The Street of a Thousand Blossoms (49 page)

Hiroshi walked slowly to his grandparents’ house. He knew Kenji would marry Mika Abe just by the way they looked at each other, the quick glances and shy smiles that no mask could hide. Hiroshi’s life as a
sumotori
left little time for anything or anyone else. Sumo had been his sole mistress and he felt it acutely now limping down his childhood streets, filled with families and children.

Hiroshi turned the corner and shook his thoughts away. He slowed as the sweet aroma of grilling yakitori and
sembei
crackers set his stomach growling and made him once again nostalgic for his childhood. Hiroshi walked slowly on, oblivious to the stares of recognition, to the young children who stopped and pointed at him, to the shouts of “Takanoyama, Takanoyama!” None of it mattered at that moment. He felt a dull ache in his knee as he walked toward the street of a thousand blossoms, to the house of his grandparents, where his dreams of sumo had first taken root.

Yoshio sat in the courtyard and heard footsteps moving toward the front gate. The chimes rang as the wooden gate was pushed open, the long whine followed by someone stepping in. He leaned forward toward the sounds and couldn’t quite place the movements. Fumiko would have helped the gate along impatiently. Kenji would close it slowly, meticulously, while Hiroshi, who had paid them a surprise visit last week, would have let the gate slam behind him. The steps he heard didn’t resemble any he’d already memorized.

Yoshio had become more fragile in the past year, venturing out less and less. His body was slowly disobeying his wishes, slight tremors and persistent headaches arriving more often, along with an increasing loss of balance. Sometimes he wavered from side to side, as if he were standing on a boat in the middle of some endless sea, his body following the motions of the waves. Most of the time, Yoshio was content just sitting in a quiet place for most of the day, out in the sunny courtyard or in the warmth of the kitchen.

Again, Yoshio heard the footsteps moving toward him. Was it simply the wind playing tricks on him? He listened. Usually, his impulse was to call out, but Yoshio remained silent, waiting. He concentrated on something else, a memory. The first time Kenji visited with Mika. Yoshio still remembered the smile he heard in Fumiko’s voice greeting the young woman. “Welcome, welcome, Mika-san! Kenji-chan has told us you met at the university.” Fumiko had stood
beside him and brushed her hand against his. Light, like a butterfly’s wings. Kenji was twenty-three, and he knew she thought it was about time one of her grandsons had a girlfriend.

He heard Fumiko inside cooking dinner, the scent of rice wine and sugar in the air letting him know that he was still alive. He tilted his face up toward the warmth of the setting sun and closed his eyes against the dull throbbing in his head. He hadn’t forgotten the footsteps, feeling someone standing right there beside him, even if he refused to acknowledge their presence. Yoshio wasn’t ready to go yet. Life was too long and too short at the same time. He hoped to be there for Hiroshi’s return to sumo, and Kenji’s marriage to Mika, whose voice sounded earnest and intelligent. And there was still so much he hadn’t said to Fumiko, one last dance around the circle. He sighed and relented. He’d have to wait for her wherever spirits went. The pain increased and spread to the top of his head, unbearable, like a vise squeezing from both sides. He reached out and fell to the ground. So this was how it felt to have his life drained from him, leaving the weight of your body behind. Yoshio opened his eyes again, and for a moment he saw everything around him as clear as day. He looked up to see his daughter, Misako, standing near him, smiling quietly. Behind her was a very blue sky. He wished for Fumiko to walk out just then so that he might have one last glimpse of her. Instead, her last fragrant lilies were right in front of him, the tiny white bells balancing on thin stalks above green, green leaves. Like Fumiko, they, too, were of great beauty. Yoshio smiled at the thought before his body shuddered one last time.

Fumiko carefully clipped the thin stems of the lilies, their heavy fragrance a reminder of joy and sorrow. It was on a windless day in May a year ago that she’d found Yoshio’s body lying so peacefully among them, his eyes open and his lips parted in a slight smile. In his gaze she saw that he wasn’t afraid and it somehow calmed her. She called out,
“Yoshio,”
just once before kneeling beside him, leaning over to close his eyes, and then taking his still-warm hand in hers. In their final moments together, Fumiko closed her eyes and saw the graceful steps of his youth, moving in the circle of the Bon Odori. It was his dancing that she loved first, the lightness of his steps as he moved toward her. The rest came so easily, a lifetime that passed too quickly. Her heart raced. What hadn’t she told him? She couldn’t think then. She couldn’t think. And so, she let Yoshio go.

She tasted the sourness that rose up to her throat and swallowed it back down. Her grief had changed with age, dull and flat now like an ongoing hum, no longer the loud, frantic scream of youth. In the end, the body betrayed everyone. Fumiko pushed back a strand of gray hair, smiled, and leaned against the wooden bench to push herself up. Her knees ached and were giving her trouble, her movements slower and requiring more effort.

She gathered the lilies that lay beside her into a bouquet and carried them into the reception room, placing them in a vase on the
tokonoma
beside the photos of Misako and Kazuo, and one of
Yoshio. Then she knelt on the tatami and bowed to them. Her words came easily now as she gazed up into their frozen smiles. She stood straight and returned to the low dining room table, where her paper and fountain pen waited. Fumiko lowered herself onto the cushion and began her weekly letter to Yoshio. If she set her thoughts down in words, they wouldn’t disappear. Where had she left off? There was so much to say.

Time was running out. Hiroshi was forced to withdraw from the Hatsu Basho in January and the Haru Basho in March when his knee became tender and swollen again, just days prior to each tournament. Two weeks before the March tournament, he’d been officially demoted to the
komusubi
rank. According to the doctors and Tanaka-oyakata, his knee had healed and his exercise regimen of leg lifts and weights went far beyond what he was doing before his injury. There was no physical explanation as to why his knee swelled before each tournament. After the swelling went down the second time around, Hiroshi began training for the Natsu Basho in May.

A year had passed since Hiroshi’s injury and the death of his
ojiichan
. His grief found itself in sleeplessness, in the words stuck in his throat, in the swelling of his knee. Since then, time moved forward according to the tournament schedules and never paused long enough for him to catch his breath. Sometimes he actually heard his grandfather’s voice telling him to “slow down, life isn’t a race.” But wasn’t it in the sumo world? There were only so many good years. Hiroshi struggled hard to stay in shape, only to lose, instead of gain, weight. Now, on the eve of the May tournament, he knew that stepping back into the
dohyo
meant everything; if his knee failed him again, his sumo career would be over.

In the dressing room before Hiroshi’s first match, Sadao helped
him to put on his silk
mawashi
belt. He felt the belt tighten around his crotch and wind tautly against his hips. They’d said very little to each other as they moved through the same routine they followed before each tournament. The boy bowed and handed him his book of poetry. He liked Sadao, who was reliable and intelligent, even if he remained cautious and spoke sparingly. He continued to work and train hard and Hiroshi hoped that in time he would relax and have some fun. A lost childhood was hard to recapture in a sumo stable, but he saw Sadao most relaxed when he stepped onto the
dohyo
, leaving the memories of his past behind.

Hiroshi didn’t have the patience for poetry today. Instead, he paced back and forth trying to keep his knee warm and flexible. The trick was to keep moving. Unlike before the last two tournaments, this time his knee didn’t swell.

A medley of voices had returned to him in a dream the night before; his
ojiichan
’s, low and raspy with age, like gravel in water. “You don’t have to prove anything to anyone. You’ll always be a champion.” He saw again his grandfather’s familiar smile. His
obaachan
looked on, worried, and said in a soft blanket of a whisper, “The sumo life is short. It’s the rest of your life that you must think about.” Hiroshi couldn’t imagine any other life than sumo. When he tried, there was only a feeling of emptiness in the pit of his stomach and the sound of dry leaves being crushed. Kenji, who sat across from him, appeared content and happy as he quietly said, “Don’t worry, you’ll fight again.”