It was painful marking the changes that had happened to the house over the years. It was the little, insignificant things. The wicker basket above the sink where Baba kept all her clothes pegs, replaced by a cheap, ugly plastic one. All of Haruka’s old Disney videos thrown out with the old tape-eating TV. The room she shared with Mama now spotlessly clean and charmless. Baba’s face. Pale and thinner.
There was a part of Haruka that held on to the naive hope that everything in her childhood home would stay the same forever. That each visit would be a dip into a timeless vacuum where nothing would alter.
It had been nearly two and a half years since Haruka had been back home. She hadn’t even bothered to return for New Year’s Eve. She knew it would have been, like all the other times, an evening of discomfort. A night of navigating Jiji’s moods, sitting around watching singing contests, making sure no one choked to death on grilled mochi. A too-large feast the following day that would remind everyone of the missing.
*
Baba pours the cold genmaicha into cups.
A thin shaft of sunlight falls onto the kotatsu table, illuminating the sparse hairs on her arms.
There you go.
Thank you.
Baba sits down in her chair and watches Haruka.
You look tired.
Everyone keeps saying that . . .
Show me your tongue, Baba says.
Haruka sticks her tongue out.
Mmm. You need to sleep. Eat more iron. I’ll do gyudon tomorrow night then. It’s fried sea-bass tonight.
I’ve missed your cooking.
Then you should come home more often.
Haruka shifts under the legs of the kotatsu.
I know. I’m sorry. I’ve been busy.
Well, remember to stop. I’ve seen everyone around me my whole life work, work, work. You need to let the body relax. Look what’s happened to Jiji.
Is he okay?
He’s. He’s quiet.
Haruka drinks.
Are you okay? You still doing aerobics every Sunday? she asks.
Yes! I’m as fit as an ox. The new instructor has such an irritating voice, but what can you do . . . Baba drinks. Then taps her fingertips lightly on the table. So. I need to prepare the fish. You go and see him. He’ll be happy to see you.
Where is he?
You know where to find him.
Haruka steps outside and into the shade. She can feel the mosquitos whining their way to her bare legs. The air is close and thick, the sky a wash of darkening blue, the promise of night deepening the tree line. She turns to walk the soft slope that will deposit her at the top of the first paddy ridge behind the house. She winds her way up the trodden path, through the birches and beech. The light at the top of the crest leaks across the dusty earth, filling her shadow as she ascends.
Haruka lands at the open plateau where the sun reaches her skin. The paddies spread out before her, and she is filled with a familiar wonder. As a child she used to stand at the top of this field, looking out across the hills, imagining herself the queen of the world. Beyond, the slopes of the neighbouring fields are smudged golden and copper. The sound of cicadas reverberating around her.
Jiji is stooped at the furthest paddy. He hasn’t seen her yet.
The last time they properly spoke it had ended in violence. Since then, the two of them had avoided sharing the same space without Baba to buffer the pain. They had run from each other, but the guilt always had a way of following.
The final fight—the one that had led Haruka from the house—had been about Mama. How Jiji had scoured the house of her memory. Packed up Mama’s music stand and sheets with the notations in pencil, all the papers and books spread across the table. He had stored the remnants of his daughter deep in the house, never to be opened. Whatever could be passed on, his daughter’s clothes, shoes, coats, were chucked into old supermarket bags and sorted for the second-hand shops, or disposed with the recycling, ready to be made into something useful. The last vestiges of a woman thrown out with the rubbish. When Haruka had returned from school to find her mother’s empty lily-of-the-valley oil amidst the beer bottles and pickle pots, she had exploded with fury. She had rushed upstairs and poured the contents of the many bags out onto the floor of her bedroom, raging at the madness of it. Angry snot running down her lips as she moved across the room, putting back Mama’s belongings, trying desperately to remember how she had arranged her creams. Pulling out nail polishes and cardigans, clawing at the leftovers of a mother.
How could he? Haruka kept saying. How could he?
When the shutter door closed, she knew what was coming, she knew the exact moment when he’d look at the genkan and see all the missing bags. Haruka knew the fury that would come, and she was ready for it. She had her own, and she would bury him. She had stepped out at his first shout, offering herself up for slaughter. Jiji had yelled at her, saying Mama’s junk was filling up the house, that it was useless rubbish that needed throwing out. He had shouted at her and she had shouted back and then she had dissolved. Cried for Baba who came running and comforted her like she was a baby, rocking Haruka back and forth in her lap, stroking the top of her forehead with the palm of her hand, whispering,
Yosh, yosh, yosh, yosh . . .
Baba promised she would speak to Jiji the following day, talk some sense into him after he’d cooled off, make him see that his grief was shared and could not be crushed like an object. That one day his daughter’s scent would bring her back to him, her scribbled handwriting would hold his hand.
It might have all been fine if Jiji hadn’t been at dinner that night. If he had let everyone calm down and readdress things in the cold light of day. But there he was, sat in his chair, waiting for his food, drinking his cans of Sapporo and stewing. At one point, he had stood up to throw his empty can into the metal recycling bin and Haruka had said something barbed and vicious like,
Throw yourself in while you’re at it.
She knew what she was doing. That was when he came for her. It was a slow attack. Coiled and snarling.
The argument still made Haruka want to throw herself at a wall. She knew even then that Jiji blamed himself for Mama’s death. That he regretted the little disciplines he doled out to Mama throughout the years, punishments for giving up her dream. Haruka knew that every glimpse of his daughter’s worn slippers felt like another death for Jiji. Her body piled high between hair pins and body lotions. But Haruka had gone for him anyway, and the damage now felt irreversible.
Haruka walks towards him across the grassy edges of the paddies. Jiji remains stooped, muttering to himself about seepage or irrigation or runoff. The things that follow him day and night, that keep him lucid and alive, in conversation with his kingdom of shoots. A swallow swoops high above him and he looks up, then turns and sees her. His face is shadowed, away from the sun, but Haruka can tell that he is afraid. He struggles to get up—the struggle of a man trying to look younger and healthier than he is. He grins at her like nothing ever happened between them. Haruka reminds herself to stay vigilant, that the good always comes with the bad with this man. That disappointment and love go hand in hand.
Haru-chan!
Hi, how are you doing?
Oh fine. Just making sure the water level is right.
The fields look good.
Yes, we have strong stalks this year. They’re coming along nicely.
Good.
How are you? You look thin!
I’m fine—
How’s Tokyo?
It’s good. Hot.
I bet, I bet! He turns to his grain. I was just singing to them. Me-de-ta-I-mo-no-wa . . .
Jiji is drunk, but no more than usual. He is in his jolly phase, cheeks red, eyes glinting. Later, when he drinks his shochu, he will turn mean, spitting at the television, finally falling asleep slack-jawed and child-like.
You remember the song?
Of course.
How long are you here for?
I’m not sure. I wanted to come as soon as I heard, but I had to get time off work. Are you feeling—
Stay for the harvest! We could use an extra hand.
. . . That’s a while away. I’ll. I’ll think about it.
Good, good . . . Yes. Right. Right! Jiji claps his hands together. Go and help Baba with the dinner, I’ll be in in a moment. I just have to do a few more things here.
Are you sure you’re okay? You don’t need anything?
I’m fine. Go on, off you go!
He turns and starts talking to his grain again.
Sometimes it’s easier to care for the things that cannot hurt you.
After dinner, Haruka helps Baba with the dishes. She works slowly, putting off the conversation that is to come. Earlier, over peeling potatoes, Baba had told her that Jiji wanted to speak to her about something important. Haruka thinks she might know what the conversation will be about and she wants to avoid it for as long as she can.
Baba takes over the washing. Haruka stands for a moment in the kitchen, watching the suds slide down the bowl and into the sink. Then she turns, walks to the partition and slides the paper door closed between kitchen and living room.
Jiji is sat in a chair watching a game show, his legs tucked under the standing kotatsu: a new, hideous replacement for the traditional wooden one that had been there through Haruka’s entire childhood. Her grandparents, no longer able get up from the floor without a struggle, had filled in the original sunken kotatsu. A decision Haruka had missed while she was away; a loss she now privately mourned. The original had been a dug-out area in the floor with a low table over the top. As a child, Haruka loved to sit on the floor and dangle her legs into the hole, while the brazier warmed her beneath the heavy blanket. She used to love hanging her dolls’ wet nappies in the kotatsu, the smell of dry wood and the sight of Baba’s curled toes greeting her every time she crawled beneath the covers.
Jiji lowers the volume on his game show and turns to her. Haruka can tell that he’s sharpened over dinner, that everything he does now has a veneer of spite. The way he talks is direct, though he speaks through a veil of alcohol. Jiji had never been a blubbering drunk. He is all edges.
I’ve written my will, as you know. Baba knows where it is, but just in case, it’s in the tansu in our bedroom. Do you understand?
Jiji—
Do you understand?
Yes.
Now, in it, I’ve left the house, the money to Baba, but as my only successor, I’ve left the farm to you. It’s yours.
. . . What?
I’ve done this for several reasons, and believe me I wish I had a different option, but as it stands, I don’t.
What?
What do you mean what?
What about Kenta?
Kenta had been under Jiji’s supervision for nearly nine years and was the natural inheritor of the farmland. Haruka had always imagined that the farm would go to him, that he would one day barge his way into her childhood home and claim it as his own. She had made peace with the idea many years ago. It was one of the reasons she worked so hard.
Haruka looks at her grandfather, unable to speak. She had thought he was going to ask her to stay until he got better. It had never occurred to her that he would leave her the land and start making plans for his imminent death. At least not so simply, not while a game show played in the background.
When she was younger there had been a time when they had talked about her working the farm. But that was child’s play, a game of make believe.
He’s marrying. Moving to the Kanagawa prefecture. His fiancée can’t stand the snow. Pathetic.
Jiji had always railed against the dwindling population. The old generation dying out, the younger moving away to more hospitable climates, while the houses of the dead turned to waste. His part of the world now a sprawl of disused land.
You know what it is that I want. As my only successor it is your duty to take over what I have created here. I don’t need an answer now. And I don’t want excuses. I taught you, raised you to one day tend this land as I have.
Jiji. I . . . Thank you. But I wouldn’t know where to start.
So you’d see all my hard work go to waste?
Behind the shoji Baba clatters a dish.
. . . No, of course not. But, there must be another way. You can find someone, another farmer to buy your land—
I’m not selling to anyone, Haruka. I’m not selling to anyone who will destroy what I have made here. Turn my life’s work into profit, destroy everything I have made all by myself!
Okay, okay. I’m just. It’s a lot to think about . . . We don’t even know if you’re, if what you have is serious. It might be treatable.
We have to prepare for the worst outcome. I’m old. And if it’s my time, then there’s nothing I can do about it. Death comes for us all. As you well know.
Haruka looks at his thin face, brown and leathery from the sun. She notices the way his clothes hang from his frame. How his breathing is shallow, a consequence of all the cigarettes she used to light for him as a little girl, sitting on his lap. Haruka watches him and feels the distinct sense that everything is moving away from her, slow but perceptible.
You’re a smart girl, Haruka. Smarter than you know. Think about what you want from this life. You only have one.