Uncle's Index Finger

The Yamanote Line in the early afternoon.

After finishing my monthly visit to Sugamo, I boarded the train, but unfortunately, there were no seats available, so I had no choice but to hold onto a strap. The afternoon sunlight streaming through the window was soft.

When the train swayed on a curve, my body tilted to the left, and my shoulder brushed against the man next to me.
“Oh, excuse me.”
As I bowed my head slightly, the man also bowed his head just a little.
There was a noticeable amount of white in his hair.
I wonder if he is around my age.
When I happened to look, the nail of the man's index finger, which was gripping the strap, was stained a yellowish-brown.
(So this person likes cigarettes, too.)
As I was blankly watching the man reflected in the window glass, I suddenly caught a nostalgic scent.
That faintly sweet fragrance.


A room filled with gray smoke.
An ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts.
Small black and white stones held between an index finger and a middle finger.
He was someone I hadn't thought about in a long time.

My uncle.

My uncle was the husband of my mother's older sister.
My father, mother, myself, and my sister, who was four years younger than me, had lived with my aunt and uncle since I was old enough to remember.
That house in Mejiro, Toshima Ward, was like the house in the manga Sazae-san; to put it nicely, it was Showa retro, but in reality, it was a dilapidated, single-story house.
Facing a long veranda on the south side were two Japanese-style rooms, one room next to the entrance on the north side, and the rest were a kitchen and a toilet, and the bath was
still a wood-fired bath.
Of course, there was no such thing as a shower.
Six of us lived in a house like that.

Opening the frosted glass sliding door, stepping up from the dirt floor onto the raised threshold, the four-and-a-half-mat room on the right was my uncle's room.
At the time, my uncle smoked Peace cigarettes in a can with a design of a dove holding an olive leaf in its beak, and I would meticulously put my sparkly toy rings, marbles, hair clips, and brooches into the empty cans.
“They’ll smell if you put them in a cigarette can,” my mother would say with a frown, but I loved those beautiful, deep navy Peace cans.
When I brought my nose close and sniffed, it had a unique, sweet scent.

On the writing desk in my uncle's room, a copy of the Weekly Shincho was always placed alongside his fountain pen and newspaper.
The four-panel comic strip and the life advice column in the newspaper, and the home tour section at the back of the Weekly Shincho were my favorites.

After coming home from school, it was my daily routine to look at the photos of the houses featured in the magazine while sitting next to my uncle as he laid out Go game records.
I think it was a rather mature hobby for an elementary school student.
That day, too, I was snipping out photos of houses I liked with scissors.

“Do you want to be a photographer or an architect, Y-chan?”
“I just like stylish houses.”
“I see. I love stylish things, too.”
Placing a Go stone held between his index and middle fingers onto the board with a click, my uncle laughed happily.


I know.
That my uncle loves stylish things.

A gold pocket watch.
A fountain pen with a black barrel and gold rings.
A silver lighter that glowed dully.

“It’s nice that you have so many wonderful things, Uncle.”
When I envied him, my mother, who was washing dishes in the kitchen, muttered,
“Your uncle is a hedonist, you know.”
A hedonist?
My school teacher always told me to look things up in the dictionary if there was something I didn't understand, so I looked it up.

“Hedonist”
1. Someone who neglects their main profession by indulging in wine, women, and gambling.
2. A lazy person. A slacker.

My uncle drinks two bottles of beer every night.
After that, he drinks a bottle of Suntory Kakubin whisky.
When he gets drunk, his face turns red and he hums the Kuroda-bushi song.
Is that 'wine and women'?
For one thing, he seems to go to work every day, so I don't feel like he's a lazy person or a slacker.

My uncle worked at a Go parlor in Ikebukuro.
He left at a fairly regular time every day and came home at a fairly regular time.
Also, my uncle is very tall.
According to the neighborhood ladies, he looks like some American actor.
Come to think of it, the photo in the album where he was wearing a white open-collar shirt and a trendy boater hat and posing looked a bit like a cool movie star.
At that moment, I realized that the word for 'hedonist' (dorakusha) is written with the characters for 'someone who enjoys the path/way'.
If that's the case, I can think of something.

When I was born, my uncle apparently used to put me in a baby carriage and go for a walk every day.
That day, too, he took baby me out for a walk in the carriage, but he didn't come back no matter how long we waited.
This was in an era without mobile phones.
Well past noon, when my uncle finally returned, my mother questioned him with a pale face.
Then my uncle, with a nonchalant face, said,
“I just went to a sushi restaurant. You don't need to worry. Y-chan was a good girl and slept the whole time.”
They say he said that and left my mother dumbfounded.

When I became able to walk, he apparently started taking me to a neighborhood soba shop instead of the sushi restaurant, and he would have a drink while feeding me tsukimi udon.
It seems my uncle has an incorrigible personality.
The fact that I still like tsukimi udon today might be a remnant of those days.

A hedonist is written as 'someone who enjoys the path'.
Someone who enjoys eating sushi and soba along the way.
My uncle is definitely a hedonist.

During summer vacation, I also went to my uncle's Go parlor.
When I climbed the narrow stairs of the building and opened the door, cigarette smoke was billowing, and there were many men playing Go.
The ashtrays at every seat were piled high with cigarette butts.
I was allowed to sit next to my uncle, who was sitting across from his opponent.
That seat by the window seemed to be my uncle's designated spot.
I didn't understand Go at all and was bored, but I was happy to receive juice and snacks from the adults while being complimented with things like, 'Little niece, are you in elementary school? How cute,' and I was even happier that my uncle was called 'Sensei' there.

When I got tired of watching the Go, I killed time by watching the flow of cars and people coming and going. I had a bit of a penchant for daydreaming, so I was good at killing time like this.
When I got tired of observing outside the window, I turned my eyes back to the board.
My uncle was staring at the board with a cigarette held between the index and middle fingers of his left hand.
Those long, well-shaped fingertips were stained yellowish-brown, just like the fingers on his right hand.
My mother had taught me before that the fingertips of heavy smokers get stained with nicotine.

I once asked him.
“Uncle, doesn't that finger color come off?”
“Nope. It doesn't come off.”
“Even if you scrub it with soap?”
“Nope. It doesn't come off.”
“I see. Then it can't be helped.”
I didn't even know myself what couldn't be helped, but I decided that I would at least stop smoking when I became an adult.

On the way home, we bought everyone's favorite cake at the Western-style confectionery shop in front of Mejiro Station.
My uncle had a savarin, and my father had a cream puff.
Everyone else had strawberry shortcake.
The cakes from the Boston Western confectionery shop were special of the special for me. Because they were high-class cakes that I could only eat on special days like birthdays and Christmas.
But when I was with my uncle, he would buy them for me.

The twilight of a summer day smells of slightly damp soil and grassy leaves.
Turning off Mejiro-dori, I walked along, holding hands with my uncle who was carrying the cake box.

“Goldfish~, get your goldfish.”

I heard the voice of the goldfish seller along with the cool, ringing sound of a bell.
A handcart with many wind chimes hanging above glass water tanks was coming from the other side.

Above the red and black goldfish swimming flutteringly, colorful wind chimes were swaying in the breeze.
“Wow, beautiful.”
As I was watching, mesmerized, my uncle peered into the water tank.
“Shall we buy a goldfish and take it home?”
“Yeah!”

We asked the man with a white towel wrapped around his neck to put the most energetic red wakin goldfish into a goldfish bag for us.
“Uncle, look, look!”
I was so happy that I held the transparent bag up to the sunset, and the red goldfish was swimming in water dyed a pale orange.

When I started elementary school, all the houses around us had switched to gas baths, but ours remained the same, so I felt a little sad, wondering if we were poor.
But I consoled myself by thinking that if I went to the public bath, I could get fruit milk or pineapple ice cream after my bath.
Around this time, I gradually stopped seeing the goldfish sellers and wind chime sellers.
The uncle who used to come by bicycle to sell freshly baked rice crackers also stopped coming. Even though the cherry blossom-shaped salty rice crackers were so delicious.



It was an era when refrigerators and color televisions were becoming common in every household, and life was becoming more convenient and affluent.
Yet, the arguments between Uncle and Auntie kept increasing.
Small arguments were repeated daily, and I still remember that day well.


I don't know the cause of the fight, but after dinner, a drunk Uncle said to Auntie,
"This is why I don't like country bumpkins."

Uncle's family home was very wealthy, and it seems Uncle was a spoiled rich kid. Auntie said that when he was in China for some work, he lived in a house with two maids.
Auntie and my mother were born in Soma, Fukushima Prefecture.
My father was born in a snowy place called Toge, Karuizawa-machi, Kitasaku-gun, Nagano Prefecture.
As a child, I thought that if Auntie was a country bumpkin, then my father, mother, younger sister, and I must all be country bumpkins too.

"It's better than being a freeloader, isn't it?"
Saying that, Auntie turned her small back to him.


"Freeloader."
Someone who lives idly without a steady job.

When I was in the upper grades of elementary school, my mother and Auntie started talking about moving often.
Not at the dining table where everyone was present, but just the two of them, or the three of them including my father.
As for me, honestly, the longing for a new house was stronger than the loneliness of transferring schools.
The wooden one-story house was old and narrow, and as a child, I was a little embarrassed to invite friends over.
Besides, although I didn't tell anyone, it was uncool and embarrassing to have to add my uncle's surname as "c/o [Uncle's Name]" when writing my address, or to see "call" written in the phone column of the class contact list.

Auntie, who was a nurse, went out to look at properties with my mother every time she had a day off.
One such day, I asked my mother,
"Is Uncle coming too when we move?"
"Just Auntie."


Why?
How come?
Aren't we all going together?

I actually wanted to ask that, but for some reason, I felt like I shouldn't ask any more.
But from that day on, the back of my heart felt prickly.
Because it felt even more prickly when I saw Uncle's face,
I returned to our room as soon as I finished my homework to avoid seeing him as much as possible.

Around the time the move was officially decided, one evening Uncle came home extremely drunk.
Surprised by the sound of him rattling the sliding door violently, I went to the entrance and found Uncle passed out drunk at the threshold.
The strong scent of alcohol drifted all around.

"Everyone, just go anywhere! Just go!"
I was scared by Uncle's red, cloudy eyes as he looked up at me while shouting.
It was the first time I had heard an adult man yell like that outside of a TV drama.

"Uncle."
Uncle's coat was covered in mud from wherever he had fallen.
"Go back to your room."
When he said that to me as I stood there, my father carried Uncle, who continued to shout loudly.
I was really glad my father was strong.
Just as I felt relieved, a foul odor, different from the smell of alcohol, pierced my nostrils.
The front of Uncle's trousers was wet.
A crushed fedora hat was lying on the dirt floor.
Uncle's favorite brown fedora.
I picked it up and tried to fix its shape by patting off the dirt, but the crushed hat wouldn't easily return to its original shape.

From that day on, Uncle came home dead drunk every night.
"Everyone, just go! Just go away quickly!"
"You idiots! You idiots!" he would shout.
My sister and I would finish our homework, take a bath, and get ready for bed before Uncle came home.
But no matter how much I hid under the futon and covered my ears, I could still hear Uncle's shouting.
The old wooden house didn't have anything as fancy as doors; the partitions were sliding paper doors and screens.
I resented that dilapidated house.

The day before the move, when I returned from school, I grabbed my mother's red shovel and went out into the garden.
As I was busily digging next to the flowerbed where daffodils were blooming in the corner of the garden, my sister came over.
"Big sister, what are you doing?"
"I'm digging a hole to bury treasure."
My sister's eyes lit up when she opened the lid of the navy blue Peace cigarette tin placed next to the hole I was digging.
"Wow, there are lots of cute rings inside! If you're going to bury them, give them to me."
"When I dig them up someday."
"Eh! When is someday?"
"Let's see. Maybe in 10 years?"
I said something vague like that to brush it off.
But once I said it out loud, I really started to feel like that might happen.
That maybe, someday, such a day might come again.

"You promise. It's a promise."
I took back the navy blue tin from my sister, who was pouting in dissatisfaction, and placed it at the bottom of the hole I had dug about 30 centimeters deep.
"Hey, big sister. If you keep digging this hole, where does it go?"
"It goes to Brazil."
"I see. Brazil, huh."
My sister nodded with a serious face while covering it with soil using both hands.

Why did I think to bury a Peace tin with treasure in it in the first place?
Even looking back now, I don't really know.
What I remember clearly is just the feel of the damp black soil and the shovel hitting something like a water pipe with a clunk while I was digging.

There were many things I didn't know back then.
But there are things I understand now.


For example, the dove on the Peace tin is designed after the dove that became a symbol of peace later, because in the story of "Noah's Ark" in the Old Testament, the dove Noah released after the great flood returned with an olive leaf in its beak.
For example, there is a theory that the origin of the name "Peace tin" comes from the fact that the tin is a sky-blue color, and it refers to a sky like a Peace tin.
For example, the opposite side of Japan is not Brazil, but a spot on the Atlantic Ocean a thousand kilometers east of Uruguay.

And about the day of the move.

I don't have any memory of saying goodbye to Uncle. So I thought Uncle wasn't there that day.
But later, when I talked about the move with my sister, my sister, who is four years younger, remembered that day well.
"Uncle was there. He was standing at the corner in front of the house.
When I went to Uncle, he said, 'Take care.'"
"Eh? But I didn't see Uncle."
"Because, big sister, you were looking for Chiro and weren't there the whole time."

I was startled by my sister's words.
Ah, that's right.
I had been looking for a white stray cat named Chiro that I was fond of at the time throughout the move.
Saying, "I'm going to say goodbye to Chiro."
It was true that I wanted to say goodbye to Chiro, but it was painful to see Uncle's face.
So I didn't help with the move and spent the whole time looking for Chiro.

The house in Chiba we moved to was a built-for-sale house a 20-minute walk from the station.
It wasn't a stylish house like the ones featured in the Weekly Shincho, but there were stairs inside the house.

In this house, I had my own room for the first time in my life. I hung moss-green curtains in the four-and-a-half-mat room and put up posters of the idols I liked at the time.
Auntie's room was the Japanese-style room on the first floor with the best sunlight. It was small, but it also had a veranda.
The garden was as small as a cat's forehead, but my mother planted kumquat and peach saplings in that small garden.

"This is from Uncle."

When I was in my third year of junior high school, my mother handed me a letter.
It was a letter from Uncle.
Did he write it with that black fountain pen?
Uncle's handwriting, which used to be elegant, was uneven and very difficult to read.

How are you?
I am not feeling well.
I want to see you all.
Please come visit sometime.

The return address was a medical nursing home in Tokyo.
"Is Uncle sick? Should we all go visit him sometime?"
When I asked, my mother made a very troubled face.
Auntie just watched TV in silence.

I wrote a letter to Uncle.
About school.
About my studies.
About club activities.
At the end, I wrote, "I will come visit sometime."

After that, Uncle and I exchanged letters several times. The pressure of Uncle's pen grew weaker and weaker, and there were more and more unreadable characters.
Even so, at the end of every letter, it always said,
"Please come visit sometime."
I continued to write about school, friends, and my thoughts on the books I was reading at the time, and at the end of the letter,
I wrote, "I will come visit sometime."

Shortly before I graduated from high school.
My mother informed me that Uncle had passed away.
In the end, I never went to see Uncle even once.

The man who had been beside me before I knew it was gone.
When the train arrived at Ikebukuro, people poured out and seats became available, but I remained standing instead of sitting.
The train approached Mejiro, the next stop.
It stopped slowly and the automatic doors opened.
Several passengers got off.
The departure melody was playing.



When I realized it, I was standing on the platform.
Although I had gotten off the train, I was just standing there blankly.
Across the platform was an unfamiliar escalator.
Why did I get off?
What will I do now that I've gotten off?
But in the end, I couldn't even board the next train, so I sat down on a white bench.

I recall a conversation I had with my younger sister about a month ago.
She said that when she accompanied her daughter to a dentist in Mejiro—who had been recommended for treating her daughter's injured front tooth—she went to see the house where we used to live.

"It's completely unrecognizable now. There were two houses built all over the lot. The road where I used to play with you, big sister, looks surprisingly narrow now. All the surrounding houses have been rebuilt, too. Oh, but only Shin-kun's house was still the same."

Well, that's to be expected.
More than 50 years have passed since then.
So, I can never see that garden again.
Not the big cypress tree, nor the loquat tree where the longhorn beetle with white spots on its back used to be.
Nor the blue Peace cigarette tin that my sister and I buried.

"Oh, and do you remember? The Boston Western-style confectionery shop.
It's gone now. They say it burned down in a fire a long time ago."

It really has become a town I no longer know.
The nostalgic flavors of my memories have also vanished.
Even so, I wonder if the road I walked holding my uncle's hand in the sunset, carrying a white cake box and a red goldfish, still exists.

The train entered track one.
Just as I stood up from the bench, something echoed deep in my ears.

"Click."
It was the sound of a small stone being placed.

The Gomoku (five-in-a-row) game I played with my uncle.
I used the black stones, and my uncle used the white ones.
"Vertical, horizontal, diagonal. The first one to line up five wins. Go ahead and place one wherever you like."
He said that, lit a cigarette, and smiled gently.

Uncle,

I was scared.
I was worried about what would happen if you resented us.
I was very scared.
That's why I didn't say goodbye.
I didn't go to see you either.
I couldn't go.



So, when I was told that you had passed away,
I felt relieved, thinking that I wouldn't have to write "I'll come to see you" in my letters anymore.

A room filled with cigarette smoke.
Long fingertips holding black and white Go stones.
The Weekly Shincho magazine on the writing desk.

A gold pocket watch.
A fountain pen with a gold ring on a black barrel.
A dull, shining silver lighter.

The many memories of my uncle that had been buried at the very bottom of my heart until today.
But in truth, they weren't buried.
I was the one who buried them.
I buried them along with a lot of guilt.

Uncle, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry for being a lying niece.
I'm sorry for being a cold-hearted niece.



On the day of the move,
I watched my uncle from afar while pretending to look for Chiro.
I watched my uncle standing all alone at the corner of the house, wearing a white dress shirt.


I should have said goodbye to my uncle properly at that place, at that time.
No matter how sad or painful it was, I should have said goodbye.

I stand up from the bench and head toward the ticket gate through the long passageway.
I start walking west from Mejiro Station, in the opposite direction of Gakushuin.
Do I still remember that road?
The road back to the place where the house that looked like Sazae-san's used to be.


Even if I forget, the memory of my uncle's index finger will surely lead me there.

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