“Incest. Incest is incest.”
“Oh.” Reiko shrugs lightly.
“The relationship between a stepfather and his daughter is no exception.”
“Thank you. I got gooseflesh all over.”
“You should. It’s the most sinful taboo among us human. We learned it in school, didn’t we?”
Reiko giggles at my words and then calmly says, “It sounds disgustingly impure compared with what he and I have been sharing with each other.”
“No matter how you see it, the fact is that you’ll be expelled from school if it’s found out. I knew all about your secret by Cahier de Secret.”
“Did you read my confession?”
“Yes, I did. You’re finished, Reiko.”
All of a sudden she seems to be frozen with fright. Now she becomes as pale as a female vampire in Hollywood movies. Her petrified looks gives me the creeps.
“I told you I could prick you anytime too, Reiko.”
“Oh, I see.”
And she quietly knocks down a glass full of cold water in this direction. The water edges toward this way, flooding over one third of the table, and starts to drip from the edge of the table, like winter rain dripping from the eaves.
Fortunately I have a narrow escape from its initial splash and consequent drippings, for I have already risen from my seat the moment she has knocked down the glass.
Reiko vacantly looks up at me as if in daydream.
She says, “I know why you’re so mean to me. It’s because you’re still a virgin.”
A bobbed waitress calls to us by the ice-cream bar.
“I’m coming right away.”
*
Being wrapped in the long sweater dress, Reiko looks like a college student.
My heart has been beating faster than usual since we stepped into this room in a hotel.
“Well,” Reiko leans her head to one side and says, “I have no idea who sent you Cahier de Secret.”
“How about Maya or Takeshi?” I ask.
“No, it can’t be. It’s just unthinkable that someone else but Yukio got Cahier de Secret. He gave us a pledge to have it in his custody no matter what. In fact, we even exchanged a written oath of keeping a secret with each other.”
“He died, Reiko. Yukio is no longer with us. We cannot place the responsibility on the dead person, can we?”
“But you called his grandfather, the professor, and asked him about Cahier de Secret, didn’t you?” says Reiko, sinking down on the edge of a bed.
I talk faster than usual: “The professor said nothing about it. He said neither he sent it nor he didn’t.”
“How disappointing,” says Reiko, stretching herself with feline grace.
I add hastily, “Besides, the professor emeritus is unlikely to send Cahier de Secret under the pseudonym of Taro Yamada.”
“Ah, that’s too silly a name to use as a pseudonym.”
Reiko is now cuddling a pillow, glancing upward at me.
“I was told not to call him again,” I say in a shaky small voice.
“Poor you.”
“I pity the old man.”
“I don’t.” She gives me a faint smile.
I respond to it with an uneasy shrug and again look around to see if anyone is watching us through a hidden camera.
This is the first time I have ever entered a room in a so-called Love Hotel. There is a karaoke player with a large display hanging on the wall. There is also a horseback-like exercise machine on which you can ride in order to, according to the publicity for it, slim down and tighten up your abdomen and thighs. My mother once tried it on the sporting goods floor of a department store after she made sure that there was nobody around except us. But my father, showing no interest in it, commented that it somehow appeared improper especially when female customers were to test the machine. He looked so stern that my mother began having a fit of coughing. It was her usual physiological reaction to anything that would be repulsive to her.
“Look, Luna.” Reiko calls me.
When I turn my face to her, she holds her open hands to both sides of the temple and mimics the way a little girl talks, “Hi, I’m a bunny,” and then sticks both forefingers straight up and imitates a thick masculine voice, “But look. I’m now transformed into an Oni. I’m going to eat you up alive.”
“Wow, I’m really scared,” I say matter-of-factly.
Then I take a backward glance at a glass sliding door through which we can see a spacious bathroom. There is a Jacuzzi for two.
“You seem to have been busy looking around,” says Reiko with a sigh.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“This is just a room decorated with a pastel peach.”
“Of course, nothing is unusual here, I guess.”
“If you didn’t like Love Hotel, you should have said ‘no’ before coming in here.”
“Because you said you could feel at ease in a confined space if we were to talk about our secret.”
“Yes, that’s the only reason why we are here. We need privacy in a quiet space. There is no other reason to be here with you. Am I wrong?”
“It was quite a sound proposal, and still is, I guess.”
“No quarrel. No fight. No anything.”
“Nor tickling,” I say.
“No tickling. No pillow fight.”
And Reiko smiles at me with a satisfied look.
This hotel is located in the backstreet of Shibuya’s red-light district. We knew that we would be unable to take a room at an ordinary hotel unless we could find some clever excuse. It was obvious that we could not but look underage.
Reiko stifles a yawn and says, “Besides, you don’t have to face anyone when you sneak into a Love Hotel. All you have to do is to select your favorite room out of the room menu on a touch screen and receive its key through the small window. It’s like picking up a train ticket from a vending machine, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t know it would be that easy. Because we’re, you know.”
“Yes, a couple of girls. Now it’s all settled.”
Then Reiko calls her mother and asks her to call up my mother to tell that her family has already arranged with me to dine out tonight.
“Wait a minute. What are you doing?”
“Calm down, Luna, will you? My mother will do whatever I ask her to do.”
Reiko tells her mother that she is in a hotel room with me.
“Wait a minute. What are you saying?” I scream in whisper.
“Don’t panic.” Reiko covers the Mobile with her palm. “My mother took it as a joke. I heard her chuckling.”
“Oh, I see.” I heave a deep sigh of relief.
“My mother always covers her eyes and ears and mouth when she faces anything that looks too remote from her so-called ‘standards.’ I think she still firmly believe I’m a virgin. I mean…she’s a woman who can deceive herself in a very clever manner.”
Then Reiko throws down her Mobile on the pillow.
I sink down into a sofa facing the bed.
She says that all those teenaged girls who try to be the bad, the wicked, and the depraved by, for example, smoking or drinking or wearing so-called Indecent Clothes or having sex with boys seem so infantile.
“I’ve been having a love affair with a man of forty-six for about a year.”
“I don’t think it’s something worth boasting of.”
“But I’m allowed to be proud of my being discreet not to tell anybody about it until now.”
“But you’ve already told everything to Yukio.”
Reiko lightly nods with an appealing smile.
“Have you ever suspected that I might have been having an affair with my daddy?”
“No way.”
“Yes, you’re right to say ‘no’ because I’ve never degraded myself by having relations with him. Is it not something I’m allowed to be proud of?”
I just shrug my shoulders without saying a word.
“Let me tell
you this: Love is colder than teddy bear but warmer than lonely night.”
“That’s cool. Whose words is it?”
“Mine. That’s one thing I learned from this affair. He’s cute and sweet, plus a little bit wicked.”
And she tells me that there is this irreconcilable difference between a virgin and an experienced. The difference extends over vision, audition, and even olfaction.
Reiko says she became able to tell how a man in a dark business suit would react to subtle variations of her gaze.
Reiko says she became able to anticipate how her body would respond to his caress by just watching him manipulate the Mobile.
Reiko also says that she became able to appreciate the scent of a man even when he is being drenched in sweat.
I grimace with disgust.
“You don’t understand what I’m talking about, do you?”
“Because I’m not you.”
“No, it’s because you’re a virgin.”
“So?” I look at her with a glare of irritation.
“I can still prick you anytime I want. You have no chance to make me feel crushed because I have already learned how to make a man feel happy.”
I knit my brows, biting my lower lip.
“Confused and beaten?” asks Reiko.
“You’re so competitive and wicked I can’t stand you.”
“I think what you’ve just said are my great assets. They’re our school’s true colors as well.”
“And you have them all to yourself.”
“That’s a pretty compliment. Thank you, Luna.”
“Reiko, I’m not being here to fight with you over your secret. I want you to hear my confession.”
“No, I don’t believe you.”
She stares at me with such a defiant look that I rise from the sofa and run up to the window.
The neon forest of Shibuya spreads from the top of the hill to its foot and the hustle and bustle of the station plaza reaches even up to this hotel located half a mile away from there. I am now listening to an ambulance and few fire trucks speeding away down the slope with their sirens wailing.
“Oh, don’t do that to me,” says Reiko and throws a pillow at my back as if she were my elderly sister.
“Come on, Luna. You’re trying to appeal to my sympathy, aren’t you? It’s a foul play.”
I turn around to show my feign tears. She seems to be startled at my downcast look. It feels certain that her heart is already at the mercy of me. What she doesn’t know is that this is only the mouth of it.
Naomi
Now let me tell you, Reiko, how I killed my little sister.
It was a usual Sunday morning. My little sister Naomi carried a small white shoulder bag with her that day. The one with a large Miffy print on.
The sky above Tokyo was high on the third day of October and the air crisp.
Naomi and I were on that hill which you’re also familiar with. The hill in the old town where Yukio’s family reside.
Naomi was five and I was eleven then.
When you turn around, what comes into view would be a ballet school on the left at a junction of a narrow street and a lane. There is also a cosmetic surgery clinic diagonally across the lane from the ballet school. And I used to take Naomi to and from that ballet school every other Sunday. There’s also an old and small temple surrounded by shadowy bamboo thicket close by, which looks eternally deserted.
While Naomi was dancing with other girls, I played my favorite game on a handheld game console, sitting on a flight of stone steps in the old temple. It usually took an hour and half to see her rushing out of the door of the ballet school.
I just don’t know why I’m still unable to recall the color of that doomed car. I don’t know why I can’t remember it. It’s frustrating.
On both sides of the stone-flagged gateway of the old temple, two stone statues of guardian dogs in a sitting posture are placed. My little sister Naomi used to touch them by turn, saying good boy and good girl, as if to stroke living dogs. According to her, those dogs were brother and sister.
Naomi also liked to touch a red pillar-box on the corner of the sidewalk. I always warned her not to dash, but she already started toward the mailbox that day and was about to walk across a sloping lane when a car rushed out of a byway and turned left into that lane. It was like a ghost car. I was frozen up by its sudden appearance. The car bumped into Naomi in such a way that I could hear nothing peculiar except the squeaky sound of its tires. It made no audible sound of a clash as far as I can remember. But the car knocked down Naomi quite hard as if an irritated teenaged girl had thrown an unwanted doll against the floor.
The car literally flung her against the sidewalk, against its concrete surface. Everything seemed to have happened very slowly. When I ran up to Naomi, she already picked herself up and bobbed her head down toward the driver who had just come out of the driver’s seat with an anxious look.
Naomi kept saying, ‘I’m sorry.’
I kept saying, ‘Are you all right?’
The driver kept saying, ‘I can’t believe this.’
Naomi told me that she hit the back of her head against the sidewalk. Then she covered her face with her little hands and began sobbing.
‘I’m really sorry.’ She kept saying it to the driver.
‘This is not your fault. Are you hurt?’ I asked.
‘I’m fine,’ said Naomi, rubbing the back of her head.
The driver was smaller than my father and worn a silver-rimmed sunglasses. He stared down at Naomi and me by turns as if to observe how we would react to this incident.
Those glaring surfaces of sunglasses were menacing to a girl of eleven.
The driver began taking a firm attitude toward us.
‘You have to be more careful when you cross the road at a corner.”
He said something like that in an irritated voice.
So I made a quick retort.
‘You had to be more careful, sir. My schoolteachers always warn us to stop to look right and left before making a turn. I think it was careless of you to rush out into the lane, sir.’
My lips were quivering. I could feel it. I turned on him out of fear but, for the rest, I don’t remember, probably because Naomi was pulling me by the sleeve, saying in a small voice, ‘Please stop it. I’m fine. I want to go home.’
Then she again bobbed her head down toward the driver.
‘I’m sorry. I’ll be careful.’
After the car had left, I picked up Naomi’s small white shoulder bag that had been thrown at the red pillar-box. Its shoulder strap was broken.
Naomi wept over the broken strap and deep scratches on the printed Miffy for a short while, and then took me by the little finger with a sulky look.
‘Can I go home now?’ she said flatly as if nothing had happened, again rubbing the back of her head.
It was such a sweet and trusting voice that I felt somewhat relieved.
She asked, ‘Do I have swelling on my head?’
I said, ‘Let me see. No. Nothing. You’re a super girl.’
We promised not tell anyone about this incident.
We also arranged with each other to say, by way of explanation for having broken the Miffy shoulder bag, that the bag was caught by the nail stuck out on a telegraph pole.
On our way home, in a subway car, Naomi dozed off leaning against my shoulder.
At dinnertime, she dropped a pair of chopsticks few times.
It looked as if a pair of chopsticks had slipped through her fingers by its own will.
‘My fingers are funny,’ Naomi said, bending her head slightly to one side.
After dinner, my father had a bath with her because it was his turn to wash Naomi on that particular Sunday.
She went to bed around eight o’clock in the evening as she usually did. Then, around half past eight, my mother ran down stairs and came in the living room where my father and I were watching a kung-fu movie made in Thailand. My mother looked awfully
pale as if to have been frightened by a strange intruder.
‘Naomi has vomited up what she had at dinner.’
‘Where is she?’ My father asked her while watching the movie.
‘She’s in bed. I think Naomi vomited up while sleeping.’
‘Now what?’ My father turned round irritably.
‘Naomi doesn’t respond to my call at all, darling.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She doesn’t come awake. She keeps sleeping even when I shake her hard. She shows no reaction.’
‘What?’
They ran up stairs and soon afterward I heard my father calling out Naomi several times. Then, after a short while, he walked down stairs carrying her in his arms. I was told to look after the house while they were away. And my parents rushed to hospital by their Toyota.
An unbearable silence fell over my house.
I turned on the television and continued to watch the Kung-fu movie. But images seemed to be slipping through my retinas. They seemed to have dissipated before they I reached my visual cortex. I felt vacant. I felt as if some kind of an evil had been lurking somewhere in this house, for instance, underneath this very sofa I had been seated. I tried to sleep but couldn’t.
My mother called me around midnight and explained in a shaky voice what happened to my little sister. She said that Naomi died about twenty minutes ago, around eleven forty. On the operating table. I was also told that she died of cerebral hemorrhage and her body would be moved to a morgue. It seems like I’m having a bad dream you know, my mother said in a tearful voice. Yes, this is a bad dream, mother, I responded vacantly. Naomi died too quick to make us feel the fact real. I thought that everything would return to its normal state when day broke. So I went to bed soon after I heard it. And I slept well.
The next day Naomi returned home quietly. My aunt and uncle moved about busily from morning till night with people closest to our family. There were bottles of Japanese sake and assorted sushi and other snacks in the dining room. I dozed off several times out of blue during the daytime and went to bed early that night, but grown-up people were said to sit up all night by her body. Then again a new day broke and the phone started ringing and more people started coming in with gloomy looks. They bowed deeply to each other and some grown-up women began weeping and some broke down crying in tears. The trouble was that everyone had this irritating convention of trying to console the family of the deceased, particularly me. I felt it annoying.
A Japanese Schoolgirl Page 13