“You’re free to say anything,” my mother whispers, “as long as you’re being sheltered from real life. By me. Lucky you.”
I quietly put my chopsticks down on the rest, trying to compose myself.
“Who is Lady V, mother?”
“This octopus is fresh but tastes somewhat watery. Try that squid instead.”
“Mother.”
“Yes?”
“Yukio left a notebook only for himself. I’ve read it and I’m now strongly convinced that Lady V was nobody else but you. My own mother.”
“Pardon me, but I’m unfamiliar with the name Yukio.”
“Mother.” I look sharply at her.
“Oh, yes, I remember his face now. He was the one who had been killed by that train accident, wasn’t he?”
“Mother.”
“I believe it’s rude of you to stare at your own mother with such an accusatory glance.”
“I knew it. You hadn’t been out shopping but been out on a date with someone. But I had no idea that someone was Yukio. That’s why he came to visit me that snowy night. Everything has finally come to make sense to me now.”
“Keep talking to yourself. Meanwhile I have a cup of green tea.”
“I can’t believe that you had sex with him.”
“You must not talk dirty to your mother.”
“I’ve only talked dirty. You’ve done the dirty.”
“Lady V? I’ve never heard of such a name. It sounds like a stage name for some sleazy woman.”
“Yes, and, it’s yours, isn’t it? Do you know what Lady V said about her daughter? According to Yukio, she said that her daughter couldn’t do without a classic glass bottle of Coca-Cola and an original Cup-Noodle even for a single day.”
“Oh, did she?”
“Yes, she did say that, I mean, you did.”
“Well, that boy, Yukio, was inescapably naive. It was so easy to manipulate your classmate. In his eyes, I could be anyone, any kind of woman, like an actress. It was fun and exciting.”
“Stop it mother. I don’t want to hear it.”
“You started this.”
“It cannot be true. You’ve just admitted having trifled with Yukio’s honest feelings.”
“I’ve never thought of you such a corny girl.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Now I can see tears welling up in your eyes.”
“No. You’re seeing things.”
“You know what? You used to be a crybaby. You always have been. And you are. Even now. Oh, you need not to frighten me with such menacing stares. I’m your mother.”
“Why? Why, mother? Tell me why you killed him.”
“Who killed whom?”
“Mother, you are the one who killed Yukio Misawa, aren’t you? I know that. Nobody else could do such things but you.”
“Do I look like a commuter train to you? I am not that big and heavy and hard.”
“Tell me the truth, mother. Please.”
“The train killed your classmate. Period. The end of the story.”
“Stop calling Yukio a classmate, will you?”
“You do love the dead more than the living, don’t you?”
“Mother. He was your lover for Buddha’s sake.”
“My lover? I feel like washing my hands.”
“There are evidences that you have done it, mother.”
“Could you please remind me of what I’ve done?”
“You’ve done a horrible unforgivable deed.”
“Oh, have I? Of course, I would do anything for the sake of your future.”
“Even a murder?”
After few seconds of an odd silence, my mother laughs in a sarcastic tone.
“I think you’re suffering from a nervous breakdown. Perhaps you watch too much Web News.”
“I already know that you’re the one who sent me parcels, but why?”
“Without my help, you could hardly concentrate your study. That’s why.”
“Thank you for your cooperation, mother.”
And I put my tablet PC on the table and show her several thumbnails.
“Oh, aren’t they pretty?” my mother says.
“Maya sent me these pictures. She has a habit of taking a picture of anything and everything.”
“What are those pictures for?”
“You’ll see, mother. You’ll see.”
Tapping the screen of my tablet PC, I enlarge a thumbnail.
It is a snapshot of a panoramic view of the platform at Shinjuku railroad station on that wet and cold day. The station at early in the morning looks insanely crowded as it always has been.
The next one is a snapshot of the back of Yukio in the waiting line. You can see his back through between shoulders of people waiting for the train.
Then a snapshot of the face of Yukio as seen from the side. You can see his face rather clearly over the shoulder of a man in suit. Yukio appears to be lost in thought.
A snapshot of the back of a person standing right behind Yukio. You can see the person who wears a woolly pull-on hat and a dark polka-dot coat through between shoulders of people waiting for the train. The person appears to be a woman with a cherry-red shoulder bag and she was holding something in her left hand that is raised at the same height as her shoulder.
An enlarged photograph of the same snapshot. That something which the woman is holding in her left hand looks like a circular compact in which her own face is being reflected. The size of the face in this photograph is so small it appears to be blurred.
An enlarged photograph of the compact in her hand.
“Now you can recognize the face of the woman, mother.”
“It looks unfamiliar. I’ve never seen this woman before.”
“Take a good look at her face, mother, will you?”
“I don’t think I need to.”
“No, you should.”
“SHOULD is not the word to be used for your mother.”
“Do you dare to imagine how I felt when I peered into this photo?”
“You sound cheerless. What a pity.”
“Yes, I am cheerless. And I think this is a natural reaction when you have to face the terrifying possibility that your own mother might be a murder suspect.”
“You must be lost in a delusion.”
“If I were in a delusion, the whole world would be in a nightmare. I’ve already found the same woolly pull-on hat and the dark polka-dot coat and the cherry-red shoulder bag in your closet, mother.”
She claps her hands, as if in applause.
“You know, I’ll do whatever I need to do if it’s necessary to protect my only child.”
“You’re saying that the end justifies the means.”
“No, I’m talking about Mother Love.”
Sakura
Sometimes I feel uncertain whether I actually believe or pretend to believe what I have confessed.
It could be uncertain even to myself.
Mind is a trickster. Emotions are daredevils. Mind deceives emotions quite cleverly.
Yukio would say that a confession is a commodity.
He could say that a confession becomes a commodity once we are to deal with crime and punishment.
A truth is not, however.
I think that a truth is rather like the sun.
It is always there but you cannot see it.
It is too bright to look at for the naked eye.
All you can see is its brilliance and the brilliance alone.
*
I sit down on a sofa in the police station in downtown Tokyo, staring up at the Rising Sun crest on the wall right above the door. This room, which I was shown into by a young female police officer, is small and tidy and smells of coffee as if someone had spilled it repeatedly on this very sofa.
It is a warm spring day and an assistant inspector has nodded at me 15 times so far. He warns that I should be very careful what to say and how to say it, especially when his eyes meet mine. Do not make a confession in fun, he says, you might
regret having done it.
“This is not a roll playing game for PC. Murder is a very serious crime even if you are sixteen and still a minor.”
“I understand it myself very clearly, sir.”
“Yes, you must. Let me ask you the same question one more time.”
“Please. It’s fine with me, sir.”
“Three months ago, you were disguised as a middle-aged woman, wearing a woolly pull-on hat and a dark polka-dot coat with a cherry-red shoulder bag.”
“That’s correct, sir.”
“You stood right behind your classmate Yukio Misawa, waiting for the rapid-service train to come. Then you pushed him off the platform the moment the train arrived.”
“Yes, that’s correct, sir. It was easy. All I needed was two fingers.”
“Which ones?”
“The index and the middle fingers, sir. They served my purpose quite nicely, sir.”
“You know that this case was already closed, don’t you?”
“But…”
“And you have no witness who can testify that what you have said could be true.”
“No, I don’t. That’s why I myself came here to confess my guilt.”
“I see.” He nods thoughtfully.
“Sir?”
“Yes?”
“Can I have a cup of green tea, please?”
“We have a vending machine over there.”
“But I have no coins with me now. May I ask you to give me change for a thousand-yen bill, sir?”
As I am about to hand him a bill, he refuses to take it saying, “I buy it for you just for this once.”
I tell him the name of my favorite product. He leaves the desk. I look at a No-Smoking sign on a wall and read three slogans written on plastic boards next to it.
‘Quick Compliance Brings Happiness.’
‘Volunteer Spirit Brings Peace.’
‘Loyalty Brings Security.’
How dearly and obsessively we Japanese love slogans.
They are everywhere. There are also a lot of slogans printed on posters in our high school.
I remember what Yukio said about them: Without a slogan we hesitate whether we should save a drowning children. But, once we bathe ourselves in a slogan, such as ‘Guard your motherland with your life,’ we become kamikaze pilots. Of course, we are not Pavlov’s dogs. We need no food to trigger our conditioned response. Only a belief or a faith or a conviction will do. It signifies that we are far more evolved and efficient and lethal than dogs. No dog dies with beliefs, only some of us humans do. Say sayonara with a sneer.
I look around the room again. No picture of Their Imperial Majesties or that of the superintendent of this police station is hanging on the wall of this waiting room. You can see an amateurish oil painting of Mt. Fuji instead. It is being hung on the wall right in front of me.
Before long the assistant inspector returns with two cans of green tea. I bow my thanks and begin to sip at mine very slowly while he stands telling his superior about me in a whisper by the door. It looks exactly like a scene from late-night police story on TV. I take a snapshot of them both by my Mobile. It has come out fine, but I am promptly requested by the assistant police inspector to delete the shot from the photo data folder of the Mobile. He advises me against taking a single picture inside the police station without permission. I follow his advice with a nod, sipping the can of green tea. It is properly chilled, bitter and sweet.
As someone sneezes in the corridor, I excuse myself from the sofa and go to the toilet.
The moment I walk past men’s room, I hear two police officers talking cheerfully with each other about coming baseball game, especially about a Japanese ballplayers playing an active part in the American major leagues.
There is an icy silence in women’s room. The fluorescent lights on the ceiling are so white and bright I suddenly tremble with a chill. There is a smiley-face sticker on a hand drier that says: No crime, no job. I rush into one of toilet booths and vomit gastric juices. It violently burns my throat with stomach acids. After having washed my face, I take my handkerchief out from the left pocket of my skirt, but I hesitate to wipe my face with it, for it is giving off clean and sweet smell of detergent that is a favorite of my mother. I don’t feel like making it tainted with my cold sweat.
I look straight into a mirror, dreaming of becoming an android that is devoid of emotions and never in a sweat.
There is no one around but me. I say to myself repeatedly: There is no one in this toilet except me. The reason is that I begin to sense a certain presence approaching, that is, someone else’s unearthly presence. All of a sudden I have cold drops come out on the skin of my spine.
Good afternoon, my girl.
I knew it’s you.
Of course, it’s me, Yukio the genius. What have you been doing these days? It was quite hard to find you.
That’s lucky of me.
What are you doing in a police station by the way?
I feel Yukio throwing his arms around my neck from behind as usual. What are dangling from the opening of his abdominal cavity are intestines and the viscera as usual, and both small and large intestine are coiling themselves around my waist like serpents as usual. They feel slippery and warm as usual.
I am afraid I wil never be able to get this ghost off my back.
I’m sorry to bother you, Luna, but I know what you’re going to do in this police station.
No, you don’t. You know nothing.
Come on. Don’t say that to me. I can tell your plot and see through your intention.
What do you think you are?
Oh, I’m just a crawling dead genius, am I not?
You’re just a phantom.
Is that what you think what I am?
Is there any other word to call you?
Please be gentle with my faults because you’re the only one who knows what I am, no, who I am.
What do you mean by that?
I mean…I could be you or you could be me, you know.
I’m sorry, but you’re a boy and I a girl. And you’re the one who is already dead.
Yes…that’s the problem I can hardly deal with.
Then leave me alone, Yukio.
All right. I just wanted to be a specter, no, spectator for your show. That’s all.
Say sayonara with a sneer, Yukio.
If you want me to leave so desperately, I wish you good luck, Luna. But don’t ever steal my favorite line.
I could delete you whenever I needed to.
Okay. Show me. Do it right now.
As soon as I go back to the room, the assistant inspector starts talking to me, looking out by the window, “The cherry blossoms at the Shinjuku Imperial Gardens are in full bloom. Did you go and see the cherry blossoms already? With your family or friends?”
“No, sir.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Because there seems to be no room for sharing such a common annual event in my mind these days, sir.”
He looks puzzled and stares at me for a long while until he breaks that awkward silence.
“You should relax and enjoy yourself more.”
“I’ll try it some time, sir.”
“Cherry blossoms teach you that everything in life is transient.”
“I learned it in a Japanese classical literature class in junior high, sir. I got A on that subject by the way.”
“That’s good. Can that be something you might agree with then?”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, I mean that everything in life is transient.”
“Well, I’m not so sure about it, sir.”
“Sake, sushi, and the cherry blossoms. These three truly make you feel that you are a Japanese, a true Japanese, don’t you think so?”
But I just cast down my eyes instead of saying something.
Again we are sinking into an awkward silence.
“Did you tell your parents about this before you came here?”
“No,
sir.”
“Why don’t you call your parents?”
“I don’t feel like doing so.”
“I think you should.”
Then the assistant inspector leaves the room as I take the Mobile out of my pocket.
It is showing the low battery power.
My mother answers my call.
(I’ve been worrying about you. Where are you? It’s time for supper.)
“I know.”
(Your father will come home late at night.)
“I know.”
And I tell her where I am and begin explaining why I am here.
(Is today April Fools’ Day?)
“No, mother, it was in last week.”
(Why then? What are you trying to do?)
“Nothing in particular.”
(Supper’s ready, Luna.)
“I’ve already heard it, mother. I am in a police station and my Mobile is very low on power so I have to speak very fast.”
(I won’t let you throw away your promising future.)
“Mother, I just want you to leave me alone.”
(I can’t. No mother in the whole world would do that, I believe.)
“No, you have to do it if your really have what you call Mother Love.”
(You’ve become such a difficult child. Tell me what you’re trying to prove.)
“Nothing.”
(If you’re sent to a juvenile home, you won’t be able to have your favorite classic glass bottle of Coca-Cola and the original Cup-Noodle every night. You know that, don’t you?)
“The thought scares me a lot, yes.”
(You did not kill that boy.)
“I did it.”
(No, you couldn’t.)
“Mother.”
(Because I did it.)
“Oh no, Mother.”
(If it’s what you want to believe so desperately, yes.)
“Why, why? Tell me why, mother?”
(Don’t make such a pleading noise. Once in a while a woman becomes Oni when she is being driven by mother love. That’s all. There is nothing unusual.)
“No, I can’t believe this. It can’t be true.”
(You want me to give myself up to the police, don’t you? That’s what you want me to do.)
“If you really have what you call mother love.”
(And then all dreams of my life would collapse.)
“I’m so sorry.”
(And if I don’t give myself up to the police and confess my crime, I still won’t have my life back because I’ll have already lost my only child, my future.)
A Japanese Schoolgirl Page 22