Read the book: «Made In Japan»
MADE IN JAPAN
S. J. Parks
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017
www.harpercollins.co.uk
1
Copyright © S. J. Parks 2017
Cover layout design ©HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
Cover photographs©Piyato/Shutterstock (front cover), hit1912/Shutterstock (back)
S. J. Parks asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books
Ebook Edition © May 2017 ISBN: 9780008201029
Source ISBN: 9780008201012
Version: 2017-08-17
‘The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is’
−Susan Sontag
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Author’s Note
About the Author
About the Publisher
Prologue
The irony is that I am the one left to explain. I should commit it to paper, but I am no good with words. No one talks of shame any more, but when I walk out with this newborn, that is what I will feel. This child will want to know it all, and to understand it, and I doubt I will ever be able to bring myself to tell the truth.
It is evening, and in the thin dusk I am trying to gather and collect my thoughts. The senbei cracker fragments lie across the desk beneath the light that the evening has lent me. The blown rice will not be marshalled easily into my cupped hand. I do know now that he will not come. I know that he will not visit me again. The hot chocolate from the vending machine is too sweet and enough time has elapsed that the excuses are brittle and dried. A small sesame seed on my tongue brings a sudden burst of taste. ‘Etahin,’ so he had said.
The temple bell across the grounds sounds gently.
I should be the one to explain.
Naomi
The teahouse, Japan, 1989
Chapter 1
‘Architects spend an entire life with this unreasonable idea that you can fight against gravity‘
−Renzo Piano
Heathrow Airport, July 2012
Wednesday 18.45. Hana Ardent clipped into her seat belt early, as if to secure misgivings she held over travelling on her own. Two men fed the locker above her head as the other passengers politely squeezed past them in the aisle. She eyed them with the interest of one settling in for the long haul – in this case, flight BA4600 to Tokyo. Eleven hours and forty minutes, enough time to accommodate her entire week’s lectures. That’s if she were to attend them all.
If she could choose her companion for the journey it would not be the business traveller but the man in the maroon woollen. It was holey and not entirely clean and it held for her some comfort, as if he might live on the same edge of domestic chaos that she inhabited. He was a little older than her, possibly late twenties, and some part of his life must have necessitated this apparent neglect. By the time they touched down in Haneda International she would surely have discovered the answer. That Hana could have no say in the matter of her fellow travellers, even though she had paid a fortune for her economy ticket, riled her. She should make it into a game. Then again, perhaps not.
Against the window seat, following the indecisive summer light skittering across the tarmac, she traced the line of the ailerons at the edge of the wing. A cloud shift darkened the metal span, making it appear suddenly less resilient. Just like her determination to go. It was not as if she had ever been forbidden to make the journey, but she knew it was against her wishes, against her last wishes, though of course it had not been put in to so many words.
Ed introduced himself as he toyed with a loose thread on what must have been a favourite jumper. He explained he lived in Tokyo, was relatively new to his company and made so many trips he had to fly economy. There was, he said wearily, nothing special for him in an international flight. As he leaned back in his seat and focused his pale-grey eyes, shot with what might have been premature cynicism, he did nothing to calm her nerves. She checked her seatbelt. The line of flesh folded over the thin fabric at her waist was a little testament to her need for comfort food. Hana had dressed for the flight and might appear perhaps as a girl trying to stave off the onset of woman. Her thin tribal shirt complemented the scarf tied, Frida Kahlo-style, around her head, swaddling those of her thoughts that had a propensity to wander off. She was defenceless in the face of all things creative and still trying on a persona for size but hadn’t finally decided. Once he had settled, there was nothing between them but his wool and her thin sleeve of batik cotton.
It was her first trip to Japan she told him and she shared her excitement as the plane circled London and she drew him into a search for identifiable landmarks around her home in Dalston. But there was no sign of the Georgian terraces with tall, confident windows, built to see and be seen, and brick, that unmistakable colour of London rain. As the plane rounded the city sprawl, she didn’t notice his stolen glances for the playing fields of his West London Grammar.
‘So Hana means flower.’
He would have guessed she must be half Japanese. She knew she had chatted too much even before the engines drowned her out as they fought against gravity. Ungenerously, he shifted a scuffed leather document case to his knees decisively. But she carried on, telling him that her mother had lived in Tokyo in 1989.
‘A lot went on that year.’ He seemed obliged to tell her and rewarded her blank look with a catalogue. ‘Tiananmen. The fall of the Berlin wall. Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest.’
Hana laughed at his mock gravity and continued the game, adding a great earthquake to the list, which he claimed not to remember. He seemed tired of their first steps of acquaintance as he slipped the sheaf of documents from his case. She shouldn’t have talked so much.
He was returning from a business trip, he apologized.
Hana was left to survey the mood-board of Southern England – earth tones, fading to the shadows of a Sandra Blow sketch – and she busied herself with the intricacies of weaving a plait. She could see he was well-defended in a carapace of media; pads and pods and luxury headphones, which, she supposed, kept him reassuringly locked in some sort of solipsism. She liked his choice of his music. Easy Classical. She listened until the strains that came secondhand were too much effort to hear and she drifted back to Japan where she hoped she could paint over the outline sketch of her own past. In a matter of a few hours she would brace herself and prepare for a new perspective and then touch down on what would be another side of her.
When her hands left her hair she felt his eyes across her shoulder. The soft hair braid lay like a gift of intimacy between them. It was quite contrary to her intentions.
She read the open page. Clause 5. iv. Pursuant to any change in market conditions the vendor shall …
A lawyer? She wouldn’t have guessed. They would have no currency to exchange whatsoever. She opened the cover of her own book but had no inclination to read it and closed it again.
‘So your first trip?’ He seemed no longer able to concentrate on the merger documents.
She narrowed her almond eyes and nodded. She had never had the opportunity to go back.
‘Family?’
So simple a question but not so easy to answer. There was no family, no relatives, in fact; no one to visit. There never had been; how easily small openings in conversation could hit a nerve. A stewardess of an over-painted age stopped to offer drinks and Ed leaned in to pass her one as he asked how long she would be away.
Knowing that after the flight they would leave as strangers, she recognized an open opportunity to tell him anything she liked – a gift. What truths you could tell a stranger when a friend might pass judgment. A license to download. And so, without editing or exaggerating, she could talk to him more freely.
‘Six weeks or so. I’ll be teaching primary in the autumn,’ she began, applying the free lip balm generously.
Ed’s firm had sent him out to live in Tokyo the year before and he would probably stay another couple. So she might know someone on arrival – someone who would speak the language who she could call on if she had a problem. She weighed up whether he would offer to take her round. It was more likely they would leave the flight as they had begun, as strangers.
‘There was lot of work after the Oshika Peninsular incident.’
The reference sailed passed her until he explained.
‘Tohoku. The Great Eastern Earthquake.’ He hammered it home: ‘Last year the earth shifted almost a foot.’
She was wide-eyed. Her lips parted.
A foot – virtually the space she took up in her seat. It shocked her.
He drew attention to her book, changing the subject.
‘The Pillow Book?’ The spine was pristine.
For some reason, she did not want to mention that this love story was a departing gift from Tom. She and Tom had been together since school and lately she had wanted to ask him what she really meant to him but had never managed to bring it up. She thought she loved him but she had not yet learned to love herself. They were kind of cut adrift together. She had left him behind to finish his dissertation and house-sit the flat that was now hers.
‘From a friend.’ She tapped the cover casually.
Ed tried again – ‘Visiting friends here?’
She shook her head. But hoped for a place to stay, where her welcome would be whispered over rustling kimono silk, where a bamboo waterspout played over samisen music and delicacies on celadon-turquoise porcelain perfectly fitted her hand.
In reality she was travelling towards a void where she would know no one. And because she was part Japanese she felt foolish, as if she had been left standing waiting too long on a street corner. Hers was a history of carelessness. How reassuring it would be to say she was headed somewhere familiar.
‘And so your parents …?’ he asked.
She stopped him with a look.
She had lost her mother quite recently, and the words would still not come.
At her response he looked away and mouthed his apologies.
‘I‘ve arranged a kind of homestay, sort of hostel.’
Ed was well trained in the art of disguising when he was unimpressed but the edge of his mouth curled down; Hana ignored it.
Four hours in and green tea was offered. Ed passed across the plastic cup.
‘Sen no Rikyū would be upset. The Zen Master of simplicity.’
Hana’s eyebrows quizzed him.
‘Founder of the tea ceremony would have banished plastic.’
‘You’ve been to one?’
‘The whole ritual is played out very slowly. At half tempo.’
After a pause she interrupted him ‘My mother lived in Shimokitazawa.’
‘Nice area. You must have great photos.’
Of course there were photos. Photos of boots slipping from her tiny feet, on yellow-wellington days, bright enough to scare the wildlife halfway across the South Downs, where they spent rented weekends. But she had never seen a single photo from her mother’s time in Japan. Not a photo, not a face, found among her possessions to suggest she had ever lived there. Hana shook her head.
‘What did she do in Tokyo?’
She hadn’t told her very much. ‘Well … she did work on a … a teahouse.’
The seat-belt sign bleeped – turbulence – and as the plane bucked, half his green tea escaped across her jeans. As his apologies tumbled out he pushed his napkin softly against her thigh until they both looked up suddenly as if as each of them had been called from opposite ends of the plane. She liked his reserve. She trivialized the accident and holding his napkin to her jeans and continued.
‘I’m not a great traveller.’
He touched her sleeve with genuine concern.
Aware that she responded to his attention, they fell into an abrupt silence.
She watched him contemplate the ceiling vents. They were a good way into the journey and the air was stale.
‘You’ve done some miles then.’
‘Yes. A lunar mission only takes three days,’ he complained. ‘That’s half a million kilometres.’ She could tell he was the sort to be making constant calculations.
‘We’d be about a third of the way right now,’ he offered.
‘To the moon?’
‘Yes. You’ll find Japan as familiar – and you might as well be travelling through time too.’
It was effectively what she wanted to do: travel through time; find a piece of her mother; find a piece of her own history. She had always accepted the thin yarn of a story her mother had offered, and over the years she had darned and patched it until it fitted her needs. This was how they had always lived together, patching and making do.
Hana woke on the descent over the daytime Pacific to find her head lay on Ed’s shoulder. She smiled sleepily at the intimacies of the flight; his stomach filled with her untouched dinner, which he had tidied away. The honesty of their conversation.
She was not embarrassed until Ed opened his eyes and she shifted quickly to a safer distance.
‘You ‘ve got the address for the homestay – right? I’m really sorry – I would offer … but I’m going in the opposite direction.’
She was disappointed. She had imagined she would have a guide – at least to the centre of town.
‘But we should hang … definitely,’ he added.
It was such a little offer – she wouldn’t press him on it.
The plane dipped sharply sending her body temperature up until she felt a little sick. Below were the rice paddy fields and from this height it seemed there was little change in what she had left behind.
‘You okay?’
‘I’m fine.’
He was, she thought, genuinely concerned. She slumped forwards, fighting what might have been too embarrassing.
When they disembarked she was met in the terminal by a bank of chilled air laced with the smell of fast food. In the café, large, red, paper lanterns radiated a warm light. It was the red of the morning sun that rose early in the east. Her mother had talked about Amaterasu, the Goddess of the morning sun who created night and day and painted the Japanese landscape. It was part of their personal folklore and her mother had said she was her goddess: strong, creative and forgiving. And now on arrival, though she wasn’t a tourist as such she didn’t feel any immediate sense of belonging; this was a new world to her.
In the queue they said a simple goodbye. She opened her British passport at the photograph where her own almond eyes were lost to the stamps and seals that ward off counterfeiters. Her name, with its distinct spelling, somehow promised she would finally learn the truth about her own identity.
As he left beyond the visa line, she waved, touching the pocket where she had put his meishi business card. And so he left her between the no man’s land of duty-free and the threshold of Japan to find her way into the centre.
She marched blindly, past the bilingual signs of welcome and the helpful English guidance into town, to find the taxi ranks. It was too much for her to work out even in her own language. Luggage in tow she ignored the helpfully positioned tourist information desk and, in an ill-judged move, got into a yellow cab.
As the cab drove off, Ed’s card lay behind in the plane, forgotten amongst the collected crumbs beneath the armrest that had divided them.
Chapter 2
‘Entreat me not to leave thee or to return from following after thee; For whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; your people shall be my people’
−Ruth, to Naomi (Ruth 1:16-18, King James Bible)
Hana’s cab hurtled to join the writhing snake of traffic on the elevated section of the Tokyo expressway. It followed the contours of the Sumida River into downtown Tokyo where it split into so many tributaries, running off to Ginza, Chiyoda Ku and Tsukiji.
It hurt as she watched the taxi-meter move faster than the city as they drove across it. Beneath the highway they ventured into back streets, where the air was already thick with the smell of yakitori, so strong it might be an impediment to the karaoke drifting through alleys, eventually getting lost and petering out. Once they reached Shimokitazawa the noise of the traffic gave way to the random calls from the pachinko parlour as the car slowed to the pace of the footfall.
The end of the afternoon was still hot when she clambered out on the unfinished road at the top of a inauspicious residential cul de sac. As she counted the yen notes into the driver’s stark white gloves he must have read her surprise at the fare because he dropped his head in an apologetic bow. The empty street was pockmarked with the shadows of air-con units and laced with scrambled utility wires that looked as if they had been restrung in haste.
She stuffed the change into her pocket. Her jeans had crusted from the spilt tea and felt as pleasant as if someone else had worn them before her. Her mind went back to Tom, alone in her flat. Would Sadie keep him company? Sadie had borrowed her jacket and had only just returned it in time before she left and she could never quite be relied on. What was she doing here in Tokyo and where the hell was she? It was it was a long way from home.
The taxi left and as the dust settled at her feet, a regret that she should have come at all gently settled. Shimokitazawa: a quiet residential suburb that the guidebook promised as a ‘suburb of film café’s, low-key nightlife’ with ‘hundreds of reasonable restaurant choices’. Not that she had any money left after her cab ride. She consoled herself that at least the budget homestay rates had been agreed in advance; she had chosen the homestay program to save on costs but also for a chance to live with a Japanese family.
As she wheeled her case past the misaligned wall at the entrance of number 65, she realized that she had got what she paid for. It was nearing 6 p.m. as she rang the bell.
Chapter 3
‘Clear-voiced cuckoo,
Even you will need
The silvered wings of a crane
To span the islands of Matsushima’
−Matsuo Bashō, The Narrow Road to the Deep North
The front door opened before her hand left the chanting, electronic bell. Perhaps the woman always watched for visitors. She was slight, a good head shorter than Hana and as agitated as a bird that does not own the pavement. Her greeting seemed lost in the effort of removing her housecoat.
Hana ignored the temptation to step back and call after the taxi but steeled herself to walk into this stranger’s house. It smelt savoury but was not unpleasant. The hall was spacious with a large central staircase of thin matchstick bannisters, empty but for a stainless-steel clock in a plastic mahogany case and from the curling rug at the doorstep, it was shabby. But she managed to hide her disappointment; find a smile and make appreciative noises as she surveyed the gallery landing, the empty walls and tired decor. Her own home was such a contrast to this, decorated with bolts of indigo and woodblock prints, brush-stroked scrolls, thumb-printed pottery and hand-painted china; a densely rich homage to Japan.
There was an unease behind the woman’s welcome. Maybe her appearance or the stain across her jeans was to blame? Her middle-aged Japanese host was tiny, and had pulled her thin hair across her scalp into a bun.
With forklift arms the woman communicated Hana should leave her case in the hall.
She was concerned that the lined and tired older woman should not lift it for her and it troubled her that she did not know how to say as much.
‘Noru desu.’ I am Noru. The aged woman slapped her bony breastbone and traced a legible greeting across the warm evening air. The enormity of the language barrier added to her jet lag. She would have so many questions – and she felt so ill-equipped to ask.
The house was silent but for a TV down the corridor as Noru took off on a tour of the lodgings. Hana trailed behind like a dependent child rather than a paying guest.
As they peered into the bathroom, Noru jabbed at the wood-lined bath, then at the shower head, positioned a foot from the floor, and she paused, lending some significance to a pair of plastic sandals by the door.
Hana had no idea. Should she wear slippers in the shower? From the back of the house came a short dry cough. As if attached by an invisible line, Hana followed on to the foot of the stairs where it was made clear that she should remove her shoes before she took to the first step. Was she was just another clueless foreign guest?
Her hot feet left damp prints on the first step and she was covered in embarrassment. As they reached the utilitarian beige of the upper floor, the smell of sour grass became overpowering. What was to be her room was off the open landing. Behind a thin door, with a quick yank of a grimy light cord, Noru showed her two single beds that were suddenly illuminated in all their plainness and just as quickly returned to gloom. It seemed clean enough.
A twin room. Assuming no one else arrived to use the other single, it would suit her fine. She thanked Noru, knowing she could not ask about the twin beds and the distance between them grew larger than just the language barrier.
Outside on the galleried landing, Hana took a seat on the tan leatherette sofa. She watched Noru drawing green tea from a giant floral flask on an old linen chest and accepted it though she had drunk plenty on the flight. It was easier to acquiesce.
‘Gohan.’ We eat. Noru tapped at her watch and then turned for the private section of the house, heading in the direction of the coughing below.
Alone, contemplating a pair of prints on the opposite wall, Hana was too tired of sitting and too weary to stand. Mount Fuji and a giant wave. She had finally arrived and all expectation was turned on its head. The volcanic cone of Fuji sloped smoothly towards a deep dusk-blue where a small fishing boat charted the choppy waters of the lake below.
Well, she rallied, she had brought her walking boots with her and could hike the Fuji trail to the top if she chose. If Tom could have come too she’d have felt more adventurous, but maybe scaring herself a little was a good thing.
The bitter tea, just the colour of the matting, felt acidic on her empty stomach and she regretted giving away her airline meal. And as a hollow emptiness descended on her, she tried to dismiss it as jet lag.
She could phone home. No, she should not phone home. Not now, not yet. All those years before, her mother, at pretty much the same age, had arrived in Tokyo, knowing no one either. And if she was honest she did know one person – the guy from the plane and with Noru that made two.
Her head fell back on the sofa and she bit into the rough side of her cheek. Her mother must once have loved Japan but it had obviously been a complicated affair as there were such huge blanks in the story. They had never come when her mother was alive: they had never had the resources; it had never been practical.
Now that her mother had gone, questions had begun to appear. Long-buried questions. Now she felt a fool for not asking, but then again she had been forced into accepting this and it had only now begun to irritate her.
Chapter 4
‘The events of human life, whether public or private, are so intimately linked to architecture that most observers can reconstruct nations or individuals in all the truth of their habits from the remains of their monuments or from their domestic relics’
−Honoré de Balzac
Hana sipped at the bitter tea. You really had to know how to ask the right questions. Her mother had hidden behind a memory that she would never share. She had cradled it like a burn to the hand and Hana had learned early on not to bring it up. Consequently it had proved a very successful way of avoiding the truth – which left Hana up against it now, up against that generational amnesia that protected the past and, at worst, buried it.
She really must find the teahouse. As her mother had described it, it lay etched on her mind, sitting in temple gardens, over an ornamental lake in one of the most tranquil places on earth. Working on that building and helping with the construction design, had been for her mother an exquisite project. On the rare occasions she had mentioned it she looked wistful, lost, and, when pressed, she would clam up, or ramble on about the way it was built.
This Zen teahouse had become a kind of monument to her and so Hana had brought from home the dog-eared Japanese map, folded into inconvenient ribbons and covered in nothing but kanji characters. The task of finding a major tourist site would be an achievement let alone an insignificant retreat in the middle of nowhere but the guy from the flight, Ed, might help.
With thoughts of freshening up she reached the hall, where Noru materialized, flapping her apron and motioning towards the bathroom at the back of the house. Once the door bolt was secured, she finally stepped out of her jeans. Peeling away the clothes she had first put on in London began the transition. You hadn’t arrived, she thought, until that moment when you remove the flight-worn souvenirs from the start of the journey. The deep wooden bath was already full of water and, ignoring the short shower hose, the slippers and the ashtray, she got in and sank into the hottest water she had ever braved. Soaping away the collected hours of arm’s-length intimacy and the Tokyo dust, she suspected she was breaking another house rule but who knew what it was.
Replacing the medicinal soap, she sank back for a blissful moment and remembered the London Fields Lido where she had first learnt to swim. She must have been about ten. This place prompted memories she hadn’t raised for years, as if, as Ed had said, she was travelling back in time. Her mother, with careful consideration, amid the shouts of pleasure or was it terror around them, had removed the floats from her skinny arms and let her go. Shoulder deep she had felt herself sinking, but her mother, beside her then, had watched her struggle to the edge, to safety. It was never going to be easy, but she had clung to that mantra, and as they walked home hers was strawberry-ice success and they shared the sweet melt line running all the way to her elbow.
The steaming bath threatened to overwhelm her and, having added more from the cold tap, she sank below the water line. She held her breath until it was not quite comfortable, then, expelling bubbles in punishing, controlled bursts, she finally let it all go, turning the water into a rolling boil above her head. It was the first time, she realized, that she was angry. She missed her mother and she was angry with herself for losing her. Now she was actually here she knew she should have asked more questions, demanded answers. She had so little go on.
Radiating more heat than a power plant, she stepped out, and realized her fresh clothes were in her bag. She tried to pull on her jeans but her clammy skin made it impossible and so she threw on a cotton robe she found on the back of the door. It smelt distinctly male and, ignoring a slight revulsion, she threw it on in favour of running to her room in a tiny towel.
As discreetly as she could she lugged her bag across the floor, battling to keep the loose yukata robe closed, intent on getting past unseen. She wasn’t sure but it was as if she had displaced someone from beyond the bathroom window vent.
She lay on the bed gazing beyond the weight of her exhausted eyelids, until suddenly energized she searched though her hand luggage for Ed’s card. And she searched again, only to find it missing, and, with vigorous frustration she realized she had probably already lost it.
On her way down she could hear more coughing. As if on cue Noru appeared as Hana descended the stairs. She ushered her into the dining room, waved a tea towel in the direction of a chair and hit the play button on some plinkety-plonkety Japanese folk music, then left.
There were five places laid at the table. It was difficult to judge the size of the house. As she waited for the other guests, her eyes ranged over the few effects in the room. A small CD collection included ten copies of the same album from a cute girl band and beside the potted cactus was a range of English football mugs. She supposed they belonged to a teenage boy, but this impression was quickly dispelled when an approaching shuffle announced the laboured arrival of a really old man. Could it be Noru’s father? Anticipating the difficulty he would have seating himself, she got up to help him to his chair and, with the arrogance both accrued in old age and naturally excused by it, he sat down at the head of the table and ignored her. Saucepans clattered in the kitchen.
‘It is my first trip to Tokyo.’ He ignored her, and she chose to turn up the volume. It didn’t matter that he wouldn’t speak English ‘My mother lived in Shimoktazawa in the eighties. For over a year.’ He could be deaf. ‘My mother, Naomi,’ she said again, for her own benefit.
He turned his head slowly as if to do otherwise would startle him and snorted down his nose, shaking his head his up and down in what could have been recognition.
‘Ukai,’ he said, introducing himself by tapping a bony finger to his chest. He had the tanned, desiccated face of a smoker. His wheezy laugh was lost in a fit of coughing that immediately brought Noru back into the room.
Hana recognized the look on her face, that look of spent patience, which must remain unvented and often accorded to the very old, the infirm, or the long-term ill.
Noru fell on him, rubbing and thumping the base of his back and drawing vigorous circles over his chest.
‘So da ne.’ She comforted him as you would a young child. No wonder she looked exhausted, this nurse and housekeeper.
‘Can I help?’ Hana was unsure at first whether she had made herself understood. But her offer was turned down graciously and she turned to look at the becalmed old man as Noru left him as she attended to the cooking. His rheumy eyes shone with his exertions and he looked at Hana directly.
‘Na-o-mi,’ he said. She could swear he said it, under thin breath. Just a copycat word? She could not ask another question for fear of bringing on another bout of asthma and so they sat in an uncomfortable silence animated only by his laboured breathing and the ticking of a cuckoo clock. The displaced German clock, like her, seemed to have lost its cultural way and migrated east. Did she have any better reason for being here? Contemplating the wizened figure at the head of the table, age itself looking like a wrong turn, she dropped her head with the thought that at least her mother had been spared this.
Chapter 5
Waiting for the evening meal took her back to the goodbye supper with friends. Tom had given a Japanese Kanpai toast and they had shared a bottle of sake Sadie had brought. They had found some shakuhachi flute music and talked of geishas, She had promised them all armfuls of manga comics.
Now she was here it was a sour joke. Moist amethyst and livid yellow pickles sat curling beside some dried fish. Noru fussed about serving them but eventually joined them at the table. At least the dinner was offered in small portions and she would manage the rice out of politeness.
Slipping the paper chopsticks from their sheath she broke them apart, whittling at the loose splinters before she began to eat. This prompted an exaggerated reaction from Noru, who exhaled in voiced panic.
‘No. No,’ Noru burst out shaking her head like an old turkey bird. Looking to the old man for his reaction to her carelessness. Noru could not begin to tell her what custom she had offended. Self-consciously Hana picked at the sticky rice and the air-conditioning unit cooling the back of her neck joined forces with her jet lag to bring her close to tears. They didn’t intend to make her feel so unwelcome, she knew that, and she forced a smile.
There were still two empty places laid at the table and she longed for a diversion. Just then doorbell went and Noru got up. Hana heard an American voice in the lobby, apologizing.
‘Yeah. Sorry it’s late. No, I won’t eat. Just going straight to sleep, thanks.’
Piles of dark unruly hair and a girl with olive skin appeared in the door and Hana noticed the energy in the house had changed. After an exchange of smiles, the girl said, ‘I’m Jess. Dead tired so I’ll see you later. I’m gonna head up.’
‘Bikyhikibiri!’ a man’s voice boomed from the back of the house.
As the diatribe continued Ukai turned his milky eyes towards Hana, followed by Noru and then Jess until she was the focal point of everyone’s stare.
‘You washed with soap in the bath?’ Jess whispered.
Hana nodded.
‘They never do this here.’ She was matter of fact; she was obviously not new to the house. ‘We share the water.’ It was not good news.
Hiding in the shadow of the doorway clutching a towel, a bare-chested man in his thirties appeared, rattling on in complaint until Noru’s response sent him into retreat.
Hana remembered the bathrobe and winced. Moments later he returned wearing a fresh cotton yukata gown over his heavy frame. He was newly shaven and his damp skin shone.
‘Kombanwa,’ he said to the room, acknowledging the girls before he sat down heavily beside old Ukai, and began again a low, gravelling rant.
‘Night,’ the American said. ‘See you tomorrow.’
She seemed very much at home and very content to leave Hana with the growling man who must, she assumed, be Noru’s son.
Noru deferentially placed sticks of startling luminous fish and sticky rice in front of the young man and it had a beneficial effect.
He turned to look at Hana as if she reminded him of someone.
‘So, welcome to Tokyo. I am Tako. You met my mother and grandfather?’ He had once got lucky with a gap year student.
His dark hair was wet and he looked like an overgrown cuckoo. It was no surprise that Noru was stretched, cooking for two generations and guests.
‘Hana, right? Japanese for flower.’ He smiled benignly like a prince appeased. ‘Ukai can write your name in kanji alphabet sometime.’ He jabbed his chopsticks at the old man enthusiastically, revealing his bare chest beneath the yukata and a lurking breastplate tattoo.
‘Thanks.’ Who would refuse such an offer?
‘You know Chelsea?’ he asked, pointing at the line of football mugs.
‘Yes.’ It was drawn out and unconvincing. The Chelsea she knew was a place where her grandparents had lived until she’d gone to senior at the City of London School for Girls. They would take her to St Luke’s playground off Sydney Street, and then, later, on those Sunday-lunch visits she and her mother were obliged to make, they would go to the Physic Garden. When she was older she would meet friends at the Goat pub, before trekking home to East London. Chelsea did not mean a football club to her and he could see that.
‘So, you are gonna see the sights, right?’
‘And lots of temples.When I find them.’
This sent him ricocheting to be of assistance. He retrieved a map and laid a hand on it ceremoniously as if it might be a passport to friendship. Opening it at his end of the table he strategically identified the areas marked and then promptly dashed it away, clearly having an Einstein moment.
‘I myself can show you.’
Too fatigued to give him anything but a lukewarm response she hesitated. ‘Thank you.’ Should she say it? ‘Very much.’
‘You are British. British and –’ he paused ‘– British Asian?’
This caught her off-guard, for while she was used to people turning over guessing stones – the game had long since ceased to irritate – but she had assumed foolishly, that possibly they might get it right here in Japan.
‘Japanese.’
‘So. I see,’ he said, more winded than intrigued.
Had she expected to walk off the plane and fit in? Outside there was just enough light to see the old wooden house opposite through the heavy dirt on the insect netting. Could she belong here? Idly, she prodded the pink seafood round the bowl with her chopsticks.
‘Chelsea is my club,’ he continued beaming indulgently and she tried hard to reciprocate the smile. For some reason nothing fitted. Perhaps she might be happier in a different homestay? She wouldn’t jump to a rash decision, but tomorrow she could look at different places to stay; maybe the American could suggest one.
She made her excuses and was sorry for not managing to eat what they had presented. She could sense their disappointment but, at the noise of her chair, as she pushed her seat back under the table, they broke from their disenchantment and wished her goodnight.
‘Oyasuminasai,’ Noru chimed with her son.
Upstairs in the twin room the American girl, despite the humidity, was hidden under a floral sheet. Hana’s room was now their room. She had, considerately, left the light on but the air-con was off and there was no remote control. The solution hung pendulously over her bed. She climbed gingerly on to the bed base and reached for the switch until the girl stirred.
‘Hospital soap,’ she mumbled sleepily.
She would leave it tonight.
As Hana closed her eyes thoughts of home drifted in. Tom would be at lunch now. It was only yesterday he had seen her off from the platform in Paddington and brought her case all the way, in an unusually generous gesture for him. He had given her The Pillow Book as she stepped onto the train. It was only as he receded with the station that the realization she was leaving him behind had hit. She had hoped for larger assurances that he would miss her; she wanted him to say it would hurt and preferably badly. She wanted him to work on what she meant to him until her return. But he was not demonstrative; he could be needy and that display of affection was entirely different, veering as it did towards his own requirements, not hers. Did she trust Sadie with him? How could she begin to taunt herself and so soon when she felt so very off-centre already? She would be away for nearly two months and to begin counting the days was a poor start. A poor start. A poor start.
She fell asleep with unexpected ease.
The free sample has ended.
