Sweet Bean Paste

by Durian Sukegawa

  I never lost that hope. It might have been a different story if I was always ill, but even after I recovered I couldn’t leave the sanatorium. Though I wanted so much to work in the outside world, the reality was that I was caged in by that hedge and living off taxpayers’ money.

  I can’t tell you how many times I wished I were dead. Deep down, I believed that a life has no value if a person is not a useful member of society. I was convinced that humans are born in order to be of service to the world and to others.

  But there came a time when that changed, because I changed.

  I remember it clearly. It was a night of the full moon, and I was walking alone in the woods. By then I had already begun Listening to the whispers of trees, and to the voices of insects and birds. On this night, the moon cast its pale, brilliant light on everything around me, and energy seemed to radiate from trees swaying in the wind. While I was alone on that path in the woods, I came face-to-face with the moon. And oh, what a beautiful moon it was! I was enchanted. It made me forget everything I had suffered because of this illness, about being shut up in here and never going out. Then next thing, I thought I heard a voice that sounded very much like the moon whispering to me. It said:

  I wanted you to see me.

  That’s why I shine like this.

  From then on I began to see everything differently. If I were not here, this full moon would not be here. Neither would the trees. Or the wind. If my view of the world disappears, then everything that I see disappears too. It’s as simple as that.

  And then I thought, what if this didn’t apply to just me, what if there were no other human beings in this world? What about all the different forms of life that have the ability to be aware of the presence of others – what would happen if none of them existed either?

  The answer is that this world in all its infinity would disappear.

  You might think I’m deluded, but this idea changed me. I began to understand that we were born in order to see and listen to the world. And that’s all this world wants of us. It doesn’t matter that I was never a teacher or a member of the workforce, my life had meaning.

  I was cured at an early stage of the illness and my side effects weren’t bad enough to make it difficult to go outside. You gave me the opportunity to work at Doraharu. I feel truly blessed to have had that experience.

  But what about a child whose life is over before he or she even turns two years old? People may wonder, in their sorrow, what point there is in a child like that even being born.

  I have learned the answer to this. I am sure it is for that child to perceive wind, sky, and voices in his or her own unique way. The world that child senses exists because of it, and therefore that child’s life, too, has purpose and meaning.

  By the same token, my husband spent a great deal of his life fighting illness, and it may have looked as if he had much to be bitter about when he had to depart. But his life too had meaning, because he also sensed the sky and wind.

  I’m sure there comes a time for everyone, not just those with Hansen’s disease, when they wonder what the point of life is.

  In answer, I can say that I know with certainty that life does have meaning.

  Of course, knowing that doesn’t mean that all our problems are suddenly solved, and sometimes simply getting on with life feels like a never-ending ordeal.

  But I was very happy, you know. I was happy when we won the court case, and the law that kept us confined was abolished. At last I was able to go out into the world and walk about freely. We fought decades for that.

  But with joy also came pain. We were free to go beyond the hedge and walk the streets if we wanted. We could ride buses and trains. We could also travel. Naturally that was a source of great happiness, and I will never forget what it was like to go outside for the first time after fifty long years of being shut up in here. Everything looked so shining and bright. But I started to notice something while I was walking around outside – wherever I went, I knew nobody and had no family. I always felt lost and alone in a strange country.

  It was too late. By the time I was told that I could go out into society for the first time in decades and start over, it was much too difficult. If I had become free twenty years earlier I might have managed to start a new life outside. There were many of us like that, in our sixties and seventies, for whom it was too late.

  We discovered that once we experienced the joy of being out in the world and free again, the greater the happiness, the more we felt the pain of lost time and lives that could never be returned. Perhaps you understand that feeling. When any of us went outside we always came back exhausted. Not just physical exhaustion, but a deeper exhaustion that comes from bearing a pain that will never go away.

  That’s why I made confectionery. I made sweet things for all those who lived with the sadness of loss. And that’s how I was able to live out my life.

  Sentaro, your life is meaningful too.

  The time you suffered behind bars, your finding dorayaki – I believe it all has purpose. All experience adds up to a life lived as only you could. I feel sure the day will come when you can say: this is my life.

  You may never become a writer or a master dorayaki cook, but I do believe there will be a time when you can stand tall as yourself in your own unique way.

  The first time I ever saw you I was taking my regular weekly outing. I was walking along that street enchanted by the cherry blossoms, when I smelt something sweet on the wind and found Doraharu. Then I saw you. I saw your face.

  Your eyes were so sad. You had a look that made me want to ask what it was that made you suffer so. It was how my eyes used to appear, when I was resigned to being fenced in by that prickly hedge for the rest of my life. That’s what drew me to stand outside your shop.

  Then I had a thought. If my husband had not been forcibly sterilized, and I could have had a child, that child would be about the same age as you. After that

  In the latter part of the letter the writing grew larger and the shape of the characters began to disintegrate. And then it broke off, unfinished. Sentaro closed his eyes with the letter still in his hands. For some time, nobody spoke. Wakana, who had been watching Sentaro as he read the letter, eventually broke the silence.

  ‘I wish I’d come sooner.’

  Sentaro opened his eyes and looked at her. She took the bag from her shoulder, pulled out a paper bag with a red bow attached, and gently placed it in front of Tokue’s photographs.

  ‘Why don’t you open it up so Toku can see?’ Miss Moriyama suggested.

  Wakana nodded and opened up the package with trembling fingers. It was a white blouse.

  ‘I can’t sew, so it’s bought. It not expensive but…’ She began to sob loudly and Miss Moriyama moved over beside her.

  ‘I’m sure Toku is very happy right now.’ She picked up the blouse, spread out the sleeves and held it up in front of the photograph. ‘Isn’t this lovely, Toku. Wakana brought back the blouse your mother made for you.’

  Gently she ran her bent fingers across Wakana’s heaving shoulders, stroking them. ‘Wakana, dear.’

  ‘Wakana,’ Sentaro said, his voice choked with tears, ‘thank you.’

  The three sat there without speaking, waiting for their breathing to become even again.

  Sentaro looked out at the garden. Time had passed quickly while they poured out their grief. The sun’s rays were now infused with a deep red radiance that played over the grass. Sentaro wiped his eyes with his fingers and looked at the empty birdcage.

  Miss Moriyama followed his gaze. ‘Toku wondered how she was going to apologize.’

  ‘Ah, you mean the canary?’ asked Wakana.

  ‘Yes.’ Miss Moriyama shuffled over to Sentaro on her knees.

  ‘I don’t know if I should say this, seeing as how you just gave her the blouse and all, but…what do you call it? Maa—?’

  ‘His name is Marvy.’ Wakana looked up.

  ‘She decided by herself to set Marvy free. Be
fore she’d even asked you. She didn’t know how she was going to explain it.’

  ‘She wrote about it in the letter,’ Sentaro said.

  Wakana nodded. ‘It’s okay. I’m sure Marvy wanted to fly.’

  ‘At first Marvy stayed around the garden and the roof just out there. He’d fly back here to eat.’

  ‘He did?’ Wakana stretched her neck to look. Her cheeks were still wet with tears. ‘Flying wasn’t his strong point.’

  Miss Moriyama tipped her head to one side. ‘Oh, not at all. I still see him here and there on different roofs.’

  ‘He’s flying? Marvy?’

  ‘Everyone feeds him quite a bit.’

  ‘Really?’ Wakana’s face relaxed for the first time since they’d entered the room.

  ‘Isn’t that great?’ Sentaro said.

  Wakana nodded emphatically. ‘Maybe I was too protective.’

  Miss Moriyama laughed suddenly. ‘It may not be proper to say this about someone who’s just died – someone I was fond of, moreover – but as a close friend of Toku’s I feel I can say anything.’

  ‘Like what?’ Sentaro asked.

  ‘Well, she was so overdramatic about everything.’

  Sentaro and Wakana looked baffled.

  ‘When she gave me that letter,’ Miss Moriyama glanced at it sitting next to the blouse, ‘I didn’t mean to read it, but it wasn’t in an envelope or anything, and I could see a bit of the writing. All the different forms of life that have the ability to be aware and so on.That’s what she wrote about, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ah, she’s at it again, I thought when I saw that. Did she use the word “Listen” a lot?’

  Sentaro nodded.

  ‘Don’t think badly of me, please. When Toku met someone she liked that’s what she’d do. Tell them to listen to the voice of the adzuki beans, etcetera, etcetera. And how the moon whispered to her and so on.’

  ‘But, I…’ Sentaro interrupted, ‘I’m grateful for that letter. So much so I want Wakana to read it later, too. It might be overdramatic but it helps me, a lot.’

  Wakana pressed her eyes again. Still smiling, Miss Moriyama looked at them. ‘Shall we go for a little walk?’ she said, and stood up. ‘We can have a chat with Toku.’

  ‘With Tokue?’ Wakana’s eyes widened.

  29

  Evening spread out against the sky. The changing light tinted everything it touched with the colours of sunset as a deep red unfolded across the clear blue firmament. They walked toward the charnel house, which, bathed in the full glare of the sun’s rays, shone like a beacon.

  ‘Toku asked me to join the Confectionery Group after I attempted suicide.’ Miss Moriyama held out her left arm to show them. ‘I cut my wrist, but didn’t do a proper job of it, so I survived. I was in awful, constant pain ever since getting sick. My fingers went crooked, I got holes in my hands, and my head swelled up and never went back to normal. I got nodules on my face and head that festered with pus. For a woman, it was…I just got fed up with it all and cut my wrist.’

  She turned side-on to face Wakana and Sentaro as they headed toward the charnel house.

  ‘The pain also gets to you. That was another thing. It goes on and on, and some people choose to die. I thought I’d reached my limit. But for some reason I survived. And then Toku said to me, let’s make confectionery. We’ll keep going together, she said. At the time I was going out of my mind, because I couldn’t even die inside this place, let alone keep living in it. Maybe she liked me. And then all that business started. Listen, open your ears – it was her pet saying. All that talk about trying to imagine the wind and the sky, what the adzuki beans saw on their travels.’

  ‘Me too…But she made such wonderful sweet bean paste, I really believe she was telling the truth,’ reflected Sentaro.

  ‘Well, maybe, that’s all well and good…’ Miss Moriyama paused a few beats. ‘I did as she said, and tried to listen. I put my ears up close to the adzuki beans, and I had every intention of trying my best. But you know, I didn’t hear a thing. No bean-talk. What about you, Mr Tsujii? Did you ever hear the beans’ voices?’

  Sentaro kept walking in silence a few moments. ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘But I think she meant we should approach the beans as if we could hear their voices.’

  ‘That’s it. That’s exactly right, but she kept on about it so much I got a bit tired of it. Some people started saying she was a liar. There was a time when she was completely isolated in the Confectionery Group.’

  This was news to Sentaro. ‘I didn’t know she went through something like that.’

  ‘I talked with her about it at the time, when we stayed up one night. I asked her what she meant by saying all that stuff. I told her everyone was in quite a state.’

  ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘I don’t want to disappoint you, but Toku herself said at the time that she couldn’t actually hear the voices of beans. But if you live in the belief that they can be heard, then someday you might be able to hear them. She said that was the only way for us to live, to be like the poets. That’s what she said. If all you ever see is reality, you just want to die. The only way to get over barriers, she said, is to live in the spirit of already being over them.’

  ‘That’s exactly the kind of person Tokue was. I felt like she’d already crossed the barrier.’

  ‘What barrier?’ Wakana asked.

  Sentaro saw an image of the young girl who’d showed him the salt-pickled flower petals beneath the cherry blossoms. He wanted to put that into words, but held his tongue. Now was not the time to mention it. He kept his thoughts to himself.

  They arrived at the charnel house. Miss Moriyama put her hands together in front of the stone cairn, shining in the evening sun, and Sentaro and Wakana also joined her in offering a prayer for the dead. But as soon as she dropped her hands she immediately set off again along the path leading into the woods.

  Sentaro looked up, puzzled. Wakana also looked at her in bewilderment. ‘Miss Moriyama, is that the way?’

  ‘Yes, come on.’

  ‘But…aren’t Tokue’s remains here in the charnel house?’

  Miss Moriyama’s answer was to beckon them on, so they followed. The path was lined on both sides with trees that blocked the light, making it much darker than the way they had just come. A red glow still lit the sky, but night was already falling here.

  Miss Moriyama began to speak again. ‘I loved the way Toku talked. She used to say it was fine to think what you want about things. Hearing that from her made me feel like I could go anywhere I wanted, when all I was doing was walking along this path. But Toku was never ever a liar.’

  ‘No, of course she wasn’t,’ Sentaro agreed.

  ‘That’s right. She wasn’t a liar.’

  Miss Moriyama stopped and turned to look at Sentaro and Wakana. It was even darker here, amongst the thick shrubs, and chestnut and pine woods. The sky visible through gaps in the trees was bright vermilion red.

  ‘About a week before she died, one night we were having cocoa in my room and Toku started talking. She told me she’d had a strange experience.’

  Wakana moved closer to Sentaro’s side.

  ‘It’s all right, dear, it’s nothing spooky. She told me how she’d been walking on this very path, about this time of night, when she heard voices for the first time.’

  ‘What kind of voices?’

  ‘Voices of the trees, she said.’

  ‘I see,’ said Sentaro simply, not knowing how to respond.

  Wakana stayed close to Sentaro’s side.

  ‘She’d been telling other people to listen to the voices of the beans all that time, but in truth that was actually the first time she’d heard voices herself. Voices other than humans, that is.’

  ‘What did they say?’ Wakana sounded husky.

  ‘Well, Toku laughed when she told me this, but what she heard was, “Good job, you did well.”’

  ‘The trees said that
?’

  ‘Yes. Toku said that whenever she walked here the trees all spoke to her, saying “Good job” or “You did it”. She’d never heard that before. I can’t forget her face when she told me. I’ve known her since she was young, and I was at her wedding too. But I’d never seen her look so happy as she did that night. I felt I should tell you both about this, because you knew her, too. I mean, she didn’t need sympathy or anything. She wasn’t unhappy at the end. I really do think that the trees were whispering to her. You did it, Tokue Yoshii. Good job. I believe they really said that. I mean…’

  Miss Moriyama stretched her hands out to indicate the area all around them. ‘This is where we plant a tree whenever one of us dies. One by one the trees have grown in number.’

  Wakana stuck close to Sentaro’s back. Sentaro looked at the trees all around them. Each one was a testament to a person who had spent a lifetime in here.

  ‘It’s already dark, but Toku’s tree is over there.’ She pointed to a nearby mound of earth with a sapling planted in the centre. ‘We all talked about it and decided to plant a somei yoshino. Because Toku loved cherry trees. She grew up near a place called Shinshiro in Aichi Prefecture. Apparently, the cherry trees there were quite something. She always used to say she wished she could see them one more time. That beech behind Toku’s tree was planted for her husband when he died.’

  Sentaro and Wakana stood close, gazing in silence at the trees all around them. The forest murmured with every ripple of wind that rustled its branches and leaves. As if Tokue was somewhere close nearby, telling them to open their ears and listen.

  Sentaro took a step closer to the sapling. He gently trailed his hand over the young, new life. ‘Tokue,’ he said, stroking the branches with his fingertips.

  ‘Oh!’ Miss Moriyama gasped behind him, and Sentaro turned to look.