‘Manjū!’ I demanded, pointing to a stall selling deep-fried jam buns in yam, cherry, sweet potato or chocolate. I loved them all, but I lived for the red bean. ‘Manjū, Grandpa,’ I repeated. Already a large queue was forming, spreading out beyond the store several lanes wide. People jostled one another, trying to get closer, as flavour by flavour the hot buns were lined up beneath the counter. A stocky middle-aged woman stood in the centre of the crowd moving sales along; she pushed people forward and then would shove them away again as soon as they collected their buns, almost in one fluid motion.
I pointed at a tray of golden manjū, but Grandpa shook his head. ‘Red bean!’ I squealed.
‘Later, Sumiko,’ he said while I pulled at his hair in annoyance.
‘Did you bring Mummy here?’
‘Yes, when she was small,’ Grandpa replied, shifting me on his hip. I was perhaps getting too big to carry, but he didn’t seem to mind. He said he wanted to remember me at this age.
‘Where is Mummy?’ I asked.
‘She’s shopping.’
‘Why didn’t she take me?’
‘I wanted to spend time with you.’
‘I want—’
‘Your mother and I started coming here when she was just as old as you are now,’ he continued as I began to lean away from him again towards the bun stall.
‘Sumichan!’ Grandpa put me down on the ground. ‘Temple first,’ he scolded, and held out his hand for me to take. In the midst of the crowds, I pressed against his legs and my fingers tangled with his; I did not like to be surrounded by the other people and tourists. I was quiet as we passed beneath the Thunder Gate, but when we approached the red pillars of the inner gate with their giant hanging sandals made of straw, I stretched to see if I could catch a glimpse of the great bell. It was one of the bells of time. My mother said that even the poet Bashō, hundreds of years ago, had heard it tolling through fields of flowers. For back then, when Tokyo was still Edo, the whole city was governed by these chimes, which told the people when to rise, eat and sleep. Now the great bell was heard only at six o’clock each morning and on the first midnight of the New Year when it was rung 108 times for each of the 108 worldly desires that are said to enslave mankind. Grandpa had taken Mama and me to see it. His friends on the local board had secured us a place very near the bell, and even now I could feel each reverberation in the air, the silent pause while the cedar beam was drawn back and then released, followed by the mellow vibrations of the bronze.
Weaving through the throng, Grandpa made his way towards the incense burner in front of the temple. As we walked he told me that the smoke emanating from it had always reminded him not of purification, but of my mother when she was a child, washing herself in the waves while he held her up, her hair tied with white satin bows, her petticoats showing through her Sunday dress.
‘Are you ready to go in?’ Grandpa asked, and I nodded, contrite. He lifted me onto his hip once more and I smiled at him as he found a place for us in front of the burnished cauldron billowing smoke into the air. I leaned in and Grandpa wafted the incense towards me as I pretended to wash in it, scrubbing my face and hands.
‘Are you pure now?’ Grandpa asked. ‘Are you sure?’ he teased. ‘No more naughty little girl?’ He laughed when I smiled sweetly at him. ‘I know what you would like to do,’ he said. ‘You would like to see your fortune.’
This too was a ritual of ours. Every time we came to Sensōji, before Grandpa said his prayers in the main temple, he would take me to the bureau of the one hundred drawers. He gave me a coin to throw between the slots and together we listened to the metal as it tumbled and fell into the donation box. Then he handed me a cylinder filled with long, slender sticks and let me shake it back and forth until one fell out.
Lifting the stick, I looked at the writing carved into the wood and we searched for the matching symbol on a drawer. When I found it, Grandpa reached inside and took the first sheet of paper off the pile. Then he handed it to me.
Grandpa watched as I shaped the words in my mouth, reading the fortune aloud. I loved these predictions. Even in the mountains I would ask Grandpa to buy them for me from the vending machines by the ski slopes. But that day, when I had finished reading, I was not sure what the fortune meant so I held out the paper to my grandfather. He smiled, giving me a slight bow, and murmured that he was glad to be of service. ‘What do we have here?’ he asked, scanning the symbols, looking for the scale of luck in the top right-hand corner. He lifted the paper higher and I heard his intake of breath. He turned away from me and I could see him looking at the wire that hung above the drawers, the wire where all the fortunes he would not explain to me were hung. There were several there that day, idly flapping in the wind.
I stepped forward as he tried to fold the fortune into a strip so he could tie it around the wire, but as he fumbled with the paper I snatched it from his hands.
‘What does it mean?’ I asked, peering at the symbols and characters again.
‘We don’t want this one,’ he said. ‘Let’s tie it up, so the wind can blow it away.’
‘I want to know,’ I said, stepping back from him, holding the fortune in my hands.
‘Sumichan, give it to me. This one belongs to the wind.’
‘Tell!’ I said, crumpling the thin sheet in my fist.
Grandpa reached for my hand and began to pry my fingers open. ‘Come on, Sumiko, I’ll get you another,’ he said, but his eyes widened in horror as I shoved the wisp of paper into my mouth and began to chew. Some words are buried, others are even burned, but over the years they re-emerge, ringing out like temple bells, rising above the din.
Rina and Kaitarō
A New Case
Kaitarō sat in his shirtsleeves, his tie neatly folded on the desk beside him. Steam from a cup of coffee curled into the air as he flipped through his latest case file. The subject was a housewife: aged thirty, brown eyes, brown hair, medium build. She liked cheesecake.
As he pulled out a map of Tokyo and located her home address, he glanced over her daily schedule, noting her preferred transport routes and mapping out how long it would take him to move between locations. He knew that weeks of tailing would follow as he collated her interests and favourite places.
The husband had filled out a case form and his answers stipulated the number of properties and family assets that were at stake in the divorce. There were two residences in Tokyo: the marital apartment in Ebisu and a further home in Meguro, as well as a holiday home on the coast in Shimoda, all registered under Sarashima, the wife’s maiden name. There was a further list of figures: bank accounts, shares, estimated net worth. Kaitarō added a separate column next to this and began to make notes of his own. Clients often lied about their assets or exaggerated; he had no doubt that Osamu Satō would have as well. Certainly, he had not told them everything.