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almost covering her eyes. Masami’s stinky perfume filled the room. I glanced again at Yuriko’s eyes, to confirm my earlier discovery. This beautiful girl with her creepy eyes. Yuriko made not the slightest attempt to speak to me before she bounded up the stairs. I clicked on the TV and settled down on the sofa. I was watching a New Year’s comedy quiz show when Yuriko came into the room, toting a backpack and her beloved Snoopy dog.
    “I’m going to the Johnsons’. I told them what you did, and they said it was too dangerous for me to stay here and I should stay with them.”
    “How nice. Now you don’t ever have to come home again.”
    I was relieved. In the end, Yuriko spent the entire New Year’s vacation with the Johnsons. Once I came across Johnson and Masami on the road.
    They both waved and said “Hi,” their faces wreathed in smiles. I said “Hi” right back with a big smile of my own. But in my heart I was thinking, Johnson, you idiot! And what a stupid cow you are, Masami!
    I couldn’t care less if Yuriko never came home. She could become the idiot child of the idiot Johnsons for all I cared.
    . 4 .
    The following year, my father’s shop went under. Well, no, it wasn’t just his shop, it was his entire business. As the Japanese grew more affluent, so too grew demands for imported confections of higher and higher quality, and consumers began to ignore the cheap candies that were my fathers specialty. Father closed his shop. He had to sell off everything in order to meet his outstanding debts. Obviously, he had to let the mountain cabin go. He even had to sell off our little house in North Shinagawa, our car, everything.
    Once he closed his business, Father decided to return to Switzerland 2 4
    G R O T E S Q U E
    to try to make a new start. His younger brother, Karl, had a hosiery manufacturing business in Bern and needed help in managing the accounts, so it was decided that we would all move to Switzerland. This decision came just as I was preparing for the high school entrance exams. I had set my sights on entering a top-level school, the kind of school that would never enroll a dimwit like Yuriko. I’m talking about the school that Kazue and I attended. Let’s just call it Q High School for Young Women, shall we? It was the elite preparatory school affiliated with Q University.
    I asked my father to let me move in with my mother’s father, who lived in P Ward, so that I could at least try to pass the high school exam. And if I did pass, I could commute to school from my grandfather’s place. At any rate, I was determined to foil any attempt to ship me off to Switzerland with Yuriko.
    Father frowned at my request at first, complaining that Q High School for Young Women was expensive and would cost way more than we could afford. But since Yuriko and I hardly spoke to each other—ever since the incident at the cabin—he decided my plan was the best course to follow. I had him sign an agreement stating that if I made it into the school of my choice, he would promise to provide the funds I would need to cover the cost of my schooling up through graduation. Even though he was my father, he couldn’t be relied on without a written agreement.
    It was decided that I would continue living in P Ward with my maternal grandfather, who lived alone in a government-funded apartment complex. He was sixty-six years old. A short man, his arms and legs were delicate and his physique small. There was no mistaking him as my mother’s father. He was the kind of person who struggled to appear fashionable, even though he had no money, so no matter where he went he always wore a suit, and he slicked back his salt-and-pepper hair with pomade. The smell of pomade so permeated his tiny apartment, it almost made me choke.
    I’d never really seen much of my grandfather until then, and I was nervous about the prospect of living with him. I had no idea what to say to him. But once I actually moved in, my fears became moot.