The Aosawa Murders

by Riku Onda

  I had a quick look once at the windows from inside. Each one’s in a tiny room a few square feet in size. The middle room was a washroom with a deep sink, big enough to put a bucket in and fill with water to work with. The rooms either side both had wooden doors. On the right was a telephone room, but the one on the left had a shelf in it, that’s all. The day I saw it, there was a single vase of flowers on the shelf. Strange, I thought, but when I asked Mum about it she was cagey for some reason. “It’s the mistress’s room,” was all she’d say.

  Nobody told me as such, but I know that’s where the mistress said her prayers. I don’t know if that was the room’s original purpose. You know those foreign films where a priest goes into a tiny room like a telephone booth to hear confessions, so he can’t see people’s faces? Well, it looked something like that.

  You could see the rooms lit up from a long way off in the street.

  My friends and I used to play silly games on the way home from school in winter. We made bets on how many windows would be lit when we went past. It was dark, even in daytime when it snowed, which made the house look like a ship floating on a white sea of snow.

  Everybody knew that house. It was the centre of our neighbourhood.

  VI

  Yes, no doubt about it, Hisako and Nozomu were the prince and princess of the Aosawa house.

  They were slim, with fair skin and beautiful features. They’d have stood out anywhere. It wasn’t so much that they stood out but that you couldn’t help looking at them, your eyes just seemed to go in their direction. They looked like something from a fairy tale. Almost too perfect. Every time I saw them I used to think, Those two aren’t from the same world I live in.

  They were a mystery pair, all right.

  I’ve met other people from so-called well-bred backgrounds, but those two had something special, something that put them beyond the understanding of ordinary folk like me. Children from that sort of background usually grow up a bit self-centred and naive, or perfect, or rebellious. However they turn out, though, it makes sense because you can imagine that’s how a person might well turn out if they grew up spoiled and wanting for nothing. Well, those two were both like that… set apart from the real world… but not in a way that made you understand them, if you see what I mean.

  I can’t explain it… they were both perfect. Good-looking, confident, clever, smiling, good manners, never naughty or above themselves. I don’t think anyone ever said a bad word about them.

  It must be hard to always be admired, always have people looking up to you.

  It’s tough to play a starring role. To always be the centre of attention. If a movie star ever goes off the rails, ever so slightly, there’s a flood of criticism and they immediately get put in their place. Self-made stars can at least retire but those two were born to it, weren’t they, born into a social system going back generations. There was no retirement for them. They were in it for life. That’s what they faced.

  Something about them made me think they’d given up on it all. Their situation in life, that is. I sensed… and this might be overstating things… that they had given up on their world. Because it was hopeless, you might say. They were kind and faultless because their situation was so hopeless… that was my sense of it, anyway.

  Especially Hisako.

  VII

  I can’t tell you anything about the day of the murders. I don’t actually know any more than what was in the papers.

  No, I never asked Mum about it directly. If she’d given the slightest sign she wanted to talk, I would have listened gladly, but I didn’t want to bring it up unless she wanted, and she seemed to want to forget more than anything. In the end, I never heard a thing about that day from her.

  The detectives who interviewed her were decent people. There were always the two of them, a man of about fifty and a policewoman. She was a bit on the plump side. They were so patient… the man wasn’t like a detective at all. He was clumsy and awkward in some ways, but very gentle and kind… you might have taken him for a schoolteacher rather than a detective.

  He was good with his hands too. I saw him in the hospital one day, fiddling about with something. I wondered what he was doing. Then I saw he was folding a tiny paper crane. He noticed me gawking and smiled. Told me he used to be a heavy smoker but gave up on doctor’s orders, and ever since, whenever he craved a cigarette, he folded a paper crane instead. He was a bit embarrassed about it, and said it was his habit to fold a crane whenever he wanted to think.

  I didn’t know before that, but there’s a kind of origami called Connected Cranes, and lots of other origami techniques for making cranes. Apparently a monk from the Ise region wrote a book about the traditional secrets of origami during the Edo period. The detective folded a few cranes from that book to show me right there and then, on the spot. He made a big crane with a small crane sitting on its tail, lots of cranes joined together in a circle, and two cranes joined at the stomach like they were attached to their reflection in water. It was magic the way he did it, using tiny scissors sometimes to make cuts. They all had fancy names. I still wasn’t well at the time, and must have looked it because when I was sitting in the corridor the nurses spoke to me like I was a patient. That detective was always very kind. Oh, that’s right, I remember the name of the crane that looks like it’s reflected in water – it’s the only one I remember. Dream Path it’s called, apparently. Pretty name, isn’t it?

  The two detectives had permission from the doctors to visit every day.

  Mum didn’t say much at first, but she came to trust them, and I remember their little talks gradually got longer and longer. I don’t think she ever said anything that gave them a clue as to who did it, though. They got on well enough with her, but the detectives always looked disappointed when they left.

  It was painful to read the newspapers and magazines at the time. I wanted to know what had happened, so at first I bought up all the papers to read, but when rumours about Mum started going round I was too scared to read them any more. I’d open one up and all I’d see were the headlines. It felt like they were going to jump out at me and stab me in the chest. Sometimes I tried to open a newspaper but couldn’t move for half an hour. I had to get my husband to look first and give me the all-clear.

  That went on nearly two months. Time dragged because nothing was happening with the investigation by then. It had completely hit the rocks. The detectives didn’t visit so much any more, and when I saw them again after a long while they looked dreadful… so tired and worn out. The minute I saw their faces I felt angry and hopeless all over again. Those people worked like slaves… how long would this go on for? While taxpayers’ money got used up in the process… how long would the nightmare last? We were in agony having to wait so long, not knowing who to blame or who to complain to.

  VIII

  When news of the murderer’s death came it was a bolt from the blue.

  I’d never heard or seen that name before. It lit a fire under the media all right… they went into a frenzy, but we were left high and dry. Yes, the ones at the centre of the case were just simply tossed aside.

  Straight away the papers and magazines started raking over the life of the man said to be the murderer, but for some reason it all felt remote to us. We were worn out by then. Even Mum barely batted an eyelid when she read about him being charged.

  Then we all started to feel sort of uneasy. Was this the end? we asked ourselves. Could it really end this way? What would happen now… was this how we had to go on?

  It was despair, I guess you might say… despair born of fear that this was how it would end. It was so disappointing the way it all ended. The murderer was already dead, so at least the media soon got over their excitement. Compared to how they’d been when the news of the murders first broke, that is. Before we knew it everything was over and done with, and the whole thing was all but forgotten. Just like that, we were out of the public eye again.

  It’s strange, but ever since the day
the murderer’s name came out, I lost my fear of the papers and magazines. Like I was set free of my demons… nothing scared me any more. I could read about the crime in the papers and not feel a thing.

  The detective visited us to give a final report on the investigation. When I saw him in his warm dark-grey suit it gave me quite a start to realize how much time had moved on. It was autumn by then.

  He looked calm enough, but there was something in his face that suggested he wasn’t quite convinced. We felt the same, so it was a bit awkward all of us sitting there squirming in our seats.

  He told us they were positive the man they had charged was the one delivered the poisoned sake.

  From the way he said it, though, it sounded like he suspected someone else was involved. The real culprit. But he didn’t tell us anything more.

  “I followed a different line, I suppose,” I remember him mumbling to himself just before he left.

  “What’s that then?” I asked him. He just laughed and said, “Oh, nothing.” Then he seemed to remember something and pulled a Dream Path crane from his pocket to give to Mum.

  It was made from lovely paper. Not his usual cheap stuff, but a fancy piece with flakes of beaten gold leaf in it. He told Mum to take care of herself, and said she had nothing to feel bad about. The way he said it was almost like a prayer.

  But the moment Mum took that crane in her hands she burst into tears and nearly collapsed. Took us completely by surprise. The detective and I held her up between us, but she couldn’t stop weeping for a long time.

  “No, no, it wasn’t like that, I wasn’t supposed to survive,” she cried. I was crying too. I asked what she meant by that. She just kept shaking her head and saying “No, no”, over and over. I told her she didn’t have anything to blame herself for.

  The detective left without another word.

  Mum and I went outside to see him off, and we both stood there crying for a bit.

  To the end of her days she never mentioned another word about her outburst then, and what she meant by it.

  That paper crane sits on my mother’s memorial tablet even now.

  IX

  I was scared of Hisako.

  I don’t know why. I can’t explain it in words.

  I suppose I was jealous. She couldn’t see, but she had everything. Or maybe everything came to her because she was blind. I know blind people might not like me saying that. But Hisako wasn’t just anyone. You couldn’t compare her to anyone, not by my standards, or by anyone else’s.

  It’s my belief that she gave her sight in return for the world. Not the world that we know, but something different. I can’t help feeling she made a deal when she was born into this world. I’ll give you my eyes if you give me the world in return. At least that’s what I think. That’s why I was afraid of her.

  I saw her on the swing once.

  A small swing in a local park.

  She was never afraid of swings, even though she lost her sight falling off one when she was little.

  It gave me quite a shock to see her sitting on the swing at dusk one evening.

  She was pumping her legs to make it go as high as she could, and looked almost desperate, actually. She went so high it worried me to watch her.

  Then I saw the expression on her face.

  She had a great big smile from ear to ear.

  Looking like the cat that got the cream.

  I’ve never seen a look like that on her or anyone else’s face, before or since. I almost felt guilty, like I’d seen something I wasn’t supposed to.

  I was fair stuck to the spot… couldn’t move.

  Because for one moment, I had a vision… just a tiny peep… of the same world she was seeing from that swing.

  Pure white, it was. White in all directions, a pure white world of nothingness. And the only thing moving in that pure white world without end was the swing.

  It was like a revelation, I tell you, a real eye-opener.

  I felt like… in that moment, I understood.

  I understood the deal she made when she was on the swing that day. She was pumping her legs, making herself go higher and higher, and somebody said to her, I’ll give you the world if you give me something in exchange.

  So she said yes, and the next moment she took her hands off the swing.

  X

  I hardly know a thing about Makiko Saiga.

  I saw her at that house a few times when she was a girl, but that’s all. I had the impression she was quiet but sensible, and no fool. The sort of child who was always on her own, quietly watching while other kids played noisy games. My sister was also the curious sort, always staring at everything, but not in the same way as Makiko. Makiko was steady as a rock. Like she’d come into the world fully formed and nothing could ever shake her. That’s the kind of girl she was.

  When she came to see Mum I didn’t realize she was the same Makiko I knew as a child.

  They exchanged letters, and I knew Mum had agreed to talk to someone, but I didn’t know until I asked that it was someone who used to live in the neighbourhood.

  Mum had fond memories of her.

  At the time Mum seemed to be on the mend, finally managing to shake off the effects of the murders. I think she might have felt like talking to somebody just at the time that Makiko contacted her.

  I thought it would be good for her. She needed to draw a line somewhere, and I believed talking about it would help her work through things in her mind… that it would be a good thing for her to come to terms with events. Dad was against it from the start, but Mum told him she’d be fine, so he gave in.

  Makiko came over once a month and spoke to Mum for several hours each time. She’d grown into a serious and responsible young lady. Every time I saw her, and remembered what she was like as a girl, I couldn’t help feeling she hadn’t changed a bit.

  No, she was always by herself. Nobody ever came with her.

  It worried me when I heard Mum crying sometimes while Makiko was there, but she always looked so relieved afterwards, like she’d got a load off her shoulders, so I didn’t think too much of it. I can see now it might have been like counselling for her to talk about the past and say things she couldn’t tell us or anyone else. Even Dad said he thought it was going well.

  But when the book came out and there was all that fuss, Mum shut herself up inside the house again.

  We were on edge too, because of talk about opening up the murder case again, and I wasn’t too happy with Makiko Saiga then, I can tell you. She hadn’t told us she was going to write a book, had she… all she’d said was that she was collecting material for her graduation thesis. Dad and I were both furious.

  We wanted to have it out with her, but Mum dug her heels in and refused to let us.

  “Don’t worry, it’s all right,” she said.

  She said that over and over again. Almost like she was trying to convince herself. So Dad and I had to leave it.

  It was true Mum kept to the house during all the fuss over the book, but it wasn’t like she was hiding from the world or was hollowed out and empty like at the time of the murders. She seemed to be concentrating very hard on something and lost in her own world for a long time. She was calm… yes, that’s the best way to describe her… and spent every day, morning till night, looking through all the letters and old photo albums she put together for her talks with Makiko. She also had this air about her, like she wasn’t going to be beaten. She used to get so deep in her thoughts I don’t think she heard anything around her. So we just left her to it. Then all the fuss died down, like it usually does if you ignore it, and the papers moved on to the next big story of the day. Then Mum was left in peace again.

  I can still see her now, sitting at the low reading desk on the floor of the tatami room, going through the photographs in that book ever so carefully.

  I haven’t seen Makiko once since then.

  I wonder what she’s up to now. I didn’t hear of her writing any more books after that.


  XI

  Good heavens no, I never read that book.

  After you got in touch I picked it up to flick through for the first time, that’s about all. It was a slap in the face to our family. But we couldn’t very well get rid of it.

  Like I said, to her dying day Mum never mentioned a word about the murders to any of our family.

  I don’t know why she went on that day, saying “No, no, it wasn’t like that” to the detective. We never found out.

  But while she was reading that book, I could see in her face she was starting to remember things, bit by bit.

  She never told us the whole story, no, but sometimes she dropped comments in passing. After Makiko had been at the house, and Mum was still upset. Times like that she talked to herself.

  One day she came out and said, “Oh, there was a phone call.”

  Just like that. So I asked her, “From who?”

  She just said, “On that day.” But she had this faraway look and her eyes had a spark in them.

  “That’s right, there was a phone call, just when everyone was lifting their glasses for a toast. I’d just picked mine up and had only had the one sip, but when I heard the phone make a clicking sound I knew it would ring any second, so I rushed to pick it up. My ears were good, you see, and it was my job to answer the phone. It used to make such an awful racket I was afraid it would spoil the party. But already, in the back of my mind, I was thinking that something in that drink tasted funny.”

  Well, I thought that was very interesting, so I asked her who this phone call was from. Mum was unusually chatty that day.

  “A woman… it was a young woman,” she told me. “She didn’t give her name. She said something strange… what was it… like she was nervous. ‘Er, is everybody well?’ and ‘what’s new?’ – that kind of thing. ‘Who’s speaking, please?’ I asked, and ‘Who would you like to speak to?’ Then she said something queer: ‘Have you seen a thin dog?’ I thought maybe it was a prank call, but all of a sudden I came over sick and dizzy. The house seemed to go dark. What’s happening? I thought, then I heard the person on the other end of the phone say ‘Ah!’ and hang up. So I put the receiver down around the same time, because everything was going dark and I suddenly felt like throwing up violently.”