by Kanae Minato
This was the first time since high school chemistry class that I’d touched test tubes and beakers, and the first time I’d ever seen one of those analysis devices that cost tens of millions of yen. Gas chromatography, liquid chromatography—they explained what these square, boxy devices did, but it flew right over my head. But the company logo on the side of the machines did catch my eye.
Adachi Manufacturing. So these were made at the factory back in my hometown with its pure, clean air, I realized, and felt a sudden closeness to them. At the same time, a sense of disgust welled up, as if that town had been lying in wait for me. This complex mix of emotions stayed with me starting shortly after I was hired.
It was in the spring at the beginning of my third year in the company that the head of the laboratory approached me about a possible marriage candidate. This was right after I’d finished my two-year stint in the lab and had officially been assigned to the accounting department.
“He’s the son of a cousin of the managing director of one of our top clients. He saw you somewhere and asked to be formally introduced.”
If the head of the lab had spoken to me privately about this, I probably would have turned him down, even though it was one of the company executives asking. I wasn’t, after all, someone who could consider getting married. But he asked me—loudly—in front of my coworkers, just as all of us who’d joined the company at the same time were gathering our belongings in the lab in preparation for moving to the various departments to which we’d been assigned. He handed me the man’s photograph and personal history right then and there, and my coworkers crowded around, dying of curiosity.
I opened the folder with the photo of the man, and some of the other women voiced their approval—“Looking good!” When I looked at the man’s CV the men in the lab voiced theirs, too: “Impressive!” Seeing their reaction, the head of the lab said, “What do you think? Pretty amazing, eh?” egging them on. “He’s quite a catch for you,” some of my colleagues said. “This is your big chance!” I’d completely lost the opportunity to turn him down flat and ended up replying that I’d be happy to meet the man.
But why would an elite man like that, a graduate of a top university working in a top corporation, and a stylish-looking guy, ask to meet someone like me, a nothing office worker in a third-rate company, and think I might be a suitable marriage partner? What was I doing when he spotted me and got interested? Thoughts like these ran through my head over and over before the day of our first meeting, and I arrived at one conclusion: he must be mistaking me for someone else.
We avoided the usual stiff omiai meeting with go-betweens present and instead arranged for just the two of us to have dinner. But actually that made me feel depressed. I was earning my own living now and finally able to talk with men like everyone else, but I’d never had dinner alone with a man I’d just met.
I was wearing a springlike pink dress recommended by one of the busybody women hired at the same time as me. I arrived at the hotel lobby where we were to meet and soon after, a man came up, the same one in the photograph. This was Takahiro.
Very cheerfully and politely he apologized for asking my boss to set things up, and thanked me for coming on my day off. I floundered a bit, unable to get out a decent reply. We went up to the Italian restaurant on the top floor, and after settling in I handed him a copy of my own CV, unimpressive as it was.
But he set it on a corner of the table without a glance.
“You grew up in —— Town, didn’t you?” he asked.
I gulped when he mentioned the name of that town, the one with the pure, clean air. He went on, a smile on his face.
“I lived in that town too, for three years, from sixth grade in elementary school to the second year of junior high. We were two years apart in school, so I don’t imagine you remember me.”
Remember? How could I when I didn’t even know him? If he’d been in sixth grade that meant I had been in fourth. That was the year the factory was built and the school was suddenly crawling with transfer students.
“I’m sorry you don’t remember,” he said. “But we played together once. The French Doll Tour. You were the one in charge and took us to see all the dolls.”
Ah—so he was in that group. Still, I couldn’t recall which child he had been. But he changed the subject before I could relive the sense of defeat I’d had then, and before I could think much about the French Doll Robbery. He lived in the town three years, so naturally he knew about the robbery, perhaps even knew I’d been caught up in it. Maybe he was avoiding the topic out of consideration for me.
Takahiro worked in sales, in a division dealing with watches, so he had many opportunities to visit Switzerland, and as he was reminiscing about my hometown one day, how it reminded him a bit of Switzerland, he’d happened to catch sight of me again and had wanted to meet me.
“Where was this?” I asked, and he said it was at what he imagined was my company’s end-of-year party. I mentioned the name of a Chinese restaurant. “Yes!” he said. “That’s the place. I was there with a friend,” he said, “next to you, and thought, Do coincidences like this really happen?” He was even a little embarrassed, he said, wondering if it was fate that had brought us together again. Now, though, I see that he was just saying whatever came into his head.
After that Takahiro and I saw each other once or twice a week. We’d have dinner, or go to a movie or art museum, typical date scenarios, but strangely, when I was with him I felt free from the fear that someone was watching me. So much so that each time we said goodbye I wanted to stay with him a little longer.
But he never asked me to go to a hotel with him, or said he wanted to come up to my apartment, where I lived alone. And of course when he took me back to my building by taxi I never invited him in for a coffee or anything. If I had, and he had come to my place, what then? Whose voice was this in my head, wondering this?
It was on our seventh date that he suddenly proposed.
This was the first time we held hands. Nothing particularly romantic about it—we’d gone to the opening performance of a famous musical and he held on to my hand so we wouldn’t get separated in the crowded lobby—but that was enough to set my heart pounding. Later, after we were seated in the darkened theater, I was overwhelmed with sadness and even shed a few tears.
“I’ve been assigned long-term to Switzerland and hoped you could come with me.”
Takahiro proposed at dinner, after we had been served a fancy French-kaiseki dessert and accompanying wine. The restaurant was very private, each table in its own individual room, the perfect place for a marriage proposal. It felt like a dream, and I thought how happy I would be if I could accept it openly, without any reservations.
But I couldn’t. And there was a reason why.
“I’m very sorry,” I said, bowing to him, “but I can’t accept.”
“Why not?” he asked. The proposal wasn’t totally unexpected, but it had me flustered. I wished I could have turned him down by giving some typical, trite reason, telling him he should find someone who would be more suitable for him instead of settling for a nobody like me. But this would have been a lie. So I went ahead and revealed the real reason.
I never imagined I would reveal that loathsome truth about me as a reply to a marriage proposal.
“I’m defective, as a woman.”
He looked flabbergasted. I’m sure he never expected to hear that. Before I was overcome by shame, I got the whole thing out.
“Even now,” I said, “at age twenty-five, I’ve never had a period, not even once. Because deep down inside me I’m rejecting the idea of my body becoming a woman’s. A body like that can’t have normal sexual relations, or have a child. A man like you, with a wonderful future ahead of him, shouldn’t marry some defective article like me.”
For the first time I cursed the way my mind had tricked my body in order to protect me. If this is how things were going to turn out, I thought with regret, I should have done whatever it took
—shots or counseling—back when I was a junior in high school.
I felt it was cowardly to cry, so I held my tears back. I took a bite of the dessert, which was like a piece of fine china, white mousse with a variety of colored berries on top. Strawberries, raspberries, cranberries, blueberries…Since the time I first learned all those different names, that country town had held me in its grasp.
“That doesn’t matter,” Takahiro said. “If you just come with me, that’s fine. If you’re there when I come home, tired from work, that’s all I need. I’ll tell you all that happened that day, and hold you and go to sleep. I can’t imagine anything happier than that. Won’t you come with me, and start a new life in a place like the one we used to live in together?
“Leaving Japan wouldn’t be a bad idea for you,” he added. “You probably got like that because of the murder, and maybe you’re worried that being in a town that reminds you of your hometown will make you remember all that happened there. But there is one thing I can guarantee.
“In this new place there is no murderer.
“And I will be there to protect you.”
I was surprised when Takahiro asked if it was all right to invite you, Asako, and your husband to our wedding. That was the first time I learned that Takahiro’s father and your husband were cousins. “When Asako and her husband see me,” I asked him, “won’t they remember the murder and suffer those terrible memories all over again?” But he said you’d told him you really wanted to attend.
To be perfectly honest, I didn’t want to see you again, Asako. I was afraid you would never forgive me for not keeping my promise to you and instead seeking out my own happiness. But I had no right to say anything when it came to the wedding. It was Takahiro’s family, after all—both parents were executives with Adachi Manufacturing—who were footing the bill for this extravagant affair, held in an art museum designed by a famous architect, a place where several celebrities had also had their weddings. The only thing I was left to choose by myself was the wedding dress.
But on the day of the wedding you told me, Asako, to forget the murder and be happy. I can’t tell you how overjoyed I was when you said that.…And one other thing made me really happy that day: the surprise that Takahiro had in store.
When Takahiro and I had been planning the wedding I was sure that, for my midreception change of outfits, I would change into a cocktail dress, but he simply dismissed the idea, urging me to stay in the white wedding dress to the end. The reason became clear during the reception when he suddenly handed me a box with a large ribbon on it and I was led to a waiting room by one of the staff.
I opened the box and found a pink dress inside. The décolleté and hem were edged with white feathers, the shoulders and waist decorated with large purple roses. A matching headband of purple roses and white feathers was also placed on my head. My French doll might wear this kind of headband, I recalled. I looked in the mirror and what I saw was the French doll we used to have in the sitting room of our old house.
But why? I wondered, and then remembered that the first time Takahiro and I met was during the French Doll Tour. Me, a country girl, proudly showing kids from the big city our antique-looking dolls. He must have remembered how I was then, and ordered a dress identical to my doll’s. To surprise me, and make me happy.
When I went back into the reception hall Takahiro gazed at me, as if holding his breath, and then burst out in a big smile. “You’re gorgeous!” he said.
Everyone kidded us, and toasted us, and two days after this blissful time, I set off with Takahiro on our trip. From the airplane I watched the scenery on the ground recede and my whole body was filled with a sense of liberation.
In this new place there is no murderer. And I will be there to protect you.
But there was a criminal.
The town I’m in now does have clean, fresh air like that other town—that much is true—but other than that there’s nothing at all the same. This town is so charming and beautiful. Two weeks have passed since we began our life together, just the two of us.
Hard to believe it’s only been two weeks.
I was a little surprised as I wrote this. Up till now I was able to write calmly about things, but I’m not at all sure I can write about the rest as well. But what I’m going to say now is what I really need to write.
I’ll start with the day we arrived in this town.…
Takahiro had told me that our new house had almost everything we needed in the way of furniture, dishes, and so on, so I’d gotten rid of most of what I had when I lived alone, and had only sent ahead a bare minimum of clothes and other personal items. After we were engaged, Takahiro had gone to Switzerland a number of times on business and had gotten the house ready for us then.
We arrived at the local airport in the morning, and several people from his company came to meet us. I went with Takahiro to his office to meet his colleagues. We all had a meal together to introduce me to everyone, and were even given a lovely wedding present. Then we drove to our new home, just the two of us, in a car provided by his company.
I marveled at everything I saw that day, but I gasped in joy when we arrived at our upscale neighborhood and saw our house, which was like an antique dollhouse.
The house was two stories, with a spacious living room, dining room, and kitchen combination on the first floor, as well as two other rooms. The living room had a sofa set and bookcase, and I went ahead and displayed the heavy standing clock we’d been given as a present. But overall the room was a bit bare. There were enough dishes and utensils in the kitchen, though I thought it would be nice to have a pair of matching cups for us. “An orange tablecloth would look nice on the dining table,” I commented. “And I’d love to display lots of photos near the bay window,” I added excitedly. Takahiro smiled and told me to go ahead and decorate it any way I liked. “But first,” he said, “let’s unpack.” The boxes we’d sent from Japan were randomly stacked in one of the first-floor rooms.
On the second floor there were four rooms, all of different sizes. “The largest room in the back is the bedroom,” he told me, “the others you can use any way you’d like.” I looked into each of them in order, starting with the closest. This place is too big for just the two of us, I was thinking as I continued down the wide hallway and put my hand on the doorknob of the room in back.
“Let’s leave this room for later,” Takahiro told me. “I got everything in this one room ready when I was here before, so let’s go eat first.” His words, and my own shyness over the bedroom being ready for us, kept me from opening the door. I went with him to a nearby restaurant instead.
We had beer and some simple but delicious local dishes, and when we arrived home in high spirits Takahiro suddenly swept me up into his arms, lifted me over the threshold like a princess, and began carrying me up the stairs. We continued down the hallway, and he opened the door of the backmost room, and inside gently lowered me in the middle of the room. The room was pitch-dark but I knew he’d let me down on a bed.
He unzipped my dress and it fell off my shoulders. Right after our wedding we’d stayed at a hotel in Japan for a few days, but Takahiro had been so busy with work, preparing for his new job, that nothing took place between us. But now, I knew, the time had come. Even with my incomplete body I thought my love for him would let me be able to do it. Somehow he’d be able to manage.
My heart was pounding and I was holding my breath when suddenly something came down gently over my head. My arms were slowly put through sleeves, a fastener on the back was zipped up, he held my hand, and I got to my feet as he carefully arranged the bottom of the long dress. I realized he’d put another dress on me.
A light came on in the room. Takahiro had turned on one of the lamps. At that instant what struck me was a vision of a French doll. What smiled back at me from above the beautifully carved wooden table next to the bed was the very face of one of those French dolls displayed in the sitting rooms in that country town.
So h
e’d bought the exact same kind of doll for me? But that wasn’t it. There was a tiny mole beneath the doll’s right eye, but the dress was different. It wasn’t pink, but light blue. And the dress he’d put on me was an identical light blue dress.
In a daze I turned around to find Takahiro gazing at me with the same smile he’d had at our wedding ceremony.
“My precious doll,” he said.
“What the—?” As soon as I got these words out, my voice husky, an angry voice shouted “Don’t speak!” His smile was replaced by a nervous, irritated look, and for the first time I remembered which child he was back on the French Doll Tour.
Unsure what was going on, not allowed to say a word, I stood there, frozen. His usual cheerful expression quickly returned, and he had me sit on the bed and sat down beside me.
“I’m sorry I shouted. Did it frighten you?” His tone was gentle, but I couldn’t reply. He was looking at me, but those weren’t the eyes of someone looking at an actual, living person. I gazed back in silence. “You’re a good little girl, aren’t you,” he said, patting my head with his large hand.
And he began to tell his story.
“Until then, I’d never been in love,” he said. “All the girls around me were trained since childhood to be well-mannered, to live up to their elite status, but they were conceited, stupid creatures, the lot of them. My mother was no different, complaining constantly about the researchers she supervised, all of them incompetent, according to her, and about my father, who worked in the same department.
“And then we had to move. I couldn’t believe that town was even part of Japan, it was so devoid of anything. I’d never seen kids like that before—uncouth and vulgar, so full of jealousy. When I thought I’d have to spend the next few years with them, I felt as if I’d go insane.