“You think it’s okay just to barge into people’s houses and say whatever the hell you want, do you?” I said. “I only held back when you first came in because I was trying not to hurt your feelings, but I don’t see why I should bother! You certainly don’t seem to care about hurting mine.
“I mean, you’re dead, right? You died a year ago. Hanged yourself. Shigeru found you when he came home from the university. He was in terrible shock for a long time—still is, in fact. You shouldn’t underestimate the kind of trauma you inflicted on him. And now you come around here, to see me? If you’re going to appear as a ghost, if you can appear as a ghost, then it’s Shigeru you should be visiting!”
Seeing that I’d run out of steam, my aunt scrunched up her nose, then waved her hands in a way that evoked total nonchalance.
“There’s no need to worry about Shigeru. He’s got his head screwed on straight, that one—even if he still insists on visiting my grave each month. If he’s got that kind of energy, he’d be better off putting it into getting a girlfriend or two, I say. But he’s a soppy fool, that kid. He always brings some food I used to like and leaves it there for me. It’s enough to bring a tear to your eye. Come to think of it, could you do me a favor next time you see him and pass on a message from me? Tell him he doesn’t need to come so often.”
“How on earth am I supposed to say something like that to him?”
Feeling totally worn out all of a sudden, I fell back into my chair. Then I summoned up the courage to ask her something I’d never been able to ask her before.
“Why did you do it, Auntie?”
Of course, I thought as I formed the words, it stood to reason that I hadn’t been able to ask her—she’d been dead.
My aunt adopted a wheedling tone as she smiled. “Hey, you don’t have anything sweet, do you?”
Reluctantly, I made some tea and brought out a packet of fine vanilla cookies I’d been saving for a special occasion. Only after she’d tasted them and found them to her liking did my aunt begin answering the question.
“I just got sick and tired of it all, really, of being what they used to call a ‘kept woman.’ This is Shigeru’s father I’m talking about, of course, as I’m sure you know. We met when we were in our early twenties and fell in love, but he was already engaged, and so things just sort of went on like that, for thirty-odd years. Still, I was happy, all things considered. And then one day, out of the blue, he announced that he thought it was about time we ended it. He’d bought me my own place and my own bar, and of course he intended to keep supporting me for a while, but he’d decided that should be it between us. Can you believe that? And his tone of voice when he told me this, as though he was this generous, good man . . . I can’t tell you how livid I was.”
My aunt’s memories seemed to grow clearer as she talked, until it felt like she was describing something that had happened just yesterday. The fresher it all became, the angrier she got.
“So I did myself in. I didn’t really think through what I was doing, and boy, did I regret it afterward. But at that time, I believed it would cause him the most damage. How wrong I was! I was stupid.”
She stared into the distance. It was as if she was groping around in the depths of her memory, trying to isolate the precise moment where she had strayed off course—the part that she longed to do again, better.
Studying her face, I tried to remember what she’d looked like when she’d worked at the bar. It hadn’t been a particularly classy place, and she hadn’t worn a kimono, but she was always properly made up, always attentive to her clothes and her appearance. Even when she hadn’t got it quite right, she was never without a thick coat of bright red lipstick, and she’d never given off the sad air of the discount store that she exuded now.
As I watched her, she turned to me, an expression of intense alertness on her face.
“Hey, you remember the time we went to watch the kabuki with your mom?”
The unexpected line of questioning startled me.
“I think you must have been still in grade school. I’ll never forget those gorgeous bento boxes we ate during the interval! But that’s by the by. Remember the play we saw then? The Maid of Dōjō Temple.”
“The maid of what?”
“You know, the story where a woman is betrayed by the man that she loves, so she turns into a snake and climbs onto the temple where he lives and just dances and dances. You loved it at the time. Have you really forgotten? Pah! A heart of stone, you’ve got.”
As my aunt jeered at me, I began scanning through the contents of my head, and soon enough a figure floated up in my imagination, accompanied by the beat of drums and the reedy strains of the bamboo flute. The figure was swaying, gliding, tilting, spinning around and around, never still for a second.
Back then, I hadn’t been able to make out a word of what the kabuki actors said. Being just a child, I had trouble believing it was really Japanese they were speaking. In the first item of the program, middle-aged men came onto the stage one at a time, their faces painted white, talking at length in a language I couldn’t understand. Some would go offstage when
