Grotesque (10 page)

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Mitsuru was honest. I’d never met anyone before who was as honest as this.

“That longing—what exactly is it?” I asked.

Mitsuru flinched and peered into my face. Her eyes were jet black and shone like the beady eyes of a small defenseless creature.

“Perhaps it’s something inside me, something of a demon.”

A demon? We all have our own demons, I suppose. All things being equal, I might have easily lived a life of quiet contentment without ever even being aware of my own demon. But being raised alongside Yuriko had caused my inner demon to grow to tremendous proportions. I understood why it was that a demon had lodged within me. But how did a demon come to be in Mitsuru as well?

“Are you saying that you have sinister motives, or is it that you just don’t like losing?”

Mitsuru looked startled by my question. “Well, I wonder… .” Confused, she looked up into the sky.

“You’re the strongest-minded person I know,” I told her.

“Really?” Mitsuru’s face flushed red. She was embarrassed. I tried to lighten things up by changing the subject.

“Is your father a salary man? That is, are you one of the orbiters?”

“Yes.” Mitsuru nodded. “He’s in the real estate business.”

“Must be lucrative.”

“He received a large compensatory sum when they bought out his fishing business, so he embarked on a new venture. Back in the day he was the head fisherman, I heard. But he died when I was young.”

Even though her people had come from the sea, Mitsuru had learned to crawl on land like a lungfish, a fish that can breathe air. Without even thinking, I started to picture Mitsuru—her thin white body—crawling through the sticky siltlike mud. Suddenly I wanted to become good friends with this girl. I decided to invite her over to my house.

“Won’t you come visit me sometime?”

“Sure!” Mitsuru accepted my invitation readily. “Would Sunday be okay? I have to go to a premed study session after school every day—to tell you the truth, I’m trying to get into Tokyo University Medical School.”

Tokyo University! Having just learned to crawl on land, she was already aiming to climb a mountain! And thus, deep inside me a desire was born to make Mitsuru the focus of my own study. Mitsuru was a 5 7

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strange creature to have been born of this school, a creature who possessed a goodness and kindness that set her apart from the rest of us.

And yet, within her heart lurked a demon larger than that of the others.

“I’m sure you’ll get in!”

“I wonder. But even if I get in, what then? There’ll just be more batdes to fight.”

Mitsuru was starting to say something when one of the tennis-club girls turned and called to her from the court. “Mitsuru? Do you want to take my place? I’m tired.”

I gazed after Mitsuru as she set out for the tennis court. Her frame was small and her hips high, giving her body a nice symmetry. She gripped her tennis racket as though it were heavy and exchanged some words with her friend. Her limbs were so white and slender they looked as though they’d never seen the light of day. But her serve struck the boundary line of her opponents’ court perfectly. The ball made a pleasant dry ringing sound as it was returned. Although I had no basis for my evaluation, I decided that Mitsuru was an incomparably good player. She was quick on her feet and used the court wisely. Surely, when the match was over, she’d be embarrassed by the fact that she’d lost herself in her play, inadvertently revealing her considerable talents. Mitsuru was no bonsai. Her beauty was not like that of a bonsai, which achieves its charm by asserting its own will in defiance of the careful bindings that lash and restrict it. How, I wondered, would my grandfather describe Mitsuru’s beauty?

A squirrel. It suddenly came to me: a clever squirrel who forages for nuts in the trees and buries them in the ground to stave off winter hunger. The squirrel was exactly what I was not. I was the tree. And no doubt a woody tree at that, a tree bearing naked seeds, ovary-free seeds, a gymnosperm. I would be a pine, perhaps, or a cedar. At any rate, I would not be the kind of flowery tree that welcomes birds and insects to gather in its branches like blossoms. I was a tree that simply existed for itself, alone. I was an old tree, thick and hard, and when the wind blew through my branches the pollen stored up there scattered of its own accord. What an appropriate analogy, I thought. The realization brought a smile to my lips.

“What’s so funny?”

I heard an angry voice behind me. Kazue was standing beside the water fountain staring at me. She’d been watching me for some time, I 5 8

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realized, and the realization left me feeling mildly irritated. I couldn’t help but picture a scraggly tree when I thought of Kazue.

“It’s got nothing to do with you. I was just remembering something funny, that’s all.”

Kazue wiped the sweat from her brow and said with a glum look, “You were sitting there talking to that girl Mitsuru, and the whole time you were staring at me and laughing.”

“That doesn’t mean we were laughing at you!”

“Well, I don’t care if you were. It’s just that it makes me angry to think that someone like you would make fun of me!”

Kazue spit the last words out with particular venom. Realizing that she was ridiculing me, I replied with earnestness, disguising my true feelings with great skill. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. We were not ridiculing you or anything of the sort!”

“Oh, it just makes me furious. They’re so malicious. So childish!”

“Did someone do something to you?”

“It would be so much better if they actually did do something to me.”

Kazue slammed her racket against the ground with surprising force, sending up a cloud of dust that coated her tennis shoes, covering the white laces with dirt. The students sitting along the bench turned to stare at her but then just as suddenly returned their gaze to the ground.

Most likely they had no interest in the conversation between two such nondescript gymnosperms (Kazue was also of the somber pine or cedar species, unable to produce flowers). After Kazue had glared at the other students on the bench with pent-up hostility, she asked me, “Do you plan to join a club? Have you decided?”

I shook my head silently. I’d dreamed earlier of being involved in club activities, but once I saw the way things really were at the school, I reconsidered. It wasn’t so much that I minded the petty demands senior members of the clubs placed on their juniors; that was a given in any club. But here the clubs weren’t strictly hierarchical. They had a complicated inner structure that ran along vertical lines as well. There were clubs for the inner-circle students, clubs for the orbiters, and clubs for everyone else.

“No, I live with my grandfather so I don’t need to participate.” Without thinking, these were the words that popped out of my mouth! My grandfather and his friends took the role of upperclassmen, and helping him with his handyman job was my extracurricular activity.

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“What do you mean by that? Explain yourself,” Kazue said.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s nothing to do with you.”

An angry look swept over Kazue’s face. “Are you saying I’m just fighting for the sake of fighting? Getting worked up over nothing?”

I drew my shoulders in and shrugged. I’d had enough of Kazue and her persecution complex. On the other hand, if she’d already figured out that much, what point was there in asking the question?

“What I’m trying to say is why does the school have to be so unfair?

It’s so sneaky! They’ve already picked the winner before the game’s even been played!”

“What are you talking about?” Now it was my turn to ask.

“See, I wanted to join the cheerleading squad. I turned in my application and before they’d even looked at it they turned me down, just like that. Don’t you think that’s wrong?”

All I could do was stare at Kazue stupefied. She was so clearly clueless when it came to both herself and the school. She folded her arms across her chest in a sulky pout and glared at the water fountain. A steady stream of water was bubbling sluggishly out of the faucet.

“The spigot’s loose!” she shouted angrily.

But she was the one who’d forgotten to twist the tap shut.

I fought back the urge to laugh at her. Not yet adults ourselves, we sought to protect ourselves from potential wounds by turning the tables on our perceived aggressors and being the ones to launch the attack. But it grew tiresome being a constant target, and those who clung to their injuries were surely not destined to live long. So I worked on refining my maliciousness and Mitsuru worked on her intelligence. Yuriko, for better or worse, was imbued from the start with a monstrous beauty.

But Kazue … Kazue had nothing to cultivate. I felt absolutely no sympathy for her. How can I put this? To get right to the point, Kazue was supremely ignorant, insensitive, ill prepared, and utterly outmatched by the harsh realities that confronted her. Why on earth didn’t she notice?

I’m sure you will once again feel compelled to note that my assessment is particularly brutal, but it’s true. Even if you allow for the fact that she was still immature, there was in Kazue a violent insensitivity. She lacked Mitsuru’s attentiveness, and she did not have my kind of heartlessness.

In the final analysis, there was something about her that was fundamentally weak. Kazue did not harbor any demons; in that sense she was similar to Yuriko. They were both at the mercy of whatever came 6 o

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their way, which I found terribly predictable. I wanted more than anything to plant a demon in their hearts.

“Why don’t you lodge a complaint?” I said to Kazue. “Why don’t you talk about it during homeroom?” The instructor in charge of homeroom didn’t do anything but take attendance and go over the day’s schedule.

There was hardly any point to having a homeroom. And it would be very uncool for a student to instigate a debate on some topic and try to get some kind of consensus. But Kazue leaped on my suggestion with alacrity.

“That’s it! What a good idea. I owe you one.” Just then we could hear the chimes signaling the end of the class period. Kazue walked off. She didn’t even say good-bye to me.

I was relieved when Kazue left, and I felt lucky to have gotten through the tennis lesson without having to do anything but chat. The gym and home economics classes at Q High School for Young Women were pretty lax. The instructors only paid attention to those who were eager to be involved.

That was the pedagogical doctrine of the teachers at Q High School for Young Women: independence, self-reliance, and self-respect. Students were encouraged to do whatever they wanted because only they had responsibility for their own growth. Rules were lax and much was entrusted to a student’s own sense of self-determination. For the most part, almost all the instructors were themselves Q graduates. Having been nurtured in the pristine purity here, the pedagogical doctrine they preached was anything but abstract. They carefully instilled in us the belief that all things were possible. A wonderful lesson, don’t you think?

Both Mitsuru and I secredy clung to this teaching. I had my maliciousness and Mitsuru her intelligence. Together our good points stretched and grew, and we nurtured them and struggled to stand on our own in this corrupt world.

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• 3 •

It was early one rainy morning in July when the phone call came announcing my mothers death. I’d finished making the lunch I was going to take to school and was just starting to prepare breakfast. Toast and jam with tea. I had the same breakfast every morning.

My grandfather was on the veranda talking to his bonsai, as was his habit. In the midst of the rainy season the bonsai tended to attract both bugs and mold, so they required particular attention. Grandfather was so busy dealing with them—heedless of the rain—that he didn’t hear the phone.

Once the butter melted on the hot toast I had to begin spreading the strawberry jam. It was important for me to spread the jam so that the black seeds were evenly distributed, but I had to be careful not to let the jam drip over the edges of the toast. Timing was everything because it was also essential that I dunk the Lipton’s tea bag into the cup twice and then remove it. I was very busy with my preparations, so I called out angrily to my grandfather when I heard the phone.

“Aren’t you going to answer?”

My grandfather turned back to look at me from over his shoulder. I pointed to the telephone.

“Get the phone. If it’s Mother, tell her I’ve already left for school.”

The sky outside was gray and the rain poured down so heavily you couldn’t even see the top floor of the apartment building on the other side of the complex; it was hidden in mist. Because it was so dark, we’d had the fights on since morning. Neither night nor day, it seemed spooky.

It never occurred to me to ask why my mother might be calling me at this hour. The time difference with Switzerland was seven hours; it would have been midnight there. Since they never called this early in the morning, it suddenly dawned on me that maybe Yuriko had died, and my heart leaped with anticipation.

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Grandfather finally picked up the phone.

“Yes, this is he… . Oh, hello, it’s been a long time. Thank you for all you’ve done recently.” Grandfather seemed to be at a loss for words.

Seeing him so tongue-tied I figured the call was from school. I hurriedly pulled the tea bag out of my cup and placed it on the saucer. The tea was still too weak. I’d misjudged. Grandfather called me to the phone with a puzzled look.

“It’s your father. He says he has something to tell you. I can’t understand a word he’s saying, It’s all gibberish. But he’s saying something about an important matter that he can’t talk about with me.”

I had never once received a telephone call directly from my father. I wondered if he was going to tell me that he wouldn’t be sending any more money for tuition. I braced myself for a fight.