“What?” In a reverie, realizing he had said my name, I looked up.
“You’ve got to stop torturing yourself, all alone, getting thinner and thinner—you even got a fever from it. When you feel like that, call me up. We’ll get together, go do something. Every time I see you you look more frail, but you pretend everything’s all right. That’s a waste of energy. I know you and Hitoshi were so happy together that now you could die of sadness. It’s only natural.”
He had never said anything like that. It was odd—that was the first time I had seen him express such emotion: sympathy as open and unguarded as a child’s. Because I had thought his style too cool for that, it was totally unexpected, this purehearted concern. But then I remembered Hitoshi saying how Hiiragi, usually old beyond his years, reverted to a childlike state where the family was concerned. I had to smile—I felt I understood now what Hitoshi had meant.
“I know I’m still a kid, and when I take off the sailor outfit I feel so alone I could cry, but we’re all brothers and sisters when we’re in trouble, aren’t we? I care about you so much, I just want to crawl into the same bed with you.”
He said it with such an utterly sincere face, and it was so obvious his intentions were honorable, I had to smile in spite of myself. Then I said to him, deeply moved, “I’ll do as you say. I really will, I’ll call you, I mean it. Thank you. Really, truly, thank you.”
After Hiiragi left I went back to sleep. Thanks to the cold medicine I took, I slept through a long, peaceful, dreamless night. It was the divine, anticipatory sleep I remember having slept as a child on Christmas Eve. When I awoke, I would go to Urara waiting at the river, and I would see the “something.”
It was before dawn. Although my health was not quite back to normal, I got dressed and went running. It was the kind of frozen morning in which moon shadows seem to be pasted on the sky. The sound of my footsteps resonated in the silent blue air and faded away into the emptiness of the streets.
* * *
Urara was standing by the bridge. When I got there her hands were in her pockets and her muffler covered her mouth, but her sparkling eyes showed she was smiling brightly. “Good morning,” she said.
The last few stars in the blue porcelain sky winked, a dim white, as if about to go out. The scene was thrillingly beautiful. The river roared furiously; the air was very clear.
“So blue it feels like it could melt right into your body,” said Urara, gesturing at the sky.
The faint outline of the rustling trees trembled in the wind; gently, the heavens began to move. The moon shone through the half-dark.
“It’s time.” Urara’s voice was tense. “Ready? What’s going to happen next is, the dimension we’re in—time, space, all that stuff—is going to move, shift a little. You and I, although we’ll be standing side by side, probably won’t be able to see each other, and we won’t be seeing the same things. . . across the river. Whatever you do, you mustn’t say anything, and you mustn’t cross the bridge. Got it?”
I nodded. “Got it.”
Then we fell silent. The only sound the roaring of the river, side by side Urara and I fixed our eyes on the far bank. My heart was pounding. I realized my legs were trembling. Dawn crept up little by little. The sky changed to a light blue. The birds began to sing.
I had a feeling that I heard something faint, far away. I looked to one side and was startled—Urara wasn’t there anymore. The river, myself, the sky—then, blended with the sounds of the wind and the river, I heard what I’d longed for.
A bell. There was no question, it was Hitoshi’s. The sound came, faintly tinkling, from a spot where no one was standing. I closed my eyes, making sure of the sound. Then I opened them, and when I looked across the river I felt crazier than I had in the whole last two months. I just barely managed to keep from crying out.
There was Hitoshi.
Across the river, if this wasn’t a dream, and I wasn’t crazy, the figure facing me was Hitoshi. Separated from him by the water, my chest welling up, I focused my eyes on that form, the very image of the memory I kept in my heart.
Through the blue haze, he was looking in my direction. He had that worried expression he always had when I acted recklessly. His hands in his pockets, his eyes found mine. The years I had spent in his arms seemed both very near and very far away. We simply gazed at each other. Only the fading moon saw the too-violent current, the too-distant chasm between us. My hair, the collar of Hitoshi’s dear, familiar shirt fluttered in the wind off the river as softly as in a dream.
Hitoshi, do you want to talk to me? I want to talk to you. I want to run to your side, take you in my arms, and rejoice in being together again. But, but—the tears flowed—fate has decided that you and I be so clearly divided like this, facing each other across the river, and I don’t have a say in it.
My tears fell like rain; all I could do was stare at him. Hitoshi looked sadly back at me. I wished time could stop—but with the first rays of the rising sun everything slowly began to fade away. Before my eyes, Hitoshi grew faint. When I began to panic, he smiled and waved his hand. Again and again, he waved his hand. He was disappearing into the blue void. I, too, waved. Dear, much-missed Hitoshi—I tried to burn the line of his dear shoulders, his dear arms, all of him, into my brain. The faint colors of his form, even the heat of the tears running down my cheeks: I desperately struggled to memorize it all. The arching lines described by his arm remained, like an afterimage, suspended in the air. His form was slowly growing fainter, disappearing. I stared at it through my tears.
By the time I could no longer see anything at all, everything had returned to normal: morning by the river. I looked to one side; there stood Urara. Still facing straight ahead, a heartbreaking sadness in her eyes, she asked me, “Did you see it?”
“Yes,” I said, wiping away my tears.
“Was it everything you had hoped?” This time she turned to face me, smiling. Relief diffused through my heart. “It was,” I said, smiling back at her. The two of us stood there in the sunshine for some time, as morning came.
* * *
The doughnut shop had just opened. Urara, her eyes a little sleepy, said over a hot cup of coffee, “I came to this place because I, too, lost my lover to an early death. I came hoping to say a last good-bye.”
“Were you able to?” I asked.
“Yes.” Urara smiled a little. “It really does happen only once every hundred years or so, and then only if a number of chance factors happen to line up right. The time and the place are not definitely set. People who know about it call it ‘The Weaver Festival Phenomenon.’ It can only take place near a large river. Some people can’t see it at all. The residual thoughts of a person who has died meet the sadness of someone left behind, and the vision is produced. This was my first experience of it, too. . . . I think you were very lucky today.”
“Every hundred years . . .” My mind raced at the thought of the probabilities involved in my having been able to see it.
“When I arrived here to take a preliminary look at the site, there you were. My animal instincts told me that you had lost someone yourself. That’s why I invited you.” The morning sun shone through her hair. Urara, smiling, was still as a statue while she spoke.
What kind of person was she, really? Where had she come from and where would she go from here? And who had she seen across the river? I couldn’t ask her.
“Parting and death are both terribly painful. But to keep nursing the memory of a love so great you can’t believe you’ll ever love again is a useless drain on a woman’s energies.” Urara spoke through a mouthful of doughnut, as if making casual chitchat.
“So I think it’s for the best that we were able to say a proper, final good-bye today.” Her eyes became terribly sad.
“. . . Yes,” I said. “So do I.” Urara’s eyes narrowed gently as she sat in the sunlight.
Hitoshi waving good-bye. It was a painful sight, like a ray of light piercing my heart.
W
hether it had been for the best was not something I as yet fully understood. I only knew that, right now, sitting in the strong sunlight, its lingering memory in my breast was very painful. It hurt so much I could barely breathe.
Still . . . still, looking at the smiling Urara before me, amid the smell of weak coffee, the feeling was strong within me of having been very near the “something.” I heard the windows rattle in the wind. Like Hitoshi when we parted, no matter how much I could lay bare my heart, no matter how much I strained my eyes, that “something” would remain transitory. That was certain. That “something” shone in the gloom with the strength of the sun itself; at a great speed, I was coming through. In a downpour of blessings, I prayed, as though it were a hymn: Let me become stronger.
“Where will you go now?” I asked as we walked out of the doughnut shop.
Smiling, she took my hand. “We’ll meet again someday. I’ll never forget your phone number.”
With that, she melted into the wave of people crowding the morning streets. I watched her go and thought, I, too, will not forget. How very much you have given me.
“I saw something the other day,” said Hiiragi.
I had gone to meet him to give him a birthday present during the lunch break at his high school, my alma mater. I had been waiting on a bench by the school grounds, watching the students come and go, when he came running up to me. He was no longer wearing the sailor outfit. He sat down next to me.
“You saw what?” I asked.
“Yumiko,” he said. My heart skipped a beat. Students in white gym suits ran past us, kicking up dust.
“The morning of . . . was it the day before yesterday? . . .” he continued. “It may have been a dream. I was sort of half-asleep when suddenly the door opened and Yumiko walked in. It was all so normal I forgot she was dead and I said, ‘Yumiko?’ She smiled, put her finger to her lips, and said, ‘Shhhhh.’ She went to my closet, carefully took out the sailor outfit, and bundled it up in her arms. Then, her lips silently forming ‘Bye-bye,’ she waved goodbye. I didn’t know what to do—I fell back asleep, thinking it must have been a dream. But the sailor outfit is gone. I looked everywhere for it. Then I just suddenly burst out crying.”
“Hmm,” I said. Could it be that it could happen somewhere other than the river? It was the right day, the right morning. With Urara gone I had no way of knowing for sure. But he was so calm about it. There was more to Hiiragi than met the eye. Perhaps he had the power to draw an event to himself that should only have occurred at the river.
“Do you think I’ve lost my mind?” he asked, jokingly.
In the faint spring afternoon sunshine, the lunch hour hubbub coming from the school building carried on the wind. I laughed, gave him his present, a record, and said, “I recommend jogging when you feel like that.”
Hiiragi laughed, too. Sitting there in the light, he laughed and laughed.
Hitoshi:
I’ll never be able to be here again. As the minutes slide by, I move on. The flow of time is something I cannot stop. I haven’t a choice. I go.
One caravan has stopped, another starts up. There are people I have yet to meet, others I’ll never see again. People who are gone before you know it, people who are just passing through. Even as we exchange hellos, they seem to grow transparent. I must keep living with the flowing river before my eyes.
I earnestly pray that a trace of my girl-child self will always be with you.
For waving good-bye, I thank you.
Afterword
For a very long time there was something I wanted to say in a novel, and I wanted, no matter what it took, to continue writing until I got the saying of it out of my system. This book is what resulted from that history of persistence.
Growth and the overcoming of obstacles are inscribed on a person’s soul. If I have become any better at fighting my daily battles, be they violent or quiet, I know it is only thanks to my many friends and acquaintances. I want to dedicate this, my virgin offering, to them.
I supported myself by working as a waitress the whole time I was writing this novel. I want to express my deep gratitude, first, to the manager of the restaurant, Mr. Tokuji Kakinuma, for kindly turning a blind eye when I neglected my duties to write at work, as well as to all my fellow workers, and especially to Ms. Yumi Masuko, who designed the format of the book. Then I would like to thank Professors Hiroyoshi Sone and Masao Yamamoto of the Department of Arts of Nihon University for supporting me for the prize for “Moonlight Shadow.” It made me so very happy.
I want to dedicate “Kitchen,” Part 1, to Mr. Hiroshi Terada of Fukutake Shoten, my publisher; “Full Moon” (or “Kitchen,” Part 2) to Mr. Akio Nemoto, also of Fukutake Shoten; and “Moonlight Shadow” to Mr. Jiro Yoshikawa, who introduced me to Mike Oldfield’s wonderful piece of music of the same name, which was the inspiration for that novella. Lastly, I want to dedicate the book in its entirety to my father, who deserves credit for the happy fact of its having come out. I don’t have space to detail the many other thanks I owe, but I hope you all will accept a general one. You have my heartfelt gratitude.
Finally, to all the readers who do not know me personally, who were kind enough to take the trouble to read my small effort, I know no greater happiness than that it may have cheered you, even a little. Surely we will meet someday, and until that day, I pray that you will live happily.
Banana Yoshimoto
About the Author
Banana Yoshimoto was born in 1964. She is the author of Kitchen, N.P., Lizard, Amrita, Asleep, Goodbye Tsugumi, and, most recently, Hardboiled & Hard Luck. Her writing has won numerous prizes around the world. She lives in Tokyo.
Table of Contents
Praise for Kitchen
Title
Copyright
Contents
Kitchen
Moonlight Shadow
Afterword
About the Author
Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen
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