He embraced Natty and then shook my hand. Natty and I watched him walk away. I was still holding his peacock feather. I almost called after him, but decided not to.
At lunch, Natty unwrapped Win’s gift. It was a small silver locket in the shape of a heart. “He still sees me like a little kid,” she said. She stuffed the box into her purse. “What did you two talk about today?”
“Old times,” I said.
“Fine. Don’t tell me,” she said. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you to Japan? You are getting married.”
“It’s going to be more like a business meeting.”
“That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Natty. I’ve decided.” I took out my calendar. “You have camp”—she was a counselor—“and then college. I’ll be back in September to help you set up your dorm room, okay?”
“Annie, I’m worried about you. I don’t think you know what you’re getting into.”
“I do, Natty. Listen, people get married for many different reasons. There are only two things that matter to me in this world, and the first is my family—you and Leo—and the second is my work. I’m not romantic, so getting married for a reason other than love doesn’t matter as much to me as it might to someone else. What’s making me feel bad right now is you looking at me with that tragic expression.”
“You are romantic. You loved Win.”
“I was a teenager then. It was different.”
“You’re still a teenager until August,” she reminded me.
“Technically.”
Natty rolled her eyes. “Even if it is a sham, take pictures, would you? The way things are going, it might be my only chance to see you in a wedding dress.”
XV
I CONTINUE TO EXPERIMENT WITH ANCIENT FORMS OF TECHNOLOGY; DISCUSS THE USE AND MEANING OF LOL
WHEN I ARRIVED IN TOKYO, an entourage of ten representatives of the Ono Sweets Company met me. All wore dark suits. Two women carried signs that said BALANCHINE. After a great deal of bowing, I was presented with a bouquet of pink tulips, a basket of oranges, a box of Ono candies, and a silk purse that contained several pairs of elaborately embroidered socks.
“Is Ono-san’s house close by?” I asked one of the women.
“No, Anya-san, we have to go into Tokyo. There, we will take the bullet train to Osaka.”
I had been to Japan as a child, but I didn’t remember much about it. Physically, the urban parts were not unlike New York, I suppose, though the train (and the air) was much cleaner. At first the view consisted of the familiar gray and neon flashes of a vertical city: red signs indicating stores or bars or girls; impressive steel-and-glass balconies with unexpectedly old-fashioned clotheslines strung across them. I find such views relaxing as they remind me of my home and indeed, I fell asleep. When I awoke, we were speeding through a green swirl of forest. Too much nature makes me anxious; I fell asleep again. When I next awoke, the view had shifted once more: ocean, modest skyscrapers. This was Osaka.
We drove in long black cars with tinted windows to the Ono estate. I could not shake the feeling that I was in a funeral procession.
Finally we came to a gate with two iron doors mounted in stone walls. A guard waved us through.
The Ono house was two stories high, with dark walnut siding and a gray tile roof. It sprawled across the land, low but somehow muscular. A member of the entourage explained that the house was in the traditional Japanese style. There were canals along the perimeter, several ponds, and groomed trees. When we reached the house entrance, I knew to take off my shoes. Perhaps that explained the gift of socks.
Kazuo, Yuji’s bodyguard, told me that my luggage would be brought to my room and that dinner was laid out for me if I was hungry—I wasn’t. “May I say hello to Yuji?” I asked. I was told he’d already retired for the evening.
A female house servant dressed in a maroon kimono led me down a hallway. The hallways ran along the perimeter of the building. The servant slid open a door that also acted as a wall.
I went into the bedroom, which had tatami mats on the floor and walls, but a Western-style bed. The room had a distant view of a pond. A cat roamed the grounds, and I wondered if she was a descendant of the cat Natty and I had met on our visit over a decade ago. Or perhaps it was the same cat? Cats live a long time, sometimes longer than people.
I unpacked my suitcase and then lay down on the bed. Silly to say, but it began to seem of pivotal importance that I find out the weather for tomorrow, my wedding day. I turned on my phone, but it wouldn’t work. I turned on my slate; slates were said to be more reliable than phones when you were traveling. A message came up on the screen.
win-win: Anya?
anyaschka66: I’m here.
win-win: I hoped you might be using your slate since you were traveling abroad. You’re in Japan, right?
anyaschka66: Yes.
win-win: That means you’re getting married tomorrow.
anyaschka66: Are you going to try to stop me?
win-win: I’d never try to stop you from doing anything anymore. I’m slow, but I learned my lesson.
anyaschka66: Smart boy.
win-win: I was thinking that it was nice seeing you at Natty’s graduation, though.
anyaschka66: Yes.
win-win: This is tiring. Why did our grandparents ever like doing this? Why didn’t people pick up phones?
anyaschka66: They had a lot more acronyms than us. My nana used to tell me them sometimes. She won a speed-texting competition when she was fifteen or maybe sixteen. OMG. LOL.
win-win: I know OMG but what’s LOL?
anyaschka66: Laughing out loud.
win-win: So you don’t need that one much.
anyaschka66: What’s that supposed to mean?
win-win: You’re kind of serious. You’re kind of a funeral of a girl.
anyaschka66: I’m funny.
win-win: Not LOL funny.
anyaschka66: LOL.
win-win: Wait, are you actually laughing out loud?
anyaschka66: I’m not laughing out loud. Probably no one is EVER laughing out loud when they write LOL. Actually, I’m ROTFL.
win-win: What’s that one?
anyaschka66: I’ll tell you the next time I see you.
win-win: When will that be?
anyaschka66: Maybe not for a long while. I’ll be based in Japan for the next several months at least, though I’ll be traveling to the other club locations, too. I will be in Boston briefly for Natty’s freshman orientation at MIT.
win-win: Look me up if you have time. I’ll congratulate you on your marriage, and I can help you and Natty if you need a big, strong man to move boxes or whatever.
anyaschka66: Who’s this big, strong man you’re talking about?
win-win: LOL.
anyaschka66: I should go. I’m getting married in the morning.
win-win: OMG.
anyaschka66: Look at you, using those fancy acronyms.
win-win: DDT YLRPANG IS IMY IHTYMYO IKIDHARBIDWAETHY ITIMSLY IDHMR
anyaschka66: Now you’re making stuff up.
win-win: All of it stood for something, I assure you.
anyaschka66: I don’t think a one of those acronyms has any chance of catching on.
win-win: Congratulations, Annie. Congratulations, my old friend. I’m serious. Be well and be safe and no matter what happens to either of us in life, let’s promise never to go so long without talking again. LOL.
anyaschka66: I think you might be misusing LOL, Win. Unless you meant that last part as a joke.
He must have already turned off his slate, because he did not reply. I turned off my slate and got into bed.
I could see that peacock feather sitting on my suitcase across the room. I felt as if the eye was looking at me, and so I got out of bed and tucked the feather into the sheath of my machete.
* * *
That night, I did not sleep. It may have been the jet lag.
* * *
It may just have been the jet lag.
XVI
I BELIEVE MYSELF TO BE MAKING A CAREFULLY CONSIDERED AND CALCULATED DECISION; I IMMEDIATELY EXPERIENCE REGRETS; I DO MY BEST TO IGNORE THEM
WHEN I AWOKE IN THE MORNING, I had not even slept an hour. My skin was puffy, my vision was blurred, my hands were sweaty, and my head throbbed.
A woman from Yuji’s staff dressed me in a kimono made from cream-colored silk with the lightest pink cherry blossoms embroidered into the hem and sleeves. My hair had grown long enough to accommodate the traditional topknot style. Gold ornaments on surprisingly sharp daggers were stuck into the buns. My face was powdered white, my cheeks were powdered pink, and my lips were painted bloodred. Finally, a heavy silken hood was draped over me. I felt like I was in a costume, but maybe every bride feels this way no matter what the circumstances of her nuptials are.
The thong sandals I was wearing forced me to take very small steps. I shuffled over to the bathroom. I closed the door behind me. I lifted the kimono and strapped my machete under it. Better to be safe than sorry, I thought. I looked in the mirror, and I fluffed out my kimono.
We were married in a Shinto shrine. I didn’t understand most of what was said. I nodded when I was asked, uttered the occasional hai when it seemed appropriate. We drank sake from small ceramic cups, and an atonal guitar provided the accompaniment. We performed a ceremonial act with tree branches, and then the service was over. Less than a half hour, I’d say.
I looked into my husband’s eyes.
“What are you thinking?” he whispered.
“I can’t believe I’ve—we’ve—done this.” I was about to faint. They’d wrapped the kimono too tight, and the weight of the fabric was causing my machete to jab me in the thigh.
He chuckled and seemed less ill than he had in some time.
“Suddenly you’re looking healthier,” I said.
“Are you worried that I will live?”
“Yuji, of course not.” But it had honestly not occurred to me that he might get better.
I was beginning to feel rather unwell myself. I wanted to be back in New York. I told my “husband” that I needed to lie down. He took me to a room reserved for married couples that was near the shrine.
Kazuo trailed us. He called to Yuji in Japanese.
“Kazuo wants to know if I am sick,” Yuji translated. “For once, it is Anya,” he called merrily to Kazuo.
Yuji and I went into the marital suite. I lay down on the bed. Yuji sat nearby, watching me.
What had I been thinking? How had I convinced myself that this made sense?
I had married a man I barely knew.
I had married him!
I could not unmarry him either.
This was it. This had happened. This was my first marriage.
Natty and Theo and everyone else who’d tried to warn me off this had been right.
I was hyperventilating.
“Calm yourself,” Yuji said gently. “I will die as promised.”
I started to cry. “I don’t want you to die.”
I was still hyperventilating.
“May I loosen your obi?” he asked.
I nodded. He untied my kimono, and I began to feel better. He lay beside me. He looked at me, then he touched my face.
“Yuji, do you think I am a bad person?”
“Why?”
“Because you know I don’t love you. In a sense, I am marrying you for your money.”
“The same could be said of me. You are on the verge of being richer than I am, no? The truth is, I do not think of you in terms of good or bad.”
“How do you think of me?”
“I remember you as a child, playing in the garden with your sister. I remember you as a teenage girl, angry and reckless. I see you now, as a woman, usually so sturdy and strong. I like you best now. I like you better than I have ever liked you before. It is a shame we have had to do everything in the wrong order, but those are the lives you and I have. I would have liked, if I were young and strong, to have courted you, to have made you love me above all others, to have wooed you and won you. I would have liked to have known that when I died, Anya would be inconsolable.”
“Yuji.” I turned on my side so that I could face him. My kimono fell open and I pulled it closed.
He grabbed the obi and wrapped one end around his hand. “I wish I could make love to you.” He pulled me toward him by the belt.
My eyes widened. I was not such a fallen creature that I would make love to a man I barely knew, even if he were my husband.
“But I cannot. I am too weak. Today has been very tiring.” He looked at me. “I am pumped full of drugs and nothing works as it should.”
He was a ridiculously beautiful man, and the sickness had made him almost unbearably so. He looked like a charcoal drawing of a man. In death, he was blacks and whites.
“I think I could have loved you if we’d met when I was a few years older,” I told him.
“What a pity.”
I pulled him to me. I could feel his bones coiling and creaking around me. He must have weighed less than me, and he was terribly cold, too. We were both tired so I pulled open my kimono and then I sealed it so we were both inside.
“This life,” he said when we were eye to eye. “This life,” he repeated. “I will have more reason to miss it than once I thought.”
* * *
In the morning, he was gone. Kazuo explained that Yuji had needed to return to his own room on account of his health and that we were to meet him at the Ono Sweets factory later that day.
Back at the house, I changed out of my wedding kimono, which I had been wearing for almost twenty-four hours, and into my regular clothes. The servants were even more deferential than they had been before, but I almost did not know to whom they were speaking when they called me Anya Ono-san. I did not take his name, if you were wondering, but my Japanese was insufficient to explain to the servants that despite what it looked like, I was still Anya Balanchine.
* * *
Yuji, accompanied by an even larger entourage of businesspeople than had been at the airport, was waiting for us at the Ono Sweets factory in Osaka. For the first time since I’d arrived, Yuji wore a dark suit. I associated him with that suit and I found it comforting to see him in it again. He introduced me to his colleagues, and then we toured the plant, which was clean, well lit, and well run. There was no telltale scent to indicate that chocolate was being concocted. Their main product appeared to be mochi, a gummy, rice-based dessert.
“Where’s the chocolate?” I whispered to Yuji. “Or do you import it the way my family does?”
“Chocolate is illegal in Japan. You know that,” he replied. “Follow me.”
We separated from the main group and took an elevator down to a room that held a furnace. He pressed a button on the wall. The wall disappeared, and we entered a secret passage that led to a room smelling distinctly of warm chocolate. He pressed another button to close the door.
“I have spent 200 million yen building this underground factory,” Yuji told me, “but, if everything progresses as I hope, soon I will have no need for it.”
As he led me through the secret factory, I noticed that the workers, who were dressed in coveralls, sanitary masks, and gloves, were careful not to make eye contact. The factory had state-of-the-art ovens and thermometers, thick metal cauldrons and scales, and along the walls, bins of unprocessed cacao. As a result of Theo’s teachings, I knew this cacao to be subpar. The color was bad, and the odor and consistency were off.
“You can’t make cacao-based products with this,” I told him. “You can bury low-quality cacao in conventional chocolate with enough sugar or milk, but you can’t make high-percentage cacao products with this. You must change suppliers.”
Yuji nodded. I would need to call Granja Mañana to see if they could supply Ono Sweets as well.
We left the secret factory and went upstairs to meet with Yuji’s legal advise
r, Sugiyama, who explained some of the challenges of opening a Dark Room–like club in Japan. “An official from the Department of Wellness will need to place a government stamp on every product, verifying the cacao content and the health benefits. This requires much money,” the adviser said.
“At first,” I said, “but then you’ll save money. You won’t have to run a secret factory, for instance. And if your business is anything like mine, you were paying off officials before. Now you’ll be paying off different officials instead.”
Sugiyama did not look at me or acknowledge that I had spoken. “Perhaps we are better off as operations stand, Ono-san,” he said.
“You must listen to Anya-san,” Yuji said. “This is what I want, Sugiyama-san. This is how it must be. We will no longer be a Pachinko operation.”
“As you wish, Ono-san.” Sugiyama nodded to me.
Yuji and I went outside to wait for a car. “These people are hopelessly conservative, Anya. They resist change. You must insist. I will insist as long as I am able.”
“Where are we going now?” I asked.
“I want to show you where the first cacao bar could be, if you approve. And then I want to introduce you to the world as my wife.”
* * *
Though we planned to open five locations in Japan, the location Yuji had selected for the flagship was an old, abandoned teahouse in the middle of the most urban part of Osaka. As soon as you passed through the gray stone front you were in another world. There were sakura trees and a garden with a few stalwart purple irises that had not yet resigned themselves to the despotic weeds. Everything was hopelessly overgrown. The feeling was unlike our location in New York, but it could be lovely. Romantic even.
“Do you think this will suit?” Yuji asked me.
“It is very different from New York,” I said.
“I want a place that will operate in the daylight,” he said. “I am so tired of the darkness.”
“Originally I wanted to do that, too, but my business partner talked me out of it. He said the club should be sexy.”
In the Age of Love and Chocolate b-3 Page 13
