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didn’t want to hurt Grandfathers feelings, so I finished it, pretending to savor each bite. As I ate I studied Grandfather’s face, trying to figure out what about him resembled my mother. Although they shared the same slight build, their faces looked nothing alike.
    “Mother doesn’t look like you, Grandfather. Who does she take after?”
    “Oh, she takes after no one, that mother of yours. Some relative long dead must have been the one to pass his looks along to her.”
    Grandfather pulled the cardboard cake box apart, as he answered, and folded it flat according to the directions on the outside of the carton.
    He tucked it, along with the paper wrapping and string, atop the shelf in the kitchen.
    “I don’t look like anyone either,” I said.
    “Well, we’ve got that kind of characteristic in our family.”
    Grandfather was a man of habit. He rose punctually at five every morning and began tending to the bonsai trees that cluttered the veranda and the narrow space of the entry hall. Cultivating bonsai trees was his hobby. He’d spend over two hours each morning tending to them. Next he’d clean the room, and after that he’d have his breakfast.
    As soon as he woke he’d start prattling in the Ibaraki dialect of his hometown. Even while I was washing my face or brushing my teeth, he’d be chattering away.
    2 7
    N A T S U O K I R I NO
    “Oh, now this is a nice trunk. Look here! The strength! The age! Any number of pines like this line the Tokaido Highway, no doubting that.
    How fortunate I am to have such lovely bonsai. Or maybe I’ve my own talent to thank. I’m sure that’s it. Must be my talent. A genius has to be fanatic with a little bit of humor. Yes, that’s me.”
    I’d glance in his direction, thinking he was talking to me, but he’d be staring at his bonsai and conversing with himself. And every morning he’d say just about the same thing.
    “People who aren’t really fanatics can try all they want, but they’ll never have the talent and their bonsai won’t look anything like those that have been raised by an old fool like me! What’ll be different? Well, let me see …”
    I finally stopped turning around when I heard him begin to talk. I had realized he wasn’t talking to me. He’d pose a question and then answer it himself. I was thrilled to have passed the entrance exam and to be on my way to a new life. I couldn’t care less about bonsai trees! I’d flip through the pages of the high school guide and give myself over to intoxicating images of how my life would be in my beloved Q High School for Young Women.
    I left Grandfather where he was and went to the kitchen to fix a slice of toast—which I then slathered generously with butter, jam, and honey.
    My father wasn’t here to scold me for using too much jam. I felt completely liberated! My father was such a miser he was always warning us about what and how much we ate. We could have up to two lumps of sugar in our tea, but that was all. And we could only have a thin smear of jam on our bread. If we wanted honey, all we could have was honey. And his ideas about table manners were equally rigid. No talking at the table.
    Elbows in and back straight. No laughing with food in your mouth. No matter what I did he’d find grounds for complaint. But even if I sat slouched and bleary-eyed over the table eating my breakfast, Grandfather took no notice. He stood on the veranda talking to his plants.
    “It takes inspiration, you know. That’s essential. Inspiration. ‘To be infused with spirit.’ Go ahead, look it up in the dictionary, why don’t you.
    You’ll see it’s not just a question of possessing elegance. Elegance will animate your work, no doubt about that. But you can’t just pick it up.
    You have to have talent too. Those who succeed have talent. And so I say, I’ve got the talent. I’ve been inspired.”
    My grandfather scribbled the Chinese ideographs for inspiration in 2 8
    G R O T E S Q U E
    the air in front of his