by Riku Onda
Father dutifully sent living and education expenses, but I think Mother was never sure how much she could count on him for. With three children to look after, there was always some kind of expense cropping up, and it didn’t seem as if she could turn to him for those. We knew other single-parent families like us who had difficulties when childcare money ran out. Mother started working. I suppose she had to, but it must have been awfully hard for her after being a housewife for so long. Anyway, she had a hard time getting by and we were all witness to it, so I was very relieved that Maki had given her some money from the book. On that point, I have to say, I’m grateful to her.
VIII
I seem to have gone on and on about nothing much at all, haven’t I?
I didn’t keep in touch with my siblings a great deal after leaving home, and a long time went by before I realized it. Come to think of it, the day of the murders was the last time the three of us ever all played together. I know that can’t actually be right, but setting out for that house is the only memory that comes to mind of the three of us doing something together. Siblings really are a mystery.
Won’t you have another beer? I’m having one. There’s nothing like a drink in the daytime on days off to relax. Though the alcohol certainly does go to the head faster during the day. I wonder why that is. Maybe the metabolism functions more efficiently in daylight. It slows down at night, which means it’s better to take medicine in the evening for the effects to last longer.
I think about things sometimes.
Is it a sin to not understand?
There are some people who you can never understand, even if they are relatives, like parents, or children, or brothers and sisters. Is that wrong? Isn’t acknowledging that lack of understanding, and giving up, one kind of understanding? That’s the kind of thing I think about.
But in this day and age, society doesn’t forgive those it doesn’t understand. To not be understood leaves you open to bullying, or gets you labelled suspicious. If you’re not convincing in the eyes of society it makes you vulnerable to attack. Everything has to be by the book – reduced and standardized. The reason for anger is, more often than not, simply lack of understanding.
In fact, the people we truly understand are far and away in the minority. To say you understand doesn’t solve anything. That’s why it’s a mistake to believe it’s realistic to think about surviving in a world that can’t be understood.
I think about it sometimes.
What was it my sister wanted to understand so much she was willing to go to such lengths?
Why did she want to become someone else to that degree?
I remember the last time we all ate together as a family. It was when my parents divorced and Father was about to leave the house for good.
Father was really a very ordinary man. Hard-working, basically a good person, loved his children. So it didn’t even enter our heads to blame him when we heard he was leaving. We were sad and resigned more than anything. There was a time when I was miserable about his abandoning us, but – how can I put it? – it was complicated because he seemed more depressed than me, even though he was the one leaving. I think he felt very guilty about us. But that didn’t carry enough weight to stop him leaving.
It was fine, warm weather the day he left.
On the surface of it we looked like any normal happy family. The three of us were playing around. Somehow it felt like that was what we ought to do.
Mother and Maki started cooking a beef stew early in the morning.
We sat at the table chatting and eating. It was excellent, so we all had seconds.
But as time went by, I began to feel queasy and started getting shivery. It wasn’t just me either. Mother, Father and my brother looked pale as well. We were all looking at each other oddly.
“Is everybody all right?” Mother asked.
I remember Mother and Father looking at each other.
And then it happened. We all began to race out of the room and vomit. We didn’t have the time to wait for the toilet to become free so we had to vomit into paper and plastic bags. The whole house reeked.
When Father asked if it might be food poisoning, Mother told him, “There’s nothing in the stew that would do this. It’s been cooking for hours.”
I remember thinking their faces looked like wet rags.
We were all so busy vomiting there wasn’t even time to think about calling an ambulance. The situation was rough for a while.
But once our stomachs emptied we felt better, and it showed on all our faces. There didn’t seem to be any other symptoms such as numbness or fever. We all drank gallons of water and felt much more ourselves.
“What on earth caused that? We should get checked out by a doctor,” Father said.
Mother said that was a good idea as it was a worry to not know what caused it. They still looked like a couple. The atmosphere had been tense all morning, but this incident had taken the edge off a bit.
Then suddenly we all fell silent.
Literally, all at the same time. And for some reason we all looked at Maki.
She was sitting there, steady as anything, not blinking an eye. None of us had noticed up to then, but she was the only one not affected. All the time we’d been running out to be sick, she’d sat there observing us.
So when this suddenly hit us all at the same time, we just looked at her, not comprehending.
And she just stared right back at us.
I noticed she’d barely touched her food.
“What’s wrong? Why didn’t you eat?” Mother asked.
“It’s this,” she said, and held out her hand to show us something in her palm. She was holding some kind of grass with serrated leaves.
“What’s that?” Mother asked her.
“I picked it on a school excursion the other day,” Maki said. She said this quite coolly, not showing any emotion.
Mother looked like a ghost.
“I put it in the pot,” Maki told her.
“In the pot? Into the stew?” Mother’s voice went screechy. Maki only nodded in reply and didn’t look sorry at all.
So Mother ripped the plant from Maki’s hand and asked, “What is it?”
Maki was surprised and tried to pull it back, but Mother held her hand up high so she couldn’t get it.
“Ah… it’s something that brings on vomiting,” she told us.
Mother looked scared and fit to explode by turns. I’m sure you can imagine. She put her face up close to Maki’s and demanded to know if it was poisonous.
Maki shook her head and said the teacher had told her it only brought on vomiting, and that animals chew it to empty their stomachs after eating something bad.
Mother really lost it then. She started screaming at Maki, asking what she was thinking of, putting that in the stew.
And it was only then that Maki started to look unsure of herself. As if she didn’t know whether to answer or not.
Then Father butted in and pushed Mother away by the shoulders. He told her to leave it be, because it was his fault.
He looked very upset, and I’m sure he thought it was some kind of revenge on him. That it was the least his children, who had no say in anything, could do to make a stand against a father who was leaving them.
But Father didn’t get it. He didn’t understand Maki or any of the rest of us in the slightest. The same way I didn’t understand Maki either.
The table went quiet then. I knew Mother thought the same as Father. I wanted to tell them that they’d got it wrong, but I couldn’t say anything.
Maki looked at Father and said to him, “I wanted to know.”
“Know what?” he asked her. But with some hesitation, as if he didn’t really want to know.
“What it felt like to poison people,” she answered.
We were all stunned. Even Father. He looked at her open-mouthed.
Nobody said anything for a while, then we all turned to look at Maki.
I asked her if she’d
found the answer. Purely out of curiosity.
She put her head to one side, with a mixed expression of anger and exasperation.
“Nope. I still don’t know.”
And she sighed.
IX
Would you like another can of beer?
This is when I’m most relaxed, having a drink on my own. Beer cans aren’t easy to doctor. It would be easy to spot if they had been tampered with.
There are many things and many people in this world that I don’t understand.
Some people want to understand everything, and others only want to understand certain things.
My sister wanted to understand one person alone. When she said she wanted to become someone else, she meant a specific person. The only person who committed the crime. The murderer who sent the poisoned drink and indiscriminately killed so many people.
I imagine that Maki wanted to understand the killer’s mind. I wonder if she was ever able to become that person. Even after reading the book, I still don’t have the slightest idea.
7
PORTRAIT OF A GHOST
The Young Master from the stationery shop
I
Rumour had it that the hanging scroll in the window case of the soba noodle restaurant was a portrait of a ghost. Nobody knew when this story first began, but anyone familiar with the neighbourhood was aware of it.
Schoolchildren who walked past the shop on the way to school were aware of it because older students routinely repeated the story to the younger ones. And in summer, when it was the custom to tell scary ghost stories, children would come by on purpose during the long summer holiday to stare at the scroll in delighted terror.
The restaurant, which was situated on a corner in the middle of the shopping district, was much like any other noodle shop in the area. All that set it apart was the modest hanging scroll and bamboo vase in the window case at the shop front, where usually customers might expect to see a display of plastic models of dishes on the menu. This could have been interpreted as a sign of refinement were it not for the fact that the window case was only dusted twice a year, meaning that the scroll had turned a dusty, grimy colour that made it barely indistinguishable from the wall, and the petals of the artificial bellflower in the vase set in front of the scroll were quite faded. In consequence, the majority of customers who passed through the restaurant door barely gave the window display a second look.
Occasionally it occurred to regular customers to enquire about the origins of this scroll; however, the proprietor, who was gruff at the best of times, would simply reply with an air of weariness that he had been ordered by his father never to remove it, and there the conversation would end. Those customers who were curious enough to persist over the years in asking, however, succeeded in learning that the proprietor’s grandfather had acquired the scroll on his travels and subsequently experienced such a run of good fortune that he had come to believe the scroll brought luck. He had therefore given strict instructions for it to be kept permanently on display in the family business, and the current proprietor was simply obeying this injunction inherited from his father.
“Hard to believe a creepy thing like that could be lucky,” the regulars whispered behind his back.
“But the restaurant does well.”
“True, the noodles are good, and the other food.”
“It’s often the case that so-called lucky objects are actually quite bizarre.”
“Ever seen Ebisu’s face close up? For a god of good fortune he looks downright sinister, if you ask me.”
“Maybe the scroll’s got historical value.”
“How can it? There’s no signature, for one thing.” The speaker shook his head. Commonly known in the neighbourhood as the Young Master from the stationery shop despite being well into his mid-forties, he fancied himself as something of a calligraphy expert.
He had happened to be present once when the scroll was taken out for dusting and had had an opportunity to examine it. The closer he had looked, the shabbier it had appeared. Kept as it was in an environment without humidity or temperature control, it was no wonder that age spots had speckled the canvas, the lines of the painting had blurred and the original colour had faded. Any historical value it might once have had would certainly not have been preserved. Not to mention that there was no artist’s signature or seal that could verify its authenticity or add to its value. For all anyone knew, the painting could easily have been cut from a screen or some such thing and mounted on the scroll. The way it had been mounted suggested a lack of aesthetic sense, with no consideration given to showing the picture to its best advantage.
The point of the painting was also obscure, and no matter how hard the Young Master racked his brain he could not discern its meaning. What might the artist have intended it to convey? Its composition – a man standing vaguely in the centre – was not particularly artful, and it was not clear who the subject was. The painting might have made sense if he were a hermit or an elder, but his age was indeterminate, and although the face was smooth it somehow conveyed an impression of elderliness. There was also something peculiar and not quite human about it that was slightly repellent and no doubt gave credence to the ghost story. But the major contributing cause of the rumour, however, was undoubtedly the forehead. Though faint, the man unmistakably had a third eye high in the middle of his brow. If he were a buddha this might have been understandable, but a third eye on the forehead of a man who did not project a particularly virtuous image provoked a sense of uneasiness in anyone who noticed it. Children whispered solemnly to each other that it shone in the dark, and watched to catch people’s eye as they walked by.
It was certainly a curious painting, but the third eye was not especially conspicuous, and appeared as no more than a blemish to the casual glance.
In short, the scroll had little to recommend it; there was nothing that appealed to the eye, nor anything in the lines that demanded attention. It was simply a piece of art for which the value of even hanging it on the wall was open to question. Give it another ten years in the window and it would probably fade away completely.
However, it had come to the attention of the Young Master recently that there was a young man who was interested in it, as he had seen this young man staring into the window at the scroll two or three times over the last few months.
In contrast to the painting, this young man made a positive impression. He was an almost painfully fresh-looking youth who dressed unremarkably in grey trousers with an open-neck, short-sleeved white shirt, and although the shirt was not new, it was always neatly ironed. His hair was trimmed very short, and his face was chiselled and spare, with finely drawn features. There was not a single excess ounce of flesh on the lean outline of his body, which evoked a recently carved statue. His face was handsome; lack of colour in the cheeks served to emphasize his features, not least the dark eyes set deep beneath a jutting, high brow.
On the sodden city streets at the height of the long, humid rainy season, he alone radiated an air of cool stillness.
How old is he?the Young Master wondered. Based on the young man’s physical appearance, he would have taken a stab at mid-twenties, but there was something about his eyes, and an aura of maturity that made him seem older.
I’ve seen that face somewhere before, he thought, a long time ago, when I was a kid, by a white roadside… A face in profile wearing a cap with stars on it flickered in the Young Master’s mind.
Toshi? Could it be him? The name came readily to mind, much to his relief. Of all his relatives, Uncle Toshi had been the most talented, advancing to the Imperial Japanese Army Academy from the prep school in Nagoya. His cool, handsome looks had drawn admiration from men and women alike, but he had been a quiet man who liked children and was at ease playing with them. “Toshi, Toshi,” the children would call happily whenever he made an appearance, and they would stick to his feet like puppies (Including me, recalled the Young Master). A scene he had witnessed as a small boy – Toshi
walking along the street before going off to war – was imprinted firmly in the Young Master’s memory even now. In his mind’s eye he could see Toshi’s handsome profile, visible beneath the shade of his cap.
He was sure of it; his uncle’s eyes were like this too: old beyond his years. Still eyes suffused with torment and uneasiness, as if he alone bore the weight of the whole world on his shoulders.
His uncle never came back from the war. All they ever knew was that he had lost his life on the Chinese mainland; his bones were never returned. Which meant that to the Young Master his uncle was forever young and handsome. And his was the face that overlapped in his mind with that of the young man who had taken to peering at the scroll at the entrance to the soba restaurant. He would stare at it, lost in thought before abruptly turning on his heel to leave, as if he were suddenly no longer interested.
It never occurred to the Young Master to speculate any more about him. The young man was simply an intriguing figure whom he occasionally caught sight of, that was all.
*
Then one day the Young Master came face to face with the young man utterly by chance. It was at a temple on the outskirts of the city, where he had gone with some old classmates to attend the memorial service for a former teacher.
Suddenly a familiar figure caught his attention. A man in a neatly ironed shirt was sitting on a bench in a corner of the temple grounds, among hydrangeas illuminated by subdued sunshine that had broken through between showers of rain.
There was a kindergarten in the temple grounds, and the clamour of children’s voices rang through the air. The man was sitting in a cosy garden nook, surrounded by children at his feet.
The Young Master felt a sense of déjà vu. He might well be one of those children, and the tiny garden filled with soft sunshine a corner of heaven where he used to play with Uncle Toshi.
But unlike his uncle, this man did not appear to be especially engaged with the children. Though he smiled at them as they milled at his feet chattering among themselves, his expression was remote and hinted at sorrow. Unexpectedly, his appearance brought the word saint to the Young Master’s mind.