'I don't believe you,' Kuniko muttered.
'What did you say?' Masako asked.
'I said, "I don't believe you." I mean, this hasn't really bothered you at all, has it?' Kuniko was frowning in disgust.
'Who says it hasn't?' Masako shot back. 'But what bothers me more is someone who would run up a mountain of debt, drive around in an imported car, and then have the nerve to come to me for a loan.' Almost instantly, Kuniko's small eyes filled with tears. She usually wore elaborate make-up, but there'd been no time for that this morning. Oddly enough, her bare face looked younger and more innocent as a result.
'You think so?' she managed to say. 'But I'm still not as bad as you. You did this willingly, but I was tricked into it.'
'Really? Then you don't want the money?'
'No, I want it. I'm screwed without it.'
'You're screwed anyway,' said Masako, 'whether you make your payment or not. I know. I've seen lots of people like you.'
'Seen them where?'
'In my old job,' Masako said, looking calmly at her. A woman like this deserves what she gets, she was thinking.
'And just what was your old job?' Kuniko said, unable to hide her curiosity.
'None of your business,' Masako told her, shaking her head.
'Now she gets mysterious all of a sudden.'
'Just drop it. If you want the money, then take the bags.'
'I'll take them, but if you ask me, there are limits as to what a person can do.'
'I like that, coming from you,' Masako laughed. Kuniko seemed about to answer, but something - perhaps the thought of the yakuza who would be coming to see her - made her hold her tongue. Her tears had dried and, in their place, sweat was dripping down her nose. 'You helped us because you wanted the money. That makes you as guilty as the rest of us, so stop acting so priggish.'
Kuniko started to speak but the tears came welling up again and she fell silent.
'Sorry to butt in,' said Yoshie, her eyes puffy with exhaustion, 'but I've got to be getting home. My mother-in-law must be awake by now, and I've still got a lot to do.'
'Okay, Skipper,' said Masako, pointing at the bags of bones and flesh. 'I hate to ask, but could you take a few of these with you?' Yoshie grimaced.
'But I'm on a bike. I can't just load them in the basket. How am I going to hold my umbrella?' Masako glanced out the window. The rain had stopped, and there were patches of blue sky. It would get hot again in no time. They would have to get rid of the bags soon or they'd begin to smell. The intestines had already been half-rotten.
'It's stopped raining,' she said.
'But I just can't,' Yoshie protested.
'Then how are we going to offload them?' Masako asked, folding her arms and leaning against the tiled wall. She turned to look at Kuniko who was still standing in the changing room. 'You take some, too,' she said.
'You want me to put them in my trunk?!' Kuniko gasped.
'You bet I do. Are you telling me your car is too fancy?' Why did they seem so dense, she wondered. 'This isn't like the factory where you can punch out the minute the shift is over. You aren't finished here until you've found a place to get rid of these so they'll never be discovered. Then you'll get paid. And if somebody does find out about them, we have to be sure they can't be traced to us.'
'I wonder if we can trust Yayoi not to talk,' said Yoshie.
'If she does, we can say she was blackmailing us.'
'Fine, then I'll say that you were blackmailing me,' said Kuniko, determined to stir things up again.
'Go ahead. Then I won't have to pay you.'
'You really are horrible, you know that?' Kuniko said, stifling a sob, before thinking better of it and changing the subject. 'You know, I think it's so sad - about this poor man. And you don't seem to feel a thing. I can't believe it!'
'Will you shut up!' Masako bellowed. 'It has nothing to do with us! It's between Yayoi and him; and anyway, it's over.'
'But I can't help thinking,' Yoshie put in, her own voice growing emotional, 'that he might even be glad that we did this to him. I mean, when I used to read about these dismemberings, I thought it sounded terrible. But it's not really like that, is it? There's something about taking somebody apart so neatly, so completely, that feels almost respectful.' Here she goes again with her self-justifications, thought Masako. But even so, she had to admit that there was something proper and orderly, almost satisfying, about finishing filling the forty-three bags. She looked at them again, lined up neatly on the bath-tub cover.
After taking off the head, they had removed the arms and legs and then cut them up at the joints. Each foot had been divided into two parts, with the shins and thighs also being cut in half, making a total of six pieces and six bags per leg. The arms had been divided into five bits. As they were bagging them, it occurred to Masako that there was an outside chance that the hands would be found, so she'd had Yoshie slice off the fingerprints, as if she were shaving sashimi. In the end, they had twenty-two bags from just the arms and legs.
It was the torso that had presented the real problems and had taken the most time. First, they had cut it in half lengthwise and removed the organs. These alone had filled eight more bags. Then they'd sliced off the flesh and separated the ribcage, sawing it into neat rounds. Twenty bags, all told. When you counted the head, it came to a total of forty-three bags. Ideally, they would have made even smaller segments, but the work had been unfamiliar and had taken more than three hours. It was after 1.00, and they had reached the end of their time and energy.
Everything had gone into city-approved garbage bags, and these had been sealed and the tops folded down to double the thickness. Then they put each bag in a second one so that the contents were no longer visible through the opaque plastic. If nobody realised what was inside, the bags would simply be incinerated along with the rest of the garbage in Tokyo. The one drawback was the weight of the bags, which were a little over a kilogram each. To avoid attracting attention to the unusual contents, they took the precaution of mixing up different parts of the body: an organ with a piece of leg, a shoulder with the fingers. Kuniko had made a fuss about it, but Masako had insisted that she help with the bagging. Yoshie suggested that they wrap the parts in newspaper first, but then they realised that a particular edition of the paper could probably be traced to a specific neighbourhood or district, so they gave up on that idea. But even after the whole body was packed up, the problem remained: where were they going to dispose of the bags?
'Since you're on your bike, you take five,' Masako told Yoshie. 'Kuniko, you take fifteen, and I'll do the rest, along with the head. Wear gloves so you don't get fingerprints on them.'
'What are you going to do with the head?' Yoshie asked, looking uncomfortably at the largest bag. Even concealed by the plastic, it was still recognisable for what it was, sitting almost regally on the lid of the tub where they had left it when they first cut it from the body.
'The head?' Masako said, imitating Yoshie's reverent tone. 'I'll bury it somewhere later. I don't see any other way of getting rid of it. If they find that, we're in big trouble.'
'Once it's rotted, it won't matter,' said Yoshie.
'But they can identify it from dental records or something,' Kuniko put in, trying to sound knowledgeable. 'That's what they do in plane crashes.'
'Anyway, make sure you take the bags somewhere far from here, and don't leave them all in one spot. And be sure no one sees you,' said Masako.
'So it'd probably be best to do it tonight, on the way to the factory,' Yoshie said.
'But the cats and crows might get at them if they sit all night,' said Kuniko. 'Wouldn't it be better to do it early tomorrow morning?'
'As long as you find a place where nobody keeps track of the garbage, it doesn't really matter. But make sure you get as far from here as possible,' Masako repeated.
'Masako, there's just one more thing,' Kuniko added, almost timidly. 'I was wondering if we could get our money today - just fifty thousa
nd, or even forty-five would do. So I can make my payment. And then if I could borrow just a bit more to live on for a few days... '
'Okay,' said Masako. 'I'll take it out of your share.'
'And how much is my share?' she asked. Her eyes were still wet with tears, but there was a glint in them now. Yoshie glanced at her and awkwardly patted her pocket. Only Masako knew that it contained the money from Kenji's wallet.
'Let's see,' said Masako. 'You filled the bags, but you didn't help with the dirty work, so I'd say ¥100,000 would be about right. And ¥400,000 for the Skipper. That is, if Yayoi can come up with that kind of money.' Yoshie and Kuniko glanced at one another with distinct disappointment in their eyes. But perhaps because Yoshie realised she was getting the bigger share, and perhaps because Kuniko decided she was glad she'd avoided the really nasty job or maybe because both of them were more than a little afraid of Masako - neither of them said anything else.
'I'd better be going,' said Yoshie, before walking out the door without looking back.
'Masako, do you want to meet at the parking lot tonight?' Kuniko said.
'Oh. No, let's forget about that.' Kuniko eyed her suspiciously as Masako loaded the garbage bags into a larger plastic bag.
'Did something happen last night?' she asked. 'You were awfully late.'
'No, nothing.'
'Really?' she said, still looking dubiously at her.
-
When they were gone, Masako took her bags, along with Kenji's shredded clothes and other possessions, out to the trunk of her car. She would do a little reconnoitring on the way to work, then dump everything either tonight or tomorrow morning on the way home. Next, she found a stiff brush and scrubbed every inch of the bathroom. When she was done, however, she still had the feeling that there was blood sticking between the tiles. And even after she'd opened the windows and turned on the ventilation fan, she was sure she could smell the gore and decay.
No, it was just an illusion, a sign of weakness, she told herself. Yoshie had been convinced that her hands still smelt of blood even after she washed them, so she'd soaked them in cresol until they were almost ready to dissolve. And though she hadn't done anything but load the bags, the mere sight of the bits and pieces had sent Kuniko running to puke in the toilet. Ridiculously, while she was stuffing the bags, she'd sworn she would never eat meat again. Masako herself had managed to take the whole thing in her stride, relatively speaking. And if she was scrubbing the bathroom until it glistened, it was because she was worried that, in the unlikely event of a police search, they might turn up traces of blood. She made it a policy to take a rational approach to things, and it would be humiliating to find that she too was suffering from the same delusions.
She spotted a hair on the bathroom wall. Short and stiff, it was clearly a man's. Picking it up, she wondered whether it belonged to her husband or her son, or perhaps Kenji. But then she realised how silly it was to worry about it. Short of a DNA test, there was no way of telling whose head - either living or dead - it had come from. She washed it unceremoniously down the drain, and with it any fancies of her own.
After calling Yayoi about the money, she finally lay down in bed. It was already after four o'clock. Usually, she was in bed by nine in the morning and up again around four; so although her body was exhausted, her mind was unusually clear and she found it difficult to get to sleep. Getting out of bed again, she went to the refrigerator and drank a beer. She hadn't been this tense since she'd lost her previous job. Back in bed, she found herself still tossing and turning in the humid, late afternoon heat.
-
She had only meant to lie down for an hour or so, but when she opened her eyes she could feel the dank night air coming through the open window. Checking her wristwatch, which she'd left on, she found it was already past eight. She got out of bed. Despite the cool evening, her T-shirt was damp with sweat. She remembered that she'd had a number of bad dreams, but she couldn't recall what they were about. She could hear the sound of the front door opening. That would be Yoshiki or Nobuki, but she'd gone to bed without making dinner. She walked slowly toward the living room.
Her son was at the dining-room table eating a take-out meal that he'd apparently bought at the convenience store down the street. He'd probably come home earlier and, finding that there was nothing to eat, had gone out to get it. Masako stood next to the table. He said nothing to her, though his face looked slightly tense. It was possible he had sensed that something was different in the house, but, whatever the reason, he sat staring, ill at ease, somewhere beyond her. As she watched him, Masako reminded herself that he'd always been a sensitive child.
'Did you get anything for me?' she said.
Now that she had addressed him directly, he looked down at the food in front of him. He seemed defensive, almost as if he had something to protect. But what? Masako herself had long since discarded things that needed protecting.
'Is it good?' she asked. Still refusing to answer, Nobuki put down his chopsticks and stared at the table. Masako picked up the plastic lid and checked the date and place of manufacture: 'Miyoshi Foods, Higashi Yamato Factory, shipped at 3.00 p.m.' Perhaps it was a coincidence, or maybe Nobuki had done it on purpose, but it was one of the 'Lunch of Champions' meals, made at their own factory that afternoon. Finding the sight of the food painful, she looked around at the orderly living room. She thought about what she and the others had been doing here this afternoon, and it all seemed unreal. Nobuki picked up his chopsticks and quietly resumed his meal.
Masako sat down across from him and stared blankly as her mute son worked at his food. She remembered how she'd felt about Kuniko today, an almost savage sense that she wanted to be quit of any superficial, changeable human relations. But here before her was one relationship she couldn't change, and the thought made her feel utterly helpless.
Getting up from the table, she went into the darkened bathroom. She turned on the light and inspected the tiles she had scrubbed that afternoon. They had dried now and looked almost absurdly clean. She began filling the tub. Keeping one eye on the rising water level, she climbed out of her clothes and rinsed off with the shower hose-in the washing area next to the tub. She remembered how anxious she had been to wash away any trace of Kazuo Miyamori last night at the factory. Since then she had stood ankle-deep in Kenji's blood and got bits of his flesh deep under her fingernails, yet somehow it was still the other man she wanted to wash away as she scrubbed her body. She thought over what Yoshie had said about the dead being no different from the living, and she nodded to herself as she stood under the shower. A dead body was revolting, but it couldn't move. Miyamori, on the other hand, could still make a grab for her, and that, she thought, made him worse.
-
Masako left the house two hours earlier than usual, with the various pieces of Kenji plus the head all safely stowed in her trunk. She noted with relief that her husband hadn't come home yet. Unlike her relationship with her son, her marriage was something she could change if she wanted to; maybe it was better not to dredge up her feelings about Kuniko.
She pulled on to the Shin-Oume Expressway, heading toward the city. The inbound lanes were empty, and she drove slowly, looking about at the scenery. She was determined to forget the shift that lay ahead of her and the body behind her in the trunk and try to look at the familiar sights around her with fresh eyes. The road crossed a large viaduct at a place where a water purification plant stretched away to the left. From the top of the bridge, the lights of the Ferris wheel at the Seibu Amusement Park looked like an enormous coin sparkling in the distance. She had forgotten all about this spot. It had been ages ago, not since Nobuki was a small child, that they had last ridden the Ferris wheel. And now as he had turned into a stranger, she had crossed the border of a strange land.
The road followed the concrete wall of the Kodaira cemetery on the right for a time and then passed a huge driving range that looked at night like a giant birdcage. Masako turned right into Tanashi City.
After heading on for a few minutes past private houses and the occasional field, she came to a large apartment complex. Since the company she'd worked for had been located in Tanashi, Masako knew her way around. She knew that these apartment blocks contained lots of units and that they were badly managed, and she remembered that the garbage collection area behind them was open and easily accessible. She parked next to the garbage shed and quickly took five bags from the trunk. There were several large blue garbage cans in the shed labeled 'Burnable' and 'Non-Burnable' in big letters, and stacked next to them were piles of plastic bags. Pushing some of them aside, she shoved the ones she'd brought deep into the pile. Kenji's body had become indistinguishable from the household trash it had joined.
She continued on her rounds. Each time she came across a large apartment building, she would check the layout, and if it seemed as though she could do so inconspicuously, she would drop off several bags. And as she drove through the neighbourhoods, if she found a lonely garbage collection spot, she would stealthily leave a few more. By the end of the day, not only had Kenji's body and clothes been cut to pieces, the pieces themselves had been scattered far and wide. All that remained was his head and the few things they had found in his pockets.
She would have to start for the factory now if she was to be on time for the shift. As the trunk had emptied, her spirits had lifted. She was a little worried about how Yoshie had managed without a car, but she hadn't taken many bags, so she had probably been able to offload them. At any rate, she knew she could rely on the Skipper. The real problem was Kuniko. It had been risky giving fifteen bags to a person like that, and it occurred to Masako that if they were still in her car when they got to the factory, she should probably take them herself.
Retracing her route in the other direction, she reached the factory parking lot in half an hour. Kuniko hadn't arrived yet, so she waited for a while in the Corolla. When there was still no sign of Kuniko's flashy car, she began to wonder if she'd decided to take the night off after the shock of the afternoon. Her first reaction was to be angry, but then she thought better of it, realising that there was nothing suspicious in Kuniko's missing work.