3
Why was it you could talk to dead people in your dreams? In the midst of a fitful sleep, Masako dreamed that her dead father was standing in the garden staring at the bare lawn. He was wearing a light summer kimono like the one he'd worn in the hospital as he was dying from a malignant tumour on his jaw. The sky was heavily overcast. When he noticed Masako standing on the veranda, his face, deformed from the repeated operations, seemed to relax.
'What are you doing?' she asked.
'I was thinking of going out.' In his last days, her father had become almost incapable of speech, but in the dream his voice was clear.
'But someone will be coming soon,' she'd said. She had no idea who it was, but she'd run around the house getting things ready. The garden had been from the old home her father had rented in Hachioji, but the house itself was the new one she and Yoshiki had built, and tugging at the leg of her jeans was Nobuki, who was once again a toddler.
'Then we'll have to clean the bathroom,' her father said. A shiver went down her spine. Somehow she knew that the bathroom was stuffed with Kenji's hair; but how did her father know? It must be because he was dead, too. She pulled herself away from Nobuki's tiny hands and tried to think of an excuse to feed her father; but while she was at it, the old man came tottering toward her on his sticklike legs. She could see his face now, sunken and pale, just as it had been in death. 'Masako/ he said. 'Please kill me.' The voice was close to her ear now, and she woke up with a gasp.
That was the last thing he had said to her. He'd been in too much pain to speak, or even eat, but he had managed to choke out these words. The voice had been lost somewhere in her memory until now, but as it came back to her, she shook with fear, as if she'd heard a ghost.
'Masako.'
Yoshiki was standing by the bed. He almost never came into the room while she was there, and she stared at him now, half in wonder, as she tried to rouse herself from her dream.
'Have a look at this,' he said, pointing at an article in the newspaper he was holding. 'Isn't this someone you know?' She sat up and took the paper from him. At the top of the third page was a headline that read 'Dismembered Body in Park Identified as Musashi Murayama Office Worker'. Just as she'd predicted, they had figured out it was Kenji sometime last night. But somehow seeing it in print made the whole thing seem less real. Wondering why that should be so, she read through the article.
'On the night he disappeared, the victim's wife, Yayoi, had gone to her part-time job at a nearby factory. The police are trying to determine Yamamoto's movements after he left work that evening,' the paper said. There were no additional details, just a repeat of the previous article which had focused on the most lurid fact: dismembered body parts found in garbage.
'You do know her, don't you?' Yoshiki said.
'I do, but how did you know?'
'A Yamamoto has called here from time to time, saying she's from the factory. And the article says she works a night shift. Yours is about the only one around here.' Had he heard Yayoi's call that night? Masako studied his eyes for a clue, but he turned away, apparently embarrassed to have seemed so excited. 'I just thought you'd want to know,' he said.
'Thanks.'
'Who could have done something like that? Somebody had a grudge against him, apparently.'
'I doubt it was that,' Masako said. 'But I don't know.'
'But you know her pretty well, don't you? Shouldn't you go and see how she's doing?' He looked at her curiously, evidently surprised at how calmly she seemed to be taking the whole thing.
'I wonder,' she answered vaguely, pretending to'look over the newspaper which was still lying on the bed. Yoshiki eyed her curiously for a moment and then went to take a suit out of the closet. He rarely went to work on Saturdays but today seemed to be an exception. Realising he was getting ready to leave, Masako jumped up and began making the bed.
'Are you sure you don't need to go over there?' he repeated, without turning around. 'The place must be swarming with police and reporters, and I bet she'd appreciate seeing a familiar face.'
'I doubt she needs one more person bothering her.' Without answering, Yoshiki pulled off his T-shirt. Masako stood looking at his bare back, taking in the sagging muscles and sallow skin. He stiffened, seeming to sense her eyes on him.
She had long since forgotten what it was like to sleep with Yoshiki. Now, they merely inhabited the same house, performing their prescribed roles. They were no longer husband and wife, nor even father and mother. They simply went on - automatically, faithfully - going to work, taking care of the house and, in Masako's mind, gradually going to pieces. Yoshiki slipped on his shirt and turned to look at her.
'At least call her,' he said. 'Why be so unfriendly?' Masako thought for a moment, realising that her anxiety about appearing to have any connection to the crime might be blinding her to how she would normally act.
'I guess I should,' she said, still sounding reluctant. Yoshiki looked at her.
'Once you decide something doesn't concern you, you just cut yourself off,' he said.
'I don't mean to.' She realised he must have noticed the change in her since the night she'd gone to Yayoi's.
'Sorry I butted in,' he said, frowning as though at the taste of something bitter. They stared silently at one another for a moment until Masako looked down and began straightening the quilt.
'You were moaning in your sleep just before you woke up,' he added as he was tightening his tie.
'I was having a nightmare,' she said, noting that his tie didn't match his suit.
'About what?'
'My father was in it, and he could talk.' Yoshiki grunted, stuffing his wallet and train pass into his pants pocket. He'd always liked her father, so she could only conclude that his refusal to pursue the subject meant he had given up trying to reach her. He probably no longer even felt the need to do so. Nor did she, perhaps. She took her time tucking in the edges of the quilt, thinking about all the things the two of them had lost.
-
After he'd gone, Masako called Yayoi's house.
'The Yamamotos',' a voice said wearily. It sounded like Yayoi, yet different somehow, older.
'My name's Katori. May I speak to Yayoi?'
'I'm afraid she's sleeping at the moment. May I ask what you're calling about?'
'I work with Yayoi at the factory, and I read what happened in the newspaper. I was worried about her.'
'That's very kind of you. She's stunned by all this, of course. She's been in bed since last night.' The woman sounded as though she had already given this speech a number of times. There must have been countless calls since this morning - relatives, Kenji's coworkers, Yayoi's friends, neighbours, and no doubt the media. She was simply repeating what she'd told everyone else, like the
message on an answering machine.
'Are you her mother?' Masako asked.
'Yes,' the woman said almost curtly, apparently anxious to avoid giving out unnecessary information.
'You must be devastated. Well, we're all thinking about you,'
Masako said, cutting the conversation short. At least she would remember that Masako had called. That should be enough. But it would have been strange not to call at all. Now all she had to do was concentrate on keeping the rest from coming to light. As she was hanging up, Nobuki came down from his room and, after eating his breakfast in silence, went out. To work? To play? Masako didn't know. Once she was alone, she turned on the TV and surfed the news programmes. They all had the same story that she'd read in the paper, so apparently there hadn't been any new developments.
Yoshie called a few minutes later, her voice almost a whisper.
Masako knew that, unlike her own quiet night, Yoshie had been to work and was now taking a break from caring for her mother-in-law to make the call.
'It's just like you said. I turned on the TV and there it was.' She sounded gloomy.
'The police will show up at the factory before long,' Masako said.
'Do you
think they'll find our bags?'
'I doubt it,' she said.
'But what should we tell them?'
'Just say that Yayoi hasn't been to work since that night so you don't know anything about it.'
'I guess that's right,' Yoshie murmured. She asked the same questions over and over, and she seemed to repeat the answers to herself just as often. Masako was getting a little fed up with the constant calls. Catching the sound of the child's voice whining in the background, she remembered her dream. The feeling of Nobuki's hands tugging at her pants had seemed so real. It was probably because she'd seen Yoshie's grandson. If she analysed each element of the dream, perhaps it would lose its power to frighten her. 'So, I'll see you tonight.' Yoshie's worried voice interrupted her train of thought. Masako hung up.
There had been no call from Kuniko. Maybe she'd been scared off by Masako's threats and would behave herself for a while. As she started the laundry, Masako thought about Jumonji, whom she'd seen last night for the first time in so many years. The racket he was running usually made a pile of money for a few years and then folded. She had no idea what would happen with Kuniko's loan, nor did she much care, but it could be trouble if Jumonji read the newspapers and recognised the name on the contract. What sort of man was this Jumonji? For the first time in a long while, Masako allowed herself to dredge up memories of her former job. There was nothing from that period she wanted to recall, and yet as she poured detergent into the washing machine and watched it dissolve into a swirling foam, her thoughts travelled back.
The first thing that came to mind about her old job was warming sake for the New Year's party. The party was an annual event at T Credit and Loan, the company Masako had joined straight out of high school and where she had worked for over twenty-two years. They used to invite the executives of the companies they did business with and the senior officers of the agricultural co-ops who were their principal depositors, and give a party on the day before work resumed after the New Year's holiday. All the female employees were required to come to work that day dressed in traditional kimonos, though in practice the rule only applied to the younger ones.
The other women worked behind the scenes at the party, making hors d'oeuvres, washing glasses, and warming sake. The men did the heavy work, bringing in the beer and setting up the furniture in the hall, but the women were busy the whole day, starting early with preparations and ending late after cleaning up. But probably the worst part of it was knowing that their vacation, which officially lasted from the close of business on 30 December until the morning of 4 January, actually ended a day early as a result. Attendance was mandatory, though it wasn't treated as a regular workday.
Masako, who at some point had become the oldest woman in the company, was kept behind the scenes in the kitchen. The role actually suited her well enough since she wasn't fond of being on display, but hour after hour in the small room heating up sake made her queasy and light-headed. And when her male co-workers got drunk and came to recruit the other women to pour drinks, Masako was left shorthanded. As she struggled, often by herself, to keep up with the glasses and the empty sake pots, her labours came to seem more absurd than sad. In the worst years, she was even made to clean up the pools of vomit left by her drunken colleagues. More than a few women had quit the company in despair after seeing how unfairly Masako was treated as the senior female employee.
Still, the party was just one day a year and she could manage to put up with it. What bothered her much more was that the effort she put in all the other days was never recognised and after all these years she had never been promoted or given more than the rudimentary clerical work she'd done since the day she first came to work there. Though she punched in at 8.00 a.m. and stayed until 9.00 almost every evening, she continued to do the same boring work year after year; and no matter how hard she tried or how well she did her job, she played no more than a supporting role, with all the important decisions left to her male colleagues. The men who had entered the company around the same time she did had all received extensive training and had long since been promoted to section head or better, and now even the younger men were being promoted to positions above her.
One day she'd happened to see the salary figures for a man who had been with the company exactly as long as she had, and she nearly went berserk. He was making two million yen more than her, when she, after twenty years of service, was earning only ¥4,600,000 a year. After thinking long and hard about it, she had gone straight to the section head, a man who also joined the company the same year as her, and asked to be promoted to a management position and given the same work as the male employees.
The blatant harassment had begun the next day. First, they must have misrepresented her demands to the other women in the company since they suddenly began giving her the cold shoulder. The word had apparently gone out that she was determined to get ahead and didn't care what happened to the rest of them. They stopped inviting her to the monthly dinner at which all the women got together, and she found herself completely isolated.
The men, on the other hand, were constantly after her, making sure she was the only one asked to serve tea when guests came to the office, and swamping her with copying. As a result, she found it difficult to get her own work done and ended up putting in even more overtime. Inevitably, the quality of her work suffered, and this was reflected in poor evaluations. Poor evaluations meant, in turn, that she was ineligible for promotion - which had apparently been their strategy from the beginning.
Still, she'd been determined to stick it out. She stayed at the office till all hours of the night and took home what she couldn't finish. Nobuki, who was still in elementary school, had been sensitive to his mother's stress and gone through a bad patch, and Yoshiki had furiously demanded that she quit her job. Masako felt as if she were a ping-pong ball, bouncing back and forth between her family and her office and totally alone in both places. There was nowhere to hide and no way out.
Not long afterward she had discovered a major mistake that her boss had made, and when she'd pointed it out, the man had suddenly lashed out at her. Her 'boss' was in fact several years younger and utterly incompetent.
'You keep your trap shut, you!' he'd bawled at her; he even gave her a slap. This happened after work, so that no one else could hear, but the incident had left a deep scar on her. Why did the simple fact of being a man make him so important? Was it because he'd graduated from college? Didn't her experience and her ambition count for anything in a place like this? She'd often thought of finding another job, but she liked finance and had stayed on. After this incident, however, she realised that she'd come to the end.
The humiliating assault had occurred just at the height of the bubble economy. It had been a period of frenzied business for the banks and loan companies, with money being thrown at customers almost without a credit check. For years, even clients Masako knew to be bad risks had been given loans, and when the bubble finally burst, this all became a mountain of bad debt. Land prices tumbled and stocks with them, and more repossessed properties went on the auction block daily. But the auction prices never matched the value of the original loans, and losses mounted.
In that environment, it became increasingly difficult to raise capital, and eventually a bigger firm backed by a large agricultural co-operative had stepped in to take control of Masako's company. Rumours of a merger began to circulate, and there was talk of a major restructuring and layoffs. Masako, as the oldest female employee, was the most vulnerable, and she knew she'd done nothing to endear herself to the management. She was hardly surprised when an order came from the personnel office transferring her to an outlying branch. It was just a year before Nobuki was due to take his entrance exams for high school; if she took the transfer, she would have to leave Yoshiki on his own with her son. She simply couldn't. When she refused, they naturally asked for her resignation. The blow hadn't really hit her until she heard that when they announced her retirement at the office, there had been applause.
-
Jumonj i had begun showing up at her company after the economy turned sour and the number of delinquent accounts began to multiply. In order to put pressure on customers who were behind on their payments, even the banks had employed men like him. In good times, they had been only too eager to make risky loans, but now they were too worried to bother about appearances. Masako had disapproved of both the reckless lending and the hardball tactics, and somehow she had imagined that Jumonji shared her feelings - even while he was making the collections. She'd never talked to him outside the office, but she was fairly sure she'd seen a look of disrespect or even dislike in his eyes as he'd laughed along with the arrogant regular employees.
Masako suddenly realised that the buzzer on the washing machine was signaling the end of the cycle, but she'd been so lost in thought that she'd neglected to put in the laundry. Dissolved in a whirlpool, drained, rinsed and spun dry - it was precisely what they'd done to her. A pointless spin cycle, she thought, laughing out loud.
4
Jumonji woke up with his arm tingling. He slid it out from under the woman's slender neck and flexed his fingers. Woken by the sudden movement, she opened her eyes and looked at him from under her impossibly thin eyebrows - the face uncannily like a child's and a middle-aged woman's at the same time.
'What's the matter?' she asked. He looked at the clock by the bed: nearly 8.00 a.m. The summer sunlight was already streaming in through the thin curtains, heating the air in the small bedroom.
'Time to get up,' he said.
'No,' she murmured, clinging to him.
'Don't you have class?' She was probably still in her first year of high school - a girl, really, not a woman at all - but he was only interested in the young ones, so to him she was a woman. 'It's Saturday,' she said. 'I'll just skip it.'
'But I've got things to do. Get up.' The girl scowled a moment and then yawned. As she did so, Jumonji glanced at the inside of her mouth. It was pink; in fact her whole childish body was a study in pink and white. Taking a last, lingering look, he pulled himself out of bed and turned on the air-conditioner. A tongue of stale, dusty air licked his face. 'Make breakfast,' he told her.