Parade

by Shuichi Yoshida

  It was right then that I heard a faint sound of somebody’s footsteps. It was between songs and the only thing I could hear was my ragged breathing. I looked up and saw a woman with a red umbrella slowly crossing towards me. The woman didn’t seem to have noticed me. Her feet, in white sandals, looked muddy. I picked up the chunk of concrete and hid behind a pillar. Having run so hard, my stomach cramped up and I felt nauseous. The woman’s face was hidden behind the red umbrella and I couldn’t see it. When I leapt out from behind the pillar I caught a glimpse of her mouth. For some reason she seemed to be smiling.

  I don’t remember exactly what I did next. When I realised what I was doing, I had my hand clamped over her mouth and had shoved her against the rusty fence. I couldn’t hear her scream. When I drove the chunk of concrete against her face, all I felt was it smashing against her, the chunk of concrete sinking in her soft face. I swung my hand up once more. The concrete chunk came right out of her face. Something black oozed out of the woman’s open mouth, like there was one more row of teeth between the upper and lower ones. The woman’s eyes were crossed. I brought the concrete back down on her again, and the action made my headphones slip off my ears. They hung down on my chest and I hurriedly thrust them back onto my ears. That done, I quickly swung the chunk of concrete down again.

  I’d been straddling the woman, but now I stood up and tossed the chunk of concrete onto her chest. The concrete bounced against her chest and clunked against the ground. The woman’s face looked like it didn’t have a chin any more. Black foam gurgled from her mouth. Just as I was about to leave, the woman’s hand moved a fraction. I bent over and saw she was pushing her thumb, over and over, against the button on the umbrella.

  At that very instant someone grabbed my wrist from behind. Wet from the rain, my wrist slipped away, but was grabbed again and roughly pulled. I recoiled and the headphones slipped off my ears again, slapping against my chest like a whip. They swung from side to side and hung down limply towards my feet. I lost my balance and may have stepped on the woman’s stomach. My soles seemed to sink into something. I looked up and there stood Satoru, his face pale. He was holding an opened black umbrella, pointed down. I couldn’t tell if it was me who was trembling, or Satoru as he held my wrist. The instant I saw him, and saw how tense he was, all the energy drained out of my body. It was a pleasant feeling, like my skin was being tickled.

  I was about to say something to him, but shut my mouth. For some reason, I almost thanked him.

  Right then Satoru’s mouth moved. ‘Hurry up!’ he said and pulled my arm hard. I stepped on the woman’s stomach again. Satoru pulled me even harder. ‘Hurry up!’ he repeated. We left the shadows of the pillar and went to the median. Satoru never let go of my arm. I didn’t resist being pulled along, but was concerned about the headphones that had been tugged away from my ears and I tried to haul them in. They hung down like a tail as we trotted along, and I couldn’t grab them.

  I can’t remember what I was thinking about as Satoru yanked me along towards Ryosuke’s car park. Maybe I was only concerned about my headphones dragging along.

  At the car park the gravel crunched under our feet as we ran towards Ryosuke’s car. I was moving too slow for his liking and he shoved me hard into the passenger side seat, locking the door so I wouldn’t escape, I suppose, then he ran round the front of the car and into the driver’s side seat. He slammed the door shut. The sounds outside were shut out, and all I could hear was the rain pounding on the roof. Maybe because of this, all the tension that had built up drained away. ‘Man, I’m soaked,’ Satoru said. He twisted around and shoved the wet umbrella in the back seat. Something’s about to begin now, I thought. But I couldn’t help but think it would be something very pleasant. I know it was kind of arrogant of me, but when I looked at Satoru’s soaked face, I nearly smiled. And at the same time I noticed how terribly self-conscious I was.

  ‘It’s okay. Nobody saw you, and we didn’t see anybody else on the way over here,’ Satoru said as he tugged off his wet T-shirt. I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about. Satoru pulled a bath towel from the back seat, wiped his face and chest, wadded it up and thrust it towards me. I knew I was supposed to say something, but I couldn’t find the words. It felt like if I didn’t say something everything would be over.

  Satoru yanked a dry T-shirt from a bag in the back seat. It was like he wasn’t paying any attention to me at all. Feeling like I was getting used to being ignored, I hurriedly grabbed his shoulder.

  ‘Hey!’ I said. ‘What do you think you’re doing? You’ve got to turn me in to the police right away!’ My throat was shaking, and felt sweetly painful.

  ‘Jeez – You scared me half to death . . .’ Satoru looked annoyed at my sudden outburst.

  I waited for his next words, thinking that when he asked me Why did you do it? I’d finally have a chance to explain this to myself. But Satoru just held out the T-shirt he’d taken out and told me to put it on. I was just sitting there vacantly. He reached out to try to tug off my wet T-shirt. ‘Knock it off!’ I shouted, brushing aside his hand. But still he reached out to me.

  ‘It’s all right. You gotta hurry,’ he said.

  ‘What’s changing my shirt going to do!’ I yelled.

  ‘There’s blood all over the one you have on,’ Satoru replied.

  ‘So what?!’

  ‘You can’t go home looking like that!’

  I see. So I’m going home. Satoru’s going to take me back and reveal me for who I am, in front of everyone.

  Satoru peeled the sopping T-shirt from my unresisting body. Urged on by him to ‘Hurry up!’ I put on the dry T-shirt. It had a milky smell to it, and was a little too small. I pictured how pitiful I’d look, handed over in front of everyone. But then I imagined myself yelling at them You have no right to blame me! and it made me feel kind of cheerful.

  ‘Okay? Have you finished changing?’

  The moment Satoru opened the driver’s side door, the car was swallowed up in the sound from outside. The sound of the rain beating against the gravel. Far-off lightning flashed in the sky. He handed me a plastic bag and I shoved the wet T-shirt inside. I shoved it in so hard the rain and sweat and blood seeped out and soaked my hand.

  Satoru, open umbrella in hand, walked around to the passenger side. He pressed his face up against the glass and watched as I tied up the plastic bag. When I opened the door, Satoru, who’d taken a step back, held the umbrella over me as I got out of the car.

  ‘I wonder if everybody’s back by now.’

  Satoru’s voice, mixed in with the crunch of gravel, sounded a little too carefree. Without replying, I snatched the umbrella from him.

  I walked along next to him for a while. I don’t know why, but it felt crushingly boring. What I wanted was to be quickly exposed for who I am. A couple of times while we were walking Satoru told me, ‘It’ll be okay.’ Each time he did I repeated to myself, There’s no way it’s going to be okay. You didn’t see that woman’s face. I knew he glanced at me a few times, but I deliberately avoided his eyes. The image of the woman’s face, smashed by the chunk of concrete, came and went in my mind’s eye. The woman might still be there, undiscovered, leaning against the fence under the elevated bridge, her thumb still pushing the button on her umbrella.

  We cut through an alley in a residential neighbourhood, took a different street and came out on Route 20. Cars buzzed past, shooting up spray from the wet asphalt. The long white lines of the crossing looked like a bridge over a dark river. Satoru gave my back a push and I stepped forwards. The crossing signal had turned green before I realised it. The headlights of the line of cars stopped at the stop line shone on Satoru and me. We were lit up, but that light only grazed our skin, wet from the rain, and didn’t shine inside us.

  ‘What do you plan to tell them?’ I asked, as I was just nearing the other side.

  ‘Well . . . I’m not going to say anything.’

  I came to an abrupt halt. Did I hear him wrong? Sat
oru, still walking, took a step forwards out from under the umbrella. He turned around, his face contorted in the rain, and was looking at me.

  ‘Hurry up!’

  He grabbed my wrist again, but I shook free. Rattled, I asked, ‘What do you mean you’re not going to say anything?’

  Satoru was gazing steadily at me. ‘Doesn’t everybody already know?’ he murmured, sounding annoyed.

  ‘They already know?’

  I grabbed him by the shoulders. His shoulders were so thin. ‘It hurts,’ he said, twisting away.

  ‘Who do you mean, everybody?’

  ‘Everybody means everybody. Mirai, Ryosuke, and Koto. Don’t they all know? I’m not really sure, though, since I never talked with them about it.’

  He sounded totally peeved. ‘Hurry up!’ he said again and pulled me by the arm.

  ‘Hold on. If everybody knows, then why didn’t they say anything?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

  ‘I don’t know. Nobody said anything . . . And besides, I like living there.’

  I suddenly recalled Ryosuke and Koto’s faces when I was going out jogging and they were just coming back from the video store. They saw my jogging shoes and looked a little put out. Satoru’s voice came back to me, his insistence that everything would be okay. It’ll be okay. I finally felt like I knew what this meant. The wet asphalt at my feet was lit up by lights, and a pizza delivery motorcycle darted out of a side alley. The driver’s red uniform and his face below the helmet were all soaked. He buzzed by, leaving behind a sweet fragrance of cheese.

  When you first enter the apartment there’s a bathroom on the right. You go down a short hallway and on the left is the kitchen. Open the sliding door to the side and there’s the guys’ bedroom. There’s a loft-style bed, and below it is where Ryosuke sleeps in his futon. There’s a sliding glass door from the guys’ bedroom that leads out to the balcony. Someone’s always drying clothes out there, and the washing machine inevitably has a single, forgotten sock in it. Go out of the guys’ bedroom and there’s the living room. The south side is all windows, and though there’s a bit of traffic noise from Kyukoshu Kaido Boulevard below, the living room is sunny and has nice, high ceilings. On the other side of the living room is the girls’ room. This is the room that Misaki and I used to share. I’ve hardly ever been in the girls’ room since Misaki moved out. That’s it for the apartment. All the rooms there are. Not the kind of high-end place you want to brag about, and not the kind you’re so attached to you can’t leave. That’s the kind of place the five of us live in – a place we can leave any time we want.

  I nearly ran the whole way home. ‘Wait up!’ I could hear Satoru yell, but I didn’t stop.

  I was too impatient to wait for the lift so I raced up the stairs to the fourth floor. I was walking down the corridor, catching my breath, when the door right before ours opened. It was the fortune teller, but when our eyes met he made a show of remembering something and quickly shut the door. The lift doors opened and I knew Satoru was running down the corridor towards me. Without glancing back, I opened the door to 401. ‘Oh, you’re back,’ I heard Mirai shout from the living room. As I was crouched down, untying the laces of my soaked shoes, Satoru pushed past me and went inside. Mirai had come out of the living room and said, ‘Hey – you came back?’ welcoming the prodigal Satoru, who’d been away a long time.

  ‘I figured things must have settled down by now,’ Satoru said. ‘Is someone taking a bath?’ he asked blithely, and strode into the living room. Maybe it was the fact that Satoru had gone in first, but it felt like things had gone off track. When I looked up, Mirai was standing in front of me, grinning away.

  ‘Come here for a sec,’ she said.

  I still hadn’t taken off one of my shoes but she tugged me along anyway. As she dragged me along, I raised one foot, peeled off the sopping shoe and tossed it towards the entrance.

  Koto was in the living room. She was peering into a small mirror set up on the table, focused entirely on plucking her eyebrows. Situation normal. Mirai left me at the entrance to the living room, rushed over to the TV and punched the Play button on the video.

  ‘You gotta see this,’ she said, and pointed at the screen. I followed her finger and saw a woman on the screen giving a guy a blow job. This must be the porn video Ryosuke and Koto had rented when I went out jogging.

  ‘You remember her, right?’ Mirai asked.

  I stood there, rooted to the entrance, and silently shook my head.

  ‘Remember? We were at Halcyon and a girl threw a glass of water at me?’

  I gazed at the girl’s face as she ran her tongue over the guy’s cock. I remembered Mirai getting splashed with water at Halcyon, but I didn’t remember the face of the girl who did it. Mirai, arms folded, glared at me. ‘You remember her?’ she said, but I just stood there, dumbfounded, and shook my head.

  From the bathroom behind me I heard Satoru’s voice. ‘Did you just get in?’ ‘No, I’ll be out in a minute,’ Ryosuke shouted back from inside the bath. Satoru emerged from the changing area next to the bath and, for some reason I couldn’t fathom, shot me a huge grin as I stood there at the entrance to the living room. Satoru pushed past me and plopped down next to Koto. Koto looked up from the mirror and turned to him.

  ‘Look okay?’ she asked.

  ‘The right one looks a little thick,’ Satoru replied, and Koto peered back in the mirror.

  Mirai, towering over them, asked, ‘You think this girl’s pretty?’ poking Satoru in the back with her foot.

  Satoru looked up at the TV. ‘No, I don’t. Is she some friend of yours?’

  ‘She’s the one who threw water on me.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘I have no idea. She was showing off a huge diamond ring – an engagement ring, maybe, I don’t know – and I said Do you have any idea how many African children were sacrificed to make this diamond? and she said I was just jealous. It pissed me off and I threw some peanuts in her face. And she flung a glass of water at me.’

  ‘Didn’t you fling one back?’

  ‘Of course I was about to. But then Saint Naoki here pinned me down and kept me from doing it.’

  In tandem Mirai and Satoru turned around to look at me. Right then Ryosuke, bath towel wrapped around his waist, emerged from the bathroom. ‘Excuse me,’ he said his wet back bumping my arm as he squeezed past. ‘The bath’s all yours,’ he said to Satoru. ‘But I wanted to take a bath,’ Koto said, poking Satoru. Nobody seemed to care about me. And that’s when it hit me. I could feel it in my bones that they really knew. That they really had known.

  ‘So what are you going to do about school?’ Ryosuke, seated on the sofa now, asked Satoru, tapping him on the head. Next to them Koto gave a big yawn, while Mirai, standing there with remote in hand, was glaring at the TV. As with all the times before, all I had to do was take a step forwards, and things might be all right.

  The first night I attacked a woman on the streets, Koto, wearing a face pack, asked me, ‘What kind of guy is this Umezaki? Ryosuke asked me to go to Izu Kogen with him.’ Pretending to be as calm as I could, I just replied, ‘He’s a good guy.’ The second time, when I came home, Ryosuke and Mirai, both looking pretty serious, asked me, ‘This guy sleeping on the sofa this morning – did you bring him here?’ I should have just said, ‘I have no idea.’ The third time, after attacking the woman I helped take care of Mirai, who’d come home dead drunk. The fourth time, I didn’t sleep a wink the whole night, and that’s when I asked Satoru, who was eating waffles that morning, if he’d like to work part-time at my office.

  Like all the times before, as long as I took a step forwards, then everything might be settled.

  I was still standing at the entrance to the living room. The woman’s face suddenly came to me, the one I’d crushed with a chunk of concrete. She might still be lying there in the rain, under the dark, elevated bridge. If, say, there were another Tokyo in this
world, and that woman were lying there, I’m sure I would rush off to rescue her.

  Laughing voices echoed in front of me. Before I knew it, the TV was showing pink panthers dancing around. This had to be that video of Mirai’s. The pink panthers that had been recorded over those ghastly rape scenes . . . A parade of smiling pink panthers, shaking their hips as they danced.

  Ryosuke was on the sofa, Koto and Satoru, the good friends, sat side by side, and Mirai was still planted in front of the TV – all of them were laughing, ignoring me. I was left hanging, by the doorway, unjudged, unforgiven, null and void. It was as if they had already – in place of me – felt regret, repented, and asked for forgiveness. We’re not going to give you anything, they seemed to be telling me. You can forget about the right to explain yourself, confess, or apologise – we’ll never give it to you. It felt like they hated me, their disgust implacable and unrelenting.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Epub ISBN: 9781448162314

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Published by Harvill Secker 2014

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  Copyright © Shuichi Yoshida 2002

  English translation copyright © Philip Gabriel 2014

  Shuichi Yoshida has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work