The Changeling (46 page)

At this point, Chikashi stopped the tape, cutting off her brother’s narrative. Akari had crawled out of bed and was now in the living room, listening to Hidetomo’s Yoshida classical-music program on the radio with the volume turned down low. He had been listening to that show every week for the past twenty years, and he had never missed a single broadcast. It had become a family touchstone; if Akari’s radio program was on, it must be Sunday.

Chikashi had been deeply moved by the sound of Goro’s exuberant voice, but now it was time to pull herself together and make breakfast for her family. She decided to keep the “Berlin tapes” for herself, rather than returning them to her husband. For the first time in a very long while, mixed in with
a complex stew of other emotions, she even felt a faint stirring of sexuality.

And based on what she’d gleaned from Goro’s recorded narrative, Chikashi felt absolutely certain that the girl in question would never turn into the type of person who could be called a “wretched woman” by some third-rate tabloid journalist.

7

Three months went by, or thereabouts. And then, out of the blue, who should appear in Chikashi’s life but the young woman Goro had talked about with so much passion? First, there was a phone call from the girl, which was an unexpectedly pleasant experience in itself.

After Goro’s death, there had been a sudden increase in phone calls from complete strangers, and as a result Chikashi had developed a not entirely irrational feeling of dread and aversion toward the telephone itself. In one sense, those calls had been harder to deal with than the complaints about Kogito’s always-controversial work that had flooded in on numerous occasions in the past, from both ends of the political spectrum. But when the call came from the girl, and even before Chikashi had any idea who the caller was or what her business might be, she somehow got the feeling, just from the young woman’s voice and way of talking, that maybe the telephone wasn’t such a bad thing, after all. This quasi-magical system that could link two human beings together by way of
a feeble electrical current flowing over a telephone line: why had she forgotten how comforting that connection could be? And that very phenomenon—two strangers on either end of a telephone line—turned out to have the power to rescue Chikashi from the submerged feelings of isolation and helplessness that had been haunting her for so long she wasn’t really conscious of them anymore.

“Three years ago, in Berlin, I was working for Goro Hanawa, and he gave me this number,” the girl began. “Is this Chikashi, by any chance? If you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to you for a minute. My name is Ura Shima.”

The voice on the telephone had the affectless quality so often heard in the voices of young women these days, a sort of unobtrusive monotone from which any tinge of emotion had been erased, but even so, it gave Chikashi a good feeling. It was as if the initial surprise at hearing that the voice belonged to the girl who was with Goro in Berlin had been quickly subsumed in a sensation of warmth and consolation.

“I’ll be happy to talk to you,” Chikashi said with complete sincerity.

“Thank you very much. I’ll get right to the point, then. I know this is rather sudden, but I have a favor to ask. Three years ago, at the time of the Berlin Film Festival, Goro sent you a watercolor painting. What I’m wondering is, would it be possible to get a color copy? When Goro was painting it, I was working as his interpreter/attendant, and I was at his side the entire time. I’m just back in Japan for a short time, and I’ve set my mind on taking a color copy of that painting with me when I return to Germany, no matter what. So I’m asking you to help me make that happen.”

“You call it a watercolor,” Chikashi responded, “but it’s actually a picture that was drawn with colored pencils, then liquefied with a wet paintbrush, isn’t that right? A picture of trees in winter, in Berlin?”

“That’s right, Goro was in Ku’damm—that’s Berlin’s equivalent of the Ginza, more or less—anyway, he was walking around in Ku’damm and that colored-pencil set caught his eye. He said that it would be good for making sketches when he was out scouting locations, and so he ran in and bought it.”

Chikashi could picture her brother, the quintessential sophisticated shopper, caught up in that spontaneous, high-spirited moment. “That painting is in my room right now,” she said. “I’ll be glad to take it to the local stationery store and make a color copy.”

“Oh, thank you so much. When would it be convenient for me to come pick it up?”

“Either the end of this week or the beginning of next—anytime around then would be fine. On Wednesdays I go to visit our mother at the hospital, but I’ll be back in the late afternoon.”

“Well, then, if you’re really sure it’s all right, I’d like to stop by the day after tomorrow—Saturday—at around two o’clock. If you could spare the time to talk to me for an hour or so, that would really make me happy. But if a visit would interfere with your husband’s work, I don’t need to go beyond the front door.”

“On Saturday afternoon he’ll be at the pool with our son, so there’s no need to worry.”

As soon as Chikashi had hung up the phone, she went to her bedroom to get the painting. The technique was as she had described it to Ura Shima; she hadn’t tried it herself, but she
thought it might be more difficult than it looked. Just before Kogito went to Berlin, the conversation had turned to Goro, and they had looked at this picture together. She took the painting out of the frame that Kogito had put it in, that night, and then she looked again at the writing in the lower right-hand corner, next to the date. It wasn’t entirely legible because the colored-pencil letters had blurred when they were accidentally painted over with a wet brush, but she could tell that it wasn’t Goro’s signature. Rather, it read: “With Urashima Taro, on Wallotstrasse.”

If a Japanese person who would be known in her native country as Shima Ura (Shima being her surname) was working as an interpreter/attendant in Berlin, it would be customary to introduce herself the Western way, last name last, as Ura Shima. From that, it would be a short leap for Goro to give her the nickname “Urashima Taro,” after the old man in the famous folktale—the approximate Japanese analogue of Rip Van Winkle, transplanted to the bottom of the sea. Goro had always enjoyed that sort of wordplay, from the time he was very young.

Chikashi stuck the watercolor between the pages of one of her own sketchbooks, and then, intending to combine the color-copying errand with shopping for the evening meal, she pedaled her bicycle toward the shopping area in front of the station in a state of ebullient excitement. Now that she thought about it, she seemed to remember having heard from Goro that Ura Shima had been given the name “Ura,” written with archaic
kanji
, as a Japanese equivalent of the German name “Ulla.” (There is, of course, no
l
in Japanese.)

The following Saturday, Ura Shima arrived a few moments after the time she and Chikashi had agreed upon. While she
was waiting—after having sent Kogito and Akari off to the Nakano pool—Chikashi busied herself with tidying up the pots of rosebushes in the garden, most of which had already finished blooming. It was the rainy season, but during this rare interval of clear weather the weak sunlight was shining through the thin clouds. Counting the bushes in the ground and the potted plants, Chikashi was raising as many as 120 varieties of English roses in the narrow garden. While she was moving the pots of tall, lush-leafed rosebushes, it occurred to her that after Goro had suddenly vanished from her life she had thrown herself into caring for the rapidly multiplying potted roses as a temporary substitute for some more serious passion (such as making art) that she longed for but, at that time, hadn’t yet found.

Before long, she noticed a sedate-looking green car being adroitly maneuvered into a parking place on the other side of a tall, dense hedge where flowering dogwood grew in profusion and the dark green leaves of camellia bushes glowed with a deep luster. Chikashi hurried down the narrow path to the gate. A tall, well-built young woman wearing a dress of soft, cream-colored fabric (Goro’s trademark taste, Chikashi thought) was approaching the gate with a poised, graceful gait. Her hair, which appeared to be a dark chestnut color, was bound in a knot at the nape of her neck, and she was looking down at the path.

“Oh, you came by car?” Chikashi called out. “If I’d known I could have faxed you a map, instead of telling you how to walk here from the station. Did you have a hard time finding it?”

“No, it was easy. I’m Ura Shima,” the young woman said, lifting her head and fixing her large eyes on Chikashi. Ura Shima was nearly four inches taller than Chikashi. Of course, if she
had been wearing pumps instead of casual canvas sneakers, the difference would have been even more noticeable. About the time Chikashi had first started going out with Kogito, while Goro was still in good spirits (that is, before he decided to oppose their marriage), he had teased, “Since you two are about the same height, I guess Chikashi won’t be able to wear high heels any more!” The fact was, Goro had always been attracted to tall women.

Looking around at the pots of bloomed-out rosebushes that were piled high, one on top of another, in the narrow space, Ura sheepishly held out a large, bulky bouquet wrapped in sturdy brown paper.

“These roses were sent to my house as a gift, and I wanted to share them,” she said. “But since you’re growing them yourself, I guess it’s a bit like carrying coals to Newcastle!”

Chikashi accepted the bouquet. “As you can see, most of my flowers have finished blooming, so these will be lovely,” she called over her shoulder as she went to get a vase for the deep-pink roses, which were charmingly striped in a darker pink, like peppermint candy. She thought they were called ‘Vick’s Caprice.’

When Chikashi returned to the living room, she found Ura staring at a framed drawing that hung on the wall. It was the work of an artist, a family friend who had also been Chikashi and Goro’s art teacher when they were in high school; they had posed for this portrait when they were children, and Kogito had bought it some time ago from the artist, who was now an established painter. Ura seemed transfixed by the image of Goro, who was wearing a beret and cupping his cheek in the palm of one large hand.

“You and Goro look a lot alike, don’t you?” Ura said, turning her gaze back to Chikashi. Her eyes, like her dress and her height, were exactly to Goro’s taste: so widely placed on either side of the well-defined bridge of her nose that they seemed to walk an aesthetic tightrope between beauty and caricature.

“That wasn’t really true when we were children,” Chikashi replied. “But Goro always used to say that when we got to a certain, more advanced age, we would end up resembling each other the way old couples do.”

Ura didn’t reply, so Chikashi added, “I made the color copy of Goro’s watercolor—it’s there on the table, so please take a look. I’ll be back in a jiffy with some tea.”

That was how Ura and Chikashi began their conversation. Then they moved on to Goro’s watercolor painting:
What were those leafless trees in the foreground? It would be hard to tell during winter, but now that they’re covered with green leaves it should be possible to identify them. And that building in the painting, the one that’s visible on the opposite shore of the lake through the gaps between the bare-branched trees? You probably can’t see it from that window anymore, now that the trees have leafed out
. That was the kind of small talk they made.

After a while Ura sat up straighter on the couch, with an air of determination. Then, plainly nervous, she embarked on a different conversational tack with Chikashi, who was feeling rather tense herself.

“When I was assigned to work with Goro, it was the winter of the year I turned eighteen. I had met the requirements for admission to the University of Hamburg, but first I wanted to get some experience in the wider world for a year or two. Then, right after I started working part-time for the Japan-Germany
Center in Berlin, I had the incredible good fortune to be chosen to be the assistant to Goro, who was there for the film festival. ‘Interpreter/attendant’ was the job title, though I don’t know whether I was much use as an interpreter ... For me, the time I spent with Goro was the first time I’d ever felt the joy of being a fresh, desirable young woman instead of just an awkward, clumsy, ill-favored girl with big feet.”

“I think it was a very happy time for Goro, as well,” Chikashi said. “You were there with him while he was painting this picture, weren’t you? I can tell that he was enjoying himself, and I think that must be why—even though it portrays a bleak, wintry landscape—this painting ended up having such a bright feeling to it.”

Ura flushed deeply all the way up to the firm skin under her eyes, as if her cheeks were being heated from inside. “‘An awkward, clumsy, ill-favored girl with big feet’: that was what my parents always used to say about me, until it got to be a sort of mantra. I guess it was their way of trying to motivate me to make the most of my academic strengths. But thanks to all their negative reinforcement, I was pretty much resigned to a future devoid of romance. And then Goro came along, and he told me that my face and figure were still sorting themselves out and assured me that one of these days I would suddenly become so startlingly beautiful that people who had known me before would laugh out loud in disbelief. He explained that the fable of the Ugly Duckling probably came from observing late-blooming girls like me, rather than being rooted in psychology. He even said that my transformation had already begun and that he thought I was really beautiful already.” As she said this, Ura once again blushed all the way up to her eyes.

“Goro talked to me about that,” Chikashi said. She didn’t feel as if she was telling a lie, but even so, she felt the need to backtrack: “Well, he didn’t actually talk to me directly, only through a cassette tape, but he said other things about you, too—like that if you were a feminist, you might say that even looking at women in ‘Ugly Duckling’ terms was the very essence of sexist discrimination. He was actually talking very seriously, for him.”