The housekeeper and the professor - By Yoko Ogawa Page 0,59

home with a dusty cardboard box. I told her I wanted to pay her for them, but she flatly refused. In the end, I took them gratefully, not daring to tell her that these discarded prizes were worth far more than the chocolate they had come with.

As soon as I got home, we set to work. I cut the envelopes open while Root removed the cards and checked them. It was a simple process, and we fell into a rhythm. We were now rather experienced with baseball cards, and Root could distinguish between the various types just by touch.

Oshita; Hiramatsu; Nakanishi; Kinugasa; Boomer; Oishi; Kakefu; Harimoto; Nagaike; Horiuchi; Arito; Bass; Akiyama; Kadota; Inao; Kobayashi; Fukumoto.... The players appeared one after the other; just as the man at the shop had said, some of the cards had embossed pictures, some had original autographs, and some were actually gilded. Root no longer allowed himself the editorial comments on each card. He seemed to feel that we would achieve our goal more quickly if he concentrated harder. A drift of little black envelopes had begun to collect around me, while the stack of cards Root had collected toppled and scattered between us.

Each time I reached into the box my hand stirred up a moldy odor, mixed with the smell of the chocolate. But by the time we had worked our way through half the box, I had begun to lose hope.

There were too many baseball players. Which was hardly surprising as every team fielded nine players at a time, and there were so many teams that they were divided into Central and Pacific leagues, and the history of the game in Japan spanned more than fifty years. I knew that Enatsu had been a great star, but there were others—Sawamura, Kaneda, Egawa—each of whom had his own fans. So, even with this big stack in front of us, it was unlikely we'd find the one card we wanted. I found myself lowering my expectations, hoping that the effort would at least satisfy Root. After all, I had a perfectly good present hidden in the back of the closet. They weren't particularly fancy shoes, but they were well designed and comfortable-looking, and they had cost considerably more than a baseball card. I was sure the Professor would be pleased with them.

"Ah ... " Root let out a very grown-up sound, the kind you might make if you'd just discovered the solution to a complex word problem. The little cry was so quiet and restrained that it took me a minute to realize that the card he was holding in his hand was the one we had been looking for. He sat staring at the card, keeping Enatsu to himself for a moment. Neither of us spoke as he showed me the 1985 limited-edition card containing a fragment of Enatsu's own glove.

10

It was a wonderful party, the most memorable one I've ever attended. It was neither elegant nor extravagant—in that sense it had much in common with Root's first birthday party at the home for single mothers, or the Christmases we'd spent with my mother. I'm not sure whether you would even call those other events parties, but I am sure that Root's eleventh birthday was special. It was special because we celebrated it with the Professor, and because it turned out to be the last evening the three of us would ever spend together in the cottage.

We waited for Root to get home from school, and then set about preparing for the party. I worked on the food while Root mopped the floor in the kitchen and did other little tasks I assigned him. Meanwhile, the Professor ironed the tablecloth.

He had not forgotten his promise. That morning, once he had confirmed that I was the housekeeper and the mother of the child named Root, he had pointed to the circle on the calendar.

"Today is the eleventh," he said, fluttering the note on his chest as if he hoped to be congratulated for having remembered.

I had not intended to ask him to do the ironing. He was so clumsy that it would almost have been safer for Root to do it, and I had been hoping that his only contribution would be to rest as usual in his chair and to stay out of the way. But he had insisted on helping.

"How can I just sit here watching when you've got a little boy working so hard?"

I might have foreseen this objection, but I would