Birthday

by Kōji Suzuki

  Toyama, I love you.

  Again, her voice coming into his brain—and together with it he thought he heard, from somewhere, the sound of a baby crying. It wasn't his imagination: he definitely heard a newborn baby crying, behind Sadako.

  9

  November 1990

  Every cell in his body was reliving the touch of Sadako's skin. This wasn't like a mental recollection: it felt as if the memory were engraved in his very DNA.

  He told Yoshino about that episode from his youth, but he didn't go into every single little detail. He just gave him the general outlines, the salient points of the day of the final dress rehearsal. But as he spoke he was remembering Sadako's voice, the softness of her skin, the feel of her hair, as if it were yesterday.

  Toyama, I love you.

  Her voice still lingered in his ear—whether he'd really heard it or only hallucinated it, he could recreate its resonance, its mysterious ambience, exactly. It was the voice of the only woman he'd ever met with whom he could have been truly happy.

  He wanted to see her again, if at all possible. Where was she now? What was she doing? The fact that Yoshino couldn't find her was at least proof that she hadn't made a name for herself as an actress. That in itself he found unbelievable, for a woman with such a unique allure as hers. He began to feel uneasy.

  He found it took courage just to ask. But somehow he managed to voice his query. "By the way, Mr.

  Yoshino. What do you think Sadako's doing now? Please, don't keep anything back from me—whatever you might know."

  Yoshino rested his chin on his hand; he licked the cover of his fountain pen with the tip of his tongue.

  "Of all the ridiculous... I'm trying to find out what happened to her. How could I have any idea what she's doing now?"

  "I think you people know something. Don't you think it's a bit unfair for you to ask me all these questions and then not answer mine?"

  "But..."

  Toyama leaned forward earnestly and looked Yoshino square in his bearded face.

  "Is Sadako alive?"

  He had to come straight out and ask it: otherwise they'd keep going in circles.

  Yoshino looked taken aback by Toyama's serious-ness. He made a strange face, then shook his head twice, gently.

  "I hate to say it, but she's probably..." Warning him that nothing was definite yet, Yoshino told Toyama that the information his colleague Asakawa had come across gave them reason to speculate that Sadako Yamamura was no longer alive. There was a possibility that she'd been involved in some kind of incident, and that it had happened right after her disappearance from the troupe twenty-four years ago. Again, it was still only specula-tion. But...

  But it was enough. It was the development Toyama had feared, and it didn't surprise him. He'd had a feeling, for he didn't know how long now, that Sadako was no longer of this world.

  Still, hearing Yoshino state it as a near-certainty caused a physical reaction in Toyama that was far more honest than he'd expected. To his surprise, tears began not just rolling down his cheeks, but actually falling to splash on the floor. In his forty-seven years he'd never dreamed his body was capable of such a thing. She was the one burning love of his life... But that was twenty-four years ago. He was more experienced now—he knew he was even something of a playboy—and now he was weeping over confirmation of Sadako's death. He couldn't help but see something comical in it.

  Startled, Yoshino searched in his satchel until he found a tissue. Wordlessly he offered it to Toyama.

  "Sorry, I don't know what..." Toyama trailed off and blew his nose.

  "I know how you must be feeling."

  But Yoshino's words sounded utterly fake.

  How could you know?

  Toyama started to blow his nose again, but then decided to ask something that had been on his mind all along.

  "By the way, you said you'd talked on the phone with some of my old colleagues from the troupe."

  "Yes. Iino, Kitajima, and Kato."

  "And that they all knew I had a relationship with Sadako."

  "That's right."

  That didn't sit right with Toyama, given the excessive care Sadako had taken to ensure that their relationship wasn't made public. Toyama, too, in response to her demands, had made a point of not mentioning it to anybody. In spite of all that, they knew. He wondered how.

  "I don't get it. I was pretty sure we'd kept it under wraps."

  Seeing that Toyama had gotten his emotions under control, Yoshino ventured a smile.

  "You were fooling yourself, my friend. When two people are in love, people notice, no matter how much they try to hide it."

  "Did they say anything specific?"

  Yoshino gave a little half-laugh, half-sigh. "Oh, maybe you didn't know about this. Well, it seems someone played a trick on you."

  "A trick?"

  "This is twenty-four years ago we're talking about, after all, so it seemed pointless to me at first, but hearing what you had to say has cleared something up for me.

  Things make sense now."

  Yoshino then told Toyama something he'd heard from Kitajima. Not precisely as Kitajima had told him—

  he blended what he'd gotten from Kitajima with what he'd just learned from Toyama to come up with his own version of what had happened.

  It was an April afternoon, the closing day of their three-week run.

  It was closing day, and the interns were all gathered in the big room behind the dressing rooms, enjoying a rare moment of leisure. After that day's performance, a late matinee, the play would be over: they'd break down the sets and lighting, and then the wrap party would begin. A week or more's vacation awaited them after that. For the first time in three months, they'd be able to really relax.

  Already feeling somewhat liberated, Okubo had gathered everybody to watch him do impressions again.

  Kitajima was still among them at this point, cheering him on with the rest.

  It wasn't clear who had brought it up. Once Okubo was all revved up, though, somebody mentioned the tape they'd recorded him on last time. This brought back memories: oh, that's right—we sure had fun that time, etc. etc. Meanwhile Okubo lost interest in his impressions and started gathering wool. Then he suddenly started to worry about that cassette, asking everybody what had happened to it. Nobody knew. Finally he realized if anybody would know, it was Toyama, he being in charge of the tape deck.

  That tape constituted a grave danger to Okubo. If Shigemori found it, then at the very least his week's vacation might be canceled. He decided that he wouldn't be able to make it through closing day with any peace of mind unless he disposed of the tape.

  So he said he was going up to the sound booth to look for it. As Okubo lost interest in his impressions in order to concentrate on finding the tape, Kitajima lost interest in Okubo. He left the room, heading for the restroom off the lobby. Before the doors to the theater opened, that restroom was usually empty, and Kitajima always went there when he needed to sit down to do his business.

  He walked together with Okubo as far as the lobby, then they separated, Okubo climbing the spiral stairs to the sound booth and Kitajima going into the empty restroom.

  He took his time. When he was finished he made a call from the pay phone to check on some tickets, and when he finally returned to the big room he almost ran into a red-faced Shigemori rushing from the room. At that moment Kitajima sensed that something bad had happened, but since Shigemori didn't seem to notice him at all he decided that he wasn't the target of the director's anger, and so he relaxed.

  In terms of timing, it seemed likely that Shigemori had learned of the cassette and was overreacting to it.

  But as Kitajima watched to see what Shigemori would do next, he saw something unexpected.

  Shigemori was definitely flustered, but Kitajima couldn't tell if he was angry or disturbed. He opened the door of the women's dressing room and called for Sadako Yamamura repeatedly, in a low voice.

  Kitajima watched from behind th
e sink. A woman came to the door in response to Shigemori's call. Probably Sadako, but since she didn't step into the hallway where Shigemori stood, Kitajima couldn't see her at all.

  From what Shigemori said next, though, it was clear who it was.

  "I don't believe you, Sadako."

  Shigemori seemed to have a hand on her shoulder, now shaking her, now stroking her, now with a pleading look on his face, now with a threatening scowl, but looking straight at her all the while. Sometimes his eyes seemed to brim with tears. In profile, as Kitajima saw him, Shigemori was showing commingled love and hatred.

  Shigemori harangued Sadako like that for a good ten minutes. After he released her, she didn't come out again until it was almost show time. When she finally emerged in order to prepare her costume and props, her expression was one that Kitajima told Yoshino he'd never forgotten to this day.

  Deep despair. He couldn't think of how else to describe it. She'd been thrust into this, her first role, at the last minute, and audiences hadn't reacted well to her. As the run dragged on she'd gotten progressively more depressed. That might have been part of it now. In any case, she looked like she'd hit rock bottom. Usually she emanated a kind of aura, but now all the light had gone out of her. She looked utterly enervated. Kitajima watched from behind as she climbed the stairs to the backstage area; she seemed to be filled with an inexpressible pain.

  That was all Kitajima saw that day.

  He only found out what had really happened several years later, after he'd quit the troupe and joined an event-planning company.

  He and Okubo had gotten together for a drink—

  their first meeting after quitting the troupe and going their own ways. Kitajima had mentioned that final afternoon before the last performance. "What happened that day, anyway?"

  Yoshino's subsequent narrative was based on what Kitajima had repeated to him of Okubo's reply.

  Okubo had gone up to the sound booth to look for the tape containing his imitation of Shigemori. Toyama wasn't there, so he made use of his absence to ransack the room. He found the cassette deck under the desk with the tape still in it. He listened to it from the beginning. From the label, he knew this was the tape he was after, but on playback he couldn't find the impressions.

  He fast-forwarded and then pressed play again, repeating this over and over until he was satisfied he hadn't missed it, finally concluding that "somebody must've erased it already." Then, just as he began to relax, his ears began to pick up a woman's moan.

  "Ahhh... ohhh..." was what he heard, along with some ragged breathing. Okubo was still a virgin, so he didn't know what he was hearing at first. He kept listening out of sheer curiosity, until gradually the moaning turned into words. It was then he realized who the voice belonged to.

  "Sadako..." muttered Okubo. That was her voice, he was sure of it. That was her, panting, moaning, and calling out a name, saying she loved someone.

  Don't ever love me more than you do now. I don't want to lose you, Toyama.

  The breathing was forced and now and then it stopped; the voice was excited.

  Toyama, I love you.

  Okubo was enraptured. Forget about the words, the voice alone had something about it that would stimulate any listener's sensitivities.

  But something abruptly brought Okubo back to his senses. The words arrived in his mind with all their meaning, and when they did, his body was invaded by an uncontrollable emotion. He couldn't put a name on it.

  It involved a strong desire for Sadako. He'd liked Sadako too, just like Toyama, and his feelings had been decid-edly mixed as he'd watched the way things developed from rehearsals on through the actual performances.

  Maybe he just couldn't stand watching the girl he loved, this girl younger than him, cozy up to the director to get a part. Maybe at heart he was a sore loser who hated seeing the girl he loved make her stage debut before him. Judging by this tape, she loved Toyama: maybe he was just burning with jealousy toward him. And on top of all that, it might have been pure malice that had made him think of presenting this as evidence to Shigemori, who was openly trying to seduce Sadako.

  You old bastard, it's just like I've always thought when I was doing impressions of you: the jilted-lover role suits you.

  Okubo felt his face grow hot as he contemplated all these factors. But the only explanation he had for what he did next was that the devil had made him do it.

  He rewound the tape a bit, hit play, and turned up the volume. Making sure that Sadako could be heard, he then turned on the intercom to the green room and dressing rooms. Everybody would be able to hear Sadako calling Toyama's name ecstatically.

  At this point, Toyama gave a cry, almost a scream.

  "Holy..."

  Yoshino gave him a sympathetic look. "You really didn't know?"

  He'd never even suspected. "How could I have known? I was gone. A friend of mine had come to see the play, and we'd gone out to lunch." Lunch was provided in the theater for everybody, but on that day of all days, Toyama had been invited to eat out.

  "Everybody was told to keep quiet about it."

  "By whom?"

  "Shigemori, of course."

  "Shigemori heard the tape?"

  "It would seem so. It so happened he was in the green room at the time. When Sadako's voice came over the intercom, he heard it. That's why he rushed to Sadako all in a tizzy like that."

  Both Yoshino and Toyama knew what had happened to Shigemori after that.

  The last performance went off without a hitch.

  They cleaned up the stage, and then had the wrap party as scheduled. Once that was finished Shigemori had collected the other troupe leaders for a game of mah-jongg, as was his wont. According to Yoshino's information, at that time one of the leading actors, Arima, had re-counted to Shigemori an example of Sadako's peculiar powers. This in turn prompted Shigemori to get excited and say, "I'm going to storm her room."

  He was unusually drunk, and no one could restrain him by word or action. His companions decided that it would be dangerous for him physically if he drank any more; everybody gave up on mah-jongg and began to get ready to go home. But nobody (they said) expected Shigemori to actually go through with it.

  What really happened would remain forever en-shrouded in darkness. Not a soul knew if Shigemori's passions had really driven him to visit Sadako's place in the middle of the night. Shigemori did show up at the rehearsal space the next day, but he was so quiet as to be almost unrecognizable. He just wandered around aimlessly, doing nothing in particular, and then he sat down in a chair and stopped breathing, as if going to sleep. The cause of death was determined to be sudden heart fail-ure. Everyone assumed that the impossible performance schedule had hastened his death, and nobody was particularly surprised.

  There was something ironic in the story, Toyama felt. He thought of all the agonizing days he'd spent in the sound booth back then, all the jealousy he'd suffered, despite Sadako's assurances that she loved him, because of her insistence on keeping things secret from Shigemori. He'd always thought how wonderful it would be if everyone could hear the sincerity in her voice when she said she loved him. Ironically, they had. He'd wished that Shigemori in particular could hear it, as a reproof for the way he was using his authority to hit on Sadako.

  In fact, he had.

  Toyama hung his head as he thought about it. He'd told Sadako, straight out, his heart's secret desire.

  ...Sadako...you'd make me so happy if you'd just say you love me in front of everyone...

  The tape had been broadcast from the sound booth.

  Toyama himself was master of the sound booth. At the time, he'd been out to lunch, but Sadako probably didn't know that. Knowing what he most wanted, Sadako had no doubt concluded that she knew who had played her moans over the intercom.

  There was no sense stamping his feet about it now.

  He didn't know what had happened with Shigemori that night, but it was all but certain that Sadako's disappearance was connected to
her relationship with Toyama.

  She probably felt he'd betrayed her. Nothing could be more of an affront to a young woman than what she thought he'd done to her: betrayed her and played her sex-cries over a loudspeaker.

  And so she'd quit the troupe, and left Toyama without a word.

  He felt drained of all strength. Sadako was probably dead. He couldn't explain himself to her. It was too late for regrets. It was all over, everything. But Okubo's mischief was in a perverse way just what Toyama had wanted. He didn't know how to feel about it.

  He recalled little Okubo's face. For the first time in a long time, he realized he wanted to see Okubo. To see him, and to find out in greater detail what had happened.

  But Toyama himself had quit Theater Group Soaring two months after Sadako had left, and he'd lost touch with his former colleagues.

  "By the way, you wouldn't know how I could get in touch with Okubo, would you?"

  Yoshino, as a reporter, seemed like he might have better information than Toyama about things like that.

  After all, he'd tracked down all eight former interns.

  "Okubo is...well, he's dead."

  "Dead?"

  Taken by surprise, Toyama jerked backward. Something felt wrong.

  "I was only able to make contact with four of you, yourself included."

  "What about the other four?"

  "Don't you see? They're all dead."

  Toyama and Okubo were the oldest of their group; Toyama was forty-seven, the same age Okubo would have been if he'd lived. The same age Shigemori had been when he died. Most of the others were two or three years younger—too young to die, at any rate. What were the chances of four out of eight of them being dead by their mid-forties? Not great, Toyama figured.

  "How did Okubo die?" It had to be either an illness or an accident.

  "I know it happened ten years ago. I don't know how. Why don't you ask Mr. Kitajima? He's my source."

  Toyama decided he'd do that. Of course he would.

  "Do you know how I can get in touch with him?"

  Yoshino searched his briefcase, pulled out his notepad, and read off the phone number. It was in the city. As he copied it down, Toyama thought he'd try Kitajima the very next day.