September. The advertisement was brought to my attention only this morning by a visiting acquaintance. I should perhaps explain I am recovering from an operation to the valves in my heart. You appealed for any relatives of Eiji Miyake to respond. I believe I may be your paternal grandfather.Two decades ago my son sired a pair of illegimate twins – a boy and a girl. He broke relations with their mother, a woman of lowly occupation, and, as far as I know, never saw his twins again. I do not know where the children were brought up, nor by whom – the mother’s people, one presumes. The girl apparently drowned in her eleventh year, but the boy would now be twenty. I never knew their mother’s name, nor did I see a picture of my illegimate grandchildren. Relations with my son have never been as cordial as one would wish, and since his marriage we have corresponded ever less. I did, however, discover the names of the twins he fathered: hence this letter. The girl’s name was Anju, and the boy’s name is Eiji, written not in the commonplace manner (the kanjis for ‘intelligent’ plus ‘two’ or ‘govern’), but with highly unusual kanjis for ‘incant’ and ‘world’. As in your case.I would like to keep this letter short for the reason that the ‘evidence’ of the kanji remains inconclusive. A face-to-face meeting, I believe, will clarify this ambiguity: if we are related, I feel certain we will find points of physical resemblance. I shall be at Amadeus Tea Room, on the ninth floor of the Righa Royal Hotel (opposite Harajuku station), on Monday 25th of September, at a table reserved in my name. Please present yourself at 10 a. m., with any concrete evidence of your parentage which you may have in your possession.I trust you appreciate the sensitive nature of this matter, and understand my reluctance to provide you with my contact details at this time. Should you be another Eiji Miyake with identical kanji, please accept my sincerest apologies for raising your hopes unnecessarily. Should you be the Eiji Miyake I hope you are, we have many matters to discuss.
Yours faithfully,
Takara Tsukiyama
For the first time since I came to Tokyo I feel clean, clear happiness. My grandfather wrote a letter to me. Imagine, meeting my grandfather as well as my father. ‘We have many matters to discuss’! Here I was, despairing at the impossibility of it all, when contacting my father really was as straightforward as I always imagined. Monday – only two days away! My grandfather uses educated language – surely he holds more sway over family politics than my paranoid stepmother. I make myself a green tea and take it into the garden to smoke a Kent, Buntaro’s brand of choice now all the Marlboros are gone. Tsukiyama – cool name – uses the kanji for ‘moon’ and ‘mountain’. The garden hums with beauty, rightness and life. I wish Monday could start in fifteen minutes. What is the real time? I go back in and check the clock which Mrs Sasaki brought me mid-week. Still three hours until Buntaro gets here. My absentee host in her seashell frame catches my eye. ‘Your luck has turned, at last. Call Ai. It was her idea to place the personal ad, remember? Go on. Shyness at the break of day is attractive in a way, but shyness buried in its shell will never serve you very well.’
‘Was that supposed to rhyme?’
‘Stop changing the subject! Go out, find a telephone and call her.’
Supermarket row is no different since my last visit, but I am. The world is an ordered flowchart of subplots, after all. Look at all these cars – driving past and never colliding. The order is difficult to see, but it is here, under the chaos. So, I lived through twelve hellish hours – so? People live through twelve hellish years and live to tell the tale. Life goes on. Luckily for us. I find a callbox under the emergency stairs in a Uniqlo. As mobile phones take over the world these things will become as rare as gaslights. I pick up the receiver and freeze. You coward! I decide to get a haircut first – you spineless worm, Miyake – and walk up the steps to Genji the Barber’s. It has one of those red, white and blue stripy poles – Anju despaired of ever getting me to understand where the stripes unwound from and wound to.