Tomo

by Holly Thompson

  Mrs. Takeyama answered the door. I like Mrs. Takeyama. She has always been kind to me, ever since Maki and I met on our first day at the international school. She doesn’t seem to mind Marmaduke, though I don’t think she really likes dogs in general. Mr. Takeyama thinks Marmaduke is brilliant and always asks after him if I turn up at their house without him.

  “You found Maki’s homework!” were Mrs. Takeyama’s first words on seeing me. “You are an angel, Mitzi,” she told me, smiling.

  “You found it!” Maki squeaked.

  “Well, the Lost Property people found it. I just collected it.”

  She jumped up and hugged me. That was very unlike Maki, which just showed how miserable she had been.

  I spent the evening with the Takeyama’s. We played games and ate hugely. Mrs. Takeyama thinks I need large amounts of Western food to sustain me, so she made a brilliant chicken and pasta dish that she’d learned to cook in America. Later we watched a DVD (in English, for my benefit), as we ate Japanese cakes, sweet peaches, and tiny aromatic grapes and laughed at Marmaduke, who had eaten so many snacks that he looked like he’d swallowed a soccer ball.

  I got home just a few minutes before Aunt Jane. Things that would have left a normal adult crushed with guilt (leaving a thirteen-year-old on her own all evening, except for the dog, and without dinner) affected her as much as an ice cube hitting the Titanic. This had hidden advantages, of course. When I asked her to sign a form—“Summer project!” I explained, airily—Aunt Jane assumed it was something to do with school and signed it without reading it.

  When I went to the Lost Property office the next day after school, I was sure I’d never be able to find it again, but I headed for exit C20 and to my astonishment I found it—the plain door in the white wall, with the sign saying Lost and Property. Mr. Motomeru took the form and looked at it. There seemed to be something suspicious in that look, as if he knew I had got it signed without being entirely honest.

  “You can start next Saturday morning,” he said.

  Tokyo Station, in spite of its vast size, is almost litter free. So, on my way to work on Saturday, I easily spotted a lost toy. It was in a corridor broad enough to take eight people walking abreast. The toy was lying on the floor, next to the wall. It looked like one of Marmaduke’s toys, chewed and discolored. It might once have been a rabbit and it was filthy.

  I opened the door of the lost property office to be met by a blast of bawling infant. I almost backed out again. A woman was standing at the counter trying to talk to Mr. Motomeru, and her child, slung over her shoulder, was screaming so loudly that they could probably hear her all the way to exit A1. As I pushed through the door, the screaming stopped. The silence was so loud that everybody froze. The child gave a hiccup and held out her hand toward me.

  After a confused moment, I realized that the little girl wasn’t holding out her hand to me but to the disgusting, dirty toy I had. I walked over to her and gave it to her. The mother was instantly all apologies and gratitude. She spoke so fast that I wouldn’t normally have understood a word. But that morning I did.

  Mr. Motomeru smiled at me.

  “I can see you’re going to be a good Finder,” he said.

  Yuki and I spent the morning on the trains. We didn’t really go anywhere, we just kind of train hopped, looking for things that people had left behind. Occasionally we managed to return an item to someone before it was really lost. An elderly gentleman dropped a book as he shuffled off the train, and Yuki pulled me out just before the train doors closed and gave him the book back.

  “Time for a break,” Yuki announced. He flopped down on one of those fearfully uncomfortable plastic seats with no backs, gave me a bottle of green tea, and opened another for himself.

  “How long have you been doing this?” I asked.

  “Since I left school,” Yuki replied, and downed the drink. He didn’t say how long ago that was. But it seemed an odd way to spend your time—train hopping your way around the metro and the Japan Railway lines picking up lost cases, jewelry, and children’s toys.

  “Are you ready for something a little more demanding?” he asked.

  “I’m ready for anything!”

  That made him howl with laughter. He clapped me on the shoulder and took my now empty PET bottle, sending it zinging into a recycling bin with deadly aim.

  “Mrs. Hashimoto is coming into the office this afternoon. We need to find her photo,” Yuki added.

  Before I could ask who Mrs. Hashimoto was, Yuki took hold of my arm and the ground started to shake. I thought it was an earthquake at first. Then the world shifted and changed. It wasn’t painful or difficult but it made me feel confused for a few moments.

  “Where are we?” I whispered.

  “Tokyo Station,” said Yuki.

  I gaped. It was Tokyo Station, but not the one I knew. It was the original building, the one you see in those historic photos of Tokyo—all quiet and deserted looking, though it was busy enough this morning. The red brick façade was the same, but the tall buildings and signs in English and the modern cars and tarmac roads had gone.

  Yuki said, “There she is.”

  I saw a young woman in a kimono, and with her a young man in a Western business suit. They looked distracted and were hurrying into the station with a couple of suitcases and some bags stuffed with belongings. One of the bags was so badly packed that you could see things were going to fall out of it, and sure enough, they did. A shoe fell out first, then a paper fan, and finally a photo in a small wood frame.

  Saying: “Don’t move!” Yuki dove for the photo, scooped it off the station floor, and dashed after the couple, running like a greyhound. He nearly made it, but they unexpectedly turned left and disappeared into a wave of people, and we couldn’t see them any longer. He came back with the photo in his hand.

  “Oh, well,” he said, grinning. “It was worth trying.”

  And he held my arm again and the old world shimmered away and we were back where and when we had been only a few minutes before.

  When we got back to the office, Mr. Motomeru was sitting on the padded bench talking to a very small old woman. She was dressed in a kimono, and she was so bent over that her back seemed to be one large hump. Her hands and head trembled.

  In a frail, quavering voice, she was saying, “It was my husband, in his graduation gown. The frame was wooden, quite cheap. You think I’m silly, don’t you?” she added, sadly. “I think I’m silly—coming to a lost property office that wasn’t even here when I lost his photo.” She paused a moment. “I can’t think why I came, really. But it’s the only photo I ever had of him, and some days I can hardly remember his face. I can’t bear to die not being able to remember his face.” And her voice quivered away into nothing, and a tear dropped onto her lap.

  Yuki crossed the room and put the photo into her hands.

  She sat for a moment motionless, silent. Another tear dropped onto her lap. She didn’t ask how. I suppose how wasn’t important to her. She just stared and stared at the photo and then hugged it to her chest. I suddenly understood how Yuki could do this job day after day without getting bored. He did it for the Mrs. Hashimotos, who came for things lost in hurry or confusion, things that money couldn’t replace and that they were too desperate to do without; he did it for people who came in spite of the apparent craziness of asking for something so long lost that it was beyond belief that it might have turned up. Beyond belief, but not beyond hope.

  “How?” I asked, when Mrs. Hashimoto had left. “How did you know when she was going to come in here? How did you go back to the right time and place to find it? How did you have my kitten ready for me? How can I understand everything that’s said in this office when I can barely manage a simple conversation in Japanese outside it?”

  “Slow down!” protested Yuki. “Life is more complicated and simple than you think.”

  I looked at him to see if he was teasing. He smiled a smile that held a promise.

  “Did you le
arn to speak English on the day you were born?” he asked, and when I shook my head, “Or Spanish on your first day in Seville or Japanese on your first day in Tokyo? You have a million questions, but you don’t have to ask them all on the first day. And we probably couldn’t explain the answers so that you’d understand them today. Experience and time will help you learn what you want to know.”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to reply that experience and time would teach us everything, but then, suddenly, I knew what he would say to that. Only if you want to know. Well, I did want to know. The promise in Yuki’s smile was, I thought, a promise of adventure and answers.

  They sent me home after lunch. Hopping trains and hopping time, they assured me, took it out of you.

  On the way home, tired and happy, thinking about the things I had learned and wondering about the things I was going to learn, I missed my station. As I got off the train to find another to take me back, I realized that there was no need ever to worry about being lost again. Yuki, I thought, would always know where to find me.

  Anton and Kiyohime

  by Fumio Takano

  translated by Hart Larrabee

  Anyone who has been to the Kremlin knows the great bell—the Tsar of Bells—near Moscow’s Cathedral Square. It stands more than six meters tall and weighs two hundred tons, but no one has ever heard it ring. The bell is cracked and broken, and has lost a chunk two meters wide. Even in Russia, where everything is grandiose, the scale of the bell is unrivaled.

  There is a story about how the Tsar of Bells came to be broken. Long, long ago, in the days of that half-legendary old country the Soviet Union, there was a scientist named Anton who lived in Tokyo. With his record of scientific achievements and an impressive title bestowed upon him by the Soviet state, he enjoyed special treatment by the Japanese authorities. In the course of his work Anton called annually at the home of a dignitary named Managono Shoji, and there came to know the man’s daughter, Kiyohime. A romance seems to have blossomed, yet when Anton was summoned back to his homeland he left without saying good-bye. Enraged, Kiyohime transformed into a flaming serpent and pursued him to Moscow. Anton fled to the Kremlin and hid inside the Tsar of Bells, but she coiled herself around it, scorching him to death and breaking the bell. Then, her passions spent, the serpent cast herself into the Moscow River and met her end. Such is the tale of Anton and Kiyohime.

  Although the current government of Russia has never acknowledged it, Anton is said to have been a Soviet spy. Did he make some commitment to Kiyohime about their future? Or was hers a love unrequited? It is impossible to know today.

  Listening to the tolling of the “Bell of Time” in Ueno Park, Olegs was thinking about the legend of Anton and Kiyohime. The cherry blossoms were nearly in full bloom. In their banter that morning the weather forecasters had said that, barring evening showers, Saturday would be perfect for blossom viewing. Each of the identical blue tarps already spread throughout the park was a claim staked in the battle for the best locations—now one of Japan’s rites of spring. Some groups were even getting a head start on their carousing.

  Olegs passed through the Ameyoko open-air market on his way to the station and then took the train to Akihabara to browse the otaku shops and electronics stores before returning to his lodgings in Ikenohata. It was actually his uncle’s place; Olegs was just passing through. Uncle Peteris was a physicist, and from Ikenohata he could both walk to the university where he worked and reach the particle accelerator at the research center in Tsukuba without changing trains. The boardinghouse itself was an eclectic prewar mix of Japanese and Western styles, and would have been an appealing place to live even if the location had been less convenient.

  Olegs had just finished a short-term exchange program at a university in western Japan and planned to spend a few days in Tokyo before returning to Latvia. Most in the program had been college students but Olegs was among a select few still in high school. Latvia had a special Japanese-language school—a well-kept secret—that students could attend even from a young age. Studying there had enabled Olegs to arrive in Japan with a better command of the language than most who majored in the subject at university.

  Olegs returned to Ikenohata in the evening just as Peteris was leaving.

  “Olegs, I’ll be staying at the lab tonight and heading straight to Tsukuba in the morning. I think I mentioned this before, but our team finally has some time on the accelerator.”

  “Sorry to have come when you’re so busy, but I’ll be okay.” Olegs flashed a confident grin. “Everyone here’s real nice, and my Japanese is loads better than yours.”

  “I’m not worried. I’ll be back by noon Sunday.”

  “Does this mean you’re going to shoot the time cannon?”

  “That’s right. If all goes as planned we’ll launch at six tomorrow night.”

  “But Uncle, your experiment will change the past, right? You’re trying to keep Anton and Kiyohime from meeting—to save Anton. If you succeed, won’t that also change the present?”

  “There’s nothing to worry about. Our calculations take everything into account. We won’t be creating any ‘grandfather paradoxes.’ Don’t look so concerned.” Peteris patted Olegs on the shoulder. “We’ll just execute a minor phase shift at the moment when Anton and Kiyohime meet. I know exactly when that was. There’s a plasticity to time-space like that of a nervous system. Information moves back and forth across the gaps between past, present, and future to ensure balance is maintained. Our molecular-level experiments irradiating tachyon particles ended ages ago. We’ve proved the theory is sound.”

  “Well, the physics is way over my head. But what’s really been bugging me—I’ve been kind of afraid to ask—is, was Anton really a Soviet spy? And if he was, why do you want to help him when you hate Russia and the Soviet Union so much? I don’t get it.”

  The immolation of a Soviet spy is something that an Eastern European who loathed the USSR might be expected to welcome. Indeed, it would not have surprised Olegs in the least to hear Peteris bemoan the fact that Kiyohime hadn’t torched the entire Kremlin while she was at it.

  “Yes, Anton was a Soviet spy. But I want to help him anyway.” Peteris’s candid admission caught Olegs off guard. “As a scientist he was my friend. That’s all. Wish me luck.” He raised a hand as if to ward off any further questions from his bewildered nephew, picked up the bag of fresh taiyaki the landlady had provided as a snack, and stepped out the front door into the darkening street.

  Olegs awoke the next morning, a bit later that usual, to find that the family Peteris boarded with was already getting ready for cherry-blossom viewing. The landlord had left bright and early to help the local neighborhood association set things up.

  Knowing he would be of little help in preparing the boxes of traditional picnic fare, Olegs headed out for a walk. The trees were sure to be in bloom everywhere, not just at the famous sites, so he decided to head toward Yanaka. His map showed dozens of temples there. According to his guidebook, the Nezu, Sendagi, and Yanaka areas were all considered one continuous neighborhood. A residential area, it was also a tourist destination popular for its old-fashioned workshops and cafés.

  Wandering through the narrow one-way lanes, Olegs noted the small temple gates scattered among the old-style row houses. Most of the temples to which they led consisted of just a main worship hall, a priest’s residence, and a modest graveyard, but all were meticulously maintained. Everywhere the cherry trees were in full bloom.

  As he ambled along enjoying the scenery, Olegs soon realized he had lost his way.

  Early April in Tokyo was quite warm, comparable to early summer in Riga. But when a gust of wind carrying a scattering of cherry petals blew across the back of Olegs’s neck he tugged his jacket closer against a sudden chill. Sensing a flicker of motion just out of sight he looked up and saw a small, weathered temple gate at the end of the alley.

  Although it looked similar to the other small temples he had already passed, Ole
gs found himself drawn to this one and stepped hesitantly through the gate. The approach led directly to the main hall, passing a narrow graveyard on the right. A cluster of stone monuments with moss-covered bases stood between the graveyard and the path.

  Something white had been set at the base of the large monument at the rear. Drawing closer, Olegs saw it was a bottle of sake wrapped in white paper. He was astonished to see Peteris’s full name written on it in Japanese.

  The inscription in the stone was weatherworn and the old-fashioned calligraphy would have been hard to make out even for a Japanese, but Olegs felt reluctant to give up without trying to decipher a character or two. Running his fingers over the rough stone, he suddenly brought them to a halt.

  “Kiyohime . . . ?”

  He was certain he had read it correctly. Absorbed in the inscription, Olegs was startled by the unexpected crunch of footsteps on the gravel path behind him and whirled around.

  A young priest stood before the main hall, having appeared as if from nowhere. Olegs often found it difficult to gauge how old Japanese people were, but he knew the man had to be somewhat older than he was. His well-shaped head was cleanly shaven, his facial features composed, and he wore stylish black-rimmed glasses. As the priest stepped closer, a single cherry petal slipped from the shoulder of his black robes and fluttered to the ground.

  “Hi. You must be the physicist’s son,” said the priest in unaccented English.

  “No,” Olegs replied in Japanese. “I’m his nephew.”

  “Well,” the priest switched to Japanese without missing a beat. “You look just like him. Peteris brought that by this morning before heading to Tsukuba, as an offering for the experiment’s success. I must admit I never thought tachyon particles even existed except in vintage science fiction. Peteris is quite a scholar, isn’t he?”