by Riku Onda
I don’t know if she ever told the police about this phone call.
To me it sounded like that was the first she remembered of it. I guess she’d had a memory blackout up to then.
But, you know, it makes me wonder how that changes things. If this woman on the phone said things like “is everybody well” and “what’s new”, well, doesn’t that sound like she knew what was happening? She could have been calling to check if everyone had drunk the poison! Maybe the thin dog was a code word for the man who delivered the drinks.
So maybe there really was an accomplice. Maybe the woman who made that phone call was the real murderer. I couldn’t stop worrying about it in bed at night after she told me this, I tell you. Maybe I should find that detective, I thought, and tell him about it. But when daylight came I always changed my mind. That detective was long retired, and the case was officially closed. There didn’t seem to be anything I could do, so in the end I did nothing.
I remember Mum saying one more interesting thing.
One of the women helping out that day had stepped on something and almost tripped when she was carrying in the tray of sake and soft drinks.
Mum said she looked down and saw a red toy car on the floor.
It wasn’t Tasuku’s, because he didn’t like getting his toys dirty. He had a big collection of model cars that he kept in a special case and only played with inside. That car was covered in mud. It was already dry but looked like it had been left outside and maybe someone – Tasuku perhaps – had taken it inside. Mum wondered who it belonged to. It doesn’t matter now. But she did wonder about it.
Mum said it was a downright pity she didn’t fall over. If she had, maybe not so many would have drunk the poison. She was very regretful about that.
You see why this story bothers me a lot?
What if someone in that house knew what was going to happen?
I can’t say how much they knew, or if they were involved. But my feeling is that somebody knew the drinks were poisoned and tried to stop it happening. One toy car on its own can’t do much, but put it on the wooden floorboards of the passage, where someone wearing slippers might tread on it, and it could be downright slippery and dangerous.
Mind you, this is just my guess.
But I don’t know. Recently a lot of things have been preying on me.
I feel like Mum left me homework to finish off. Me… at this age! What am I to do?
Lately I have the same dream over and over, just before I wake up.
I’m walking across the surface of a white lake, like a ninja. I know Mum’s supposed to be waiting for me, way up ahead. In front me is the Dream Path, and in my dream I know if I go along it I will see Mum.
I keep my mind on trying to walk across the water. It’s misty all around and I can’t see, but I know for sure Mum is up there ahead of me.
I hurry. Then I happen to look down and see a reflection of myself walking on the surface of the lake.
Me upside down… walking along underneath.
I look at my face.
But when I look closer, I see it’s not me after all.
It’s Hisako.
Hisako is walking upside down right underneath me.
I scream. Then I run, desperate to get away from her.
But Hisako runs too, keeping up with me no matter how fast I go.
I’m scared out of my wits.
I run and run and run. It feels like my heart will burst if I run any more.
Then I wake up.
XII
Mum used to visit the Aosawa family grave every year, on the anniversary of the murders. She always went by herself, none of us family ever went with her.
After she died none of us went either.
But I think I might go this year. Like Mum did, on the anniversary of the murders.
She wanted some of her ashes scattered in the sea, you know. It’s because she grew up by the sea. The house she lived in as a girl had a sea view, and her primary school was set one street back from the beach. She used to say she always had the sound of waves in her ears. I kept back some of her ashes like she wanted, to scatter there, but haven’t been able to actually bring myself to do it, so they’ve been in the house all this time.
But I think that this year I’ll visit the Aosawa grave, then go to the beach near her old school and scatter the ashes there. Another thing I’m thinking about doing is reading this book through properly from the beginning. It might help clear my mind a bit.
It’s a hot summer this year, isn’t it?
That year was a hot one, too.
I think it’s a good time to scatter Mum’s ashes, at the end of summer.
Lately, I get an odd picture in my mind whenever I look at the sea.
I see a swing hanging down from the sky, over the water.
I can’t see where the swing ropes start. They’re hanging from high up in the clouds, like beams of light.
The swing rocks slowly over the water.
She’s on the swing, of course.
Just like she was that day I saw her.
Pumping that swing with a smile so bright it’s like she’s not of this world.
I squint my eyes and watch her for a long while, swinging above the horizon.
Nobody else sees her. Only me.
Just like that day I saw her in the park… when was it?
Oh yes, the day of the joint memorial service for the victims. They held it after the murderer’s suicide brought the case to a close. Anyway, I was coming back home around dusk when I saw her sitting on the swing, with a great big smile on her face.
5
THE DREAM PATH: PART ONE
The detective
I
It was because of ants that he chose his profession. The moment he saw them swarming all over a melted purple ice cream lying in the gutter, he had a feeling it was the right thing for him.
Since he was a serious boy who got good marks at school, his mother dearly wished for him to find employment as an office worker in a bank, or a trading company, or something similar that would pay a regular monthly salary, as she found it a struggle to raise four children on the unreliable income from her husband’s earnings as a joiner. His parents pinned their hopes on their capable eldest son and made every sacrifice they could to ensure he received a good high-school education. He in turn had every intention of meeting their expectations, and had wished for nothing more since he was a young boy than to become independent in order to contribute to the family’s income.
In the spring term of his last year at high school he began to discuss and explore his options with as many people as possible. Naturally, his first preference was to become an office worker in accordance with his parents’ wishes, and after consulting an acquaintance who proudly gave him an introduction to a medium-sized trading firm, he went to visit an office for the first time. What he discovered when he went there, however, was that he felt very out of place in that environment. At first he could not identify the nature of this emotion, because he had never visited a company or seen the inside of an office before, and assumed it was simply connected with the novelty and surprise of it.
The scene that he encountered in the office was one of men briskly answering the telephone and office girls in dazzling white blouses, the energy and smartness of it all radiating promise of a bright future. If he had been like other youths his age the blood would have rushed to his head at the thought of being accepted as one of them, and his chest would have swelled with pride and hope. He might have imagined himself eventually joining the ranks of those men, making important phone calls, drawing up documents and bantering light-heartedly with the young women.
However, the only sensation in his chest was unease, and every attempt he made at picturing himself working there failed miserably. He was nonplussed by this emotion. What was it? Why couldn’t he picture himself there? Why didn’t it feel right?
The acquaintance who had given him the introduction assured him that these
qualms were nothing more than a general symptom of anxiety about finding employment. “It’ll be fine,” the acquaintance told him breezily. “Everyone’s nervous when they first start work. You’ll have no trouble, Teru, you’ll see. You’ll get the hang of it in no time. And with your head for numbers, they might let you into accounting and you’ll be promoted quickly.”
Though he nodded vaguely in agreement, he did not find this reassuring. His uneasiness continued to grow. It was impossible for him to explain why he felt this way. He already had considerable work experience in a variety of casual jobs – delivering newspapers, labouring on construction sites and sorting invoices – which all went to show that his unease was not an allergy to hard work as such, nor could it be put down to anxiety about job insecurity, as that was not the case in the life of an office worker. Whichever way he looked at it, he simply could not picture himself in that environment.
After a great deal of thought he came to the conclusion that it might be due to lack of life experience, so with this thought in mind he asked his teacher to arrange for him to see other companies that accepted intakes of high-school graduates. This, however, did not make any difference, and wherever he went, he still experienced the same sense of unease.
If he had tried to express it in words he might have said it was the insincerity he sensed in that environment, the treachery he sensed in the cosmetic atmosphere of an office, which seemed superficial in comparison to his experience of life and the world.
In the impoverished neighbourhood where he grew up he was often derided for being a “goody-goody”, or “aloof”, or “looking down” on other people. He never denied that he felt different, and nor did he deny that he wanted an escape from there to help better his family’s situation. He could not abide their cramped, squalid life with its complete lack of privacy, although he never expressed this sentiment openly. However, he did not feel comfortable with the world that awaited him when it was time to leave school and nor, in all honesty, did it hold any attraction.
By the time the summer holidays of his last year in high school rolled around he was still unable to open up about his feelings to anybody. In the holidays he took a job carting ice, conscious of the absurdity of hauling cold ice under a blazing sun while drenched in sweat.
One evening, as he was on his way home from the ice factory after a day of heavy labour, he noticed a commotion on the corner of a backstreet factory. Police rushed busily about, shooing away curious spectators.
He stood among the throng watching from a distance, and heard the whispers in the crowd around him.
“What’s going on?”
“Woman stabbed her husband, apparently.”
“She really stuck it to him – there’s blood everywhere.”
“Them two were always fighting. Husband’s a real tomcat. Always heard ’em screaming they were gonna kill each other.”
“He sneaked some pussy home in broad daylight when the missus was out.”
“Blew her top when she came back and found ’em.”
“Didn’t think she’d really have the guts to do it.”
He saw a policeman speaking to a middle-aged woman standing in a daze near the factory gate. There was a blank look on her face, and she gave no reaction whatsoever to anything that was said to her. Upon looking more closely, he noticed that her purple work smock and hands were covered in blood that was beginning to blacken. It was a weird contrast to the orderly row of morning glory vines in planters lining the alleyway.
Separately, he observed a young woman crying as she leaned against the railing of the entrance to the factory housing. Her white cotton kimono was open from the knees down, starkly exposing naked calves that trembled and twitched like the limbs of a dying frog.
He straightened up. A shiver coursed through his body. An entirely unfamiliar emotion rose in his breast and bared its fangs, his heart beat fast and hard. What is this feeling? he thought in wonder.
Perplexed, he cast his eyes restlessly about him for no specific reason and caught sight of a black lump in the corner of his field of vision. He bent down nimbly to examine it and discovered ants crawling all over some kind of object. His first reaction was to automatically recoil, but then he leaned in again for a closer look.
A white paper bag lay dropped in the shallow gutter. Inside, he saw two sticks of melted adzuki ice cream, dotted with exposed beans and stuck firmly to the paper. The swarm of ants that had appeared, as if from nowhere, was busily traversing the surface of the now shapeless ice cream.
It was just a hunch, but he had the feeling that this paper bag belonged to the woman standing by the factory gateway.
The evening was oppressively hot. Perhaps the woman had spontaneously bought ice cream for herself and her husband, wanting something sweet and cool after her labours were over for the day. But then she had seen the young woman in her disordered kimono come out of the house and something inside her had snapped. She hadn’t been aware of herself breaking into a run and dropping the ice cream.
In that moment of insight, he had a vision.
He saw a man lying on a tatami floor covered in blood, the sobbing woman with trembling legs, the woman in the blood-covered smock standing rooted to the spot, and all the curious bystanders gathered outside. And then there was a youth, standing alone, apart from the crowd.
He had divined the nature of events while gazing at the object in the gutter, and that was when he knew it: This is where I belong. He was certain. From then on, he had no more doubts about his future.
The following year, after graduating from high school, he joined the police force.
II
Although he became a detective by choice, he was still something of a misfit in the workplace. Whether it was temperament that set him apart or an unconscious deep-seated rejection of something, he never became completely assimilated into the organization. While his colleagues in the force kept their distance, pegging him as an intellectual who was somehow different to them, they nevertheless respected him since he was affable, level-headed, carried out drudge work assiduously and did not rush into hasty, needless action.
Though he would never have actually said that he had found the perfect job, he was in no doubt that this was where he belonged. The work suited him, irrespective of the organization.
He liked a drink or two but drank mostly on his own, apart from with a few select colleagues. The bars he chose to patronize were places where he could enjoy a quiet drink in peace, for he never talked much about himself, and at his regular bar the other customers and staff assumed he was a teacher or researcher.
At thirty-two he married a woman who was introduced to him by an old high-school friend. By then his father had passed away and his siblings were all independent, which lightened his responsibilities somewhat. From the first he hit it off with his wife, a girlish, easy-going woman with no special ambition. Her outward demeanour, however, belied an inner strength that sustained her as she patiently nursed his mother through a long illness until death, and bore him two sons. Because of her, he was able to make a home and family.
His job was a busy one, but he was fascinated by the work. When attending a crime scene he always experienced the same vivid sensation that had come over him the summer he had seen the ants. Whenever he felt that thrill run through him he always felt guilty, as if he must be a deeply sinful man to experience such emotion. But essentially it was born of his curiosity about the true nature of human beings and a desire to understand them, which said much about the sort of person he was.
He used to ponder this and other such existential questions regarding human nature over a cigarette at the counter of his regular bar: Who am I? Would I kill someone in an extreme situation if I were cornered? Are all humans the same? Is reason ultimately no kind of restraint?
Shortly after turning forty-two, he was sitting at the counter drinking as usual one weekend when he felt an unaccustomed pain in his chest; the bar owner, noticing that something was amiss,
called an ambulance that carried him off to hospital. There he was told by the doctors to stop smoking or there was no guarantee he would live. After this warning he felt compelled to quit. His cigarette consumption had increased since joining the force to the point where he was smoking close to two packs a day.
Cigarettes, however, had long been his constant companion and therefore giving them up turned out to be far more difficult than he had anticipated. Lollies or caramels were ineffective as a substitute as he did not have much of a sweet tooth to begin with, not to mention that they made him feel thirsty and left an unpleasant stickiness in his mouth.
One day, while in a highly edgy state brought on by the intense craving to smoke, he ran into an old school friend he had not seen in a long while. At the time he was working on a difficult case that had reached an impasse, which may have had something to do with what happened next. Unable to concentrate on the conversation, he unconsciously reached his hands out for a cigarette; then, realizing what he had done, he tried to cover up by taking hold of the sake cup.
The friend could not let this pass. He picked up the paper envelope for disposable chopsticks from the table and opened it out into a long rectangular piece. Then, without haste, he began folding it.
The detective’s attention was captured, and he watched as in almost no time his friend folded it into a three-dimensional accordion. This impressed him so much he forgot all about cigarettes.
“Whoa, how did you do that?”