When he entered her, she was filled with a sense of humiliation - that her first sex in years should be rape, that a woman of her age could be used by a man this way. Just a short time ago, another man had held her, and it had been a comfort; but it caused only loathing now. She had learned that sex could be a source of deep hatred. At that instant, she hated him as a man just as much as he despised her as a woman.
While he was doing it to her, she knew that he was living in a dream, an endless nightmare that only he could understand, and that she was just a living prop for his fantasy. For a moment she wondered how one went about escaping from someone else's dream; but then realised the more immediate challenge was just to understand him, to figure out what was coming next. If she couldn't, then she was suffering pointlessly. She needed to know what it was that had happened to him in the past. As he bore down on her, she stared at the void above them - her freedom was just there, beyond his back.
When he was finished, she called him a pervert, out of utter disgust. But she knew that wasn't right. He wasn't a pervert or a madman; he was a lost soul in desperate search of something, and if he thought he could find it in her, then she might be able to play along with him .. . and go on living.
-
She waited impatiently for the sun to make its way into the factory and warm her up a little. The cold was unbearable, painful in a way she never knew it could be. For a while, she had tried to keep moving to warm herself, but now her body was shivering uncontrollably, as if she were having convulsions. But the frigid air in the factory probably wouldn't get any warmer until the sun was high in the sky, and she doubted she would be able to hold out until then. She didn't want to give up, but she'd begun to realise that she would probably freeze to death here.
To distract her from the spasms that were shaking her body, she gazed around. The shell of the factory was like an enormous coffin. It occurred to her that she had spent nearly every night for the last two years working in a place like this, and she couldn't help thinking that she was destined to die in one, too - that this was the cruel end that was waiting for her on the other side of that door she had been so determined to open. Help me, she whispered to herself. But the help she wanted wasn't from anyone like Kazuo or her husband; it was from Satake, the man who had brought her here.
She turned to look at him. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor a short distance away. He was watching her trembling body, but not as though he enjoyed seeing her suffer; rather, he seemed to be waiting for something. But what? She studied his face in the half-light. From time to time he glanced up at the windows, as if he were waiting for dawn. He was shaking as well, but he sat naked on the floor, apparently oblivious to the cold.
-
He looked up at her, perhaps sensing that she was watching him, and their eyes met in the dim light. He flicked his lighter at her, as if in irritation, then lit a cigarette. Abruptly, she realised that he was waiting for the light, to be able to see whatever he needed to see. And when he found what he was looking for, he would kill her. She closed her eyes.
A little later, she felt the air stir, and opened her eyes to see Satake standing up and taking something out of his bag. It was a black sheath, presumably holding the knife he was going to use on her. The sight of it made the piercing cold even sharper. She began to shake more violently, but she managed to turn her head away, determined to make Satake think it was only the cold.
At last the sun came streaming through the windows, and she could feel the tightly closed pores of her skin opening, beginning to breathe again. If she could warm up even a bit, she might be able get some sleep. But then she remembered the knife and laughed at herself. What was the point, with that in store for her?
Most days she would just be getting home from the factory now, ready to put breakfast on the table and get a load of laundry started. Then, when the sun got to a certain point in the sky, she wouldn't be able to put off sleep any longer. What would Yoshiki and Nobuki think if she disappeared without a trace? It didn't matter whether she died here or somehow managed to escape, she was already beyond their reach. Hadn't Yoshiki admitted that he wouldn't come looking for her? There was something about this thought she found almost comforting, that made her realise how far she had already come.
When it was light enough, Satake came over to stand by her. 'Did you make all those lunches on something like this?' he said, apparently amused at his little joke. She lay on the rack, like a meal about to be rolled down the line, and tried not to show her fear. He was right: who would ever have thought she'd end up on the belt herself? Yoshie, who controlled the speed of the line, had found a way out; but not her. 'How do you cut up a body?' he asked, running a delicate finger across her neck and then down from her throat to her crotch, as though he were dissecting her. She cried out at the pain of it on her already raw skin. 'How did you come up with the idea of chopping him up? What did it feel like when you were doing it?' She realised that he was trying to whip up her hate for him. 'You're just like me,' he said. 'You've gone too far to go back.'
Again, he was right: there was no way back. She had heard the doors slamming behind her one by one. The first had closed the day they had cut up Kenji. But what had happened to Satake to make him feel this way? She asked him, but he didn't answer. She stared into his eyes - at the swamp concealed in there - or was it just a void?
She screamed as he suddenly forced his cold finger between her legs. But when he entered her for the second time, her body was surprised by his warmth. It seemed to rejoice at a source of heat so much more potent than the pale sunlight. The warm, hard thing inside her began to thaw her from the belly out. This link between them was the warmest object in that empty cavern; but it troubled her that her body could almost innocently take pleasure in it, and she was determined not to let Satake know it had accepted him. She closed her eyes again, and he seemed to believe she was rejecting him.
'Open your eyes,' he said, pressing his thumbs into them. Let him blind me, she thought, if it would keep him from finding out that I responded to him. She hated him with her whole being, and it horrified her to think that her eyes wouldn't show him that fact if he looked in them now. He told her he hated her because she was a woman. Then why didn't he stop forcing himself on her and just finish her off? He slapped her again to stir up her hatred, but somehow she found herself pitying a man who needed to be despised in order to feel pleasure. His past was beginning to take shape out of the fog.
'There's something wrong with you,' she told him, 'something broken inside.'
'Of course there is,' he said. 'Just like there's something broken in you. I knew it the first time I saw you.' For her, knowing it was the damaged part of her that had first drawn him to her only made her hate the man moving inside her all the more. He pressed his lips to hers, and she realised how desperately he wanted her. Then he reached over for the knife, shook it free from the sheath, and put it by her head. Her eyes closed instinctively from fear of the cold blade next to her, but Satake forced them open and peered at her. She stared back at him, knowing that given the chance she'd use the blade on him as readily as he'd penetrated her.
The factory was awash in sunlight now, but there was another kind of light shining in his eyes, the first sign that she was becoming real to him, that she moved him. But it wasn't a feeling that would ever grow or mature. Just as she had once thought she wouldn't mind dying by his hand, he was longing for the same end himself. Suddenly, she realised she understood him.
She felt the dream in which he'd been trapped begin to dissolve, felt him move closer to the living world. Their bodies came together and their eyes met. Seeing nothing reflected there but her own image, she felt a wave of pure pleasure rise and break over her. She could die like this. But the glint of the blade in the corner of her eye pulled her back to earth.
-
He beat her until she lost consciousness, but a nauseating pain in her jaw revived her a short time later. He was staring at her, enraged.
She had spoilt things for him just as he was getting near a place he'd longed to reach.
She told him she needed to go to the bathroom. When he said she could, she let her legs slide to the floor and stood up. How long had she been tied up there? She could feel the blood coming back to her legs; feel the numbness becoming pain. It made her cry out loud. Reaching down for her jacket, she pulled it around her shoulders and closed her eyes, letting her raw skin adjust to the cold fabric. Satake watched her in silence.
She headed toward the toilets in the corner of the factory, but her legs were stiff and it was difficult to walk. Something sharp cut into the bottom of her foot, drawing blood, but she felt nothing. Lowering herself on to the grimy toilet, she relieved herself, ignoring Satake's watching eyes. She let the piss run over her fingers, which sent shooting pains through her hands as the hot liquid touched the numb, frozen skin. Stifling a moan, she stood up, thrust her hands in her pockets, and made her way back toward him.
'Hurry up,' he said. She stumbled against an oil can and fell. When she had trouble getting to her feet, he ran over and, grabbing the collar of her jacket the way a cat grabs a kitten by the scruff of the neck, he dragged her up, impatient to continue. Her hands, still deep in her pockets, were starting to warm up, her fingers beginning to tremble. 'Come on,' he said.
She closed her palm over something, and when he raised his hand again to hit her for moving too slowly, she reached out and cut his face with the scalpel she'd found in her pocket. He looked up for a moment, as if he didn't know what had happened, then felt his cheek. She held her breath and watched as the blood began to gush from his face, pouring over his outstretched hand. The scalpel had made a deep incision from the corner of his astonished eye to the base of his chin.
8
-
Satake fell backward, sitting down hard on the floor. His hand was clutched to his face, but the blood poured through his fingers. Masako cried out in shock. A sense of sudden, permanent loss had squeezed the sound from her.
'You got me,' he whispered, spitting out the blood that was quickly filling his mouth.
'You were going to kill me,' she said. He lowered his hand and stared at his bloody palm. 'I was aiming for your throat but my hand was numb,' she told him; her mind was reeling and her mouth seemed to run on without her. Realising she was still holding the scalpel, she threw it on the floor, where it bounced away with a hollow clatter. She'd pressed the blade into a wine cork and put it in her pocket before she left the house.
Though air was seeping into his mouth from the wound and he had trouble speaking, he managed to say, 'You're special .. . I should've let you kill me before .. . would've been so good.'
'Did you want to kill me?'
He shook his head and looked up at the ceiling. 'I don't know. . .' The sunlight from the high windows was now blinding. Pillars of brilliantly lit dust linked the windows to the concrete floor, like the spotlights in a theatre. Her eyes followed his to the windows. She was shaking again, but not from the cold; it was from knowing that with her own hands she had cut off this life. The sky was pale blue beyond the windows and a quiet winter day was beginning, as though nothing had changed, as though last night's horrors had never happened. Satake stared at the pool of blood collecting on the floor before answering her. 'Not kill you,' he said, 'but watch you die.'
'Why?'
'Thought I'd be able to love you when you were dying.'
'Only then?' He looked at her for a moment.
'I guess so.'
'. . . Don't die,' she murmured. There was a hint of surprise in his eyes. By now, the blood flowing from his face had stained his body red, and he'd begun to moan with pain.
'I killed Kuniko...,' he said. 'And another woman before that looked just like you. .. . I think I died once, when I killed her. Then I saw you and thought - I wouldn't mind dying one more time... '
She took off her jacket so that she could hold him closer. Her face was swollen and heavy from the beatings, and she knew she must look hideous. 'I'm alive,' she said. 'And I don't want you to die.'
'Looks like I'm going to,' he said, with what sounded almost like relief. His whole body had begun to quiver. She brought her face close to his and examined the wound. It was deep and gaping, but she pressed the skin together and kept her fingers there. 'It's no use,' he said. 'Must be an artery.' But Masako refused to give up, continuing to hold his face as the life seeped out of him. She looked around the factory again. They had met here in this vast coffin, had come to understand one another here, and now would leave each other here.
'I need a cigarette,' he mumbled. Masako roused herself and went to find the pants he'd taken off. Getting a cigarette out of the pocket, she lit it and put it between his lips. In the space of a few seconds it was soaked in blood, but Satake still managed to blow a thin line of smoke from his mouth. She knelt in front of him and looked into his eyes.
'Let me take you to the hospital.'
'Hospital...' he murmured, with the ghost of a smile. A tendon had probably been cut, and all the smile amounted to was a slackening on the side of his face not bathed in blood. 'Woman I killed said the same thing. . . . Must be fate . . . my dying the way she did. . . .' The cigarette fell from his lips, sputtering out in the pool of blood that lay around him. He seemed to be giving up, and had closed his eyes.
'Still, we ought to go.'
'.. . Both end up in jail.' He was right - laws would still apply if they emerged from the factory now. She pulled him closer. As their heads touched, she realised that he was already colder. His blood continued to flow over them.
'I don't care,' she said. 'I want you to survive.'
'Why?...' His voice was barely audible. 'After what I did.'
'It would be like dying myself. I couldn't go on.'
7 did,' he said, closing his eyes again.
She began to get frantic, struggling to hold his wound together, to slow the bleeding, but he seemed to be slipping away. He opened his eyes again, this time barely a crack, and looked at her.
'Why me?'
'Because I understand you now,' she said. 'I see that we're the same, and I want us both to live.' His lips were covered in blood when she bent to kiss him, but his eyes were peaceful.
Haltingly, as though hope were unfamiliar to him, he mumbled, 'I've never.. . didn't think it could happen... . But who knows? with fifty million... we might get out.'
'It's nice in Brazil,' she said.
'Take me with you?'
'Yes,' she said. 'I can't go back.'
'. . . go back .. . or go on.' He was right. She stared at her bloodstained hands. In a whisper, he added, 'We'll.. . be free.'
'Yes, free.' He reached out and brushed his hand against her cheek, but his fingers were quite cold. 'The bleeding's nearly stopped,' she said, but he just nodded, perhaps knowing it was a lie.
-
9
Masako was walking along a passageway in Shinjuku Station, though she barely knew what she was doing. She seemed to move automatically, planting one leg in front of the other. She let herself be drawn into the flow of the crowd, and eventually found herself heading out of the station. Once she had passed the ticket gate, she made her way down into the underground arcades. She caught sight of her reflection in a shoe-store mirror. The sunglasses hid most of the swelling, but she watched the woman in the mirror pull her jacket tightly about her, trying to hide the pain inside. She stopped there for a moment and took off the glasses to look at her face. The puffiness in her cheeks where Satake had beaten her wasn't so bad any more, but her eyes were swollen from crying. She put on the glasses again and looked up to find that she was standing in front of the elevator for the shopping floors upstairs. A moment later she had pushed the button for the top floor and was riding up. She had nowhere to go, nowhere she had to be.
When the doors opened, she was facing a line of restaurants. All she wanted was somewhere she could rest for a while, away from prying eyes. She lowered herself on to
a bench by the window and put the black nylon bag between her knees. It held Satake's fifty million and six more of her own. Lighting a cigarette, she remembered how he had asked to smoke at the end. Her eyes swam behind the sunglasses. She dropped the cigarette into the grey steel ashtray. It sputtered softly as it hit the water inside, like the sound his cigarette had made in the pool of blood.
Wanting suddenly to get away, she stood and picked up the bag. All of Shinjuku was visible from the large windows. Beyond Yasukuni Avenue lay Kabuki-cho. She put her hand against the window and stared out at the unlit neon signs and gaudy, faded billboards, pale in the weak afternoon sunlight. The streets were quiet, like a sleeping beast that only hunts at night. This was Satake's town, a chaotic and seamily hedonistic place. The door she had opened when she went to work on the night shift had led here, to a place she'd never known before - his place.
She decided to take a look at the building where his casino had been; but the decision brought the other emotions to the surface again. For the past two days she had lain in a hotel bed, miserable and empty. Those feelings came back to her now, and with them the memory of how his body had felt. She gave a small moan she couldn't help it - wishing she could see him one more time. She would go to Kabuki-cho to breathe the air he'd breathed, see the things he'd seen. Maybe she would find another man like him, and pursue his dream? The hope that she had lost was beginning to stir in her again.
Masako turned away from the view and hurried off, but the soles of her tennis shoes on the polished tiles sent a loud squeak echoing down the corridor. She stopped after only a few paces, startled by the noise, and turned back to the window. For a moment, the world outside seemed filled with the darkness of the abandoned factory.