Earlier, I mentioned oversleeping on the morning after firefly viewing, only managing to catch the final train back to Kyoto with a few other stragglers. I did not mention that when I did so, out of some weird desire for symmetry, some sense of wanting to continue the strangeness of the weekend, I entered the same railway car I’d used on my way to the Sugiyama’s farmhouse.
Third class cars had open seating so I would have taken the same seat, too, had Mr. Sato not been in it, his head bent so far forward that I didn’t think he saw me as I came down the aisle to fall into Kaori’s seat behind him. The window I had opened for Kaori was still open, too, pleasing me until I realized that the window would have to be on the opposite side of the compartment, since we were now traveling toward Kyoto and not away from it. I looked across the aisle at the seat she would have used, but its window was closed.
I pulled my book out, hoping it might shed further light on the vast amount that I still didn’t know about Japanese people - things I would have to learn if I went to Hokkaido - when Mr. Sato coughed and cleared his throat. And when I looked up, expecting to see the back of his head, he was on his knees and staring at me over the back of the seat. He had a handkerchief over his mouth, into which he was depositing a large amount of phlegm.
“Hello, Cornelius,” he said. “You didn’t think I saw you sneaking past me?”
“Yes,” I said, “I didn’t.”
“Did you enjoy the fireflies? Did you think about the fleeting nature of things, as we were ordered to do by Mr. Sugiyama? I did. Each year I find it calming, in the face of my corporate responsibilities, to come out here and do as I am told.”
“I thought about the beauty of certain women,” I said.
Mr. Sato was the last person I would choose to say something like that to. Firefly weekend must have lowered my defenses. But he seemed pleased. He was a short man, probably no taller than Mr. Watanabe of the antique shop, so the only parts of him visible to me over the back of the seat were his shoulders, neck, and head . Plus his face, of course, with its eternally perturbed expression.
“Are your corporate responsibilities burdensome?” I asked. “Whenever we get close to criticizing Mitsubishi in class, I can be sure you’ll come to its defense.”
“Ah, well, yes, for in class there are corporate spies. But, like you, I wish that I had been born a century ago,” he said. “It is the burden of all sensitive men to believe themselves to have been born too late.”
According to Mr. Sugiyama I was an observant man, and now I was a sensitive one to Mr. Sato. “I don’t wish I was born a century ago,” I said. “What makes you think that?”
“Because the stories you told us about your grandmother let me know that you are like me, though I am old and you are young,” he said. “Here’s an interesting aphorism: ‘It’s a proclivity of older men to admit that they wish they had been born before; a proclivity of younger men to deny it.’ But the older we get the more we understand that things were better in the past. It’s always been that way. Old men a century ago wanted to go back two centuries, and two centuries ago they wished they had lived three centuries earlier. There has never been an age that satisfied old men. For you to understand that, however… the only explanation is your grandmother.”
I had just told him that I didn’t understand it, or at least I didn’t wish it. “My grandmother’s been dead since I was ten,” I said. “I think I’d like to give her influence over me a rest.”
Mr. Sato’s head seemed to slide along the back of his seat. When he’d coughed out his phlegm it was over by the aisle, and now it was nearly to the window. I had a feeling that if it hit the window a bell would ring and it would slide back to the aisle again, like the ball in a Selectric typewriter.
“I see that you were not paying attention to my opinion on it,” he said. “Dead since you were ten years old? I don’t think so. When I said in class that she was a gift you had been given, you admitted then that she was very much alive in you. It is too late for you to give her influence a rest, for once you have opened such a gift you cannot wrap it up again. You should know by now that we can only keep our inner lives a secret if we don’t know those inner lives ourselves.”
Quite suddenly he stood farther up, until he loomed above me, his eyes glistening in the train’s dull light, to say in a voice both high in pitch and low in timbre -
The scent of flowers
tolls as the temple bell fades
the evening falling.
He then turned and sat back down, so low in his seat that I couldn’t see him anymore.
But oh how I loved the poem… it’s the scent of flowers that tolls, not the temple bells themselves.
Later I would learn that the haiku wasn’t his, but was written by the great Matsuo Bashō, in the spring of 1688, when he was out for an evening stroll.
—
I assumed that the usual suspects would be at Mountain Cabin to see Melinda off - Bill, saying how much he’d miss her to everyone but Melinda herself; the entire Sugiyama family, sincere in wishing her a happy life; and many of Melinda’s students, past and present, some of them bearing gifts that she would not be able to take with her on the plane. Kaori might even come, in order to nurse a drink at the bar. One night at Mountain Cabin was like every night at Mountain Cabin, was like every night at every bar across the city and the world. But what was I going to do, not show up?
My first plan was to go late, at about the time Melinda would be leaving for the airport, thank her again for the portrait, offer to help her with her luggage, then leave again whether she accepted my offer or not.
My second plan was to go early, on the chance of avoiding the others, but what if Melinda wasn’t there yet?
My third plan, which was really no plan at all, was to go at eight o’clock.
Hank Williams was singing “Your Cheatin’ Heart” when I walked in, with Bill lurking near the turntable, probably perusing Junichiro’s record collection. One crooked look from him and I’d know he sent the itinerary.
Junichiro’s dislike for country music was well known, but he’d made tonight’s playlist with what Melinda liked in mind - no Beatles or Stones or jazz - but “Your Cheatin’ Heart” followed by the Jimmie Rodgers tune, “Blue Yodel Number 1”, then “I Fall to Pieces” and “Crazy”, both by Patsy Cline. Melinda stood with him at the bar. I waited through all those songs, then went up to her just after Roy Orbison ran into the love of his life in “Crying.” He’d thought he was over her but realized he wasn’t, the moment she touched his hand.
“Good song,” I said. “Just goes to show you that no one ever gets over anyone.”
“Hard to sing at karaoke, though,” said Melinda. “Too many octave changes.”
She smiled and squeezed my arm. She’d mentioned karaoke to me before, as if that were something we might share... or perhaps she only mentioned it to let me know she had a good voice.
I’d seen that Kaori wasn’t there the moment I walked in, and berated myself for thinking she might be. Not only would she not come to see Melinda off, but she would never come again, to practice her English with foreigners. She’d taken a very long walk in that particular wilderness and found it lacking, yet in a way she’d invited me to visit her at her house, saying, “I will be the host but not the guest,” while Ichikawa Yuki seemed to be saying, if the itinerary came from her, “Let’s go find a world of our own.”
The Sugiyamas sat at a table in the center of the room - Mr. and Mrs. with a chair between them that I presumed was meant for Etsuko’s father, who was in the kitchen helping out. When Etsuko saw me and called me over, I got a beer and joined them, taking the chair myself.
“Who’s looking after Emi?” I asked, though I knew as well an anyone that Emi could take care of herself.
“She’s here,” Etsuko said. “I’m under strict orders to take her home in time to see Jikan Desuyo, but for now she’s in there, helping her grandfather.”
She nodded toward the kitchen, the door to which swung open to reveal Emi struggling under a heavy case of Kirin beer, her hair moving in counterpoint to the floor. I was about to get back up and go help her, when Bill went into the kitchen and took the beer. He stayed there after that, maybe getting a feel for the place, while Emi and her grandpa came out.
“Let’s go, Mama,” Emi said. “Grandpa wants to see it, too.”
Her grandfather looked like the only thing he wanted was his futon.
“I’ll go with you,” I said. “Let me just say goodbye to Melinda first.”
“You mean you’re gonna watch Jikan Desuyo with us?” asked Emi. “That would be great. I can fill you in on what’s happened so far. And one of the stars, Amachi Mari, has the very same haircut that I am planning to get tomorrow. You can tell me whether you like it or not, and if you do we’ll take a picture so you can have it with you when you visit Hokkaido. Someday I am going to send you an itinerary, you know, if you’re still single.”
Her parents sat up straight, while Emi flew into such a torrent of fast Japanese that I didn’t understand a word of it. What I did understand was that she thought telling them about my itinerary was fine, not violation of my trust, for she put her hands on her hips and scowled, as if daring me to be angry with her.
“Really, Cornelius, you should be careful,” her father said, once he’d heard her out. “Hokkaido is too great a distance for you to easily come back, both in time for our next school term and in time to regain yourself, if things don’t go well.”
This from a man whose wife nearly ran off to Germany with Fritz Stolz.
“Well, I think it’s practical,” said Etsuko. “No go-between digging into family histories, no listing the pros and cons of someone you are supposed to learn to love…”
She turned to her husband, “A listing of pros and cons isn’t necessary, anata. A person’s presence is a clear enough declaration of that person’s love.”
Anata - shorthand for “sweetheart.”
“That’s true, Papa,” said Emi. “Take Jikan Desuyo, for example. People rarely talk about their deepest feelings there, unless they put them in a song. Maybe I’ll be a singer when I grow up, so I can say things straight, but none of us should do it now. Otherwise we’ll miss the show.”
“You’re right, Emi,” her grandfather said. “We don’t want to be late. A little bird told me that tonight someone’s going to sing that Red Balloon song.”
“I’m the little bird, Grandpa,” said Emi.
So with that, as was my wish from the beginning, I left Melinda’s party twenty minutes after I got there, to go watch Emi’s favorite show with her and her mother and her grandfather.
Rather than going with us, her father went to sit at the farthest end of the bar from Fritz, who didn’t look up, even when we all gave Melinda our warmest farewells.
Endnotes…
The Japanese for Mr. Sato’s haiku is 鐘消えて 花の香は撞く 夕かな. The romaji is: kane kiete hana no ka wa tsuku yuube kana. Since I know that quite a number of you know Japanese far better than I do, I would like to hear what your translation might be.
This is a very nostalgic episode for me. Jikan Desuyo was a television drama about a family that ran a bath house, starring, among others, Mori Mitsuko, Sakai Masaaki, and the girl who’s haircut Emi liked, the post star, Amachi Mari. The show was a huge hit that I tried never to miss, if only to see if I could understand the fast-paced and colloquial Japanese.