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A Place in Life

C. D. Wight

    Ichirō Nakamura continued calling on clients and stopping by the office unannounced, even after his retirement party. Even after management’s informal pleas. As his successor I was tasked with persuading him to sever ties with the company he had helped build. It wouldn’t be easy. To him retirement meant death.
    We met at a trendy café near Iidabashi station. Neutral ground.
    Ichirō wore a business suit despite the scorching summer heat and his official state of retirement. My golf clothing must have seemed disrespectful. He sat across the small table from me, dabbing the sweat from his face with a folded napkin, his white hair parted with precision, white carnation pinned to his lapel. I finished pouring tea and forced myself to meet the determined stare of my former superior. “The company is grateful for your years of service.”
    “Thirty-one years.”
    “Everyone retires at sixty,” I reassured him. “Spend time with family, play some golf. You’re vested...”
    Ichirō turned away, a pained expression on his face.
    I knew his family had been alienated by decades of his total devotion to work, that he shunned leisure. “Why not take a post-retirement job, something to keep you busy?” I offered.
    “What would I do, park bicycles at the station? Three months ago I had your job,” he said bitterly. “You found your place in life, ne?”
    “Nakamura-san ... respectfully, we must ask you to stop working,” I stated in a formal tone, barely audible above the quiet din of the café. “Any further indiscretion will result in legal action.” With that I put management’s letter on the table and pushed it his direction, the final death blow.
    Ichirō suffered my crushing directness with a stoic stare that faded into darkness as if the ground beneath him had crumbled away, leaving only a precipice over which he was doomed to fall.
    After some time I stood and left him, a terrible weight pulling at my heart.
    Months went by and I was at a Tokyo golf club with colleagues.
    There, by a sand trap stood Ichir Nakamura - lean and tan, in a grounds-keeper uniform, with a rake in his hand.
    My first reaction was avoid being seen. I wanted to save my former boss the mortification for having so compromised his pride, and to save myself the embarrassment for having condemned him to such a fate.
    But Ichirō recognized me and approached. “They let me play for free,” he said with soft eyes and a Buddha smile.
    I was relieved and envious to see him so alive, and was sure his family relations had improved. “You found your place in life, ne?”

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