The Nakano Thrift Shop

by Hiromi Kawakami

In any event, the truck’s engine had come through its ‘full change-up’ without a hitch, and Mr. Nakano was completely recovered from his injury as well. Having undergone a thorough examination while he was in the hospital, he had been diagnosed with a predisposition for diabetes, which resulted in a tendency to spout copious and dubious information about calories at mealtimes. Otherwise Mr. Nakano seemed quite back to himself again, as he manipulated the truck’s steering wheel with one hand, making a wide turn onto the street.

  The rays of midsummer sunlight came into the shop, high and strong. I sat on a chair and massaged my own shoulders.

  The incident with the dog frolicking around in the aristocrat’s garden had all started with Mr. Maruyama, Masayo’s whatever-he-is (that was Mr. Nakano’s name for him).

  ‘You know, I hear Maruyama lives in an apartment in the next neighborhood over,’ Mr. Nakano had said, a hint of displeasure in his voice. Really? I replied.

  ‘I mean, if he’s my sister’s whatever-he-is, they ought to live together. Her house is big enough.’

  Masayo lived in the house left by Mr. Nakano’s and her late parents; it is an old but quite magnificent home.

  ‘There’s something cheeky about them insisting on living apart, isn’t there?’

  I always suspected that Mr. Nakano might have a bit of a sister complex. Perhaps, I offered reasonably.

  ‘And, you know, there’s the landlord at his apartment building . . . ’ Mr. Nakano said and then paused meaningfully. I ignored his suggestive silence and continued to busy myself with pasting rough paper together to make bags. When customers bought large items, we put them in paper shopping bags with handles that came from department stores or boutiques, but for things that weren’t so big, like smaller delicate items, the Nakano shop provided simple paper bags—flat square ones like you used to get at the greengrocer’s.

  ‘Hitomi, you make pretty bags,’ Mr. Nakano said, admiring my work.

  Really? I replied.

  ‘Yeah, you are good with your hands. I think the bags you make may even be that much neater than my sister’s.’

  Really? I said again. The reference to his sister had brought Mr. Nakano back to the topic, and he started off again about ‘the dog in the aristocrat’s garden.’ This was the gist of the story.

  The landlord of Mr. Maruyama’s building was a heartless miser.

  The apartment was called ‘Maison Kanamori 1’ and, first of all, despite it being a forty-year-old building that was showing its age, the landlord shamelessly charged rent that was almost the same as for a newly constructed building. He even paid careful attention to refreshing the paint and changing the wallpaper—the kind of work that keeps up outward appearances—so that inside and out it bore enough of a resemblance to a new construction.

  Tidy rooms with a spacious layout like you used to see, plenty of closets. His modus operandi was to trick foolish tenants into paying a deposit right away, before they noticed the hidden truths of ‘Maison Kanamori,’ such as the voices from neighboring apartments that could be heard distinctly, the floors that were on a slant, and the numerous cockroaches that came up out of the drain as soon as night fell to run rampant around the apartment.

  What made things even worse was that Maison Kanamori was blessed in its surrounding scenery. Even tenants who had steeled themselves against the sloping floors or the vague signs of vermin would, nine times out of ten, break into a smile the instant they laid eyes on the landlord’s garden—his ‘pride and joy’—which was directly opposite Maison Kanamori. Verdant was the perfect word to describe it.

  Buildings one to three of Maison Kanamori were built in a row on the landlord’s property. These buildings as well as the main house where the landlord lived were surrounded by his ‘pride and joy’ on all sides. The landlord was constantly making improvements to the garden. Mixed in among a grove of ornamental trees such as Japanese oaks, silver birches, southern magnolias, and maples, were fruit trees such as persimmons, peaches, and summer mandarins, in addition to showy varieties like fragrant olive trees, azaleas, and hydrangeas, all growing together in a jumble. The undergrowth was a mass of English-style flowering grasses with tiny white and blue blooms, and over the entrance to the premises was an arch with large roses.

  ‘It sounds like a garden with no particular rules,’ I remarked to Mr. Nakano, who nodded in agreement.

  ‘But, you know, Maruyama is enough of a scatterbrain to get caught up with someone like my sister, so he was easily taken in by that heartless landlord,’ Mr. Nakano said sagely, shaking his head.

  If it was only that the rent was expensive, I’d say just deal with it, but Maison Kanamori’s heartless landlord is hostile towards his tenants, Mr. Nakano explained.

  ‘Hostile?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, hostile,’ he replied in an overdramatic, low voice.

  The landlord and his wife were so crazy about their garden that if a tenant did the slightest harm to it, they held an implacable grudge. But they didn’t just show hostility towards a tenant who had damaged the garden in the past, they even got really tough with the tenants who hadn’t done anything. Mr. Nakano went on, I hear that, when showing the apartment, they are terribly courteous, if anything they seem like a timid and naïve married couple, only to change their manner abruptly as soon as the lease is signed, scolding and rebuking for all sorts of things.

  ‘Scolding and rebuking?’ I repeated with surprise.

  Mr. Nakano laughed. ‘For instance, you know, if someone parks their bicycle in a corner of the garden, less than an hour later, they might find it covered with stickers that say DO NOT LEAVE BICYCLES HERE or TO BE REMOVED, so I hear.’

  ‘Stickers?’

  ‘The landlord and his wife must have had them made up for just this purpose.’

  Isn’t that a bit scary? I said.

  Mr. Nakano nodded. ‘And if that weren’t enough, apparently those stickers are impossible to peel off.’

  Why can’t people leave their bikes there in the first place?

  ‘They say it affects the way the sunlight falls on the grass, and the flowers might get crushed.’

  Maruyama’s not a very good judge of character, Mr. Nakano went on gleefully, and stood up. Should we call it a day? he asked as he started to tidy up the things on the bench out front.

  As a matter of fact, I already knew about Maison Kanamori. It was less than a five-minute walk from Takeo’s house. Once, for some reason, I accompanied Takeo home (of course I didn’t go inside or meet anyone there), and on the way, we passed Maison Kanamori. It did have the feeling of a dense and contained forest, and the landlord’s garden—his ‘pride and joy,’ as Mr. Nakano put it—was certainly something to be proud of, which is to say that it was rather tasteful.

  ‘This place seems like it belongs somewhere else,’ Takeo said, staring deep into the garden.

  ‘Should we go in?’ I said, but Takeo shook his head.

  ‘One mustn’t enter someone else’s garden without permission. My grandpa taught me that, a long time ago.’

  Hmm, I said. I was slightly annoyed that Takeo had opposed my suggestion. I had thought about giving him a big wet kiss, right there on the spot, but I gave up on the idea.

  So, what does this have to do with the landlord and the aristocrat’s dog? I asked, but Mr. Nakano was preoccupied with closing the shutter, and didn’t seem to hear what I said. That’s how he was. It’s still hot even after the sun has gone down, I called out as I stepped outside the back door. Beside the half-moon hanging clearly in the sky, the same star that I had seen on the way home from visiting Mr. Nakano in the hospital stood out white and glistening.

  See you later, I called back towards the inside of the shop, but sure enough, there was no response from Mr. Nakano. I could hear him humming over the clatter of the shutter.

  In the end, it was Masayo who revealed the full details of the
aristocrat’s dog.

  ‘I mean, the landlord and his wife’s children have been independent for a long time already,’ Masayo began, almost as abruptly as Mr. Nakano, a few days after I heard the story of Maison Kanamori from him. For the first time in a while, Mr. Nakano, Takeo, me, and Masayo—the so-called full members of the Nakano shop—were gathered together there. It’s the first time since Haruo was in the hospital, isn’t it? Masayo said as she looked around at us all.

  ‘Speaking of which, what is happening to the woman who stabbed Mr. Nakano?’ Takeo asked.

  ‘I think she’s in detention,’ Masayo answered briskly.

  I see, Takeo replied. After that, nobody asked for any other details, such as when the trial might be, or what kind of charges were to be expected. It was less out of tact or restraint than because we were not well versed in discussing such worldly matters.

  ‘So, going back to the landlord and his wife, they didn’t know what to do with themselves, so they ended up getting an enormous Afghan hound,’ Masayo continued.

  I see, I replied this time.

  ‘And that dog became even more important to them than their garden.’

  I see. Takeo’s turn.

  ‘One time, Maruyama ran into the landlord and his wife while they were taking the dog for a walk.’

  I see. Me again.

  ‘Not only did they scowl at him, on top of that, they told him to go away.’

  So, what did Maruyama do? Takeo asked.

  ‘He went away, he said,’ Masayo replied, and then after a moment she giggled. I laughed too. Takeo’s mouth relaxed just the slightest bit. Mr. Nakano was the only one who seemed annoyed for some reason.

  Come on, come on, don’t be such a lazybones. We’ve got Kabukicho, so hop to it, Takeo, will you? Mr. Nakano said with the same annoyed look on his face. That day both Mr. Nakano and Takeo were supposed to go on a pickup at an apartment in Kabukicho, the red-light district. Apparently there was only one item in the pickup, and ordinarily, either one of them could go and take care of it on their own, but according to Mr. Nakano, there was something about this customer that seemed fishy.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ I had asked, and Mr. Nakano had thought for a moment before replying, ‘When he called on the phone, he was terribly over-polite.’

  After Mr. Nakano and Takeo left, Masayo stayed behind at the shop for a little while. Four customers came in, one after another, and all four bought something that Masayo casually recommended—a chipped plate, or a glass with a beer logo on it, or some such.

  I hope everything is all right with that customer in Kabukicho, I said after a lull in customers. Masayo tilted her head and said lightly, Everything will be fine.

  Maruyama’s landlord and his wife sound like strange people, I said after another pause. Masayo tilted her head even more than before. They are, indeed, and Maruyama is a good man. I just hope they don’t create any problems for him, she said, sounding deeply concerned now.

  Masayo went home soon after that. Once she was gone, the customers suddenly petered out. With nothing to do, I tried to remember what an Afghan hound looked like, but I kept mixing it up with a borzoi or a basset hound, and I couldn’t quite picture it.

  That means that the landlord and his wife are keeping that Afghan hound inside their house, Masayo had said. People say that they even specially ordered a double-size futon, so that the dog can sleep with them. You mean a futon, not a bed? I asked, and Masayo had nodded.

  As I was daydreaming about the idea of that big dog spread out on top of a futon, the phone rang. Startled, I jumped up from my chair. The person on the phone wanted to know how much they could get for a rice cooker from 1975 or so. I told them when Mr. Nakano would be back and hung up. Until Mr. Nakano and Takeo came back, there wasn’t a single customer.

  ‘Was a helmet,’ Takeo said.

  He was sitting on the yellow stool that had no back, as usual. I was on a chair that looked like something a elementary-school student would sit on. This seat wasn’t from Mr. Nakano’s shop; I got it at a church bazaar that was near the place where I used to live.

  Over the course of visiting my place numerous times, at some point Takeo seemed to have fallen into the habit of sitting on the yellow stool. But whenever he sat down on it, he did so in such a cautious manner that I wondered if it might be the yellow color of the chair that he disliked.

  ‘A helmet?’ I repeated.

  ‘And, just as Mr. Nakano suspected, the guy was a yakuza mister,’ Takeo said, putting his elbows on the dining table.

  ‘A yakuza mister?’ I laughed—it sounded odd to call a yakuza ‘mister.’

  ‘Well, he’s still a customer. And compared to some of the others, he seemed like a pretty nice guy.’

  The yakuza mister’s place was on the top floor of an elegant building that faced the street where the Kabukicho ward office was. They had looked for a parking spot but the streets were packed so tightly with black Lincolns and Mercedes and Presidents, there was nowhere to park. They had no choice but to put the truck in a faraway lot, and Mr. Nakano and Takeo ended up being late for their appointment.

  ‘Mr. Nakano was kind of freaked out,’ Takeo said as he swung his upper body back and forth on top of the stool.

  What’s Mr. Nakano like when he’s freaked out? I asked. Takeo stopped swinging to and fro.

  ‘He becomes terribly over-polite.’

  No way, come on! You mean, just like the yakuza mister? I had a good laugh, and Takeo started swinging his upper body again. The cushioned part of the stool was making a squeaking sound.

  In spite of their late arrival, Mr. Nakano and Takeo were greeted politely. The yakuza mister’s beautiful wife appeared, carrying a tray with fragrant black tea served in Ginori teacups that she offered to them. There was heavy cream and rose-shaped sugar cubes. Encouraged by their hosts, Mr. Nakano and Takeo hastily drank their tea.

  ‘I drank it too fast—I burned my tongue.’ Takeo relayed this abruptly.

  There was cake too. It was deep, dark black. It wasn’t very sweet; it was made almost entirely of chocolate.

  ‘You ate that too fast too?’ I asked. Takeo nodded emphatically.

  ‘Did it taste good?’

  ‘Amazingly good.’

  Takeo let his gaze briefly wander through the air. Takeo, I said, you like sweets, don’t you? But he shook his head slackly. Was hardly sweet at all, it was so dense, he said. Stop making the cushion squeak, I said. Takeo looked surprised. Then his torso went limp and he stopped fidgeting.

  Once Mr. Nakano and Takeo had finished eating the cake, the yakuza mister clapped his hands together. A door opened suddenly, and two men carried in a helmet and a suit of armor laid out on a plank. The two men were wearing white shirts with dark trousers. One of them looked even younger than Takeo and wore a tightly knotted tie. The one without a tie had a shaved head and round John Lennon glasses. After they placed the helmet and the armor on the floor, the two men quickly left.

  ‘How much would this go for, approximately?’ the yakuza mister asked in a composed voice.

  ‘Lemme think.’

  Influenced by the yakuza mister’s Kansai accent, Mr. Nakano had assumed a similar intonation.

  ‘Does Mr. Nakano know how to appraise things like that?’

  ‘Guess helmets and armor have a general market price,’ Takeo said, looking down. Now that he could no longer swing his body around, he must be bored. I pretended not to notice.

  Mr. Nakano offered a price of 100,000 yen. I have no objection to that, the yakuza mister said in a deep voice. His beautiful wife instantly appeared, bringing out whisky. She poured it into shot glasses and served it neat, with a chaser of mineral water in a Baccarat glass. Takeo left his untouched but Mr. Nakano drained three shot glasses full, one after another.

  It might have been that the alcohol went straig
ht to his head, but Mr. Nakano grew bold. Do you have any other items to sell? he asked without any hesitation, which made Takeo nervous. The yakuza mister was silent, sinking into his easy chair. His wife piped up, ‘I keep unusually shaped bottles that I came across at the bar.’

  She went on, ‘Glass liquor bottles are pretty, aren’t they? I have a little collection.’ She looked from Mr. Nakano to Takeo.

  ‘She was what they call a stunner,’ Mr. Nakano said to Takeo later when they were back in the truck. He speculated that she must have been a hostess in what they call the water trade. Mr. Nakano went on, I bet she worked in the kind of bar that you and I will never go to, pushing the kind of expensive booze that we’ll never drink in our whole lives.

  Each time they stopped at a traffic light, Takeo could hear what sounded like things moving around in the back of the truck. The lightly packed helmet and armor were probably sliding around. When they got onto the Koshu Kaido road, Takeo pulled over onto the side. Mr. Nakano had been dozing for a little while. Takeo got out and carefully positioned the helmet and armor in between the cardboard boxes that had been piled up in the truck. When he got back into the driver’s seat, Mr. Nakano was still asleep. His mouth was half open and he was snoring softly.

  ‘This meal is really delicious,’ Takeo muttered once he’d finished telling the story of the yakuza mister.

  Really? I answered coolly.

  I had put an unusual amount of effort into cooking that night’s dinner. Shrimp au gratin. Tomato and avocado salad. Soup with shredded carrots and peppers. Since I rarely ever cooked a proper meal, it had taken me two hours to make it all.

  ‘It’s no big deal,’ I replied, scooping up some of the gratin and bringing it to my mouth. It needed salt. Just a little bit more. Next I tasted the soup; it was too salty.

  Takeo and I ate dinner, neither of us saying much. We finished two cans of beer. Takeo hardly drank at all that evening. Even though I still had half of my food left, Takeo had already finished. Was delicious, he said, swinging his torso a little bit. Then right away, he said to himself, Ah, and was still.