The Maid

by Yasutaka Tsutsui

  Various incidents that occurred at the time of his retirement were still floating around in Katsumi’s mind. These were memories which had become concrete images and which Nanase had glimpsed any number of times in the two months she had worked here.

  After he had been told of his retirement, he started putting more and more energy into his job. Then one day he was shocked to realize that the documents he was being asked to handle were gradually decreasing in number.

  I broke down and cried.

  He remembered the dazed feeling on the day he retired, when his underlings saw him off at the entrance showering him with lively cheers. Their shouts of “good luck” sounded like “get lost”; all he could feel was a burning humiliation.

  My knees were shaking.

  Then there was the time.

  And the time…

  And the time…

  “You didn’t enjoy deep-sea fishing, did you, Father?” asked Ayako. She had suggested he take up fishing, because it had been her own father’s hobby.

  “It just didn’t suit me,” Katsumi responded affably.

  I can’t understand why anyone would do something that boring. I felt so bored I wanted to weep.

  Humph. If it’s Ayako, he’ll answer. Look at him making eyes at her.

  What a lecherous smile! It sends shivers down my spine.

  “Grandpa, it’s not good for your body to loaf around the house,” Akira piped in precociously. He was mimicking the way his parents would talk in their second-floor bedroom. Ryuichi and Ayako, caught off guard for a moment, glared at Akira and then nervously gauged Katsumi’s reaction.

  “Is that so? Is that so?” Katsumi stared at his grandson with the same drooling expression. He nodded a few times.

  This adorable child was the reason why he didn’t get angry at his son and daughter-in-law for the way they treated him. Obviously, if they moved out, he wouldn’t be able to see Akira any more either.

  “Stop saying ‘Is that so?’ over and over,” Akira raised his voice, annoyed at being treated like a child. “You’ve got to get out of the house.”

  So even my grandson treats me like a nuisance. He’s been taught by his parents.

  Katsumi’s smile vanished and he stared at Ryuichi and Ayako.

  “You can’t talk that way to Grandpa,” scolded Ayako, who was making a show of being embarrassed.

  “It’s OK. He’s only speaking the truth,” said Teruko, chuckling to herself. She gave Akira an approving nod. She was well aware that as long as she was siding with their grandson, Katsumi would not get openly angry.

  Serves you right!

  Tadaji was laughing derisively inside.

  Nanase was disgusted. Although she was about the same age as Tadaji, she could not find one thing she had in common with him. Taking into account the fact that he was a boy, he was still insensitive, rude, ill-tempered and severely stunted emotionally. This type of guy, she knew from her experiences in high school, would attract a lot of girls. But none of them would see him for what he really was; they would mistake rudeness for manliness. He was the kind of boy who often came up in girls’ conversations, but Nanase couldn’t care less.

  “I would like to get a job,” Katsumi said at last. He had said this so many times before, however, that his entire family could predict his next line: “But the best job I could get would be a security guard or a nightwatchman.” Then he slowly looked over his family in a somewhat high-handed manner.

  Even they wouldn’t have the gall to tell me to be a security guard. And surely they’re not going to suggest that I pay daily visits to an employment agency. I was a section chief. What if someone who worked under me saw me in a place like that?

  Pompous stuffed shirt.

  In spite of the fact he can’t do anything.

  Humph. He said himself that the only job he’s capable of getting is a security guard or nightwatchman.

  He’s so incompetent, how could he ever have become section chief?

  As if on cue, everyone started to revile him in their minds. It was like a hail of curses.

  “But if you put your mind to it, I’m sure you could find something,” Ryuichi quickly added. This too was a standard line.

  No one in the family had any idea what the first two to three months of retirement were like for Katsumi. He had learnt in a matter of days how painful this long, long stretch of time with nothing to do would be, and in fact he had determinedly gone looking for a job every day.

  But there was nothing suitable. There was no kind of work that he could throw himself into the way he had been doing up until then. An employment agency could probably find him some menial job, but he didn’t consider such jobs to be real work. And anyway, his pride would not permit him to go to an employment agency.

  It dawned on him that mandatory retirement was, in effect, the same thing as forcibly taking a job away from somebody. Even prisoners were better off. At least they didn’t have any free time.

  Katsumi’s family, however, looked at the new lifestyle of the head of the household and concluded that he was having a grand old time of it. Katsumi knew what they were thinking. But he wasn’t about to confess that he had seriously gone searching for work just after his retirement. It surprised Nanase that he was ashamed of this desire to work. His greatest fear was that a workaholic’s need for a job would seem as base as the desire for food or women.

  Nanase observed Katsumi’s psychology with deep interest. At the same time, she had become preoccupied anew with her own extrasensory ability to read people’s minds.

  When she first realized she was telepathic, Nanase wanted to know why she had this special power and if there might be anyone else with the same ability. In junior high school, she secretly looked for books that might supply the answer. However, the only books she could find had titles like Weird but True Tales, How to Be a Mind Reader and Strange Stories from around the World. These, of course, were completely useless.

  In high school, she systematically read all the books on psychology she could find. She also read general works by and about people claiming to have extrasensory powers. And she consumed parapsychological studies in English based on experimental research – especially works by the scholars J.B. Rhine, S.G. Saul and G. Schmeidler. But again she was unable to obtain any concrete answers.

  The great majority of books on psychology did not so much as touch on the topic. If there was an occasional article, the tone was almost always sceptical. The books for general readers were bogus, written solely to titillate, and virtually all the important works of parapsychological research foundered at the experimental level.

  Nanase despaired of ever finding a scientific explanation for her power. She gave up her search and accepted her ability simply as something that existed. Her power, she reasoned, was akin to an animal performing sexually without knowing the purpose of its action.

  But now, through her observations of Katsumi Kiryu’s emotional state, she had become interested in her ability once again. She no longer cared about scientific explanations; now her interest lay in finding out the limits and possibilities of her telepathic power. She wanted to see just how completely she could read Katsumi’s mind. She had chosen him as a subject for an experiment in ESP.

  A few days later Nanase noticed a change in Katsumi. The lewd glances he had given to Ayako were being directed solely at her. Ayako must have noticed the change as well. In the kitchen one day, she grinned and whispered into Nanase’s ear: “Father seems to have taken a liking to you. You have my sympathies.”

  Ayako was relieved that her father-in-law’s interest had strayed elsewhere, but at the same time she was more than a little jealous of Nanase. Why should she, in full possession of her feminine charms, take second place to this skinny wisp of a maid?

  Nanase, however, couldn’t care less about the all-too-female workings of Ayako’s mind. What she really wanted to know was why she had become the sole object of Katsumi’s attentions.

  The image of
Nanase in Katsumi’s consciousness was that of a Chinese peach, its white skin tinged with pink. Katsumi had superimposed Nanase’s youthful, creamy white flesh onto the glistening down of a sweet, juicy peach.

  Why? Why me suddenly?

  And why this poetic and symbolic image of a peach – so atypical for a middle-aged man? Nanase probed deeper into Katsumi’s mind.

  A popular magazine had recently published a special issue on the problems of the elderly, and Katsumi had come across the image of the peach in a bit of verse by an American poet.

  The poem also used images of mermaids, the beach and a necktie, but it was the symbolic line about eating peaches that had left the most vivid impression on Katsumi, and he had transferred the erotic aspect of this image to the peach-like young girl in the midst of his family.

  Katsumi’s interest in his daughter-in-law stemmed only from erotic desire – a libido that sought out Ayako’s ripe figure. No doubt his interest in Nanase also had its share of the erotic, but in this case desire was intricately bound up with the longing for lost youth, as symbolized in the poem, and with the perverted self-assertions of a man who felt that his retirement had estranged him from society. Katsumi also thought that to take advantage of the maid was hardly the same as to rape his own daughter-in-law. For all this, his desire for Nanase was far stronger and more complex.

  Nanase sensed the danger. Katsumi was actually considering rape!

  While Nanase might have had an interest in Katsumi’s psychology, that did not mean, of course, that she felt any real sympathy for him. Nor was she about to be a victim to his sliminess. Just the thought of him assaulting her made her cringe in horror. But in fact, in Katsumi’s consciousness, the image of rape was becoming more and more graphic.

  Nanase had read that anyone confined in a monotonous environment for a long period of time will inevitably take a turn for the worse. If that was true, then it was only natural for Katsumi, a man who had thrown himself into his work his whole life, to lose his mental balance. Day by day, Nanase could see the danger closing in on her.

  Until now Katsumi had used his work to assert and justify his existence. Only through his work was he able to feel confident that there was a bond between him and society at large. But with his retirement, all this had vanished, and his ego was on the verge of crumbling. He had his sights set on Nanase in an effort to regain his sense of self. By violating the peach-like virgin, he could justify his existence. Through her youth – through a stranger, who belonged not to his family but to the outside world – he could create once more a bond between himself and society.

  The more Nanase raked through his consciousness and subconscious, the clearer it became that Katsumi’s spirit had been driven into a corner from which there was no escape – and that she had become the only refuge for his ego. It was hopeless to try to divert his attention.

  Nanase gritted her teeth. If she didn’t quit, her only recourse was to tackle each dangerous incident as it happened.

  The danger came earlier than expected.

  Ryuichi, Ayako, Akira and Tadaji had taken advantage of a long holiday to make a trip to Kyushu. Even though they knew that Katsumi would use his wife’s illness as an excuse not to go, no one even went through the motions of inviting him. Katsumi, his wife and Nanase were left behind in the house.

  With his children gone, Katsumi put together his plan to assault Nanase. Teruko’s bedroom was in the back of the house, while the maid’s room was right next to the entrance hall. Even if Nanase screamed a little, it was unlikely that Teruko would hear her. She might even be too embarrassed to scream – after all, she was a virgin.

  Nanase was amazed at the way Katsumi was thinking. He was like a criminal, egging himself on with one-sided calculations for the crime he was about to commit. But it was entirely conceivable that Teruko would not wake up no matter how much Nanase screamed. The insomniac Teruko regularly took sleeping pills, which she kept hidden from the family.

  When evening came, the only defence Nanase could think of was to hammer a nail into the sliding doors of her room.

  It was after one in the morning when Katsumi’s bloated ego and sweaty feet headed slowly down the hall to the maid’s room.

  Once a woman’s been raped, she’s putty in a man’s hands.

  He was desperately trying to encourage himself by dredging up from memory his extremely meagre, juvenile and simplistic knowledge of women.

  What’s more, she’s a virgin. Since I’ll be her first man, all the better. No matter what she says, I can’t waver. Girls these days are all talk. The worst would be if halfway through I let her talk me out of it. All I have to do is rape her, and she’ll keep her mouth shut.

  If she starts crying, I can’t feel sorry for her. I don’t care if she cries. I don’t care if she gets angry – I’m going through with it.

  Whatever Nanase said, he was determined not to listen. Whether she pleaded, cried or threatened, nothing would stop him now. He was going to possess her body by force. And Nanase knew only too well that he was strong enough to do it.

  Nanase shivered. Why am I here? How stupid of me to stay when I knew what was coming.

  Katsumi stopped in front of her sliding doors and renewed his determination.

  All right. Do the job from start to finish, and don’t say a word.

  The nail on the sliding door proved utterly useless.

  The next moment, Katsumi’s bull-like, square-shouldered hulk became a black silhouette barring the way at the edge of Nanase’s bedding. Nanase jumped up and retreated to the far side of the room.

  The fluorescent light from the hall shone faintly into the tiny room. Nanase could not see Katsumi’s face, but most likely he could see hers, pale and expressionless.

  Even when his eyes caught her in her blue-striped pyjamas, Katsumi’s mind did not register any erotic impulse. He was obsessed with a personal sense of mission to carry through to the end the violence he had planned for so long. For him, this was “work”, which required inhumanity and brute strength, and which would bring him only an inkling of physical pleasure.

  He felt no guilt about what he was about to do. Violating this peach-like virgin was “substitution behaviour”, to take the place of searching for a new job, something he had failed at so miserably. It was an action far easier, far less humiliating, than looking for work. After all, taking advantage of the maid was a common practice dating from olden times. Even if word got out, his action would probably be considered less reprehensible than openly looking for a job.

  But, in reality, when Katsumi faced Nanase, he was extremely agitated, in spite of all his encouragements.

  Nanase knew that her chances were almost nil, but she pinned her hopes on the smallest of possibilities, and spoke to him in as calm a voice as she could muster.

  “If you leave quietly now, I won’t tell anybody.”

  Liar!

  As expected, Katsumi vehemently denied her in his mind.

  Now that I’ve forced my way into her room, I’ve got to finish the job. If I leave now, she’ll blab it to anyone she can think of. Girls are like that.

  This inner rebuttal only increased his desperation. He had become so worked up that he didn’t notice how unvirginlike Nanase’s calm was. This put Nanase at an extreme disadvantage.

  Katsumi stepped onto the bedding and closed in on her.

  Nanase gave up trying to talk to him, her mind feverishly searching for some way out of the situation. True, she did not place that much importance on her virginity. Be that as it may, there was no way she was going to put up with his taking her forcibly, as some kind of convenient substitution. Worst of all, she was afraid of the physical pain. In her consciousness she had already telepathically experienced the pain of a ruptured hymen, and she could tell he would be violent.

  Katsumi tried to grab Nanase’s arm. At the same time, his other hand reached for her shoulder. By intuiting each of his actions before they occurred, Nanase was able to escape him moment
by moment. But once he pressed in on her, she was defenceless. He forced her down onto the bedding.

  With Nanase’s silken skin and breath now close at hand, Katsumi’s lust grew. After years of abstinence, the feeling of the young girl’s flesh beneath her pyjamas gave him an instant erection. Whatever Nanase might say, however she might resist, it was too late. His consciousness was at the peak of excitement.

  In the midst of fighting Katsumi off, Nanase had an idea.

  So far, she had appealed only to his reason. But now that his mind, which had been in an abnormal state to begin with, had reached such a frenzied pitch, she knew that any rational attempts to dissuade him would prove useless. In which case, why couldn’t she use her power to drive him really berserk?

  I can do it, thought Nanase.

  However there was a risk involved – the risk of revealing to an unsuspecting world the power she had kept hidden so long.

  But there was no time to lose. Katsumi had already stripped off her pyjamas and was yanking at her underwear. That she hadn’t screamed or resisted very much had given him courage. He gazed at her white thighs, desperately trying to stay excited.

  A peach. She’s a peach. A ripening, juicy peach. I’m going to savour this peach to my heart’s content.

  Suddenly relaxing her arms and legs, Nanase regained his attention. Then she spoke slowly, enunciating each word carefully.

  “I am not a ‘ripening peach’. I don’t want you ‘to savour me to your heart’s content’.”

  In a flash, Katsumi tensed. He was confused. Conflicting thoughts rushed from his subconscious into his consciousness. Doubt began to grow.

  What? Why? When did I speak? I didn’t say a word.

  His mind wandered momentarily, searching for a satisfactory explanation. But this was not an occasion when he could afford to brood over the matter. He grabbed at the first thought that came to mind.