The Briefcase (3 page)

The mother and child we had seen earlier were now in front of a mushroom stall. Sensei stood right behind them.

“Mom, these
kinugasa
mushrooms look yummy.”

“I thought you hated
kinugasa
mushrooms.”

“But these
kinugasa
mushrooms look especially good.” They went through exactly the same exchange.

“They must be decoy plants,” Sensei said gleefully.

“That’s pretty ingenious, to use a mother-and-child setup.”

“But ‘
kinugasa
mushrooms,’ that was over-the-top.”

“Yes.”

“They should have used
maitake
mushrooms instead.”

The grocery stalls thinned and gave way to stalls selling larger items. Household appliances. Computers. Telephones. There were mini
refrigerators lined up in different colors. An LP was playing on an old record player. I could hear the low timbre of a violin. The music had an old-fashioned, simple charm. Sensei stood, listening intently, until the end of the piece.

 

 

IT WAS STILL only mid-afternoon, yet there were already almost imperceptible signs of the approaching evening. The hottest part of the day had just passed.

“Are you thirsty?” Sensei asked.

“Yes, but if we’re going to be drinking beer this evening, I don’t want anything else to drink before then,” I replied.

Sensei nodded in satisfaction. “Good answer.”

“Was that a test?”

“Tsukiko, you are an excellent student when it comes to drinking. In Japanese class, on the other hand, your grades were awful . . . ”

There was a stall that had cats for sale. There were newborn kittens and great big fat cats. A child was pleading with his mother for a cat. It was the mother and child from earlier.

“We don’t have anywhere to keep a cat,” the mother said.

“That’s okay, it can be an outdoor cat,” the child replied softly.

“But do you really think a cat we buy here can survive outside?”

“It’ll be all right, somehow.” The owner of the cat stall listened in silence to their conversation. Finally, the child pointed at a small, striped tabby. The owner wrapped the tabby in a soft cloth and the mother took it and gently placed it in her shopping basket. The faint sound of the tabby’s mewling could be heard from inside the basket.

“Tsukiko,” Sensei said suddenly.

“Yes?”

“I’m going to buy something too.”

Sensei approached not the cat stall, but a stall selling chicks.

“Male and female, one chick each,” Sensei said decisively.

The proprietor of the stall picked one each from the two separate groups of chicks on either side, and placed each chick into its own little box. “Here you are,” he said as he handed them to Sensei, who took the boxes cautiously. Holding them in his left hand, Sensei pulled his wallet from his pocket with his right hand and gave it to me.

“Would you mind paying him for me?”

“Why don’t I hold the boxes?”

“Ah, yes.”

Sensei’s panama hat was even more askew now. Wiping the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief, he took out the money to pay. He put his wallet back in his breast pocket and, after a moment’s hesitation, he took off his panama hat.

Sensei turned his hat upside down. Then he took the chicks’boxes one at a time from my hands and put them inside the upside down hat. Once the boxes were settled, Sensei began walking with the hat carried protectively under his arm.

 

WE GOT ON the bus at the Kawasuji-nishi stop. There were fewer people on the bus ride home than on the way there. The market surged again with people who were probably doing their evening shopping.

“I’ve heard that it’s difficult to tell the difference between a male and a female chick,” I said, and Sensei made a sort of harrumphing sound.

“Well, I know that much.”

“Oh.”

“It doesn’t matter to me whether these chicks are male or female.”

“I see.”

“I thought one chick would be lonely on its own.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Was that so?
I wondered as I got off the bus and followed Sensei into our usual bar. “Two bottles of beer,” Sensei ordered right away. “And edamame.” The beer and our glasses came right out.

“Sensei, shall I pour?” I asked, but he shook his head.

“No. I’ll pour for you, Tsukiko. And I’ll pour for myself too.” As usual, he wouldn’t let me pour for him.

“Do you hate it when someone else pours?”

“I don’t mind if they can do it well, but you aren’t very good at it.”

“Is that right?”

“Would you like me to teach you?”

“That’s not necessary.”

“You’re a stubborn one.”

“As are you.”

There was a stiff head of foam on the beer that Sensei poured for me. “Where will you keep the chicks?” I asked. “Inside the house, for now,” Sensei replied. I could barely hear the sound of the chicks moving inside the box, inside the hat. “Do you like having pets?” I asked. Sensei shook his head.

“I don’t think it’s my forte.”

“Will you be able to handle them?”

“Chicks aren’t very cute, are they?”

“Is it better if they aren’t cute?”

“That way I won’t become obsessive.”

There was a rustling sound as the chicks moved again. Sensei’s glass was empty, so I replenished it. He did not refuse. “A little more foam. That’s right.” He talked me through the technique as he serenely accepted the beer I poured for him.

“Soon you’ll have to let those chicks out somewhere in the open,” I said. That night we drank only beer. We had edamame, grilled eggplant, and octopus marinated in wasabi. After we finished eating, we split the check right down the middle.

When we came out of the bar, it was almost dark. I wondered if the mother and child from the market had finished their dinner already. I wondered if the cat was still mewling. There was only a hint of a glow lingering in the western sky.

SENSEI AND I aren’t speaking.

It’s not that I haven’t seen him. I often run into him at our usual bar, but we don’t speak. We glance at each other out of the corner of one eye, and then we simply pretend we are strangers. I pretend, and Sensei pretends as well.

It has been going on since about the time when the bar started serving “Stew of the day” as a special, so it must be almost a month by now. Even when we sit next to each other at the counter, we don’t say a word.

 

IT ALL STARTED with the radio.

The broadcast of the baseball game was on. They were leading up to the final game of the pennant race. It was unusual for the radio to be on in the bar, and I was sitting with my elbows resting on the counter, idly listening to the game while drinking warm saké.

Before long, the door opened and Sensei came in. He took the seat next to me and asked the bar owner, “ What ’s in the stew?” There were several dented individual-sized aluminum pots piled up on the cupboard.

“Cod stew today.”

“That sounds good.”

“So, would you like the stew then?” the bar owner asked, but Sensei shook his head.

“I’ll have salted sea urchin.”

He certainly is unpredictable,
I thought to myself as I listened to their exchange. The first-at-bat team’s third batter got an extra base hit, and the sound of cheering and the fife- and drum-playing grew louder on the radio.

“Tsukiko, which is your favorite team?”

“None in particular,” I replied, filling my cup with warm saké. Everyone in the bar was listening to the radio ardently.

“Obviously, it’s the Giants for me,” Sensei said, draining his beer in one gulp and switching to saké. He spoke—how can I put it?—with more passion than usual. I wondered about this passion.

“Obviously?”

“Yes, obviously.”

The game on the broadcast was the Yomiuri Giants versus the Hanshin Tigers. I don’t have a favorite team, but to tell the truth, I hate the Giants. I used to openly proclaim myself “anti-Giants.” But one time, someone pointed out that being “anti-Giants” was really just a backward strategy for those who were so stubborn they couldn’t bring themselves to say that they liked the Giants. Something about this resonated with me, and, since then, I have refrained from even uttering the dreaded name, “Giants.” I avoid baseball broadcasts. Honestly, the issue is so murky in my own mind that I myself am not at all certain whether I love or hate the Giants.

Sensei lingered over his bottle of saké. Whenever the Giants’pitcher struck out a batter, or a Giants player got a hit, he nodded vigorously.

“What’s the matter, Tsukiko?” Sensei asked me after a home run at the top of the seventh inning gave the Giants a three-point lead over the Tigers.

“I’m just tapping my foot.”

I had been nervously shaking my foot since the Giants had gained their lead.

“The nights are getting cold,” I said, apropos of nothing and not even in Sensei’s direction, but more toward the ceiling. At that moment, the player for the Giants got another hit. Sensei cried out “Oh!” just as I muttered “Shit!” without meaning to. This run gave them a secure four-run lead, and the bar exploded with excitement. Why were Giants fans so ubiquitous? It really was annoying.

“Tsukiko, do you hate the Giants?” Sensei asked me at the bottom of the ninth, when the Tigers were down to their last out. I nodded, not saying a word. The bar had calmed down. Almost everyone there was listening closely to the broadcast. I had a disquieting feeling. It had been a long time since I had listened to a baseball game on the radio, and my Giants-hating blood was boiling over. I now knew for sure that it was, in fact, straightforward hatred as opposed to some kind of perverse affectation.

“I can’t stand them,” I said in a low voice.

Sensei’s eyes opened wide. “How can you be Japanese and hate the Giants?!” he murmured.

“What kind of prejudice is that?” I asked, just as the Tigers’ last batter struck out. Sensei stood up from his chair and raised his glass high. Over the radio, they announced the end of the game, and the bar started bustling again. Suddenly, orders for drinks and food came from every direction, the owner replying to each one with a gruff acknowledgment.

“They won, Tsukiko!” Sensei beamed and moved to fill my cup with saké from his own bottle, which was rather unusual. We had established a practice of never encroaching on each other’s food or drink. We ordered on our own. We poured for ourselves. And we paid separately. We had been doing it this way all this time. But here was Sensei coming over to pour me his saké, to break our tacit agreement. And it was all
because the Giants had won. It was far too soon for me to have Sensei so capriciously endanger the comfortable distance that existed between us. Those fucking Giants.

“So what?” I said very quietly as I tried to move my cup away from Sensei.

“Nagashima’s a great manager, isn’t he?” Sensei still managed to deftly pour his saké into my fleeing cup, without spilling a drop. Quite well done.

“Fortunately that’s fortunate,” I said, turning aside and putting down the cup of saké without drinking it.

“Tsukiko, that’s a strange thing to say.”

“Unfortunately that’s unfortunate.”

“The pitcher played well, too.” Sensei was laughing.

He’s laughing—what a jerk
, I cursed to myself. Sensei had a huge grin on his face. And Sensei, who was always so calm and composed, was laughing heartily.

“Can we stop talking about it?” I said, staring at Sensei. But he wouldn’t stop grinning. And there was something curious playing at the corners of his mouth. It was like the glimmer of delight in the eyes of a young boy as he squashes little ants.

“No, I will not stop talking about it, most definitely not!”

What was he saying? Sensei knew that I hated the Giants, and here he was, gloating. He was most definitely gloating.

“The Giants, they’re all fuckers,” I said, spilling the entire cup of saké that Sensei had poured me onto an empty plate.

“‘Fuckers’?! Such language from a young lady!” Sensei replied, having regained his perfect composure. He stood up even straighter than usual and drained his cup.

“I am not a young lady.”

“Pardon me.”

Disquiet filled the air between Sensei and me. Sensei did have a point. After all, the Giants had won. Eventually, without saying a word,
we each went back to pouring our own drinks. We didn’t order anything to eat, we simply kept on pouring. At the end of the night, we were both quite drunk. Maintaining our silence, we each paid our bill, left the bar, and went our respective ways home. And ever since then, we haven’t spoken.

 

 

WHEN I THOUGHT about it, Sensei was the only person I spent any time with.

For a while now, there hadn’t been anyone besides Sensei with whom I had sat and had a drink, or gone for a walk, or seen anything interesting.

When I tried to think whom I spent time with before I became friendly with Sensei, no one came to mind.

I had been alone. I rode the bus alone, I walked around the city alone, I did my shopping alone, and I drank alone. And even when I was with Sensei now, I didn’t feel any different than when I did these things on my own. It seemed, then, that it didn’t really matter whether or not I was with Sensei, but the truth was, doing these things with him made me feel proper. “Proper” is perhaps a strange way to put it. It was more like the way I felt about leaving the extra band, the
obi
, that sometimes came on a book jacket intact after I bought it, rather than throwing it away. Sensei would probably be angry if he knew I was comparing him to the band on a dust jacket.

When I saw Sensei at the bar and we pretended not to know each other, it felt as distressing as if the ripped-off band and book were lying strewn about on the ground. But it would have been too wearisome to attempt to restore the level of comfort we had. No doubt Sensei felt the same way. And so we just went on ignoring each other.