The Spare Room Read Free Page A

That’s not the way families behave in Japan. Not my family, anyway. When I’d tell Australians that, they’d find it very strange, but it was some time before I had the language or the confidence to talk about such things. I wonder why it is that customs develop as they do. Why is it that in some countries people kiss on the cheek or the mouth when they meet, whereas in others they hug or shake hands, and in Japan they bow? I even heard that in New Zealand Maoris greet each other by pressing their noses together. It’s a strange and varied world, that’s for sure. But I didn’t know any of these different ways then, at least not first-hand. I’d seen movies, but those places and customs didn’t seem real. Now that I’ve lived in another culture even movies have changed. I can get inside them more. That’s how it seems, anyway.
    I took a train out to my dad’s factory. I walked in towing my suitcase, which suddenly seemed ridiculously large — like towing a small trailer, really — and very top-heavy on its four tiny wheels. I’d never realised how big the factory was. It seemed to take forever to walk from one side over to my father’s office. At each sewing machine the machinist gave me a bow without stopping her fingers from working. I bowed my head a bit and I felt very foolish, I remember, bowing at each machine, which seemed to throw me more off balance with my suitcase. Finally it occurred to me to leave the suitcase, so I abandoned it in the middle of the factory floor, which caused a bit of a giggle among the women. I briefly wondered whether, when my father expanded and moved some of his business offshore to factories in the Philippines and Thailand, these women would have jobs. Unemployment wasn’t something that had worried anyone in Japan for a long time, as you know, but now, so it was said, Japan was in decline, its economy sliding as surely as if it was sitting on its backside coming down the side of Fuji-san. I remember doing that once, after watching the sunrise from the top. I remember seeing all the drink cans and the sweets wrappers and thinking so much for our sacred mountain. But I didn’t have time to dwell on that, and, besides, it was precisely that kind of talk of declines and recessions and interest rates that bored me so totally at college. At least I wouldn’t have to hear that kind of talk for some months. Six months, in fact. That was the idea, anyway, but possibly extended for a year, depending. On what exactly was never made clear.
    You’ll probably have some inkling of the way I was feeling by now, Satoshi. My father was never a father who put you at ease. I always felt he was more like the school inspector, making sure that you were all in order. I was feeling a bit tense. But if I wanted to I could look at this as my father believing in me enough to send me to Australia. For his own ends, yes, and against my will initially, yes, but still he must have had some faith in me. It’s not something he would ever put into words. Nor would I expect him to. That would only embarrass us both. Or would it? Now I know I would like to have a bit of praise, like to hear a direct word that is not a command or a criticism. Now I know what a bit of praise can do. But this was then. Before everything happened. Before Australia. And I still had to face my father. And not face him at home in his yukata, wet-haired from the ofuro, or over the occasional breakfast soup together, or stretched out on zabutons in front of the television. This time it was on his territory, where he was kingpin. This was his factory, and it had been his father’s before him. And, it had to be supposed, it would be mine at some later date. That thought was enough to stop me in my tracks outside my father’s office. What would I do with a factory? But then I gave myself a mental shake, knocked and opened the door. My father wasn’t there. I