Hiromi Kawakami - The Briefcase

Tsukiko, Sensei said as he peered at me, but I turned my face away. “Well, you can’t take your order back now, but you mustn’t drink the whole thing,” he said in an unusually stern tone. As he spoke the words, he tapped me on the shoulder.

Yes, I replied quietly. The alcohol had suddenly hit me. Sensei, could you please tap me again? I said, the words a jumble in my mouth.

Tsukiko, you are like a spoiled child tonight, he laughed, lightly tapping my shoulder several times.

That’s because I am a spoiled child. Always have been, I said, reaching out to touch the ayu bones on Sensei’s plate. The soft bones were pliant. Sensei removed his hand from my shoulder and slowly brought his cup to his lips. For a moment I leaned up against Sensei. Then I quickly moved away. Whether or not Sensei noticed me leaning against him, he kept his cup at his mouth and said not a word.

WHEN I CAME to, I was in Sensei’s house.

I seemed to be lying directly on the floor in the tatami room. Above my head was the low dining table, and right in front of me I could see Sensei’s legs. “Oh,” I said as I sat up.

“You’re awake?” Sensei said. The rain shutters as well as the doors were open. The night air was streaming into the room. It was a little cold. I could faintly make out the moon in the sky, swathed in a thick halo.

“Was I sleeping?” I asked.

“You were sleeping,” Sensei laughed. “You had quite a good rest there.”

I looked at the clock. It was just past twelve midnight.

“I didn’t sleep that much, did I? It was about an hour.”

“To sleep for an hour at someone else’s house is plenty,” Sensei laughed anew. His face was redder than usual. I wondered if he had been drinking the whole time I was asleep.

What am I doing here? I asked.

Sensei opened his eyes wide. You don’t remember? The way you carried on, I want to go to your house, I want to go!?

Did I really? I said, lying back down on the tatami. I could feel the straw weave on my cheek. My tangled hair fanned out over the mat. I lay there, watching the night clouds roll by. I didn’t want to go on a trip with Kojima. The thought came clearly to mind. With the distinct feeling of the tatami weave on my cheek, I thought about the vague sense of discomfort I experienced when I was with Kojima—it was faint yet inconsolable.

“I’ll have tatami marks here,” I said, still sprawled on the floor.

“Where?” Sensei asked. He had come around the table to my side.

“Ah, I see. You’re really laid up against it, aren’t you?” Sensei said, lightly touching my cheek. His fingers were cold. Sensei seemed bigger to me. Probably because I was looking up at him from below.

“Your cheek is warm, Tsukiko.”

He was still touching my cheek. The clouds were moving fast. At times the moon would be completely hidden behind the clouds, then the next moment part of it would appear again.

I’m drunk, that’s why I’m hot, I replied. Sensei was trembling slightly. I wondered if he was drunk too.

“Sensei, what if we went somewhere together?” I asked.

“Where would we go?”

“Maybe a delicious inn where they have ayu fish?”

“I can get all the ayu I need at Satoru’s place.” Sensei pulled his fingers away from my cheek.

“Then what about a remote mountainside hot-spring spa?”

“There’s no need to go all the way into the mountains when the public bath around the corner is just fine.” Sensei was next to me, sitting on his heels with his legs folded under him. He was no longer trembling. His posture was perfectly straight, as always.

I sat up. “Let’s go somewhere, just the two of us,” I said, looking Sensei in the eye.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he replied, staring straight back at me.

“No! I want us to go!”

I must have been drunk. I myself could only half-understand what I was babbling on about. Although the truth was that I fully understood, my head seemed to be pretending I was only half-aware of my own words.

“Tsukiko, where on earth would we go?”

“We could go anywhere at all, as long as I’m with you,” I cried.

The night clouds were moving fast. The wind had picked up strength. The air was heavy with humidity.

“You’d better settle down, Tsukiko,” Sensei said lightly.

“I’m settled down enough.”

“It’s time to go home, you should go to bed.”

“I will not go home.”

“Don’t you think you’re being unreasonable?”

“I’m not the least bit unreasonable! What I mean is, Sensei, I love you!”

The moment I said this, my belly blazed with warmth.

I had screwed up. Grown-ups didn’t go around blurting out troublesome things to people. You couldn’t just blithely disclose something that would then make it impossible to greet them with a smile the next day.

But I had gone and said it. Because I wasn’t a grown-up. I never would be, not like Kojima. Sensei, I love you, I repeated one more time, as if to be doubly sure. Sensei just stared at me with astonishment.

• • •

THUNDER RUMBLED OFF in the distance. After a little while, there was a flash of light among the clouds. It must have been lightning. A few seconds later, thunder could be heard again.

“This strange weather must be a result of the strange thing you said, Tsukiko,” Sensei murmured, leaning forward from the veranda.

It wasn’t strange, I retorted. Sensei gave a wry smile.

“It looks like we’ll have a bit of a storm.” Sensei put up the rain shutters with a loud clatter. They didn’t slide very well. He also closed the doors. The lightning was flashing wildly, and the thunder was growing near.

Sensei, I’m scared, I said, going to his side.

“There’s nothing to be scared of. It’s merely an electrical discharge phenomenon,” Sensei replied quite calmly while trying to avoid my encroachment. I scooted closer to him.

The truth is, I’m very frightened of thunder. I’m not trying to make something happen between us, really, this is just about being scared, I said through clenched teeth. The thunderstorm was already quite intense, lightning flashes followed the next moment by rumbling thunder. And it had started to rain—the sound of it driving against the rain shutters was loud.

“Tsukiko?” Sensei peered at me. I was sitting beside him, stiff as a board, with both hands over my ears.

“You really are terrified, aren’t you?”

I nodded silently. Sensei stared at me solemnly, and then he began to laugh.

“My dear, you are a strange young lady,” he said, laughing gleefully.

Come over here, let me hold you. Sensei drew me close. He smelled like alcohol. The sweet smell of saké wafted from Sensei’s chest. Still sitting on his heels, he laid my torso across his knees and embraced me tightly.

Sensei, I said, in a voice that sounded like a sigh.

Tsukiko, he replied. His voice was extremely clear; he sounded very much like himself. Children think the strangest things, don’t they? Because anyone who is afraid of thunder is nothing more than a child.

Sensei laughed loudly. His laughter reverberated with the rumbling thunder.

Sensei, I meant it when I said I love you. I spoke these words as I lay atop Sensei’s knees, but he didn’t hear me at all—my words were lost amid the thunder and Sensei’s booming laughter.

The thunderstorm grew more and more intense. The rain beat down in torrents. Sensei was laughing. And here I was, bewildered, lying across Sensei’s knees. What would Kojima say, if he could see us now?

It was all somehow absurd. Me declaring my love for Sensei to his face, Sensei taking it rather completely in stride yet without responding to my declaration, the sudden outbreak of the thunderstorm, the increasingly oppressive humidity in the room now that the rain shutters were closed—everything seemed like it was part of a dream.

Sensei, am I dreaming? I asked.

It sure seems like it, doesn’t it? he replied merrily.

If this is a dream, when will I wake up?

Hmm, I can’t say.

I wish I didn’t have to wake up.

But if this is a dream, then we must wake up sometime.

A huge crack of resounding thunder immediately followed a bolt of lightning, and my body stiffened. Sensei rubbed my back.

I don’t want to wake up, I said again.

That’s fine, Sensei replied.

The rain beat down hard on the roof. I kept my body rigid atop Sensei’s knees as Sensei calmly rubbed my back.

AND SO IT was that, after all, I found myself here.

Sensei’s briefcase sat in a corner of the room. The same briefcase he always carried.

“All of your things fit into that briefcase?” I had asked him while we were en route on the train. Sensei nodded.

“This briefcase is more than big enough for two days’ change of clothes.”

I see, I said. Sensei’s hands lightly held the briefcase on his knees as he gave himself over to the rocking of the train. Both Sensei and the briefcase swayed back and forth in short, quick motions.

We rode the train together, we took the ferry together, we climbed the hill on the island together, and we came to this small guesthouse together.

Had Sensei given in and decided to go on a trip because of all my pleading that night—the night of the thunderstorm that heralded the rainy season? Or had he made up his mind about it, had a sudden change of heart, sometime after the storm had passed, while he lay quietly in the room next to where I too lay quietly alone on the extra bedding that Sensei had carefully spread out for me? Or was it that, for no particular reason and without any motivation, Sensei was seized with an urge to travel all of a sudden?

“Tsukiko, would you like to go to an island with me next Saturday and Sunday?” Sensei had said out of the blue. We were on our way home from Satoru’s place. The street was wet from the ongoing rain. Several puddles of water caught the reflection of the streetlights and they seemed to glow white in the night. Sensei didn’t bother trying to avoid walking in the puddles; he just kept going steadily ahead. I tried to sidestep them one by one, and so I weaved randomly this way and that, as opposed to Sensei’s swift progress.

“Huh?” I responded.

“Didn’t you suggest that we go on an excursion the other night?”

“An excursion?” I repeated Sensei’s words like an idiot.

“There’s an island that I’ve visited from time to time in the past.”

Sensei mentioned that he had often traveled to this island. For some kind of reason, he muttered.

What was the reason? I asked, but Sensei did not reply. Instead he quickened his step.

“If you’re busy, Tsukiko, I will go on my own.”

“I’ll go, I’ll go,” I replied hurriedly.

And so it was that here I found myself.

On the island where Sensei had traveled “for some kind of reason.” At a small guesthouse. Sensei carried his same briefcase, and I carried a brand-new suitcase I had bought for the occasion. The two of us. Together. To be sure, we had separate rooms. Sensei had strongly suggested that I take a room with a view of the sea, while he took a room facing the island’s interior hillside.

No sooner had I deposited my luggage in the alcove of my seaside room than I was knocking on Sensei’s door. Knock-knock. It’s your mother. Open the door, dear little goats. I am not the wolf. Look how white my paw is.

Sensei simply opened the door, without bothering to look at my paw first.

“Would you like some tea?” Sensei grinned as he invited me in. I grinned back.

Sensei’s room seemed slightly smaller than mine, even though it was the same six-mat size. Perhaps because the window looked out on the mountain.

“Why don’t we go to my room? The view of the sea is lovely,” I said, but Sensei shook his head.

“A man mustn’t barge into a lady’s room.”

I see, I replied. You may barge in, if you like, I was about to add, but I didn’t think that Sensei would find that amusing, so I stopped myself.

I could not imagine what Sensei had in mind when he invited me on this trip. His face had betrayed nothing when I agreed to go along with him, and on the train he had been exactly the same Sensei as always. Even here, now, sipping tea, his manner was no different from at Satoru’s place when the counter was full and we ended up sitting across from each other at a small table.