“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 boxes. 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 bento 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 bento box 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 to 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 decoys, fake customers,” 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.