Monoi’s voice, almost more of an interior monologue, reached Handa like a distant echo, its source buried under a thick layer of dust that had accumulated over sixty-nine years. His profile, as he gazed down at the paddock, appeared leathery, hardened and worn-out from a life that had lasted roughly twice as long as Handa’s own.
“By the way, Handa-san. Let’s give our group a name,” Monoi said. “What do you think of ‘Lady Joker’?”
“What is that? English?”
“The other day, Nunokawa called his daughter the joker that he had drawn. That’s when it occurred to me. If a joker is something that nobody wants, then what better name to describe the lot of us?”
“So Hinode Beer is the one that draws the joker?”
“That’s right. Besides, if it weren’t for Lady, we’d never have had the chance to know one another like this.”
Hearing Monoi put it that way, Handa felt deeply moved. Recalling the image of Lady, who very recently had been wobbling her head joyfully in the grandstand on Sundays, Handa nodded. “All right. I like it. Lady Joker it is.”
After parting with Monoi, Handa took the train, transferring from the Keio Line to the JR Line, arriving at Kamata Station a little before six. His wife had the early shift that day at the Ito-Yokado supermarket where she worked, so for the first time in a while they had agreed to meet up at the pachinko parlor in front of the west exit of the station. As he left the station building and stepped into the pedestrian crossing at the traffic circle, a bicycle burst out from the side alley beside the pachinko parlor directly in front of him.
Handa stopped in his tracks, as did the sneakers pedaling the bicycle. The truth was, it was those sneakers more than anything else that caught his eye. He stared at them, then took in the faded jeans, dark sweater, and finally the face that appeared above all these.
The man was also regarding Handa, staring at him in a similar manner, but in the next instant, both sides of his mouth spread wide, like the surface of frozen water cleaving apart, and he flashed his white teeth.
“Handa-san, right?” The quality of the man’s voice was as stiff as ever, but unlike the last time Handa had heard it, there was a bracing and clear ring to it. No, it was more of an artificial sound, as if his voice had been carved out with a high-performance lathe.
“Oh, Inspector Goda . . .”
“Just Goda. I haven’t seen you since we were on that case in Shinagawa. Which department are you working from now, Handa-san?”
“Kamata.”
“I see. I was transferred to Omori in February. We’re neighbors.”
As he said the word “neighbors,” his lips drew a fine arc once more.
Handa remembered him clearly now. He was that assistant police inspector with the Third Violent Crime Investigation Team from MPD. He had been assigned to Special Investigation Headquarters that had been set up in Shinagawa Police Department to handle a murder case. But unlike the icy, reptilian face in Handa’s memory, the face of the man in front of him was calm and luminous, projecting a vibrant, otherworldly smile, and his closely shaven head—so bracingly handsome—made him look completely different, like a clone. As if in a trance, Handa continued to stare at him, for the moment disbelieving his own eyes.
Upon closer inspection, Goda appeared to be sitting astride his own bicycle, and the contents of the front basket were a basin with shampoo, a soap dish and other toiletries, and a violin case. When Handa’s eyes glanced at the basket, Goda immediately donned a shy smile and said, “It’s my day off today, so I went to the batting cages, the public bath, and now I’m on my way to a local gathering.”
“That’s very health-conscious of you. On my day off I usually go the racetrack or play pachinko—oh, and that Theater Palace over there is great, too. In the middle of the day, it’s housewives of all stripes . . .”
Handa laughed, blathering on about things he had had no intention of mentioning, and though he tried to scrutinize the façade of the man before him, his opponent put up an impenetrable defense.
“I’d much rather enjoy a triple-feature of adult films instead of arguing with geezers with athlete’s foot at the public bath. Anyway, are you off-duty today too, Handa-san?”
It was as if each word that escaped from Goda’s bracingly fresh mouth self-destructed before it reached Handa. Such crude and insubstantial remarks rang hollow, coming from Goda, and if they were meant as jokes, they sailed past Handa’s comprehension.
“Goda-san, do you play the violin?”
“I’ve got a rehearsal right now with an ensemble for a Christmas concert over there at Kamata Church. I only dabbled when I was a child, so I’m way out of my depth,” Goda said breezily, then peeked at his wristwatch. “Oh, sorry to take so much of your time. Excuse me, I have to go now,” he said, bowing his head slightly. Out of habit, Handa’s head also lowered automatically as he responded, “Oh, not at all.”
Handa, staring at the receding figure as he peddled away on the sidewalk, remained rooted to the spot for a few long minutes. Time seemed to have stopped as everything he had felt back when they had encountered each other on the staircase at the Shinagawa Police Department—the physiological mass of emotion that had erupted within him, the mood and circumstances surrounding him at the time—came rushing back all at once. Handa stood there bewildered, suddenly forgetting where he was.
With the rush of emotion constricting his throat, Handa asked himself, Did he say Omori Department? If Goda had been transferred to a local department from MPD, did that mean he had been promoted? No, the director of CID and the acting deputy chief were both someone else. If he was still an assistant police inspector after being transferred, then the simple fact was that he had been demoted. The hotshot from MPD who had walked with a swagger four years ago had been demoted. Handa experienced the pleasure of this realization only fleetingly, for now he couldn’t help but wonder what it was about that face, which had been as sleek as glass. Though this was something that—once again—remained beyond Handa’s imagination.
Handa tortured himself endlessly, caught up in the illusion as if he were still standing there on the staircase of the Shinagawa Police Department. Who was that guy? Who was he to have materialized out of nowhere, carrying a set of toiletries and a violin case in the basket of his bicycle and saying he was on his way to a rehearsal for a Christmas concert before disappearing before his eyes? The guy who had practically cut him off in the crosswalk—as if to taunt him, as if to suddenly slap him across the face, as if to gloat for a brief moment? When his thoughts reached this point, Handa had completely forgotten what time he was supposed to meet his wife, and instead began running toward Kanpachi, in the direction the guy had disappeared.
Kamata Church was located about three hundred meters past the Kamata Overpass, and then down a side street on the left. Following his vague recollection of where it was, Handa dashed into a narrow alley at the corner of a parking lot and, still running, he found the open gates of the church on his right.
Beyond the front garden stood a simple wooden chapel. To the left of the chapel, there was a single-story wooden shack that appeared to be a meetinghouse—parked in front of it was the bicycle he had seen earlier, and he could hear strains of string instruments coming from within.
Without even thinking about it, Handa approached the building and peered inside through the window. Inside the humble, wood-paneled room illuminated by a single light bulb, eight men and women holding violins and cellos were seated in a semicircle around a music stand, and in one corner he saw Goda’s face. Had Goda’s story about arguing with geezers with athlete’s foot at the public bath been a lie, or was it that this man’s world was so extraordinarily different from his own? Goda’s right hand and elbow, which controlled his bow, and his left hand, which slid along the neck of the instrument, moved with such mysterious dexterity. And his profile, turned toward the sheet music, was focus
ed so intently on the musical notes that the rest of the world seemed to have completely disappeared for him. His face bore no trace of disappointment at having been transferred to a local police department. No, not only the world of the police force but also the grimy public bath, the geezers with athlete’s foot, the detective from another department whom he had run into just a few minutes earlier, the smoke and soot from the nearby factory—all of it had been erased from this face. Handa could only stare, deeply wounded by the sight of a face like this, and in that moment, his ears barely registered any sound. He recognized the music as something-or-other by Mozart, which he had heard from time to time at the coffee shop near his department, but whether the music was performed well or whether the players were in sync didn’t even reach his consciousness.
Handa was simply aware of the crucial distance between these two worlds separated by a single pane of glass, and for no reason at all he felt his skin prickle as he stood there stuporously. What he saw here was a spectacular absurdity, or perhaps the design of this world was fundamentally flawed. He considered this, but the truth was before he could give it any thought his knees began to buckle and, as if he were about to tumble into a fissure in the ground split by his own two feet, he walked away, reeling in despondency.
He passed back through the alley, and once he had reached Kanpachi, at last he felt the blood rushing back to his brain, which had started to work again dully. If their plan were to proceed as it now stood, a Special Investigation headquarters would be set up not in Shinagawa where Hinode Beer was located, but in the Omori Police Department, the precinct that covered the home of Hinode’s president in Sanno Ni-chome within its jurisdiction. Handa pondered the fact that if Goda were working in Omori now, it was inevitable that sooner or later they would meet again.
So, I will soon force a bitter medicine down that man’s throat. I will see that man turn blue in the face.
Handa thought—Yes, I’ve finally found that “something.” He never would have expected that “something”—so much bigger than the fantasies he had nurtured in the police force—to have arisen from a police inspector he had not seen for four years, but such was fate. As the vast haze of hatred and gloom—neither of which still held any meaning for him—suddenly started to coalesce around the man who had crossed his path, Handa tasted a fresh, hitherto unknown emotion. When it was the police force or a corporation, and there was no individual face to witness in agony, he might only attain an abstract sense of self-satisfaction, but now he knew that, more than anything, he would enjoy the sight of someone suffering right before his eyes. It wouldn’t be long until, inside the small office of the local police department where he had been demoted, that goody-two-shoes with his clear-eyed face would be sobbing, mired in defeat, frustration, and humiliation.
Upon each brick of the plan of attack that he had been constructing up to now, he applied the flesh and blood of this man named Goda, and feeling the plan beginning to pulse with a vivacity as real as something touching his own skin, Handa became euphoric. This is it, he thought. The reason I will commit this crime is because I yearn for this sensation.
PART THREE
Spring 1995
The Incident
1
Yuichiro Goda
On Monday, March 20, five thousand people were affected by a poisonous gas terror attack on the Tokyo subway during morning rush hour. The incident, widely rumored to be the work of a new religious sect, had occurred outside Yuichiro Goda’s precinct, but a comprehensive inspection of chemical agent manufacturers began the following day throughout the entire metropolitan area, including the Omori Police Department where he worked, and he ended his shift on Friday, March 24, after yet another day spent pounding the pavement.
Returning to his apartment in Yashio after nine in the evening, he grabbed his violin and immediately went back out. Playing every day—even when he only had half an hour to spare—had become a minor rhythm in his life over the past year since he had been transferred to the precinct police department. Why it had ended up being the violin rather than, say, jogging or bamboo sword practice remained a mystery, one that he had not even tried to solve. He only knew that what he truly wanted was not so much a routine in his life as time in which to think about nothing at all.
On a bench in Yashio Park near his home, Goda started by practicing his fingering, in accordance with the instruction manual on the Maia Bang method and as he had done thousand of times since he was a child. The part of his brain that was listening to each note was not his auditory cortex but most definitely the part that controlled his reflexes near the cerebellum, and as usual, before long his mind emptied for a brief respite. He was convinced that he didn’t do this out of necessity—this fact alone was what mattered—yet he was aware once again of his effort to turn himself into a machine. His own body was much more honest, however, and his fingers were soon too cold to keep moving, forcing him to put down his violin and rub his hands together. If it was this cold here, he thought, up in the mountains the heavy snow of early spring must be falling.
A lone man in a duster coat walked across the park, which had turned desolate after dark. Thinking it could be his old friend Yusuke Kano, Goda briefly followed the figure with his eyes.
Eight years had already passed since Goda divorced Kano’s younger sister, Kiyoko, but Kano, who worked as a prosecutor in the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor’s Office, was unable to reconcile his own delicate position as Goda’s former brother-in-law the way he managed to organize the documents in his office at work everyday. Even now, whenever the mood would strike, he dropped by Goda’s apartment in Yashio, which was closer to his office than his government employee housing in Setagaya, and after making small talk and downing one or two cups of whisky, he would lay out a futon to sleep and then leave in the morning. In their university days Kano and Goda had been mountain climbing partners, but now they were both so busy that the mountains felt like a distant part of their lives, and for the last few years this had been the state of their relationship.
The man walking across the park disappeared in the direction of another apartment tower. Goda put away his violin in its case and stood up. It finally dawned on him that Kano had stopped by only the day before yesterday, and he chided himself for being so spaced out.
Goda returned to his housing complex at 9:45 p.m. and started his laundry. He switched on the television, opened the refrigerator, and after taking out a withered bunch of komatsuna greens and an expired packet of tofu and throwing them in the trash, he set a glass on a platform scale and poured 150 grams of whisky into it, then turned off the lights in the kitchen.
The veranda of his tiny apartment faced east, over the elevated Bayshore Route of the Shuto Expressway, and beyond it the Shinagawa switchyard was steeped in expansive darkness. Among the sounds he could hear were the wind blowing across the landfill, cars speeding over the Shuto Expressway, steel doors opening and closing in a hallway somewhere, and the scattered echoes of children’s cries.
The television that Kano had given him for his birthday last year came with an antenna and a receiver for satellite TV, but since there was a fee for every channel, he had only subscribed to the sports channel and the BBC. Kano had told him he should at least try to keep up his English whenever he didn’t feel like doing anything else, but that wasn’t why he watched it—rather, he would give in to boredom and flip it on, listening halfheartedly to the news from overseas that he could care less about, or watching J-league soccer games so he could make small talk at work.
With his whisky in his left hand, Goda sat down on the tatami floor and gazed at the screen for a while and, pulling a few of the books scattered on the writing desk toward him with his right hand, he debated which one he should crack open. The chapter on “Art of Fugue” from the first volume of Glenn Gould’s collected writings would be his sleeping aid before bed. He would save Discourse on Commercial Transactions for another time. He
still could not sing any of the songs in 100 Easy Karaoke Songs, which he had purchased out of a sense of social obligation. Then, his eyes fell on the March issue of Nikkei Science, but when he tried to drag it out the mountain of books came toppling down. He gave up on reading anything and for the moment turned his attention back to the world business report playing on the television, then in the margin of the magazine he jotted down the English word he had just heard, “squabble.” He pulled out a dictionary from the collapsed pile of books and checked the definition, and by the time he opened the magazine and started reading an article entitled, “The Birth and Death of V1974—A Nova in the Constellation Cygnus,” it was exactly 10:20 p.m.
V1974, which had erupted three years ago, was the only nova in the history of astronomy that could be observed from its onset to completion, and this recording had bolstered significant parts of the theory that novae eruptions occurred in a binary system consisting of two stars of dissimilar masses. While reading about the nuclear fusion that involved otherworldly mass, temperature, and speed, Goda’s mind emptied again and he managed to finish off about a third of his glass of whisky.
When he had been transferred to the precinct police department, Goda had considered starting a brand new life—both mentally and physically—but in the end he couldn’t afford to actively study for the certification required for a future job. Instead, he bought a new violin with the money he had been saving up for a car and started playing around with the musical instrument he had not touched since his divorce, but even that remained nothing more than hobby that barely took up an hour of his time. At the end of the day, he often fell into an unthinking void, and he would find himself idly gazing at nothing.
Lady Joker, Volume 1 Page 28
