Her movements became increasingly frenzied. There was nothing he could do but make sure not to interfere with what she desired. They neared climax. He couldn’t hold back, and ejaculated, and in time with that she let out a short screech like some foreign bird, and her womb, as if waiting for that instant, greedily absorbed his semen. A muddied image occurred to him of himself, in the darkness, being devoured by a greedy beast.
After a while she stood up, as if pushing his body aside, and silently adjusted the hem of her dress, stuffed the stockings and panties that had fallen to the floor in her handbag, and hurried off to the bathroom, bag in hand. She didn’t come out for a long time. He was beginning to get worried that something had happened to her when she finally emerged. Her clothing and hair were neatly arranged now, her makeup redone. Her usual calm smile graced her lips.
She gave Menshiki a light peck on the lips, and told him she had to go, since she was already late. And she hurried out of the office, without looking back. He could still recall the click of her pumps as she left.
That was the last time he ever saw her. All contact ceased. He’d call her, and write, but never got a response. And two months later she got married. He heard about this from a mutual friend, after the fact. The friend found it odd that Menshiki was not invited to the wedding ceremony, and, in particular, that he had no idea she was getting married. He’d always thought that Menshiki and the woman were good friends (they’d always been very discreet about their relationship, and no one else had known they were lovers). Menshiki didn’t know the man she married. He had never even heard his name. She hadn’t told Menshiki she was planning to marry, nor even hinted at it. She just disappeared from his world without a word.
That violent embrace on the sofa at his office, Menshiki realized, must have been her final, farewell act of love. Afterward he went over those events, over and over in his mind. Even after a long time had passed, those memories remained amazingly distinct and clear. The creak of the sofa, her hair whirling around her, her hot breath in his ear—it all came back to him.
So did Menshiki regret losing her? Of course not. He wasn’t the type to have regrets. He knew very well he wasn’t suited to family life. No matter how much he loved someone, he still couldn’t share his life with them. He needed solitary time every day to concentrate, and he couldn’t stand it when someone’s presence threw off his concentration. If he lived with someone he knew he would end up detesting them. Whether it was his parents, a wife, or children. He feared that above all. He wasn’t afraid of loving someone. What he feared was growing to hate someone.
For all that, he had loved her very deeply. He’d never loved any other woman so deeply, and probably never would again. “Even now there’s a special spot inside me just for her,” Menshiki said. “A very real spot. You might even call it a shrine.”
A shrine? This struck me as an odd choice of words. But for him it was likely the right way of putting it.
* * *
—
Menshiki ended his story there. He’d told this private tale in great detail, yet I got little sense of it being sexual. It was more like he’d read aloud from a medical report. Or maybe it really was that sort of dispassionate experience for him.
“Seven months after the wedding she gave birth to a baby girl in a hospital in Tokyo,” Menshiki continued. “Thirteen years ago. I heard about this birth much later from someone.”
Menshiki stared down at his now empty coffee cup, as if nostalgic for some past age when it had been full of hot coffee.
“And that child might possibly be my own,” he said, seemingly forcing out the words. He looked at me, like he wanted to hear my opinion.
It took me a while to grasp what he was trying to say.
“Does the timeline fit?”
“It does. It coincides perfectly. The child was born nine months after she came to my office. She must have picked the day she was most fertile to come see me and—how should I put it?—deliberately gathered my sperm. That’s my working hypothesis. From the beginning she wasn’t expecting to marry me, but had decided to have my child. I figured that’s what happened.”
“But you can’t confirm that,” I said.
“Of course. At this point it’s merely a hypothesis. But I do have a sort of basis to say this.”
“That was a pretty risky experiment for her, wasn’t it?” I pointed out. “If the blood types didn’t match it might come out that the father was someone else. Would she risk that?”
“My blood is type A. Most Japanese are A, and I think she is too. As long as they didn’t have some reason to run a full-blown DNA test, the chances are slim that the secret would come out. That much she could figure out.”
“But on the other hand, unless you ran an official DNA test you wouldn’t be able to determine if you’re the girl’s biological father or not. Right? Or else you ask her mother directly.”
Menshiki shook his head. “It’s no longer possible to ask the mother. She died seven years ago.”
“That’s terrible. She was still so young,” I said.
“She was walking in the woods and was stung by hornets and died. She was allergic to them. By the time they got her to the hospital she’d stopped breathing. Nobody knew she was so allergic to their stings. Maybe she didn’t even know herself. She left behind her husband and daughter. Her daughter is thirteen now.”
About the same age my little sister was when she died, I thought.
“And you have some sort of basis for conjecturing that this girl is your daughter. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Some time after she died I suddenly received a letter from the deceased,” Menshiki said in a quiet voice.
* * *
—
One day a large envelope, with a return receipt, arrived at his office from a law firm he’d never heard of. Inside was a typed two-page letter (with the letterhead of the law firm) and a light pink envelope. The letter from the law firm was signed by a lawyer. The lawyer’s letter read: Ms. **** entrusted me with this letter while she was still alive. Ms. **** left instructions with me to send this letter to you in case of her death. She added a note to the effect that the letter should be for your eyes only.
That was the gist of the lawyer’s letter. The circumstances leading to her death were described simply, in a businesslike manner. Menshiki was speechless, but finally pulled himself together and snipped open the second envelope. The letter inside was handwritten in blue ink, on four sheets of stationery. The handwriting was exquisite.
Dear Mr. Menshiki,
I don’t know what month or year it is now, but if you are reading this it means I am no longer among the living. I’m not sure why, but I’ve always had the feeling I’d depart this world at a relatively young age. Which is why I made full preparations like this for after my death. If all this ends up being wasted, of course nothing could be better—but when all is said and done since you are reading this letter it means that I’ve already passed away. The thought leaves me very, very sad.
The first thing I’d like to say in advance (maybe it’s something I really don’t need to say) is that my life has never been of much consequence. I’m well aware of that. So it seems fitting for someone like me to quietly exit the world without making a big deal of things, without any uncalled-for pronouncements. But there is one thing I need to tell you alone. My conscience is telling me that if I don’t, I may forever lose the chance to treat you fairly. So I’ve left this letter with a lawyer I know and trust with instructions to pass it on to you.
Suddenly leaving you like that, and marrying someone else, and not saying a word to you about it beforehand—I am deeply sorry about all of it. I can imagine how shocked and upset you must have been. But you’re always so calm, so maybe it didn’t shock you, or bother you. At any rate, that was the only path I could follow. I won’t get into details here, b
ut I do want you to understand that. I was left with hardly any other choice.
But one choice was left to me. A choice that was condensed in one event, in one act. Do you remember the last time I saw you? That evening in early fall when I suddenly came to your office, maybe I didn’t seem like it, but I was at my wit’s end then, completely driven into a corner. I no longer felt like I was myself anymore. But even in that confused state of mind, the act I did was utterly intentional. And I’ve never, ever regretted it. This was something profoundly important in my life. Something far surpassing my own existence.
I am hoping that you will understand my intentions, and ultimately forgive me. And I pray that none of this will cause you, personally, any harm. Since I know very well how much you dislike those kinds of things.
I wish you a long and happy life. And I hope that what a truly wonderful person you were will be passed along, in all its richness, for a long time to come.
****
Menshiki read the letter over so many times that he memorized it all (and he recited it to me without faltering). All sorts of emotions and suggestions played back and forth through the letter—light and dark, shadow and sunlight—creating a complex, hidden picture. Like a linguistics scholar researching an ancient language no one speaks anymore, he spent years considering the possibilities concealed in the letter’s contents. Extracting each word and phrasing, recombining them, intertwining them, shifting their order. And he arrived at one conclusion alone: that the baby girl she gave birth to seven months after she got married was, he was now certain, conceived in that office, on that leather sofa, with him.
* * *
—
“I asked a law office I knew to investigate the daughter she left behind,” Menshiki said. “Her husband was fifteen years older than she was, worked in real estate. Or, rather, he was the son of a local landowner and managed the land and properties he’d inherited from his father. He had some other real estate holdings, too, of course, but wasn’t that ambitious when it came to expanding the business. He had enough assets to live on comfortably without working. The daughter’s name was Mariye. The husband had not remarried after his wife’s accidental death seven years ago. The husband has an unmarried younger sister who lives with them and takes care of the household. Mariye is in her first year at a local public junior high.”
“And have you met this girl, Mariye?”
Menshiki was silent as he chose his words. “I’ve seen her from a distance many times. But never spoken with her.”
“And what did you think when you saw her?”
“Did she look like me? I couldn’t say. If I think there’s a resemblance then everything about her resembles me, but if I don’t think that way then I don’t see a resemblance at all.”
“Do you have a photo of her?”
Menshiki silently shook his head. “No, I don’t. I could get one easily enough, but that’s not what I was after. What good is carrying around a photo of her in my wallet going to do? What I’m after is—”
But nothing came after this. He was silent, the quiet buried in the lively buzz of the hordes of insects outside.
“But you told me earlier, Mr. Menshiki, that you were totally uninterested in blood relations.”
“True enough. I’ve never cared about lineage. In fact, I’ve lived my life trying to avoid that as much as I could. My feelings haven’t changed. But still, I find I can’t take my eyes off this girl, Mariye. I simply can’t stop thinking about her. There’s no reason for it, but still…”
I couldn’t find the right words to say.
Menshiki continued. “I’ve never had this experience before. I’ve always been very self-controlled, even proud of it. But sometimes now I find it painful to be alone.”
I went ahead and said what was on my mind. “Mr. Menshiki, this is just a hunch on my part, but it seems like there’s something you want me to do in regard to Mariye. Or am I overthinking things?”
After a pause Menshiki nodded. “I’m not sure how I should put this—”
* * *
—
I realized at that instant that the clamor of insects had completely stopped. I looked up at the clock on the wall. It was just past one forty. I held a finger up to my lips, and Menshiki stopped in midsentence. And the two of us listened carefully in the still of the night.
14
BUT SOMETHING THIS STRANGE IS A FIRST
Menshiki and I stopped talking, and sat still, listening carefully. The insects had stopped chirping, just like they had two days ago, and again yesterday. In the midst of that deep silence I could again make out the tinkling of the bell. It rang a few times, with uneven periods of silence in between before ringing once again. I looked over at Menshiki, seated across from me on the sofa. I could tell he was hearing the same sound. He was frowning. He lifted up his hands on his lap, his fingers moving slightly in time to the ringing of the bell. So this wasn’t an auditory hallucination.
After listening intently to the bell for two or three minutes, Menshiki slowly rose from the sofa.
“Let’s go where that sound’s coming from,” he said drily.
I picked up my flashlight. He went outside and retrieved a large flashlight from his Jaguar. We climbed the seven steps and walked into the woods. Though not as bright as two days before, the autumn moonlight clearly lit the path for us. We walked in back of the little shrine, pushing aside pampas grass as we went, and emerged in front of the stone mound. And again we perked up our ears. No doubt about it, the sound was coming from the cracks between the stones.
Menshiki slowly circled the mound, cautiously shining his flashlight into the cracks between the stones. But nothing was out of the ordinary, just a jumble of old, moss-covered stones. He looked over at me. In the moonlight his face resembled some mask from ancient times. Perhaps my face looked the same?
“When you heard the sound before, was it coming from here?” he whispered.
“The same place,” I said. “The exact same spot.”
“It sounds like someone underneath the stones is ringing a bell,” Menshiki said.
I nodded. I felt relieved to know I wasn’t crazy, but I had to admit that the unreality of the situation had now, through Menshiki, taken on a reality, creating a slight gap in the seam of the world.
“What should we do?” I asked Menshiki.
He shone his flashlight on where the sound was coming from, his lips tight as he considered the situation. In the still of the night I could almost hear the wheels turning in his mind.
“Someone might be seeking help,” Menshiki said quietly, as if to himself.
“But who could have possibly gotten under these heavy stones?”
Menshiki shook his head. He had no idea either.
“Anyway, let’s go back to the house,” he said. He lightly touched my shoulders from behind. “At least we’ve pinpointed the source of the sound. Let’s go home and talk it over.”
We cut through the woods and came out onto the empty space in front of the house. Menshiki opened the door of his Jaguar and returned the flashlight. In its place he took out a small paper bag. We went back inside the house.
* * *
—
“If you have any whiskey, could I have a glass?” Menshiki asked.
“Regular Scotch okay?”
“Of course. Straight, please. With a separate glass of water, no ice.”
I went into the kitchen and took a bottle of White Label from the shelf, poured some into two glasses, and took them and some mineral water out to the living room. We sat across from each other without speaking, and drank our straight whiskey. I went back to the kitchen to get the bottle of White Label and poured him a refill. He picked up the glass but didn’t drink any. In the silence of the middle of the night, the bell continued to ring out intermittently. A small sound, but wi
th a delicate weight one couldn’t fail to hear.
“I’ve seen a lot of strange things in my time, but something this strange is a first,” Menshiki said. “Pardon me for saying this, but when you first told me about this I only half believed you. It’s hard to believe something like this could actually happen.”
Something in that expression caught my attention. “What do you mean, could actually happen?”
Menshiki raised his head and looked me in the eyes.
“I read about this sort of thing in a book once,” he said.
“You mean hearing a bell from somewhere in the middle of the night?”
“No, what they heard was a gong, not a bell. The kind of gong they would ring along with a drum when searching for a lost child. In the old days it was a small Buddhist altar fitting that you would hit with a wooden bell hammer. You’d strike it rhythmically as you chanted sutras. In the story someone heard that kind of gong ringing out from underground in the middle of the night.”
“Was this a ghost story?”
“Closer to what’s called a tale of the mysterious. Have you ever read Ueda Akinari’s book Tales of the Spring Rain?” Menshiki asked.
I shook my head. “I read his Tales of Moonlight and Rain a long time ago. But I haven’t read that one.”
“Tales of the Spring Rain is a collection of stories Akinari wrote in his later years. Some forty years after he finished Tales of Moonlight and Rain. Compared with that book, which emphasized narrative, Tales of the Spring Rain was more an expression of Akinari’s philosophy as a man of letters. One strange story in the collection is titled ‘Fate over Two Generations.’ The main character experiences something like what you’re going through. He’s the son of a wealthy farmer. He enjoys studying, and one night he’s reading late when he hears a sound like a gong coming from underneath a rock in the corner of the garden. Thinking it odd, the next day he has people dig it up, and they find a large stone underneath. When they move that stone they find a kind of coffin with a stone lid. Inside that they discover a fleshless emaciated person, like a dried fish. With hair down to his knees. Only his hands are still moving, striking a gong with a wooden hammer. It was a Buddhist priest who long ago chose his own death in order to achieve enlightenment, and had himself buried alive in the coffin. This act was called zenjo. The mummified dead body was unearthed and enshrined in a temple. Another term for zenjo is nyujo, meaning a deep meditative practice. The man must have originally been quite a highly revered priest. As he had hoped, his soul reached nirvana, and the soul-less physical body alone continued to live on. The main character’s family had lived on this plot of land for ten generations, and this burial must have taken place before that. In other words, several centuries before.”
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