The Aosawa Murders

by Riku Onda

  Sorry about this letter. I’m really sorry to leave you a letter like this.

  I’m too scared to sleep. The thought of seeing those people and the white cat in my dreams terrifies me.

  VIII

  CITIZENS’ GROUP PROPOSES DISCUSSIONS

  A citizens’ group has put forward a new proposal regarding the long-standing impasse over the Aosawa residence. Their proposal is to include Hisako Schmidt (now resident in the United States) in discussions to confirm the final decision on the fate of the building.

  According to the Aosawa family lawyer, Mrs Schmidt has already received the proposal and approved it. She is expected to return to Japan by the 16th at the earliest to participate in talks with the group.

  13

  IN A TOWN BY THE SEA

  The friend

  I

  And now here we are. In an unfashionable town by the sea, late in the day on an early-autumn afternoon, the two of us standing side by side as we look down on the ocean. A sea breeze blowing over us. The sun’s rays, though dazzling, hold only the illusion of heat, and the freshness of sunlight at the beginning of summer has long since faded.

  This feels at once like the end of a very long journey, but also as if no time has passed. I struggled to reach this point, and now I’m here it feels dreamlike. All the people I met along the way are mere figures in the distance, while this woman with me now is like the first person I’ve ever met in my life. Yet she seems to be in the most distant place of all.

  The sound of the ocean washing over us on this hill takes the uncomfortable edge off the silence between us. We start walking.

  She watches the windbreak forest sway in the wind as she paces slowly along the walkway. All I can do now is wait. Wait for her to break the silence and speak. This is all there is left for me to do.

  It puzzles me that I still cannot form a fixed visual impression of her. Perhaps it’s interference from the light reflecting off the sea. Or was the image of her that I created in my mind somehow biased? I follow her with my eyes to gauge the truth of this, but I still cannot see her distinctly.

  She is much smaller and more delicate than I expected. Thinner and more modest than in my imagination. Her complexion is fair and her face still beautiful, but her skin is thin and the lack of flesh on her neck and shoulders gives her a forlorn, pathetic air.

  This is not how she’s supposed to be; I can’t quite believe it. The woman I know, the woman that everybody spoke of, was not like this. Her appearance is unsettling, and I can’t understand why.

  Suddenly, she whips around to face me and says, “So you’re a friend of Jun’s from university. That funny little boy. The middle child in that family who used to live nearby. That does take me back. He could never keep still, and was always making people laugh.”

  She looks at me with faraway eyes, as if searching through her memory.

  I return her gaze. Though I cannot see her pupils because of the sun at her back, I know I must be reflected in those eyes.

  Eyes through which Hisako Aosawa now sees.

  II

  “I had no idea Junji had died. How old was he?”

  We proceed slowly along the walkway, side by side.

  “He was twenty-seven. It was very sudden,” I answer. My own voice sounds like a stranger’s. It seems unreal to be talking with her now, like this.

  “Gosh, that long ago? He was so young.” Her voice goes up in surprise.

  I think about the long journey to this point, the sea a pounding accompaniment to my thoughts. I think about the letter from him that started it all. It still sits in my drawer, growing old along with me, though its writer never does. How many times have I reread it? How many times have I wished I could ask him what it means? Though of course I know there will never be an opportunity for that.

  “Dear me, how tragic,” Hisako Aosawa says, oh-so-tactfully, in consideration of my feelings, I suppose. From her tone I can tell she thinks Jun and I were romantically involved. I deliberately don’t inform her otherwise.

  The roar of the ocean smothers the silence between us.

  Jun and I weren’t particularly close. In fact, we were cool if anything towards each other in university tutorials. But we both recognized that we were kindred spirits. We both knew how uncomfortable the world could be for people like us, those who make compromises without any resistance to speak of yet still feel out of place. Who have no faith in their own kindness or goodness. Who are conscious of another, different world below the surface of this one.

  We both knew we were that kind of person. Which is exactly why we avoided each other. For fear of being called out.

  He was a lively, skilled conversationalist who was popular in our tutorial group, but I kept a distance from him because I saw what he was really like, and he knew it. In my memory he is always alone, returning my gaze with troubled eyes.

  Hey, you get it, don’t you? I bet you feel the same, he’s saying to me. Wanting my approval.

  When I read that letter, I was perplexed. It made me feel he wanted my permission for something truly awful. And I turned out to be right.

  The heavy salt-laden breeze lifts my hair.

  It’s strange. These last few years all I’ve thought about is Hisako Aosawa. I forgot about Jun, the one who originally set me on this path. He was shunted to a corner of my mind while I became fixated on the crime and finding out what happened afterwards. Yet now that I have finally found her, for some reason all that passes through my mind is memories of him.

  “When did you regain your sight?” I ask.

  “Two years ago,” she replies. “I took part in clinical trials for a long time. To cultivate and regenerate the nerve cells, and then I had a transplant operation. I was told the chances of success were very low because it fails for many people, but it worked for me. It was a miracle.”

  She speaks softly, but her bleak tone suggests that she considers her recovery to be anything but a miracle.

  “What was it like to see again after decades?” I ask, pretending not to notice the unhappiness in her voice. I suspect some kind of trap and am wary.

  “I was disillusioned by so much beauty, I suppose.”

  Did I hear right?

  “Disillusioned? Did you say disillusioned?” I ask.

  She smiles faintly. “Yes. Disillusioned. It was a long time before I became used to being sighted again, because my world before that was so much more interesting.”

  In her voice there is a note of quiet despair.

  “Your world before that? You mean the world in which you could not see?” I ask tentatively.

  “Yes.”

  She turns to face the sea. Already she appears to have lost interest in my question. Beads of light blur the outline of her figure.

  In the end it was decided to demolish the Aosawa residence. Because that is what Hisako Aosawa wished. I heard it announced on the news.

  “I want to forget the whole thing,” she said. “I don’t want anything left that reminds me of it. I’m grateful that people feel affection for the house, but the family has financial difficulties, and practically speaking it’s hard for us to find enough money to maintain it.”

  Once she put it like that, it was difficult for even the most enthusiastic citizens’ group members to continue their campaign. Sooner or later, the demolition work will start.

  When I heard this news, however, the thought that crossed my mind was that she had another reason for wanting to forget about the murders. Which was – as several people I spoke to suspected – because she was the mastermind behind the crime.

  Scenes I have heard described pass through my mind one after another like a parade. Hisako pumping the swing in the park, Hisako’s mocking smile, Hisako looking at the crepe myrtle, Hisako being waited upon, Hisako behaving like a queen, Hisako receiving the origami cranes.

  Is my image of her mistaken? Is the Hisako that everybody spoke about with such fascination really the same person I am with now?

/>   This skinny middle-aged woman?

  I glance at her in irritation. Disillusioned – if anyone has the right to be disillusioned, it’s me. I’m the one who’s been let down. Here I am, having finally arranged the appearance of a legendary heroine, and she turns out to be the kind of ordinary woman you might meet anywhere on the street. Where is the mysterious wicked enchantress of my imagining who lured me into all this? I cannot help but feel deceived.

  Was I bewitched? Or hopelessly fascinated by an image I created myself from everything people told me about her? All that kept me going in my research was an irrepressible desire to meet her.

  Waves come rushing towards us.

  Or… maybe it was simply all an illusion? One that we all created?

  A powerful surge of waves breaks on the shore with a loud roar.

  What if she’s simply what everybody wanted her to be?

  This idea strikes me almost physically. What if everybody simply desired the culprit to be a spectacularly evil, cunning, beautiful woman, rather than an impulsive, mentally ill young man?

  The thought stuns me. There is no evidence, nothing at all. Only her smile, her insinuating words, and her suspect appearance. The second-hand bookshop burned down, and Makiko Saiga died. There is nothing left. Nothing that can be used to pin her down as the mastermind. Nothing apart from everybody’s conjectures and hopes, that is. This woman walking alongside me is simply a shadow, a receptacle for their fantasies.

  When something beyond comprehension happens people need and demand answers. Explanations such as a major conspiracy or sinister plot. The weak and powerless feel compelled to create answers or demand explanations from those in positions of superiority, because they have a need to lay the blame somewhere.

  I chew on this bitter disappointment as we continue to walk.

  III

  “Is that how everybody sees me?” she says abruptly, with a self-deprecating smile.

  The smile startles me. For a moment, her face seems to split, making her look like an old crone.

  “That is all I see in people’s eyes now I have my sight again. How ironic,” she says, a crooked smile still on her lips.

  I have no answer. Did she read my disillusion and disappointment?

  “Good heavens, is this the one and only Hisako Aosawa?” she continues in a sing-song voice. “She used to be such a lovely young girl. How did that bright, beautiful child become this sorry figure of an old woman? What a disappointment. I can see it in everybody’s eyes.”

  My cheeks flush. This thought exactly had been running through my mind.

  She turns to gaze at the sea in stony silence, her humiliation whirling in the thick, humid air.

  By now the sun has sunk low and sombre, ink-washed clouds roll across the sky. The evening clouds always creep up suddenly on this coast, irrespective of how fine the daytime weather has been. Where do those clouds come from?

  “I used to be special. The world was mine,” she mutters angrily. “Now I don’t feel special or satisfied at all. When my eyes awoke, I realized the world belonged to strangers and that I never had anything from the start.”

  The anger in her voice turns to resignation. “Colours are the same,” she says.

  Casually she reaches down and plucks a withered day flower from the path’s edge.

  “The colours I knew in childhood from long, long ago were enough for me. I could have happily passed my whole life with the colours in my memory. The blue and red in my mind were bright and beautiful. Fresh, pure and full of energy. Much more so than real flowers.”

  She sounds like a small child putting on a juvenile display of bravado, bragging about how much better her home is than anyone else’s.

  “My husband is the same. He looks at me as if I’m a different woman,” she says, the anger returning to her voice. “He’s disillusioned too. I actually heard him say that once.”

  She swipes roughly at the tall grass with the day flower in her hand.

  “When I was blind, I felt like a goddess. Full of confidence. People thought I knew everything. But once I could see again I became timid and always looking nervously around me. I aged instantly. It was like a spell had been broken.”

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. A spell! Is she joking? After going to America and spending all those years in clinical trials and putting up with tests to satisfy her husband?

  She tosses the flower angrily aside.

  I watch her in silence. Time to bring our talk to an end, I think, and I start to wonder about return train times.

  She turns to look at me, as if she’s read my mind. Her intuition certainly is good.

  “So you think I did it too, don’t you?”

  I see her observing me, an abject light in her eyes.

  “You’re just like that detective, and little Maki with her book. You think I did it and that’s why you’re trying to get close to me, aren’t you? I can tell from your eyes. Are you waiting for me to confess now the statute of limitations is suspended? Looking for a scoop, are you? Or are you here to get revenge for Jun?”

  She pretends to be angry, but beneath the surface of her words I hear a pleading note. The unctuous tone of her voice revolts me. Is this what she has come to? The once divine young girl reduced to pushing her own scandal like a TV personality fallen on hard times, so she can ingratiate herself with a stranger? When I think how much time I’ve invested in order to hear this voice, anger and frustration surge through me in equal measure.

  My contempt must be obvious, as her expression changes and she straightens her back. The change in her makes me recoil. Time seems to peel away in that moment as the haughty, proud look of the young girl returns. I, too, hastily straighten up and look at her anew.

  Her calm, intelligent eyes observe me.

  “All right,” she says solemnly. “I’ll tell you the truth, as I know it. My gift to you.”

  IV

  The walkway overlooking the beach follows a gentle, downward curve. In the distance is a dark pine grove.

  “There’s a small park over there, where I was often taken as a child,” Hisako says, pointing to the pine grove.

  I’ve heard about this place. To see it for the first time fills me with a strange feeling, almost like nostalgia.

  We slowly make our way towards it. Hisako’s previous childish irritation and ingratiating attitude has completely disappeared. Is this quiet, composed version what she used to be like? It confuses me, puts me on my guard again. Was the grovelling an act? What if her change in attitude is a trap? Surely she wouldn’t lure me here to this forsaken place and make me disappear too?

  A shiver runs down my spine.

  So far we have met nobody else. Has anybody seen us? Even if somebody had spotted two women walking together at a distance, I doubt if they could identify us. If I disappeared right now, there would be nobody who knew where I had gone and why. Then Hisako could go back to America having disposed of more evidence.

  “There used to be a church over there. It’s gone now.”

  She sounds wistful as she looks in the direction of where the church presumably once stood. Has she noticed my wariness, I wonder?

  “The church was also a children’s home. Mother often went there with Christmas presents or cakes and biscuits for the children. I always went with her. I loved listening to the sea, so Kimi would take me to that park and I’d spend hours sitting there.”

  A small park comes into view. In it I see a solitary white stone bench, S-shaped, like a large love chair.

  “Most of the children in the home had intellectual disabilities. Even fully grown they were just simple children at heart. They were always pleased to see me and would come running up to tell me all their news. They were so cheerful and innocent. Chattering with them made me feel all light and happy like a pretty paper balloon.”

  Hisako’s gentle soothing voice skilfully steers the conversation. I could listen to it forever.

  “Look at this bench. See the unus
ual shape. The backrest is so high you can’t see who sits on the other side. But you can tell somebody is there through the coloured glass inset.”

  We sit down on the bench. The white, dry stone is warm from the sun, but not so hot as to be unbearable. Once I am seated I suddenly realize how tired and tense I am.

  “I used to sit here for ages. Kimi did her knitting on the other side. Sometimes she’d say something through the glass, but mostly we sat in silence, listening to the sea. I always felt relaxed and peaceful here with the open sea breeze on my cheeks and the sound of the waves in my ears.”

  We both gaze at the distant horizon. She could not have seen this in the past. I try closing my eyes. The roar of the sea comes pounding at me from all directions and the world feels loosed from its foundation. Before I know it the uneasiness grows and I open my eyes again.

  I glance at Hisako sitting next to me and see her stony profile fixed on a distant point, way out at sea, as if she had been gazing at this scene for years.

  “When was it? I can’t remember any more.”

  The cold face begins to speak.

  “Sometimes Kimi went to help Mother and left me here alone. I didn’t mind being by myself.”

  She puts her hand out to gently stroke the coloured glass inset.

  “So this is what it looks like. Now I know why he said that,” she says.

  There is a red flower pattern on the glass, enclosed by a black line.

  “He came from over there.”

  She points to the walkway we had just come along.

  “He had a soft voice and sounded intelligent. He knew from my stick that I couldn’t see, and called out to me first so I wouldn’t be surprised. ‘Hello, I’m just taking a walk along here. I’ll sit down with you, if that’s all right,’ he said. And I could tell that he’d sat where Kimi had been earlier. I had a good feeling about him. Back then I had very good instincts about people. I could tell he wasn’t a bad person. He had an air of heartache about him, as if he had suffered from grief.”

  Long-ago emotions colour Hisako’s voice.