Inheritance from Mother

by Minae Mizumura

  Lying around the house were other indulgences purchased right up to her mother’s hospitalization. Once she could no longer go shopping by herself, she would ask one of them to pick up various items for her. There was a ton of cosmetics. For Natsuki, the musician, to buy opera and ballet DVDs made sense; but she was also the one asked to buy cosmetics.

  “Mom’s worse than I am,” she used to say. “The foundation alone costs over twenty thousand yen, and she uses it up three times faster than I do!”

  Their mother must have known that Mitsuki would refuse to buy anything so extravagant.

  There was of course a mountain of scarves—a crucial part of her wardrobe. As her body began to take on a deformed shape, the styles she could wear grew fewer, but a scarf could set off any outfit. And knowing Mitsuki’s fondness for fabrics, she would take advantage of any occasion, including trips abroad, to request one. The scarves filled a shelf to overflowing—everything from featherlight watered silk to heavy cashmere with colorful embroidery.

  The remnants of their mother’s penchant for luxury, a penchant she could ill afford, spilled from all corners of the house, plastered and rebuilt in the seventies, casting a peculiar aura of romance through the dull, humdrum space. Hues of all shades appealed to the eye, while, wafting through the pungent odor of mothballs, the scents of silk and perfume appealed to the nose. Humdrum or not, the space was filled with poetry, the remnants of her dreams.

  “I don’t go in for jewelry, so where’s the harm?” When indulging a lavish taste, she would declare this out loud as if reasoning with herself. The clear implication was that she was unlike her own diamond-bedazzled mother; but whether their grandmother had actually been dazzled by a diamond was by no means certain, so this was also a little family joke. Seen from the perspective of anyone rich, the luxuries their mother allowed herself were—could only be—small. And anyway, she was of a generation uninterested in designer brands. Her dream was one shared by other girls of her day: a yearning to look like the illustrations of dewy-eyed maidens in the magazine Girls’ Friend or the female stars of the silver screen. But why had she spent her whole life so obsessively consumed by such dreams?

  Long before becoming unhinged in old age, she had already been fairly balmy. How much of it was owing to the personality she was born with, how much to upbringing?

  One day, hearing Natsuki call her name, Mitsuki stepped out into the hallway and found her sister, still wearing her coat, sitting on a cushion surrounded by a flood of items from the back of the storeroom. They had never cleaned out the storeroom after their father died; it was the one room in the house that had been kept closed off. Now, along with color slides of his frequent trips to the United States, out came childish drawings, compositions, and report cards from their elementary school days; musty, clothbound photo albums from their parents’ youth; notebooks their father had filled with letters from his best friend, who died in the war, carefully preserved; and bundles of glossy stills of movie stars that their mother had collected as a girl. As expected, there were several of Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, and Gary Cooper. There was even one of the French actress Arletty. As if peeling back layers of family history, they became absorbed in examining each find.

  In the very back was a wooden storage box lined with tin. Mitsuki opened it to find brown-stained rice paper tied with twisted strings. When she undid them, all at once the lid of memory was lifted. Here it was: the Golden Demon kimono.

  Natsuki remembered it too, quickly exclaiming, “It’s still here!”

  When their grandmother had walked out on her first husband, she’d sold everything she could, except for the kimono she’d been wearing as a young wife when she happened to run into her first love, “Kan’ichi,” again: whether true or not, the story was part of family lore.

  Mitsuki was in high school when she first read the old novel The Golden Demon and came across this passage portraying O-Miya on that crucial day:

  Her lacquerlike hair, arranged in a chignon so perfect that one might have mistaken it for a wig, was adorned with an ornamental hairpin trimmed with tiny beads of coral, and the white collar of her under-kimono, visible at the neck, was of a cool beauty beyond description. She wore an unlined five-crested kimono in heavy crimped silk of deep violet-gray, with an embroidered olive-gray obi.

  The heirloom kimono in her family was supposed to be this “unlined five-crested kimono in heavy crimped silk of deep violet-gray.” Its heavy silk was indeed crimped, but it was lined, not unlined. Their mother had apparently inquired about this discrepancy long ago, and Grandma had answered without batting an eye: since she could only wear the unlined kimono during summer, she’d had it lined so that it could be worn most of the year.

  The violet-gray silk exuded the fragrance of aloeswood, and the sisters, after dipping in and out of the Showa era, found themselves abruptly transported back over a hundred years to the time of Meiji.

  GMAIL EXCHANGES WITH THE WOMAN

  The whole time she was in the rehabilitation hospital, their mother retained the look of someone trapped, hunched, and alone in a wind-whipped wasteland. She still wanted them to visit her around suppertime. No other patient was so constantly attended by family; keeping it up would have been impossible if either Mitsuki or her sister had regular jobs. They tried visiting with less frequency but she pestered them to come, and then when they did, she looked desolate and forlorn.

  Why couldn’t she be like other people?

  It was as if she could no longer endure the misery of having ceased to be her former self. For better or worse, her nerves had been desensitized during her long hospital stay, and she accepted without protest the portable toilet they placed by her bed every night before she went to sleep. But in a more abstract way she continued to be horrifically miserable, her misery a source of pain not just for her but for them too.

  One day Natsuki reported, “She’s gobbling Depas.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Her supply keeps magically dwindling. I’ll bet that’s why she’s groggy all day.”

  She must reach for the Depas without thinking, to numb her sorrow. They agreed that the hospital should now take charge of her medications, but the next day when they broke this to her she turned pale and went into a frenzy. Finally they consulted a psychiatrist who prescribed a stronger tranquilizer that the hospital would administer once a day.

  Her physical therapy wasn’t progressing well, either. A dozen years ago at this point she had gritted her teeth, endured the pain, and made an effort to walk again, but now she was letting life slip through her fingers. She did recover to the point where she could stand up from her wheelchair by herself and use the railing to ease herself onto the toilet. She was at risk of falling, however, so someone had to be there just in case. Unable to achieve her goal of relieving herself in private and annoyed as ever by the hassle of constantly asking for help, she suffered even more from constipation and an overactive bladder.

  In the midst of all this came word from Golden that there was now an opening: a resident was moving to an associated nursing home in Kobe, where her son had been transferred. Did they make up stories like this because people were reluctant to take a room where someone had died? Anyone put off by news of death had no business entering a nursing home in the first place.

  Mitsuki paid the initial deposit immediately, glad that she would have time to prepare her mother’s final living space. One thing she liked about Golden was that they let you redecorate as you pleased. Supposing that her mother would live many more years, she set out to make the small room elegant and comfortable. She selected faux plaster wallpaper and distressed hardwood flooring, above the standards of nursing homes. So her mother wouldn’t have to look down on the parking lot, she hung embroidered lace curtains made in France, having ordered them, naturally, from Isetan. To display antique bric-a-brac her mother cherished—a porcelain basket weave bowl, a little perfume bottle of Venetian glass, a silver box inlaid with pearls and lap
is lazuli—she added a shelf to one wall. She also brought in a tall vase of dark-red faceted glass, a gift from Grandpa Yokohama that her mother prized, and filled it to overflowing with a sumptuous arrangement of artificial flowers, again from Isetan.

  Tetsuo’s eyes popped. “God, you’re spending a lot of money.”

  “Well,” she defended herself, “she did come into a lot all of a sudden.” And it’s her money, she wanted to add, but refrained.

  Mitsuki used to worry more about her mother’s budget than her own. With inward apologies to Tetsuo she had occasionally helped her out: “Here, Mom, let me pay for this.” It felt good now to spend her mother’s money with abandon. She wanted her to end her days swathed in small luxuries—though given the way her mother had warehoused her father, why this should be important to her she couldn’t have explained. But it was somehow because her father had died without even a chair to call his own that she wanted her mother’s remaining years to lack nothing in comfort.

  Following the doctor’s recommendation, she chose a sturdy yet stylish German wheelchair. She replaced her mother’s flat-screen TV with a larger model. She invested in a pricey new wardrobe of polyester clothes that could be tossed in the washing machine and dryer. Wool vests and cardigans would have to go to the cleaner’s, and these too she bought all new, choosing items that would be easy for others to help her mother in and out of.

  After a little more than two months, the hospital said there was no point in continuing intensive physical therapy.

  Right around then, Tetsuo left for Vietnam.

  In the past, Mitsuki had gone with her husband on his sabbaticals, first to California, then Okinawa, but this time she’d all but given up on the idea of accompanying him, even before her mother’s latest accident. It had gotten so that if she was away from Tokyo for even a few days, her mother grew so anxious that her blood pressure shot up; she would then send for Natsuki and be whisked to the hospital. Now she’d actually been in the hospital since December. Leaving was not an option.

  On top of all else, there was the dratted tissue case. Ever since finding it, Mitsuki had been glad of the chance to live apart from her husband for a while.

  On the day Tetsuo paid her mother a last visit, he said to Mitsuki, “When she gets settled in at the nursing home, come to Vietnam for a week or two.”

  “Okay.”

  He would be going with the younger woman; of this she was now certain. While he busied himself with travel arrangements, she’d been at her mother’s beck and call, the distance between them yawning wider all the time. By now he lived in a different universe. Once she had her mother squared away, she would sit down and think what to do about her marriage—so she told herself, trying to block from her mind the vision of that tissue case, so sweet-looking and so sinister.

  “Sorry I won’t be here to help with the move.”

  He sounded genuinely regretful. In fact, simply coping with all the cardboard boxes would be a huge task for her and her sister. She hated to impose on Natsuki’s husband, Yuji. Tetsuo was a good worker and would pitch in if he were around, but she no longer wanted his help anyway.

  On the day of his flight he caught a cab to Shinjuku, where he would take the Narita Express to the airport. She waved him off, and then he was gone.

  Assumption soon turned to fact. Just before her mother went into Golden, Tetsuo called to say he had safely arrived. Shortly afterward he emailed her that he had moved into the apartment as planned, but the place only had a dial-up line, and email would be difficult unless he went to a four-star hotel as he was doing now. She wrote back a line or two, switched off the computer, and got up. Then a thought struck her. She sat down and switched the computer back on.

  She went to the opening screen for Gmail and typed in not her email address, but his. Years before, he had given her his password. Long before switching to Gmail, he used to fly off to remote spots around the world on what he called his “research,” and he’d given her the password so she could check his email for him while he was away. Chances were slim that he was still using the same password, but she typed it in on the off chance that it might work—and, miraculously, it did. Once in, she couldn’t help seeing a long chain of exchanges with some woman, and once she saw that, she couldn’t help starting to read, with no time for compunction.

  She was up all night going through the correspondence he had carried on with the young woman over the past two years. Their relationship evidently went back even further, but Gmail covered only those two years. Midway through, she got up and went to the freezer, took out ice cubes and wrapped them in gauze to cool her eyes as she read, since she was afraid of going to the hospital the next day with eyes puffy from weeping. When the ice melted, she went and got more after wringing out the gauze at the sink. Soon her fingertips felt frozen, and the chill spread throughout her body.

  Yielding to pressure from the young woman, Tetsuo had sent her Mitsuki’s photograph in an attachment. She’d written back smugly, “Pathetic. I have to say, I feel bad for her.”

  Humiliation stung Mitsuki, and for a while she could read no more.

  The woman was young and therefore cruel. Clever, too. Though Mitsuki had planned to think about her marriage later, the woman had very kindly worked it all out for her, looking far ahead. Tetsuo’s going to Vietnam with her had a purpose. The idea was to establish that he and Mitsuki had lived apart for a whole year; if Mitsuki suggested joining him, he was to dissuade her in a lazy, offhand way. Then just before returning to Japan he would send her a letter announcing he wanted a divorce and never again set foot in their Tokyo home. At least, that was what she had made him promise.

  While wringing out the gauze, Mitsuki looked in the mirror. The face reflected there was pathetic indeed. Just how alluring could the other woman be? Knowing Tetsuo, she must be at least as attractive as Mitsuki had been in her younger days.

  Toward dawn, she took a long hot bath, but she couldn’t get warm.

  The next day there was a rainstorm, of all things. On her way to the hospital, Mitsuki was pelted by rain as the wind blew it sideways. She walked along wiping her face, unsure if she was brushing away raindrops or tears. Rain soaked into her shoes, wetting her toes.

  When she walked into her mother’s room, her mother greeted her with “This morning I moved my bowels, and I feel good!” Her gaze used to be so sharp that it was tiresome to be around her, but now she didn’t notice Mitsuki’s swollen eyes.

  “That’s nice,” Mitsuki said.

  THE TIME OF CHERRIES

  There is a chanson called “Le temps des cerises” that was written in the nineteenth century but continues to be sung even now.

  Quand nous chanterons le temps des cerises

  Et gai rossignol, et merle moqueur

  Seront tous en fête!

  Les belles auront la folie en tête

  Et les amoureux du soleil au cœur!

  Quand nous chanterons le temps des cerises

  Sifflera bien mieux le merle moqueur!

  When we sing in the time of cherries

  The merry nightingale and the mocking thrush

  Will all join in the fun!

  Beauties’ heads will fill with folly,

  And lovers’ hearts with sun!

  When we sing in the time of cherries

  The mocking thrush will be second to none!

  Cherries that slowly plump up and turn red symbolize youth, its freshness, its beauty, and its excess. Hanging from trees they are like pendant earrings; they ripen by the blood’s wild surging; fallen on the ground, they are drops of blood.

  Mitsuki had always liked the original French lyrics—especially the line Les belles auront la folie en tête, where the melody rose on the words la folie, lingering so that for a brief moment the singer’s voice hung lightly in the sky. “Beauties’ heads will fill with folly.” French, the language of romance, sums up with gallantry all girls who long to be beautiful and to be loved: les belles. But the word actually
means something more like “pretty young things.” Every young girl loses her head, but not over any one young man in particular; before that, before all else, she realizes that she is indeed a pretty young thing, the object of men’s admiration, and the knowledge goes straight to her head.

  Chanson lyrics are a treasure-house of wisdom. Where today’s popular songs mindlessly extol the world of youth, the chansons of a generation ago, which the entire world embraced, take a step back to convey what youth is and to remind listeners that it soon vanishes, that time’s march is unstoppable. They extol not youth but life, declaring that the very pathos of youth’s brevity makes life wondrous. Chansons are for people who have already lived their lives.

  Or so it seemed to Mitsuki. The longer she lived, the deeper her conviction grew: the heads of “pretty young things” fill with folly.

  Mitsuki too had been one of those “pretty young things” before she met Tetsuo.

  She was no beauty. The story was that at birth, she’d been so queer-looking that her parents exchanged looks and wordless sighs. Her mother had kept the story alive by retelling it over and over. They had already settled on the name “Mitsuki” if the new baby was a girl, she said, but then hesitated because the character for mi meant “beautiful.”