“Well—”
“I knew it!” Matsuo said.
Komaki let out a yelp and backed away from Narazaki.
“But this is unfair. When you ask that way . . . Yoshida-san, help me here.”
“Shut up!”
“Don’t tell me to shut up!” Narazaki was suddenly shouting.
“Don’t be angry because you lost your hair, Yoshida,” Matsuo said. “But if we compare your body to a globe, I bet there’s still some hair in Australia.”
“What? Why are you talking about continents?”
“Stop,” Mineno said. “Yoshida-san’s bald head has nothing to do with Narazaki-kun. Yoshida-san lost his hair all on his own. Right?” She had turned on Yoshida as if to start a fight. “You did that all by yourself.”
Komaki was staring at Narazaki suspiciously. What’s wrong with these people? Narazaki tried to edge out of the room, but Tanaka entered, blocking Narazaki’s path. Today she was wearing a Che Guevara apron. Where do they sell these?
“Sorry to interrupt, but there are reporters here,” Tanaka said with an anxious look on her face. “I’ll try to get them to leave, but what should I do? There’s a little bug spray left in the kitchen . . .”
“That should do it,” said Yoshiko.
“You can’t do that,” Narazaki interrupted.
“Why not?”
“It’s fine,” Matsuo said. Tanaka nodded and tried to leave, but Narazaki held out a hand to stop her.
“Oh, right, Narazaki-kun,” Matsuo said, pointing his backscratcher at him again. “You take care of them. Make them think you’re crazy. Go out there without any pants, and say this: ‘Are you the dentist? My penis has a pretty bad cavity.’”
“No thank you.”
“Okay, Mine-chan, you go.”
“No.”
In the end, no one stopped the visitors from coming in. They were reporters from a magazine. There was a female interviewer and a male cameraman. Someone had turned down an interview over the phone, so they had come in person. They claimed to be investigating the renewed activity of this religious organization, but their aim was clearly to expose some suspicious cult activity. Narazaki was wary of them.
“While we can’t offer much money, we would pay for an interview.”
Matsuo’s eyes looked strange. “We don’t need any money. Instead, will you let me poke your boobs?”
“What?” the interviewer gasped. The cameraman lowered his camera. “Excuse me, but is this a joke?”
“No, I’m not joking. Let me poke your boobs,” Matsuo told the interviewer seriously.
Mineno and the others exited the room, abandoning the shocked interviewer. Didn’t they care about what would happen? They must know the repercussions of treating the media like that. Narazaki had no reason to, but he stayed in the room.
The interviewer was obviously angry. “I’m sorry, but are you making fun of us?”
“I’m not. I just asked if you would let me poke your boobs. After all, that’s how it is, right? In life there are those who poke, and those who get poked. Maybe I’m the one who’ll get poked. Maybe you are. Everyone has the potential to be poked. Do you follow me?”
“What?”
“I’m going to begin the incantation. Mokopen, mokopen, who will be poked, mokopen! Please, close your eyes.”
“No.”
“What did you say?” Matsuo suddenly lowered his voice. “Why won’t you be poked? Why?”
“What?”
“Be poked, you bitch!” Matsuo stood up. The interviewer screamed, and the cameraman stepped between them to protect her.
“I’m sorry,” Narazaki said. “He’s possessed now.”
“Possessed?”
“Yes. The personalities of all humans reside within the leader. And today . . .”
Narazaki escorted the interviewer and cameraman out of the room, then returned to Matsuo.
“What are you doing?”
Matsuo was sulking. “They came to make fun of us, so I made fun of them.”
“No, that’s not true. You really wanted to poke her boobs, didn’t you?”
Matsuo waved his backscratcher left and right in front of his own face. “Of course not. It was just revenge.”
“You’re lying. You definitely wanted to poke her boobs, at least a little.”
Yoshiko watched Mineno as they listened to the interviewers leave. With one hand on her stomach, Mineno looked at the flyers she’d printed. Maybe, Yoshiko thought. Maybe she’s not pregnant at all. Maybe she just thinks she is. Maybe she is that desperate. Maybe.
Mineno turned around, so Yoshiko smiled at her. If that’s true, I need to embrace her. I’ll have to hold her close and help bring her back. I’ll have to make her forget about Takahara-kun.
When Mineno first joined this group, she had clearly been looking for a home with Matsuo and Yoshiko. She hoped to get what she hadn’t had as a child. Yoshiko and the others were aware of this when they took her in. Now, seeing Mineno with her hand on her stomach, Yoshiko thought, That’s why we must take care of her.
Last night she’d seen a lizard in the mansion. Had it actually been black, or had it just looked that way in the dark?
Something was about to happen. There was a fluttering in her chest. Something she hadn’t felt in years.
18
There was still some time before Matsuo’s speech, but over the past three hours many attendees had already shown up.
If they had set up all the folding chairs before people started arriving, things would have been easy, but Matsuo said selfishly that it would look bad if there were more chairs than people, so they had to set up more chairs as people arrived. There was a relatively large number of young people. There were even some who eagerly brought notebooks.
People continued to arrive in droves. Narazaki handed out plastic bottles of tea. Matsuo was watching TV in his room, not practicing his speech or anything. The incident with the interviewer the day before still hadn’t made the paper. They’d expected there would be more onlookers, but thankfully the talk came before anything was published.
Narazaki looked for Mineno, but he couldn’t find her anywhere. Strange. He was sure she’d been handing out bottles with him until a moment before. He went to get more bottles, but froze. There was a long-haired man in the audience. The man who had led Narazaki to the twenty-first floor of that compound. Narazaki stared at him. Why is he here?
“Narazaki-kun,” Yoshida called out to him. Narazaki’s heart was racing. “See that man with his hair tied up in the back?”
“Yes.”
“He’s from that cult. He used to come here, and when Sawatari disappeared, he vanished as well. There’s no mistaking him.”
Narazaki couldn’t look Yoshida in the eyes.
“Pretend you don’t notice him. We don’t want to start a scene before Matsuo’s talk. But after it’s over, Arayama-kun and Kato-kun will grab him. Don’t let Matsuo-san know.” Yoshida’s voice was quiet as a whisper. “He already knows what I look like. Arayama-kun and Kato-kun are relatively new, so he won’t recognize them. He doesn’t know you either. So when the speech starts, I want you to sit behind him with Arayama-kun. Once he’s out the gate, grab him.”
Narazaki couldn’t manage a response.
“Don’t make a big fuss about it. We can’t make a scene. We don’t want Matsuo-san to notice. Just talk to him, see if you can get him to go to a café or something with you. We want to find out where their cult is located. We thought about tailing him, but we don’t know anything about that kind of stuff, so it probably wouldn’t go well. You got it?”
Narazaki nodded ambiguously and Yoshida left. Do they trust me? Narazaki wondered. They must be testing me. If I do anything strange after hearing this, they’ll have proof that I’m involved with the cult. Someone is probab
ly already keeping an eye on me.
Narazaki exhaled. The danger is that the man with long hair might be surprised to see me and give me away. Does he know that I’m here because Sawatari told me to come?
There were flyers placed on the three seats behind the man with long hair. Someone saved our spots, Narazaki thought. I have no choice but to sit.
People streamed into the garden. How many people is this? About two hundred? The noise faded, and when Narazaki looked up, Matsuo had climbed to the edge of the mansion’s deck. It seemed Matsuo was just going to start without any introduction. Narazaki rushed to his seat, the one diagonally behind the man with long hair.
“Everyone, thank you so much for coming!” Everyone clapped. He’s lost weight, Narazaki thought. Compared to what he looked like on the DVDs, he’s lost a lot of weight.
“I didn’t announce this ahead of time, but today will be my last talk.” A quiet rustling ran through the crowd. “I want to talk about the first half of my life. Well, I’ll probably wind up telling my whole life story. I want to tell you about my sins.”
19
Matsuo-san’s Lectures, IV
I was born in Aichi Prefecture. My mother was a housemaid at an inn. My father wasn’t a zaibatsu, but he owned an incredible amount of land. Children like me, the products of affairs, are generally kept secret, but I grew up in my father’s mansion. My mother lived there as well. I didn’t see his legitimate family much, but they provided us with a room in the corner of the mansion. And after my mother died of some illness, I was raised there by a nurse.
If my father’s wife hadn’t had any children, I would have taken over his business as his successor. At least that’s what the arrangement seemed to be. I thought that when they had a child, I’d be chased out or sold off somewhere. I didn’t want to stay in that mansion, but I was still a child. I couldn’t live on my own. I prayed they wouldn’t have any children. I spent my childhood full of twisted thoughts like that.
But they did have a child, and, just as I thought, I had to leave the mansion. Of course, I wasn’t sold off. I was sent away as an apprentice. Following my father’s wife’s wishes, I left Aichi and went all the way to Tokyo. I had no choice. Of course, they were happy to get rid of me. I was an obstruction. Happiness depends on one’s disposition. It also requires the exclusion of many other things; it can only exist in a closed space. From my father’s wife’s perspective, there was nothing else to be done. She was sad as well. I lived and worked at a factory where they made tiles by hand. The owners of the factory were good people. As for school, I only made it through elementary.
Then there came a great war. The Pacific War, or World War II.
When I was twenty, I got my draft card. I was going to war.
The first thing I thought was, shouldn’t this draft card have been sent to that kid in that mansion? They are sending me to war so that kid doesn’t have to go. Of course, that wasn’t the case. I was thinking too much. That’s just how twisted I was back then.
I had no interest in war. I didn’t want to be a soldier. When Japan was heading toward war, the socialists did a lot of underground organizing. I didn’t participate in that, but in exchange for distributing their manifestos, they’d lend me books. I wasn’t interested in socialism, but I wanted to get my hands on books however I could. English books were hard to get at the time, but I read many of them and tried to study on my own. I often heard the words “American devil,” but I could never understand what was evil about this country that could produce such amazing literature. I wasn’t taken in by progressivism or anything. I just hated Japan, or the soldiers that talked about how great Japan was. They made me think of my father. My father was a staunch jingoist. But that was natural for people of his generation. Basically, at the time, my understanding of the world was framed entirely by my personal likes and dislikes.
I was sent to join the army’s 357th division. The front line in the north central Philippines. Do you all know that the majority of deaths in the war were caused by starvation and illness? Many Japanese soldiers were sent by their boastful but powerless country to wander in tropical forests, never encounter an enemy soldier, starve, and then die of malaria. After three months of training, I joined those forces as a recruit. We were tasked with guarding the central coast, but a scout found close to a hundred American ships approaching us, and both my small platoon and the whole larger battalion hid in the mountains. More than half of us already had malaria.
There’s no way we can win—that’s what I thought then. The battalion leader and other higher-ups would never say such a thing, but we lowly recruits were almost all certain we had no hope of winning. The silver of the enemy’s steel ships crossed the ocean calmly and surrounded us. The same silver of their war planes was already flying across the sky. That great dull luster seemed to repel everything that tried to touch it. What could we have done, faced with that tremendous force? All we wanted was to hide in the mountains of that southern country, which was so hot it felt like it was on fire, and wait to lose the war. I wasn’t simple enough to believe the military’s lies that if we lost the war our country would be obliterated.
However, we received notification that reinforcements were coming, one hundred and twenty shock troops. But with just a few machine guns, what could we do even if another hundred and twenty reinforcements came? Were they telling us to fight the Americans’ sophisticated long-range fire with single-loader rifles, swords, and the hand grenades they provided us with to commit suicide? They were sending reinforcements just to die. All while the commanders did nothing. They just watched as this key territory in the Philippines got snatched, and sent more living people in as reinforcements so they wouldn’t be criticized by the government leaders in Japan. And when the troops all die, our officers will tell the Japanese people that they fought with all their strength, that they fought to uphold the honor of our country. Of course dying is scary, and we soldiers were resistant to the idea of death, so they kept telling us that even after we died we’d live on as heroes in Yasukuni Shrine. People have always egged on soldiers with religion since time immemorial. They were encouraging those in our platoon to go and die.
I didn’t yet have malaria, so I was part of the group sent to greet the reinforcements. When the five of us left our shack, the Americans began shooting. It wasn’t a battle. All we could do was run. The platoon scattered.
I joined up with a platoon led by a lieutenant with dark eyes. By now I had gotten malaria. I had a high fever, and on the second day, I began tripping on my own legs. By the fourth day, I couldn’t really speak. My tongue wouldn’t move like I wanted it to. The lieutenant’s platoon left me behind. That was just the way things were. I had left behind many people as well. I had sworn to my friends that we’d never abandon each other. Friends who stumbled through the jungle using thick branches as canes, who didn’t even notice their hands were bleeding from the bark. Who didn’t notice that they were shitting and pissing themselves. Those friends who had grown so thin and collapsed. I, who couldn’t even speak properly, had to lie and tell them we’d help each other go on. Countless men who’d fallen knowing that what I told them was a lie. But still they smiled at me sadly, knowing that I, also walking with stick for a cane, could do nothing else but lie. Incontinence. That’s one of the signs that death from malaria is coming. This time, it was my turn. I collapsed, and looking up I saw the leaves of the jungle. “That’s right, that’s right,” I remember whispering to myself. The green, green grass stood up as if to rub my cheek. I didn’t know what was real.
When the sun rose, the heat pierced through my clothing and burnt my skin. The forest continued on forever, and the branches piled on top of each other, out of control. They stretched out irregularly, indefinitely. I was alone in that foreign forest. Maggots popped in and out of a long wound on my arm. I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten it. The maggots seemed to hide whenever I spotted them. As if they we
re ashamed. They were ashamed of me. It was like they were trying to prove a point. I assume it hurt, but I couldn’t feel pain. It felt as though it were someone else’s arm these maggots were eating. My vision narrowed. Maybe it was one of those special malaria fever delusions, but I could see all those leaves dimly swirling in my vision. The leaves had begun to feel like countless tiny hands on my body. I thought I wanted to die. I wanted to throw up, but even when I tried to, there was nothing in my stomach. My throat was so dry it burned. I had to end the pain quickly. My stomach hurt from starvation, and for some reason that pain stretched to my chest and throat. My body would sometimes twitch and I would begin to lose consciousness, but then pain from somewhere would return me to consciousness. I tried again to vomit, but nothing would come out.
I had one hand grenade. They were called type 99s. I thought that’s how I would die. I had seen one of my comrades try to commit suicide with a gun and fail. His teeth were shattered, and the bullet pierced his chin and cheek, but he lived on for another hour. I was covered in twisted branches, but there was no wind, so the thick leaves didn’t move. I placed my grenade on the ground. It was covered in grass so thick it could cut you. As I stared at it, that hexagonal orange metal canister we used to call the pumpkin, I thought about the reasons I had to die. I put my hand to my cheek. It was so sunken that I could feel the position of each one of my teeth. I tried to sum up my life.
I would die in this war. I would die because of my powerless country and their worthless plan. That was clear. So what was this war? I wondered about it. We were fighting for Japan’s victory. What was victory? What would victory get us?
If Japan could take control of the Philippines, we would gain control of a route for transporting fuel and other supplies. If we did that, we could continue to send fuel to Japan and fight America much longer. That was all. And if Japan beat America, what would happen? If America and the Allied forces petitioned Japan to end the war, and they agreed to Japan’s conditions for surrender, what would happen? We would be able to hold on to our territory in China and the other Southeast Asian countries we had conquered. That’s all. Who would be happy about that? The zaibatsu who owned those territories, the business people and politicians, and the top brass in the military who pandered to those with economic power. And what would become of Japan? The people would be a little bit better off, but they’d only be getting the scraps from those deals. That’s all. Or instead, if you wanted to be better off, you could just work.
Cult X Page 12
