Don't Judge a Book
by Its Cover

The lawyer arrived while Ren was deciding whether to throw away the soup.

Hana had left it in a saucepan with a note asking him to add the spring onions before he ate. He had forgotten the onions, then forgotten the saucepan. By the time the intercom sounded, a skin had formed across the surface and he was standing at the sink with a spoon in his mouth.

"Mr. Kuroda? My name is Seki. We spoke on the telephone about your grandfather."

Ren looked at the clock. He had agreed to six thirty, though he had spent most of the afternoon trying to decide how to cancel.

He let the man into the building.

Seki was perhaps fifty, with rain-darkened trouser cuffs and a leather document case tucked beneath his arm. He waited on the landing while Ren opened the apartment door, then introduced himself again and offered a business card with both hands. Ren took it. A Kyoto address, an office number, a mobile number. Beneath the name, in smaller characters, was the word lawyer.

"I'm sorry to come so late," Seki said. "You mentioned you worked until six."

"What is it you need me to sign?"

"Nothing at the moment. Your grandfather appointed me to carry out his will. There was something he specifically asked me to deliver to you."

Seki opened the case. Inside was a flat parcel wrapped in brown paper. Ren saw his own name written across it and felt the same irritation the old man's handwriting always caused him. His grandfather had taught him to write it that way, with the last stroke of the second character held perfectly straight.

"I don't want it," Ren said.

Seki paused with the parcel halfway out of the case.

"Whatever he left me, give it to someone else."

"There isn't any money attached to this. It's a book."

"I know what he did. I don't need to read his version."

From the floor below came the sound of a television, then somebody laughing. Seki glanced down the staircase and lowered his voice.

"I'm not asking you to forgive him. He gave me instructions, and he paid me to carry them out. Once you've taken it, you may do as you wish."

"Including throwing it away?"

"Including that."

Ren had prepared himself for an argument. He didn't know what to do with the absence of one. He looked down instead. The landing bulb hung almost over their heads, and his slippers stood in a small pool of his own shadow. The man's shoes had left two damp marks on the concrete beside them. Ren reached for the parcel.