by Riku Onda
“Maki!”
She looked up at the sound of her name and the rain instantly soaked her face. Junji was coming towards her with an open umbrella.
“Where did you go? Mum’s looking for you.”
“Where are you going?”
“Dr Aizawa’s house.”
“Again?”
“They said to come back later.”
Junji was holding the umbrella, but she could not stand about chatting. Let him do as he likes, she thought with irritation. For no reason, she suddenly felt exasperated and ran off angrily towards home. It was no great distance, but avoiding the puddles made progress difficult and her breath quickened with the effort.
In the midst of all this, with everybody rushing frantically about, the girl’s eye was suddenly caught by the sight of a young man standing on the street corner with a map in his hand, looking all around him as if he was confused.
He wore a black baseball cap and bright-yellow raincoat. Drops of rain trickled from the visor of his cap as he stood next to a motorbike stopped on the shoulder of the road, a case of drinks strapped to the back.
He seemed to be looking for signs that showed addresses, for she saw him hurry over to look at one with a street number on it. He compared the map with the sign, but was apparently not satisfied. Reaching his hand to scratch the back of his neck, the man seemed to realize for the first time that there was a hood on the raincoat, and pulled it over to cover the baseball cap.
The girl did not quite understand why the man had attracted her attention. Maybe it was because he was stopped in his tracks while everyone else about was running around in a panic. Or perhaps it was the bright-yellow raincoat that stood out in a landscape drained of colour.
Later, she was to replay this moment over and over in her mind.
With head cocked to one side, the man went to mount the motorbike. A clinking of glass sounded from the case on the back that held soft drink, beer and a large bottle of sake. He was about to grasp the handlebars of the bike when he noticed the girl looking at him and stopped to stare at her.
In that instant it seemed to the girl as if the world was enveloped in silence.
Instead of riding off, the man dismounted and walked briskly over to her.
“Pardon me, could you tell me if the Aizawa Clinic is near here?”
His voice was measured and clear. Beneath the baseball cap she saw a distinct five o’clock shadow. Unexpectedly, the Beethoven biography she had been reading in the hallway flashed into her mind.
“Are you going to the celebrations?” the girl asked.
The man looked at her in surprise. “Ah, I heard something’s going on there today. I’ve never been to this part of town before, but I was asked to make a delivery.”
He nodded and looked around him; left, right and left. She noticed his chiselled profile.
“It’s over there. Go straight along this road, turn at that light, keep going and you’ll see a stone house and the sign. That’s the place.” The girl turned behind her and pointed.
“Turn at that light? Thanks, you’ve been a big help.”
The man nodded and gave her a smile. He lifted his hand in a small wave and flung his leg across the motorbike, then rode off with a rev of the engine, leaving the sound of clinking bottles in his wake.
Though thoroughly soaked by now, the girl remained standing there as she watched him disappear from sight. She satisfied herself that the yellow-raincoated figure had turned the corner, and once he had disappeared from the black-and-white landscape, the reality of the abysmal weather besetting the city streets returned to her.
Back home once again, the girl realized at last why the sight of the man had stopped her in her tracks. The Beethoven biography.
The man who had paid a visit just before Beethoven’s death.
This man, whom she had met on the street, was the very image of the man she had imagined as a messenger of death. A composed, clean-cut young man. An emissary from a far-off country, deep under the earth. She could not rid herself of the feeling that he had materialized here, in this present-day city, wearing a black baseball cap and yellow raincoat.
It can’t be. It’s just a coincidence.
The girl puzzled over it while her mother towelled her hair dry. And then she forgot all about him. When half an hour later Junji came back to ask her to go and get a soft drink with him at that house, her mind had already turned again to the homework that she had not yet finished.
4
THE TELEPHONE AND A TOY
The housekeeper’s daughter
I
Yes, Mum passed away. Going on three years now, poor dear. Over twenty years after those murders.
She had a few minor strokes, but the last one left her unconscious in hospital for two months before she passed on.
Well, she did mumble to herself sometimes. Always the same thing. Like she was desperately calling out to someone. But we never knew who, though we always asked: “Who are you calling, Mum? What do you want us to say?” We never found out in the end.
Most of the time she looked like she was asleep, but sometimes a look of pain would come over her face. It used to give me a right start, make me think she was conscious again. It was like seeing a complete stranger take over my own mother’s face. I always jumped and held my breath when it happened.
No, it wasn’t because of the illness, she was stable by then. It was the past, coming back to torment her, that’s what. She had terrible memories. More than anyone should have to bear. The thought of them made her twist her face in agony.
She lived those murders in her mind, over and over, I’m sure of it. The thought of her still trapped by the past as she lay on her deathbed breaks my heart, it does. Time stopped for Mum the day of those murders. She was still a prisoner of the past when she left us.
II
Yes, it’s all very much over and done with now.
Mum’s no longer with us. It’s been some years since she passed. But to be honest, I still find it hard to talk about things. Even now I get a sick sinking feeling in my gut just thinking about that time. I know the pain’s still there, stuck inside me like a splinter. That period of my life weighs heavy, it does. It’s like a lump of foul, black jelly stuck somewhere deep inside me, but the last thing I want is to stir up the muck. I do my best to keep a lid on it, but never know when it’ll come back… the slightest thing sets it off. It was evil we experienced then, you know, evil. The stench still hangs about. Nothing changes… the evil filth keeps pouring out and polluting everything.
I know people were scared out of their wits at the time, they had their suspicions to be sure, but my goodness, they said some terrible things… Unbelievable, it was.
I mean to say… Mum drank the poison herself, for goodness’ sake! She was in and out of consciousness for nearly a week before she came out of the woods, and then it was another three months before she could leave the hospital. It was only coincidence she just took a sip of the poison. But that didn’t stop people talking, did it? Dreadful, the rumours were. People said she knew the drinks were poison, that’s why she only had a sip. They called her the poisoner, or an accomplice at the very least. Our whole family was under suspicion for a time.
It was criminal they way we got treated! Still upsets me to think how the newspapers and gossip magazines hounded us… not to mention the tone they took! We got silent nuisance calls, and one day someone threw a stone into the garden, wrapped in an anonymous poison pen letter. Having to put up with that sort of thing on top of everything else was just rubbing salt in our wounds. It was a dreadful crime, I know, and everybody was caught up in the storm, but even so…
I can still hear Dad’s voice when he went to the front door after that stone was thrown. I was holding the baby and stood behind him in the passageway, where no one could see me. I watched him deal with it.
Yes, he was. He sounded calm enough, but I could see his hands shaking. He must have been fit to blow his top.
Still, for all that, we managed to keep our heads low. It wouldn’t happen that way now, with the media like it is. They’re all over people in the news like a swarm of locusts. Nowadays they’d circulate photos of the family and before you know it you wouldn’t be able to leave the house. Yes, it’s mob justice for the criminal and the victims now… before the truth’s known! But I believe the only ones with the right to criticize are the victims. I don’t understand this behaviour nowadays… why is it okay to have a go at complete strangers? I really can’t understand that.
III
At the time I’d just given birth, so I wasn’t up the day of the murders. My first son was no problem, but for some reason the second was difficult, and I had a hard time recovering. I hardly ate, and didn’t get up for two weeks. And I had dreadful black rings under my eyes for ages. My oldest burst into tears when he saw me, which just goes to show how different I looked.
That’s right, my family’s in the wholesale metal parts business. My husband’s from a family of stonemasons, but being a third son he couldn’t inherit the family business so he came to work for us instead. The understanding was he’d take over from my dad, who had no boys. When we married we lived with my parents.
Like I was saying, I was still in my bed, so my sister, a newly-wed at the time, saw to Mum in the hospital. She used to drop in on the way back to tell me how it was all going. I remember her crying and carrying on something dreadful as she told me how awful it was to see Mum like that. My sister’s an emotional type. Always one to let her feelings get the better of her. When we were girls she used to cry whenever she was angry, and cry when she couldn’t put her feelings into words. The tears would come rolling down… Anyway, that’s what went on every single day when Mum was in hospital.
Yes, imagine how on edge we were, wondering what people were saying about us. If we’d had any more stone-throwing incidents I think it might have broken us.
But Dad was a rock, truly amazing he was. Told us to walk tall and not do anything that would give people cause to take advantage of us. There’s always someone waiting for an opportunity to jump on others for their own amusement, he used to say. We did our best to stay calm and keep our heads down, just like he said. That’s why we never had any direct run-ins over the rumours, though we knew what people were saying behind our backs.
Some people changed their tune quickly enough though, buttering us up and becoming ever so friendly and kind after police discovered who did it… though he was dead by then, of course. Maybe they felt guilty. We got given a heap of condolence gifts. To see all those boxes of sweets and fruit piling up made me very bitter, it did. Why pretend now, I used to say to myself. But we knew the ones who had changed their tune, and didn’t touch any gifts from those people. Instead we shared them with families we got to know at the hospital. It was the least we could do to get our own back. Felt good, it did. Of course, even those people did the right thing by bringing a gift to mark Mum’s leaving hospital.
Mum always was a hard worker, and cheerful too, never one to stand still. But after that day she was never the same again. She aged twenty years almost overnight. When I first saw her in hospital I was so shocked by the change I was lost for words.
She suffered after-effects from the poison of course, but I think the overall shock was just too much for her… she seemed to lose her will to get better. Part of it was seeing the youngest Aosawa child, a boy she thought of like a grandchild, die in agony right before her eyes. I don’t think she ever got over it. Too cruel, it was. Mum herself experienced pain like nothing else on earth… that was another memory she had to live with… and, well, it was all too much to bear, I think.
Even now I wish I could kill that murderer. I can’t forgive him committing suicide. The coward’s way out. So unfair. A quick death is too kind. I’d like to drip-feed him his own poison, drop by drop, until he vomited and rolled on the ground covered in his own puke and poo. I’d make it last for days, too, so he knew what it was like to feel the same pain as his victims. That’s what I wish.
IV
You want to know when my mother started working for the Aosawas?
She had always worked there, as far as I can remember.
Her family were gardeners, had been for generations. They had a small landscaping business and had been in charge of the Aosawa garden since the time of Mum’s grandfather. She’d been going to the house with her father and grandfather ever since she was little. The Aosawas had a soft spot for her. Even gave her a fancy wedding gift when she married.
The younger doctor’s wife was Christian. A fine woman, Mum used to say. Always gentle, never once did she hear the mistress speak impatiently or in anger. When the daughter lost her sight they did everything to try and get it fixed, but nothing worked. The master, the younger doctor that is, was very down about it, but apparently the mistress comforted him by saying it was God’s will.
When the mistress started her volunteer welfare work they needed someone to help with housework, and that’s when Mum’s name came up. She’d known the family since she was small and liked being useful, so she was happy to take it on. I guess she’d been there twenty years or so when the murders happened. Like I said, she was always cheerful and spared no effort, so I’m sure they thought her a treasure, even if I do say so myself as her daughter. The children of the house were very attached to her. The youngest boy in particular… it almost made me jealous at times, even though I was an adult. Mum was awfully fond of that boy… he was her special pet.
I think you get the picture of how well she knew the family. The daughter, Hisako, and eldest boy, Nozomu, were both outstanding children, very self-possessed for their age and no trouble at all, so I understand why she might have wanted to spoil the youngest boy… he was a bit of a monkey.
V
Whatever else you might say about it, that house had a very particular atmosphere.
All the really good old houses are like that.
It was very tasteful. A lovely blend of Japanese and Western style, with high ceilings, a lace-covered three-piece suite and heavy curtains in the windows – just like a film set.
They always had music playing in the background. Classical, English songs, things like that – cheerful, classy sort of music. The master liked music, but that wasn’t the main reason. People said the radio was always on for Hisako’s sake. Apparently it’s easier for the blind to find their way round with sound to guide them.
I used to go there a few times a year, whenever Mum asked me to take something over or I had to go and fetch her. But I never felt comfortable in that house, not like Mum and my sister.
I suppose because it was too different. Not real, somehow. Like a house in a play.
For one thing, visitors were always coming and going. You’d hear them talking, speaking so la-di-da like they were onstage. It always gave me a strange feeling to hear them. My sister liked hanging around there, but I never could bear being in the house more than ten minutes. They had imported clocks, and music boxes, and dolls we’d never seen the like of before, and any number of fancy, beautiful things. My sister loved to look at them, that’s why she was always trying to get in there.
But me… I just didn’t like it. Only a few minutes inside and the atmosphere of the place made me so tense I’d be itching to get out. So I always went to the back entrance if I had to call Mum, and scooted off as soon as I was done with my errand. To avoid seeing anyone. If I ever ran into someone from the house I did a quick bow and kept going. They took me for shy, and used to say I wasn’t at all like my mother. Mum used to ask me rather than my sister to run the errands there because she knew I wouldn’t hang round. She could depend on me to leave straight away and never say anything more than I had to.
The smell used to bother me too.
I thought it smelled of disinfectant, because of the clinic.
But Mum and my sister said flat out there was no smell. Mum said the clinic and living quarters were completely
separate, and that there wasn’t any disinfectant in the house. She said I probably imagined it because I knew the clinic was there.
But it always smelled. Every time the back door opened that smell hit me. It was like a… how can I describe it… a cold, tart kind of smell. Made me feel like I wasn’t wanted in there.
What I’m trying to say is, that smell might have had something to do with my feelings about that house. You know what a hospital’s like, no matter how done up or how much the nurses smile, one sniff and you know where you are… in a hospital… a border zone between life and death. That’s how I felt inside that house. I knew I had to watch myself, pay attention and be proper… be on my guard. That’s the kind of feeling I had about the place, and I was always keen to get away soon as possible.
Of course, not everybody felt that way. Don’t get me wrong about that.
They were a well-respected family in the community, known and admired for their good works. That house was a magnet for young people.
Once when there was a cholera outbreak before the war, the whole house pitched in day and night to care for huge numbers of patients free of charge. When I was a girl many people still remembered that with gratitude. I’m not sure if I’m making myself clear, but in any case that house was special.
Oh, by the way, I say the Aosawa house for convenience, but nobody really calls it that. I didn’t even know for the longest time that the Aosawas were the family who lived there.
What people actually called it, if you must know, was “Round Windows”. So-and-so of Round Windows, or at Round Windows, they’d say.
Round Windows. Yes, because it really did have round windows.
It was a nice-looking place. Built of stone, with three round windows in a row that made it look like a picture of an old-fashioned submarine. The architect was German. One of the doctors in the family got to know him while studying medicine in Germany. But the house was actually built by local workmen, so it sort of looks Japanese. You can tell that in places like the tiles around the windows, where the plasterers obviously used Japanese techniques to set them. Or the way the blue-green frosted glass was set in place.