Grotesque

by Natsuo Kirino

  The man looked annoyed. “Did your grandfather put you up to this?”

  I shook my head from side to side.

  He smirked. I realized he wanted to get revenge on my grandfather. “I see. Well, I’ll give you a fine price for it then. How does five thousand yen sound?”

  Disappointed, I held up two fingers. “Can’t you give me two bills for it? Twenty thousand yen? My grandfather says it’s a fine nandina.”

  “Young lady, this bonsai is not worth that much.”

  “Okay, fine. I’ll take it to someone else.”

  The probation officer immediately doubled his price, offering ¥10,000. I countered that the pot itself was worth that much. After he thought that over, he offered in a wheedling voice, “It must be heavy,” and put his hands over mine, encircling the pot. The hard skin of his hands had the luster of finely polished leather and was strangely warm. Repulsed, I drew my hands away instinctively, letting go of the pot. When I did, the bonsai slipped between us and struck one of the garden stones, smashing to pieces. The roots of the nandina, released from bondage, sprang out in all directions. The young people who’d been cleaning up around the garden stopped what they were doing and looked up in alarm. The probation officer bent over and began picking up the pieces in great agitation, glancing at me with nervous apprehension as he did so.

  In the end I got thirty thousand yen for the deal, broken pot and all. I decided to deposit the money I had left after paying the phone bill in my savings account. I never knew when I’d need to come up with quick cash for a class field trip or something. At Q High School for Young Women we were always being pressured to contribute to events, from the annual school festival to some birthday celebration. None of the other students thought anything of it. The extra cushion in my savings account would be for my own protection.

  My grandfather didn’t notice a thing that night, but the next morning, when he stepped out onto the veranda, he let out a heartrending cry.

  “Mr. Nandina! Where have you gone?”

  I went about fixing my lunch as if I hadn’t noticed. Grandfather rushed into the cramped sitting room and raced around in search of the nandina. He opened the closet and then peered up on the shelving along the ceiling in the smaller room. He even went out in the entryway and rummaged through the shoe cupboard.

  “It’s nowhere to be found! And such a nice bonsai it was. Where could it be? Come out, come out, wherever you are! Please, Mr. Nandina. I’m sorry if I neglected you. I didn’t mean to. But my daughter just died, you see, and it’s been hard on me. I’m heartbroken. I’m sorry, really I am. Please come out. Please don’t pout.”

  Grandfather searched the house like a madman, until I guess he just wore himself out. Crestfallen—his shoulders curling inward—he stared off into space. “He went off to guide her to the next world.” My grandfather was much practiced in the ways of swindling others. But it never once occurred to him to doubt me or the insurance lady or the security guard or any of the other people who were around him all the time. He hadn’t even the slightest suspicion. It looked like this was the end of the absurd event, so I went off to school feeling relieved. Visiting Kazue’s house had been the cause of one misfortune after another.

  When you think of it, though, my mother’s sudden suicide resulted in the scattering of the entire family. I stayed with my grandfather, Yuriko ended up with the Johnsons, and my father remained in Switzerland, where he started a new family with that Turkish woman. For my father, Japan would always be associated with my mother’s death. Later I learned, to my great surprise, that the Turkish woman was no more than two years older than me. She gave birth to three children, I learned, all boys. The oldest child is now twenty-four, and I’ve been told he plays for a Spanish soccer team. But since I’ve never met him and have no interest in soccer, it’s as if we’re from completely different worlds.

  But in the world of my hypothetical chart, Yuriko and I and our stepbrothers are all swimming vigorously in the bright blue of the brackish sea. If I draw another analogy to the Burgess diagram of the Cambrian Period I love so much, Yuriko, with her beautiful face, is queen of the watery realm. So she has to be one of those animals that devours all others. That would make her the Anomalocaris, I suppose, the ancestor to the crustacean, a kind of creature with massive forelegs, like a lobster’s. And then my younger brothers, who must certainly have dark heavy eyebrows on account of their Middle Eastern blood, would be those insects that live all clumped up in a pile—either that or jellyfish-type creatures that cruise through the sea. Me? Without a doubt I’d be the Hallucigenia, the thing that crawls through the mud of the ocean floor covered in seven sets of quills, looking for all the world like a hairbrush. The Hallucigenia feeds on carrion? I didn’t know that! So it survives by eating dead creatures? Well, then, it fits me to a T, since I live by soiling the memories of the corpses of the past.

  Oh, about Mitsuru and me? Well, Mitsuru went on to pass her boards at Tokyo University Medical School, just as she’d hoped. But after that her life headed in a completely different and entirely unpredicted direction. She seems to be well—but she’s in the penitentiary. Once a year I get a New Year’s card from her, heavily excised by the censors, but I’ve never once replied. Do you want me to explain? I’ll be sure to do so as soon as I’ve wrapped up this part of the story.

  To continue, then, just the other day something completely unexpected happened. I haven’t wanted to talk to anyone about it, but if I’m going to continue with my account I have no choice but to reveal everything. It was about a week before the opening day of the trial. The two murders had been linked—for convenience I suppose—and were being dubbed “The Case of the Serial Apartment Murders.” At first the mass media had a field day over Kazue’s murder, which they referred to as the “Elite Office Lady Murder Case.” But once they connected Zhang to Yuriko’s murder as well, they changed their headlines. Yuriko had been murdered first, and when the case initially involved just a middle-aged prostitute, there’d been no reason even to create a headline.

  We’d heard reports that an off-season typhoon was threatening to move in on Tokyo. It was a disquieting day. An unseasonably warm wind rattled through the city, growing increasingly loud and strong. From the window of the ward office I watched the gale tear through the leaves of the sycamore trees outside as if to rip them from their branches. It toppled the bicycles in the parking lot like dominoes. It was a nerve-racking day, let me tell you, and made me feel somehow on edge.

  I took my seat at the Day Care consultation counter as usual. But no one came to apply for day care, and I lost myself to my thoughts. With the typhoon approaching, all I could think of was how I wanted to head home. Then an elderly woman appeared at my counter. She was wearing a smartly tailored gray suit, very subdued and classy. A pair of silver-rimmed reading glasses were perched on her nose. She seemed to be in her mid-fifties. Her graying hair was pulled back in a tight bun, and she had a severe manner, like a German woman. I was used to seeing no one but young mothers with children in tow at this particular window. I figured this woman must have come to inquire about putting a grandchild in day care, so with obvious reluctance I said, “May I help you?”

  At this, the woman let out a short snort and pulled her lips back. There was something about her teeth that struck me as familiar.

  “My dear, don’t you know who I am?”

  Even when I stared long and fast at her face, I couldn’t recall her name. The skin on her face—which bore not so much as a trace of makeup—was brown. She wore no lipstick. Here was an elderly woman wearing no makeup with a face like a fish. How was I supposed to distinguish her from any other woman her age?

  “It’s me, Masami. Masami Johnson!”

  I was so startled I let out a little gasp. I would never have expected Masami to turn into such a subdued modest-looking woman. The Masami of my memory would forever be a garish woman out of sync with her surroundings. She was the woman who strolled along the mountain paths o
f Gunma Prefecture sporting a humongous diamond ring, the one who wore bright red lipstick out on the ski slopes. She was the one who put her fuzzy mohair cap on Yuriko’s head. A woman who wore a designer T-shirt printed with the snarling face of a leopard so realistic it terrified young children. And she was the one who spoke English with such a trill she might as well have shouted “Hey! Look at me!” But even so, I was readily convinced by her transformation that she’d come to inquire about a nursery school. So I pulled out the registration book and said, while trying my best to conceal my bewilderment, “I didn’t realize you were living in this ward.”

  “Oh, no, I’m not,” Masami responded, in all seriousness. “I live in Yokohama now. I’ve remarried, you see.”

  I didn’t even know she and Johnson were divorced. In my mind, both Masami and Johnson were people I had never expected or wanted to see again.

  “I didn’t know. When did you get a divorce?”

  “It’s been more than twenty years.”

  Masami pulled a very elegant name card out of what appeared to be a solid-silver case and handed it to me.

  “This is what I do now.” COORDINATOR AND CONSULTANT: PRIVATE ENGLISH LESSONS, the card read. And her name had changed from Masami Johnson to Masami Bhasami.

  “I’m married to an Iranian who’s in the export-import business. And I have my own little business enlisting English tutors and dispatching them to various assignments for private conversation classes. It’s really a lot of fun.”

  I pretended to study her name card while I mulled it over. Why had she shown up here to see me after twenty-seven years? More to the point, why on a day like today? It was just too strange for words. To top it off, Masami was standing there beaming at me, her eyes dancing with nostalgia.

  “Oh, it’s so good to see you, dear! Let’s see. The last time we spoke was when Yuriko called to tell you she’d gotten into Q Junior High. That must have been more than twenty years ago!”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “Well, how have you been?”

  “Very well. Thank you for asking.”

  Thank you for asking indeed, I thought to myself bitterly, as I replied with the expected formality. It was so odd that she’d turned up here. She hadn’t come all the way to tell me about her private English classes, surely! When I could hide my dubious expression no longer, Masami finally blurted out the truth.

  “After Johnson and I broke up, he really hit rock bottom. He’d once been a rising star as a securities trader, you know, but once his career took a nosedive he sank to becoming one of those dime-a-dozen English teachers. And then, of course, Yuriko was murdered.”

  There was an edge in Masami’s voice—an effort to contain an inappropriate emotion: hatred. And then, looking straight at me and my bewildered expression, she said, “You didn’t know, did you, dear? Johnson and I broke up because of Yuriko.”

  I suddenly remembered the expression on Johnson’s face as he sat in front of the fireplace in his mountain cabin on that night so long ago with Yuriko leaning against his lap, playing sweet with him. She was just a primary school student then. Johnson had always looked so handsome and self-possessed, with his tousled brown hair and faded blue jeans. I found myself imagining what the face of a child born of those two would look like. The image I concocted was so endearing, so charming, it was enough to paralyze my mind. Yuriko might have died, but she still managed to exert control over me. I couldn’t stand it.

  Sensing my own hidden loathing, Masami said, “Then you really didn’t know. And I was so good to her, looking after her. To have her stab me in the back like that! Really, it made me so crazy I had to seek psychiatric counseling at the hospital for a while. I mean, I went to so much trouble to get her into the Q school system, and then every day I fixed her lunch, making sure it was so wonderful that none of her little friends would ever make fun of her. And the allowance I gave her was no pittance either, plus I was always certain she had money whenever she went out. Then there was the money it took to get her into the cheerleader squad, which was quite a sum, let me tell you. If I could get it back now, I would certainly try!”

  So that was it. She’d come to get the money! I lowered my head in confusion, trying to avoid her eyes.

  “I’m terribly sorry.”

  “Forget it! There’s nothing you could have done about it. You and Yuriko were never close anyway. I guess you were the clever one. You saw through her all along.”

  I might as well have been a fortune-teller the way Masami praised me. And then she reached in her bag, pulled out a notebook, and plopped it on the counter in front of me. The cover of the notebook was plastered with a sticker of a white lily and looked very girlish. Where the seal had peeled up, the edges were dirty and stained.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s your sister’s. I guess you could call it her diary. It looks like she kept it up until the very end. I’m sorry to spring it on you like this, but it gives me the creeps. I came here today to hand it over to you. I think it would be best for you to keep it. Johnson kept it for some reason, and then one day he sent it to me out of the blue, saying he had no use for it since he couldn’t read Japanese. When Yuriko was murdered I guess he suffered from a bout of guilty conscience. But he must not have realized she’d written about him in it.”

  Masami’s lips curled down when she said this.

  “Did you read it?” I asked her.

  “Certainly not.” Masami shook her head vigorously. “I have no interest in other people’s journals—and especially not in something as riddled with filth as this one.”

  Masami didn’t seem to notice the contradiction in what she said.

  “Very well. I’ll take it.”

  “Oh, what a relief! I thought it would be strange to turn it over to the police. And I hear the trial will begin soon, so it did cause me some concern. All right, then. I’ll leave it with you. Thanks. Take care of yourself.”

  Masami waved a suntanned hand at me. She glanced out the window at the sky and turned briskly on her heels. I’m sure she wanted to get home and out of this unfamiliar place before the typhoon set in. Or perhaps she didn’t want to spend a minute more talking with someone related to Yuriko. At any rate, she fled down the hall.

  The section chief came up behind me and peered down at the notebook. “Was it a claim? Or was something wrong?”

  “Neither one. It was nothing, really.”

  “Really? Well, she didn’t look like she had any connection with day-care centers.”

  I quickly placed my hands over Yuriko’s notebook. Once the Serial Apartment Murder Case got under way, I’d again become the target of curious stares. The section chief was already certain I was withholding information.

  “Boss, would it be okay if I wrap up early? I’m sorry, but I’m worried about my grandfather.”

  The section chief nodded wordlessly and he returned to his desk by the window. On account of the strange dampness in the air today, even the sound of his sneakers along the floor was dull and leaden. With the section chief’s permission, I rushed home, battling the wind with all my might. The gusts were so strong they practically lifted both wheels of my bike off the ground. It wouldn’t be long before fall set in and we could anticipate the cold north winds. But the dampness today made my skin feel warm and sticky. And the queasy feeling in my stomach had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with the fact that someone like Yuriko had left behind a journal.

  When she was in grade school, Yuriko was so bad at composition she had to ask for help. And she never paid attention to anything around her because she completely lacked any spirit of inquiry. A journal written by such a self-absorbed dim-witted girl had to be brimming with puerile self-portraits. Yuriko could hardly compose a coherent sentence; how could she possibly have kept a journal? Surely someone masquerading as Yuriko had written it. But who? And more than who, what? What could she possibly have written about? I was beside myself with curiosity and wanted to delv
e into Yuriko’s journal as quickly as possible.

  Well, here it is. This is Yuriko’s journal. To be perfectly honest, I would rather not show it to you. It is teeming with rubbish about her own messy life, but it is also replete with lies about me and our mother. Yuriko, of all people! It just amazes me that she could write such garbage. Certainly the handwriting resembles Yuriko’s. Someone must have forged it.

  If you promise not to believe a word of it, I’ll let you see what she wrote. But you really must not believe it. It really is a complete fabrication. A number of the Chinese characters she used in the journal were written incorrectly. And then there were places where she left out characters, and others where the characters she wrote were just plain ugly or else really hard to decipher. I’ve rewritten those parts.

  THREE • A NATURAL-BORN WHORE: YURIKO’S DIARY

  • 1 •

  It was one in the afternoon when the phone rang. Still in bed, I answered with as much charm as I could muster, thinking it might be a customer. It was my sister. I never called her. But she called me at least two or three times a week. She clearly had too much time on her hands. “I’m busy, call later,” I told her curtly as I started to slam the phone down. “I’ll call again tonight,” she shot back. It’s not as though she had anything important to discuss. I think she just wanted to see if I had a man with me. That’s the only reason she called. And I know this because the next minute she asked, “Are you alone now? I feel like you’ve got someone with you.”

  Once when Johnson had come over, my sister called while we were doing it. She left a long rambling message on my answering machine.

  “Yuriko, it’s me. I just had a great idea. Why don’t we move in together? Think about it. Given our different schedules, it ought to work out really well. I work during the day and I’m finished by nightfall. Since you work at night, you’ll be asleep at home while I’m working. And then while I’m asleep, you’ll be out. If you could get home before I wake up, we could go through the whole day without ever once seeing each other. We’d really save on rent. And we could take turns cooking meals and eating the leftovers for days on end. What do you say? Don’t you think it’s a great idea? Which apartment do you think we should keep? I’d like to know what you think, okay?”