Yakumo, your eldest son listened to my story, but I cannot say with certainty that he has forgiven the writer who saw a little girl in a cemetery—Was there even such a being, Yakumo?—and saw for her a fate worse than death. I have done what I can to assure Kazuo that the writer and Papa were no longer the same man.

What I could not tell Kazuo about the story of his birth was that, before his arrival, you had been in misery. When you traveled there, you stayed for days in the nest that your beddings had become. In misery, you refused to allow in sunlight or even a breeze. In misery, you complained of pains in your eye and wore on it, day and night, a cloth soaked in cool water. In misery, you existed on a diet of whiskey, which made you sing to yourself late into the night. What these songs mourned or regretted, I could not tell, because they were in the language of your birth.

Yes, Yakumo, I know. English is not the language of your birth. It is the language of your Father’s.

“Mother did not know English,” you had told me.

“How did Father and Mother speak?” I asked.

“Father knew some of her languages,” you replied, “but it was not enough.”

In Herun-san’s language, “not enough” and the word “hunger” were one and the same.

As with the lanterns at Matsue Castle and the storm cloud in your left eye, “hunger” made me see them, Yakumo. Your Father and Mother sitting across from each other, their plates half empty, wanting for more.

Perhaps in misery, your songs were in English and other languages as well. They were all foreign to me, Yakumo. When I waited for your return, I slept on the other side of the closed dividers to your room, and there I heard you. “A-e-TE-A” came from your lips most often. When “A-e-TE-A” began your forlorn songs, you could not finish them. Whiskey slurred your words, but “A-e-TE-A” silenced them, Husband.

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.