The Mad Kyoto Shoe Swapper and Other Short Stories

by Rebecca Otowa

  No wonder the kids next door had always been so mean to her. She had been singled out to be just one child in a family, no fighting over supper, no hand-me-downs, no sharing, doted on as only an only child can be. Of course they must have been jealous.

  And who would she herself marry? She shrugged at the pointless question. It wasn’t up to her.

  The rice fields began to give way to buildings speeding past on either side. School was not far away now. She stopped at an intersection to let a few motorcycles pass, not thinking about anything in particular, her mind full of the school day ahead. The street was clear and she stepped up on her bike pedals, ready to ride on. It was then that it happened.

  Two big, muscled American soldiers from the local base (actually just a house with half a dozen soldiers living in it—a very small rural outpost of the Occupation Forces) moved toward her, white teeth flashing. One of them grabbed her bike handlebars, preventing her from going forward. The other was laughing and talking in a loud voice. Misako didn’t understand a word. She stood, head lowered, heart thumping, waiting until the teasing was over and they stepped back. Her vision blurred as she rode away.

  Two years later, Misako was about to graduate from middle school. One day, returning home, she barely had time to hop off her bicycle before her mother appeared, breathless, and grasped her arm.

  “You’ll never guess who was here today!” Her mother gazed at her with excited eyes, then without waiting for an answer, she blurted, “Teacher! He’s back from the war!”

  Misako was dumbfounded. “But the war ended three years ago.”

  “He was taken prisoner by the Russians. He’s been working in a coal mine in Siberia—he was only recently released. And now he’s back!”

  “We all thought he was dead. Didn’t we?”

  “We did. But he’s alive! He came this afternoon to say hello. He was devastated to hear that Father was gone. He went over to next door as well.” The mother paused significantly, and Misako understood her right away. As a young teacher, he had made no secret of his interest in the second-eldest girl next door, Hanako, barely a teenager at the time. It was obvious he had come back to inquire about her.

  A few days later, Misako and her mother learned that Teacher had indeed asked for Hanako’s hand. Hanako had been so embarrassed that she ran upstairs and hid. The reason was that she was already married. Just after the war ended, she had been married to a cousin, and she already had a baby. Teacher had left, disappointed.

  Some days later, a letter arrived for Mother, addressed in handwriting that Misako recognized as Teacher’s. Mother took it next door to discuss with the other family members. The letter contained a proposal of marriage to Misako. “No—he’s too old for her” was the verdict, and Teacher was notified of the decision by letter.

  Misako herself saw the next letter. Teacher pleaded to be allowed to join the family. Misako knew instinctively that this was no love-struck young man pining for his beloved. He was a hardheaded thirtysomething now, with a lot of painful experience behind him, wanting only to settle down in a peaceful place with good memories and take up the threads of his life.

  Misako’s mother was weak, tired and ill. She longed for a man in the house again, and this time she agreed to the marriage. Thus Teacher and the little girl who had woken him up at the age of six were married. She was sixteen and he was thirty-two, exactly twice her age.

  Author’s note: This is the end of Showa Girl’s story, as upon her marriage she became Showa Woman. She eventually had four children, including two boys, the first male children to be born in the family in a century. Though her marriage was not as happy as she had hoped (her husband brought back a violent temper from his years in prison), she had a long, full life, with a few adventures, and even some overseas trips. Perhaps she would have said that her greatest adventure was that her beloved elder son, who inherited the house, brought home a true foreigner, a girl from Australia, to be his bride.

  Showa Girl was my mother-in-law.

  A Year of Coffee and Cake

  1

  Amanda paused with a double-fisted bouquet of silverware, halfway from the cardboard box to the drawer. She peeped through the as-yet-uncurtained kitchen window. The house next door appeared to be a mirror image of her own, its bland façade giving nothing away. Someone was shouting continuously somewhere in the back—someone who sounded very old and very angry.

  The shouts were in Japanese, of course. After ten years in the country, Amanda could understand some of the words, which were complaints, mainly about food. Amanda wondered what it would be like having that angry voice in her ears all day when the weather warmed up and open-window season came. She felt a twinge of resentment as she began to prepare dinner, searching among half-empty boxes for elusive equipment. She had really preferred the hectic but exciting apartment in the city. Her husband had sold her on the idea of suburban life with its peace and quiet, but that was turning out to be an empty promise.

  Masatoshi came home late that evening, frazzled from negotiating an unfamiliar commute. Halfway through dinner, she asked him, “Do you know anything about those people next door?

  Masatoshi heaved himself up with a grunt to refill his rice bowl. The grunt was for her, she knew. He disliked her “self-service” policy at mealtimes, but had given up lecturing her about his own mother, who, to hear him tell it, had never sat down once during his entire childhood.

  “Not much. The husband is with some kind of trading company, I think.” His mouth was full again almost before he had sat down.

  “Someone is making a lot of noise over there. I heard them shouting all day. Somebody very old.”

  “Not our business.” He changed the subject. “Did Mother come over today?”

  “No, she didn’t.” Masatoshi’s mother lived around the corner from their new house. That had been the main reason for the move: she was getting old, and they should be near her in case she needed anything. It was the Japanese way. How could a mere foreigner argue with that? Amanda got up to clear the table.

  After about a week in the new house, Amanda emerged from her front door one cloudy morning with a bulging green trash bag. Huffing in the frosty air, she walked past the dull, decorous suburban houses to the trash enclosure, and, opening the wire door, heaved the bag inside. Her exuberant motion almost knocked over a tiny birdlike woman who had come up behind her with her own trash bag.

  “Oh—sumimasen,” Amanda murmured, but the woman answered in perky, fluent English. “Please, don’t mention it.” She smiled and continued, “How do you do? My name is Ishida. I think we’re neighbors.” Dropping her mask of Japanese politeness, Amanda smiled back. “Hello, I’m Amanda Murata.”

  The little woman closed the cage door and fell into step beside Amanda. They walked along, exchanging pleasantries, until Mrs. Ishida stopped, and Amanda realized that this woman lived in the House of the Yelling Old Person.

  “My husband is away a lot on business,” said Mrs. Ishida, continuing to speak in English as she opened her gate. “I’m a bit lonely, so I hope we’ll be good friends.”

  “That will be nice,” Amanda responded. Then, impulsively, she added, “How about some coffee?”

  Mrs. Ishida didn’t come in for coffee that day, but she did ring Amanda’s doorbell a few mornings later, holding a wrapped box at chest level.

  “I hope you don’t mind. I thought we could eat these cakes together.”

  “Um—please come in,” Amanda replied, a little startled. She opened the door and stood aside, surreptitiously whisking up a pile of laundry from the foot of the stairs and tucking it into the closet.

  Soon the two were seated almost knee to knee in the small front parlor, hemmed in by the giant overstuffed sofa and chairs that Masatoshi had insisted on buying for the new house. Amanda gradually felt more at ease as Mrs. Ishida chatted lightly, praising the American coffee and the unlikely furniture. Speaking in English definitely helped. She sometimes got tired of negotiating all the
thorny obstacles of Japanese conversation. People seemed to have an inflated idea of her fluency, and she was often confused by bland statements that hinted at deeper meanings she couldn’t understand. There was no need for such second-guessing now, although Mrs. Ishida’s English was just as polite as her Japanese would have been, with old-fashioned phrases which made Amanda occasionally turn aside to hide a grin.

  As she poured more coffee, no longer disoriented by the idea of cream cakes at nine in the morning, Amanda decided to broach the subject that was uppermost in her mind. “Do you have an elderly relative living with you?”

  Mrs. Ishida jumped a little and laughed, and a few crumbs fell from her handkerchief-draped lap onto the floor. “Oh, I do apologize. I’m afraid my mother-in-law isn’t accustomed to being an invalid. She never lets a minute go by without complaining about something. Can you hear her very clearly? Of course you can. I’m so sorry.”

  “That’s quite all right,” said Amanda hastily. “It’s too bad she’s ill. May I ask what’s wrong with her?”

  “She’s diabetic, and recently she lost the use of her legs. She isn’t really all that ill, but she does require special food and medicine, as well as all the personal attentions, of course.”

  “That must be difficult. Don’t you have anyone to help you?”

  Mrs. Ishida laughed again. It seemed to Amanda that she did a lot of laughing. “Oh, no, I can manage. In any case it’s my duty to care for my husband’s parents. Actually, my father-in-law is also living with us, but he’s in the hospital at the moment.”

  “Wow.”

  “So you see, I can’t get out as often as I’d like. It would be nice if my husband could give me a break once in a while, but you know what men are. Always working. And he’s an only child, so there are no siblings to help out.”

  “Oh, dear.” Amanda was privately appalled. “What do his parents think of you?”

  “Well, they never liked me—they never thought I was good enough for their son, I suppose. It must be irksome for them to have to submit to my care.” Mrs. Ishida glanced at her watch and put down her coffee cup. “I’m sorry, I have to go—it’s almost time for Granny’s medicine. I hope I haven’t bored you! It’s so good to talk in English for a while.”

  “Where did you learn to speak so well?” Amanda asked as she showed her guest to the door.

  “I spent five years in London when I was a student. I wanted to become a confectioner—make cakes, you know. Maybe have my own shop. But instead, I met my husband. Now I buy the cakes I don’t have time to make.” Again the laugh. Amanda watched as Mrs. Ishida went up the path to her front door and closed it behind her with a firm click. It occurred to her that Masatoshi was also an only child.

  2

  As winter inched its way along, Amanda and Mrs. Ishida shared more talks over coffee and cake—always in Amanda’s living room. Mrs. Ishida, who soon insisted on being called Yoko, brought different cakes every time, always from high-class shops, and was an exemplary guest; but she never invited Amanda into her own home. Maybe she felt ill at ease—maybe her house was a mess because she was busy taking care of the old lady. Amanda was a little afraid to imagine her new friend’s life. She supposed Japanese women were just stronger, more capable of handling these complex family situations.

  The nagging, raucous complaints continued. Amanda listened to them with half an ear as she went about her housework and prepared the lessons for the part-time English teaching she had taken on. Eventually they joined the background music of her life, as unnoticed as traffic sounds or birdsong.

  Then, suddenly, one day they were gone.

  That morning was cool and soft, the sun pressing against fine-grained clouds. As Amanda sat down to breakfast (Masatoshi had eaten and left for work long before) she was struck by the ringing silence. It was as though she’d gone deaf—but no, she heard the piercing whistle of a distant nightingale. She waited. There it was again, on a different note this time. The silence went on, and Amanda began to feel uneasy. She put her dishes in the sink and peeked through the window at the neighbor’s house.

  Just as she had made up her mind to go and ask if everything was all right, the silence was broken by the two-note blare of an ambulance, swelling to a climax and then suddenly cut off as the vehicle itself swooped into view and stopped in front of the Ishida house. Amanda stood frozen at the window as two paramedics carrying a stretcher rushed up the path and through the front door, which opened magically from inside. In no time the film was reversed and the paramedics rushed back down the path, this time carrying a burden on the stretcher. Yoko followed, looking neither left nor right, walking purposefully in spite of the huge shopping bags she carried in both hands. They all vanished into the ambulance, which erupted again in its war cry and wailed its way down the street. Going, going, gone. In the ensuing silence, the nightingale resumed its whistling.

  As far as Amanda could see from her window, the funeral was mostly a succession of shiny black cars coming and going. She knew nothing about Japanese funerals, but this didn’t seem to be a large one, and it was soon over. Amanda wondered if she ought to go over and knock on Mrs. Ishida’s door, but her ignorance of the protocol made her shy, and she never did. Afterward, her newly awakened ears were aware of all kinds of neighborhood noises: the song of the paper recycler’s truck; the whizzing of bicycles; someone’s TV broadcasting the noontime news. Time passed. The air warmed up day by day; Amanda garnered a few more English students. Yoko didn’t appear at her door and there were no more chats over coffee and cake.

  One full-moon night in April, Masatoshi came home very late and very drunk. Startling her out of a sound sleep, he burrowed into her futon. At first he was jolly, his slurred endearments borne on a tide of whiskey-scented breath, but her lukewarm response soon had him truculently jerking at her nightdress and muttering about their honeymoon. When he finally conked out, she got up, in some pain, and trailed her blanket down the stairs, to pass a sleepless night on the living room sofa. Masatoshi banged out the door next morning with a pale, stony face and no breakfast. Amanda watched him go from the sofa, feeling very married indeed.

  On a silky, silvery spring morning of rain scented with peach blossoms, Yoko again rang Amanda’s doorbell with her usual smile and box of cakes. “Please forgive my long silence,” she said breezily, “and many thanks for your condolences.” (These had been offered, diffidently, by the Muratas at the neighbors’ front door a few days after the funeral. It was the first time either of them had met the scowling, mountainous Mr. Ishida. Amanda had wondered how he and Yoko slept together, and decided that they didn’t.) Amanda took her place across from her guest, the coffee and cakes between them. She wondered how to break the ice, but Yoko jumped right in with her customary cheerfulness.

  “I know it’s been a long time—can you forgive me? I’ve been so busy … of course you don’t know about funeral customs here, do you? And I pray you’ll never have to find out. So troublesome!”

  “Did your mother-in-law suffer much at the end?”

  “Well, I don’t think so. She slipped into a coma—that’s quite common among diabetics—and just stopped breathing after a few hours.”

  “It must feel strange now to be alone most of the time,” Amanda heard herself say. She was immediately consumed with embarrassment—was the remark too intimate? However, Yoko seemed not to have heard. She stared into space and her voice took on a musing tone.

  “She fell unconscious, yes … It must have been because she didn’t get her medicine on time.”

  “What?”

  Yoko looked up. “Oh, we had an argument—something about bedclothes? I don’t recall—and she called me all sorts of names. Finally I got so angry, I just walked out of the room and shut the door. I peeped in there a couple of hours later—she’d simmered down, and I thought she might be in the mood to apologize … but she was just lying there. I thought she had fallen asleep. When I checked again a while later, I realized that she should
have had her medicine long before. I guess I forgot. But she shouldn’t have made me so angry.”

  Amanda couldn’t believe her ears. Stunned, she stared at Yoko’s cheerful elfin face. As if in a dream she heard Yoko continue.

  “Well, I won’t have time to be lonely, because my father-inlaw is coming back from the hospital next week.”

  “What about your husband?” Amanda managed to say.

  “He’s in Europe. I guess he’ll be in and out as usual. But please forgive me for running on like this.” Yoko stood up. “I just wanted to thank you, and to tell you I hope we can resume our delightful morning chats.”

  They did resume them. Everything went on just as before. For a time, Amanda was a little rattled by Yoko’s unrelentingly pleasant smile, but she tried to convince herself that she must have misunderstood her, as she often misunderstood Japanese people. Anyway, Amanda couldn’t resist the chance to chat in her own language, so she continued to open the door to Yoko’s knock a couple of times a week. Except for mentioning that her father-in-law was senile as well as bedridden, Yoko kept the conversation general. She bent enthusiastically over Amanda’s modest flower garden, which was now sending up small tufts of marigolds and periwinkles.

  Once, at night, Amanda caught herself gazing through the bedroom window at the house next door. She turned on impulse to Masatoshi, a humped quilt in the gloom. “Do you know what that woman, Mrs. Ishida, said to me?”

  “Mf … not our business …” Seconds later he was snoring. Amanda lay awake much longer. Yoko couldn’t have said that … could she?

  3

  Amanda stepped out of the supermarket into the glare of the shopping street, toting groceries in a heavy cloth bag. Summer in Japan! It took her breath away with its full-on, savage intensity. How could this be the same country that sheltered misty pines and soft mountain lakes, silken sleeves glimpsed in shadowed doorways and delicate flower arrangements poised on dark wooden windowsills? She always expected to come out into the sunshine and, when her eyes adjusted, find herself surrounded by dark smooth Thai bodies or the bright ruffled skirts of Mexico. The sunlight pressed down on her head. She remembered she had a hat somewhere under the groceries, and rummaged for it.