Nan-Core

by Mahokaru Numata

  That day on the way home I asked Yohei to dinner. Even after a steak, however, he failed to return to his usual cheery self. We talked in clipped sentences about the reality we had to face. Once that was done I told him everything Dad had said about Misako, my mother. I was the one who told him about the notebooks when he’d known nothing about them, even forcing him to read sections. It was unfair to involve him as far as I had and not tell him how it ended.

  He already knew enough to work out we were in fact cousins. I couldn’t leave him feeling unsettled about everything, not when we were preparing to say goodbye to Dad.

  “You’re not surprised?” I asked once I’d finished, noting that his expression was unchanged.

  “Of course I am. I had wondered as much. But still, it’s hard to believe.”

  “What do you think about it?”

  “That there was no hate. That it’s a chronicle of family love.” I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I stopped myself from asking again.

  He was right, I supposed, that no one had hated anyone else. Even though the others had killed my mother, they had done it so she could atone for her sins while simultaneously offering her salvation. Perhaps that was what he meant.

  “I’m glad you told me, Ryo.”

  I nodded, feeling very relieved somehow.

  Following Dad’s wishes that we focus on visiting Gran, Yohei and I made an effort to see her more often. She no longer seemed able to tell us apart—she didn’t even seem to understand that we were her grandchildren. At the same time, she seemed happy to have young people coming in to fuss over her. Now and again she opened her toothless mouth to offer us an innocent, child-like smile. We were keen to help, even when it was just with food, in contrast to having unwittingly assigned the various chores to Dad.

  After a process of trial and error we discovered we worked best together, Yohei using the spoon to feed her, I wiping any mess off her chin from the side. When we established a rhythm, Gran managed to get through her entire dinner without leaving a thing. One time, when a staff member came to check in on us, Yohei even complained about the spoons. He said the home needed to provide spoons of different shapes and sizes depending on the type of food served. The staffer walked out after mumbling a noncommittal response.

  Whenever the home had a singer volunteering or a women’s chorus performing in the auditorium, we bundled Gran into a wheelchair and took her to watch. Some of the others gathered there would quietly sing along, nostalgic for the old songs, some clapping in time. Gran’s head, looking like she was wearing a white woolly cap, would sway above her chair as well.

  Everything that had befallen her family was engraved inside that small head, all the memories from Misako’s birth up to her death. Now her mind was a disembodied shadow wandering through an amorphous fog.

  Sometimes, though, when she suddenly gazed off into empty space with a frightened look or burst into tears without warning, I had to wonder whether the thorns of those memories were still lodged inside her head, scratching and painful in her shattered consciousness.

  19

  I had a rare call from Dad one morning when the days were starting to get bitterly cold both in the mornings and at night.

  “I said my goodbyes to Gran yesterday. I told her I wouldn’t be able to visit anymore.”

  “Oh.” I wanted to say something kind that would express how I felt, but I knew he’d hate that.

  “I’m terribly weak now. I want to see you both, one last time. There are some things I want to tell you.”

  “Okay.”

  “The forecast says it’s going to rain this afternoon. I’m sure it’ll be slow at the cafe, so could you come over?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Did you have a talk with Yohei?”

  “I told him everything about what was in the notebooks and what you told me.”

  “When was this?”

  “Quite a while back now. Probably a couple of months. He’s smart, so I think he’d already had a pretty good idea. Didn’t seem all that surprised.”

  “I see. He’s amazing, you know, he hasn’t breathed a word about it to me. Still, it’s for the best. Gran won’t be around for much longer, you’ll be the only blood relations left. It’s better for you both to know everything going forward.”

  “You don’t have to worry, we’ll be okay.”

  “I’m not worried. Invite him along, will you? Come over after lunch. I’ll be waiting here.”

  This is an odd thing to say, but as his condition deteriorated, what made Dad “Dad” seemed to grow more concentrated, becoming more apparent in his various expressions. The obstinacy, the child-like qualities, the mad-scientist-like way he was sometimes out of touch with reality, and his unique gentleness.

  He was terribly skinny but still had a kind of dignity. As always, I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but I knew he wasn’t afraid of dying. Yohei and I were nervous, aware he had hinted at seeing us for the last time. We sat around the table in the kitchen but hardly touched the snacks of fish paste and salami on the plates and didn’t refill our beer glasses. Dad was the only one who seemed livelier than usual.

  “Misako came to visit.”

  He said this like it was something to be expected.

  He’d said “Misako,” but I didn’t know which of my two mothers he meant. I wondered if he’d started to lose his mind, either from the illness or the pills he was taking. Yohei was gaping at him.

  Dad paid us no mind. He began to talk, pausing only to catch his breath as he told us an incredible story.

  A while ago I told Ryosuke about what happened to Misako. There is actually a lot more to tell. I couldn’t decide whether to tell you the rest. To be honest I’m still not sure if I should. Maybe if you’d been totally ignorant from the start, it’d be different, but now that you know some of what happened, I think it would be insolent to cover up the rest of it.

  First and foremost, I don’t want to have to think this over anymore, not when I’m facing death. Ryosuke, and Yohei, I want you to consider this my last will and testament as you listen.

  As I just said, Misako came to visit yesterday. Yes, your birth mother, Ryosuke. Yes, the woman who wrote the notebooks. We’ve been seeing each other every now and then for a few years. I’m not going to make excuses. I just … had to. Knowing I don’t have much time left, she asked me to go on a trip, to make one last memory together. It’s exactly what I want, but I asked her to wait until tomorrow. I wanted the time to talk to you first.

  Now, hang on—this won’t make sense unless I tell you everything in order. If I know her, she’ll be back later. If you want you can meet her, but you don’t have to. Maybe you’ll be okay, Yohei, but I imagine Ryosuke might need more than a day to prepare himself.

  There’s just one more thing to say first: I gave the notebooks, the hair, and the handbag to Misako and asked her to get rid of them. Okay? They shouldn’t be left around. I wanted to burn it all myself, but this house doesn’t have anywhere to build a proper fire.

  It happened a long while ago. Misako just appeared out of nowhere. I was on my way back from work, about to head through the turnstiles, when she called my name. It had been ten years, and I’d thought her dead the whole time. I stood in the middle of the crowd and reached out to touch her cheek, to assure myself she wasn’t an illusion. The moment I made contact it was like those ten years just up and vanished.

  I knew immediately that times had been hard for her. Her expression had changed completely. Where her features had been ill-defined before there was a severe virility. I suppose it’s odd to describe a woman’s face as looking virile. She didn’t laugh much, just like before, but when she did it was from the heart. I’d never seen her do that.

  We talked, wandering through the streets near the station. I asked straightaway how she’d found me. She told me she knew we were in Komagawa. She’d guessed I would take the train from Komagawa or transfer on my way to work, and she’d been looking for me ther
e that morning. When she actually spotted me she considered going home, but she ended up following after me to see where I got off. She spent the rest of the day walking around, hesitant and unsure of what to do, but she went back to the station in the evening. That’s apparently what happened.

  I asked where she was living and how she knew we were living in Komagawa, but instead of answering she made it clear she was very keen to hear about the family. I mainly talked about you, Ryosuke. You were still in middle school then. Then I told her you had a younger brother, Yohei, about Emiko, and about her parents, who were both alive and well. I became so engrossed in telling her these things that time flew by.

  Looking back now, that was so strange. I’d conspired with her family to kill her, yet there we were. Plus her younger sister Emiko had assumed her identity, and she had had our son, Yohei. Despite all that there wasn’t even a trace of awkwardness between us.

  Misako listened with rapt attention, smiling with tears in her eyes. She was completely immersed in my stories. I just kept talking, knowing she was very interested in what I was saying.

  When I finally reached a convenient point to pause, I asked what had happened to her—in other words, after her parents had driven her away in the car. She seemed surprised to find out that I knew nothing about it, but she told me anyway. It was an amazing story, and she told it matter-of-factly, as though it was a simple catch-up on how she was doing.

  She said she thought she’d been sucked into the well. You know, the old well she wrote about in the notebooks, in the garden of the house of the girl who died, Michiru. As she sank to the bottom of the lake behind the dam, her hands and legs tied up, she thought that the dark well of death had finally caught up to her, that it would pull her down forever. Your grandparents had given her a large dose of sleeping pills to ease any suffering. Her mind was probably groggy from that.

  She told me it was terrifying. She lost all sensation until nothing she could call her self remained. That was when she died. She knew it for certain, she said.

  She was lying on her side when she came to in a totally unfamiliar place. She wondered if it was already night as everything around her was pitch dark. Her heart felt empty. She was still tied up so she couldn’t move.

  Then she heard a voice.

  “Don’t turn around. Just keep quiet and listen.”

  It was a hoarse male voice, and for some reason she thought it was me: I’d jumped into the well; my voice was like that because I’d had a hard time getting her out.

  It wasn’t me, regrettably. I never asked him directly, but I think it was probably your grandfather. I can’t see it being anyone else. Your grandmother would have known, of course. After throwing her into the water, they must have found they couldn’t just leave their daughter to die.

  “You’re a criminal, having you around creates disaster for everyone. If you care for your son’s future, never have anything to do with your family ever again. As of today, you must become another person and live another life. Concentrate on nothing but atoning for your sins,” the voice continued.

  The words settled in her empty, newly-revived heart.

  The man behind the voice loosened the ropes around her arms and legs before leaving. She waited a while, then shuffled free, got to her feet, and started to walk. Her shoes had been neatly arranged by her side.

  Her legs were trembling so badly that she had to rest every few steps. She noticed she was freezing because her clothes were still wet. She found a bundle of ten-thousand-yen notes in one of her soaked pockets, as well as a hastily scribbled map on a scrap of paper that outlined the way back to the city.

  Her strength gave out partway through her journey, and she slept that night in some bushes next to the road. When she finally reached the city the next day she boarded a train, hoping to get as far away as she could. With no particular destination in mind she changed trains a number of times, finally getting off at a deserted station, the name of which she’d never heard of. It was already evening.

  She called home using a pay phone at the station. The man behind the voice—she still thought it was me—had forbidden her from doing so, but she was desperate to know how you, Ryosuke, were doing since your transfer to the hospital in Tokyo. She needed to hear it before she could move on to become someone else. They hadn’t let her see you properly since the night of the incident.

  Gran answered the phone. She was breathing heavily when she said Misako’s name, sounding like she had to force it out. Then she immediately composed herself, rapidly answering Misako’s questions.

  “You don’t need to worry about Ryosuke … He’ll be in the hospital for a while but it’s nothing serious … He’s doing well.” Her voice grew muffled with tears partway through but she kept to a whisper, apparently fearing your grandfather might overhear.

  That was when Gran told her about Komagawa. “Your father will be furious if he ever finds out I let you know,” she warned her before telling her the place. She explained that Emiko and I were going to move there soon, and that we’d look after you, Ryosuke, there. “So there’s no need to worry, I want you to live your life. If you care about Ryosuke’s happiness, then stay away. Never break that rule, no matter what happens. But I’ll still pray that someday something will bring us back together again, even if just for a moment. I’ll always pray for that,” she said through tears.

  It’s all a bit incoherent, I know. But she was still Misako’s mother, even after everything that happened. She would have felt pity for her daughter, who was being forced to live as a wretched recluse.

  She can’t tell Emiko and Misako apart anymore, not with the dementia, but she does seem to remember, if only vaguely, the fact that she did something awful to one of her own daughters. She’s still suffering from that, even now. I can tell.

  Sorry, that’s a bit off topic. So, after the call, Misako obeyed what the male voice had said. She had worked out on her own that Emiko would need to take her place as your mother and my wife, understanding it was necessary for the family—all five of us—to start over in a new land. She also believed it was the best for you, Ryosuke.

  She understood that she shouldn’t have been allowed to live, so it didn’t matter. She wasn’t even human, just a corpse that had been revived by some chance. She carved that concept into her mind.

  “You’re a criminal, having you around creates disaster for everyone.” Misako repeated the words the man had spoken over and over to herself.

  I don’t have the time or strength to go through all the details of her life after that. She spent a while drifting from place to place, then worked for a long time as a live-in maid at a hot springs resort town in the Tohoku region. She was greatly helped, she said, by the kindness of others.

  Without a resident card or a family register she was unable to get a license or certifications necessary for gainful employment. There’s no way she didn’t lead a hard life. And yet she told me that the things that once scared her didn’t anymore, now that she’d escaped unscathed from the dark well. Hard work didn’t feel difficult because she was a corpse, and as for her Nan-Core, she was now perfectly fine without one. It was uncanny. The woman before me was Misako, yet not Misako. The woman I met was another Misako.

  You can probably imagine what happened. It wasn’t fair to your late mother, but I had never—not for a moment—forgotten about Misako. Your mother realized this, of course, and I know she suffered as a result. But I couldn’t do anything about it. I don’t know, people can be really horrid.

  I think Misako had been the same. She had been acting tough for so long that hardship no longer felt like hardship, but there must have been something deep in her heart that she couldn’t erase. She lived like an actual zombie for three, five, then ten years, but that something continued to grow until the day came that she couldn’t suppress it any longer. Why else would she have turned up out of nowhere like that?

  She had told herself it would be the one and only time she’d see me or ask a
fter you. And I could tell she knew perfectly well it was unforgivable in itself.

  We’d been walking non-stop for two hours and found ourselves back in front of the train station. She said goodbye and bowed, and just like that she turned to leave. She’d taken maybe a dozen steps when I realized what was happening and called out to stop her. I called her name, loudly enough to make a few passersby turn.

  “I want to see you again, even if it’s just once a year. I’ll bring photos of Ryosuke and the family and update you on how we’re doing,” I said.

  She laughed and said it would be like Tanabata, the annual summer festival of star-crossed lovers, and suggested we take it a step further and meet at the same station at 5 p.m. every July 7th. Once a year, for just a few hours. We would share the burden of her sins.

  She told me she didn’t want me to ask anything about her current life when we met, and I agreed.

  It was October then, so it was less than a year until the next Tanabata. That made it bearable. It was hard to wait. At the same time I was euphoric, elated to have discovered that this woman I had thought dead was still alive. We were apart, but we were still under the same sky. You both know I’m not religious, but I still felt gratitude to a higher something for the way things had turned out.

  Each year I brought family photos as promised. I spent my days thinking up all sorts of things to say when we met, only to forget it all when the time came. We only ever discussed mundane things. Even though we didn’t have much time, we sat next to each other and watched the city lights in silence for long spells. I kept my word, never once asking where she was living or what she was doing. She didn’t have the luxury of being picky about what jobs she took, and it was evident that her life was hard. If I’d known any of it, I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself from trying to help. I wanted to avoid that. We both knew it was betrayal enough just to be meeting.

  I don’t want you two to get the wrong impression; there was no physical relationship. She kept telling me to pretend I was meeting with a ghost. The only time we touched was that first time I saw her, when I had reached out for her cheek to make sure she wasn’t just an illusion.