The Granny Room

JOHN HAYLOCK

I first met Mrs. Hayashi in London at the house of a friend who made regular business trips to Japan. I had been invited to meet her as I was about to take up a teaching post in Tokyo. “You must meet Mrs. Hayashi,” Cuthbert Meade had said. “She can be of great help to you.” And no sooner had I met her than she suggested that I should live in her house. Seeing what was probably an expression of doubt on my face (I have never been good at disguising my feelings), she said in passable English, “You have a separate apartment. I just built one above my garage. It is for me when I am a widow and grandmother. I call it the ‘granny room.’”

I raised my eyebrows. Mrs. Hayashi was petite, slim, neatly dressed; she had a tidy head of jet hair above a face composed of small but well-defined features; her skin shone as if it had been polished; her eyebrows were carefully plucked, her lips subtly painted, her teeth, except for one gold incisor, perfect. An attractive woman. I wondered how old she was. She did not look old enough to be cast in the role of grandmother, and I knew her husband was alive as he was talking business to Cuthbert on the other side of the room. Mr. Hayashi could have been a grandfather for he was gray and grizzled. I put his age at fifty-five, but Mrs. Hayashi did not seem a day over forty. I knew nothing of Japanese customs and supposed it was natural for a wife to be planning for her old age after her husband’s demise while he was still living; however, I raised my eyebrows, and Mrs. Hayashi sitting on the edge of Cuthbert’s capacious sofa, leaned forward. “We rebuild our house, and so we think of future. My son twenty-two. Next year he will graduate. When he twenty-five he will marry.”

“Has he a fiancée?”

“Not yet,” replied Mrs. Hayashi. “It is not time now to find wife for him.” Her small dark eyes flicked into mine and then down to examine the carpet. “At twenty-six my son will have a child.”

“And you will be a grandmother.” I nearly asked if she would have killed off her husband by then—only four years to go. Did Mr. Hayashi know of this plan? He must be aware of it, for she could hardly have built the granny room without his knowledge. Anyway four years was enough for me as my contract with the university was only for two.

Cuthbert’s wife then joined us and the conversation moved from Japan to London. There were many questions I wanted to ask Mrs. Hayashi, but I didn’t have a chance to pose them as she turned to Mrs. Meade and began to bombard her, rather insistently, with queries about where to buy this and that. Where could she buy shoes, she asked, since her feet were so small. She looked down at her feet and giggled—was she proud of them? I was about to suggest that she go to the children’s department at Selfridge’s, but I rose instead, invented another engagement, said I’d like to take her granny room, excused myself, and left with her visiting card in my pocket.

That meeting with the Hayashis occurred toward the end of February. They were due back in Tokyo at the beginning of March and I arrived there in the middle of the month. I had let Mrs. Hayashi know of the day of my arrival, but not the flight number; I did not wish her to meet me since a professor from the university had promised to do that, and knowing from that brief meeting in Cuthbert’s flat that she had a strong personality, I did not want her to steal the professor’s thunder, and I was right for Mr. or rather Professor Naito was far from thunderous: modesty, courtesy, and gentleness seemed to be his principal characteristics.

“You must be very tired,” he said when I met him after emerging from the Customs Hall at Narita Airport. He stood behind a fence with other welcomers and held on high a placard with my name on it. He was a dapper little man, whose iron-gray hair was long but neat, whose overcoat was well-cut, whose black shoes shone.

“It doesn’t seem like four in the afternoon,” I said. I had flown over the Pole from London, an exhausting, eighteen-hour flight with one stop at Anchorage. “I hope my hotel is comfortable.”

Professor Naito made no reply and put out a hand to help me with my suitcase.

“It’s a lovely day,” I remarked, observing the cloudless sky above the airport buildings while we were queuing for the “limousine” bus to Tokyo.

“Sometimes we have fine days in March but not always.”

I had got the airline to reserve a room for me in an expensive downtown hotel, because I had thought that three or four nights in international luxury would enable me to acclimatize myself gently to my new, exotic environment. I had informed Professor Naito of my plans and also that I would be living in Mrs. Hayashi’s flat because the good professor had offered to find me accommodations.

The comfortable bus gently glided along a highway. I looked out at thickly wooded hills between which nestled fields and farmhouses with steep gray roofs. “How pretty!” I said.

“Soon dreadful Tokyo begins,” replied the Professor.

He was right for it was not long before an unmitigated mass of concrete molded into unoriginal shapes took over from the dark green hills. Professor Naito explained that Mrs. Hayashi had contacted him and that she would be meeting us at the Air Terminal, and then he added, “Frankly speaking, I have something to tell you which you may not like.”

I braced myself for bad news. Had my appointment been canceled? Had discoveries been made about my past? “Yes,” I replied, “please tell me.” I supposed that the university, which had paid my fare, would provide me with a ticket home.

“It concerns Mrs. Hayashi,” he said looking across me at a regiment of huge apartment blocks. How ugly Tokyo seemed! Would it all be like this, I wondered. “Mrs. Hayashi?” I repeated the name.

“Yes. She will take you directly to the apartment she prepared for you.”

“But I reserved a room in a hotel as I told you in my letter.”

“She canceled the reservation.” Professor Naito’s dark eyes peeped at me, like a child’s they were, gauging a grown-up’s reaction.

“Why should she do that? I wrote to her saying that I would move into her place after spending a few days in a hotel.”

“Yes, yes, you told me. I fully understand your reasons, very wise ones. But Mrs. Hayashi, well, she wanted to save you the expense of—”

“I see. Well, never mind. I suppose she meant to be kind.” I omitted to add that her meddling annoyed me because I did not want to upset Professor Naito, who seemed infinitely kind and solicitous.

“That is all right then,” he said with relief. “I shall leave you at the Terminal after I have put you into Mrs. Hayashi’s capable hands.”

Was I right in sensing that the arrangement for me to go directly to Mrs. Hayashi’s and not first to a hotel suited Professor Naito too? It meant that he could give up shepherding me, but perhaps I was being unfair. The bus crossed a brown river, a recorded female voice made a long announcement in Japanese through the loudspeakers, and then another female voice in an over-precise accent mouthed (I could almost see her mouthing) in English the information that we would shortly arrive at Tokyo City Terminal, where we would find taxis and buses for our onward transportation. The bus extracted itself from the tangle of vehicles on the highway and entered a walled ramp and then ascended to the “Ter-min-al Beeldeeng.” Professor Naito and I descended two flights of moving stairs to the baggage hall, where Mrs. Hayashi awaited us.

She looked broader, less slight than she had in London; this was perhaps because of her fur coat, which she wore open. She greeted me cordially rather than warmly (there wasn’t much warmth in her), shaking my hand; she bowed deeply to Professor Naito, who bent even lower toward her. After this little pause for the showing of mutual respect, the three of us joined the line for taxis with my suitcase, which the Professor had insisted on collecting for me from the revolving band in the luggage hall. Mrs. Hayashi made conventional inquiries about my health, the flight, my impressions of Tokyo in less accurate but more fluent English than Mr. Naito’s. When we reached the head of the queue, the Professor obsequiously ushered Mrs. Hayashi and me into a taxi and then stood back and waggled an open hand. “Aren’t you coming with us?” I asked, but by then the door had shut on its own and we were away. “How did the door shut?”

“The driver. It is automatic,” explained Mrs. Hayashi. “We are now going to pass through the center of Tokyo to the district where you are going to live.”

It was dark by this time and except for the ideographic signs that were appropriately exotic to me, the streets, the lights, the buildings and the traffic did not bear many startling marks of difference from those of any other city I knew, and the fact that one drove on the left made me feel less abroad. After half an hour or so of stopping at lights and then moving slowly on, we crossed a park. “Our B.B.C.,” said Mrs. Hayashi, pointing out a solitary block, the sides of which were striped with white fluorescent light. “And this is Yoyogi Park.”

“Yoyogi?” I repeated the name, which sounded funny and reminded me of a toy I played with in my boyhood. “I remember yoyos,” I said.

“Yoyos?” She did not seem to understand and I was too tired to explain. We crossed several more traffic lights and then my companion began to give instructions to the driver, who turned into a narrow road, then left, then left again and up a hedged lane which in the dark seemed countrified. “Here we are,” cried Mrs. Hayashi. “You see it’s quite central.” “Yes,” I replied, but I didn’t then see that it was central. “This is the house,” she declared, after she had paid the taxi driver (she brushed aside my feeble fumblings with the strange money I had bought from my bank in England) and I got my suitcase out of the trunk. I looked up at a concrete slab of a house, sideways on to the road.

“Your flat, the granny room, is up there.” She indicated a flight of iron steps flanked by iron railings which led up to a door above a garage that housed a car around which junk was stacked: boxes, a kitchen range, two rusty bicycles—the kind of things whose uselessness is not accepted by a parsimonious owner. “Leave your suitcase here by the car. No one take it. We go up to your room after dinner.” I followed my landlady down a passage to the front door of her house. “You must take off your shoes and put on these slippers,” she commanded when she had opened the door with her key, and stepped up into the hall from the well by the entrance. “It’s our custom as you probably know and,” she added rather severely, “one most foreigners like. Well, welcome to my home!” She took off her fur coat and in a petulant tone called up the stairs, “Nori-chan, Nori!” There was no answer. “My son seems to be out. He may be asleep.”

Mrs. Hayashi was wearing a bottle-green woolen dress with a thick black suede belt tight round her tiny waist; her breasts were hardly noticeable, and her fingers were ringless. I was shown into a sitting room that was dominated by a gigantic stereo set and speakers—“My husband’s,” she said, giving the machine a derogatory wave. “Please sit down.” I sat in a leather armchair, one in which Mrs. Hayashi would be lost; she perched on its companion for a moment, rather a restless moment, and then excusing herself left the room hurriedly. On each side of the stereo set were tall bookcases: one held a number of Japanese tomes and the other a collection of ornaments and dolls, none of which seemed of much value. At the end of the room were sliding glass doors which gave on to an umbrageous garden lit in a ghostly fashion by the crude light of a fluorescent street lamp. I got up and with my nose nearly rubbing the glass looked at the shrubs and the trees; I hoped there would be a view of them from my room. Mrs. Hayashi reappeared. She said, “My garden,” and then took me into a spacious kitchen in the middle of which was a dining-table covered with a plastic cloth; round the table were four bulky dining chairs with arms and cushioned seats. I sat opposite my hostess and facing a row of up-to-date kitchen appliances: a refrigerator, a deep freeze, a sink, and a range; behind me were cupboards tidily stacked with crockery. The room was as neat and as clean as Mrs. Hayashi.

I felt like a surrogate husband—was that part of her plan? Did she have designs on me? We had sukiyaki, a cook-it-yourself dish, which I was to learn is often served by Japanese to foreigners. Deftly manipulating a pair of long chopsticks, Mrs. Hayashi put into a pan on top of a gas ring placed on the table slivers of beef and shreds of cabbage, a kind of vermicelli, floppy headed mushrooms, and some sake too into a tiny china cup, instructing me to hold the cup toward her while she poured.

As I clumsily helped myself from the pan with my chopsticks, occasionally letting fall a piece of meat, a mushroom, I re-examined Mrs. Hayashi’s face. I decided that the thoughts I had had about her in London were right: she was an attractive woman. It was a pity about her gold incisor as her other teeth were good, but otherwise her tidy hair, her tidy face were impressive; tidy was the best word to describe her features, which, with her trim eyebrows, her neat nose, lips a sculptor could not have improved upon, were compact, like a new set of tools in a case. Her dark eyes were small and though bright they shone with what seemed to be a forced brightness, and were kept puckered at their inner corners; perhaps her chin and her eyes betrayed her strong character. Good-looking, yes, undoubtedly good-looking, yet somehow she lacked appeal, at least to me; this was due to her manner, which was not at all soft and feminine; there was something hard about her. Was she the decision-maker in the family? Did she wear the trousers? I had scarcely met Mr. Hayashi, only having shaken hands with him at Cuthbert’s. I remembered him as a little man with thick, gray hair and dark-rimmed spectacles—that was all I remembered about him. Where was he now? It was nearly half-past eight. Was he away? Should I ask? I was just about to inquire when my hostess said, “Are you tired?”

“Well, I am, rather,” I admitted. I was longing for a whiskey. I didn’t much care for the tepid rice wine and I yearned to get out my duty-free bottle and pour myself a treble. “The flight over the Pole takes eighteen hours,” I said.

“Yes,” Mrs. Hayashi replied. “I find coming West-East not so tiring as coming from East-West. Here the time—” she looked at her little silver wristwatch—“eight-twenty-eight and so in England it is about eleven-thirty in the morning, so your day finished and when you go to bed most of your day missed. From here to Rondon you have to have the day again, so West-East less tiring.”

I didn’t quite follow her reasoning, but I realized from her speech that I was not expected to be tired.

After I had eaten as much of the sukiyaki as I wanted—the beef was delicious—I was served with a bowl of clear soup with a tiny egg floating in it, and finally a crème caramel in a plastic cup—the latter obviously bought. Then Mrs. Hayashi rose. I also got up. “We go to your room,” she announced. Was it only a room? And out of the house we went, she carrying in a fussy way that suggested she was doing something extra my plastic bag of duty-free drink and cigarettes, my brief case and my overcoat, and behind her up the iron steps I lugged my suitcase.

The “room” was more than a room, two rooms in fact and there was a bathroom also, off the bedroom, which had in it a three-quarters double-bed, a “honeymooner” as some call it. The disadvantage about the sitting room I noticed at once was the kitchen, which was in an unventilated alcove at the back of the room. Mrs. Hayashi went proudly to the window (the curtains were undrawn) and exclaimed, “The garden, you see? You look on my garden. We call this shakkei, borrowed view. So,” she went on, gazing into a reflection of herself in the glass, “when I live here I not lose my garden.”

I smiled wanly. I was pleased with the flat, which was adequately furnished with a carpet, a sofa, armchairs, a desk, and a dining-table. It was clear that she had carefully considered the needs of a Westerner. “Of course,” she said, “I like better tatami, Japanese mats, to a carpet, and a cushion to a chair. When I live here I have tatami put down.” She talked as if her moving in were imminent. Was her son about to marry? Was a grandchild on the way? What about her husband? Had she gotten rid of him? I decided I must ask. “Is your husband away?”

“He at work,” she replied, rather sharply.

“And your son?”

“Nori is out. Well, it is getting late. We will talk about contract for apartment in the morning.”

I slept well in the “honeymooner” and I was pleased to find all the ingredients necessary for breakfast in the refrigerator. Mrs. Hayashi had even remembered marmalade. How practical she was! How businesslike too! For soon after breakfast, before I had telephoned Professor Naito, she arrived with the contract for the flat. “The rent is one hundred thousand yen a month; this is reasonable for this district.” Two hundred pounds a month seemed a lot for two rooms, one of which was partly a kitchen, but I could only accept. I signed and agreed to arrange for my bank to pay the rent on the twenty-eighth of each month. After neatly folding her copy of the contract, Mrs. Hayashi said, “You may think rent high.” My face as usual had shown my feelings. “I do not ask key money or rent in advance, and if you are willing to give Nori English lessons two times a week, I pay you thirty thousand yen a month.”

I agreed. I only had to be at the university on three days in the week, so I could easily fit in Mrs. Hayashi’s son, and £60 seemed a fair fee. “What year is he in at his university?”

“He a senior. His major Economics.”

I wasn’t used to these American terms, but did not then inquire their precise meaning. “I can’t teach him economics,” I said.

“No. You teach him English. I want him speak English good.”

Shortly afterward I bravely introduced myself to the mysteries of the Tokyo subway system, going to the local station down a pleasant hedged lane (the hedges were composed of azalea bushes) and a narrow shopping street which, with its shops all open at the front, their wares on display, wooden houses and small blocks of flats, tiny bars and little restaurants, was excitingly strange. I met Professor Naito at a central station and he conducted me to the university, where I shook hands with a number of professors (everyone seemed to be a professor), who were very cordial. The term was not to begin for two weeks. When I returned to my flat, I found a note from Mrs. Hayashi on my desk. The fact that she had a key and could let herself in while I was out (or even while I was in) disturbed me a little. The note said that she would be bringing her son to see me at eight and I was to let her know only if this wasn’t convenient.

At eight precisely my two-noted door-bell sounded and I let in Mrs. Hayashi and Nori. The young man, who was head and shoulders above his mother, had a longish face and black wiry hair that covered his ears and the back of his shirt collar that was outside his light-blue pullover, which was more or less the same color as his jeans. “Here is my son,” said Mrs. Hayashi. I held out my hand and the son, very solemn, bowed, putting his hands on his thighs; when he looked up I saw he had a brown and healthy complexion, and his smile was more generous and warmer than that of his mother, who never allowed her lips to expand fully. When they had sat down I said, “I only have whiskey to offer you, I’m afraid.”

“No, thank you,” said the mother, “we do not want drink anything.”

By the expression in Nori’s large dark eyes I guessed he would have liked a glass of whiskey, but I didn’t dare give him one. We talked, or rather Mrs. Hayashi held forth about her son, saying that his English was very poor, that he did no work at the university, that he was out most nights. Nori looked down at his folded hands during this complaint. What was I to say? I didn’t want to side with the mother, as that might have started off the teacher-pupil relationship on the wrong track, so I simply interpolated an “Oh?” now and then. Mrs. Hayashi rose. “I hope you make Nori into a good English speaker,” she said and left, leaving her son behind; it seemed that she expected him to be speaking perfect English by the time he returned to the house next door.

Nori was shy and said very little. I had obviously got to win his confidence somehow and I was not sure how to do this. After having monosyllabic answers to my stock questions about age, study, and recreation—“Do you like reading?” “Yes.” “Have you read any English books?” “Yes.” “What books have you read?” “The Catcher in the Rye.” “Did you like it?” “Yes.”—I decided that a little whiskey might help. It did. After a second whiskey, Nori talked freely and with surprising frankness about his mother. “My mother expect much of me,” he said. “She want me enter Tokyo University, but I fell entrance examination and was ronin for one year. She very angry. Tokyo University very high standing and students from there get good jobs, certain. Now I am student at private university. Not so good. My mother want me to go to Tokyo University and join some Ministry, maybe Finance Ministry and then later become Prime Minister.” I smiled but the young man was quite serious.

“What does ronin mean? And I think you meant ‘failed’ not ‘fell.’”

“Yes, sorry, failed. Ronin student who failed university entrance examination and must study until next year examination. He has no school, no university. Ronin in old Japan was samurai—you know samurai?” I nodded. “Ronin was samurai without his lord. Maybe the lord lose his land and so his samurai must go away and wander.”

“I see, rather a good expression. Do you want to read a book with me or just talk?”

“As you like.”

“I think we’d better read a book. It would give us something to talk about, be a basis for our conversations.”

“O.K., what we read?”

“Let’s decide later. I’ll see what there is available. What about your father? What did he say when you failed to get into Tokyo University?”

“He no say much. He went to small university. It was just after war end. Very different then. He has his own company. Very busy. Always very busy.” Nori put some resentment into the last three words.

It was at the fourth lesson—we had chosen to read a book of stories by Somerset Maugham—that Nori said when I asked him a question about “Rain” which he couldn’t answer, “I am in love.”

“Oh? Who with?”

“A hairdresser.”

“What sort of hairdresser?”

“She is thirty-two years old and married and has two children, two girls.”

“Oh dear!”

“Her husband not live with her. Leave her. She live with her mother. Her father dead.”

“Where does she work?”

“She work near the station.”

“The station near here?”

“Yes. My mother go her shop. She cut her hair and give it perm sometimes.”

“How fascinating! Does your mother know of your connection with this hairdresser?”

“She not know.”

“Perhaps we should read a little of ‘Rain’?”

Nori made a moue, but I reminded myself that I was being paid for the lesson and we read a little of “Rain.” Nori’s mind, though, was not on the story at all. “What are you going to do about her?” I asked.

“What can I do?”

“Do you see her often?”

“Yes, but it is difficult. I cannot tell my mother. She work very near. I pass her shop every day when I go my university. I look in. Sometime she see me; sometime she busy.”

“When do you meet her?”

“After her work, we meet. Not near here. It is dangerous near here. People they know me; all my life I live here.”

“Does she love you?” This was an impertinent question, but I was curious to know the answer.

“Yes, she love me,” replied Nori with certainty. “Once we go together to Hakone, near Mount Fuji and . . .” Instead of finishing his sentence, he said, “It is very difficult. What do you think should I do?”

“I don’t know. I see nothing wrong with your having an affair with her.” Nori’s eyes brightened; he clearly wanted approval. “But,” I went on, hoping to dilute the encouragement I had given him, “don’t go too far. She’s much older than you and it may be hard for her to find a husband, so don’t become too attached to her.”

“I love her.”

“Yes, love, but that is not enough,” I said, upbraiding myself for my sententiousness. “Go carefully. I can’t advise you. How can I? But think of your mother and don’t do anything hasty; perhaps you should tell your mother.”

Nori turned down his mouth at my last suggestion, which I realized was unhelpful; he probably felt that being about his mother’s age I sympathized with her. “You not tell her, will you?”

“No, I won’t. It’s not my business.”

I am inquisitive by nature, a despicable characteristic, but a human and forgivable one nevertheless, and so after Nori had told me his story my walk to the station became more interesting. There were two hairdressers’ in the little shopping street, one on the right at the top and the other on the left at the bottom near the railway line. I wondered in which one Nori’s lover worked. The sex of the hairdressers or stylists or trichologists was not easy to determine through the windows of the shops, but I gathered that some were women and others men. I guessed that Nori’s mistress belonged to the shop that had on its window the words “Spring up your Hair” (it was now April and Mrs. Hayashi’s cherry tree had bloomed and come into leaf) and not to the one called “Beauty Style,” for the former looked the more prosperous of the two and had five chairs to the other’s three.

Nori often cut his lessons and I was not sure whether I should tell his mother about this. I decided not to because I was beginning to feel sorry for him. Why shouldn’t the poor, wretched, mother-run boy kick over the races a bit with a hairdresser before becoming harnessed to a job? I rarely saw Mr. Hayashi. He came up to my room one evening soon after my arrival and seemed rather tongue-tied; perhaps he was shy, so many Japanese men were I was beginning to realize, for he didn’t say much except a polite, “I hope you comfortable,” and he refused a drink. After that we only passed the time of day on the rare occasions we saw each other going out or coming in. On Sunday mornings, pipe in mouth and wearing a little round cloth hat he would mow the lawn, but although I could see him from my window I never tossed out a “Nice day!” or a “I’m enjoying your roses,” for I felt that I shouldn’t disturb his privacy, and if he wanted to see me he could easily come up to the granny room; on Sunday afternoons, Beethoven, usually the “Emperor,” boomed into the garden from the sitting room below and once I greeted him with a “So you like Beethoven?” but all he answered was “Beethoven? Oh yes, Beethoven,” and this made me suspect that he was more concerned with the performance of his stereo than the music. Mrs. Hayashi often rang my bell and inquired if I needed anything. This was kind of her, but I found her attention rather intrusive; after all, one only wants to see one’s landlady when the plumbing has gone wrong, the faucet has broken, or the roof is leaking. Once Mrs. Hayashi called when Nori should have been with me having a lesson.

“Is Nori with you?” she asked at the door. She rarely came into my flat. I think this was because the taking off of shoes and the putting on of slippers, which is a necessary ritual on entering a Japanese abode, commits one to a proper visit, as it were. When I replied that Nori hadn’t turned up, Mrs. Hayashi stepped out of her shoes and into a pair of slippers in two quick, almost imperceptible movements. I ushered her into the sitting room and into a chair from which the kitchen range could not be seen. On the stove was one of my attempts to make a daube and I did not want any comments or advice.

“Is this the first time he not come to his lesson?” she inquired.

I hesitated for a moment or two, wondering whether I should reply honestly and then I did. “No,” I said, “it’s not the first time.”

“Why you not tell me?”

This time I did not reveal what I truly thought, which was that she ought to allow her son, who had come of age, to decide for himself whether he wanted a lesson or not. “I didn’t think that it mattered all that much,” I replied. “I presumed that he was busy with some university activity; he’s no longer a schoolboy.” I had never imagined for one moment that he sacrificed trysts with his hairdresser-lover for some academic chore but I was on his side. I had not warmed to Mrs. Hayashi, and I’ve always supported rash, passionate youth against the opposing forces of age, experience, reason, and sanity. I’ve frequently iterated to students a “gather-ye-rosebuds-while-ye-may” philosophy, because I really believe that in the world of woe in which we live happiness, even self-indulgent, sensual pleasure, should be snatched when offered. So I approve of Herrick’s advice “To the Virgins, to make much of Time,” but of course Mrs. Hayashi would abhor the poet’s “That age is best which is the first. . . .”

The interview with Mrs. Hayashi did not last long; possibly she sensed my antipathy to her great “plan for Nori.” She only sipped twice from the cup of Earl Grey I poured out for her, and broke delicately in two a chocolate biscuit which was small enough to put whole into the mouth, even into her tiny one, and only ate one half. She left me, her almost full cup of tea, the other half of the biscuit, saying “Thank you very much for the nice cup of tea and the cookie. Very delicious.” I saw her to the door and she repeated her thanks, but her eyes looked down, not into mine.

June arrived; the pink and red azalea blooms were succeeded by the pale blue and purple clusters of the hydrangeas; the notice on the window of the second hairdresser’s was changed to, “Fresh up Gals with Summer Hair.” I did not yet know which of the assistants had stolen Nori’s heart, though he had told me that she worked in the shop near the station. We hadn’t progressed very much with “Rain” in spite of the fact that the appeal of the story had increased by the arrival of the rainy season, for Nori only wanted to talk about his love. About Mrs. Davidson, the missionary’s wife, he once remarked, “She like my mother.” I was tempted to try to engage his interest by suggesting that Sadie Thompson and his lady hairdresser might have something in common, but I did not do so through fear of hurting his feelings. He was very sensitive and was not a person who could laugh at himself or at his predicament. One evening—lessons were supposed to last from five until six-thirty, though he never turned up before five-thirty—he said, “I want to introduce you to Keiko—her name is Keiko.”

“Oh, why?”

“I want you tell me what you think.”

I saw involvement looming and did not wish to be within the compass of the tentacles of that clinging octopus. “I don’t think my advice would be of much help.”

“Please.”

“I won’t be able to speak to her.”

“You can judge by seeing.”

“Where could we meet?” I was of course curious to know what this thirty-two-year-old divorcée hairdresser with two daughters was like.

“Outside Isetan Department Store in Shinjuku. You know?”

“Yes, when?”

“Tomorrow, eight o’clock p.m.”

I agreed.

I had naturally speculated much upon the physiognomy and the character of Nori’s beloved and I had decided that she was one of the “fluffy” girls I had espied through the window of the Ladies’ Hairdressers near the station, one of the girls who had had her hair dyed copper and fuzzed into a bush of tight curls. I was quite wrong.

I met Nori outside the department store and he took me across the street into a building that housed several small cinemas and up in a lift to a cafe called Mozart, an old-style cafe with straw-seated, wooden chairs with hooped backs, which served Kaffee mit Schlag and creamy tortes; the background music was exclusively that of the Austrian composer, of whom there was a bust on the cake counter. Nori led me to a table at which was sitting a woman who was mature in a motherly way that Mrs. Hayashi was not. Keiko had a shiny head of black, straight hair that danced over her forehead and her ears, and a figure that was full rather than fat. Her pale white skin accentuated the darkness of her hair, her eyebrows, and her eyes. She had a round face and a largish mouth that turned up at the corners when she smiled. She exuded a womanly warmth and a protectiveness that was obviously captivating to an inexperienced young man, and it was clear by the way she kept looking at Nori when he spoke that she was in love with him.

The meeting didn’t extend much beyond the time it took to drink a cup of coffee and eat a cake. I didn’t know what to say and Keiko could speak no English. Nori told me about the cafe being dedicated to Mozart—the place was nearly empty but it was near closing time—and we had a desultory conversation about this and that, about how I liked Japan and so on. I was relieved when the young man said, “It getting late” and we left. In the street, we bade each other goodnight and parted. I went back to the granny room next door to Nori’s home, but he didn’t accompany me; he went off with Keiko.

One evening a few days later Nori burst into my room—he knew that I never locked the door. I pulled myself up from my prostrate, postprandial posture on the sofa, half-gathered together my somnolent wits and said, “Oh, hello?”

When I had got him a whiskey and one for myself (I don’t usually drink after dinner but his arrival gave me an excuse to do so), he said, “We going to ‘erope.’”

I thought he meant Europe. “But how? It’s term time. You can’t get away. You mustn’t give up your studies. And what about money?”

“I get arbeit.”

“In Germany?”

“German? Why you say Germany?”

“But you say you’re going to Europe and—”

“Not Europe, ‘erope.’”

I then realized that Nori had substituted an “r” for the “l” and he had meant elope, and he explained that arbeit was used in Japan to mean a part-time job. “So you will leave home?”

“Yes.”

“What will your mother say?”

“I not tell her. I just go.” Nori looked at me, his dark eyes wide, liquid, pleading. “Will you do something for me?”

“What?”

“You tell my mother about my going. You tell my mother you meet Keiko-san and that she is very nice girl.”

“You want me to tell your—”

“My mother she like you very much; if you tell her she not be angry with you. So you tell her, please.”

“No, you must tell her.”

“I can’t.”

“It’s none of my business. It is your family affair. It’s nothing to do with me.” There was alarm in my voice as I spoke, alarm that betrayed weakness which Nori detected, I’m sure; he had some of his mother’s forcefulness.

“So you tell her. Tell her tomorrow. I will go to Keiko tonight.”

“Where? Where will you go?”

“To a room we rented.”

“What about her children?” I threw this question at him, hoping it might make him reconsider his plan.

“They stay with her mother.”

“Why do you decide to do this? Why not carry on as you have been doing?” I knew these were silly questions, for if one is young and in love one wants to be with one’s lover as much as possible. Nori’s answer was a simple, “I can’t.” I followed him to the door, where he trod into a pair of grubby gym shoes with broken backs and took up a bulging grip which he had left in the entrance.

“Why not tell your mother now? It’s much better for you to tell her.”

“She in bed. Always she go to bed at nine-thirty.”

“What about your father?”

“He on business trip. Goodbye. Thank you very much.” He jerked a little half bow, crept down the iron staircase and hastened round the corner out of sight.

What was I to do? I did not relish telling Mrs. Hayashi that her son had gone off to live “in a room” with a divorced hairdresser. The next day was a Wednesday, a day when I had to leave early for the university, and one on which during the lunch break I invariably saw Professor Naito. I decided not to give Nori’s message to Mrs. Hayashi (the more I thought about it, the more monstrous I regarded his behavior, not so much his running away from home, but his involving me in his escapade) until the evening, until I had asked the kind professor his advice.

“May I come and see you at noon?” I asked him on the telephone from my room in the university, and in his usual deferential way, he replied, “I don’t want to trouble you. I shall come to your room.” When I answered his gentle taps on my door with a “Come in!” he entered apologetically as if he were making an intrusion.

“I have a problem,” I announced.

“Oh?” he said in a raising tone.

“It’s to do with Mrs. Hayashi and her son Nori.”

“Oh.” The second “oh” was on a falling tone and one of relief. I think the professor feared that I was going to complain about teaching or salary conditions. I then told him the story and how the selfish young man had landed me with the unenviable task of informing his mother of his flight.

Professor Naito asked, “Did you encourage Nori-san to go away with this woman?”

“No, of course I didn’t.” I did not say that I had not condemned the affair and that playing the role of confidant had amused me. “But what should I do?”

“You must tell her. He was your pupil and as his teacher you have responsibility.”

“I don’t see that I have, Professor Naito. I am a foreigner here and—” an idea came to me—“I wonder if I could ask you a favor.”

“A favor?” He seemed uncertain.

“Could you come with me this evening when I tell Mrs. Hayashi? Apart from your deep knowledge of English—Mrs. Hayashi may have a good ear for the language, but she doesn’t have a big vocabulary—your moral support would be of enormous assistance.”

Professor Naito looked very confused. “I am sorry to say that this evening there is a faculty meeting.”

“Couldn’t you miss it?”

“Not possible, I am sorry to say.” Naito smiled.

“Then do you think you could telephone Mrs. Hayashi and tell her that I shall be calling on her at about six, and give her the gist of what I’ve told you about her son? It would help prepare the ground if you did, and you could tell her in Japanese and therefore in the Japanese way, which would be so much better than the clumsy, Western way I would use.”

Professor Naito looked at his watch. “I’ll see,” he replied. “It is a difficult matter.”

I guessed this meant that he wouldn’t and I was right, for when I rang Mrs. Hayashi’s two-tone bell she came to the door in an apron over a white blouse and black trousers and welcomed me in her usual way with a flash of her gold incisor and a businesslike, “How are you?” She must have noticed from my expression that something was wrong for she said, “You not well?” And when I said I was all right, she asked me if anything had gone wrong with the granny room, as indeed it had in a way, the “granny” side of it, at least. “The water heater again broken?” It had failed to function three times since my arrival and Mrs. Hayashi had telephoned a mechanic who had come after an annoying delay of several days. I didn’t know whether I should ask to come into her house to impart my news, to invite her upstairs to the granny room, or to blurt out about the wayward son on his mother’s doorstep. “It’s about Nori,” I said.

She did not grasp my meaning for she said, “He is not here. He not come home last night. Probably he spend last night with one of his university friends. Sometime he does. Is it his lesson day?”

“No, but he came to see me last night and told me that he was going away.” I should have gone on and not allowed the strong-minded lady to speak before I had finished my message.

“Sometime he go away with a university friend. He live in Yokohama.”

She had not listened properly to what I had said. “Nori asked me to tell you he was going away to live with his girlfriend.”

Mrs. Hayashi let out a humorless laugh. “It is his joke. He has not girlfriend.”

“But he has. I met her.” As soon as I had allowed the last words to slip out I wished I had not done so, for now I was deeper in the plot than I had meant to be.

“You met her? Where?”

“In Shinjuku. And last night, very late, he came to see me and asked me to tell you he was going to live with her.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. In a room. They have rented a room.”

“Why he ask you to tell me this? Why he not tell me himself?” I was sure she must have an inkling of the true answer to this question, but I simply replied, “I don’t know.”

“I see.”

I then excused myself and went up to the granny room, leaving her flummoxed at her own front door, and hoping that as far as I was concerned the affair was over. I was mistaken. After an hour or so my wretched two-toned bell tinkled and it was she. She had changed into a dress, a severe, dark-blue one, which, I imagined, she had thought suitable for the occasion.

“I don’t know what to say,” she said when she had accepted a chair but refused a brandy. “You tell me that you know this girlfriend of Nori-san?”

“Not know. I met her once, as I told you, er, in Shinjuku. I ran into Nori by chance and he was with her. He introduced me.” Mrs. Hayashi was staring at me in astonishment, so nervously I continued, “She seemed nice, older than your son but very soft and feminine.” I stopped myself from adding, “But you know her. She does your hair!”

“Soft and feminine?” Mrs. Hayashi repeated with distaste. “And how old?”

“I don’t know; thirty, perhaps.”

“Thirty? And married? Is she married?”

“I don’t know.” I thought it best to soften the blow a bit.

“What have you been teaching Nori?” she asked.

“‘Rain,’ a story by Somerset Maugham.”

“Some romantic stuff.”

“Cynical, really.”

“Some romantic stuff,” she repeated. I don’t think she understood the adjective I had used. “I know,” she went on, “the romantic Western way. You encourage my son in living a so-called romantic Western life. You teach that romance is good, that love is good.” She was quite angry I felt, although her face didn’t show it.

“I haven’t actually taught him that, but isn’t love good?”

“No. Not this kind of passion love,” replied Mrs. Hayashi, fervently. “He follow your way, your Western way. You responsible for this love affair he have with this woman.”

“I don’t think it’s fair of you to blame me, Mrs. Hayashi. Nori is a man; he’s twenty-two.”

“Nori is a boy, a young boy, a young innocent boy.”

“It won’t harm him to lose his innocence. It will help him grow up. I’m sure this will soon blow over, Mrs. Hayashi, will pass; in a while he’ll be home and right as rain.”

“Is that what happens in the story?”

“No.” I laughed; I couldn’t help myself. “‘As right as rain’ means all right.”

“I don’t think it is funny; for you perhaps it very funny; for me it is serious matter.” She rose and said, “I leave you now.” I saw her to the door, and without saying another word she stepped out of her slippers, into her shoes, and out of the granny room.

I did not see her or her husband for a week and then my faucet broke down and I had to speak to her about it, but all she said when I asked her to call the mechanic was, “I see.” Another week passed and no mechanic came. Then my air-cooler went wrong and it was uncomfortable without it at night, but again all she said was, “I see,” when I told her about it. A week went by, a week of sweaty nights and days of boiling water in kettles and saucepans to have a bath and to wash up. I called on my landlady again, but all I got was another, “I see.” I invoked the aid of Professor Naito and he advised me to move. “She wants you to go,” he said. “She does not mend your equipments. That is the sign.”

“I have a contract,” I protested.

“Better to go,” said Naito. “I will help you find other accommodations.”

“No, thank you. I think I know of a place.” I didn’t, but house agents advertised apartments almost every day in the Japan Times and I decided to apply for a flat through one of them, and not be beholden to Professor Naito in case things went wrong again.

Accommodation was found in the form of a flat that was more expensive, noisier, and with a far less attractive prospect than the granny room—it was high up and looked on to another block—but the landlord dealt through the agent and never appeared himself. Mrs. Hayashi accepted my departure with equanimity. With her face closed as if she had pulled a blind over it, she said, “Well, goodbye,” when I summoned her to the door by pushing the hateful two-noted bell and handed her my key. I left on a day in late July when the white oleander was in flower and the myrtle tree was about to blush. “I shall miss your garden,” I said, but she made no reply to this remark and kept the blind drawn.

In November when the maple trees began to glow like embers I felt the need of my overcoat, which after a search, I realized I had left behind in the granny room. Several days of wondering what I should say to Mrs. Hayashi passed before I steeled myself into telephoning her. Without any preliminary politenesses I simply stated who I was and asked about my coat. “Yes, it in the apartment,” she replied. “Why don’t you go there and ask for it? Someone is there.”

“All right, thank you. Any news of—” But she rang off before I had time to say her son’s name. When I called at the granny room there came to the door an American blonde with blue saucer eyes, dressed in a turtle-neck pullover and jeans and with a cigarette in her mouth.

“I’ve come for my coat. Did Mrs. Hayashi tell you?” I could hear the squawks of children inside the flat.

“Yeah, sure. Why don’t you come in?”

I followed the young mother into what used to be my sitting room. Two unbashful, tow-haired tots glared at me for a moment and then went on playing with some model cars. “Make yourself at home,” sang the American lady, “and I’ll see if I can find your coat. It’s a top coat, isn’t it?”

“Yes, gray, mohair.” I ignored the children because my eyes were drawn to the window by two dazzling maples outside. “How splendid the leaves are, aren’t they?” I said to the American mother when she came in from the bedroom with my overcoat on her arm.

“Yeah. I’m just crazy about them.” She, busy housewife that she was, took her cigarette out of her mouth and turned to her children, “Now I thought I told you, Chester, not to do that to your sister.”

“D’you see much of Mrs. Hayashi?”

“Yeah, sure. She’s really great. She comes up to baby-sit when Bill and I want to go out, and she doesn’t charge a cent. She just adores the kids. You’d think she’s their grandmother, really you would.”

“Do you know what happened to her son?”

“Son? I didn’t know she had a son. She’s never mentioned a son to me.”

[1980]