Penance

by Kanae Minato

  Maybe I had gradually resigned myself to my fate. Or perhaps I had a premonition sprouting inside me that the series of tragedies that had taken place would, in the end, come my way.

  That was probably why I could listen so calmly to the end of Yuka’s story.

  I had had no idea about Emily playing in that abandoned cottage. Though I do remember the ring going missing.

  I couldn’t bring myself to throw away the ring he gave me, or Akie’s suicide note. I’d carefully placed it in a box and put it in the back of the closet, but when I was putting things away after we moved, Emily happened to see that box and opened it up. “That’s so pretty,” she said, eyes narrowed as she opened the ring case. “Why is this in here?” she asked, to which I immediately answered, “Because this is going to be yours, Emily.”

  “Then let me have it now,” Emily said. “Someday,” I said, “when the time comes.” And I didn’t give it to her. She pouted a bit, though she seemed to like the notion of a secret promise. She always liked those kinds of things.

  Someday. When the time comes. When the time came that I had to tell her who her real father was.

  After I ran away from him I started going out with my old friends. That felt like where I really belonged. I didn’t have the strength to mourn a girl who had killed herself while simultaneously propping up a man who’d lost his job. There was no way I could share a miserable life with him. And the person my friends introduced me to then became my present husband.

  His grandfather was the founder of Adachi Manufacturing and he’d joined the company himself five years before. I thought his eyes were cold and that he was a little scary, and when I asked him, “Are there any other girls you like?” he said, “If there were I wouldn’t be here.” “Then I’ll be happy to go out with you,” I said, bowing. He laughed, cheerfully. “Same here,” he said, holding out his hand. We shook hands on it, and that’s when we started dating.

  I think it was on our third date when we were out on a drive. I suddenly felt sick, asked him to pull over, and got out. I felt dizzy and collapsed on the spot. When I woke up I was in a room in the nearest private hospital, and he was seated beside me. I quickly tried to sit up but he told me to lie down and rest.

  “It’s not good for the baby you’re carrying,” he said.

  I felt about to collapse again. A boyfriend I had never slept with was announcing I was pregnant. It’s all over with us, I figured. This is my punishment for having run away. God wasn’t going to forgive me for forgetting everything and trying to be the only one who ended up happy. I was more concerned at this point about my life from then on than with my relationship with Adachi. What would my parents say when they found out? And other people I knew? I knew I couldn’t make it on my own.

  Assuming that my relationship with Adachi was over, I told him all about the baby’s father. Without touching on Akie.

  When I’d finished, Adachi said something that bowled me over.

  “Let’s get married,” he said. “I’d like you to have the child as mine.”

  He didn’t say this out of love for me. He wasn’t able to have children himself, probably because of a bout of mumps when he was in college. He hadn’t been tested at a hospital, he said, so it wasn’t totally certain that was the cause. But it was certain his sperm count was zero. He’d used his own company’s test kit, so there was no mistake.

  He was ambitious. He was a grandson of the founder, but he was the son of the founder’s second son, and the older brother’s son would be the one set to inherit the company. But he was more able, he felt, than that other son—his cousin—and he swore to himself that he would someday become the company president. But one day, half jokingly, he tested himself and found out he was sterile. Would people allow a person who couldn’t have any descendants to be the heir? Ever since then, he seemed to have given up on the idea of heading the company. Even after his friends introduced me to him, he said he didn’t intend to marry me.

  And then he heard from the doctor that I was pregnant.

  We made a deal. He’d provide a stable life for me, and I’d help him win the trust of those around him.

  He quickly registered me in his family register as his wife. When the baby was born, presumably early but still at normal weight for full term, we told people we’d slept together from the start. And we named the baby girl Emily. My husband’s grandfather, the founder of the company, named her. Apparently it was the name of a girl he fell in love with when he was studying abroad.

  But I always felt that Emily was mine alone.

  Not to imply that we weren’t loved. Adachi took good care of me and loved Emily like his own daughter.

  I had no inkling that day was coming. So that ring should still have been in the box with Akie’s note in the back of the closet in our company housing apartment where I’d put it.

  One day there was a company party, and I thought I’d wear a string of pearls and took my jewelry box from the back of the closet. And I noticed that the lid of the other box was askew.

  I took it out and found the ring, along with the case, gone. As well as the note from Akie. The next day the ring was back, but the note wasn’t.

  “If Daddy found out you loved another man he’d be sad,” Emily said, “so I thought I’d better hide it somewhere outside the house. I could get back the ring, but the note got thrown away. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  As she stood there, crying and telling me this, I felt a wave of love for her. She’d mistakenly thought I’d written that note, though my handwriting was never as beautiful as that.

  Emily had hidden the ring and note in the abandoned cottage. And as he was searching for a suitable building to use for his free school, he discovered it there. Maybe he was searching for a place there, thinking that, as he rebuilt his life, he’d do it in a place that had some connection with Akie. I’m sure he was shocked at what he found. He just opened a cookie tin he happened to run across, only to find a ring he remembered all too well. And a suicide note addressed to him.

  I think he realized right away that Akie had written it.

  After this he probably started investigating things. He’d lost the woman he loved, and the job he’d poured all his passion into—should I be blamed for that, too? Where was the woman who’d stolen away everything precious to him and run away, and what was she doing now? And what was precious to her?

  Emily was murdered all because of me.

  The four of you just happened to get involved. And what I said to you was unforgivable. You took it to heart and led me to the murderer.

  It’s my turn now to do penance for you.

  After I left Yuka I went to see him.

  Until I arrived at the free school, which had been widely reported about in weekly magazines, my thoughts were about penance. About what I should do for the sake of you four.

  Should I hire a top lawyer and have all four of you declared innocent? Should I help pay for your living expenses? Or pay you compensation money?

  But doing any of that, I thought, would only earn your contempt.

  What I had to do was none of those things, but rather to confess my sins, and tell the murderer, Hiroaki Nanjo, the truth.

  You are Emily’s father.

  And I did. I told him that clearly.

  I think you all know, through TV and the newspapers, what happened to him afterward. And I think you can understand how I feel about that, even if I don’t write about it here.

  I wonder if you have it in your hearts to forgive me.

  And whether you are freed now from the curse that’s held you in its spell for so many years.

  Asako Adachi

  The Final Chapter

  A summer sky as twilight approaches.

  They pass the locked back gate and clamber over the chain-link fence. Two people.

  One of them carries an old, well-used volleyball, the other a small bouquet of flowers.

  They head to the school playground.

  “
They talk about beefing up anticrime measures, but it’s still easy to get in.…Speaking of which, is it hard for you to be here? You don’t feel traumatized or anything?”

  “I’m okay. What about you? Can you see things all right today?”

  “No problem. But I’m not confident we can do a hundred times in a row the very first time.”

  “We’ll try as long as we need to. Like on that day…”

  The two of them lay their bags down at their feet and face each other.

  A white ball goes back and forth between them.

  One, two, three…fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three…ninety-one, ninety-two…

  “Ninety-three…Ah! Sorry!”

  The mis-hit ball rolls away.

  A ball rolling away. Five children chasing it.

  A man in work clothes, Hiroaki Nanjo, picks up the ball.

  “I’m here to check the ventilation fan for the changing rooms in the pool, but totally forgot to bring a ladder. We just need to tighten a few screws, so could one of you ride piggyback on my shoulders and help out?”

  The shortest girl takes the ball from him.

  “To ride piggyback I should do it since I’m the smallest.”

  The tallest girl steps forward.

  “It’d be a problem if you can’t reach the fan, so should I go since I’m the tallest?”

  A girl wearing glasses in the back interrupts.

  “But can either of you twist a screw? I’m really good at it.”

  “But what’ll you do if the screw is too tight? I’m strong so I think I could handle it.” The biggest girl says this proudly.

  Nanjo looks at the five children one by one.

  “Can’t be someone either too small or too big.…I wouldn’t want your glasses to fall off, and you look a little heavy, maybe.…”

  He walks over to the most intelligent-looking child, Emily.

  “You’re just right.”

  Emily looks back anxiously at the other four.

  The tallest girl claps her hands and speaks loudly.

  “Then let’s all help!”

  The other three children agree.

  Nanjo is nonplussed. But still he smiles.

  “Thank you, but the changing room is cramped and if too many go it’ll be hard to work. I wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt. So why don’t you stay here. We’ll be done real soon. And afterward I’ll buy you all ice cream.”

  The four children are delighted.

  Nanjo takes Emily by the hand and leaves.

  Not knowing they are related, father and child—

  The two of them pick up the ball and start passing it back and forth again.

  “…One hundred!”

  They take deep breaths.

  They pick up their bags, head for the gym, and sit down side by side on the steps to the entrance.

  “So what did that murder mean for us, anyway?”

  “And the fifteen years after…”

  “When I was reading that long letter from her—more of a memoir, really, since it was so long—it made me wonder what the point of my life has been.”

  “Maybe I was a victim. And because I felt that way, that’s why her words weighed so heavily on me. Even so, we were just caught up in it all.”

  “Normally if you’d done such awful things in your past, wouldn’t you ask yourself, right after the murder, whether it was your fault?”

  “Yeah, but not thinking that was her way of dealing with life. If someone did ask themselves that, maybe it would mean they really didn’t have anything like that in their past?”

  “I suppose.…But I can’t really blame her. She’s the one who suffered the most. And it’s also thanks to her that I can live an ordinary life now.”

  “They charged you with inflicting bodily injury, but you got probation, right?”

  “Right. The cause of death was loss of blood, and he’d stabbed himself. I never touched the knife, and kicking him in the face wasn’t the direct cause of death, so the crime was inflicting bodily injury. She collected signatures for me, some parents wrote petitions asking for leniency, and the lawyer said I should hold out until we could get a verdict of not guilty. But when they offered probation, I thought, Okay, that’s enough. I quit my job as a teacher, too.”

  “What’re you going to do now?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. I’d like to take time to consider things, including how my life would have turned out if that murder had never happened. I’m worried about the other two, also.”

  “It’s going to take more time for them.”

  “Self-defense and insanity. Those are hard to prove. But they did turn themselves in and didn’t have intent to kill. And they have well-known lawyers defending them, so I think it’ll work out. I’m hopeful, at least. But who knows.”

  “They’ll do what their lawyers tell them to, so I think it’ll turn out okay. But you know—I was kind of surprised that you had her find a lawyer for you.”

  “You thought I’d turn her down?”

  “If it had been me, I would have.”

  “It’s like…I just decided to go ahead and accept her good intentions. I realized how powerless I was and gave up clinging to any stupid pride. And your case—I couldn’t believe you got it reduced to an accident. It seemed like you were going to admit you’d pushed him down, even though you didn’t have to. Just to get back at her.”

  “Because it’s not just me anymore. I’m a single mother, and it would be hard on my child to have a criminal for a mother.”

  “I see. You’ve really matured, haven’t you.”

  “Actually, I think I can understand her feelings at the time Emily was killed. If I were in her shoes, I might have said the same sort of thing to the kids she was playing with.”

  “Mothers are scary. Or tough, maybe? You’re living with your parents, right? How many years will it be until your child is going to this school?”

  “Didn’t you hear? Next March they’re going to close the school. Declining birth rates. The kids in this town will commute by school bus to the next town over. The school buildings are old, too, and they’re going to tear the whole place down.”

  “That’s why you got in touch with me?”

  “Sorry. And you said all four of us should get together.”

  “No, it’s okay. I’m glad I could come here before it’s gone.…Let’s put an end to it, the two of us.”

  “Right. It’s all over.…Before long I imagine this town will be incorporated into another and the town itself will no longer exist.”

  “It’s too bad. I mean, since it’s got the cleanest air in Japan.”

  “The clean air will still be here.”

  The two of them smiled at each other.

  “Greensleeves” started to play quietly.

  “Shall we go?”

  They stood up.

  And looked at the small bouquet.

  “It’s like that cake that time.”

  “You’re right. I asked the florist to make up a bouquet that a ten-year-old girl would enjoy.”

  Find the murderer before the statute of limitations is up. If you can’t do that, then atone for what you’ve done, in a way I’ll accept.

  The two walked toward the pool.

  “Let’s pray for Emily. Why didn’t we realize that back then? The one thing we should have done the most?”

  “Maybe we needed these fifteen years to finally understand.”

  Their shadows lengthen along the playground.

  And twilight envelops the small town.

  About the Author

  Kanae Minato is an internationally bestselling novelist and former home economics teacher and housewife who wrote her first novel, Confessions, between household chores. Confessions won several literary awards, including the Radio Drama Award, the Detective Novel Prize for New Writers, and the National Booksellers’ Award, and was adapted into an Academy Award–nominated film directed by Tetsuya Nakashima. Minato lives in Japan.

&nb
sp; About the Translator

  Philip Gabriel is a professor of Japanese literature in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Arizona. His translations include many novels and short stories by the writer Haruki Murakami, most recently Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. Gabriel received the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature for his translation of Senji Kuroi’s Life in the Cul-de-Sac, and the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for his translation of Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore.

  Also by Kanae Minato

  Confessions

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