not the same without it,’ said Miss Moriyama, taking a pinch of the kombu. ‘Mm, perfect,’ she said, nodding to herself.
Sentaro also reached for a piece. It was cut into strips of just the right size in length and width, and gave off a pleasant plum scent that tickled the back of the nose. He put it in his mouth and felt the moist firm texture.
‘Oh…this tastes of pickled plum.’
‘That’s right. I use pickled plum and shiso.’
Sentaro tasted the s
oup again in admiration. ‘This is amazing…’ He gave the two elderly ladies a querying look. ‘How do you make this soup, and the kombu?’
He knew of course there was no easy answer to his question, but it was the only way he knew to convey his feelings. Tokue giggled.
‘It’s not so difficult. This is a Confectionery Group standard. We make it every New Year.’
‘That’s right. Toku was sick this year so I managed to do the soup by myself, but I had to use bought kombu. Today Toku stirred herself into action at last to make her pickle in time for your visit.’
‘Thank you very much,’ Sentaro said. He looked at his bowl and noticed that it was nearly empty. ‘I’ve never had sweet soup like this before.’
‘Oh, isn’t that lovely, Toku? He seems to like it.’
‘I didn’t know that sweetness could be this mild… and the flavour of kombu just seems to expand in the mouth.’
‘We put a bit of salt directly in the soup, too, you know. But only a pinch because of the kombu, so you can’t really tell,’ Tokue said, and at last took a mouthful herself. She looked into the distance while assessing it, then her gaunt cheeks relaxed into a smile. ‘Mm, the balance is just right.’
Sentaro and Miss Moriyama both nodded vigorously in agreement.
‘Boss.’
‘Yes.’
Tokue put the bowl down and looked Sentaro straight in the eye. ‘I would say that my bean paste is just the tiniest bit on the salty side.’
‘Yes, I can tell that,’ he said.
‘On the other hand,’ she continued, ‘that bean paste you were using at the shop. It had absolutely no…’
Sweet Bean Paste Page 10