Before the Coffee Gets Cold

by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

  The first rule was that when returning to the past, the only people one could meet were those who had visited the cafe.

  That’s no problem for me, thought Kohtake. Fusagi has visited here countless times.

  The second rule was that the present wouldn’t be changed by returning to the past, no matter how hard one tried. Kohtake had already reassured herself that this rule wasn’t a problem. Of course, this did not only apply to letters. If, for example, a revolutionary treatment for Alzheimer’s disease was discovered and somehow taken back to the past to be tried on Fusagi, it would be unable to improve his condition.

  It seemed an unkind rule.

  The third rule was that, in order to return to the past, one had to sit in this seat in particular. By chance, the woman in the dress had gone to the toilet just at that moment. The narrow window of opportunity was perfectly timed for Kohtake to take advantage of. She had also heard – though didn’t know if it was true – that if you tried to forcefully remove the woman in the dress from her seat, she would curse you. So coincidence or not, Kohtake felt lucky indeed.

  But the rules did not end there.

  The fourth rule was that when one returned to the past, it was not possible to move from the chair in which one was seated. It wasn’t that you were stuck to the chair, but rather that if you did get up, you would be forcefully brought back to the present. As this cafe was in a basement, there was no mobile-phone signal, hence there was no chance of going back and calling someone who wasn’t there. Also, not being able to leave your seat meant you couldn’t go outside – yet another detestable rule.

  Kohtake had heard that several years ago the cafe had become quite famous, attracting a throng of customers who all wanted to return to the past. With all these maddening rules, no wonder people stopped coming, she thought.

  Kohtake suddenly realized that Kazu was silently waiting for her reply. ‘I have to drink the coffee before it goes cold, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is there anything else?’

  There was one other thing she wanted to know: how could she make sure that she returned to the right day and time?

  ‘You need to form a strong image of the day you want to return to,’ Kazu added, as if reading her mind.

  Simply being asked to form an image was rather vague. ‘An image?’ Kohtake asked.

  ‘A day before Fusagi forgot you. A day when he was thinking of passing you the letter . . . and a day when he brought the letter with him to the cafe.’

  A day when he still remembered her – it was a rough guess, but she remembered a day in summer three years ago. It was a time before Fusagi had shown any symptoms.

  A day when he meant to hand her the letter – this was difficult. If she hadn’t received it, how could she know? Yet it would be meaningless to return to a day before he’d written the letter. She decided she should simply visualize an image of Fusagi writing to her.

  And a day when he brought the letter with him to the cafe – this one was important. Even if she managed to go back in time and meet him, if he didn’t have the letter, everything would become pointless. Luckily, she knew that he normally put all his important things in his black zippered portfolio, and he would carry this with him. If it was a love letter, he wouldn’t leave it lying around at home. He would definitely be carrying it with him in his zippered portfolio so that she wouldn’t happen upon it.

  She didn’t know the day when he meant to give it to her, but where there was a bag, there was a way. She formed an image of Fusagi carrying his zippered portfolio with him.

  ‘Are you ready?’ said Kazu in a calm, quiet voice.

  ‘Just a moment.’ She took a deep breath. She formed the images one more time. ‘Day he doesn’t forget . . . letter . . . day he came . . .’ she chanted softly.

  OK, enough messing around.

  ‘I’m ready,’ she said, staring directly into Kazu’s eyes.

  Kazu gave a small nod. She set the empty coffee cup in front of Kohtake and carefully picked up the silver kettle from the tray in her right hand. Her ballerina-like motions were efficient and beautiful.

  ‘Just remember . . .’ Kazu paused, facing Kohtake with downcast eyes. ‘Drink the coffee before it goes cold.’

  These soft words echoed through the silent cafe. Kohtake sensed how tense the atmosphere had become.

  With a serious and ceremonial air, Kazu began pouring coffee into the cup.

  A thin stream of pitch-black coffee poured from the narrow spout of the silver kettle. Unlike the gurgling sound made by coffee poured from a carafe with a wide mouth, the coffee filled the white coffee cup silently and ever so slowly.

  Kohtake had never seen such a kettle before. It was a little smaller than those she had seen at other cafes. Solidly built, it looked very elegant and refined. The coffee is probably special as well, she thought.

  As such thoughts were passing through her mind, a wisp of steam rose from the now-full cup. At that moment, everything around Kohtake began to ripple and shimmer. Her entire field of vision suddenly seemed surreal. She recalled the glass of Seven Happinesses she recently downed. Perhaps I’m feeling its effects?

  No. This was definitely different. What she was experiencing was far more alarming. Her body had also begun rippling and shimmering. She had become the steam coming off the coffee. It seemed as if everything around her was unravelling.

  Kohtake closed her eyes, not out of fear, but in an attempt to focus. If indeed she was now travelling back in time, she wanted to mentally prepare herself.

  The very first time Kohtake noticed a change in Fusagi, it was because of something he said. On the day he admitted out loud what had happened, Kohtake was preparing dinner while waiting for him to come home. A landscape gardener’s work does not simply involve pruning branches and raking leaves. He has to consider the balance between the house and the garden. The garden cannot be too colourful, nor can it be too plain. ‘The keyword is balance.’ That was what Fusagi had always said. His work day began early but finished at dusk. Unless there was a particular reason not to, Fusagi would come home straight away. So when Kohtake didn’t have a night shift, she would wait for him and they would eat together.

  On this occasion, night came, but Fusagi had still not come home. This was unusual behaviour, but Kohtake assumed he must have gone out drinking with colleagues.

  When, finally, he did come home, it was two hours later than usual. Normally, when he came home he would always ring the doorbell three times. But that night, he didn’t ring. Instead, Kohtake heard the sound of the door knob turning and a voice from outside saying, ‘It’s me.’

  On hearing his voice, she rushed and opened the door in a panic. She thought he must have hurt himself in some way that prevented him from ringing the doorbell. But there he was, looking as he always did: dressed simply in his grey gardening smock with his navy breeches. He had taken his tool bag from his shoulder, and, looking a little ashamed of himself, admitted, ‘I got lost.’

  That had happened around the end of summer two years ago.

  Being a nurse, Kohtake had been trained to recognize early symptoms of a whole range of illnesses. This was more than simply forgetting something. She was sure of it. Soon after he began to forget whether or not he had done a task at work. After the illness had progressed a bit further, he would wake in the night and say out loud, ‘I forgot to do something important.’ When this happened, she wouldn’t argue with him; she focused on calming him and reassuring him that they could check up on it in the morning.

  She even consulted a doctor behind his back. She was keen to try anything that might slow the advancement of his disease, even if by just a little.

  But as the days went on, he began to forget more and more.

  He liked to travel. It wasn’t the travel itself that he liked, but the opportunity to visit gardens in different places. Kohtake always arranged to take her holidays at the same time as him so that they could go together. He would complain and sa
y he was going for work, but that didn’t bother her. While on a trip, his brow seemed permanently furrowed, but she knew that this was how he looked whenever he was doing something he liked.

  Even as his illness progressed, he didn’t stop travelling, but he did start visiting the same destination over and over again.

  After a while the illness began to affect their daily lives. He often forgot that he had bought things. More and more often, there would be days when he would ask, ‘Who bought this?’ and then spend the rest of the day in a bad mood. They lived in the apartment they had moved to after getting married, but he began not coming home and she would frequently get calls from the police. Then about six months ago, he started calling her by her maiden name, Kohtake.

  Finally the dizzy sensation of rippling and shimmering faded. Kohtake opened her eyes. She saw the slowly rotating ceiling fan . . . her hands, and her feet. She was no longer steam.

  However, she didn’t know whether she had actually gone back in time. The cafe had no windows and the lighting was always dim. Unless one looked at a watch, there was no way of knowing whether it was day or night. The three solid-looking clocks on the wall all showed completely different times.

  But something was different. Kazu had vanished. Kei was nowhere to be seen either. Kohtake tried to calm herself, but she was unable to stop her heart from beating faster and faster. She once again looked around the cafe.

  ‘There’s no one here,’ she muttered. The absence of Fusagi, who she had gone back to meet, was a huge disappointment.

  She looked at the ceiling fan in a daze and considered her plight.

  It was a shame, but perhaps it was for the best. Actually, in some ways she was relieved. Of course she wanted to read the letter. But she couldn’t help feeling guilty that she was sneaking a peek, so to speak. Fusagi would have surely been cross to learn that she had come from the future to read what he had written.

  It wasn’t as if anything she did would change the present anyway. It didn’t matter if she never read it. If by reading it his condition would somehow improve, then of course she would – she would give her life for that. But the letter had nothing to do with his condition. It wouldn’t change the fact that he had forgotten her, either.

  She coolly and rationally considered her predicament. Just earlier, she had the shock of him asking her whether they’d met before. It had really upset her. She had known this time would come, but it still caught her off balance, and brought her here.

  She was beginning to feel more composed.

  If this was the past, then it held nothing of use. I should return to the present. Even if I am just a stranger to Fusagi, I can be his nurse. I must do what I can. She remembered her heart’s resolve and reaffirmed it.

  ‘I doubt it’s a love letter,’ she muttered to herself as she reached out for the cup of coffee.

  CLANG-DONG

  Someone had entered the cafe. To enter this cafe, one has to descend stairs from the ground level, and go in through a large door about two metres high, made out of solid wood. It’s when this door opens that the bell sounds, but the visitor does not immediately appear at the entrance, as a small patch of flooring must be crossed first. Once the bell rings, there is a time lag of a few seconds before the visitor takes those one or two steps and enters the cafe.

  So when the bell rang, Kohtake had no idea who had come in. Was it Nagare? Or Kei? She noticed how nervous the suspense was making her. Her heart was racing in excitement. It wasn’t the kind of thing she normally did – a once in a lifetime experience, to be exact. If it was Kei, she would probably ask me why. Kazu, on the other hand, would just probably deliver her usual customer service . . . that would probably be a disappointment.

  Kohtake played out various scenarios in her mind. But the person who appeared was neither Kei nor Kazu. Standing in the doorway was Fusagi.

  ‘Oh . . .’ Kohtake said. His sudden appearance had taken her by surprise. It was him she had come back to see, but she hadn’t been expecting him to walk into the cafe right then.

  He was wearing a navy polo shirt and beige knee-length shorts. It was what he often wore on his days off. It must have been hot outside, as he was fanning himself with his black zippered portfolio.

  She sat unmoving in her chair. He stood at the entrance for a while, staring at her with an odd look.

  ‘Hi there,’ she began.

  She felt clueless as to how she was going to broach what she had come to talk about. He had never stared at her like this. Not since they met – let alone since they had been married. It was both flattering and embarrassing.

  She had formed a hazy image of three years ago but she didn’t know how to make sure that that was where she was. Maybe she hadn’t imagined it right, and if that was the case, what was to say that by some mistake she’d got the three right, but she had only returned to three days ago? Just when she began to think she might have been too vague . . .

  ‘Oh hello. I didn’t expect to see you here,’ he said matter-of-factly.

  Fusagi sounded like he had before he became ill. He was as she had pictured him – that is to say, he was how she remembered him.

  ‘I was waiting, but you didn’t come home,’ he added.

  He looked away from her gaze. He coughed nervously with a furrowed brow, as if uncomfortable with something.

  ‘So it’s really you?’ she said.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You know who I am?’

  ‘What?’ He looked at her with bemusement.

  But she was, of course, not joking. She had to make sure. It was obvious that she had returned to the past. But when? Before or after the onset of the Alzheimer’s?

  ‘Just say my name,’ she said.

  ‘Are you going to stop messing with me?’ he spat out crossly.

  Though he hadn’t answered the question, she smiled with relief. ‘No, it’s OK,’ she said, shaking her head a little.

  This short exchange told her everything she needed to know. She had definitely gone back. The Fusagi standing before her was Fusagi from before he had lost his memory. And if the image she pictured had worked, it was the Fusagi of three years ago. Kohtake smiled as she gave her coffee an unnecessary stir.

  Fusagi observed Kohtake and her peculiar behaviour. ‘You’re acting a bit strange today,’ he said, looking around the cafe, as if he had just realized no one else was there.

  ‘Nagare, you here?’ he called to the kitchen.

  With no reply, he went behind the counter, flapping his setta sandals as he walked. He peeked into the back room, but no one was there.

  ‘That’s odd. No one’s here,’ he grumbled. He sat down on the counter seat furthest away from Kohtake.

  She coughed on purpose to get his attention. He looked at her, fed up.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Why are you sitting there?’

  ‘Why not? What’s stopping me?’

  ‘Why not come and sit here?’

  She rapped on the table to beckon him to sit in the empty seat facing her. But he winced at the idea.

  ‘No. I’m fine,’ he replied.

  ‘Oh, come on now . . . Why not?’

  ‘A mature married couple, sitting down together like that . . . nah,’ Fusagi said, a little crossly. The crevice between his brows deepened. He was dismissive of the idea, but when his brow furrowed in that way, it wasn’t that he was displeased. On the contrary, it was a sign that he was in a good mood.

  She knew all too well it was meant to conceal his embarrassment.

  ‘True. We’re a married couple,’ she agreed, smiling. She was so happy to hear the word couple from his lips.

  ‘Ugh . . . Don’t be so sentimental . . .’

  Now anything he said brought back waves of nostalgia . . . and happiness. She absent-mindedly sipped the coffee.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ she said out loud, as she realized how much the coffee had cooled. It suddenly dawned on her how limited her time there was. She had to do what she had to do be
fore it went completely cold.

  ‘Look, there’s something I need to ask you.’

  ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘Is there anything . . . anything you want to hand me?’

  Kohtake’s heart started racing. Fusagi had written it before the onset of his illness, it may have been a love letter. Totally impossible . . . she was telling herself. But if it were . . . Her wish to read it was now running wild, reassured by the fact that no matter what she did, the present would not change.

  ‘What?’

  ‘About this by this . . .’

  She drew the size of the envelope in the air using her fingers, just as Kazu had shown her. Her direct approach provoked alarm in his face, as he glared at her, completely motionless. I’ve blown it, she thought on seeing his expression. She remembered that something similar had happened soon after they were married.

  Fusagi had a present ready to give her for her birthday. On the day before, by accident, she saw it among his belongings. Never before having received a present from him, she was overjoyed at the prospect of receiving this first gift. On the day of her birthday, when he had returned home from work, she was so excited that she asked him, ‘Don’t you have something special for me today?’ But on hearing this, he went very quiet. ‘No, nothing in particular,’ he said. The next day, she found her present in the bin. It was the lilac handkerchief.

  She felt she had repeated the same mistake. He hated being told to do something that he had been meaning to do himself. Now she feared that even if he was carrying the letter, he would never give it to her – especially if it was a love letter. She regretted her carelessness even more so because time was of the essence. He still looked alarmed. She smiled at him.

  ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean anything. Please forget it,’ she said in a light-hearted way. Then to emphasize that it didn’t really matter to her either way, she tried to make small talk. ‘Hey, I just thought: why don’t we do sukiyaki tonight?’

  It was his favourite dish. He seemed to be in a sulky mood, but this usually lifted his spirits.

  She slowly reached for the cup and felt the temperature of the coffee with her palm. It was still OK. She still had time. She could cherish these precious moments with him. She wanted to forget the letter for the time being. Judging by his reaction, he definitely had written her something. If he hadn’t, he would have responded in no uncertain terms, ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ If she allowed the current situation to play out, he would end up throwing the letter away. She decided to change strategy. She would try to alter his mood to prevent a repeat of what happened on her birthday.