“You really are a foul cook, aren't you? It's unbelievable! It's not as if you're using a microwave. Ugghh, this looks repulsive!” Haru said.
I was making Chinese-style mixed vegetables that night. The man had gone out with her that afternoon, keeping it a secret from me, so I was in no mood to put up with her.
“There's no reason why I should have to listen to such rude things from someone dressed in clothes as laughable as yours. I think you need to have slightly larger breasts to wear black knitwear like that.”
Haru jabbed me very sharply in the back with her elbow. I was sautéing vegetables, and my hand very nearly went into the wok.
“What the hell are you doing?” I shouted.
The fierce sizzling of the vegetables and the waves of heat washed over my voice and made it sound achingly sad.
“You have no right to say that,” Haru said.
“Maybe not,” I replied, and turned off the heat.
Now that the room was suddenly quiet, our silence drifted up into the foreground. By that point neither of us could figure out whether it was okay for us to be sharing the body of a single man—a slightly eccentric man, a man who seemed to be laughing at the world, living life in his own way—and whether it was normal or abnormal. The same was true of the fact that even though he never demanded that we stay, we were spending all our time cooped up in his house, and of the fact that the two of us were always there together. All I knew was that Haru's gloomy voice and her crazy thinness were getting on my nerves. She was always weaving around in front of me, making me want to wring her neck like a chicken's.
“Why are we doing this?” Haru said then, her tone peculiarly absent. “There are other women who like him, you know, but you and I are the only ones doing this stuff. And he's not even here.”
“That's how it goes.”
“I feel like I'm going crazy, you get on my nerves so much.”
“Those ought to be my lines. Anyway, it's too late to complain now.”
I found Haru's hackneyed way of thinking about things and her darkly cheerless point of view sickening. I hated it.
“What's with you, anyway? Do you even really want him?” Haru said this as if she were scolding me.
“Yes, I want him!” I said. “That's why I'm stuck here with you, isn't it? With a moron like you—”
Wham!
Apparently I'd said too much. Before I'd even finished speaking Haru slapped me across the cheek with the flat of her hand, producing a loud smack. I was stunned for a moment, unable to grasp what had happened. Then, as the seconds passed, I felt my right cheek getting hotter.
“You've really pissed me off now, so I'm leaving,” I said, and stood up. “You can have him tonight. If he comes back.”
Haru went on staring at me as I picked up my bag, and then as I walked out the front door. She had her eyes open so wide, and they shone with such an earnest light, that I seriously thought she might call out for me to stop. That's the kind of gleam she had in her eyes. A look that says Don't go, not a look that says I'm sorry. I suspect that she only remained silent because it would have seemed weird if she'd actually spoken those words.
Her small, fair, tackily made-up face was half hidden by her long hair. I noticed how lovely and insubstantial she looked when you saw her from a distance. Without saying a word I closed the door.
Just thinking about other women I knew sleeping with the man gave me heartburn and left me fuming, and yet where Haru was concerned I no longer minded. In fact there were times, when the three of us were all sleeping together, when he and Haru would start going at it, and I hardly gave it a second thought. If it had been any other woman I probably would have killed her on the spot.
As long as we were together I could sort of understand how the man felt toward her.
I'm not talking about who she was inside.
Inside she was probably just a strange, high-strung, unpleasant woman. But there was something truly special in her appearance. The soft shadow you saw in her panties, slender shoulders flickering in and out of the blackness of her long hair, odd little valleys over her collarbone, the curves under her breasts that seemed so impossibly, untouchably distant . . . she could have been the embodiment of the diaphanous image of Woman herself, come shakily to life, stumbling around. That's certainly what you felt.
I saw the glimmering uproar of the trees in my garden again that night, outside the window. It was a beautiful scene, one that seemed to break off in bizarre angles, coming to points, just as I'd remembered. In the wash of light I had the feeling that these points were gentle, not pitilessly hard.
No doubt this was because I was drunk.
I turned out the lights. The various objects in the room were even more sharply visible now.
I could hear my breath, and my heartbeat.
I pulled the covers up over myself and sank my head deep down into the pillow. And then I heard it again.
The reverberations of a voice as pure as an angel's, the light tenderness, the melody—all this made my heart begin to flutter, to dance achingly. Like waves, distant and close, full of nostalgia, rolling on. . . .
Haru, is there something you want to say?
My heart felt like it was spinning, like something that goes on spinning even when it's hidden from view—I tried to lock the spinning on that sound. But there was no sign of Haru, nothing at all but the beautiful stream of sound stabbing through my chest. Perhaps on the other side of this beautiful melody I'd find Haru's smile. Or maybe—maybe she was screaming in a voice filled with hatred that my happiness and her death were two sides of a single sheet of paper. I didn't care, either way I wanted terribly to hear.
I needed to know what she was trying to say. I concentrated so intensely that the space between my eyebrows started to ache, and before long exhaustion rolled out on waves of sleep from the far side of the song. Deep down inside I gave up, murmured words expressing my decision to give up. As if they were the words of a prayer.
I feel bad, Haru. But I can't hear you. I'm sorry.
Good night.
“You were right, Haru's dead,” I said.
Mizuo just opened his eyes a little wider; that was it.
“So she really is?” he said, and shifted his gaze to the window.
The glittering nighttime town was stunning.
We were only fourteen stories up, but the view was quite good. I'd suggested that we go eat someplace sky-high for a change, and Mizuo had asked if I meant sky-high in cost or elevation. I'd laughed and said I meant both, and that's how we'd ended up here.
The world beyond the window was awash with shining beads of night, these beads were everywhere—I was overwhelmed. The lines of cars were a necklace circling the rim of night.
“What makes you think it's Haru?” I asked.
“The two of you were so close to each other.”
He said this in a perfectly ordinary tone, then cut himself a bit of meat and lifted it to his mouth. For a moment my hands stopped moving. Because all of a sudden I was on the verge of tears.
“Does Haru want to say something to me?”
“Afraid I wouldn't know that.”
“No, I guess not.”
I looked back down at my dinner. Maybe it wasn't such a big deal after all. Maybe the various lingering regrets that kept drifting up to the surface now that my alcohol-spattered life was getting ready to enter a new stage had simply taken form as an image of Haru. We'd already emptied two bottles of wine tonight—I'd had help from Mizuo—and the world before me was starting to get fuzzy around the edges.
I felt like I wouldn't mind even if those inescapable regrets that we're all left with, that lie buried deep inside every one of us, ended up being nothing more than a bit of color added to the night—as long as I could enjoy the incredible beauty of this quietly blurring, infinitely reflected scenery until morning, when everything would return once again to zero.
“Would you like to go see Haru now?” Mizuo asked suddenl
y.
“Excuse me?” I said this in a rather jarring tone. I was so taken aback that the other people in the restaurant glanced over at me.
“I know a guy who can do that sort of stuff,” Mizuo said, grinning.
“This sounds extre-e-emely suspect,” I replied, and grinned back.
“Actually, it's pretty impressive. The guy's a midget—I got to know him way back when I was doing a kind of work much more unsavory than what I'm doing now. He lets you talk to dead people. It's kind of like hypnotism, you know, except it's totally real,” Mizuo said.
“And you've tried this?” I asked.
“Yeah. I once killed someone, see, by mistake.”
These words just slipped off his tongue. His casualness indicated how unfathomably deep his remorse was.
“What, in a fight or something?”
“Nope. I lent him my car when it was broken.”
Mizuo seemed unwilling to say more. He changed the topic. “It left a really bad aftertaste, you know, so I went to this midget . . . and then I met the guy and talked things over with him, and even if it was bogus it made me feel better—it totally cleared the air. And I meant it when I said that I think you and Haru were close to each other. If there hadn't been a man standing between you, I'm sure you would have hit it off really well. That guy has turned into a real loser now, and he's living a sleazy life, but back then he had this super-cheery kind of air about him, right? I always thought that since the two of you reacted in the same way to that sort of radiance, you must be pretty similar.”
It occurred to me once again that the coldness of Mizuo's personality was like that of water, just as his name suggested. I realized that the trees and all kinds of other things scattered throughout the gorgeous scene spread beneath the window—a scene that ought to have been perfectly still—were shaking. There must be a strong wind blowing. The headlights of cars kept flowing on, quietly burying the streets.
“Of course you're much more my type. Flat nose, klutzy . . .”
He said this in the same tone he'd use to say that a chipped vase had a certain appeal, and I liked that way of speaking, so I thought again how much I liked Mizuo.
“Okay, let's go see the midget,” I said. “It sounds neat.”
“You bet it is,” Mizuo replied, sipping his wine. “Even if it's a lie, even if it's who knows what, if it clears the air, you know, if it's fun, you might as well try it. As long as it makes you feel better, it's all right.”
* * *
The shop Mizuo took me to was an ordinary snack bar, the sort of place you come across all over, down below street level, with nothing in it but a counter. There was no denying that the man in charge was a midget. But apart from the badly proportioned arrangement of his body, he seemed like a regular enough person, and there was nothing about him that made you feel uncomfortable. He gazed at me with steady eyes.
“Your girlfriend?” the midget asked Mizuo suddenly.
“Yeah—her name's Fumi.”
I nodded slightly and said it was nice to meet him.
“This here's my buddy, Tanaka the midget.”
Tanaka laughed when Mizuo said this.
“If I were an American I'd be Mr. John Doe,” he said. “That's me.”
He was about as sketchy as you can get, but the intelligence behind his words made me feel that I could trust him. He pushed open the small gate and stepped out from behind the counter, then walked over to the heavy front door and turned the lock.
“You're here to see someone dead?” he said.
“Right. Got to keep you working!” Mizuo said, grinning.
“I haven't been doing this at all lately. Takes strength. I have to charge a lot,” Tanaka said, and looked at me. “When did this person die?”
“Just recently. She's a young woman—I hadn't seen her in about two years. We were battling each other over a man.” My heart was pounding fast and hard. “I wonder if I could have something to drink?”
“Yeah, I could use something too. Break out a bottle,” Mizuo said.
“Well then, tonight the bar is yours,” Tanaka said.
He climbed a ladder and took a bottle down from one of the shelves up near the top, then started mixing two whiskeys and soda, moving his hands quickly and deftly.
“This one here's been overdoing it lately,” Mizuo said, with a smile. “You better make it super strong.”
“Gotcha.”
Tanaka laughed, and I laughed along with him. There was something I kept noticing. Mizuo trusted me, he treated me just like he would any adult. And that called forth an incomparable feeling of relief and security. I really believe that no matter how old people get, they tend to change in certain ways depending on how people treat them—they change their colors. Mizuo was always very skilled at using people. We said cheers and drank.
“I don't get it,” said Tanaka, tilting his head slightly to the side. “Why would you want to see a woman you fought with over a man?”
My mouth felt numb from the strong whiskey and soda. I answered him honestly. “It seems we may really have liked each other. In fact we might have had a little lesbian dynamic going on.”
Tanaka exploded into laughter. “You're honest, good for you.”
I kept gazing vaguely at his small shoes, inspecting the shape of his tiny hands, thinking about what I'd say to Haru if I actually connected with her. But as hard as I tried, I couldn't think of anything.
“Shall we start?” Tanaka said. We'd finished our drinks.
Mizuo had become very quiet. No doubt he was thinking of the things that had happened when he'd come here himself, long ago.
“What do you mean? How do we start?” I asked.
“It's simple. You don't have to take any drugs, and there's no counting involved. All you've got to do is close your eyes and keep quiet and you'll go to this room. That's the room where the meetings take place. There's just one thing I ought to warn you about, and that's that even if she invites you to leave, you can't step outside that door. You remember what happened to Earless Hōichi in the old ghost story when he went along with the ghost. That's how he became earless. And there have been plenty of people like that—people who leave the room and then realize that they can't get back. A few of them never returned. So you've got to be careful, see?”
I was now so scared I couldn't even speak.
Mizuo saw this and laughed. “Don't worry, you'll be fine,” he said. “You're strong.”
I nodded and closed my eyes. I sensed that Tanaka had come out from behind the counter again. Almost immediately I felt a smooth coolness spread quietly through my body.
Suddenly I found myself in the room.
It was a strange, cramped room, with one small frosted glass window. I was sitting on a worn red sofa. There was a second small sofa shaped just like mine directly across from me—there wasn't even a table in the middle. It was a lot like the House of Surprises that they used to have way back when, in amusement parks, that thing where the walls rotate, and even though you're not moving you have the illusion that the whole house is spinning. The lights were dim, and I felt sort of melancholy.
And then there was the wooden door.
I figured it would probably be okay if I just touched it, so I stretched my hand out toward the doorknob. It was narrow and soothingly cool, a dull gold in color. The moment I closed my hand around it, I felt a sweep of vibrations come throbbing up into my arm. If I had to describe the feeling, I'd say it was as if the door were holding something back, as if this were the only quiet place in an incredible whirl of energy that was spiraling around outside, someplace like the eye of a hurricane, or like walled-off sacred ground. Every cell in my body started to quake and gibber. I realized that I had an instinctive fear of the world beyond that door.
Yet at the same time I could understand that certain people might be tempted to open this door. I understood that Mizuo must have felt that urge. And that several people had stepped outside, and that it was true—those p
eople had probably never come back.
Yeah, it makes sense.
I stepped away from the door and sat back down on the couch. My head had cleared. I stamped my feet on the wooden floor and slid my hands across the sandpapery beige wall. Everything felt extremely real. Like the deserted waiting room of a train station way out in the country, the room had a certain unnatural feeling about it, a certain oppressive air.
And then it happened. All of a sudden the door crashed open and Haru came bounding into the room.
I was so surprised I couldn't speak.
For just a moment, over the top of Haru's shoulders, I caught a glimpse of a tremendous expanse of heavy ash-colored gray, and heard a wild moaning, like the noise of some kind of storm. That scenery was any number of times more frightening for me than the fact that Haru had actually come.
“It's been a while,” Haru said.
She gave me a small smile, tightening her lips.
You had the feeling that smile would be sucked up by the room and by the frightening grayness outside almost before you knew it. It seemed like a terribly lonely smile.
“It's great that we're able to meet like this,” I said.
The words came out as smooth as oil.
“I'm glad I figured out that you wanted to see me. Because to tell the truth, I liked you a lot, Haru, you know? The days we spent together had this special feeling of tension—it was a lot of fun. And that's only because it was you. You mean a lot to me. And just being with you taught me so much. There were all these things that I wanted to talk to you about, but we never had the chance. I really regret that.”
I couldn't say that this was all the truth. It was like a confession. It was like shouting love at a boat as it glides off into the distance.
But Haru—thin as ever, still dressed in black—nodded.
“Me too,” she said. Then, “But take a look at this!”