The Street of a Thousand Blossoms (43 page)

“Mika-san!” he called out, picking up his pace.

She stopped at the doorway and looked up. When he reached her, he was surprised by her red lipstick and dark eye makeup. She looked like one of those young followers of the
kasutori
culture his
obaachan
talked about. According to his grandmother, they were to blame for the uncontrollable behavior and countercultural sentiments that had captured the thoughts and actions of so many of his classmates and contemporaries. He found Mika Abe as beautiful as before.

Kenji wasn’t sure she recognized him at first. He hadn’t thought about how he must look until that moment. It couldn’t be much different from the first time he had seen Yoshiwara emerge from the back room, disheveled, wood dust all over his hair and kimono, appearing older than he was. It was too late for him to turn away.

He bowed. “Kenji Matsumoto,” he said.

“Hai, I know.” She bowed back. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“Please forgive my appearance. I’ve come from work.”

Mika smiled. “Are you designing the houses, or building them?”

“Neither.” He laughed. “I’ve opened a mask shop in the Yanaka district. It’s the Noh theater I’ve always loved.”

She watched him for a moment in silence. Was it curiosity or disbelief he saw flicker in her eyes? It felt like an eternity before she said, “I’m afraid I have to go; I’m meeting some friends. But I’d like to visit your shop sometime.”

Kenji bowed. “Of course, I’d be honored.”

“One day very soon,” Mika said, smiling. She bowed and turned into the restaurant.

It wasn’t until Kenji was halfway back to Yanaka that he realized he hadn’t given her directions to his shop.

Sadao scooped more coals onto the fire. The
ofuro
was almost hot enough for Takanoyama’s soak, the steam rising like smoke. Every day the
sekitori
asked him more questions about his life before the Katsuyama-beya. It was just a matter of time before Takanoyama learned the truth about him. Sadao had lied to Tanaka-oyakata. He was only twelve when he came to the stable, though he could easily have passed for fifteen. He was already tall for his age and broad shouldered, the son of a butcher, his father a large man with the strength of a bull and nicknamed
buru
by everyone who knew him in their Tokyo neighborhood. Sadao, who had helped his father at the shop since he was a little boy, was called young
buru
. Those days seemed far away now, days when he was still very small and his father’s shop was filled with the bloody carcasses of chickens and pigs, and an entire side of beef whose sheer size fascinated him. And once, someone had kept a dead ox in his father’s meat locker until he could arrange for its burial. As the war progressed, the cement-walled meat locker was stripped bare by the
kempeitai
, and the only signs left of his father’s once successful butcher shop were the remnants of dark bloodstains on the floor.

Sadao’s parents had died in the firestorm when he was six years old. His father refused to leave his shop when the incendiary bombs were dropped, telling them not to worry, the Americans had never
bombed so close to the city center before. Sadao and his mother had found protection in the meat locker, listening to the low drone of the approaching planes, waiting for his father to come. Instead, they heard his father’s screams, and his mother hugged Sadao tight and told him to stay there, and not to leave until she returned. “Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go,” he’d begged. His mother touched his cheek, said she’d be right back. She never returned.

Sadao waited in the dark. He sat stone-still on the cement floor and used the matches and candles sparingly, as his mother had taught him. Outside, the roar of the angry wind was deafening and seemed to suck the air right out of the room. Sadao remembered crying until his stomach hurt from fear and hunger. He lay down then, covered his ears and closed his eyes. The heat wrapped itself around him like a blanket. When Sadao awoke, it was to silence. Rising from the floor on wobbly legs, he disobeyed his mother and opened the door of the meat locker, only to see that the world he once knew had been reduced to smoldering ashes.

After the death of his parents, there was nowhere for him to go, and no living relatives close by. Sadao walked down the devastated streets crying when a group of kids found him. They were all orphans, they said, and they stayed together in order to survive. They took little Sadao in, taught him how to live on the streets, and he remembered being afraid and biting his lip rather than asking them what the word “orphan” meant.

Later, it was just as easy to say he was fifteen rather than twelve when the man who had seen him fighting in the streets wanted to know how old he was. He could be any age they wanted him to be, if they paid. Hadn’t he survived for half his life knowing how to read people? And where were his parents? the man had asked. He didn’t have any, he answered. There was nothing for him to worry about. He saw the man’s brow wrinkle, his hand running across his smooth, shaved head. Sadao wondered if it meant the deal would slip through his fingers. He was afraid that if he told him his real age the man might not be interested. He looked like a man who might like his boys older.

Instead, the man named Tanaka-san had taken him to a place called the Katsuyama-beya, where he was the stable master and trained boys to be sumo wrestlers. It wasn’t at all what Sadao expected when he arrived almost a year ago. It was a place where he could start over again, be someone he had always wanted to be.

After living on the streets for so many years, everything at the stable felt too big and too small at the same time. He wasn’t used to sleeping in a warm room on a futon whose softness made him feel as if he were being held. It frightened him, a reminder of his parents and his lost childhood. He remembered his mother’s voice, high and singsong, and his father’s thick, strong hands, which could wrestle the animals he butchered to the ground by himself. But Sadao’s biggest fear was that his parents’ faces were slowly disappearing in a fog, slipping from his memory, while he tried without success to forget his life on the streets. Why couldn’t he forget those faces instead? He recalled how he had prayed to an unknown god, the deity his mother worshipped, lighting incense and chanting, or the Buddha his father had perched in the back room of his butcher shop. But nobody had come to save him when they touched his body, when they did unspeakable things to him, laughing, leaving yen coins, leaving cigarette butts, leaving chocolate bars … leaving.

Sadao gathered the towels and returned to wash Takanoyama’s hair. It took at least three washes to get the
bintsuke
wax completely out. Sadao liked Takanoyama and thought he was fortunate to be his personal attendant. He had heard stories from other
sumotori
apprentices, whose
sekitori
took advantage of their positions, making life miserable for them. Sekitori Daishima was said to have ill-treated his attendants, including a young sumo who was a close friend of Takanoyama’s when he was starting out. Perhaps that was why he was so fair and patient, and treated him like his younger brother. He began teaching Sadao to be a
sumotori
from the start. “Watch everyone and everything around you to understand the stable life,” Takanoyama advised. Sadao soon learned the principles of honor and hierarchy
that had governed the sumo world for hundreds of years. Takanoyama tried to draw him out, but Sadao kept to himself, something he’d learned on the streets; the less you made yourself visible, the better. After all, weren’t all the rules of survival the same?

He liked it at the stable. Before long, he knew that most of the wrestlers maintained their own private rituals. Sadao sat in the locker room and watched some
sumotori
chant and meditate before a tournament, while others held talismans—a coin, an
omamori
bag with a special prayer in it, or beads—and still others played cards or read magazines and told endless jokes to relax. Sadao felt as if he could reach out and grab the energy, thick with the fear, excitement, and restlessness of pent-up animals.

Sadao had a few rituals of his own. Every morning when he awoke, he touched the futon he slept on and then he knocked softly on the floor three times, just to be sure he was really there. When he rose, it was still dark outside, and he heard the snores and grunts of all the sleeping wrestlers, and felt strangely at peace.

The steam from the bath rose around them, sweet and hot, as he lifted another bucket of water and rinsed Takanoyama’s hair.

“What will you do with your free time this afternoon?” Takanoyama asked.

Sadao hadn’t even thought about it. Most days he had no free time. He moved from one chore to the other, and his day usually ended with washing the dishes after their evening meal. He ran his hands over the
sekitori’s
hair to see if all the wax was washed out. “I’ll sleep,” he answered.

Takanoyama laughed. “It was all I wanted to do, too.”

Sadao had finished washing his hair for the third time when Takanoyama turned around and asked, “How old are you, Sadao?”

Sadao stopped for a moment, weighing the question. Takanoyama watched him and waited. Not the way other men had watched him, but as if he were trying to figure out a puzzle and couldn’t. The words rose to his lips. In that split second he’d made the decision to trust
the
sekitori
, even if it meant having to leave the stable. “I’m almost thirteen.”

Takanoyama sat still and didn’t turn to face him. “Why did you tell Tanaka-oyakata you were older?”

Sadao shrugged. “At first, I thought that’s what he wanted to hear. After I came to the stable, I was afraid he would make me leave if he knew I was so young.”

Takanoyama grunted. He could almost hear the
sekitori
calculating his age. If he were twelve when he entered the stable, and his parents had died during the firestorm, then he was only a little boy of six when he was left alone to survive on the streets. He didn’t want Takanoyama’s pity. He hesitated before asking, “Will you tell Tanaka-oyakata how old I really am?”

Hiroshi shook his head. “The decision is yours to make.”