by Otsuichi
Kiyone was afraid of dolls. She found it creepy the way the girls seemed to stare at her. Are they about to start moving? The second I take my eyes off them, will they discard those expressionless masks and grin? Will they leap onto my shoulders in their disheveled red kimono like bawling children? Kiyone was terrified. The thoughts were enough to make her want to flee from the room.
Two futon mattresses were laid out inside the room. One must have been where Masayoshi slept. The other should have held Yuko.
But however Kiyone looked at it, the white face atop the futon looked not like a human, but like a doll.
This doll is “Yuko.” Kiyone was convinced.
My father may even have made this one.
Kiyone removed the comforter and saw that the figure was wearing white pajamas. She realized that she had been washing clothes worn by a doll, and she couldn’t keep the thought of it from her mind no matter how hard she tried.
All this time, haven’t I just been a puppet for that doll?
But I’m not the only one she’s been manipulating.
Kiyone picked up Yuko.
On her way out of the room she turned out the lights, and the rows of dolls were covered in darkness.
Could they have been laughing just then?
Or crying?
*
Kiyone laid Yuko face up in the center of the garden and lit her candle. The flame wavered and jostled shadows across Kiyone’s face and Yuko’s expressionless visage. The candle’s single dim light seemed to surface in the garden.
This doll is blinding Master Masayoshi. He calls it by the name of his wife who now rests in her grave and cares for it as if it were a woman.
Without hesitation, Kiyone splashed the kerosene over Yuko. The oil seeped into Yuko’s white clothes, turning them vaguely transparent. Kiyone tipped the bottle until nothing remained, and then she set it gently on the ground.
Yuko’s body, lying on the ground soaked in kerosene, reflected the candlelight. Kiyone thought, This doll really is pretty—prettier than any woman alive.
Quietly she lit the fire.
Yuko’s white oil-soaked clothes were instantly engulfed in flame, and the flames flared high. The fire around Yuko was hundreds of times larger than the light of the candle, and the garden flooded with light. It’s as bright as day, thought Kiyone. She watched the flames and felt their heat on her eyes.
The doll is burning away. The doll he loved is burning away. The words echoed again and again inside her mind, and she took one step back from the flames.
Even after fully enveloping Yuko, the fire continued to torment the corpse with its unceasing fury.
Embers floated up and whirled high into the windless sky. From far heights the embers appeared as red points in the sky dark with no moon or starlight.
*
Suddenly came Masayoshi’s violent cry.
“What’s happening? Yuko! Yuko!”
He tossed aside his briefcase at Torigoe Manor gate and desperately dashed to the edge of the fire.
“Ahhh, this is—! This is—!” he screamed again and again, unable to find any other words. In one swift motion, he swept off his kimono and laid it over the fire. He threw himself on top, and the garden was left with only the light of the candle and that of the flames that still burned where the kerosene had soaked into the ground.
“Master Masayoshi! That’s a doll! There is no Yuko! Come to your senses, master!”
But as if Kiyone wasn’t even there, Masayoshi kept crying out, Yuko, Yuko, as tears streamed from his eyes.
“Master Masayoshi! Look at me, master!”
Masayoshi, having extinguished the flames with his own body, tightly embraced Yuko, who had lost all traces of the beauty she’d had before the fl ames burned her. He pressed his cheek against hers and apologized over and over.
“Oh Yuko, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”
From every corner of his being, he yelled until his voice wavered and finally shattered as if his soul itself had broken away. It pained Kiyone to see him so pitiful.
Masayoshi wept over Yuko in his arms, and Kiyone clung to his back and began to sob.
The fire of the candle she had thrown to the ground dwindled, and the few patches of flames on the earth reflected their flickering light in the tears that ran down her cheeks.
6. BELLADONNA
The hospital’s old wooden door caught before grudgingly sliding open at Masayoshi’s touch. Inside, a miasma of medicine and must hung in the air, and an unpleasant feeling took hold in his chest. The brown hospital slippers were also old, and he searched for but did not find a pair without some amount of damage.
In contrast to the dim, dank interior of the hospital, the world outside the windows was bright with the early summer light.
Masayoshi passed through the waiting room with its black leather chairs that had patches of yellow stuffing poking out here and there, walked down the aged wooden hallway, and was led to a room where a doctor sat waiting.
The doctor was young, his face serious, and he met Masayoshi with a gaze that felt ominous.
Masayoshi was nervous, unaware he was squeezing his handkerchief.
*
“Oh, I’m glad. I really am. I’m sure you are too, Father. Master Masayoshi is going to be released from the hospital very soon. He just has to have a little talk with the doctor first, and then he’ll be free to go. I was worried, so I asked the doctor about it. That’s when he told me. He said, ‘The most important thing for him now is a calm place where he can relax.’ That’s what he said. The master’s talking with him right now. You know him, don’t you, Father? You were friends with him.”
When Kiyone heard that Masayoshi wouldn’t have to stay in the hospital, she was overjoyed. To her, the best news was that though he still was in severe shock, he would soon be able to return to his normal life.
*
“Shall we talk about it?” said the doctor as Masayoshi took a seat on the stool.
At Masayoshi’s slightest movement, the stool let out a high-pitched grating slash of a sound.
“Yuko was . . . Yuko was burning. When I came home, Yuko was in flames. Oh, I can still see it now.”
Masayoshi realized his voice was quavering. He closed his eyes, and on the back of his eyelids he saw the flames dancing around Yuko. The flames never stopped.
“Oh, Yuko . . . Doctor, when will Yuko return to me . . .”
With a furrowed brow the doctor answered, “No, it would be best for you not to see her again. The body is in a terrible state.”
A drop of sweat slid slowly down the middle of Masayoshi’s back. He wiped sweat from his forehead and it clung to the back of his hand.
“I understand how you must feel,” said the doctor, pity in his face.
“Yuko was my second wife. After my first wife died, all I had left of her was a three-panel mirror.”
Masayoshi slouched forward, and the stool made a loud screeching that quickly faded into a corner of the room.
“It was cracked and utterly useless, but I’d kept it to remember her and how she was before she died of tuberculosis. So when Kiyone lost a piece of the mirror, I was saddened.”
“When did your first wife pass away?”
“Two years ago. I gave her a proper burial and made her a fine gravestone. When she was alive, the villagers treated her unreasonably.”
“I see. So that’s two wives you’ve lost in succession . . .”
Masayoshi paused. “It was fate.”
“Fate?”
“I never thought that Yuko would die in such a way . . .”
Masayoshi and the doctor fell quiet. The long silence lay over the room, and for a moment Masayoshi wondered if all sound had vanished from the earth.
Finally, the doctor broke the silence.
“I’ve spoken with Kiyone.” His face went pale. “There are quite a few differences between your stories. Tell me, why would that be?”
For a short time, Masayoshi was s
ilent. He set down his folded handkerchief on the wooden table as if he were letting go of something heavy, and then he looked the doctor in the eyes and spoke.
“You might not believe me.”
“What won’t I believe?”
Masayoshi didn’t reply. Instead, as the doctor watched, he quietly unfolded the handkerchief with trembling fingers.
Inside were two small, glossy, pitch-black berries that seemed to swallow all light.
“You might not believe me.”
“What won’t I believe?”
Masayoshi didn’t reply. Instead, as the doctor watched, he quietly unfolded the handkerchief with trembling fingers.
Inside were two small, glossy, pitch-black berries that seemed to swallow all light.
They were the berries of the plant that grew next to the gate of Torigoe Manor.
The doctor looked closely at the black berries on the table and asked, “What are these?”
“I found those berries on the floor of Kiyone’s room. You see how they are small and glossy? They’re from a plant that grows on the grounds of Torigoe Manor. It’s called a belladonna.”
“Belladonna?”
“Yes . . .” said Masayoshi, his lips violently trembling and his face pale as though he were struggling not to retch. “Belladonna.
The poisonous berry used in the murder of Hamlet’s father.”
The doctor, who had begun to reach out for the black berry, froze his hand, his face a dreadful color.
Masayoshi continued. “I had a friend of mine in one of the publishing houses look into it for me.”
“But what do these berries have to do with what happened?” Masayoshi wrinkled his sweaty brow, unsure of where to start.
There was quite a bit left that needed explaining. “This story doesn’t have a direct connection to the tragedy, but . . .”
The doctor nodded and urged him on.
“I’d heard it from a friend. Something that happened—no, a rumor, I should say, of something that happened decades ago at the base of a mountain.”
Masayoshi and the doctor both were sweating, yet they looked cold.
*
Several decades ago, a group of men had gone deep into the mountains to gather plants for food. It was just before nightfall when the men discovered a bush they didn’t recognize.
On it grew small but delicious-looking berries.
The men wondered what they tasted like. Figuring they couldn’t find out just by looking, one of the men grabbed a berry and ate it. That was his undoing.
The other men circled around the one who ate the berry and asked what it tasted like. But the man didn’t answer. Instead, he dropped to his hands and knees and ran off like a wild beast. They said his bloodshot eyes had glittered.
The dumbstruck men watched him vanish into the mountains.
After a time, an eerie howl, not that of human or wolf, echoed three times through the mountains.
Wind blew in through an open window.
“After that, they went farther into the mountains from where the howl had come, and they found the dead body of the man with foam running from his mouth.”
The doctor frowned and drew his body back, and his chair gave a sharp creak. “After he ate the poisonous berry, he thought he was a wolf, and then he died? What does that have to do with Kiyone?”
Neither Masayoshi nor the doctor could avert their eyes from the black berries on the table. They could hear the far-off sound of someone running through the hallways, but it sounded like it came from an entirely different dimension from the room Masayoshi was in.
“I believe that she ate the belladonna berry, fatal at even a tenth of a gram.”
The doctor’s eyes jumped wide open. “If the berry is fatal, shouldn’t she be dead? Yet she’s still alive.”
“Just because some amount is called a fatal dosage, that doesn’t mean that it has been measured and tested on humans, so it’s an imprecise amount. And maybe she spit it out after biting into it, or it just affects some people less than others. The fact is that she is still alive. She survived it.”
“I see what you’re getting at. You mean to say that Kiyone is in a state similar to that of the man who ate the poisonous berry and became a wolf.”
“No, not quite. I don’t think her condition is a symptom of consuming the atropine, the primary active agent in belladonna. Rather, I believe it is the aftereffects of the fierce shock when she ate the ‘devil’s cherries.’ In other words, she ate the fruit of the belladonna plant and survived. But the price she paid for her life was a state of chronic delirium. That’s what I believe happened.”
“And in a state of delirium, the line between delusion and reality blurs, and consciousness becomes clouded.”
“Exactly. How horrible!” Masayoshi moaned, his grief escaping. “Once, when Kiyone was a young child, she was locked inside her father’s doll workshop for an entire night. I heard that for a time after, she had a terrible fear of girl dolls. That terrifying experience intertwined with the delirium caused by the devil’s cherries, and Kiyone could no longer easily distinguish dolls from humans. Now the line between humans and dolls is hazy to her.”
The doctor opened his eyes wide. “Kiyone became convinced that Yuko was a doll all because of that?”
“It was all the fault of that black berry.”
Without Masayoshi so much as pointing his finger, the two turned their eyes toward the small berries atop the table.
“Belladonna is the devil’s herb. And the devil’s cherry made Kiyone see a fantasy. Incredible. The belladonna planted a fantasy in her head—that Yuko the person didn’t exist, but that she was instead a doll.”
“And, under the spell of the devil’s cherry, Kiyone set the doll on fire.”
Masayoshi drew his hands to his face and started to cry through gritted teeth. “I still can’t believe it!”
“A hell of a thing. Such a tragedy—for both Yuko and Kiyone.
Kiyone was unknowingly possessed by belladonna. Was she nothing more than its puppet?” the doctor wondered.
“But why didn’t you let Kiyone in your room? Why didn’t you introduce her to Yuko? It makes no sense to me.”
“Yuko also . . .” Masayoshi spoke in a nasal voice. “Yuko also had pulmonary tuberculosis. I didn’t want Kiyone to get too near, in case she were to be infected. Her own father, her only relative, had died from the disease just before she started working for me. So I alone did all the nursing. I kept Yuko’s tuberculosis a secret from everyone. Even Kiyone. You probably understand—the icy looks from closed-minded villagers. I didn’t want to tell anybody about my wife’s illness. I didn’t want them hurling at her the same terrible abuses that had been thrown at my first wife.”
The room filled with silence, and Masayoshi felt as though he were being crushed under some heavy weight. The ground grew soft beneath his feet; he felt like he might sink down into it at any moment.
His arms were covered with cold sweat. When the doctor sighed, Masayoshi straightened up in his chair. It creaked.
“Please listen to me,” said the doctor. “That night, Yuko didn’t eat the dinner Kiyone had prepared. And Kiyone said she didn’t respond when she called out to her. Yuko didn’t resist when Kiyone picked her up, and she didn’t try to flee when the kerosene was being poured on her. Is there an explanation for that? Why did Yuko let Kiyone do anything she wanted to her?
Masayoshi thought it over. He felt sick. It could have been due to the room’s poor ventilation or the heat. But he was hopelessly sad—disconsolate.
“Yuko often had these dazed spells. She would just blankly stare off at a point in space, motionless. Yes, just like a doll. When she got in such a state, it was difficult to rouse her from it. Sometimes I could roughly shake her shoulders or shout her name right next to her ear, but it was rare for her to snap out of it on her own. So even if she were laid down on the ground . . .”
He closed his eyes and saw Yuko’s burning figure.
I’m sorry. Every time he saw her he had a need to apologize.
I’m sorry.
I am the source of tragedy.
“Oh, the belladonna berry.” The doctor breathed the words as if letting out a sigh. “This thing here on the table set a trap for Kiyone and Yuko. There’s no other way to put it. But why was such a dreadful plant, a plant capable of obliterating the line between humans and dolls in the mind of a young woman, growing on your land?”
Fingertips still on his forehead, Masayoshi lowered his head in anguish, but finally, in a somber tone, he spoke.
“Torigoe Manor has a long and famous history. It’s a long history, but the truth is, Torigoe blood does not flow through my veins.”
A slight tremor entered his voice. “My mother told me a story that happened some generations ago. A woman and her young daughter collapsed in front of Torigoe Manor. That was the beginning of our doom.”
“Your doom?”
“Yes. The master of the mansion back then should never have aided that woman. My mother never said it in so many words, but I think that woman was trying to gain favor with the master of Torigoe Manor. No, I’m certain of it. And if you wonder how, why else would she have collapsed in front of that particular mansion?”
Masayoshi was forlorn.
“The master of the house had a wife at the time, but she died soon after that woman and her child came to the mansion. And then he made that woman his new wife.”
“His new wife . . .”
“Yes. But that wasn’t the end of it. Soon after that woman became a member of the house, the master died too!”
The doctor gulped.
“That woman and her child took over Torigoe Manor. I’m a descendant of the child and have no Torigoe blood in me.”
Masayoshi could no longer hold back his tears.
“The sudden deaths of the master of Torigoe Manor and his wife. Oh, my heart could just burst! My ancestors poisoned them and seized the house, of that I have no doubt. My mother told me the child was holding a flower when they came to the mansion. Now I know what that flower was. The girl had been carrying a belladonna flower. The tuberculosis isn’t the only reason the villagers look coldly on our house. No, I fear they must know that it was my ancestors who took Torigoe Manor.”
