‘Yoko, Yoko,’ the man was mumbling. ‘Help me, Yoko.’
Chiaki took aim at his droopy-lidded eyes and slammed the can opener down.
My name isn’t Yoko
. She heard the stainless steel meet the bone of the eye socket, a sound like a shovel crunching into frozen earth. The man covered his head and tried to crawl away, but Chiaki followed, sobbing and raining down blows to his shoulders and arms and mouth and cheeks and ears.
The first blow dredged Kawashima up from the swamp of unconsciousness. The shock and the subsequent fierce pain reawakened his deadened senses, and the iron shutter was blasted to bits just before closing completely. He was bathed in a sudden, blinding light that screamed of danger, and he tried to shield his face and head. It was like waking from a long but fitful sleep, and it felt as if all the windows in the apartment had shattered and wind was howling through the room.
He heard the voice quite clearly.
Don’t say you’re sorry, no matter how much it hurts. If you apologise you’ll only be beaten harder
. It was the same voice he’d heard by the disposable diaper shelf and again tonight, when looking at the new bandage on the girl’s thigh, but to Kawashima it seemed as if he were hearing it for the first time in years. This was the voice, he remembered very distinctly now, that had always protected him as a child.
Don’t ask for forgiveness. The attack will be over soon. When you’re sure it’s over, look in her eyes. If you can do that, it won’t be a defeat. You will not have lost if you can look her right in the eyes.
The moment Chiaki realised she was sobbing, her shoulder and arm succumbed to exhaustion and she found herself gasping for breath. The tears coursing down her cheeks dripped from the tip of her chin to the carpet. She was gazing at a single teardrop that sat like dew on the shaggy strands, when all the strength drained from her body. I used up the rage, she thought as the can opener slipped from her hand to the carpet, I used up all the rage. The man, she noticed now, was peeking out between blood-drenched fingers, watching her. There was something scary about the look in his eye. Was he angry? What if he got up and left? She wondered if she should wrap her arms around him, apologise and beg him to stay, but she wouldn’t have had the strength to do that anyway.
The girl was just standing there with her face all contorted and her shoulders and chin jerking with silent sobs.
Look at her
, the voice said.
She’s crying. She’s afraid. You see? You can let down your guard now - she’s crying, and she isn’t holding the weapon any more
. Kawashima slowly lowered his hands. The sleeves of his sweatshirt were soaked with blood, and he couldn’t see out of his left eye because of all the blood from the gash. The back of his left hand was cut and bleeding as well, but he scarcely felt it. Why was the pain fading away, though, when he hadn’t even used the technique? It must be the power of the voice, he thought. The voice that came from somewhere inside his own skin and echoed in his ears. That voice had taught him so many things. He hadn’t heard from it much since meeting Yoko, but it had helped him out all through childhood. That voice was the only one he could trust.
Chiaki watched the man lower his arms, thinking how ridiculous he looked. He reminded her of the sloth she’d once seen in a Disney movie. The sloth that fell out of a tree. Sloths spend their lives hanging from branches, the narrator had said, and being on the ground is a serious threat to their safety because their muscles aren’t built for it. The sloth was desperately trying to get back to the tree, but its movements were slow and weird and comical: clinging to the ground, awkwardly waggling one arm or leg at a time and hardly making progress at all. This man was exactly like that sloth. His movements were totally primitive and retarded-looking, but Chiaki wasn’t able to appreciate the humour right now. The left side of his face was like a half-mask of thick, dark red blood, but it wasn’t that; it was the way his right eye was staring at her. No one had ever looked at her that way before. It was an ogling, spacy stare, but one that flickered with sorrow and hatred and defiance. He was trying to get to his feet again. And he was saying something to her in a voice she could barely hear.
‘Did you find the ice pick beneath the bathtub? The ice pick. Was it under the tub? You must’ve looked under the bathtub, right? When you moved?’
She didn’t understand what he was talking about, but the look in his eye scared her, and she shook her head.
‘I need it now. You didn’t look under the bath when you moved?’
She shook her head again.
‘That’s funny,’ Kawashima muttered. The smell of burning tissue was not only deep in his nostrils now but swirling through every cell in his body. Showers of sparks shot out where his senses intersected, but he wasn’t aware of them in any objective sense, or of the fever saturating the space between his temples. He was already one with the burnt protein smell and the sparks and the fever. The voice was no longer reverberating inside him, but that was all right. The voice helped me out earlier for the first time in a long time, he was thinking, but I can take it from here.
And now he remembered whose voice that was. It’s mine, he thought. It’s me as a child. I mean, the voice I created as a child. I knew my own voice would be too weak, too childlike and vulnerable, so I chose the voice of an adult. A generic grown-up, like the man who read the news. But now I’m all grown up myself. I can speak for myself, and act for myself. Look at the woman standing there. See how she fears me. The whole
world
shall learn to fear me.
He remembered feeling this way once before. This time the sensation was even more intense, but the first time was when he’d hit his mother. Seeing her after all those years, he couldn’t get over how small she looked. As if she’d shrunk. Like the toy monster they used to sell that expanded in water and shrank when it dried. That was her, all dried up and shrunken. Just to see her like that had been enough for him, but then she had to go and act timid and scared. ‘You forgive your mother, don’t you?’ That’s when he hit her, when he saw how scared she was. He couldn’t bear it that she was frightened and asking for help. Asking for help is wrong. Because there isn’t any such thing as help in this world.
Like the woman standing right here, he thought - scared to death and begging me to help her. I’ll have to set her straight. I have to let her know that no matter how much she cries, no one’s going to come to her rescue. She says she doesn’t know where the ice pick is. So maybe the ice pick
wasn’t
under the bathtub all this time. Maybe the police took it away after all, as evidence. The police. Wait a minute. Weren’t the cops supposed to be surveilling this apartment? Ah, well. No matter. Just have to do it over there in the corner, where they can’t see us. But what about the ice pick? How can I set this woman straight without the ice pick? I’ve got to hurry. Before my arms and legs get too heavy. All the pain is gone, though. No pain. Mustn’t sleep until I’ve taught her this lesson. Very important. Wonder if she’ll try to run. Have to show her she can’t escape. Easy enough.
‘Come here a minute,’ he said.
Chiaki shook her head again and took half a step back. The man lurched forward and grabbed hold of her arm, squeezing so hard that she screamed - or tried to. All that came out of her parched throat was a raspy, whistling sound, like steam escaping. Breathing heavily, the smell of curry thick on his breath and sweat pouring down his blood-slick face, the man dragged her into the kitchenette, to the counter where the espresso machine sat. He ripped the machine’s cord from the socket and used it to bind her wrists together. She tried to break free, but he was much too strong for her and didn’t even seem to feel it when she kicked him, though the kicking made her thigh hurt again. He wound the cord around her wrists three or four times, pulling with all his might, and ended by looping it the other way, between her hands and forearms. He secured it all with a tight knot, and her skin turned a colourless, ghostly white where the cord bit into it.
‘Just tell yourself,’ he said as he crammed a balled-up dishcloth into her mouth, ‘it doesn’t hurt.’ He was slurring his words now. ‘Here’s the secret. You have to believe. If you even
think
it might hurt, even a little, you won’t succeed. You mustn’t doubt, for even one second, that all the pain will be gone. Look at me.
Look
at me.’
He yanked on her bound wrists, pulling her so close their noses nearly touched. The wound above his left eye hadn’t closed and blood was still leaking from it. The Halcion must be killing the pain, Chiaki thought. The eye remained open even though it was awash with blood. Coated with a red film, it swivelled about as if it had a mind of its own. Searching for something in its own crimson world. Like the eye of a broken android, she thought, in some science-fiction movie. Her wrists hurt, and the dishcloth stuffed in her mouth made it difficult to breathe, but she couldn’t stop looking at that eye.
I have to show her there’s no need to run away, thought Kawashima. He kept talking but was having trouble enunciating some of the words. Twice he accidentally bit his tongue, and he tried to stimulate sensation in his mouth by running a fingernail over his gums.
‘I would never, lie to you, I want you, to look at me, but focus your eyes, somewhere behind me, like one of those, 3-D pictures, do like that, that’s the secret, my mother, she put ammonia, on my hand, and one time she said, do you want a tattoo, and she sharpened this pencil, a hard one, 4H or 5H, really sharp, and she stabbed my arms, and legs with it, and she hit me, with a milk bottle, and tied up my ears, and fingers, with string, she didn’t care, she’d prise open my eyelids, with her fingers, and bring the tip, of a burning cigarette, or a needle, right up to my eye, it didn’t bother her at all, so now, do you understand, the secret?’
Chiaki had no idea what the man was raving about, but as she gazed at his swivelling eyeball her ears were registering words like
ammonia
and
tattoo
and
milk bottle
and
needle
, and when he asked if she understood she nodded. The corner of the dishcloth protruding from her mouth flapped up and down as she did so.
‘Now I’m going to, cut your Achilles, your Achilles tendons, so remember, remember to do, like I just told you.’
It was hard to make sense of what he was saying, and Chiaki absently nodded again, but when she saw the man squat down and sift through the forks and spoons and cooking scissors and other utensils scattered on the floor, the words
cut your Achilles tendons
replayed in her mind, and she let out a muffled squeal and struggled to get away. The man was holding on to the cord with one hand, and she managed to rip it from his grasp but in doing so brought the espresso machine crashing to the floor. The impact it made caused her to fall backwards and sit suddenly down beside it.
Where’d my knife go, Kawashima was muttering, when his eye fell on the bag he’d left beside the sofa.
‘Hang on, a second, I’ll get, my knife.’
When he staggered off towards the sofa, Chiaki tried to yank the cord loose from the espresso machine, which lay on its side bleeding dark brown liquid. It was all she could think of to do, but she succeeded only in tightening the loops around her wrists, which were swollen now and turning purple. She could see the man reflected in the shiny stainless steel surface of the machine. He was rummaging in his bag. Gritting her teeth, she began dragging the machine little by little over the floor, hoping somehow to reach the door, but with each tug the cord bit deeper into her. She was breathing rapidly through her nostrils, and her chest began to hurt. The dishcloth was making her gag, and she tried to spit it out; but it was so tightly packed in her mouth that it wouldn’t budge. Somehow she had to make it to the door and kick or pound on it in the hope that someone would respond. She remembered how the man had looked in the bathroom at the hotel, whispering in her ear as she bit his finger, and she imagined him wearing the same bland expression as he sliced through her Achilles tendons. Murdering her with the same poker-face he’d worn waiting for her in the freezing cold.
I’ve never met a man like this before, she thought. He’s not like You-know-who, of course, but he’s not like any of the others either. When he says he’ll do something, he does it, no matter what. And it isn’t just the Halcion talking. Halcion confuses your mind but it doesn’t change your personality. This is a totally new type of man.
Urging the machine along a centimetre at a time, grimacing against the pain in her wrists and thigh, she’d managed to drag it out of the kitchenette and on to the carpet when she looked up to see that the man had returned. He was holding a small package wrapped in duct tape. She was still a good two metres from the door, and when she realised she wasn’t going to make it the strength drained from her body once again. She collapsed to the carpet, and the man bent down and grabbed hold of her left ankle.
Using his grip on her ankle, Kawashima rotated the girl on to her back and pulled her towards him, then sat heavily down on the toppled espresso machine. It made a loud bang, and she raised her head to look.
The man had her left leg pinned fast between his knees. He was stripping the duct tape from the package but stopped to wipe his bloodied eye with the sleeve of his sweatshirt. Chiaki could scarcely breathe. She let her head sink back to the carpet. The dishcloth was drenched with her saliva, and drool leaked from the corner of her mouth. Staring up at the ceiling and listening to the tearing sound the tape made, she tried to remember what the man had been saying a while ago.
The secret. Just tell yourself it doesn’t hurt. Focus your eyes like on a 3-D picture. Believe. Don’t doubt you can stop the pain
. Something like that. She stared at the ceiling, trying to do as he’d said; but the ceiling was a depthless field of white, and it didn’t seem possible to focus on a spot beyond it.