“You’re kidding.”
“Do you want to see it? I want you to read it.”
Reiko hands me her Mobile. The following is what Yukio sent to her: No pleasure seems to be found in the way we Japanese drink and eat and have sex. We take a swig of drinks, gobble up foods, and have hurry-scurry coitus like rabbits.
According to my grandfather, a Japanese columnist has claimed, in 1980s, that Japanese culture can be symbolized as a tiny phimotic penis suffering from premature ejaculation. We Japanese are always in a rush without any particular reason. We were born to be impatient and this is why we could think of nothing but Kamikaze squad as an ultimate option in order to win the war. Once we get into a desperate situation, we easily sacrifice our own lives.
We the impatient Japanese walk at a brisk pace with short legs. We love bullet train; we dream of making the world fastest public transportation vehicle even though we are marooned in this small archipelago that is about the size of California. As soon as we get on a bullet train, we start reading or playing some video game or watching movies on the tiny display of the Mobile, or simply fall asleep. No one is interested in gazing at passing scenery through the train window, probably because we seldom care about the outside. No, we need not to see it because we are no longer interested in nothing that comes between the start and the goal.
We Japanese are the people who enjoy seeing the moon in a dewdrop.
Yes, we are born to be Zen kind of people.
Yes, we are able to see the moon in a dewdrop: but it has little to do with Japanese aesthetics.
The moon in a dewdrop holds the earthly dewdrop and the heavenly moon, the start and the goal, within. In a single dewdrop we find the way to grasp both at once. Our love for such a tiny container of the earth and the heaven, the start and the goal, the approachable and the inapproachable, has given birth to our maniacal interest in Mobile.
The Mobile indeed makes the inapproachable approachable in a nanosecond. In other words, the Mobile is the moon in a dewdrop. It is a tribute to the uniqueness of our nationality.
Remember this: Impatience is the mother of invention.
And it has a twin sister called desperation. When both starts dancing hand in hand, they become twin killers under the principles of Yin and Yang. Impatience plus desperation is Kamikaze squad, whereas impatience plus ingenuity is the Mobile.
It is quite a neat equation, isn’t it?
Say sayonara with a sneer.
*
Reiko is looking into the touchscreen over my shoulder.
“Thus spoke Yukio,” I say.
“He’s really weird, but it doesn’t sound like a farewell mail to me.”
“Because, Reiko, you’re thinking that what had happened to Yukio might not be a suicide.”
“Maybe that was a suicide. Maybe that was an accident. Who knows?”
“I heard almost all eyewitnesses testified that Yukio had thrown himself from the platform.”
“Because Yukio-san really seemed to have done it that morning. It was cold and wet and slippery too. Anything could happen.”
“So it could be an accident, you think.”
“Could be.”
Then Reiko swiftly covers her mouth with the left hand, staggers, and then leans against a telegraph pole.
I grab her shoulder in surprise.
“Are you all right?”
“I cannot get rid of that scene out of my head you know. I think I’ve been haunted by that memory since that day.”
“It’s all right.”
“No,” says Reiko, shaking her head. “Nothing’s all right.”
Then she starts talking as if in a hypnotic trance: “Scattered organs…a lot of blood…and he’s dying over there right before your eyes. You start hearing something in your head. It’s a kind of scream you’ve never heard before. You’re crying in the crowd…but there is no one who can help you out. People are all turning into dark shadows with…with wide-open eyes and…and they have no pupils you know.”
“Breathe, Reiko, breathe.”
“I feel nausea,” she says and turns her face away, crouching.
I start stroking her back as she removes pink gloves to retch. Three women with shopping bags are passing by, looking at us up and down, probably in order to probe into what is happening between us. After a short while Reiko has regained color on her face. She has vomited nothing after all.
I wonder if she did it for show.
“It’s very sweet of you. Thank you, Luna. I feel fine now.”
Reiko looks up and smiles beautifully at the winter sky.
“I love this icy air. It’s so clean and crisp. How was Yukio-san’s room by the way? I heard you stayed there for quite a long while. I wonder if you could find what you were looking for.”
“Why do you think I was looking for something?”
“You know we girls have a sixth sense.” She shrugs.
“Actually, I did find something very intriguing.”
“Oh, it does sound intriguing,” says Reiko and then gazes at me in the eyes as if she were trying to dig up my hidden thoughts.
I say, “I mean…I was talking about the secret.”
“Do I ought to be surprised?”
Reiko chuckles with an anxious look.
I say, “It’s a DVD. No, I mean, it’s stored in the DVD.”
“So?” Reiko tilts her head slightly to one side.
“You’re supposed to have known all about it already, Reiko.”
“Tell me what kind of secret you’re talking about.”
“My secret. Your secret. Our secret.”
“It sounds a bit risque, doesn’t it? I like the word secret, though.”
“Reiko, I know why you visited his house. You must have been trying to look for the same thing, right? Because you’re one of us.”
“Are you talking about something like a secret society?”
“Could be.”
“Oh my goodness. You should listen to the way you talk. It sounds incurably serious.”
“I find nothing wrong to be serious.”
“No, it’s risky to take anything seriously you know. Particularly things other people say.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t, Luna. Things other people say would irritate you, exhaust you, hurt you, and confine you in the past. In a very cruel way.”
I turn my eyes away from her.
Reiko might be remembering what had happened to her last October. A man of forty-four was arrested by a railroad police officer in the act of stealthily making a recording of everything under her short pleated skirt at Shibuya railroad station. The incident took place the moment she stepped on an up escalator. Standing right behind her, the man was operating a microminiaturized digital video camera hidden inside his attache case with its lens peeping out through a tiny hole that had been drilled in its frame.
The man who had crept up on Reiko from behind was an executive producer of a well-known Japanese animation production so that the case was made public all at once via various Web News bulletins that evening. And, although the media tried to withhold Reiko’s personal information for the reason that she was still a minor of fifteen, almost everyone in our gakko became able to identify who was the victim before long. It is because we learned that the heroine created by that Japanese Anime production for the coming cable television animation series was to all appearances exactly like Reiko. The producer even uploaded a three-dimensional computer-graphic image of the heroine as a new icon of innocence to one of blogs specializing in Hentai anime, that is, sexually perverted Japanese animation. It was also discovered later that he had been stalking her for about eight months prior to the day he was caught. Anyhow I am still wondering how the railroad police officer could suspect that the well-dressed man with the custom-made attache case was a voyeur. It remains to be a mystery to which a great number of students in our school still try to offer the answer. And, now, the forty-four-year-old voyeur’s ex-prey h
as grown to be sixteen and, under the icy blue sky, she happens to be waving at me under my nose.
“Are you all right, Luna? You seem to be in a daze.”
“Wow.” I blink. “I must’ve been daydreaming.”
“So you have the DVD in your backpack. Can I see it?”
“The answer is no. It’s my trophy.”
“Or maybe it’s just a white elephant.”
“Could be. But, whatever it would be, you don’t believe everything other girls say, do you?”
“Of course, not.”
But Reiko shows no smile on her face.
Matryoshka
The faint roar of a jet is being heard again. I spot a passenger plane far up in the icy blue sky.
Reiko and I have passed the cosmetic surgery clinic and then the ballet school. She tells me that she used to come here for lessons in ballet when she was little. Suddenly my feet freeze the moment I look at the red pillar-box on the corner of the sidewalk.
“Is there something wrong?” asks Reiko, turning her head toward the same direction as I did.
“I saw a little girl.”
“A little girl? I see no one there.”
“Oh…maybe I’ve just seen things.”
Facing the stone-flagged gateway to the desolate temple, we join hands in prayer. Then I reach the stone statue of a guarding dog. It is as startlingly cold to touch as the corpse of my little sister I touched the night before the funeral service.
Soon Reiko and I have reached the hilltop where she points her forefinger at a hotel on the east side of the foot.
“My daddy will pick me up at that glassy hotel.”
“Well, I go down this way.” I point to the south side of the foot.
“Why don’t you come with me then? I can ask my daddy to give you a ride home.”
“Thanks, but there is no need for that. Give my best regards to Mr. Earnest Kaufman.”
Reiko giggles at me.
“I’m curious why you always call my daddy by his full name. Is it because he is an American?”
“Your father is handsome, well-built, intelligent and rich. That’s why. I just would like to pay my respects to anyone who possesses all those assets.”
“You’re seriously funny.”
“I take that for a compliment. Thank you, Reiko.”
“It’s strange.”
“No, I don’t think it strange.”
“No, I mean, my daddy becomes miserably shy whenever we’re alone together. He’s said to be a very aggressive banker, though. When my daddy acts like a shy boy he looks so cute I can’t help teasing him more.”
“Do you call your own father cute?” I grimace.
“Especially when he looks at me as if he’s eager to have something more out of me. The problem is that he has no idea what I’m capable of. He doesn’t know how far I can go to make him happy.”
Then Reiko takes a view of the boundless cityscape.
Perhaps she is looking for some kind of clues to what she has just said.
Again there can be heard a faint roar in the sky.
Reiko slips her arm into the coat and says, “Well then, I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”
I say sayonara and am about to cross the narrow street and into a sloping lane when she looks back at me.
“What?” I ask.
She raises her voice: “I was in the same waiting line of which Yukio-san was in the front.”
“I know, but you were standing behind Maya who were behind Takeshi. Your position was far back from Yukio.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Take it whatever you like.”
Reiko says, approaching me, “I’m curious whether you seriously believe Yukio-san was killed not by the train but by someone we know.”
“Did I mention it to you?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“How did you know it then, Reiko?”
“I have long ears you know. I used to pound steamed rice into cake on the moon, wearing a bunny-girl costume”
“I’m serious, Reiko. How did you get all those information?”
“You shouldn’t forget that Maya is one of us.”
“I see. She has just broken my heart.”
“Maya is really worried if you’re under the delusion that Yukio-san was murdered by someone we’re all familiar with.”
“What do you think about it yourself, Reiko?”
“No, I don’t fall for your tricks so easily.”
“Good for you.”
“I admire your carefree attitude. I really do. But do you still remember that Yukio-san called you a week before that incident? Around eleven o’clock at night. I’ll be glad if you tell me what you talked about with Yukio-san.”
“Did he speak to you about the call?”
“No, Takeshi-san showed me the transmission record from Yukio-san’s Mobile.”
“Wait a minute.”
“Stop staring at me like that, Luna. It’s scary.”
“How would Yukio’s Mobile happen to be in Takeshi’s hand?”
“I know nothing about it.”
“Okay. You know nothing about it. Then I have nothing to talk about.”
“Well, Takeshi-san said he picked up the Mobile from the scene of the accident.”
“The scene of the crime, you mean.”
“Whatever you like to call it. I was also told that Takeshi-san wanted to have it in his custody for Yukio-san’s grandparents. He seemed to be worried if it might have been lost once the railroad police took it with them.”
“And you believed it.”
“Because he is one of us you know.”
“Does Takeshi still keep Yukio’s Mobile with him?”
“How should I know? He might have already returned it to the professor.”
“Do you realize what he did? It’s a crime, Reiko.”
“What about you? You stole a DVD from Yukio-san’s room. Did you not?”
“Ouch.”
“Ouch,” mimics Reiko with a frosty smile and continues, “If I were you, I would try not to open the secret. The DVD might be a Pandora’s box. Who knows?”
“That’s fine with me, Reiko. I need any kind of clue no matter how tiny it looks if it’s still calling my name.”
“Or, maybe, it’s a Russian Matryoshka Dolls.”
“Matryoshka dolls?”
“You know, a set of beautifully painted hollow wooden dolls that vary in size. They are nesting inside one another and you end up seeing nothing after having opened the last smallest one.”
“Oh, you mean, the nesting dolls.”
“Yes, Matryoshka.”
“There could be found no answer even if you would probe into the cause of it hard. That’s what you’re suggesting, Reiko, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. There might be nothing in something. And there might be something in nothing.”
“Or nothing could be something, don’t you think? Wow, we’re now talking like Zen monks.”
Reiko says with a sarcastic smile, “I’m wondering if you happen to know that Matryoshka in Russian comes from the Latin word meaning MOTHER.”
“So?” I shrug.
“Maybe Matryoshka is teaching us what means to be the mother of truth.”
“I didn’t know you’re a philosopher, Reiko.”
“I simply learned it from Yukio-san. He was a true savant. By the way, Maya asked me to tell you that she was not so naive as she might have appeared the other day. In wagashi-ya, you know.”
“What does it mean?”
“You should ask Maya yourself. I think I’d better warn you not to underestimate her. If you try to take advantage of her, you’ll suffer.”
“Wow, I’m scared. But you’re one of us too, aren’t you, Reiko?”
But she is staring back at me as if in anger.
“What about you, Luna? Are you truly one of us?” says Reiko and then adds in an icy whisper, “Do not ever forget that I can prick you any
time and anywhere.”
“I don’t want to miss it.”
“You’ll see,” says Reiko and plugs up her ears with a pair of earphones.
I keep staring at her back for a while. You can see her trotting off a downward slope.
Now the cityscape of Tokyo begins to mute its noises and I feel as though I were sinking into the bottom of a swimming pool. I also notice that something eerie is in the air. Before long an unearthly presence creeps up on me from behind.
Oh, no. Please don’t.
Good afternoon, my girl.
Don’t call me that.
What a view. We always need perspective, don’t we?
Please get off my back, Yukio.
I’ve been worrying about you.
You’re such a liar.
I can hear you wheeze. An asthma attack? I found it psychosomatic.
Shut up.
Do you need some advice?
Teach me how to break away from you.
Look. Don’t rush to get the answer from Reiko. Sooner or later she’ll give in.
I don’t think so. Will you please not squeeze my throat with your arms?
Let me be your baby. I want to be your baby.
Listen, Yukio. A baby is a creature that crawls on hands and knees, not the one which crawls on hands alone.
Ouch.
And one more thing: Will you not twine your intestines around my chest, pleeease?
Okay, have a nice day, Luna.
In the winter sky thin fog-like cloud that has emerged in the east is now leisurely heading toward the west. I no longer feel the presence of Yukio.
There is a row of sparrows that have perched on an electric wire above. They don’t move at all as if they were ceramic figures. I begin to hear the roaring sound of a passenger plane again, which is high up in the sky and glittering like a silverfish.
I feel dizzy from the flash of its reflected light.
Oni
Here comes another earth tremor. It is ten past nine at night and I am in my four-and-half-mat room. Bookshelves squeak while I watch a tubular fluorescent lamp swinging on the ceiling. This tremor is probably an intensity of about two on the Richter scale, nothing out of ordinary. We have at least three tremors a week in Tokyo recently. This one is just another intimate vibration as compared with the last cataclysmic one we had.
A Japanese Schoolgirl Page 5