Evil and the Mask

by Fuminori Nakamura

  “The other day you didn’t tell me your number, but now I can see it clear as day.”

  “Ah.” I snickered. I figured that letting her see my number was just an aberration, not deliberate. “Yeah, I guess I slipped up.”

  “Are you drunk? Where are you?”

  “Ikebukuro, but I’ll come to you. You in a bar?”

  “Yeah, but I’m just leaving. I’m in Shibuya.”

  “Okay, in front of the station. Thirty minutes.”

  I hung up and tried to stand. I was definitely a bit drunk. I paid my bill and as I headed through the low doorway my cell phone rang again. I thought she was calling me back to tell me that something had come up, but it was the detective.

  “I’ve found out who it is, the person investigating Ms. Kaori.”

  “What?”

  “I couldn’t tell by looking at the company’s list of board members, but the principal shareholder is Mikihiko Kuki.”

  My older brother, the second son.

  “He doesn’t have a good reputation. Not at all.”

  I realized that I’d half expected this, but my pulse still started to beat faster. So it was the Kukis after all, I thought. Everyone dancing in the shadows around Kaori was connected to the Kuki family.

  “Can you find out more about this Mikihiko?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me if you need any extra expenses. I don’t care how much it costs.”

  “Understood. And about the missing cell phone—I think he was following me because he recognized me from somewhere. He found out about Azusa Konishi as well.”

  “No, that was someone else.”

  “Someone else?”

  “Yes. I’ll take care of that, so you please concentrate on Mikihiko. I want you to find out all about him.”

  “Got it.”

  I ended the call and left the bar. My head was killing me.

  THE FUZZY GREEN light gradually resolved itself into trees, and a narrow street of damp terra-cotta bricks stretched lazily into the distance. Curled up in the darkness, she was tinged with that green and russet glow. The gentle tones shone only on the spot where she was sitting, casting deeper shadows in the gloom behind her. It took me a moment or two to work out that she was watching a movie on TV. Kyoko Yoshioka, that was her name.

  A slender foreign woman appeared on the screen. She stared out at us expressionlessly, not with a Mona Lisa smile encompassing everything, but with a blank face that rejected all meaning.

  “Oh, you’re awake.”

  “Yeah.”

  The woman on the television was still looking at me. I didn’t know what to make of her. I felt a shiver of fear, and then realized that the picture had changed back to the wet street scene some time ago. Or perhaps she had never been there in the first place. My head was still thick with sleep.

  “Hey, you should put some clothes on,” I said. “Aren’t you cold?”

  “I like not wearing any clothes.”

  The pale skin of her back seemed to float in the darkness.

  “This movie, it’s nice to look at but it’s very slow.”

  I chuckled. “Yeah, maybe.”

  She scratched her neck lightly as if she were thinking.

  “I tend to watch stuff like this using my own frame of reference,” she said. “Anything outside that I don’t like.”

  “Mm.”

  “But someone told me I’d never broaden my horizons like that, that it was a waste, that I’d miss out on the small details. It would be nice if I could expand my horizons a little bit at a time, though.”

  “But just realizing that is pretty impressive.”

  “This man told me, in an institution I was in a long time ago. He was nice. He showed me lots of stuff. Books and movies and music.”

  “Well, it’s a little surprising.”

  She was smiling. I could still feel the alcohol in my system from the night before and my temples ached.

  “So you watch this kind of stuff?” she asked.

  “Yeah, recently. A little bit at a time.”

  Lately I’d been working my way through Shintani’s movies.

  “And those books?”

  She pointed at the bookcase.

  “Yeah, those are new too, so I’ve only read a few of them.”

  They were mostly foreign classics.

  “Until now,” I continued, “I’ve been completely wrapped up inside my head. We use words to think, don’t we? The people who wrote those, they’re thinking about nothing but words. While everyone else is doing all sorts of different things, those writers are just thinking about life, about words. When I read their words, I don’t know how to explain it, I thought I wanted to expand my own thoughts. I’ve been too narrow-minded.”

  “Hmm. Have you read anything that really inspired you?”

  “I’ve only just started. But before I get enlightened, I feel like the world is rapidly becoming more complicated. I don’t know if I can catch up.”

  For some reason her face softened.

  “But books like that must be difficult.”

  “They sure are. And they’re pretty old. But I think they’re still relevant to today’s society.”

  The movie ended and the credits began to roll.

  “I am cold after all,” she said, and came back to bed. “But hey, you realize that you let me see where you live?”

  “Yeah, I did, didn’t I?”

  “I thought you were hiding something, but … are you all right? Don’t you think you’ve been careless?”

  Certainly I’d been getting lax lately.

  “I bet you’ve always been really careful, haven’t you? You’ve got to keep on being careful.”

  “Maybe it’s because I’m getting tired. Bad, eh?”

  The room was slowly cooling down. When I thought about it, the only people who’d been in this apartment were the cop, Aida, and her. My exposed skin felt dry. Suddenly I remembered the dream I’d been having. I was outside, somewhere with no sign of people. No towns, no buildings, no evidence of humans at all, dark and barren as far as the eye could see. It had been cold there too, cold enough for me to start worrying about what would happen if the temperature dropped any further. Gray clouds hung low in the sky, so dense I could feel their weight. As I stood in that desolate place, I thought it could have been anywhere.

  “It’s because you’re different. I tell you stuff.”

  “If you like me, why don’t you let me be your girlfriend?”

  “I told you, I changed my face. I’m actually ugly.”

  “That doesn’t matter, does it? After all, it was your choice.”

  “And because I killed someone.”

  She looked at me blankly. “Hang on. You spring that on me out of the blue like that?”

  “What?”

  I was watching her face, wondering what I was saying. My pulse, however, didn’t waver.

  “Is that your ego talking? Does it turn you on?”

  I noticed that she’d snuggled a little closer to me in the bed.

  “I wonder. I don’t know.”

  I stared at the ceiling, puzzling over why I was so calm.

  “When I was I kid, I thought I’d do whatever it took to protect the most important thing in the world to me.”

  I breathed in slowly.

  “I was still just a child, but even then I knew that doing so would ruin my life. But I did it anyway, because that thing meant everything to me. Even if I weighed everything else in my life against it, I was dazzled. And in fact I did become twisted. I could never be at peace. It was obvious that would happen, but at the time I couldn’t think of any alternative.”

  “Was this to do with someone called Kaori?”

  “What? I did it again?”

  “Yes, you were talking in your sleep again. This time it was just her name.”

  I turned on the heater. She moved even closer to me.

  “After I changed my face, it was a weird feeling. I felt like I was
already dead. I thought I’d become one of the thirty thousand people who kill themselves every year in this country, that I was a living corpse. I felt so detached, from myself and from my life so far. Everything seemed so clear. Looking back, perhaps I enjoyed it. Losing all my hopes and desires, just being an observer, it gave me a strange sense of relief. But then I went and did the same thing all over again.”

  I could feel her eyes on me.

  “It turns out I’m still alive after all. I get hungry, I sweat, I still like feeling a woman’s touch, like this. My bodily functions and desires, they were distasteful, but I can’t help them. They make me aware of my own life. It feels like life is forcing itself on me, lifting me up. But I ruined the lives of people who were just like me. Whenever I feel life stirring inside me, I remember that I killed others who felt the same stirrings. This contradiction, I think it’s twisting me even more. It doesn’t matter what kind of people I harmed, it makes no difference. You said I was talking in my sleep. That’s one of the consequences. That brief feeling I had of being an observer faded rapidly, and what I did festers inside me. Every day I grow wearier and wearier. Like you said, I have nightmares and I get careless. The human mind is weak—they often say that the conscious is the slave of the subconscious. So in the long run I’m slowly growing distorted from the inside out, from my subconscious. Maybe I’m rejecting myself as someone who’s killed another human being, I don’t know. But at the same time I think this feeling is important. If you watch the news, you see people who are killed wantonly, people who kill wantonly, don’t you? War is the same. Somehow I get the feeling that this sense of distortion is important for us. It’s something fundamental about this world.”

  I could feel the warmth of her body next to mine.

  “But what puzzles me is why you aren’t running away as fast as you can.”

  She looked at me in surprise. “Why would I do that?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “My life hasn’t been so sheltered that I’ll suddenly get scared by a story like that.” Casually she took hold of my fingers.

  “In costume dramas and cartoons,” I continued slowly, “when the bad guy gets killed everybody cheers. In real life it seems like it’s not that easy. I don’t know why, but Japan seems to be full of stories and games and stuff where people get killed and no one seems upset, even though they teach that killing people is wrong. But in real life …”

  “But even if life is hard, you mustn’t die,” she said quietly. “I don’t know all the details about what happened, but you’ve got to get over it.”

  “Get over it?”

  “That’s right. Because here and now you’re alive.”

  She put her arms gently around me.

  “Did you know this?” she went on. “Every year far more people kill themselves in Japan than die through war or terrorism in Iraq. We go on and on about other countries, but I think Japanese society is pretty cruel too.”

  She took a deep breath.

  “Let’s sleep like this today. From a distance we’ll look like a contented couple.”

  “You’re weird, you know that?”

  “It’s just that I don’t like the world very much.”

  When I woke the next morning, Mikihiko Kuki’s secretary was standing outside my apartment.

  WHEN THE DOORBELL rang, I was still in bed and Kyoko was sitting at the table watching TV. The news was reporting on Diet members who’d secretly taken to wearing wigs after JL threatened to assassinate politicians in order of baldness. One guest, a young politician, was calling it pitiful. Another, a self-declared liberal, said that the PM should do the imitation of Hiromi Go, a comment that infuriated the third guest, a member of the conservative party. The directors of a chemical plant where three employees had died of overwork had all suffered food poisoning at a nightclub, and it was suspected that JL was behind it. I ignored the bell but it just kept on ringing, echoing through the apartment. Kyoko, who was laughing at the news, gradually turned to look at me. I climbed out of bed and looked at the intercom. A tall middle-aged man was standing there.

  “Koichi Shintani?” he asked as soon as I lifted the receiver.

  “What is it?”

  “Mikihiko Kuki would like to meet you.”

  I could feel Kyoko’s eyes on my back.

  “I don’t know him.”

  “Please get ready,” he said, completely ignoring me. “The car is waiting.”

  He fell silent. I was a bit unnerved, but I realized that more than anything that I was just weary. The moment I heard the name Mikihiko, my fatigue grew much stronger. I was sure that no matter what I said, this guy would just keep repeating the same message. When I replaced the receiver Kyoko was still watching me. In the light seeping through the curtains her skin looked white.

  “I’m going out for while.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Maybe.”

  I started to get changed.

  “What should I do?”

  “If you’ve got things to do you can go home, but you can stay here if you like.”

  “But if I stay here, you know I’m going to go snooping around, at your computer and stuff.”

  “That’s okay. Anyway, I don’t think you will.”

  “You should be more careful.”

  When I opened the front door the man gestured for me to walk ahead of him. I could feel his looming presence. I remembered stories of jailers accompanying prisoners like this, walking behind so they could keep an eye on them.

  WE GOT INTO a black car, expensive but tasteless, and drove slowly along the dark road. The streetlights were just coming on. There was a matte cigarette case in the car but I lit one of my own instead. I saw that the smoke bothered him and he opened the window, so I made up my mind to keep smoking until we arrived.

  “Why does this guy Kuki want to see me?”

  The man didn’t reply. No response at all, not even a shrug.

  “What’s he like? Just give me your impression.”

  “Mr. Shintani,” he said, still facing ahead and gripping the steering wheel.

  I noticed that he had a dark red scar on his neck.

  “It’s not my job to answer your questions. Mikihiko Kuki told me to bring you to him, and that’s all I’m doing. I wasn’t told to be polite. Just to deliver you.”

  He didn’t overtake any other cars, nor give way to them.

  “Obviously we are in close proximity at the moment, but that doesn’t mean we have to establish any kind of relationship. Is that understood?”

  What a hard-ass. I just kept blowing smoke at him without saying anything.

  WE GOT OUT of the car in front of the Lille Durant Hotel and took the elevator to the top floor. He swiped a card key through a scanner to open the automatic glass doors. “At the back, on the right,” he said from behind me, and when we reached the room he stretched out an arm and rang the bell. An indistinct voice came from inside. My heart rate, which had been gradually increasing as we came closer, grew even more ragged. The voice sounded exactly like my father’s.

  The man opened the door and we entered. I saw a carpet, garish under the dim lighting, a white table with white chairs. The rough, vulgar chandelier was unlit and some potted plants, struggling to grow in the restricted space, glowed pale orange under the indirect lighting. On the wall opposite was a painting, too big for the room, of a lake that looked like a pit. Behind the low table was a black sofa, and sitting on it was a man in a black tracksuit. I thought it was Father. My body went rigid, as though it had tensed of its own accord. He was tall, much bigger than Father, but if my father were fifty years old the similarity would have been remarkable. With a large nose and eyes that slanted down at the corners, he should have been ugly, but somehow his face had a kind of dignified balance. Even from a distance I could tell that his clothes were made of expensive fabric.

  “That will do,” he said quietly.

  “But—” protested the driver.

&n
bsp; “It’s fine. Go home.”

  The man who had brought me here bowed low and silently left the room.

  For some reason the picture of the lake had really grabbed my attention. The man gazed expressionlessly at me, not saying a word, as I stood in the doorway. The orange lights threw random shadows around the room. I moved slowly towards him, doing my best to stay calm. The closer I got, the more he looked like my father. I stood before the sofa with the table between us, staring at him. My pulse just wouldn’t settle. I felt I was reliving all those memories of being summoned to Father’s study. A bottle of whiskey and a glass with spiral patterns etched in it cast long shadows on the table.

  “What can I do for you?” I asked.

  My throat was incredibly dry. His dark form seemed like the wreckage of something huge and soft.

  “You brought me here, remember? If we’ve got no business then I’m leaving.”

  “It’s so depressing.”

  He watched me lazily, leaning back in the couch. He was big-boned but, cloaked in languor, he showed no energy at all.

  “Koichi Shintani, eh?”

  The corners of his mouth turned up slightly.

  “You’ve done well. Nice to meet you, Fumihiro.”

  Suddenly I felt like I was suffocating. He didn’t take his eyes off me.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “That won’t work. Tricks like that, they never work with me.”

  Even though I’d half expected this, the strength in my legs deserted me. Confronted with his bland gaze I had no idea what to do.

  “Have a seat. Something to drink?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Relax. You must be thirsty.”

  Slowly he stood and took a beer from the fridge. When he moved, his blurred shadow danced on the wall behind him.

  “Everyone who meets me seems to get nervous. It’s not me they’re afraid of. It’s the hell inside me. Especially now. It’s really depressing.”

  I sat on the couch and looked directly at him. He wasn’t drunk, but he reminded me of Father when he was intoxicated. His skin was dark, as though the dullness was oozing out from inside, and I couldn’t read the emotion in his clouded eyes. I sank deep into the sofa, feeling uncomfortable. It was like the couch was alive, holding me in place with its strange, soft springiness.