“My mother isn’t a good person. She beat us. She cared more about drinking and getting money than anything else. After my brother died, if my sister and I hadn’t run away, she would have put us to work. Doing what she did. Not once did she ever say a kind thing to me,” Yumi said. She’d never told anyone this.
“Mozasu told me your sister passed away.”
Yumi nodded. After she and her sister had left home, they’d found shelter in an abandoned clothing factory. In the winter, they both got sick with a high fever, but her sister had died in her sleep. Yumi had slept beside her sister’s dead body for nearly a day, waiting to die herself.
Sunja shifted her seat and moved toward her.
“My child, you have suffered too much.”
Yumi did not deliver a girl. Her baby Solomon was an enormous boy, over nine pounds, even larger than the famous doctor had expected. The birth took over thirty hours, and the doctor had to call in a colleague to help him through the night. The baby was strong and well. In a month’s time, Yumi recovered fully and returned to work, bringing Solomon with her to the workshop. On his first birthday ceremony, Solomon clutched the crisp yen note over the ink brush, string, or cakes—signifying that he would have a rich life.
3
Yokohama, November 1968
When the floor manager came by to tell Mozasu that the police were waiting in his office to see him, he assumed that it was about the pachinko machine permits. It was that time of the year. Once he reached his office, he recognized the young men from the precinct and invited them to sit down, but they remained standing and bowed, not saying a word at first. The floor manager, who remained by the door, was unable to meet his glance; preoccupied earlier, Mozasu hadn’t noticed that the floor manager’s face was so solemn.
“Sir,” the shorter of the two officers said, “your family is in the hospital at the moment, and we’ve come to take you there. The captain would have come himself, but—”
“What?” Mozasu left his side of the desk and went to the door.
“Your wife and son were hit by a taxi this morning. A block from your son’s school. The driver was inebriated from the night before and had fallen asleep while driving.”
“Are they all right?”
“Your son broke his ankle. Otherwise, he is well.”
“And my wife?”
“She died in the ambulance before reaching the hospital.”
Mozasu ran out of the office without his coat.
The funeral was held in Osaka, and Mozasu would always be able to recall some parts of it vividly and some not at all. During the service, he had held on to Solomon’s small hand, fearing that if he let go, the boy might disappear. The three-and-a-half-year-old boy stood, leaning on his crutches, insisting on greeting each person who’d come to pay his respects to his mama. After an hour, he agreed to sit down but did not leave his father’s side. Several witnesses had recounted that Yumi had pushed her son onto the sidewalk when the taxi lost control. At the funeral, Mozasu’s childhood friend Haruki Totoyama had observed that Yumi must have had incredible hand-eye control in a moment of such intense pressure.