I have thought about A-e-TE-A in the years since your passing, and I believe it to be a name. I assume that the name belongs to a woman. Alcohol rarely loosens in men the name of an aunt or a grandmother, Yakumo. Was she another Elizabeth? I have looked through Kazuo’s English-language notebooks to find an A-e-TE-A. I believe “A” begins the name, but I cannot be sure. I have not found a trace, Yakumo. I have even thought of asking Kazuo to write to your Elizabeth to inquire, but it shames me not to know the letters that form the sounds that form the name that forms the woman whom I believe A-e-TE-A must be. It shames me more that Kazuo would be the first to know, should your Elizabeth send a reply.

I would ask you, Yakumo, but I have no whiskey in this house of Koizumi tonight.

No, Husband, the whiskey would be for me.

Yakumo, during the first and the second tellings of your story, I have found that Kumamoto City and Kōbe have no distinct borders in my memory. Both cities you despised. You accused them of losing themselves to the West. You saw their redbrick buildings as affronts. You disliked the telegraph poles that marred their views. Even the steamboats and the trains that sped us from city to city you found fault in. Too loud, you complained. Too fast, you decried. Your students were dull and sullen. Your fellow teachers preferred beer and cigars to sake and pipes or, worse, were Japanese Christians. You were insulted by the Japanese women in their Western-style dresses and hats. Those horrid heeled boots are ruining their feet, you railed. You cringed when you heard them speaking the English language. You abhorred the modern Japanese, Yakumo, though you were there to educate their sons. You retreated to your Father’s language, writing until you fell asleep atop the pages that became your articles and your books.

Yakumo, I could travel with you to Kumamoto City, Kōbe, and soon to Tokyo, but I could not accompany you when you were in misery. It was not language that separated us there, but I did believe that language—the English one—could bring you back when you had been away for too long.

Before Kazuo came to us, I had pleaded with you to teach me. “English is ugly,” you said, “coming from the mouth of a Japanese.” You meant the mouth of a Japanese woman, Husband.

Silence was available to us both, Yakumo. At first, you also did not recognize mine as anger. When you did not hear “Pardon me for being the first to sleep” for the first time since the cohabitation, you must have known something was awry. You dismissed it though, as an oversight, an uncharacteristic moment of carelessness that had kept this back turned to yours. Four nights of that back broke yours, Husband. You woke me on the fifth and said, “Sweet Wife, we begin tomorrow.”