Summer，Fireworks，and My Corpse

by Otsuichi

  *

  Masayoshi always took his meals in his room with Yuko. For each meal, Kiyone set two servings on a tray and carried it to their room through a dim hallway with windowless earthen walls set with flanking rows of sliding paper doors. The black floorboards were old and worn smooth and complained beneath her footsteps, creak creak.

  That was probably how Masayoshi could always tell when Kiyone had come with their meals. Before she could speak up and inform him that she had arrived with their food, he would say from behind the sliding door, “Thank you, just leave the tray there, please.”

  She set the tray down in front of the doorway and left. She had never seen into his room.

  The master and his wife are such odd people, Kiyone thought. Masayoshi and Yuko went to great lengths not to open the door in her presence, and it gnawed at her curiosity. Thinking of how intently they listened for the creak creak of the floorboards sent shivers down her spine. Many times since she came to Torigoe Manor she had the creeping feeling of a dreadful gaze watching her from the shadows pooled at the ends of the long corridors in the mansion. She walked quickly past the demonic masks of hannya and tengu that hung from the walls. Their expressions seemed to change whenever she glanced back at them.

  *

  One day, soon after Kiyone had begun to work at Torigoe Manor, she was walking down the hallway to Masayoshi and Yuko’s room to retrieve the tray with their dishes. When the two had finished eating, they always left the tray in the hallway in front of their room, exactly in the same spot Kiyone had set it, and she would pick it up without a word and bring it back to the kitchen.

  On this day, Kiyone had prepared a side dish of tempura along with their meal. When she was a child, her father had once taken her out to eat tempura, but she hadn’t had it since. Now, she had been nervous trying to cook it all by herself.

  Is this all right? Does it really taste like actual tempura tastes? Kiyone had spent some time looking at the tempura, comparing it with the image in her memory.

  Kiyone always went to a house in the neighboring village to buy the vegetables, and she often asked for advice on how to cook. She had followed the instructions to make the tempura, but she had no way of knowing if she had done so correctly or not. And when she saw the tray on the floor of the hallway with half the food uneaten, she felt deeply abashed.

  Kiyone picked up the tray and stood in front of the door to their room, unsure of what to do. Should I say something? Should I ask what was wrong with my tempura?

  Masayoshi’s kind voice came from inside the room. It feels so awkward to have a conversation through the closed paper door, she thought.

  “Kiyone, do you have a minute?

  Here it comes, she thought.

  “From tomorrow,” he went on, “could you only make half the food for Yuko and me?”

  Why only half? Is my cooking that unbearable? Do they not even want to eat it anymore?

  “We’re both light eaters. Because neither one of us moves around much, you see. So starting tomorrow, we’d like you to cut our servings in half.”

  “Um . . .” Kiyone fearfully began. “Um . . . is it because of my cooking? If that’s the case, I’d be happier if you just told me so.”

  She heard Masayoshi’s pleasant laughter from behind the paper door. “Your tempura really was delicious.”

  Kiyone felt her cheeks quickly warm, and she hurriedly left. Not until she lay alone tossing in bed that night did she realize that she had heard Masayoshi laugh, but not Yuko.

  *

  The house’s pantry was just off the kitchen. Among the objects that sat on its white dried-earth floor were several cardboard boxes and a dust-covered stove. The strong, stale odor of wet straw filled the room.

  Kiyone kept potatoes, carrots, and other vegetables bought from the next village in the boxes, but one day, she looked inside only to find them empty.

  What should I do? I can’t make lunch like this. Kiyone methodically went through the boxes one by one. The cardboard had softened in the humidity, but the dirt clinging to the sides had long dried. As her hands moved through the boxes, her fingers started to turn white with the dry mud and began to grow cold.

  Each box she opened was empty, and soon it seemed that none would contain any ingredients at all. What should I do? Kiyone cursed her carelessness. Why didn’t I notice that we were running out of food earlier?

  But Kiyone kept searching. She lowered her head to the dusty earthen floor in search of anything she could cook, and behind the legs of the stove she spotted a single cardboard box.

  Kiyone let out a sigh of relief and pushed the stove aside to get at the box. The stove was heavy, and as she lifted it she could feel the kerosene sloshing around inside.

  Inside the box were a few old, yellowed daikon radishes and onions, maybe just enough for Masayoshi and Yuko’s meal.

  But not enough for me, Kiyone thought. Well, I can just make do with some berries or something.

  Kiyone looked up and saw a row of crates lining a shelf high on one of the storeroom walls. The word DOLLS was written in kanji across the rough wood of the crates. Both the writing and the wood itself looked quite old.

  She was drawn in by the word dolls. Kiyone had never learned how to read kanji, but her father had been a dollmaker, and she remembered the meaning of those characters.

  Do all those crates contain dolls? If they do, that’s certainly a lot of dolls. Maybe some of them are my father’s handiwork.

  Unable to contain her curiosity, Kiyone stretched her arms up and carefully pulled down one of the crates from the shelf. She was surprised by its lightness, and when she set it down and opened the lid, she discovered the reason.

  It was empty. She opened all the other crates, and they were all empty. Among the many crates, there wasn’t a single doll.

  *

  That afternoon, Kiyone decided to go to the neighboring village to restock the vegetables. When she informed Masayoshi, he gave her a generous amount of money and said, “I don’t have a car, but there is a cart in the shed you can use. Will you be fine going by yourself? If it’s too heavy, please have someone there help you bring it back.”

  Kiyone thanked him, said she’d be fine, and left. The cart, even though empty, took a considerable amount of strength to pull, but once she got it rolling, it moved along without needing much further effort.

  She pulled the cart through the gate of Torigoe Manor and along the narrow stone path that cut through the bamboo grove.

  I don’t understand why he sends me all the way to the next village to buy the groceries. Why does he want me to avoid doing the shopping in our own village?

  As she thought about it, Kiyone noticed that the neighbors she passed on the street were watching her with rigid gazes. As she pulled the cart along, she attempted to greet some of the villagers, but they only looked away, as if to them she were nothing but a nuisance.

  Between the two villages, an expanse of rice paddies stretched as far as she could see. Kiyone pulled the rattling cart down the long, straight road that led to the neighboring community and to the home of a family who occasionally helped out the Torigoe household. Kiyone loved to visit there. They sold her vegetables, carefully and meticulously taught her how to cook, and treated her with warmth and kindness—like she was a person.

  Beneath the clear sky, uncommonly cloudless for the rainy season, Kiyone was pulling the cart down the gravel road when she noticed a three-wheeled truck driving toward her from the next village. The road was narrow enough to make passing difficult for the cart and the truck, and the driver pulled his vehicle to the side of the road in front of her and waited for her to pass.

  Kiyone thanked the driver and sped up to get out of his way as quickly as she could, and as she passed, he called out to her.

  “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to be running errands for Torigoe Manor, would you?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  The driver scratched his chin in thought, then said, “Well,
good luck.”

  His words were brusque, but there was some warmth behind them. Kiyone got the impression that he was from the neighboring village and knew exactly why she had to go all the way there to do her errands.

  Next to the road, a harvested wheat field fell into shadow. Kiyone looked up and saw a single cloud fl oating across the sky, hiding the sun.

  2. THE ROOM

  Masayoshi sat on a legless chair in one corner of his spacious ten-mat room, his fountain pen gliding across sheets of paper.

  In another corner of the room stood an old three-panel dressing mirror. The left and right panels were tied closed with red string wrapped clockwise around the handles to keep the doors from falling open. Along the opposite wall, a large number of dolls were lined up on display, almost all of them Japanese dolls with long smooth hair and white, expressionless faces all aimed at the center of the room. Anyone who entered the room would be encircled by the dolls and surrounded by the blank faces of the nameless children.

  A futon was spread out on the straw tatami flooring in front of the rows of dolls.

  Masayoshi’s hand paused, and he looked over at the futon, where he saw the figure of the woman he called Yuko.

  Yuko was lying in the futon, staring in Masayoshi’s direction.

  Her voice, thin and soft, barely discernible, came to his ear, and he could hear every word. I caught a glimpse of Kiyone’s face, dear.

  “She’s an intelligent young lady.”

  Yes, I just saw her through the crack of the door as she walked by. She’s young. I hope the work isn’t too tough for her.

  Masayoshi stood, went to the side of his resting wife, and gently placed his hand on top of her comforter.

  When she was gone, I went to the kitchen and found a piece of paper with recipes on it. But it was written entirely in simple hiragana—no kanji.

  “Yes, she never went to school, and she never learned how to write kanji.”

  Still, that’s quite a feat, learning hiragana on her own.

  To Masayoshi, Yuko’s voice sounded dim, precarious, as though it might vanish altogether.

  “I hired her because I felt sorry for her, left all alone when her father died of tuberculosis. But I’m lucky to have her here. By the way, did I ever tell you that she brought one of her father’s dolls when she came here? It was a little girl doll.”

  Masayoshi gently brushed three fingers down the curve of her smooth, white cheek, and he thought he saw a faint smile touch the cold colors of her inanimate face.

  *

  Masayoshi was troubled by Yuko’s occasional catatonic spells. She would stare off at nothing in particular and seem oblivious to his attempts to talk to her. He felt it was as though she were in another world, and it worried him greatly.

  Usually, Masayoshi and Yuko knew that Kiyone had brought their meals when her footsteps came creak creak creaking along the hallway. Masayoshi would thank the young woman and listen for her to walk away down the hall before he slid open the paper door to take the tray into their room.

  But when Yuko was having one of her spells, silently sitting on her futon, she made no response and showed no recognition. Even when he placed chopsticks in her delicate fingers, she made no attempt to eat.

  One such time, Masayoshi became so frightened that he cried out, “Yuko! Yuko!” He shook her slender shoulders, and her long smooth hair waved violently in the air.

  What’s wrong, dear?

  Masayoshi was relieved by the sound of her voice, and when he looked at her face he saw it filled with affection. He always felt as if her face, its features so perfectly assembled as to appear otherworldly and the purest white skin, would swallow him whole.

  What’s wrong, dear?

  3. THE OPENING

  The garden at Torigoe Manor, dotted with aptly placed stone lanterns and large, well-shaped rocks, was as expansive as the grounds of a shrine. A fence of roughly bound bamboo encircled the garden. Outside the fence grew a bamboo grove, and Kiyone often listened to the rustling of the trees when the wind blew through them. In the evening, the setting sun painted the sky behind the trees a vibrant orange, and the bamboo loomed large and black. When the bamboo bent in the breeze, they seemed like some far-off howling beast.

  I wonder what path this is.

  Kiyone was walking around the back of the house where she usually never went when she noticed a narrow path snaking through the bamboo grove. She had been about to start preparing dinner.

  What is it?

  Kiyone tilted her head, peering into the bamboo. The path wound through the trees, and she couldn’t tell where it led. But the young woman still had work to do, so she went back into the house to start peeling sweet potatoes with thoughts of the path lingering in her mind.

  The next day, Kiyone walked down the path. On either side the bamboo trees stretched straight up into the cloudy gray sky. When Kiyone looked up, the trees converged at a single point above her and seemed to enclose her on all sides.

  Tall, wild grass grew on either side of the path, and the long blades brushed against Kiyone’s nose as she walked. The path continued unbroken through the grove. At the end of the path was a single grave.

  It was a fine grave, not just a lone marker left among the trees but a tombstone that stood upon an arrangement of large rocks. A name was engraved on the stone.

  It didn’t look to be that old.

  Kiyone approached the grave. A snake was winding its way through the small gap between the tombstone and the bamboo.

  Whose grave is this? I can’t read this kanji.

  A flower placed on the grave had long since turned black, and a bamboo sprout left in offering lay rotting beside it.

  *

  As Kiyone returned to the garden, a gentle rain began to patter on her head.

  Oh no, I need to bring in the laundry. Kiyone ran lightly over to where she had left the laundry out to dry.

  A faded bamboo drying rack was suspended by a string from the roof next to the kitchen door, and a line of laundry hung along the rack.

  Kiyone swiftly pulled off an armful of the clothes and carried it into the house, then repeated the process once more. There had been constant showers lately, and Kiyone had taken to hanging out the laundry even on cloudy days in a fruitless attempt to dry them.

  As she brought in the second armload of laundry, she noticed that the outside door to Masayoshi and Yuko’s room had been left open a crack.

  Once all the laundry had been brought inside, Kiyone felt relieved. But the image of that opening in the sliding door lingered in her mind. It had been one month since she had come to stay at the manor, and yet she had not once seen the inside of their room. And not only that, she had not had a single glimpse of Yuko. From time to time, Kiyone had washed Yuko’s white pajamas, but they had been nearly pristine—so clean that she doubted they had been worn at all.

  She found it difficult to believe that a woman named Yuko even lived in the house.

  She’s bedridden, so of course her clothing wouldn’t get dirty so easily. That’s why the laundry is always so clean. Kiyone tried to dismiss it at that, but she couldn’t help but think it peculiar that she hadn’t met Yuko even once.

  Masayoshi’s wife must be beautiful, Kiyone thought. Because she’s his wife.

  Because she’s a wife.

  Kiyone couldn’t stand it any longer. She put on her sandals and went outside.

  The air was hazy with misting rain.

  She looked over at Masayoshi and Yuko’s room. The door was still open a crack, but she couldn’t see inside.

  With steady, controlled breaths and careful footsteps, she walked toward the door.

  I’ll just pass right by it, like nothing’s unusual.

  The closer she got to the door, the faster her heart raced. A narrow wooden porch ran along the outside of their room, and below the walkway was a long, fl at stone. Atop the stone, a thin layer of water had pooled around a single straw sandal.

  I’ll jus
t stroll by. Just one glance inside the room, that’s all.

  As Kiyone walked awkwardly past the door, she noticed out of the corner of her eye that the paper of the sliding door had started to turn a faint yellow, and through the tiny opening of the doorway she saw a three-panel dressing mirror. She also made out a legless chair, although no one was sitting in it.

  Her clothes were damp in the rain, and the palms of her closed fists were moist with sweat.

  Through the opening, she saw that one wall was decorated with a great number of white-faced dolls, and in front of them a futon was spread out on the floor. The coverings on the futon were filled out, as if someone were lying in it. But what Kiyone saw in the futon as she passed the opening of the doorway was the expressionless face of a doll looking right back at her.

  *

  The next day, when she had a break between chores, Kiyone went to visit Shizue, a young woman who had also worked as a maid at Torigoe Manor and had quit six months earlier, after marrying someone from the neighboring village. Kiyone was always welcome in Shizue’s home, and she sometimes went there for advice with cooking and sewing.

  “What’s wrong?” Shizue asked her. “You seem down today.”

  Kiyone tried to smile, but it soon vanished.

  The two women sat drinking tea on the wooden porch. Kiyone looked up and saw the hydrangeas in bloom. She thought the pale blue flowers looked much like the cloudy gray sky.

  “Hey,” Shizue said, “look at what I found.” In the palm of her hand rested a tinhort-haired kitten.

  “Oh, it’s cute,” said Kiyone, looking at the cat with wonder. “That’s really something. Is it a little kitty doll?”

  Shizue narrowed her eyes at Kiyone. “Don’t be silly, she’s the real thing. She got lost. She must have had a home somewhere, otherwise she wouldn’t be so used to being held like this. If I see a lost animal, I always take it in.”

  Kiyone took a sip of her tea and asked, “Is your husband around today?”