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Chapter 4

‘The events of human life, whether public or private, are so intimately linked to architecture that most observers can reconstruct nations or individuals in all the truth of their habits from the remains of their monuments or from their domestic relics’

−Honoré de Balzac

Hana sipped at the bitter tea. You really had to know how to ask the right questions. Her mother had hidden behind a memory that she would never share. She had cradled it like a burn to the hand and Hana had learned early on not to bring it up. Consequently it had proved a very successful way of avoiding the truth – which left Hana up against it now, up against that generational amnesia that protected the past and, at worst, buried it.

She really must find the teahouse. As her mother had described it, it lay etched on her mind, sitting in temple gardens, over an ornamental lake in one of the most tranquil places on earth. Working on that building and helping with the construction design, had been for her mother an exquisite project. On the rare occasions she had mentioned it she looked wistful, lost, and, when pressed, she would clam up, or ramble on about the way it was built.

This Zen teahouse had become a kind of monument to her and so Hana had brought from home the dog-eared Japanese map, folded into inconvenient ribbons and covered in nothing but kanji characters. The task of finding a major tourist site would be an achievement let alone an insignificant retreat in the middle of nowhere but the guy from the flight, Ed, might help.

With thoughts of freshening up she reached the hall, where Noru materialized, flapping her apron and motioning towards the bathroom at the back of the house. Once the door bolt was secured, she finally stepped out of her jeans. Peeling away the clothes she had first put on in London began the transition. You hadn’t arrived, she thought, until that moment when you remove the flight-worn souvenirs from the start of the journey. The deep wooden bath was already full of water and, ignoring the short shower hose, the slippers and the ashtray, she got in and sank into the hottest water she had ever braved. Soaping away the collected hours of arm’s-length intimacy and the Tokyo dust, she suspected she was breaking another house rule but who knew what it was.

Replacing the medicinal soap, she sank back for a blissful moment and remembered the London Fields Lido where she had first learnt to swim. She must have been about ten. This place prompted memories she hadn’t raised for years, as if, as Ed had said, she was travelling back in time. Her mother, with careful consideration, amid the shouts of pleasure or was it terror around them, had removed the floats from her skinny arms and let her go. Shoulder deep she had felt herself sinking, but her mother, beside her then, had watched her struggle to the edge, to safety. It was never going to be easy, but she had clung to that mantra, and as they walked home hers was strawberry-ice success and they shared the sweet melt line running all the way to her elbow.

The steaming bath threatened to overwhelm her and, having added more from the cold tap, she sank below the water line. She held her breath until it was not quite comfortable, then, expelling bubbles in punishing, controlled bursts, she finally let it all go, turning the water into a rolling boil above her head. It was the first time, she realized, that she was angry. She missed her mother and she was angry with herself for losing her. Now she was actually here she knew she should have asked more questions, demanded answers. She had so little go on.

Radiating more heat than a power plant, she stepped out, and realized her fresh clothes were in her bag. She tried to pull on her jeans but her clammy skin made it impossible and so she threw on a cotton robe she found on the back of the door. It smelt distinctly male and, ignoring a slight revulsion, she threw it on in favour of running to her room in a tiny towel.

As discreetly as she could she lugged her bag across the floor, battling to keep the loose yukata robe closed, intent on getting past unseen. She wasn’t sure but it was as if she had displaced someone from beyond the bathroom window vent.

She lay on the bed gazing beyond the weight of her exhausted eyelids, until suddenly energized she searched though her hand luggage for Ed’s card. And she searched again, only to find it missing, and, with vigorous frustration she realized she had probably already lost it.

On her way down she could hear more coughing. As if on cue Noru appeared as Hana descended the stairs. She ushered her into the dining room, waved a tea towel in the direction of a chair and hit the play button on some plinkety-plonkety Japanese folk music, then left.

There were five places laid at the table. It was difficult to judge the size of the house. As she waited for the other guests, her eyes ranged over the few effects in the room. A small CD collection included ten copies of the same album from a cute girl band and beside the potted cactus was a range of English football mugs. She supposed they belonged to a teenage boy, but this impression was quickly dispelled when an approaching shuffle announced the laboured arrival of a really old man. Could it be Noru’s father? Anticipating the difficulty he would have seating himself, she got up to help him to his chair and, with the arrogance both accrued in old age and naturally excused by it, he sat down at the head of the table and ignored her. Saucepans clattered in the kitchen.

‘It is my first trip to Tokyo.’ He ignored her, and she chose to turn up the volume. It didn’t matter that he wouldn’t speak English ‘My mother lived in Shimoktazawa in the eighties. For over a year.’ He could be deaf. ‘My mother, Naomi,’ she said again, for her own benefit.

He turned his head slowly as if to do otherwise would startle him and snorted down his nose, shaking his head his up and down in what could have been recognition.

‘Ukai,’ he said, introducing himself by tapping a bony finger to his chest. He had the tanned, desiccated face of a smoker. His wheezy laugh was lost in a fit of coughing that immediately brought Noru back into the room.

Hana recognized the look on her face, that look of spent patience, which must remain unvented and often accorded to the very old, the infirm, or the long-term ill.

Noru fell on him, rubbing and thumping the base of his back and drawing vigorous circles over his chest.

‘So da ne.’ She comforted him as you would a young child. No wonder she looked exhausted, this nurse and housekeeper.

‘Can I help?’ Hana was unsure at first whether she had made herself understood. But her offer was turned down graciously and she turned to look at the becalmed old man as Noru left him as she attended to the cooking. His rheumy eyes shone with his exertions and he looked at Hana directly.

‘Na-o-mi,’ he said. She could swear he said it, under thin breath. Just a copycat word? She could not ask another question for fear of bringing on another bout of asthma and so they sat in an uncomfortable silence animated only by his laboured breathing and the ticking of a cuckoo clock. The displaced German clock, like her, seemed to have lost its cultural way and migrated east. Did she have any better reason for being here? Contemplating the wizened figure at the head of the table, age itself looking like a wrong turn, she dropped her head with the thought that at least her mother had been spared this.