Grotesque

by Natsuo Kirino

  Such a simple, wonderful desire. I felt I’d struck oil by coming across a boy as pure as Yurio. Like thick black liquid bubbling up from the earth’s core, my maternal instincts bubbled up within me. I would earn money for him. I had to buy him a computer. I decided to beg money from my father in Switzerland. I searched for my old address book and found my father’s phone number.

  “Hello. It’s me. Your daughter.”

  A woman responded in German. It had to be the Turkish woman my father had married. She put my father on the phone right away. He sounded old, and he could hardly understand Japanese anymore.

  “No press please.”

  “Father. Did you know Yuriko had a son?”

  “No press.”

  He hung up. I looked back at Yurio, disappointed. He had an expression on his face that seemed to say, I could have told you this would happen. He turned his face away—his profile the spitting image of Yuriko’s—and closed his eyes. I wondered if in his world he created beautiful shapes out of sound. I couldn’t accept anything I couldn’t see. I could see beauty. Yurio’s sightless beauty held no meaning for me. Even though I had a beautiful child in my life, I wasn’t able to share his world. It was terrifying, wasn’t it? And sad. I felt my heart fill with a giant sorrow, as if I were suffering unrequited love. I wanted to curl up in pain. I had never in all my life had these feelings before.

  “Someone’s here.”

  Yurio pulled the headphones off and listened but I couldn’t hear a thing. Just as I was looking around the apartment suspiciously, I heard a knock at the door. Yurio’s sense of hearing was uncanny.

  “It’s me! Mitsuru.”

  Mitsuru was standing in the filmy darkness of the housing complex hallway. She was wearing a vivid blue suit and had a beige coat folded over her arm. It was an outfit for spring and she made the dingy hallway pulse with brightness.

  “I can’t believe you’re still living exactly where you lived when you were in high school! Do you mind if I come in?”

  Mitsuru peered past me into the apartment somewhat timidly, as if she were afraid of barging in. I had no choice but to invite her in. She offered the perfunctory greetings, removed her high heels, and placed them neatly by the door. Her gaze landed on Yurio’s big sneakers lined up next to her shoes, and she gave a slight smile. I wondered why she’d come. She was even livelier than she had been when I saw her at the courthouse. Yet she seemed completely poised. She was gradually returning to her old self.

  “Sorry to pop in like this. I had some news I wanted to share with you.”

  Mitsuru settled down by the tea table and placed her coat and handbag neatly at her side. They were both brand-new and without a doubt expensive. I boiled a kettle of water, keeping an eye on Mitsuru out of the corner of my eye, and made us each a cup of tea. I used the same kind of Lipton tea bags I’d used when Grandfather was living here. I was stubborn that way. Once I found something I liked, I hated to have to change it.

  “You said you had some news?”

  “I’ve gotten a divorce and I’m going to marry Kijima.”

  Kijima? Which Kijima? Surely not Takashi Kijima. Had she come to take Yurio away? Seeing my look of panic, Mitsuru laughed and shook her head.

  “The father, you dummy. Professor Kijima. We’ve been corresponding, and we finally decided to marry. This is the way Professor Kijima put it: Marrying you will be the last task I have as an educator.”

  “My, my. Well, congratulations.”

  I offered my best wishes stiffly. Of course, I had Yurio so I wasn’t particularly jealous. I was just feeling sad that Yurio had a world of music I couldn’t enter, that was all. I couldn’t muster up genuine joy. My armor of malice was gradually growing thin. Mitsuru was glowing with happiness.

  “So Professor Kijima feels duty bound to rescue his brilliant student, does he?” I asked, somewhat snidely. “And is he going to make you the stepmother of his corpulent son?”

  “I suppose. That’s why I’m here today, with a message for you from Takashi.” Mitsuru pulled an envelope out of her purse. “Here. My stepson, as you say, told me to hand this over to you. Won’t you please accept it?”

  I peered into the envelope, hoping it contained cash. Instead I found two notebooks that looked like old ledgers of some sort.

  “Those are Kazue Sat’s journals. She sent them to Kijima just before she was murdered. Kijima felt he should give them to the police when he learned about the crime. But she writes about his occupation, so he was afraid he’d get arrested for aiding and abetting prostitution. He came to the courthouse that day to see how to get rid of them. He tried to give them to me, but of course I’m worried myself about being under police surveillance and don’t need to get involved in any more trouble. But you’re the older sister of one victim and friend to the other. No one had a closer relationship to the two of them than you. If anyone should have the diaries, it’s you. So, please don’t make a fuss; just take them.”

  Mitsuru spilled all that out in one breath and then shoved the package across the table toward me. Kazue was murdered and now here were her journals. Somehow they seemed ominous. Without thinking, I pushed the package away. Mitsuru slid it back across the table in front of me. We played our little game of back and forth a few more times, shoving the package across the narrow table, and then Mitsuru grew frustrated. She stared at me hard. I glared back. The last thing I wanted was Kazue’s journals. I mean, really! I didn’t care whether Zhang killed Kazue or if she was killed by someone completely different; it had nothing to do with me, but Mitsuru would not let up.

  “Please,” she begged. “Just take them. And read them!”

  “I don’t want them. They’re bad luck.”

  “Bad luck?” Mitsuru looked offended. “Are you saying they’re bad luck because they’re affiliated with a woman like me? A woman with a criminal history?”

  I could feel an incredible power coursing through Mitsuru, one I had never felt before now. I shrank back. I suppose it was the power of love. Water a plant and it comes to life, sinking its roots deep into the black earth and raising its head up high, afraid of neither rain nor wind. That’s the impression Mitsuru made on me. Women who need water all become domineering. Yuriko had been the same way. Finally, I replied, “I don’t think you’re bad luck or anything of the sort. With you it was a question of religion.”

  “Blaming it on religion is a bit facile, don’t you think? I was undone by my own weakness. That’s what led me to join that organization in the first place. I get confused even now when I think about it. Staring at your own weakness is horrible. Unimaginably painful. But you’ve never once even thought about your weaknesses or tried to overcome them, have you? I know about the complex you harbor toward Yuriko. It’s practically debilitating. Especially because you don’t fight it.”

  “Don’t patronize me. What have these journals got to do with me?”

  It was all so baffling. Why did Mitsuru want me to read the diaries so badly?

  “I think it would be best for you to read them yourself and find out. Takashi said so too. Because you and Kazue were close. You ought to read them. Kazue sent them to Takashi because she wanted someone to read them; of that there can be no doubt. She didn’t want them read by the police or a detective or the judge. She wanted them read by someone from the real world…her world.”

  What kind of proof, I wonder, did she have for making such assertions? As you well know, Kazue and I were not very close at all. We entered high school at the same time. She started talking to me, and I had no choice but to answer. That’s all there was to it. We had misunderstandings and would patch them up from time to time. But after the incident of the love letters she sent to Takashi Kijima, her pride was wounded and she avoided me.

  “You’re the only one who ever visited her house, aren’t you? She was a loner, just like you.”

  “I think Takashi should keep them. She sent them to him because she liked him. Wasn’t there a letter?”

&n
bsp; “There wasn’t a letter. This is all there was. If you ask how she knew his address, I’ll answer but it’s not easy. It seems Takashi knew the owner of the hotel where there was an escort agency that Kazue used. He ran into Kazue once in front of the hotel. I think he gave her his card.”

  “Then why don’t I send them to her family? If I mail them from the ward office, it won’t cost me a thing.”

  Mitsuru shot me a look. “Don’t you dare. I don’t think Kazue’s mother will want to read these. I don’t care how close a daughter might be to her mother, there are some things she doesn’t need to know.”

  “Well, then, why is it so important for me to know them? Explain yourself.”

  Explain yourself. That was exactly the same phrase Kazue always used in high school. I smiled sardonically when I remembered it. Mitsuru looked to the side and started tapping her front teeth with her finger. She still had that same space between those teeth. Yurio was in the other room, his back to me, sitting cross-legged on the floor with his headphones on. But he wasn’t swaying to the rhythm. I wondered if perhaps he was eavesdropping with his amazing sense of hearing. I didn’t want him to know about my weaknesses. I began to regret letting Mitsuru into the house. Then she suddenly stopped tapping her teeth and fixed her eyes on mine.

  “Don’t you want to know why Kazue got into prostitution? I do. But I don’t want to get any further involved in this. I have my hands full just trying to sort out the mess I got myself into. I can’t afford to think about Kazue. I have to think about myself and the people I’m involved with now: my family, Professor Kijima, all the people I killed. Until I’ve straightened my own life out, I don’t think I’ll be going back to the trial. I was able to see you after all these years—and talk to Takashi—but I have to start thinking about my problems and only my problems now. It’s different for you. You’re going to keep going to the trial because of Yuriko’s murder, right? And you’ll take care of her son, Yurio. You have to because she’s your sister. Why do you have to be involved with Kazue? Well, read her journals.”

  I remembered reading in Yuriko’s diaries that she ran into Kazue in one of the love-hotel alleys in Murayama-ch. Maybe what happened after that was recorded in Kazue’s journals. I wanted to read them, but at the same time I didn’t want to. I hesitatingly picked up the package and peered inside.

  “What’d she write about?”

  “Ha! See! You’re curious already,” Mitsuru chirped triumphantly. “Don’t you want to know what she was thinking about? She studied her head off, just like I did. Then she went out in the world and got herself a good job. And yet that wasn’t the half of it. I don’t know what led Kazue to do what she did, but she became a common streetwalker, standing on the corner picking up men. That’s the most dangerous way to go about it. It wasn’t at all like what Yuriko had done in high school, turning a few tricks on the side. You want to know what happened to Kazue, don’t you?”

  Why did I have to be told this by Mitsuru? Why was I being blamed? I was furious. Mitsuru drained her tea and placed the cup back on the saucer with a light clink. As if that sound was the signal she’d been waiting for, she let loose.

  “This is what I think. I probably shouldn’t say this, but I will. You and Kazue were exactly alike in many ways. You both were insanely studious. You studied all the time and always did your best, and you made it into Q High School for Young Women. But once you were in, you discovered that you were way out of your league and could not possibly compete with the other students. So you gave up. Both you and Kazue were amazed, when you entered high school, by the disparity between yourselves and the other girls there. How you wished you could narrow the gap a bit. Fit in more. So first you started adjusting the hem of your school uniform to make it shorter. Then you started wearing knee socks like the other girls. Did you forget? I know it’s not polite for me to say this, but you finally just gave up because you didn’t have the money to compete. You pretended not to have any interest in fashion or boys or studying. And you decided you’d manage to endure your time at Q High School for Young Women by arming yourself with malice. You got nastier and nastier with each year. Meaner in the second than the first, meaner in the third than the second. That’s why I kept my distance from you.

  “On the other hand, Kazue put all her energy into trying to fit in with the others. She came from a family that had some money. She was smart. So she thought she could wiggle her way in with the rest of us. But it was her very determination that marked her as a target for bullying. The harder she tried the worse it was. There’s really no one more cruel than adolescent girls, and Kazue was uncool about everything. And then, when you of all people laughed at her, it set you up as a target as well. I can still remember how you cried when someone called you a ‘penniless loser.’ It was during gym class. You had decided to act like a lone wolf; that was your strategy for survival. But there were plenty of times when you let your defenses down. You liked the school ring everyone ordered at graduation, didn’t you?”

  Mitsuru looked at the fingers of my left hand. I hurriedly hid the ring.

  “What do you mean?”

  My voice trembled with bitterness. Mitsuru had attacked me as though she were a completely different person. I didn’t know how to react. I wanted to argue with her, to set her straight. But my beloved nephew was sitting in the next room listening.

  “Don’t you remember? It’s hard to say, but since I probably won’t ever see you again, I will.”

  “Why, where are you going?”

  My voice must have sounded anxious. Mitsuru’s face softened and she broke into a laugh.

  “I’ve told you that Kijima and I are going to live in Karuizawa. But you’re not going to want to see me after I finish telling you all that I think. I’ve stopped worrying about hurting other people’s feelings and curtailing my opinions. I may offend you with what I have to say, but now’s my chance.

  “When we graduated from Q High School for Young Women, many students went on to Q University, right? That’s when they all got together and decided to make a school ring to commemorate our class. Everyone there ordered the ring. It was gold with the imprint of the school emblem. I lost mine long ago so I can’t remember exactly what design it was. Wait a minute. Don’t tell me you’re wearing the ring!”

  Mitsuru pointed at the hand I had hidden. I shook my head emphatically.

  “No, this is different. I bought this ring at the Parco Department Store.”

  “You did? Well, I really don’t care one way or the other. The students who’d been in the Q School system from the very start didn’t really pay much attention to the rings and never wore them. They just wanted one as a keepsake. But the girls who brandished the rings around proudly after they went on to university were inevitably those who’d entered the first year of high school. That’s what I heard later. And they wore them with such bravado because they could finally be proud of having advanced up from a lower division. I know this is really trivial, so don’t laugh, but when I first heard this I was very surprised to learn that the one who was most determined to wear her ring night and day was you. Now this may be just a silly rumor. I mean, I don’t know if it’s true or not. But it caught me by surprise because I thought for the first time I had seen inside your heart.”

  “Who told you?”

  “I forget. It was really all so silly. But is it? Is it really just a silly story? If anything, it’s terrifying. That’s because it represents precisely the value system that holds sway in Japan today. Why do you think I got involved in a religious organization with such a similar structure as Q School? I believed that if I renounced my family and entered the religious organization, I could advance my social position, make my way up the ranks of the hierarchy. But even though my husband and I practiced all kinds of austerities, we would never have been permitted to become executives in the innermost circle of power, and we would never have been in line to assume leadership of the organization. Only the founder and his entourage wer
e ‘born into the privilege.’ They were the true elite. See? It’s exactly the same as what we faced at Q, don’t you think? I figured this all out while I was in prison. I realized that my life took a turn down the wrong path when I entered the Q system in junior high and tried so hard to blend in with those who were born to power. You and I are the same. And Kazue too. We all had our hearts wrested away by an illusion. I wonder how it looked to others. I wonder if we looked like victims of mind control.

  “If you look at it that way, the one who was freest of all was Yuriko. She was so liberated, I wondered if she didn’t come from an entirely different planet. Such a free spirit. She couldn’t help but stick out in Japanese society. The reason she was such a prize among men goes beyond her beauty. I suspect they instinctively saw her true spirit. That’s why she was able to captivate even a man like Professor Kijima.

  “The reason you haven’t been able to overcome your sense of being Yuriko’s inferior is not just because she was beautiful but because you could never share her sense of freedom. But it’s not too late for you. I’ve committed a horrible crime and will spend the rest of my life repenting. But for you it’s not too late. That’s why I’m telling you: Read these notebooks.”

  Mitsuru stepped into the next room and spoke affectionately to Yurio, with no sign whatsoever that she had just spoken to me harshly.

  “Yurio, I’ll be going now. Please take good care of your aunt.”

  Yurio turned toward Mitsuru, his beautiful eyes fixed on the space above her head, and slowly tilted his head down. I was so smitten by the color of his eyes, I didn’t care one way or the other what Mitsuru had said to me. By the time I came to my senses, she was gone.

  For a brief second the love I had once harbored for Mitsuru bubbled back into my heart. Wise, clever, squirrel-like Mitsuru. She had finally returned to the nest in the safe, luxuriant woods with Professor Kijima. I knew she would never leave again.