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A Novel
by Yoko Ogawa
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1
The first vehicle I ever rode in was a baby carriage that had been brought across the sea, all the way from Germany. It was fitted out in brass and draped all around with bunting. The body of the carriage was elegantly designed, and the interior was lined with handmade lace, soft as eiderdown.
The metal handle, the frame for the sunshade, and even the spokes of the wheels all glittered brilliantly. The pillow was embroidered in pale pink with the characters for my name: Tomoko.
The carriage was a gift from my mother's sister. My aunt's husband had succeeded his father as the president of a beverage company, and his mother was German. None of our other relatives had any overseas connections or had even so much as flown in an airplane, so when my aunt's name came up in any context, she was always referred to as "the one who had married a foreigner"—as if the epithet were actually part of her name.
In those days, my parents and I were living in a rented house on the outskirts of Okayama City, and the carriage was more than likely the most valuable object among our possessions. A photograph from the period shows how out of place it looked in front of the old wooden house. It was far too large for the tiny garden, and it was far more eye-catching than the baby herself, presumably the subject of the picture. I'm told that when my mother pushed the carriage in the neighborhood, passersby turned to look at it. If they were acquaintances, they'd invariably come up to touch it, commenting ecstatically on how beautiful it was before moving on, without any mention of the baby inside.
Unfortunately, I have no memory of riding in the carriage. By the time I became aware of what was happening around me, that is, by the time I'd grown too big to ride in the carriage myself, it had already been relegated to the storage shed. Still, though the lace had yellowed a bit and was spotted with milk I had spit up on it, the carriage had lost none of its former elegance. Even surrounded by kerosene jugs and tattered blinds, it still gave off the aroma of foreign places.
Breathing in that smell, I'd let my imagination stray in my childhood. I'd daydream that I was, in reality, a princess from a distant land, abducted by a treacherous servant who had subsequently abandoned me, along with the carriage, deep in a forest. If you unstitched the embroidered Tomoko on the cushion, you would no doubt find some trace of my real name—Elizabeth, or perhaps Angela ... The carriage always played a starring role whenever I invented these sorts of stories.
* * *
The next vehicle that transported me was my father's bicycle. Jet black and featureless, it emitted a sad squeaking sound. It was, admittedly, quite plain in comparison with the German carriage. Each morning, my father would tie his briefcase to the rack and ride off to his office. On holidays, he would set me on the rack and ride to the park.
I can still recall the sensations associated with this bicycle. The strong hands that lifted me so easily, the smell of tobacco coming from the broad back, the breeze from the spinning tires.
"Hold on tight! Don't let go!"
My father would turn to make sure that I was gripping his sweater, and then he would start pedaling. The bicycle flew along, easily negotiating steep slopes and sharp turns, and I held tight to his back, convinced that simply by doing so I could be taken anywhere in the world.
Though I was true to my word and never let go of him, he left me without warning, going alone to a distant place. Stomach cancer, discovered too late. In 1966, soon after I'd started elementary school.
* * *
On the fifteenth of March, 1972, the day I graduated from that school, the Sanyo Shinkansen link between Osaka and Okayama was inaugurated. The next day, at the age of twelve, I boarded the train alone, seen off by my mother from the Okayama Station, which was still decorated for the opening ceremony.
Excerpted from Mina's Matchbox by Yoko Ogawa. Reprinted by permission of Pantheon Books, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2024 by Yoko Ogawa.
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