Toddler Hunting

by Taeko Kono

  The curtain fell. Hisako realized she had been fascinated, watching this scene. Japanese performers, of course, were capable of this kind of trick, as well as the preceding numbers in the program, simple sleights of hand. But these foreigners’ gestures were so polished, and their costumes so ­eye-catching — their performance had extra élan. Come to think of it, how long had it been since she had last seen a live magic show? Discounting the ones on television, it had been years and years.

  She remembered as a child having watched conjuring tricks at some dance hall or other: a hand of cards that shrank every time it was spread, finally disappearing altogether; a Manchurian flag drawn out of a bowler hat. She also recalled watching three dog couples — in tuxedoes and gowns — waltz in a traveling fair. Then there was the time she went to the German circus when it toured Japan. Her parents had gone twice, taking their children two at a time. Some of the acts had involved scores of lions and tigers in the ring, and in the event of an emergency, they wanted to be able to escape each carrying one child.

  But she couldn’t remember having gone to see anything like this magic show since then. And that had been when she was still in grammar school — a good twenty, no, thirty years ago. She had almost forgotten such things existed. Hisako smiled wryly: so what did she think she was doing, coming to a show like this at her age, and by herself?

  At least half the seats in Hisako’s section of the balcony seemed unavailable for purchase. A whole block of vacant seats was cordoned off by ropes with tags saying “Do not enter.” The same went for the opposite side of the balcony and the first five rows from the stage on the floor below. No doubt it was necessary to keep people from seeing the tricks’ secrets, but it seemed a pity as far as the theater itself was concerned.

  All the available seats had been taken. The place was so full, in fact, that she wondered whether some people hadn’t been turned away. If they’d timed their run to overlap with spring vacation, it was a successful strategy: the audience buzzed with the voices of ­grammar- and ­middle-school students. Several groups looked like tourists who’d come to town specially for the show. She was the only one who’d come alone, of course; every other ­middle-aged person was accompanying a child. In the audiences of the foreign magic shows and circuses she watched on television, Hisako always saw several ­middle-aged, even elderly, couples. But not here — here the couples were all very young.

  Noguchi and Tsuneko had told her that they had come without their children. Last Sunday they had seen this show. She wondered: what would they have looked like, sitting there in the audience? Generally speaking, a ­middle-aged Japanese husband and wife who go out on dates would have to be very happily married. On the other hand, one could, a little cynically, reach the opposite conclusion. A couple on terrible terms might decide on a whim to go, after say, being persuaded by a friend that they should try going out — to try enjoying something together just once in a while. Where could they go, they would wonder, as they stepped out the door. Not to visit friends. Shopping would be irritating; and it would be depressing to face each other over a long ­drawn-out meal. We don’t have any amusements in common, they would realize; how can we just invent one on the spot? Neither would object to a film or a play; but how uncomfortable if one was moved to tears — and bothered by the other’s lack of reaction. The poster for the magic show would catch their eye, and each would sigh with relief. That was what they should go and see: at a magic show, they wouldn’t need to talk — and unlike a movie or a play, it wouldn’t make any emotional demands. As they watched, deceived into feeling that they were in a happy mood, they might even have the illusion that they were enjoying a moment of harmony together as man and wife.

  The next number — a kind of circus act — had begun. A slender steel ladder, placed sideways, rose straight up out of the stage floor. Advertised in the program as Spanish, a man dressed in a sequined toreador’s costume of white and yellow came bounding out from the wings, striking two steel swords together. Aiming one sword at the stage floor, he tossed it away and it landed with its point embedded in the wooden boards. Bending it back like a bow, he released it, and the sword flashed upright vibrating loudly, shivering, and eventually coming to rest still stuck in the floor. After doing the same thing with the other sword, he plucked them both out, and then held them out horizontally, one on top of the other, in front of him. One blade clattered to the ground — he had dropped it on purpose to prove that they weren’t magnetized.

  Now holding each by the flat of its blade, he aligned the swords together at their points, and then swung them round so they were positioned vertically in front of him, and raised them into the air. As the two swords joined tip to tip moved up, he took his hand away from the higher one. Using this hand to grip the handle of the bottom sword, he lifted the whole thing still higher. Then he turned his face up toward the ceiling, placed the handle of the bottom sword between his teeth, and took both hands away. Balancing the swords with his mouth, he started to climb the vertical metal ladder.

  With every step he took, the precariously balanced swords swayed together, threatening to come apart. When he got halfway up, the delicate ladder began to teeter and sag. The higher he climbed, the shakier the ladder grew, and the more dangerously unstable the swords. The man waited patiently after each move for the shaking to cease, and then took one more step up. He was a handsome man, with Mediterranean features, which seemed to make the possibility of the top blade slipping and running him through the throat all the more exciting. The glints of light thrown about by the trembling swords and metal ladder — and the man’s tense concentration — were thrilling.

  The man reached the topmost rung, and swung a leg over. Still balancing the swords in his mouth, he started his descent. As he approached the bottom of the ladder, Hisako saw that his upturned face was drenched in beads of sweat glittering like specks of gold leaf. Finally he was off the ladder and down on the ground. He turned to the audience, and with a jerk of his chin, tossed away his swords which separated, landing straight up in the floor. He was met with cheers and applause.

  “What a wonderful performance!” Hisako suddenly wanted to exclaim to somebody, not that she actually looked around for anybody to say it to. Instead, she imagined what a happily married ­middle-aged couple might say to each other — and then, what the unhappily married might say.

  A little while after the applause, a happily married couple might say:

  “Oh, look! There’s a dove up there.”

  “It probably flew out as the curtain fell.”

  Or else:

  “Imagine if the ladder had snapped!”

  “I’d sort of like to see something like that.”

  But an unhappily married couple could easily have the same conversation. And then, having exchanged such simple remarks, both couples would turn their innocent faces forward, blank for the beginning of the next act.

  An announcement came over the loudspeakers:

  “In a few minutes the high point of today’s show, an act entitled ‘The Beauty under the Electric Saw,’ will start. Since this is an especially frightening act, will pregnant women, anyone with a heart condition, anyone who is nauseated by the sight of blood, or who does not want her child to see what is about to occur, please leave now.”

  Hearing this, the happily married couple and the unhappily married couple might say:

  “Do you think they’ll actually cut her up?”

  “You’d rather leave now?”

  “But you want to see it, don’t you?”

  “The warning is probably just part of the act.”

  “Oh I see. Of course.”

  And they would go on sitting there.

  Hisako had no special gift for determining the marital relations of a couple who went out on a date to watch a magic show. At first sight, such a couple would seem to get on very well; but on second thought, one might conclude that
in fact such a couple would have to either get on very well or not at all — and this would probably be closer to the truth. But she was just thinking about it in a general kind of way. The reason she’d even started was her curiosity about her friends Noguchi and Tsuneko’s relationship. Of course, how well a couple get on is something that even the two concerned, let alone a third party, find hard to judge. But even so, after witnessing their fight the other night, she couldn’t help doubting whether Noguchi and Tsuneko were getting along as well as they had always seemed to.

  Hisako had long known that Noguchi and Tsuneko went out together on a date once or twice a month. This last time, they’d left the house to go to the movies, but then, catching sight of a poster in the train for the magic show, Noguchi suggested that they go to watch it instead, and Tsuneko had agreed.

  A few nights later, Hisako visited and they’d started to tell her about the performance. When they reached a certain point in their story, however, their opinions diverged noticeably, and they began to argue.

  According to Noguchi, the entire show consisted of one spurious deception after the next. Tsuneko insisted that the magic was real. There are, in any case, two ways to appreciate magic shows: you either try to figure out how the tricks work, or sit back and enjoy the illusion. So their argument might have boiled down to a simple difference of opinion reflecting these two sorts of enjoyment. But both of them stuck so stubbornly to their points of view. Tsuneko couldn’t possibly have believed that all the tricks were real magic, but she refused to admit this, insisting that even the most farfetched things had been genuine.

  Even Hisako on the sidelines thought she was being a bit irrational, and Noguchi flatly contradicted her. But he went to the opposite extreme, insisting that even the most convincing tricks were all sham.

  “It was so obvious,” he told Tsuneko. “You’re the only one who didn’t realize — that’s typical of you. You’re so easily taken in. And yet you won’t believe your own husband!”

  Tsuneko had retorted: “Oh, what’s the point of even talking to you!”

  Hisako had interrupted three times: “Come, come,” she’d said. “It’s not that serious. I’ll go and see it. I’ll be the judge.”

  But her words didn’t make the slightest impact: their faces were white with anger and excitement, and far from seizing the opportunity to stop quarreling, they wouldn’t even look at her. Even when they appealed to her — “Listen to him, Hisako” or “Can you believe anyone so stupid?” — they kept their eyes fixed on each other, not sparing her so much as a glance.

  But her offer didn’t go entirely unnoticed. When the time came for her to leave, Tsuneko had said, “You will go and see it, won’t you? Go with your husband, and tell us what you think — I can’t wait to hear.”

  “Me too,” Noguchi added. “Because I know I’ll win.”

  By then, they seemed all made up.

  Nevertheless, Hisako had been deeply disturbed by her friends’ fight. She’d felt just like a little girl witnessing her parents violently quarrel, people who had always treated each other with nothing but affection. She hadn’t ever seen her friends argue before; she’d been told by them of some of their squabbles, of course, but never about such an ­out-­and-out altercation. Perhaps they just didn’t mention such things, but she couldn’t imagine them quarreling like that every day. She’d gone to school with Tsuneko, who’d also worked in Hisako’s husband’s company. Hisako had known her through several periods of her life: she was not a contentious person. Hisako felt she was partly to blame for letting the fight go on for so long, but she had been so taken aback.

  She couldn’t help thinking, even in retrospect, that the fight had been unbelievably obstinate and acrimonious. Noguchi had started it, she recalled; but Tsuneko had reacted with a defensiveness that was quite out of character. Surely it wasn’t just because she was there that they had stuck to their positions. And it didn’t seem as if they’d simply discovered something in the other of which they’d been previously unaware. No, it seemed more like they’d been forced to acknowledge something in each of them and also something about their very relationship that they’d been unconsciously avoiding, and, forced to become aware of it, they felt betrayed.

  The deep impression of her friends’ quarrel had set Hisako’s mind to wondering about the marital relations of ­middle-aged couples who went out to magic shows.

  But she hadn’t really come tonight in the belief that she could deliver a judgment about the show, or, for that matter, her friends’ marriage. She had come simply to see for herself the cause of so much disagreement, and out of a childish curiosity about magic itself.

  Two days after their scene, Sumita, her husband, had returned from a ­five-day business trip. Hisako told him all about the quarrel, expressing her amazement, and said: “Tsuneko wanted us to go see it. Will you come?”

  “You’ve got strange tastes,” Sumita smiled. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

  But that didn’t mean it was possible to say where their own marital relations lay on the scale of good to bad.

  The curtain rose for “The Beauty under the Electric Saw.” The stage was deserted, without a single prop. As Hisako watched, several people in starched white coats hurried on stage. Four women in nurses’ uniforms, foreigners, wheeled on an operating table. A blonde woman lay on it, ­faceup — no doubt this was the Beauty.

  “She must be drugged,” voices whispered.

  “Probably.”

  A hush fell over the audience. The blonde girl, her arms tied down, her torso covered in a white sheet, had an oxygen mask on, the type used for anesthesia.

  This mask was something they’d disagreed particularly vehemently about, Hisako remembered. Noguchi had contended it was just for the sake of appearances, but Tsuneko insisted they must really have anesthetized the girl. No conscious person could stand to be used for that act, she said; and sleeping pills wouldn’t have been strong enough to conquer her nerves. Then Noguchi had demanded: what sort of sense did it make to anaesthetize a person for something that was not going to happen?

  As she watched, Hisako found herself agreeing with Tsuneko here, even if that meant she too was deceived. The girl’s arms looked too limp for her just to be pretending. She’d probably been made up to look pale, as Noguchi claimed; but she looked so deathly white, without a trace of life or warmth, even though directly under the hot lights.

  Three foreign men in white surgeons’ coats and masks came on stage, pushing a large mounted circular saw up to the edge of the operating table. The performers in this act were obviously not going to acknowledge the audience.

  Next came a group of four Japanese men in shirtsleeves, carrying a long fat column of something white, which they dumped down in front of the table and rolled out forward. It was a thick white plastic tarp.

  The three surgeons maneuvered the saw, placed at a right angle to the table, to the right and left, backwards and forwards, then up and down, correctly positioning the blade. The circle of men widened a little. The saw emitted a buzzing noise, then rotating at terrific speed, groaning away, it drew closer and closer to the blonde girl. All of a sudden, the sound changed to a ­high-pitched whine, and the men drew back. The blade was visible only as a blur, but as it whined it grazed the stomach of the blonde girl, and that part of her torso turned scarlet.

  “That’s blood!” somebody in the audience said.

  The next instant, the wound split open.

  “Oh no!” a woman screamed, covering her eyes. Over the whining of the saw a continuous sound like the tearing of cloth could be heard. A red rain spattered over the plastic tarp covering the floor. The saw was issuing a scarlet spray, Hisako realized, which went curving through the air like a fan held sideways to the back of the stage, and then fell down in a bloody rain.

  The blonde girl slept on, her white masked face utterly still. According to both Noguchi and Tsu
neko, the girl’s arms twitched when the white sheet covering her abdomen turned scarlet, but this, too, had been cause for disagreement. Tsuneko claimed that had the girl been faking unconsciousness, she would have jerked her arms away; she must have been anaesthetized; she had hardly moved at all. Noguchi countered that this was either a trick to fool idiots like her, or a mistake—the girl was tense. At this, Tsuneko brought up the anesthesia mask again: well, if the girl was tense, what was the mask for? Even if other things might have been fake, she couldn’t stay silent when he denied that that was real.

  Nevertheless, they both agreed that they’d seen the girl’s arms twitch. Today Hisako paid special attention: the girl’s arms were utterly still. It was clear at least that she wasn’t pretending.

  The circular saw was still producing its ­high-pitched whine and large pool of blood had collected on the plastic tarp. Hisako’s seat was toward the back, so she didn’t have a very good view, but the wound in the girl’s ­blood-soaked stomach seemed to gape wide open. Something appeared to be pushing out of it, suggesting the force of what was inside. The electric saw gave no sign of stopping, however. The seven men and women in white uniforms stood stock still, at some distance from each other, their arms folded.

  “She’s done for,” said somebody. A lot of stuff seemed to have come out of her belly.

  Then the saw noise ceased. Everything went quiet. The three men in surgeon’s uniforms gathered around the operating table and stared down into the bloodied torso. The four men in shirtsleeves reemerged in a line, and raised the far edge of the tarp to collect a pool of blood in the center. Then, each at one corner, they dragged it to the side. They pushed the saw off into the wings.