The Nakano Thrift Shop

by Hiromi Kawakami

  I really hate Takeo, I thought to myself this time. I felt much stronger about it than before. Why should I be brooding over a useless guy like him? I even started to get angry at myself. I was going to forget all about Takeo, find a new guy to fall madly in love with and be able to say breezily, Takeo and I had some good memories . . . Yes, I would eat a diet rich in vegetables, seaweed, and legumes, and every day would be sparkling and bright, my life brimming with health and vitality.

  While imagining this, I was again filled with a general sort of sadness. I definitely wasn’t sad because I was thinking about Takeo. Definitely not.

  Speaking of which, I wondered if Masayo was all right. I hadn’t seen her since three days ago. After the man with the lighter had left, I had waited and waited, but Masayo didn’t return from her lunch. My sis, she’s always done this kind of thing. She just suddenly disappears, and then at some point, as if it were no big deal, she shows up again, Mr. Nakano muttered, as if to convince himself, while he was closing up the shop.

  The way Mr. Nakano called her ‘my sis’ that day was a bit different from how he usually referred to her. It’s hard to say, but it wasn’t like the impudent, middle-aged Mr. Nakano; it seemed like what a not-yet-grown-up, still somewhat innocent kid would call his big sister.

  ‘Should I go and check on Masayo at her house?’ I asked Mr. Nakano, who was still fiddling with his hat. Meanwhile I was trying my best not to look in Takeo’s direction.

  ‘Right. That’s probably a good idea,’ Mr. Nakano replied with concern. Takeo made a slight movement. I hadn’t the faintest idea what he was thinking right then. Even though I used to think that I could tell. Sort of.

  ‘I’ll stop by on my way home,’ I said.

  Mr. Nakano made a gesture of thanks to me with one hand, and with the other he pulled out a 5,000-yen note from the register. Maybe you could pick up some cake or something, he said, pressing the note into my hand.

  The money was wrinkled. Takeo was still just standing there.

  Masayo was doing surprisingly well.

  Oh, my, thank you for coming! she said as she showed me into her home. I held out the box of cakes from the Posy tea shop, and Masayo immediately opened the lid.

  ‘Just like Hitomi—a pie series!’ she laughed.

  A pie series? I asked in reply.

  Masayo raised her eyebrows. ‘You know, the time Haruo told you to come over to scout out what was going on with Maruyama,’ Masayo said, placing the lemon pie on the plate in front of her. Go ahead, Hitomi, take whichever one you like.

  Now that she mentioned it, I had bought the same pastries from Posy when I came here before. It was already almost a year since then.

  ‘Time flies, doesn’t it?’ Masayo said as if she had read my mind.

  Yes, I blurted out, surprised.

  ‘Cherry pie, of course!’

  Yes, I said once more.

  ‘You had cherry pie last time too.’

  Did I? I said, falteringly. Masayo nodded deeply.

  For the time being, we devoted ourselves to the pastries. Come to think of it, how much had Mr. Nakano given me back then? Was it 5,000 yen? Or was it 3,000? I wondered about this as I sank my fork into the pie. I couldn’t quite remember.

  ‘So, Hitomi, do you think that sexual desire is important?’ Masayo asked suddenly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Without sexual desire, it’s not interesting, is it?’

  Unsure of how to answer, I chewed the crust from the cherry pie in silence, and swallowed.

  ‘Hitomi, you must still have plenty of sexual desire. I envy you!’ Masayo said dreamily as she poked at the meringue of the lemon pie with her fork. By the way, don’t you think that the quality of Posy’s cakes has gone down a little lately? she went on with a nonchalant air.

  ‘I don’t normally eat them, so I wouldn’t know,’ I replied courteously.

  Is that so? Masayo said, breaking off a large piece of lemon pie and bringing it to her lips. My goodness, but today they are quite good! I wonder if it has to do with my physical condition. It’s really no fun getting old!

  Masayo chatted away in a strangely cheerful tone. Sexual desire. I tried saying the words inside my head. They seemed to have a similar timbre to the way Masayo had said them, with an oddly bright resonance. I don’t really like cherry pie all that much, I thought. And yet, just like that I am drawn to its red gooey moistness, almost in spite of myself.

  My mouth was filled with the scent of butter from the pie crust. Masayo’s chin was moving as she chewed.

  The story about Mr. Maruyama began.

  But first Masayo polished off the lemon pie. ‘One more,’ she said, and then devoured the millefeuille.

  ‘So, anyway, Maruyama disappeared,’ Masayo said.

  D-did he really? I replied hesitantly. What will I do if this turns into some kind of life counseling session? I was thinking. I’m not much good at either giving or receiving advice.

  ‘There were signs.’

  Maruyama had left two weeks earlier, and according to Masayo, for the preceding month or so there had been indications. Restlessness. Absent-mindedness. A lack of punctuality. And yet, for some reason, he was in awfully high spirits.

  ‘That is obviously the behavior of a man whose affections have shifted to another woman, right?’ Masayo asked, seeming to peer over at me.

  Y-yes. All I could do was timidly stammer another reply, since I know absolutely nothing about ‘the behavior of a man whose affections have shifted to another woman.’

  ‘Then Maruyama was gone. The end,’ Masayo concluded succinctly.

  Th-the end? I asked.

  ‘Well, he disappeared!’ Masayo’s voice sounded the way a child’s does when wheedling their mother for a sweet.

  Unsure of how to reply, I placed the apple pie on my plate. Posy’s apple pie is very tart. They use Jonathan apples, you know, Masayo had said at some point. Haruo can’t eat Jonathan apples. That kid, he hates tart or sour things. He has the palate of a child.

  I ate the apple pie in silence. Masayo placed one of the last two remaining pastries—cream puffs—on her plate for a moment, but then she put it back. I prefer cream puffs filled with custard, not with cream, she said in a low voice.

  ‘Has Mr. Maruyama not been back to his apartment?’ I asked, just to be sure, after I finished eating the apple pie. Mr. Maruyama did not actually live with Masayo; he rented his own apartment. Even if he had left his relationship with Masayo, he would have been back at his own place, wouldn’t he? This thought occurred to me when I had finally composed myself a little.

  ‘That’s right. He hasn’t been back to his apartment at all either.’

  I was on the verge of asking if she had been checking there every day, but I quickly stopped myself.

  ‘He hasn’t even called you or anything?’

  ‘He’s run off, so he’s not going to call, is he?’

  ‘He didn’t leave a note or anything?’

  Not a thing. He just suddenly disappeared, that’s all.

  Just suddenly, I repeated like an idiot.

  ‘Did you have a fight or something?’ I asked gingerly.

  ‘No fight.’

  ‘Did one of his relatives pass away?’

  ‘If so he would have told me, don’t you think?’

  ‘Could he have been kidnapped?’

  ‘Why would someone do that to a man with hardly any money?’

  ‘Amnesia?’

  ‘He always carries his pension book on him.’

  Perhaps because Masayo’s tone of voice was so easy-going, I began to feel as though we were discussing someone who didn’t concern her. Who is to say that, one of these days, he won’t just show up again? You know people, sometimes they just have this burning need to go off on a trip by themselves, don’t they?

>   The next thing I knew, it was as if I were spouting off responses to my own advice. Masayo was even occasionally nodding along in agreement.

  The time has come, I thought to myself, and I slid off the seat cushion so that I was kneeling on the tatami. Well, I . . . I began to say as I bowed my head, when I suddenly remembered.

  Keeled over. The words that Masayo had used to describe it.

  When I haven’t heard from someone for a while, the first thing that occurs to me is that they might have just keeled over. This was what Masayo had murmured when Takeo hadn’t been answering my calls to his cellphone.

  I had let out a little cry and then fallen silent again, and Masayo was eyeing me dubiously. I scooted back on the cushion that I’d just slid off, but as I did so, the low table shook, and the aluminum foil that had been stuck to the bottom of the apple pie crinkled.

  Chiri—that was the faint sound it made.

  ‘Did you put in a bid for the auction?’ Mr. Nakano asked Takeo.

  ‘Not yet, but plan to.’

  Well, well, you’re actually going to bid on it? Mr. Nakano’s eyes grew round. The lighter is really that nice, huh? Mr. Nakano asked, despite the fact that he had been the one to take it on.

  ‘’S’nice, sure. Guess it’s my type,’ Takeo replied.

  ‘Your type?’ Mr. Nakano’s eyes became perfect circles.

  The three of us—Mr. Nakano, Takeo, and I—had gathered in the back room. Masayo was not there. Since the day after I paid her a visit, Masayo had been showing up again at the Nakano shop, but only to drop in for an hour or so during the morning or afternoon, and then she would soon return home.

  ‘Why don’t we have a debriefing session?’ Mr. Nakano had said a little while ago as he was closing the shutter. There’s really nothing to report, I replied. I asked him to do something too, Mr. Nakano said, raising his chin in Takeo’s direction. Takeo went to check out Maruyama’s building for me.

  Mr. Nakano ordered three bowls of katsudon over the phone, then we sat under the kotatsu. It was a small model. It’s new but I decided to trade up, said the customer who had come to sell it the day before yesterday. Items like second-hand gas heaters and kotatsu moved surprisingly well.

  There were no newspapers or letters piled up in the mailbox at Mr. Maruyama’s apartment. The needle on his electric meter was moving. Any time I went there, the curtains were always drawn shut. Nothing much, otherwise.

  Takeo gave his brief ‘report,’ and then I gave my own. It’s been a little over two weeks since Masayo had any contact with Mr. Maruyama. He gave no advance notice that he was leaving. The cause of his disappearance is unknown (I did not relay Masayo’s theory that Maruyama’s affections had shifted to another woman).

  It had been a long time since the three of us had been together like this. Before the summer arrived, sometimes we all used to go out for lunch. Back then, Mr. Nakano would just lock the glass door and leave the shop, without a sign that said OUT TO LUNCH or anything. At the time, sales had been adequate; Takeo’s and my salary were calculated differently from month to month. Recently and all of a sudden, the Nakano shop was starting to put its affairs in order.

  ‘I went to the police,’ Mr. Nakano mumbled.

  The police? Takeo asked in response, a nervous look on his face.

  ‘To find out whether or not they had found a body.’

  ‘Had they?’ Takeo cried. Nope, Mr. Nakano replied. All three of us let out a sigh.

  But these days my sis seems a little better, doesn’t she? Mr. Nakano mumbled again.

  Sure does—other day she called me ‘our dear Takeo’ for the first time in a while. Now it was Takeo’s turn to mumble.

  As for me, I recalled something Masayo told me when I had visited her house. It was after she had finished eating her millefeuille, as she was poking her fork at the slivers of pastry stuck to the aluminum foil.

  You know, I thought sexual desire was the reason why I’m with Maruyama, Masayo had said. Right, Hitomi—men and women have carnal urges, and people fall in love with each other in order to satisfy those desires, don’t they? We can call it love or passion or various other things, but you know, no matter how pretty the paper that you wrap it up in, when all is said and done, the primary force that drives people towards one another is still that same sensuality—that’s what I’ve always thought.

  I see, I had replied.

  But you know, Masayo continued. The thing is, it may not have been desire that brought me to Maruyama. At that point Masayo arched her eyebrows. She stared directly at me.

  I was feeling the way I used to during a private meeting with my teacher at school, and without thinking, I had replied with a precise ‘Yes’ as opposed to my usual vague ‘I see.’

  And, since Maruyama disappeared, I can’t help but feel lonely. Masayo said this and sniffed.

  Is there a connection between sexual desire and loneliness? I asked.

  In my experience, until now, when I have sexual desire, I don’t feel lonely—it’s more about feeling agitated.

  Agitated, I murmured.

  At least at first. After a while, though, that’s when I start to feel lonely.

  That’s the order of things?

  That’s how it goes. Really, it is, Masayo went on. But you know, this is the first time I have felt only loneliness, Masayo said with a simple and innocent expression. This is truly the first time for me.

  If sexual desire wasn’t the origin of Masayo and Mr. Maruyama’s relationship, then what was their love based on? I had silently pondered this as I walked away from Masayo’s house.

  There was a knock on the shutter. Mr. Nakano leaned out of the back door and called to the delivery boy.

  The katsudon from the soba shop tastes better than the one from the cutlet shop, Mr. Nakano said as he bolted down his bowl of food. Takeo and I ate in silence, heads bowed over our own bowls.

  The deadline for the online auction was eight o’clock the next evening. At the end of the day, Takeo went home and came back carrying an old-model laptop computer. He connected to the Internet at the shop and, under the guidance of Mr. Nakano, he managed to put in a bid.

  ‘Seems it’s at one thousand one hundred yen,’ Mr. Nakano laughed as he looked at the screen that appeared when they were connected. Tokizo had created the site so that the lowest possible bid was one thousand yen. The people who bid in these auctions were quite savvy about the value of the goods being offered, so the prices were hardly ever unreasonably high or too low.

  ‘Is this a joke, with that hundred yen?’ Mr. Nakano said, clicking away with the mouse. Ashes fell from the cigarette in his mouth, scattering all over the keyboard. Sorry, sorry, Mr. Nakano said, cursorily brushing them away. Takeo twitched.

  ‘What’s more, there are only two bidders,’ Mr. Nakano said.

  Even at five minutes to eight, there was still no third bid on the lighter. When the competition is high, the bidding is fierce up until the last moment, you know, but in this case you might just get it, Mr. Nakano said, tapping awkwardly on the keyboard. See, take a look! Mr. Nakano leaned to the side and Takeo peered over his shoulder.

  ‘One thousand four hundred yen,’ Takeo muttered. ‘If nobody wants to buy it, seems like it would be better to take it back.’

  ‘But, you know, the customer himself was the one who said to put it up for auction,’ Mr. Nakano said, his tone harsh as he gripped the mouse again.

  Mr. Nakano let out a little sound, causing me to peer over his shoulder too. The number beside the lighter now read 1,700. The first bidder had raised his price against Takeo’s bid. Mr. Nakano tapped on the keyboard again. Should I switch with you? Takeo said from behind him, but Mr. Nakano replied tersely, ‘It’s okay,’ without turning around. The number on the screen changed to 2,000. It quickly jumped to 2,500; Mr. Nakano tapped on the keyboard again and it read 3,000.
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  I stood right next to Takeo, our eyes fixed on the screen. How many weeks had passed since I had been this close to him? Takeo smelled of soap. It was the same scent as when he used to come over to my apartment.

  Boing! A wall clock that was for sale in the shop sounded the hour. Good thing this won’t go on for much longer, Mr. Nakano said between his teeth. He had been sitting still in front of the screen for some time, but now he stood up and said, ‘Takeo, want to try?’

  Yes, Takeo said and sat down in the chair with a thump. Now that he was in a lower position, the scent of shampoo wafted upward.

  Takeo was staring intently at the screen. He made no move towards the keyboard. Looking at the display at the top of the computer screen, the time said three minutes past eight. Quietly, I moved away from Takeo.

  Ten or so minutes must have passed. ‘Won it,’ Takeo said softly. ‘Four thousand one hundred yen.’

  That guy with his five hundred thousand yen! Mr. Nakano said with a laugh. Takeo pulled a crumpled 5,000-yen note from his pocket. He took a 100-yen coin from another pocket, and handed them both to Mr. Nakano.

  Takeo seemed lost in thought for a moment before he said, Don’t need any change. You can tell the customer it sold for that price.

  That’s generous of you. Mr. Nakano laughed again, then wrapped the lighter in newspaper. Takeo took it, and at first he put it along with his laptop computer into a large rucksack, but then he took the lighter back out. He ripped off the newspaper, and set it on top of the shelf in the back room.

  Okay if I leave it here? Takeo asked.

  Mr. Nakano nodded, a look of curiosity on his face. Why keep it here?

  Takeo didn’t say anything for a moment, but finally he replied with, Don’t smoke at home, so if I leave it here, everyone can use it.

  Mr. Maruyama came home.

  He had been on the edge of despair, he said. ‘And suddenly stricken with wanderlust.’ Apparently this was the pure and simple explanation Mr. Maruyama had given as to why he had just upped and left.