Grotesque (54 page)

It wasn’t at all like what Yuriko had done in high school, turning a few tricks on the side. You want to know what happened to Kazue, don’t you?”

Why did I have to be told this by Mitsuru? Why was I being blamed?

I was furious. Mitsuru drained her tea and placed the cup back on the saucer with a light clink. As if that sound was the signal she’d been waiting for, she let loose.

“This is what I think. I probably shouldn’t say this, but I will. You and 3 4 0

G R O T E S Q U E

Kazue were exactly alike in many ways. You both were insanely studious.

You studied all the time and always did your best, and you made it into Q High School for Young Women. But once you were in, you discovered that you were way out of your league and could not possibly compete with the other students. So you gave up. Both you and Kazue were amazed, when you entered high school, by the disparity between yourselves and the other girls there. How you wished you could narrow the gap a bit. Fit in more. So first you started adjusting the hem of your school uniform to make it shorter. Then you started wearing knee socks like the other girls. Did you forget? I know it’s not polite for me to say this, but you finally just gave up because you didn’t have the money to compete. You pretended not to have any interest in fashion or boys or studying. And you decided you’d manage to endure your time at Q High School for Young Women by arming yourself with malice. You got nastier and nastier with each year. Meaner in the second than the first, meaner in the third than the second. That’s why I kept my distance from you.

“On the other hand, Kazue put all her energy into trying to fit in with the others. She came from a family that had some money. She was smart.

So she thought she could wiggle her way in with the rest of us. But it was her very determination that marked her as a target for bullying. The harder she tried the worse it was. There’s really no one more cruel than adolescent girls, and Kazue was uncool about everything. And then, when you of all people laughed at her, it set you up as a target as well. I can still remember how you cried when someone called you a ‘penniless loser.’ It was during gym class. You had decided to act like a lone wolf; that was your strategy for survival. But there were plenty of times when you let your defenses down. You liked the school ring everyone ordered at graduation, didn’t you?”

Mitsuru looked at the fingers of my left hand. I hurriedly hid the ring.

“What do you mean?”

My voice trembled with bitterness. Mitsuru had attacked me as though she were a completely different person. I didn’t know how to react. I wanted to argue with her, to set her straight. But my beloved nephew was sitting in the next room listening.

“Don’t you remember? It’s hard to say, but since I probably won’t ever see you again, I will.”

“Why, where are you going?”

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N A T S U O K I R I NO

My voice must have sounded anxious. Mitsuru’s face softened and she broke into a laugh.

“I’ve told you that Kijima and I are going to live in Karuizawa. But you’re not going to want to see me after I finish telling you all that I think. I’ve stopped worrying about hurting other people’s feelings and curtailing my opinions. I may offend you with what I have to say, but now’s my chance.

“When we graduated from Q High School for Young Women, many students went on to Q University, right? That’s when they all got together and decided to make a school ring to commemorate our class. Everyone there ordered the ring. It was gold with the imprint of the school emblem. I lost mine long ago so I can’t remember exactly what design it was. Wait a minute. Don’t tell me you’re wearing the ring!”

Mitsuru pointed at the hand I had hidden. I shook my head emphatically.

“No, this is different. I bought this ring at the Parco Department Store.”

“You did? Well, I really don’t care one way or the other. The students who’d been in the Q School system from the very start didn’t really pay much attention to the rings and never wore them. They just wanted one as a keepsake. But the girls who brandished the rings around proudly after they went on to university were inevitably those who’d entered the first year of high school. That’s what I heard later. And they wore them with such bravado because they could finally be proud of having advanced up from a lower division. I know this is really trivial, so don’t laugh, but when I first heard this I was very surprised to learn that the one who was most determined to wear her ring night and day was you.

Now this may be just a silly rumor. I mean, I don’t know if it’s true or not.

But it caught me by surprise because I thought for the first time I had seen inside your heart.”

“Who told you?”

“I forget. It was really all so silly. But is it? Is it really just a silly story?

If anything, it’s terrifying. That’s because it represents precisely the value system that holds sway in Japan today. Why do you think I got involved in a religious organization with such a similar structure as Q School? I believed that if I renounced my family and entered the religious organization, I could advance my social position, make my way up the ranks of the hierarchy. But even though my husband and I practiced all kinds of austerities, we would never have been permitted to become executives 3 4 2

G R O T E S Q U E

in the innermost circle of power, and we would never have been in line to assume leadership of the organization. Only the founder and his entourage were ‘born into the privilege.’ They were the true elite. See?

It’s exactly the same as what we faced at Q, don’t you think? I figured this all out while I was in prison. I realized that my life took a turn down the wrong path when I entered the Q system in junior high and tried so hard to blend in with those who were born to power. You and I are the same.

And Kazue too. We all had our hearts wrested away by an illusion. I wonder how it looked to others. I wonder if we looked like victims of mind control.

“If you look at it that way, the one who was freest of all was Yuriko.

She was so liberated, I wondered if she didn’t come from an entirely different planet. Such a free spirit. She couldn’t help but stick out in Japanese society. The reason she was such a prize among men goes beyond her beauty. I suspect they instinctively saw her true spirit. That’s why she was able to captivate even a man like Professor Kijima.

“The reason you haven’t been able to overcome your sense of being Yuriko’s inferior is not just because she was beautiful but because you could never share her sense of freedom. But it’s not too late for you. I’ve committed a horrible crime and will spend the rest of my life repenting.

But for you it’s not too late. That’s why I’m telling you: Read these notebooks.”

Mitsuru stepped into the next room and spoke affectionately to Yurio, with no sign whatsoever that she had just spoken to me harshly.

“Yurio, I’ll be going now. Please take good care of your aunt.”

Yurio turned toward Mitsuru, his beautiful eyes fixed on the space above her head, and slowly tilted his head down. I was so smitten by the color of his eyes, I didn’t care one way or the other what Mitsuru had said to me. By the time I came to my senses, she was gone.

For a brief second the love I had once harbored for Mitsuru bubbled back into my heart. Wise, clever, squirrel-like Mitsuru. She had finally returned to the nest in the safe, luxuriant woods with Professor Kijima. I knew she would never leave again.

Yurio ran his fingers across the tea table, came to the package with the notebooks, and pulled them out of the envelope. He clutched them briefly and announced in a clear, calm voice, “I feel hatred and confusion here.”

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S E V E N • J I Z O OF D E S I R E : K A Z U E ‘ S J O U R N A LS

• 1 •

APRIL 21

GOTANDA: KT (?), ¥15,000

ain since morning. I left work at the usual time and headed toward the Shimbashi Station entrance to the Ginza Subway Line. The man ahead of me kept glancing back vigorously over his shoulder as he walked. I assumed he was trying to spot a cab. The rain bouncing off his umbrella splashed onto the front of my Burberry trench coat, causing it to stain. I fumbled angrily through my purse, looking for my handkerchief. I pulled out the one I’d stuffed in my bag yesterday and patted busily at the raindrops. The rain in Shinibashi is gray and stains whatever it hits. I didn’t want to have to pay for dry cleaning. I quietly cursed the man as he climbed into his cab. “Hey, asshole, watch what you’re doing!” But as I did so I recalled the vibrant way the rain had bounced off his umbrella, and that led me to think about how strong men are in general. I was seized with a feeling of desire, soon to be followed by disgust. Desire and disgust. These two conflicting emotions always accompanied my thoughts of men.

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G R O T E S Q U E

The Ginza Line. I hate the orange color of the train. I hate the gritty wind that whips through the tunnels. I hate the screech of the wheels. I hate the smell. Usually I wear earplugs so I can avoid the sounds, but there’s not much I can do to avoid the smell. And it’s always worse on rainy days. It’s not just the smell of dirt. There’s the smell of people: of perfume and hair tonic, of breath and age, sports pages and makeup and menstruating women. People are the worst. There are the disagreeable salary men and the exhausted office ladies. I can’t stand any of them.

There aren’t very many high-class men out there who catch my attention.

And even if they did, it wouldn’t be long before they’d do something to make me change my opinion of them as well. There’s one more reason I hate the subway. It’s what links me to my firm. The instant I step down into the subway and head toward the Ginza Line, I feel as if I’m being pulled into a dark subterranean world, a world lurking beneath the asphalt.

As luck would have it, I was able to get a seat at Akasaka-mitsuke. I peered over at the documents the man sitting next to me was reading.

Was he in my line of work? Which company does he work for? How did his company rank? He must have felt my gaze, because he folded the page he was reading so I could no longer see it.

At my office I am surrounded by papers. The stacks piled on my desk form a veritable wall all the way around me and I don’t let people peek at my desk while I’m working. I sit there hidden behind the wall of paper, earplugs in place, lost in my work. A pile of white pages stretches in front of my eyes, and to my left and right are other piles. I sort them carefully so they won’t tumble over. But they’re stacked higher than my head. I want them to grow so high they’ll brush the ceiling and cover up the fluorescent bulbs. Fluorescent lights make me look so pale—I have no choice but to wear bright red lipstick when I’m at work. It’s the only way to counteract the washed-out look. Then, to balance out the lipstick I have to wear blue eye shadow. Since that makes my eyes and lips stand out too starkly, I draw my eyebrows in with a dark pencil; if I don’t I won’t look balanced, and if things aren’t balanced it is very difficult—if not impossible—to live in this country of ours. That’s why I feel both desire and disgust for men and both loyalty and betrayal for the firm I work for. Pride and phobia, it’s a quagmire. If there were no dirt, there would be no reason for pride. If we had no pride, we’d just walk around with our feet in the mud. One requires the other. That’s what a human being such as myself needs to survive.

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N A T S U O K I R I NO

Dear Ms. Sato,

All the noise you make is annoying. Please do everyone a favor and try to be a little quieter when you’re working. You are inconveniencing others in the office.

This letter was on top of my desk waiting for me when I got in this morning. It had been typed on a computer, but I couldn’t care less who wrote it. I snatched it up and walked to the office managers desk, waving the paper noisily as I went.

The office manager had graduated from the economics department of Tokyo University. He was forty-six. He’d married another woman in the firm, who had graduated from junior college, and they had two children.

The manager had the tendency to squash whatever achievements other men made and to steal the successes women attained. Earlier, he had ordered me to revise a report I had written. Then he stole my original thesis and represented it as his own work: “Avoiding Risks Related to the Cost of Construction.” This kind of misappropriation was an everyday occurrence with the research office manager, and the only way I could succeed was to learn to outmaneuver him. For that reason, I had to try to protect my spirit, to keep things in balance, and accent my most impressive abilities. That was the only way I was going to get to a clear understanding of the true meaning of things. I had to remain firm and concentrate.

“Excuse me, but I just found this note on my desk. I’d like to know what you intend to do about it,” I said to him.

The office manager took out his metal-framed reading glasses and put them on. As he slowly read over the note, a sardonic smirk rose to his lips. Did he think I wouldn’t notice?

“What do you expect me to do? It looks like a private matter to me,”

he said, scrutinizing the clothes I was wearing. Today I had on a polyester print blouse and a tight navy-blue skirt accessorized with a long metal chain. I had worn the same outfit yesterday, the day before yesterday, and the day before that.

“So you might think. But private matters influence the workplace environment,” I told him.

“I wonder.”

“Well, I’d like some kind of evidence that the noise I make really is annoying and, moreover, just what it takes to be annoying.”

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G R O T E S Q U E

“Evidence?”

The office manager glanced at my desk with a perplexed look. My desk was piled high with papers. Next to it sat Kikuko Kamei. Kamei was staring at her computer monitor, her fingers flying feverishly over the keyboard. After a minor restructuring last year, all the office personnel who were in managerial positions got their own computers. Of course, I was the assistant office manager, so I was given one. But the rank-andfile Kamei did not. Undeterred, she proudly came to work each day with her own laptop. She wore a different outfit every day as well. At some point one of my colleagues said to me, “So, Ms. Sato, why don’t you wear a different dress to work every day like Ms. Kamei does? It would give us all more to enjoy on the job.” To that I had replied tartly, “Yeah? Well, are you going to increase my salary so I can go out and buy a new outfit for every day of the year?”