Dark Lanterns

by Zoe Drake

"I can't relax," Hubby said at dinner time.

  He looked quite relaxed to Ritsuko. He lay spread out on the cushion, his knees under the kotatsu heater, listlessly watching a TV variety show.

  "Why not?"

  "You know why not? Things are getting worse. I don't know how long it'll be until my company goes bankrupt."

  "But you've been saying that for the past two years. Just do your best. Things will be all right."

  Hubby took a deep slurp of his miso soup and avoided her gaze. "We might have to sell the car."

  "What?" Ritsuko almost dropped her bowl of rice. "What are you talking about? We need the car. How am I going to take Baby out?"

  Hubby screwed up his face. "You don't understand. We've got to do something."

  "Why don't you take out another loan?"

  "Yeah, that's your answer to everything." He slammed down his bowl of soup, so hard the remnants splashed over the side and spattered the tablecloth. "Your loans, your debts — that's the reason we're in this mess!"

  In the corner of the living room, Baby started crying.

  The next day, Ritsuko awoke with a positive feeling of determination. She prepared Hubby's breakfast of rice and grilled fish, and his lunchbox of rice, pickles and deep-fried chicken, all the while her anticipation growing. Today she was going to escape the feeling of depression left over from last night's argument, like an unwanted relative in the New Year's holiday.

  Today she was going shopping.

  Taking the Yamanote line from Shinjuku to Aoyama was torture. When she finally walked through the automatic doors of the first department store, a profound feeling of calm enveloped her. She felt herself slipping into a trance as she slowly paraded past the designer labels, examining each in turn. No thoughts. No mind. Time passed outside on the Omote-sando, but it could not touch her here.

  Baby had come along this time. He sat back in his harness strapped to the front of her torso, head lolling, eyes rolling as he stared over her shoulder, mouth agape and brown eyes wide in pantomime of surprise. Baby could share in the excitement, she had thought, Baby can see what the world is made of. But the shop assistants were beginning to irritate her. They were fawning over her, as was appropriate, but they were even more obsequious to baby. Her attitude changing, Ritsuko became sullen and tight-lipped, requesting to be left alone as she browsed, flicking her hand in an imperious gesture.

  Burdened down with an impressive weight of dresses and shoes, the names of the stores picked out in maroon, gold and emerald on the bags, she walked up the Omote-sando towards Harajuku station, the Christmas illuminations of the trees a dazzling display of stars and Disney characters. The avenue was crowded with shoppers and business people, and she was gradually swallowed by an amorphous, many-headed mass.

  Strangely, though, she felt alone. (Alone, with Baby of course.) Her identity was intact; the names on the labels protected her. They were her lucky charms. She read off every brand in her mind, feeling stronger with every foreign-sounding syllable.

  Gradually, she became aware of two things at the same time. First, a slight buzzing and hissing in her ears. Secondly, the memory of Kaori's words. What had she called it? Tsuji-ura. You walk down the street, and listen to the conversations of passing strangers. You pluck out the sounds of the future.

  "The name of your true love," Kaori had said. An affair? Someone else in her life? Would someone murmur into her ear, his fingers cooling her skin with sudden shock?

  She would try it.

  She found it was quite easy to shift attention from her eyes to her ears, once she started to concentrate. The sounds of the street reared up around her, a tapestry woven from taxi horns, footsteps, the recorded jingles and Christmas songs playing outside shop entrances, the childlike melodies of the pedestrian crossings. A rhythmic sizzling with faint percussion booms sounded close by, and she realized it was another pedestrian's MP3.

  Slowing her pace to almost a shuffle, she guided her way through the avenue of ambient sound. Everything around her was noise. It was the voice of the city she heard; a nonstop muttered conversation with itself. But there were no words. She listened to the people talking as they rushed past her, but it was only breath. Only noise. The meanings slipped away from her like water from a DKNY raincoat.

  Ritsuko felt a faint sadness at this, but could not get too upset. Her concentration had displaced her from emotions such as sorrow or anger; she had become a neutral observer. If someone stepped into her path, she was sure that the stranger would walk right through her body, as if she was a ghost.

  At her breast, Baby gurgled.

  Later, back in the small back garden of her own house, she remembered her experience and found herself repeating it. In the chilly November air, she was raking up the fallen autumn leaves that littered the grass. and the afternoon stretched out around her.

  She heard the voices of the city, drifting in from the streets nearby. The constant surf of the traffic gathered on her skin; the metallic, recorded voice of the sodai gomi collectors, with the precise measured tones of the female voice requesting old computers, television sets, furniture, all the electronic goods that the city hall services would not carry away. The barking of a dog. The wailing of ambulance sirens, and the driver's voice, amplified by loudspeaker; "Please move your cars to the side. Please move your cars to the side."

  The rake snagged an obstruction in her path and she stopped. She looked down.

  The wet leaves had clumped together to form a single, sticky mass. They had entangled themselves in the metal fingers of the rake. She pulled at the shaft, but the mess would not break free of the grass.

  As she looked down in disgust, a score of tiny holes opened in the leafy mass, elongated, rippled, and then spoke. "Take care of me," they said in unison, in a muddy wet whisper. "Take care of me."

  It was Hubby's voice.

  Ritsuko let go of the rake and hurried back in through the French window. She sat down on the sofa, shaking, sick to her stomach.

  From the room above, she could hear Baby gurgling, laughing to himself.

  She snapped up the remote and clicked the TV on. Some Korean TV drama with dubbed Nihongo. She grabbed her cigarettes and an ashtray from the kitchen and lit up a Kool. Baby carried on gurgling upstairs. Shut up, she thought. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.

  Her fingers were shaking and wouldn't stop. She felt perspiration breaking out over her forehead, neck, armpits, and back — she had a sudden urge to drench her whole body in perfume. The more she wanted to forget it, the more she tried to concentrate on the TV, the more she trembled. She thought of leaving the house, of running, escaping back to the Omote-Sando boutiques and Christmas lights.

  Baby laughed.

  "I don't know what time I'll be home," Hubby grunted as he put his shoes on in the parlor.

  "Come back safely," Ritsuko said. "I'll leave something in the oven for you."

  He grunted again and left the house, ready to squeeze himself onto a bus, so that he could squeeze himself onto the train.

  Ritsuko silently washed the dishes. Rice, miso soup, grilled fish. She always made it a point to cook him a proper breakfast; he should have nothing to complain about. Another normal day with Baby was beginning, and everything would be fine.

  Nothing like yesterday would happen. She must try to forget the leaves, the whispering leaves; they would make her ill. Perhaps it was something she ate. The news had said that eating food with the wrong kind of bacteria could have all kinds of effects; fevers, stomach cramps, headaches. Hallucinations? Perhaps that was it.

  But she felt so restless. If only she could go out — if only she had someone to take care of Baby. She needed a new pair of shoes, she needed a handbag, she needed a new winter coat so that she would be able to go out in the first place ...

  What else did she need?

  She ran a bath, brushed her teeth and soaked in the bath for a while. She could hear Baby wheezing and snuffling in the front room. Afterwards, she took a few of her be
st dresses out of the closet, hung them up to look at them. She had felt so happy when she bought them. Now, she felt as if she was splitting into two people; one, the energetic wife, and another, who wanted to roll herself up in her own disappointment and go to sleep.

  She dressed herself in the comfortable Alba Rosa top and slacks she wore for the housework and, before she really knew what she was doing, left the kitchen through the back door and stepped through the crisp air into the garage.

  She eased herself past the Toyota sedan that Hubby used to drive her and Baby around at weekends, and moved to the tansu — the old chest of drawers — that one day, they would throw out. The garage held sodai gomi, furniture that Hubby had brought from his old apartment but was too big to fit in their house. The chest of drawers, the armchair, the hi-fi ... one day, Hubby said, he would get around to having it taken away. One day.

  She knelt down and opened the left door of the chest, and looked inside. Bulky packages in plastic and brand-name stores lay piled up inside. These were the things she could not show Hubby. The shoes and the sweaters and the credit card receipts that she kept hidden. It wasn't his business; they had agreed to keep separate bank accounts, even though they lived together. He would never look in here, he was good like that; he left her things alone, didn't ask many questions.

  She heard a sound from inside the house. Uh-oh, she thought, but before she could stand up, she heard something else — from much closer.

  "Ritsuko-chan ..."

  She stood up and the world swayed in front of her eyes. She felt the strength draining out of her. Although she refused to turn her head, she could see the armchair next to the chest, she could see the rip in the middle of the backrest that was flapping open and closed, an obscene mouth, and a voice that was old and dry and horribly withered, calling her name.

  "Ritsuko-chan ... don't leave me ..."

  This time, it was her father's voice.

  She scrambled past the car, ran back into the house, and locked the kitchen door. In the front room, Baby was wailing as if he shared her fear. And fear; yes, fear is what it was. Fear of the whispering that came from the garage, the muttering and whispering rising around the house to seal it off from the rest of the world, the whispering that she could hear at every window.

  She picked up Baby, held him close, shut her eyes and stood helpless in the middle of the front room. "Don't worry, Baby," she said through her tears. "It's going to be all right, Baby."

  Baby was heavier than usual.

  She shifted position, moving Baby from her right shoulder from her left, and as the head swung into view she looked straight into Baby's face.

  It wasn't Baby. The head had swollen, and the eyes and mouth gaped like a deep-sea fish. The skin was hideously wrinkled. The eyes bulged further out as she stared in speechless horror and disgust. The worst horror was that the aged face reminded her one second of her husband, then her father, then her grand-father, but she knew it was none of them.

  Baby's arms closed around her neck, and he pulled himself onto her chest.

  She staggered back, unable to believe how heavy it was. It was like a lead weight at the sports club. She lost her footing, and fell, her head crashing into the wall. Everything went black for a moment. Then she stars; first white, then red.

  Then her vision cleared. Baby squatted on her chest, its inhuman face staring down into hers.

  "Take care of me ... take care of me..."

  The pain was incredible. Baby's weight pressed down on her chest, growing heavier every second. She couldn't scream. She couldn't even breathe.

  "Take care of me ..." The whispering had entered the house and began to fill the room around her.

  The windows grew dark, and slowly faded to black.

  The iridescent dreams of machines and men swam through the viscous air of Kabukicho.

  Awash in the smog, the coral reefs of skyscrapers stood massive and serene, bejeweled with the neon eyes of artificial life; winking, luring, warning. The voice of the city gave forth its mermaid call, speaking from the cash machines, the elevators, the storefronts; it shrilled from the advertising screens that swarmed and multiplied upon the coral. Shoals of boneless mollusk humanity surged back and forth, appearing and disappearing with the tides of day and night.

  Tetsuaki Sugita, sushi chef, swaggered along the Kabukicho streets as the December day oozed slowly into dusk. About him, the haunters of the red-light zone busked their wares; the hustlers shimmied in their ankle-length down jackets, pressing flyers and telephone numbers into his hands. The wet tongues of hostesses peeked at him through pink lips, as the girls bowed to him from softly lit doorways. Cars droned, computerized billboards teased. Sugita glanced about him with the disinterested contentment that came with endless nights sated with middle-age, sake and pornography.

  A cold wind blew whirlpools of trash around his slacks. Shielding his eyes from the grit, he looked up at the giant sign above him; Salon Visu — Pachinko. Two neon dinosaurs clawed at each other in clockwork rage. Sugita grunted in satisfaction. A new pachinko parlor? When had that gone up? Who cared. Here in Tokyo, any building over thirty years old was ripe for demolition, making way for a new cell-phone shop, a new game centre, a new shot bar. He would kill some time before he resumed his evening shift killing prawns.

  As he entered through the sliding doors, the roar of the interior broke over him, drenching him in his metallic tide. Recorded announcements of welcome; frenetic J-Pop blasting out of one speaker and Eurobeat blasting from another; the amplified voice of the host, reading out a rapid-fire list of which machines were winning at any given moment; and above all else, the deafening, relentless, crash of the ball-bearings as they surged into the rows of bagatelle Pachinko games lining the shop. Sugita picked up a complimentary rice-cracker from the tray near the door and crunched it thoughtfully as he paid for a cardboard box of ball bearings from the dispenser.

  The place was quite full. The usual mix of off-duty salarymen, students in Uniqlo check shirts and baggy jeans, aggressive-looking old women. With his practiced eye, Sugita scanned each machine, looking for the main chance.

  It was mid-way through December, and customers were looking for a few winnings to pad out their year-end expenses; come January the first, and Sugita was expected to give toshidama envelopes of cash to the three brats his son and daughter-in-law had squeezed out. Mendokusai. Better find a good machine. At least in December the shops paid out more, enticing the customers to come back and spend more. He glanced at the areas he favored, near the toilets, near the front entrance: occupied. He peered towards the back of the store, into the haze of cigarette smoke, and ...

  There!

  There was the machine he was looking for.

  Sugita walked down the rows and eased himself into a plastic seat between a bone-thin chain-smoking old man and a fat, dead-eyed college student. He put down his cardboard box on the tray next to the seat and sat back, letting his muscles relax. Admiring the upright board of the machine in front of him, and the identical design of the machines around him, Sugita fed the balls into the delivery chute, ready for the start of play.

  He'd never seen a machine like this before. A new shop, with new machines — yeah. A good sign; they'd be looking for customers that they could keep.

  He lit up a Seven Stars and then fished in his pocket for his Bron cough mixture. Clearing his throat, he took a swig of the codeine-laced syrup and then another drag of his smoke.

  He was ready. He clicked his tongue and twisted the black handle with his right hand, giving just the correct amount of pressure, and watched the balls go flying up into the main playing tube of the bagatelle. He had already seen, at a glance, that the arrangement of the nails on this board was as close to perfect as he could wish for. Slight degrees of alignment, a leaning toward this way instead of that, would direct the balls to the bottom of the board, to drop into the chakka hole — and net him some well-needed cash.

  It was not just the ease of playing
that made it a perfect machine; the design of the board held a beauty that Sugita rarely saw outside of a temple. The board was filled with a circle of fire, and the game played out within its radius. A brilliantly colored quincunx filled the interior; figures in monk-like robes floated serenely around the pins and the windmills. A manga-style Oni demon resided at the center of the circle, and outside the wheel, clutching the perimeter with claws of iron and baring its fearsome jaws, was the dreaded Ema, the Lord of Yoni — the land of the dead. The familiar face that used to chase him through his childhood nightmares.

  Sugita smoked, relaxed, and played the game. The balls dropped just where he wanted them, and the score mounted. As each ball hit the delicate tulip shape of the chakka and slid through the jaws, the petals stayed open for a few seconds, and if Sugita was lucky a couple more balls would shoot down the gullet while it was so invitingly open.

  After a while, a sudden diarrhea of ball-bearings in his catch-tray told him he'd hit the jackpot, and the 'game over' sign lit up. A good catch. Scooping up the balls into the box, Sugita grinned, muttering "Chakka, chakka" to himself, and went to convert his winnings into cash. The little booth around the corner was not supposed to do this, legally speaking, but the habits of pachinko parlor owners were more deeply ingrained than the law.

  As the doors to the entrance slid open, he paused.

  He sniffed the air suspiciously.

  Cherry blossoms floated on a soft Spring breeze. Groups of young people in casual wear crowded the street, singing the school graduation song Hotaru no Hikari.

  Sugita knew that something was wrong, but he couldn't figure out what. He suddenly realized that he couldn't remember where he was supposed to be going. He'd finished work, so he was on his way home ... go to Shinjuku station, catch the train back to ... back to ...

  He shrugged, and went back inside. There was still lots of time before the last train.

  It was easy to find a new machine, because they all seemed to have the same new design. He sat down again, prepared to repeat his lucky streak.