‘You kept running on and on by yourself. Not even pulling me along by the hand!’ said Mutsuko, sitting down on the sofa and kicking the cardboard box in front of her. I guess even sixty-seven-year-olds do things like that if they have the strength to do so.
I sat down on the bed. Finally letting go of the pistol, I opened and closed my hand repeatedly to relieve the stiffness.
‘I can’t believe you could even think of taking a poster instead of running away,’ said Mutsuko, glaring at me.
‘That was the plan.’
‘But there was no point. You surprised me, running to the back instead of running away!’
‘I wanted to go as far as I could.’
‘Then you should have taken the poster. Instead you just touched the glass, then ran away ahead of me.’
‘I thought that was as far as I could go.’
‘You should have taken a shot or two. Then they would have been more obedient.’
‘If that’s what you wanted, then you should have taken the gun. I did try to give it to you!’
‘I felt bad, making a man follow me unprotected.’
‘Oh come on!’
‘Really, I did. What if I’d just run off and made you follow? You’d have been hurt, wouldn’t you?’
‘No I wouldn’t. It’s easy to do nothing at the time and then criticise afterwards.’
‘Well, what could I have done? What could I have done there?’
‘You hardly said a thing.’
‘What did you want me to say? Don’t criticise me just because you couldn’t do it right.’
‘It’s not that I didn’t do it right. I did more than enough. And on top of that, we were able to get back here without getting caught. I would say it was pretty successful.’
‘But they saw our faces.’
‘Well, there was no way for us to hide them. You’re the one who rushed us into it. You rushed me, saying a crowd of people would be coming out in five minutes.’
‘Now I’m worried. I’m worried about you. You could get caught tomorrow if you go out.’
‘There’s no point in worrying. I don’t mean to sound funny, but I have a very typical face. As long as I’m not caught in the act, I think I can get away by just pretending I know nothing about it.’
‘Don’t use that tone with me. I’m just worried about you.’
Her voice weakened and broke. Then she started to cry. Unable to take it any longer, I stood up and walked over to the kitchen and poured myself a whisky with water.
I didn’t want to get into an argument like this, with her of all people. An argument just like those I have with my wife or the other woman I once had an affair with. I didn’t want an argument like this, not with Mutsuko. But even though her circumstances were exceptional, to say the least, it didn’t change the fact she was a woman. It was pure sentiment to wish for a different kind of relationship, and to feel disappointed when it didn’t go the way I hoped.
‘Do you want a drink?’ I asked. ‘A whisky?’
There was no response. Given that I was making the effort to patch things up, you’d have thought the least she could do was respond.
‘Do you want a whisky?’ I asked again.
‘Yes, I’ll have one.’
She said this in a voice that was barely audible, but I could tell that she didn’t want to argue any more either. I poured whisky and water into the teacup and returned to the room. Mutsuko had moved from the sofa to the bed, where I had been sitting until just moments ago. She was holding the pistol. I handed the whisky to Mutsuko and she took it in her left hand, while thanking me in a small voice. I sat down on the sofa, leaned my head against the back of it and closed my eyes in an attempt to relax. But the adrenalin was still flowing and I couldn’t even feel the fatigue. I thought I’d gradually feel tired if I drank the whisky.
When I opened my eyes the pistol was pointed right at me, with Mutsuko’s pale face behind it. I immediately sensed it wasn’t a joke, but I managed to make a wry smile anyway and say, ‘Stop it now. It’s not a nice feeling.’
‘Don’t move,’ she said, her voice quivering.
I stayed completely still. I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t find the words. Mutsuko stood up slowly and threw away the cup in her left hand while keeping the gun, her right hand and her face trained on me — as if her left side were somehow acting independently, unaware of the actions of the rest of her body.
‘What are you thinking?’ I said, finally opening my mouth.
‘If you move, I’ll shoot. I honestly will,’ she said, keeping her eyes on my forehead. The barrel of the gun slowly came closer.
‘I don’t care if l die,’ I said. And I meant it. I didn’t feel like fighting for my life. l had suddenly given up on everything. There probably wouldn’t be much to look forward to even if I did keep living, and Mutsuko had already given me plenty to be glad about.
‘I’ve started to feel that feeling,’ said Mutsuko.
‘But—’
‘Don’t look. Don’t look at me,’ she screamed.
I felt something strike me in the head. She had hit me with the pistol. Then I felt it again. And again. And again. I shouted out and felt like my voice belonged to someone else. I felt blood running down my forehead and into my eyes. Then nothing. Nothing but darkness.
5
Of the rolls of film on which I’d photographed Mutsuko, I took the two twenty-four-exposure ones photographed outside to a photo shop inside Shinjuku station on the Odakyu Line and got forty-nine pictures developed. Mutsuko could be clearly seen in each of them. Well, most of them, anyway — I must admit a few were rather out of focus.
I’d been wearing a bandage on my head for a couple of weeks and I still occasionally had the feeling that Mutsuko might be nothing more than a product of my imagination. Whenever I did feel that way, I’d open my commuter-pass holder and take a look at a shot of Mutsuko that had turned out particularly well — one I’d taken on the corner of the Mitsui building. There were also many times when I’d suddenly get the urge to look at the image while I was on a train. When I felt that way, I’d get pleasure out of resisting the temptation to look until I had reached my station.
When I’d regained consciousness that day, Mutsuko had already gone, so I caught a taxi home. The bleeding from my head hadn’t been too bad and a towel had been wrapped around the wound. Both at the company and at home, I’d gotten away with the lie that I’d been attacked while I was drunk.
Although I couldn’t go so far as to say I’d appreciated her kindness in wrapping a towel around my head, I couldn’t find it in myself to be angry with Mutsuko. After all, I could understand her not wanting others to see her transformation in progress. Instead, I simply wondered where she’d gone and felt sorry for her, knowing she’d have to find somewhere to stay on her own.
In the middle of June the company suddenly undertook a restructuring, and the built-to-order projects department was abolished just like that. My new post was acting head of the public relations research section. Despite the name, however, we didn’t actually have our own section, but instead occupied a couple of desks in the corner of Headquarters public relations department. Me and my one subordinate were supposed to ‘liaise’ (run errands, in other words) between the sales staff at the housing exhibits and the members of the public relations department. Our days consisted of going from one housing exhibit to another, covering all eleven exhibits in Saitama, Chiba, Tokyo and Kanagawa between just the two of us. It wasn’t meaningless work and I didn’t slack off. But I didn’t regain any desire for promotion or feel any sense of renewed loyalty to the company. All I was concerned about was how I could see Mutsuko again and how I could develop the nude photographs of her I’d taken that night in the hotel room. I had, after all, purposely taken those shots in black and white as I’d thought it would make them easier to develop. But now that I actually wanted to do so, I was finding it considerably more difficult to get them done than I’d imagine
d.
I went to a camera enthusiast’s store to see an exhibition of do-it-yourself darkrooms. I’d even asked the sales assistant about the possibility of developing photographs without a darkroom, but it sounded like it’d be difficult to carry the materials into my home unnoticed. It would have looked suspicious if I rather suddenly took a new interest in photography and, considering that development involved steps such as ‘running the film under the tap for thirty minutes’ or ‘hanging the negatives up to dry naturally in the room’, it would take an extraordinary amount of excuses to develop the pictures and it’d be highly likely that my wife would find them. If that happened, I’d not only have the shame of being found with pictures of a naked woman and her private parts, but she’d also find out about the affair. In the end, unable to do anything with them, I put the two twenty-four-exposure films of Mutsuko naked in a paper bag with the negatives and prints of Mutsuko taken outside, then stashed them away in my desk at work.
As for my wife, she’d reached a point where she could no longer manage her town magazine with just three members of staff, and she began looking for additional help by recruiting ‘members’ — calling on people to do editing, research, distribution and ad sales for no pay.
‘It’ll mean I won’t be able to secure an income for myself like before, but the money that comes in will still belong to the company,’ she explained, sounding a little defensive. But of course I was fully in favour of it. If she had that kind of organisational ability, I could respect her for it. And the more she left me alone, the less guilty I’d feel about the things I was doing. It seemed to me that the best thing the two of us could do was to maintain this slightly distant relationship until our old age. ‘But are there really people who are willing to work for no pay?’
‘There are. Some places even charge a membership fee and they still get lots of members. It’s a question of whether we can provide them with tasks that they find truly challenging and rewarding.’
I was a little stunned to hear my wife say this kind of thing seriously. l had thought that it was a way of gathering bored old women and coaxing them into providing free labour, but that kind of thought wasn’t in my wife’s mind at all. I felt inferior somehow and was careful not to make any sarcastic comments. I had no right to be critical of her anyway. This new passion of hers was a lot healthier than the things occupying my mind.
I mean, what was I doing? I was taking out Mutsuko’s photo from my commuter-pass wallet under the tables of cafés and staring at it. And I was chasing young girls with my eyes. Well, chasing for one girl in particular, as I’d become convinced that the Mutsuko I would next see would be a girl — only I didn’t know how old she would be now. There didn’t seem to be any strict pattern in the way she went from being sixty-seven to forty and then to her mid twenties. Would she appear as a teenage girl or maybe even younger? It was abnormal to be thinking such things, but thinking back on what I had experienced, it seemed to me like a perfectly natural prediction. On the other hand, there were also times when a sharp sense of fear skimmed my chest. A fear that I might never see her again. I tried not to think such thoughts, as it brought on an unbearable feeling of solitude. But I couldn’t help thinking about how much she’d enriched my life. And when I thought of this, I could easily forgive her for the hard-headedness she’d shown on our last evening together. I could be very understanding when it came to Mutsuko. lf only she’d appear. If only she’d show me her face. To stop this hopeless feeling of need that was consuming me through my waking and sleeping hours.
It was a rainy night in early July. The official end of the rainy season had been followed by three hot, sunny days, but the rain had returned that Saturday. The temperature was too cool to just be in short sleeves and I was wearing a summer jacket in the living room of a show home — our company’s Scandinavian-style two-storey house in a large housing exhibit located along Loop No. 8 in Yoga, to be exact. The sparse flow of visitors completely stopped after 8 p.m. and though it was decided that we would stay open until 9 p.m. on the summer weekends, there was nothing you could do when it rained like this. So I let the two young sales guys leave at eight, but as for me, I had no reason to rush home.
‘There was a time when I used to be in sales. I can manage for an hour on my own.’ That’s what I told the two, as they’d already worked hard enough for the day. They wouldn’t have been allowed to claim overtime even if they had stayed, as the logic at our company for people in sales was unchanging — dictating that ‘You can’t do your job properly if you start claiming overtime pay.’ Bearing this in mind, you had to call it a day whenever you could.
I looked up at my reflection in the large sash window facing the garden. It was light inside, so you could hardly see the garden except for a small area through the bottom left corner of the four-pane window that was illuminated by a small garden light by the front door. There I was, staring at myself sitting on the sofa. A thin, middle-aged man on a brand-new but cheap living-room sofa gazing at his reflection. My hair was short. Just long enough to be parted. It had been clipped down to just a couple of centimetres so that my head wound could be treated and the rest of my hair had been trimmed to match the length. I was told that I should just keep it like that for the summer. But instead of going to a barber again, I had let it grow out and parted it once more.
Suddenly my heart jumped and I realised why I had been drawn to look out of the window. I had felt a presence in the garden. But as l couldn’t see the garden very well, I’d been staring at myself instead. There was something on the other side of me, or more precisely, inside of me. I looked harder and saw someone standing on the other side of my reflection. Though I couldn’t see very well, I was already filled with anticipation and almost fell over as I stood up. I managed to steady myself by leaning my right hand on the sofa, but then I hit my shin against the glass table in front of the sofa as I ran over to the light switch.
Thinking back, it was a strange thing to do. If I’d wanted to check if someone was there, I should have gone to the window and slid it open. But instead I had run towards the light switch. Perhaps I was afraid of opening the windows and suddenly coming face to face with Mutsuko. Whatever my reason, I flicked off all three switches and was confronted by a girl in the garden.
From the dark of the living room I could see what appeared to be a ghostly girl holding an umbrella silhouetted by the white of the garden light. I couldn’t make out her face, but I could tell she was looking at me. I moved away from the light switch and slowly, carefully, walked over to the window. I guessed this skinny girl must have been in high school.
I went to open the window.
‘Good evening,’ said Mutsuko. Her voice that of a young girl.
‘Good evening,’ I responded. She was beautiful. Tears welled up in my eyes and, unable even to ask her to come in, and with my eyes still on her, I began to sob. Mutsuko watched me in silence.
‘I cried too,’ said Mutsuko, in her young girl’s voice.
‘Did you?
I handed her a cloth at the front door to the show house and she wiped her feet, her white arms showing from her shorts sleeved blouse and her calves looking painfully thin.
‘Aren’t you cold?’
‘I am.’
I took off my jacket and put it round her. Mutsuko pulled it over herself without any protest and let me guide her into the living room.
‘I’ll make some coffee. Or would you like tea better?
I was unconsciously speaking to her like I would to a young girl.
‘I’ll take tea, thank you,’ she said as she sat down on a chair, striking me with her adult speech.
I moved towards the sideboard in the corner of the living room, where there was some instant coffee as well as green and black tea.
‘How did you know to find me here?
‘I made a phone call. And I was told you would probably be here.’
‘I was worried you might not find me. Both my phone number and office ha
ve changed.’
Mutsuko nodded and pulled my jacket closer around her chest.
‘Do you have a fever?’
She shook her head without looking at me.
‘Just tired.’
‘If only we had something to eat, like biscuits,’
Even as l poured the tea, I kept looking at this girl in front of me, feeling a need to keep an eye on her. This Mutsuko who sat motionless with her eyes on the floor exuded a beauty completely different from before: a pure kind of beauty, with everything unnecessary removed. Absent was the unsure feeling of a teenager. Missing was the clumsiness of a child. Instead this young beauty possessed the grace and refinement of sixty-seven years of life experience. I’m sure my perceptions were coloured in her favour, but the way in which she wiped her feet at the front entrance charmed me in a way that a normal cute girl could not. Maybe it was her casual yet efficient hand movements that drew me in and the way they seemed so adult.
‘I did a terrible thing,’ said the girl.
‘What did you do?’
I thought she’d done something and needed my help.
‘No, I did something terrible to you.’ She smiled and shot me a glance.
Inside, I knew it was her, but still I felt unsure of how to respond to the young girl in front of me who was apologising for something done by the Mutsuko in her twenties.
‘It’s okay,’ I said.
‘But are you okay?
‘I’m okay. Now, anyway.’
‘I didn’t know what else to do. You wouldn’t have been able to leave if I had lost consciousness there, and I didn’t want that. I’m not sure exactly how, but I’m quite certain that there must be a stage of my transformation that is pretty ugly. That’s something I don’t want to share with anyone. Perhaps like the way an elephant goes into hiding when it knows that it’s dying, I myself feel an instinct to retreat from the world. It’s a feeling so strong, I’ll do anything to hide myself. But afterwards, I couldn’t bear the thought of the terrible thing I did to you. How I could have killed you. I wanted to apologise.’
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