Mari nodded.

Mas noticed small beads of perspiration on his daughter’s nose. Whenever she was caught in a lie or a tight situation, her nose would begin to sweat.

“Well, anyway, apparently Seiko’s mother had worked as a housekeeper over in the Waxley House back in the thirties. I guess she worked under Kazzy’s mother, Emily, and even filled in when Emily was pregnant. During the war, Asa was over here, in Seabrook, so I guess he wondered if we had any information.”

“Did you?”

“Well, Seiko had showed us a journal.”

“Yes,” Mari murmured. Mas also remembered some sort of diary on display in the high-rise apartment.

“She didn’t give to us, of course, but did leave some sample pages. She wanted to know if we could translate it for her or at least find someone who could. Unfortunately, I can’t read kanji, only some katakana and hiragana, you know? My Japanese is terrible; I took Italian for my PhD. For a while I was introducing myself as Tachibana- san to visiting scholars, until I found out that no Japanese puts ‘ san ’ after their own name.”

Mas wasn’t surprised about the young man’s inability to speak Japanese. He was third-generation, after all. Even a Nisei like Tug didn’t know much. The World War II camps and racism in general had made the Japanese lose their language. Why try to retain it if it was just one more thing that the government and people would hold against them?

Mari apparently felt that way. “But we’re not Japanese. We’re American,” she said.

“That’s true.” Kevin laughed. “Maybe it was my subconscious, attempting to assert its Americanness, huh? Anyway, I couldn’t read the thing. Neither could most of the staff. But we are planning to apply for a grant to do the translation. Seiko couldn’t afford it otherwise; she’s a retired nurse and also a perfectionist. Her Japanese is limited to a few phrases she learned from her parents. Simple stuff that I also remember hearing from my grandparents. But no writing or reading of kanji. Seiko wanted it professionally done. She told us that she would keep the original for now, but that we could have access to the journal anytime we wanted.”

“Do you have the sample pages?”

“Oh, yeah, I dug them out for you. I have it in the back. Hold on a second.” He disappeared through a door to a storage area.

Meanwhile, Tug had wandered to a photo exhibit of Seabrook, and Mas joined him. One photo had a line of women, their heads covered with white caps like the ones nurses used to wear, sorting vegetables on a conveyor belt. Men and teenagers picking beans. Nisei singles dancing, twists of crepe paper overhead.

Tug pointed to a black-and-white photo of girls, both Nisei and hakujin, standing together in Girl Scout uniforms. “Kind of like a mini United Nations. Jamaicans. Hakujin escaping the Dust Bowl.”

Mas stared at an image of a line of hakujin women wearing headbands and long, flowing dresses with geometric patterns. “Theysu Americans?” Mas asked.

Tug examined the photo in front of Mas. “Oh, no. There were a lot of Estonians who were here. Their country was over by Russia. The Soviets occupied them, then the Germans, then the Soviets again. Some escaped to come here in fishing boats.”

“ Hakujin boat people?” Mas was surprised. People were running away from their troubles any way they could. It didn’t matter if you were black, Asian, Latino, or even hakujin. “Dat Anna Grady not American. Sheezu come from somewhere else.”

“Maybe she’s Estonian.”

Mas nodded, and Tug took out his notebook from his pocket and jotted some notes. Health inspector turned detective, Tug took on his new role with relish.

Kevin finally returned to the counter with some papers in hand. Tug and Mas could overhear him and Mari struggle with the Japanese.

“Let’s see, hmm, well, this is the date, right? Damn, the year’s written by era. What are they again?” asked Mari.

“Meiji, Taisho, Showa,” Kevin recited. “Showa is during Emperor Hirohito’s reign. Starts around 1926, I think.”

Mari held a page close to her face. “These are the characters for Showa. How does it work again? The year in which the era begins minus one plus the number that follows the era?”

“Confusing.”

“I know,” said Mari. “It’s just like when babies are born in Japan; they come out a year old already. We had a heck of a time figuring out what year my grandmother was born after she died.”

“Dad”-Mari finally called over Mas-“can you help us with this?”

Mas got out his reading glasses, not that eager to serve as a linguist. He looked at Tug, Mari, and then Kevin. If Mas was the most literate one of them all, they were in deep trouble.

The pages were written in a woman’s fine script. She must have had some kind of education, because the strokes from her pen were definite and crisp. Each sentence ran straight from the top to the bottom without the aid of lined paper.

“Youzu start off here,” Mas told Mari and Kevin, pointing to the far right side.

“Dad, that much we know. What does it say?”

“Novemba sixteen, letsu see, 1930. Kumori, gray day. Ame, rain. Go buysu beef from whatchacallit-”

“Butcher?” offered Tug.

“Yah, butcha. So dis person-girl, right?-went to buysu beef for some kind of dinner. Stew. For, letsu see. Wakusuri.”

“The Waxleys!” Mari exclaimed.

“Yah, Waxley family, I guess.”

Mas flipped through more pages. All notes about preparing meals and rooms to clean. The writer was obviously some sort of housekeeper, like Chizuko, because all she wrote about was making the Waxley family more comfortable in the Prospect Park house.

Mas dragged his dirt-lined fingernail up and down the lines. This woman was wired to be chanto, to take her work seriously.

“Pretty tsumaranai ” was Mas’s final analysis.

“What?” Kevin asked.

“Boring,” Mari translated.

“Well, it’s her day-to-day activities.” Kevin shrugged his shoulders.

“Do you have more pages?” Mari asked.

“No, those are the only ones.”

“Can we make a copy?”

“Well, normally, we need to get permission from the donor. But since I know you-”

“Thanks, Kevin.” Mari followed Kevin to the photocopy machine. Kevin flicked a button on the machine. The photocopier purred and hummed as it warmed up.

“When I showed this to Kazzy, he got pretty excited,” said Kevin. A flash of bright light leaked from the edges of the photocopier’s glass cover. Why would these daily accounts have been of interest to Kazzy? wondered Mas. Maybe it was like the young professor said-Kazzy had known that he was going to die soon, so he wanted to piece together as much of his past as possible.

“Is there any mention of Kazzy in there?” Mari asked.

“I think some cursory stuff. He said that he could probably do the translation himself in exchange for getting access to the whole journal.”

“He didn’t have time to do a translation job. He was busy with the garden,” said Mari.

“Well, he was pretty adamant. He was on a mission to reclaim his childhood. Once you hit seventy, eighty, you’re dealing with your own mortality.” Kevin then realized that he was in the company of two seventy-something-year-olds and covered his face with his right callused hand.

Tug laughed, his eyes dissolving into thin sideways crescents. “Mas and I know our days are numbered.”

Mas grunted. Everybody’s days were numbered, he thought, both old and young. The thing was, you didn’t know what number you were dealt until it was too late.

“Well, anyway”-Kevin recovered from his embarrassment-“I provided him with Seiko’s phone number and address, but I think that she was pretty resistant.”

“Really? But she was willing to deal with you.”

“Yeah, but we’re a nonprofit institution. I think Seiko was a little taken aback by Kazzy’s aggressiveness. I mean, here’s this silk mogul who keeps bothering her about her mother’s diary. Even knowing that he and his family are mentioned in there, she was reluctant to help him.”