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in any field he chose. In elementary school he particularly stood out in arithmetic and
math, but I wasn’t so surprised to hear that he has been a success in literature.”
“I understand that his father was an NHK fee collector.”
“Yes, that’s right,” the teacher said.
“Mr. Kawana told me that his father was quite strict,” Ushikawa said. This was just
a shot in the dark.
“Exactly so,” she said, without hesitating. “His father
did have a strict way about
him. He was proud of his work—a wonderful thing—but this seemed to be a burden
at times for Tengo.”
Ushikawa had skillfully tied topics together and teased out the details from her.
This was his forte—to let the other person do the talking, as much as possible. Tengo
hated having to tag along with his father on his rounds on the weekend,
she told him,
and in fifth grade he ran away from home. “It was more like he was kicked out rather
than ran away,” she explained. So Tengo
had
been forced to go with his father to
collect the fees, Ushikawa mused. And—just as he thought—this must have taken an
emotional toll on the boy.
Miss Ota had taken the temporarily homeless Tengo into her home for the night.
She prepared a
bed for him, and made sure he ate breakfast the next morning. That
evening she went to Tengo’s house and convinced his father to take him back. From
the way she talked about this event, you would have thought it was the highlight of
her entire life. She told him too about how they happened to run into each other again
at a concert when Tengo was in high school. Tengo had played the timpani,
wonderfully, she added.
“It was Janá
č
ek’s
Sinfonietta
.
Not an easy piece, by any means. Tengo had first
taken up the timpani only a few weeks before. But even with such little preparation he
played his part beautifully. It was miraculous.”
This lady has deep feelings for Tengo
, Ushikawa thought admiringly.
Almost a
kind of unconditional love. What would it feel like to be loved that deeply by someone
else?
“Do you remember Masami Aomame?” Ushikawa asked.
“I
remember her very well,” the teacher replied. But her voice wasn’t as happy as
when she had talked about Tengo. The tone of her voice had dropped two notches on
the scale.
“Quite an unusual name, isn’t it?” Ushikawa said.
“Yes, very unusual. But I don’t remember her just because of her name.”
A short silence followed.
“I heard her family were devout members of the Witnesses,” Ushikawa said,
sounding her out.
“Could you keep this between just the two of us?” the teacher asked.
“Of course. I won’t repeat it to anyone.”
The woman nodded. “There is a large branch office of the religion in Ichikawa, so
I have had several children from the Witnesses in my class over the years. As a
teacher this led to some delicate problems I had to address. But
no one was as devout
as Miss Aomame’s parents.”
“In other words, they were uncompromising.”
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As if recalling the time, the teacher bit her lip. “Exactly. When it came to their
principles they were extremely firm, and I think they sought the same strict obedience
from their children. This made Miss Aomame quite isolated in the class.”
“So in a sense she was someone rather special.”
“She was,” the teacher admitted. “But you can’t blame the child for this.
Responsibility for it lies in the intolerance that can take over a person’s mind.”
The teacher explained more about Aomame. Generally the
other children just
ignored her. They tried to treat her as if she
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