Mitsuko laughed.
“Look!” she said. “My old man’s enjoyin’ that!”
On the altar were some small framed photographs. One showed a man of about sixty-five in a suit—Mitsuko’s late husband, Yoshio. He was definitely smiling. Takeru’s tapping quickened and his voice grew louder. He looked carefully at the other photos to see if anyone else was smiling. That was when he noticed. The oldest photo on the altar was so faded that you could hardly even call it black and white. He stretched up to take a better look. In the photo, a group of about ten adults and children were gathered around a bald hermit-like old man with a long goatee, who was sitting on the veranda of an old-fashioned house. In the foreground were a wicker bamboo bowl, some chickens, and a piglet. Takeru’s eye was caught by a woman standing near the frame, farthest away from the old man. She was staring out of the picture with a suspicious frown. Takeru’s dubious mantra stopped. The drum fell silent.
“Who’s this, Mitsuko?” he said.
“Which one?” she asked, coming closer to the altar. She picked up the photo and held it out to Takeru.
“The boy standing in front of that woman…”
“Ah… that’s her son, Bunji.”
The shaven-headed boy in the picture was just a child. But Takeru felt sure it was him—the man he’d seen at the airport, the man he somehow felt he already knew. Takeru was about to say so to Mitsuko, but he didn’t. The boy in the picture was looking down—perhaps he was nervous about the piglet whose nose was so close to his foot that it might almost have been eating it. Takeru couldn’t see enough to judge whether his features were definitely those of the face he’d seen yesterday—the strange face that could have belonged either to a young child or an old man. And besides, Mitsuko had suddenly started talking, excited, as though she’d noticed something important in the picture that she’d never seen before.
“Oh, look! Can ya see the kid Bunji’s ma’s holdin’? That’s Bunji’s little brother—Takeshi. A lot like your name.”
“Well, yeah,” said Takeru, “but it’s not the same. I’m Takeru, not Takeshi.”
“Of course. But at first we all thought you were called Takeshi. I can’t ’member why we thought that, but everyone said your ma must’ve named ya after this Takeshi in the photo. He was a cousin of your ma’s grandpa—a very clever boy who got into the Naval Officers’ School. So we thought your ma, Wakako, named ya after him. But really, I don’t suppose your ma would’ve even known ’bout him.”
Mitsuko’s tone then changed—it was as if she was saying something she didn’t really want to. She wouldn’t have been good at telling lies.
“We didn’t even know your ma had a child ’til years after ya were born. And for a long time we all thought your name was Takeshi. Your ma never came home for Bon or the New Year. Didn’t even send a New Year’s card. We had no idea what she was doin’ with her life. We didn’t even know if she was alive. We had no word at all and it upset us… but she always was that kind of girl.”
Had his mother not told people in the village about his brother? That’s what Takeru wanted to ask, but his mouth said something different. He pointed at the boy in its mother’s arms and the boy standing in front of her:
“What happened to them? Are they still alive?”
“They died a long, long time ago. If they were alive today, they’d be over a hundred. I never knew either of ’em.”
Something inside Takeru wanted to block out the sound of her voice, but it was powerless, so he heard everything she said.
“Bunji died when he was very young—just a child. Takeshi was in the Navy durin’ the war. Then with the American ’cupation there were restrictions on jobs for officers out of the military, so he came back here and set up a fishin’ business. When the restrictions were lifted he was ’lected a councilman. But then, shortly after, he drowned at sea. It seems like such a waste that he died like that, after he made it through the war.”
She sighed, but didn’t say any more. Two brothers—like you. That would have been an obvious thing to say, thought Takeru. But of course she didn’t say it. She was kind. She’d taken him in, and she never cornered him. She wouldn’t say something like that.
Takeru didn’t feel confident to answer questions about his brother, but he always expected to be asked. But neither Mitsuko nor anyone else he met in the village ever mentioned him. They occasionally brought up his mother, but never his brother. It was strange. It was almost as if he’d never had a brother. Perhaps he hadn’t. Was that the truth of the matter? He wished it was.
Takeru met Saki Kawano a couple of days later. Mitsuko had gone out to a local Welfare and Children’s Committee meeting and Takeru was watching television alone when he heard a child’s voice:
“Mitsuko!”
He stood up, went to the kitchen, opened the back door, and found a girl standing outside. Her black hair was straight, her bangs cut at right angles above her neat eyebrows. She had large long-lashed eyes that curved down slightly toward her cheekbones. It was a regular southern face. He knew right away that she was from the house next door—he’d caught sight of her a couple of times coming or going. Seeing her up close for the first time, he noticed her long thin limbs. She was slightly taller than he was. She had probably seen him before as well. Her big sparkling eyes stared at him more in friendly curiosity than surprise.
“Who’re you?” she asked.
“Takeru Tamura,” he said.
“I’m Saki,” she said. “Saki Kawano. Where’re you from?”
“Tokyo…” said Takeru vaguely.
“What grade?”
“Fourth.”
“I’m in second.”
Knowing he was two years older than her, Takeru now felt bolder.
“So what do you want?” he said.
For a moment Saki looked surprised. Takeru thought maybe he’d sounded conceited. Her hands shot out. They held a small cooking pot.
“Please thank Mitsuko for us,” she said. “It was delicious.”
Takeru took the pot and Saki opened the door to leave. Then, with her hand still on the doorknob, she turned around as though something had just occurred to her. She looked very serious.
“Can ya play tomorrow?” she said.
Before Takeru had time to nod, the door slammed shut.
Through the door he could hear the girl running on the white gravel outside the house. It seemed like a happy sound.
Mitsuko came home shortly afterward. She picked up the pot from the table.
“Saki bring this back?” she asked.
She ran her finger around the rim of the pot.
“She always brings things back so clean,” she said, as though to herself. “I suppose she’s the one that washes ’em. She’s a good girl.”
Saki and her father lived in the two-story house next door, beyond a small field of cucumbers and onions. According to Mitsuko, they’d moved in about four years ago when the house was new. Because there was no woman in their house, Mitsuko took over food whenever she could—nikujaga, curry, boiled fish, sashimi.
Saki’s father, Tatsuya, had worked at Kawase Fisheries, one of the biggest fisheries in the area, based in a village that had once been the administrative hub of the district. But he had given up that job and bought the house in Takanoura. He had also bought a small secondhand boat and started fishing on his own, but the boat was always tied up at the quay now. Neither Mitsuko nor anybody else in Takanoura knew what he lived on. Some people said he made money playing pachinko. That was the opinion of Chikara Goto, a fisherman friend of Mitsuko’s late husband, who sometimes stopped by to bring her fish. The evidence he gave to support his theory was how often he spotted Tatsuya’s car in the parking lot of one of the pachinko parlors on the main road in “town” (as the local people called the built-up area beyond the hill).