Last Winter We Parted

by Fuminori Nakamura

  I was at work when you were in the traffic accident. I had just left a big publishing house for a smaller one, and I was caught up in the dizzying pace. I rushed madly to the hospital, to find you there in bed, your leg suspended in traction, and you smiled at me in greeting. I was forced to face the possibility of losing you. Of you disappearing from this world. That terrified me. My entire world would become worthless. Grasping your hand—such a slender, warm hand—I could only be grateful that you were here now. Such a soft, irreplaceable thing … I would go on holding your hand forever.

  After you left the hospital, I asked you to stay at home while I was working. But you just smiled at me and, as always, went everywhere. Sometimes when I was stressed out from work, I raised my voice at you without thinking. You looked at me with such sad eyes that I immediately apologized. But I couldn’t stop myself from worrying about you.

  I started leaving work as early as I could. When I’d get home and not find you there, I’d feel a slight panic. I’d call you and, ignoring your protests that you were all right, I’d drive over to get you. You kept telling me you could do things on your own. That you only get one life. That you didn’t want to limit yourself. You wanted to experience it all. And that you didn’t like it when I interfered too much in your life. Everything you said was true. Yet I couldn’t control myself. “It’s because I can’t see,” you said at last. “You worry about me because I can’t see, don’t you? In that case, maybe you ought to go after one of the other girls walking around out there.”

  But that’s not what it was about. Of course, it’s true that I had been worried about you because you couldn’t see. But the problem was mine.

  Six years before I met you, I was involved with someone else. I won’t tell you her name, but we were very much in love. All she said was that her stomach hurt a little bit, and I started to worry and asked her to go to the hospital. When she came back from the local clinic and said that it was nothing serious, I still wondered if she was all right, and I begged her to go to a bigger hospital where she could have a more thorough examination.

  She gave me a strange look but, seeing the state I was in, she acquiesced and went to another hospital. When she returned and again said it was nothing, I was assured for the time being but—that’s how I always acted toward her.

  If she said that she wasn’t feeling well, I became overly concerned that it was really the flu. I even asked her not to ride in cars. Me, who would never go to the hospital when I was ill. I made her go to the hospital so many times. I wore her down. That was the reason she left me.

  After that, I started to think that maybe I ought to just avoid falling in love with anyone. I lived my life, taking care not to let anyone get too close to me. As far as I was concerned, having someone to love was too much to deal with. I could feel a quiet madness within me. If I loved someone with all my heart, my worries became unbearable, to the point where they got the better of me. I was powerless against this anxiety. There was no way for me to ignore even the slightest little worry. But … then I met you.

  At the time, the doctor said that you were very lucky to have only broken your leg in the accident. Often, I took off from work and watched you when you left the house. To make sure you made it back home without getting in another accident. I shadowed you. I have no doubt that when your friend happened to spot me walking behind you, she must have thought it was creepy. You were so angry with me when she told you what I was doing. You had every right to be. “Did you think that I wouldn’t find out, because I can’t see?” you demanded. I was impossible. For some time now, a rift had been forming between us that would be difficult to repair. I followed you everywhere you went. When a car passed too close to you, I forced the driver to stop and got into an argument, while you cried and pleaded with me to stop. I forbade you to take the stairs. Or to go out. Or even to boil water.

  I took my eyes off you. In that moment, I couldn’t guarantee your safety. Your life—and within that life, your self, which I could never quite perceive—went on, survived second after second. I don’t understand why, in the face of those we love, we can only acknowledge the one part we can see. I can’t help wondering about the you I couldn’t see.

  When you told me that you wanted to live apart for a while, my vision receded to the point where I could only see a blurry version of your face. You had grown weary of putting up with the suffering I inflicted on myself. You, who had always been so active and lively, had been negatively impacted by my stubborn persistence. You still cared for me, you said softly, but if we didn’t spend some time apart, it would be bad for the both of us. With tears in your eyes, you tried to hold back your sobs. Your idea was unacceptable to me. But then again, it was also unacceptable for me to be a burden to you. From that day on, I always watched you from a distance.

  The yellow tactile paving follows in a straight line from the station. When the yellow line meets the sidewalk along the main road, though, it suddenly disappears. This is your way home from the station. Every day, I was lying in wait for you as you made your way home along that yellow line. And that day, I waited all day to make sure that you were safe.

  What made you notice me that time? On that day, I was sitting on a bench in the plaza in front of the station, and I saw you as you moved along the yellow line with your walking stick. I was relieved that, once again today, you were safe, and I watched for a while as you passed right by me. That was when you stopped in your tracks and turned to face me.

  Was it my scent? Or was it just some sort of feeling? You were definitely aware of my presence. Of me, who was still watching you like a chaperon, even though we lived apart. Who would always follow you around. Who was unwilling to leave you. That day, your expression betrayed a trace of fear. Your face contorted, as if you were afraid of me. The next day, you did not walk along the yellow line. You chose another way, one that did not have tactile paving, a more dangerous route, in order to avoid me. So I stopped watching you.

  It seemed better for me not to love anyone because I became a burden to the person I loved. I decided to throw myself into my work. To try to forget about you. I thought I could change myself. I forced myself to stifle my worries about you, trying to withstand the regular bouts of nausea that accompanied the effort. The nausea tended to well up around the same time in the evening that your traffic accident had occurred. I took time off from work and made myself go on a trip alone. Despite all this, I knew that I’d never be able to change, but it was the only thing I could do. When I returned from my trip, I was still the same, of course. But without a doubt, I knew that, at the very least, I absolutely needed to stop brooding about you. I even went to see a psychosomatic specialist, but he told me that I was “normal.”

  But if I stopped worrying about someone, and then if I were to lose that person, then just who exactly would be to blame? When it comes to relationships, the more I love someone, the less I know what is appropriate. I thought about quitting my job and living somewhere far from Tokyo. If I stayed close, I’d end up looking for you again. And I didn’t want to frighten you any more. But, in my mind, I would never be able to move on from our time together.

  It was about two weeks after I had left Tokyo and gone back to my hometown in Sendai, where I found a job as an editor at a local free paper. That’s when I found out about your death.

  Fire at the home studio of photographer Yudai Kiharazaka. Female model dies. It was an article that I just happened to read in the newspaper. The moment I saw your name written there in small print, my heart started to pound, then it was helplessly racing and, the next thing I knew, my colleagues were holding me up. You were dead …? How could that be …? A photographer’s model …? The feel of my colleagues’ hands touching me suddenly made me sick. They felt like the hands of strangers. I was aware of the many fingers of my colleagues’ hands. I didn’t want anyone touching me. I shook free, stood up, and went to the bathroom, where I threw up. You were dead? My vision narrowed—all I could see was a tin
y portion of tiled floor around the toilet. I quit my job right on the spot. I know it was unfair to my colleagues, but at the time, I couldn’t think of anything else besides you.

  From there, although it seems strange even to me—since I had been drinking very heavily and, in my crazed state, didn’t want to cause trouble for anyone on the road—I took the bullet train. For some reason I put on a suit first. Oddly, it made me feel like I was standing up straighter. And then on the train, even though I already had several coffees that I hadn’t drunk lined up on the table in front of me, I kept ordering more from the vendor girl while people eyed me curiously.

  When I got back to Tokyo, I didn’t go to the police to request the details, or give my name as a person involved. I was trying to keep my presence a secret, as much as possible. Probably by that time, something had already taken root in my mind. I met up with my former colleagues, reporters for a weekly magazine, and asked for the details about the incident. Both the police and the media regarded it as an “accident.” Kiharazaka had been taking photographs, with you as the model, and at one point he had taken a break and gone into another room where he was fixing something to drink. While he was in there, a candle that was being used as a photo prop fell over, setting fire to a rug that was also being used in the shoot, and the fire then spread to the paint. Being visually impaired, you were unable to flee and inhaled the smoke. At the time of the accident, Kiharazaka had suffered burns trying to rescue you, and was still screaming when he was taken to the hospital. But, I thought to myself, was that what actually happened? Really?

  I started watching Kiharazaka. I shadowed him, planting myself outside his house when he was home and keeping watch. The studio where the fire occurred was on the same property as his home, and it was left in its burned out state. His new studio was housed in a crude looking shed-like building. He definitely looked worn out. Was it really an accident? I didn’t know what kind of relationship had developed between you and him, but if you were lovers then he would have been a brokenhearted man, just like me. In the midst of my grief, this humanized him to me. Without a doubt, he had been careless, but I too had once almost lost you in a traffic accident. And then, because I was trying to straighten myself out, I had let you out of my sight, and I had let you die. I thought about meeting with him. I was tormented. Unsure of what to do, I lapsed back into old habits, and spent my time keeping watch at Kiharazaka’s house. I also ordered all sorts of back issues of magazines to see his photographs. Most of the subjects in his work were shot at quite close range, and his meticulous fixation on details was apparent, yet I didn’t think he seemed crazy enough to kill someone.

  It was around this time when I heard the rumors about the doll creator. Living with a doll … I couldn’t imagine it, but I thought I’d go to see him, just to hear what he had to say. I must have been fascinated by the fact that some people even started to hear their doll’s voice. When I think about the condition I was in at the time, hearing voices didn’t seem like a strange phenomenon at all. I wanted to hear your voice again. I thought that meant I was crazy but it didn’t matter. Maybe I wanted to retreat into madness in order to escape this world.

  The man who greeted me was much cheerier than I expected. This was the doll creator, Suzuki. When I nervously showed him a photo of you, his expression changed. He looked at me calmly and asked, “What kind of relationship did you have with this woman?”

  “… I dated her a long time ago.”

  When I said this, he gazed at me even more steadily. Then he silently got up from his seat and took down an envelope from a shelf.

  “These are horrible photographs. Are you prepared to see them?”

  Not knowing what they were, I nodded automatically, and the photos were placed in front of me. Photos of you, on fire. Photos of you, engulfed in flames.

  My vision narrowed, and it took me some time to realize that the sensation I felt was nausea. Suzuki the doll creator started speaking again.

  “The fact is, Kiharazaka and I are close. He said that he hadn’t taken any photographs, but the truth is that he did. He couldn’t show them to anyone, nor could he keep them, so he asked me to hold them for him. He said that an artist like me was the only person in the world he could trust, and he insisted that I absolutely couldn’t show them to anyone. Seeing these photos, I didn’t know what to do. I don’t care much for the police. But I couldn’t just keep them a secret like this either. They were proof that he murdered her.”

  He was speaking very deliberately, as if choosing every word.

  “I was terribly disturbed, but … I will entrust these photographs to you. To your own discretion.”

  However, something seemed strange to me. Something about the photographs. Having worked as an editor, I happened to know a lot about photography. I took the photographs from Suzuki and brought them to a photographer I knew. A few days later, he told me he was of the same opinion. He agreed that these were composites.

  The shot of your face on fire was a composite photograph. As well as the one of you being consumed by the flames. To be sure, twenty-one of the photographs were not composites. Among those were two shots of you, with your legs bound and looking very thin, sleeping on top of a pedestal. There were no flames in either photo, or any sign of fire. The remaining nineteen photos were of flames. But they were all taken from a distance.

  If Kiharazaka had burned you to death, in order to photograph the scene in the manner of Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s “Hell Screen,” wouldn’t he have persisted in following through completely, as shown in the composites? If he were going to burn you that way, there would be no point in photographing it as a long shot. By now I’ve seen nearly all of his photographs. These long-shot photographs—all of the ones that were the real thing and not composites—didn’t seem like his work at all.

  I wondered if the truth was something else. Judging from the photos, he had been holding you captive. Forcing you to sleep and binding your legs, not letting you move around. That would fit with what the article said, that a candle being used as some kind of prop had fallen over and started the fire. When he realized it, he had hurriedly clicked away with his camera, rather than try to rescue you. Judging by the layout of the non-composite photos, he could have saved you before the flames overtook you. You would probably still have suffered burns all over your body, but judging from these photos, it definitely seems possible that he could have dragged you out of the flames—had he not stopped to take nineteen photographs. In what appears to be the last photo he actually shot, you are already completely immersed in flames.

  Yet none of these photographs are successful. Not the least bit stimulating to the viewer—they are no more than mediocre. I can’t help but think that the composition of the close-ups in the composite photographs was motivated by his regret—that these were the photographs he had really wanted to capture.

  I tried to verify my hypothesis. I thought if I went to see Kiharazaka, though, I’d end up killing him. So I met with his sister. She was living on her own in Ueno, off an inheritance from her grandfather.

  After hearing what I had to say, she bowed deeply. Then she told me that what I had said was probably correct. That her brother may not be a respectable fellow, but he didn’t have the nerve to kill someone. That he may not have killed you directly himself, but morally, he bore an immense responsibility in your death. And that he now seemed destroyed. Then she said, as for what to do with these photographs, that of course she would leave it up to me. She was crying the whole time.

  To have a brother like that, one whom she used to love … Kiharazaka’s sister Akari seemed weary of her life, a woman beset by countless miseries. When I asked her, she said that she had lost two people dear to her, men with whom she had been in love.

  I was at a loss. If I brought the photographs to the police, Yudai Kiharazaka would be charged with one crime or another. But he wouldn’t be sentenced to death. The murder wasn’t premeditated, and there was only one victim. Even though he�
��d go to prison, he’d be out again in a few years. Yet as far as society was concerned, he’d have paid for his crime.

  Akari asked me to see her again. She said it might not be her place to say such a thing, but she thought that being with me seemed to make her feel a little better. I started seeing her often after that, all the while worrying about what I should do next. I told her about my relationship with you. She told me about how she had lost one of the men who had been dear to her. A traffic accident, she said. She cried quietly while she told the story.

  Some time after I first met Akari, we were just leaving each other at a coffee shop when someone called out to me from behind. The man looked terribly sad. He was around the same age as me, about thirty-five or thirty-six, and he wore an expensive suit.

  “We need to talk,” He said to me abruptly.

  “… You and me? What for?”

  “It’s about Akari Kiharazaka … Please excuse me, but I know all about you.”

  Archive 11-2

  Reluctantly, I accompanied this man back into the coffee shop where I had just been with Akari. The coffee that he ordered arrived, and as soon as the waitress walked away, he slid aside the gaudy wristwatch he was wearing. Underneath was a large gash. A suicide scar.

  “You should stay away from her. You’ll end up like me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Please excuse me … You are contemplating avenging the death of Ms. Yoshimoto. But right now you’re worried about the best way to do so. Am I wrong?”

  “How do you …?”

  He was a lawyer. Long ago, he said, his life had been destroyed by Akari Kiharazaka. He seemed like a creepy guy. I even resented him for trying to help me. When it comes to love, there’s no such thing as fair. Akari had told me herself that she had a number of enemies. That she was apt to be misunderstood. There had been times, it was true, when I had detected a creepy quality in her laugh, as it rose to an almost unconscious cackle. But she wasn’t the ruthless woman the lawyer made her out to be. He was probably stalking her. I managed to get out of there without antagonizing him. I didn’t know what he might do to me if he thought I was her boyfriend.