by Kōji Suzuki
Suddenly the phone trilled. As soon as Eriko heard the sound, she reflexively looked at the clock. It felt too early for her husband to call. He normally did just shy of nine.
As the number of rings rose, Eriko felt herself stiffen. The noise of the TV and the yelling from next door faded into the background and her mind zeroed in on the ringing phone, her hands stilling on the dishes. After the fifth ring and Yoshiaki’s prerecorded greeting, she heard that man’s voice.
“Ugh, not again …” She wanted to yank the cord out of the phone but recalled what Yoshiaki had said: If we know who it is, we can figure out a way to deal with him. There might be a clue hidden in the caller’s words that could help pin down his identity, so she endured the man’s voice as it entered her ear.
“Hey, pig. What’re you doing? I know you can hear me. From right there. Don’t pretend you can’t hear me …”
Eriko felt as though the man had physically trespassed into their home. She was too terrified to even turn around to check. Right by the living room entrance, near the phone stand … The man had snuck all the way into that corner.
“Cut the shit, idiot. Just seeing you pisses me off. What’re you doing now? Bathing your brat in a washtub? Or is the munchkin asleep on the cushion? With that stuffed bunny next to it and in that stupid little vest? I’ll smash everything. Who do you think you are …”
The tape ran out there, ending the call automatically. It took a while for the man’s words to register in Eriko’s mind.
Bathing in a washtub … Indeed, that afternoon she had bathed the baby using a pink plastic washtub. Asleep on the cushion … Afterwards, she usually put the baby down for a nap—placing a white cushion and covering it with a bath towel. She always put a stuffed animal beside the baby. The bunny was her daughter’s especial favorite. She didn’t remember putting a vest on her daughter today, but they did have one that Eriko’s mother had made, with an appliqué of a cat on the chest …
How could the man know all this?
Eriko slammed shut the narrow window above the kitchen sink. Her heart was pounding. The living room was on the building’s corner with windows on the eastern and northern sides. She ran over and lowered the blinds one by one, changed the channel on the TV, and turned up the volume. That brief spurt of activity was enough to make her gasp for air. She found it difficult to stay standing so she perched on the sofa and stared at the ceiling for a while in blank amazement.
Someone was watching! There was no other explanation. The room was being observed from outside.
Was it being watched now? Eriko got up and went to the blinds she’d just pulled closed and peeked through to check outside. As she already knew, no other buildings more than three stories tall existed within several hundred yards. Peering into their third-floor apartment and seeing their baby napping called for a building with at least four stories. To the east and the north, there was only one that fit the description. The public housing project to the northeast had seven floors, the same as their building. There was simply no other in sight.
Even at this hour, there were no lights on in the project. Eriko doubted whether anyone actually lived there. What if it was an abandoned building? As soon as that thought came to her, her ears started to ring. She pulled at her earlobes and swallowed, but the discomfort behind her eardrums didn’t disappear. The man’s voice, burned into her ears, began to lose that unique human timber. Somehow, it ceased to feel like any living person’s. Against her will, her imagination careened towards the worst. Getting a peep of their family life, a picture of bliss, ghosts dwelling on the top floor of that abandoned project saw fit to make prank calls and … Images like that invaded her mind. Maybe the man was ensconced in another dimension and was using a phone line to castigate her. Perhaps he’d snuck into the living room to whisper directly into her ear …
The baby sling was biting into her shoulders and her collarbones ached. Eriko’s knees dissolved, and she sank to the floor and trembled with terror. Her hands, with which she covered her face, became drenched in tears. What she couldn’t stand was that the new home they’d sacrificed so much to acquire seemed jinxed. No, she didn’t really believe in ghosts. But until a logical explanation put the issue to rest, her terror would only grow entwined with such fantasies. She knew very well from experience that it took years to recover inner peace once she was ensnared by this stuff.
She slumped forward, rubbed her forehead against the floor, and muttered, “Why me … just me …”
Her ears continued to ring. To add insult to injury, the back of her head started to ache dully, and perhaps thanks to that the lights in the room felt a little less bright.
7
As he listened to the messages over and over, Yoshiaki began to think that Eriko’s worries were not groundless.
The prank caller did seem privy to the Fukazawas’ everyday life as if he were witnessing it. But on second thought, most any family with a two-month-old baby would bathe their baby in a washtub, put her down to nap on a cushion where her mother could see, give her stuffed animals, and dress her in a handmade vest. A commonsensical list enumerating the activities of a household with an infant necessarily overlapped with the Fukazawas’ actual routines. Everybody read guidebooks on childrearing with the arrival of a newborn. Anyone who knew that Yoshiaki and Eriko had a two-month-old baby could easily imagine their daily life.
Just seeing you pisses me off.
That was the line that worried Yoshiaki the most. Unless the culprit were actually viewing her through, say, a telescope, “seeing you” wasn’t a phrase he was likely to use on the spur. It would be an extremely unnatural thing for the prank caller to say to someone he had called at random. Upon Eriko’s request Yoshiaki had gone to the local housing project to confirm that it was not, in fact, abandoned. If someone were observing their home from the outside, then as Eriko suspected, the upper floors of the project represented the only possibility. Think as he might, no other spots seemed suitable. But if the prank caller was a resident of the project, what of the calls they’d gotten at their old apartment in Naka Meguro? It had all started when they still lived there, and they could hardly explain it away as a coincidence.
Yoshiaki was confounded. Fear tends to skyrocket when no logical explanation offers itself. He feigned calm since he was with Eriko, but after running repeatedly into the same questions and realizing he was getting nowhere, his mind conjured up ominous thoughts.
Eriko muttered “police” as if in a daze and said, “We can’t live here anymore,” as though she wanted them to move again.
Yoshiaki felt blood rush to his head. “We have to move?Are you kidding? Did you forget how hard it was to get this place?” He knew yelling at her was a misdirection of his rage, but remembering how difficult it had been to scrape together a down payment and all the hardships they’d gone through, his tone got rough. Things had finally begun to settle. He didn’t want to go back to square one.
“Well, it’s okay for you, since you’re at work all day.”
Trapped inside almost all day caring for a two-month-old baby, defenseless in face of a Peeping Tom’s gaze … Yoshiaki could easily imagine the state of panic he might be in if he were a woman stuck in Eriko’s position.
A logical explanation was what they needed. Yoshiaki racked his brains.
“Maybe the bastard was just trying to make you think he’s watching, to scare you.” It wasn’t impossible. Harassment was always an objective for a prank caller. The caller might have implied he’d been watching in order to terrorize her when in fact he didn’t even know her address.
“What difference does that make? As long as there’s even the slightest chance that he’s watching, I’m going to feel hemmed in.”
A year ago, Yoshiaki had gone in for a thorough health exam and been told he might have cancer. During the two weeks he’d waited for the results of the re-examination, he’d found himself in the mental state of a cancer patient. Even the slightest chance … It was
the same. Yoshiaki understood perfectly well what Eriko meant. A makeshift excuse didn’t pass muster. The only way to set his wife’s mind at ease was to remove the problem in its entirety.
They could speak of hypotheticals forever. Maybe the caller had gotten his info from a friend who had visited them and now spoke as if he’d seen into their apartment. Assuming it was a friend of a friend also solved the mystery of how he’d gotten the number of their new home. Yoshiaki tried to convince himself with this poor excuse of a deduction, but as he did he felt ashamed of himself. He was reminding himself of his father, who only ever half-heartedly replied to his wife even when she was in a fix and needed help. Yoshiaki feared he might end up retreading his father’s behavior if he wasn’t careful. While his mother had carried the weight of the household on her back, his father simply feigned ignorance. Yoshiaki didn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps.
“All right. I’m going to do something about this.”
It wasn’t that he had a specific plan. All he could do for now was to contact all of his friends who had recently come to visit and subtly question them. In addition, he would determine who, including door-to-door salesmen, even briefly stood in the entryway of their home. Or should he contact the police since a suspicious person might be loitering in the neighborhood?
“Please, I’m so scared.” Eriko was still shivering slightly.
“Hey, Eriko, could you list up every single person who’s come to the door while I was away at work?”
Eriko took a pen and paper and started to write, stopping now and then to think.
Newspaper salesmen, the NHK fee collector, religious solicitors, the electrician who came to fix the air conditioner, the technician from the phone company … Such designations began to fill the memo pad. Yoshiaki didn’t know where to start.
When I find you, you won’t get off lightly.
What spurred on Yoshiaki’s overworked frame was the hatred he felt for the prank caller who dared to impose such an outrageous burden on him.
8
The next day, he visited the police station in his precinct and told them the gist of the story. The assigned officer listened cordially, but that was as far as it went. It was beyond clear that at this point, there was nothing for the police to act on. The officer offered mere consolation: “We’ll step up the neighborhood patrol.” Yoshiaki could only respond with a short bow and a thank-you when he left.
For a week afterwards, Yoshiaki used all his spare time even at work desperately attempting to ascertain the identity of the prank caller.
He called friends he had invited over, opened up about the situation, and asked if they had any clues. He also asked a coworker for advice. He came up empty-handed. Regarding the coworker, Yoshiaki was sorely disappointed by his misguided aperçu that Eriko might be having an affair.
On Sunday afternoon, Yoshiaki went to the roof of the municipal housing project and peered into his own apartment with a pair of binoculars, but it was impossible to see what was happening inside. It would take an astronomical telescope to specify types of stuffed animals. Even such a telescope, however, would be helpless against the blind spot from the floor up to a height of about three feet. From this roof, the visible area was limited to a narrow section of the living room. The baby napped on a cushion on the floor with the stuffed animal right beside her. Yoshiaki couldn’t help but feel that this scenario was implausible.
Perhaps a salesman held a terrible grudge, irritated by the way Eriko had spoken to him on the phone. When Yoshiaki answered calls at home, as soon as he figured out it was a solicitation or sales pitch, he’d hang up in a fairly rude manner. Even though it was an inevitable part of their jobs, some callers probably did get upset. When he brought up the possibility to Eriko, she told him she had taken calls from a real estate agent and a securities firm back in Naka Meguro but that she had been polite in declining their offers. As far as Yoshiaki knew, Eriko’s phone manners were almost too courteous. It wasn’t likely that she’d angered anyone.
Considering the caller phoned both the Naka Meguro apartment and their current place, at one point Yoshiaki suspected their realtor and the moving company. Yet as far as he could remember, there were no issues that would have earned their spite, plus the voice of the prank caller was plainly different. Just to be certain, he called both companies using trumped-up excuses. Both voices that answered were quite unlike the peculiar, lazy speech of the prank caller.
In addition, he checked out by phone the men Eriko had listed: the newspaper salesman, the NHK fee collector, the electrician, the telecom technician … There was no way of knowing the name or number of the religious solicitor, but since Eriko had spoken with him for nearly half an hour, she clearly remembered his speech and there was no need to confirm. She declared there was no way that the solicitor was the prank caller.
By process of elimination, they had crossed off every man on Eriko’s list.
Even at work, thoughts of the prank caller plagued Yoshiaki until he was on the verge of a meltdown. Images of the culprit prowling about his neighborhood suddenly assailed him until he gasped for breath and called home worried over the safety of his wife and baby. The nervousness he felt until Eriko picked up the phone … A mere ten seconds sufficed for ghastly scenes to flit through his head. Once he heard his wife’s voice, he basked in a moment of relief, but fury soon shot through his body and rendered him incapable of work. He wanted to drag that coward out of the darkness where he hid peeping and consign him to oblivion.
As if his prayers had reached heaven, shortly thereafter Yoshiaki happened across a clue.
Once the calendar turned to July, a heat wave moved in bringing temperatures that reached over 85 degrees for days on end. The end of the rainy season had not been formally announced yet, but for a week there hadn’t been a drop of rain.
Running down the stairway in the train station, Yoshiaki felt sweat seeping into the collar of his shirt. He wiped at his neck with his hand and checked his watch. It was just after 9:00 a.m., plenty of time before half past when he had to be at work. His office was less than a ten-minute walk from the JR Tamachi station. He’d left home a little early because he had an errand to run.
After turning right at the shopping strip and walking for a dozen yards he saw the orange sign for Shiba Photo.
Yoshiaki opened the glass door and called to the back. “Good morning!”
Footsteps sounded down the stairs, and then Kodama, the owner, emerged through the shop curtains. He was a small, old man with gray hair. “Hello,” he said.
This was his usual manner of greeting customers. The store was so small it could scarcely hold more than a half-dozen people standing. The darkroom was on the second floor, accessible via the stairs at the rear. Kodama usually worked upstairs and came down only when he heard people in the shop.
“Hot out there, eh?”
“Sure is. It’s killing me.” With that standard seasonal greeting, Yoshiaki pulled out a finished roll of film from his briefcase.
Kodama slipped on his silver-rimmed glasses and pulled a drawer open. “Baby getting bigger?”
“Indeed.”
“Must be pretty cute.”
“I guess so.”
“Hm? What’s the matter? You seem low today.”
“Oh, it’s nothing …”
Kodama gave him a direct look. “Fukazawa. You look like you’ve lost weight. Is it the heat?”
“Maybe that too.”
“Busy with work?”
Yoshiaki could only give a noncommittal laugh. He had worked part-time at the photo shop for half a year during college. He’d remained friends with Kodama over the ensuing decade. Since the insurance company he worked for was so close by, Yoshiaki had never brought his film anywhere else for ten years. He dropped off his film before work and picked up the finished photos at the end of the day, and through each such occasion, they kept each other updated on their respective lives. After the arrival of the baby, Yoshiaki t
ook up a decidedly larger portion of their conversations. The old man, whose wife had passed away years ago and whose grown son had moved outside of Tokyo for work reasons, by and large found himself in the position of listener.
“No good. You shouldn’t work so hard.”
Kodama took out an envelope and handed it to Yoshiaki along with a pen.
On the envelope was a form with carbon paper underneath where one could designate a matte or glossy finish, the size of the photograph, etc. Yoshiaki filled it out as usual, checking the boxes. Just as he was about to enter his name and number, his hand stopped moving. Right before him on top of the glass case was a finished roll of 24-exposure film. The small cylinder archived the day-to-day lives of the Fukazawas like a picture scroll. With a newborn in the family, they had wanted to document each and every action of the baby even if it was nothing at all. Such photos naturally included backgrounds and surroundings.
When was the last time I dropped off film?
At the end of the weeklong national holidays in May, he had brought in a roll of 36-exposure film that contained shots of the new house and the newborn. He remembered the composition of most of the pictures, especially the ones of Aya, since he ended up taking most of those. A shot of Aya in a pink washtub being bathed by her mother, Aya’s adorable face as she slept on a cushion on the floor … He’d photographed his baby girl’s every expression from all possible angles.
And the phone number.
For the last ten years, Yoshiaki had checked the same boxes and entered his phone number and name on envelopes that Kodama had handed him. The last time he’d dropped off film, naturally he had given his new number. Come to think of it, the first prank call to their new home had come right after the May holidays.
Why hadn’t he realized it sooner? A photo instantly relayed visual info about the inside of their apartment as if the viewer had actually been inside. The prank caller had divulged no other tidbits in his messages.