“He goes so often he’s gotta be livin’ off it,” said Chikara smugly.
“So how come you ain’t livin’ off it, Chika?” asked Mitsuko.
She looked entirely earnest, without a hint of malice or hidden motive. Chikara smiled awkwardly. His chubby face, always red and beading with sweat, grew even redder.
Tatsuya would sometimes come to the door when Mitsuko took food to the house. He was tall and thin, with a slight stoop. His hair was always unkempt, his face unshaven, his eyes bloodshot and puffy. It was hard to believe those eyes could belong to the father of a girl whose eyes were so big and clear. When he opened the door it always looked as though he’d just been asleep. He’d appear in a crumpled T-shirt and shorts or track pants that he’d obviously just put on. He often stank of cheap liquor.
Mitsuko couldn’t help but mutter under her breath at the sight of him. Being on the local Welfare and Children’s Committee, she felt she should express her concerns clearly. But she was disarmed by Tatsuya’s affable, slightly sad, smile.
“Thank ya,” he’d say, bowing his head. “You’re always so kind.”
“No bother,” she’d say. “We’re neighbors, after all. We’ve gotta look after each other.” What else could she say?
“And thanks for that stew you gave us t’other day—Saki really loved it. ‘Scrumptious,’ she said. She ended up eatin’ my helpin’ too.”
His back would hunch up when he spoke this way, and he’d sound so apologetic that the kindhearted Mitsuko found herself unable to say anything critical.
His words suggested that he didn’t leave his daughter to eat on her own. That at least was something. Before setting off from her house with a pan or tray, Mitsuko always resolved to deliver one or two harsh truths when she arrived. But when leaving his house she’d find herself cheerfully saying things like: “Okay! I’ll have t’make more next time so there’s enough for you too!” It was as if, unable to confront him, she’d decide that both Tatsuya and she herself would benefit from a bit of positivity. Then she’d walk home, her head cocked to one side, wondering what had happened.
The fact that nobody ever saw Tatsuya working didn’t mean that the household was broken or degenerate. There was no screaming or shouting to be heard, no sounds of things smashing, no endless, heart-wrenching crying. In fact, the house was rather quiet. If a window was open, the sound of the TV came out—sports highlights, or laughter from a variety show—blending with the cries of the insects. Occasionally, Mitsuko worried that the TV was on too late, but it didn’t happen often. Sometimes Tatsuya put out the wash—both his and his daughter’s clothes—too late in the day to dry, but it nearly always appeared at some point during the day. Peering inside through the front or back door there were no signs that the house was a mess. Mitsuko felt sorry for Saki, having no mother, but the girl didn’t look unhappy.
“It reminds me of when your ma was little,” Mitsuko said one day out of the blue. Takeru couldn’t imagine his mother as a child.
Once she saw that Takeru and Saki had become friends it became easier for Mitsuko to invite Saki over for a meal. “Dad says it’s okay,” Saki would say when she arrived, without Mitsuko having to ask whether she had permission. Before long she was a regular visitor, coming over to have dinner or a snack with Takeru.
Mitsuko’s house had a wide veranda that faced south, where Mitsuko placed a folding table for them. She lit a mosquito coil and when Takeru complained about the heat, she brought out an electric fan, the cord stretching from inside. The breeze from the fan dispersed the smoke from the mosquito coil, but at the same time made it difficult for the light, black insects to get close to the bodies at the table. The mosquitoes hung in the air, impotent yet threatening. It was difficult for thoughts to take shape when they were hovering there, hard for sentences to fall into place. Maybe only simple things could be said—like what Takeru said now:
“Showa.”
Mitsuko laughed.
“What’s so funny?” he said.
“You mean the fan and coil make ya think of the Showa Period? What do you know about the Showa Period? It ended years ago.” she said.
Takeru pouted, his tight lips pressed forward like a mosquito’s proboscis. Then he heard a voice. Or thought he heard a voice.
Don’t! Don’t talk about things you don’t know.
Takeru glanced across the table at Saki. Her face was turned in the direction from which the voice had come. Takeru turned to gaze the same way. He could see Saki’s house beyond the vegetable field, slightly obstructed by the kurogane holly tree that grew at the edge of Mitsuko’s garden. Beside the tree stood Bunji. His back was tight against its pale trunk. Maybe he thought he was hidden. Maybe he thought he’d become part of the tree. His hands were over his mouth, as if he’d said something he shouldn’t have, and his shoulders were hitching up and down. He looked comical. Takeru imagined Bunji criticizing himself, his voice screeching in time with the jolting of his shoulders: Don’t! Don’t poke your nose into other people’s business!
Takeru felt certain that Saki had also noticed Bunji. He watched her as she turned back to the table.
“Dad hasn’t taken the clothes in,” she said. “I’ll have t’go and take ’em in soon.”
“Yeah,” said Mitsuko. “But you won’t be able t’reach. I’ll take it in for ya later, don’t worry ’bout it.”
Takeru looked at the tree again. Bunji wasn’t there anymore. But he could see him plodding along the narrow concrete road between the fields that led north to the seawall. He was bent forward, as though carrying something heavy on his back. Against his small thin body Bunji’s hands looked strangely large, dangling weakly by his thighs. Beyond him were hills. A hill to the west, one of the two that formed the bay, was beginning to cast a purple shadow over the village, a sign that night was not far off. A half-transparent moon hung in the sky. From time to time there was the noise of a vehicle on the bay road, which had been straightened during the coastal protection program. The cicadas were as loud as ever. The cries of black hawks fell from the sky like quoits, hoops of sound thrown down toward trees and telephone poles. The hawks themselves, descending more swiftly than their cries, settled here and there on the poles, folded their scruffy wings, and stared fixedly toward something more distant than tomorrow.
Takeru thought of Bunji’s eyes and wondered if they could see this scenery. Tottering along the road Bunji looked spurned by the world outside himself, by this land. But from what Mitsuko had said, Bunji had died without ever leaving, without ever going beyond the boundaries of the green hills and dark blue sea. So, how could it be that there was no place for him here, where he’d been born and lived his whole life? His eyes looked as though they couldn’t see what was in front of him, as if—though no one else was there to see it either—the scene hid itself from him, refused to let him see it. So his vision couldn’t expand outward, and had no alternative but to go inward. But what was there inside? Any memories that might rise up from the dark depths inside him would be memories of this land between the green hills and dark blue sea, this land that was now sinking into the depths of night. There was nothing else inside him but the very scenery that so stubbornly refused to accept him. Even if he’d tried to remember any other landscape he wouldn’t have been able to—there was nowhere else he knew. And he couldn’t have created fake memories for himself. Mitsuko said he hadn’t been bright, hadn’t gone to school. If you’ve got nowhere to go in reality, then at least you’d want your mind to take you somewhere. But if you don’t understand what people say, if you can’t read or write, how could you imagine another world?