What's Left of Me is Yours Read online

  Dedication

  For Subhashini, Roger, and Tom,

  with all my love.

  what’s left of me is yours

  Stephanie Scott

  Contents

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Part One

  Sumiko

  Rina

  Sumiko

  Rina and Kaitarō

  Sumiko

  Yoshi

  Part Two

  Rina and Kaitarō

  Sumiko

  Rina and Kaitarō

  Part Three

  Sumiko

  Rina and Kaitarō

  Sumiko

  Rina and Kaitarō

  Part Four

  Sumiko

  Yoshi

  Sumiko

  Rina

  Part Five

  Sumiko

  Acknowledgements

  Praise for

  About the Author

  Copyright

  It matters not how strait the gate,

  How charged with punishments the scroll,

  I am the master of my fate:

  I am the captain of my soul.

  – William Ernest Henley

  prologue

  Sarashima is a beautiful name; a name that now belongs only to me. I was not born with it, this name, but I have chosen to take it, because once it belonged to my mother.

  It is customary upon meeting someone to explain who you are and where you come from, but whether you realise it or not, you already know me and you know my story. Look closely. Reach into the far corners of your mind and sift through the news clippings, bulletins, tabloid crimes, tucked away there. You will see me. I am the line at the end of an article; I am the final sentence ending with a full stop.

  Wakaresaseya Agent Goes Too Far?

  By Yu Yamada. Published: 6:30 p.m., 16/05/1994

  The trial of Kaitarō Nakamura, the man accused of murdering Rina Satō, began today at the Tokyo District Court.

  The case has attracted international attention due to the fact that the defendant, Nakamura, is an agent in the wakaresaseya or so-called ‘marriage breakup’ industry, and has admitted that he was hired by the victim’s husband, Osamu Satō, to seduce his wife, Rina Satō, and provide grounds for divorce.

  Nakamura claims that he and the deceased fell in love and were planning to start a new life together. If convicted of murder, Nakamura faces a minimum 20-year prison sentence; the judges may even consider the death penalty.

  Rina Satō’s father, Yoshitake Sarashima, told reporters: ‘A business such as this which destroys people’s lives should not be allowed to operate in Tokyo. Rina was my only child and the heart of our family. I shall never get over her loss, nor forgive it.’

  Rina Satō is survived by a daughter of seven years old.

  Can you remember when you first read this? Were you at home at your breakfast table or in the office, scanning the morning news? I can see your face as you read about my family; your brows drew together in a slight frown, a crinkle formed above your nose. Perhaps the smell of coffee was strong and reassuring in the air, for eventually you shook your head and turned the page. The world is full of strange things.

  Wakaresaseya was not common in Japan when Kaitarō was drawn into my mother’s life. The industry emerged out of a demand for its services, a demand that exists all over the world today. Look at the people around you: those you love, those who love you, those who want what you have. They can enter your life as easily as he entered mine.

  Do you know now when we first met or where? Was it in the Telegraph, New York Times, Le Monde, Sydney Morning Herald? My story stopped there in the foreign press. Later articles focused on the marriage break-up industry itself and the agents who populate it, but none of them mentioned me. Lives to be rebuilt are always less interesting than lives destroyed. Even in Japan, I disappeared from the page.

  part one

  When you look at the world with knowledge, you realise that things are unchangeable and at the same time are constantly being transformed.

  – mishima

  Sumiko

  What’s in a Name?

  For the Sarashima, the naming of a child is a family matter. For me, it marked a bond with tradition that would govern my life. The names of my maternal relatives have always been chosen at Kiyoji in Meguro. You can just about glimpse the temple from the park at the end of our street. It sits at the base of a hill in the very centre of our neighbourhood; the green peaks of its roof tiles gleam in the sun and the red pillars of the portico peer out over the surrounding buildings.

  As I grew up, my grandfather told me that our family had worshipped there since coming to Tokyo. He said that they remained at prayer during the firebombing of the city and that after the war they had restored the temple. For him, it is a symbol of regeneration.

  This is why, as soon as Mama recovered from my birth, instead of gathering around the kamidana in the northern corner of the living room, my family went to Kiyoji and my mother carried me in her arms beneath the gates and into the heart of the temple complex.

  As we climbed the stone steps leading to the main hall, my mother glanced up at the sprawling wooden roof, at its curved eaves stretching out beyond the building – shutting out the sunlight – resulting in the cool, dark shadows within. Inside, we proceeded through the sweet smoke of incense to the altar. All around us the wind blew through in gusts and the air swirled, while outside the bronze bells of the surrounding temples began to toll.

  I don’t remember this journey, but I can see it quite clearly: me in my cream blanket, my father carrying Tora, the toy white tiger Grandpa had given to me, and my grandfather himself, grave in his three-piece suit. I have been told this story so many times it has seeped into my memory.

  One of the monks, pale in his indigo robes, bowed to my grandfather and took from him a pouch containing a selection of names. My mother had prepared these names, first consulting the astrologer and then choosing her favourites, counting out the strokes of the characters to ensure that each given name, when combined with our surname, would add up to an optimal number.

  I can still see her sitting at our dining table in her house slippers and jeans, an oversized T-shirt covering the bump that was me. The blinds are open, the sun slants across the marble floors of our home, while in the kitchen the rice cooker bubbles and the washing-up dries on the draining board. My mother lays a sheet of rice paper out in front of her and turns to the inkstone by her side. I can see her dip her brush into the ink, smell the rich scent of earth and pine soot rising into the air, as using the very tip of the bristles she presses down, the horsehair bending to create the first fluid stroke.

  The monk bowed once more and placed the names in a shallow dish upon the altar. Then, kneeling before them, he selected a delicate wooden fan and, in unison with the breeze that drifted through the open screens, unfurled it, whipping up currents of air. Everyone was silent. The grey smoke of the incense drifted towards the rafters as one by one the names painted by my mother flew towards the ceiling. Eventually, one remained, alone on the teak surface:

  寿美子

  Grandpa knelt and picked it up from the altar and a smile broke out on his face as he read the characters of my given name and their meanings: celebration, beauty, child.

  ‘Sumiko,’ he said. ‘Sumiko Sarashima.’

  My father had been silent throughout the proceedings. In the weeks leading up to my birth, plans for an ‘adoptive’ ceremony ha
d been discussed. Under Japanese law, both people in a marriage must share the same surname, but in certain circumstances, a husband may take his wife’s surname and join her household, so that her name and her line may continue. My father was a second son and his family, the Satōs, readily agreed. However, that day, as the monk took out a fresh sheet of paper and began to inscribe my full name upon it, my father spoke:

  ‘Satō,’ he said. ‘She is a Satō, not a Sarashima.’

  What I Know

  ·I was raised by my grandfather, Yoshi Sarashima.

  ·I lived with him in a white house in Meguro, Tokyo.

  ·In the evenings he would read to me.

  ·He told me every story but my own.

  My grandfather was a lawyer; he was careful in his speech. Even when we were alone together in his study and I would perch on his lap tracing the creases in his leather armchair, or later, when I sat on a stool by his side, even then, he had a precision with words. I have kept faith with that precision to this day.

  Grandpa read everything to me – Mishima, Sartre, Dumas, Tolstoy, Bashō, tales of his youth and duck hunting in Shimoda, and one book, The Trial, that became my favourite. The story begins like this: ‘Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K.’

  When we read that line for the first time, Grandpa explained that the story was a translation. I was twelve years old, stretching out my fingers for a world beyond my own, and I reached out then to the yellowed page, stroking the written characters that spoke of something new. I read the opening aloud, summoning the figure of Josef K.: a lonely man, a man people would tell lies about.

  As I grew older, I began to argue with Grandpa about The Trial. He told me other people fought over it too, that they fight about it even today – over the translation of one word in particular – verleumdet. To tell a lie. In some versions of the story, this word is translated as ‘slander’. Slander speaks of courts and accusations, of public reckoning; it has none of the childhood resonance of ‘telling lies’. And yet, when I read this story for the first time, it was the translator’s use of ‘telling lies’ that fascinated me.

  Lies, when they are first told, have a shadow quality to them, a gossamer texture that can wrap around a life. They have that feather-light essence of childhood, and my childhood was built on lies.

  The summer before my mother died, we went to the sea. When I look back on that time, those months hold a sense of finality for me, not because that was the last holiday my mother and I would take together, but because it is the site of my last true memory.

  Every year, as the August heat engulfed Tokyo, my family piled their suitcases onto a local train and headed for the coast. We went to Shimoda. Father remained in the city to work, but Grandpa Sarashima always came with us. Each time, he stopped at the same kiosk in the station to buy frozen clementines for the train, and in the metallic heat of the carriage Mama and I would wait impatiently for the fruit to soften so we could get at the pockets of sorbet within. Finally, when our chins were sticky with juice, Mama would turn to me in our little row of two and ask what I would like to do by the sea, just she and I, alone.

  Our house on the peninsula was old, its wooden gateposts warped by the winds that peeled off the Pacific. As we climbed towards the rocky promontory at the top of the hill, the gates, dark and encrusted with salt, signalled that my home was near: Washikura – Eagle’s Nest, the house overlooking the bay, between Mount Fuji and the sea.

  Our country is built around mountains; people are piled up in concrete boxes, cages. To have land is rare, but the house in Shimoda had belonged to my family since before the war, and afterwards my grandfather fought to keep it when everything else was lost.

  Forest sweeps over the hills above the house. I was not allowed up there alone as a child, so when I looked at my mother on the train that summer she knew immediately what I would ask to do. In the afternoons, Mama and I climbed high on the wooded slopes above Washikura. We watched the tea fields as they darkened before autumn. We lay back on the rocky black soil and breathed in the sharp resin of the pines. Some days, we heard the call of a sea eagle as it circled overhead.

  Grandpa knew the forest but he never found us there. At four o’clock each afternoon, he would venture to the base of the hillside and call to us through the trees. He shouted our names: ‘Rina!’ ‘Sumi!’ Together, we nestled among the pines, giggling, as grandfather’s voice wavered and fell.

  I often heard Grandpa calling before Mama did, but I always waited for her signal to be quiet. On our last afternoon in the forest, I lay still, feeling the soft and steady puff of my mother’s breath against my face. She pulled me against her and her breathing quieted and slowed. I opened my eyes and stared at her, at the dark lashes against her cheeks. I took in her pallor, her stillness. I heard my grandfather begin to call, his voice thin and distant. I snuggled closer, kissing her face, pushing through the coldness with my breath. Suddenly she smiled, her eyes still closed, and pressed a finger to her lips.

  We no longer own our home, Washikura, on the outskirts of Shimoda; Grandpa sold it years ago. But when I go there today, climbing up through the undergrowth, I can feel my mother there beneath the trees. When I lie down on the ground, the pine needles sharp under my cheek, I imagine that the chill of the breeze is the stroke of her finger.

  Rina

  Atami

  Rina stood in the garden of Washikura and looked out across the slopes and mountains stretching towards Mount Fuji, at the deep shadows forming on the forested hills. She thought of how the plates that created this peninsula had converged at Fuji-san millions of years ago, causing a land of volcanoes, earthquakes and hot springs to rise from the sea.

  The volcano was still active, she knew. On a clear day one could see vapour and smoke curling above the snow-covered peak, hinting at the new islands, plateaus and peninsulas waiting within. But that summer, as Rina watched the slopes before her turn gradually from lime green to pomegranate to rust, she did not think of what was to come; she thought about her daughter kneeling beside Grandpa Yoshi in the garden, digging into the dark soil of the azaleas with her trowel, her face turned sullenly away from her mother. Rina looked up at the mountains watching over them, and beneath their quiet gaze she climbed into her red Nissan and drove to Atami.

  At the crowded beachfront Rina stopped and looked for a space to park. Atami had become a place for pleasure-seekers. Salarymen flocked to its beaches, eager to supplement their existence in Tokyo with summer condos, shopping malls and karaoke. Hotels capitalised on the natural hot springs, and buildings long ago replaced the trees. The forests of camphor and ferns that once surrounded the town were all cut back until little trace of them remained. Rina left her car at the end of the beach and walked along the waterfront, shading her eyes against the glare of the sun as it glanced off the concrete.

  ‘You came!’

  At the sound of his voice, Rina turned. Kaitarō was walking across the beach towards her, barefoot in the sand. She smiled and watched his slow, loping stride.

  ‘I was afraid you’d stood me up,’ he said as he reached her.

  ‘You weren’t afraid.’

  ‘I am when you’re not with me,’ he replied.

  Rina laughed and they began to walk towards the yachts bobbing against the blue of the sea. She stopped by an ice-cream stall advertising azuki, red bean flavour. At her side, Kaitarō passed his sandals from one hand to the other and reached into his pocket for some change.

  ‘Just one, please.’

  Rina smiled at him. ‘My daughter loves these,’ she said as she bit into the ice cream, savouring the caramel sweetness of the beans. She felt Kaitarō’s eyes on her and lowered her gaze.

  ‘We can bring Sumiko here,’ he said.

  ‘Impossible.’ Rina shifted as he stepped behind her. She felt the warmth of him at her back, his breath at her ear.

  ‘Yos
hi will not notice if we take her out for an afternoon.’

  ‘What will I tell her when this ends?’

  ‘It won’t end, Rina.’

  He drew her back against his chest and she dug her toes deep into the white sand, feeling the tiny grains sift between her red sandals and her skin.

  ‘I shouldn’t be here,’ she said, but her sentence ended in a shriek as he lifted her up into the air and over his shoulder.

  ‘Oh my god!’ she hissed, hitting at him with her fists. ‘What are you doing?’ Rina gasped as her ice cream fell into the sand.

  ‘There are too many people here,’ he said. ‘We can’t talk.’

  ‘What are you, a child?’

  Kaitarō grinned against her hip. ‘You bring out the worst in me.’

  ‘People are staring.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ he said. And it was true, she thought, he really didn’t.

  They reached his car and he put her down. Rina could feel the blush rising in her cheeks; people were still looking at them. Kaitarō placed his palms on either side of her face. ‘Rina,’ he said, ‘you’re with me today. Try to concentrate.’

  She took a deep breath and looked up at him. ‘I don’t have long.’

  Rina caught glimpses of the view as they drove up into the hills above the town, following a narrow road that wove between the pines. The sea was a deep blue against the concrete of the bay, and along the slopes she could see the cypresses and cedars settling along the fringes of Atami, as though they would one day reclaim it.

  They drove to a parking spot where a stone path led up onto the hillside. Rina tied her bobbed hair back with a handkerchief to protect it from the wind and then she joined Kaitarō on the slope. Together they climbed up to an orchard of natsumikan trees; the summer oranges hung low and heavy against the dark green shells of their leaves. Kaitarō found a spot for them in the grass and spread out the raincoat he had brought from the car. It was beige in the style of New York detectives, and Rina smiled; she liked to tease him about it. A few minutes later, however, as the cool of the breeze settled against the back of her neck, she felt a thread of unease. She had committed herself by coming with him. He wanted more from her, a great deal more, of that she was sure. Rina shifted away from him, pulling her skirt down over her knees. She sat farther back on the coat as he dug into his satchel.