“Oh, look! Can ya see the kid Bunji’s ma’s holdin’? That’s Bunji’s little brother—Takeshi. A lot like your name.”
“Well, yeah,” said Takeru, “but it’s not the same. I’m Takeru, not Takeshi.”
“Of course. But at first we all thought you were called Takeshi. I can’t ’member why we thought that, but everyone said your ma must’ve named ya after this Takeshi in the photo. He was a cousin of your ma’s grandpa—a very clever boy who got into the Naval Officers’ School. So we thought your ma, Wakako, named ya after him. But really, I don’t suppose your ma would’ve even known ’bout him.”
Mitsuko’s tone then changed—it was as if she was saying something she didn’t really want to. She wouldn’t have been good at telling lies.
“We didn’t even know your ma had a child ’til years after ya were born. And for a long time we all thought your name was Takeshi. Your ma never came home for Bon or the New Year. Didn’t even send a New Year’s card. We had no idea what she was doin’ with her life. We didn’t even know if she was alive. We had no word at all and it upset us…but she always was that kind of girl.”
Had his mother not told people in the village about his brother? That’s what Takeru wanted to ask, but his mouth said something different. He pointed at the boy in its mother’s arms and the boy standing in front of her:
“What happened to them? Are they still alive?”
“They died a long, long time ago. If they were alive today, they’d be over a hundred. I never knew either of ’em.”
Something inside Takeru wanted to block out the sound of her voice, but it was powerless, so he heard everything she said.
“Bunji died when he was very young—just a child. Takeshi was in the Navy durin’ the war. Then with the American ’cupation there were restrictions on jobs for officers out of the military, so he came back here and set up a fishin’ business. When the restrictions were lifted he was ’lected a councilman. But then, shortly after, he drowned at sea. It seems like such a waste that he died like that, after he made it through the war.”
She sighed, but didn’t say any more. Two brothers—like you. That would have been an obvious thing to say, thought Takeru. But of course she didn’t say it. She was kind. She’d taken him in, and she never cornered him. She wouldn’t say something like that.
Takeru didn’t feel confident to answer questions about his brother, but he always expected to be asked. But neither Mitsuko nor anyone else he met in the village ever mentioned him. They occasionally brought up his mother, but never his brother. It was strange. It was almost as if he’d never had a brother. Perhaps he hadn’t. Was that the truth of the matter? He wished it was.
Takeru met Saki Kawano a couple of days later. Mitsuko had gone out to a local Welfare and Children’s Committee meeting and Takeru was watching television alone when he heard a child’s voice:
“Mitsuko!”
He stood up, went to the kitchen, opened the back door, and found a girl standing outside. Her black hair was straight, her bangs cut at right angles above her neat eyebrows. She had large long-lashed eyes that curved down slightly toward her cheekbones. It was a regular southern face. He knew right away that she was from the house next door—he’d caught sight of her a couple of times coming or going. Seeing her up close for the first time, he noticed her long thin limbs. She was slightly taller than he was. She had probably seen him before as well. Her big sparkling eyes stared at him more in friendly curiosity than surprise.
“Who’re you?” she asked.
“Takeru Tamura,” he said.
“I’m Saki,” she said. “Saki Kawano. Where’re you from?”
“Tokyo…” said Takeru vaguely.
“What grade?”
“Fourth.”
“I’m in second.”
Knowing he was two years older than her, Takeru now felt bolder.
“So what do you want?” he said.
For a moment Saki looked surprised. Takeru thought maybe he’d sounded conceited. Her hands shot out. They held a small cooking pot.
“Please thank Mitsuko for us,” she said. “It was delicious.”
Takeru took the pot and Saki opened the door to leave. Then, with her hand still on the doorknob, she turned around as though something had just occurred to her. She looked very serious.
“Can ya play tomorrow?” she said.
Before Takeru had time to nod, the door slammed shut.
Through the door he could hear the girl running on the white gravel outside the house. It seemed like a happy sound.
Mitsuko came home shortly afterward. She picked up the pot from the table.
“Saki bring this back?” she asked.
She ran her finger around the rim of the pot.
“She always brings things back so clean,” she said, as though to herself. “I suppose she’s the one that washes ’em. She’s a good girl.”
Saki and her father lived in the two-story house next door, beyond a small field of cucumbers and onions. According to Mitsuko, they’d moved in about four years ago when the house was new. Because there was no woman in their house, Mitsuko took over food whenever she could—nikujaga, curry, boiled fish, sashimi.
Saki’s father, Tatsuya, had worked at Kawase Fisheries, one of the biggest fisheries in the area, based in a village that had once been the administrative hub of the district. But he had given up that job and bought the house in Takanoura. He had also bought a small secondhand boat and started fishing on his own, but the boat was always tied up at the quay now. Neither Mitsuko nor anybody else in Takanoura knew what he lived on. Some people said he made money playing pachinko. That was the opinion of Chikara Goto, a fisherman friend of Mitsuko’s late husband, who sometimes stopped by to bring her fish. The evidence he gave to support his theory was how often he spotted Tatsuya’s car in the parking lot of one of the pachinko parlors on the main road in “town” (as the local people called the built-up area beyond the hill).
“He goes so often he’s gotta be livin’ off it,” said Chikara smugly.
“So how come you ain’t livin’ off it, Chika?” asked Mitsuko.
She looked entirely earnest, without a hint of malice or hidden motive. Chikara smiled awkwardly. His chubby face, always red and beading with sweat, grew even redder.
Tatsuya would sometimes come to the door when Mitsuko took food to the house. He was tall and thin, with a slight stoop. His hair was always unkempt, his face unshaven, his eyes bloodshot and puffy. It was hard to believe those eyes could belong to the father of a girl whose eyes were so big and clear. When he opened the door it always looked as though he’d just been asleep. He’d appear in a crumpled T-shirt and shorts or track pants that he’d obviously just put on. He often stank of cheap liquor.
Mitsuko couldn’t help but mutter under her breath at the sight of him. Being on the local Welfare and Children’s Committee, she felt she should express her concerns clearly. But she was disarmed by Tatsuya’s affable, slightly sad, smile.
“Thank ya,” he’d say, bowing his head. “You’re always so kind.”
“No bother,” she’d say. “We’re neighbors, after all. We’ve gotta look after each other.” What else could she say?
“And thanks for that stew you gave us t’other day—Saki really loved it. ‘Scrumptious,’ she said. She ended up eatin’ my helpin’ too.”
His back would hunch up when he spoke this way, and he’d sound so apologetic that the kindhearted Mitsuko found herself unable to say anything critical.
His words suggested that he didn’t leave his daughter to eat on her own. That at least was something. Before setting off from her house with a pan or tray, Mitsuko always resolved to deliver one or two harsh truths when she arrived. But when leaving his house she’d find herself cheerfully saying things like: “Okay! I’ll have t’make more next time so there’s enough for you too!” It was as if, unable to confront him, she’d decide that both Tatsuya and she herself would benefit from a bit of posit
ivity. Then she’d walk home, her head cocked to one side, wondering what had happened.
The fact that nobody ever saw Tatsuya working didn’t mean that the household was broken or degenerate. There was no screaming or shouting to be heard, no sounds of things smashing, no endless, heart-wrenching crying. In fact, the house was rather quiet. If a window was open, the sound of the TV came out—sports highlights, or laughter from a variety show—blending with the cries of the insects. Occasionally, Mitsuko worried that the TV was on too late, but it didn’t happen often. Sometimes Tatsuya put out the wash—both his and his daughter’s clothes—too late in the day to dry, but it nearly always appeared at some point during the day. Peering inside through the front or back door there were no signs that the house was a mess. Mitsuko felt sorry for Saki, having no mother, but the girl didn’t look unhappy.
“It reminds me of when your ma was little,” Mitsuko said one day out of the blue. Takeru couldn’t imagine his mother as a child.
Once she saw that Takeru and Saki had become friends it became easier for Mitsuko to invite Saki over for a meal. “Dad says it’s okay,” Saki would say when she arrived, without Mitsuko having to ask whether she had permission. Before long she was a regular visitor, coming over to have dinner or a snack with Takeru.
Mitsuko’s house had a wide veranda that faced south, where Mitsuko placed a folding table for them. She lit a mosquito coil and when Takeru complained about the heat, she brought out an electric fan, the cord stretching from inside. The breeze from the fan dispersed the smoke from the mosquito coil, but at the same time made it difficult for the light, black insects to get close to the bodies at the table. The mosquitoes hung in the air, impotent yet threatening. It was difficult for thoughts to take shape when they were hovering there, hard for sentences to fall into place. Maybe only simple things could be said—like what Takeru said now:
“Showa.”
Mitsuko laughed.
“What’s so funny?” he said.
“You mean the fan and coil make ya think of the Showa Period? What do you know about the Showa Period? It ended years ago.” she said.
Takeru pouted, his tight lips pressed forward like a mosquito’s proboscis. Then he heard a voice. Or thought he heard a voice.
Don’t! Don’t talk about things you don’t know.
Takeru glanced across the table at Saki. Her face was turned in the direction from which the voice had come. Takeru turned to gaze the same way. He could see Saki’s house beyond the vegetable field, slightly obstructed by the kurogane holly tree that grew at the edge of Mitsuko’s garden. Beside the tree stood Bunji. His back was tight against its pale trunk. Maybe he thought he was hidden. Maybe he thought he’d become part of the tree. His hands were over his mouth, as if he’d said something he shouldn’t have, and his shoulders were hitching up and down. He looked comical. Takeru imagined Bunji criticizing himself, his voice screeching in time with the jolting of his shoulders: Don’t! Don’t poke your nose into other people’s business!
Takeru felt certain that Saki had also noticed Bunji. He watched her as she turned back to the table.
“Dad hasn’t taken the clothes in,” she said. “I’ll have t’go and take ’em in soon.”
“Yeah,” said Mitsuko. “But you won’t be able t’reach. I’ll take it in for ya later, don’t worry ’bout it.”
Takeru looked at the tree again. Bunji wasn’t there anymore. But he could see him plodding along the narrow concrete road between the fields that led north to the seawall. He was bent forward, as though carrying something heavy on his back. Against his small thin body Bunji’s hands looked strangely large, dangling weakly by his thighs. Beyond him were hills. A hill to the west, one of the two that formed the bay, was beginning to cast a purple shadow over the village, a sign that night was not far off. A half-transparent moon hung in the sky. From time to time there was the noise of a vehicle on the bay road, which had been straightened during the coastal protection program. The cicadas were as loud as ever. The cries of black hawks fell from the sky like quoits, hoops of sound thrown down toward trees and telephone poles. The hawks themselves, descending more swiftly than their cries, settled here and there on the poles, folded their scruffy wings, and stared fixedly toward something more distant than tomorrow.
Takeru thought of Bunji’s eyes and wondered if they could see this scenery. Tottering along the road Bunji looked spurned by the world outside himself, by this land. But from what Mitsuko had said, Bunji had died without ever leaving, without ever going beyond the boundaries of the green hills and dark blue sea. So, how could it be that there was no place for him here, where he’d been born and lived his whole life? His eyes looked as though they couldn’t see what was in front of him, as if—though no one else was there to see it either—the scene hid itself from him, refused to let him see it. So his vision couldn’t expand outward, and had no alternative but to go inward. But what was there inside? Any memories that might rise up from the dark depths inside him would be memories of this land between the green hills and dark blue sea, this land that was now sinking into the depths of night. There was nothing else inside him but the very scenery that so stubbornly refused to accept him. Even if he’d tried to remember any other landscape he wouldn’t have been able to—there was nowhere else he knew. And he couldn’t have created fake memories for himself. Mitsuko said he hadn’t been bright, hadn’t gone to school. If you’ve got nowhere to go in reality, then at least you’d want your mind to take you somewhere. But if you don’t understand what people say, if you can’t read or write, how could you imagine another world?
Rejected both from within and without, where was Bunji trying to go? Was he unable to go anywhere, and thus had no choice but to remain here? The expression of Bunji’s eye was stuck fast in the surface of its lens. Clear but at the same time blurred. It was just the same as… whom? Takeru must have known from the start. But he would only realize later that every time a word for that person, or an image of them, came into his mind, he tried to get rid of it immediately, as though crumpling up a yellowing scrap of paper on which it had appeared. Takeru seemed to have been given the task of seeing Bunji, even when everyone else’s sight rejected him. Who or what had imposed this duty on him? This place, of course. There was no other possibility. In which case, the place was not necessarily ignoring Bunji, not necessarily rejecting him entirely. Didn’t that make sense? If Takeru could see Bunji so clearly, that meant that the landscape—everything alive and dead from which the landscape was formed—was, to at least a very small degree, yielding to Bunji, yielding something of the outline and density of existence, and so was preventing, if only just, his complete disappearance. Doesn’t that make sense? Yes. It’s a reasonable idea. Bunji faded into the dusk, and then Takeru saw his brother in the darkness instead, asleep on his stomach, his face flat against the tatami mat. The top half of his body was naked, and an ant was crawling up his thin arm. Before any other ants could appear, Takeru opened his eyes. It was only then that he realized they’d been closed.
Takeru had been dreaming of his sleeping brother again, and again it was Bunji’s voice that brought him up from the depths of the dream, so when he opened his eyes he wouldn’t have been surprised to see Bunji’s face. But it was actually Saki who’d woken him, coming through the back door of Mitsuko’s house.
“Oh…Saki,” Takeru said, rubbing his eyes. “What’s up?”
“You promised to play today,” said Saki.
“Oh, I’m sorry!”
Saki smirked.
“What?” Takeru asked.
“Your cheek looks funny. Like it’s been pressed against a tatami mat.”
“I was fast asleep,” said Takeru, not really feeling like he had been.
“And ya got drool down your chin.”
“Do I?” he said, quickly wiping his mouth and chin with his hand.
He remembered that Mitsuko had gone out, leaving a five-hundred-yen coin on the table so that he and Saki could buy s
ome drinks or ice cream. His mother had often left money for him like that when she was busy, back in Akeroma. But that hadn’t been for treats—it had been for meals.
Gripping the coin tight in one hand, Takeru took his FC Barcelona cap from the back of the chair and hurried out after Saki. Bunji shouted from behind, as though pushing him forward.
Get ice cream. Enough for two—for you and your big brother!
Takeru stopped and looked around. That’s nasty, he muttered. Did Bunji hear? Even if he had, he wouldn’t have understood what Takeru meant. But he must have sensed Takeru’s discomfort, because he put one of his big hands over his mouth, and the other went to the top of his head. I want to vanish, the gesture seemed to say. But he didn’t have to vanish. Takeru pulled down the brim of his cap. That always made things he didn’t want to see disappear.
Takeru and Saki went out to the road along the seawall, and soon reached the main highway that ran north-south through Takanoura. There was a good breeze where the roads met, and Takeru thought of old Tsuru holding his glass eye up to the sun. “This spot has the best light in the village,” he had mumbled, his jaw jerking. In the mornings old people could often be seen chatting at the bus stop. They’d be there in the late afternoons too, or they’d go to the seawall before the warmth of the day faded. Whenever he walked past, Takeru was nervous that he might see Tsuru again, but today the sun was still hot and there was nobody around. Now and then a car passed, disturbing the hot, heavy, clinging air. No. What stirred was time, which had been drowsing and had forgotten to move on.
They turned south along the highway and went to the Shudo Gas Station, which had a vending machine—the closest one to Mitsuko’s house. No vehicles were filling up or being washed. There were four or five small cars for sale along the retaining wall on the north side of the station, with prices displayed on their windshields. In the shade against the southern wall were three men as always. Well, they always seemed to be hanging around and chatting when Takeru came by. Not entirely unlike used cars that could find no buyers, they were essential to the way the gas station looked—another part of the scenery his mother hated, detested.
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