by Fuyumi Ono
That's enough already, Ohkawa chided his wife. Kazuko looked up at Ohkawa dissatisfied. "Well I mean, isn't that just creepy? Really, I don't know what's happening in this village anymore...."
5
Seeing her parents off, Shimizu Hiroko felt both dejected and relieved. Her parents from her birth family had both come to stay at the home for the memorial service. She knew that they went through the trouble of staying for three days because they were worried about Hiroko's own depression. But, on top of having lost her daughter, Hiroko was self-conscious of her own depleting will power. She shunned paying attention to her parents and at the same time shunned being paid attention to.
She opened the entryway as if unloading a burden from her shoulders, heading into the house only to see how empty it was. The electric lights were bright white. The village at night was dead quiet and the frail voices of insects sang of vestiges of fall.
With Megumi gone, there was a Megumi shaped emptiness in the house. While her parents were about, their presence glossed over that but with both of them gone, it was all the more exposed. Her father-in-law Tokurou and her husband too had lost their vitality since Megumi's death. The presence of people had faded from the house and there were many times when the sound of the TV echoed futilely. She had thought that emptiness suited her own mood, a reason why all the more she couldn't help thinking her parents presence was ill suited and yet when the two had gone the inside of the house was indeed lonely.
Hiroko sighed and went towards the living room. Her father and law and husband were both watching the surface of the TV without a word. Even if she joined in and made it three people, it probably wouldn't lead to it feeling like there were people gathered together there.
Hiroko went to sit without a word at the dining room table. Nobody said anything to Hiroko, and Hiroko said nothing to anybody. On the table was an open notebook with the costs of the service in them. She didn't want to do anything but if she didn't do something time would fail to pass. It was like being a prisoner of time but even if she thought of ways to kill the time, that imprisonment wouldn't end.
Without a word Tokurou stood and left the living room. Hiroko and Shimizu both watched that, without asking where he was going or what he was doing. Without Tokurou, unable to bear the building silence, Hiroko opened her mouth.
"....What did you talk with the Junior Monk about?"
"Hm?"
"After the service, I was wondering what you were talking so deeply about."
Ah, Shimizu murmured. Before Megumi had gone missing did she seem to be acting weird in any way, did she go out anywhere from the latter half of July or in August or not. Had she ever gone to Yamairi, was she familiar with a man called Gotouda Something, if he'd ever heard anything like that.
Hiroko was silent to Shimizu's low answer, the conversation coming to an abrupt halt. While Shimizu too was silently trying to place his thoughts, he thought that he hadn't thought much himself about the answer.
He didn't think Megumi went to Yamairi. He didn't think she had known a man called Gotouda Shuuji. But he wasn't certain. What kind of man Gotouda was, Shimizu neither knew or asked but just maybe, he thought. ---In the dead Megumi's room was the lingering faint scent of perfume.
That scent that even now lingered faintly tormented Shimizu. It wasn't air fresher, it was perfume. Hiroko wasn't in the habit of wearing that on a daily basis. Shimizu had wondered about it at the time but the scent that lingered in the room was one that somebody her age might put on trying to put on airs for somebody, he murmured then. When Megumi had collapsed in the mountains, a few heartless neighbors intimated that what happened to her was obvious. Shimizu himself worried about it. Even if Toshio said not to worry about that, could he really believe the assurances of a doctor who said that it was just anemia?
Something probably happened to Megumi. Megumi had probably put on that perfume for somebody. When had his daughter transformed into a "woman"? Shimizu had not only lost his daughter to death but had lost sight of her as well.
".....He asked some strange things."
At first for a moment Shimizu didn't know what the isolated words Hiroko had spoken were about, what they were in regards to--who they were even at. When he turned about absentmindedly, Hiroko was looking at him.
"....Aa....Yeah, he did."
"Who was this Gotouda person?"
"Who knows."
"Did that person perhaps do something with Megumi?"
"Something?"
"....I don't like it." Hiroko said without answering his question.
"Something...."
"Somehow, it's nothing but bad things happening lately."
"I guess so, huh...."
"Didn't the Ohtsuka Sawmill's son die? Just a while ago, Nakano-san's place seemed to behaving a funeral too."
"That right."
"The people in Yamairi died, to. ....This year it's been nothing but such things. What's going on?"
"Isn't it your imagination?" Shimizu said but it came out more bluntly than necessary. The truth was Shimizu thought so too. This year was odd. He was seeing too many funerals around. He couldn't help feeling like something not good was happening in the village right now. But, when Shimizu said as much, his colleagues at work said he was over-thinking it. Maeda who also lived in Shimo-Sotoba lost a daughter, and she became neurotic, they chastised, seeming worried. That might be the case, Shimizu himself thought.
"It seems the Yasumori Obaa-chan's moved. Moved out to live with her son, I heard. ...Bit by bit it's like the popular's decreasing."
Is that right, Shimizu answered. It felt like they were being left behind in a lurch.
"Come to think of it, Nara-san from the JA retired, too."
"Nara-san? But, he was still...."
"Seems he was sick. It seemed like he planned to hurry into retirement."
"I see.... that might not be too bad."
"Even if you say that. For those of us left behind, it's unbarable. What with employees not coming to work and all."
"Employees? Who?"
Shimizu provided the name of a female clerk who transferred to Sotoba. She had been employed there a long time, so Hiroko knew of her.
"Her? She isn't coming in?"
"Mm," Shimizu frowned. "This is just between us but it seems she vanished without a trace."
My, Hiroko said aloud. "What about her husband and child?"
Shimizu shook his head with a sigh. Hiroko was shocked, and aware of just how much envy she felt. It wasn't a strong enough emotion to call envy but it was something similar.
--How good it would be to throw away the present, to flee away towards the future.
From the house oppressed by silence, from the family with a hole in it. From she herself who had lost her daughter. And.
(....From this cursed village.)
6
Toshio received notice of Mizuguchi's Ohkawa Shigeru's death at the usual time, early in the morning. September 19th, Monday. By the time he had hurried to the telephone, Shigeru had already died. Ohkawa Shigeru had been 33, one grade higher than Toshio, with 34 close at hand when he'd suddenly died.
Shigeru had been bedridden since three days prior, his breathing fizzling to a stop without anyone to care for him in the grey hours of the morning. When his family had come in the morning to try to wake him they finally noticed Shigeru was dead.
"To think that this could happen!" Shigeru's mother threw herself over the corpse sobbing. Toshio looked over that in irritation. Why, if he was ill, was he not made to go to the hospital, not brought into the hospital?
---Of course, he knew. Because it was over a weekend. It wasn't that Shigeru's parents weren't worried about their son. Nor were they indifferent to his health. Shigeru became far worse than his parents feared. At first, they couldn't think it was something to call the doctor out for on his day off. All the same, because they were worried for their son, they planned to bring him in first thing at the beginning of the week. And tha
t wasn't soon enough. The illness did not give Shigeru until Monday.
It'd be better to open the hospital even on days off, Toshio knew. Those in the village were intimately familiar with Toshio. But that was why all the more they couldn't exploit him on his days off. There's no excuse for that, they thought, most considerably. They meant well--it was absolutely nothing but the best of intentions but for those patients braving this disease, the two days of the weekend, just those two days, were a fatal procrastination.
It wasn't just his patients. Toshio himself was inconvenienced by it. Every time he was called out for an examination it was of a corpse---and unable to even do an autopsy, he couldn't observe its progress or observe it, leaving him unable to determine the source of the disease. Anyway, saying that he needed to fill out a death certificate, he asked about Shigeru's medical history, both parents medical history, his habits past and present, pushing with all his might for who he'd seen recently, where he went, if there was anything there that could have infected him but nobody but the man himself could know all that. If he could at least ask Shigeru himself. While he was still lucid.
Lately the death reports had stopped. It was an incredibly short break. And then in came Shigeru's death notification. It was possible this was a beginning. After a small break ended the peak was coming. The coming wave would probably be greater than the last one.
It would be good to open the hospital on the weekend too. He knew that. All the same, if he did decide to open the hospital, he would need staff. It wasn't as if he could tell his already busy staff to work any harder, and they weren't exactly surrounded left and right by places to try and recruit new staff from.
Toshio looked down at the Ohkawa husband and wife crumpled and crying, in a dark, somber mood.
Seishin received notice of Ohkawa Shigeru's death also at the usual time right after the morning services. Returning to the office for a short break Seishin and the others heard the phone ring and looked to each other. That a phone call in the morning was not a good thing was something all of them had come to feel in their bones this summer.
The one to take the call was Mitsuo, the one to say "again" in a small mumble was Tsurumi. Nobody else said a word beyond that.
When he went to the Ohkawa household in Mizuguchi for the bedside sutras, there unfolded the usual pathetic scene.
"If I'd known that it would come to this, I would have drug him to the hospital on Saturday!" His mother Norie broke down sobbing. "It was because he said himself that he was okay!"
What happened with Fuki---when Gotouda Shuuji died, was repeating itself here. His father Choutarou and Norie both looked to have rounded and become smaller too. Shigeru wasn't yet married. Seishin didn't know whether he should say that the two having no daughter-in-law or grandchildren was fortunate or unfortunate.
For Ohkawa Choutarou and Norie, their son Shigeru's death was a disaster on par with their own deaths. It was a death so sudden they couldn't even imagine it in their dreams. The shock and significance was likely immeasurable to them, and yet to Seishin this was nothing more than another stereotypical scene he'd seen repeat so many times he felt nauseous this summer.
And so he found himself failing to ask indirectly about Ohkawa Shigeru's latest movements, too. Either way it there wasn't going to be any visible point of connection, he'd sensed from the beginning in his heart. ---And, practically speaking, he couldn't find any point of contact between Shigeru and the dead to now.
(Is this going to keep happening.... for how long?)
Wondering to himself in that dark and somber mood he'd fallen into, Seishin asked suddenly whether Shigeru had retired from work just before he died.
Norie made a face as if she didn't understand why she was being asked such a thing. "Of course not."
That's right, Seishin said with a wry internal smile. Yes, there was no significance to that. It was only something he'd noticed as an observer. As if not fully understanding his self-derisive silence, Norie piled on more words.
"He could not have. This morning, when we had notified his workplace in Mizobe, they didn't say anything about that."
"No, pardon me. It was just bothering me a bit, I am truly sorry to have troubled you over it."
Seishin apologized thusly and said that he would see them again at the all night vigil, then took his leave of the Ohkawa house. The next time he visited the Ohkawa house was a little before the all night vigil; sitting aside in the tatami room Seishin, as usual, listened to the grieved voices of condolence callers for the dead and the jumbled conversations passing through. Fixedly in wait through this, amongst the faces of the mourners he saw Ohkawa Tomio's face. Come to think of it the master of the Ohkawa Liquor shop didn't have strong blood relations with Ohkawa Shigeru but he remembered that there was some connection.
"Ah, it's the Junior Monk. You are workin' hard as usual. To think I'm meeting you at it today again after yesterday."
"It must be hard on you as well, Boss."
"That's two relatives now. Honestly, man." Ohkawa gave a sigh and with a bow of his head returned to his relatives. The main mourners, the Ohkawa couple, sat deeply discouraged, receiving the visiting mourners.
"My condolences for your sudden loss." said a man in the prime of his life in a dark suit, behind him many likewise in mourning clothes in waiting. "When I had been told, I was surprised. I am sure that you must be depressed. If at tomorrow's funeral there is any way that I may be of service, please do not hesitate to ask."
To this Choutarou and Norie both nodded in silence.
"Thank you very much. ...Those of the neighborhood will do everything, so, your feelings alone are enough."
Is that so, the young man sighed. "Even so, it really was sudden. Was there anything the matter with Shigeru-kun?"
No, Norie said dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief, shaking her head.
"Is that so? ....Ah, it's just, everyone," the man said turning back towards the number of people behind him. "had thought: Ah, Shigeki-kun probably quit suddenly for treatment or recuperation."
Norie's face lifted, the eyes she had been sobbing out blinking. Choutarou too suddenly started to stand as if pricked. Seishin too took another, more serious look at the man's face.
"Uhm... What might you be talking about?" Norie crushed the handkerchief in her hands. This time it was the man who blinked as if bewildered.
"No, uhm. Last week on Friday, Shigeru-kun took his retirement leave, and at that time he had said that it was for personal reasons but we were thinking that it was surely because he was sick and that he had quit in order to focus on recovery, we thought." The man said, looking at Choutarou and Norie's flabbergasted faces. "Uhm.... Did you not hear about it? He had quit, Shigeru-kun did. And very suddenly. He said that he had his reasons and that he was giving up any rights on inheriting anything and all of this and that, so he had to quit, by the end of the day and that was that." The man looked at the number of people behind him--colleagues, likely---as if seeking support. "He was very forceful, for Shigeru-kun, so we were saying he really must have had quite the circumstances, and then when we had received notice of his death, that must have been it, we.... uhm, that is..."
"That---that can't," Norie was at a loss for words and then looked towards Seishin who was waiting his turn in the side tatami room. "That boy, he didn't say anything about---"
They looked at each other in bewilderment. Perhaps overhearing the conversation, the people around again exchanged looks.
Sinking down to the floor, Choutarou who had stood up was again seated. "I don't know anymore.... what's what. ---Why, such a thing."
And at such a loss for words, he began a fit of crying.
Seishin, still seated, fell as if he were thrown into the middle of an absurd play.
Shimizu Ryuuji, Hirosawa Takatoshi, and Ohkawa Shigeru. Each of them were young men who worked out of town. Who suddenly died. Dying was no longer odd, not in this village anymore. ----But.
Chapter Six
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1
It was on September 20th that Sotoba resident Katou Yoshihide came to the hospital, supported by his wife Sumie. An emergency case, Towada called. Toshio who was in the middle of examinations turned his eyes towards Yasuyo. Knowing his intent, Yasuyo stepped out into the waiting room where the old man, supported by his wife at one side and Mutou at the other, had at last been settled into a chair.
"Are you all right?" Yasuyo lowered herself to look into the old man's face. He looked faintly at Yasuyo and gave a nod, but it was a vague one, his color poor, shoulders heaving as he breathed. His breath was shallow and weak. When she tookh is hand, she could tell he was in a cold sweat. His pulse was also fast.