One Morning Like a Bird

by Andrew Miller

  ‘When was this taken?’

  ‘Before the New Year.’

  ‘Is it . . . this what it seems?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you have waited until now to tell me?’

  ‘He was born in Yokohama. December the twenty-first. At night.’

  ‘He?’

  ‘His name is Emile.’

  ‘Emile?’

  ‘Like Zola.’

  ‘You are telling me you have a son.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Father leans back in his chair. For Yuji, there is a moment of incongruous satisfaction in the way his words, his news, have felled the older man’s mind. Then, moving his cup aside, he bows over the table, forehead almost touching the varnish. ‘Please accept my apologies for not informing you sooner.’

  ‘Sit up,’ hisses father. ‘You are drawing attention to us.’

  Yuji sits up.

  ‘It would . . .’ begins Father, after a long pause filled by the idiotic, the half mad sighing of the music, ‘it would have been courteous to . . . have chosen a moment when we could have . . . discussed this.’ His voice is quiet. There is an edge of irritation, of bewilderment, but no anger. The old fierceness, that severity of character Yuji, as a boy, so dreaded to be the focus of, has not, it seems, returned from the mountain with him.

  ‘I didn’t know she was carrying a child.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I didn’t know until the end.’

  ‘But it’s yours?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I suppose . . . I suppose he has some of your features?’

  ‘His eyes perhaps. His back . . .’

  ‘His back?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you’re a father.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A father . . .’ He shakes his head, lights another cigarette. ‘Tomorrow, this conversation will seem like a dream.’

  ‘Will you tell Mother?’

  ‘I have no idea. What can I say to her? By the way, before I boarded the train Yuji informed me of something quite interesting.’

  ‘I should have spoken sooner.’

  ‘Of course you should.’

  ‘You were away.’

  ‘Please, do not make excuses.’ For a few moments, looking past Yuji, Father gently rubs, with the tip of his thumb, the crease between his eyebrows. ‘I am a grandfather,’ he says at last.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your mother is a grandmother.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And he, this child, he is with his mother now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Alissa?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They intend to return one day?’

  ‘They still have a house.’

  ‘In Kanda.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And he is healthy.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Emile.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You could have chosen a name that’s easier to pronounce.’

  ‘If I have brought shame . . .’

  ‘It’s not a question of that. It’s not . . . All that . . . With things as they are, I mean. We must think more practically.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do they sell sake in this place?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘A pity.’

  Father reaches for the photograph, puts on his glasses again. ‘I should like to have seen him. Once, at least.’

  ‘Please, take it with you,’ says Yuji.

  ‘The photograph?’

  ‘When you tell Mother, you could show it to her.’

  ‘You have others?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you must keep it.’

  ‘Please take it.’

  ‘You don’t want it?’

  ‘It’s not that.’

  ‘No?’ They look at each other, study each other. The minute hand of the clock slides to ten to the hour.

  ‘Your train,’ says Yuji.

  ‘The train? Mmm . . .’

  Yuji pays. They cross the road in silence, enter the halls of the station.

  ‘I’m near the engine, I think,’ says Father, hurrying past the steel pillars at the side of the train as a guard follows behind them slamming doors.

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Three?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Father climbs the metal steps. Yuji swings up the cases.

  ‘We cut it fine again,’ says Father through the open window. ‘Another minute . . .’

  ‘Please give Mother my best wishes.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Thank her for the biscuits.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘And Uncle Kensuke and Auntie Sawa . . .’

  ‘All of them. Yes.’

  A bell rings. A bell answers. The guard shouts a final warning.

  ‘It may be a while,’ says Yuji.

  ‘You must do what is necessary,’ calls Father. ‘Ryuichi can take care of us now.’ He opens a hand in farewell. Yuji, turning away, shields his eyes from the smoke.

  19

  While Miyo is out of the house watching, with the neighbourhood children, a show put on by a travelling entertainer (puppets in a shoebox theatre strapped to the back of a bicycle), Yuji telephones Mr Masuda. Masuda sounds as though he has just returned from a long lunch and is, perhaps, considering locking his door and sleeping for an hour, but his voice becomes more attentive when Yuji mentions Horikawa.

  ‘You used to work for him?’

  ‘I was the one who wrote the copy for your company last year. “The newest ships, the fastest routes . . .” ’

  ‘“Niigata Docks are truly a gateway to the world.” I remember it. It had a good ring to it.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Mr Horikawa was a man I had a deep respect for. We sometimes played shogi together. Had things been different for him . . .’

  ‘His circumstances . . .’

  ‘Yes . . . It is very regrettable.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But how is it I can help you, Mr Takano? Is this a business matter?’

  20

  The maid, a girl with large, drowsy eyes, the sleeves of her kimono tied up, a damp cloth in one hand, ushers Yuji into a room at the back of the house where a window at floor level admits a flow of even, shallow light. She puts out a sitting cushion for him beside the alcove. The scroll in the alcove is an ink drawing of a frog, a slightly mischievous-looking creature described with a half-dozen energetic lines. Something about this picture makes Yuji smile, and he is smiling still when Mrs Miyazaki comes in, bowing, chattering, her face puckered with embarrassment to find herself alone with such an educated young man, a published poet, a friend of her brilliant sons. Also, of course, someone who has seen her in consternation, who has seen her weep.

  To calm her, he asks about the drawing of the frog.

  ‘Junzo chose it,’ she says, ‘before he left. It was the one he liked best for springtime. It’s only a copy of course. I think the original is in a museum in Kamakura. Or Nara? I’m sure you know where it is.’

  ‘So he’s gone?’

  ‘It’s nearly two weeks now. The Association of Patriotic Schoolgirls was at the station to wave them off. There were so many of them, all cheering so excitedly it was quite difficult for us to get close to the train and I was afraid we wouldn’t find him. But then I heard his voice, calling me. We had his belt, you see. His thousand-stitch belt. Everyone in the street had sewed a stitch on it, lots of strangers too, though now with women waiting on every corner with needle and thread, it’s a wonder anybody has the time to do anything else, don’t you think?’

  ‘He’s gone to China?’

  ‘He said they would be near a big river, though, of course, he wasn’t allowed to tell me any more.’

  ‘The Yangtze, perhaps.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Perhaps it was that one.’

  ‘And Taro? There
were two flags outside the house.’

  ‘He’s in Hanoi,’ she says. ‘They needed people who could speak French.’

  ‘Translators.’

  She nods. ‘We were very honoured.’

  ‘His French was always better than mine,’ says Yuji.

  ‘I’m sure that can’t be true,’ she says.

  ‘I brought something for Junzo. I thought . . . I’d hoped he might still be here.’

  ‘How kind of you,’ she says, glancing at the package in Yuji’s hands.

  ‘It’s just a book. Some French poems I had when I was at university. I tried to give it to him once before, when he volunteered . . . And there’s a letter.’

  ‘From you?’

  ‘No. It’s an old letter. Some of us thought it didn’t even exist. But Junzo always believed in it.’

  ‘So,’ she says, trying not to look confused. ‘It’s an old one, then.’

  Yuji puts the package on the mat and with both hands slides it towards Mrs Miyazaki’s knees. Seeing the formality of his gesture, she accepts the package with as low a bow as the fullness of her waist, the tightness of her obi, permits. She touches the indigo cloth, Uncle Kensuke’s ‘test piece’, in which the book and letter are wrapped. ‘And this?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes,’ says Yuji. ‘It’s all for him.’

  For while she sits there, quiet as a flower. Her eyes have brimmed but the tears will not fall in front of him again.

  ‘You are going away too?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then perhaps you will see him. You could give it to him yourself.’

  ‘I am not going to China,’ says Yuji.

  ‘No?’

  ‘Somewhere else.’

  ‘Ah.’ She nods, then bows again. ‘On behalf of the Miyazaki family, please accept our congratulations. May you return safely one day.’

  He thanks her. ‘One day,’ he says.

  The door slides open. The maid, excusing herself through a stifled yawn, brings in the tea.

  21

  One more day for Fujitomi. One more day in the blue van. One more strip of soft money. When Yuji climbs from the van near a tram-stop in Nihombashi, he tells Fujitomi he is closing the house in Hongo.

  ‘Then you’ll need some help,’ says Fujitomi, wiping the April warmth from his throat. ‘Somewhere to store the valuables?’

  Yuji nods.

  ‘I’ve got a place up in Meguro Ward. Steel door. A ventilation grille even a mosquito would have trouble getting through. I’ve been putting some of my own stuff there . . .’

  ‘Your own?’

  ‘It’s good to be prepared, eh? When do you need it?’

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘How soon?’

  ‘Tomorrow afternoon?’

  ‘As soon as that . . . Well, let’s see. If I can leave those boxes of Shanghai eggs at the bakers in Monzen Nakacho and find somewhere for the golf balls, the van will be empty enough.’

  ‘Thank you,’ says Yuji. ‘I’ll be ready.’

  They smile at each other through the open window. If, thinks Yuji, Fujitomi asks him a direct question now, if he asks him the direct question, then he will answer it, directly, but Fujitomi, long conditioned by that habitual restraint of curiosity required by the pick-up and delivery business, does not ask.

  ‘I’ll be there at half twelve,’ he says. ‘People will be busy with the midday meal. We’ll have less of an audience.’ He revs the engine, finds the gear at the third attempt. ‘Looks like I shall have to do my own driving for a while,’ he shouts, then grins, peers from the far window to watch the road, and moves the van, in a series of lurches, into the evening traffic.

  When Yuji reaches home, two men walk into the house behind him. They do it so naturally – the air of people whose right to enter this or any house is beyond debate – that Yuji, turning to face them in the vestibule, is, at first, more impressed than alarmed, as if they have performed an interesting trick, a little theatrical coup. One man is several years older than the other. They are wearing smartly pressed but inexpensive suits, the same suits Yuji saw them in outside the cemetery.

  ‘Surprised to see us?’ asks the elder man.

  ‘We know all about you,’ says the younger, taking off his shoes and leaving them neatly beside the step.

  ‘We’re going to have a look around,’ says the elder man. ‘You don’t mind, I hope?’

  Miyo comes out of the kitchen. ‘They want to look around,’ says Yuji. She asks if she should serve tea.

  ‘And something sweet,’ says the elder man. ‘I’m aching for something sweet.’

  With Yuji walking between them, an arrangement they seem to fall into quite naturally, they go out to the verandah, put on garden slippers, and follow the curving path of worn and irregular slabs down to the garden study. Yuji opens the door. The study is chill and slightly damp. The elder man starts smoking. As he looks along the shelves he taps his ash into the palm of his hand, then scatters it on the wooden floor. The younger one has a camera. He photographs any book with a foreign title, photographs the photograph of Father with fellow students in a rowing boat on the Sumida, summer 1911. Also the picture beside it, Father and two unidentified foreigners, one a woman, all young, none quite in focus, in front of a statue in a park in London or Paris.

  In the house, in the Western room, he takes a photograph of the wireless. In the Japanese room, it’s the empty shelves beside the alcove that interest them.

  They go up the stairs, open the storage cupboard, drag everything onto the landing, place in a pile – presumably for later confiscation – the jazz records, a bowler hat, a woman’s felt cloche hat, several elaborately framed portraits of unsmiling ancestors Yuji could not have begun to identify. Then they go to Yuji’s room. In here, locked inside a box of black and bronze tin, he has the telegram from Alissa (‘Arrived Tuesday. All in good health. Emile eats everything.’) He has Feneon’s address in Singapore, a roll of 340 yen and a document authorising passage on the Izu Dancer, a cargo vessel chartered by the West Japan Shipping Corporation leaving Shiminoseki on the fifteenth bound for Tourane, Singkawang, Batavia. (‘I’m in the rubber business now,’ he told Masuda. ‘And as you know, it’s a crucial time for rubber.’)

  While the elder man searches through clothes, the younger lays out novels and books of poetry, arranges them first in a line and then in a square, as if it was important not just to present the evidence but to show it in a way that would be aesthetically pleasing.

  ‘What are these?’ asks the elder man, holding in his palm the last of Dick Amazawa’s pills.

  ‘I have headaches,’ says Yuji.

  ‘Shouldn’t read so much,’ says the younger man, who has now found the black and bronze box and is trying, with the pressure of his thumbs, to force up the lid. ‘How does this open?’ he asks.

  ‘There’s a key,’ says Yuji.

  ‘Find it.’

  ‘It’s just some money. Some savings.’

  ‘Find it.’

  The key is in Yuji’s pocket. There is, he knows, not much sense in delaying the moment, but if he is about to be arrested, beaten, imprisoned, he would like a few seconds to prepare himself. Is it worth trying to run? He concentrates on not looking at the platform door. He would have only the smallest possible start on them, but if he could get outside, he could clamber down to the garden. Are they armed? Would they shoot at him? And where would he run to? Kanda? Setagaya? If they know all about him, they know about Kanda and Setagaya.

  He pretends to be searching for the key among the clothes tangled on the floor. His mind, little by little, is assuming the blankness of surrender, of dumb capitulation. An hour ago he was free! Free to eat in Otaki’s, free to ride his bicycle, free to make his plans. But already it seems hard to remember it, to recall exactly how that felt. He is about to start on some schoolboy story about having lost the key, or no, given it to someone, someone whose name he has unfortunately forgotten, when the elder man lets out a sharp grunt of
surprise. Yuji turns to him. The man is holding the velvet-skinned case. The case is open. The pin, in its satin crease, gleams with the self-contained glamour of a weapon.

  ‘This yours?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where d’you get it?’

  Yuji tells him.

  The man stares at him, stares at the pin, runs his tongue along his teeth, glances at the younger man, looks back at the pin. ‘You should have said,’ he says, a high voice, a whine. ‘Now you’ve let us embarrass ourselves. There was no need for that.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Yuji.

  ‘We’ve lost face.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You want us to help you put this back?’ He gestures to the floor and, more generally, to the chaos on the landing.

  ‘There’s no need,’ says Yuji.

  ‘You should wear it,’ says the man, shutting the case and giving it to Yuji. ‘Save everyone a lot of trouble.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Yuji. ‘Thank you.’

  The younger man hangs his camera over his shoulder. He winks at Yuji. ‘The key,’ he says, ‘it is in your pocket, right?’

  22

  He has a single tan suitcase with him. He is dressed plainly, the graduation suit again, the austerity hat. When he rose it was dark, when he left it was dark. Now, at six fifteen, the station’s yellow lights are switched off and a crowd of men and women are streaming through the station doors. It is morning, officially.

  He has drunk tea and eaten rice in the all-night food stall by the Station Hotel, but there is something wrong with his insides. An hour after the Tokko left he was racked with stomach cramps, followed by violent diarrhoea. It has been over a week now. The cramps have stopped but the diarrhoea remains troublesome, unpredictable.

  He stands by a pillar, sits on a bench, studies, as discreetly as he can, what the others do, what is normal. He lines up to buy a newspaper. When he reaches the front of the queue, he becomes confused by the coins in his hand. The vendor is irritated. Time is money. Are there more policemen at the station this morning? More uniforms? Through the clustered speakers above his head a woman’s voice, broken by amplification, is announcing the name and destination of a train. Part of the crowd peels away, advances in close formation. Yuji’s gut grips tighter. He stops, shuts his eyes, breathes. All that has led to this moment is hidden from him. What was it? What made him think he could do this, could break through the black lines? Certainly, he is no longer guided by argument, by any of those justifications he muttered to himself for hours in the sewing room. All he has left now are skin memories. The ghostly weight of a child in his arms, a woman’s hair on his face . . . How can that possibly be enough?