“Hmm . . . yeah, I don’t really know if that’s the kind of book I want to read right now, but bring one anyway. And a change of clothes, I guess . . . Whatever.”
After the nurse’s second request, I left the hospital room. Since it seemed that Sayuko still wanted to talk about things, I decided to come back again the next day. The nurse gave me bits of random advice about Sayuko. She said she hadn’t looked up Sayuko’s insurance situation, but that Sayuko’s body was in really bad shape from the alcohol. When they’d brought her in, Sayuko’s condition had been strange—the nurse went on and on in her empathetic tone. I wanted to understand the nurse’s good intentions, but I scuttled out of the hospital.
•
Back at my apartment, I drank for many hours. I had known for a while where Sayuko hid her whiskey. It seemed unlikely I could drink so much in one day, but I just kept filling my glass and drinking it down. I knew full well that, even if I finished this off, she would just get another bottle and start drinking again.
8
I took the train and got off at a small station where the rapid-transit doesn’t stop. The building that houses the station looked old and run-down, but plenty of people used it—it was difficult even to walk along the narrow passages. The downtown area appeared unchanged since I came here eight years ago after graduating from high school. Beside the derelict shopping district with its conspicuously shuttered businesses stood a row of garish condominiums, whose presence casually implied that everything was fine.
I could still see the orphanage from the exit of the station, could just make it out through a gap between the condos, on its perch atop a small hill. I used to be ashamed of the building’s prominent position. I felt as if we were on display for all of the people downtown.
I could not be more grateful to this institution. I had the feeling I was biting the hand that had fed me by coming here, and for a moment, I was unable to move. But the head of the orphanage was the only person I had ever been able to trust. Otherwise, I just got by, relying on my own self.
I hailed a taxi and gave the name of the building. The driver took one look at me; his expression seemed to say that he had me all figured out. But that might just have been my paranoid tendencies. It was embarrassing that I still hadn’t outgrown those kinds of feelings. He asked what I did for a living, and I replied that I was a taxi driver, like him. He nodded deeply. “It’s a good job, if I do say so myself,” he said. “The pay is low, but there’s no need for any calculating or mercenary behavior. No competition to speak of—you know what I mean? Mostly just turf wars.”
As I looked at his smiling face, I felt myself starting to relax. I’d never been able to put a customer at ease that way.
A middle-aged woman I had never seen before was the one who led me inside. “Mr. Yamane has been expecting you,” she said, greeting me with a wide smile. I had seen that kind of smile many times before, though—conveying absolute reassurance, because that was the only thing the bearer had to offer.
From a jungle gym bearing the name of the corporation that had donated it, a boy in short pants was watching me. There were two girls in the sandbox, and at a distance away near the fence, a boy in a white T-shirt was crossing and uncrossing his arms below the elbow, repeating the same movement over and over. The boy in shorts called out in a loud voice, “Good morning!” The boy near the fence who had been moving his arms around glanced over with a shameful look on his face. I felt as if I knew just what he was thinking.
When I had lived here, there was a similarly amiable boy. I don’t remember his actual name, but everyone had called him Toku. Whenever someone from the outside arrived he would greet them, and he would eagerly respond to any of their questions. It wasn’t a calculation on his part because he wanted to be adopted; now that I think about it, it seems to me he was motivated by pride, that he wanted to show that even in an orphanage he was still able to greet people so cheerfully. He paid attention to my habit of dropping things, and on occasion he forcibly stopped me. “That’s just what they expect,” he would say, as if he were trying to convince himself, too. “For miserable situations to beget miserable people. I’m not buying into that kind of formulation.” (Sometimes he had a strange way of putting things.) “If you do, you’re just playing into their hands.”
Who had he meant, who were “they”? Probably the world at large. I wondered where Toku was now, and what he was doing. And if he saw me, what would he think? What would he say to me?
•
Mr. Yamane was sitting in a chair in the staffroom. He wore brand-name eyeglasses. He had once quit smoking but had apparently started up again, and was dragging on a cigarette with a look of satisfaction. He had gotten older. His expression was cheerful, but his face was weather-beaten, and though his hair had always been white in my memory, his shoulders were now noticeably thinner.
“You look good. Thank you for coming. How is your job going?” he said.
Grasping both of his outstretched hands, I replied, “It’s fine.” The corners of his eyes crinkled in a smile, and his white teeth were beautiful. I couldn’t bear to look him in the face.
With a gesture, he sent the woman who had accompanied me from the room and got right down to business. “What is this favor you want to ask?”
Despite his kindness in being the one to broach a difficult topic, I had fallen speechless.
“Don’t worry. You don’t need to hold back. When I say I’m like a father to you children, those aren’t mere words. I always had a fond impression of you in particular as a child. Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
“That . . .”
“What is it?”
“I need . . . money. Would . . . would you be my guarantor? I promise not to cause any trouble, that . . .”
I still couldn’t look him in the face, but I told myself I was being cowardly, so I forced myself to raise my gaze. His brows were knit in a frown. Then, as if trying to recall something, he looked at me with anxious eyes.
“I see . . . so what will you use it for?”
“I need it for something. And right away. I promise, I won’t cause you any trouble.”
No matter what I said, it sounded like an excuse. That’s just the nature of favors involving money.
“How much?”
“. . . About three hundred thousand.”
“Do you have any other debts?”
“None.”
“I might as well lend you that amount myself. If you borrow it from a broker, they’ll charge you interest, won’t they?”
“No, that’s too much. Just being my guarantor is more than enough.”
Mr. Yamane laughed when I said this. “I get it. It’s fine. Don’t look so upset. When you made that face, it reminded me of your father. But remember this. You mustn’t borrow any more money. Got it?”
“Yes. I promise.”
There were a number of pictures drawn by the children posted on the wall. Some were vivid, their subjects easy to identify, but others were just dyed smudges of black and brown. Mr. Yamane got up from his seat, turning his back to me as he looked out the window. The boy was still crossing and uncrossing his arms. I wondered if Mr. Yamane was watching him.
“Have your nightmares gone away?”
“Yes.”
“And the feeling of pressure on your chest?”
“. . . It’s gone.”
“Really? That’s good.”
He waved to someone outside. I figured he might be responding to the boy on the jungle gym.
“When you first came here, your illness was quite serious. You must remember?”
“Yes.”
“It was more psychological than physical. That asshole of a doctor said he had rarely seen anything like it, that your recovery would be difficult.”
I felt a jolt in my heart, as if it had been stabbed, and then suffocated b
y an oppressiveness that seemed to originate from within me. The serious illness that he referred to—I had thought it was purely physical.
“This is the first time I’ve seen such severe symptoms induced by fear. That’s what the asshole said. I got angry because he acted as if psychiatrists could explain everything with their theories.”
Mr. Yamane was looking at my face as if he had seen something there for the first time. Sweat trickled behind my ears, and I felt thirsty. My breathing was labored, and the drops of liquid that ran down my neck were surprisingly cool. My body suddenly felt chilled. My hearing was unusually acute. It was as if his low voice, like a murmur, was reverberating directly in my brain.
“That quack said, ‘He suffered prolonged emotional trauma from fear—like a habit, the fear has become part of his flesh and blood, so it is now second nature to him. Presently, he is seeking out fear. Rather than becoming a part of him, fear has eroded his body, and he is held captive by it—he is dependent upon it. The extent of this self-drive toward fear creates an illness that is eating him away . . .’ I remember thinking, I’ll be damned, that’s just not possible. I asked around later and found out that doctor might have been a medical resident. Just because these kids are in an orphanage, people seem to think they can treat them like damned guinea pigs. In other words . . .”
He looked at me, both his eyes wider than I’d ever seen them.
“In other words, that’s the kind of person you are.”
Without moving his wild-eyed gaze from mine, he opened his mouth, his lips hanging in a warped expression. I swallowed, unable to take my eyes off his face.
“That’s the kind of person you are.”
“What—?”
“You are garbage. You’re like a piece of trash. You know it, don’t you? In this world, there are those who are lucky as shit and those who are shit out of luck. Nothing you can do about it. You are like the slag that’s left behind—you are the excrement of this world.
“You’re a freak who takes pleasure from fear. You’d be better off dead. Those like you, their place is to die. You ought to have died back then, when you were in the earth. The person who’s here now is just a husk left over after what happened back then. If there’s a God, then in God’s eyes, you are outside of the plan, an error in calculation.”
Intertwined with the words in my ears, a pain thrummed in my head, gradually taking on a rhythm as it formed a writhing mass. Everything around me was dim. All of the faces in the pictures on the wall were smiling as they looked down upon me.
“Get it? We don’t need people like you. Isn’t that right? You freak—you’re better off dead. There’s no use wasting my thoughts on such a disgusting, twisted person. I wish you had just died. The meaning of your life was merely to elicit sympathy for your death.”
“You’re wrong—plenty of people who have been through experiences like this grow up to be normal, stable adults.”
“Do you really think so? Of course, you’re probably right. But right now, I’m talking about you. Not anyone else. This is about you. You’re a monstrosity. For God’s sake, hurry up and die.”
“Shut up!”
“For God’s sake, just do it!”
“Shut the fuck up!”
The chair fell over, and as the sound of breaking glass echoed, I found myself standing up. This middle-aged man was standing before me, baring his white teeth. “Calm down!” he shouted, gripping both of my shoulders and shaking me violently. I couldn’t speak, I gasped for breath—I couldn’t seem to get any air. He caught me with both arms and tried to squeeze even harder. His skin was on my skin.
“You’re not me!” I shout, and I try to escape but I cannot move. The others are clinging to me. They are clinging to me, trying to get inside of me. I am trembling with fear, and I feel a revulsion—as if it’s about to seep from within my skin—it becomes an intense shiver that erodes my body. “You’re not me!” I shout, as if gasping for air. “You’re not me!”
My vision went dim as I struggled. Suddenly, Mr. Yamane was embracing me. The woman who had greeted me at the door was there, too, and she drew closer; through the window, children were peering inside. We were in the staff room. Mr. Yamane was shouting, “What just happened?” Was he talking to me? He was looking straight at me, so he must have been, right? He was shouting at me to calm down, and asking me what was wrong. I heard various voices. They were calling out to me. Right—I needed to calm down. I had to do as they said and calm down.
The dying fluorescent bulb flickered in an irregular rhythm. Mr. Yamane was standing over me, looking down with concern. Apparently I had been put to bed. Our eyes met, but I had no idea what to say.
“Does that kind of thing happen to you often?”
He was looking at me sadly through narrowed eyes. I had seen this expression many times before.
“No.”
“But what happened wasn’t normal. What’s the matter?”
“That . . . I was exhausted. I’ve been working too much overtime.”
“. . . Really?”
His look of sympathy did not change. The more sincere his expression, the less able I was to tolerate it. I had to say something, it didn’t matter what.
“What is Toku doing now?”
“Hmm?”
“Toku. He was here at the same time I was . . .”
“. . . I remember. I’ll never forget. He’s dead.”
“What?”
“He . . . killed himself. It happened right after he turned twenty . . . It seems he . . . he couldn’t shed the traumas of his past.” He lit a cigarette, as if to distract himself. “For that to happen to someone like him . . . I simply can’t bear to think about it. You understand, don’t you?”
I nodded, but there was nothing else for me to say.
9
Beyond the sound of the shovel digging up the earth and the beam of a flashlight feebly illuminating the darkness, I had a hazy vision of their expressions as they spoke hurriedly to each other, their faces twitching as if they were frightened. I lay there, looking up at them as, shovelful by shovelful, the earth was heaved on top of my small body. I recognized the scene before my eyes for what it was—the culmination of their unrelenting violence toward me. I had only just woken up, but I was overcome by extreme drowsiness. Except this sleepiness was clearly different from normal; it felt as if I were being coerced, like it was impossible to resist. The sounds and voices faded away while my body was gradually pushed down further. My mouth filled with earth and sand. Yet I couldn’t muster the energy or the desire to spit it out. It was all I could do to suppress a weak urge to cough.
I opened my eyes one more time, and I was inside the earth. My clothes were wet from the moisture in the soil, and they felt pleasantly cool. I drifted off to sleep again, yearning for the time in my mother’s womb, which surely had been just like this. Through my grogginess, I was aware that my skin was enmeshed in particles of dirt. The earth was eroding me, and I would erode the earth. How I wished I could become one with the earth and disappear. There was no need for me to do anything. I didn’t need to wait with bated breath to see what their mood was, I didn’t need to run about trying to evade their raised fists, I didn’t need to protect my head and belly. The earth softly soothed me, cooling me little by little, the chill penetrating deeper into me. There was no hunger or fear here. The earth sequestered me from the rest of the world, completely and securely, and I could die, just like this. I put my thumb in my mouth to reassure myself. My body was growing cold. The drowsiness was different from before, absolute yet gentle, slowly swaying my brain. This is how it ends, I thought. When all was said and done, the world had let me go gently.
But something clamored within me. With my attention drawn to this stirring, it grew louder and louder. I wondered what it could be. I thought about how I might describe it, to put it into words. After a moment, t
he question that came to mind was, Are you really convinced? But convinced of what, I wasn’t sure. This thought grew louder, as if it had a will of its own. Wasn’t there something strange about all this? Was I really okay with it? Didn’t I still need to consider the question of why I had these feelings of doubt, and to do so from above ground? When I moved my arms weakly, my breathing became forced, as if I had awakened from something. My body grew heavy. It felt as though the heaviness was pushing down on me, crushing me. I gasped, all the blood in my body seemingly rushing to my head. I am definitely not convinced of this. The muscles all over my body began to convulse, quivering incessantly. This is strange. Something is wrong. With all my effort, I tried to bend at the abdomen to raise my torso. But, held back by the weight of the earth shrouding my body, I couldn’t get up no matter how much I struggled. I moved my arms, trying to dig my way to the surface, but the earth cascaded down on me anew. Drowning, I gagged and sputtered out the earth that I kept swallowing. I could no longer tell up from down. Sensing a solid layer of earth against my knees, flailing my hands about, I thrust at the earth with my head as if to kick my center of gravity into place. The rough particles of dirt were scraping away the surface of my face. After one last vigorous heave, the earth that had covered me was driven upward, and then fluttered back down to settle on top of my head, which had broken through and was now above ground. Still sputtering earth, I let the sudden rush of hot air flood into my lungs. From the chest up, I emerged from the ground and looked around. The peculiar absence of light was so complete, the darkness so overwhelming, that I thought to myself, I must be somewhere in the mountains.
No matter how hard or how far I stared into the dark, I could not find a single point of light. With my eyes gradually adjusting to the pitch-black, I could make out the depths of the shadows that formed tall, thin trees with leaves growing only high up on their trunks. My chilled body thawed in the outside air, and my damp clothing dried out slowly. Lying prostrate on the ground, I drank some water from a nearby puddle; it tasted gritty but it seemed to revive me. My awareness began to come around, and I felt a faint stirring in my arms and legs. I have to get out of here, I thought. I didn’t know what I would do once I left, but I wanted to flee as quickly as I could from the utter nighttime silence enveloped by these infinite trees.