The Maid

by Yasutaka Tsutsui

  Nanase could not believe her eyes: there were nine loads of washing. Even with a family of thirteen, this is ridiculous, she thought. It’s not as if it rained yesterday. With this much laundry every day, the washing machine isn’t going to hold up much longer.

  After Nanase got the washing started, she straightened up the living room and swept the floor. While she was working, she put together the pieces of Kaneko’s mental make-up she had already glimpsed and gradually came to an understanding of her. Kaneko’s eleven children hadn’t made her the way she was. She was a born slob!

  The living room, the kitchen – everywhere was dirty. Inside the cupboards, plates and cups not normally used were piled up in a jumble and covered with dust. The bowls by the sink had grains of rice hardening inside. Kaneko probably hadn’t bothered to scrub them, but had just soaked them in water and wiped them. Rice starch had congealed on the tips of a dozen chopsticks standing in the drainer. Undoubtedly, Kaneko had just run them under water for a second.

  Nanase was appalled. What ordinary housewife could put up with such filth? Probably her natural sloppiness had got worse by having to look after all these children. Before now, Nanase had worked for two or three families with close to ten members, but she had never come across anything like this. Come to think of it, having conceived eleven children was in itself a good indication of Kaneko’s carelessness.

  While Nanase was hanging up the washing in the backyard, she noticed that the sky was overcast. When she had peeked inside the drawers earlier, there was hardly any spare underwear. Actually, none at all would be a better way to put it. Probably whose underwear was whose was a moot point; she couldn’t even find any belonging to Koichiro. What would happen if it rained tonight? Nanase shuddered at the thought. Most likely Kaneko wouldn’t care.

  The two girls and the boy in elementary school returned home and stared curiously at Nanase. Only the sixth-grader, Ayako, introduced herself. Nanase peered into their juvenile minds and saw immediately that they all had their father’s amiable, easy-going nature. Whether they were as messy as their mother, she couldn’t tell, but if their clothes were anything to go by, they were indifferent to dirt. Most likely, the other children were the same, Nanase concluded.

  In an ordinary household, the children would want an after-school snack, but they seemed to realize there wouldn’t be anything and didn’t even bother to open the refrigerator. The only food inside was dried fish and garlic.

  After the children got some spending money from Koichiro in the store and went out to play, the vegetable man came to deliver Kaneko’s order. The kitchen table was buried under the vegetables – six turnips, three Chinese cabbages, twenty heads of lettuce and fifteen cucumbers.

  In the evening the junior-high- and high-school-aged children came home one after another, but Kaneko had yet to return. She was probably gabbing with somebody somewhere when dinner has to be prepared, thought Nanase, who had no idea how the household was run. Of course, in this family there might be no need to worry about such things. But when she thought of having to prepare a meal for thirteen people, she was bound to feel anxious.

  “Sorry I’m late.”

  Kaneko returned with three kilograms of beef, five loaves of bread, a pound of butter and other small items inside her basket. It was already getting dark. The smaller children had got home long before and were watching TV in the living room, whining that they were hungry. What could she have been thinking of, Nanase wondered as she peered into her mind. Just as Nanase imagined, Kaneko had met a neighbourhood friend from her school days, and they had been chatting in a coffee shop by the station. Still dwelling on their conversation, Kaneko half-heartedly went about dinner – a large quantity of tasteless food. When dinner was ready, the two eldest sons, one a company employee, the other a college student, returned. Although the family was relatively well off, it seemed to be the policy not to give the children much pocket money and to insist that they eat dinner at home.

  Nanase predicted that when the thirteen family members gathered around the table, they would be as noisy as a beehive, but the only commotion to speak of came from the smaller children arguing about what TV show to watch. They were no different from an ordinary small family – if anything, they were even quieter. The older children, junior high school and above, didn’t pay much attention to Nanase, even though she was the family’s first maid; they just ate in silence. Koichiro was the same.

  Nanase peered into their minds: they were all absorbed in their personal problems as they mechanically plied their chopsticks. Nanase was impressed that they could consume so much awful food without complaining; then again, when tasteless food becomes an everyday occurrence, one might no longer consider eating an act of pleasure. This could be the only explanation for the family’s utter lack of interest in food.

  That evening, after clearing the table, Nanase started to take in the washing, but it was still damp from the day’s overcast sky. Kaneko told her to let it dry overnight. Against her better judgement, Nanase followed the order.

  Nanase was the last to take a bath, but when her turn came, the water was covered with white scum. She couldn’t bring herself to get into the tub, and so she made do by washing herself with cold water from the tap.

  That night her head ached from the stench and she couldn’t get to sleep. Every hour a bad dream would wake her up.

  She dreamt that she was in the corner of a kitchen somewhere. She was squatting, trying with her scratchy tongue to scrape off grains of hardened rice stuck to the bottom of a chipped, dust-covered bowl. The taste was so terrible she woke up in a cold sweat. She found the family cat, who had crawled into her bedding, sleeping on her chest. The cat’s dream had invaded her consciousness. She chased the cat into the hallway, and carefully shut the sliding doors.

  When Nanase went out into the backyard in the morning, the laundry was still damp from a drizzle during the night. Now she had to iron each article of clothing until it was dry.

  When Nanase went to the bathroom, she was disgusted to find that somebody had used her toothbrush. Probably no one had his or her own toothbrush, so if a slightly newer one was lying around, no one would bother over whose it was. She could count only ten toothbrushes, of which two or three were worn beyond use. So at least five or six members of the family had to be sharing toothbrushes.

  I better keep my toothbrush somewhere else, thought Nanase. That morning she brushed her teeth with her finger.

  As Kaneko was busy preparing breakfast, Nanase worked on the ironing. In the meantime, the children woke up and got dressed. Her ironing could not keep up with them. The children would come to the room, strip off their underwear, and grab the underwear that Nanase had just ironed. Some of the children, who couldn’t wait for her to finish the ironing, would forage through the discarded underwear for the cleanest one they could find. They’d sniff the articles one by one, and put on whatever didn’t smell too bad.

  The junior-high and high-school children woke up and started fighting over the socks their elder brothers had discarded. One child played the clown by taking a big whiff and pretending to faint.

  Soon the whole room began to stink. Nanase’s head ached, and she felt like throwing up.

  I’m going to fight this smell, Nanase resolved. I have to do something to rid the house of it. It’s as if the family is stagnating in a stench that none of them can perceive.

  After all the children except the two youngest had left, Nanase and Kaneko started on the breakfast dishes. According to Kaneko, the children weren’t particularly smart, but they weren’t particularly stupid either. These days, however, being on the slow side was an advantage over being too smart. This was Kaneko’s strange view of life.

  Kaneko spoke disjointedly, flitting from one topic to another without any logical connection. To avoid a repetition of the previous day’s mishap, Nanase kept her latch fastened as much as possible, but did allow herself to glimpse into Kaneko’s mind. The illness Koichiro had mentioned
was actually a lie Kaneko had told him so she could hire a maid and do even less.

  Kaneko had no interest in her husband, in making money, in housework, in her children or in her children’s future. Her thoughts lacked any cohesiveness, and she had no clear-cut goals in life beyond wanting it easy. In a way these attempts to live on a pure, animal-like level were indicative of a feminine, almost too feminine, intellectual and emotional state – but actually, she was stuck at a more primitive and dishonest spiritual level. Daily drudgery had stripped her consciousness of the all-important mother instinct. Kaneko herself was not totally unaware that she was more negligent than the average housewife, but she justified it by convincing herself that she had an “optimistic” nature, and by bragging so to her friends.

  Koichiro had a second income from selling land. When he left for the ward office to register some property, Kaneko had to mind the store. Nanase resolved to give the house a thorough cleaning and get at the roots of the stench.

  There were any number of rooms. The bigger ones had been divided in half and the closets remodelled, so the children of high-school age and above had their own rooms.

  All of the rooms were filthy. Except for the eldest daughter’s, they looked as if they hadn’t been cleaned in a month. Layers of dust had collected underneath the desks; sheets and blankets were covered with stains; pillowcases glistened with grease.

  The college boy’s bed was especially bad; under the mattress were dozens of nude photos that had been cut out of men’s magazines. Underwear that had been used to wipe bodily fluids, and that were now as hard as a board, had been crumpled into balls and shoved underneath the bed. Nanase shuddered. She knew men relieved themselves sexually in various ways, but because the underwear was giving off such a horrendous odour, she could not ignore it.

  She discovered similar things in the high-school boys’ rooms. She gathered everything together and stuffed it all into paper bags which she then discarded in a plastic rubbish container. Then she scrubbed her hands with soap again and again.

  From under the junior-high-school boy’s desk, she unearthed a lunch box. It seemed to have been lying there for ages; when she cautiously opened the lid, she found it covered with a purple mould.

  The washing machine was running constantly. Even after four loads of the underwear and shirts the children had discarded that morning, she still had the sheets and pillowcases to do. Nanase kept going.

  At last, the cleaning was done, but the stench still hadn’t gone. The stink seemed to have permeated the house itself; all Nanase could do now was wash the walls, posts and ceilings. She heaved a sigh. Her headache was becoming chronic. If I ever get over this headache, she smiled to herself, I won’t be able to smell the odour either.

  Partly in an attempt to forget the pain, she continued to work feverishly, all the while trying to keep her mind a blank. In the meantime the smaller children returned home and stared wide-eyed at their rooms, clean almost beyond recognition.

  “Wow, who did this?”

  Although they were clearly impressed, Nanase instantly picked up on a slightly critical note emanating from their consciousnesses. What could they be criticizing, she wondered with a start. Since they were children’s minds with no well-formed thoughts or images, she wasn’t sure what they meant, but she was put a bit on guard.

  How would the older children react when they found their rooms cleaned? She braced herself for their return.

  Just as she expected, that evening the college son came into the kitchen and asked Nanase nonchalantly if she was the one who had cleaned his room. When Nanase nodded, he gave her a twisted smile. It was a clumsy attempt to mask his hostility.

  “Is that so? Uh, thanks.”

  Obvious hostility.

  Why the hell doesn’t she mind her own business? Did she know what I used the crumpled-up underwear for? There were nude photos in the same spot, so she must suspect something. She’s only an eighteen-year-old girl, so she wouldn’t know about a guy jerking off. Still, I wonder if she figured it out? Interfering bitch!

  Of course, for him, Nanase was an invader who had disturbed his private sanctum.

  Although the eldest son and the high-school boys didn’t directly ask who had cleaned their room, they too began to harbour bad feelings towards Nanase. The night before there had been no hint of hostility in their consciousness; now she could clearly make out both their guilt at having their sordid secrets revealed and their inferiority complex towards cleanliness – that is, towards Nanase herself. In his thoughts, the eldest son was calling her “Peeping Tom”.

  This hostility reached a peak when the family gathered around the dinner table. To a third party without telepathic powers, the large household would probably have seemed the picture of a “wholesome” family. Even if one could perceive that this harmony was superficial, no one could have noticed any difference between this night’s meal and all the other dinners up until now. But Nanase could tell that a major change had taken place in the Jimba family’s collective consciousness. Nanase had exposed something hidden in their subconscious: the family’s filth.

  Thanks to their common mind and metabolism they had submerged themselves in a mire, their filth enveloped in a comfortably tepid stench. Now that this filth had been exposed, it pushed its way towards the surface of their consciousness. And the instigator of all this was none other than the eighteen-year-old maid who had arrived the day before.

  The smaller children, influenced by the strange silence overtaking the dinner table, were making attempts in their confusion to maintain normal behaviour patterns.

  “Thanks to Nana, the house has got really clean.”

  When Kaneko forced out the compliment, several of the children stiffened and stopped eating for a moment. Koichiro gave some automatic response. Then a definitive silence took over. The dining room filled with ill will towards Nanase.

  You think you’re better than us because you’re clean. Leaving only the nude photos! What a bitch!

  You want to make us feel inferior. Maybe I’ll rape you. Then you’ll be just like us.

  Soon the ill will of the children began to turn back onto themselves in their own filth, and then onto their filthier family, for having made them this way.

  Mum’s at fault for being such a slob. Dad lets Mum get away with murder.

  Hatred among the family, suppressed until now, began to flare up.

  I’m filthy, I probably look like a pig to the maid. I am a pig.

  Then, as if by common agreement, they began to recall graphically the various filthy acts they had committed in the past.

  Kaneko alone remained unaware of her own sloth; her only concern was that Nanase had found out about her children. She was worried that Nanase would spread rumours about the family. She started recalling the various incidents when she had discovered her children’s dirty ways. Kaneko knew better than anyone else about her children’s filthiness.

  The episodes unfolding in Kaneko’s consciousness were so gross that Nanase felt like screaming. She quickly tried to fasten her latch. But she couldn’t. She was mesmerized.

  The Jimba family’s filth-ridden consciousness had been whipped into a whirlpool that was sucking Nanase in. The images floating in the minds of the entire family, the mental landscapes dotted with filth, the memories full of scum – these were assaulting Nanase non-stop as they released an ever-greater stench.

  In the past, I did something much dirtier. I’m lucky she didn’t find that out. I wonder if she looked inside my drawers? Come to think of it, I once did something really disgusting. Then there was the time… Come to think of it… Come to think of it…

  These incidents full of excrement and bodily fluids were enough to make one’s hair stand on end. Now they were surging full force into Nanase’s consciousness, clashing with each other inside of her.

  She could take it no longer.

  Nanase got up and slowly walked into the hall.

  The colour drained from her face as
she ran into the bathroom. She threw up. She felt as if her stomach was going to burst. She couldn’t stop vomiting.

  “I see. Well, of course…”

  When Nanase asked to leave her job, Koichiro was momentarily taken aback. As he mulled over various things – keeping up appearances, salary and so on – he let his eyes wander off into space and sighed.

  I guess she couldn’t stand the filth. That must be it. After all, she threw up in the bathroom.

  Koichiro, like Kaneko, was concerned that Nanase would start rumours about how dirty the Jimbas were. Koichiro knew that for a family with unmarried daughters it would be fatal if word got around that they had a “dirty kitchen”. But what he hadn’t realized until Nanase came was just how filthy his family really was.

  Since Nanase wasn’t going to explain why she wanted to quit and since Koichiro felt unable to press her for a reason, he was compelled to come up with some excuse himself. Sweating nervously, he offered an ingenuous substitution.

  “I can’t blame you. We’re a family of thirteen. Any ordinary girl would have baulked just on hearing that. Anyway, you’ve done as much as you could. Really, you’ve done a good job. It’s been short, but, honestly, you’ve done a good job.”

  Koichiro’s candidness had flown off somewhere; all he could think about now was maintaining appearances. As if imploring her, he kept on and on with this meaningless repetition.

  3

  In Quest of Youth

  Nanase had been working at the Kawaharas’ for two weeks, but she had yet to have any “human contact” with the family in the ordinary sense of the term. There hadn’t even been any conversation to speak of, just high-handed orders which Nanase had carried out mechanically. Of course, this arrangement suited Nanase perfectly.