Birthday

by Kōji Suzuki

  Reiko was relieved to see this. It was visual confirmation that Kaoru had accomplished the mission he'd gone down into the Loop to perform. The beauty and brightness of the image told her this faster than any words could have.

  She wanted to go to sleep clinging to this feeling of relief.

  She turned off the computer, thinking she'd watch more tomorrow, and lay her pregnant body down on the bed. She could feel the fetus kicking energetically inside her. It could come at any time now. She pulled the telephone up next to her pillow, just in case.

  The next day, at the same time, Reiko accessed the Loop again. Six days had passed in the Loop world, and in just that short time, a change had come over Takayama's body. He was in the hospital again. He was in the same exam room, and he was undressing in front of the doctor again.

  Reiko was looking at his back. In addition to the scar slanting across his back, she could see brown spots on his skin, and wrinkles on his neck. The change was drastic for such a short period of time. His hair was going white, and his hands, as he picked up his clothing, were dry and cracked.

  Reiko took her vantage point around to the front and looked at his face. What she hadn't dared think before became a certainty now. The face she was looking at had changed. It was old.

  It was Takayama, no doubt of that. His belly and chest still looked youthful. The contrast between them and his aged face put Reiko in mind of some unnatural power. Her anxiety grew.

  The exam over, Takayama went to the reception desk for his prescription and then tottered out of the hospital. As he did, Reiko's monitor showed her the waiting room, where she'd previously seen two Sadakos in a brief moment; now there were none. Had they been completely expelled from the Loop world?

  Takayama left the building and walked down the street. This time he wasn't driving, but walking along the pavement.

  His shrunken back bore witness to extreme fatigue and physical decline. Walking seemed difficult for him.

  Every now and then he'd stop and lean against an electrical pole or a wall, press on his chest and wheeze and cough.

  Each time, he'd take out the medicine he'd just been prescribed and swallow a little, but he himself seemed to realize it was good for nothing but psychological comfort.

  Obviously, Takayama was overcome by rapid aging.

  Reiko thought she could guess why. He'd become infected with the same virus that had aged the Sadakos.

  He must have foreseen it when he was developing the virus. Given the similarities of their manner of resurrec-tion into the Loop world, the virus was bound to affect him as well, to kill him. He'd known it but gone through with it anyway. He'd sacrificed himself twice over. He was a man burdened by fate.

  When he could no longer stand, he made his way between some buildings to a set of steps leading up into a park and sat down on them. She could imagine him feeling the coolness of the concrete beneath him. What season was it, she wondered. Passersby looked to be dressed for chilly weather.

  Sitting there on the concrete steps, Takayama was surrounded by people but steeped in a stunning solitude.

  Nobody knew him as their messiah; everybody simply walked by without noticing him. Reiko was seized with a desire to reach out and touch his body so they could tend to each other's loneliness. If only she could. She was so close, but she couldn't even really hold his hand. For the first time since she'd begun accessing the Loop, she felt violently annoyed at the setup.

  Takayama was leaning forward, hands resting on his weakly splayed knees. Sometimes he would lift his head and gaze at the sky; when he did, he looked strangely refreshed. Did he feel like he'd lived out his allotment of days? He'd certainly been through his share of death and rebirth. He looked like a man who had composed himself to meet a natural death, secure in the satisfaction of having accomplished his task. He stretched out his bent frame and leaned back against the steps. He looked more comfortable than before.

  He was almost supine now, and she had a good view of the expression on his face. He was looking straight in her direction. He could probably see the sky from that space between tall buildings. But his stare seemed ready to penetrate to Reiko's side of the monitor.

  Takayama started to say something to the sky but closed his mouth and licked his dry lips.

  What's he trying to say?

  His mouth opened only to clamp shut again several times.

  Remembering Amano's instructions, Reiko tapped out some commands on the keyboard and locked into Takayama's perspective. It would allow her to see with her own eyes what Takayama was seeing with his.

  The scenery changed, and just as she'd expected, the monitor showed her a small patch of blue sky between the tops of buildings. Reiko was now looking at the world through Takayama's eyes. It moved her to think that she was seeing the way he was seeing. When she looked more closely, she saw something resembling a human face floating in the sky.

  Reiko recognized the face. She saw it in the mirror every day: it was her.

  He's thinking of me right now and imagining my face.

  Reiko felt Kaoru's feelings with painful intensity.

  Even after he closed his eyes, the image of her face hov-ered there against the backs of his eyelids. She could actually see the strength of Kaoru's thoughts. He wanted her so much that his mind was creating her face for him.

  Reiko could see it with her own eyes.

  Only when the face in the sky started to blur and become double did Reiko become aware of her tears.

  With Takayama's heart in her breast, she tried to imagine what it was he'd been trying to say—or not to say.

  It seemed to her that, on the verge of death, he was reflecting on how happy he'd been with her. That made Reiko far happier than hearing him say goodbye.

  The beating of his heart grew slower and fainter.

  Death was approaching. The scene wobbled slightly. He seemed to be having a hard time keeping his head up.

  Now his eyes stayed closed for longer stretches than they were open. At length, his surroundings faded away.

  The skyscrapers, the trees, the crowds of people, all disappeared, and his field of vision was swathed in darkness. Reiko's face alone remained distinct. It stayed that way for a long time among the echoes of death.

  The Loop world meant nothing to Reiko now. Seeing Takayama's final visions through the monitor made a far deeper impression on her than simply hearing about his death ever could. She disengaged from his point of view and allowed herself to stare at the Loop world from above for a time, lost. She knew that she had to accept Takayama's death calmly, just as he himself had. But she couldn't, not yet.

  Later, when she'd managed to get herself somewhat under control, she eased her gaze away from the monitor. Her interest in the Loop world had faded now that Takayama was no longer in it.

  Goodbye.

  She turned off the power so that the virtual world disappeared from before her eyes. She would probably never look into it again.

  It had only been for an instant, but Reiko had experienced death vicariously; strangely, she'd done so while seeing her own face through the eyes of someone she loved.

  She didn't know if that was the reason, but a change had come over her body. Her labor pains hadn't exactly started yet, but her intuition was telling her:

  It's coming.

  She reached for the phone and dialed the number she'd been given.

  7

  Labor pains belonging to the first stage of childbirth came and went with a gentle rhythm. The fetus, which had been moving about so actively, quieted a bit now and moved to a lower position. Reiko felt as if a buoyant void occupied her chest area.

  She climbed into a taxi and gave the name of the hospital.

  "Having a baby?" the driver asked, and gently eased the car forward.

  A large travel bag rested in her lap. She'd packed it some time ago with the things she'd need for the stay.

  When Ryoji was born she hadn't needed to make any preparations. Her mother an
d husband had sat on either side of her in the car, holding her hands and encouraging her to "hang in there." Now she was on her own, and nervous.

  She arrived at the hospital at exactly seven o'clock pm. She changed clothes and lay down on a bed to wait for her cervix to dilate completely.

  The labor pains made her think of massive undula-tions. The intervals were shorter than the rising and falling of the tide, but somewhat longer than those between waves crashing onto a beach. Grimacing with pain, Reiko called Kaoru's name. It seemed like it might distract her from the pain to talk to Kaoru—he would be beside her, watching over her.

  In between the waves, Reiko's ears picked up music.

  At first she thought it was a radio in a neighboring room, but that didn't seem right.

  She looked at the window, at the darkness it framed, and realized that the birth was going to last far into the night. She couldn't imagine that the music was coming from beyond the darkness. Maybe the hospital was playing some kind of background music for the fetus's benefit.

  The music was soft, the melody mysterious and beautiful; it briefly lessened Reiko's suffering.

  All at once she placed the source of the music. She could hardly believe it as she raised her head and stared at her belly.

  "Stop singing down there and come out already."

  She fantasized about her own son singing in the dark womb to ease his mother's suffering. Maybe the events of the Loop were still with her; she was starting to confuse the relationship between protector and protected, container and contained.

  By a little after eleven, her cervix had completely dilated. Reiko was taken from the labor room to the delivery room and placed on the delivery table.

  She started pushing in time with her labor pains, following the instructions of the doctor and the nurse.

  The rhythm was quicker now than before, and the contractions of her uterus and abdominal muscles kept pace.

  She could feel all the strength in her body concentrating in an effort to push the baby out.

  She tried to switch to abdominal breathing like the nurse told her to, but it was difficult. Between the pain and her nervousness, the deep belly breaths she tried to take ended up as quick shallow ones. She needed to relax. She thought of Kaoru's face again and began to talk to him.

  "Don't speak!"

  She was calling Kaoru's name now with every groan, every ragged breath that escaped from the corners of her mouth. Each time, the nurse cautioned her not to talk—

  it was wasting energy that she needed for the delivery.

  Then the nurse gave a little cry and looked at the doctor. It had looked, just for a moment, like the baby's head had peeked out from Reiko's vagina.

  The doctor gave a long sigh beneath his mask and clicked his tongue. He looked worried.

  "She was dilated when she was brought in here, wasn't she?"

  It wasn't really a question aimed at the nurse. He was just muttering to himself, confirming what he already knew. Her cervix, which had been dilated up until a few moments ago, had closed again.

  Reiko had sensed something in their conversation, in the atmosphere of the room. She raised her head.

  "What's wrong?"

  "Oh, nothing."

  The doctor had no choice but to give a vague answer, not wanting her to worry. But Reiko showed no hesitation about putting into words what the doctor was beginning to fear.

  "Did my baby go back inside?"

  "Well, that's certainly what it looks like." There was something so childlike about the way Reiko had spoken, it did away with the doctor's apprehensions and put him in a slightly mirthful mood. "Why don't we just wait a little while?"

  Mother and fetus were both doing just fine, and it looked like there would be no harm in letting nature take its course. The energy involved in birth all went in one direction; there was no chance it was going to reverse itself. They took Reiko back to the labor room, where she settled down to wait for a while longer.

  If the labor pains of a few moments ago had been a raging storm, Reiko now felt like she was in the middle of an evening calm. The waves had been immense—

  where had they gone? Now that she asked herself that, Reiko began to find the peaceful respite unnerving. She could recall the exact instant when the energy shifted gently. When the nurse had given her little cry, Reiko had immediately known what it meant—she'd been about to cry out herself. She'd felt the air move against her skin right then.

  "Hurry up and come out."

  Somehow it seemed like the baby was reluctant, as if, having gotten a glimpse of the outside worlc^ it was trying to decide if it was a place worth going out into.

  Reiko looked at the white wall beyond her dis-tended tummy and addressed her child.

  "It's a pretty good place out here, you know."

  She placed her hands on her abdomen and checked for movement, but there was no reply.

  She glanced at the clock beside her pillow and closed her eyes. It was almost one in the morning. It had only been six hours since she'd checked in. She tried to calm down, telling herself it was still early.

  An hour later the nurse came back to check on her.

  Nothing much had changed. "Hang in there," she said, and left.

  Right after that, Reiko had a mighty contraction. It felt like the entire contents of her abdomen were going to be pushed out. She groped for the buzzer beside her pillow but couldn't find it.

  The baby's coining!

  As that maternal intuition coursed through her body, consciousness receded.

  The next day Reiko was lying in bed with a peaceful look on her face as the preceding night's struggle receded to the far side of memory, to be replaced by a drowsy, languid satisfaction. The pain of delivery had been transformed into the moving feeling of having delivered; joy welled up from deep within her.

  A baby cried, right next to her. It wasn't in bed with her. The nurse was dandling it in her arms.

  Reiko observed the baby's expression almost unconsciously. It was a boy, just as expected. Something about his face made him look like his father.

  Behind the nurse was a thick pane of glass separat-ing the nursery from the outside to keep it germ-free.

  The glass also acted like a mirror, reflecting the nurse and the baby. The real scene and the fictive one in the glass faced each other and swayed in the same direction.

  Reiko could see the hint of a tall form looking down at the baby reflected in the glass. It was just a hint, a shade. It leaned over and brought its face close to the baby's, gazing at it, as if to whisper something to it.

  The outlines of the image became clearer, its features more defined.

  Kaoru.

  Reiko raised her head, faced the image, and called to it. She had the feeling that words he'd tried to speak but couldn't before were finally emerging from his mouth.

  Happy birthday.

  The words tumbled from his lips, celebrating, not a day, but birth itself.

  Reiko thought with pleasure: when her son grew older, how she'd tell him about his father, and watch his exploits together. This vision of the future made her heart dance. She was sure her son would be proud of the man his father'd been.

  Reiko cradled Kaoru's words and repeated them to their son.

  Happy birthday.

  Table of Contents

  B I R T H D A Y

  CONTENTS

  COFFIN IN THE SKY

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  LEMON HEART

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  HAPPY BIRTHDAY

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

    Kōji Suzuki, Birthday