by Susan Barker
From that moment on, I was intrigued. But, like I said, Ai was very unpopular, and I was reluctant to be tarred with the same brush. Two unpopular people closely associated would become the laughing stock of the whole school. Our lonely sufferings would be greatly amplified.
The first time we ever spoke was some months after the typhoon, when she came across me lying face down in the bamboo forest one afternoon. I had just received a vicious beating from the twin bullies Michio and Kazuo Kaku, who’d been enthusiastic to test out their new mail-order numchucks on me. Hearing the approaching clank of metal, I looked up to find myself lying in the inquisitive shadow of Ai Inoue. She leant over at the slight angle her brace would permit.
‘Do you mind?’ she said. ‘You are lying on a rare species of herbaceous flora. You really should show some respect.’
I shifted sideways, then sank my face back in the mud, expecting her to go away.
‘Y’know, Watanabe, the Kaku twins have waited for you in the same place at the same time every month since fourth grade. Why don’t you just take a different route home from school?’ she asked.
I looked up again and told her that to avoid them would be to deprive myself of a valuable learning experience. The look in her eyes told me she thought I was a loon, but she held out her hand anyway and helped me to my feet.
From that day on we were friends. And, as expected, the opprobrium of our peers rocketed. We were told we should run away and join the circus together. My glasses were repeatedly stolen and the lenses smeared with glue. Even in the staff room the teachers joked that at least there was no risk of teen pregnancy with Ai wearing that oversized chastity belt all the time. But, to my delight and surprise, none of this mattered to me. I began to skip cram school and spent many a happy hour helping Ai collect botany samples from the forest, or calculating prime numbers and listening to the Russian opera station her brace picked up on clear evenings. We never spoke much. Owing to our solitary childhoods and social exclusion from the high-school community, neither of us were well versed in the art of conversation. We were content just being in each other’s company. Our persecutors succeeded only in strengthening this bond.
My second most potent memory of Ai was made on the penultimate day of our friendship. We were walking together in town when we spotted some schoolyard tormentors coming towards us. Anxious to avoid them, Ai took me by the hand and pulled me into the alleyway beside the KFC. We each held our breath as the rowdy gang scuffled past, pushing and shoving and crudely denigrating each other. Perhaps it was the risk and excitement of being caught. Perhaps it was the stench of burning chicken fat. Whatever it was, to this day I cannot pass a KFC without remembering that moment Ai pulled me towards her and put her lips to mine.
That night I walked home upon cushions of air. I sat at the kitchen table and ate without tasting a single mouthful the food my mother had set out for me. I then floated up to my bedroom, and sat leafing dreamily through a section in my physics textbook on Faraday’s Law. Within minutes the bedroom door opened and my father walked in, his stern grey expression shattering my blissful mood. He strolled over to my desk and adjusted my anglepoise lamp so it shone directly in my face.
‘Watanabe,’ he said, eerily calm, ‘your private cram school telephoned today. They said you haven’t attended any classes for the last two weeks.’
Terrified, I tried to blink away the vivid sunspots and spectral bulb filaments drifting across my retinas.
‘Now, Watanabe, tell me the name of this vile slut you have been seeing.’
I hung my head, cringing beneath the intensity of his gaze. Then, in a devastated whisper, I told him.
I rushed through the school gates the next day, pale and nervous after a night of sleepless dread. I was desperate to speak to Ai, to warn her of my father’s wrath. At morning recess, I picked out her unwieldy metal gait lumbering down the corridor.
‘Ai-chan,’ I called. ‘Ai-chan.’
She spun round, her red chemistry folder clutched to her chest.
I ran up to her and put my hand on her shoulder. ‘Why weren’t you in accelerated maths this morning?’ I asked.
She looked me up and down, her nondescript beauty untarnished by the spit-balls flecking her hair. How I longed to take her aside and lovingly pluck them out.
‘Why wasn’t I in accelerated maths?’ she repeated. ‘Because I was in the principal’s office denying the charges of sexual harassment your father has lodged against me on your behalf. Now, would you please remove your hand from my shoulder. I would hate this to be misconstrued.’
Then, her eyes flashing with fury, she turned on her heel and marched away.
I was sad for a long time afterwards. But I truly believe that what happened was for the best. From time to time I like to sail across the oceans of hyperspace and look in on Ai Inoue. After her first year of college Ai took her new poker-straight spine over to America, where she had won a scholarship to study botany at Stanford University. Though Ai Inoue will never know the fourth dimension, I have to concede that she has done quite well for herself. She even has a new American boyfriend, Chip Fontaine. I was jealous of him at first, but then I reminded myself of the stellar heights I have ascended to since my days of the third dimension. And the jealousy goes away.
The circle of petrol is complete. All that is needed now is a naked flame. Intuiting his imminent death, Yuji has crawled to the middle of the bar. Saline leaks through his tear ducts. Perhaps I should allow him five minutes to marinate in his misery before the roasting.
Why me? I belong at the top of the food chain, not here, bleeding to death on my hands and knees. Look at what I have become . . .
I really should get a move on. I have wasted enough time outside this hovel already. The sooner I get this over with, the sooner my reunion with Mary.
This pain is killing me. I must be dying. Please, God, I swear I will believe in you if you let me live. I will lead a holy and devout life, just please don’t let me die alone . . . I am so alone . . .
Existential horror seizes Yuji by the throat. The dark truth of the fundamental solitude of man has lurked in his mind since childhood, but Yuji has always hounded it out in his lonelier moments with hiphop, video games and Internet porn. And for the record, Yuji is not dying. He is a crude insult to the 15.2 citizens of Osaka actually gasping their last at this precise moment. I think it is my duty to teach this oversized baby what dying is really about.
My fingers close round the plastic lighter in my pocket. Then I hear it. A broken whimper, so thin and babyish that, were I not omniscient, I would mistake for a girl scout lost in the woods. Disgusted, I take my hyper-scalpel and make an incision into the fugitive’s head. As I suspected, his expulsion and persecution by his gang has left him bereft of sanity. It will take him months to recuperate.
I hurl the cigarette lighter high in the air. It lands on the other side of the railway tracks with a flimsy thud. To spark the bonfire now would be a gesture of goodwill, a coup de grâce. Why bother?
For the time being, humanity is safe.
15
MR SATO
You always used to joke that a rainstorm was the way the sky cleared its sinuses. Not the most charming of images, but when I left the house this morning and breathed in the crisp, new-born air it felt remarkably apt. Eight yellow hats bobbed by our front gate as a procession of neighbourhood children made their way to elementary school. They halted outside number 47 and waited for a little girl with pigtails to emerge from the front door. She skipped towards them and tagged onto the end of the group, which had begun to move off again. They each had identical yellow satchels, and reminded me of jaunty little ducklings waddling down to the pond.
When I saw that there was no one at the mailbox I hurried down the path post-haste. But I should have known my expeditiousness was in vain. As I unlatched the gate I heard Mrs Tanaka’s front door open and her signature call: ‘Cooeee, Mr Sato!’
I turned and watched Mrs Tanaka tra
verse the lawn as though in possession of seven-league boots. Her will to pry obviously lends her powers beyond those of an ordinary pensioner with an artificial hip.
‘Good morning, Mrs Tanaka,’ I said.
‘Mr Sato,’ Mrs Tanaka said, catching her breath.
‘That rainstorm cleared the skies nicely, didn’t it?’
‘Hmmm . . .’ Mrs Tanaka replied, impatient with frivolities such as the weather when there was busy-bodying to be done.
In her rush to catch me Mrs Tanaka had donned her pink quilted housecoat in a slapdash manner, resulting in buttons being secured in the wrong buttonholes. Her grey hair was still bound in curlers and encased within a gauze hairnet. She crossed her arms and eyed me in a shrewish manner. I was about to make my usual remark about the 7.45 express being unsympathetic to the plight of the tardy, when Mrs Tanaka said: ‘Well, Mr Sato, aren’t you the dark horse.’
‘Am I?’ I said, though I knew perfectly well why she would think this.
‘Yes, you are! Imagine my surprise when I stepped out last night, to put the rubbish out for collection, and saw a young girl on your doorstep.’ Mrs Tanaka was mildly affronted in tone, as though the girl had been put there on purpose, to provoke her.
I smiled politely. As you know, rubbish-collection day is not until Monday.
‘She gave me quite a fright!’ Mrs Tanaka continued, pressing her hand to her chest as if to quell the lingering shock. ‘Who is she? A friend of yours?’
‘No . . . A colleague from work.’
‘A colleague from work!’ Mrs Tanaka cried, widening her eyes. ‘I thought she was a schoolgirl who had lost her way.’
My smile came unstuck at the edges. ‘She did not stay for long,’ I fibbed. ‘She left very soon after I returned home. She just wanted to speak to me about some . . . work matters.’
‘I didn’t hear your front door slam,’ Mrs Tanaka said, not one to miss a trick.
‘I closed the front door very quietly so as not to disturb you.’
‘And you let her walk home alone, did you?’ Mrs Tanaka persisted.
‘No. I called a taxi for her . . .’
‘The only car I heard in our street last night was Mr Okamura’s, when he returned home from work at quarter past ten.’
An excruciating liar’s blush rose upon my cheeks. Mrs Tanaka is the eyes and ears of the neighbourhood, and near impossible to deceive. I felt like the boy who swore blind he hadn’t touched the red bean cake when his mouth and fingers were smeared with its paste.
‘How odd,’ I remarked weakly.
My burning cheeks must have been vanquishment enough for Mrs Tanaka. She pushed on to the next thing she had to say. ‘Very strange girl, your work colleague,’ she said.
‘Really?’
‘Yes,’ Mrs Tanaka continued. ‘She was sitting on your front stoop, in the dark, quiet as a church mouse. I went up to her and asked if she was waiting for you. I thought she might have got the wrong house. Well, the girl looked right through me, Mr Sato, as if I were thin air.’
‘She was a little unwell, I think,’ I said.
‘Hmmm . . .’ said Mrs Tanaka. ‘I thought perhaps she was slightly deaf, so I moved a few steps closer to her and asked her again, in a very loud, clear voice, if she was waiting for you. Then I told her that you often work late, and if she would prefer she could come and sit in my nice warm living room and wait for you there.’
‘What did she say?’ I asked.
‘Not a word,’ Mrs Tanaka said. ‘But this time she looked right at me, and there was no mistaking that she had heard precisely what I had said.’
‘Perhaps she is a little shy with strangers.’
‘Shy with strangers!’ Mrs Tanaka scoffed. ‘She was quite the opposite of shy, Mr Sato. She looked right at me and grinned. I thought to myself, Who does this saucy madam think she is, grinning at me like that? Then she began to laugh at me, as though I was an idiot or a circus clown. I asked her what on earth was the matter, and the girl laughed even harder. Well, after that I left her sitting in the cold and wet, laughing to herself like a loon. I refuse to waste my hospitality on such an ill-bred young lady.’
‘I can only apologize on my colleague’s behalf,’ I said, though I suspected that there wasn’t really any misdemeanour to atone for. Mrs Tanaka is prone to exaggeration and Mariko was probably too ill to be coherent. ‘I am sure there is a rational explanation behind her behaviour.’
Mrs Tanaka reacted to my apology as one would a personal slight. She pursed her lips and a frown commandeered her brow into a barricade of wrinkles. She gazed up at our bedroom window as if Mariko’s mischievous face might peep out from the curtains, in mockery of her.
‘You have left your curtains closed today,’ Mrs Tanaka said.
I open those curtains every morning without fail. What further proof does Mrs Tanaka need that the room is occupied?
‘How forgetful I am,’ I said, unconvincingly.
‘Well, Mr Sato,’ Mrs Tanaka huffed, ‘I would hate to make you late for your train.’
This was her sure-fire way of letting me know how cross she was. Most mornings she will natter merrily on, utterly indifferent to my having a train to catch. Now she bade me good day and shuffled indignantly back to her house. This made me quite sad. Even though I am entitled to my privacy, I could not help but feel I had let Mrs Tanaka down.
I spent last night on the futon in the spare room, drifting at the cusp of sleep. Ten times an hour I jerked awake, at the gurgling of pipes, the caterwauling of amorous cats, at every creak and sigh our house made as it settled on its plot of land. I stared into the dark, stirring the shadows until the bookcase and cello took on new and sinister forms. Unaccustomed now to another living, breathing presence in the house, I listened as Mariko tossed and turned in her sleep, grief rampaging through her dreams. I did not know what to do. I spent the night on stand-by, waiting for her distress to break the surface, as she lay a room away, restless as a ticking bomb.
My briefcase fell upon the wet lawn when I saw her. I ran over, my heart thumping in fright. ‘Mariko,’ I called. She was as unresponsive as a pile of wet leaves. I dropped to my knees and shook her by the shoulder. ‘Mariko.’
There was a limp lifelessness about her that terrified me. For one macabre moment I thought she was dead, and our doorstep a mortuary slab. She was on her side, her knees drawn up to her chest, her hands over her face, as though she had curled up as tight as could be to protect herself from an invisible predator. I took her wrist and my heart plummeted at her inertness of pulse. I pushed the hair from her face. A few strands remained stuck to her forehead, which was damp with a feverish sheen. Seeing that her lips were parted, I put my hand in front of her mouth to check she was breathing. I shook her again. ‘Mariko!’
One hand securing her head, the other her shoulders, I heaved Mariko upright. She remained limp and insensible, her head rolling back to expose her swan-like neck, a damsel fainting in the arms of a vampire.
‘Mariko. Now, listen here. I am going to phone for an ambulance. I have got to get you to hospital.’
From between the parting in her lips came a murmur of resistance.
‘Mariko, wake up. Try to sit up properly. I am going to phone for an ambulance for you.’
I lifted her head upright. Her eyes opened a fraction and she looked at me from beneath the fronds of her lashes.
‘No,’ she demurred, in an empty husk of a whisper.
‘Mariko, I am going to leave you here for a minute while I quickly go inside and phone them.’
Her eyes opened wider. I felt some weight leave my arms as she strained to support herself.
‘No, please.’
‘Mariko, you need to go to hospital.’
‘No! I have to go . . .’ Fear had jerked her into panicky sentience. Her eyes darted all over the place.
‘You are very ill. Now, I am going to help you inside,’ I said. ‘Can you stand up?’
Mariko nodded.
&nb
sp; I unlocked the front door and then, clasping her by the upper arms, lifted her to her feet. Taking a deep breath, I scooped her up into my arms. She was even lighter than I had anticipated, and my lower back withstood the journey to the living room without a stitch of lumbago. Panic made me clumsy, though. Twice Mariko winced in pain as her crown knocked the door frame. Having taken care to enter the living room sideways, I deposited Mariko on the sofa. The plastic dust-cover crackled slightly as I moved her so her head was elevated by the armrest.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘That’s quite all right,’ I said.
I turned on the light and had a good look at her. She wore a peach cardigan with pearl buttons and a pleated skirt with grass stains on it. Her cheeks blazed against a candescent pallor that had settled upon the contours of her face like snow. Her eyelids fluttered shut again, and I heard her breathing, light and irregular. I went and pulled the heavy red curtains to, wary of neighbourhood spies.
‘Mariko,’ I said, ‘do you want me to take you to hospital?’
Without opening her eyes, Mariko shook her head.
I paced the stretch of carpet in front of the mantelpiece. ‘Mariko,’ I said, ‘you look very ill. Perhaps I should call my doctor. It would be foolhardy to do otherwise.’
‘I just want to sleep,’ Mariko said, her voice so insubstantial it was almost drowned out by the ticking of the mantelpiece clock.
‘But you could be seriously ill.’
‘I just need to sleep it off.’
‘Sleep what off? Have you taken any medication or drugs?’
