Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

  Mizuki gave it some thought. “I don’t think I have. Of course there’re plenty of people more fortunate than I am. But that doesn’t mean I’ve ever felt envious of them. I figure everybody’s life is different.”

  “Since everybody’s different it’s hard to compare them?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “An interesting point of view…,” Mrs. Sakaki said, hands folded together on top of the desk, her relaxed voice betraying amusement. “Anyway, those are just mild cases, envy as we’ve said. In cases of intense jealousy, things aren’t so simple. With jealousy a parasite takes root in your heart, and as your friend said, it becomes like a cancer that eats away at your soul. In some cases it may even lead the person to death. They can’t control it, and their life does indeed become a living hell.”

  After Mizuki got back home, she took out an old cardboard box wrapped in tape from the back of her closet. She’d put Yuko’s name tag in there along with her own, inside an envelope, so they should still be there. All sorts of memorabilia of Mizuki’s life were stuffed inside the box—old letters from grade school, diaries, photo albums, report cards. She’d been meaning to get rid of it, but had always been too busy, so she’d dragged it along every time she moved. But the envelope was nowhere to be found. She dumped out the contents of the box and sorted through them carefully, but came up empty-handed. She was bewildered. When she moved into the condo she’d done a quick check of the box’s contents and distinctly remembered seeing the envelope. So I still have it, she’d thought then, impressed. She’d sealed the name tags back inside the envelope and hadn’t opened the box once since then. So the envelope had to be here. Where could it have disappeared to?

  Since she started going to the ward counseling office once a week and talking with Mrs. Sakaki, Mizuki didn’t worry as much about forgetting her name. She still forgot it about as often as before, but the symptoms seemed to have stabilized, and nothing else had slipped from her memory. Thanks to her bracelet, she’d avoided any embarrassment. She’d even begun to feel, occasionally, that forgetting her name was just a natural part of life.

  Mizuki kept her counseling sessions a secret from her husband. She hadn’t intended to hide it from him, but explaining the whole thing just seemed like more trouble than it was worth. Knowing him, her husband would demand a detailed explanation. And besides, forgetting her name and going once a week to a ward-sponsored counselor weren’t bothering him in any way. The fees were minimal.

  Two months passed. Every Wednesday Mizuki made her way to the office on the third floor of the ward office for her counseling. The number of clients had increased a little, so they had to scale back their one-hour sessions to thirty minutes. The reduced time didn’t matter, though, since they were already on the same wavelength and made the best use of their time together. Sometimes Mizuki wished they could talk longer, but with the absurdly low fees, she couldn’t complain.

  “This is our ninth session together,” Mrs. Sakaki said, five minutes before the end of one session. “You aren’t forgetting your name less often, but it hasn’t gotten worse, has it?”

  “No, it hasn’t,” Mizuki said. “The symptoms are holding steady.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Mrs. Sakaki said. She put her black-barreled ballpoint pen back in her pocket and tightly clasped her hands on the desktop. She paused for a moment. “Perhaps—just perhaps—when you come here next week we might make great progress concerning the issue we’ve been discussing.”

  “You mean about me forgetting my name?”

  “Exactly. If things go well, we should be able to determine a definite cause and even be able to show it to you.”

  “The reason why I’m forgetting my name?”

  “Precisely.”

  Mizuki couldn’t quite grasp what she was getting at. “When you say a definite cause…you mean it’s something visible?”

  “Of course it’s visible,” Mrs. Sakaki said, rubbing her hands together in satisfaction. “Something we can set down on a platter and say, Here you go! I can’t go into details until next week. At this point, I’m still not sure whether it will work out or not. I’m just hoping that it will. And if it does, don’t worry; I’ll explain the whole thing to you.”

  Mizuki nodded.

  “At any rate, what I’m trying to say is, we’ve gone up and down with this but things are finally heading toward a solution. You know what they say—about life being three steps forward and two steps back? So don’t worry. Just trust good old Mrs. Sakaki. I’ll see you next week, then. And don’t forget to make an appointment on your way out.”

  Mrs. Sakaki punctuated all this with a wink.

  The following week at one p.m. when Mizuki entered the counseling office, Mrs. Sakaki sat there behind her desk with the biggest smile Mizuki had ever seen on her.

  “I’ve discovered the reason why you’ve been forgetting your name,” she announced proudly. “And we’ve found a solution.”

  “So I won’t be forgetting my name anymore?” Mizuki asked.

  “Correct. You won’t forget your name anymore. We’ve solved the problem and taken care of it.”

  “What in the world was the cause of it?” Mizuki asked doubtfully.

  From a black enamel handbag beside her Mrs. Sakaki took out something and laid it on the desk.

  “I believe this is yours.”

  Mizuki got up from the sofa and walked over to the desk. On the desk were two name tags. Mizuki Ozawa was written on one of them, Yuko Matsunaka on the other. Mizuki paled. She went back to the sofa and sank down, speechless for a time. She held both palms pressed against her mouth as if preventing the words from spilling out.

  “It’s no wonder you’re surprised,” Mrs. Sakaki said. “But not to worry, I’ll explain everything. Relax. There’s nothing to be frightened of.”

  “But how did you—?” Mizuki said.

  “How did I happen to have your high school name tags?”

  “Yes. I just don’t—”

  “Don’t understand?”

  Mizuki nodded.

  “I recovered them for you,” Mrs. Sakaki said. “Those name tags were stolen from you and that’s why you have trouble remembering your name. So we had to get the name tags back so you could recover your name.”

  “But who would—?”

  “Who would break into your house and steal these two name tags? And for what possible purpose?” Mrs. Sakaki said. “Rather than having me respond to that, I think it’s best if you ask the individual responsible directly.”

  “The person who did it is here?” Mizuki asked in astonishment.

  “Of course. We captured him and took back the name tags. I didn’t nab him myself, mind you. My husband and one of the men under him did it. Remember I told you my husband is section head of the Shinagawa Public Works Department?”

  Mizuki nodded without thinking.

  “So what do you say we go meet the culprit? Then you can give him a piece of your mind face-to-face.”

  Mizuki followed Mrs. Sakaki out of the counseling office, down the hallway, and into the elevator. They got off at the basement, walked down a long deserted corridor, came up to a door at the very end. Mrs. Sakaki knocked, a man’s voice told them to come in, and she opened the door.

  Inside were a tall, thin man around fifty, and a larger man in his midtwenties, both dressed in light khaki work clothes. The older man had a name tag on his chest that read “Sakaki,” the younger man one that read “Sakurada.” Sakurada was holding a black nightstick in his hands.

  “Mrs. Mizuki Ando, I presume?” Mr. Sakaki asked. “My name’s Yoshio Sakaki, Tetsuko’s husband. I’m section chief of the Public Works Department here. And this is Mr. Sakurada, who works with me.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Mizuki said.

  “Is he giving you any trouble?” Mrs. Sakaki asked her husband.

  “No, he’s sort of resigned himself to the situation, I think,” Mr. Sakaki said. “Sakurada here has been keeping an eye on him
all morning, and apparently he’s been behaving himself.”

  “He’s been quiet,” Mr. Sakurada said, sounding disappointed. “If he started to get violent I was all set to teach him a lesson, but nothing like that’s happened.”

  “Sakurada was captain of the karate team at Meiji University, and is one of our up-and-coming young men,” Mr. Sakaki said.

  “So—who in the world broke into my place and stole those name tags?” Mizuki asked.

  “Well, why don’t we introduce you to him?” Mrs. Sakaki said.

  There was another door at the rear of the room. Mr. Sakurada opened it, and switched on the light. He made a quick sweep of the room with his eyes and turned to the others. “Looks OK. Please come on in.”

  Mr. Sakaki went in first, followed by his wife, with Mizuki bringing up the rear.

  The room looked like a small storage room of some kind. There was no furniture, just one chair, on which a monkey was sitting. He was large for a monkey—smaller than an adult human, but bigger than an elementary-school student. His hair was a shade longer than is usual for monkeys and was dotted with gray. It was hard to tell his age, but he was definitely no longer young. The monkey’s arms and legs were tightly tied by a thin cord to the wooden chair, and his long tail drooped on the floor. As Mizuki entered the monkey shot her a glance, then stared back down at the ground.

  “A monkey?” Mizuki asked in surprise.

  “That’s right,” Mrs. Sakaki replied. “A monkey stole the name tags from your apartment.”

  I don’t want a monkey running off with it, Yuko had said. So that wasn’t a joke after all, Mizuki realized. Yuko had known all about this. A chill shot up Mizuki’s spine.

  “But how could you—?”

  “How could I know about this?” Mrs. Sakaki said. “As I told you when we first met, I’m a professional. A licensed practitioner, with lots of experience. Don’t judge people by appearances. Don’t think somebody providing inexpensive counseling in a ward office is any less skilled than someone working in some fancy building.”

  “No, of course not. It’s just that I was so surprised, and I—”

  “Don’t worry. I’m just kidding!” Mrs. Sakaki laughed. “To tell the truth, I know I’m a bit of an oddball. That’s why organizations and academia and I don’t exactly get along. I much prefer going my own way in a place like this. Since, as you’ve observed, my way of doing things is pretty unique.”

  “But very effective,” her husband added.

  “So this monkey stole the name tags?” Mizuki asked.

  “Yes, he sneaked into your apartment and stole the name tags from your closet. Right around the time you began forgetting your name, about a year ago, I believe?”

  “Yes, it was around then.”

  “I’m very sorry,” the monkey said, speaking for the first time, his voice low but spirited, with almost a musical quality to it.

  “He can talk!” Mizuki exclaimed, dumbfounded.

  “Yes, I can,” the monkey replied, his expression unchanged. “There’s one other thing I need to apologize for. When I broke into your place to steal the name tags, I helped myself to a couple of bananas. I hadn’t planned to take anything besides the name tags, but I was so hungry, and though I knew I shouldn’t, I ended up snatching two bananas that were on the table. They just looked too good to pass up.”

  “The nerve of this guy,” Mr. Sakurada said, slapping the black nightstick in his hands a couple of times. “Who knows what else he swiped. Want me to grill him a little to find out?”

  “Take it easy,” Mr. Sakaki told him. “He confessed about the bananas himself, and besides, he doesn’t strike me as such a brutal sort. Let’s not do anything drastic until we hear more facts. If they find out we mistreated an animal inside the ward office we could be in deep trouble.”

  “Why did you steal the name tags?” Mizuki asked the monkey.

  “It’s what I do. I’m a monkey who takes people’s names,” the monkey answered. “It’s a sickness I suffer from. Once I spot a name I can’t help myself. Not just any name, mind you. I’ll see a name that attracts me, especially a person’s name, and then I have to have it. I sneak inside people’s homes and steal those kinds of names. I know it’s wrong, but I can’t control myself.”

  “Were you the one who was trying to break into our dorm and steal Yuko’s name tag?”

  “That’s correct. I was head over heels in love with Miss Matsunaka. I’ve never been so attracted to somebody in my life. But I wasn’t able to make her mine. I found this too much to handle, being a monkey, so I decided that no matter what, at least I had to have her name for myself. If I could possess her name, then I’d be satisfied. What more could a monkey ask for? But before I could carry out my plan, she passed away.”

  “Did you have anything to do with her suicide?”

  “No, I didn’t,” the monkey said, shaking his head emphatically. “I had nothing to do with that. She was overwhelmed by an inner darkness, and nobody could have saved her.”

  “But how did you know, after all these years, that Yuko’s name tag was at my place?”

  “It took a long time to trace it. Soon after Miss Matsunaka died, I tried to get hold of her name tag, before they took it away, but it had already vanished. Nobody had any idea where. I worked my butt off trying to track it down, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t locate it. I didn’t imagine at the time that Miss Matsunaka had left her name tag with you, since you weren’t particularly close.”

  “True,” Mizuki said.

  “But one day I had a flash of inspiration, that maybe—just maybe—she’d left her name tag with you. This was in the spring of last year. It took a long time to track you down—to find out that you’d gotten married, that your name was now Mizuki Ando, that you were living in a condo in Shinagawa. Being a monkey slows down an investigation like that, as you might imagine. At any rate, that’s how I came to sneak into your apartment to steal it.”

  “But why did you steal my name tag too? Why not just Yuko’s? I suffered a lot because of what you did. I couldn’t remember my name!”

  “I’m very, very sorry,” the monkey said, hanging his head in shame. “When I see a name I like, I end up snatching it. This is kind of embarrassing, but your name really moved my poor little heart. As I said before, it’s a kind of illness. I’m overcome by urges I can’t control. I know it’s wrong, but I do it anyway. I deeply apologize for all the problems I caused you.”

  “This monkey was hiding in the sewers in Shinagawa,” Mrs. Sakaki said, “so I asked my husband to have some of his young colleagues catch him. It worked out well, since he’s section chief of Public Works and they’re in charge of the sewers.”

  “Young Sakurada here did most of the work,” Mr. Sakaki added.

  “Public Works has to sit up and take notice when a dubious character like this is hiding out in our sewers,” Sakurada said proudly. “The monkey apparently had a hideout underneath Takanawa that he used as a base for foraging operations all over Tokyo.”

  “There’s no place for us to live in the city,” the monkey said. “There aren’t many trees, few shady places in the daytime. If we go aboveground, people gang up on us and try to catch us. Children throw things at us or shoot at us with BB guns. Huge dogs tear after us. If we take a rest up in a tree, TV crews pop up and shine a bright spotlight on us. We never get any rest, so we have to hide underground. Please forgive me.”

  “But how on earth did you know this monkey was hiding in the sewer?” Mizuki asked Mrs. Sakaki.

  “As we’ve talked over the past two months, many things have gradually become clear to me, like the fog lifting,” Mrs. Sakaki said. “I realized there had to be something that was stealing names, and that whatever it was it must be hiding underground somewhere around here. And if you’re talking about under a city, that sort of limits the possibilities—it’s got to be either the subway or the sewers. So I told my husband I thought there was some creature, not a human, living
in the sewers and asked him to look into it. And sure enough, they came up with this monkey.”

  Mizuki was at a loss for words for a while. “But—how did just listening to me make you think that?”

  “Maybe it’s not my place, as her husband, to say this,” Mr. Sakaki said with a serious look, “but my wife is a special person, with unusual powers. Many times during our twenty-two years of marriage I’ve witnessed strange events take place. That’s why I worked so hard to help her open the counseling center here in the ward office. I knew that as long as she had a place where she could put her powers to good use, the residents of Shinagawa would benefit. But I’m really glad we’ve solved the mystery. I must admit I’m relieved.”

  “What are you going to do with the monkey?” Mizuki asked.

  “Can’t let him live,” Sakurada said casually. “No matter what he tells you, once they acquire a bad habit like this they’ll be up to their old tricks again in no time, you can count on it. Let’s destroy him. That’s the best thing to do. Give him a shot of disinfectant and that’s all she wrote.”

  “Hold on, now,” Mr. Sakaki said. “No matter what reasons we might have, if some animal rights group found out about us killing a monkey, they’d lodge a complaint and you can bet there’d be hell to pay. You remember when we killed all those crows, the big stink about that? I’d like to avoid a repeat of that.”

  “I beg you, please don’t kill me,” the bound monkey said, bowing its head deeply. “What I’ve done is wrong. I understand that. I’ve caused humans a lot of trouble. I’m not trying to argue with you, but there’s also some good that comes from my actions.”