Inside, they walked in silence beneath the shade of the trees. Rina watched the dappled shadows play across the leather of Kaitarō’s jacket, softening its lines and cut. As the path curved, they paused to let a jogger and then a young mother with her children pass them. Kaitarō relaxed completely once they entered the park, and Rina found it harder to steal glances at him, now that he’d returned his full attention to her. Instead, she glanced up at the sprawling branches of the giant ‘Fabled Pine’ and caught a glimpse of her reflection in the small hyotan pond at its base, the remnants of an ancient pleasure garden where once lovers used to meet.
‘So you grew up near here?’ Kaitarō asked, and Rina nodded.
‘Just up the hill, in Meguro. My father still lives there, actually.’
‘Should I have chosen somewhere else?’ Kaitarō asked. ‘Is it too . . . familiar?’
‘No!’ Rina shook her head and smiled. She paused to take in the abundance of greenery all around them, the sweet scent of late spring. ‘It’s perfect,’ she said. ‘A good choice.’ Beneath the canopy of the trees she eyed his leather jacket and dark jeans, his city loafers. ‘Don’t you like nature?’ she asked. ‘A real city guy?’ she teased when he looked ruefully at her. Rina smiled and began to walk up the path, but he put his hand on her arm and she turned, surprised by the sudden intensity of his gaze.
‘Actually, I’m not from the city,’ he said.
‘No?’
‘I’m from Hokkaido.’ Kaitarō said it slowly and without inflection. He watched her, waiting for a reaction. ‘From a small fishing village, north of Sapporo.’
Rina stood still while the breeze lifted the lace edge of her collar, causing it to rise up her neck.
‘I worked at a seaweed plant,’ Kaitarō continued, ‘my father at the fisheries.’
‘So you don’t belong in Tokyo?’
‘No.’
‘So this Kaitarō,’ Rina smiled slightly, ‘with his leather jackets and town polish, he’s—’
‘Fake.’
‘I see,’ she said. ‘So who are you really?’ Rina looked at him for a moment, her eyes grave. ‘Are you still a photographer?’
Startled, Kaitarō laughed. ‘Yes – I mean it’s not my day job – but yes. At heart that’s what I want to be.’
Slowly, Rina’s lips stretched into a grin. ‘Phew!’ she said, delighting at the look in his eyes, and started off again up the path. Rina smiled as she quickened her pace ahead of him. She could feel the warmth of his gaze as he watched her, her own rising elation. Finally, she left the main path and started towards a swathe of forest. When he continued to hang back, as though uncertain of what she might do next, she turned to face him. ‘Come on!’ she called, laughing as he ran to catch up.
Later, they sat together outside a small café by the edge of a pond. There was a breeze blowing, and sunlight caught on the water as it flowed into the reeds where brown ducks swerved and dived, searching for food. Rina could feel the sun at her back; she could see her shadow stretching out to the side. She closed her eyes and smiled. The café was not large, no more than a kiosk with some tables beside the water, but she felt at peace there, more so than she had in a long time. When they had first arrived, they headed straight for the glass cabinet of cakes. Rina had felt a flutter in her stomach as she spotted a raspberry cheesecake. She looked up to see Kaitarō’s eyes, equally bright and focused on her. ‘Shall we?’ he asked, and she had smiled at his timidity. ‘I don’t want to force you,’ he said. ‘I mean, if it’s only my obsession,’ he added until she turned to him. ‘I love it too,’ she said, and he ordered two slices.
Now with their empty plates stacked to one side, a black folder lay open on the table between them. It was her portfolio, a silly thing, a sample of her work from long ago, but still, she had brought it to show him. Kaitarō was holding one of her photographs in his hands. She could see him following the lines of the landscape, analysing the angle of the light as it settled in the bay. This was Rina’s favourite photograph, the last to be exhibited before she left her career for good. The print run had been small, only five exhibition-size pieces and all of them had sold. This one small version was all she had left.
The picture had been taken early in her marriage, in secret, on a winter day trip to Shimoda. She had caught a taxi from the station and climbed down the rocky embankment in front of her home to the beach. Kicking off her shoes, Rina walked on the freezing sand all the way to the edge of the sea. She watched the waves curl, icy and languid, beneath a stormy sky, and as the water unfurled she pressed the shutter, capturing the light as it pierced the clouds and hit the waves. It was at this moment, as she stood on the beach, staring through her lens, registering all the gradations of black and white, the power of the natural world, that she first felt Sumiko leap inside her, jumping out of the monochrome picture like a silver fish.
It represented so much, this photograph: all she had wanted to achieve and what was left. She still remembered printing it – the alkaline scents of her darkroom, how she’d experimented with dodging and burning, her hands flying between the light source and the photographic paper to create the perfect accentuation of luminescence and shadow. She didn’t expect Kaitarō to see any of this there, but she liked how careful he was with it, the attentiveness with which he looked at the composition, the way he wiped the table surface brushing away stray crumbs before he set the photograph down so that it would not get dirty. Something about the way he held the very edges of the picture, so that the oil on his fingers would not soil it, made her smile. And perhaps he did see what was there, for she watched as his finger traced the lines she had created, hovering over the space where her own hand had hovered as she let the light in through her fingers, drawing out the exposure, burning the details of the waves onto the paper.
‘You stopped working after this?’ Kaitarō said. It was more of a statement than a question, but Rina nodded in assent.
‘I had completed a series on Shimoda, had taken part in a few shared exhibitions, but after this photo was shown I—’
‘Focused on your marriage,’ he supplied. Rina nodded once more, biting her thumbnail in silence, but she did not object to what he had said. There was no judgement in his tone, only a statement of fact.
‘You’ve never thought to include Sumiko in your work?’ he asked.
At this Rina smiled. ‘I have wanted to. Sometimes when I’m in Shimoda with her and we’re in the forest above our house or down by the bay, I catch the light glancing off her figure or illuminating her face as she turns to smile at me, but I – I don’t know how to bridge the gap. I can’t imagine a new project; my ideas have dried up.’ Rina looked down at her hands, twisting them in her lap. After a few moments she felt Kaitarō lean towards her and she lifted her eyes to his.
‘Rina, you can do anything,’ he said, ‘anything at all.’ It was a grandiose statement, probably a platitude, but there was something about his expression, the energy in his eyes, that made her want to believe him. His hope and encouragement kindled something within her.
‘Perhaps,’ she said with a small smile.
Drawing her portfolio across the table she closed it and returned it to her bag. ‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘Have you ever included anyone you loved in your work?’
Kaitarō grimaced and Rina laughed, happy to turn the conversation towards him.
‘No,’ Kaitarō said quietly.
‘No one?’
Kaitarō shook his head, wincing once more at the determined look in her eyes.
‘There’s not a single person in the whole—’
‘Perhaps my uncle.’
‘Your uncle?’
‘He taught me photography,’ Kaitarō said, looking away and rubbing at the back of his neck. ‘The pictures I showed you – I was with him when I took them.’
Rina was silent for a while, watching him. S
he thought of the first coffee they’d shared together after the lecture in Ginza. He had told her of a mentor, a photographer he worked for, but she had not realised he was family. She thought too of the photos he had shown her then, of the sun rising above the fields, golden rays coating translucent stems of rice, of giant greenhouses stuffed with chrysanthemums for trading, a single dragonfly gliding on the wind with wings clear as cellophane. They’re just postcard shots, he had said, but they weren’t like any postcards she’d ever seen. She thought they were perhaps experiments in landscape from a trip to the far north, had envied him his mentor and their ability to travel for work. She hadn’t realised that he’d been showing her his home or noticed that there were not, not in any of the photographs, any people.
‘When were they taken?’ she asked. ‘The pictures you showed me?’
‘Just before I moved to Tokyo.’
‘You haven’t seen him since?’
Rina waited, watching him as he glanced at her tentatively, not wanting to push too hard.
‘I haven’t been home,’ he said finally. ‘I doubt my uncle has either; he wouldn’t be welcome.’
Rina felt her forehead crease into a frown and swiftly smoothed it. Kaitarō lowered his gaze to the mottled grey surface of the table and his eyelid twitched. She had thought he was merely shy about where he was from. Rina knew insecurity well and she didn’t blame him for his, but she realised now that there was a lot more to it and that they were both on new ground, for clearly he didn’t talk about this often. She waited once more, hoping he would go on.
‘My father blamed him,’ he said at last. ‘He liked to blame people.’
‘I know someone like that,’ Rina said softly, giving Kaitarō a small smile when he looked up at her. ‘So your uncle was a photographer?’ She pressed. ‘When did he teach you?’
‘On and off, as I was growing up,’ Kaitarō replied. A grin tugged at the corner of his mouth, and Rina was relieved to see that she had asked the right question, that these memories at least were good.
‘He travelled a lot, was a loner at heart, but when he was in the area he took me out with him. I started as his assistant, keeping his cameras loaded, cleaning the darkrooms we used, running endless water baths.’ He paused. ‘Of course, there was that time early on when I used the fixer instead of the developer and wiped his film!’
Rina snorted with laughter, but it was the sympathetic kind. ‘We’ve all been there,’ she said, and he smiled with her.
‘Eventually, he let me get my hands on his camera, and then it was all he could do to take it away from me.’ Kaitarō laughed, and Rina loved the note of satisfaction in his voice. ‘The work wasn’t steady by any means, but when he could get it, and when it could pay for both of us, I came along and he taught me what he knew.’
‘What work did you do with him?’
Kaitarō grinned. ‘Not high art, that’s for sure. We used to set up temporary photography stalls outside the train stations. Sometimes we’d get bigger projects – local festivals, a high-school graduation – but mostly it was local matchmakers needing shots of prospects, or boyfriends and their girls, smoking cheap cigarettes.’
‘Motorbikes and leather?’ Rina asked, laughing when Kaitarō nodded. ‘Did you have a bike?’ she asked.
Kaitarō smiled. ‘I did. Took some years, but I saved up the profits we made from those kids and bought my own camera too. Stupid punks, I just wanted their money.’
‘Money is useful.’
‘It is indeed,’ he said, and their eyes met in understanding.
‘He sounds like a good uncle,’ she said.
Kaitarō shrugged, looking down for a moment, and Rina held her breath. She knew, could just feel, that they had reached the part he had been avoiding. She wondered if he would trust her enough to continue. He clasped his hands on the table in front of him and kneaded his knuckles. Then he glanced up at her with such trepidation that Rina wanted to place her hands over his, but he dropped them to his lap and looked away. It was as though he were deciding something and Rina could only wait.
‘I had just finished school when he came back,’ he said after a while, his voice low. ‘I’d been drifting since graduation, unable to find work on the trawlers and growing idle with only my evenings at the seaweed plant.’ Again he paused and Rina could see he was still wary of her.
‘My father never liked my uncle,’ he said. ‘He tolerated him for my mother’s sake, but he didn’t respect him. Dad called him a wanderer, but he didn’t mean it as a compliment. My uncle didn’t really have a home, he would travel for months and then suddenly reappear with a new jacket or flashy clothes. Whenever he did, my father would say it was all right to earn a bit extra with a hobby, but it was no way to make a living. That year, I wanted to work with him again, but my father wouldn’t allow it. When my uncle came round to try to talk to him, Dad threw him out of the house. He was a good uncle, but there was only so much he could give. In the end he left for the west coast; he never did say exactly where.
‘I still went out with my camera though. My mother spoke up for me for a while, but as the weeks passed my father fought with her more and more. I’d hear him shouting from the end of the street. I can still remember the smell of him as I opened our front door – blood and sardines, the stink of kerosene from the boats. He wanted me to be like him. He thought I was like him.’ Kaitarō glanced up nervously, but Rina was just listening, her eyes on his face.
‘I tried to find more acceptable work, I evaded and dissembled, but in the end it—’
‘Came to a head?’ Rina offered, and he nodded, still looking down.
‘My father got me a contract on one of the boats, a full-time apprenticeship. It was a good offer, but I didn’t want it. When I came home one night he was waiting up for me. The house was quiet. I had thought they were asleep, but when I went into the kitchen he was there. His buddies had told him I turned down the job. He rose to meet me. I was holding my camera in my hand and tried to set it on the table, but he snatched it from me. My mother came in from the bedroom. She reached out for him, tried to calm him, but he turned and smacked her, hard. I remember how she staggered and fell.’
Rina swallowed. This was violence like she had never witnessed. Anger expressed through force.
‘I did nothing,’ Kaitarō said, eventually. ‘Most times, we would both try to dodge or slip out till he slept it off, but that night he really hit her. It’s hard to do, you know? Takes effort to knock someone out cold.’
‘It wasn’t your fault, Kai.’
‘But it was,’ he said. ‘I tried to stay out of the house. I came home later and later, but in the end I just made him worse.
‘That night – I still hadn’t gone to help her – I was waiting for him to come at me, could see him building up to it. Mum kept a miso pot on the windowsill. It was too old and cracked for cooking, so she grew herbs in it. He hefted it up and it exploded near my ear, shattering into shards of dirt and old fired clay. As this happened, Mum started to come round and her recovery distracted my father. She snapped at him to stop it and I could see her cheek beginning to swell. Then she told me to get out.’ For a moment, he looked at her steadily as though to emphasise this point. ‘She told me to leave and I did. I gave them my camera as rent, sold my bike, and crossed the Tsugaru Strait. I haven’t been back.’ He looked swiftly away, but Rina had already seen the anxiety in his eyes, the panic that he had told her too much too soon, that he shouldn’t have told her anything at all.
‘You chose to look after yourself. That’s not a crime,’ Rina said. She leaned forward across the table, looking at the refined young man sitting opposite her. He was so resilient, contained. ‘You are nothing like him,’ she insisted, and Kaitarō lifted his head.
‘Rina, I hope not,’ he whispered. There was so much hope in his face.
‘Kai,’ she said, and his eyes warmed at h
is name on her tongue, ‘I know so.’ Finally, she slid her hand across to cover his. He drew a ragged breath as she touched him, his eyes and hers moving to their fingers intertwined on the tabletop. Rina felt the texture of him through her palm, the slide of skin against skin and the warm grip of his hand as it enveloped her own.
‘You haven’t been back?’
Kaitarō shook his head.
Rina nodded. ‘I would have left too, if I could,’ she said, while his hold on her hand tightened, drawing her towards him so they sat very close. There was such an affinity between them, she thought, that he must know she understood. He said her name and the timbre of his voice stroked up her spine.
‘Rina. When can I see you again?’
Follow Me
‘What’s it like?’ Rina asked.
‘What?’
‘To follow people?’
‘You want my job?’ Kaitarō took a sip of his coffee, watching her over the rim of his cup. He had told her he was a private detective, and it was close enough. As close as he dared.
‘It can’t be that hard,’ she said.
His smile broadened as he looked at her; she was so fascinated by his work. She loved to watch people, was so inquisitive and nosy; it must be the fact that they were both photographers at heart and given to voyeurism. ‘I’ll show you,’ he said, stepping down from the bar stool. As he waited for her to put on her coat, he checked the bill and set down some notes.
‘Don’t you want your change?’ she asked, ever frugal. The question made him smile, and as she passed before him he caught – all too briefly – the fresh scent of her hair. ‘Come with me, Rina,’ he said, falling into step beside her.
He led her out into the sunshine, the glass doors of the coffee shop swinging shut behind them. ‘Who should we choose?’
‘That one, the pretentious one in the trilby.’
What's Left of Me is Yours Page 10
