The Briefcase by Hiromi Kawakami Read Free Book Online Page A

or mud, and Satoru had torn the large ones into pieces, leaving the smaller ones as they were, before briefly sautéing them in a small frying pan they had also brought along. Then he put the sautéed mushrooms into the pot of already boiling water, stirred in some miso, and let it all simmer for a little while.
    “I studied up a bit last night for our trip,” Sensei said, as he blew on the soup, cupping in both hands the alumite bowl that reminded me of old-fashioned cafeteria ware.
    “You studied up? Isn’t that just like a teacher!” Toru responded, heartily slurping his soup.
    “There are many more kinds of poisonous mushrooms than I realized,” Sensei said, snaring a piece of mushroom with his chopsticks and popping it in his mouth.
    “Hmmm, well . . . ,” Satoru murmured. Having already drained his first bowl, he was just that moment ladling out a second serving.
    “The really poisonous ones, you shouldn’t even think about putting them near your mouth.”
    “Sensei, please stop! At least while we’re eating,” I pleaded, but he paid no attention to me. As usual.
    “But the trouble is, it seems the kaki-shimeji mushroom looks exactly like the matsutake , and the tsukiyotake mushroom is indistinguishable from the shiitake , and so on.”

    Sensei’s gravely serious tone caused Satoru and Toru to burst in laughter.
    “Sensei, we’ve been collecting mushrooms for more than ten years now, and we’ve never once seen such strange mushrooms as that.”
    I now returned my chopsticks, which had been suspended in the air, to my alumite soup bowl. Unsure of whether or not Satoru and Toru had taken notice of my hesitation, I cast a furtive upward glance in their direction, but neither of them seemed to be paying any attention to me.
    Satoru and Toru were both mesmerized by Sensei, who had just uttered the statement, “Actually, the woman who used to be my wife once ate a Big Laughing Gym mushroom.”
    “What do you mean, ‘the woman who used to be my wife’?”
    “I mean my wife who ran off about fifteen years ago,” he said, his voice as serious as ever.
    Huh? I gave out a little cry. I had assumed that Sensei’s wife had died. I expected Satoru and Toru to be just as surprised, but they both seemed unfazed. As he sipped the rest of his mushroom soup, Sensei told us the following story:
    My wife and I often went hiking. We usually hiked smaller mountains, places that were about an hour’s train ride away. Early Sunday mornings, we’d take along a lunch my wife had packed for us and board the train, still empty at that hour. My wife had a book she loved called Suburban Pleasure Hiking . On its cover, there was a photo of a woman climbing a mountain with a walking stick, wearing leather hiking boots, knickerbockers, and a hat with a feather tucked into it. My wife had re-created this exact outfit—down to the walking stick—and she would wear it on our hiking trips. This is just ordinary hiking, I would say to her, You don’t need to be so formal about it. But she would reply, impervious to me, It’s
important to dress the part. She wouldn’t break character, even on a trail where people were walking around in flip-flops. She was a very hardheaded person.
    This must have been when our son was in elementary school. The three of us were on one of our usual hiking trips. It was exactly the same time of year as now. It had been raining, and the mountain’s fall foliage was beautiful, although many of the brilliantly colored leaves had been scattered by the rain. I was wearing sneakers and had fallen down a couple of times when they got stuck in the mud. My wife had no trouble walking in her hiking boots. But whenever I fell, she refrained from making any sort of sarcastic remark. She may have been stubborn, but she did not go in for cattiness.
    After walking for a while, we took a break and each had two honeyed lemon slices. I’m not particularly fond of sour sweets, but my wife insisted that honeyed