The Briefcase

by Hiromi Kawakami

  In fact, a former colleague once said to me, “Tsukiko, the way you pour really lacks allure.” The word “allure” seemed old-fashioned to me, but then again, the fact that it’s always the woman who is expected to pour, and to have “allure” when doing so, seemed antiquated too. I stared at my colleague with surprise. He must have gotten the wrong idea, though, because after we left the bar, he tried to pull me into a dark corner to kiss me. “Cut it out!” I said as I caught his looming face with both my hands and pushed him away.

  “There’s nothing to be af raid of,” he whispered, peeling my hands away and coming in for another try. Everything about him was old-fashioned. It was all I could do to keep from bursting into laughter.

  With a deadly serious expression and in an earnest tone, I said, “But today is such an unlucky day.”

  “Unlucky?”

  “Yes, today is a tomobiki day. But tomorrow is a red-letter day, a kanoe-tora!”

  “Huh?”

  I took that opportunity to quickly run off toward the subway entrance, leaving my colleague standing agape in the dark street. Even after I was down the stairs, I kept running. After making sure that he wasn’t following me, I ducked into the ladies’ room. I went to the bathroom and thoroughly washed my hands. As I looked at my reflection in the mirror, with my hair slightly out of place, I started to giggle.

  Sensei did not like anyone to pour his drinks for him. Whether it was beer or saké, he meticulously poured for himself. One time, I filled Sensei’s first glass of beer for him. The moment I tipped the beer bottle toward his glass, I felt him flinch slightly—actually, more than slightly. But he didn’t say a word. When the glass was full, Sensei calmly raised it to his lips, offering a terse “Cheers,” and drank it down in one swallow. He downed the whole glassful, but he choked a little. I could tell that he had gulped it down in haste. No doubt he had wanted to finish it off as quickly as possible.

  When I picked up the bottle of beer to refill his glass, Sensei sat up straight and said to me, “Thank you, that’s very kind. But I enjoy pouring for myself.”

  I have not poured for him since. But every now and then, he still pours for me.

  SENSEI ARRIVED AT the bus stop just after I did. I had gotten there fifteen minutes early, and he got there ten minutes early. It was a beautiful Sunday.

  “These elms are so verdant, aren’t they?” Sensei said, looking up at the trees beside the bus stop. He was right—dense with leaves, the branches of the elms waved in the breeze. Although the wind was light, high in the sky, the tops of the elms swayed even more grandly.

  It was a hot summer day, but the low humidity kept it cool in the shade. We took the bus to Teramachi and then walked a little. Sensei was wearing a panama hat and a Hawaiian shirt in muted colors.

  “That shirt looks nice on you,” I said.

  “Oh, no, it doesn’t,” Sensei replied tersely, quickening his pace. We walked briskly along beside each other in silence, but then Sensei slowed down to ask, “Are you hungry?”

  “Well, actually, I’m a little out of breath,” I replied.

  Sensei smiled and said, “Well, if you hadn’t said such a strange thing.”

  “I didn’t say anything strange. Sensei, you’re very well dressed.”

  Without replying, Sensei went into the boxed-lunch shop in front of us.

  “One kimchi pork special,” Sensei said to the girl at the counter. He prompted me with his eyes, “And for you?” There were too many things to choose from on the menu—it was bewildering. Bibimbap with egg appealed to me at first, but I decided I didn’t want a fried egg, which was the only option. After a moment’s hesitation, I became paralyzed by the sheer number of choices.

  “I’ll have the kimchi pork too.” Lost in uncertainty, in the end I chose the same thing Sensei had ordered. He and I sat side by side on a bench in a corner of the shop while we waited for our lunches to be prepared.

  “Sensei, you seem familiar with the menu here,” I said.

  He nodded. “I live alone, you know. Do you cook, Tsukiko?”

  “I cook when I’m seeing someone,” I answered.

  Sensei nodded again seriously. “That makes sense. I think it would be good for me to see one or two people.”

  “Two might be difficult.”

  “Two would be the limit, I suppose.”

  During this absurd chat, our lunches had been prepared. The girl put the two boxes, which were different sizes, into a plastic bag with handles. “Why are the boxes different sizes if we ordered the same thing?” I whispered to Sensei.

  “But you ordered the regular, not the special, didn’t you?” Sensei replied in a low voice. When we went back outside, the wind had picked up a bit. Sensei carried the plastic bag with the boxed lunches in his right hand, and in his left hand he held his panama hat.

  STALLS STARTED TO appear here and there on the street.There were stalls that only sold tabi boots. Stalls that sold collapsible umbrellas. Stalls for secondhand clothing. Stalls that sold used books mixed with new books. Soon, both sides of the street became tightly packed with stalls.

  “You know, forty years ago, all of this was completely destroyed by heavy flooding from a typhoon.”

  “Forty years ago?”

  “Many people died too.”

  Sensei went on explaining: “The market has been here for a long time. The year after the flood, there were many fewer stalls, but the following year, a full-scale market picked up again on each of the three monthly market days. The market flourished, and now almost all the stalls that used to run from the Teramachi bus stop all the way to the Kawasuji-nishi stop have come back, even on days other than those ending in eight.

  “Come on over here,” Sensei said, stepping into a small park set away from the street. The park was deserted. Out on the street it teemed with people, but one step inside the park, here was a silent refuge. Sensei bought two cans of genmaicha tea from a machine at the entrance to the park.

  We sat next to each other on a bench and took the lids off our lunches. The air immediately filled with the aroma of kimchi.

  “Sensei, yours is the special, right?”

  “That’s what they call it.”

  “How is it different from the regular?”

  We both bent our heads to examine the two boxed lunches.

  “There doesn’t seem to be much difference at all,” Sensei said amiably.

  I drank the genmaicha slowly. Although there was a breeze, the hot summer day had me craving a drink. The cool tea quenched my thirst as I sipped it.

  “The way you’re eating that looks delicious,” Sensei said with a hint of envy as he watched me drizzle the leftover kimchi sauce over my rice. He had already finished eating.

  “Excuse my poor manners.”

  “It may well be bad manners, but it still looks delicious,” Sensei said, as he put the lid back on his empty boxed lunch and replaced the rubber band around it. The park was planted with alternating elm and cherry trees. The park must have been there a long time, because the trees had grown sturdy and tall.

  After we passed a corner stall selling odds and ends, more and more of the stalls had grocery items for sale. Stalls selling only beans. Stalls with all different kinds of shellfish. There was a stall that had crates full of little shrimp or crabs. There was a banana stall. Sensei stopped to look at each one. He stood with perfect posture, peering at them from a slight distance.

  “Tsukiko, that fish looks fresh.”

  “There are flies swarming on it.”

  “That’s what flies do.”

  “Sensei, what about that chicken over there?”

  “It’s a whole chicken, though. It’s too much trouble to pluck the feathers.”

  We browsed past the stalls, chatting at random. The stalls became even more densely packed. They were tight up against each other, and the voices of the vendors hawking their goods also vied with one another.

  “Mom . . . These carrots look yummy,” a child said t
o his mother, who was carrying a shopping basket.

  “I thought you hated carrots,” the mother said with surprise.

  “But these carrots look especially good,” the child said brightly.

  The proprietor of the stall raised his voice: “What a smart boy! That’s right, my vegetables are the best!”

  “Those carrots do look good, don’t they?” Sensei said as he studied them earnestly.

  “They look like any other carrots to me.”

  “Hmm.”

  Sensei’s panama hat was slightly askew. We walked, carried along by the throngs of people. From time to time, I would lose sight of Sensei amid the crowd. But at least I could rely on always being able to spot the top of his panama hat, so he was easy to find. For his part, Sensei seemed unconcerned about me. Much in the way a dog stops to sniff at every telephone pole, Sensei would simply stop and stare whenever a stall caught his interest.

  The mother and child we had seen earlier were now in front of a mushroom stall. Sensei stood right behind them.

  “Mom, these kinugasa mushrooms look yummy.”

  “I thought you hated kinugasa mushrooms.”

  “But these kinugasa mushrooms look especially good.” They went through exactly the same exchange.

  “They must be decoy plants,” Sensei said gleefully.

  “That’s pretty ingenious, to use a mother-and-child setup.”

  “But ‘kinugasa mushrooms,’ that was over-the-top.”

  “Yes.”

  “They should have used maitake mushrooms instead.”

  The grocery stalls thinned and gave way to stalls selling larger items. Household appliances. Computers. Telephones. There were mini refrigerators lined up in different colors. An LP was playing on an old record player. I could hear the low timbre of a violin. The music had an old-fashioned, simple charm. Sensei stood, listening intently, until the end of the piece.

  IT WAS STILL only mid-afternoon, yet there were already almost imperceptible signs of the approaching evening. The hottest part of the day had just passed.

  “Are you thirsty?” Sensei asked.

  “Yes, but if we’re going to be drinking beer this evening, I don’t want anything else to drink before then,” I replied.

  Sensei nodded in satisfaction. “Good answer.”

  “Was that a test?”

  “Tsukiko, you are an excellent student when it comes to drinking. In Japanese class, on the other hand, your grades were awful . . . ”

  There was a stall that had cats for sale. There were newborn kittens and great big fat cats. A child was pleading with his mother for a cat. It was the mother and child from earlier.

  “We don’t have anywhere to keep a cat,” the mother said.

  “That’s okay, it can be an outdoor cat,” the child replied softly.

  “But do you really think a cat we buy here can survive outside?”

  “It’ll be all right, somehow.” The owner of the cat stall listened in silence to their conversation. Finally, the child pointed at a small, striped tabby. The owner wrapped the tabby in a soft cloth and the mother took it and gently placed it in her shopping basket. The faint sound of the tabby’s mewling could be heard from inside the basket.

  “Tsukiko,” Sensei said suddenly.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m going to buy something too.”

  Sensei approached not the cat stall, but a stall selling chicks.

  “Male and female, one chick each,” Sensei said decisively.

  The proprietor of the stall picked one each from the two separate groups of chicks on either side, and placed each chick into its own little box. “Here you are,” he said as he handed them to Sensei, who took the boxes cautiously. Holding them in his left hand, Sensei pulled his wallet from his pocket with his right hand and gave it to me.

  “Would you mind paying him for me?”

  “Why don’t I hold the boxes?”

  “Ah, yes.”

  Sensei’s panama hat was even more askew now. Wiping the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief, he took out the money to pay. He put his wallet back in his breast pocket and, after a moment’s hesitation, he took off his panama hat.

  Sensei turned his hat upside down. Then he took the chicks’boxes one at a time from my hands and put them inside the upside down hat. Once the boxes were settled, Sensei began walking with the hat carried protectively under his arm.

  WE GOT ON the bus at the Kawasuji-nishi stop. There were fewer people on the bus ride home than on the way there. The market surged again with people who were probably doing their evening shopping.

  “I’ve heard that it’s difficult to tell the difference between a male and a female chick,” I said, and Sensei made a sort of harrumphing sound.

  “Well, I know that much.”

  “Oh.”

  “It doesn’t matter to me whether these chicks are male or female.”

  “I see.”

  “I thought one chick would be lonely on its own.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  Was that so? I wondered as I got off the bus and followed Sensei into our usual bar. “Two bottles of beer,” Sensei ordered right away. “And edamame.” The beer and our glasses came right out.

  “Sensei, shall I pour?” I asked, but he shook his head.

  “No. I’ll pour for you, Tsukiko. And I’ll pour for myself too.” As usual, he wouldn’t let me pour for him.

  “Do you hate it when someone else pours?”

  “I don’t mind if they can do it well, but you aren’t very good at it.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Would you like me to teach you?”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “You’re a stubborn one.”

  “As are you.”

  There was a stiff head of foam on the beer that Sensei poured for me. “Where will you keep the chicks?” I asked. “Inside the house, for now,” Sensei replied. I could barely hear the sound of the chicks moving inside the box, inside the hat. “Do you like having pets?” I asked. Sensei shook his head.

  “I don’t think it’s my forte.”

  “Will you be able to handle them?”

  “Chicks aren’t very cute, are they?”

  “Is it better if they aren’t cute?”

  “That way I won’t become obsessive.”

  There was a rustling sound as the chicks moved again. Sensei’s glass was empty, so I replenished it. He did not refuse. “A little more foam. That’s right.” He talked me through the technique as he serenely accepted the beer I poured for him.

  “Soon you’ll have to let those chicks out somewhere in the open,” I said. That night we drank only beer. We had edamame, grilled eggplant, and octopus marinated in wasabi. After we finished eating, we split the check right down the middle.

  When we came out of the bar, it was almost dark. I wondered if the mother and child from the market had finished their dinner already. I wondered if the cat was still mewling. There was only a hint of a glow lingering in the western sky.

  Twenty-two Stars

  SENSEI AND I aren’t speaking.

  It’s not that I haven’t seen him. I often run into him at our usual bar, but we don’t speak. We glance at each other out of the corner of one eye, and then we simply pretend we are strangers. I pretend, and Sensei pretends as well.

  It has been going on since about the time when the bar started serving “Stew of the day” as a special, so it must be almost a month by now. Even when we sit next to each other at the counter, we don’t say a word.

  IT ALL STARTED with the radio.

  The broadcast of the baseball game was on. They were leading up to the final game of the pennant race. It was unusual for the radio to be on in the bar, and I was sitting with my elbows resting on the counter, idly listening to the game while drinking warm saké.

  Before long, the door opened and Sensei came in. He took the seat next to me and asked the bar owner, “ What ’s in the ste
w?” There were several dented individual-sized aluminum pots piled up on the cupboard.

  “Cod stew today.”

  “That sounds good.”

  “So, would you like the stew then?” the bar owner asked, but Sensei shook his head.

  “I’ll have salted sea urchin.”

  He certainly is unpredictable, I thought to myself as I listened to their exchange. The first-at-bat team’s third batter got an extra base hit, and the sound of cheering and the fife- and drum-playing grew louder on the radio.

  “Tsukiko, which is your favorite team?”

  “None in particular,” I replied, filling my cup with warm saké. Everyone in the bar was listening to the radio ardently.

  “Obviously, it’s the Giants for me,” Sensei said, draining his beer in one gulp and switching to saké. He spoke—how can I put it?—with more passion than usual. I wondered about this passion.

  “Obviously?”

  “Yes, obviously.”

  The game on the broadcast was the Yomiuri Giants versus the Hanshin Tigers. I don’t have a favorite team, but to tell the truth, I hate the Giants. I used to openly proclaim myself “anti-Giants.” But one time, someone pointed out that being “anti-Giants” was really just a backward strategy for those who were so stubborn they couldn’t bring themselves to say that they liked the Giants. Something about this resonated with me, and, since then, I have refrained from even uttering the dreaded name, “Giants.” I avoid baseball broadcasts. Honestly, the issue is so murky in my own mind that I myself am not at all certain whether I love or hate the Giants.

  Sensei lingered over his bottle of saké. Whenever the Giants’pitcher struck out a batter, or a Giants player got a hit, he nodded vigorously.

  “What’s the matter, Tsukiko?” Sensei asked me after a home run at the top of the seventh inning gave the Giants a three-point lead over the Tigers.