Grotesque (37 page)

I can still remember seeing him sitting perfectly still in the dark shadows of the innermost room of the cave. Everyone in the family got so used to him we stopped noticing if he was even there or not. When it was dinnertime, my mother would set a bowl of food in front of him.

Before long the food would be gone, so we took that as a sign that our grandfather was still alive. When Grandfather did actually die, no one noticed for some time.

Once, when no one else was in the house, my grandfather called out to me. I was in elementary school at the time. Since I’d hardly ever heard him speak, his voice caught me by surprise and I swung around to stare at him. My grandfather was sitting in the dark of the inner cave, his eyes fixed on me.

“We’ve a murderer in the family,” he said.

“Grandfather! What did you say? Who are you talking about?”

I asked my grandfather to explain, but he didn’t say anything more. I’d been spoiled by then into believing I was a clever boy, a sensible lad, so I chalked my grandfather’s comment up to the ramblings of a half-dead old fool and paid no attention. Before long I’d forgotten all about it.

Every day the members of our family cultivated fields halfway up the mountainside with the help of an emaciated old ox. Other than the ox, we had two goats. It was my older brother Gen-de’s job to take care of them. He was the second son. The family grew an assortment of crops, 2 3 3

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mostly grains. My father, mother, and older brothers would awaken early, before the sun had risen, and head out to work. They wouldn’t come home until past dark. Even so, the amount of food produced by those fields was inadequate to feed the entire family. Often we had to contend with droughts. When that happened we would go for months without ever getting enough to eat. All I could think, at those times, was how as soon as I reached adulthood I wanted to eat my fill of white rice, even if it killed me.

Because that’s the kind of life we led, I was determined—from the moment I was aware of what was going on around me—to leave home as soon as I was old enough. I would head to one of the big cities—the likes of which I had yet to see—and find a job there. I assumed the family land would be passed down to the oldest son, An-ji. My older sister, Meihua, was sent in marriage to a neighboring village when she was fifteen.

I knew that the crops from our fields and the food from our few goats was not enough to sustain my brother Gen-de, my younger sister Meikun, and me.

Eight years separated me from my eldest brother, An-ji. There was a three-year difference between me and my second brother, Gen-de. When I was thirteen, a catastrophe befell the family. An-ji caused Gen-des death. It terrified me to think that my grandfather’s prophecy had come true, and I clutched my younger sister, Mei-kun, and trembled with fear.

An-ji and Gen-de got in an argument, and An-ji hit Gen-de and knocked him down. Gen-de stuck his head on one of the crags in the cave and stopped moving. A police officer came to investigate his death, but my father concealed the circumstances, saving that Gen-de stumbled, accidentally hitting his head as he fell. If An-ji had been charged with killing his younger brother, he would have been sent to prison and there would have been no one left to tend the fields. After he got out of prison, he would have had nothing to come home to and would have needed to survive on his own.

In our village there was a surplus of men. It was so bad it was said that in a neighboring village four men had been forced to share one bride.

That’s how poor we were. My brothers had been arguing about a bride; that was the reason for their fight. Gen-de had made fun of An-ji.

But after An-ji killed Gen-de, he changed. He started to act just like my grandfather, refusing to speak to anyone. An-ji still lives in the village with my parents. He never married.

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Perhaps my family is cursed. As the result of being pursued by a violent passion, both my older brother and I ended up murderers. As punishment, my brother will spend the rest of his life in solitude and poverty; and I, for the crime of killing Yuriko Hirata, must be incarcerated in a foreign country. My beloved younger sister met an untimely death on her way to Japan, and now I have nothing left.

My grandfather may have been forced to leave his home in Fujian and drift along to Sichuan, but if only his predictions hadn’t been so dire, if only he hadn’t chased everyone away, then … well, that is all I can think about these days. I am sure my grandfather saw the dark collapse of the family. Surely that is why he ended his days no better than a stone, sitting wordlessly in a dark cave.

At any rate, if my grandfather had said, “The murderer in the family is you; be careful,” if he’d warned me, I could have been more cautious. I would not have come to Japan. And if I hadn’t come to Japan, I would not have killed Yuriko Hirata, my younger sister would not have died, and I would not be suspected of Kazue Sato’s murder. I could have gotten a job in a factory near the village and would have learned to content myself with one yuan a day. That’s the way my life would have ended.

When I think about what might have been, I’m consumed with grief.

What I did to Miss Hirata was unforgivable. I have no way to apologize.

If it were possible, I would gladly replace her life with my own miserable existence.

However, when I was thirteen, I never would have imagined that this is the way I would end up. At the time, I could not forgive An-ji for what he had done. I could not bear to watch my parents grieve or listen to the malicious gossip the villagers circulated about us. I hated An-ji. But then, a person’s emotions are a curious thing. At the very bottom of my heart, I couldn’t help but sympathize with him.

After all, what he did was not unreasonable. Even I found Gen-de’s behavior extremely offensive. He liked to fool around and was always out chasing women. He stole money from my father and spent it on booze.

He was a complete good-for-nothing. Why, some of the villagers had even caught him having sex with the goats, and the gossip that ensued was a source of great shame for my father.

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To be perfectly honest, Gen-de had brought so much shame to our family that I was relieved when he died and An-ji, who was to inherit my fathers fields, escaped going to prison. If An-ji had been sent to prison, I would have inherited the fields, but it would have been more a curse than a blessing. Tied to a tiny parcel of land, I would have been forced to endure a life of hardship without ever knowing the civilized world.

The impoverished masses of Chinas inland people have one good thing going for them: freedom. But that’s it. With no one to take particular notice of us, we were left pretty much to our own devices. And we clung to our freedom. So long as we stayed in the country, we were free to go where we wanted, do what we wanted, and die like dogs if we wanted. But all I could think about at the time was getting out of there and going to the city.

After my brother died, I had to take his place and look after the goats.

Those were my fathers wishes. But when I turned eighteen I took a job in a little factory nearby that made straw hats and wicker pillows. I was able to do that because we sold the goats when my mother started to suffer from a stomach ailment. I preferred working at the factory, making things from wheat straw, over tending the goats or working the fields.

But the pay was low. I got only one yuan for every day of work. Still, even that paltry sum was a luxury in a family as financially strapped as my own.

Around that time, the second and third sons on the farm next to ours started preparing to go out to work in one of the port cities. The farm they had was not enough to feed all the mouths in the family, and the village already had too many workers. There were no jobs for young men and no marriage partners for them either. So most of them just loitered around the village like Gen-de had done—up to no good, getting into scrapes, and causing trouble.

A fellow I had known since we were children, Jian Ping, went off to Zhuhai in Guangtung, which later became designated as a Special Economic Zone. Here he took a job with a construction company, mixing cement and hauling building materials. With the money he sent back to the village, his family bought a color television, a motorcycle, and all kinds of other things that we considered great luxuries. I was so jealous I could die.

I wanted to set out for the city as soon as I could. But how was I to raise the money? The earnings I made at the straw factory—one yuan a 2 3 6

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day—were so measly, I couldn’t even think of saving it. If I was going to get funds together, I’d have to take out a loan. But from whom? No one in the village was in a position to loan money. I had to raise the funds somehow so I could go off to the city like Jian Ping. That became my one and only dream.

In 1988, the year before the Tiananmen Square massacre, news shot through the village that Jian Ping had died. From Zhuhai City, he could see Macau just across the harbor, and apparently he had drowned while trying to swim across and smuggle himself into the country. At least, that is the information provided by the person who wrote the letter announcing Jian Ping’s death.

Jian Ping had wrapped his documents and money into a bundle and tied it to his head. He waited for the sun to go down and headed to the outskirts of Zhuhai. Then, with his eyes fastened on Macau, he began swimming. It was pitchblack and he swam a number of miles, intending to slip secretly into Macau waters. To a Japanese, his action would probably appear unbelievably reckless. But I can understand his feelings so strongly it makes my heart ache.

Zhuhai and Macau are connected by land. You can stand on the streets of Zhuhai and look over at Macau. Just a breath away, a different country stretches out before your eyes, inhabited by the same race of people. And casinos. Macau has casinos. And money. Where there is money, one can do anything and go anywhere. In Macau people enjoy all kinds of freedoms, every freedom there is. But that freedom, we hear, is guarded by border patrols and surrounded by an electrified fence. Could there be a more cruel place on earth?

If caught trying to sneak across the border, we were told that you’d be sent to a prison where the conditions were worse than horrible. You’d be stuffed into a tiny room where bedbugs the size of animals crawl over everything, and where you’re forced to fight others in the cell for the luxury of using the shit-encrusted slop jar.

But there is no high wall in the water. The waves cross the seas freely.

I decided that I would try to swim for freedom too. I would swim to Macau, perhaps even Hong Kong.

In China, a person s fate is determined by where he is born; that is an inescapable fact. Jian Ping was willing to risk his life in an effort to alter his predetermined destiny. When I heard what had happened, my ideas 2 3 7

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underwent a change. I was determined to take Jian Ping’s place in the effort to cross the ocean, to head for a free country where I could make as much money as I wanted.

At the end of that year my family began to discuss a marriage proposal for my younger sister, Mei-kun. The proposal was a good one for a family like ours, seeing as how we lacked financial resources. Although the suitor was a man from our village, he came from a fairly wealthy family.

But there was a marked difference in ages. Mei-kun was just nineteen and her suitor was already thirty-eight. The suitor was short and homely.

Small wonder that he was still without a wife!

“You’re going to accept his offer, aren’t you?” I asked my sister. “You’ll be able to live a better life than you have until now.”

Mei-kun looked down at her lap and shook her head.

“I absolutely refuse. I despise that puny little monkey of a man, even if he does have more money than we do. He’s so short I’d still have to look down on him, wouldn’t I! I won’t go. If they do make me go, I’ll agree to tending the fields, but that’s it. I’m not going to become an old woman like my sister.”

I gazed at my little sister. What she said was not unreasonable. Our older sister—six years my senior—had married into a family that was not much better off than our own, and she had had children one right after the other until now she was as dried up as an old woman. But Mei-kun … Mei-kun was an adorably attractive girl, the very apple of my eye. Her cheeks were round and her nose thin. Her limbs were long and slender and graceful when she moved. Sichuan is known for its beautiful women. I’d heard that a girl from Sichuan could go to any city in the world and be assured of a warm reception. My litde sister had inherited a wanderer’s blood from her grandfather. She was prettier than any of the girls in the nearby villages and she was headstrong.

“If I had a suitor like you, I’d marry,” Mei-kun went on with great earnestness. “I’ve seen all the actors on the color television that Jian Ping’s family has, and I don’t think any of them come close to you.”

I’m embarrassed if I seem conceited, but I have to admit that around my village people thought I was a handsome man. Of course, our village 2 3 8

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was small. If I went to the big cities I am sure I’d find any number of men better looking than I. Even so, my sister’s compliment gave me confidence.

And after I came to Japan, people often told me I looked like the actor Takashi Kashiwabara. Mei-kun looked me right in the eye and said, “We ought to appear on TV together, you and me. We’re both goodlooking, and we have a nice sense of style. I’ll bet we could make lots of money in the movies. But of course we’ll never get a chance, as long as we stay in a village like this. I’d rather die than stay here. Let’s go to Guangzhou together. Really. What do you say?”

My sister looked around the cave where we lived—our dark, cold, damp home. Outside we could hear our mother and An-ji talking in gloomy tones about when it would be best to sow the millet. I couldn’t take much more of this place. I’d had enough. As I listened to An-ji’s voice, I supposed my sister had the same feelings. She reached out and took my hand.