As Emiko asked another routine question, they were interrupted by rapid footsteps on the stairs. Jess breezed in.
Emiko met Jess’s excitement only to dampen it.
‘Your friend is here only for a short time,’ she said apologetically and with impeccable grace excused herself to respond to one of the card players. Hana looked at Jess apologetically. She had been turned down when they had bet on a certainty. To her surprise she was disappointed. They went back to the street as if they needed air.
Jess began an athletic rant.
‘Emiko actually said that?’ As Hana relayed their conversation.
It was never easy to be rejected, even when she hadn’t staked a whole lot on the idea and she appreciated Jess’s indignance.
‘So, let’s try something else,’ Jess continued energetically and flipped quickly to reassurance, tapping Hana’s hand to comfort her. As they walked away Jess waved familiarly to a woman standing behind a tsunami of pottery, spilling into the street as if she knew everyone here. As if she belonged.
They ambled over the tracks and the humid air clung to them like disappointment. ‘We’ll get something to eat?’ Jess said.
They would head for Ziggy’s. For a moment Hana thought she had a waitressing job in mind for her? It might be in Tokyo but she didn’t want to spend her time in a café. At least the bar was different – nothing like it in London.
‘I told you about Miho’s Pastries,’ Jess cajoled, explaining Ziggy’s was her regular; it was so reasonable it had become her dining room.
Knocking gently at the window, pressing against the plate glass, Jess rubbed her empty stomach and reached for Hana to do the same. As Hana peered into the small café she could see shelves of well-travelled coffees and Kilner jars of mulberries and cinnamon lining the walls.
Miho waved from the back of the store. Taking out her earphones she came over to usher them in. The cool of the air-con was as welcome as the brewed coffee and croissant she offered them. Dressed in bleached linen, an indigo band around her bobbed salt-and-pepper hair, she wore huge wedge platforms as if in homage to a style now out of place on a woman of her age. A tried, failed, but not entirely vanquished, style. She was old enough to be their mother.
Hana drank her coffee, her stomach rumbling for pastries that had yet to arrive.
‘My best customers today.’ Miho smiled and offered more coffee. Hana felt at home immediately.
‘Just like a diner. I give you refills.’ She was warm and she was generous.
‘Here comes noodle legs.’
A pastry delivery arrived from the French bakery, Miho explained, on the other side of the tracks. She approached a large stack of plastic trays on legs cautiously and carefully relieved the boy of the top layer. The café was suddenly infused with the delicate aroma of cinnamon.
‘So you are from London?’ Miho placed two pastries directly onto the table.
In the background some Eighties track was playing lightly.
Jess’s mouth was dusted with icing sugar.
‘Could you maybe talk to Emiko? Hana wants a job.‘
Miho nodded, eying Hana.’
‘Sure.’ Her accent was American.
‘She spent time in the States,’ Jess explained.
‘Do you plan to go back?’ Hana asked.
A strain came over Miho’s face. It was youthful, though crossed with inevitable age.
‘I have no plans right now. You know my kid is with his dad. He’s just fine. It is about time I get to see him again. I may go back next fall.’
‘How old is he now?’
‘You want to see a picture of him?’
Miho reached into her back pocket and produced her screen saver. A shot of an old photograph. She was younger slimmer but recognisable, standing beside a man in hiking boots carrying a child in a frame backpack: a rotund toddler with a crop of unmanaged black hair.
‘Long time back. Before we broke up,’ she concluded.
Jess cooed, ‘Cute baby.’
‘You don’t need glasses.’ Miho smiled fondly. ‘He’s left college now.’
‘Good-looking, I bet,’ Hana offered.
‘And did you get to go to his graduation?’
‘I haven’t seen him so much. Hardly since this photo was taken. Pretty much.’ Miho was unemotional.Resigned.
Hana looked down in silence and Miho noticed her distraction.
‘Okay, Hana?’
Hana smiled and traced circles in the sugar dust.
Miho pulled up the skirts of her apron and joined them at the pine table.
‘I left him in the States when I couldn’t support him. It was best for him. I’ve been back a long time.’
‘Really?’ Hana responded. She didn’t understand. It seemed like a little tragedy.
‘I am not an American citizen,’ Miho explained. She caught at a pastry flake on the table and blew it, along with her reminiscences, out of her hand, as if they were really of no importance to her. ‘Too many coffees to make an airfare.’ She grinned.
‘He’ll visit Tokyo,’ Jess said. ‘Hana is back. She had family here.’
Miho nodded as if she guessed she might. People arrived and she had to serve them.
Fleas or no fleas Hana decided it was time to get back to their room.
Jess swigged the last of her coffee and called back to remind Miho to speak to Emiko.
‘Okay,’ Miho promised. As they left her she was busy with pancakes.
Hana scratched the side of her neck. ‘The cat has to go.’
To her surprise Jess agreed.
‘A clump of summer grass,
Is all that is left,
Of the hopes and ambitions,
Of ancient warriors’
−Matsuo Bashō, The Narrow Road to the Deep North
Tokyo
Heat trailed Hana all the way from the shade of the cherry trees beside the concrete-covered river and over the level crossing to where the warning bell sounded.
Hana had established the site of a number of teahouses across the city. Some were not attached to a temple and she could discount these and many temples had no teahouse, which narrowed it down a bit. The one over the lake at Hamarikyu Gardens was enormous, and so trodden by tourists as to be disappointing. She felt she couldn’t possibly afford the tea ceremony they offered, and she didn’t trust the cafés advertising the experience. That afternoon she promised herself she would find the local temple and walk around the grounds, but first she would head back to the homestay to change.
Ukai sat as he often did just under the porch that ran the length of the old wooden house. He was bare to the waist and his frail arms stuck out like undernourished chicken wings. As she stopped to greet him, she saw he was labouring to breath.
Very suddenly Tako