The Street of a Thousand Blossoms (63 page)

“And Aki-chan?”

“She can take care of herself. Besides, Aki-chan has Hiroshi to care for her. She isn’t your responsibility. I want you to return to Nara and be happy.”

Haru nodded.
“Hai,”
she said.

But he wasn’t sure she was convinced. Even as a little girl, she’d had a mind of her own. Tanaka stood up and paced the floor. “Haru-chan, you’ve made me very proud with all your accomplishments. Now it’s time for you to enjoy all that you’ve worked so hard to achieve. Go back to Nara and your teaching.”

“What makes you think that’s what I want?” she asked.

He stopped. “Isn’t it?”

“I thought it was.”

“Then go back and see if it is. If it isn’t, return to Tokyo because it’s your decision. Not because of Aki-chan or your old, failing father, but because it’s what you want.”

He watched her glance down at the open accounts book; the dark quick scratches were a blur from where he sat. When she looked up again, there were tears in her eyes.

When Haru stepped off the train in Nara, she felt the first trace of fall in the air, lighter and sweeter, not the crowded, hot breath of Tokyo. As she walked down the street toward her apartment, the waning light set everything aglow; even the trees seemed ablaze. She had been hesitant to leave Tokyo, unsure of what there was to return to in Nara. But even Aki seemed resolute that she should return. Just the day before, Haru had been combing out her sister’s hair, trying to put her at ease, when it seemed just the opposite was happening.

“You must be excited to be returning to Nara.” Aki glanced up at her in the mirror.

Her sister had been calm and playful all morning. There was a healthy color to her cheeks again, nicely offset by her kimono with magenta flowers. “I’m not sure,” Haru said.

Aki raised her hand and caught her wrist as the brush stroked downward. “Don’t you want to return and teach?”

“I’m not sure,” Haru repeated.

Aki turned around to face her. “Is it because of me? Please don’t worry, Haru-chan, I’m all right now.”

Haru smiled, and her gaze found an unexpected contentment in Aki’s eyes. It startled her at first. She had noticed something different about her sister since she returned from Lake Ashino, a tangible joy. She
was
free to return to Nara.

Haru had left Tokyo with a heavy heart. She missed her father and sister and the life she knew so well, filled with voices and childhood comforts. Was the ghost of her unborn child still haunting her? Did she really want to stand in front of a classroom of students? She felt a cool wind blow as the trees rustled and waved. As she rounded the corner and her apartment building came into view, she saw the brightness of Nara again, a place she loved. Haru smiled and walked faster, more lightly, as if toward the open arms of an old friend.

Aki was pregnant again. Even before she saw the doctor, she felt the baby growing inside of her, a faint, fragile pulse of life. She thought back to their week at Lake Ashino last August and smiled. Ever since, she and Hiroshi had found happiness again. She rubbed her stomach; she couldn’t be more than two months along, still barely showing. The idea that she could keep this secret to herself for a little while longer calmed her. No one had to know just yet.

Ever since she was a little girl, Aki had loved secrets. “If I tell you my secret,” Haru once said to her, “you have to hold it inside and never let it out. If you do, it won’t be a secret anymore.” Aki was five and nodded enthusiastically. She remembered how the fullness of the secret filled her body, weighed her down with importance. She was the keeper of Haru’s secret, even if she could no longer remember what it was.

There were very few secrets in Aki’s life now. She was married to the great Yokozuna Takanoyama, and any opportunity for a private life was confined behind the gates of their house. Once they stepped outside, their every move was scrutinized and followed by reporters and photographers. She hated the flash of their cameras, which temporarily blinded her as if she were caught doing something wrong, her eyes wide with fear. She felt the panic as voices shouted questions
at her: “Where is Yokozuna Takanoyama?” “When will you have another child?” “Do you think the Yokozuna will win his next tournament?” She began to think that they waited outside just to torment her, and as much as she tried to ignore them, Aki couldn’t just walk by bantering with them as Hiroshi did. Her pregnancy would simply be another headline in the newspaper, which she wasn’t ready for. She rubbed her stomach, the slightest rise only she felt. The baby was hers and would remain her secret for as long as possible.

By late November, the weather was unusually mild, cool and comfortable with a hint of wetness in the air. The first time Kenji followed Mika was just a few weeks before. It was unexpected and on sheer impulse. He was on his way to the mask shop when he caught a glimpse of his wife’s back, the blue-green of her kimono as she made her way down the alleyway and through the crowd toward the train station. She was even more beautiful now, ever since she’d begun to wear traditional kimonos again. In the past few years she’d become even more involved in her father’s textile business, designing fabrics in bright, vibrant colors that he could see from afar. He found himself following the blue-green of her kimono as if it were a mirage he was trying to get to, a calm, placid lake he could swim in.

The next day, and the day after, when Kenji followed her to the train station, it was with a calm awareness that there was something desperate in his pursuit. Yet, he felt strangely closer to her from a distance, similar to when they were university students and he sat behind her, loving her from afar. It became more and more difficult for Kenji to keep up with her schedule, all the meetings and travel. At the same time, their marriage had come to a standstill and he searched his mind to find movement again. He wondered if it would have been different if they’d had a child, something they no longer talked about. Their evening conversations were reduced to a minimum of words until Mika looked up and said, “I’m going up then,” and went upstairs, his gaze following. It began to sound like a refrain from a Noh play each
night. He felt her slipping away from him and sometimes thought it better if they’d yelled and screamed, giving voice to their frustrations.

Each morning for weeks, Kenji pursued this same pattern. He waited for Mika to leave the house and followed her down the alleyway at a careful distance. Just once, early on, did he venture too close and thought Mika might have seen him, his heart drumming as she moved quickly along, lost in her own thoughts. He stood across the road and watched her enter the swarming station and hurry down the stairs to the train, disappearing from sight. Only then did he wind his way back through the crowds, already late for his morning tea with Yoshiwara-sensei.

By December, when Kenji stepped out into a cold wind, Mika was wearing a saffron-colored kimono with a burgundy obi, which made it easy for her to stand out in the crowd. She walked at a brisk, confident pace, and each day he seemed to notice something new about her; how she fixed her hair in a chignon, or tied it back away from her face, sometimes in a braid, sometimes not. She stared straight ahead and never looked back, never curious about the people around her. And she always seemed to be carrying something. Some days, she was weighed down with material samples and he wanted to rush forward and take the weight from her shoulder. But he held back.

Kenji didn’t know what made this morning any different from the others, but the same impulse that had made him pursue Mika now brought him to a standstill. He saw her receding into the crowd, her head bobbing up and down in the vast sea of people, her saffron kimono disappearing down the alleyway until she rounded the corner and was gone. Then he turned around and walked the other way to the mask shop.

Kenji had just poured a cup of tea when he heard the front door of the shop open. He stepped out of the back room, surprised to see
Mika standing there, flushed and breathing hard as if she’d been running.

“Is everything all right?” he asked.

“You stopped following me,” she answered, and dropped her material samples to the floor.

“You knew?”

“From early on.”

“Why did you come all the way back?”

She paused to catch her breath. “I came back for you,” she finally answered.

From the moment Hiroshi found out Aki was expecting another child, a flicker of apprehension stayed with him. What if they should lose this child, too? His uneasiness grew each day leading up to the tournament, and as he stepped up to the
dohyo
for the first match of the spring
basho
in Osaka, he remained unsettled; the glare of the lights felt suffocating, the roar of the crowd too loud. Usually, when something bothered him, Hiroshi trained hard and concentrated all his worries into winning. But even the cool clay of the
dohyo
felt foreign to the hardened calluses on his feet. When he locked eyes with his opponent, he felt nothing of the fighting instinct that had helped him to reach grand champion. Moments later, Hiroshi felt his leg tripped out from under him as his back slammed hard against the
dohyo
. The entire stadium went silent in disbelief, and it took him a moment to realize that he’d lost the match, until the
gyoji
declared the winner by pointing his war paddle toward his opponent. All he wanted was to lie there for another moment, forgetting.

He won his match the next day and the day after, nine out of fifteen bouts and his lowest numbers since he’d reached the rank of
yokozuna
. Still, he gained another tournament win. Hiroshi was on his way to becoming one of the most successful sumo wrestlers in Japan’s history. Not since before the war, during Futabayama’s reign, had a wrestler been so popular. His anxiety calmed and turned to exhaustion by the time he returned to Tokyo and waited for the birth of his second child.