I wrote my reply at the kitchen table. I had hoped to keep the postcard short and simple, but once I had pen in hand, those few concise phrases were not forthcoming. I was fortunate enough to have known the late Mr. Honda and benefited from our brief acquaintance. The news that he is no longer living brings back memories of those times. Our ages were very different, of course, and our association lasted but a single year, yet- I always used to feel that there was something about the deceased that moved people deeply. To be quite honest, I would never have imagined that Mr. Honda would name me specifically to be the recipient of a keepsake, nor am I certain that I am even qualified to receive anything from him, but if such was his wish, then I will certainly do so with all due respect. Please contact me at your earliest convenience.
When I dropped the card into the nearest mailbox, I found myself murmuring old Mr. Honda's verse: Dying is the only way / For you to float free: / Nomonhan.
It was close to ten before Kumiko came home from work. She had called before six to say that she would be late again today, that I should have dinner without her and she would grab something outside. Fine, I said, and ate a simple meal. Again I stayed home alone, reading a book. When she came in, Kumiko said she wanted a few sips of beer. We shared a midsize bottle. She looked tired. Elbows on the kitchen table, she rested her chin in her hands and said little when I spoke to her. She seemed preoccupied. I told her that Mr. Honda had died. Oh, really? she said, with a sigh. Oh, well, he was getting on in years, and he was almost deaf. When I said that he had left a keepsake for me, though, she was shocked, as if something had suddenly fallen out of the sky.
For you?! she exclaimed, her eyebrows twisting into a frown. Yeah. Weird, isn't it? He must have liked you. How could that be? I never really talked to the guy, I said. At least I never said much.
And even if I did, he couldn't hear anything. We used to sit and listen to his stories once a month. And all we ever heard from him was the Battle of Nomonhan: how they threw Molotov cocktails, and which tank burned, and which tank didn't burn, that kind of stuff.
Don't ask me, said Kumiko. He must have liked something about you. I don't understand people like that, whats in their minds.
After that, she went silent again. It was a strained silence. I glanced at the calendar on the wall. Her period was not due yet. I imagined that something unpleasant might have happened at the office.
Working too hard? I asked.
A little, Kumiko said, after taking a sip of beer and staring at what was left in her glass. There was an almost defiant tone in her voice. Sorry I was so late, but you know how it is with magazine work when we get busy. And its not as if I do this all the time. I get them to give me less overtime than most. They know I have a husband to go home to.
I nodded. I'm not blaming you, I said. I know you have to work late sometimes. I was just worried you're letting yourself get tired out.
She took a long shower. I drank my beer and flipped through a weekly magazine that she had brought home.
I shoved my hand in my pants pocket and found the pay there from my recent little part- time job. I hadn't even taken the cash from the envelope. Another thing I hadn't done was tell Kumiko about the job. Not that I had been hiding it from her, but I had let the opportunity to mention it slip by and there had never been another one. As time passed, I found it harder to bring up the subject, for some strange reason. All I would have had to say was, I met this odd sixteen-year-old girl from down the street and took a job with her doing a survey for a wig maker. The pay was pretty good too.
And Kumiko could have said, Oh, really? Isn't that nice, and that might have been the end of it. Or not. She might have wanted to know more about May Kasahara. She might have been bothered that I was making friends with a sixteen-year-old girl. Then I would have had to tell her about May Kasahara and explain in detail where, when, and how we happened to meet. But I'm not very good at giving people orderly explanations of things.
I took the money from the envelope and put it in my wallet. The envelope itself I crumpled and threw in the wastebasket. So this was how secrets got started, I thought to myself. People constructed them little by little. I had not consciously intended to keep May Kasahara a secret from Kumiko. My relationship with her was not that big a deal, finally: whether I mentioned it or not was of no consequence. Once it had flowed down a certain delicate channel, however, it had become cloaked in the opacity of secretiveness, whatever my original intention may have been. The same thing had happened with Creta Kano. I had told Kumiko that Malta Kano's younger sister had come to the house, that her name was Creta, that she dressed in early-sixties style, that she took samples of our tap water. But I had remained silent on the fact that she had afterward begun to make startling revelations to me and had vanished without a word before reaching the end. Creta Kano's story had been too far-out: I could never have re-created the nuances and conveyed them to Kumiko, and so I had not tried. Or then again, Kumiko might have been less than pleased that Creta Kano had stayed here long after her business was through and made all kinds of troubling personal confessions to me. And so that became another one of my little secrets.
Maybe Kumiko had the same kind of secrets that she was keeping from me. With my own fund of secrets, I was in no position to blame her if she did, of course. Between the two of us, I was surely the more secretive. She tended to say what she was thinking. She was the type of person who thought things out while speaking. I was not like that.
Uneasy with these ruminations, I walked toward the bathroom. The door was wide open. I stood in the doorway and looked at Kumiko from behind. She had changed into solid-blue pajamas and was standing in front of the mirror, drying her hair with a towel.
About a job for me, I said. I have been thinking about it. I've asked friends to be on the lookout, and I've tried a few places myself. There are jobs out there, so I can work anytime I decide to work. I can start tomorrow if I make up my mind to it. Its making up my mind thats hard. I'm just not sure. I'm not sure if its OK for me to pick a job out of a hat like that.
That's why I keep telling you to do what you want, she said, while looking at herself in the mirror. You don't have to find a job right away. If you're worried about the economics of it, you don't have to worry. If it makes you uneasy not to have a job, if its a burden to you to have me be the only one working outside the house while you stay home and take care of the housework, then take some job-any job-for a while. I don't care.