“That’s all I need to tell you about the inheritance. He had no assets other than the post office account—no insurance policies, stocks, real estate, jewelry, art objects—nothing of this sort. Very straightforward, you could say, and fuss free.”
Tengo nodded silently. It sounded like his father. But taking over his postal account made Tengo feel a little depressed. It felt like being handed a pile of damp, heavy blankets. If possible, he would rather not have it. But he couldn’t say this.
“Your father also entrusted an envelope to my care. I have brought it with me and would like to give it to you now.”
The thick brown envelope was sealed tight with packing tape. The obese lawyer took it from his black briefcase and laid it on the table.
“I met Mr. Kawana soon after he came here, and he gave this to me then. He was still—conscious then. He would get confused occasionally, but he was generally able to function fine. He told me that when he died, he would like me to give this envelope to his legal heir.”
“Legal heir,” Tengo repeated, a bit surprised.
“Yes. That was the term he used. Your father didn’t specify anyone in particular, but in practical terms you would be the only legal heir.”
“As far as I know.”
“Then, as instructed, here you go,” the lawyer said, pointing to the envelope on the table. “Could you sign a receipt for it, please?”
Tengo signed the receipt. The brown office envelope on the table looked anonymous and bland. Nothing was written on it, neither on the front nor on the back.
“There’s one thing I would like to ask you,” Tengo said to the lawyer. “Did my father ever mention my name? Or use the word son?”
As he mulled this over, the lawyer pulled out his handkerchief again and mopped his brow. He shook his head slightly. “No, Mr. Kawana always used the term legal heir. He didn’t use any other terms. I remember this because I found it odd.”
Tengo was silent. The lawyer collected himself and spoke up.
“But you have to understand that Mr. Kawana knew you were the only legal heir. It’s just that when we spoke he didn’t use your name. Does that bother you?”
“Not really,” Tengo said. “My father was always a bit odd.”
The lawyer smiled, as if relieved, and gave a slight nod. He handed Tengo a new copy of their family register. “If you don’t mind, since it was this sort of illness, I would like you to check the family register so we can make sure there are no legal problems with the procedure. According to the record, you are Mr. Kawana’s sole child. Your mother passed away a year and a half after giving birth to you. Your father didn’t remarry, and raised you by himself. Your father’s parents and siblings are already deceased. So you are clearly Mr. Kawana’s sole legal heir.”
After the lawyer stood up, expressed his condolences, and left, Tengo remained seated, gazing at the envelope on the table. His father was his real blood father, and his mother was really dead. The lawyer had said so. So it must be true—or, at least, a fact, in a legal sense. But it felt like the more facts that were revealed, the more the truth receded. Why would that be?
Tengo returned to his father’s room, sat down at the desk, and struggled to open the sealed envelope. The envelope might contain the key to unlocking some mystery. Opening it was difficult. There were no scissors or box cutters in the room, so he had to peel off the packing tape with his fingernails. When he finally managed to get the envelope open, the contents were in several other envelopes, all of them in turn tightly sealed. Just the sort of thing he expected from his father.
One envelope contained 500,000 yen in cash—exactly fifty crisp new ten-thousand-yen bills, wrapped in layers of thin paper. A piece of paper included with it said Emergency cash. Definitely his father’s writing, small letters, nothing abbreviated. This money must be in case there were unanticipated expenses. His father had anticipated that his legal heir wouldn’t have sufficient funds on hand.
The thickest of the envelopes was stuffed full of newspaper clippings and various award certificates, all of them about Tengo. His certificate from when he won the math contest in elementary school, and the article about it in the local paper. A photo of Tengo next to his trophy. The artistic-looking award Tengo received for having the best grades in his class. He had the best grades in every subject. There were various other articles that showed what a child prodigy Tengo had been. A photo of Tengo in a judo gi in junior high, grinning, holding the second-place banner. Tengo was really surprised to see these. After his father had retired from NHK, he left the company housing he had been in, moved to another apartment in Ichikawa, and finally went to the sanatorium in Chikura. Probably because he had moved by himself so often, he had hardly any possessions. And father and son had basically been strangers to each other for years. Despite this, his father had lovingly carried around all these mementos of Tengo’s child-prodigy days.
The next envelope contained various records from his father’s days as an NHK fee collector. A record of the times when he was the top producer of the year. Several simple certificates. A photo apparently taken with a colleague on a company trip. An old ID card. Records of payment to his retirement plan and health insurance.… Though his father worked like a dog for NHK for over thirty years, the amount of material left was surprisingly little—next to nothing when compared with Tengo’s achievements in elementary school. Society might see his father’s entire life as amounting to almost zero, but to Tengo, it wasn’t next to nothing. Along with a postal savings book, his father had left behind a deep, dark shadow.
There was nothing in the envelope to indicate anything about his father’s life before he joined NHK. It was as if his father’s life began the moment he became an NHK fee collector.
He opened the final envelope, a thin one, and found a single black-and-white photograph. That was all. It was an old photo, and though the contrast hadn’t faded, there was a thin membrane over the whole picture, as if water had seeped into it. It was a photo of a family—a father, a mother, and a tiny baby. The baby looked less than a year old. The mother, dressed in a kimono, was lovingly cradling the baby. Behind them was a torii gate at a shrine. From the clothes they had on, it looked like winter. Since they were visiting a shrine, it was most likely New Year’s. The mother was squinting, as if the light were too bright, and smiling. The father, dressed in a dark coat, slightly too big for him, had frown lines between his eyes, as if to say he didn’t take anything at face value. The baby looked confused by how big and cold the world could be.
The young father in the photo had to be Tengo’s father. He looked much younger, though he already had a sort of surprising maturity about him, and he was thin, his eyes sunken. It was the face of a poor farmer from some out-of-the-way hamlet, stubborn, skeptical. His hair was cut short, his shoulders a bit stooped. That could only be his father. This meant that the baby must be Tengo, and the mother holding the baby must be Tengo’s mother. His mother was slightly taller than his father, and had good posture. His father was in his late thirties, while his mother looked to be in her mid-twenties.
Tengo had never seen the photograph before. He had never seen anything that could be called a family photo. And he had never seen a picture of himself when he was little. They couldn’t afford a camera, his father had once explained, and never had the opportunity to take any family photos. And Tengo had accepted this. But now he knew it was a lie. They had taken a photo together. And though their clothes weren’t exactly luxurious, they were at least presentable. They didn’t look as if they were so poor they couldn’t afford a camera. The photo was taken not long after Tengo was born, sometime between 1954 and 1955. He turned the photo over, but there was no date or indication of where it had been taken.
Tengo studied the woman. In the photo her face was small, and slightly out of focus. If only he had a magnifying glass! Then he could have made out more details. Still, he could see most of her features. She had an oval-shaped face, a small nose, and plump li
ps. By no means a beauty, though sort of cute—the type of face that left a good impression. At least compared with his father’s rustic face she looked far more refined and intelligent. Tengo was happy about this. Her hair was nicely styled, but since she had on a kimono, he couldn’t tell much about her figure.
At least as far as they looked in this photo, no one could call them a well-matched couple. There was a great age difference between them. Tengo tried to imagine his parents meeting each other, falling in love, having him—but he just couldn’t see it. You didn’t get that sense at all from the photo. So if there wasn’t an emotional attachment that brought them together, there must have been some other circumstances that did. No, maybe it wasn’t as dramatic as the term circumstances made it sound. Life might just be an absurd, even crude, chain of events and nothing more.
Tengo tried to figure out if the mother in this photo was the mysterious woman who appeared in his daydreams, or in his fog of childhood memories. But he realized he didn’t have any memories of the woman’s face whatsoever. The woman in his memory took off her blouse, let down the straps of her slip, and let some unknown man suck her breasts. And her breathing became deeper, like she was moaning. That’s all he remembered—some man sucking his mother’s breasts. The breasts that should have been his alone were stolen away by somebody else. A baby would no doubt see this as a grave threat. His eyes never went to the man’s face.
Tengo returned the photo to the envelope, and thought about what it meant. His father had cherished this one photograph until he died, which might mean he still cherished Tengo’s mother. Tengo couldn’t remember his mother, for she had died from illness when he was too young to have any memories of her. According to the lawyer’s investigation, Tengo was the only child of his mother and his father, the NHK fee collector, a fact recorded in his family register. But official documents didn’t guarantee that that man was Tengo’s biological father.
“I don’t have a son,” his father had declared to Tengo before he fell into a coma.
“So, what am I?” Tengo had asked.
“You’re nothing,” was his father’s concise and peremptory reply.
His father’s tone of voice had convinced Tengo that there was no blood connection between him and this man. And he had felt freed from heavy shackles. As time went on, however, he wasn’t completely convinced that what his father had said was true.
I’m nothing, Tengo repeated.
Suddenly he realized that his young mother in the photo from long ago reminded him of his older girlfriend. Kyoko Yasuda was her name. In order to calm his mind, he pressed his fingers hard against the middle of his forehead. He took the photo out again and stared at it. A small nose, plump lips, a somewhat pointed chin. Her hairstyle was so different he hadn’t noticed at first, but her features did somewhat resemble Kyoko’s. But what could that possibly mean?
And why did his father think to give this photo to Tengo after his death? While he was alive he had never provided Tengo with a single piece of information about his mother. He had even hidden the existence of this family photo. One thing Tengo did know was that his father never intended to explain the situation to him. Not while he was alive, and not even now after his death. Look, here’s a photo, his father must be saying. I’ll just hand it to you. It’s up to you to figure it out.
Tengo lay faceup on the bare mattress and stared at the ceiling. It was a painted white plywood ceiling, flat with no wood grain or knots, just several straight joints where the boards came together—the same scene his father’s sunken eyes must have viewed during the last few months of life. Or maybe those eyes didn’t see anything. At any rate his gaze had been directed there, at the ceiling, whether he had been seeing it or not.
Tengo closed his eyes and tried to imagine himself slowly moving toward death. But for a thirty-year-old in good health, death was something far off, beyond the imagination. Instead, breathing softly, he watched the twilight shadows as they moved across the wall. He tried to not think about anything. Not thinking about anything was not too hard for Tengo. He was too tired to keep any one particular thought in his head. He wanted to catch some sleep if he could, but he was overtired, and sleep wouldn’t come.
Just before six p.m. Nurse Omura came and told him dinner was ready in the cafeteria. Tengo had no appetite, but the tall, busty nurse wouldn’t leave him alone. You need to get something, even a little bit, into your stomach, she told him. This was close to a direct order. When it came to telling people how to maintain their health, she was a pro. And Tengo wasn’t the type—especially when the other person was an older woman—who could resist.
They took the stairs down to the cafeteria and found Kumi Adachi waiting for them. Nurse Tamura was nowhere to be seen. Tengo ate dinner at the same table as Kumi and Nurse Omura. Tengo had a salad, cooked vegetables, and miso soup with asari clams and scallions, washed down with hot hojicha tea.
“When is the cremation?” Kumi asked him.
“Tomorrow afternoon at one,” Tengo said. “When that’s done, I’ll probably go straight back to Tokyo. I have to go back to work.”
“Will anyone else be at the cremation besides you, Tengo?”
“No, no one else. Just me.”
“Do you mind if I join you?” Kumi asked.
“At my father’s cremation?” Tengo asked, surprised.
“Yes. Actually I was pretty fond of him.”
Tengo involuntarily put his chopsticks down and looked at her. Was she really talking about his father? “What did you like about him?” he asked her.
“He was very conscientious, never said more than he needed to,” she said. “In that sense he was like my father, who passed away.”
“Huh,” Tengo said.
“My father was a fisherman. He died before he reached fifty.”
“Did he die at sea?”
“No, he died of lung cancer. He smoked too much. I don’t know why, but fishermen are all heavy smokers. It’s like smoke is rising out of their whole body.”
Tengo thought about this. “It might have been better if my father had been a fisherman too.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I’m not really sure,” Tengo replied. “The thought just occurred to me—that it would have been better for him than being an NHK fee collector.”
“If your father had been a fisherman, would it have been easier for you to accept him?”
“It would have made many things simpler, I suppose.”
Tengo pictured himself as a child, early in the morning on a day when he didn’t have school, heading off on a fishing boat with his father. The stiff Pacific wind, the salt spray hitting his face. The monotonous drone of the diesel engine. The stuffy smell of the fishing nets. Hard, dangerous work. One mistake and you could lose your life. But compared with being dragged all over Ichikawa to collect subscription fees, it would have to be a more natural, fulfilling life.
“But collecting NHK fees couldn’t have been easy work, could it?” Nurse Omura said as she ate her soy-flavored fish.
“Probably not,” Tengo said. At least he knew it wasn’t the kind of job he could handle.
“Your father was really good at his job, wasn’t he?” Kumi asked.
“I think he was, yes,” Tengo said.
“He showed me his award certificates,” Kumi said.
“Ah! Darn,” Nurse Omura said, suddenly putting down her chopsticks. “I totally forgot. Darn it! How could I forget something so important? Could you wait here for a minute? I have something I have to give you, and it has to be today.”
Nurse Omura wiped her mouth with a napkin, stood up, and hurried out of the cafeteria, her meal half eaten.
“I wonder what’s so important?” Kumi said, tilting her head.
Tengo had no idea.
As he waited for Nurse Omura’s return, he dutifully worked his way through his salad. There weren’t many others eating dinner in the cafeteria. At one table there were three old men, none of them s
peaking. At another table a man in a white coat, with a sprinkling of gray hair, sat alone, reading the evening paper as he ate, a solemn look on his face.
Nurse Omura finally trotted back. She was holding a department-store shopping bag. She took out some neatly folded clothes.
“I got this from Mr. Kawana about a year or so ago, while he was still conscious,” the large nurse said. “He said when he was put in the casket he would like to be dressed in this. So I sent it to the cleaners and had them store it in mothballs.”
There was no mistaking the NHK fee collector’s uniform. The matching trousers had been nicely ironed. The smell of mothballs hit Tengo. For a while he was speechless.
“Mr. Kawana told me he would like to be cremated wearing this uniform,” Nurse Omura said. She refolded the uniform neatly and put it back in the shopping bag. “So I’m giving it to you now. Tomorrow, give this to the funeral home people and make sure they dress him in it.”
“Isn’t it a problem to have him wear this? The uniform was just on loan to him, and when he retired it should have been returned to NHK,” Tengo said, weakly.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Kumi said. “If we don’t say anything, who’s going to know? NHK isn’t going to be in a tight spot over a set of old clothes.”
Nurse Omura agreed. “Mr. Kawana walked all over the place, from morning to night, for over thirty years for NHK. I’m sure it wasn’t always pleasant. Who cares about one uniform? It’s not like you’re using it to do something bad or anything.”
“You’re right. I still have my school uniform from high school,” Kumi said.
“An NHK collector’s uniform and a high school uniform aren’t exactly the same thing,” Tengo interjected, but no one took up the point.
“Come to think of it, I have my old school uniform in the closet somewhere too,” Nurse Omura said.
“Are you telling me you put it on sometimes for your husband? Along with white bobby socks?” Kumi said teasingly.
“Hmm—now that’s a thought,” Nurse Omura said, her chin in her hands on the table, her expression serious. “Probably get him all hot and bothered.”