Deep Red

by Hisashi Nozawa

  What will save you isn’t any treatment you receive here but probably just time. She remembered how relieved she’d felt as a twelve year old upon hearing those words during her first session. After that, she no longer needed to feel afraid that her heart would be pried open against her will.

  The room was on the small side. The window that faced west let in a flood of light because Kanako visited at around four in the afternoon after she was done with school. She sat in a comfy cushioned chair about three feet from the doctor and facing him. Set out on the table was a large glass filled with iced water that she would pour down her parched throat as it tired from speaking. It was always empty by the time they reached the end of their two-hour session.

  She felt the same restful atmosphere as always. Yet for some reason, today she felt like looking back nostalgically over the past year and a half of counseling.

  Whenever Dr. Tanaka listened to Kanako talk, he always looked straight into her eyes and made sure to make understanding sounds. Even when the mood darkened from her painful retellings, he never tried to change the topic to put her at ease.

  “There’s not much point in me listening unless it’s difficult for me to hear,” Dr. Tanaka would say, sitting back to lend his ear to Kanako.

  He was her “receptacle,” and all she had to do was spew out her words. Sometimes she spoke so fast she stammered, but he easily accepted all she had to say.

  When she took a breath and sipped her iced water, the doctor would say, “So in other words, is this what you mean?” and organize her thoughts. Kanako enjoyed seeing into herself in this manner. The design of her mind was like a puzzle. If you just calmly searched for the fallen fragments, they settled into their proper places.

  Her feelings of mistrust towards her father, for instance.

  Shortly after she’d moved to Hachioji, her father’s lover had come through pouring rain with a flower-patterned umbrella to light incense, a red rose brooch gleaming on the chest of her mourning dress. She had handed Kanako a bottle of Hennessey, apparently her father’s favorite, and told her, “I could have become your mother.”

  That was when Kanako had first learned of her father’s betrayal of her mother. Then, how he and her mother had argued at night, and seeing cut-up pieces of men’s underwear in the trash, came back to her as though a knot had untangled itself.

  Speaking of this chain of memories to the doctor laid bare a lump at the bottom of her heart concerning the truth about her father, Yukihiko Akiba.

  In order to cover his grandfather’s debt, her father had tricked Tsuzuki out of a life insurance payout, and afterwards had been slippery in avoiding the man’s requests for restitution. This had driven Tsuzuki into a corner. Tsuzuki’s crimes had been cruel, but the origin of it all had been her father’s swindling, or so the public believed.

  Kanako was doing her best not to take the articles in the weeklies at face value, but in the counseling room, she continued to process the tormenting fact in light of her father having had a lover and betraying her mother.

  “Kanako, when were you scared of your father?”

  Today, too, the questions started there.

  She recalled her father hitting her. She was a girl so he never struck her face, but the soft parts of her body, like her arms, posterior, and thighs, would end up swollen with red marks.

  “He hit me because I was being selfish or mean to my brothers. So he had reason to scold me…but back when he was trying to leave his company, his brow was always furrowed, and I think he might have been looking for some way to take out his frustration. He would rage at my mother over the smallest things, and whack my thighs.”

  Her father’s angry shouts revived in her mind and beat at her eardrums.

  “Don’t get in my way…That’s what my father yelled.”

  She hadn’t understood the meaning of his words. She hadn’t been in his way. Why was her existence in her father’s way?

  “I think maybe my father hadn’t wanted to start his own family. Maybe my mother and me and my brothers were all just in the way of his dreams…”

  He had to support his family. In order to do that, he had put off his dream of founding a venture. As that dream was becoming a reality, he would return home to kids squabbling over the stupidest things and hear their piercing wails, and it rubbed at his frazzled nerves. When would his house become a place where he could relax?

  Kanako thought that perhaps that was what her father had meant by, “Don’t get in my way.”

  “I think that was maybe why my father had a lover. I think he found a place to feel at ease outside. Because he was guilty of that, I think he might have needed to accept when my mother asked him to do something about my grandfather’s debt. But he didn’t want to get burned, or sacrifice himself more than he already had for a family that was only in his way…I think that’s maybe why he chose someone he knew from work who would have to co-sign.”

  “It’s amazing that you’ve managed to put together that much.”

  “I hate that I think this way.”

  “I do feel that it’s very spiteful. But if it helps you feel better, then it’s all right.”

  Dr. Tanaka stroked his shadowed chin and showed a gentle smile. “Your father deserved to be killed. Are we fine with that conclusion?”

  After thinking for a while, Kanako shook her head sideways.

  She loved her father. She had loved playing on a swing while he held her to his chest. He always made manga heroines’ eyes yellow and their hair pink when he helped her with her coloring books. A familiar park looked altogether different once he carried her on his shoulders and made her feel like some conqueror.

  “I…still didn’t want my father to die.”

  Dr. Tanaka gave her a big nod. The setting sun shining directly from the side seemed to pierce his pupils, and they reminded Kanako of the yellow ones that she had fashioned with her father using colored pencils a long, long time ago.

  “You don’t need to come here anymore.”

  “Huh…?”

  They still had plenty of time left.

  “This is your last day of counseling.”

  Dr. Tanaka was certifying that she’d escaped the dark path that she’d been wandering since the incident and crested a peak.

  Perhaps she’d felt strangely nostalgic about her past year and a half of counseling upon coming in today because she’d somehow sensed that it was going to be her last day.

  “You might still have to put up with the ‘four hours’ sometimes. But other than that, you’re fine.”

  With each counseling session, she slowly overcame symptoms like becoming dehydrated after sweating and having nightmares where faint human silhouettes writhed on a dark background, but the “four hours” alone remained and would still come periodically.

  As always, Dr. Tanaka saw Kanako off at the entrance to the counseling room.

  “Goodbye, doctor.”

  “Goodbye, Kanako.”

  When she left the building, cherry blossom petals were raining down. The trees stretched down the street that ran along the office building. Last spring, she had barely even been aware that there had been cherry blossom trees.

  The petals scattering in the springtime gale seemed to be blessing her for finally managing to crest the peak with Dr. Tanaka’s help.

  Kanako turned back to look at the entrance. Businessmen with offices in the building were passing briskly through it. She doubted she would ever enter and face the puzzle of her heart with fear and anticipation again.

  She did want her father to be alive. Having forgiven him, she was ready to embark on a life where her family had departed together before her.

  Kanako hoped to walk without trampling on the pink that colored the road.

  Now, standing before the entrance to the icy cavern, she remembered how twice a month, on her way back from school, the afternoon sunlight had bathed her on her 4 p.m. visits to the counseling room. She felt a little unnerved by a premonition that h
er troublesome heart was getting exposed.

  She stood still before the bar entrance and clutched at her chest. This heart of hers was ever the problem.

  One year after graduating from counseling, Kanako had obtained Norio Tsuzuki’s statement from Shiina, read it, and learned everything that her father had done to him. She couldn’t possibly give her father a pass just because she remembered how it felt like to be carried on his shoulders.

  He deserved to be killed, and her mother and brothers were dragged to hell with him—Kanako lived with that densely proliferating idea by packing it away in her heart, her hideaway.

  Even then, she never went back to Dr. Tanaka. She hadn’t wanted to disappoint her aunt. Kanako had no choice, she believed, but to take care of her troublesome self on her own, for all eternity.

  Looking upon the entrance to Ice Storm with fresh eyes, the way the blue glow from the neon-pipe lights reflected off the rough stone wall seemed to be designed to invite travelers into an icy cavern.

  She was alone tonight. She had visited this place with Takumi for the first time three days ago. Crushing the loneliness she felt without him at her side, she finished her part-time at the movie theater in Shibuya and organized the report on the surveys at a cafe before coming here.

  She went down the steep staircase and pushed the door. The noise from the crowd within and the tobacco smoke immediately rushed out to stroke her face. It wasn’t as crowded as before. A four-person group of businessmen and office ladies had just finished paying and passed by Kanako. Ice Storm was open until two, but taking into consideration the times of the last trains, it was around the right hour to leave for those who had to work tomorrow.

  “Welcome,” the blond guy greeted her. From behind the counter, Miho Tsuzuki glanced at Kanako.

  She seemed to remember Kanako from three days ago and to have noticed, after glancing at her for a mere second, that she had come alone this time.

  Kanako mustered all her courage and made a beeline for a counter seat. There just happened to be a seat directly in front of Miho. Kanako stretched a bit before settling on a stool and was able to watch Miho work up-close. She poured draft beer into a tumbler and was carefully measuring the thickness of the foam. She no longer had a Band-Aid at the edge of her mouth, and Kanako could discern a faint red scab.

  She was wearing a black leather tank top today too. At this distance, the Liberty Bell marked on her skin on her right shoulder looked a faintly unhealthy color. Maybe Miho regretted having carved it into her flesh as a youthful folly.

  After handing the blond guy the draft, Miho asked Kanako, “What would you like?”

  Kanako suddenly felt something magnetic. Miho was a negative pole, Kanako was also a negative pole, and even when they were close there was no drawing them together. It was that awkward sensation where contending fields maintained a certain distance.

  “A frozen daiquiri please.”

  It was a cocktail she had settled on beforehand. She wanted to order something complicated so she could observe Miho’s skills as a bartender. Kanako had read in a book that ordering a frozen daiquiri was a way to gauge a bartender’s experience.

  But she also wondered what would come of her discerning Miho Tsuzuki’s excellence as a bartender.

  “Frozen…” Miho Tsuzuki groaned softly and seemed to be flipping a recipe book in her head. Her face said that this was her greatest challenge of the night. She asked, “Is it humid outside?”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s getting to be the time of year when the sorbet types aren’t popular anymore.”

  “I came in a hurry from the station, so I feel a bit sweaty.”

  “When you drink them when you’re like that, they cool your throat and feel good, don’t they?”

  Listening to her voice from three feet away, it sounded like her vocal chords were also covered in scabs.

  Miho Tsuzuki poured white rum and lemon juice into the mixer, measuring with her eyes. She grabbed a handful of crushed ice from the freezer and threw it into the mixer as well.

  This was the point where most bartenders added in a bit of liqueur. They would use some white curaçao to maintain the flavor of alcohol diluted by the ice, but Miho Tsuzuki cut off a bit of lime skin with her knife and grated it down before putting it in the mixer.

  She knew how to make a superior frozen daiquiri. Kanako felt her face split into a smile. She didn’t even know what her smile meant herself.

  Miho hit the switch to the mixer then immediately turned it off. She transferred the content to a cocktail glass, added lemon and mint leaves, and put in two thin straws.

  “Here you go.”

  She set it down in front of Kanako. It was right around where the spotlights from the ceiling shone down. The world of ice within the glass sparkled. Kanako took the straw in her lips and took a sip. Miho Tsuzuki was waiting for her to give a comment.

  “It’s delicious, and feels wonderful in my throat.”

  It was her honest reaction.

  The corner of Miho Tsuzuki’s lips twisted. It was her version of a smile.

  “Daiquiris really are the cocktails of summer, aren’t they?” Miho Tsuzuki said, sounding as though she wanted one herself.

  “I heard it was born in Cuba.”

  “Huh, is that so.”

  This female bartender apparently didn’t care for her concoctions’ origin stories.

  Kanako had gathered bits from the cocktail book she had read at the bookstore. At around the end of the nineteenth century, there was a war in the Caribbean, and America won against Spain. After the war, the Cuban government wanted to increase production from the Daiquiri ore mine and asked for support from an American ore engineer. But the hot climate was harsh on the American who visited the island for the first time and made his work difficult, and his sole respite was the alcohol he drank after hours. The only ingredients they could obtain close to the Daiquiri ore mine was Cuban-made rum and lime, and so the American engineer invented a cocktail using them.

  “Are you working?” Miho Tsuzuki asked, apparently at a break between orders.

  “Nope, a college student.”

  “Close by?”

  “Not really. I’m towards Shimokita.”

  “Then I bet you go to Eiwa Gakuin. A girl I worked with up until last month was an Eiwa girl.”

  Kanako clicked her tongue at herself for being so careless. She had revealed part of her background. She felt sweat trickling down her belly from the chest that housed her troublesome heart. A fear that perhaps the girl already realized who Kanako was clawed at her, but she pushed it away as foolishness.

  “You came with your boyfriend before, right?”

  Even as she spoke bluntly, she was putting out feelers to see if Kanako was the kind of customer with whom she could speak casually.

  “I heard about this place from a friend, but I felt lonely coming alone so I invited him.” Feeling more and more like she was being chased into a corner, Kanako decided to turn the tables to do the questioning. “Have you been working here long?”

  “Not really.”

  “But you know how to make really good frozen daiquiri.”

  “I like those quite a lot too…I’ve only been a bartender for two years.”

  Kanako felt like she was stepping through the bushes and advancing step by step towards her opponent’s interior. “Are you around the same age as me?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

  “I’m twenty this year.”

  “Same.”

  “Really? You look so young.”

  It was something everyone said to her when they first met her. With her black polo shirt and white sports jacket draped over her shoulders, Kanako figured she might have looked like a fresh recruit to the tennis club. “Are you from Tokyo?” she asked airily, trying to keep the other girl from becoming aware of her motives.

  “I was raised in Utsunomiya.”

  After her father had been caught red-handed and arrested, Miho Tsuzu
ki had been taken in by her mother’s family. The years she’d spent in Tokyo should have comprised the majority of her childhood, but perhaps she was trying to erase the days she had spent with her father.

  This was it. Miho Tsuzuki had a wound here. A Kanako eager to shove her fingers into it to pry it open was holding her breath in her hideaway.

  A mass of orders came in. Miho Tsuzuki was busy for a while thereafter. Chanting the names of the five alcoholic beverages that had been ordered, she dove into preparing them, starting with the ones that would take more effort. She shook her shaker and finished a pale green cocktail. The drink she had mixed in the mixing glass was probably a martini. Even Kanako recognized that one because of the plump olive stuck into it.

  Miho didn’t make a single wasted movement. Kanako sipped her frozen daiquiri that had started to melt and observed intently.

  Once the five drinks had been taken from the counter, Miho Tsuzuki let out a soft breath of relief and lit a Marlboro.

  “You work fast.”

  At the praise, Miho shrugged her shoulders to hide her embarrassment.

  “…Is that a real tattoo?” It had been on Kanako’s mind for a while.

  Miho Tsuzuki leaned forward and put both her elbows on the counter. Kanako suddenly felt overwhelmed. The two negative poles had gotten too close. She drew back at once.

  “It’s fake,” Miho said as though sharing a secret. “The other staff think it’s real, though.”

  She flashed a mischievous grin worthy of a sound effect. Kanako was drawn in and couldn’t help but smile too. But inside, she was surprised. Miho Tsuzuki had revealed her secret to someone she was speaking with for the first time.

  What was the purpose of the fake tattoo? It had to be her posturing to the other staff so they wouldn’t take her lightly.

  “That must be so difficult too, though. You have to stick it on the same place every day, right?”

  “It only needs to be redone once every three days.”

  Miho Tsuzuki wasn’t the kind of person who had the dedication to brand herself with a seal that would never disappear from her skin. She was a girl who was bluffing by sticking on a fake tattoo. In that case, Kanako felt she could take her on.