Last Winter We Parted

by Fuminori Nakamura

  The temperature in the room grew chilly.

  “She told me. That she was only pretending to be the ‘sister.’ That she had been blackmailed by a man. Save me, she said … It was creepy, it didn’t make any sense. I went to see the doll maker, too. He had the photographs of Akiko Yoshimoto and Yuriko Kobayashi on fire. And there was a doll in his collection that looked familiar. A doll of the first victim, Akiko Yoshimoto. He drew me a portrait of the person who commissioned its production—the face of the man who was Akiko Yoshimoto’s former boyfriend. It was you.”

  The editor lowers his gaze and brings the glass of whiskey to his lips.

  “I realized that you were involved in this incident. It occurred to me that perhaps it might be some kind of revenge. When I looked at the photos again, the ones of Yuriko Kobayashi when she was on fire, her eyes were quite different and the impression was completely different too, yet I thought she bore a vague resemblance to the ‘sister.’ I was confused and, at the same time, I had a terrible foreboding. Having been shown the ‘composites’ once, something told me that these photographs of Yuriko Kobayashi burning might also be composites. But I didn’t know why these photographs existed. If I was right, that would mean that Yuriko Kobayashi was alive. The truth was, a woman who looked a lot like her was living as Kiharazaka’s sister. That meant that, all along, I had been seeing Yuriko Kobayashi posing as the sister. Yuriko Kobayashi, who was supposed to be dead, was pretending to be Kiharazaka’s sister. So the person who was actually burned … There was only one answer. Identifying the body is done by the family. I had thought it was a mere coincidence that you and Yuriko Kobayashi had the same family name.”

  I draw in my breath again.

  “I was told that Yuriko Kobayashi, posing as the sister, contacted the doll maker by phone, saying that she wanted to reclaim all of the photos Kiharazaka had taken, as well as the Akiko Yoshimoto doll. As far as she was concerned, she wanted to hush up everything. That doll connected you to this incident. And that made it a piece of evidence that would connect to her. But the doll maker, he interpreted her call to mean something different. That Akari Kiharazaka had used her brother in order to have those women killed. The doll maker didn’t know that Akari Kiharazaka was already dead. So he thought that she had made her brother kill them, out of jealousy or something. He figured that there was something mysterious behind all this, but he had his own way of thinking about it. Maybe that Akari was a lesbian, and was trying to get a hold of the doll that had grown more beautiful after the death of the real Akiko Yoshimoto. That’s his kind of wacky reasoning.”

  Still drinking his whiskey, he stares at me.

  “But I don’t get it. Why did you hire me for this job? Why go to the trouble, of dredging up a crime that you pulled off?”

  He doesn’t reply. I draw in my breath, holding back the tremor in my voice.

  “After I left the doll maker’s home, I pressed her for an explanation, and she confessed that she was Yuriko Kobayashi. I didn’t know if she was telling the truth or not, but she said that she was being blackmailed. That’s why she asked me to run away with her. Take me with you and let’s run away together, she said … She told me even more. That there was someone she wanted me to kill beforehand. She hinted at it over and over, until finally she put it bluntly.”

  “… Okay.”

  “It’s been a while already since you finished that whiskey. She gave it to me. It should take effect soon enough.”

  He stares at me, the glass still in his hand. Moments pass but he remains calm. Or rather, he appears to be objectively wondering about the fact that he isn’t upset. I draw in a short breath to say something, when suddenly he begins to speak.

  “Right. She did that. Just out of curiosity, is it sleeping pills that I drank? Or something that it’s too late to undo?”

  “Something that it’s too late to undo.”

  My eyes meet his. Only for a few seconds, but it feels like much longer.

  “So that’s how it is.”

  “But why? Why did she do this to you?”

  He gives a terse laugh at what I say.

  “You’re willing to kill someone without knowing the reason why?”

  He leans against the sofa and lights another cigarette. As if he is taking stock of his own body, he raises his arm slightly, casting his gaze over the palm of his right hand.

  “Because I was trying to make a book. About what happened.”

  He brings his gaze back to me.

  “I wasn’t going to publish anything. I guess I wanted to stop myself, stop this dangerous act of dredging it back up. Even if I die now, it’s easy enough to make it seem like it was from grief over my dead ‘wife,’ isn’t it? By the way, how long do I have? Before I die.”

  I stare at the whiskey in the glass before me. The surface of the amber-colored liquid brightly reflects the light in the room. Slowly, I bring the glass to my lips.

  “There’s nothing in it. I switched the bottle with another I brought along with me … I couldn’t do it.”

  But the editor, he doesn’t show any sign of relief. My eyes meet his. A few seconds go by, and I feel like a few minutes more have passed. But then finally, as if weary, he begins to speak softly.

  “Your doubts are reasonable. You must have thought it was a strange assignment, to go through the interview process, if possible to write it as you go along, then send it in to me. I was surprised when I read your opening sentence. ‘It’s safe to say you killed them … Isn’t that right?’ Those words seemed to symbolize this whole ‘incident.’ But the part about yourself is a bit overwritten. I corrected it here and there. Readers want to know about the writer’s personal life. Nevertheless, you don’t even mention a single thing about your girlfriend, Yukie. You can’t hide yourself and still write. That’s why I changed that part too. As well as the fact that you don’t delve at all inside of Kiharazaka’s mind. That’s why I went ahead and started up a correspondence with him. Concealing my true identity, of course. Really, I wanted audio recordings of the interview subjects, but you couldn’t even manage to get those. So I had no choice but to rely on your subjectivity. By the time Yudai Kiharazaka wrote to me, asking to swap stories of our insanity, it was already over—I had accomplished what I’d planned to do to him.”

  “But what if I had …”

  “Gone to the police? You mean when you eventually suspected? Good point. But you’re so conscientious, I knew that before going to them, you’d be sure to come to me, just as you have. And when that happened, I could kill you. Just make you write the manuscript … You drank the whiskey too, didn’t you? There’s cyanide on your glass.”

  I look at the editor, at a loss.

  “A lot of corrections had to be made to the manuscript you delivered, but for the most part, it’s all there. I liked your writing style. I’m an editor, so I can’t make something from nothing. But this is all I need—I can go back later and mimic your style. There wasn’t anything in your manuscript about Yuriko Kobayashi trying to kill someone—I think I’ll add in some hints about that. The editorial process may take a while.” My heart starts to race and I can no longer see straight. Trembling, I bring my right hand to my mouth and try to stick my fingers down my throat to make myself vomit. I wonder if I still have time. I … Suddenly he puts a bottle on the table.

  “Don’t worry. There wasn’t anything on the glass.”

  He smiles.

  “Well … I thought about it. Look, I’ve got some potassium cyanide. But I changed my mind. Just like you did. I wonder why.”

  The temperature in the room is getting even chillier. It takes a little while for me to realize that I have been staring, dumbfounded, at the editor all this time. I have broken out into a sweat all over my body, to an embarrassing extent. He is staring at me now.

  “Is it because you saw the graves?”

  “… The graves?”

  “Yeah. The graves of Yudai and Akari Kiharazaka’s mother and father.”
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br />   He is still leaning far back on the sofa.

  “If you had looked them up, you would have seen what their parents were like when the kids were little. A quite simple man, violently alcoholic, and a woman who disappears, leaving behind her children. The soil into which they were born definitely nurtured them into what they became. I thought I needed to seek revenge upon those parents as well, and when it was all over, I aimlessly searched for their whereabouts. But I ended up at two graves. They were old and small, and no one had left any flowers. They were overgrown with weeds … While I was there, a strange feeling came over me. After I had taken revenge on the ones who were in these graves, I would need to seek revenge on their parents as well—that’s how I felt.”

  He smiles.

  “The fact was, I didn’t feel an ounce of regret about what I did to the brother and sister. But I just sat there for a while. I could feel the air around me as it moved softly over my cheeks and my hands … I was there for hours.”

  As he speaks, he brings the glass of whiskey to his lips again.

  “My sorrow, hatred, and joy—all of it was ending. Eventually my life would go on. Like the breeze that moved tranquilly amongst the small stone graves … Just what does it all mean? This world we live in.”

  I light a cigarette.

  “By the way, what do you intend to do, now that you’ve quit this project?”

  “I’m going to marry Yukie. And then, I’ve got work as a celebrity ghostwriter.”

  My voice quavers slightly.

  “When I figured out what was going on with you and them, I was reminded of that photograph, Butterflies. What’s inside each person, the true desire that people aren’t even aware of … Yudai Kiharazaka had no desires of his own. His envy of others, that imitation was all there was for him. That was even what led him to just want to die. It’s terrible, but that was when I figured it all out. It’s not my true desire to lead a ruinous life. Desire for something wild and violent is not what creates beautiful art. I want stability—though occasionally I yearn for ruin—and since it doesn’t matter to me what kind of work I do, everyone is just a little envious. I realized that I would never be a novelist. That’s why I can’t write this book about you and them. The ‘sister’ told me so from the start. She said, You aren’t capable of writing a book about us. She said, You cannot simply come into our realm. She was right.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll take over. Together you and I will make this into a ‘novel.’ The only thing I ask of you is to write this scene of us here, if you can.”

  I stare at my cigarette, which had burned down to a nub.

  “I’m quitting smoking from now on. To mark this day, this will be my last cigarette.”

  I take a drag, and exhale slowly. The white smoke gently drifts away. As if something inside me is quietly emerging. I put out the cigarette in the ashtray. A thin line of smoke rises faintly from the extinguished stub, disappearing before long. There is a smile on the editor’s lips.

  “That’s great. You should take care of yourself. Despite the inherent tedium of the world, it’s beautiful to see those people who still live fully. But, every so often, I want you to remember the utter folly of what we did with our lives. And the fact that it was the way we truly wanted to live.”

  He stands up slowly, still holding his whiskey. He lights yet another cigarette.

  “Akari told me. She said that the reason I fell in love with Akiko Yoshimoto was so that I could suffer through the pain of worrying about her. She was a woman who said terrible things. Still … whatever the reason, that was all I felt when I fell in love with her, and I wanted to believe it was the real thing. That was the only time … when I felt like the world was truly beautiful.”

  “… Yes.”

  “I wonder. If Akiko saw me now … what would she do with me?”

  I remain seated on the sofa, watching him. He seems far away from where I am.

  “It’s not simply a duality between either acceptance or rejection, nor between acknowledgment or denial. She … I think she might just take you in her arms, tearfully … As foolish as you are. But I don’t know.”

  He smiles at what I say.

  “Would it really work out that easily …? And what I also wonder … well, my actions were unilateral.”

  He takes a sip of whiskey.

  “She liked the books I edited. A long time ago, she said something to me in jest. She said, If I’m ever murdered, like in a mystery novel, I want you to make that into a book. Hunt down my killer, and take revenge for me. She was a very energetic person. I decided to create the ‘novel,’ and I thought I’d send it first to Yudai Kiharazaka. It would be a strange mix of archived materials and fiction chapters. This would be after his death sentence had been definitively determined. He would read the novel in prison, and knowing the truth about what had been done to him would likely drive him insane. And thus, my revenge would be complete … It’s a rather editorial revenge, isn’t it? Because he’s already crazy, right? He’d make a big commotion, saying it was a conspiracy between the state and the judge, and even though he knew the truth, nobody would pay him any attention. He’d be executed. After his execution, they’ll say, maybe there was something strange about that ‘novel’…”

  He is looking off somewhere. I can’t tell where.

  “And I will dedicate the book to her. She was blind. That’s why everything is written out, even the video archives. Later it would all need to be put into Braille. That’s why I’d write their names on the first page of the story. A dedication, like in foreign novels … But because the Japanese are easily embarrassed, I’d use the alphabet. Since it’s a ‘novel,’ I used aliases in the main part of the book, but these would be their real initials. The first one would be for the photographer on death row, and then for my beloved.”

  He is still looking off somewhere.

  “It would be just like the book itself: on the one hand, a manifestation of pure hatred, and on the other, a manifestation of true love … Dedicated to M.M, and to J.I.”