Lady Joker, Volume 1 by Kaoru Takamura (lightest ebook reader .txt) 📕

were having, the flowers were only about three centimeters wide, and though they bloomed early each morning, by the time he opened the store at nine, they were already wilted and drooping. Whenever he saw the morning glories bearing up under the blazing sunshine, their vines creeping limply outward, Monoi could not help but wonder if the plant, not long for this world, was satisfied with its life, and before he knew it he would be muttering to himself before the morning glories.

The lady pharmacist, picking at her hundred-yen shaved ice, popped her head out from the store and remarked, “If you keep staring at those wilty flowers, the bluesbug will get you.”

Reasoning that it was best to avoid the heat of the day, she always visited the shopping district before ten in the morning and brought back things like shaved ice and kudzu mochi. She would consume these sweets and then still manage to polish off two servings of somen noodles for lunch.

“Now, you’ll get heatstroke if you stand out in the sun like that. Come inside and have some barley tea. I’m going to cook somen noodles for lunch soon.”

“I don’t need any lunch today. I’ll have a little ochazuke before I head over to Akigawa.”

“But you just went there yesterday. And in this heat—you sure are odd.”

“You’ll understand when you get to be my age.”

“I’ll be sixty soon myself, but who wants to think about what’s ahead?” The lady pharmacist spoke with a mouthful of shaved ice, then went back inside. He could hear the television in the living room at the back of the store; a broadcast of the high school baseball tournament was playing. Monoi tipped his bucket over to pour the remaining water onto the asphalt and realized that it was in fact only yesterday when he last went to Akigawa.

Monoi did not have the blues—he just had a lot on his mind. Several matters had presented themselves each of which needed to be addressed, and lacking specific feelings about any of them, he simply divided his day at random, based on his physical strength, so that he could tackle them one by one. Watering the sidewalk repeatedly, tending to the morning glories, lunching on somen noodles, visiting Seiji Okamura at the special care nursing home in Akigawa every other day—all of these followed the same rhythm.

Monoi returned to the living room and sat down before the family Buddhist altar. He rang the small bell, joined his hands in prayer, and then put away the bowl of white rice he had offered that morning. There were so many departed souls—his wife, Yoshie; his grandson, Takayuki; his son-in-law, Hatano; the grandparents and parents from his ancestral village—all of whom had to make do with sharing a single bowl as an offering. But when he thought about it, it was strange that his older brother Seiji Okamura was not among them. A man whom he heard had died forty years ago was still alive, while the ones who should still be alive had passed away.

Pouring barley tea over the same bowl of cold rice he had removed from the altar, he took out some pickled gourd and eggplant and ate a simple lunch while ruminating on the reason he meant to visit the nursing home in Akigawa two days in a row.

Three months had passed since Seiji’s existence had been confirmed at the beginning of May, but a few days ago, Monoi had started to think about taking Seiji into his home. There was no way he could nurture familial feelings toward a man with whom he had been accidentally reunited just three months ago, but when he considered that Seiji was, after all, his biological older brother, he felt it was his duty to care for him, and a part of him thought that, by taking care of Seiji, he might be able to spend the rest of his own life in peace. So long as he had time to be irritated by the hopelessness laid bare by the steady advance of old age, there was no question it was better for him to keep moving and do something useful instead, which is to say, it was more for himself than for Seiji. Nevertheless, considering how old they both were made him hesitate, and then he would waver between thinking he ought to do it with what strength he still had left and thinking it was already too late, so it was not something he could act on easily.

As he delayed his decision day after day, the height of summer arrived and Seiji’s body was visibly weakened—yesterday he even refused the beer he used to sip through a straw. And he only had a bite of the watermelon Monoi had brought with him. Seiji had basically been bedridden the entire time, so his loss of appetite was not such a concern, but his fragile state yesterday gnawed at Monoi a bit, and as soon as he woke up that morning he felt the need to visit him again.

With Seiji’s progressive dementia, was it physically possible to take the man into his home? And even if the conditions were right, would Monoi really go through with it? The decision was Monoi’s alone to make—no one was pressuring him—but even as he slurped his ochazuke, he felt that there wasn’t much time left.

Monoi packed an overnight bag with a collared summer shirt he had bought on sale in the shopping district, freshly laundered underwear and a towel, among other items. As for himself, he changed into a fresh shirt, put on a hat to shade him from the sun, and, after asking the lady pharmacist to water the morning glories in the evening, he got on the bus bound for Kamata from the stop in front of his store.

Seiji Okamura had entered the nursing home in the suburbs of Akigawa in 1990. He had been seventy-five years old at the time, and the extent of what