II - Husband and Wife

The café has no air-conditioning. It opened in 1874, more than a hundred and forty years ago. Back then, people still used oil lamps for light. Over the years, the café underwent a few small renovations, but its interior today is pretty much unchanged from its original look. When it opened, the decor must have been considered very avant-garde. The commonly accepted date for the appearance of the modern café in Japan is around 1888—a whole fourteen years later.

Coffee was introduced to Japan in the Edo period, around the late seventeenth century. Initially it didn’t appeal to Japanese taste buds and it was certainly not thought of as something one drank for enjoyment—which was no wonder, considering it tasted like black, bitter water.

When electricity was introduced, the café switched the oil lamps for electric lights, but installing an air conditioner would have destroyed the charm of the interior. So, to this day, the café has no air-conditioning .

But every year, summer comes around. When midday temperatures soar to above 86 degrees Fahrenheit, you would expect a shop, even one that is underground, to be sweltering inside. The café does have a large-bladed ceiling fan, which, being electric, must have been added later. But a ceiling fan like this one doesn’t generate a strong breeze and simply serves to circulate the air.

The hottest temperature ever recorded in Japan was 105 degrees at Ekawasaki in Kochi Prefecture. It is difficult to imagine a ceiling fan being at all useful in such heat. But even in the height of summer, this café is always pleasantly cool. Who is keeping it cool? Beyond the staff, no one knows—nor will they ever know.

It was an afternoon in summer. It was only early in the season but the temperature outside was as high as on any midsummer day. Inside the café, a young woman seated at the counter was busy writing. Next to her on the counter was an iced coffee diluted by melting ice. The woman was dressed for summer, in a white frilled T-shirt, a tight gray miniskirt, and strappy sandals. She sat with her back straight, as her pen raced across cherry-blossom-pink paper.

Standing behind the counter, a slender woman of pale complexion looked on, her eyes filled with a youthful sparkle. It was Kei Tokita, and the contents of the letter had piqued her curiosity. Occasionally she would take sneak peeks with a look of childlike fascination on her face.

Apart from the woman at the counter writing the letter, the other customers in the café were the woman in the white dress sitting in that chair, and the man named Fusagi, who was sitting at the table closest to the entrance. Fusagi once again had a magazine opened before him.

The woman writing the letter drew a deep breath. Kei followed by taking a deep breath herself.

“Sorry for being here so long,” the woman said, inserting her finished letter in an envelope.

“Not at all,” Kei said, fleetingly glancing down at her feet.

“Um... Do you think you could pass this to my sister?”

The woman was grasping the envelope with two hands, and presenting it to Kei politely. Her name was Kumi Hirai. She was the younger sister of the café regular Yaeko Hirai.

“Ah. Well, if I know your sister...” Kei thought the better of continuing, and bit her lip.

Kumi tilted her head slightly and gave Kei an inquisitive look.

But Kei simply smiled as if she meant nothing by it. “Okay... I’ll pass it on to her,” she said, looking at the letter Kumi was holding.

Kumi hesitated a little. “I know she might not even read it. But if you could...” she said, bowing her head low.

Kei assumed a polite stance. “Of course I will,” she said, acting as if she was being entrusted with something extremely important. She received the letter with both hands and made a courteous bow while Kumi moved to the cash register.

“How much?” Kumi asked, handing Kei the bill.

Kei carefully placed the letter on the counter. Then she took the bill and began punching the keys of the cash register.

This café’s cash register had to be a contender for the oldest one still in use—although it hadn’t been in the café right from the beginning. Its keys were much like those of a typewriter, and it was introduced to the café at the beginning of the Showa period, in about 1926. This was a very solidly built cash register, designed to prevent theft. Its frame alone weighed about 88 pounds. It made a noisy clank each time a key was punched. “Coffee and...toast...curry rice...mixed parfait...”

Clank clank clank clank...clank clank. Kei rhythmically punched in the amounts of each order. “Ice-cream soda...pizza toast...”

Kumi certainly seemed to have eaten a lot. In fact, not everything fit on one bill. Kei began punching in the orders of the second bill. “Curry pilaf...banana float...cutlet curry...” Normally it’s not necessary to read out each item, but Kei didn’t mind doing it. The sight of her punching in the amounts resembled a child happily immersed in playing with a toy.

“Then you had the Gorgonzola gnocchi, and the chicken and perilla cream pasta...”

“I sort of pigged out, didn’t I?” said Kumi in a rather loud voice, perhaps a little embarrassed at having everything read out. Please, you don’t have to read it all out , was probably what she wanted to say.

“You certainly did.”

Of course, it wasn’t Kei who said this—it was Fusagi. Having heard the order being read out, he had muttered this softly while he continued to read his magazine.

Kei ignored him, but Kumi’s ears went a rosy pink. “How much?” Kumi asked. But Kei had not finished.

“Ah, let’s see...then there was the mixed sandwich... grilled onigiri...second curry rice...and er...the iced coffee...comes to a total...of ten thousand, two hundred and thirty yen.”

Kei smiled, her round sparkling eyes showing nothing but kindness.

“Okay then, here you go,” Kumi said, and she quickly pulled out two notes from her purse.

Kei took the notes and counted them efficiently. “Receiving eleven thousand yen,” she said, and again she punched the keys of the cash register.

Kumi waited with her head hung low.

Cha-ching... The cash drawer opened with a jolt and Kei pulled out the change.

“That’s seven hundred and seventy yen change.”

Smiling once again, with her round eyes sparkling, Kei gave Kumi the change.

Kumi bowed her head politely. “Thank you. It was delicious.” Perhaps because she was embarrassed that all the things she had eaten had been read aloud, Kumi now seemed eager to leave quickly. But just as she was going, Kei called out to stop her.

“Um... Kumi,” she said.

Kumi stopped in her tracks and looked back at her. “About your sister...” Kei said, and glanced down at her feet. “Is there any message you would like me to give her?” She held both hands up in the air as she asked.

“No it’s okay. I wrote it in the letter,” Kumi said, without hesitation.

“Yes, I imagine you did.” Kei furrowed her brow as if disappointed .

Perhaps touched that Kei showed such concern, Kumi grinned and said, after a moment’s thought, “Perhaps there is one thing you could say...”

“Yes of course.” Kei’s expression brightened instantly.

“Tell her that neither Dad nor Mom is angry anymore.”

“Your father and mother aren’t angry anymore,” Kei repeated.

“Yes... Please tell her that.”

Kei’s eyes were once again round and sparkling. She nodded twice. “Okay, I will,” she said happily.

Kumi looked around the café and once more bowed politely to Kei before she left.

clang-dong

Kei went over to the entrance to check that Kumi had gone, and then with a quick pirouette, she started talking to the vacant counter.

“Did you have a fight with your parents?”

Then from under the supposedly vacant counter a husky voice answered. “They disowned me,” Hirai said, emerging from under the counter.

“But you heard her, right?”

“Heard what?”

“That your father and mother aren’t cross anymore.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it...”

After being crouched under the counter for such a long time, Hirai was bent over like an old woman. She hobbled out into the room. As always, she had her curlers in. She was dolled up in a leopard-print camisole, a tight pink skirt, and beach sandals .

Hirai winced a little. “Your sister seems really nice.”

“When you’re not in my position, I’m sure she is...yeah.” Hirai sat on the counter seat where Kumi had been sitting. She plucked a cigarette from her leopard-print pouch and lit it. A plume of smoke rose into the air. Following it with her eyes, Hirai’s face showed a rare vulnerability. She looked as if her thoughts had drifted somewhere far away.

Kei walked around Hirai to take her position behind the counter. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

Hirai blew another plume of smoke. “She resents me.”

“What do you mean she resents you?” Kei asked.

“She didn’t want it passed down to her.”

“Huh?” Kei tilted her head sideways, unsure what Hirai was talking about.

“The inn...”

The inn Hirai’s family ran was a well-known luxury resort in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture. Her parents had planned for Hirai to take over the inn, but she had a falling-out with them thirteen years earlier and it was decided that Kumi would be the successor. Her parents were in good health, but they were getting on in years and as the manager, Kumi had already taken over many of the inn’s responsibilities. Ever since Kumi had accepted she would take over, she regularly made the trek to Tokyo to visit Hirai and try and persuade her to come home.

“I keep telling her I don’t want to go home. But she keeps on asking time and time and time again.” Hirai bent the fingers of both hands one by one as if she was counting the times. “Saying that she was persistent would be an understatement.”

“But you don’t have to hide from her. ”

“I don’t want to see it.”

“See what?”

“Her face.”

Kei tilted her head inquisitively.

“I see it written on her face. Because of what I did, she is now going to be the owner of an inn she doesn’t want to run. She wants me to come home so that she can be free,” Hirai said.

“I don’t really see how all that can be written on her face,” Kei suggested doubtfully.

Hirai knew Kei well enough to know she was probably struggling to picture this. Her very literal mind sometimes missed the point.

“What I mean,” Hirai said, “is it just feels like she is pressuring me.”

Frowning, she blew out another plume of smoke.

Kei stood there thoughtfully tilting her head to the side several times.

“Oh god! Is that the time? Oh dear!” Hirai said dramatically. She quickly stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray. “I’ve got a bar to open.” She stood up and gingerly stretched from the hips. “You sure feel it in your back after three hours crouched down like that.”

Hirai thumped her lower back and headed quickly for the entrance, her beach sandals flip-flopping loudly.

“Hold on! The letter.” Kei picked up the letter Kumi had given her and presented it to Hirai.

“Throw it away!” Hirai said, without looking, waving it away dismissively with her right hand.

“You’re not going to read it?”

“I can imagine what it says. It’s really tough for me by myself. Please come home. It’s okay if you learn the ropes once you’re there. You know, that sort of stuff.”

As she spoke, Hirai pulled out her dictionary-sized purse from her leopard-print pouch. She put the money for the coffee on the counter.

“See you later,” she said and left the café, clearly desperate to get away.