The Nakano Thrift Shop

by Hiromi Kawakami

  Once the rainy season arrived, Mr. Nakano had a bit more free time. The rain prevented the weekend vendors from setting up their stalls in the outdoor antique market, and because there were fewer house moves in the humid weather, there were also fewer pickups.

  ‘Why so many good finds at the pickups when people move?’ Takeo asked Mr. Nakano as he drank from a can of coffee.

  Mr. Nakano pressed his cigarette butt through the opening of the now-empty can, his head slightly to one side. He had let the butt fall through only the top of the narrow hole, so the ashes piled up as they burned down and were now on the verge of spilling over. Even when there was an ashtray right in front of him, Mr. Nakano preferred to use anything else as a receptacle for his cigarette butts.

  One time I asked Takeo furtively why Mr. Nakano didn’t use any of the ashtrays in the shop. Takeo replied, Must be he plans to sell them. Surprised, I said, But that ashtray isn’t particularly old, it’s just an ordinary freebie from somewhere. Takeo said impassively, Just shows that Mr. Nakano is an avaricious businessman. Avaricious? That’s a pretty old-fashioned word for a young guy to know, Takeo. C’mon, Hitomi, they say it all the time on Mito Komon. You watch period dramas like that? I asked. I like the actress Kaoru Yumi, he explained.

  I chuckled at the idea of Takeo intently watching Kaoru Yumi on television. Now that I think about it, sometimes ad posters for mosquito coils displaying her photo come into Mr. Nakano’s shop. At one time they had been a bestseller, and the posters would sell within a week of arriving in the shop. But lately it seemed like the demand had run its course, and they didn’t move as quickly.

  ‘You know what I mean? When people move to a better place, they want better things for inside their home too,’ Mr. Nakano answered Takeo’s question.

  He added, ‘That’s why we get so many cheap-n-goodies.’

  ‘Cheap-n-goodies,’ Takeo parroted after him, and Mr. Nakano nodded perfunctorily.

  ‘So then, what happens when they move to a worse place?’ Takeo continued.

  ‘What do you mean by “a worse place”?’ Mr. Nakano asked, laughing. I laughed too. Takeo didn’t crack a smile, his face solemn.

  ‘Running away in the middle of the night, or the break-up of a family,’ he offered.

  ‘You know what I mean? In urgent situations like that, there’s no time to request a pickup, is there?’ Mr. Nakano said as he stood up, brushing off the cigarette ash that had fallen on his black apron. Takeo said tersely, Right, and got up too.

  It had been pouring rain since the early part of the afternoon. The bench that always sat out at the front had been brought inside, making the shop feel cramped. Mr. Nakano ran a feather duster over the items for sale.

  These things are old, so you can’t let them collect dust, Mr. Nakano often said. Because they are old, they must be immaculate. But not too perfect. It’s a fine line, a fine line, he would say, chuckling as he passed the duster over everything.

  Takeo had gone out to throw his coffee can into the recycling bin next to the vending machine that was nearby. He had gone out without an umbrella. When he came back, he was soaking wet. Mr. Nakano tossed him a towel. It had a frog pattern on it. They had got it from the last pickup. Takeo used it to rub his hair roughly, then hung the towel off a corner of the desk where the register was. The frogs turn a brighter green when they are wet. The strong smell of the rain wafted from Takeo’s body.

  Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen Masayo around for a while.

  What made me realize this was hearing Mr. Nakano say her name while he was on the phone in the back of the store.

  ‘Masayo has what?’

  Really. You’re kidding. Come on. Hard to imagine. Mr. Nakano was continuing to interject these kinds of responses as he listened.

  ‘I wonder what’s going on with Masayo,’ I said to Takeo, who was sitting idly on the bench, which was still inside the shop.

  ‘Hmm,’ Takeo replied. He was drinking another can of coffee.

  You must like that kind of coffee. When I had said this to him previously, he had looked at me with surprise.

  Do I like it? Takeo had repeated back to me. Because you’re always drinking the same kind, aren’t you? I had said. I never really thought about it, Takeo had replied. You pay attention to such odd things, Hitomi.

  Even after we had this conversation, Takeo continued to drink the same brand of coffee. Just once I had gone so far as to try that brand, to see what it tasted like, but it was too sugary for me. Sweet, milky coffee. Takeo was lounging on the bench, sitting with his legs spread wide.

  ‘See now, time for work!’ Mr. Nakano said, coming out from the back room. Takeo slowly stood up from the bench. He went outside, jangling the keys to the truck. As usual, he didn’t take an umbrella. Mr. Nakano sighed exaggeratedly as he watched Takeo’s retreating back.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked. It seemed like Mr. Nakano wanted me to ask him about it. Sighing deeply and muttering to himself was Mr. Nakano’s way of showing that he wanted to talk about something. Regardless of whether or not I asked him, eventually he would start talking, but I could do without the little lecture that always seemed to precede these chats.

  At some point I had seen Takeo pre-empt Mr. Nakano’s lecture by asking him, ‘Something happen?’ and ever since, I had started doing the same. Once prodded, Mr. Nakano would start talking, spouting forth like water from a hose. Not prompting him meant that only a strange sermon would sputter out, as if the end of the hose were packed with hardened soil or something.

  ‘Well, you know.’ It started to gush from Mr. Nakano. ‘Masayo has . . .’

  ‘Your sister, Masayo?’

  ‘It seems that Masayo has fallen for a man.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘And it appears that this man is shacked up with her.’

  ‘You mean, he’s her live-in?’

  ‘Live-in, is that what you young people call it? It’s like they’re playing Sachiko and Ichiro.’

  ‘What do you mean, Sachiko and Ichiro?’

  ‘That is just what I can’t stand about young people!’

  The phone call had been from Michi Hashimoto, Mr. Nakano and Masayo’s aunt. Michi was the youngest sister of their father, who had passed away; she had married a young man who ran a sporting goods shop in their home town. Of course, this was all long ago—that young man had now retired and his son, who was the same age as Mr. Nakano, had taken over the shop.

  A few days ago, Mr. Nakano said, Aunt Michi had paid a visit to Masayo’s house, bringing some cakes from the Posy tea shop as a present. The cakes from Posy were not particularly remarkable or even very tasty, but Michi always chose to patronize old local shops.

  ‘Tradition is important,’ Michi had once said to Mr. Nakano. He had nodded his head at her in agreement, but later had said to me with a laugh, ‘In those downtown shops, nobody gives a damn about tradition.’

  Aunt Michi had bought two pieces of cheesecake from Posy and called on Masayo. She rang the doorbell, but there was no answer. Thinking that Masayo must not be home, Michi tried the doorknob and found it unlocked. The door swung easily inwards. Concerned that there might be a burglar inside, she checked for signs. She heard a faint noise. She thought she might have imagined it, but then she heard it again. It didn’t sound like a person’s voice. Nor was it music. It was a muffled, heavy sound. As if one or two people or things were slowly moving about in the next room.

  Michi braced herself, in case it really was a burglar. From her purse, she took out a bell that she carried to ward off gropers, ready to ring it loudly if necessary.

  ‘Imagine—an old lady carrying a bell to ward off gropers!’ Mr. Nakano stopped to mutter in the middle of his explanation.

  ‘There have been a number of disturbing incidents lately,’ I replied, and Mr. Nakano just shook his head.

  ‘You know
what I mean? So then, what is she doing, going into such a dangerous situation? If she thought there was a burglar, why didn’t she just run off, eh?’ he said, letting out a deep sigh.

  And if Aunt Michi had run off, she never would have discovered the ‘man’ at Masayo’s, Mr. Nakano seemed to be implying.

  Michi had been standing for a moment inside the front door, when she began to hear some kind of moaning.

  ‘Moaning?’

  ‘You know what I mean . . . Masayo . . . and that . . . man,’ Mr. Nakano said with vexation as he continued to swish around the duster.

  ‘You mean they were doing it?’

  ‘Hitomi, a young woman shouldn’t ask things so bluntly.’

  Mr. Nakano let out another sigh, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was the one who had started such a blunt conversation, which had led to such a blunt question.

  Sliding open the paper door, Aunt Michi barged into the room. Masayo sat facing an unfamiliar man. In between them, there was a cat.

  ‘They weren’t doing it. At least not at that moment. It was the cat.’ The moaning sounds had come from the cat.

  ‘Isn’t that better, that it was the cat?’

  ‘Yes, good thing it was the cat. If Aunt Michi had caught them in the act, it would have been quite a scene,’ Mr. Nakano said, as if Masayo had committed a crime.

  ‘But, since Masayo is single, she can have someone over whenever she wants, can’t she?’ I said.

  Mr. Nakano frowned. ‘There is such a thing as appearances.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘It’s not easy, when so many relatives live around here too.’

  ‘But is this man really, I mean, as you say, does he have a relationship with Masayo?’

  ‘I don’t know for sure.’

  Here Mr. Nakano’s story grew vague. Aunt Michi had pressed Masayo for answers, he said, but Masayo had been nonchalant, remaining perfectly tight-lipped when asked who this man was, or what she was doing with him. Michi had even questioned the man, but she got nothing more than evasive responses from him too.

  Finally, he said, Michi had practically thrown the box of cakes from Posy at the two of them and left. And I was looking forward to eating them with her, Aunt Michi had apparently fumed over the telephone. She had then dispensed a vehement lecture to Mr. Nakano who, as the only brother, she said, had better keep a closer eye on his older sister.

  ‘It’s because she only bought two pieces of cake. With stingy little pieces like that, she should have got ten—or twenty even.’

  ‘Even so . . . ’

  ‘You know what I mean? Masayo’s a woman in her mid-fifties, there’s really nothing to see to about her, is there?’ Mr. Nakano furrowed his brow again. ‘What is to be done about it, Hitomi?’

  I wanted to tell him that it was none of my business—not in the least—but I couldn’t say so, certainly not to my employer. I liked my job. And Mr. Nakano wasn’t a bad boss. The hourly wage wasn’t much, but it was consistent with the amount of effort required.

  ‘You know, Masayo is fond of you, Hitomi.’

  What? I asked in reply. I had never once heard anything to the effect that Masayo felt any particular fondness for me, nor had I ever got that impression from her.

  ‘Do you think you could . . . pay a visit to Masayo’s?’

  What? I asked in reply, my voice rising.

  ‘See what this man is like,’ Mr. Nakano said with forced casualness.

  ‘You’re asking me to?’

  ‘There’s no one else I can rely on.’

  ‘But . . . ’

  ‘My wife, you know, she and Masayo don’t get on well.’

  All you have to do is just check out the scene. I’ll even pay you overtime. Mr. Nakano put his hands together, as if he were praying. What do you mean by overtime, I asked, and Mr. Nakano winked at me. Just don’t tell Takeo or my sis, he said as he opened the register, pulled out a 5,000-yen note, and thrust it into my hand. I can’t do anything, you know. I’m just going to go over there, I said as I hurriedly stashed the 5,000-yen note in my wallet.

  That evening, at the convenience store where I stopped on my way home from Mr. Nakano’s shop, aside from the chicken bento that was usually my only purchase, I added two cans of beer to my basket. I also threw in a packet of Cheechiku—short tubes of fish paste chikuwa stuffed with cheese—along with a packet of ‘mayo-flavored’ fried squid snacks. After wavering, I added two cans of chuhai as well. And an éclair and a carton of vegetable juice. When I finally made it to the register—not before grabbing a weekly manga magazine—the total came to just over 3,000 yen.

  You know what they say, I murmured as I walked along the street that night. Easy money. The cans of chuhai and beer clinked against each other in the bag from the convenience store, making a metallic noise. I sat down on a bench in a park along the way, took out one of the beers, and started drinking it. I tore open the packet of Cheechiku, but only ate three of them. The bench was damp from the rain that had kept up until the afternoon. If Takeo were here now, I could share my beer with him, I thought fleetingly, but then I quickly changed my mind. He would annoy me if he were really here.

  The dampness had soaked through my jeans, so although I was still drinking my beer, I stood up. I sipped the beer as I walked along. I decided that I would pay a visit to Masayo’s house tomorrow, in the morning. The moon was high in the sky, enveloped in mist. It was a thin crescent moon.

  Come to think of it, Masayo’s eyebrows resemble crescent moons.

  Masayo hardly wore any make-up, just a bit of lipstick, but she was always glowing. There is that phrase, doll-faced, which is exactly what her features called to mind, her eyes and nose perfectly placed in her oval face. No doubt she was very beautiful in her youth. Mr. Nakano’s and Masayo’s features resembled each other’s closely, but his face was more angular and tanned, so that if Masayo’s face were carved from porcelain, his seemed etched in brown sugar soap, perhaps.

  On Masayo’s mostly unmade-up visage, only her eyebrows were perfectly groomed. They were thinly drawn gentle curves, like in a poster of a Taisho-era beauty from the early part of the twentieth century. Masayo had once told me that she used tweezers, arranging her eyebrows one hair at a time.

  ‘At my age, I’m far-sighted, so sometimes my aim goes astray,’ Masayo had laughed. ‘But having plucked my brows all these years, I hardly have any left.’

  Listening to Masayo, my hand had instinctively touched my own brows. I hardly groomed them at all, so they sprouted above my eyes, thick and untamed.

  I rang the doorbell, and Masayo soon appeared.

  Above the shoe cupboard by the front door, there was a pair of dolls, a tall and spindly man and woman that had been on display at the exhibit of her doll creations six months ago. Stepping into the slippers that were laid out, I followed after Masayo. After much deliberation, I had bought four pastries from Posy to bring with me. When I handed them to her after we had entered one of her rooms, Masayo giggled, covering her mouth with her palm.

  ‘Haruo must have sent you,’ she said.

  Yes, I answered.

  ‘How much of a bonus did he pay you?’ she pressed me.

  N-no, it’s not . . . I faltered, and Masayo raised those crescent-moon eyebrows at me.

  ‘Haruo doesn’t want to stir up a hornets’ nest, that’s why he won’t come himself,’ she said. ‘Hmm, five thousand yen, I bet. He can be cheap,’ Masayo guessed, poking her fork into the lemon pie from Posy.

  Before I knew it, I had told her all about the ‘extra overtime pay’ from Mr. Nakano. Although it may be disingenuous to say that I didn’t realize I was spilling the story; I think I had the subtle intention of wanting to see the expression on Masayo’s face when I confirmed the amount, which I still couldn’t figure out if it was too much or too little.

  ‘I’m sorry
,’ I said, casting my gaze downward as I picked at my cherry pie.

  ‘Hitomi, you must like pie.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  See here—cherry pie, lemon pie, millefeuille, and apple pie. Like a bird singing, Masayo cheerily recited the different pastries I had brought from Posy. Then she stood up, opened the cupboard that was beneath the telephone, and took out a wallet.

  ‘Make up whatever you want to tell him,’ she said, as she wrapped a 10,000-yen note in a tissue and placed it beside my plate of cherry pie.

  ‘That’s not . . . I don’t need that,’ I said, pushing back the tissue, but this time Masayo stuffed it into my pocket. The tissue had bunched up, and the top half of the note was exposed.

  ‘Keep it. Haruo thinks everything should stay the way he likes it.’

  Have the apple pie too, if you like, Masayo encouraged, as she tapped my pocket twice. The tissue swayed gently. The nerve of him, I wish he would leave me alone, a woman well past fifty. Masayo muttered to herself, in the same manner as Mr. Nakano, as she busied herself with the rest of her lemon pie. I too applied myself to my cherry pie. When Masayo had finished the lemon pie, she immediately moved on to the millefeuille.

  While she ate her millefeuille, Masayo began telling me about the man. His last name was Maruyama. Just as Mr. Nakano spouted like water from a hose, once Masayo started talking, her torrent of words gushed at full blast.

  I dated Maruyama a long time ago, you see, but I broke up with him, Masayo explained brightly. After that, he married Keiko, the rice dealer’s daughter from the next neighborhood over, and they set up house, but just recently they got divorced. I wonder if it was one of those divorces that happen after the man retires. Apparently Keiko served him with a letter of divorce, and he simply agreed to it. It seems that Keiko was a bit taken by surprise. I don’t think she expected Maruyama to give her a divorce so easily.

  Masayo’s words flowed ceaselessly. Judging from the photo she showed me, Mr. Maruyama was a man of average height and medium build with drooping eyes. He and Masayo stood next to each other in front of a shrine. That’s Hakone Shrine, Masayo said in an excited voice. We bought some Hakone mosaic woodwork on that trip too.