Toddler Hunting

by Taeko Kono

  “Did you ever think it would make Sumita angry?”

  “Has he a right to feel one way or the other?”

  “And your husband? What did he say?”

  “Just how scary women are. . . .”

  Hisako shut her mouth and clenched her teeth. She wished very much that a sword would pierce her throat so that she’d fall dead to the floor. She was shaking the ladder and leaning the sword in her mouth forward, longing for it to drop, but her tense body wouldn’t let that happen. She gave up, and started the descent.

  Hisako was suddenly curious to know what Sumita had said about her when he’d made his request. But now it would be difficult to find that out. It might have been different if she had started by remarking, “My husband says he asked you to tell me to give up doing such a silly thing — what did he say about me?” But Tsuneko would only get angry if she came out with the truth now, and she wasn’t somebody to cross swords with.

  “Oh?” Tsuneko might even say, “So you’re jealous that he and I came to such an arrangement?”

  Hisako was bothered, it was true, by their arrangement. Especially since Tsuneko hadn’t told her the truth, then or now. Had he asked Tsuneko by telephone, or in a note? Since they were old colleagues, perhaps he’d invited her out for coffee. Last night, in the heat of the moment, he had said he often asked Tsuneko for such favors. Most likely he asked her this time because she was a mutual friend. But he would never have asked somebody he didn’t trust and like. And Tsuneko was still faithfully keeping her pact with him. . . . Surely she wasn’t doing this to spare Hisako’s feelings. If that were the case, she would have shown more sympathy when Hisako told her about feeling guilty; she would also have tried much harder to persuade her originally. Wasn’t Tsuneko looking a little tense and alert herself today? Wasn’t she feeling guilty about keeping another secret from Hisako?

  Hisako recalled Tsuneko and Noguchi’s obstinate acrimonious quarrel the other evening. Perhaps neither was aware of it yet, but hadn’t some kind of change, a change for the worse, come over their relationship? . . . And Sumita had said he was disappointed in her. She’d never thought that Sumita’s relationship with Tsuneko amounted to much, but now her dreadful foreboding seemed to be homing in ever closer on its target. And once it did, who could tell what other tricks might be coming into play?

  “You know,” Tsuneko was saying, “My neighbor insists small eggs are more nutritious because younger hens lay them. Wouldn’t you think bigger eggs were more wholesome? She seemed so sure, but . . .”

  Pretending to listen to Tsuneko, Hisako started to detest herself — what a liar. She had been doing nothing but lie since her arrival. And the person in front of her went on deceiving her. Hisako wanted to start yelling, and smash the coffee cups and sugar bowl on the floor. She managed to contain herself, however, and say: “Sorry to change the subject, but you know when couples are waiting on the platform for a train, chatting, the kind of conversation you drop as soon a train arrives? I think their conversation would be the same whether they were happily or unhappily married — don’t you? It would be so nice if all one’s conversations in life could be like that, with no worries about the harm one is doing to — ”

  On the spur of the moment, she tacked on a harmless explanation: “On my way here, I saw a ­middle-aged couple on the train platform chatting — and all this occurred to me.” Another lie.

  It was Saturday, and Tsuneko’s children would soon be back from school. Sumita had been quite cool to her this morning, so he wouldn’t be in any hurry to get home. But if on an ­off chance he did return, he wouldn’t be able to get into the house, since she’d locked it up. And at any rate, she thought, she couldn’t stand being here a second longer.

  “Well, I should be going.” Hisako stood up. “I don’t want to overstay again.” She lied one more time: “I was a little sad thinking over what I’d done. But I feel much better now that I’ve talked to you. Thank you so much.”

  Hisako’s feelings were far from settled when she left Tsuneko’s house.

  Last night, when she started to feel sick, Sumita had showed little concern.

  “Feeling bad?” he said, observing her coldly. “Well, go to bed if you’re going to sleep,” he said, probably thinking she was having one of her dizzy spells, and switched on the television. He’d left this morning without saying anything more to her.

  With Sumita’s departure, Hisako’s anxiety had begun to mount. Suddenly between today and tomorrow there was a space of time which seemed terribly important. How should she behave toward Sumita, then? Rushing over to ask Tsuneko — the very person he had asked to deceive her — had resulted only in a deepening of her suspicion and disgust.

  Emerging in the midday spring sunshine onto the street of shops, Hisako, who last night had hardly slept at all, felt dazed by the throngs of people, the traffic, the signs, and the merchandise laid out in front of the stores. She continued walking, however, determined to bear it. Suddenly, at the corner of her eye, she glimpsed an electric saw, dancing. It was nearly lunch time, and customers were crowding into a baker’s, where a silver electric ­bread slicer was speedily cutting through a loaf.

  Hisako remembered the blonde girl being wheeled out on stage for “The Beauty under the Electric Saw” — in silence, peacefully asleep on the operating table. Hisako herself was utterly exhausted: she wanted to be wheeled out on a table too, unconscious, and at peace.

  And just then, her whole body became so painfully heavy, she doubted whether she could keep moving. Nevertheless, she crossed the public square in front of the station. As she passed through the ticket barrier and along the passageway, she shuffled along so slowly, it must have amazed the people walking briskly toward her. When she started up the steps, everybody around her all at once started running. A train must have arrived. Continuing at the same slow pace, she could barely manage to bring one foot up after the other. She reached the deserted platform at last and headed toward a bench, sighing and gasping like an old person.

  Her body was so heavy, heavy with all the lies that the four of them — Sumita, Hisae, Tsuneko, and she ­herself — had packed inside her, she thought. How many lies, deceptions, and schemes had been concocted and carried out from the time Sumita had started his affair? All the intertwined tricks had been packed inside her belly. Her ­weighed-down appearance must have convinced Sumita that she was delivering the money to Hisae purely out of suspicion. Now she would never have a chance to explain her other motivations. She was too immobilized by all the deceit.

  The electric saw began buzzing again, in front of her eyes. Yes, she thought, that would be the best way: it won’t do any good to just tell you; that won’t make you see how all your tricks are gathered, intertwined, and packed inside me. The only way to prove it will be to have you cut me open and look. Look, everybody. Here they are: all the deceit and tricks I was forced to hold inside. And while they look, I will be unconscious, anesthetized.

  Hisako had no idea whether the greatest fault of women was their suspiciousness, as Sumita said; or if she herself had this fault; or if she could correct it. The only way to find out for sure was to lie down under the electric saw like the blonde girl on stage, get them to open her up, take a good look at all the lies and deceit, and cut them out.

  But what if it was too late to excise the lies and deceit? Perhaps they were already becoming a part of her. In that case, Sumita must look soon, before she and the deceit became indistinguishable. Now was the time, wasn’t it, to see how many lies and deceptions had been packed inside her, how they had all woven together, and started to become one?

  And exactly what kind of magic had she witnessed in that gruesome performance, anyway? Nothing strange or unbelievable — nothing involving deftness or skill. The audience had simply been shown a horrible spectacle, that was all. That was not “magic.”

  Hisako had heard stories of mountain priests s
lashing open their own arms and healing themselves in a burst of terrific energy, wiping the blood away with no trace of a wound. To injure somebody for a magic show was not a crime, providing she was an adult and you had her consent. But murder, now, that would be a crime. The performance had stopped short of showing the girl “coming back to life,” which would have been where the real magic came in. Oh, but murder is a crime, ladies and gentlemen: we’re not actually killing her — we’d never break the law. We’re only cutting open her belly. We’d love to show her to you when she’s recovered, but naturally that’ll take time. You’ll have to take it on faith that she will. . . .

  And that had left it unclear who the real magician was supposed to be in that act. And even if they had gone so far as to “kill” her and show her coming back to life, it still wouldn’t have been clear whether it was the surgeons in white coats, or the blonde girl herself who had brought about a recovery.

  A train arrived. As Hisako rose from the bench and approached the edge of the platform, she was conscious that her stomach felt strangely heavy and weak. The car wasn’t crowded, exactly, but all the seats were occupied. The doors closed, and the train set off. Taking hold of a strap, Hisako felt the wheels’ vibration directly beneath her feet rise through her body, and blend with the heaviness in her stomach, gradually easing it. After she had been cut open by the electric saw, she wondered, would Sumita help her recover? Or would she have to do it herself? Would they do it together? Since neither possessed the powers of a mountain priest, recovery would take time. Perhaps Sumita would not put out a hand. Perhaps nothing would help and she would just lie there in a heap. It was Sumita’s words that had made her yearn for the electric saw: remembering them, she felt apprehensive about what would happen after the curtain fell. Still, she couldn’t help longing to hear that buzzing sound.

  The train stopped, and the doors opened. Two college students, a couple, came inside. The girl leaned up against the post at the end of a row of seats. The boy stood facing her. A window behind was wide open, so when the train set off, the roar and clatter of the wheels on the tracks rushed into the car. The boy started talking to the girl, shouting above the noise. Hisako, standing four seats away, couldn’t catch the words. But he was talking, smiling, with a ­know-­it-all expression, while the girl’s head nodded from time to time. Very different from a ­middle-aged couple.

  There were several stops before the train reached her station. Hisako resolved to watch and see if any ­middle-aged couples entered on the way — yes, she thought, she could try counting them. If the number were even, that meant she would recover from having her stomach cut open, but if it were odd. . . . On the other hand, perhaps she should try to refrain from making such frightening predictions.

  Bone Meat

  Hone no niku, 1969

  It was last fall, but the woman could not seem to take it into her head to dispose of the belongings the man had left behind when he deserted her.

  A day or two before, it had been raining. Four or five days later she noticed his umbrella and her own lying by the window. She had no recollection of putting the umbrellas there, so perhaps the man had done it. In her panic over being deserted, however, perhaps she had forgotten what she herself had done. She opened them, and found they had dried completely. The woman carefully adjusted the folds of each, wound around the strap, and hooked the metal ring over the button. But after standing her own umbrella in the umbrella rack inside the shoe cupboard, she wrapped the man’s umbrella in paper, along with another of his she had found there, tied them up with a string, and put them away in the closet.

  It was, perhaps, around the same time that she threw away the man’s toothbrush. One morning, as she was about to pick up her own toothbrush, her eyes fell on his lying beside it. The bristles at the end of the transparent, ­light-blue handle were bent outward from hard use. Once, he had come home with an assortment of six toothbrushes for the two of them which he had bought on sale. She also recalled having bought their toothbrushes two or three times. Whether the toothbrush that remained was one of the six the man had bought, she didn’t know. But as she picked it up she remembered his purchase and, seeking an excuse for discarding it in the painfully ­worn-out bristles, dropped it in the wastebasket. Next, she threw in three or four old blades from his safety razor. She also removed the blade still clamped in the razor, on which were hardened bits of soap mixed with the man’s whiskers, and discarded it. But the razor she wrapped in his dry towel, together with several small boxes of unused blades, and put them away in his underwear drawer.

  That drawer was the top one in the woman’s wardrobe. Previously, the man’s clothes had hung inside together with hers, but before leaving he had collected them quickly. However, the woman later noticed a faded gray ­lizard-skin belt which he no longer wore, and that too she put in his underwear drawer.

  There were other things of his that ought to have been put away. Two or three of his shirts were probably at the laundry, and she intended to go pick them up and put them in the drawer too, though she hadn’t done it yet. She couldn’t imagine he had gone to get them. . . . Atop the wardrobe lay his four clothing boxes, a couple of which seemed full; she put them in the closet in place of her own.

  The man’s pillow stayed where it was for quite some time. Each night when the woman laid out the quilts, she first took the man’s pillow out of the bedding closet, holding it by the opening of its oversized pillowcase, and put it back when she had finished taking out the quilts. And in the morning when she put the quilts away, she took it out once again. This continued for several weeks before it occurred to her to pack it away. She washed the case and set the pillow in the winter sun, choosing as bright a day as possible; then, replacing it in its cover and putting it into a nylon bag, she laid it on top of the man’s clothing boxes in the closet.

  The woman knew perfectly well that the man would not be back. How many times had she been unable to refrain from saying things like “I’d be better off without you!” and meaning them. And one day when she had again been unable to restrain herself, the man had replied “So it seems, doesn’t it?” and left. The remorse she felt afterward had been painful. She acutely regretted having become accustomed to speaking in that way, and having said those words once again the day the man took her up on them. But what made it so painful, in retrospect, was that she had no right to regret it, considering the man’s attitude for some time past as well as his adroitness in taking advantage of her words. And the pain bereft her of the energy to pursue him.

  The woman no longer wanted even to ask the man to come pick up his things. His reply was certain to be: “Do whatever you like with them.” And, in fact, perhaps what he had left there he cared nothing about. As their relationship had begun to deepen and he stayed at her place for long intervals, he had little by little brought over personal things he needed. But even after he was virtually living with her, he didn’t move out of his own lodgings, where he must have still had a dresser and desk, several boxes of clothing, ski equipment, and bedding. He had taken away the everyday clothing he had kept for convenience in her wardrobe; furthermore, it seemed that he was rising to a higher position at work. Surely he felt no attachment to the ­worn-out things he had left behind.

  The woman, however, was at a complete loss as to how to dispose of them. Aside from putting them away, she simply could not decide what to do with the objects the man had left lying about. If she called him to come for them, it would be equally disagreeable whether he told her to throw them out or said: “Are they still there? Well, just send them over.” Even if someone else would see to it, getting in touch with the man like that was itself distasteful. Yet it was also disagreeable to take it upon oneself to throw away someone else’s belongings — still quite useful things — or to have them carted off by a junk dealer. Besides, she couldn’t give these things, which the man had abandoned along with herself, to someone else.

  She regretted sh
e had not had him take all of his belongings when he left. She regretted it with all her heart.

  The first hints that the man was beginning to think of a life in which she had no part appeared even before his work took a turn for the better. His decision to abandon her had been reflected in both his private and public aspects; even the clothing he wore was all newly made. She felt the sympathy of a ­fellow sufferer for the old clothes that he took no more notice of, and yet felt scorned by the very things she tried to pity. And thus the woman found even more unbearable these troublesome leftover belongings.

  She had several times considered taking the man’s underwear, which filled the top drawer of the wardrobe, and his woolen clothes that lay mixed with her own in the tea chest on the lower shelf in the closet, and making a single bundle of them, but the mere thought of it made her feel weary and feverish. If one were to open them and look, there might also be just enough room to put the man’s underwear and woolen clothing in his suitcase which was on the tea chest, or in the four clothing boxes that she had put in place of her own on top of her suitcase on the upper shelf. The man’s rucksack and canvas shoes, also on the upper shelf, might well fit into one of these too. But she didn’t feel like opening any of them. She always felt that the things the man had left weighed upon her.

  She was terribly envious when she thought of the man’s delight as he abandoned her and his belongings with the single comment “So it seems.” She had decided that the best method of dealing with the perplexing problem of the man’s belongings was herself to abandon them entirely, along with her own, and move to a new place. But she didn’t have the money to move to a new place or to buy all the necessary things for it. Although the woman would have liked to abandon it all, she could not, and even her own belongings and the place itself became repugnant to her.