The housekeeper and the professor

Janaruobu
.
The Professor never found out that we had looked in his cookie tin. I had
been momentarily mesmerized by the inscription on the thesis—For N, with
my eternal love. Never forget. The handwriting definitely belonged to the
Professor, for whom "eternal" meant something more than it did to the rest
of us, eternal in the way a mathematical theorem was eternal....
It was Root who brought me back from my daydream.
"Mama, slide the ruler under so I can put it back in." He took the thesis
out of my hand and returned it to the bottom of the tin, careful not to disturb
or dishonor the Professor's secret.
A moment later, all the cards were back in place, and there was no sign
that the collection had ever been touched. The tin itself was undamaged,
and the edges of the cards were neatly aligned. Still, something was
different. Now that I knew about the thesis and its dedication, the tin was no
longer a simple container for baseball cards. It had become a tomb for the
Professor's memories. I set it carefully back on the bookshelf.
I hadn't really thought anything would come of the last shopkeeper's
suggestion, but somehow I was disappointed when he failed to call. Root
made some final efforts, sending off a postcard to the readers' exchange in
the magazine and asking around among his friends and their older brothers.
Not wanting to be caught without a present, I had quietly arranged a
backup. It hadn't been easy to figure out what to buy. I'd thought of pencils
and notebooks, clips and note cards, even a new shirt. There were very few
things the Professor really needed. The fact that I couldn't discuss the
choice with Root made it all the more difficult.

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I decided on shoes. He needed a new pair, ones that he could wear
anytime, anywhere—mold-free. I bought them and hid them away in the
back of the closet, just as I had with Root's presents when he was little. If
we did find the card in time, I would slip them into the Professor's shoe
cupboard without saying anything.
In the end, a ray of hope came from an unexpected place. I had gone to
pick up my paycheck at the Akebono Housekeeping Agency and was
talking with some of the other housekeepers. As the Director was listening,
I had avoided mentioning the Professor, and just said that my son had been
wanting baseball cards and I'd had no luck finding good ones. Then, out of
the blue, one of them mentioned that her mother used to run a little store,
and she remembered seeing some leftover cards that had been included with
candy in a shed where her mother stored old stock.
The first thing that caught my attention was the fact that her mother had
retired and closed up the shop in 1985. She had ordered some candy to take
on a trip her seniors group was planning, and the chocolates with the cards
had been included in the shipment. Thinking the old folks would have no
use for them, her mother had peeled off the little black prize envelopes
stuck to the back of each box. She'd been planning to give them to a
children's club, but had gone into the hospital later in the year and then
closed the shop for good. This was how nearly a hundred mint-condition
baseball cards had been stored in a shed all this time.
We went straight from the agency to her house, and I headed home with a
dusty cardboard box. I told her I wanted to pay her for them, but she flatly
refused. In the end, I took them gratefully, not daring to tell her that these
discarded prizes were worth far more than the chocolate they had come
with.
As soon as I got home, we set to work. I cut the envelopes open while
Root removed the cards and checked them. It was a simple process, and we
fell into a rhythm. We were now rather experienced with baseball cards, and
Root could distinguish between the various types just by touch.
Oshita; Hiramatsu; Nakanishi; Kinugasa; Boomer; Oishi; Kakefu;
Harimoto; Nagaike; Horiuchi; Arito; Bass; Akiyama; Kadota; Inao;

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Kobayashi; Fukumoto.... The players appeared one after the other; just as
the man at the shop had said, some of the cards had embossed pictures,
some had original autographs, and some were actually gilded. Root no
longer allowed himself the editorial comments on each card. He seemed to
feel that we would achieve our goal more quickly if he concentrated harder.
A drift of little black envelopes had begun to collect around me, while the
stack of cards Root had collected toppled and scattered between us.
Each time I reached into the box my hand stirred up a moldy odor, mixed
with the smell of the chocolate. But by the time we had worked our way
through half the box, I had begun to lose hope.
There were too many baseball players. Which was hardly surprising as
every team fielded nine players at a time, and there were so many teams
that they were divided into Central and Pacific leagues, and the history of
the game in Japan spanned more than fifty years. I knew that Enatsu had
been a great star, but there were others—Sawamura, Kaneda, Egawa—each
of whom had his own fans. So, even with this big stack in front of us, it was
unlikely we'd find the one card we wanted. I found myself lowering my
expectations, hoping that the effort would at least satisfy Root. After all, I
had a perfectly good present hidden in the back of the closet. They weren't