by Susan Barker
‘No. You are the one who is giving her money.’
‘What proof do you have other than her word?’ Murakami-san hiccuped.
I had no tangible evidence, but my logic was conclusive. ‘Someone has been feeding her private information about me. She knew I was a widower, she knew all the vicious lies that were spread about my wife after her . . . her passing. All those vicious untruths. Only one customer she has come into contact with at the hostess bar could have taught her these things. And now I know your motive.’ Emotion deformed my voice and hot tears needled my eyes. This vexed me terribly. The humiliating reality of my confrontation no longer corresponded to what I had intended.
‘Sato-san,’ Murakami-san said softly, ‘I promise you I have never once discussed you with that hostess. Someone else must have. She is playing you for a fool. I will speak to the Mama-san at the bar where she works: she needs to keep those bitches under better control.’ He took a step towards me, his hand held out in a gesture of comfort.
‘Then, how did she know all the lies you spread about my wife?’
‘I have never spread any lies about your wife.’
I went mute with fury. How dare he deny all the lies he spread about the company? I even overheard him with my own ears once, gossiping with his cronies in the designated smoking area.
‘Liar! I heard what you said! Thanks to you, even now, years later, everyone thinks that my wife took her own life. Do you have any idea how you dishonoured her? How you dragged her name through the mud?’ I was shouting like a madman, but I did not care.
The champagne lustre was finally gone from Murakami-san’s eyes. ‘Sato-san, you are a good man, a first-rate employee, but I think you need to take a break for a while, seek some psychiatric help . . .’
His hypocrisy sent my heart askew. It pounded all over that hotel rooftop, everywhere at once.
‘Who are you to tell me that I need psychiatric help? I am not the one who makes up sick lies for his own amusement.’
‘It was broad daylight,’ Murakami-san persisted. ‘There were many eyewitnesses who saw what she did. It was reported in the newspapers.’
Do you see the wickedness I was up against? When exposed as a bare-faced liar, Murakami-san’s tactic was to lie and lie ad nauseam.
‘One more word about my wife,’ I said, ‘and you will regret it.’
But the Deputy Senior Managerial Supervisor could not stop himself. ‘I understand your guilt, Sato, but it wasn’t your fault. You have to stop blaming yourself. Everybody knew about her mental-health problems . . .’
Murakami-san paused to let out a despondent, drunken hiccup. It was one mark of disrespect too far. Before I knew it I had leapt across the four or five metres that separated us and taken a clumsy swipe at him. He swerved before it connected and toppled backwards into the jacuzzi with a great splash, sending a chlorinated tidal wave over my shoes and slacks. At first he vanished completely beneath the white, frothing bubbles as I looked on, amoral with rage. Then his head bobbed up, wide-eyed and gasping, his silver hair plastered otter-like against his scalp. Coughing and spluttering with panic and disbelief, he splashed away from me and made his way to the side of the jacuzzi. He heaved himself out and lay on the side, as if beached, his parrot robe clinging wetly to his bruised behind. Palms flat against the tiles he coughed and coughed, trying to clear his watery lungs. The hot-tub interior was moulded plastic, so if he was concussed I doubt it was all that serious.
I swelled with remorse at my bungled act of violence. No matter how terrible the provocation, there is no excuse to carry on like a barbarian. I hung my head, just as I hang my head now, because I know you disapprove.
‘I did not mean to do that,’ I said, as Murakami-san wheezed into the tiles. A pair of angry, bloodshot eyes met mine. ‘I will go now. It was foolish of me to come here. This is a matter best left for Head Office to deal with on Monday.’
Leaving him to cough the agony from his lungs, I went inside, deeply ashamed by my behaviour. How can you be proud of a husband who carries on in such an aggressive manner? It wasn’t only Murakami-san who had dishonoured you tonight.
Repentance did little to quell my anger, though. How dare he suggest I seek psychiatric help? He who has turned to illegal activity to fund his hedonistic addictions. He who has sacrificed all integrity for the sake of lobster, hired go-go dancers and panoramic views of the Osaka skyline? What disease lurks in the heart of a man ready to take advantage of a penniless young girl? Come Monday morning he will no longer be in a position to abuse others. I will see to that, I thought, retreating down the dim corridor.
I decided to return to the hospital to check on Mrs Tanaka’s progress. Then I would go to the Finance Department to commence an investigation of every file and account Miss Yamamoto has so much as sniffed at in the past week. Whatever evidence I find will be backed up by Mariko, who will come with me to explain everything to Head Office on Monday. The thought of Mariko and her deception was accompanied by a stab of pain. But we both know that she is a good girl at heart – a girl who needs help to turn her life around, so that she may never have to compromise her dignity again.
At the lift I pressed the call button and saw that the lift was already in use. I watched the numbers on the display above the door climb to twenty-nine, and then the doors ping open. At first I did not recognize the man in the lift. He was with a stout, foreign woman, who had a mannish haircut and rounded, hamster cheeks. The man was a middle-aged hippy, bronzed by the sun, his long fringe hanging in his eyes. They both wore tie-dyed sarongs and flip-flops woven from straw.
The man smiled at me widely. ‘Sato-san! Aloha! Taro said you’d come along to celebrate tonight!’
It was Takahara-san, back from Hawaii.
Takahara-san had brought his wife and her five children to Japan for a family honeymoon. The rooftop party had been at his expense and the go-go dancers were his wife’s two Japanese-Hawaiian cousins and eldest daughter. Taro had woken the newly-weds to inform them, in his melodramatic style, that I had gone berserk. Takahara-san placed a bronzed hand on my shoulder and said it concerned him that I thought Murakami-san was stealing money. He told me that Murakami-san had offered him his old job back – hardly the behaviour of a man with something to hide . . . And how had my health been lately? Had I been getting enough sleep? After listening to Takahara-san, his wife smiling enthusiastically along (stone deaf to the meaning of her husband’s words), I mentioned my accident with Murakami-san by the hot tub. As Takahara-san and his new bride sped off to check he was OK I stepped into the empty lift.
Takahara-san’s last-minute intervention took the edge off my conviction. But for all I know Takahara-san could be in on it as well. The only way to know the truth is to seek it out myself.
Before leaving the hospital I sat at the bedside of the comatose Mrs Tanaka, breathing in the odour of bactericide and surgical dressing. Mrs Tanaka resembled a waxwork as she lay there, pale to the point of translucency, her inner arms threaded with blue and green. I was concerned that this discoloration was a sign that her drip was malfunctioning. When Naoko returned from the roof, flushed and smelling like she had been in attendance at a chain-smoking convention, I asked her opinion. Naoko removed her leather coat and hung it on the back of the door.
‘I think her arms have always been like that. Yes, come to think of it, I remember asking her about it when I was a kid.’ She bent over her aunt and stroked her brow. ‘You always had bad circulation, didn’t you, Auntie?’
I stood up again and told Naoko that I had an errand to attend to, but would be back in an hour or two.
Naoko looked at her watch, a slender band of silver round her wrist. ‘What kind of errand do you have to attend to at six thirty on a Sunday morning?’ she asked in bafflement. Then she shook her head at herself. ‘Sorry, I am forgetting my manners. You really look as though you haven’t slept, Mr Sato . . .’
‘I will be only an hour or two. And I will bring you back something n
ice for breakfast,’ I said. ‘And a portable television set too, so Mrs Tanaka can listen to her favourite programmes.’
And off I went once more, determined to get the investigation under way, so as not to keep Mrs Tanaka waiting too long.
The early sunlight stung my eyes. Through the smeary lenses of my spectacles I inspected the hospital car park, peaceful now it was empty of television crews. More than anything I wanted to sit and close my eyes for a minute. Just a minute. But I knew this was a tempting trap laid out for me by sleep. Though the trains were running I decided to take a taxi to the Daiwa Trading offices. One can always rely on a taxi driver in want of his fare to wake passengers who nod off in the back. The taxi rank was across the road from the hospital. As I stood at the pedestrian crossing, waiting for the lights to change (there was no traffic, but one mustn’t neglect the rules of road safety, under any circumstances), I heard a foreign voice call out: ‘Hey, can I ask a favour?’
I turned my head, expecting to see a boy because the voice was husky and low. But instead I saw a girl with wavy blond hair falling to her shoulders. It was Mary from England. Do you remember how I met her at the hostess bar? How she had picked her nail varnish and got told off by the Mama-san? I was very surprised because I did not expect to see Mary from England again, let alone in the car park of Osaka General Infirmary. The night I met Mary in the hostess bar she had been wearing too much make-up. Now she wore none at all and was so washed-out she resembled her own ghost. Her eyes were dark and shadowy like a racoon’s, and her clothes rumpled and dirty. On her thin wrist was a hospital band, so I assume she had just been discharged. On her feet were toilet slippers. Didn’t she know they are only meant to be worn in the toilet? I wondered if it would be rude of me to tell her.
‘I’ve lost my purse, see, and I need to borrow 1,000 yen to get to my friend’s place. If you give me your address I promise to send the money back to you right away. If you don’t have 1,000 yen, anything will do.’ She spoke in excellent, if somewhat slangy, Japanese. She did not seem embarrassed about accosting a stranger in such a matter-of-fact manner. Perhaps this behaviour is acceptable in England. Mary did not recognize me. But I expect she encounters a lot of faces in her line of work, and mine is not the most memorable.
‘If you have lost your purse,’ I said, ‘you should go to a police box. Someone might have handed it in. I can direct you to the nearest one.’
Mary sighed impatiently. ‘I lost it in Shinsaibashi. I doubt it would have been handed in round here.’
‘But they could still help.’
‘Right.’
The pedestrian crossing flashed green and played a melody, signalling it was safe to cross. Mary turned away from me, regretful of the time wasted. It was obvious that she would continue to waylay strangers until she got the money.
‘Wait,’ I said: ‘1,000 yen, was it?’
Mary turned back and nodded.
I rummaged through my wallet. ‘I have nothing smaller than a 5,000-yen note,’ I said. ‘Here, take it.’
She had not struck me as a sentimental girl but as she took the money her eyes shone with gratitude. I remembered how terribly young she was. What would her mother and father think if they knew she was scavenging for money in a hospital car park in Japan?
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘That’s quite all right. I know you from the hostess bar,’ I said. ‘It’s Mary, isn’t it?’
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘It isn’t.’ Then she darted ahead of me, ignoring the traffic lights, which had gone back to red.
I’ve just sent the last of a second cup of coffee down the hatch. Good thing it’s a Sunday and there is no one about, because I could really do with a good spit and polish. The beginnings of a beard rasp beneath my fingertips and my teeth are unclean. While on my first cup of coffee I went about collecting the files assigned to Miss Yamamoto and have piled them in front of me. I am not sure exactly what I am looking for. But there is no excuse to delay any longer. I want to put an end to Murakami’s wrongdoings once and for all. I let you down tonight, and I want to earn back your respect. I want to do good in your eyes again.
File number one, here I come.
22
MARY
The taxi pulls through the quiet streets, past a silent row of vending machines, a wooden tenement building, its curtains drawn in postponement of dawn. I think of all the people behind the curtains, asleep in their beds, breathing the same air as the people they trust. The grass is not just greener, every blade is gold-plated.
I fidget on the back seat, jittery in my skin. It is a poor substitute for what I really want to do, which is scream, for as long and hard as my lungs can endure. Inside my head is a terrible place to be right now. I could have sworn right up until the drugs kicked in that he loved me. Fool.
The blast of our horn drowns out my thoughts. The taxi driver curses and thumps the steering wheel. Sliding out from a side street is a car, silent as a shark. It brakes ahead of us, creating a road-block, and we skid to a slantwise halt on the edge of a building site. ‘Idiots!’ the taxi driver cries. ‘What are they playing at?’
The windscreen of the car is all reflected sunlight, but I make out the shadows of two men. My stomach bottoms out. That was too decisive a manoeuvre to be engine trouble. The driver and I watch as the car door opens. Out steps a man in a suit and sunglasses: Yamagawa’s one-man search-and-retrieval unit, Hiro.
I lean towards the driver. ‘You’d better reverse the taxi,’ I tell him, urgency undermined by the calm in my voice. ‘He has a gun. Reverse back down the road.’
The driver does not reverse, speak or even look round. In a breath-taking display of chivalry he opens his door and legs it into the building site, where he vanishes behind the scaffolding of a nearly completed house.
Hiro smiles at the sight of my driver loping off, or maybe it was just a trick of the light. Adrenalin doesn’t allow me time to speculate – it has me out and flying down the road, harrowed by the thought of a well-aimed bullet shattering my spine. Hiro gains on me in a few seconds and seizes my arm. I wheel round and lash out, striking air. He catches my other arm and I scream, almost dislocating my wrists as I try to wrench them free. He says: ‘Mary, stop. I am not going to hurt you . . .’
Bloodstains like crimson raindrops splatter his shirt. Things do not look good.
Behind him comes his friend, running to help him. ‘Mary! It’s OK. Stop, it’s me.’
I stop my thrashing. Katya? My wrists are released and Katya slots herself between us, her hands squeezing my shoulders. A man-sized T-shirt and loose jeans swamp her small frame; her brown hair is tucked out of sight beneath a baseball cap.
‘We were waiting outside the hospital for you, but you got in the taxi before we could get you.’
I look back down the empty road, at the two abandoned cars. There is no one but Hiro and her.
‘Good thing we got you before you got to my apartment,’ Katya says. ‘They’ll have someone waiting for you there.’
We drive to a lake and park in the clearing by the trees. Hiro skims stones from a small jetty. They skip the water, concentric circles spreading from the instances of impact. The new, tomboyish Katya tugs off her trainers, the visor of the baseball cap shading her face. Breathing in the brand-newness of the upholstery, I watch as her boyfriend reaches down on the ground for another stone.
‘So you remember nothing,’ Katya says.
‘The last thing I remember is the drugs starting to work; after that, waking up in hospital.’
‘The police evacuated the street. There was some kind of gas leak – I don’t know the details. Watanabe knew you were in Yamagawa-san’s bar and told a policeman. It’s thanks to him that you got out. Hiro told me that Watanabe had been watching out for you.’
I think of Watanabe in his stained chef’s apron, and feel violent gratitude. I always liked that boy.
‘And then they took me to hospital?’
‘Hiro said they put you in an ambulance. Didn’t you speak to a nurse or anyone?’
‘No one. I left five minutes after I woke up.’
‘You just left?’
‘Yeah. What was the point in staying?’
The reasons for staying were many and obvious, but Katya nods as if I was right to leave. The first thing I saw when I woke was the green of my cubicle curtains. I had been crying in my sleep, tears spilling from my eyes and wetting my ears. I asked myself some questions. Why am I in hospital? What did they do to me in that office? Have I been raped? I sat up, swung my legs over the side of the bed and looked myself over, checking under my skirt. I was groggy but not in pain, not sore or bruised. So I found my shoes under the bed and left. I keep seeing Yamagawa-san leaning over me, breathing on me, doing things to my unconscious body.
From the lake comes a sequence of splashes, two faint, one loud, as a stone skips and breaks the surface.
‘Do you know if I was raped?’ I ask.
Katya does not flinch at this question; she gazes calmly at me. ‘Highly unlikely. They got you out of there quickly. And even if Yamagawa-san had a fortnight I doubt it would have made a difference. The man is impotent.’
‘Impotent?’ I smile my first smile of the day. Not-quite relief lightens my heart. ‘So why . . .?’
‘It’s one method of recruiting girls to work for him. The man is scum . . .’
Katya continues to vent her rage in Ukrainian. I recognize the swear words she taught me, expletive after expletive, a string of poison pearls. Her words of hate and condemnation soothe me, but they come too late.
‘Why didn’t you tell me what these people are like? You never said a bad word against them . . .’
Katya looks to Hiro and back again, almost in a silent appeal for help. ‘I have not been a very good friend to you. I’m sorry. I knew they were after Yuji . . . He had it coming for a long time now. But I promise you, Mary, I thought you were safe. I don’t know, maybe I should have said something . . .’ A guilty pause. ‘Yamagawa-san never messes with English or Americans. Everyone knows it. When you didn’t show up for work last night Mama-san told me you’d gone to Korea with Yuji. And I knew you two were planning to leave Japan. I thought she was telling the truth . . .’