“How hard did you study for the exam?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Kazue has been a diligent student ever since elementary school. Fortunately she’s a smart girl, and she enjoys studying. So it’s only right that she’s made it this far. But I don’t think just studying is enough. She’s a girl, after all, and I want her to pay attention to how she dresses. And since she’s now at Q High School for Young Women, I want her to become more ladylike. To try, you know. And for her part she’s still doing all she can to meet my expectations. So she’s very dear to me. I’m praising her blindly because I’m her father. Both my daughters are so submissive that I worry about them. But you. You’re different. When compared to my daughter, you seem much more sure of yourself. I work for a major corporation, and I’m a good judge of character. I can spot a person’s true character a mile away. What does your father do?”
Kazue’s father leered at me. He did not try to conceal the fact that he was sizing me up. I was sure he’d find my father’s work of no value whatsoever. So I lied.
“He works for a Swiss bank.”
“Which bank, I wonder, the Swiss Union Bank? Or perhaps the Swiss Credit?”
“I’ve been told not to divulge that information.”
I was completely clueless and confused, but I did my best to answer with care. Kazue’s father let out a short snort and nodded. A slight wave of respect washed over his face. Did he feel somewhat humbled? It surprised me to realize that I found the encounter quite enjoyable. Yes, laugh at me if you will, but I found myself saying exactly the sort of thing my grandfather, the con man, always said about my father’s work. I had managed to adapt myself to this man’s sense of values. I knew of no one else who was as clear-cut as he on what was worthy and what was not. But it terrified me that he would force his biased logic on me. I was only sixteen at the time, after all.
“Kazue told me you were the one who put her up to the discussion about the clubs. My daughter’s the type to take everything seriously and do her best as a result. She’ll apply herself naïvely to anything anyone tells her to do. And you knew this, didn’t you? But I’m the one who controls my daughter, see? It’s best if you stay out of it.”
I tried to meet him head on. “Sir, you don’t know what it’s like at our school, and you don’t know about my friendship with your daughter, so why would you say such a thing?”
“There’s friendship, is there, between you and Kazue?”
“There is.”
“But you’re not an appropriate friend for one of my daughters. It’s a pity about your mother. But from what I can tell, the circumstances of her death are not what one would call normal. I selected Q High School for Kazue because I knew I couldn’t go wrong there. I knew Kazue would be able to make friends with good girls. Kazue’s a wholesome girl from a normal family.”
What he meant was that my family was not normal. Yuriko and I were not wholesome. I wonder what he would have said if Mitsuru had come.
“I don’t think that’s fair. I—”
“That’s enough. I’m not interested in what you have to say.”
I could feel the anger burning in his tiny upturned eyes. His anger was not directed at me as a child but as a separate force that threatened his daughter.
“Of course, a friendship with a girl like you might prove to be a good lesson for Kazue. She could learn more about society that way. But it’s still too early for her, and you have nothing to do with our family. Besides, I have my younger daughter to think of, so I’m sorry to have to say this but I don’t ever want to see you here again.”
“I see.”
“Please don’t hold a grudge over what I’ve just said, either.”
“I won’t.”
This was the first time I’d ever been so clearly rebuffed by an adult. He might as well have said, You’re worthless. It shocked me.
My own father had of course wielded paternal authority within the home. But because he was a minority in Japan, he had never really been able to communicate that authority to the outside world. My grandfather was a timid convict who did whatever I told him to do. If anything, it was my mother who represented our family to the rest of society. But my mother had no influence in the home and gave in to my father on everything. Therefore, when I saw a person who used the rigidity and absurdity of social conventions as steadfastly as Kazue’s father did, I was impressed. Why? Because Kazue’s father did not really believe in the social values he represented, but he clearly knew that he had armed himself with them more or less as a weapon of survival.
Kazue’s father obviously paid no attention to the internal affairs at Q High School for Young Women. He was utterly unconcerned with the impact this would have on Kazue or the way it would make her suffer. He was one self-centered son-of-a-bitch. That much I understood with crystal clarity, even as a high school student. But Kazue, her mother, and her younger sister lived in complete ignorance of this man’s intentions or his character; yet he was able to apprehend the evil intentions that Mitsuru and I nurtured, take them for his own, and use them to protect his family. Protecting the family was nothing short of protecting himself. In that sense, I couldn’t help but envy Kazue and her strong father. Dominated by her father’s strong will, Kazue trusted his values implicitly. When I think about it now, I realize that the power he had over her was tantamount to mind control.
“Well, then, take care on your way home.”
I started to climb the stairs, feeling as though Kazue’s father were pushing me from behind. After he had watched me for a bit, he went back into the living room, slamming the door closed behind him. The darkness in the hallway felt all the deeper.
“You took long enough!”
Kazue was annoyed to have been kept waiting. It looked as though she’d been trying to stave off her boredom by doodling in the notebook she had spread out in front of her on the desk. She’d sketched a picture of a cheerleader in a miniskirt hoisting a baton. When she saw me looking down at the drawing, she quickly covered the page with her hands, just like a child.
“He let me make an international call.” I showed Kazue the bill her father had written out. “I’ll give you the money tomorrow.”
Kazue glanced at the amount. “Wow! That was expensive. I was wondering, How’d your mother die anyway?”
“She committed suicide—in Switzerland.”
Kazue dropped her gaze and looked like she was searching for the right words, then looked up again. “I know this sounds awful, but I kinda envy you.”
“Why? Do you wish your mother were dead too?”
Kazue’s answer was barely more than a whisper. “I detest my mother. Recently I’ve begun to notice that she acts more like she was my father’s daughter than his wife. What a way for a mother to behave! My father only has hopes for his daughters, you know, for us—so having her around is really annoying.”
Kazue brimmed with joy at the thought that she was the only one able to measure up to her father’s expectations. Kazue was a “good girl,” a filial daughter whose only reason for living was to please her father.
“Yes, I suppose he doesn’t need another daughter,” I said.
“You’ve got that right! And I could do without my little sister too!”
Without thinking I let out a sympathetic laugh. My own family was far from normal, a fact I well understood without having Kazue’s father point it out. I realized this was something a die-hard disciple like Kazue would never understand.
As I was stepping out of the house into the dark street, I felt someone clutch at my shoulder. Kazue’s father had followed me out.
“Just a minute there,” he said. “You lied. Your father doesn’t work for the Bank of Switzerland or anything of the sort, does he?”
The streetlight bounced dimly off his little eyes. He must have learned that from Kazue. I stood there petrified. He continued. “It’s wrong to lie. I’ve never once lied in all my life. Lies are the enemy of society. Do you see? If you don’t want
me to report you to the school, you’ll not come near Kazue ever again.”
“I understand.”
I could tell that Kazue’s father was staring after me until I turned the corner at the end of the street. Four years later he would suffer a cerebral hemorrhage and die on the spot, so my chance encounter with this man would be my first and last. After her father died, Kazue’s family fortunes plummeted. I suppose I was a witness to the fragility of Kazue’s family, having observed it only years before its drastic demise. And yet I can still feel the way Kazue father’s glare bored into my back like a bullet that night.
After a week had passed, my father called to tell me the funeral had gone smoothly. I didn’t hear so much as a peep from Yuriko. Convincing myself that her plans to return to Japan had been dealt a setback, I spent the next few days walking on air. And then one evening not long thereafter, an evening so warm it felt like summer vacation had already arrived, I got a phone call from the last person in the world I was expecting to hear from: Johnson’s wife, Masami. Three years had passed since that time at the mountain cabin.
“Hii-aaai! Is this Yuriko’s seesta? It’s meee! Masammy Johnson!”
She stretched her vowels inordinately long and pronounced the s’s in her name just as a foreigner would. Just hearing it made the flesh on my arms crawl.
“It’s been a while.”
“Well, I didn’t know you’d stayed behind by yourself in Japan! You should have told me! I would have been happy to help you any way I could. How silly for you to be so reserved. Look, I was really sorry to hear about your mother. What a shame.”
“Thank you for your concern,” I managed to mumble.
“Actually, I’m calling you about Yuriko-chan. Did you hear?”
“Hear what?”
“Yuriko’s going to stay with us! At least while she’s in junior high school. We have a spare room and we’ve been fond of Yuriko ever since she was a little girl. She has to change schools, of course. She said she wanted to go to Q School, where you are. So I checked into it, and found out what was required to get her enrolled as a student returning from abroad, and they’ve agreed to admit her. I just got the news a little while ago. Isn’t that great? You and Yuriko will be going to the same school! My husband’s really happy about the way it’s all worked out. He says Q is a really good school, and it’s not far from where we live!”
What the hell was happening? I’d studied my butt off in the hopes of finally getting away from Yuriko, and now here she was seeping back into my life like some kind of poison gas! I sighed in despair. Yuriko was as dumb as a doornail, but her beauty would forever entitle her to special treatment. On that score, the Q School system was no different.
“Where’s Yuriko now?” I asked.
“She’s right here. Just a minute. I’ll put her on.”
“Hello, Sis? Is that you?”
I had told Yuriko not to come back to Japan, but here she was. Her carefree voice on the other end of the line was quite a contrast to the distraught girl I’d heard just hours after our mother had died. Clearly she was now eating up all the attention the Johnsons were dishing out and rolling in the luxury of their swank house in upscale Minato Ward.
“So are you transferring into Q Junior High?”
“Yes, from September. Isn’t that great? We’ll be in the same school.”
“When’d you get back?”
“Hmmm, about a week ago, I guess. Daddy’s remarrying, you know.”
She said it casually, without the slightest bitterness, as if whatever was okay with her was okay in general.
“How’s Grandpa?”
Gripping the phone tightly in my hand, I glanced back at my grandfather. He was engrossed in his bonsai, completely unaware of the conversation taking place right next to him. He’d calmed down over the previous few days.
“He’s fine.”
“Mm.” Yuriko’s response, if you could call it that, betrayed her complete indifference. “I’m really glad I didn’t go stay to with you in P Ward. I’m going to try really hard to get along on my own over here.”
Yeah, right. She was really going to be on her own. What a farce. With no interest in pursuing the conversation further, I hung up, utterly dejected.
• 6 •
The events I’ve narrated up to this point were those I experienced personally. Yuriko and Kazue—and Kazue’s father—still live in my memory. It’s something of a one-sided story, but what can you expect? The only one left to relate the events is me, and here I am as healthy as can be, working in the ward office. My grandfather, as I’ve mentioned, has Alzheimer’s and is off enjoying himself in never-never land, where neither time nor place holds any relevance. He doesn’t even remember how he once devoted himself to bonsai. He sold off his beloved oak and his black pine; either that or the trees withered long ago and were dumped in the garbage.
Mention of bonsai makes me remember that there was one more thing about my encounter with Kazue’s father that I’ve forgotten to mention: the need to pay back the cost of that international telephone call, ¥10,800.
Since I wasn’t carrying much money on me at the time, I had promised to pay it back later. But that became a problem. At the time, my allowance was a mere ¥3,000 a month. After I got through buying all my necessary school supplies—notebooks and pens and such—there wasn’t a whole lot left over. My father sent ¥40,000 a month in addition to tuition fees. But I handed all that over to Grandfather. I mean, after all, I was living in his apartment. Of course he squandered it on his bonsai, either buying new plants or new paraphernalia for the plants he already had. At any rate, I’d never imagined an international phone call would be so costly, and as I made my way home from Kazue’s house that night, I racked my brain over how I was going to pay for it.
From time to time we’d get phone calls from Switzerland, but of course my father always covered the charge, and besides, we never talked very long. We just weren’t the kind of family to have long chats. Even if I asked my father to send me the money for the charge, it would take time for it to reach Japan. I figured I had no choice but to ask Grandfather to lend me the money.
But when I got home that evening from Kazue’s, my grandfather was already snoring away in bed, trying to sleep off the sudden surge in his blood pressure. The neighbor, an insurance lady, was there looking after him. “You have to pay how much? Why on earth didn’t you call collect?” she snapped, when she heard about the phone call.
“You’re the one who told me to call from there, remember? You should have told me then to call collect. How’m I supposed to know about international calls?”
“You’re right.” The insurance lady sucked on her cigarette and blew the smoke out the corner of her mouth so it wouldn’t go in my face. “But still, it’s awfully expensive. Who spoke to the operator and confirmed the actual charges?”
“Her father.”
“What if he lied? He probably figured he could pull a fast one on you, since you’re just a girl. Even if he didn’t try to cheat you, most people would have felt sorry enough for you—losing your mother and all—to have covered the cost, kind of like offering a condolence gift. I know I would have. It’s really the only decent thing to do. But I suppose it’s a question of character.”
The insurance lady was particularly stingy. I had a hard time believing that she’d actually extend charity to anyone. But still her words caused a shadow of doubt to spread across my heart. Did Kazue’s father lie to me? But even if he did, I had no proof. I looked at the scrap of paper I’d stuffed in my pocket: the statement of the telephone charge. The insurance lady snatched at it with her thick fingers. The longer she stared at the figure, the angrier she got.
“I just can’t believe someone would write out a sum like this and hand it to a child: a child whose poor mother has suddenly been taken from her and whose old grandfather has taken to bed ill. What a monster. What line of work is he in? If he can send his kid to that school he must be rich. I’ll bet
their house is nice.”
“I couldn’t really say. He told me he worked for some major corporation. They did have a nice house.”
“Figures…the greed of the wealthy!”
“It didn’t seem like that.”
The atmosphere of stingy frugality permeating Kazue’s house floated before my eyes, and I shook my head from side to side.
“Well, then, I get the impression that he is just a run-of-the-mill salary man with a low income trying to pretend to be wealthy. If not, he’s a real cheapskate!” Once she reached this conclusion, the insurance lady hastily collected her things and left, obviously wanting to clear out before I could get around to asking her for a loan. I felt an uncontrollable anger and hurled the scrap of paper with the phone charges at the wall.
The next morning when I saw Kazue in class, she immediately started to press me for the money. “My father told me to tell you to be sure not to forget about the money you owe us for the telephone call.”
“Sorry. Can I pay you tomorrow?”
I can still remember the way Kazue’s eyes panned over my face. She clearly did not trust me. But were they being honest with me? Still, a loan’s a loan. I knew I had to pay it back. So as soon as classes ended, I rushed home and picked a plant from among my grandfather’s bonsai collection—a nandina tree, one that was small enough to carry. My grandfather was particularly proud of it; he used to describe with pleasure the beautiful color of the red berries that it bore in winter months. Luxuriant green moss, as thick as a carpet, covered the soil at the base of the little tree. It was planted in an enamel-glazed pot of somber blue.
My grandfather was engrossed in a sumo bout on TV. I couldn’t hope for a better chance than now, so I quietly walked out of the apartment with the bonsai. I put it in the basket of my bicycle and pedaled as fast and furiously as I could to the Garden of Longevity.
Night was falling and the garden was closing. The probation officer stood at the front gate seeing off customers. He looked surprised to see me ride up with the bonsai.
“Good evening,” I said, as politely as I could. “I was wondering if you would buy this bonsai from me.”