Birthday

by Kōji Suzuki

  Mai had been on the track team in middle school and high school, as a sprinter, and she had confidence in her athletic ability. She'd been able to throw a softball farther than almost anybody in her class. But she'd never tried throwing from her current position before—flat on her back. The only feasible motion was to swing her right arm in an arc from her head toward her feet; it meant there was only one direction in which she could toss the concrete. If she couldn't get it over the railing at the edge of the rooftop, the whole thing would be a waste of effort.

  The sun was descending into the west. She realized that if she was going to try this, she should do it in day-light when there would be a maximum number of people walking by. She flung the piece of concrete into the air.

  It immediately disappeared from sight, swallowed up soundlessly by the sky.

  She was astonished how little of the world she could see. Her entire world was that narrow strip of sky. The ease with which the concrete had disappeared made her wonder if the place she was in really connected to the world below.

  She felt around again and this time found a four-inch length of iron pipe. Big enough and heavy enough, she thought, to carry farther than the fragment of concrete. On the other hand, if it hit someone in the head it could do considerable damage.

  She wanted to minimize the pipe's potential to do injury. She also wanted to lend it some trace of herself, to make it seem like a message.

  She fished in her pockets for a scrap of cloth. A handkerchief would do—anything, really. If she could tie something to the pipe, then whoever found it would be less likely to think it had simply fallen at random.

  But she had no handkerchief in her pockets. She tried to tear off a piece of her sweatshirt, a bit of the hem of her jumper, to no avail. She closed her eyes to think of her options, and an idea came to her. The odder the item attached to the pipe, the more attention it would elicit.

  She'd take off her panties and tie them to the pipe.

  She'd have one chance. If she screwed it up, that would be it. But her only fear at the moment was that getting them off her legs might hurt too much.

  She slowly hiked up her skirt and felt around in the area of her hipbone. Her skin was bare. She should have encountered the elastic band of her underwear, but all her fingernails found was her own skin. She felt all around but couldn't locate her panties.

  What the.. ? I'm not wearing any underwear!

  This was not normal for her. She'd never gone out in public wearing nothing under her clothes.

  She raised her head and craned her neck to a painful angle in order to get a glimpse of her groin, but her dis-tended belly was in the way. She had to judge by feel. At the very moment she realized she really wasn't wearing any underwear, her arm felt something moving inside her abdomen.

  It felt precisely like a baby stirring in her womb. But then she remembered that she was still a virgin, and her consciousness threatened to recede again. Her puzzle-ment as to why she wasn't wearing panties gave way instantly: what was this in her womb?

  She could see part of her belly now, peeking out of her rolled-up skirt. It was swollen, but it was also moving, changing shape before her eyes, in response to pressure from within.

  She remembered a scene from a movie she'd seen years ago. The sheer abnormality of her situation chilled Mai to her core now.

  4

  Her memories couldn't be wrong about it. Mai knew it was foolish even to examine them.

  Once, and only once, she'd nearly yielded herself physically to a boyfriend. She'd been in the same position she was in now, flat on her back, arms and legs extended. On the single bed in his apartment... They'd had long, serious discussions about it, and she was ready.

  His name was Sugiyama, and he was a student at her college; both of them were in the school of liberal arts.

  Sugiyama was slender, pale, and handsome. A little taller than Mai, with something of the beautiful boy about him. In terms of looks, he and Mai were a fine couple.

  Mai, though, wasn't attracted to his looks, but to his precociousness as a scholar. Sugiyama prided himself on knowing everything about everything, and he could answer seemingly any question with ease. It was fun just to ask him questions, so sharp was his mental razor, and conversation with him was a joy.

  He was well versed in literature and was a real charmer the way he peppered conversation with bits of astrology or Greek mythology. Having devoted most of her attention to sports in high school, Mai had vowed to focus on academics in college. She fell head over heels for Sugiyama's mind—not that his androgynous good looks didn't help.

  Friends who knew her as a dedicated member of the track team expressed doubts about her choice of boyfriend. Hey, I thought you went for jocks! That was the gist of their doubts. But Mai knew that if she had to choose between body and mind, she'd choose the latter as the locus of talent without hesitation. Of course, to have both would be ideal. But she wouldn't meet a man like that until Ryuji.

  Several upperclassmen had asked her out back in high school. Although they were all pretty naive and none of them actually tried to move on her, just sitting across the table from that type came to be a burden for Mai, what with their masculine passions and ghastly thirst for sex.

  Sugiyama's androgyny comforted her, in a way. She didn't have to worry about blocking his lust, or taming it and diverting it. That was a relief and it made him relaxing to be around.

  That time in his apartment when they nearly hooked up, it began almost as a sort of ritual. They proceeded with great deliberation, and only after confirming each other's feelings and intentions. At that moment, Mai had no reservations about discarding her virginity.

  Following his instructions, she lay down on his bed and shut her eyes tightly. Her nervousness had made her arms and legs tense. Just as now, her limbs were straight and rigid. Sugiyama didn't try to alleviate her tension.

  Rather, he went about his business in stony silence, almost seeming to enjoy the stiffness of her body.

  He slowly took off her clothes and exposed her skin.

  Mai could see her own naked body in her mind. He simply undressed her, with no kisses or caresses, nothing to blur the roles of undresser and undressee. As pre-inter-course ceremonial, it was strangely monotonous, but Mai didn't have enough experience to think it odd.

  It happened when she'd been reduced to bra and panties, and Sugiyama laid his hands on her chest. Her bra slipped upward and exposed her smallish breasts.

  Never very big at the best of times, they looked perfectly flat when she was supine. She imagined her breasts the way Sugiyama would be looking at them. Her nipples, large in proportion to her breasts, must have been erect and pointing at the ceiling.

  The image of that moment remained vivid in Mai's memory, no doubt because it had been the product of her imagination to begin with.

  She was left in that state for a dozen or more seconds, her breasts visible beneath her displaced bra. It was an awkward limbo that emphasized the flatness of her chest. She thought she could feel Sugiyama's gaze. Then the current shifted subtly—she detected a change in the air that filled her with unease.

  What are you doing I Hurry up!

  But he didn't hurry. In fact, he started to replace her bra.

  At the touch of his hands on her chest, Mai's eyes popped open. She stared in disbelief as he covered up her breasts. And not only her breasts. He put all her clothes back on her, retracing his earlier steps in reverse. He closed her away, just as innocent as she had been before, with not so much as a drop of his saliva upon her.

  She looked the question into his eyes.

  ...Why ?

  Sugiyama leaned close and whispered into Mai's ear,

  "I guess we'd better not."

  The blunt inadequacy of the words belied his usual eloquence. Sugiyama should have been able to come up with some pretty-sounding explanation for why he'd stopped in the middle. But he hadn't even tried. He had simply said "let's not."

  Mai's
mind went blank with confusion. She felt humiliated, robbed of her dignity as a person, reduced to the status of a dress-up doll.

  They'd agreed to have sex. Why did he feel it necessary to do a u-turn like that? Was her body so unattractive? His refusal to explain allowed all sorts of doubts to bloom in her mind. She couldn't understand what had killed his desire. She could only despair.

  Is it because my breasts are so small? she asked herself. But he hadn't needed to undress her to find that out.

  It was obvious, to a degree, even when she was clothed.

  Hurt, and without finding out why, she left Sugiyama's apartment and went home.

  Their relationship ended there.

  She'd had boyfriends since, and they'd tried, but she'd never crossed the line. Those dozen or so seconds of blankness always came back to haunt her. She felt like he'd evaluated her nakedness; she didn't like it. She'd rather stay a virgin for the rest of her life than go through that again.

  There could be no mistake, no gap in her memory, about it. There was no point to any further scrutinizing the fact that she'd never had sex. That was a sure premise.

  So then why am I pregnant?

  Cause and effect. When something happened, there was a reason for it. The only immediate cause she could think of—yes, having watched that tape.

  Then, she remembered something else, too.

  I was ovulating the day I watched it.

  She knew it, based on her cycle and on the ther-mometer. Her ovulation, that tape. The two had somehow come together to produce the change in her body.

  The line between shadow and light was climbing the wall now. The sun was sinking, and the rectangular space was coming under the inexorable rule of darkness again.

  Mai felt an appraising gaze on her body, like Sugiyama's. But there was nobody at the lip of the fissure peering in. The gaze emanated from within her own womb. The eyes she carried within were watching her.

  As if to prove it, her belly undulated again with small but sharp movements.

  5

  In the end, she never was able to locate the missing pages among Ryuji's household effects. She'd promised the editor she'd have the manuscript to him by the next day. She had until the next afternoon to provide a clean copy of the final installment of the series.

  It was late in the evening. Mai had locked herself in her studio apartment. She had spread the manuscript out before her on the table, and now sat there groaning, her head in her hands. It was a small room—five mats or so in size. She sat on the floor with a backrest propping her up at a low table that she used as a desk. This was how she always studied. From where she was sitting, her bookcase was close enough that she could reach out and touch it. The bookcase housed a fourteen-inch TV with a built-in VCR.

  She didn't know what to do about the manuscript.

  Over and over she'd look up and heave a sigh. How was she going to make up for the missing section?

  Mai had been concentrating on filling in the gap with her own words. There was a clear leap in logic from the previous installment to this final one. She'd been trying to supplement the argument; that was what had her stalled and groaning, her head aching.

  Suddenly it occurred to her. Instead of trying to add, why not subtract? I'm stuck because I'm trying to add words, and they won't come. It would be much easier to pare down what was there until it made sense. She wouldn't be as liable to twist Ryuji's thoughts that way.

  As soon as she'd decided on her new plan, her spirits rose. Now there looked to be a good chance of getting it done by morning.

  The videotape seized that moment to catch her eye.

  It was what she'd found instead of the missing pages.

  She'd brought it back with her and placed it carelessly on top of her television. She could watch the tape now, to refresh her mind, and still have time to finish the manuscript by morning.

  Thinking back now, Mai felt she had been snared, and quite cunningly. She didn't know who had set the trap, but she'd certainly been carried along by that un-seen being's schemes.

  From where she sat on the floor it was a natural motion for Mai to reach out and pick up the videotape.

  Liza Minnelli, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr. / 1989.

  There was no case, just the cassette.

  The handwriting on the label told her that the tape didn't belong to Ryuji. Made by an unknown third party, brought into his apartment by some unknown route, it had made its way into Mai's room now to emit its strange pull.

  She reached out and put the tape into the VCR. The unit came on automatically. She switched the channel to video and pressed play.

  There's still time—throw it away!

  But the static of the tape drowned out the voice of instinct.

  She couldn't fight her curiosity. The screen dis-solved into a chaos to match the static. Then an image like spilled ink leapt into her vision. It was too late to turn back now. Mai steeled her nerves and sat up straight. The tape seemed to emanate arrogance, to demand close attention from whoever watched it.

  Watch until the end. You will be eaten by the lost.

  The thick stream of ink formed itself into a threat.

  The blinking points of light emitted an artificial brightness not possible in reality. When it pierced her eyeballs it should have been unpleasant, but she couldn't look away.

  The tape was a collection of fragmentary images whose meaning was unclear. But each scene, taken on its own, had great impact, a real you-are-there quality that seemed to come straight at her. She began to wonder if the images weren't having a physical effect on her, so powerful they were.

  A spray of red flashed across the screen at one point, then to change into a stream of lava that Mai saw at once was flowing down the scorched sides of a volcano.

  Sparks danced up into the night sky. A perfectly natural scene.

  The next moment, the character for "mountain," yama, was floating in black against a white background, fading in and out of view. Then a pair of dice were tumbling around in a lead bowl.

  In the following scene, a person appeared for the first time. An old woman sitting on a tatami mat, facing forward and mumbling something. It was a dialect Mai couldn't make out. The old woman seemed to be lectur-ing somebody, preaching.

  A newborn baby gave its first cry. As Mai watched it, the baby grew larger and larger. Mai felt that she was holding the onscreen baby with her own two hands. Her palms touched skin covered in amniotic fluid. It was slick, and she felt like it slipped out of her hands. Reflex-ively she drew back her hands.

  At the same time, the baby disappeared, and a crowd of voices erupted in cries of "Liar!" and "Fraud!" She saw a hundred faces crammed into a grid like a huge chess-board; each face wore an accusatory expression when she looked at them. The faces divided like cells until they became tiny dots filling the screen.

  In the center of the black screen floated the character sada.

  A man's face suddenly came into view. An abrupt transformation. His breathing grew ragged and huge beads of perspiration appeared on his face. Scattered trees stood behind him.

  He seemed to be running—his naked shoulders gleamed with sweat. His sunburned skin was peeling.

  Both the background and the man's appearance were summer itself. His eyes were bloodshot, murderous. His mouth was twisted, and he was drooling; he looked upward, and then disappeared from view.

  When he reappeared, a chunk of flesh had been gouged out of his shoulder, and he was bleeding pro-fusely. Great drops of blood fell onto the screen.

  The baby cried again, somewhere. A chaotic cry, it vibrated not against her eardrums but directly against her skin cells. Mai recalled the touch of the infant's flesh.

  In the center of the screen there was a bright, round hole. It was like looking up in the dark at a full moon directly overhead. After a while, a rock fell from the moon, then another.

  This person's looking up from the bottom of a well.

  The moment she saw the scene, M
ai grasped the situation. Maybe her intuition was at work, guessing at the fate that would later befall her.

  Because, at that point, there was no reason for her to think that the moonlike circle was the lip of a well.

  Finally, more words appeared. Those who have viewed these images are fated to die at this exact hour one week from now. If you do not wish to die, you must follow these instructions exactly...

  And then the scene changed. The concatenation of images was replaced by a commercial for mosquito-re-pelling coils that she'd seen on TV numerous times. A commercial had been taped over the instructions for avoiding death. They had been erased.

  With a trembling hand Mai pushed the stop button.

  Her jaw was shaking; she was trying to speak, but the words wouldn't come. But she was alone—who was she trying to talk to?

  The existence of a videotape that killed its viewers in a week's time...

  When Asakawa had asked her about Ryuji's death, he'd said, He didn't tell you anything there at the end?

  No last words? Nothing, say, about a videotape?

  The tape had been in Ryuji's room. Ryuji had watched it, and a week later he'd died mysteriously.

  If she hadn't watched the tape herself, she'd never buy such a scenario. But she had watched it. Every scene had exuded a reality that she could feel in her very cells.

  Something was rising within her. She'd been sitting, stunned, in front of the VCR, but now she felt like she had to throw up. She dashed into the bathroom.

  I shouldn't have watched it.

  It was too late for regrets. Besides, she hadn't so much watched it of her own free will as been forced to watch it, by the will of another, she felt.

  Mai stuck her finger down her throat and vomited until her stomach was empty. At that moment she wanted to rid herself of everything that was inside her.