Your body became ash and bones, and their destination was Zōshigaya Cemetery, which will be mine as well. We will call that village of the dead the last shared country. We will wait there for many years, if the gods are merciful, before the children will join us, one by one.

Until then, Yakumo, your memory lives with me here in this Ōkubo house.

I have kept all of your letters, even that final pristine sheet. I tell myself that I was its intended recipient, that “Setsu” was the name on the tip of your pen. I will lock the letters away until there is no one left who is fluent in Herun-san’s language, until what is lost will render your words and mine immune to judgment and ridicule. How many generations will it take, Yakumo?

The pages of this second telling will keep your letters company. I must learn from your example, Yakumo. What was once fact—because you alone claimed it to be—can lose its lacquer, chip and blister over time. What was once opinion—or the echo of the prevailing winds—can take on the weight of conviction. What was a matter of taste can reveal a lifetime of foibles and faults. What was a term of affection can disclose a failing of character. What was love can be read as mere proximity.

Rest assured, Husband, the third telling of how Lafcadio Hearn became Koizumi Yakumo will withstand Kazuo’s scrutiny, Iwao’s, Kiyoshi’s, Suzuko’s, and their children’s and their children’s children. It will go into the world as the Reminiscences of Lafcadio Hearn by Koizumi Setsu and feed the houses of Koizumi and Inagaki, my aim since the age of twelve.

These pages that I have shown you tonight, Yakumo, they are still weak with truths. I will shore them up by removing more bones.

Elizabeth Bisland: (1861–1929)

ELIZABETH BISLAND

(1861–1929)

. . . .

NEW YORK, 1906