The Salaryman's Wife(108)

A pair of policemen were jogging toward us, their feet making the pedestrian bridge spring up and down under my back. I struggled into a sitting position and my shaggy friend got up and melted into the crowd of commuters. As the policemen took their notebooks out, I started in a slow, shaky voice to tell them about the phantom cyclist.

The senior officer interrupted me. “Your alien registration card, please?”

I should have expected they’d fixate on that. I pointed at my backpack lying with my shoes on the tracks below and told them to get it.


I arrived at Nichiyu dusty and late, but went straight to the English teaching office and slapped an envelope on Mr. Katoh’s desk. His secretary Mrs. Bun kept her eyes on me, and I wondered if she’d investigate. Fifteen minutes later, I saw her whispering to the personnel director and knew she had.

I cleaned up in the lavatory but remained shell-shocked as I went in to teach my lunch-hour class. Everything was different. My teaching style had become formal and by-the-book. It was ironic that at a time when Tokyo’s reading population was entering a first-name relationship with me, I was holding distant the people I’d worked with for years. At the end of class, a few students bowed and said sayonara to me instead of the more typical “see you next week.” Perhaps they also sensed something was over.

Mr. Katoh called me into the conference room after I finished teaching. He spoke about the bad weather and made some disparaging comments about the way the media had behaved lately. Finally, he looked at me and said, “So you want to leave us.”

“I feel compelled.” I stared at the wall decorated with framed posters of Nichiyu’s proudest products. The bean-grinder combination coffee maker. The water heater with so fuzzy logic. I wouldn’t be around to see the “caffe ratte” maker ascend to its rightful framed position.

“You wrote about wanting to spare the company shame and humiliation. I feel directly responsible for the trouble, you know.” Mr. Katoh bowed his head. “It was I who suggested you take your holiday in Shiroyama.”

“That wasn’t your fault—”

“I don’t understand why you had to involve yourself so. There were other guests, but I do not see their names in the newspapers anymore. Only you and this Englishman.”

“He’s Scottish, not English.” I stopped, aware I was veering away from the business of my resignation. “Mr. Katoh, I’ve had a very good experience working here, but I am no longer effective with my students. Like I said in my letter, they are distracted by what I’ve become.”

“When do you want to leave?” His voice was mournful.

“I have to see the police in Shiroyama next Monday.”

“Oh, no, Miss Shimura. Do you have a lawyer?”

“Yes,” I lied.

“It could all work out, I suppose.” He sounded less than hopeful.

“I’m very sorry about how this is all turning out,” I said.

“When you get out of this questioning, please call me. Maybe I can find something for you part-time. You recorded such a beautiful voice-over for the Caffe Ratte video. Surely none of our overseas vendors would know about your problems here.”

My brusque, paternal boss was trying to help me in a most unorthodox manner. Feeling moved, I tried to thank him, but he brushed it off.

“We still need to make changes in the language program. Having been here so long, you can advise me about…how best to encourage Mr. Randall to like Osaka?”


All I wanted to do was go home and bury my injured body under blankets, but I couldn’t forsake my appointment at Ishida Antiques. When I stepped inside, Mr. Ishida put the closed sign on the door and went back to his mini-kitchen to fill the kettle.

“So where were you yesterday? I telephoned a few times,” I complained when he came back out to clear his abacus and business receipts off the low kotatsu table and set it for tea.

“I was having a second meeting with my friend at the Tokyo National Museum. Honda-san is a man with many responsibilities, so I must go when he has time for me.” Mr. Ishida laid out a dark red Kutani teapot, cups, and a small strainer. Such special pieces; it was amazing he used them daily.

“And?”

“Patience, Miss Shimura.” My mentor went into the kitchen to take the whistling kettle off the stove. I toyed with the china, looking on the underside for its stamps.

When he came out, he poured me the first cup.

“Please try it,” he said.

“Itadakimasu.” I said grace before sampling the steaming, pale green liquid. “A little grassy tasting. Fresh.”

He looked pleased. “It is gyokuro, the highest grade of green tea. It comes from a farm that is eight generations old in Shizuoka Prefecture. I brewed it for exactly one minute.”