‘The memory means more to me than just words.’
* * *
It was a twin bedroom on the eighteenth floor with a large window, but the view of the city was blocked by the rear of a building two or three hundred metres away. All we could see were rows of small rectangular windows. But because of the random pattern of windows with and without lights on, it didn’t feel lifeless. If anything, I felt something like a distinct sorrow arising from something large and unknown.
‘I come to Shinjuku every day, but I rarely see a view like this,’ I said.
Looking down, I saw a car make a half-circle in front of the hotel and drive off onto the road. The light in the room went off.
‘It’s better this way.’
I didn’t turn round but continued to look out at the night view.
‘You get a better night view this way.’
She came and stood next to me in silence. Like me, she gazed out at the concrete vista.
I held her in my arms. What else was I to do? Her body stiffened, and although she didn’t resist, she remained motionless as if trying to insist that it hadn’t been her that had turned off the light and approached me. I held her thin shoulders and stroked her hair. I didn’t rush it. There was something hot in the deep core of her chest, and I could feel it slowly melting away. I placed my lips on her forehead, then her cheeks, and then, pushing her head back slightly, placed my tongue on her neck. Then on her ears.
Time passed in silence, then she drew a deep breath and whispered, ‘lt was wrong of me. To have deceived you like that, that night.’
The lips that said those words responded softly to my tongue. I touched her breasts. As my hands moved clumsily, as if foiled by the kimono, she said, ‘I’ll undress,’ in a low voice. ‘I’ll take it off.’
For me to write more about my sexual accomplishments would probably just make people feel unpleasant. I have no intention of bragging either, so I won’t describe in detail her body or the sadness that I felt in the softness of her white skin. Or how the first time, even at this age, I came early. Or how the second time I experienced the most perfect pleasure, intensity, persistence and oneness of all the sexual experiences in my life.
Her excitement. The gentle, slow, sex we had the third time round (yes, a third time was actually possible). The closeness of it. The sweat and the sounds. Her smell. About these things too, I won’t share the details with you.
Once we were all used up and lay motionless with our eyes closed, I asked the woman her name for the first time. But as soon as I asked her, I regretted it. It was obviously better not to share names. Or at least, that’s what I thought she’d think, and I immediately took back what I said.
‘Never mind. It’s better if I don’t ask.’
‘Mutsuko,’ she said casually. ‘Now, after my separation, I’m Mutsuko Kizuki.’
‘Mutsuko, Mutsuko, Mutsuko, Mutsuko,’ I murmured and placed a hand on her breast. The next moment sleep descended on me.
I had called home from the restaurant, but nobody had picked up and that thought stayed in the corner of my mind as I fell asleep. It was fine. It wouldn’t be such a bad thing for me not to return home sometimes. But later, a little later, I should try calling at least one more time — to say I wouldn’t be coming home — after Mutsuko has fallen asleep, I thought. But when I next opened my eyes, the bright morning light was pouring in through the gap in the curtains. And she wasn’t there.
I wasn’t surprised. I think I’d unconsciously been expecting it all along. After all, they do say good things are never meant to last. This feeling took deep root in me as I thought how I might have become even more unstable if she’d stayed.
It crossed my mind that I hadn’t asked exactly where she lived. And that I might never see her again. It was a thought that shot a sharp feeling of regret right through me, while at the same time I felt it would be right for us never to meet again. I went down to the front desk on my way out and found the room had already been paid for.
* * *
About five days later, I was reading the paper at my desk at work in the afternoon, when I suddenly felt like something was clawing at my stomach. It wasn’t that there was an article in the paper about Mutsuko. I had actually been reading an article about something that happened in the US in a small section of the paper that featured foreign newswires from agencies like UPI.
The article was about the Resh family in Columbus, Ohio. Apparently at the Resh home, furniture would move around on its own, the telephone would float up into the air, lights would go on, water would suddenly start running from the tap and so on. A local journalist went to research the story and actually saw the furniture moving around for himself. The family turned to experts to help them find out the cause, but the scientists had all given up. The article ended by saying that many similar cases have been reported in the past.
I myself had once read an article about a similar occurrence. But I hadn’t given it a second thought. There was nothing I could do about it anyway. But this was an extraordinary phenomenon, something that completely defied scientific laws and evaded explanation. Not many people saw it that way, though. Most people just thought of it as a slightly strange story, then forgot all about it. In this way their grip on reality remained firm and unchallenged.
Of course, if it was something that happened far away, you couldn’t blame people for treating it that way. But what if it happened to you? Would you… could you forget it once it had passed? Why had I been able to speak and understand French? And that woman — Mutsuko — was that old, grey-haired woman really Mutsuko? Could I honestly believe that?
Leaving these questions aside, I returned to my daily life. I was struck by apathy, and before long it had overwhelmed me. I glanced at the phone. I thought of calling the hospital. Mutsuko went by the last name Miyabayashi there, so I could tell them I had a question about Ms Mutsuko Miyabayashi. Then they could tell me no such person had been staying at the hospital. I felt like it was possible that would happen. But how would I ever know if I didn’t call?
It wasn’t really possible for me to make a private long-distance phone call from work. So I opened my diary, checked the phone number for the hospital, and, remembering that the most hard-working and cheerful nurse had been a woman named Ms Nakanobu, wrote Nakanobu under the phone number.
The whole department had been tasked to work together organising employees’ opinions on how to provide diverse and detailed services for special prefab product orders, while keeping costs down at the same time. We were then to write up a ‘mind-blowing’ report on possible actions that might be extrapolated from this information. It was an assignment that somehow smelled of ‘therapy,’ however. Although nobody said this out loud, it had taken any passion from the work, but even so, I couldn’t just leave the office during working hours.
I decided to wait until live. In the meantime, I picked out all the 100-yen coins I had and put them in my jacket pocket. I also decided on a public phone located in a relatively quiet area. At five o’clock, as always, there were no urgent tasks waiting for me, so I left the office and went to the public phone I’d decided on.
I asked for Ms Nakanobu at the nurse’s station on the fifth floor.
‘My name is Taura. I was in room 501 with a fracture.’
‘My, my,’ Ms Nakanobu responded in a cheerful voice, just as I had expected. ‘How are you doing? Where are you calling from? From Tokyo? My—’
There was only one thing I really wanted to ask, but it would have been unnatural to ask just that, so I asked her if she knew the address of Ms Mutsuko Miyabayashi who was staying in room 513 at the end of last year.
‘I have no idea.’
She told me that she could connect me to the administration office to ask there, since it was only a little past five and people should still be there.
‘Then how about this? Do you know her age?’ I asked quickly. ‘Her age?’
‘Yes, how old was she?’
&nbs
p; ‘Hold on a second.’
Without showing any suspicion as to why I would be asking, she called out ‘Ms Ozaki’ to one of the other nurses. I couldn’t hear what she said after that.
I waited. And I received the response that I had secretly been expecting.
‘Ms Miyabayashi… sixty-seven years old.’
Just like that I found out. Perhaps it was because Mutsuko had wanted me to find out when she’d said to me, as if making a confession, ‘I’ve become younger.’ Some of the words that peppered her conversation were old-fashioned for a woman of forty-two or forty-three, too. She’d even said that her friends would be shocked if they saw how she’d become younger. Mutsuko hadn’t been hiding it. I just didn’t have the ability to sense the truth. I couldn’t see beyond my basic assumptions. But that was no surprise.
Who could believe that a sixty-seven-year-old woman had become that young? Who would believe such a surprising change? If anything, you would have to be losing your mind to believe such a thing so easily. So the woman I met had to be someone else. A person who, for some reason, had pretended that she was the young, rejuvenated version of the sixty-seven-year-old woman. That’s why she tried to avoid questions about what had happened at the hospital and about her daily life now. But what could she possibly have to gain from doing that?
As these thoughts ran through my head, more than half of me still believed that Mutsuko really was the old woman turned younger. But this thought didn’t make me feel any disgust towards her. I didn’t feel the nausea or reality-shaking dizziness I’d felt when I’d seen the old woman at the hospital that morning. I was simply touched as I remembered Mutsuko’s expressions, her figure and the way she’d felt as she tried to open up her younger, early forties body to me.
‘Mutsuko,’ I murmured under my breath as I walked. Then, in French, I tried to say, ‘I want to see you.’ But I couldn’t find the words.
3
There were only four Kizukis in the Yokohama city phone directory and I managed to reach Mutsuko’s late brother’s home on the second call.
‘May I ask if I am talking to a relative of a Ms Mutsuko Kizuki?’
‘Yes…’ The voice belonged to a teenage girl. A middle- or high-school student, I guessed.
‘My name is Ishikawa and I’m calling from Keihin Life Insurance. I was hoping you could kindly tell me Ms Mutsuko Kizuki’s address in Tokyo.’
There was a moment’s silence, then the girl called for her mother. A middle-aged woman came to the phone and I introduced myself again.
‘Why do you need to contact her?’ she asked in an emotion less voice.
‘I have information that she requested regarding the purchase of life insurance.’
‘Are you saying Mutsuko bought a life-insurance policy?
‘Well, she called in to our office saying that she wanted to, but we haven’t heard from her since.’
I had said this kind of thing countless times when I was working for the sales department.
‘When was this?’
‘About a week ago.’
The woman paused, probably in thought, then said, ‘Well if she really wants to she’ll probably visit you again.’
She was right, of course.
‘By the way,’ she continued, ‘how did you get our number?’
‘She had mentioned that her family home was in Yokohama, and that her family there would be the beneficiaries of the insurance policy.’
There was another pause for thought.
‘Actually, we don’t know where she is.’
‘But I was told that this is her brother’s home…’
‘Yes it is. But we don’t know. As a matter of fact, we would like to know where she is ourselves. If she comes by your place again, please can you let us know?’
She sounded like she meant it.
‘I most certainly will,’ I said. ‘Just to make sure… Ms Kizuki was sixty-seven on her last birthday.’
‘I think she turns sixty-eight in July. Can she even buy insurance at that age?
‘The premiums do become more expensive.’
‘I see.’
‘Well, thank you for your time.’
‘Hello?’ She stopped me from ringing off.
‘Yes?’
‘Was it her? I mean, did she come to your office herself?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Did grandma actually visit your office in person?’
‘Well, no…’
‘Was it a woman in her early forties?’
‘Yes. She asked for information on the different policies.’
She fell silent again for a moment. ‘I mean, you can’t conclude a contract without her actually being there at least once, can you?’
‘No we can’t. Especially since she is rather advanced in years.’
‘I’m sure she won’t show up. In fact, I think you’re probably wasting your time looking for her.’
After the call, I stepped out of the booth and walked in the afternoon sun towards Shinjuku station. It had been a careless lie, pretending to be from an insurance company. And as the woman on the other end of the phone had pointed out, a sixty seven-year-old woman probably wouldn’t be eligible for insurance anyway. The whole telephone incident had served only to add to my suspicions that my mind had been deteriorating since fracturing my thigh.
Actually, deteriorating wasn’t the right word. Because if I wanted to, I probably could think very sharply. But there was something that somehow made me not want to. Something deep in my heart that made me refuse to be careful and alert.
I got on an express train on the Odakyu Line, then changed to the local train at Seijogakuenmae station. Kitami station was the next stop. It appeared that Mutsuko’s family, or at least the woman I had talked to, had seen the younger Mutsuko.
They had been surprised to see her looking about forty-two or forty-three years old and, just like me, they’d suspected that she was a different person. They probably still couldn’t believe it was her.
Mutsuko had hidden herself away. Her beauty was a monstrosity in the eyes of people who knew her as a sixty-seven-year old, and perhaps all she could do to avoid their understandable surprise, doubts and curiosities was simply to disappear. I could imagine the anxieties and solitude of ageing, but I couldn’t imagine what life was like for someone who’d become young again. But when I thought of her white nakedness, the feel of her skin, her warmth, her smell and her intensity, I could only imagine that she was losing herself in the pleasures of youth. Such thoughts tortured me as sharp pangs of jealousy, jabbing me every time the train lurched forward.
* * *
‘What’s going on?’ asked my son Shinichi as we sat eating dinner together. ‘Mom’s always out.’
‘You don’t like that?’
‘It’s fine with me.’
‘Then it’s fine. It’s not as if we don’t see her.’
‘I wouldn’t like it if I were you.’
‘For a long time, I wasn’t around either.’
‘Doesn’t mean you should let her do whatever she wants.’
‘She’s increased her magazine’s circulation to twenty thousand copies. And they do most of the work with just the three of them. It’s not something you can do without being fully committed.’
‘You’re too understanding. Could even say you were cold.’
‘Your mother’s good at what she’s doing. What is there to gain by getting in her way when she is clearly very committed? Besides, I’d never hear the end of it if I did.’
‘Fine, if it’s fine with you.’
‘I’m fine with it. It’s a whole lot better than her staying at home and complaining all the time.’
‘It’s just that you look… desolate.’
‘I’m not at all desolate. If you continue to be too sensitive to these things, then when you get married, the disappointment is going to crush you.’
‘Not all women are like Mom.’
‘Don’t be stupid. You rarely f
ind a woman as great as your mother.’
‘You really mean that?’
We had decided not to insult each other in front of our children. Of course it was better if my wife was home for dinner, but my wife’s thinking was as follows: Babying a husband that had suffered a mental breakdown at work would only make him over-dependent on the wife. The wife’s individuality would be compromised, and family life would become unbearable. The best treatment was for the wife to have her own world and not provide the husband with a place to escape to.
She didn’t say this to me in person, but this was what was written in an anonymous column in her town magazine, a copy of which had been sent to me at the hospital. I immediately knew that this was how my wife saw my situation and that in a way she was justifying her own decisions. My wife was probably right, though. If she’d stayed at home and treated me like a sick person, I wouldn’t be the way I was. I had no intention at all of becoming dependent on someone. Especially after reading a quote about being ‘not afraid to be called a bad wife’ in that column.
Shinichi went upstairs and I turned on the TV, left feeling alone in my own home as always. ‘Mutsuko,’ I breathed out in a low voice — something I should be careful not to make a habit of. Imagine if I were to call out her name in front of my wife. I noticed the comedy group The Drifters, on TV, reminding me it was Saturday.
‘Mutsuko.’
Could she be a figment of my imagination?
Surely she couldn’t.
‘Mutsuko,’ I breathed again, unable to resist.
Was I losing my mind? Escaping into a fantasy, depending on a fantasy, called Mutsuko?
Surely not. It simply wasn’t possible that my memories, from the flavour of the food and wine at the restaurant to the details of the hotel room, to my experience with Mutsuko, were figments of my imagination. But at the same time, when I thought about Mutsuko’s beauty, the way she was attracted to me, and the perfection of my French and that sexual experience, that all seemed unbelievable, too.
As I soaked up the sounds from the television, I felt a sharp anxiety well up inside me and I set out to search for clues. I sought for a trace, any trace, of Mutsuko. I went to my wardrobe, took out the clothes I’d been wearing that day and searched through every single pocket. But I didn’t even have the receipt from the restaurant. I’d thrown it out so 1ny wife wouldn’t find it. There was nothing. But it couldn’t have been an illusion. It was too vivid, it had lasted too many hours, it just couldn’t be an illusion. Besides, the Kizukis in Yokohama had seen how Mutsuko had clearly become younger. But really, though, was it clear? Was it really?
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