The Part of Me That Isn't Broken Inside

by Kazufumi Shiraishi

  In that case, though, I feel very sorry for Momma, I thought.

  If it were me, I wouldn’t so easily tolerate the man who abandoned our mother, nor would I so readily accept the children this man fathered with another woman as my own brother and sister.

  It was already September, but the sweltering heat lingered in Tokyo. I finally grew accustomed to my new life in Kagurazaka, and work kept me busy as usual. Still, there were a few things that were different. First of all, I rarely went out drinking anymore. I realized—as if taught a lesson—how precious Tomomi’s shop was to me, having lost it now. These days, I left the office around nine and returned directly to my apartment. I’d buy food from a late-night supermarket in the vicinity to prepare dinner by myself. But it wasn’t anything much; just dishes like stir-fry vegetables, omelet, fried noodles and fried chicken, and I’d eat them as side dishes while watching TV and drinking a can of beer. After getting a bit tipsy, I’d take a bath before getting into bed around one in the morning.

  In the brief period before falling asleep, I’d try to think about something but nothing would occur to me.

  Whether I thought about Mother or Tomomi and Takuya or Teruko Onishi or Raita or Honoka, or even Eriko, the only things that floated into my mind were past memories, to which I didn’t have anything to add. For this reason my thoughts failed to expand, and I couldn’t take any pleasure in imagining. Once upon a time, I used to feel that retracing the past was comforting, but I realized that I was only deluding myself. The past is something like a catalyst for enjoying the present, so if you don’t have a present, memories become totally worthless.

  Right now—in my present—I definitely found myself with a place of my own. But there were no people. And I realized then that without people, time was nothing.

  People are time itself, after all. And as such, a space devoid of time may be meaningless to humans. As Machiko-san used to say, everything, including places, people, and time, is merely a different manifestation of a single thing.

  What was Eriko doing now?

  Were Raita and Honoka getting along well? How did Honoka’s job-hunting turn out? Eriko must be mentoring her even now. How did Eriko explain to the two of them about our breakup? I hardly think she’s blaming me …

  September 17, Tuesday.

  On that day, when the cool autumn winds began finally to blow through the town, I was at my desk, busy processing the final-proof galley that I had to finish by tomorrow morning. The author was high-strung and he had red-penciled large-scale revisions in what was the final proof, so my work got complicated, and I had to proceed with caution, readjusting the lines and changing the subheadings.

  I don’t know how much time had passed since I finished lunch, returned to my seat, and began to concentrate on the galley again, but the entire seventh floor, where my publishing division was located, was suddenly abuzz with commotion. This noise was tinged with an indescribably awful and dismal foreboding, so I put down my pen and turned around.

  There were a few people at their desks, but they too were standing up and looking in the direction of the noise. We were facing the east window, but the noise was breaking out near the west window, directly across from us. It was where the editorial department of the general monthly magazine, to which I’d once belonged, was situated.

  One of us in the division went to see what was happening and returned.

  What’s the matter? someone asked.

  While hastily turning on the TV on a worktable, he blurted out, looking pale with shock, Seems that Udagawa’s been stabbed.

  All at once, everyone rushed over to the television set, each crying out, Really? You must be joking! After taking a deep breath, I also walked over to the TV where the anchorman was beginning to convey the news in an anxious voice. As I walked over, though, a vivid image of Raita was projected into my retina. It was a picture of him, just as I’d seen him approximately one and a half months ago at the assembly hall of Hotel New Otani, where I’d run into him; a picture of him dressed in a suit, sporting a tan, and looking elated.

  25

  ON SEPTEMBER 17TH, AT 2:15 in the afternoon, Prime Minister Keiichiro Udagawa (63) was stabbed by Raita Kimura (20), a young, left-wing activist moonlighting on a TV crew in the National Diet building.

  The prime minister, who had just returned to Japan after visiting China and Korea over the three-day holiday period that included in the middle the Respect for the Aged Day, was attending a meeting in which intensive deliberations had begun as soon as the holidays ended. The deliberations were being carried out by the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives to discuss the secondary supplementary budget for the economic recovery policy. Emerging from the assembly hall after finishing his energetic address, the prime minister was surrounded by television crews from various stations, who had been waiting for him to appear. It so happened that on that day, the leader of the ruling party had just expressed his intention to resign after being subjected to criticism regarding the matter of the former First Secretary’s implication in a massive tax evasion scheme, so the media had flocked into the building to directly elicit Prime Minister Udagawa’s comments on the scandal.

  According to protocol, Udagawa had stopped in front of the reporter holding the pool microphone, and the moment he was about to make a comment, a thin man suddenly leapt out from the surrounding crowd of camera crews and hurled himself at Udagawa. Of course, there were bodyguards, dispatched from the Metropolitan Police Department, positioned behind the prime minister, but it was totally impossible for them to carry out their duty in this situation; it was all over in the blink of an eye.

  After Prime Minister Udagawa wrapped his arms around the young man, who had jumped up to his chest suddenly, he parted his tightly pursed lips, let out a single groan, and collapsed right there and then, together with the young man. Right after that, the bodyguards and the reporters, who were stationed at the front, rushed over to the two and fell all over them.

  And that’s how the decisive moment of the sudden assault on the incumbent prime minister transpired in front of many cameras.

  The wounded prime minister was immediately carried out of the building and transported to the Toranomon Hospital.

  The perpetrator, Raita Kimura, was dragged out of the crowd by several bodyguards and was taken, gagged and handcuffed, to the Metropolitan Police Department in Sakuradamon. The TV cameras captured in great detail, and repeatedly televised through news broadcasts, how two police officers amid the turbulent atmosphere were escorting Raita outside, seizing him on either side as they walked down the wide corridor of the building teeming with a crowd of onlookers.

  Newspapers released extra editions, while TV stations rescheduled various programs in order to carry out continuous coverage.

  Raita’s name and age had already been ascertained soon after the incident had occurred, but it was only late at night that day when it was revealed that Raita was the son of an official of the Japanese Communist Party. Although the party promptly held an emergency press conference to disavow any connection to Raita’s act of terrorism, Shinichi Kimura, the father of the perpetrator who was also a council member of Inagi City, was conspicuously absent from the conference and refrained from making any statement. So the media’s response was terribly cold.

  It had been reported that Raita was cooperating with the investigation, and it was on the following day, the eighteenth, in the morning editions of newspapers, that the synopsis of Raita’s deposition was reported.

  While the plan, motive, and background of the crime were apparently going to be disclosed at a press conference to be held by the Metropolitan Police Department on the eighteenth from nine in the morning, the newspapers, thanks to their interviews with various parties connected to the investigation, succeeded in scooping most of the details.

  Above all, what shook the world beyond belief was Raita’s motive. The morning edition of the Mainichi Shimbun ran his testimony word for word.

 
"It’s not that I wanted to change the world, or that I was thinking that this person (Prime Minister Udagawa) was ruining Japan or anything like that. In the first place, I’m not interested in politics at all, and I hardly ever read the papers or watch the news on television, you see. But it’s just that, you know, someone like the prime

  minister’s considered to be great, right? But in reality, he’s the same as us, and even if he were to die, the world’s, like, not going to change one little bit. Well I guess I wanted everyone to learn this lesson. Ah, heck, I don’t know. Basically, all I’m saying is that the death of the prime minister’s not going to make any difference in Japan; it’s not going to change the nation for the better or worse. Anyway, I’m hoping I get the death penalty or whatever soon. I’m not too confident about committing suicide; I think I’ll really suck at it."

  Similarly on the eighteenth, the president of the TV station that had hired Raita as a part-timer took responsibility for the incident and resigned. Upon receiving this news, I wondered about the look on Terauchi’s face—the look on the face of the man who had been effectively used by Raita.

  At that juncture, I hadn’t yet been contacted by the police. Obviously, during the investigation, there was no reason for Raita to say anything at all about me or Eriko or Honoka.

  However, my friendship with Raita would eventually come to the police’s attention from Terauchi’s mouth. At that point, though, all I had to do was respond to their questioning in a straightforward fashion.

  But what concerned me the most was Honoka. If her relationship with Raita was still intact, it was only natural that the police would end up focusing their attention on her. If she were going in and out of that apartment in Ekoda, her face would be known to the neighbors, and the press was undoubtedly going to sniff out her presence soon. If I didn’t do anything, it was inevitable that she’d get mobbed by the reporters and sensationalized, in a news maelstrom, as the lover of the prime minister’s would-be assassin.

  There was no way Honoka could tolerate such a situation.

  On the afternoon of the seventeenth, as soon as I saw the first images of the incident, I called Eriko.

  She seemed to have been in a studio for a shooting job, and when I skipped the greetings and told her about Raita’s case, she was at a loss for words for a while.

  Eriko went on to inform me, though, that Raita and Honoka had broken up in late July. So when Raita laughed and told me in Hotel New Otani that Honoka was very busy job-hunting, he was apparently talking about a time before he split up with her. Eriko also said that Raita had suddenly disappeared from Honoka’s sight, vacating the apartment in Ekoda without a warning. This claim was supported the next day, when Raita, in his statement, clarified that he’d been wandering around Tokyo, moving from capsule hotel to capsule hotel, in the months of August and September.

  I’d like you to immediately contact Honoka and tell her to stay overnight at your place tonight, I said.

  Understood. I’ll call her now and go pick her up. She’s probably heard the news by now. I can’t bear to leave her alone.

  Yeah, please. I’m going to wrap up my work and also head over to your place. I should talk to Honoka too.

  That evening I rushed over to Eriko’s apartment and met, for the first time in a long while, Honoka, who was sobbing, and—snuggled up next to her—Eriko, who was dazed and confused.

  The assassination attempt on Prime Minister Udagawa went on to shake the nation for over a month. The Japanese ended up tasting, for the first time in ages, the true meaning of the word turmoil. On the fifth day following the incident, Toshiyuki Onodera, who was the Minister of Finance in the Udagawa Cabinet, was appointed prime minister during a plenary session of the National Diet. While Prime Minister Udagawa had narrowly escaped death, his abdominal region was seriously wounded; the Swiss army knife’s fifteen-centimeter-long blade had reached the kidneys and liver. All hopes for a swift return to the post of prime minister were effectively dashed.

  In response to the kind of political instability, which hadn’t been seen in Japan since the postwar years began, the level of foreign countries’ confidence in Japan saw a marked decline. Sparked by a huge sell-off of Japanese stocks, the stock market went into free fall and the yen plummeted repeatedly. Furthermore, Japanese government bonds were downgraded and the money market entered into a state of panic.

  The name Raita Kimura came to be etched in the minds of the people with far greater force than the name of the notorious criminal, Otoya Yamaguchi, who had committed suicide in jail after stabbing Inejiro Asanuma. This was because a series of investigations had failed to uncover any mastermind behind Raita’s act, confirming, for the most part, that Raita wasn’t driven by any ideology. Journalists, politicians, and even legal experts were all at a loss, since, for the life of them, they couldn’t figure out what to make of his act of terrorism. This lack of clarity proved to be the source of a malaise that afflicted the whole of Japanese society.

  In the end, however, I wasn’t called for questioning, and Honoka wasn’t summoned by the police either. It was

  also likely that Terauchi didn’t mention my name. Come to think of it, that man was principled enough not to do such a thing. But above all, Raita, apparently, hadn’t breathed a word about us. When he moved out of his apartment he’d disposed of all of his personal effects. In addition, he didn’t seem to have acquaintances other than us, so unless he himself talked, there was no trail that could ever lead the police to us.

  Indeed, you could say that Raita had brilliantly made this thing that’s like a cord that’s barely been keeping me tied to this dirty world … snap. And to him, his relationships with Honoka, Eriko, and myself may have been nothing more than mere segments of such a cord.

  After one and a half months passed, when November came, Honoka gradually started to regain her composure. Ever since the incident occurred, she’d been living together with Eriko. I also made frequent visits to Eriko’s apartment and the three of us would cook together, watch TV together, and sometimes even drink alcohol together. The subject of Raita or the incident hardly ever came up.

  I’ve decided to remain another year in university, Honoka told us at the beginning of November. I don’t think I particularly wish to carry on studying psychology, but then again I really don’t want to join the workforce yet, and it’s not as if I need to, either. Actually, for a while I don’t want to get close to anybody, and I don’t want to get absorbed in anything new. I’ll pay for my school fees and living expenses by working part-time, so Eriko-san, please continue to keep me here, please?

  Watching Honoka plead in that way and bow, Eriko nodded and said in a carefree tone, Yeah, I think it’d be a good thing for you to just take it easy for a year and do nothing.

  Eriko and I warmed to each other, as if we’d really become friends again, as if nothing had happened between us. And perhaps, in reality, nothing all that significant had transpired. However, I was patiently watching Eriko, and I knew that Eriko herself was also patiently watching me; the two of us were waiting for the opportune moment to arrive to try to settle the matter of our relationship once and for all.

  What drives Eriko to be so persistent is perhaps nothing more than mere pride. It may be that she simply can’t stand being spurned and ignored by someone like me. But truthfully, I wasn’t ignoring Eriko, nor was I thinking lightly of her. Ever since that night I sprang out of the house in Suwa—ever since that juncture in my life—I realized all the more that I’d been yearning for Eriko, from the depths of my heart. However, I understood at the same time that my hope was futile, that it would never bear fruit.

  I wasn’t qualified to live together with someone else. I lacked that ability.

  The showdown for us came on November tenth.

  It was a very warm spring-like Sunday, which also happened to fall on my thirtieth birthday.

  I visited Eriko’s apartment in the evening as usual. Honoka was absent, as she’d left for an overn
ight trip to Tateshina with her classmates. Apparently, her decision to travel was made just the previous night, but Eriko was nonetheless very pleased that Honoka had recovered enough of her vitality to enjoy a trip together with her friends. Although I hesitated in the doorway for a while before entering an apartment where it’d just be the two of us alone together, she said, rather forcefully, Well, please come on in, and accepted the wine I’d bought before quickly going back inside.

  We cooked dinner together and toasted with wine.

  Since Honoka was absent, I talked a little about Raita’s current situation. The first public trial had been slated for the end of November, and the full results of a battery of psychiatric tests, which the prosecution and the defense had been requesting the court to disclose ahead of the public trial, had just been released. All results concurred on the diagnosis that he was, of course, of sound enough mind to assume legal responsibility. However, according to a tip from the defense lawyer, it was believed that Raita was in a terribly deranged state.

  Apparently, on top of enduring grueling interrogations over an extended period, he’d been severely shocked by the fact that his father, Shinichi Kimura, the city council official, had hung himself to take responsibility for his son’s crime.

  It seems he’s gone mostly insane now, I said. I don’t ever want Honoka to know that, but sooner or later, it’s going to get covered by the press.

  "Yeah, I suppose it’s not something we can hide, and besides, she herself has got to get over it. But you know something? In retrospect, I’m grateful that Raita-kun dumped Hono-chan before he committed the crime. Of course, I’m pretty sure that she understands what’s going in his heart of hearts—that is, she understands his true feelings for her—but still, the fact remains that he left her without telling her anything, and to Hono-chan, that’s

  reason enough to give up on him."

  Eriko, how serious do you think Raita was about Honoka? Perhaps truly understanding his heart of hearts might, quite to the contrary, end up hurting Honoka even more, you know.