A Tale for the Time Being Read Free Page B

feel rich and important. But now the fad is over and maids are no longer
it
, and the only customers are tourists from abroad, and
otaku 16 from the countryside, or sad hentai with out-of-date fetishes for maids. And the maids, too, are not so pretty or cute anymore, since you can
make a lot more money being a nurse at a medical café or a fuzzy plushy in Bedtown. 17 French maids are downward trending for sure, and everyone
knows this, so nobody’s bothering to try very hard. You could say it’s a depressing ambience, but personally, I find it relaxing exactly because nobody’s trying too hard.
What’s depressing is when everyone is trying too hard, and the most depressing thing of all is when they’re trying too hard and actually thinking that they’re making it. I’m
sure that’s what it used to be like around here, with all the cheerful jangle of bells and laughing, and lines of customers around the block, and cute little maids sucking up to the
café owners, who slouched around in their designer sunglasses and vintage Levi’s like dark princes or game-empire moguls. Those dudes had a long, long way to fall.
    So I don’t mind this at all. I kind of like it because I know I can always get a table here at Fifi’s Lovely Apron, and the music is okay, and the maids know me now and usually leave
me alone. Maybe it should be called Fifi’s Lonely Apron. Hey, that’s good! I like that!
    2.
    My old Jiko really likes it when I tell her lots of details about modern life. She doesn’t get out very much anymore because she lives in a temple in the mountains in the
middle of nowhere and has renounced the world, and also there’s the fact of her being a hundred and four years old. I keep saying that’s her age, but actually I’m just guessing.
We don’t really know for sure how old she is, and she claims she doesn’t remember, either. When you ask her, she says,
     
    “Zuibun nagaku ikasarete itadaite orimasu ne.” 18
     
    Which is not an answer, so you ask her again, and she says,
     
    “Soo desu ne. 19 I haven’t counted for so long . . .”
     
    So then you ask her when her birthday is, and she says,
     
    “Hmm, I don’t really remember being born . . .”
     
    And if you pester her some more and ask her how long she’s been alive, she says,
     
    “I’ve always been here as far as I remember.”
     
    Well, duh, Granny!
    All we know for sure is that there’s nobody older than her who remembers, and the family register at the ward office got burned up in a firebombing during World War II, so basically we
have to take her word for it. A couple of years ago, she kind of got fixated on a hundred and four, and that’s what it’s been ever since.
    And as I was saying, my old Jiko really likes detail, and she likes it when I tell her about all the little sounds and smells and colors and lights and advertising and people and fashions and
newspaper headlines that make up the noisy ocean of Tokyo, which is why I’ve trained myself to notice and remember. I tell her everything, about cultural trends and news items I read about
high school girls who get raped and suffocated with plastic bags in love hotels. You can tell Granny all that kind of stuff and she doesn’t mind. I don’t mean it makes her happy.
She’s not a hentai. But she understands that shit happens, and she just sits there and listens and nods her head and counts the beads on her juzu, 20 saying blessings for those poor high school girls and the perverts and all the beings who are suffering in the world. She’s a nun, so that’s her job. I swear,
sometimes I think the main reason she’s still alive is because of all the stuff I give her to pray about.
    I asked her once why she liked to hear stories like this, and she explained to me that when she got ordained, she shaved her head and took some vows to be a bosatsu. 21 One of her vows was to save all beings, which basically means that she agreed not to become enlightened until all