The Kingdom

by Fuminori Nakamura

  She probably just didn’t want to hurt my feelings, but she accepted my offer. That was good. She’d probably wear them. If not, maybe she’d give them to someone who’d look good in them. I left the department store and flagged a cab. I still had to throw away the gun.

  We took a long, wide road from Yokohama to Tokyo. I could see the moon above Tokyo. For some reason, it looked like it was beckoning me. Maybe it was because I hadn’t slept, but my head felt empty. I leaned into the seat of the car.

  “There aren’t any cars following us, are there?”

  Why was I asking a question like that? I was tired. My body felt heavy.

  “None now. Is there something wrong?”

  “Nothing. Sorry to ask that. I can just get off here.”

  “No, no. It’s fine. If I see any strange cars, I’ll lose them.”

  I could see the side of the driver’s face from the back. He was probably about sixty. For some reason, he was smiling.

  “How long have you been a cab driver?”

  “I’ve been doing this for thirty years. You’ll be fine. I know a lot of roads.”

  As I wondered what kind of man this driver was, my phone rang. It was from Hasegawa. I wasn’t sure whether I should answer, but I decided they’d think it was suspicious if I didn’t. For some reason, he was breathing heavily.

  “Oh good. Where are you?”

  “Why? What happened?”

  There was a lot of noise on the other side of the phone. It was a strange sound. It seemed like it already had me surrounded, but I couldn’t make out its shape. The cab window was wet with condensation.

  “Kizaki is . . . He’s thinking about what job to give you next. But it’s dangerous. Really dangerous. So . . .”

  I could tell he was taking a deep breath.

  “Run away with me.”

  “You really . . .”

  “I’ll tell you the details later. Where are you? I’ve got everything arranged.”

  “And?”

  “I love you. Can’t you tell?”

  I looked outside the window. Neon I’d never seen in a part of the city I’d never seen. Countless white lights were reflected in the window. He was so cheerful when we were children. Even now, you could see that cheerfulness in his face. I leaned back, gripping my phone.

  I don’t know how this goes with other people, but usually, when I’m confused about whether or not I should like someone, I already like them. All these feelings of loneliness make me want to go for whatever opportunities present themselves. I want to have sex too, but what I really want is just for someone to hold me tight. But even that could be dangerous. I’m still lonely though, so when someone makes strong advances on me like this, when someone gives me a reason, I usually go along with them.

  But I was too tired. I was tired of the pain and pleasure of losing myself in someone else, thinking that I could change my partner, and I was tired of the guilt of taking on a partner I didn’t actually like that much. But . . . I thought about this all, and then laughed. This was not the time.

  “Stop it. I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  “Why?”

  We passed through one part of the city I didn’t know, and entered another.

  “I wondered this whole time whether or not you were Hasegawa. It was all so strange. How I met you so randomly. And how even though we were childhood friends, you worked for him.”

  I couldn’t pull my back from the seat.

  “You definitely have Hasegawa’s face. I didn’t really like him, and I don’t remember him that well, but you have the same presence, too. But I still can’t shake this weird feeling. I’m still not sure if you’re Hasegawa. But I know this much. You don’t really love me. I’ve been through a lot, so I can tell that much. Even though you don’t love me, you say you do, and you even say we should run away together. That means you’re, at the very least, my enemy.”

  “No. You’re wrong.”

  “You made a mistake, didn’t you? I’m not sure what you’re plotting, but I didn’t go along with your invitations, so you failed at getting close to me. Not counting when we first ran into each other, I’ve only seen you twice. There was no time to make me love you. Am I wrong?”

  “What are you saying? Let’s talk about this in person. Where are you?”

  “Your voice has changed. In this short a conversation, you’ve already asked where I am three times. I can imagine how cold your eyes must look. Bye.”

  I hung up. Inside, I thought this was a good choice. It felt right based on both my experience and something like intuition. But I was tired, and my emotions were wild, even though I knew there was no reason for them to be that way. I started to tear up for no reason.

  “There really aren’t any cars following us?” I asked the driver again. There was no point in asking. Even my voice was teary. I was uneasy, and tired.

  “We’re fine. If there are any cars, I’ll let you know.”

  “. . . You’d let me know, even though I might be a criminal? Even if it’s the police?”

  “Yes.”

  The car went quiet for a moment. Even after hearing my bizarre questions, the driver was strangely calm.

  “After all, I’m a cab driver. I must respond to my customers’ demands. Regardless of who they are, I give my customer the best service I can.”

  “Even if you get arrested?”

  “I won’t. I’d just say I had to do whatever I did. Besides, you don’t seem like a bad person.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Hmmm.”

  I stared at the driver. He was old. He was a strange man. But for some reason, he made me feel a bit more comfortable.

  However much we talked, once I got out of this cab, I’d never see him again. All of my relationships were like this. Even Kimura, whom I was entrusting my fate to, I didn’t really know. I woke up in the cab, and realized I had dozed off for a bit. I could see the Ikebukuro Marui department store in the distance. I couldn’t drag this driver into this. I got out of the cab at an intersection and put on my mask.

  I couldn’t keep looking behind me or I’d appear unnatural. I had put on glasses, changed my hair color and clothes, so it would be hard to tell it was me from far away. But I couldn’t go to the parking lot like this. If the police were waiting there, they’d find the gun in my bag.

  If I just threw it away randomly, I’d feel bad. A strange person might pick it up and use it. But there were cameras monitoring the garbage cans in front of the convenience stores. I found a mailbox and walked up to it. There were no cameras there, so I could get rid of it safely. And when a postal worker found it, they’d do the responsible thing. I put the whole bag in the box and walked away quickly.

  There were a lot of police cars. I wondered if something had happened. A screen on one of the buildings was playing the news. Two diplomats had committed suicide. A certain stock’s price had soared suddenly, and then dropped unnaturally. But that had nothing to do with me. If my passport wasn’t there, I’d get out of Tokyo. If it was, I’d make for the airport. If they were following me, I’d just have to lose them.

  The moon was rising from right behind the hotel. For some reason, I stared at it blankly. I went into the hotel, walked past the front desk, and took the elevator to the basement. My heart was beating disgustingly fast. I thought about how far I had come. But I needed to hold off on the sentimentality until after everything was over.

  The elevator door opened, and I walked into the dark parking lot. There were spots where the surface of the concrete was black and wet for some reason. There were almost no cars. There was the black sedan with a Hiroshima plate. My breathing was wild, and my body freezing. No one was following me. I was fine. I just had to find out whether the passport was really there.

  I held my breath. I needed to focus, to be ready for anyth
ing. I put my hand on the door. The silver handle reflected what little light there was in the dim garage. It felt cold on my fingers. The handle clicked and the door opened. It wasn’t locked. I sensed someone’s presence. When I turned around, a man wearing a construction worker’s uniform was getting out of the elevator. I stared at him. Was he really a construction worker? He was large. I stared at him and thought about how I could get out of here if he tried something. But he never looked at me, just headed into the parking lot. Off in the distance, he picked up a brush. Something was dripping from the end of the brush. I let out a big sigh. Aside from him, there was no one around me.

  I opened the driver’s door, and then opened the glove compartment. Strangely, my hand wasn’t shaking. I sat in the driver’s seat and felt around the compartment. My fingertips were moist. Was it there? Mixed in with all these papers was a black bag. When I looked inside, there was a passport.

  I felt a dull pain in my chest. I sensed someone behind the driver’s seat. Our eyes met in the rearview mirror. I couldn’t move. In the back seat was Kizaki. I’m not sure why, but for some reason I felt like I had known all along that he would be there. My body went limp.

  “Drive.”

  16.

  When did I realize I would never get what I want most?

  Do I still want it? If I got it, what would I do?

  I was walking down an unmaintained dirt road with my backpack on. I walked as far as I could. Was I running from the orphanage? Did I just want to visit somewhere? I vaguely noticed my dirty shoes getting dirtier as I walked along that straight road, following the river.

  I could see lots of lights in the distance. I had seen those lights like this, from far away, once before. Those lights belonged to the big, new shopping mall they had built in this small town. They were bright. They were so bright they made my eyes hurt.

  Why was I trying to go toward those bright lights? Was it because they seemed kind? The closer I got to the lights, the more it felt like they would envelop me. I came to a brick road. It was wide enough to be a town square. There was a lit-up fountain and flowers surrounded by rows of glittering shops. From far away, I probably looked like I had made it inside that light.

  It took me some time to realize that my dirty shoes stood out in all this light. I felt embarrassed. I found a bench and sat down with my backpack still on. A small boy being led by a grown man and woman passed by. He had ice cream in his hand. It was white. He looked so proud and sweet. It was beautiful. For some reason, I wanted it. But I only had seventy yen. When we kids at the orphanage said we wanted something, it made trouble for the people there. Strictly speaking, the money I had wasn’t even mine.

  I sat on the bench and watched everyone around me. There were couples laughing and joking. A young girl in red begging an old woman for a fish-shaped cake. Families dividing up their big paper shopping bags for everyone to carry. Children who still tried to get their parents to hold their hands, even though they were carrying those big bags. How long was I there like that? I found myself staring at a big man with wide shoulders wearing a beige sweater. His sweater looked soft, and I wanted to touch it. He waved his hand in the direction of a woman and a small girl. The girl was wearing a child’s orange down jacket, and in her hand she had two beautiful balloons.

  For some reason, as I watched those blue and white balloons tremble in the gentle breeze, I felt my head go blank and I got worried. The man took out a cigarette; they’d leave after he smoked it. The woman and girl walked off somewhere. That orange down jacket would have looked better on me than that girl. I’d be more beautiful than that girl, or even that woman, if I could just dress up. For some reason, that’s what I thought then. The man lit his cigarette. He looked like he was enjoying it. He sat on a bench a short distance from the one I was on.

  I wanted him to look at me. He wore soft-looking clothes and clean shoes. He was a big man, and his face looked kind. I stared at him. But he just looked at me briefly and then turned away.

  Why did I think of this then? It wasn’t quite a distant memory. It was more like a vague impression welling up inside me. There was a woman who was close to me before I went to the orphanage. I could see her smooth shoulders peeking out from her loose shirt. Her thin, seductive legs stuck out from her short skirt. Those legs looked soft. I scratched my own thighs as if I had mosquito bites. I flipped up my skirt. But that man didn’t look at me. My heart started beating unbelievably fast. I pulled my skirt up little by little.

  My cheeks were red, and my smile was inappropriate for a child. I was trying to remember that woman’s skin. I couldn’t remember her face. The man looked at me. He looked at my white, thin underwear. That was the first time my body got hot. He looked surprised. I smiled at him. I smiled at him in forgiveness of his deviant passion for a child. He got up, and I went short of breath. He looked around, then approached me. I was scared and confused, but for some reason my body grew even hotter. He touched my arm, and crouched down to make eye contact.

  “You shouldn’t do that,” he said kindly. He smiled, disregarding my fear and confusion and the heat in my body. He didn’t ignore me. Instead, he approached me with unwanted kindness. He approached me like I was a troubled child.

  “Are you lost? I’ll call someone.” He stood quietly. I felt the beautiful silver ring on his finger graze my arm. It was cool.

  It’s hard to explain logically what happened inside me then. I got off the bench and suddenly took off my panties. I started bawling like I was on fire.

  Maybe that was my absurd way of getting revenge. But it wasn’t directed at that man. It was directed at the life that surrounded me. It was revenge on the will of the world. The will that determined everything that happened around me, regardless of how I felt. If things wouldn’t go the way I wanted, I’d just have to destroy everything. Even if things did turn out the way I wanted, I should still destroy it all. Before it abandoned me, before it lost interest in me, I’d have to betray the world. I felt heat in my body. It was so hot, so hot I didn’t know what to do. The man was surprised. He tried to smile even more kindly, to repel me gently. But he had no time. He had to leave me to run away, to some safe place far from me. A young man with a security guard’s arm badge came running up to me, just in time to replace the first man. I described the man who did that to me, but he was already gone. Suddenly, I realized that the security guard was looking at me harshly. At the balled up, white underwear caught on my feet. He puffed out his cheeks a bit, and made a face I didn’t like. He seemed angry. I took off my underwear and put it in my pocket.

  The moon was there in the distance. Even when I was much, much younger than that, I used to stare at the moon. Why did the full moon look really red then? It shined bright and clear through the thin veil of clouds. As if praying quietly for a new beginning.

  17.

  I didn’t know where I was driving.

  I drove at a constant speed down a dark road. Kizaki told me three times to switch routes, and in the course of turning where he told me to, I lost track of where I was. I knew he was behind me, smiling slightly. I wondered when I had come under his control. When had I become a part of his scheme? Kizaki told me to turn, so I turned the steering wheel.

  But that’s not really true. I’d always been living my own life. That should seem obvious, but sometimes I thought it was strange.

  I remember when I was a kid, and this man and woman were deciding whether to become my foster parents. Listening to the staff talk to this couple, I thought their conversation seemed so precarious, like either side could collapse at any moment. It felt strange that my life could change so drastically because of other people. I turned down that couple, but was that just to reject someone else’s trying to take control of my life? Or, by rejecting them, did I enter my own life?

  “Hey . . .” For some reason my voice was quiet. “What are you?”

  “Who knows.”

 
We drove down a narrow alley. There were no lights. We might have been surrounded by houses or by shops.

  “At that bar,” he said finally, “you rejected Hasegawa’s first invitation, and moved away from me. But you came back again. When you think about it, there are a lot of strange forces at work in this world.”

  “I . . .”

  “You don’t know what’s happening? That’s fine. I like watching people die unsure of what’s happening. I’m in a good mood, so I’ll tell you some of it.”

  I could see streetlights in the distance. We arrived at a wide road. I was soaked in sweat.

  “First of all, Yata is going to die soon. He’s low on the totem pole, but he belongs to a big organization. They’ll forget about him.”

  “What kind of organization?”

  “The people who benefit from this country’s gains. It’s not an organization, really. More of an informal group—a class.”

  He lit a cigarette behind my back.

  “Imagine a revolution. Imagine the people rise up and overthrow the emperor. Then new people take power. After that, people flock to those who have just seized control. The new rulers are the ones that everyone thinks have been overthrown. But only the appearance has changed. Those are the people who benefit from the gains of this country. In Japan, and outside of it, many people flock to those in power. And they maintain the system. It’s a disgustingly flexible system. Even if you rip it to shreds, it will return to what it once was. Revolution is usually just a way for the common people to let out some steam.”

  “And you?”

  “I have my eyes on the system because I want to bring everything to a head. To rip it to bits.”

  “You want to end equality?”

  Kizaki laughed loudly.

  “Of course not. I don’t care about anything as boring as that. I want to see things boil over. You should see it. It’s really amazing. When those in power come under assault and cling to what they have in total confusion.”