Grotesque (53 page)

“I never met my mother, so I don’t care what you tell me about her. I heard about her from my father. I think she probably hated me. When I was small it made me sad, but I’m used to it now. I don’t really think much about it anymore.”

“Yuriko was a woman who thought only of herself. She wasn’t like me.

She used to torment me, so I know just how you feel. I’m going to look after you for the rest of my life, so don’t you worry. You can stay with me forever.”

Because Yurio had no interests except music, he’d answer a question perfunctorily and then pop his headphones back on. The music that leaked out was some kind of rap in English that I did not understand. At school Yurio had been studying to be a piano tuner. Although his studies were cut short midstream, he didn’t seem to care. He just spent the day listening to music through his headphones, from the time he got up until the time he went to bed.

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“Yurio, what do you want to be when you get older?”

When Yurio heard me ask another question, he pulled his headset off again. But he didn’t look irritated. “Well, something related to music, I guess.”

“A piano tuner?”

“No. I’d like to make music. That’s why I need a computer. I know it sounds strange for me to say this, but I think I have talent.”

Talent. The word thrilled me. Yuriko had been as beautiful as a monster; now her child, who was her equal in looks, was also blessed with a talent that surpassed others. I wondered how I could help him develop this talent further.

“I understand. I’ll see what I can do.” I let out a deep sigh and looked around the shabby room. “What if you went to Johnson’s?”

“Well, I’d like to go to America to get a taste of real rap music. I know my father has family in Boston. He went back after he divorced his Japanese wife. I heard that he just got married again over there, to a woman with a ten-year-old son, and that boy’s his heir, so there’s no reason for me to go see him. I’d only be in the way.” Yurio sounded relieved to get that off his mind. “All I have is music,” he continued. “It’s my fate to be surrounded by music.”

I stroked Yurio’s cheek. It was tense. I would replace Yuriko and be the mother he never had. Yurio smiled sweetly.

“I was starving for a mother’s affection. So I’m really happy to be living here with you, Aunt.”

Yurio was not able to see, but he more than made up for it by speaking from the heart. I took his hand and pressed it to my cheek.

“I’m the exact image of your mother. Your mother had a face like this.

Just touch it and see.”

Yurio timidly stretched out his other hand. I grabbed his big, cool hand and brought it to my nose and eyes.

“People always said your mother and I were really pretty. Here, feel this? Double-fold eyelids. My eyes are large and my nose is thin. My eyebrows look like yours—with a nice elegant arch. My lips are full and pink. They’re like yours too, but I don’t suppose you can tell.”

“No, I can’t.”

For the first time Yurio’s response was tinged with sorrow.

“But I don’t think of my sightlessness as a handicap. I’ve been blessed 3 3 5

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with a talent to allow me to live immersed in beautiful music. My desire is to hear music and also to make music that no one has yet heard before.”

Such a simple, wonderful desire. I felt I’d struck oil by coming across a boy as pure as Yurio. Like thick black liquid bubbling up from the earths core, my maternal instincts bubbled up within me. I would earn money for him. I had to buy him a computer. I decided to beg money from my father in Switzerland. I searched for my old address book and found my father’s phone number.

“Hello. It’s me. Your daughter.”

A woman responded in German. It had to be the Turkish woman my father had married. She put my father on the phone right away. He sounded old, and he could hardly understand Japanese anymore.

“No press please.”

“Father. Did you know Yuriko had a son?”

“No press.”

He hung up. I looked back at Yurio, disappointed. He had an expression on his face that seemed to say, I could have told you this would happen. He turned his face away—his profile the spitting image of Yuriko’s—and closed his eyes. I wondered if in his world he created beautiful shapes out of sound. I couldn’t accept anything I couldn’t see. I could see beauty. Yurio’s sightless beauty held no meaning for me. Even though I had a beautiful child in my life, I wasn’t able to share his world.

It was terrifying, wasn’t it? And sad. I felt my heart fill with a giant sorrow, as if I were suffering unrequited love. I wanted to curl up in pain. I had never in all my life had these feelings before.

“Someone’s here.”

Yurio pulled the headphones off and listened but I couldn’t hear a thing. Just as I was looking around the apartment suspiciously, I heard a knock at the door. Yurio’s sense of hearing was uncanny.

“It’s me! Mitsuru.”

Mitsuru was standing in the filmy darkness of the housing complex hallway. She was wearing a vivid blue suit and had a beige coat folded over her arm. It was an outfit for spring and she made the dingy hallway pulse with brightness.

“I can’t believe you’re still living exactly where you lived when you were in high school! Do you mind if I come in?”

Mitsuru peered past me into the apartment somewhat timidly, as if she were afraid of barging in. I had no choice but to invite her in. She 3 3 6

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offered the perfunctory greetings, removed her high heels, and placed them neatly by the door. Her gaze landed on Yurio’s big sneakers lined up next to her shoes, and she gave a slight smile. I wondered why she’d come. She was even livelier than she had been when I saw her at the courthouse. Yet she seemed completely poised. She was gradually returning to her old self.

“Sorry to pop in like this. I had some news I wanted to share with you.”

Mitsuru settled down by the tea table and placed her coat and handbag neatly at her side. They were both brand-new and without a doubt expensive. I boiled a kettle of water, keeping an eye on Mitsuru out of the corner of my eye, and made us each a cup of tea. I used the same land of Lipton tea bags I’d used when Grandfather was living here. I was stubborn that way. Once I found something I liked, I hated to have to change it.

“You said you had some news?”

“I’ve gotten a divorce and I’m going to marry Kijima.”

Kijima? Which Kijima? Surely not Takashi Kijima. Had she come to take Yurio away? Seeing my look of panic, Mitsuru laughed and shook her head.

“The father, you dummy. Professor Kijima. We’ve been corresponding, and we finally decided to marry. This is the way Professor Kijima put it: Marrying you will be the last task I have as an educator.”

“My, my. Well, congratulations.”

I offered my best wishes stiffly. Of course, I had Yurio so I wasn’t particularly jealous. I was just feeling sad that Yurio had a world of music I couldn’t enter, that was all. I couldn’t muster up genuine joy. My armor of malice was gradually growing thin. Mitsuru was glowing with happiness.

“So Professor Kijima feels duty bound to rescue his brilliant student, does he?” I asked, somewhat snidely. “And is he going to make you the stepmother of his corpulent son?”

“I suppose. That’s why I’m here today, with a message for you from Takashi.” Mitsuru pulled an envelope out of her purse. “Here. My stepson, as you say, told me to hand this over to you. Won’t you please accept it?”

I peered into the envelope, hoping it contained cash. Instead I found two notebooks that looked like old ledgers of some sort.

“Those are Kazue Sato’s journals. She sent them to Kijima just before 3 3 7

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she was murdered. Kijima felt he should give them to the police when he learned about the crime. But she writes about his occupation, so he was afraid he’d get arrested for aiding and abetting prostitution. He came to the courthouse that day to see how to get rid of them. He tried to give them to me, but of course I’m worried myself about being under police surveillance and don’t need to get involved in any more trouble. But you’re the older sister of one victim and friend to the other. No one had a closer relationship to the two of them than you. If anyone should have the diaries, it’s you. So, please don’t make a fuss; just take them.”

Mitsuru spilled all that out in one breath and then shoved the package across the table toward me. Kazue was murdered and now here were her journals. Somehow they seemed ominous. Without thinking, I pushed the package away. Mitsuru slid it back across the table in front of me. We played our little game of back and forth a few more times, shoving the package across the narrow table, and then Mitsuru grew frustrated. She stared at me hard. I glared back. The last thing I wanted was Kazue s journals. I mean, really! I didn’t care whether Zhang killed Kazue or if she was killed by someone completely different; it had nothing to do with me, but Mitsuru would not let up.

“Please,” she begged. “Just t ake them. And read them!”

“I don’t want them. They’re bad luck.”

“Bad luck?” Mitsuru looked offended. “Are you saying they’re bad luck because they’re affiliated with a woman like me? A woman with a criminal history?”

I could feel an incredible power coursing through Mitsuru, one I had never felt before now. I shrank back. I suppose it was the power of love.

Water a plant and it comes to life, sinking its roots deep into the black earth and raising its head up high, afraid of neither rain nor wind. That’s the impression Mitsuru made on me. Women who need water all become domineering. Yuriko had been the same way. Finally, I replied, “I don’t think you’re bad luck or anything of the sort. With you it was a question of religion.”

“Blaming it on religion is a bit facile, don’t you think? I was undone by my own weakness. That’s what led me to join that organization in the first place. I get confused even now when I think about it. Staring at your own weakness is horrible. Unimaginably painful. But you’ve never once even thought about your weaknesses or tried to overcome them, have you? I 3 3 8

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know about the complex you harbor toward Yuriko. It’s practically debilitating.

Especially because you don’t fight it.”

“Don’t patronize me. What have these journals got to do with me?”

It was all so baffling. Why did Mitsuru want me to read the diaries so badly?

“I think it would be best for you to read them yourself and find out.

Takashi said so too. Because you and Kazue were close. You ought to read them. Kazue sent them to Takashi because she wanted someone to read them; of that there can be no doubt. She didn’t want them read by the police or a detective or the judge. She wanted them read by someone from the real world … her world.”

What kind of proof, I wonder, did she have for making such assertions?

As you well know, Kazue and I were not very close at all. We entered high school at the same time. She started talking to me, and I had no choice but to answer. That’s all there was to it. We had misunderstandings and would patch them up from time to time. But after the incident of the love letters she sent to Takashi Kijima, her pride was wounded and she avoided me.

“You’re the only one who ever visited her house, aren’t you? She was a loner, just like you.”

“I think Takashi should keep them. She sent them to him because she liked him. Wasn’t there a letter?”

“There wasn’t a letter. This is all there was. If you ask how she knew his address, I’ll answer but it’s not easy. It seems Takashi knew the owner of the hotel where there was an escort agency that Kazue used. He ran into Kazue once in front of the hotel. I think he gave her his card.”

“Then why don’t I send them to her family? If I mail them from the ward office, it won’t cost me a thing.”

Mitsuru shot me a look. “Don’t you dare. I don’t think Kazue’s mother will want to read these. I don’t care how close a daughter might be to her mother, there are some things she doesn’t need to know.”

“Well, then, why is it so important for me to know them? Explain yourself.”

Explain yourself. That was exactly the same phrase Kazue always used in high school. I smiled sardonically when I remembered it. Mitsuru looked to the side and started tapping her front teeth with her finger.

She still had that same space between those teeth. Yurio was in the other 3 3 9

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room, his back to me, sitting cross-legged on the floor with his headphones on. But he wasn’t swaying to the rhythm. I wondered if perhaps he was eavesdropping with his amazing sense of hearing. I didn’t want him to know about my weaknesses. I began to regret letting Mitsuru into the house. Then she suddenly stopped tapping her teeth and fixed her eyes on mine.

“Don’t you want to know why Kazue got into prostitution? I do. But I don’t want to get any further involved in this. I have my hands full just trying to sort out the mess I got myself into. I can’t afford to think about Kazue. I have to think about myself and the people I’m involved with now: my family, Professor Kijima, all the people I killed. Until I’ve straightened my own life out, I don’t think I’ll be going back to the trial.

I was able to see you after all these years—and talk to Takashi—but I have to start thinking about my problems and only my problems now. It’s different for you. You’re going to keep going to the trial because of Yuriko s murder, right? And you’ll take care of her son, Yurio. You have to because she’s your sister. Why do you have to be involved with Kazue?

Well, read her journals.”

I remembered reading in Yuriko’s diaries that she ran into Kazue in one of the love-hotel alleys in Murayama-cho. Maybe what happened after that was recorded in Kazue’s journals. I wanted to read them, but at the same time I didn’t want to. I hesitatingly picked up the package and peered inside.

“What’d she write about?”

“Ha! See! You’re curious already,” Mitsuru chirped triumphantly.

“Don’t you want to know what she was thinking about? She studied her head off, just like I did. Then she went out in the world and got herself a good job. And yet that wasn’t the half of it. I don’t know what led Kazue to do what she did, but she became a common streetwalker, standing on the corner picking up men. That’s the most dangerous way to go about it.