He looked at the girl, with the look of surprise on her face. She was sitting behind the steering wheel of a car. Her chestnut-brown skin shone in the photograph.
She looks just like her mother, Senba thought. Lately, he had a hard time telling his dreams apart from reality, and occasionally he would get confused, but there were a few memories he had been holding onto with particular tenacity. Setsuko was one of them. He could close his eyes and be instantly transported back decades.
Senba was still in his early thirties. He was working for a company selling electronics, wearing a suit, carrying his attaché case as he flew around the country. His sales numbers were the best in the company, and he got special dispensation when he took customers out to party in Ginza. Their best customers he took to luxury nightclubs, sometimes more than once a week.
It was at one of those clubs that he met Setsuko. She had a pretty face but an at-home feel to her. She wasn’t pushy with her conversation and mixed drinks without a lot of small talk.
She reacted differently one night when Senba brought up the topic of local cuisines—he caught a sparkle in her eyes, which he remembered. The next time he had a chance to talk with her alone, he asked her if she had an interest in cooking.
Her answer was as clear as could be: absolutely. She confided in him that what she really wanted to do was quit her nightclub job and work at a restaurant. Not as a waiter, but as a cook. Except, she said, she probably lacked the experience she would need.
Senba immediately thought of Haruhi. He had been to Hari several times to visit his wife’s hometown, which was enough to pique his interest when he found the little restaurant. The food was excellent, and Senba quickly became a regular. The proprietor was a short man with a beautiful wife, and they ran the whole place by themselves. He’d heard them say on occasion that they were looking for extra help. He mentioned it to Setsuko, who was interested, so he took her over one night after the nightclub had closed.
The proprietors loved Setsuko the moment they set eyes on her, and one month later, Setsuko was working there. Within three months, the regulars were calling her by her nickname, Setchan, and after half a year had passed, the owners couldn’t imagine running the place without her. Every night, she wore her trademark foliage-patterned kimono. To Senba, she looked ten times more alive than she had when she was working as a hostess.
Haruhi was open late those days, and Senba would almost always drop by after he’d seen his clients off for the evening. He enjoyed closing off his nights in Ginza with a cup of warm sake, a bit of Hari-style hors d’oeuvres, and Setsuko’s smile.
The food at Haruhi was always good, but that wasn’t the only reason he went. No matter how tired he was or how pressed he was for time, he always stopped by to see Setsuko. He wasn’t sure exactly when it had started, but it was clear she had a hold on him. He thought she noticed, too, and when their eyes would happen to meet, he felt a connection there.
But he lacked the courage to do anything about it. He was married, after all, and he told himself he should be happy just getting to sit across the counter from her like this. Occasionally, Senba would bring a hostess he knew well along with him to Haruhi, as a kind of camouflage and a way of restraining his own feelings. The hostess’s name was Nobuko Miyake.
Senba wasn’t the only customer who came there to see Setsuko. Some of them made open passes at her, which she brushed aside with finesse. But there was one customer whose advances she didn’t seem to mind. That was Shigehiro Kawahata.
Senba had seen him at the restaurant several times before. They would usually nod to each other, but they had hardly ever exchanged a word. Senba got the sense that Kawahata came there even more often than he did.
“He’s a good man,” the owner’s wife would say. “Hard worker, gentle, and single. A perfect catch, if you ask me.” Setsuko seemed to agree. She would laugh and shake her head while jealousy burned inside Senba’s belly.
Then one night, after work was done, Setsuko invited Senba out for a drink out of the blue. He was a little surprised, but happily agreed. They went to a wine bar that stayed open all night. Setsuko was in unusually high spirits. She suggested they drink champagne, and when that was done, they ordered a bottle of wine. She drank quickly, and the bottle was gone before they knew it. He asked her why the good mood, and she said it was nothing, she just felt like tying one on that night.
She was considerably drunk when he brought her home, and he was laying her down on her bed when she wrapped her arms around his neck. When he looked down and saw the tears glimmering in her eyes, he lost what self-control he still had and returned her embrace, his lips pressing against hers. Setsuko was still lying in bed the next morning when Senba left. Her eyes were closed, but he didn’t think she was asleep.
It was the only time they slept together. The next day, when he saw her at Haruhi, she acted the same as she always had. The events of the night before might as well have been nothing more than a dream.
He heard shortly thereafter that Kawahata had proposed to Setsuko, and she’d said yes. Only then did he understand what their night together had meant. She’d had something she needed to get off her chest, and that was him.
Setsuko quit Haruhi a short while thereafter. Senba heard about the wedding, raised a glass to her happiness, and tried to forget. But when he later heard that Setsuko had already been pregnant at the time of the ceremony, he became unsettled. He checked his calendar over and over, making sure of the date.
As the days passed, he grew increasingly suspicious that the child was his. When he heard that Setsuko had given birth to a baby girl, it took considerable effort to keep from dashing over to the hospital.
His own wife was in frail health and had been told she should avoid childbirth. He’d known this when they got married and had never thought of having children of his own. But now that it had happened, he couldn’t get it out of his head.
After agonizing over it for days, Senba contacted Setsuko. He needed to know the truth.
It was his first time seeing her in a while, and though her skin practically glowed, her face had changed. She looked like a mother. Her voice was softer, too. She hadn’t brought the baby with her, dashing Senba’s secret hope that he would get to meet his daughter.
They spoke briefly about their lives for a while, before Senba asked his question point-blank: are you sure Kawahata is the father? Setsuko didn’t seem taken aback in the least. “Of course he is,” she said. Her calmness struck Senba as unnatural, and when he saw the hard look in her eyes, he knew that she was lying.
But he didn’t press her further. Instead, he made a request. He wanted a photograph of her child. Setsuko hesitated. Why would he need a photograph of someone else’s baby, she wanted to know. But Senba was firm. He promised that, if she gave him just one photograph, he wouldn’t speak of the matter again.
Finally, she relented, and on another day, they met in a different place, and she gave him a photo of Narumi cradled in her arms. Narumi’s eyes were big and her skin porcelain white. Just looking at it brought tears to his eyes.
“Thank you,” Senba said. He looked at Setsuko and saw that her eyes were red, but she held back her tears in front of him.
Senba promised he would tell no one, that he would keep it a secret to his death. Then he said, “Just give her the happiest life you can.” Smiling, Setsuko told him that had been her plan regardless. Senba had laughed a little at that and agreed it had not been the most helpful advice.
The photograph became Senba’s most prized possession, a secret treasure he could allow no one to see. He put it inside a plastic case and hid it toward the back of a drawer in his study.
He no intention of ever seeing Setsuko again after that. He still longed to see his daughter’s face but kept that desire buried as deep as he could. Thankfully, he’d just started his own company, and there was plenty of work to keep him busy and keep his mind off things that didn’t matter now.
For the next dozen yea
rs or so, he rode the waves of the economy. At first, his new venture was successful, but their time in the sun was very short. Before he knew it, he was left with nothing but an incurably ill wife and a small summer home in East Hari.
Yet, some good came of those days spent in East Hari. By losing everything, he was able to reflect back with unusual clarity on the path he had walked. He felt a resurgence of gratitude toward his wife. All of his successes had been thanks to her unflagging, unquestioning support. In his heart, he apologized to her many times about his one infidelity.
His wife did not have long to live. Senba stayed by her side at all times and tried to give her all she asked for. Not that she asked for much. She said she was happy just being able to look out over the sea where she had grown up. One day, she announced that she would like to paint the sea, and so he went and got her some supplies. She placed a canvas out on the porch of their cottage and began applying paint to it, a little each day. When he saw the finished painting, Senba was shocked. He’d never known his wife had any artistic talent.
After she passed away, he went back to Tokyo. He had no intention of starting over. He just needed a way to pay the bills. An old friend gave him an introduction and helped him land a job at a home appliances wholesaler.
It was around this time that he met a face from the past: Nobuko Miyake. He had spent many an evening with her when she was a hostess, but he had not seen her since his company folded. She invited him out for a drink.
He accepted lightly, never questioning her motives. He even thought it might be fun to remember the good old days. They ate dinner, then went to their old hangout, Bar Calvin. Nobuko had always been good at getting men to talk, and after two or three glasses, Senba had pretty much told his entire life story. He watched as she went from interest to disappointment, right around the part where he made it clear he was no longer the high-roller she once knew. As though she couldn’t already tell from the clothes he was wearing. Senba realized she’d been hoping to borrow money.
It was then that he made the mistake he would regret for the rest of his life. He pulled out his wallet to buy some smokes, and the photograph fell out—the picture of Setsuko’s baby. Nobuko picked it up and asked him who it was.
He told her it was a friend’s child, but his words didn’t sound convincing even to him. Setsuko’s face wasn’t visible in the photo, but when Nobuko said she remembered the foliage-patterned kimono the woman was wearing, Senba stiffened in his chair and fell silent.
She asked him to tell her the truth, promising she wouldn’t tell a soul. Senba feared she would make assumptions anyway and spread the word around if he said nothing, so he told her on the condition she keep her promise. As he talked, he felt her warming to him, and this put him at ease. Maybe, he thought, she was a friend after all. Maybe he could trust her to keep his secret.
When he had finished, Nobuko told him to hold on a moment, and she left the table. When she returned after a few minutes, she placed a piece of paper with an address and a phone number on the table in front of him.
She told him that was where Setsuko was living. She had called Haruhi and pretended to be one of Setsuko’s nightclub friends to get the information.
Nobuko suggested he go see her. Surely she wouldn’t mind a single meeting. But Senba shook his head. There was no need. He’d put all of that away for good and had no intention of dragging it back out now. But even as he said it, tears came to his eyes.
As it turned out, Nobuko had another reason for looking up Setsuko’s address.
Two days later, he saw on the morning news that she’d been killed. When he learned where it had happened, the blood drained from his face. After going back and forth on it for hours, he called Setsuko, half worried he might already be too late. In his heart he was already sure she’d stabbed Nobuko. But when she answered the phone, he was relieved to hear her sounding calm. She was a little surprised when he told her who he was, but she didn’t sound unhappy to hear from him. Senba explained what had happened the other night and why he had called. Halfway through his explanation, Setsuko sounded noticeably disturbed. She hadn’t seen her daughter yet that morning, she told him.
She said she should go check on her, so Senba hung up and waited by the phone for a terrifyingly long time. Anxiety rose in him until he felt nauseated, and he couldn’t sit still. When Setsuko finally returned his call, her voice was filled with despair. Her daughter had killed Nobuko, she said through tears. The bloodied knife was still on the table in her room.
Senba made up his mind about what he was going to do. He told her to bring him the knife. Setsuko sounded hesitant, but they chose a place and a time, and he hung up.
He looked around his apartment. There was nothing he worried about losing, with one exception. He bundled up the painting of the sea his wife had made in her last days and, tucking it under his arm, he left.
Setsuko was there when he arrived at their rendezvous point. From the way she acted, he guessed she’d already figured out his plan. She told him she wasn’t sure she was doing the right thing, but he told her that as a mother, protecting her daughter had to be the right thing.
He gave her the painting in exchange for the knife, and asked her to keep it for him until the day came when they might meet again. As he was about to leave, Setsuko told him to look at the café across the street. He did so and saw a slender girl with long black hair sitting at the table by the window. To his astonishment, she looked almost identical to the sister he’d lost to illness when she was young.
He thanked Setsuko. Seeing his daughter was the one thing he felt he needed to do. Now he would have no regrets.
Senba pulled out a small bag containing several photographs from beneath his pillow. He took out one, the photo of the baby, and compared it to the girl in the photo the physicist had given him. He could still see the baby there in her grown features. He wondered what kind of woman she was. He wondered what her voice sounded like. He would have liked to meet her once again before he died, but he knew that would never happen. He couldn’t allow it to. If he did, then all he had endured would be for nothing.
His mind traveled back again to sixteen years earlier, to himself, standing in his old apartment in Tokyo’s Edogawa Ward. The police would be arriving any moment. Once they had identified Nobuko’s body, it would only be a matter of time before they tracked him down as the man who’d shared a drink with her the night before.
The detective came, a tough-looking man. Senba refused to let him inside, hoping to draw his suspicion. The detective left, but Senba knew he would be lingering in the area, keeping an eye on the apartment. Senba waited a while and then headed out, carrying a bag with the knife he’d taken from Setsuko.
He walked to a nearby river, and began to look around suspiciously—an act for the benefit of the detective following him. It worked. The detective came running down the bank toward him.
Senba ran, going as fast as he could, making an honest attempt at escape. For a moment, he feared he might actually succeed, but the detective’s stamina had him beat. He was grabbed from behind and thrown on the ground.
Senba was arrested, put on trial, and declared guilty. And no point did anyone doubt his testimony—save one man, Tsukahara, the arresting detective. Tsukahara wanted to know why he hadn’t thrown the bag into the river when he had a chance. He’d run along the waterway and could’ve tossed the bag in at any time. They might’ve found the bag later, of course, but it would’ve bought him some time. As it was, with the knife in his possession, he’d been arrested for suspicion of murder on the spot.
Senba claimed that tossing the knife hadn’t occurred to him. He’d been so intent on escape that he’d forgotten the knife was in the bag. Tsukahara never seem satisfied with his answer, but Senba didn’t change his story.
Life in prison wasn’t easy. But it gave him strength to know that, because he was here, his daughter could live normally. It gave his own life meaning. When he got out, he called on a friend he??
?d made while serving his sentence. The man got him a job as a waste collector. The salary was pitifully low, and he was forced to live in a tiny, dirty room, but he was happy enough just to be alive.
Yet even this meager happiness didn’t last long. The man who had gotten him his job ran off with the company’s money. The waste collection service shut down, leaving Senba without a job or even a room to call his own. After that, he was forced to live on the streets. He knew where some homeless people lived, so he turned to them for help. They were kind to him, teaching him everything he needed to know to live outside the framework of society.
He was just getting used to his new life when a new challenge arose. He started finding it difficult to move his arms and legs the way he wanted them to move, and he was afflicted with terrible headaches that kept him from sleeping. Some days, he found it impossible to talk. He stopped being able to go to the soup kitchens he had come to rely on for food. He knew he was sick, very sick. His homeless friends took care of him, but he showed no sign of improvement.
That was when the last person he expected to see in the world found him: Tsukahara. He told Senba he had been searching for him for years. And when he learned that Senba was sick, he pulled some strings and got him into the hospice.
Senba wasn’t sad when he learned about the tumor. In a way, it was a relief. He much preferred to die here, in a well-appointed facility. It was all thanks to Tsukahara—which was why he felt so guilty whenever the detective would beg him to tell him the truth about what had happened.
“I know you’re protecting someone,” Tsukahara told him. “Someone very important to you. Which is why I gotta know, are you okay with it ending like this? Don’t you want them to know what’s happened to you? Don’t you want to see them one last time?”
Every time he came to visit, the detective would sit down on his bed and say the same thing. The secret became harder and harder for Senba to keep, especially when Tsukahara swore to him he would never tell a soul. By the time he relented, it was already difficult for him to speak, and it took a very long time for him to tell the whole story. Tsukahara listened patiently, barely saying a word.