“I’ll pay the money.”
“With interest!”
“I’ll pay the interest, too,” Tetsuyuki pleaded.
“Fine. With interest that’ll be one point five million yen.”
“One point five million . . .”
“And when Kobori gets out of the cooler, you’ll have to make a suitable apology. That’s five years! Five years of stinking food, all because of you.”
“One point five million yen . . . even if you stood me on my head, I don’t have that much money.”
“Well then, you’ll die here.”
The strength drained from Tetsuyuki’s body. If they’d come after him no matter where he ran, he’d fight back. Did the man intend to kill him right there in the car? Or take him to a dark field with no one around to kill him? If he were dragged out of the car, he’d have a chance to run for it. He had no other choice. He murmured, “Please kill me.” The driver looked at him for the first time and said, “You mean it?”
“No matter how much I work, everything is eaten up by my dad’s debts. I’m tired of this. There’s no point in going on living. Please kill me.” This acting was a matter of life and death for Tetsuyuki. The two men looked at each other.
“Okay, I’ll kill you. Three punches for each of the five years Kobori spends in the slammer. That’s fifteen punches. And they won’t be with an open hand. No one survives fifteen of my punches.”
The driver got out of the car and opened the back seat door. Tetsuyuki was pulled out, remaining in the grip of the two large men and unable to escape.
With the first punch he felt as if his face had been crushed. His legs were numb and he was not even able to stand up, much less run away. He could hear nothing and felt nauseated. Grabbed by the collar, he was forced to stand. The second punch was more violent than the first, but the third seemed to be poorly aimed and only grazed his cheek. The fourth punch landed in the middle of his face, and he could hear his nose breaking. His entire face had become slimy, though he did not know where the blood was coming from. He desperately stood up and tried to run away. The man seemed to misunderstand his motive.
“Seems this punk really intends to get fifteen punches.” The man thought for a moment. “Hey, hurry up and kick the bucket!”
Only half conscious, Tetsuyuki thought he was running in the direction of escape, but instead ran right into the man. Unable even to sense that the fifth punch was lighter than the others, Tetsuyuki again stood up and clung to the man. Then he could understand nothing that was going on. Above his neck there were netlike cracks in all of his bones, and, hallucinating that blood was gushing out of those cracks, a fear of death welled up from within him.
A hollow sound like that of a crane became alternately louder and softer. After that, he could sometimes hear the sound of human voices. It was only after some time had passed that he realized it was the voices of the two men.
“This kid’s gonna die. How long do you plan to stick around? We should beat it, and fast.”
Like whispering in a large cathedral, the man’s words momentarily brought Tetsuyuki to consciousness. He realized that he was not lying on the ground of an embankment, but on the futon in his apartment.
“Idiot! We’re not dealing with a child messenger here. Unless we settle the matter once and for all, we can’t just give up on the promissory notes.” It was the voice of the man who had beaten him. The same man moved his face close to Tetsuyuki’s. “Hey, don’t you have anything of value? Anything would do. I’ll return these promissory notes to you in exchange for it.”
Tetsuyuki had nothing of value. Emitting a groan through the searing pain of his face, he barely managed to shake his head. He wanted to be taken to a hospital. If left in this condition, he would die. But he could produce no voice. He raised his arm in an attempt to grasp the man’s thick shoulder, and on his wrist was fastened the Rolex watch he had received from Yōko. The man mistook Tetsuyuki’s action as wanting to show him the watch, a thing of value. The man snatched the watch.
“It’s old but hey, it’s a Rolex.”
Tetsuyuki had no strength to resist. At length the cranelike sound receded, and everything fell silent.
His right leg was numb. He pounded on the floor with his right hand. He wanted someone to come help, anyone. He thought perhaps someone living in the apartment building would think the pounding suspicious and come look. The pounding caused vibrations that were unbearable inside his brain, and yet actually it produced a sound no greater than that of a rolled-up newspaper. He no longer sensed light, sound, or temperature.
He was playing baseball in the middle of a shopping arcade whose lights were all out. This “baseball” game used a bamboo broom handle for a bat and wadded newspaper secured with cellophane tape for a ball. Minoru pitched the ball, and Tetsuyuki struck at it. Having no bounce in it, the ball rolled, entering the grilled pancake shop Full Moon, whose door was slightly ajar. Tetsuyuki cautiously peered inside. Three old men were playing “flower” cards with the proprietress of the shop. Every night those three old men would show up at Full Moon to play cards, and she always trounced them.
“Don’t break the glass.” The proprietress—who looked about thirty but at the same time also past sixty—scolded him. One of the old men picked up the newspaper ball.
“You think this ball could break glass? Huh, Tetchin?” People who had known Tetsuyuki since he was little called him Tetchin. One of the pancakes sizzling on the grill was almost done, and the bonito flakes sprinkled on it were writhing.
“If you don’t eat it right away, it’ll burn,” Tetsuyuki reminded them in a loud voice, though he knew that the three old men had only ordered it but wouldn’t eat it. They had no time for that. Each held his fan-shaped hand of cards at eye level, and while scattering the ashes from their cigarettes would say such things as “Who’s got the Priest? It’s probably that vixen,” or “Someone toss in the Pine, or else I’ll be done in by the Red Poetry Ribbon.”
Tetsuyuki asked the old man: “Then, is it okay if Minoru and I eat it?”
“You just ate, didn’t you?” Another man added, “Well, at fifteen or sixteen they’re bottomless pits. They can eat any amount.”
“So then, it’s okay if we eat it?”
Tetsuyuki called Minoru and, by their own leave taking two stainless-steel spatulas in hand, sat down, turned off the gas burner, and cut the pancake in two. Staring at the old men, the proprietress bared her lipstick-stained teeth and laughed. “You guys are all going to be dead in another hour.”
The three old men all set their cards on the table in unison. Tetsuyuki’s maneuvering of the spatula came to a standstill as he looked at the faces of the old men, which had taken on an ashen cast. The door of the shop opened and in came a lizard, and then another one. Before he knew it, so many lizards had come rushing into Full Moon that there was no room to move. Even the walls and ceiling were thickly covered with them, and at length, the ankles of the three old men were buried in their glossiness. Like the surface of the sea at high tide, the number of lizards swelled up from the floor of the shop. Tetsuyuki held several of them on the palm of his hand after they had eaten up his pancake. One of the old men was crying. “There are lots of things I’ve left undone. Please don’t tell me I have only one hour left.”
The lizards kept pouring into the shop, piling on top of one another until the old men were waist-deep in them. There was also a steady stream of them falling from the ceiling.
“What’re the things you’ve left undone?” another old man asked, with an expression on his face as if he were the only one resigned to what was about to happen.
“Yōko, and the child she and I created together. I want to see them and apologize to them.”
“Where are they now?”
“They’re nearby. I know they’re living somewhere close, but I can’t seem to find them.”
“Why did you become separated? Wasn’t it because you reduced them to poverty? And what’s more,
you hit her just because she talked to another man.”
“Yes, and I want to apologize for that, too.”
At that, the old man who had been silent mumbled, “If our lives are two feet long, then the part taken up by dealings between men and women is just half an inch. And yet, if it weren’t for that half inch, it would never turn into two feet.” Then he laughed loudly and sank into an ocean of lizards. Tetsuyuki stood up and looked for Minoru, who was nowhere to be found.
“I’ll take you to that woman named Yōko and her kid.”
“Tetchin, you know where they are?”
“I do.”
“Where? Where are they?” Those were his last words before the two remaining old men were overcome by a wave of lizards and never resurfaced.
Fighting his way through the lizards, Tetsuyuki exited Full Moon, running through the shopping arcade and down a gray path. He dashed into a phone booth and dialed Yōko’s house, but his fingers and his will were at odds with each other: when he tried to dial 2 he dialed 6 instead and, becoming flustered, started over. No matter how many times he tried, he was unable to dial the number he wanted.
He had not noticed that lizards had entered the phone booth as well, their writhing bodies progressively burying his legs, abdomen, and chest. He stood on his tiptoes. The lizards finally reached his nostrils and stopped there. The phone rang. It must be Yōko. But if he moved even slightly he would sink into the mass of lizards, and would be unable to take Yōko’s call.
He wondered if Kin was not somewhere among them, and called out, “Kin-chan, Kin-chan.”
In Tetsuyuki’s field of vision there appeared the morning sun of winter and the form of Kin nailed to the pillar. His body was chilled to the bone and he was shivering in short bursts. His right leg had recovered from its numbness, but during his dream the pain in his nose had increased in severity and his face kept cramping. He tried reaching his hand to his face. Something like a hardened membrane was stuck to it from beneath his nose over his chin and extending to the apertures of his ears. Apparently he had gotten a crick in his neck from his beating, and was unable to move it. Using his fingernail, he scratched what was stuck to his face: it was dried blood.
His nose was swollen, and even without a doctor’s diagnosis he knew that it was broken; he could tell that a piece of bone moved when he endured the pain of pressing it. He could hardly open his left eye, and both cheekbones ached. It occurred to him that they might also be fractured. But his headache had vanished. Rolling his body over toward the closet, he was barely able to pull out his quilt.
He was unable to recall any blows except to his head, and yet he felt pain in his right ribs. When he was beaten and fell down in the frozen field he had probably injured them on a rock or something. He felt a burning sensation in his face and wanted to cool it with a wet towel, but was unable to get up.
He could hear the footsteps of the woman who lived alone in the apartment next door, and pounded repeatedly on the wall with his fist. There was no one aside from that sickly woman to whom he could appeal for help. At one point he gave up, but renewing his resolve, he began banging against the wall with his foot. He kept kicking against the wall with all his might. He heard her opening the door.
“Mr. Iryō,” she called with her thin voice. He opened his mouth and was about to answer, but then realized he needed to hide Kin. Pulling a handkerchief out of the back pocket of his trousers, he grasped the pillar and raised his body, struggling against dizziness and nausea. The moment he placed the handkerchief over the nail piercing Kin’s back, he fell over, making a great noise.
“What’s wrong, Mr. Iryō?”
The door was not locked. Tetsuyuki turned his face toward the door, and the moment his neighbor saw him she stooped down and let out a long, hoarse scream. An office worker in the neighborhood who had just left for work came into Tetsuyuki’s apartment in his overcoat, and another man in his thirties who lived on the corner of the alley but whom Tetsuyuki had never met also entered. The three of them showered him with questions.
“What happened? Were you robbed?”
“Hey, we need to call an ambulance.”
“Did you get in a fight or something?”
“Can you see?” Tetsuyuki nodded.
“Are you conscious?” He nodded again.
What made them turn pale and become alarmed was the fact that blood from his nose had formed a large, dark red circle on the front of his sweater and on the quilt, leading them to believe that he had been stabbed in the chest or stomach.
Tetsuyuki was taken by ambulance to a hospital on the Hanna Freeway, where the doctors immediately took an X-ray of his head. His nose was indeed broken.
“If the break had been even just one centimeter deeper, it would have killed you.”
“Is it only my nose that is broken?”
The doctor answered in the affirmative, and then explained that after the initial treatment he would do an electroencephalogram.
“Do you live alone?”
“Yes.”
“Your parents or siblings?”
Tetsuyuki did not want his mother to know about it. It was over now. The villains had left his father’s promissory notes, and would never come again. He wanted to keep this a secret from his mother. He gave the doctor Yōko’s home telephone number.
After the blood had been wiped away and he had been moved to a private room, a nurse came and put an ice bag on his face. As she exited, a young police detective came in and sat down beside the bed.
“You were threatened and beaten by a collector once before, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“This was their henchmen, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“You have no legal responsibility to pay back your father’s promissory notes. That was a despicable thing they did to you.”
Tetsuyuki expected to be asked about various other things, but the detective got up to leave the room.
“Please don’t arrest them. If you do, their partners will just come and get back at me. It’s all over now. They took my watch in exchange for the promissory notes.” The detective made no reply. “Even if you arrest them, they’ll get out of prison after five or six years, won’t they? And then I’ll have to live in fear again. I won’t press charges . . .”
The wooden expression of the detective then broke into a smile. “Uh, I was surprised at that lizard on the pillar. Is that some kind of charm?”
Tetsuyuki closed his eyes. The door shut, and the sound of the detective’s bold gait receded. Since the detective entered his room, the landlady must have accompanied him. And she no doubt also saw Kin. At that thought, it occurred to him that he might be evicted before April.
That miserly landlady would be certain to demand payment for the pillar, but even if she got the money she would simply install a new tenant without repairing it. Tetsuyuki resolved that he would not pay. It was because the landlady had not switched on the electricity that the lizard ended up getting nailed to the pillar, and he as tenant ended up in the situation of having to share the space with the reptile. What, after all, did she intend to do about his psychological stress? He would let all that loose on her in no uncertain terms, and that would take the edge off her hostility.
Tetsuyuki started to feel a bit better. He recalled fragments of his dream. He understood vaguely what the ocean of lizards was that had engulfed the three old men. No matter how severe the laws that human beings create, they never truly punish a guilty person. But you can never completely evade the law that creates human beings, no matter what you do. And there is such a law. There is a law that created the myriad living things, including flowers and trees. There are invisible, imperative laws. They make the seasons go through their cycles, and the tides advance and recede. They make human beings happy or unhappy, animating them and destroying them. If that were not so, then what was the reason that Kin—one worthless lizard—should go on living?
There must be a deep meaning in
the dream he saw last night—during a time when he could easily have died—about the old man lamenting the things left undone as he was sinking in a sea of lizards. There are no doubt many people who die that way, and it is because they have violated a law. Though not applicable to rules created by human beings, the ocean that swallows those who are guilty of great sins leads them into a fathomless darkness that symbolizes everything horrifying, like lizards and snakes. Sawamura Chiyono was probably one of those human beings. Half asleep, Tetsuyuki’s thoughts branched out from one thing to another.
Tetsuyuki pricked his ears up with a start. He could definitely hear busy footsteps: Yōko’s. They brought tears to his eyes. He could not tell whether he was still dreaming or was out of his mind.
Yōko opened the door without knocking. The moment their eyes met Tetsuyuki raised one arm as if taking an oath. “As long as I’m alive, I’ll never hit you. And even if you dance with another man, I won’t get jealous.”
She timidly approached and peered into his face, which was mostly hidden by the ice bag. She sighed deeply and then began to cry.
“Yōko, my luck has really been rotten. I wasn’t able to die even after being thrashed by a guy who was like a pro wrestler.”
“Idiot . . .”
“They returned my dad’s promissory notes. Even though they said they’d kill me, after I lost consciousness they brought me back to my apartment. That was kind of them.”
“Such people ought to die.”
“If you say that, you’ll be the one who dies. While I’ve been half awake just now, I’ve been thinking about a lot of different things. I’ve turned into a philosopher. I’ve arrived at a great enlightenment, nothing like empty academic theorizing.”
Yōko gently lifted the ice bag. “Do you realize what your face is like?”
“I have a pretty good idea. From my nose on up I’m a monster with no eyes, and from my nose down . . .”
“It’s worse than you imagine. Someone who has no idea what his face is like could hardly have arrived at a great enlightenment, could he?” Yōko laughed and cried at the same time. Then she softly brushed her lips against his face.
Inhabitation Page 24