Mina's Matchbox

Quant à l'endroit où se trouvait mon père, le jour de ses funérailles, ma mère me l'avait indiqué. C'est un peu loin, mais un jour ou l'autre nous irons le rejoindre, il n'y a pas à craindre de s'égarer. Ton papa est gentil, il est seulement parti devant pour voir comment c'était, m'avait-elle dit.

Yoneda-san was like the glittering white bits inside a snow globe. The scene of the Ashiya house was reflected in the glass of the globe. The rooms were all perfectly clean and tidy, the aroma of a delicious meal wafted here and there, laughter echoed through the house. You had only to invert the globe to send the snow falling, collecting on the floor, protecting the inhabitants. But no matter how hard you shook it, the snow could never leave the globe. Breaking the glass would be a foolish mistake. Everything that had looked like snow before would become something much more uncertain, something dirty and viscous and unable ever to return to its original form. That’s why Yoneda-san could never be taken too far away from the house.

Even if Mina left a book sitting open on the table in the sunroom, Yoneda-san would never presume to move it or put away. Beyond the page lay an unknown world, and the open book was a portal to that world that should not be thoughtlessly disturbed, lest Mina be unable to find her way back. Or so Yoneda-san believed. In the house at Ashiya, books were considered more precious than any sculpture or piece of pottery.

the box of matches she kept in her pocket. The matchboxes were her precious possessions, her talismans.

We could visit whenever we wanted, Ashiya and Okayama were practically next door, and there were no diesel fumes on the Shinkansen. Though we had parted repeating those assurances over and over, in the thirty years since, Mina and I have seen each other only a handful of times. It's not that we’ve grown apart or lost track of each other, but simply that time has slipped away much more quickly than we could have imagined when we were young.

I looked down at my feet as though I’d been scolded. As usual, I was incapable of behaving naturally when it mattered.

I knew where my father was too; my mother had shown me his resting place on the day of his funeral. It’s a bit far away, she told me, but we’ll both be joining him there someday, so we’re not likely to lose track of the spot. Your father is kind, she added, so he’s gone on ahead to see where we’ll be.

But with so many books in the house, do you still need to go borrow them from somewhere else?” “Are you serious?” Mina’s eyes widened with surprise. “When there are so many books in the world that you could never even read them all?

The books that lined the walls from floor to ceiling sat there quietly, never calling out for attention or advertising themselves with gaudy covers. But even if they appeared to be nothing more than unadorned paper boxes from the outside, they exuded a beauty equal to anything created by a sculptor or potter. Even though the meaning of the words printed on their pages was so profound it could never have been contained by those boxes, the books never let on to their depths. They waited patiently until someone picked them up and opened their covers.

Nothing was ever solved by waiting around.

Did you know that shooting stars are made when stars die?' Mina asked. 'Really? I thought they were stars going on a trip.' 'No, they shine so beautifully because they get pulled in by Earth's gravity and burn up when they reach the atmosphere.' 'You're kidding me.' 'So, while we're watching them thinking how beautiful they are, they're literally burning up and dying.' 'Like matches that look most beautiful the moment before they burn out.' 'Did you know that it was the comets that brought the elements to Earth that created life? Comets are made of ice, and a gigantic one struck the Earth when it was just forming, and that made the oceans.' 'So, does that mean that part of us is in the Giacobini comet? ...How would we ever know?' 'I learned all this from the library books you borrowed, Tomoko. You're like a comet that brings books. But tell me, what are you going to wish for? When you see the shooting stars.