CUT AND FIT
Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au
Fitzcarraldo EditionsFebruary 2022Selected by Barbara Epler
Cold Enough for Snow pulls at me. It’s one of those slim books you can read in a day, but can’t shake for years. On one level, it’s a spare novel telling the simple story of a mother and daughter travelling from abroad one autumn to meet in Tokyo. They explore the galleries and eat in little restaurants and walk along rainy canals. All the while, they’re talking – about family, memories, art, shopping – but something’s off-kilter. Could a ghost be speaking? Or is talking about the past to some degree an innately spectral undertaking? It’s very hard to say, but in any case, Jessica Au powerfully conjures up a profoundly familiar familial sorrow – one with a maternal source that daughters are especially prone to feel – and does so with such a powerful undertow that for me she undoes time. It’s an uncanny little book, shot through with an unreality that is very, very real. – Barbara Epler
When we left the hotel it was raining, a light, fine rain, as can sometimes happen in Tokyo in October. I said that where we were going was not far – we would only need to get to the station, the same one that we had arrived at yesterday, and then catch two trains and walk a little down some small streets until we got to the museum. I got out my umbrella and opened it, and pulled up the zipper of my coat. It was early morning, and the street was filled with people, most walking away from the station, rather than towards it as we were. All the while, my mother stayed close to me, as if she felt that the flow of the crowd was a current, and that if we were separated, we would not be able to make our way back to each other, but continue to drift further and further apart. The rain was gentle, and consistent. It left a fine layer of water on the ground, which was not asphalt, but a series of small, square tiles, if you cared enough to notice. †
We had arrived the night before. My plane landed an hour before my mother’s and I waited for her at the airport. I was too tired to read but collected my bags and bought us two tickets for one of the express trains, as well as a bottle of water and some cash from the ATM. I wondered if I should buy more – some tea perhaps, or something to eat, but I did not know how she would be feeling when she landed. When she came out of the gates, I recognised her immediately, even from a distance, somehow by the way she held herself or the way she walked, without being able to clearly see her face. Up close, I noticed that she continued to dress with care: a brown shirt with pearl buttons, tailored pants and small items of jade. ‡ It had always been that way. Her clothes were not expensive but were chosen with attention to the cut and fit, the subtle combination of textures. She looked like a well-dressed woman in a movie from maybe 20 or 30 years ago, both dated and elegant. I saw too that she had with her a large suitcase, the same one I remembered from our childhood. She’d kept it on top of the cupboard in her room, where it had loomed over us, mostly unused, only brought down for the few trips she’d made back to Hong Kong, like for when her father died, and then her brother. There was hardly a mark on it, and even now, it seemed almost new.
Earlier in the year, I had asked her to come with me on a trip to Japan. We did not live in the same city any more, and had never really been away together as adults, but I was beginning to feel that it was important, for reasons I could not yet name. At first, she had been reluctant, but I had pushed, and eventually she had agreed, not in so many words, but by protesting slightly less, or hesitating over the phone when I asked her, and by those acts alone, I knew that she was finally signalling that she would come.
I had chosen Japan because I had been there before, and although my mother had not, I thought she might be more at ease exploring another part of Asia. And perhaps I felt that this would put us on equal footing in some way, to both be made strangers. I had decided on autumn because it had always been our favourite season. The gardens and parks would be at their most beautiful then; the late season, everything almost gone. I had not anticipated that it might still be a time for typhoons. Already, the weather reports had contained several warnings, and it had been raining steadily since our arrival. ◉
† In 2008, Tokyo officials considered installing energy-harvesting tiles at the opening to the city’s subway stations, turning the kinetic power of the commuters into electricity to power overhead signs and timetables.
‡ In China, jade has long been a highly valued sculptural material, used for beads, jewellery, weapons, amulets and other items that symbolise authority and aristocracy. During the Han dynasty, the royal family and prominent lords were buried enshrined in jade burial suits sewn with gold wires.