The Street of a Thousand Blossoms (57 page)

It was December and cold as Haru packed quickly. Her small room looked as if a typhoon had blown through. She opened another drawer and took inventory. There was no need for a bathing suit in winter, even if Oshima was well known for its long stretches of
sandy beach and summer tourists, but Haru folded it neatly into her bag anyway. They would be taking a train to Yokohama, and from there they’d catch the ferry to Oshima.

Haru could hardly believe it when Professor Ito pulled her aside a few weeks ago and unexpectedly asked her to join his research group traveling to Izu Oshima, the closest of the seven volcanic islands known as the Izu Archipelago. They were to stay on Oshima for the weekend, collecting specimens on the less populated west side. She would return to Tokyo afterward for the New Year.

The ferry only carried a handful of passengers, their research team of five, which included three fellow graduate students, Professor Ito, and herself. There was also a younger couple who kept to themselves and an older man who sat alone and read for the entire trip. It began as a calm day, cool and gray but mild. Toward the last hour of the trip, Haru left the small group and went upstairs to the top deck to watch the ocean. The ferry rose and fell against the waves, leaving a trail of milky froth behind. She felt as if she were moving on the water with nothing but the sky above and the sea below her.

“Are you enjoying the ferry ride?” A voice rose above the hum of the ferry’s motor and the rush and splash of the water below.

“Yes,” she said, at first quietly. Then she raised her voice when she saw it was Professor Ito. “Yes, I am,” she said, again.

“I’ve taken this ferry many times, and still I enjoy it, provided the weather is agreeable like today.”

Haru smiled. It was the first time they’d spoken of anything but plants or students. “Do you go to Oshima often?”

The professor nodded. “Usually once a year. Ever since I was a graduate student like you, and then afterward when I began to teach. It’s being in the field that I love best. It breaks the monotony of the classroom.”

The wind had started up, and Haru found it more difficult to keep her footing.
“Hai,”
she said. “It’s something I hope to do more of.”

Professor Ito smiled. She thought he must be near forty, and age was just settling in nicely onto his face. At twenty-three, she was surprised at how easy it was to talk to him now that they were away from the university.

“I’ll keep an eye out for you,” he said. “Perhaps we’ll go on another research trip together.”

Haru blushed. “I would be honored,” she said.

“See over there?” He squinted and pointed to the far distance.

She saw the endless sea, a glassy mirror.

“We may be too far away yet, but just keep focusing and it’ll eventually come into view.”

“What am I looking for?”

“You’ll see very soon.” He smiled.

They stood on the deck in silence, lost in the lulling motion beneath their feet and the salty fish smell. The winds had picked up, blowing the strands of her hair away from her face. Haru felt like a young girl again, excited with anticipation. Her eyes watered. Then, as if time had stopped, she could just make out the vague outlines of something large and menacing in the distance, reaching upward toward the sky.

“There it is,” Professor Ito said softly, almost lovingly, still pointing. “Right there in the center of Oshima is Mount Mihara. It’s still an active volcano that possesses a long and terrible history.”

She shaded her eyes and looked hard to see the blurred lines of the volcano. “How so?”

Professor Ito stared straight ahead. “Back in 1933, a young high school student committed suicide by leaping into the volcano. That same year, another one hundred and twenty-eight people jumped to their deaths. Can you imagine? Many thought it was Mihara that lured all those people to their deaths.”

Haru shook her head and stared down into the water. She couldn’t imagine so many suicides. Lives swallowed by the dark shadow of a volcano. She wondered if they’d died from the fall, or if it was the heat that killed them first. Haru felt a chill as she recalled the bodies she’d seen right after the firestorm, charred black and stiff, a scream frozen onto their faces. They had had no choice, while others chose to jump into the smoldering lava, which burned hot white and didn’t leave a trace of anyone ever having been alive. “It’s such a tragedy,” she said, in a voice barely audible.

The sea had turned choppy. The boat lurched and she grabbed
on to the wet rail, her hand slipping as she fell toward Professor Ito. He raised his arms to catch her and pulled her against him, holding her tightly until the boat calmed again.

“Perhaps we should go back downstairs,” he suggested, becoming more formal again.

Haru nodded and followed the professor back down. From behind, she focused on his patch of thinning hair that scarcely hid the perfect
O
on the back of his head.

They’d discreetly begun seeing each other when she returned to Nara after the New Year. The first time Professor Ito kissed her, he told her to call him by his given name, Ichiru. She whispered it once before he leaned forward and kissed her again.

On most afternoons Akira Yoshiwara excused himself from the mask shop to take a long walk down by the river. He walked along the alleyways of Yanaka and cut across the park and through the wooded area to where the river narrowed and stilled. In another life, he might have ventured there for other purposes. Rumors were rampant that men met other men there in the dark of the woods, the silent trees masking their veiled lives.

At forty-seven, Akira was there for other reasons. There were fewer people walking the dirt path and the trees muffled the noise from the city. Time seemed to pause. He could get closer to the river, take in the sounds and scents down by the water, the calm trickling, the faint breeze of dank earth on the warm, muggy summer afternoons, or the cold air of winter that whistled through the trees as the water rushed by like cracking ice. All of it soothed him, carried with its currents the memories of Aio and brought down his fever of restlessness. Like him, the river was full of secrets. It wasn’t that he didn’t cherish his work at the mask shop, or his time spent with Kenji. Unlike the complications he’d had with Emiko, Kenji was like a son and he felt closer to him and Mika than any of his own bloodline. Yet there was a part of him no one would ever know or understand. Sometimes Akira still thought of Sato, at other times of Emiko and Kiyo, wondering if life had been kind to them. But their faces had faded in the past few years like an old photo or a fairy tale he had heard a very
long time ago. The memories came to him in bits and pieces but no longer as a whole.

“It’s your turn to hide,” or “It’s your turn to seek,” he still occasionally heard Kiyo’s voice telling him. Akira didn’t hide or seek in the years since he’d returned to Yanaka. He simply returned to the masks.

Akira walked slowly along the riverbank. It was a mild April and already turning to dusk. It was usually quiet this time of the day. He wandered along a path winding around the river’s edge, a section that remained untouched by the encroaching building and construction that had enveloped Tokyo since the occupation ended. On the other side of a stone walk, it sloped down to the water, a murky green in the afternoon light. He noticed everything, even the slimy moss that grew along the edge of the river like strands of a woman’s hair. If he closed his eyes and listened to the listless drift of the water, he might be in Aio again, sitting by a mountain stream created by the melting ice. Sometimes, as he watched the river flowing, he wondered what it would be like to move in the same quick, fluid motion, never setting down roots, never staying in one place to develop attachments. Yet, Akira came to the river for exactly the opposite reason. He came to recapture his memories so he wouldn’t lose them all. He felt them return to him most intimately down by the river, as if they were ghosts that hovered just above the surface, inviting him in.

Fumiko slowly lowered herself onto a cushion at the dining room table. Before she began to write, she stretched her fingers to loosen the dull ache in them that now plagued her almost continuously. She was seventy-five years old now, and arthritis made her once straight fingers look like the crooked roots of ginseng, the stubby knobs of fresh ginger root. It was increasingly difficult and painful to form her once fluid characters. Her calligraphy was something Fumiko had always taken great pride in, having won awards and ribbons when she was a little girl in Sapporo. Now, she could barely stand
the sight of her shaky writing. But it was summer again and the warm weather soothed her joints, made her feel brave.

Fumiko knew Yoshio would understand why her letters to him only came occasionally now. Who knew better how age stole away all the gifts given to the young? She smiled at the irony of her writing to him; if he were alive, his blindness would keep him from reading it. But wherever he was, writing was her way of communicating with him. Fumiko put down her pen. Her thoughts flowed too quickly and she couldn’t keep up. She flexed her hand and her fingers felt weak. She looked down at her shaky writing and frowned at the uneven lines of a child. She would certainly win the prize for the poorest calligraphy in the class now.

She heard the front gate whine open and pushed herself up from the table. She was expecting Hiroshi and Aki, who had recently bought a new house in Shoto, an exclusive area in Shibuya Ward, but when she stepped out to the
genkan
she only saw the imposing figure of her grandson laden with packages.

“Ah, there you are,” he said, bowing.

“Aki-san?”

“She had hoped to come with me. She sends her apologies but was feeling a little under the weather this morning.”

Fumiko drew in a breath and stepped down. It was a beautiful day in early July and she’d been looking forward to their visit. She had hoped to get to know Aki better. Unlike Mika, Aki-san always appeared uncomfortable around her no matter how she tried to put the young woman at ease. Fumiko always felt there was something unreachable about her; she could see it in her eyes. “I hope it isn’t anything serious.”

Hiroshi smiled widely. “It should be resolved in just over six months.”

It took Fumiko a moment to understand what Hiroshi was saying, that Aki was with child. For the past few years, she knew Kenji and Mika had been trying, and she always expected to hear the news from them first. “Hiro-chan, a baby?”

He nodded like a young boy. “Your first great-grandchild.”

For a quick moment her heart fluttered; as delighted as she was
for Hiroshi and Aki, she felt a sharp sting of grief for Kenji and Mika. Still, Yokozuna Takanoyama must have carried more than a hundred babies this year; young mothers stopped him in the streets so that his strength and good health would rub off on their children. It was time he carried his own child for a change. Fumiko stepped toward her grandson and reached up to touch his cheek.

Alone in the
keikoba
before morning practice, Sadao gripped the long wooden bow in his hands and swung it from side to side, up and down, then in slow circles that grew faster and faster, disrupting the still July air. He was delighted with the force of it, at the power he felt between his hands as the whistling sound of air vibrated around him. At the age of eighteen, Sadao wasn’t as tall as he had hoped, but he did live up to his father’s nickname of
buru
. He was powerfully built and very strong and had been given the fighting name Takanoburu. During his six years at the stable, he had quickly learned the intimate rituals of sumo and had risen to the Makushita Division, just below that of an upper-ranked wrestler. He knew both Tanaka-oyakata and Yokozuna Takanoyama expected him to move up in rank after the upcoming tournament in September. Then, by the newly added Kyushu tournament in November, Sadao hoped he would have reached the rank of
sekitori
. It was something he dreamed of, but, before then, there was one ritual he loved best and hoped to perform before he advanced in rank. Only a wrestler in the Makushita Division could perform the bow twirling ceremony, which represented a token of gratitude on behalf of the winning wrestlers of the day. It was the only time a lower-ranked wrestler was given the honor of wearing a
kesho-mawashi
apron with the chrysanthemum emblem of the sumo association on it. He would have his hair styled in an
oichomage
, that of the ginkgo leaf, and receive a cash bonus.