‘But you know that I’m really a sixty-seven-year-old woman.’
She walked over to the bed and sat down, stood up sharply, then threw herself onto the sofa, face down.
‘In just a short time,’ I said to her back, ‘I’ve seen you become younger so fast. But all I have is an idea of your fear. I just don’t understand enough to know what to think or feel.’
‘You don’t understand! Well, three days to you is three years to me. Three days and two nights to you means more than three years for me.’
I knelt down on the floor next to where she was lying and gently placed a hand on her back.
‘I want to know what happened.’ I felt the familiar warmth of her body under my hand. ‘And what you’re doing alone in a room like this.’
‘After l left that hospital, l went back to my husband, pressed my seal on the divorce papers, packed my things and flew to Haneda.’ She said all this in one hurried breath and then fell silent again.
‘Do you have children?’
‘I have two.’
‘It hadn’t occurred to me.’
‘A forty-five-year-old daughter and forty-three-year-old son. How do you think they’d react if they could see me now?’
‘Were you living together?’
‘No. They both have their own families to occupy their minds. It’s not surprising that they left home. My husband didn’t trust them. He said his fortune would be lost if he left it to them. Even now that he’s in his seventies, he refuses to think about any kind of inheritance. Business is the only thing he can think about.’
‘I thought you said he wasn’t involved in business. That he was a landowner.’
‘He is. Stocks, construction, demolition, rentals, car parks. All he ever did was stare at a portfolio of assets, then go around trying to grab another yen wherever he could.’
Because Mutsuko was young, she reminded me of a school girl acting the part of an old woman. It brought back memories from when I was a student.
‘So you arrived in Haneda and went to your brother’s place in Yokohama?’
‘No. I didn’t want to impose. I stayed at a hotel, looked for an apartment to rent, found one in Honmoku, dropped my things there, then went to see them three or four days later. When they heard that I had separated from my husband, they had grave expressions on their faces, probably worried that they might have to take care of me or pay for my funeral. I remember trying to tell myself that I don’t need anyone to take care of me, but realistically I was old, so I couldn’t afford to be so sure of myself.’
‘I see.’
‘I bought this bed when I was at that apartment,’ she said, glancing towards it. ‘I just bought the bare minimum. A kettle, a pot and a gas stove. Then I asked myself how I would live from then on. I had just about enough money to get by, but I wondered how l could spend my old age in a way that would leave me with no regrets.’
‘l see—’
‘One night, I suddenly started to feel unwell. My entire body felt heavy and uncomfortable. I wanted to scratch everywhere. I opened my mouth wide, crawled around the room with my mouth still wide open and tried not to make a sound so as not to disturb the neighbours. I was pretty sure I was about to die and was consumed by regret about how I’d wasted my life. Trying to feel something physical, I pinched myself hard all over and the tears came flooding from my eyes.’
I rubbed her back with my hand, not quite sure if I was comforting an old woman or consoling a girl.
‘I lost consciousness and, when I came to, two weeks had passed.’
‘Two weeks? The way you were? Without anyone finding you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Without eating anything? lust lying there the way you were when you lost consciousness.’
‘When l came to, I wasn’t aware that two weeks had passed. It was daybreak, and l just thought that it was the next morning.’
‘I see.’
‘My body wouldn’t move and I was aching all over. I thought that all I could do was to call an ambulance and stay in hospital.’
‘I see.’
‘But I didn’t have a phone because I hadn’t thought I would need one. I was going to stand up, go down to the bottom of the building and use the phone or catch a cab. I didn’t want to inconvenience anyone else, you see.’
‘I see.’
‘But I couldn’t stand up. I was suffering from exhaustion. I simply couldn’t move.’
‘Well, I’m not surprised, if you were on the floor for two weeks.’
‘I was on my back, looking up at the ceiling and thinking, oh what a sad life it has been. Knowing I’d wasted my life and recognising that part of the blame lay with me, I placed a hand on my chest. And that’s when I realised that I had breasts. I mean, that they were no longer flat. I was in my pyjamas at the time and I slid my hand up under them to find them surprisingly full and firm. Then I realised that my whole body felt bloated and suddenly worried in an instant that I might have caught some strange disease, involuntarily crying out “Aargh”, kind of like you do.’
‘You’d become younger.’
‘Well, it took me quite a while to realise it. I wasn’t hungry. Just tired and unable to get up. I remained like that for two days and I still find it all very strange when I think about it now…’
‘Two days?
‘Well, you see, I wasn’t uncomfortable if I just stayed lying down. The only problem was that I couldn’t get up. I think God had perhaps done that on purpose so that I wouldn’t be too surprised to suddenly see myself younger.’
‘But you could see your body.’
‘That’s right. When I looked at my hands, there were surprisingly young. They were plump, not bony, and all my old blotches were gone. My breasts were big and white. And when I touched my hair, which had been thinning, I noticed it was thicker. I brushed my hair over my eyes and found that it was black. At that moment, I thought I’d either gone mad or had died. That I was in another world.’
‘When did you first look into a mirror?’
‘Well… I suddenly became very hungry, and I could feel strength returning to every part of my body. Isn’t that strange? To regain strength by becoming hungry.’
‘It’s already a pretty strange story. Nothing can surprise me any more.’
‘And I knew I didn’t have a hand mirror. Just a small mirror on my powder compact. So when I got up, the first thing I did before anything else was to grab my handbag, pour out its contents and look into the small round mirror.’
‘And you were about forty-two or -three.’
‘I couldn’t tell how old I was. Even now, I feel like I could be both about thirty or twenty-two, -three. I might actually even be flitting between those ages.’
‘Were you glad?’
‘I don’t know how many days it took to feel that way. I was afraid. I was hungry and wanted to go outside, but I was afraid to do so. I wanted to look at myself more carefully in the mirror, but I was afraid to do that too. Another couple of days later, I finally calmed down, accepted what had happened to me and went to the Kizuki home in Yokohama. I called them beforehand so as not to surprise them. I told them I would be going over that night and that they shouldn’t be alarmed. But the warning didn’t really help. Everyone except the children, including my sister-in-law and nephew, had known me when I was in my forties, so you can imagine their surprise. My sister in-law started feeling unwell and collapsed to her knees the moment she saw me at the front entrance. My nephew didn’t think it was me, and he let me into the house, saying that he could “clearly tell from your face that you are related to my aunt” and he would “listen to my situation”; but in the end he got all confused, and I was asked to leave.’
‘They didn’t believe you?’
‘It’s no surprise. To become ready to believe something like this, you would have to give up on life at least once.’
‘Are you referring to me?’
‘Yes.’
She looked at me
for the first time and smiled. Then pushing herself up, she kissed me on my lips and I felt a trace of lipstick linger there.
‘The first night I was at the hotel with you, I began to feel that same sluggishness. An indescribable dullness began welling up around my chest.’
‘I can’t quite understand the feeling of dullness in the chest.’
‘Well, that’s the only way I can describe it. I knew that feeling right away. When I thought back to the first time it had happened, I remembered that my chest had been heavy for about two to three days before. I sneaked out of the room and went back to Yokohama by taxi.’
‘You said you were living in Tokyo.’
‘I was just being cautious. The next night I was hit by another strong wave of this. And once again, I squirmed around with my mouth open. My body felt extremely heavy, like every muscle in my body was rotting, and it made me want to stab a knife into myself just for distraction. It lasted for two, three hours, before it reached a point where I couldn’t take it any more. That’s when I lost consciousness.’
‘For another two weeks?’
‘For more than twenty days. Twenty-two to be exact.’
And you didn’t become emaciated?’
‘I had just become younger. And before I knew it, I was this age. But how much longer can I stay this way? My last phase lasted from the end of January until the eighth of March. This phase started at the beginning of April and it’s the seventeenth of May today. It could come at any moment. The sluggishness will hit me once more and I’ll lose consciousness again—’
‘But it might not. You might be able to remain the way you are now for ever.’
‘A sixty-seven-year-old woman stay this way for ever? Do you really think people get that lucky?’
‘There are plenty of episodes of people getting lucky like that. Take me, for instance. An unremarkable middle-aged man who had his way with a beautiful young woman like you.’
‘I’m afraid.’ She placed her head against my neck. ‘I don’t like it,’ she said, pressing her lips against me repeatedly. I held her tight to calm her down and felt her soft sobbing.
I had no intention of telling her, but I was a little hurt. Mutsuko had been this young since early April, but she had only come to see me almost ten days into May. And even then she’d disappeared after just two days. I had hoped that I meant more to her than that. After all, she had said that I was all she had. So what had she been doing all that time? Setting out to experience all things in life? Trying to gain so many experiences in such a short time? I’m sure that was exactly what she had been doing. But if she were to become younger again, I hoped that she would come and see me before a month had passed.
As soon as this thought passed through my mind, it suddenly hit me. I didn’t believe she’d be able to remain the way she was. Human beings tend to want to ascribe rules and find patterns for everything. She’d become a woman in her forties. Then one in her twenties. So next time she should be in her teens or younger. That kind of thing. But if reality followed rules like that, then she wouldn’t be this young now. Realising how foolish I’d been to make such assumptions myself, I saw how small and insignificant I really was.
‘It’s a bit bare, this room,’ I said, wanting to change my mood.
‘Well, I wanted to live in Tokyo.’
‘But even so.’
‘Because all the other spaces in the building are offices, there’s nobody around at night. So if I have to let out a cry, there will be no one to get suspicious.’
‘Let out a cry?’
‘You know. When that sluggishness overtakes me. I’m sure I must let out the most terrible cries.’
‘But surely if that was the case, your neighbours at the apartment in Yokohama wouldn’t have left you alone for two weeks and twenty-odd days.’
‘No, I was holding back my cries then, even up to the point where I lost consciousness. Here it’s not a problem to cry out.’
‘You could maybe cry out for other reasons too…’
‘Don’t be silly. No. Let me go. I must look terrible. After all this crying.’
‘I love the dishevelled face of a beautiful woman.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?
‘I guess it means I like beautiful women when they aren’t consumed with beauty.’
‘Well, I’m not a beautiful woman.’
‘Actually, I’ve done a thorough investigation and I must let you know that it’s official — you really are a beautiful woman.’
I pushed her down onto the sofa and did exactly as I desired.
Afterwards, Mutsuko showed me something unexpected. She opened a cardboard box, which she was using as a wardrobe, that had underwear stacked neatly inside. That wasn’t what was unexpected, though. What was unexpected was when she reached her hand down between the garments and pulled out a navy, velvet package. It was about the size of a large lunch box and a thick rubber band was wrapped around it in a cross.
‘What do you think it is? She gave me a teasing smile.
‘I suppose it’s not just a block.’
‘No.’
‘A Rorschach test?’
She sniggered.
‘Uncut diamonds?’
‘Of course not.’
‘A royal jelly drink, or ginseng?’
‘Come on, you’re being silly.’
‘A box with your umbilical cord in it? No, really. I’m not being silly. There was one at home, although it wasn’t that big. No, you know what — I give up. There’s nothing in my life that I need to wrap in velvet and stash among my underwear, so l’m afraid I can’t even begin to imagine what it might be.’
She took off the rubber band without saying a word, then unfolded the cloth to reveal a small pistol.
‘It’s real,’ she said.
‘I’m surprised,’ I said. And I really was.
‘I bought it.’
‘Why? No, where? How?’
I tend to assun1e other people think more or less along the same lines as me usually, so when I imagined Mutsuko buying a gun I was shockingly reminded of the sheer gulf between one person and another.
‘I guess it’s what you call a Beretta,’ I offered.
‘It’s a Colt Pocket Automatic.’
The words didn’t suit her.
‘Is that so?’
‘It’s not that I know a lot about it. I was told when I bought it. Apparently it’s a Model M.’
‘Where did you buy it?’
‘In Yokosuka.’
‘From a foreigner?’
‘I was approached.’
‘Why?’
‘I went to this scary-looking place.’
‘You slept with a foreigner, didn’t you?’
I could feel my gaze turn stern. I suddenly felt a pang of jealousy.
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘But why would someone try to sell a gun to a woman unless he had something going with her? Look, I know don’t have the right to say who you can and can’t sleep with. But Yokosuka?’
‘I’ve always wanted to go there. My father was in the navy and he’d worked in Yokosuka for a long time. I hadn’t been there since I went there for the Navy Day celebrations as a small child, so I went there on a whim. I’m sure the port has changed a lot, but it felt really familiar. So did the smell of the sea. After that, I thought I’d try to go somewhere a little scary.’
‘By yourself?’
‘Of course by myself.’
‘But why “of course”?’
‘That’s just how it was.’
‘But why would you want to go to a scary place all by yourself?
‘I just wanted to. Of course, I felt scared, but I wasn’t a young girl and bad things don’t happen so commonly, so I walked into a bar. It was almost empty and it was dark and dirty, but it wasn’t scary at all. There was one black man and he smiled at me and we had a beer together.’
‘That’s enough.’
‘It isn’t. He said he wasn’t
a soldier. That he was a sailor. He asked me to go to a hotel with him. I told him I had no intention of doing that, and he just nodded, and that was all. It was like he asked just to be polite. Then we had a second beer together. He’d bought the first round, so I bought the second.’
‘Did he bring up the pistol?’
‘No, actually it was me. I meant it as a joke. Just because it was that kind of atmosphere. I asked him if he had a pistol. He didn’t answer, but his eyes were smiling. Then when I left the bar, he followed me out and asked me to go into an alley with him. When I refused, he whispered that he wanted to sell me a gun.’
‘In English?’
‘Well, I can understand that much.’
Of course a young woman would, but I was thinking that Mutsuko was sixty-seven years old.
‘He gave me a price of 100,000 yen, so I said no way and he reduced it to 80,000 then 60,000. I thought it would be nice to own a gun for 60,000 yen.’
‘How about bullets?’
‘I have some.’
She skilfully slid out the magazine, showed it to me, then snapped it back in.
‘That’s all there is to it,’ she let out a wry laugh. ‘Nothing dramatic happened.’
‘And you weren’t followed?
‘From Yokosuka? Of course not.’
‘I guess it’s okay if you just want to keep it.’
‘But I want to use it.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘I do, I want to shoot it. I want to blast away any worries. Want to really do something. Will you join me?’
‘ln what?’
‘Armed robbery and extortion.’
I let out a laugh of disbelief.
‘I’m not joking.’ She glared at me and her voice suddenly turned serious. ‘I want to do it, even if l have to do it on my own.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I want to. Because I don’t know when that sluggishness will hit me again.’
Her voice quivered. ‘It’ll be fun. Scaring someone who looks strong. Don’t you want to do it? You would if you could, wouldn’t you?’
‘I don’t mean to change the subject, but do you want to get some dinner.’
‘I do.’
Was Mutsuko testing my worth as a man?
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