by Yoko Tawada
“You should wipe your snot on your own notebook. But then you wouldn’t be able to read what you’d written, so use this instead.”
The other kids sat there in a daze, watching, but as soon as the principle of the “snot book” began to sink in they were all clamoring for one of their own, and since there was only one left in Mitsuko’s cabinet, it was decided that the rest would get theirs the following week, so the ruckus finally quieted down.
After class the following week, five girls were squatting in a circle in the garden staring at the ground, so engrossed they’d apparently forgotten to go home, and when Mitsuko, wondering what was up, went over to join them, she discovered they were watching ten ants drag a dead mayfly into their nest, having a terrible time since the entrance was too small, which was when she noticed Fukiko walking away without even stopping to see what the others were doing.
“Why don’t you girls ever talk to Fukiko?” she asked.
Although none of them seemed to understand the question at first, one finally spoke up, as if she’d suddenly remembered the word she was trying to think of.
“Because she’s strange.”
“What’s strange about her?” Mitsuko asked again.
And another piped up: “Well, she never washes her hair, and sometimes she doesn’t even wear socks.”
That was enough to get the rest going.
“She’s fat.”
“And she has a Snoopy pencil case but it’s a fake.”
“And she can’t play dodgeball.”
“And they say her father’s weird.”
“Oh, yeah, he hangs around in Game Centers and stuff like that.”
After listening for a while, lost in thought, Mitsuko suddenly ran back into the house and retreated behind the sliding doors, slamming them behind her.
One August day soon after school had let out for the summer, a man of twenty-seven or -eight came calling at the Kitamura School with an old-fashioned leather suitcase but not a trace of sweat on him despite the hot sun beating down from above, and although he didn’t look like a friend of Mitsuko’s, with his closely cropped hair, immaculate white shirt, neatly creased trousers and polished leather shoes, he seemed to know all about her house, for he walked straight into the garden through the gap in the fence, and when he saw Mitsuko repairing her mountain bike, half-naked, her hair disheveled, he went right up to her and said:
“I’m here to stay.”
Mitsuko’s eyes widened and rolled upward, her mouth dropped open and she forgot to close it, and since she couldn’t think what to say, she kept touching her throat with her fingertips, while the man silently put his suitcase down on the veranda, took off his wristwatch, and gave it two or three hard shakes as though to get the water out of it.
“Did you get my telegram?” he asked with a knowing laugh.
Unable to take in what was happening, Mitsuko stared blankly up at him and shook her head, furrowing her brow as though trying to think, so the man introduced himself in an even clearer tone:
“You can call me Taro. Under the circumstances, it mightn’t be advisable to use my real name, but I can’t think of any other.”
Still in a daze, Mitsuko nodded weakly, and then, as though he’d suddenly thought of something, the man took her by the hand and, like a host inviting her into his own home, escorted her to the veranda, where he removed those fine leather shoes with a single shake of each ankle, without even bothering to stoop to untie them, before stepping up onto the wooden floor, and the strangest thing was that even so, when Mitsuko looked down, she saw the shoes neatly lined up on the stone below. He then took Mitsuko’s waist in his large palms, which were neither hot nor cold nor the least bit sweaty, and lightly lifted her.
“Did you get my telegram?” he asked again.
This time Mitsuko hurriedly shook her head, whereupon the man slipped off her shorts as easily as drawing a handkerchief out of his sleeve, laid her on her back, and very politely, still in his shirt and pants, fitted his body on top of hers, then, gently pressing his canine teeth against the delicate skin of her neck, began sucking noisily, with Mitsuko’s face growing paler all the while until she suddenly flushed crimson and the beads of sweat standing out on her forehead got sticky from the shock of feeling a thing with both the flexibility and indifference of a vegetable slide into her vagina, but as she writhed, struggling to get away, he flipped her over and, easily grabbing her thighs, one in each hand, raised them up and began licking her rectum, now poised precariously in midair. The sheer size of his tongue, the amount of saliva dripping from it, and the heavy panting were all literally extraordinary; and besides, even in this sweltering heat, the huge hands that gripped Mitsuko’s thighs neither trembled nor grew the least bit moist no matter how long they held her that way, and when at last he gently pulled her up into a sitting position, the dark eyes that gazed into hers were tranquil, without so much as a droplet of sweat on the forehead or nose, and since his hair was as neat as ever, she reached out without thinking and touched it, only to find it as coarse as the bristles of a scrubbing brush, the skin beneath as smooth and strong as cowhide, and while she sat there as though in a trance, stroking his head, the man quietly, seriously, returned her gaze, until on a sudden impulse, leaving Mitsuko still naked from the waist down, he ran into the kitchen and started stir-frying some bean sprouts.
When she finally came to herself, Mitsuko put her shorts back on and went into the kitchen to find a meal ready, the table neatly set with plates and bowls for rice and soup, all looking like doll’s dishes in the man’s big hands. He’d been sitting there waiting for her, and at the sight of her let out a cheer, then tucked into the rice in a manner that was somehow refined but frighteningly energetic, wolfing it down so fast that his bowl was empty before Mitsuko had even picked up her chopsticks, then quickly helping himself to a second bowlful, which he devoured in no time, and when she gave him a reproachful look, he licked the bowl clean with his long tongue, then suddenly stood up and, taking a rag from the suitcase he’d left on the veranda, rinsed it, wrung it out at the kitchen sink, and began scrubbing the wooden corridor. As Mitsuko’s eyes moved back and forth between her rice bowl, still more than half full, and the man washing the floor, with the muscles in his bottom pumping up and down in perfect rhythm as he pushed the rag along on all fours, he looked so funny she burst out laughing, and as she giggled and ate, the floorboards began to give off a dull sheen, and by the time she finished he’d taken a duster from the suitcase and begun dusting the rooms inside, easily reaching corners so high up that Mitsuko would have had to stand on a chair to get to them, scooping up cobwebs in his hands as they fluttered down and gobbling them like cotton candy, and though for a while she sat there motionless among the motes of dust, sparkling in the western sunlight, when she saw him take out a blue fold-up broom and start sweeping the tatami, she went out into the garden where she wouldn’t be in his way, and was gazing at the bike she’d been repairing earlier, standing there with a tube dangling wantonly from the tire like an intestine, when she heard someone greet her:
“Good afternoon, Miss.” She looked up in surprise to see two of her pupils standing on the other side of the fence in red swimming trunks.
“Who’s that man, Miss?” they asked bluntly.
Not knowing how to answer, Mitsuko tried to gloss over it with a simple, “Oh, just somebody I know,” which didn’t satisfy the children.
“Why’s he cleaning your house?” they wanted to know, but
as Mitsuko was fumbling for another reply, luckily they heard the distant voice of another child calling, and raced off in that direction.
Not that the two boys forgot what they’d seen — far from it; in fact, when one of them got home he ran up the apartment steps two at a time, and without stopping to catch his breath or call out “I’m home!” went straight to his mother with the news.
“When we went by Miss Kitamura’s on the way home from the pool, a man was cleaning her house.”
“A man? What kind of man?”
He didn’t know, really, but finally managed to say: “Like Superman, sort of. Real big and kind of scary.”
“About how old was he?”
“Around twenty, or maybe thirty, I guess.”
His mother laughed, thinking some nephew of Miss Kitamura’s must have come up to Tokyo and found the house so dirty he decided to do something about it; people might say young men were turning into sissies these days, but you had to admire a man who liked a clean house.
“What do you think — would a young unmarried man nowadays go so far as to clean a single woman’s house for her?” she asked when she ran into another mother from the next building and told her all about it, but the other woman cocked her head and said:
“A nephew? I wonder. Seems more likely City Hall has sent in a social worker. A place with that many children running in and out has to be sanitary, you know.”
As the two women talked, a certain suspicion did, admittedly, arise in their minds, but it was left unsaid, until several days later the same child reported seeing the man again when he’d passed Miss Kitamura’s place on the way home from the pool that evening; this time he was in the garden “cutting the grass,” which didn’t sound right at all, and even though the Kitamura School was out for the summer, Mitsuko’s name was soon on mothers’ lips throughout the apartment complex, along with the phrase “cutting the grass,” which took on a special meaning, though no one could have told you exactly what it was, and although Mitsuko herself didn’t know the content of the rumors, she was sure there were plenty floating around, since the man she was now used to calling “Taro” had been seen by the same pupil twice in a row, and it wasn’t just a matter of “having been seen,” either, for while the first time he’d just been cleaning the house, which was all right, on the second occasion he’d been sitting in the grass about to tickle her rectum with a bunch of clover when the boy’s face had appeared through the fence, startling Mitsuko, who was lying face down but now sat up, burying her legs in the grass and yanking her skirt down, while Taro, apparently not noticing the child, tried to lift up the hem she’d just pulled down, and then, still oblivious to the boy staring at them with ever widening eyes, picked her up and planted her firmly between the branches of the cherry tree.
If his physical strength was somewhat out of the ordinary, so was the rhythm of his days, for while the sun was out he’d lie around sleeping, but at six in the evening he’d be up cleaning the house and making a sumptuous meal, and by the time he and Mitsuko were finished eating, he would suddenly be full of energy; ready for lovemaking, after which he always went out alone into the darkness to spend half the night running around god knows where, only returning — without a sound — just as Mitsuko was about to go to sleep, but since Taro then kept her up until dawn with his lovemaking again, Mitsuko could no longer get up in the morning and would be dozing off all day, except when some salesman marched into the garden unannounced and she’d have to get up in a hurry, but unlike Taro, who was always alert the minute he awoke, with his eyes wide open and his hair as neat as if he’d just combed it, Mitsuko would emerge bleary-eyed, her hair sticking out in all directions, so that the person outside the door would blurt out: “Sorry. Seems I’ve caught you at a bad time,” at which Mitsuko would blush, not knowing how to explain, and while she was busy making lame excuses, the woman who ran the general store in the neighborhood was telling everyone she met that Mitsuko Kitamura had “got herself a man,” an odd phrase that the housewives from the apartment complex refrained from using because they found it rather crude, but when they tried something lighter like “Miss Kitamura has a boyfriend,” it sounded like a joke, so for lack of anything better they ended up saying, “It seems there’s a young man living at Miss Kitamura’s,” which you could take to mean anything you chose, and though they were all dying to see this young man for themselves, during the summer vacation the housewives had no reason to venture into the southern part of town, so they sent their children to the pool, reminding them to be sure to stop by Miss Kitamura’s to say hello on the way back, sometimes even sending along some sweets for her, but these kids, though they looked the picture of innocence, were actually just as keen to see Taro themselves, for the very sight of him gave them that thrill children get from seeing something they’re not supposed to, and even if they didn’t catch Mitsuko doing anything in particular, even if Taro was just sitting on a stone in a corner of the garden staring blankly into space, their hearts beat faster, and some didn’t so much drop in to see Miss Kitamura on the way home from the pool as go swimming just so they could catch a glimpse of Taro.
Taro didn’t mind the children staring at him in the least. Although he got nervous when dogs or cats wandered into the garden, people he simply ignored, which worried Mitsuko, who found herself wondering one day what would happen after August when classes started again, for the Kitamura School was her only source of income. Though half asleep, she was still pursuing this thought when she looked at the clock and saw it was already past five, so she sat up and glanced around the room to discover that Taro, who had appeared out of nowhere, was right in front of her, burying his head between her knees, to smell her, she assumed, as she could tell by the sound that he was breathing through his nose, and he went on doing this until her legs started to go numb and she shifted to one side and tried to stand up, which was difficult, of course, with Taro clinging to her like that, holding on so long in fact that Mitsuko thought she’d go out of her mind, but she knew that he never got tired of sniffing an odor he liked. Although he didn’t have a job — didn’t do anything, really, except take care of the laundry, cooking, and cleaning — he was never bored enough to resort to reading or watching television, and his principal hobby was smelling her body; when he got started he could sometimes keep at it for an hour or more, which at first bored Mitsuko to tears, but in time made her realize that her body was always slightly damp with perspiration and that, far from being odorless, her sweat carried various faint but distinct aromas not unlike those of seaweed, shellfish, citrus fruit, milk, and iron, depending on minor shifts in mood, so that when she was surprised by something, for instance, she’d notice a certain odor in the air around her and think, “Ah. I must be surprised,” which is how she got into the habit of smelling herself as she reacted to things.
Oddly enough, Taro wasn’t at all attracted to breasts, and never touched Mitsuko’s; although kissing didn’t interest him either, sucking certainly did, but the spot he always chose for that was Mitsuko’s neck, which he’d attack like a vampire, leaving a number of reddish-purple, doughnut-shaped marks, which Mitsuko would have to hide, in spite of the heat, by wrapping an Indian cotton scarf around her neck, making her sweat all the more; and when she caught sight of herself in a mirror and saw how red and swollen her face was, with dry lips and a rounder nose than before, she realized she’d never seen herself looking this bad — all because of Taro, which seemed strange, but perhaps having someone so strongly attached to
you did actually ruin your looks, and besides, he never looked her up and down in the coolly appraising way that other people did anyway, while Mitsuko, who at one time hadn’t minded being appraised like that, now had him always grabbing her and holding on for dear life, which left her no time to repair the damage.
One day a group of seven or eight third-graders dropped by with their mothers on the way back from an outing, to bring her a watermelon, so Mitsuko busied herself pouring iced barley tea and setting out cushions, glancing nervously around the room all the while, even though everything, thanks to Taro, looked neat enough and the tea glasses sparkled like crystal, so to anyone ignorant of the circumstances there would have seemed no need to worry, but Mitsuko didn’t know what she’d do if Taro, who was asleep in the next room, were suddenly to get up; on top of which, these proper-looking housewives seemed to have brought an invasion of odors with them, waves of sweat, perfume, the paste they use for pickling vegetables, detergent, blood, tooth powder, insecticide, coffee, fish, cough medicine, band-aids, and nylons, which confused her completely, making it impossible to distinguish the subtle aroma that hovered around her own body, without which she couldn’t be sure how she was feeling, so although it was only natural that she should be annoyed with these people for bursting in on her with no warning, without the smell to prove it her own feelings didn’t seem real to her, which upset her all the more. As Mitsuko joined halfheartedly in the conversation, taking care not to breathe through her nose, wishing they would all leave soon, the clock on the wall struck six, and at that very moment the sliding doors opened and Taro appeared.
