6

The next two days I spent working on my proposal. On the third day, I set out for Asakusa. The time was shortly after noon.

My interlude with Kei had dissolved the impulse that had gripped me so powerfully that evening—the urge to rush headlong out the door for Asakusa. Just as my night in Asakusa had eclipsed my earlier concerns about Kei’s state of mind, so this new turn in my relationship with Kei had pushed aside Asakusa.

But I could not simply forget those events and move on. Deep within me resonated still the tenderness in the couple’s voices as they urged me, “Don’t be a stranger, now,” and, “Yes, do come again.” Although I no longer craved the kind of emotional comfort I had found in their presence, I did know the night had a way of playing tricks on a person’s perceptions, and I longed to ascertain just how much of my extraordinary encounter with them might have been a product of the nocturnal hour. This was why I set out in the middle of the blazing summer day: I needed to look reality in the eye under the all-illuminating light of the sun.

To a degree, too, my timing was motivated by a measure of fear—the fear of meeting that couple another time under the veil of darkness. After all, the likeness they bore to the mother and father I’d carried in my mind’s eye for the past thirty-six years was truly beyond belief. Of course, images engraved in memory at the age of twelve could not, by themselves, provide a reliable impression of their every feature. And yet, somehow, the amazing sense of tranquility that enfolded me while I was with them had all but convinced me that they were indeed my parents.

Among the fondest memories from my childhood was that of coming home from a long, hard-marching school excursion, throwing down the school bag my mother had made for me out of an old Imperial Army haversack, casting off my shirt and pants and socks, flopping down on the tatami in my underwear, and, utterly free of the need to keep up appearances or my guard, drifting drowsily off to sleep as my mother went about her preparations for dinner in the kitchen. Something closely akin to the wonderful sense of security I’d felt at such times as a child had descended on me that night in Asakusa.

I could recall no such moments in all the years since my parents had died. Of course, at one time I had enjoyed many hours of relaxation and refuge from worldly cares with my former wife, but the sense of complete security I had experienced as a child was something else.

Perhaps a certain stiffness on my part, from feeling that a man should not presume too much upon a woman’s solicitude, had frustrated my wife’s protective impulses. I believed that a woman’s maternal instincts were meant to be exercised solely upon her children, and that for a man to seek such qualities from his wife was to twist the relationship between them into something it ought not be. Over the years, I had often heard people say things like “He can’t do anything for himself, I have to do everything for him” or “I won her over by appealing to the mother in her.” But as for myself, I found it impossible to fall wholeheartedly into my wife’s maternal embrace and let her dote on me.

As I see it now, the perpetual stress I had been under since the age of twelve had rendered me woefully inept at accepting the goodwill of others. Those who go through healthy childhoods learn that exhibiting a suitable degree of dependence is how one gains others’ love. But an unfortunate adolescence had deprived me of this secret, and the deficiency had gradually placed a chill on my relationship with my wife.

I could tell that my wife found the lack of warmth in our relationship increasingly difficult to bear. Yet she refused to broach the subject of divorce, and I ultimately realized I had to be the one to break the ice. This, at any rate, was the position I took during the proceedings. For her part, my wife continued throughout to insist that she had never stopped loving me—though now, it seemed, she had already fallen into bed with Mamiya. Well, that was fine. That was all very well and good. The important point was that, in the final analysis, even in divorce, I had been denied the passive role. I had had to take the initiative myself, I had had to bear the blame myself, and, although the amount itself was in no way unreasonable, I had also had to give up the better part of our assets, including the house we had made our home and the land it stood on.

The entire experience had taken its toll on me and left me emotionally spent.

I longed to return to a passive role—to the carefree joy of simply doing as my mother and father said.

“Here, spread this hand-towel over your lap. In case you spill something.”

“See. You hardly got the words out of your mouth before you dropped one.”

Perhaps somewhere deep in my heart I had been yearning precisely for the tranquility such words could bring.

And my desire had crystallized into a single night’s illusion. It had all seemed much too real for an illusion, but I found it easier to accept that a temporary emotional disturbance had been responsible for it than to come up with another explanation. Of course it did not feel particularly good to have to admit to a mental weakness capable of triggering such a disturbance, but it seemed the most plausible way to account for my experience that night.

This time I got off the subway at Tawara-machi station instead of going all the way to the end of the line at Asakusa.

I recalled how I’d once taken offense when I heard a TV news anchor misread the name as Tawara-cho, using the other common reading for the final character. I felt like he had slighted my hometown. It’s Tawara-machi, you idiot, I’d snarled at the TV. Even though I hardly ever came back to visit anymore, a measure of loyalty still lingered in my veins.

Now back in that old district of mine, I climbed the stairs from the subway and emerged onto the sidewalk. The fiery, midsummer sun beat down relentlessly upon the shabby, discolored townscape. I was on my way to meet that remarkable couple again, and yet, because of the nagging doubts I carried with me, the sun struck me as relentless and the townscape as shabby. My feet grew heavy.

The sense that I had come on a misguided quest grew stronger with each step I took. I knew that the events I remembered could hardly have been real, so I also knew pretty well that coming back here to learn the truth, whatever it might be, could lead only to disillusionment. Why, then, was I making my way to the one place where all the sweet memories of that evening were most certain to be shattered?

I had bought some cookies and a bottle of saké in Jiyugaoka on the way. I felt their weight in the grocery bag at my side.

That’s right, I reminded myself. Since they shared their food and drink with me, it’s only fitting that I bring them something in return. And besides, they probably won’t be home in the middle of the day anyway. I’ll just leave the gifts with their next-door neighbor or someone.

I easily found the alley where I needed to turn. I was not yet drunk when the man led me there, so I remembered the surroundings well.

A metal staircase scaled up the side of the building, exactly as I remembered. Following the man’s example from the other time, I tried to create as little noise as possible as I walked up the stairs.

On my way here, the idea—I could not say whether it was more a fear or a hope—that the apartment might have disappeared, that I might not be able to find it again no matter how hard I tried, had become entwined with my anticipation. But the second-floor walkway on which I now stood appeared every bit as real as it had seemed before, and I could see the last door at the back where the couple lived standing wide open.

A blue plastic garbage pail sat against the door—presumably to keep the door from swinging shut. Since they could not be expecting me, I knew the door had not been propped open for my benefit. It was probably so they could get a cross breeze.

In spite of my attempt to silence my footsteps, I knew that the sound of my shoes on the metal stairs must have carried at least a little to every apartment in the building. If I stood at the top of the stairs for too long, the residents might start wondering. Striding briskly along the walkway as though suddenly pushed from behind, I stopped at the last apartment and knocked on the open door.

“Hello?” I called out, turning to look into the apartment with considerable trepidation.

“Oh, you came.”

It was my mother. Or rather, it was the woman who looked in every discernible way like my mother when she was young. Kneeling at a low table in the middle of the tatami, she was turning a crank attached to some kind of plastic container.

“I’m sorry to drop in unannounced like this.”

“Oh, never mind that. We don’t have a phone, so everyone comes unannounced.”

She went on turning the crank.

“It certainly is hot, isn’t it?” she said. “Day after day.”

“Yes, it certainly is.”

I didn’t recognize the device she was cranking.

“What is that?” I asked as I stepped out of my shoes and up into the apartment. People often chided me for holding back, but here, for some reason, I found myself walking right in without even asking, as if it were my own home and it was the most natural thing for me to do.

“I’m making ice cream.”

“Oh.”

“Honeybunch says the ready-made kind they sell in stores is too sweet.”

“I’ve never seen one of those gadgets before.”

“They’re advertised on TV.”

She couldn’t possibly be my mother. Ice-cream makers like hers didn’t exist in 1950 or 1951. There could be no question that this woman belonged to the present.

“Take off your pants and make yourself comfortable,” she said.

“Excuse me?” I was startled by her suggestion.

“You don’t want your pants to get wrinkled.”

“Oh, that’s quite all right.”

Here I was, visiting some very recent acquaintances, and I’d come at a time when the wife was alone. I couldn’t very well take my pants off.

“Then at least take your shirt off.”

“I don’t think I’d care to do that either.”

“Why not?”

“I’d be down to my undershirt.”

“Oh, go on. Putting on such airs!”

“It’s not that, but …”

“Keep this going for me a minute, will you?”

“Huh?”

“Here, you just turn it like this, see. And again. And again.”

The next thing I knew, I was turning the crank on the ice-cream maker in her place.

“I’ll get you a nice cool washcloth.”

She took a neatly folded washcloth from a cardboard box sitting against the wall and went to the kitchen sink.

“Oh,” I remembered. “I brought you some cookies and a bottle of saké in that bag there.”

“Why, thank you. You didn’t have to do that.”

“Yes, I know, but I ate and drank an awful lot the other night, so …”

“We had a merry old time, didn’t we?”

“We sure did. So, where’s Dad?”

The word slid naturally off my tongue. Referring to a married man without children as “Dad” seemed a little bit odd, but the woman didn’t bat an eye.

“He’s on the early shift today. He gets off around seven, so I suppose he’ll be back around eight.”

“Home at eight on the early shift?”

“That’s what happens when you work at a place that stays open until two in the morning.”

As she said this, she came at my face with the washcloth she had dampened. I instinctively pulled away.

“Sit still,” she commanded, as if scolding a child.

I let her wipe my face as I continued turning the crank. She wiped around my neck as well.

“That must mean he doesn’t get home until three sometimes.”

“Is it getting harder yet?”

“Excuse me?”

“The cranking.”

“Oh. Not yet.”

“Then you don’t need to be cranking so hard.”

“Where exactly does he work?”

“It’s a place in Shintomicho.”

“That’s quite a ways.”

“He worked right here in Asakusa until not so long ago, but he never lasts, you know. He gets tired of the place, or something rubs him the wrong way, and he’s out of there.”

“I see.”

“He’s really good at his job, you know. He never wastes toppings or rice, and his sushi comes out perfect every time, and he always keeps his work area clean. Plus he’s reasonably good-looking, isn’t he? He has a way with the customers. He doesn’t act like a know-it-all either, so his employers all love him.”

“Uh-huh.”

The woman went back to the sink to rinse out the washcloth. “But he doesn’t know how to stay put. After a while he just ups and quits.”

“I see.”

I had idealized my father in my mind, so I felt a little taken aback to learn of this defect in his character. Except she’s not actually talking about my father, I reminded myself. She’s talking about her husband. I needed to stop confusing the two.

“There are so many sushi shops, you know,” she went on. “If you’re in the chef’s association, you can go out and find a new job pretty much any time you want. That’s what makes him so cocky. He can’t stand chefs that talk like sushi’s more important than life itself, so he won’t have anything to do with the fancier shops.”

“Well, just as long as he can keep food on the table, I suppose.”

“We manage to eat, but an apartment like this is about the best we can ever hope for. Not that I’m complaining. There’s no end to it if you start wishing you had more. So long as we can go on living together like this in our happy-go-lucky way, that’s pretty much all I ask for.”

“Mmm.”

“Can I get you some beer?”

“No thanks.”

It would hardly be proper to start drinking when I’d barged in in the middle of the day and the master of the house was away.

“Oh, there you go again, always trying to be so polite. It was the same the other night. You kept saying no thanks, I’ve had enough, thanks, but then you went right on drinking everything we offered you.”

She was uncapping a bottle of beer even as she spoke. It seemed I would be having a drink after all.

As I felt the first flush of intoxication warming my body, I began to think there really wasn’t anything so extraordinary about what had taken place.

I had simply run into a rather gregarious fellow who chose to invite me back to his apartment. His wife was also an easygoing person, and the three of us got drunk together, after which I went home. For some people, things like that happened all the time. Out of sentimentality, I had superimposed memories of my parents on the man and his wife. If I removed my personal projections from the picture, nothing so unusual had taken place that I needed to come all the way to Asakusa to find out “the truth.”

The woman wore a trim, sleeveless dress with pale pink stripes, and I could see the marks of fresh mosquito bites on both of her arms. If this were really my dead mother, how could she appear before me looking so palpably alive, skin blemishes and all? And besides, if the man were in fact my dead father, he surely wouldn’t stick it out until the end of his shift in Shintomicho when I had come to visit. I could not but conclude that I had a fragile temperament that easily let wild fancies carry me away.

“I had such a good time the other night,” I said. “I just had to come by again to thank you.”

“We actually thought we might see you back here a little sooner.”

She poured some more beer into my glass. I glanced up at her profile as she tilted the bottle, and my heart went thump again. She did look so much like my mother.

I was struck also by how odd it seemed to be alone with a woman in her mid-thirties and not feel the slightest hint of sexual tension in the air. But then I realized it wasn’t odd at all. When a woman looked so much like one’s mother, it was only natural that sexual impulses would be suppressed.

But suppose her husband came home and discovered us like this. Then what? Would he buy it when I told him his wife looked so much like my mother that no improper thoughts ever entered my mind? Not very likely. I needed to leave. Lingering on over beer was definitely not a good idea. I didn’t want to be a cause for unnecessary friction between such a nice couple.

I was on the verge of saying I’d better be going, when I swallowed my words. If I took my leave now, I would be left with the same doubts as before. Part of me still found it difficult to believe that the uncanny resemblance between this couple and my parents was purely accidental.

I had come all this way. I should at least ask her one thing—one of the questions that had led me to revisit this place.

“Shall I slice up some cucumbers or something for you to nibble on?” she asked.

“Thanks, but I’m afraid I need to be getting on my way.”

“Already?”

“Yes, I need to be going.”

“But you just got here.”

“I’m sorry. I have a meeting. I’ll come again. Please say hello for me.”

“You really have to go so soon?”

“Unfortunately, yes …”

“Some TV station, I suppose?”

“That’s right, in Akasaka.”

“And here I was thinking we could all have dinner together.”

“I really only came to deliver a token of my gratitude for the other night. Instead, I’m drinking your beer again.”

“Oh, stop acting like such a stranger.”

I bowed with deliberate formality and got to my feet.

“Dad will be disappointed,” she said.

“I’ll come again.”

I knew it was time for that question, but I still shrank from voicing it aloud.

“They were forecasting a typhoon to come our way, but it looks like maybe it’s fizzled out.”

She spoke to my back as I put on my shoes at the door. Her voice, too, was indistinguishable from my mother’s.

I knew I could not let the opportunity pass. “You may think this is a strange thing for me to ask after all this time, but …”

“What?”

“I don’t know your name. I mean, since you don’t display a name plate by your door.”

“My word! What’re you talking about? It’s Harada, of course.” The woman spoke my surname without a trace of self-consciousness, then burst out laughing. “This heat must have really gotten to your head. What child asks his own parents their name?”

For a fraction of a second I felt helpless under the massive sledgehammer that was poised to come crashing down on my skull. Then the sledgehammer dealt me its blow.

“I guess you’re right. Ha ha ha. It must be the heat.” I managed to recover my breath just enough to force the words out. I could not turn to face her.

“See you then,” I said, bowing.

“We’ll be expecting you.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Take care now.”

“Good-bye.”

I tried with all my might to maintain a normal gait as I moved away from the door, but the wave of terror was swelling up rapidly. As I started down the metal staircase, my feet gathered speed with each step, and by the time I came out of the alley onto the shopping street I had broken into a full run. Every organ in my body seemed to erupt in a frenzy of horror.

God! Oh, God! I cried silently. I was not religious, but at that moment I desperately wanted to call upon any god that might be listening.

I hailed a cab, but when it pulled up I waved it on.

“Never mind. I’m sorry.”

The thought of being enclosed in a small compartment with no one else but the driver had sent a shudder of terror through me. What if the driver turned to look at me and his face was my father’s?

“You’ve been watching too many old horror films,” I chided myself. When I noticed people giving me strange looks I realized I had said the words aloud.

I glanced anxiously over my shoulder as I hurried toward the Tawara-machi subway station, terrified that I might see my mother coming after me.

To my great relief, she was not.