Chapter 10

It occurs to her that it’s been four and a half years since her last visit to Tokyo. As she gazes out at the early-morning ocean from the window of the Yosan Line train, Yukari Yukino realizes she hasn’t gone even once since she went home. Ponderous cumulus clouds hang low over the ocean, almost as if enormous fish are covering the sky, and the scale of it thrills her. Yukino’s eyes trace the subtle gray gradations on their landward-facing bellies, following them out to sea. She can’t tell the color of the offshore clouds from that of the little islands that float on the sea. Under that hidden morning sky, the ocean seems like a vast sandbox. It’s so perfectly still, it really doesn’t look like water. She imagines herself running across that sandbox with another little thrill: Look at how big it is! The ocean is never the same two days in a row. I wonder if the landscape can shape human hearts, Yukino thinks, out of nowhere. The thought reminds her of that other view, four and a half years ago, on the September day when she left Tokyo and returned to her hometown. Of what she saw from the train she took from Matsuyama Airport to her own area, Imabari. As the sun fell lower and lower, more and more lights had come on in the houses. She caught glimpses of figures in the kitchens, preparing dinner. The lights were yellow and warm, but she was surprised at how far they were from one another. The physical distances between houses, between people, were much greater than they were in Tokyo. This is loneliness in its purest form, Yukino thought. It was clearest when the sun went down, making you feel small and uncertain. That’s why people seek out others, Yukino thought, feeling as if she’d realized something important. After she’d been home for about a month, Yukino had found a position as a provisional teacher at a private high school in the city. She worked there for two and a half years. At the same time, she took the prefecture’s teacher employment exam. Now she was working as a classics teacher at a public high school on a small island. She lived at home with her parents, who were getting older little by little, and she drove a little domestic car to work every morning over a high, enormous suspension bridge. At first, the black kites languidly wheeling over the ocean from the coast road had given her a curious feeling, but now the days she’d spent working in Tokyo seemed stranger and more distant. A heavy, metallic clanking envelops the train car, and Yukino lifts her head. The express is crossing the Great Seto Bridge. The steel pillars stream past, and shining clouds drift far beyond them, hiding the morning sun behind them. The ocean beneath those clouds shines, too, like a great band of light. My heart’s pounding, Yukino thinks. I’m nervous. I decided to go by train because I was afraid of getting there too soon…but maybe that wasn’t the right decision. Are these nerves going to last another four hours? Will I be able to hold myself together until I arrive? Until I reach that garden of light… * * * According to his research, the cheapest flight to Tokyo went through Finland. A flight to Osaka had been canceled due to a structural issue or something like that, so Takao Akizuki is seeing quite a lot of Japanese people in the lobby of the Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport. His ears catch the sound of Japanese frequently, which just makes him more tense. No matter where he goes in the Oltrarno district of Florence, where he’s lived for two years, he’s almost never seen anyone Japanese. For the first two months or so, the loneliness was crushing, but it wasn’t long before he started to find it pleasant. It was a firm reminder that he wasn’t anybody yet, that he didn’t belong to anything, that he was just en route. His own inexperience had irritated him so much in Tokyo, but in Florence, it hadn’t bothered him a bit. Being confronted with the techniques of so many artisans had shown him keenly, deeply, that his lack of experience was only natural. Now, Takao knows he’s on the path that will lead him to them. There are still three hours left until his flight to Narita. He goes into a small café and bar in the airport and orders a half pint of Strongbow, hoping a drink will help him relax. Instead of a half pint, the waiter brings him a one-pint glass that’s about 70 percent full. Bad service. Still, more is better. He’ll drink until it really hits him and sleep on the plane. He’s still more than half a day from Tokyo; if he stays this tense the whole time, he won’t last. For the two years until he graduated from high school, he exchanged occasional letters with her. Asking for her e-mail address seemed overly familiar, so he never did. The first letter had come from her. She’d written that she was teaching at a private high school. Beside the last line, I’ll write again, she’d drawn a small shoe. Takao was especially glad to hear she’d become a teacher again, and her support of his shoemaking made him truly happy. When he told her he’d be studying abroad in Italy, he took the plunge and wrote his own e-mail address in the same letter. The next letter he received was an e-mail, after he arrived in Florence. Takao kept exchanging e-mails with her, once every two months or so. They sent each other brief reports on what they’d been up to. They both carefully avoided writing about anything too personal, such as whether either had a lover or not. That said, Takao was so busy with his studies and daily life that he didn’t have much of a personal life to report. For his next drink, he orders a pint of Peroni, and what he gets is a glass that’s 80 percent full. Takao smiles weakly and starts in on it. He advances the hands on his Diesel watch (a farewell gift from his brother) by seven hours, in hopes of adjusting little by little. I don’t know whether she has a lover now, or if she’s married, or anything like that. As he drinks his beer and gazes absently at his watch, Takao thinks. Even if she is single, he suspects she’s probably gotten a few proposals. After all, if I’m twenty—it means she’s thirty-two. It’s okay, though. I don’t mind whether she’s single or not. You can’t turn back time. I have something more important this time—I’m going to fulfill the promise I made her. I don’t know whether she thinks of what happened back then as a promise or not. I don’t even know if she remembers it. To me, though, it was a promise. In that garden of light, almost five years ago, I touched Ms. Yukino’s foot. And I did it so I could make her a pair of shoes. * * * “I’m making a pair of shoes right now.” I remember what Akizuki told me in that arbor, surrounded by shining rain. “I haven’t decided who they’re for, but they’re women’s shoes,” he said, and he traced the shape of my foot onto paper. I don’t know whether he remembers it or not, but to me, that was a promise. Someday, when he’s a real shoemaker, I’d like to order shoes from him. Whatever Akizuki makes will be like our hearts back then given shape. “Next stop, Nagoyaaaa. Now arriving at Nagoya.” The conductor’s laid-back voice echoes from the speaker. Oh no, I’m already in East Japan! She’s emptied three cans of beer, but they’ve only made her more nervous. Through the window of the bullet train, a line of steel towers stretching into the distance streams past smoothly, like a perspective exercise in an art class. The May sky is solid gray. The girl selling onboard snacks and drinks is approaching. Yukino considers whether she should buy a little more beer. * * * When he disembarks from the Narita Express at Shinjuku Station, a light rain is falling. Tokyo’s May humidity brings so many memories with it, and Takao sucks in a deep breath on the platform. Abruptly, he remembers taking a deep breath just like this when he stepped off crowded trains in high school. He’s spent two years working as hard as he can in Florence, and before he knew it, he was able to get by in Italian. Although he’s still a student, he’s allowed to work as a sort of assistant at one of his favorite shoe workshops. When he decided to return home for a visit, he summoned his courage to let Yukino know, and she replied that she’d be in Tokyo to run an errand at around that time. And so Takao’s goal for the past three months has been to finish those shoes before he goes home. Takao pushes through the ticket gate, then deposits his suitcase in a coin locker. Carrying only his backpack, he visits a kiosk and buys a vinyl umbrella. The clerk who helps him is so polite that it startles him. The design on the Japanese yen that he takes out of his wallet looks very strange to him. * * * She disembarks from the Sobu Line train at Sendagaya Station. Leaving her small wheeled carry-on bag in a coin locker, she opens her madder-red folding umbrella and leaves the station. Her umbrella turns into a surround-sound speaker, bringing the noise of rain to her ears. The sound tells her that the rain has grown heavier. I ended up drinking a little too much. I need to sober up, she thinks, wandering into the café next to the station as if she still went there every day. “Will this be for here or to go?” asks the cashier. “Oh, to go, please,” she answers. Then she adds, “Um, two of them.” * * * Once he crosses the bridge in the Japanese garden, the sound of the rain changes slightly. The sound of raindrops rustling the leaves is louder than the sound of rain on water. The clear twitter of a mountain white-eye twines around the squelch of his wing-tip boots, shoes he’s made for himself. He can see the surface of the water beyond the black pines, reflecting the pink of the azaleas, the red bark of the umbrella pines, the dazzling green of maple leaves. Takao’s backpack holds shoes for her. Small pumps with two-and-a-half-inch heels. The toes are pastel pink, the bodies a near-white flesh tone, and the heels lemon yellow, as if they’ve been exposed to the sun. The long straps to wind around her ankles have cutouts shaped like maple leaves sewn to the ends. These are shoes that will let her walk for a long time. Somewhere, a large-billed crow gives one assertive call, and from the far reaches of the sky, distant thunder rumbles softly. The thunder whispers. The words rise to Takao’s lips, and he knows something is about to happen. Behind the curtain of wet maple leaves, the arbor comes into view. Someone is sitting inside. Breathing in the scent of the rain to calm himself, Takao goes nearer. The clouds of leaves fall behind him, revealing the whole structure. The figure is a woman in a pale-green skirt. Takao stops in his tracks. She has a coffee cup raised to her lips, and her soft hair is trimmed evenly above her shoulders. In a gentle motion, she looks at him. Yukino’s tense, near-tearful expression slowly dissolves into a smile, and Takao watches her. Like the sun coming out after the rain.