The Kimono

originally published in The Gateway Review

Claire couldn’t believe her luck.  The vintage kimono was just the thing:  the rich plum silk cascaded in supple folds to a shrine pictured in autumn.  Gold, bronze and copper threads shimmered from the torii and pagoda, and from a wind-swept swirl of colorful leaves blown across the purple sky.  

The old man had fixed his gaze on her even before she’d entered the temple sale.  His stall stood just inside the wooden gate, facing it.  He waited while she paid her five hundred yen and walked in.  As she approached the table, he’d drawn it from the pile, shaken it out, swung it around and spread it over his wares, all in one fluid motion.  He stood silent and unsmiling, his eyes small and bright in his wrinkled face.  The kimono was stunning, and the colors would look good on her.  “How much?” she asked, feeling the Japanese roll off of her tongue more easily than expected.  When he told her, she was stunned.  The kimono was a steal.  Even on an intern’s salary, she was almost ashamed to pay so little.

She bought it, along with the obi that he suggested.  She didn’t even bother with the other stalls; she was anxious to show the kimono to the neighbor who had told her about temple sales with their offerings of trash and treasure.  She hurried down the busy street to the train station, the heavy kimono and obi folded carefully into her large canvas shopping bag.  The sun shone bright above her.  It was still warm in the afternoons, she thought, but the humidity had broken.  Autumn was in the air.  By the evening of the reception, it would be cool enough to wear the kimono comfortably.

In the train, a tiny, old grandmother stared astonished at Claire from the seat across from hers.  After six weeks in Osaka, she was used to curious glances, but people usually looked away quickly, too shy and too polite to make eye contact.  The old woman was still staring at her when Claire watched the train pull away from the platform at her stop.  She climbed the stairs up to the street level.  A breath of cool air met her at the top.  

Claire heard the afternoon gong from a neighboring shrine:  five o’clock.  It echoed in the stillness left in the wake of the cicada’s summer buzz.  Every day the gong sounded once in the morning, and once in the evening, anchoring the life of the people in centuries-old shrine observances.  Heavy with the fragrance of incense and pyrethrum, the breeze trailed over the damp flesh of her neck and shoulders.  

Despite her impatience to show off the kimono, she slowed to take in the look and feel of the residential neighborhood she called home.  It wasn’t really pretty as a whole, but it was picturesque.  The streets were narrow, crooked and choked with queer little houses of every description, fit together like jigsaw puzzle pieces on their tiny patches of land.  Picturesque and pristine:  nothing was out of place.  Everything was swept, rinsed and tidily stowed in little nooks and crannies.  Here and there, bright flowers in window boxes, and lovingly pruned miniature trees created oases of loveliness for the eye.

Claire turned the final blind crook in the road, which ended in a tiny cul-de-sac.  Her own small apartment block nestled against the back of a tree-covered hill.  A low, wooden house stood next to her building.  She walked up to the front door and slid it to the left, peering into the dim entry.  “Gomen kudasai,” she called softly.  I’m sorry, please.  

“Dozo, Claire-chan.”  Her friend, a retired teacher, emerged to welcome her into the little house.  She was small and neat in a flowered blouse and tailored slacks.  Claire slipped off her shoes, arranged them neatly in the entrance with the toes pointing toward the front door, and stepped up into a tiny hallway.  Ii-san opened the sliding door into the sitting room, and closed it again behind them.  Claire settled herself somewhat awkwardly on the tatami mat floor; she felt so big in the room.  

“Would you like some mugicha?”  Claire nodded, intoned, yes.  “I’ll tell Obaa-chan that you have come.”  Ii-san disappeared into the house, leaving Claire alone in the room.  It was a traditional Japanese house, built of wood and paper; it smelled faintly of varnish and dried rushes.  Ii-san returned quickly, carrying a tray with three small, frosty glasses of the delicious cold grain tea that Claire liked so much. 

“Thank you for waiting,” she said.  “You weren’t at the sale very long.”  

“I found the most beautiful kimono, Ii-san.  Let me show you!”  Claire drew the kimono out of her bag and lay it on the floor between them.  Ii-san examined the fabric, nodding appreciatively.  The door from the hall slid open.  Ii-san’s mother, bent nearly double, shuffled into the room, closing the door carefully behind her.  Ii-san positioned a little stool for her; she was too old to get up from the floor.

But Obaa-chan didn’t sit down.  She began speaking rapidly to her daughter, pointing to the kimono.  Claire couldn’t understand what she was saying.  Ii-san turned to her, slightly embarrassed.  “Obaa-chan wants me to tell you not to wear that kimono, but she won’t say why.”  The old woman continued a stream of agitated Japanese.  “It’s lovely, Claire, but I think you’d better take it away.  She’s very upset,” Ii-san frowned, perplexed.  

Claire left the little house and walked to her apartment building.  She climbed the stairs to her third floor flat at the back.  It was a nice apartment, just enough room for one.  Her bedroom was immediately at right on entering, but she wasn’t sleeping there, now.  Instead, she slept in the tatami room at the back, which gave onto the balcony.  With the slider opened all the way and a breeze from the hillside blowing into the apartment, Claire didn’t need the air conditioning any more.  She liked waking to the view of the trees towering over the building, anyway.  It was like living at the edge of a forest.    

She set the canvas bag down on one of the chairs at her table, and went into the kitchen.  The rice cooker was programmed to start automatically, but she was home early.  The rice wasn’t quite ready.  She leaned down to retrieve a bottle of grain tea from the refrigerator.  It wasn’t as good as Ii-san’s tea, brewed daily, but it was all right.  She drank her tea while rummaging through the leftovers in her fridge, settling on some cold chicken, and the remains of a fantastic salad she’d made the night before.  

She was just sitting down to eat it when the rice pot played the happy little tune that meant the rice was done.  She surveyed the small apartment with pleasure.  The main room also opened onto the balcony.  It was hard to believe that her little out-of-the-way cul-de-sac was anywhere near the enormous urban sprawl of Osaka.  She had the curious sensation of stepping out of time whenever she came home – out of modern, urban Japan, and into its traditional past.  Her carefully selected second-hand furniture and Ii-san’s charming little house added to the feeling.

After she’d cleared away the dinner dishes, Claire threaded the sleeves of the kimono onto a heavy wooden hanger she’d also bought from the old man.  She was able to hang it from a notch in the frame of the sliding door in the tatami room.  She studied for her Japanese lesson, then put out the light, and lay on her futon looking at the moonlight filtering through the trees.

The wind blew under the moon, through the trees, and into Claire’s apartment, but she was sleeping.  Filled with air, the kimono looked like a woman standing in a dark corner of the room, her head shrouded in shadow.  It stirred slightly at first, but the wind was rising.  At the border of wood and sky the wind was like the sea washing up on the shore, pushing the hissing foliage back then retreating before it.  The kimono danced on the breeze, bowing and swaying, Claire silent and still below it in a strange tableau.  The wind swelled.  The arms of the kimono reached toward the center of the room; the broad skirt billowed out onto the air.  One final gust freed it from the hanger, and it hovered, suspended over the room for a moment before collapsing into the darkness below.

Claire woke to the morning gong.  She had been dreaming about wearing the kimono, her rich auburn hair wrapped smoothly around her head and accented with an ornament at the back.  She sat up sleepily, stretched and saw that the kimono had fallen during the night.  It lay spread across her body like a sheet.  She admired the beautiful design as she gathered the fabric and put it back in the corner, on the hanger.

#

The day of the reception arrived.  In the afternoon, Claire went to a hairdresser accustomed to working with foreign clients.  He was able to create the hairstyle she described – the hairstyle from her dream.  He adeptly inserted the hair ornament that Claire had found; she was pleased with the effect.  

Claire knew that the partner visiting from Tokyo would be inclined to take the young men in the office more seriously than a woman.  Scattered remarks the office ladies had made, and the elaborate details of the reception told her that he was very traditional.  She had resolutely improved the basic Japanese she had learned at school, making rapid progress.  She was sharper than those guys in identical dark suits and boring ties; she had one chance to get the man’s attention and prove it to him.  

How could she turn his traditionalism to her advantage?  She couldn’t risk being identified with the office ladies – tea serving clerks – who would be dressed in smart pastel suits.  Claire was the only other woman in the office, and she wanted a permanent professional position.  She had to stand apart from the young men, as well as the support staff.  That’s how she’d thought of the kimono.  It was a bit of a gamble, but it just might work.  If she played it safe, she could say goodbye to her lovely little cul-de-sac flat, and to Ii-san, and Japan.

At a quarter to four, Ii-san slipped into the entry of the apartment.  “Gomen kudasai,” she called, softly.  

“Dozo,”  Claire answered.  Ii-san had come to help Claire tie the obi.  She started, surprised, when she saw Claire dressed in the kimono, the right side of the robe wrapped around the left.  

“Claire-chan,” Ii-san said gently, “this way of wearing is only for the dead.”

“Oh!”  Claire blanched.  “What’s wrong with it?”

“You must fold the kimono the other way.”  Ii-san helped Claire to wrap the kimono left over right, insuring that the neck created by it was straight and then securing it with a thin strip of cloth.  She took a plain obi of her own out of a bag, and tried a series of obi styles on Claire:  bows, fans and a little rounded box at the back.  When they had decided on just the right one, Ii-san tied Claire’s beautiful gold brocade obi around her waist.  Claire turned before the full-length mirror in her bedroom.  

“Thank you, Ii-san,” she beamed. 

They left the apartment together.  Ii-san took a picture of Claire in front of her little house, and Claire shuffled carefully toward the train station in her gold zoris.  Her progress was slowed by the unaccustomed bulk of her clothing, but she had left early, calculating every detail meticulously.  The gong sounded; a flurry of leaves blew against her skirt.  She carefully negotiated the stairs and the ticket gate in the station.  There was no risk of treading on the kimono; Ii-san had folded it so that the skirt was just the right length, but she didn’t want to catch the fabric on anything.  

At last she stood on the platform.  There was no one else in the station.  Just past five on a Saturday afternoon – perhaps a little early for nightlife.  A cool wind blew from the curving tunnel; the train was coming.  The loose corner of the kimono flapped against Claire’s legs.  She checked her hair reflexively; it held.  The train rattled into view.  It was an older train, not at all like the ones she usually took.  The train came to a full stop, but the doors did not open.  Claire saw her faint image in the glass, insubstantial in the imperfect reflection.  There was a handle to the left of the window; she gripped it and scraped the door open far enough to pass through.  There was no one else in the car.  She sat down gingerly on the lime velveteen, and didn’t lean back.  She didn’t want to crush the beautiful obi, tied expertly by Ii-san.  

There were no monitors above the doors, showing progress on the route, the display alternating between English and Japanese.  And no verbal announcements, she noticed, as the train trundled out of the station.  There was a printed route map, but she didn’t know all of the kanji for the stations.  It would be so easy to lose track.  She would have to pay careful attention or miss her stop; fortunately she knew this train line well.  

Or did she?  The first few stops were right, but when the train came out from under the ground, she was surprised to find herself in an area that she didn’t recognize at all.  It seemed the train had taken a spur out of city center, and was heading into a lovely, old fashioned quarter, still forested and interrupted only now and again by wooden buildings.  There were no gleaming steel and concrete high-rises here.  She’d have to get out at the first station, and catch a train heading back into the commercial district.  She had factored in extra time for mistakes, but she’d have to hurry.

The train didn’t stop for a long time.  At last it slowed, allowing Claire to glimpse a beautiful old pagoda as it pulled into the station.  She looked through the platform to the shrine outside, then glanced at her watch:  five o’clock.  She had plenty of time!  Music drifted by at the edge of her hearing.  There must be some special festival, she thought; the few people in the station, and walking toward the shrine, were all dressed in traditional clothing.  She had no idea where she was.  She would have to find the station master’s office and ask for information.  She stood, attentive to the kimono, stepped across the car and pulled the door clear, then shuffled out through the door and onto the wooden platform.  The door rasped shut behind her.  The train pulled out of the little station, rattling along the track toward a destination she couldn’t even guess.  

Claire was just entering the torii to the shrine when the train reached its terminus.  The old man stood on the platform waiting, his eyes small and bright in his wrinkled face.  He opened the door, got on the train and crossed to the seat that Claire had recently vacated.  He leaned over to pick up a neatly folded parcel left there on the seat.  He sat silent and unsmiling as the train began its return to the busy city, the plum silk kimono settled carefully on his lap.