The Street of a Thousand Blossoms (69 page)

“Good, good.”

She looked past him at the idling car. “I should go, or I’ll be late,” she said with a smile.

Hiroshi wanted to say more, but knew she was in a hurry.

Haru walked toward the car, paused, and turned back to him. “Thank you, Hiroshi-san, for arranging for the teaching position at the university for me. It feels good to belong somewhere again.” She bowed low and disappeared into the car.

The air was still thin and cold in late April as Akira Yoshiwara walked the last stretch up the mountain from the village of Aio, following the deep ruts in the road that would lead him directly to the praying-hands house. The road was saturated; the last remnants of the melting snow ran down in smaller rivulets that would be etched into the dirt road come summer. It felt wonderfully prehistoric; nothing had changed, the same pine trees watched ominously over him as years before. He stopped to catch his breath, a sharp, quick burning in his lungs as the smell of wood smoke drifted over the top of the trees and Akira watched it rise into the sky and disappear.

Just around the bend and up the road, Kiyo and her family waited for him. But it was Emiko-san he longed to see step out on the road to greet him. It was her calmness that was so similar to his, the need and loneliness that lay just beneath the skin, that had drawn them together and then apart.

“Akira-san!”

He looked up at the sound of his name and squinted against the light to see Kiyo standing there, holding the hand of a little girl. He waved to them.

“Akira-san, we’ve been waiting for you,” she said, her voice rising in delight just as it had when she was a girl and had found some small gift he’d hidden for her.

He smiled and walked faster up the road toward them as if each step brought him back in time. Over twenty years later, a mother and daughter once again waited along the same rutted road to greet him.

Kenji swept the last of the wood dust from the floor of the back room, covered the saw, and stored away all the paints. With Yoshiwara-sensei away for the next few weeks visiting Kiyo in the mountains, he thought it was about time to do some traveling himself. At thirty-five, Kenji had barely been out of Tokyo, only to the countryside during the war. It was something Mika had wanted them to do, travel more, and now that she had been gone for almost a year and a half, he finally found himself wanting it, too. Her shadow was always there, trailing him, pushing him forward. Now, she was the ghost.

It was a difficult year after Mika’s death. The drinking, the burns on his hands, the few months he stayed with his
obaachan
, healing. He smiled to think of her. At eighty-three, his grandmother was fragile but still formidable.

On his first morning staying with her, she brewed a strong tea and set it down on the table before him. “Drink this, you’ll feel better.”

Kenji didn’t dare look directly into her eyes, afraid of what he’d see. So instead, he watched her hands, thin and heavily veined; the hands that had carried him as a baby and picked him up when he fell. He lifted the cup of tea with his bandaged hands and sipped; it was bitter on his tongue, hot and soothing down his throat. His neck was sore and the back of his head ached where it had hit the flagstone.

His
obaachan
sat down across from him and said softly, “Do you think Mika-chan would want to see you this way? There was no one who loved life more. Don’t dishonor her memory by giving up on the very life she treasured.”

Her words echoed through the small kitchen. He looked down at his bandaged hands. His mouth tasted sour.
“Yes, yes, yes,”
he wanted to say, but why then had Mika simply disappeared, leaving him behind with all this sorrow? How could he explain the gaping hole where his heart was? So he nodded to appease his grandmother.
“Hai,”
he whispered, thinking that all lives eventually ended. And wasn’t sorrow a kind of slow death anyway?

The year’s distance had softened his outlook. Kenji glanced up at the canvas bag with Mika’s masks in it sitting on the top shelf. Hiroshi had given the bag to Yoshiwara-sensei to keep. His teacher had put it out of the way, yet always within sight. It was up to Kenji as to when, and if, he looked at them again. On impulse, he walked over and reached up for the watermarked, soot-stained bag and swung it down to the worktable. He looked at the palms of his hands, which had completely healed, and tentatively opened the bag. One by one, he lined up the masks across the table and Mika was suddenly in the room with him again. A moment’s agitation before he felt strangely calm, comforted. Kenji examined each mask closely; only two were really damaged by the fire. The others could be cleaned and easily restored. He reached into a drawer for sandpaper, a fine grade that wouldn’t scratch the wood. Then Kenji gently, lovingly, began sanding away the scorched areas around her nose and along her cheek. He blew away the black dust and smiled to find that there was new life underneath.

It wasn’t the challenge of winning or losing, but of standing up on her two feet that brought her such joy.

“You see, Yoshio,” Fumiko said aloud. “I haven’t forgotten.” She reached up and placed the small bouquet of lilies in a vase by his photo. The past few weeks she’d remained bedridden, the constant pain in her hip making it difficult to walk. She’d fallen and broken it at the end of last August, just after Kenji had returned to his own home, and now, almost eight months later, it still gave her trouble. But this morning, Fumiko didn’t care what the doctor said; she was lured by the sweet fragrance of the lilies in bloom and she was determined to put some by Yoshio’s photo.

“Fumiko-san, what are you doing out of bed?”

She quickly turned around at the sound of Kazuko’s voice, the live-in housekeeper Hiroshi had hired to take care of her and the house after she fell and broke her hip. She refused to move in with either of her grandsons, and only agreed to Kazuko’s coming when she was bedridden. Fumiko felt uncomfortable with another woman in the house, doing all the simple things she’d done for more than sixty years. It irritated her to see the middle-aged, heavyset woman who stayed in her grandsons’ room and moved through her house as if it were her own. And now, she had the nerve to confine her to bed.

“And why can’t I be anywhere I wish to be in my own house?” she said.

“Fumiko-san, you know you’re supposed to be resting.”

Kazuko’s voice dropped a few octaves. She was always too loud for Fumiko’s taste. She imagined her as a child in school, always the one who spoke the loudest and knew the least.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“That’s what Sayo-san said,” Kazuko went on about the mistress at her last position. In her stories, she was never the one who was wrong. “She thought everything was fine until one day she strained her back. I took care of her for months and I’m sorry to say that she never rose from her futon again.”

Fumiko shook her head. She noticed that Kazuko never spoke of her personal life. Was she ever married? Did she have any children? Most likely she had scared them all off with her attentiveness. “If you’re so sure I’ll hurt myself doing the smallest task, then you’d better carry me back up the stairs to my room,” she said, amused.
Lately, their verbal sparring had become a game they played with each other.

“You’re too funny, Fumiko-san. I can see you’ll live to a fine old age.”

Fumiko smiled. “I’ve already reached a fine old age, and I mean it. I believe it would best if you carried me back up,” she said. “I’m afraid my grandsons won’t be happy to know that I’ve used up what little energy I have left climbing the stairs!”

Kazuko paused for a moment and studied her face. “I see, Fumiko-san. Do you think I’ll give up working here because of your petty and difficult behavior? Well, I’ve seen it all.” She walked over to Fumiko, turned around, and leaned over. “Get on, then,” she directed. “Let me help you up the stairs.”

Fumiko couldn’t back away now and let Kazuko get the better of her. She had only meant to reclaim her position in the household, to give Kazuko a small reminder that she couldn’t direct her every move; she hadn’t expected Kazuko to really carry her up the stairs. Fumiko
had
acted childish, and now regretted it. Why was getting old so much like going backward? She hesitated before climbing onto the wide back. Slowly, she lifted her leg and a sharp pain instantly paralyzed her entire body. She stumbled back and a high-pitched cry emerged from her.

“It’s okay now, just come closer,” Kazuko instructed and she stepped backward to accommodate her.

It took Fumiko a full minute to catch her breath and allow the pain to move through her leg and out the tips of her toes. She took a deep breath and tried again.

Kazuko squatted yet lower. “Put your arms around my neck and lean forward onto my back.”

She didn’t argue and did as she was told. A child again. Fumiko leaned forward onto the big, broad back as if she were being sacrificed; her thin arms grasped tightly around Kazuko’s red, blotchy neck like a winter scarf. It brought back a long-ago memory of once taking a walk with her father and her thirteen-year-old brother, Isamu. She was just a bit older than five-year-old Takara was now. It
felt as if they’d walked half the day away. And even when their house was finally in sight, she simply couldn’t find the strength to walk anymore, much less make it up the hill. Her father paid little attention to her and marched on in quick, long strides, his sandals click-clacking even as she fell farther and farther behind. It was Isamu who finally stopped and waited for her, teasing her into moving faster. “Hurry or even the tortoise will beat you home, Fumi.” Then he leaned over so she could scramble onto his back, her arms wrapped around his sweaty neck, his slightly sour boy smell making her turn her head to the side. He carried her all the way up the hill and to the front door.

Kazuko took one stair at a time, a small grunt emerging with each step, careful not to drop her load. She was from the Niigata prefecture in central Japan, raised in a family of farmers, and as Fumiko suspected, was used to carrying much heavier loads than her. Fumiko turned her head and rested it for just a moment on Kazuko’s thick, soft shoulder. She was tired, and the weight of life suddenly felt pressing. If Fumiko were to die right at that moment, she’d be more than ready.

As soon as they stepped out of the darkened train station and into the bright daylight, Haru felt the July heat rising from the pavement, a mixture of afternoon boil and exhaust from the crowds and cars. The shrieking buses stopped and started along the teeming Ginza shopping district, lined with a multitude of tall buildings and expensive shops. After the war, soldiers and foreigners had brought the area back to life. Pale, sleeping neon lights shimmered in the sunlight. At night she envisioned them coming alive, the side streets aglow in the hypnotic flashing of lights. But in the blinding, mid-afternoon light of summer, Haru followed just a step behind Aki,
who held Takara’s sweaty hand as they walked down the congested sidewalk. Every once in a while, Takara turned back to make sure she was still behind them. Haru smiled and nodded in reassurance, part of her wishing she were holding the small, slippery hand in hers.

Since Aki was feeling better again, they went on more outings on the days she didn’t teach; to the park or the market, even to the zoo, where Takara was fascinated with the giraffes, their height and, even more so, their long eyelashes. She thought giraffes were all girls, even if they weren’t, because of their long, rolled eyelashes, which she called seaweed lashes, like the strips of dried seaweed rolled into sushi.

Haru smiled to herself and breathed in the warm, stale air. She’d found happiness in her life after all; teaching in Tokyo and watching Takara grow up. The Wako Department Store was just down the block and her heart raced at the thought of entering the tall doors and walking into the cool, open, high-ceilinged room. The Wako had a long history of selling watches and other luxuries from all over the world. When she and Aki were young girls, their mother took them to look at all the lovely things at least twice a year, and Haru grew dizzy from the powerful scent of new leather and sweet perfumes. She’d always felt as if she were stepping out of their scentless life and into the rich aromas of another. It would forever remain her favorite store and she hoped Takara would feel the same one day. The Wako Department Store was also one of the few buildings in the area to have survived the bombings at the end of the war. During the occupation it was used as the army PX, but was fully restored to its former glory when the occupation ended. She looked up to see the watchtower that defined the famous building, with its curved granite façade sitting on one of the most exclusive corners in the Ginza. Now that Aki-chan was finally better, returning to the Wako felt like a glorious moment—they had all somehow survived, to varying degrees, the madness of the war.