Goodbye Tsugumi

Banana Yoshimoto, Michael Emmerich

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780802139917
• eBook ISBN: 9780802190451
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

In this "witty, perceptive novel", a young woman moves to Tokyo and encounters the world of university enrollment and impending adulthood ( Elle).
 
Banana Yoshimoto's novels of young life in Japan have made her an international sensation.  Goodbye Tsugumi is an offbeat story of a deep and complicated friendship between two female cousins that ranks among her best work. Maria is the only daughter of an unmarried woman. She has grown up at the seaside alongside her cousin Tsugumi, a lifelong invalid, charismatic, spoiled, and occasionally cruel. Now Maria's father is finally able to bring Maria and her mother to Tokyo, ushering Maria into a world of university, impending adulthood, and a "normal" family. When Tsugumi invites Maria to spend a last summer by the sea, a restful idyll becomes a time of dramatic growth as Tsugumi finds love and Maria learns the true meaning of home and family. She also has to confront both Tsugumi's inner strength and the real possibility of losing her.  Goodbye Tsugumi is a beguiling, resonant novel from one of the world's finest young writers.

Of the Night

Every so often I’ll have one of these really bizarre nights.

Nights when space itself seems to have shifted a little out of line, and I feel as if I’m on the verge of seeing everything all at once. I lie there in my futon, unable to fall asleep, listening to that clock up there on the wall, and the ticking of the second hand and the rays of moonlight that stream across the ceiling dominate the night, just like they did when I was a little girl. This night will go on forever. And yet it seems that back then nights used to be even longer than this—ever so much longer. I catch a faint whiff of some unknown scent. Perhaps it’s the scent of saying goodbye, so faint it seems slightly sweet.

There was a night like this years ago that I’ll never forget.

I was in one of the upper grades of elementary school. Tsugumi and Yōko and I had gotten completely caught up in some program on TV. We were so passionate about it that it was as if we had all come down with some kind of fever. It was about this girl who went around having all kinds of adventures as she searched for her little sister. Tsugumi didn’t usually fall for overblown gags like that, but this time even she kept coming week after week to watch it with Yōko and me, never missing an episode. It’s odd, but my impressions of the program itself have faded, become lost in a shroud of mist, and all that comes back to me is the feeling of what it was like to watch it—an excited memory of the thrill we felt. The lighting in the TV room, the flavor of the Calpis drink we always had when we watched this show, the vaguely warm breeze that blew out from the fan—all this comes together again inside me just the way it was, vividly real. Watching this show was one of the high points in our week. And then one night we found ourselves confronted with the fact that we had just finished watching the end of the last episode in the series.

At dinner we were all very quiet.

Aunt Masako chuckled. “Oh, I see! That program you all like so much finished tonight. That’s it, isn’t it?” she said.

Tsugumi, who had been going through her rebellious teens ever since she was born, growled back, “Keep your mouth shut unless you’ve got something worth saying!”

Yōko and I were feeling pretty down too, and though neither of us was in any sort of rebellious period, for once we kind of felt that Tsugumi’s response had hit the mark. I guess this shows how much we loved the program.

That night, having wriggled down into my futon all alone, I found myself in the grips of a wrenching sadness. I was only a child, but I knew the feeling that came when you parted with something, and I felt that pain. I lay gazing up at the ceiling, feeling the sleek stiffness of the well-starched sheets against my skin. My distress was a seed that would grow into an understanding of what it means to say goodbye. In contrast to the heavy ache I would come to know later on in life, this was tiny and fresh—a green bud of pain with a bright halo of light rimming its edges. Unable to sleep, I got up and wandered out into the hall. It was pitch black, and the clock on the wall was tick-tick-ticking with the same loud noise as always. The white of the paper that covered the sliding doors seemed to hover there in the dark, vague and dim, and I felt terribly small. I kept remembering scenes from the show—after all, it had been the center of my life for quite a while now; I’d been so absorbed in it that I’d totally forgotten everything else. The night was still enough that I didn’t want to go back into my room, and I inched my way down the stairs, one barefoot step at a time. I wanted to breathe some fresh air, so I went out into the garden. It was flooded with moonlight, and the hulking silhouettes of the trees stood there quietly, holding their breath.

“Hey, Maria!” Yōko called out suddenly, but somehow I didn’t feel a bit surprised. She was standing there in the garden, dressed in her pajamas. “You couldn’t sleep either?” she whispered. The faint glow of the moon lit her face.

“Nope,” I said, keeping my voice down too.

“Same for both of us,” Yōko said. Her long hair was braided, and she was bent over, running her fingers along the spiraling vine of a morning glory.

“Want to go for a walk?” I asked her. “Though I guess we would get yelled at if anyone found out. Were you very quiet when you came out?”

“Yeah, I was. You don’t have to worry about that.”

The gate whined quietly as we pushed it open. Suddenly the aroma of the tide drifting through the darkness seemed to grow stronger.

“Finally we don’t have to be quiet anymore.”

“Yeah. It feels great out tonight, doesn’t it?”

Yōko was in pajamas, I was in a thin cotton kimono. I had on my sandals and I wasn’t wearing any socks, but I kept walking on toward the ocean anyway, just as I was. The moon had climbed up high overhead. A line of fishing boats stood along the edge of the road that led up to the peak of the mountain, all of them sunk in such a profound sleep that you would think they were just rotting away. This wasn’t the town we knew. It felt as if we had arrived someplace unrecognizable, fantastically distant from everyday life.

All of a sudden, Yōko spoke. “Who would ever have guessed that I would find my sister here, of all places!” she cried.

At first I thought she was just taking on the role of the main character in the TV show again, but after a moment I realized that it was real. Tsugumi was crouched down all alone at the very end of the path that led to the beach, gazing out over the ocean.

“You dimwits came too?” Tsugumi said, her tone quieter than ever. The way she spoke, it sounded as if she found it perfectly natural that we were there, almost as if we had arranged to meet in advance. She briskly rose to her feet and stood there, a wall of darkness at her back.

“Tsugumi, you’re barefoot!” cried Yōko.

Yōko stripped off her socks and gave them to Tsugumi. Tsugumi fooled around for a while, putting them on her hands and saying, “Hmm, is this right?” and stuff like that, but when we totally ignored her she slipped her shockingly bony feet into them and started walking.

Through rays of moonlight.

“Maybe walk around the harbor once and head home?” said Yōko.

“Sure. We can get some sodas before turning back,” I agreed.

But Tsugumi disagreed. “Suit yourself. I’ve got other plans.”

“Why? What are you going to do?” I asked.

She replied clearly, not looking at me. “I’m going to walk.”

“Walk where? How far?”

“As far as the next beach, right across the mountain.”

“Doesn’t that sound kind of dangerous?” said Yōko. Then, “Though to tell the truth, I wouldn’t mind giving it a try myself.”

There was no one else on the road that climbed the mountain, and it was as black as a cave. The high bluff that bordered the road cut off the moonlight, plunging us into shadow, and we had a hard time just making out the ground beneath our feet. Yōko and I held hands and walked on carefully through this blind world, as if groping our way through the dark. Tsugumi strode rapidly on by herself, a little bit off to the side, keeping in line with the two of us. Her footsteps were so steady and sure that I remember looking at her and finding it hard to believe she was actually walking in the dark like us. The darkness was frightening.

We had come out on this walk as a way to deal with our sadness, to mourn the end of our favorite TV program. But we had totally forgotten that now, and as we trekked over the peak of the mountain, deep in the heart of night, surrounded by the wind shaking through clusters of trees, we felt a sort of eager excitement. As we made our way farther and farther down the slope of the mountain, the neighboring town, a small fishing village, appeared before us under the dark cover of midnight. Before long the beach came into view.

The rocky shore was lined with little stands and shops that only stayed open for the summer. They were all boarded up, with an aura of emptiness about them that made you think of ghosts. Way out in the water the flags on the buoys were swaying vigorously back and forth, in time with the roar of the waves. The slight nip in the wind cooled our burning cheeks. We all bought sodas. The clunking of the vending machine in the night seemed to send a shiver of surprise across the entire pitch-black expanse of the beach. The dark ocean undulated before us, blank and vague. Way off in the distance, the lights of our town glittered faintly, like a mirage.

“It’s like the afterlife or something, huh?” Tsugumi said.

Yōko and I nodded, murmuring our agreement.

A little later we started back along the same mountain road we’d come by, and arrived back at the Yamamoto Inn completely worn out. We wished each other a good night and then slipped off to our own rooms and slept so soundly that we might as well have been dead.

The hardest part came the next morning. At breakfast Yōko and I were so exhausted that we couldn’t even make conversation. The two of us just sat there in silence, rubbing our tired eyes, chewing our food. Compared to the way we’d been the previous night, alive with that strange energy, we might as well have been different people altogether. Tsugumi didn’t even get up.

There’s something else I know about that night.

Tsugumi had picked up a white stone while we were out on the beach and taken it with her, and even now it was sitting there in one of the corners of her bookshelf. I really have no idea what Tsugumi was feeling that night. I don’t know what sort of emotions that rock held for her. Maybe it wasn’t anything special at all, maybe she just scooped it up on a whim. And yet whenever I find myself starting to forget that Tsugumi belongs to life, I always think of that stone, of her feeling such an overwhelming urge to walk that she went outside without even putting on her sandals, and every time I remember these things I start to feel sort of sad, and my mind gets very sharp and clear, and I think things through in a very levelheaded way.

For some reason I was thinking about all this again. Glancing over at the clock, I saw that it was nearly two. The thoughts people have when they can’t get to sleep are generally a little weird. Your mind rambles through the dark, tossing up one dreamy conclusion after another, each one as tender as a bubble. All of a sudden I realized that sometime after that night, at some unknowable point along the way, I had grown up. I wasn’t living here in this town now, not anymore, I was attending a university in Tokyo. It all seemed so bizarre. My hands lay stretched out in the darkness, and somehow they didn’t seem to belong to me.

Suddenly the door to my room slid open.

“Hey, get up!” barked Tsugumi.

She had given me a terrible start, and my pounding heart refused to quiet. It took a few moments before I finally managed to speak.

“What do you want?”

Tsugumi sashayed into my room as boldly as if it were hers, and crouched down by my pillow. “I can’t sleep.”

I was staying in the room right next to Tsugumi’s, so I should probably just have considered myself lucky that this kind of thing hadn’t happened before. I squirmed about in my futon for a bit and sat up.

“Yeah, well is that my fault?” I said testily.

“Oh, don’t be so grumpy. Think of it as some kind of karma and help me think up something fun to do. C’mon, be a pal!” Tsugumi grinned.

It’s only at times like this that Tsugumi assumes this docile attitude, letting you feel as if you’re in control. All at once I found myself remembering the numerous occasions when she had barged in and woken me up with a whack, and how she used to stomp on my hands or feet when I was sleeping, and how she would go in and sneak the dictionary out of my desk while I was in gym class simply because she didn’t feel like bringing her own to school—she claimed it was too heavy! One little dictionary!—and all sorts of other pranks like that. Suddenly I was in the midst of a flashback, a familiar sense of irritation at the unreasonableness of it all, and what I remembered gave me a shock. How on earth could I have forgotten? My relationship with Tsugumi was certainly no endless party.

“Listen, Tsugumi, I’m tired,” I said. I wanted to try putting up a little bit of resistance, just a little, the way I had in the old days. But at moments like this Tsugumi never listened to a word anyone said.

“Hey, it’s the same, isn’t it?” Tsugumi asked, her eyes glittering.

“The same as what?”

“Man, you know what I’m talking about! That night when the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise for Goodbye Tsugumi
• Half Title
• Also by Banana Yoshimoto
• Title
• Copyright
• The Haunted Mailbox
• Spring and the Yamamoto Sisters
• Life
• Outsiders
• Of the Night
• Confession
• Swimming with My Father
• Festival
• Rage
• The Hole
• Presence
• A Letter from Tsugumi