I couldn’t go on breathing, the alcohol was taking effect all at once, and although I was burning up inside, feeling the heat surging toward the surface of my skin, it was as if each and every pore in my body was blocked, making it impossible to vent the heat. My vision turned slightly hazy and everything before me began to lose clarity.
Tomomi went upstairs again and I began hearing the sound of heavy footsteps right above my head, going thump, thump, thump! After returning approximately five minutes later, she started to close up shop early. The abrasive, screeching noise of the seven stools being dragged across the concrete floor seemed to rub my throbbing nerves the wrong way, irritating the hell out of me.
She ended up taking me to her room on the second floor and laid me down on the futon, which was already made-up there.
While going up the stairs, borrowing her shoulder for support, and after hunkering down on the futon, I kept complaining, The tea’s made it worse! The tea’s made it worse!
Cotton, cotton, she said in a panic before fetching from a dressing table a box of cotton strips she used for her makeup. Handing me several layers of them at a time, the box was empty in the blink of an eye, the cotton strips stained red, one after another, before ending up scattered all over the tatami mat.
That’s it! No more cotton, Tomomi declared, and when she held out some tissue paper as a substitute, I just couldn’t tolerate her bungling ways anymore.
Why don’t you have a steady supply in your house, I complained, of something so necessary as cotton? What are you going to do if Takuya gets injured? Look, it’s all right. Just forget about it and leave me alone.
Tomomi placed the tissue box beside me and left without a word.
A little later she returned with a tub of ice and a cold wet towel. When she gently pressed the cool towel to my cheek I felt the pain dissipating somewhat. At the same time, at twice the speed, I felt the drunkenness inside me fade away as I fell into a wonderfully peaceful state of mind, just like when you’re about to doze off.
After she’d changed towels several times, the pain had subsided for the most part and I was humming, as I usually did out of habit. Even though I was still hemorrhaging, I thought to myself, Man, the world’s opening up its doors to me again.
And then I felt foolish for having such a hackneyed line flit through my mind. I realized I was thinking clearly again.
When I considered falling deeper into my drowsiness—my body all curled up and cozy—I suddenly realized that Tomomi, who should’ve been at my side, was nowhere in sight. I raised my head in a panic, looking around.
She was sitting in a corner of the eight-mat room, looking down apologetically. For a moment I thought she was crying, but then I noticed that both her hands were moving earnestly over her lap for some reason.
I slipped into a reverie, musing that her red hair didn’t look good on her at all, that it seemed frivolous even, and when she was looking down, I saw that the shadow of her face mercilessly revealed the fact that she was a woman in her thirties, her wrinkles beginning to stand out at the edge of her makeup.
Tomomi was five years older than me. The thin nape of her neck was pale, reminding me of Takuya, whose breathing I heard as he lay sleeping in the next room.
After a while I couldn’t stop wondering what on earth she was up to, so I rose from the futon, the towel still pressed against my cheek, and approached her, crawling on my knees.
There was a small box placed on her black skirt. It was a box of sanitary napkins and in her hand was a small, slender white thing. Tomomi was working hard to untie this hard lump of cotton with her manicured red fingernails.
Noticing my line of sight, she slowly lifted her face.
Just hang in there for a bit longer, okay? she said with earnest eyes. I’ll have some decent substitutes for cotton ready. I just need to do a little more disentangling.
3
THE NEXT MORNING I got up early and went to the dentist.
Although the pain was completely gone, I was anxious about the fact that the next day was a Sunday. Besides, I dreaded the possibility of finding myself in a similar predicament again that night; I’d have been devastated and mired in deep despair. So it was absolutely necessary to secure a large quantity of painkillers.
I didn’t want to wake up Tomomi, who was asleep on the futon next to mine, so I quietly sneaked out of bed, put on my pants, and, on the back of a furniture store’s leaflet I found on a low table, began to scribble with a ballpoint pen some words of regret for staining her pillow case with blood, along with some words of gratitude for nursing me last night, when suddenly Tomomi woke up and called out to me from behind, giving me a jolt of surprise.
Tomomi’s face, which was resting on her pillow, no longer showed any traces of makeup. I wondered when she’d wiped it off last night.
Her large, languid eyes were lit by the pale light streaming through the curtain, dimly betraying the fatigue that had settled in them. But she was looking rather attractive nonetheless. In fact, her face, devoid of any seductive allure, had a strong, down-to-earth charm, with its small wrinkles, and a texture you could see in fine detail. Her sharp eyebrows, her long nose and her thick lips, which always made those other features, in contrast, look a little sloppy, matched her tired expression well. I recalled the faces of Eriko and Teruko Onishi and realized that Tomomi was quite different from them. She was endowed with a particular beauty of her own.
When our eyes met, she said, Thanks for the doll.
I’ll come pick you up tomorrow at ten, I replied.
To which she said, Uh-huh, nodding like a little girl.
I pulled my wallet from the inside pocket of my coat in hand, took out three ten-thousand-yen bills, stacked them up on the leaflet, placed the ballpoint pen lengthwise, splitting into two halves the face of Yukichi Fukuzawa, the man on the bill, and faintly waved goodbye to Tomomi before softly tiptoeing down the stairs.
The apartment I rent is about fifteen minutes walking distance from Morishita Station in the direction of Monzennakacho. It’s a temple town close to the Kiyosumi Garden, crowded with small buildings and stores, taking a while to reach even after crossing the lofty bridge straddling the Onagi River, which merges into the Sumida River. New Seoul is in the direction of Ryogoku, which is in the opposite direction from Morishita Station, and if you were to go there on foot it’d take you nearly thirty minutes. I usually take a cab, but that morning, since my dentist was located near the bridge, I reluctantly decided to walk over there.
I had a checkup, got my medicine, and returned to my apartment, once again on foot.
It’s an old, three-story concrete apartment called Corporate House Nagisa. Nagisa means beach, so it seems like an odd name to give an apartment by the river, but apparently there’s no deep meaning behind the name; it’s just the name of the landlord’s granddaughter. At any rate, the place is just a shabby accommodation made up of three floors, each with the same 2DK layout.
I went up the perpetually dark stairs and turned the doorknob to my room, located at the end of an open corridor.
As I opened the unlocked door it occurred to me that it had been a while since Raita and Honoka had dropped in.
I took off my shoes and entered the room. After walking into the kitchen and placing on the table an envelope bulging with five days’ worth of painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs, I put the kettle on to make some coffee and then opened the refrigerator door—there was no food in there, only beer. I went on to slide open the door to a six-mat Japanese-style room connected to the kitchen.
Looking inside the dimly lit room with the curtains closed, it didn’t seem like anything had changed since around ten days ago, when I’d stepped into the room to ventilate the place after Honoka had stayed and gone home. Just to be sure, I opened the closet and checked the position of the futon mattress, but because Honoka was always scrupulous when it came to folding the mattress, I couldn’t tell whether it had been used since then. Still, chances
were that it hadn’t been taken out and put back in there that many times, since the sheets and pillow covers weren’t all that wrinkled, so I supposed she hadn’t come in here, after all, for ten days.
As for Raita, I knew for certain that he hadn’t turned up recently because we made it a point to sleep together in the eight-mat Western-style room across the corridor, removed from the kitchen.
At any rate, I was a little worried about Honoka, wondering what she was up to.
It was nearly six months since I’d begun allowing her to visit my apartment freely, and she used to stay at least once or twice a week without fail—until now, that is. This was the first time she’d been absent for so long. I feared she may have found a more convenient place to crash somewhere else, but then again, I never considered her savvy enough to pull off something like that.
The kettle rang out noisily behind my back so I banished Honoka from my mind and returned to the kitchen.
It was no use getting worried; it wasn’t as if I could contact her or anything. Besides, I wasn’t close to Honoka, or even Raita for that matter; my ties to them weren’t deep.
I poured myself a weak cup of coffee, sat down at a table for two, and absentmindedly gazed out the window until my cell phone began to ring inside the pocket of my suit jacket.
I pulled it out and looked at the screen. It showed Eriko’s name and her cell number. Although I hesitated for a moment, I pressed the Start button and brought the phone to my ear. Eriko’s voice buzzed as I peered at my watch—the hands pointed to about nine twenty.
She was asking what I’d been doing all week, pretending not to be worried. Her tone suggested she really couldn’t care less, but there was an underlying anger seething in there, betraying how upset she was over my failure to answer, no matter how many times she’d tried calling. But I couldn’t help thinking tenderly of her, hearing her voice after a long absence. I told her that I’d been bingeing on alcohol all week, that I’d had one wisdom tooth pulled out, and that until just a little while ago I was in a dental clinic, reclining in a chair.
It was no big deal, I said.
Are you eating well?
Yes, I am.
So it doesn’t hurt anymore?
No, not anymore. Besides, they gave me lots of drugs.
Oh …
But hey, anything the matter? Anything urgent?
Why?
Well, apparently you’ve been calling my cell phone a lot lately.
At this point, for a fleeting second, I sensed Eriko holding her breath.
Then why the hell didn’t you answer or return my calls? she said.
I’m sorry. I just didn’t feel like talking over the phone. Besides, I was probably drunk whenever you called, since I’ve started drinking early in the evenings.
The cell phone was all I had, having never gotten around to installing a landline in my apartment.
So what if it was an emergency? What were you going to do then?
Was it an emergency?
Eriko didn’t answer.
At times like that, I went on, you should just call my office. Even if I’m out, you can leave a message with the operator.
I heard Eriko letting out a small sigh at the other end.
Oh for God’s sake! The least you could do is set up a PC in your office. You know it’s out of the question for me to call your company.
Ever since I got transferred last April to the publishing division from the editorial department of the monthly magazine where I’d worked for two years, I hadn’t used a PC at all. In the magazine’s editorial department, where I had to proofread on a monthly basis and where manuscript submissions piled up at deadlines, email was indispensable for carrying out all the back-and-forths regarding manuscripts. But for the present job, which only requires me to proofread at most around ten books a year, there was no need to use email at all.
I distinctly remember telling you quite some time ago that I detest email, I said.
Yes, you did, she chimed in before going on to say, but if you’d answered the first call, I wouldn’t have bothered calling you that many times, so it would’ve been a good thing for you too, don’t you think?
In theory, sure. But look, after returning from the trip, I just wanted to put some distance between us, I said
candidly, at which she scoffed straightaway and said, What the hell are you saying? There you go again with your weird nonsense.
You think?
Oh yes, for sure! Look, have you become fed up with me?
It’s not like that.
Then why do you say such a thing?
I only thought that we needed to keep our relationship fresh, that’s all.
Eriko laughed again.
What’s funny? I tried asking assertively.
You’re kidding, right? You can’t seriously believe that meeting once or twice, now and then, is going to keep a relationship alive, do you? That’s absurd.
You think?
"Absolutely! Liking someone and being able to feel like the relationship is always fresh means that you and your partner are able to understand each other pretty well and discover new sides to each other. Genuine freshness in a relationship is something that naturally emerges in the course of keeping company. It’s really not the same thing as enjoying your favorite game or book, you know. When two people are together, the relationship’s constantly evolving, and that’s what keeps the love alive, what keeps it fresh. So if you stay away from your lover—if you keep a distance—the romance would just fade away, wouldn’t it?
Hmm.
I was impressed by what Eriko had said, but I didn’t necessarily agree.
What’s the matter? You’re not disagreeing. That’s unusual. Eriko seemed amused.
I just thought it was quite clever of you.
In that case will you please properly answer my calls from now on?
Yeah okay, I’ll be sure to do that.
Fine.
I listened for a while to Eriko’s account of her week.
Eriko was in charge of planning magazine campaigns at a mid-sized PR firm rather well known in the fashion business. She’d started working as a stylist in her college days attending the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, then joined a magazine publisher owned by a major apparel maker, working first as a fashion-magazine stylist and editor. But she said when the parent company of the magazine fell into financial trouble two years ago and was acquired by a French publishing conglomerate, she transferred to her present company. Even so, she only entered into an annual contract with this company and apparently managed other work at the same time, as a freelance stylist. According to colleagues of mine working in the editorial department of a women’s magazine, Eriko is a charismatic presence in the fashion world, but I’m clueless about that trade, so I’ve never really been able to form any kind of opinion about her in that regard.
Eriko was talking about various things, like how she’d traveled all the way to the Inubozaki Lighthouse in the Choshi Peninsula to attend a shooting session on location there, only to see it ruined by sudden rainfall, or how a certain female celebrity, whom Eriko turned to for advice, became desperate thanks to some trouble with her new boyfriend—apparently this celebrity came uninvited to her apartment late at night, dead drunk, and Eriko had ended up letting her stay overnight to lend a sympathetic ear.
It was about twenty minutes before she finally came to a pause, at which point I seized the opportunity to interrupt her.
Listen, do you remember my face?
What do you mean? she said, sounding perplexed.
It’s just that, since we haven’t met for a week already, I thought you surely must have forgotten what I look like by now, ha, ha.
After a slightly long pause she answered, I see.
What do you mean ‘I see’?
Well, I understand now what you meant when you said you’d like our relationship to stay fresh.
She wasn’t making much sense to me.
So what did you understand?
It’s like if we’re able to forget each other’s face, we can meet again as if we were meeting for the first time, right?
What I was saying isn’t that simple really.
Having said so, however, I also felt that’s what it really boiled down to in the end.
So, how’d it go for you? Eriko said. Were you able to forget my face entirely?
Regrettably, I remembered just a short while ago. Bummer.
You’re such a fool, aren’t you?! Eriko said, laughing.
You think?
You bet. One week’s absence can’t be long enough to make you forget, mister.
But until yesterday I’d forgotten completely, you know. I was sloshed all the time, after all. I spoke jokingly, but Eriko suddenly fell silent.
What’s the matter?
Her voice eventually returned, but only after she sighed heavily.
I always remember you, she said. Even when I’m having lunch I wonder if you’re also eating at that time, and at night, when I’m in a meeting at work, I think you must also be in a meeting, talking with a writer or a college professor. And get this, sometimes I even break out laughing when I’m alone, imagining how you must be putting on a fake smile for people you bad-mouth all the time—those folks you call dimwits and ignoramuses. Oh, and did you know that whenever you laugh with your mouth closed you look nasty? It’s so obvious that I’m sure people notice. Anyway, my point is that’s how much I think of you, how well I remember you.
Is that right?
Uh huh. So I call you sometimes when I want to listen to your voice. But you never answer. All I want is to be able to hear your voice, just like I’m doing right now, and that’s why I don’t need any reason to call. What matters isn’t what we talk about, but the fact that we do.
It occurred to me then that if there really were no value in what was being said—that is, in the content of a conversation—then there mustn’t be any value in talking itself, and anyway, I also didn’t know what was so important about the fact of talking to each other.
The Part of Me That Isn't Broken Inside Page 3