The Briefcase. Hiromi Kawakami

“Are you hungry?”

      “Well, actually, I’m a little out of breath,” I replied.

      Sensei smiled and said, “Well, if you hadn’t said such a strange thing.”

      “I didn’t say anything strange. Sensei, you’re very well dressed.”

      Without replying, Sensei went into the boxed-lunch shop in front of us.

      “One kimchi pork special,” Sensei said to the girl at the counter. He prompted me with his eyes, “And for you?” There were too many things to choose from on the menu—it was bewildering. Bibimbap with egg appealed to me at first, but I decided I didn’t want a fried egg, which was the only option. After a moment’s hesitation, I became paralyzed by the sheer number of choices.

      “I’ll have the kimchi pork too.” Lost in uncertainty, in the end I chose the same thing Sensei had ordered. He and I sat side by side on a bench in a corner of the shop while we waited for our lunches to be prepared.

      “Sensei, you seem familiar with the menu here,” I said.

      He nodded. “I live alone, you know. Do you cook, Tsukiko?”

      “I cook when I’m seeing someone,” I answered.

      Sensei nodded again seriously. “That makes sense. I think it would be good for me to see one or two people.”

      “Two might be difficult.”

      “Two would be the limit, I suppose.”

      During this absurd chat, our lunches had been prepared. The girl put the two boxes, which were different sizes, into a plastic bag with handles. “Why are the boxes different sizes if we ordered the same thing?” I whispered to Sensei.

      “But you ordered the regular, not the special, didn’t you?” Sensei replied in a low voice. When we went back outside, the wind had picked up a bit. Sensei carried the plastic bag with the boxed lunches in his right hand, and in his left hand he held his panama hat.

      STALLS STARTED TO appear here and there on the street.There were stalls that only sold tabi boots. Stalls that sold collapsible umbrellas. Stalls for secondhand clothing. Stalls that sold used books mixed with new books. Soon, both sides of the street became tightly packed with stalls.

      “You know, forty years ago, all of this was completely destroyed by heavy flooding from a typhoon.”

      “Forty years ago?”

      “Many people died too.”

      Sensei went on explaining: “The market has been here for a long time. The year after the flood, there were many fewer stalls, but the following year, a full-scale market picked up again on each of the three monthly market days. The market flourished, and now almost all the stalls that used to run from the Teramachi bus stop all the way to the Kawasuji-nishi stop have come back, even on days other than those ending in eight.

      “Come on over here,” Sensei said, stepping into a small park set away from the street. The park was deserted. Out on the street it teemed with people, but one step inside the park, here was a silent refuge. Sensei bought two cans of genmaicha tea from a machine at the entrance to the park.

      We sat next to each other on a bench and took the lids off our lunches. The air immediately filled with the aroma of kimchi.

      “Sensei, yours is the special, right?”

      “That’s what they call it.”

      “How is it different from the regular?”

      We both bent our heads to examine the two boxed lunches.

      “There doesn’t seem to be much difference at all,” Sensei said amiably.

      I drank the genmaicha slowly. Although there was a breeze, the hot summer day had me craving a drink. The cool tea quenched my thirst as I sipped it.

      “The way you’re eating that looks delicious,” Sensei said with a hint of envy as he watched me drizzle the leftover kimchi sauce over my rice. He had already finished eating.

      “Excuse my poor manners.”

      “It may well be bad manners, but it still looks delicious,” Sensei said, as he put the lid back on his empty boxed lunch and replaced the rubber band around it. The park was planted with alternating elm and cherry trees. The park must have been there a long time, because the trees had grown sturdy and tall.

      After we passed a corner stall selling odds and ends, more and more of the stalls had grocery items for sale. Stalls selling only beans. Stalls with all different kinds of shellfish. There was a stall that had crates full of little shrimp or crabs. There was a banana stall. Sensei stopped to look at each one. He stood with perfect posture, peering at them from a slight distance.

      “Tsukiko, that fish looks fresh.”

      “There are flies swarming on it.”

      “That’s what flies do.”

      “Sensei, what about that chicken over there?”

      “It’s a whole chicken, though. It’s too much trouble to pluck the feathers.”

      We browsed past the stalls, chatting at random. The stalls became even more densely packed. They were tight up against each other, and the voices of the vendors hawking their goods also vied with one another.

      “Mom . . . These carrots look yummy,” a child said to his mother, who was carrying a shopping basket.

      “I thought you hated carrots,” the mother said with surprise.

      “But these carrots look especially good,” the child said brightly.

      The proprietor of the stall raised his voice: “What a smart boy! That’s right, my vegetables are the best!”

      “Those carrots do look good, don’t they?” Sensei said as he studied them earnestly.

      “They look like any other carrots to me.”

      “Hmm.”

      Sensei’s panama hat was slightly askew. We walked, carried along by the throngs of people. From time to time, I would lose sight of Sensei amid the crowd. But at least I could rely on always being able to spot the top of his panama hat, so he was easy to find. For his part, Sensei seemed unconcerned about me. Much in the way a dog stops to sniff at every telephone pole, Sensei would simply stop and stare whenever a stall caught his interest.

      The mother and child we had seen earlier were now in front of a mushroom stall. Sensei stood right behind them.

      “Mom, these kinugasa mushrooms look yummy.”

      “I thought you hated kinugasa mushrooms.”

      “But these kinugasa mushrooms look especially good.” They went through exactly the same exchange.

      “They must be decoy plants,” Sensei said gleefully.

      “That’s pretty ingenious, to use a mother-and-child setup.”

      “But ‘kinugasa mushrooms,’ that was over-the-top.”

      “Yes.”

      “They should have used maitake mushrooms instead.”

      The grocery stalls thinned and gave way to stalls selling larger items. Household appliances. Computers. Telephones. There were mini refrigerators lined up in different colors. An LP was playing on an old record player. I could hear the low timbre of a violin. The music had an old-fashioned, simple charm. Sensei stood, listening intently, until the end of the piece.

      IT WAS STILL only mid-afternoon, yet there were already almost imperceptible signs of the approaching evening. The hottest part of the day had just passed.

      “Are you thirsty?” Sensei asked.

      “Yes, but if we’re going