Death and the Flower

by Kōji Suzuki

  “Strange.” Yoshiaki looked up to the ceiling and considered the ways a total stranger might look up a new phone number from an old one. He searched his memory. Before sending out postcards with their new address to friends and acquaintances, he’d called his closest associates directly to notify them of their new number. He remembered every single person—just five guys whom he considered his best friends. His business card was printed with his office phone number with no mention of private info. It had only been two months since they moved, and his high school and college alumni directory still listed his old address.

  “Did the voice sound familiar?”

  Eriko shook her head, hand still pressed to her mouth.

  “Think carefully. Someone you know could be the one harassing you.”

  It would make sense if it were a friend of a friend whose voice she didn’t remember all that well. The man might have subtly asked a mutual acquaintance for her number. The idea that one of the people they’d notified of their move had done it didn’t enter his mind even for a second.

  “What do you think?” Yoshiaki urged.

  Eriko, who’d been puffing out her right cheek, turned her head slightly and asked, “What?”

  “What do you mean, ‘What?’ Weren’t you listening?”

  It seemed to him that rather than not hearing him, she’d been too preoccupied for his words to get through. When he stuck his face closer to her with a dismayed expression, her own face contorted as if she were ready to burst into tears. Her right temple was twitching. The skin between her eyebrows was creased and the worry written around her eyes and mouth distorted her entire face. Some shorter strands of her shoulder-length hair curled upwards as if to symbolize her frayed nerves.

  “I’m sorry, can you say that again? I couldn’t hear you very well.”

  “The guy that called,” Yoshiaki said more loudly, “might be a friend of a friend or something. That’s what I said.”

  Eriko’s eyes went wide with surprise. “I don’t know,” she said, her voice nasal. Sticking her index finger into her right ear, she wiggled it around and swallowed.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “You know how you get that tight feeling in your ears when there’s a change in air pressure? My ear sorta feels like that.” Eriko swallowed again and pressed down on the base of her nose.

  “Anyway, let’s just see what happens for now,” Yoshiaki concluded indifferently, putting an end to the conversation. Glancing sidelong at Eriko, who kept fiddling with her nose and ears, he unbuttoned his shirt.

  4

  On the first Monday of June, Eriko got the second prank call since moving. It came slightly earlier in the evening right after she’d done the dishes. Aya slept on a flat Japanese-style cushion on the floor, and Yoshiaki was working late at the office as usual.

  Once she knew it was the same man, she resisted hanging up right away and mentally readied herself to sound out the caller.

  “You’re alone now, aren’t you?” The question came with wet noises as if the man were smacking his lips as he spoke.

  Eriko nearly lost the willpower to keep holding up the receiver. Even over the phone, conversing with an utterly malicious person took courage. In Eriko’s case, it took her at least ten seconds to work up a reply.

  “You’re the one who used to called me. How did you get this number?”

  The man’s sloppy laughter welled up through the receiver. Eriko pictured a mad, drooling dog infected with rabies. “Of course I know the number. I’m not stupid.”

  “What do you get out of doing this?” She tried to feign calmness but her voice trembled. She moved the receiver away from her mouth so he wouldn’t sense her agitation.

  “I can just picture it. Your face as you’re ready to burst out crying …”

  Her throat was parched. She tried to speak, but the back of her throat was bone dry, turning her voice husky. She frantically rifled through her memory. Could he be an acquaintance, or someone who held a grudge against her? Nobody came to mind. She closed her eyes and tried to think of who might have a similar voice, but her mind ran into darkness. Something faintly tangible seemed to lie within that darkness but she couldn’t trawl it in.

  “I’m calling the police,” Eriko managed to squeeze out.

  “Pointless. You don’t even know who I am. Eh? Or do you?”

  Intense resentment engulfed Eriko. The man was lobbing threatening words from deep in the darkness where he hid out of reach. She couldn’t tolerate the unfairness, the informational imbalance.

  With a voice pitched high with anger, her face ready to crumple into tears, Eriko pointed out that she didn’t live alone: “Coward. Next time, why don’t you call when my husband’s home?”

  “Your husband?” piped the man. So what, his tone seemed to say.

  Eriko’s anger and terror subsided just a bit when she pictured her husband. If only he were here … She believed her husband could confront the caller and browbeat him into silence even over the phone. Her husband was not a slender man.

  “That pasty dweeb?”

  “Huh?” Eriko felt her whole body stiffen. Although her husband had a stout built, he was fair-skinned and didn’t sport much body hair. She was afraid that the man was referring to those characteristics when he said “pasty.”

  “You’re impressive, doing it with a guy like that. How many pregnancies does this make anyway?”

  Eriko was struck dumb. Still, she glanced towards her baby sleeping on a cushion right before her. That he seemed to know she’d just given birth was uncanny, but why did he ask how many times she’d been pregnant? In her twenty-nine years, of course this had been her only pregnancy.

  “Hey, now, why’re you so quiet?” He wasn’t pressing her for an answer. The peeved, languid delivery sounded theatrical.

  Eriko’s mind was in disarray. She could almost put her finger on whatever was hidden in the darkness of her memory, but as soon as she managed to touch it she was forcefully repelled.

  “You’re pretending you can’t hear me again, aren’t ya.”

  A chill raced through Eriko’s body.

  “I know you can hear me. I can tell when someone’s ly—”

  Eriko slammed the receiver down with instinctive alacrity. Immediately after, she heard a strange ringing inside her ear. She had a hard time hearing the TV that she’d left on, as if the volume had been turned down a notch. She swallowed repeatedly, but it didn’t make any difference. She clapped both hands to her ears and sank to the floor.

  She didn’t have the energy to get back up. Was she suffering from anemia? She thought she saw the lights in the room grow dimmer. The whiteness of the cushion on the floor floated indistinctly across her retinas, and everything seemed to dissolve except for her baby asleep on that cushion. She felt like she’d experienced similar symptoms long ago but shook off the memories from that time. Her heart was racing and she couldn’t stop trembling.

  For about ten minutes, she had no choice but to sit there with her back against the wall until her hearing and vision returned to normal.

  The next day, Yoshiaki stopped by a discount shop on his way back from work to purchase an answering machine. It was obvious that Eriko was having a nervous breakdown, and he needed to put a stop to the prank calls immediately. Ever since they’d gotten married she had the tendency to ask him to repeat himself, but since last night she’d been experiencing a temporary hearing impairment, to the point where even ordinary conversation was difficult. The psychological damage inflicted seemed excessive, but there was no doubt as to the prank calls being the cause. There’d been too few of them to bother consulting with NTT, and the police certainly wouldn’t lift a finger. The situation demanded a swift countermeasure, and procuring an answering machine, however makeshift, was it. Setting the machine to “on” at all times removed the risk of unwanted calls. It was the simplest safeguard.

  If it weren’t for the prank calls he wouldn’t have made such a purchase, and his fo
ul mood persisted even as he brought the machine home and set it up. Already shouldering a mortgage incommensurate to their means, their family budget was hardly impervious to this hit of a few ten-thousand-yen bills.

  Yoshiaki recorded the outgoing message in his voice.

  “Hello, this is the Fukazawa residence. We cannot take your call right now. Please leave your name and a message after the beep.”

  Most people hung up without leaving a message when they realized no one was home. This meant he needed to let friends and acquaintances know that the machine would be on “away” all the time. That way, Yoshiaki and his wife would avoid missing too many calls from friends.

  He set the machine to trigger after five rings. Eriko would have to stand by the phone for that interval without picking up. The tape would then play the greeting and beep. At that point callers could state their name, and their voice would be projected through the speaker. Whether to take the call or not could wait until then. If the caller failed to give a name or was someone she didn’t want to speak to, the receiver could just stay put. After a minute of recording, the machine automatically disconnected. She only had to pick up if she wanted to.

  Done with the setup, Yoshiaki said, as if to convince himself, “This oughta make the pervert give up.” He figured the caller was attempting to satisfy his sexual needs. Eriko’s voice over the phone was indeed very charming.

  Nonetheless Eriko, who was next to him, still looked ill at ease. To her, the prank caller’s motive was totally unfathomable. At the very least she was sure that sexual release wasn’t the motive. The boundless malice in the depths of his voice told her otherwise.

  5

  Towards the middle of June, the Kanto region entered the rain season. Many people disliked the humidity, but it was Yoshiaki’s favorite time of the year. The sun, at the largest size it would be all year, peeked through in the breaks between squalls, giving everything he saw a crisp, vivid outline. He loved the sight of the world after the air had been cleansed by rainfall.

  The precipitation had let up late in the afternoon that day, the rifts in the clouds rapidly growing larger.

  It had been quite some time since Yoshiaki was able to walk through the shopping strip to Tamachi station while there was still plenty of daylight left. Most of the time, he didn’t get home until between nine and ten, and having dinner at home was limited to the weekends. Yet at his current pace he’d likely be home by half past seven.

  Right before heading down the stairs to the subway platform, he phoned home. After it rang five times, the machine automatically switched on and he heard his voice on the outgoing message.

  “Hello, this is the Fukazawa residence …”

  No matter how many times he heard the recording, it still felt uncomfortable.

  “Eriko, are you listening? It’s me, Yoshiaki,” he shouted into the mouthpiece not waiting for the message to finish.

  There was a click as she picked up. “Hello, honey?”

  “It’s me. I’m on my way home. I’ll have dinner at home tonight,” Yoshiaki said slowly and loudly. Eriko’s ears were still acting up.

  “Great. Come home soon, I need you to listen to something.”

  “What is it?”

  “I can’t do it over the phone.”

  “All right. I’ll be back in an hour.”

  Yoshiaki hung up.

  As he stood by the apartment door and looked westward from the edge of the building’s exposed corridor, he could still see traces of sunlight. He dreamed of a less hectic life, of how happy he’d be if he could come home at this hour every day. Burdened with a 25-year mortgage, however, quitting his current job at a major insurance company to find other work was, realistically speaking, an impossibility. He’d been able to purchase his own home only thanks to his decent salary. As for the home, sparkling new and spacious, it gave them greater satisfaction than they’d anticipated. To wish for further luxury would be a sin …

  The doorbell rang out its ever-satisfying chime. As soon as the door opened to reveal half of his wife’s head peeking through, he could hear his daughter crying in the living room.

  “Welcome home.” Eriko looked haggard.

  “Our little baby is crying.”

  The infant’s cries tumbled out from behind the living room door at the end of the hallway. Yoshiaki kicked his shoes off, ran inside, and got onto all fours, putting his face close to the baby’s. Her wrinkly, small face was contorted and bright red. The baby showed no signs of stopping her wails even though Yoshiaki brushed his cheek against hers.

  “It’s fine, she’s just hungry.” Eriko loosened her skirt, and after pulling an arm free from her t-shirt, she scooped up the baby from the side and walked to the living-room door.

  “While I’m nursing her, can you please listen to that?” Eriko asked, thrusting her chin towards the phone.

  “The answering machine?”

  “I just … I’m fed up with this,” she muttered weakly, then stepped into the hallway and closed the door. It seemed like she didn’t ever want to hear the message again and was using breastfeeding as a pretext to leave the room.

  Yoshiaki played the recording and heard the prank caller’s voice for himself for the first time. The man started speaking as if to interrupt the greeting, before it was finished.

  “Pfft, an answering machine? Don’t mean a thing. You’re probably right there listening, aren’t ya. To my voice.” The man’s tone rose. “Hey, are you listening to me? Hello, hello? You can probably hear my voice better this way, eh? Yo, ugly, you listening? Pig! You lewd slut! You haven’t changed one bit.”

  Yoshiaki trembled to hear such filthy abuse hurled at his wife. He was far more enraged than if he himself had been badmouthed to his face. His wife wasn’t ugly, a pig, nor a lewd slut. Emphatically rejecting the calumny, and seized with naked hostility for the man, he punched the floor with his fist.

  The voice droned on. “Still keeping mum? Please, pick up the phone. ’Nuff pretendin’ you can’t hear me …”

  The message ended there. Reining in his temper, Yoshiaki listened to the message again from the beginning. Something bothered him. Hearing that line, You haven’t changed one bit, Yoshiaki couldn’t help thinking that the man was an old acquaintance of his wife’s. Was some guy she’d been seeing before she got married harassing her now? Yoshiaki had married Eriko three years ago. Back then, at twenty-six, she had been a virgin. That fact was certain. Even now, in Yoshiaki’s eyes, Eriko was far from lewd and decidedly no slut. In fact, he knew of no other woman whom the old-fashioned word “chaste” suited so well. But if she’d developed a relationship with another man after their marriage and had come across as lewd to him … A tawdry scenario, like something out of a soap opera, flashed across Yoshiaki’s mind and vanished just as quickly. It was obvious from his wife asking him to listen to the tape and going to the next room to breastfeed the baby. Exposing her husband to the voice of a partner in adultery ran counter to common sense.

  He peeked into the other room and found Eriko faced away from the door and breastfeeding in the gloom with only the midget lamp on. Yoshiaki approached her from behind, put his hand on her shoulder, and whispered, “I listened to it.”

  Eriko sniffled a few times as she rocked gently to and fro. He could sense that she was on the verge of tears just from the hunch of her spine.

  “I’m fed up,” she repeated.

  Was she feeling like throwing in the towel, the joy of owning a home halved thanks to prank calls that came in quick succession, just when they were getting settled into a new neighborhood as a family of three? Taking out an over-ambitious mortgage and increasing his commute to work was worth it if it benefited his wife and child. The man’s voice had trespassed and polluted their first steps towards a life of contentment. Yoshiaki brimmed with a different strain of anger.

  “The bastard … You really can’t think of anyone?”

  Eriko, still facing away, shook her head. “I have no idea.”
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  In truth she probably didn’t. Yet she seemed troubled by the man’s insinuations that he knew her. Some fellow nursing a persistent grudge towards her over something trivial wasn’t out of the question. If, by any chance, she’d incurred ill will from some passing man, then remembering him would be a herculean task.

  “Think about it some. If we know who it is, we can figure out a way to deal with him.”

  The first call had come around February. Yoshiaki tried recalling Eriko’s activities during January and February when they still lived in the Naka Meguro apartment. At the end of the preceding year she’d left the university hospital where she’d worked as a nutritionist to nest at home, eager to prepare for their daughter’s birth. Never a fan of parading around, Eriko’s sphere of activity was particularly limited during that period.

  “Why always me … just me?” she demanded, her voice turning weepy mid-sentence.

  Yoshiaki moved his hand resting on her shoulder up and down, caressing her back. He didn’t know what else to do. What could he do to alleviate his wife’s anxiety? The infant nursing at her nipple made suckling sounds with her lips. Once again, Yoshiaki was seized with the urge to drag the man behind the voice right through the phone.

  6

  Eriko did the dishes with the baby strapped to her back. It was just past 7:00 p.m., and NHK News was reporting on a trifling quarrel between apartment building neighbors that had developed into a full-blown murder case. Through the narrow window above the sink, she could look right down onto the rain-drenched roof of a nearby house. From it often issued a shout-fest between a mother and her daughter. As the mother tried to force study or piano practice on her recalcitrant junior or senior high daughter, the emotional tension ratcheted up high enough to be felt in the Fukazawas’ apartment as well. Now too Eriko could hear them arguing hysterically, but the muffling rain kept the exact point of contention from leaking out of their home.

  The baby had fallen asleep on her back. When Eriko turned her head, she could feel her daughter’s soft hair against her cheek.