“What – again?!” I said, looking at her aghast. “We’ve only had this one six months!”
“It’s the latest flat-screen type. I’m sure you’ll like it. It shows foreign films dubbed or undubbed at the flick of a switch.”
“Wow!” I said, opening my eyes wide. “That’s good. I’ve never liked these dubbed films. Let’s go for it!”
“Well, would you go to the bank tomorrow and complete the debit forms? Twenty-four monthly payments, five thousand yen a month.”
I couldn’t stand the thought of so much money leaving my account every month. But then, if there were other things we wanted, we could always buy them in instalments too. Most of the furniture in our apartment was bought in instalments, and we’re still paying for nearly all of it. We rarely need large sums in one go. As in many other homes, most of my salary is used up on monthly payments. If my mother suddenly kicked the bucket, we could even pay the funeral costs in instalments these days.
Rampant inflation of land and house prices has made it increasingly hard for people to buy their own homes – not just first-time buyers, but even people with a bit of money. Though actually, that isn’t such a bad thing. You work like a dog in the hope of buying your own home, all the while wondering whether house prices are going up faster than you can save. But in fact, you’re merely holding on to cash that’s gradually losing value with inflation. Forget it! It makes much more sense to use your whole income on monthly instalments – even with the interest payments. Salaries are going up all the time. If you can just forget how cramped your home is, you can eat good food and live a rich life, surrounded by high-class goods as well as the latest furniture and electrical appliances. Personally, I don’t completely agree with this trend. I realize that it merely accelerates inflation. But I’ve no doubt that it’s far more sensible to spend money than to keep it – and therefore, not to own a home. So I have no option but to follow the trend.
I sipped some tea my wife had made for me. It was finest Uji tea, ordered direct from the store in Kyoto.
The grandfather clock struck ten. The clock was an expensive handcrafted piece. Paid for in monthly instalments, of course.
My wife started knitting.
I drank my tea as I watched TV.
It was a contented family scene.
My wife suddenly shuddered, lifted her head and looked at me. “Darling, I’m so happy,” she said in a self-demeaning voice. There was even a hint of a tear in her eye.
I couldn’t hold back the anger, the loathing, the sheer abhorrence of it. I kicked the coffee table and got up. “You bloody fool!” I shouted. “You stupid bloody fool!” I opened my mouth so wide it seemed likely to split, and bellowed with all the air in my lungs. “What do you mean, happy?! You’re not even slightly happy! Now I know why they call you cows! You think happiness just means being satisfied! You call yourself human?! You think you’re alive? Well, I wish you were dead! Dead, dead, dead!!”
I punched and kicked her wildly. She keeled over and tumbled onto the linoleum floor of the kitchen, where she crawled about in confusion.
“I’m sorry, dear! I’m really sorry!” she wailed.
“What do you mean, you’re sorry?! You don’t even know why I’m angry! How can you possibly be sorry?!”
I was boiling with rage. I grabbed hold of her hair and slapped her on the cheek perhaps ten, twenty times.
Startled, my mother and Shigenobu rushed out of the next room. They knelt on either side of my wife on the floor, apologizing to me as they wept.
As always, I went off to the bedroom in a fit of pique, leapt into bed and pulled the sheets over my head.
There was nothing unusual about this. I have an outburst like that about once a month, on average. For my family, who don’t understand why I’m so angry, it must seem like some kind of natural disaster. But by the next day, it’s all forgotten, and they try to smother me once more with their sickening phoney happiness.
That utterly repulsive, extraordinarily ordinary blinkered happiness, so false it saps my energy, so tepid it makes me want to vomit. A kind of happiness in which a minor dissatisfaction might surface every now and again, or a small disagreement might occasionally flare up, but we pretend to make up almost immediately.
Just after lunch the next day, I went to the bank near my office. I wanted to deposit my wages and complete the direct debit forms for the television. The bank was heaving with other office workers like myself, taking advantage of their lunch break, as well as salespeople from the nearby shopping centre. Expecting a long wait, I sat on a bench near the window and lit a cigarette.
While I was waiting for my number to be called, a gaunt young woman with narrow slanting eyes came and sat on the bench in front of me. She was accompanied by a boy of about the same age as Shigenobu, a mischievous-looking brat who just couldn’t keep still. Before long, he started knocking over ashtray stands and grabbing handfuls of leaflets, which he scattered all over the floor.
“Yoshikazu! Stop that!” shouted the boy’s mother. “What do you think you’re doing? Stop it, I said! You naughty boy! Keep still! Yoshikazu! Where are you going?”
Ignoring his mother’s incessant scolding, the boy continued to wander around, until he eventually knocked over the entire leaflet stand.
“YOSHIKAZU!”
The boy’s mother stood up, grabbed the brass pipe of an ashtray stand and, brandishing it high above her head, brought the solid metal base down onto his head.
There was a dull, sickening sound, like that of a wooden post being driven into the ground by a mallet. The child cowered on the floor, his eyeballs turning white. With the look of a woman possessed, the mother continued to beat the boy over the head with the ashtray stand. He was sprawled belly-down on the floor, but I could still see his face. White matter was coming out of his nose. His mouth was gaping open, and it too was full of white matter. His pummelled brains were oozing out through his nose and filling his mouth. The tips of his fingers twitched convulsively at first, but then stretched out limply. The mother staggered out of the bank with the same empty look in her eyes, leaving the boy’s body on the floor behind her. And still the aftersound of the incident continued to echo in the vaulted ceiling of the bank.
Two or three of us stood up slowly. After checking the expressions of those around him, a middle-aged man in a business suit went up to a security guard and whispered to him. The guard nodded gravely, went over to the body and peered at the boy’s face. Then he went to a nearby telephone, picked up the receiver and calmly started dialling.
Eventually, the police arrived. They questioned two or three people, then turned to me.
“Did you see it all from the beginning?” they asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Could you be sure it was the child’s mother? The woman who killed him?”
“Yes, I think it was.”
“Why do you think she did it?”
I said nothing. How could I possibly know? But I could immediately picture the headline in the newspaper that evening:
“HALF-CRAZED MUM BEATS CHILD TO DEATH
IN FRONT OF BANK CUSTOMERS”
But until she picked up the ashtray stand, there was nothing to suggest she was “half-crazed” at all. And although there were other people in the bank, she wasn’t really “in front of” us. It was absolutely certain that the people who read the article would never see the incident as I’d seen it just moments ago – vividly, with horrible reality.
Everyone in the bank had displayed a kind of indifference when the incident happened. I wondered if all the incidents we read about in our newspapers were actually reported in the same way – with a casual concern akin to indifference. To be sure, a kind of peace was maintained in the process. But I wondered if, perhaps, something really awful might be happening. Or perhaps this incident was just the start of something else.
Why did you just sit and watch so passively? – I asked myself.
It’s not that
I was indifferent, I protested in reply. No, I was merely stunned by it all. I’m not like the others. I’m sure I’m not.
As the days went by, abnormal incidents started to happen all over the place. So much, at least, could be gleaned from the newspapers – which, as always, satisfied themselves with nonchalant concern and smug explanations.
“HYSTERICAL NURSE TORCHES HOSPITAL – SIXTY-SEVEN MENTAL PATIENTS BURNT ALIVE”
“UNBALANCED OFFICE WORKER STABS PASSERS-BY IN BROAD DAYLIGHT”
Despite the use of phrases like “random killing,” most of the perpetrators were paradoxically described as “hysterical” or “unbalanced”. When neither of these applied, mental conditions that are more or less universal – such as “agitation” or “irritation” – were cited as the cause. But you only had to open your eyes just a little wider to realize that these episodes couldn’t be explained so easily.
Meanwhile, our sham family happiness continued as before. The pretence was merely encouraged when my salary was increased to three hundred and twenty thousand yen a month.
Then, in June, I was given an extra day off per week. Other employers were increasingly changing to a four-day week, some even to just three days.
On the last weekend in July, I decided to drive my family to the seaside. I wasn’t all that keen, to be honest, as the holiday season had only just started and the roads were bound to be congested. But I was getting pretty fed up of lounging around at home for three whole days every week. So I resigned myself to the coming “leisure hell” and decided to go. Of course, the others were all delighted.
As we moved out of the city centre, we had little more than light congestion to contend with. But when we turned onto the trunk road leading down to the coast, it was jammed solid with traffic. Each car was packed with family members. We’d remain stationary for several minutes at a time, sometimes up to an hour. When at last we’d start moving, we’d travel for a few hundred yards before stopping again. There was no room to manoeuvre, and it was already too late to turn back. Trains on the line running alongside the road were packed to the rafters. Passengers were piled high on the roofs of the carriages, while others clung onto doors, windows and couplings.
We’d left home in the early hours, but were only halfway to the coast when it began to get dark.
“Shigenobu! Where are you? It’s dinner time!”
He was playing tag with children from another family in the spaces between stationary cars. My wife brought him back to our car, where we enjoyed a truly bland meal.
Expecting the worst, we’d brought blankets with us. The others went to sleep. But I had to drive on through the night. If I thought we’d be stationary for a while, I’d rest my head on the steering wheel and take a nap. Then, when the traffic started moving again, I’d be woken by the driver behind me blowing his horn. With so much congestion, at least there was no fear of causing a major accident. Everyone was falling asleep at the wheel; the worst that could happen was a minor bump from behind.
The following afternoon, we crawled into a small town about two miles from the coast. We had to abandon our car on the town’s main road. Vehicles had been abandoned on all roads worthy of the name, including back streets no more than two yards wide. Continuing the journey by car was quite impossible. The town had ceased to function altogether – simply because it was near the coast.
We changed into our beachwear in the car, then started to walk along the pavement. It was already full of families like us, and nearly everyone was in swimwear. We had no choice but to join the flow of people and keep shuffling forwards with them. The sky was clear and the sun shone a bright shade of purple. I was immediately covered in sweat. The back of the man in front of me also glistened with drops of perspiration. Beads of sweat dripped from the tip of my nose. The whole surface of the pavement was moist and slippery with human sweat.
As we moved out of the town and onto a rough country road, clouds of dust blew up around us. Our bodies turned black as we continued to walk. People’s faces became dappled with sweat and dust. My mother and my wife were no exception. Shigenobu and the other children had faces like raccoons, caused by wiping their eyes with the backs of their hands. Where did people get this extraordinary power of endurance, just in order to have a good time? I asked myself, and tried to guess the mental state of others around me. But I couldn’t find any reason. Perhaps it would be clear when we got to the beach…
We negotiated a level crossing, and the commotion grew more intense. People arriving by train had joined the throng. Already, cries of “Don’t push!” could be heard here and there. In one hand I held a basket, in the other the hand of my child, who was gripping mine ever so tightly. We were already walking on sand. And even the sand was soaked with sweat.
We entered a pine wood, and the numbers increased again. Everywhere around us was packed with people, the air rank with the smell of humanity. Some, crushed against tree trunks and unable to move, were calling out for help. Then there was the astonishing spectacle of countless items of clothing hanging from the branches of pine trees, like colonies of multicoloured bats. Young women as well as men, now indifferent to the gaze of strangers, had climbed the trees to take off their clothes and change into swimsuits.
We passed through the pine wood and came out onto the beach. Even then, all I could see was the horizon in the far distance. The sea of human heads made it impossible to know where the beach ended and the water started. To my right and to my left, behind and in front of me, all I could see were waves of people, people, people, people. Their heads stretched as far as the eye could see. The sweat on their bodies was evaporating and curling up into the air.
“Hey! Stick tight together!” I barked loudly in my wife’s direction. “Stay close to me! Hold mother’s hand!”
The sun was beating down on our faces. Sweat ran off my body like a waterfall. We were being pushed from behind, jostled by bodies that were slippery with sweat and could only move forwards. We, in turn, had no option but to press our bodies into the sweaty backs of the people walking in front of us. It was worse, much worse than a packed commuter train.
Shigenobu started to cry. “I’m hot! I’m thirsty!” he whined.
“We can’t go back. You’ll have to put up with it!” I shouted. “The water will be nice and cool, you’ll see.”
But as it stood, I had no way of knowing whether the sea would be cool or not. Perhaps it was already more than half made up of human sweat, all warm and slimy.
Every year, they used to build makeshift changing rooms around this area, with walls made of reed matting. But I couldn’t see them, however hard I looked. They must have been pushed over and trampled underfoot by the wave of humans. Yes, maybe the reed matting we just waded through was, in fact, the remains of the changing rooms.
It reminded me of an advancing herd of elephants that flattened everything in its path. Or perhaps a swarm of locusts, leaving nothing standing behind it. These people aren’t human, I thought, as I surveyed the half-witted smiles of those around me. They’re leisure animals.
“Please keep moving. Please keep moving,” screamed a voice through a loudspeaker at the top of an observation tower. But of course – we had no alternative. If we’d stopped moving, we’d have been pushed over and trampled to death. So we all just kept moving forwards in silence. Only the tearful cries of children could be heard here and there.
As I was relentlessly pushed from behind, my sweat-soaked chest and stomach were now wedged into the tattooed back of the man in front of me. I’d long since lost sight of my mother and my wife. For all I knew, they could have drifted off anywhere in the human tide.
At last, I felt sea water swirling around my feet. But the human congestion remained the same, and I continued to be pushed from behind. I looked down to see the water glistening slimily with human fat. It was grey-brown in colour, like liquid mud.
Soon I was up to my waist in muddy water, sickened by the unpleasantly lukewarm sensation of it. I
t was only then that I first realized the danger we might face if we kept being pushed forwards like this. Once the water came above our heads, with the mass of humanity around us as it was now, we might not even be able to tread water. Then what would happen?
Shigenobu, already out of his depth, started clinging to my waist. I hastily threw away the basket I’d held in my hand and lifted him up in both arms.
The water now came up to my chest. I shuddered on noticing the sensation under my feet. I’d been so preoccupied with the lukewarm feeling of the water that I’d failed to notice. For some time now, it was clear that we weren’t stepping on pebbles any more, but something soft.
It was the bodies of drowned people. I was sure of it. The drowned bodies of children who’d become separated from their parents and had gone under the water.
I took another good look at the faces around me. No one was calling out or making any noise. I could hear nothing but an eerie silence. That and the dimly roaring echo of the clamour from the beach.
Everyone was smiling, as if demented with euphoria. They simply stared ahead with vacant eyes and a look of longing. Sometimes, as if wanting others to recognize their joy, they would look around, face each other, then give another smile of satisfaction. Perhaps even I, unknown to myself, might also be smiling that smile.
The water was up to my neck now. A woman near me started to drown. I thought it might be my wife – but it wasn’t. Even so, both she and my mother must now be drowning, somewhere. As she started to go under, the woman suddenly seemed overcome, for the first time, by the fear of dying. With eyes opened wide, she desperately tried to keep the water away from her nose and mouth, and kept splashing against the surface of the water. Soon, people who were shorter than me started drowning on both sides.
The sensation of soft meat on the soles of my feet remained as strong as ever. Drowned bodies must be piling up on the sea bed. If it weren’t for them, I thought, I would have gone under long since.
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