Grotesque Read online

  Listening to these stories as if Mother were describing something in a distant land, I’d get excited, imagining a scene from a television crime drama. My grandfather’s a police detective! I’d brag about it whenever one of my friends stopped by. But Yuriko never looked very impressed and would always ask Mother why grandfather was a detective. I guess she didn’t think having a detective for a grandfather was particularly thrilling; I have no idea what went on in her head. But my mother’s answer was always the same. “Your grandfather was very good at catching watermelon thieves. His father owned giant fields in Ibaraki Prefecture—that’s where the thieves lurked.”

  I passed the entrance exam to Q High School for Young Women just before my parents and Yuriko set off for Switzerland, so I loaded up a little truck with my futon, desk, school supplies, and clothes and moved from North Shinagawa to my grandfather’s apartment in the government housing project. P Ward is in the scruffier part of downtown Tokyo, in the so-called Low City. It’s mostly flat there, with hardly any tall buildings. A number of large rivers run through the ward, slicing it into smaller sections. The large levees along the rivers obstruct one’s line of vision. The surrounding buildings are not very high but, because of the levees, they look oppressive. It is in fact a very peculiar area. Just beyond the levees, an immense volume of water flows by at a normally languid pace. Whenever I’d climb the banks of the levees to gaze down into the brownish water of the river below, I’d imagine all the different life-forms swirling around beneath the surface.

  On the day I moved in, my grandfather bought two cream puffs from the local shop. They weren’t the kind you’d get at a bakery, but the kind with the hard puff pastry shell and the custard filling that I hate. I didn’t want to hurt Grandfather’s feelings, so I finished it, pretending to savor each bite. As I ate I studied Grandfather’s face, trying to figure out what about him resembled my mother. Although they shared the same slight build, their faces looked nothing alike.

  “Mother doesn’t look like you, Grandfather. Who does she take after?”

  “Oh, she takes after no one, that mother of yours. Some relative long dead must have been the one to pass his looks along to her.”

  Grandfather pulled the cardboard cake box apart, as he answered, and folded it flat according to the directions on the outside of the carton. He tucked it, along with the paper wrapping and string, atop the shelf in the kitchen.

  “I don’t look like anyone either,” I said.

  “Well, we’ve got that kind of characteristic in our family.”

  Grandfather was a man of habit. He rose punctually at five every morning and began tending to the bonsai trees that cluttered the veranda and the narrow space of the entry hall. Cultivating bonsai trees was his hobby. He’d spend over two hours each morning tending to them. Next he’d clean the room, and after that he’d have his breakfast.

  As soon as he woke he’d start prattling in the Ibaraki dialect of his hometown. Even while I was washing my face or brushing my teeth, he’d be chattering away.

  “Oh, now this is a nice trunk. Look here! The strength! The age! Any number of pines like this line the Tokaid Highway, no doubting that. How fortunate I am to have such lovely bonsai. Or maybe I’ve my own talent to thank. I’m sure that’s it. Must be my talent. A genius has to be fanatic with a little bit of humor. Yes, that’s me.”

  I’d glance in his direction, thinking he was talking to me, but he’d be staring at his bonsai and conversing with himself. And every morning he’d say just about the same thing.

  “People who aren’t really fanatics can try all they want, but they’ll never have the talent and their bonsai won’t look anything like those that have been raised by an old fool like me! What’ll be different? Well, let me see…”

  I finally stopped turning around when I heard him begin to talk. I had realized he wasn’t talking to me. He’d pose a question and then answer it himself. I was thrilled to have passed the entrance exam and to be on my way to a new life. I couldn’t care less about bonsai trees! I’d flip through the pages of the high school guide and give myself over to intoxicating images of how my life would be in my beloved Q High School for Young Women.

  I left Grandfather where he was and went to the kitchen to fix a slice of toast—which I then slathered generously with butter, jam, and honey. My father wasn’t here to scold me for using too much jam. I felt completely liberated! My father was such a miser he was always warning us about what and how much we ate. We could have up to two lumps of sugar in our tea, but that was all. And we could only have a thin smear of jam on our bread. If we wanted honey, all we could have was honey. And his ideas about table manners were equally rigid. No talking at the table. Elbows in and back straight. No laughing with food in your mouth. No matter what I did he’d find grounds for complaint. But even if I sat slouched and bleary-eyed over the table eating my breakfast, Grandfather took no notice. He stood on the veranda talking to his plants.

  “It takes inspiration, you know. That’s essential. Inspiration. ‘To be infused with spirit.’ Go ahead, look it up in the dictionary, why don’t you. You’ll see it’s not just a question of possessing elegance. Elegance will animate your work, no doubt about that. But you can’t just pick it up. You have to have talent too. Those who succeed have talent. And so I say, I’ve got the talent. I’ve been inspired.”

  My grandfather scribbled the Chinese ideographs for inspiration in the air in front of his face. And then he drew the characters for fanatic. I drank my tea and watched wordlessly. After a long time my grandfather noticed me sitting at the kitchen table.

  “Is there any left for your grandpa?”

  “There is, but it’s cold now.” I pointed to the toast. Grandfather set on the cold dry toast with great delight and gnawed at it with his false teeth, sending crumbs flying. As soon as I saw this, I knew the stories my mother told about his being a detective were lies. I don’t know quite how to explain it, but even to my sixteen-year-old eyes it was clear what kind of person Grandfather was. He was the kind who thought only of himself. There’s no way he ever could have chased down another man and charged him with a crime.

  Grandfather’s dentures were ill-fitting, and it seemed difficult for him to chew, so he dunked his toast into his tea until it was soft and soggy. Some of the bread melted away into the tea, but my grandfather gulped it down anyway.

  I summoned up my courage and asked, “Grandfather, do you think Yuriko is inspired?”

  Grandfather looked out over the veranda at the large black pine and answered in no uncertain terms.

  “Not whatsoever. Yuriko-chan is just too pretty a girl for that. She might be a garden plant. A pretty flower. But she’s no bonsai.”

  “So, a flower, no matter how pretty, is not inspired?”

  “That’s right. Inspiration is the bonsai’s trump card. But it’s a person who makes it that way, you know. Look over there, at the black pine. Now that’s inspiration. See there? An old tree gives us a lesson in life. Strange, isn’t it? The tree may look withered, but it’s living just the same. A tree can withstand the passage of time. Humans are the only ones who are at their most beautiful when they’re young. But a tree, no matter how many years go by, you train it and train it, and though the tree itself would naturally resist, gradually it bends to your will. And when it does? Why then it’s as if life has sprung forth anew, isn’t it? Inspiration resides at that point when you begin to feel the miraculous. That’s the word for it in English, right? Miracle?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “What about in German?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Here we go again, I thought to myself, and I only pretended to look back at the veranda where he was standing. I could hardly understand a thing my grandfather talked about, and listening to him grew tiresome. All my grandfather really cared about was the dried-up old pine tree that he’d plopped down smack in the middle of the veranda. The roots were gnarled and hideous and the branches were crisscros