Sorry, my visitor is here, I said. More than two weeks, wasn't it? I can tell from your voice. Three weeks, maybe? I said nothing. Oh, well, never mind, she said, her voice like a little broom sweeping off the dust that had piled up on the slats of a Venetian blind. That's between you and your wife. But I will give you everything you want. And you, Mr. Okada, you need have no responsibilities in return. Just go round the corner, and there it is: a world you've never seen. I told you you have a blind spot, didn't I? You still don't understand.
Gripping the receiver, I maintained my silence.
Look around, she said. Look all around you and tell me whats there. What is it you see?
Just then the doorbell rang. Relieved, I hung up without a word.
Lieutenant Mamiya was a bald old gentleman of exceptional height, who wore gold- rimmed glasses. He had the tan, healthy look of a man who has done his share of manual labor, without an ounce of excess flesh. Three deep wrinkles marked the corner of each eye with perfect symmetry, as if he were on the verge of squinting because he found the light harsh. It was difficult to tell his age, though he was certainly no less than seventy. I imagined he must have been a strapping fellow in his prime. This was obvious from his erect carriage and efficient movements. His demeanor and speech were of the utmost respectfulness, but rather than elaborate formality, this gave an impression of unadorned precision. The lieutenant appeared to be a man accustomed to making his own decisions and taking responsibility for them. He wore an unremarkable light-gray suit, a. white shirt, and a gray and black striped tie. The no-nonsense suit appeared to be made of a material that was a bit too thick for a hot and humid June morning, but the lieutenant was unmarked by a drop of sweat. He had a prosthetic left hand, on which he wore a thin glove of the same light-gray color as the suit. Encased in this gray glove, the artificial hand looked especially cold and inorganic when compared with the tanned and hairy right hand, from which dangled a cloth- wrapped bundle, knotted at the top.
I showed him to the living room couch and served him a cup of green tea.
He apologized for not having a name card. I used to teach social studies in a rural public high school in Hiroshima Prefecture, but I haven't done anything since I retired. I raise a few vegetables, more as a hobby than anything, just simple farm work. For that reason, I do not happen to carry a name card, although I realize it is terribly rude of me.
I didn't have a name card, either. Forgive me, but I wonder how old you might be, Mr. Okada? I'm thirty, I said. He nodded. Then he took a sip of tea. I had no idea what it meant to him that I was thirty years old. This is such a nice, quiet home you live in, he said, as if to change the subject. I told him how I came to be renting it from my uncle for so little. Ordinarily, with our income, we couldn't afford to live in a house half the size, I added. Nodding, he stole a few hesitant glances around the place. I followed his lead and did the same. Look all around you, the womans voice had ordered me. Taking this newly conscious look at my surroundings, I found a certain coldness in the pervading atmosphere.
I have been in Tokyo two weeks altogether on this trip, said Lieutenant Mamiya, and you are the very last person to whom I am distributing a keepsake. Now I feel I can go back to Hiroshima.
I was hoping I could visit Mr. Honda's home and perhaps burn a stick of incense in his memory, I said.
That is a most laudable intention, but Mr. Honda's home-and now his grave-are in Asahikawa, Hokkaido. The family came from Asahikawa to sort out the things he left in his house in Meguro, and now they have gone back. There is nothing left.
I see, I said. So Mr. Honda was living alone in Tokyo, then, far away from his family.
That is correct. The eldest son, who lives in Asahikawa, was concerned about leaving his old father to live by himself in the big city, and he knew that it did not look very good. Apparently, he tried to persuade his father to come and live with him, but Mr. Honda simply refused.
He had a son? I asked, somewhat taken aback. I had always thought of Mr. Honda as utterly alone in the world. Then I assume Mr. Honda's wife must have passed away some time ago.
Well, that is a rather complicated story. Mrs. Honda committed a lovers suicide with another man after the war. In 1950 or 1951,1 believe. The details of that event are not something that I would know about. Mr. Honda never said too much about it, and of course I was in no position to ask.
I nodded.
After that, Mr. Honda raised his children alone-one son and one daughter. When they became independent, he moved to Tokyo by himself and began his work as a diviner, which is how you knew him.
What sort of work did he do in Asahikawa?
He was partners with his brother in a printing business. I tried to imagine Mr. Honda standing in front of a printing press in coveralls, checking proof, but to me Mr. Honda was a slightly grimy old man in a grimy old kimono with a sash more suited to a sleeping robe, who sat, winter and summer, with his legs in the sunken hearth, playing with his divining sticks atop his low table.
With deft movements, Lieutenant Mamiya used his good hand to untie the cloth bundle he had brought with him. A package emerged, shaped like a small box of candy. It was wrapped in kraft paper and tightly tied in several loops of string. The lieutenant placed it on the table and slid it toward me.
This is the keepsake that Mr. Honda left with me to give to you, he said. I picked it up. It weighed practically nothing. I couldn't begin to imagine what was inside. Shall I just go ahead and open it? I asked. Lieutenant Mamiya shook his head. I am sorry, but Mr. Honda indicated that he wished you to open it when you were alone. I nodded and returned the package to the table. In fact, said Lieutenant Mamiya, I received the letter from Mr. Honda exactly one day before he died. It said something like this: I am going to die very soon. I am not the least bit afraid of dying. This is the span of life that has been allotted to me by the will of Heaven, Where the will of Heaven is concerned, all one can do is submit to it. There is, however, something that I have left undone. In my closet there are various objects-things that I have wanted to pass on to certain people. Now it appears that I will not be able to accomplish that task. Which is why I would be most grateful if you would help me by distributing the keepsakes on the attached list. I fully realize how presumptuous this is of me, but I do hope that you will be so kind as to think of it as my dying wish and exert yourself this one last time for my sake.
I must say, I was utterly shocked to receive such a letter from Mr. Honda. I had been out of touch with him for years-perhaps six or seven years without a word. I wrote back to him immediately, but my reply crossed in the mails with the notice from his son that Mr. Honda had died. He took a sip of his green tea.
Mr. Honda knew exactly when he was going to die, Lieutenant Mamiya continued. He must have attained a state of mind that someone like me could never hope to reach. As you said in your postcard, there was something about him that moved people deeply. I felt that from the time I first met him, in the summer of 1938.
Oh, were you in the same unit with Mr. Honda at the time of the Nomonhan Incident?
No, I wasn't, said Lieutenant Mamiya, biting his lip. We were in different units- different divisions, even. We worked together in a small-scale military operation that preceded the Nomonhan battle. Corporal Honda was later wounded at Nomonhan and sent back to Japan. I didn't go to Nomonhan. I lost this hand of mine-and here Lieutenant Mamiya held up his gloved left hand-in the Soviet advance of August 1945, the month the war ended. I caught a slug in the shoulder from a heavy machine gun during a battle against a tank unit. I was on the ground, unconscious, when a Soviet tank ran over my hand. I was taken prisoner, treated in a hospital in Chita, and sent to an internment camp in Siberia. They kept me there until 1949.1 was on the continent for twelve years altogether from the time they sent me over in 1937, never set foot on Japanese soil the whole time. My family thought I had been killed fighting the Soviets. They made a grave for me in the village cemetery. I had a kind of understanding with a girl there before I left Japan, but by the time I got back she was already married to another man. Twelve years is a long time.