The Japanese Lover(82)

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That afternoon, when Seth returned to his apartment, Irina threw her arms around his neck and kissed him with a newfound joy, scarcely appropriate to a time of mourning.

“I’ve got a surprise for you, Seth,” she announced.

“Me too. But tell me yours first.”

Irina steered him impatiently toward the granite kitchen island, where she had put the packets of letters from the backpack.

“These are Alma’s letters. I was waiting for you to come to open them.”

The packets were numbered from one to eleven, and contained ten envelopes apiece, all except the first, which had six letters and a few drawings. They sat on the sofa and looked at them in the order their owner had left them. A hundred and six missives in total, some brief and others longer, some more informative than others, all signed simply “Ichi.” The ones in the first packet were written on sheets torn from an exercise book in a childish hand, from Tanforan and Topaz, and were so badly censored that their meaning was lost. The drawings already hinted at the polished style and firm brushstrokes that characterized the painting that Alma had taken with her to Lark House. It would take them several days to read all the correspondence, but a swift glance at the other packets showed they were dated from 1969 on. Forty years of an irregular correspondence that had one thing in common: they were all love letters.

“I also found a letter dated January 2010; it was behind Ichimei’s portrait. But all these letters are old and are addressed to the Belascos’ house at Sea Cliff. Where are those she received at Lark House over the past three years?”

“I think these are the ones, Irina.”

“I don’t understand.”

“My grandmother collected Ichimei’s letters her whole life through, all those that came to Sea Cliff, where she always lived. Then, when she moved to Lark House, she began sending the letters to herself every so often, one by one, in the yellow envelopes you and I saw. She received and read them, treasuring them as if they were new.”

“Why would she do such a thing, Seth? Alma was in her right mind. She never showed any sign of senility.”

“That’s what is so extraordinary, Irina. She was well aware of what she was doing; she wanted to keep the great love of her life alive. That old woman, who seemed so armor plated, was at heart an incurable romantic. I’m sure she also sent herself the weekly gardenias, and that her escapades were not spent with her lover; she went alone to the cabin at Point Reyes to relive her past encounters there, to dream about what she could no longer share with Ichimei.”

“But why not? She was on her way back from being with him when the accident occurred. Ichimei went to the hospital to say good-bye to her; I saw him kiss her, I know they loved each other, Seth.”

“You couldn’t have seen him, Irina. I was surprised he showed no reaction to my grandmother’s death, given that the news came out in the press. If he loved her as much as we believe, he would have attended the funeral or have offered his condolences at shiva. Today I decided to look him up; I wanted to meet him and lay to rest the doubts I had about my grandmother. It was very easy: all I had to do was turn up at the Fukudas’ nursery.”

“It still exists?”

“Yes. It’s run by Peter Fukuda, one of Ichimei’s sons. When I told him my name, he received me very warmly, because he knew all about the Belasco family, and he went to call Delphine, his mother. She is very friendly and pretty; she has one of those Asian faces that seem never to age.”

“She’s Ichimei’s wife. Alma said she met her at your great-grandfather’s funeral.”

“She’s not Ichimei’s wife, Irina. She’s his widow. Ichimei died of a heart attack three years ago.”

“That’s impossible!” she exclaimed.

“He died around the same time my grandmother went to live at Lark House. Possibly the two things are connected in some way. I think that letter dated 2010, the last one Alma received, was his good-bye.”

“But I saw Ichimei at the hospital!”

“You saw what you wanted to see, Irina.”

“No, Seth. I’m sure it was him. That is what happened: Alma loved Ichimei so much that she succeeded in having him come to find her.”





January 8, 2010

How exuberant and boisterous the universe is, Alma! It turns and turns, and the only constant is everything changes. It is a mystery we can only appreciate out of stillness. I’m living through a very interesting stage. My spirit contemplates the changes in my body with fascination, but this contemplation is not from a distance, but from within. My spirit and my body are together in this process. Yesterday you told me how you missed our youthful illusion of immortality. Not me. I take pleasure in my reality of being a mature man, or should I say an old one. If I were going to die in the next three days, what would I do during that time? Nothing! I would empty myself of everything but love.

We have often said that loving each other is our destiny, that we have loved each other in past lives and will go on meeting in lives to come. Or it may be there is no past or future, and everything takes place simultaneously in the universe’s infinite dimensions. If that is so, we remain together forever.

It’s fantastic to be alive. We are still seventeen years old, my Alma.

Ichi