The Briefcase. Hiromi Kawakami

issue is so murky in my own mind that I myself am not at all certain whether I love or hate the Giants.

      Sensei lingered over his bottle of saké. Whenever the Giants’pitcher struck out a batter, or a Giants player got a hit, he nodded vigorously.

      “What’s the matter, Tsukiko?” Sensei asked me after a home run at the top of the seventh inning gave the Giants a three-point lead over the Tigers.

      “I’m just tapping my foot.”

      I had been nervously shaking my foot since the Giants had gained their lead.

      “The nights are getting cold,” I said, apropos of nothing and not even in Sensei’s direction, but more toward the ceiling. At that moment, the player for the Giants got another hit. Sensei cried out “Oh!” just as I muttered “Shit!” without meaning to. This run gave them a secure four-run lead, and the bar exploded with excitement. Why were Giants fans so ubiquitous? It really was annoying.

      “Tsukiko, do you hate the Giants?” Sensei asked me at the bottom of the ninth, when the Tigers were down to their last out. I nodded, not saying a word. The bar had calmed down. Almost everyone there was listening closely to the broadcast. I had a disquieting feeling. It had been a long time since I had listened to a baseball game on the radio, and my Giants-hating blood was boiling over. I now knew for sure that it was, in fact, straightforward hatred as opposed to some kind of perverse affectation.

      “I can’t stand them,” I said in a low voice.

      Sensei’s eyes opened wide. “How can you be Japanese and hate the Giants?!” he murmured.

      “What kind of prejudice is that?” I asked, just as the Tigers’ last batter struck out. Sensei stood up from his chair and raised his glass high. Over the radio, they announced the end of the game, and the bar started bustling again. Suddenly, orders for drinks and food came from every direction, the owner replying to each one with a gruff acknowledgment.

      “They won, Tsukiko!” Sensei beamed and moved to fill my cup with saké from his own bottle, which was rather unusual. We had established a practice of never encroaching on each other’s food or drink. We ordered on our own. We poured for ourselves. And we paid separately. We had been doing it this way all this time. But here was Sensei coming over to pour me his saké, to break our tacit agreement. And it was all because the Giants had won. It was far too soon for me to have Sensei so capriciously endanger the comfortable distance that existed between us. Those fucking Giants.

      “So what?” I said very quietly as I tried to move my cup away from Sensei.

      “Nagashima’s a great manager, isn’t he?” Sensei still managed to deftly pour his saké into my fleeing cup, without spilling a drop. Quite well done.

      “Fortunately that’s fortunate,” I said, turning aside and putting down the cup of saké without drinking it.

      “Tsukiko, that’s a strange thing to say.”

      “Unfortunately that’s unfortunate.”

      “The pitcher played well, too.” Sensei was laughing.

      He’s laughing—what a jerk, I cursed to myself. Sensei had a huge grin on his face. And Sensei, who was always so calm and composed, was laughing heartily.

      “Can we stop talking about it?” I said, staring at Sensei. But he wouldn’t stop grinning. And there was something curious playing at the corners of his mouth. It was like the glimmer of delight in the eyes of a young boy as he squashes little ants.

      “No, I will not stop talking about it, most definitely not!”

      What was he saying? Sensei knew that I hated the Giants, and here he was, gloating. He was most definitely gloating.

      “The Giants, they’re all fuckers,” I said, spilling the entire cup of saké that Sensei had poured me onto an empty plate.

      “‘Fuckers’?! Such language from a young lady!” Sensei replied, having regained his perfect composure. He stood up even straighter than usual and drained his cup.

      “I am not a young lady.”

      “Pardon me.”

      Disquiet filled the air between Sensei and me. Sensei did have a point. After all, the Giants had won. Eventually, without saying a word, we each went back to pouring our own drinks. We didn’t order anything to eat, we simply kept on pouring. At the end of the night, we were both quite drunk. Maintaining our silence, we each paid our bill, left the bar, and went our respective ways home. And ever since then, we haven’t spoken.

      WHEN I THOUGHT about it, Sensei was the only person I spent any time with.

      For a while now, there hadn’t been anyone besides Sensei with whom I had sat and had a drink, or gone for a walk, or seen anything interesting.

      When I tried to think whom I spent time with before I became friendly with Sensei, no one came to mind.

      I had been alone. I rode the bus alone, I walked around the city alone, I did my shopping alone, and I drank alone. And even when I was with Sensei now, I didn’t feel any different than when I did these things on my own. It seemed, then, that it didn’t really matter whether or not I was with Sensei, but the truth was, doing these things with him made me feel proper. “Proper” is perhaps a strange way to put it. It was more like the way I felt about leaving the extra band, the obi, that sometimes came on a book jacket intact after I bought it, rather than throwing it away. Sensei would probably be angry if he knew I was comparing him to the band on a dust jacket.

      When I saw Sensei at the bar and we pretended not to know each other, it felt as distressing as if the ripped-off band and book were lying strewn about on the ground. But it would have been too wearisome to attempt to restore the level of comfort we had. No doubt Sensei felt the same way. And so we just went on ignoring each other.

      I HAD TO go to Kappabashi for work. There was a strong wind that day. I was wearing a light jacket but I was still cold. It wasn’t a plaintive autumn wind, but rather a rough wind, calling winter to mind. Kappabashi is filled with wholesale dealers of household goods and tableware. There are pots and kettles, plates and bowls, and all sorts of small kitchenware. After I finished my work errands, I walked around, window-shopping. One store had copper pots that were nested inside each other, smaller and smaller versions of the same pot piled up one on top of the next. The front of another store was decorated with huge earthenware pots. Yet another had spatulas and ladles, arranged by size. There was a cutlery store. Kitchen knives, vegetable knives, sashimi knives—all of them were displayed, without their handles, inside the glass door. There were nail clippers too, and floral shears.

      Attracted by the gleaming blades, I went into the store. In one corner was an assortment of graters. There were dozens of graters of different sizes, grouped together by the handles, with a little piece of cardboard that said GRATERS ON SALE attached to each bunch with a rubber band.

      “How much is this?” I held up a small grater and asked the sales clerk.

      “One thousand yen,” she answered. The sales clerk was wearing an apron. “Sales tax included, it’s exactly ¥1,000.” When she said, “sales tax,” it sounded like “tales sax.” I paid with a thousand-yen note and she wrapped it up for me.

      I already had a grater. Kappabashi was the kind of place where I couldn’t resist buying something every time I came. On one trip, I bought a huge iron pot. I had thought it would be useful to have when I cooked for a lot of people, but when did I ever have that many people at my apartment? And even if I did, I hadn’t considered that I wouldn’t know what to make in a big pot that I wasn’t accustomed to cooking with. And so it sat, unused, in the back of the kitchen cupboard.

      I had bought the new grater because I wanted to give it to Sensei.

      I had started to miss Sensei while looking at the brilliant knives. As I gazed at the blades, so sharp that touching them would draw blood instantly, the desire to see Sensei grew. I had no idea why the gleam of the knives elicited