Zen Attitude (2 page)

“Dōmo sumimasen deshita.”
The man’s formal apology startled me before I remembered that under Japanese law, the vehicle hitting the other is automatically at fault.

“I’m sorry, too. I was distracted,” I babbled.

“It is solely my fault. And look at what I’ve done to your beautiful car.” The man’s voice cracked. I realized then that he was probably worried about having gotten into an accident while driving a company vehicle. I was going to reassure him that I wouldn’t sue, but he already had his hand in his wallet.

“What about the paint on your truck? Are you sure you won’t have trouble at work?”

He looked at his fender and shook his head. “It is ordinary depreciation they will not notice. But I must reimburse you. I will not leave until I do so!”

I had been drifting. He had been nosing into my lane. I supposed we both were at fault. I took the money without looking at it, still feeling guilty. “If you give me your address, I can send you a copy of the bill and any change—”

“Please don’t trouble yourself!” He had jumped back into the truck again. Since no names or information had been exchanged, he could rest securely and believe that the matter had ended. I tried to push my unease aside as I sipped the sweet Yodel Water and steered back into traffic.

Two hours later I was in Hita. I had called ahead to the shop Mrs. Mihori had told me about and learned that Hita Fine Arts did have a number of antique
tansu
in stock. The antiques dealer told me he had one
tansu
that probably came from Yahata, a wood-working town on Sado Island I had already fruitlessly searched.

“Where did you acquire the piece?” I asked, resentful of his good fortune.

“From a good source. It’s available at the moment, but I’d advise you to hurry. A woman customer came in yesterday and asked me to hold the
tansu
for her. She didn’t return, so I have just decided to release it for sale.”

Appearing slightly uninterested can lead to discounts, a very good thing. But I had no time or energy to play games. I drove straight into Hita’s shopping district, nabbing an illegal spot in front of Hita Fine Arts. I wasn’t worried, because I’d know pretty quickly if the
tansu
was worth buying.

I wasn’t hopeful. The shop screamed tourist trap, with an exterior that mimicked the red and gold splendor of a Shinto shrine. The first floor was crammed with mass-produced ceramic fishbowls, brightly gilded screens, and tacky acetate wedding
kimono
, all pseudo-Japanese items that were probably made in China.

Nana Mihori had wanted me to come. I reminded myself of this as I made my way to the main desk where a sign boldly proclaimed, W
E
S
PEAK
E
NGLISH
! W
E
T
AKE
D
OLLAR
!

“Nao Sakai works upstairs in furniture,” the receptionist said when I asked for the antiques salesman I’d spoken to on the car phone. “That’s behind the T-shirt section and next to the stamps.”

It didn’t sound as if there was much priority given to antiques. Upstairs, though, the section was surprisingly well stocked. I checked out a gorgeous kitchen
tansu
and a few smaller chests that looked as if they’d been crafted in Sendai and Yonezawa.

A slender man with sharp features was sitting cross-legged at a rosewood table, chatting on the phone with someone. He looked at me and said, “If you wish to buy a new T-shirt, they are over by the window.”

“I’m Rei Shimura. I telephoned earlier about the
tansu.”
I crossed my arms over my wrinkled shirt and stared him down.

Sakai smiled widely, reevaluating me. “Shimurasan? I’ve, ah, kept the piece for you in the back.”

I followed him into a dim stockroom filled with a forest of cardboard boxes. Through the gloom, I saw a dark maroon chest of drawers adorned with ornate, hand-chased iron hinges and lock plates.

Mrs. Mihori had sketched what she wanted, so I pulled out her drawing to make comparisons. She was looking specifically for a
kasane
, a bridal chest in two sections, each with two drawers, that could be stacked on top of each other for a commanding appearance. She wanted the wood to be top-quality paulownia decorated with cranes and turtles, symbols of good luck that often marked furniture built in the Sado Island town of Yahata. The metalwork on this piece was burnished black but not too dark, as it might be if it had been artificially aged. The hand-forged nails with irregular heads also looked right for the mid-nineteenth century.

“You know furniture,” Mr. Sakai said flatteringly as I began pulling out the drawers for inspection. They were smoothly joined, and there was also the happy circumstance of no insect holes. In my time spent shopping around Japan, I’d been saddened to find that many
tansu
interiors had been devoured by wood-eating moths. These fresh-smelling cedar drawers were pristine and appeared to have been recently sanded, which made me pause.

“Did you refinish this?”

“Absolutely not! This is a small business,
neh?
I just take consignments and turn them over as fast as I can.”

There was no price tag on the chest. As if hearing my unspoken question, Mr. Sakai said, “The old gentleman is having some hard times, so he will part with it for a very reasonable price: one million, five hundred thousand yen.”

He was asking a little over twelve thousand dollars, which was fair but worth testing. “Is there any way you could make it a little cheaper? I’m sort of on a budget.”

“Hmmm. You come from Tokyo?” He studied me carefully. I hoped my story had not lost credibility because of my high-priced address. “I could include the cost of delivery, I suppose.”

“Okay. I just need to make a phone call to my mother.” There was no need for him to know I was buying for a client, especially since I was getting him to comp the delivery. He agreed, looking somewhat wary, and I ran out to use the Windom’s telephone. A young man with greased-back hair and a lime-colored rayon suit was standing outside, examining my smashed taillight. People in Japan always worried about other people’s troubles, so I smiled at him and bowed slightly, indicating that I knew about the damage.

I slid into the Windom, keeping the door open to catch a breeze while I was on the telephone. Miss Tanaka, Nana Mihori’s housekeeper, said that her mistress was busy with a delegation of visitors. I hung up, wondering if I should buy without authorization. I didn’t think so, since she’d rejected two other
tansu
I’d found on the trip.

I took out Mrs. Mihori’s sketch again. It was unlikely I’d ever find such a beautiful Sado piece again. I couldn’t lose it. Maybe I could put it on hold. I hurried back into the shop, where I found Mr. Sakai talking to a new customer: a woman in her forties wearing a silk blouse and skirt the color of green tea. She looked exquisite until she turned, revealing a large black mole on her left nostril.

“The problem is that there’s a new customer.” Mr. Sakai indicated me with his hand.

“But I’m ready to buy and I have the money right here!” The woman waved a handful of yen notes at him, very bad form. I realized that she was probably the customer who had put the
tansu
on hold.

“Excuse me. I’d like to get things settled with the Sado Island
tansu
,” I said.

“She’s not talking about my
tansu?”
The customer looked coldly at me.

“Actually, it’s a difficult situation now,” Mr. Sakai apologized.

“I’ll buy the
tansu
if you just give me a chance to contact my mother,” I said, nervousness growing. “I can give you an answer within a couple of hours.”

The woman gasped, and Mr. Sakai looked pained at my insolence. “That is impossible, I’m afraid.”

“Yahari hafu da,”
the woman murmured to Sakai. The phrase meant “because she’s a half blood”—implying that my racial makeup allowed for my rudeness.

“There can be no more holding of this
tansu.
Whoever is ready to buy it will receive it.” Mr. Sakai cleared his throat and looked at the small crowd that had collected: two salesclerks from the souvenir department and a few shoppers.

Making an executive decision, I whipped out my credit card with the ultra-high limit.

“Because of the consignments, I deal only in cash.” He looked at my card as if it was dirty.

A store this big had to accept credit cards, but Mr. Sakai was probably playing tough in order to avoid paying percentages to anyone. Knowing this system, I had brought more than I needed—about 2.2 million yen jammed in several Pocky pretzel boxes in the bottom of my backpack. I shrugged and said, “Fine. I’ll pay cash.”

“I was here first!” the lady in green snapped.

“One point five million. Was tax already included?” I started counting off ten-thousand-yen notes, wishing I didn’t have such a big audience.

“I’ll pay more than her! Fifty thousand yen more”, the woman said.

She couldn’t do that. It wasn’t ethical. I gave Mr. Sakai a beseeching look.

“I must work in my client’s best interest,” he said in a low voice.

“I’ll pay one million, five hundred and sixty, then.” I was sweating despite the air-conditioning, feeling myself on the edge of a calamity.

“One million, seven hundred thousand yen.” The woman gave me a scathing look.

“One million, eight hundred.” If this was an auction, I was hanging in.

As Mr. Sakai muttered nervously, the woman raised me again, offering 1.9 million. Would she go higher? I couldn’t tell from her face. I was at the end of my money and couldn’t afford to risk any more rounds of this sick game.

“I’ll give you two million, one hundred thousand.” With a steeper jump in price, I might scare her off.

The woman paused as if aware that things had gone too far. But she spoke again.

“Two million and two hundred thousand yen.”

At that, I shook my head. I was giving up. I stuffed my cash back in the Pocky boxes and zipped up my backpack with shaking fingers. It was wrong to pay so much over the original price; I knew it in my bones. In any case, I shouldn’t do it without Mrs. Mihori’s permission.

As I stormed through the fishbowl display on my way out the door, I felt a tug on my backpack. Someone had seen my money and was trying to grab it. Reaching back blindly, I connected with soft flesh. When I turned, I found I’d knocked over a young saleswoman who had been upstairs.

“Miss!” she panted. “You can still buy the
tansu
, I came to tell you—”

“Gomen nasai,”
I apologized, helping her up. Why hadn’t I looked before lashing out? Thank God she hadn’t hit her head on one of the massive fish-bowls.

“The other customer did not have enough money. Mr. Sakai sent me to say you can have it for two million one hundred thousand, like you offered.” The girl’s lip quivered, as if she was about to cry.

I felt like crying myself. If this was an auction house, the overzealous woman would have been forced to pay. I thought about that as I climbed the stairs and approached Mr. Sakai’s section.

“Two million is actually what I have in my bag this minute. However, I could go to the bank.” The woman was digging through her handbag, tossing out yen notes like used tissues.

Mr. Sakai looked past her at me. “Banking hours are over. I apologize for the confusion, Shimura-san.”

Now that I knew my competition’s finances, I had a bargaining chip. “I’ll buy it for two million, total, and that includes free delivery, as we agreed before.”

“Final sale,
neh
?” Sakai was already writing the receipt.

“Final sale,” I repeated, and the
tansu
was mine.

Outside the shop, my exultation was tempered when I saw the same young man who’d been lurking earlier perched on the car’s trunk.

“You’ll need to get that fixed,
Onēsan,”
he drawled, pointing to the taillight. “Your bulb is broken.”

I frowned. He was calling me “big sister,” a slightly flirtatious form of address. It was par for the course coming from vendors in the vegetable market, but I didn’t like it coming from a well-dressed stranger. Although he wasn’t entirely strange; he reminded me of someone I couldn’t place.

“I’ll do it in Tokyo,” I said, glancing up at the sky darkening with the onset of evening, and then at the taillight, which was in worse shape than I’d realized. The truck driver’s aplogy had been too distracting.

“Heh?
You can’t drive cockeyed all the way to Tokyo. Which neighborhood are you going to?”

“Roppongi.” The land of foreigners and gourmet pizza. I had lived somewhere more modest and authentically Japanese before Hugh Glendinning had entered my life.

He whistled and ran his hand over his glossy pompadour. “Fantastic place. I used to hang out in Yoyogi Park, which isn’t too far—”

“With the Elvis dancers?” I relaxed slightly. On Sundays a giant tribe of young men dressed in pegged jeans and black leather jackets danced to recorded 1950s music in the park. Now I knew who he reminded me of—a Japanese Elvis.

“Tokyo city government shut down the outdoor dance parties. Now I don’t go there anymore.” He pulled a business card out of his wide-lapel jacket. “I’m Jun Kuroi. I work for the Toyota dealership in Hita. I stopped when I saw your car and was wondering if it was ours.”

“It’s not,” I said, examining the card.

“Too bad. I would have given you a loan car. That’s part of our service plan.”

The card looked genuine—it had the official, whirly Toyota emblem—so I admitted, “I do need to get my light fixed. How expensive will that be? I’ve never had to take the car for servicing.”

“Those Windoms never break down, do they? I drive one myself.” He gestured toward a shiny silver model with a dealership name over the license plate. “I think we’re talking about four thousand yen. You can charge it, of course—”

He’d said the magic word given my finances. I got into the car and followed him along the road to the dealership, a small glass and chrome showplace filled with highly polished cars.

“Hita’s a great little town,” Jun said, bringing me a glass of iced coffee while I waited in the customer lounge. “As long as you’re here, you should make use of your time. Why don’t you drop in for a soak at the hot-spring baths before you go back to the city? I’d join you if I could, ha-ha.”