Shiokari Pass by Ayako Miura

Author:Ayako Miura
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8048-1529-1
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing

'Coming from the uncomfortable rainy season in Tokyo to endless days of completely blue skies in Hokkaido, I feel almost as if I have returned to a different world altogether. Thank you for all you did for us during our stay in Tokyo. Apart from anything else it was good to share the experience of being twenty-year-old young men. Even the trees in the grounds of our old school have grown so big, they made me feel the passage of those ten years. Thank you for everything; for the time when we were ten and talked about ghost-hunting under the cherry tree; for the times this spring when we strolled round the Ginza and Asakusa; for all the times we spent together.

'Silly Fujiko can't get the time when you had your palm read in Asakusa out of her mind. You remember, that bearded old fogey said that you would have a short life. Well, I suppose I should have said the same at a guess. That fellow took one look at your pale face and thin body and guessed that you must be suffering from consumption. But I've discovered that you're really unusually tough and my mind has been put at ease.

'Since I've been back I've been very busy and somehow or other I don't seem to be able to put this letter together very well. In the midst of all my busyness there has been the question of Fujiko's engagement. I'm glad to be able to tell you that it has been agreed that she will get married this autumn. Her prospective husband is a solid fellow by the name of Sagawa. There hasn't been a formal exchange of engagement presents yet, but at least the matter is settled and I can breathe again. Both my mother and Fujiko seem to be relieved too. I hope to write a more leisurely letter later on, but please accept this letter of thanks.

'Please give my greetings to your honourable mother and to Machiko.

Yoshikawa.'

When he returned to work, Nobuo stood blankly in his office and read the letter again and again. The sweat gathered at the base of his neck.

'It's terribly sticky today,' he muttered to himself.

As lie thought about the fact that this autumn, Fujiko, as pure as the driven snow, would become somebody's wife, he felt unbearably desolate. Apart from her bad leg, she was as near perfect a person as existed, and Nobuo felt a sense of irretrievable loss. During the two or three days he had shown her round Tokyo, Fujiko had become an unforgettable person to him.

In particular he was unable to forget the look on her face in the fortune teller's booth in Asakusa. Yoshikawa had spread out his enormous palm and had been told that he would rise to a position of considerable importance, and he had stretched out his own hand and been told, 'You have only another two or three years to live, but if you follow my advice and chew your food carefully and sleep in a sunny room, you may perhaps live to be fifty.

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