by Yoko Ogawa
Was she asking me out? That seemed to be where this was going. If so, I had no objections. She seemed nice enough. At the same time, though, I knew better than to jump to conclusions—and her invitation felt more like an apology than an attempt at flirtation.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“To a French restaurant,” she said with some hesitation, her eyes still fixed on the floor. “I don’t want to go, but I have to. We’ll have lunch … that’s about it. It’ll be painless.” Her whole body seemed to shrink with each word she spoke, as though she hoped to hide behind that bookshelf, deep in the shadows of the library. “I know this must seem kind of random. Just tell me if you don’t want to go.”
Sunlight streamed in through the window to the west, turning her long hair amber. I could hear in the distance the sound of basketballs bouncing against the gymnasium floor.
“Sure, I’d be happy to go,” I said. “Just to have lunch, right? Why not?”
I resisted the urge to press for details, or to ask why she had chosen me of all people to go with her. I worried that if she were forced to say more, she might shrink farther away and disappear altogether.
“Thank you,” she said, with obvious relief. Then, at last, she looked up and smiled slightly, but I felt a pang of disappointment.
* * *
“My mother is sick,” the girl told me in the subway on the way to the restaurant. “Did you know she’s in the hospital?” I shook my head. I had heard that she lived alone with her mother, but that was all I knew about her. A rumor had circulated around school that she was someone’s illegitimate child. I didn’t remember much about it.
“She has liver cancer. She won’t live much longer.” Her words were clear and audible over the rumbling of the subway. “The other day she told me that if anything happened to her I should contact this man, that he would help me.”
She pulled a business card from her skirt pocket. It was printed with the name of a relatively well-known politician, a man who had recently served in some important post, as minister of labor or perhaps postmaster general. The edges of the card were creased and worn, as though her mother had been keeping it for some time.
“How bad is she?” I asked, not knowing quite what to say. I was afraid of hurting her.
“Four months in the hospital. I’ve been home alone all that time.”
She was wearing a blouse with a floral pattern and a skirt of some soft material. The collar and cuffs of the blouse were neatly ironed. She looked older in these clothes than she did in her school uniform.
She was an inconspicuous girl, perhaps the quietest in our grade. She almost never spoke in class, and when asked to stand up and translate a passage from English, or to solve a math problem on the board, she did it as discreetly as possible, without fuss. She had no friends to speak of, belonged to no clubs, and she ate her lunch in a corner by herself.
Still, no one bullied her or treated her like an outcast. She wasn’t disagreeable, just easy to ignore. You could even say her silence suited her. The pale skin, the long, straight hair, the shadows under her eyes when she bowed her head—it all lent her a kind of tranquillity that I think we didn’t want to disturb.
But when someone did take notice of her, it seemed she was always apologizing for it—I suppose “apologetic” might be the best word to describe her. “I’m sorry, please ignore me…” You could almost hear her murmur the words, like an incantation, a way of conjuring a still place for herself.
“Are you meeting him for the first time today?” I asked, glancing down at the business card in her hand.
“Yes.”
“He never came to see you, even when you were little?”
“Never,” she said, shaking her head.
She was so close to me I wondered if she could feel my breath. The card trembled in her hand.
* * *
A waiter led us into a private room at the back of the restaurant, where the man was already seated at a table too large for three, sipping a garish red cocktail. For some reason I had assumed he would be accompanied by a secretary or a bodyguard, but he was alone.
A chandelier hung from the ceiling and flowers had been arranged around the room. The silverware gleamed, the tablecloth was blindingly white.
They barely greeted each other, exchanging little more than vague, meaningless grunts. She sat down without introducing me, and I realized the moment for such formalities had already passed.
Sitting with her back straight, she studied the menu from top to bottom, though she seemed to have little interest in selecting something to eat. This went on for a while. “Order whatever you like,” the man repeated several times, just to break the unbearable tension, but she was intent to make him stew in silence. I ran my finger along the edge of the elaborately folded napkin.
“Is there anything you don’t like to eat?” he asked.
“No,” we said at nearly the same time.
He ordered a great deal of food, speaking so quickly that the waiter could barely keep up. Clearly he was accustomed to giving orders. The dishes arrived one after another and we made short work of them, our chewing and swallowing the only sound in the room. The man downed another drink.
He was short and solidly built, but he looked older than he did on television. His hair was thinning and the skin on his neck sagged. There were liver spots on his face and hands.
I would have expected a man of his power and position to be more arrogant or condescending, but his daughter had fully succeeded in making him uncomfortable. He groped for topics of conversation and was disconcerted when nothing succeeded in coaxing a response.
“What’s your favorite subject in school?” he said. It was the kind of question you asked a child, and it occurred to me that there were more important topics he might have broached—her mother’s condition, their economic difficulties, perhaps the apology he owed them. I began to worry that my presence was inhibiting him, making things complicated.
“Classics,” she said, setting down her knife and fork and wiping her mouth with her napkin. “And English … and music. I guess music is my favorite.”
“Music, is it? That’s fine. How about you?” he asked me.
I blurted out “Biology” for lack of anything better to say. Biology, P.E.—What did it matter? We were just talking to fill the silence.
“Do you play a sport?”
“No, not really.”
“Ah, they’ve used truffles in this consommé,” he suddenly remarked with obvious pleasure. “Do you like them?”
“I’ve never had them before.”
“They’re something of an acquired taste.… And what do you do when you’re not in school?”
“Play with the cat, do the laundry, listen to music—stuff like that.”
The waiter brought out the fish course. The man had ordered sea bream with a pea-green sauce; his daughter had scallops meunière, I had a steamed lobster.
She ate with impeccable table manners, her back straight, her knees flush together, her feet planted evenly on the floor. She kept her eyes on her plate, and raised them only when answering a question and then only slightly, as though she were looking at a spot near the butter dish at the center of the table.
I glanced over at her whenever I had the chance. Her hair fell in dainty wisps around her face. She had nice features—an intelligent brow, a firm jaw—but she was difficult to read. On the one hand, she could be pretty tough on her father, but at the same time she was her usual apologetic self. She seemed to doubt that she was worthy to be eating these delicious scallops, or even to be here at the table.
Next came the meat course, served with a flourish by several waiters. I was already full, but the two of them went on eating almost greedily, so I forced myself to eat the meat as well.
“Do you play an instrument?” he asked. “The piano? The guitar? The violin, perhaps?”
“No,” she said. “We don’t have any instruments at home.”
He coughed, then his knife struck the plate with a harsh clatter. She shook her head, dismissing him.
I suddenly recalled that I’d spoken with this girl once before, at the beginning of third grade. Why had I forgotten it until now? It was after classes had ended for the day. I was passing the music room, but I stopped, sensing someone was inside. When I looked in, she was standing on tiptoe, reaching up to open the glass door of a cabinet. She was alone. I don’t know why I stood there watching her. I must have been curious. Or perhaps it was the glimpse of snow-white skin I saw on her wrist as she raised her arm. The cabinet door creaked and she took a deep breath as she reached for the violin inside. She examined it, almost fearfully, and then clutched it to her chest. “What are you doing?” I said. But I shouldn’t have interrupted her; I should have left her alone with the violin. She jumped at the sound of my voice. “Nothing,” she said, “I’m not doing anything,” and hurriedly replaced the violin in the cabinet. One of the strings must have struck the door, and a sound like the cry of a small bird floated across the room.
Dessert arrived: strawberry cake covered in a thick layer of whipped cream. The man wadded up his stained napkin and set it on the table.
“You’re welcome to your father’s as well,” he said, sliding his plate toward her.
An icy gust seemed to pass between them, and the word “father” hung in the air. I glanced over again and saw her devouring her cake, lips shiny with cream.
“No, thank you,” she said.
* * *
The man insisted on driving us home in the expensive black sedan he had parked in front of the restaurant, but she politely refused. We started walking, but when we came to the subway stop near the restaurant, she marched right past it and we continued on by foot all the way back to our neighborhood. She walked quickly, clutching the strap of her shoulder bag, eyes down on the sidewalk, and she said not a word the entire way.
I was afraid she was angry with me. She had brought me along, but I had been of no use whatsoever. I had eaten my fill of the fancy lunch but done nothing to make the meeting with her father any easier.
I tried to keep up with her, but not get too close, and I searched my head for something to say that might comfort her. But nothing came to me.
The sun began to set, and the sky turned a deep red. Some children flew past us on their bikes, heading home from the park. The sound of laughter on a television came from a house nearby. I caught a glimpse of a stray cat, its tail flicking as it darted down an alley. Though the evening was still, her hair fluttered beautifully, and I could see her ears, pale and transparent like the skin I had glimpsed that day in the music room. They bore no resemblance to those of the man at the restaurant. My chest felt tight. It seemed so many things—the unfamiliar food, the silence—were making me restless.
At last, and without warning, she stopped, like a wind-up toy that has run down.
“Thank you,” she said, looking back at me. Her voice was hoarse, she sounded exhausted.
We sat down for a moment on the steps of an old building. There was a barbershop across the way, and a nursery school beyond that. Behind the buildings there sloped a small hill that had been planted with fruit trees. A motorcycle passed, then someone walking a dog, but there was little here to disturb us.
“We should rest a bit,” I said.
“You’re right,” she said, smoothing her skirt. The soft material brushed against my leg. Her face was disappearing in the dusk. The sweat on my back gave me a chill.
“Where is your mother?” I asked.
“Chuo Hospital.”
“I’d like to visit her,” I said.
“Really? That would be wonderful. I’m sure she’d be pleased. She gets so lonely.”
An ant crawled between our shoes on the hard concrete steps.
“My mother is a typist,” she said, looking up at me. “A really good one. The fastest and most accurate in her office. She can type anything—letters, reports, the minutes of a meeting. She’s even won prizes for it. Her fingers are perfect, long and very flexible.”
“You have beautiful fingers, too,” I said, looking down at her hands where they rested on her lap.
“She didn’t start out wanting to be a typist. She wanted to play an instrument—and I’m sure she would have been really good at music.”
The stray note from the violin in the music room seemed to echo in my ears.
“This used to be a post office,” she said, as if to quiet the sound in my head. She nodded at the building behind us. “A long time ago, when we were in kindergarten.”
A rusted sign hung above the door, the characters for “post office” barely legible.
The door was locked up with a chain, but just slightly ajar. She peered inside through the narrow opening. “Look!” she called, sounding happier than she had all afternoon.
I put my eye to the crack as well, and at first I could see nothing in the dim light. Gradually, as my eyes adjusted, the inside of the building came into focus.
“Weird…,” I murmured. The building was filled almost to the ceiling with piles of small, dark spheres of some sort, like tennis balls.
“Kiwis,” she said.
“Kiwis?” I repeated.
“Let’s have a look.”
“But it’s locked.”
“Who cares?” she said, and then she picked up a rock and began to pound at the chain. Her composure vanished as she viciously struck it over and over, until at last it snapped and the door swung open. We stepped inside.
Indeed, they were kiwis, just like the ones they sell at the grocery store. But the scene before us was grotesque and dizzying. We moved slowly into the room, which was cluttered with shelves and desks and cardboard boxes. A pencil sharpener, a red ink pad, and a dusty scale sat on the counter. But the rest of the space was filled with kiwis, enormous heaps of them. The air was both sweet and sour. She reached down to pick up a piece of fruit. I watched, afraid she might disturb the pile and bring it tumbling down on us.
The kiwi was perfect, not a bruise or a blemish anywhere.
“Don’t they look delicious?” she said, gazing at the mountain of fruit. “More than you could ever eat!” Then she bit into the one in her hand. I could hear her teeth sink into the flesh.
For a long time, she stood there eating kiwis, one after another. She consumed them like a starving child, dizzy with hunger. Her carefully ironed blouse and her beautiful hands grew sticky. I could only watch and wait until she ate through her sadness.
* * *
When she showed up for school on Monday, she was once more the unremarkable girl I had always known. We never spoke after that day.
Her mother died at the start of winter vacation, and I had not kept my promise to visit her in the hospital.
Rather than continuing on to university, the girl went to a cooking school that specialized in pastry-making. The last time I saw her was at graduation. Some twenty years have passed since our lunch with her father. That Sunday—and the moment in the music room—sank into a hole at the bottom of my sea of memories.
I did phone her once, however, five or six years later, when I came across an obituary for the man we had dined with at the French restaurant. The phone number of the bakery where she was working was in the alumni register.
“I’m afraid I wasn’t much use to you that day,” I said.
“No, you can’t imagine how it helped to have you there. I mean it. I’m truly grateful. At the time I … I…”
She started to cry on the other end of the line. Not because the man was dead. I realized she was finally letting flow the tears she could not cry at the post office, and that this sadness was coming to her peacefully from the distant past.
“I never thanked you properly back then,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
OLD MRS. J
My new apartment was in a building at the top of a hill. From my window, there was a wonderful view of the town spread out like a fan below and the sea beyond.
An editor I knew had recommended the place.
The hill was planted with fruit: a few grapevines and some peach and loquat trees. The rest was all kiwis. The orchards belonged to my landlady, Mrs. J, but she was elderly and lived alone, and she apparently left the trees and vines to themselves. There was no sign of laborers working the orchard, and the hill was always quiet. Nevertheless, the trees were covered with beautiful fruit.
The kiwis in particular grew so thick that on moonlit nights when the wind was blowing, the whole hillside would tremble as though covered with a swarm of dark green bats. At times I found myself thinking they might fly away at any moment.
Then one day I realized that all the kiwis had disappeared from one section of the orchard, though I had seen no one picking them. After a few days the branches were again covered with tiny new fruit. Since I was in the habit of writing at night and sleeping until almost noon, it was possible I had simply missed the workers.
The building was three stories tall and U-shaped. In the center was a spacious garden, with a large eucalyptus tree for shade when the sun was too bright. Mrs. J grew tomatoes, carrots, eggplants, green beans, and peppers, which she shared with her favorite tenants, I assumed.
Her apartment was directly across the courtyard from mine. A single curtain hung in her window; the other was missing and she seemed to be in no hurry to replace it. Whenever I looked up from my desk, I would see that orphaned curtain.
From what I could tell, Mrs. J led a quiet, monotonous life. As I was getting up each day, I could see her through the window sitting down in front of her TV, wearily eating her lunch. If she happened to spill something, she would wipe it up with the tablecloth or her sleeve. After lunch, she would pass the time knitting or polishing pots or simply napping on the couch. And by the evening, when I was at last beginning to get down to work, I would see her changing into a worn-out nightgown and crawling into bed.
I wondered how old she was. Well past eighty, I imagined. She was unsteady on her feet and was constantly bumping into chairs or knocking over something on the table. In the garden, however, she was a different woman; she seemed years younger and much more at ease when she was watering or staking the plants, or plucking insects with her tweezers. The clicking of her shears as she harvested her crop echoed pleasantly through the courtyard.
