I Hear Them Cry

by Shiho Kishimoto

  “Where’s Mother-in-Law?”

  “She put on her makeup and left a long while back.”

  “So she went to work, right?”

  “I don’t know. How about telling me what the two of you talked about?”

  It felt as though she was pressing me to make a deal—her story about the makeup for mine about last night.

  “She was talking to me about things that happened in her life, up to the point when Sophie committed suicide.”

  “Oh yes, Sophie. Well, if only she hadn’t aimed too high and desired to take up the position of a Tachibana daughter-in-law, she would have led a good life with her child. It would have been blissful in its own way, really.”

  “What are you saying? She killed herself because her dignity was trampled on. And on top of that, she lost Shigeki’s love.”

  “Oh my, is that so?” Ms. Sato managed to dodge my sudden counterattack.

  “Where would Mother-in-Law be besides some place for work? That’s all she has in her life these days, right?”

  “Your lunch is getting cold. You really should start eating soon,” she said, putting on airs before scuttling out of the room.

  My head was still throbbing, and I wanted more sleep, but Ms. Sato had piqued my curiosity.

  In the kitchen I found a meal of corn soup, toast, prosciutto salad, and a glass of cold lemonade. I drank the lemonade, chugging it down in one sip. My body felt awake at last.

  “Where did Mother-in-Law go?”

  “Madam Kanako is dating Mr. Kei Nakahara,” Ms. Sato answered seriously, like a television reporter with a scoop.

  “What? Really?”

  “Yes, their reunion took place five years ago in Roppongi in a pub called Soul. Madam Kanako was bubbling over with excitement when she told me that he had grown to become a ‘cool and classy man.’ She really blossomed after that. I can tell because I’m a woman after all, with a woman’s intuition.”

  Five years ago Kanako was fifty-five. Surely she could still pass as someone in her forties. She was beautiful and well preserved. But no matter how young she looked, she was sixty years old now—a time when you wave good-bye to middle age and say hello to the winter of your life. But I suppose Kanako didn’t see it that way, at least not in terms of her libido. I thought it seemed crazy to have a sexual awakening that late in life.

  “A typhoon was approaching, but President Taichi took out the boat anyway, and that’s when he went missing. While it’s never said aloud, no one in his or her right mind believes he’s alive. In other words, Madam Kanako is now the widow of a wealthy man, and you can bet that there are plenty of men out there approaching her.

  “I’ve told her a thousand times to be careful, but she has a passionate streak that’s rather unbecoming of her advanced years.” Ms. Sato seemed concerned. “Do drop a hint to Mr. Shigeki about all this before things get complicated. This matter isn’t for me to speak about.”

  “I’m in no position to offer any advice to Mother-in-Law. But I suppose it’s necessary for Shigeki to be informed. Naturally he knows about his real father, right?”

  “Of course he knows, but my hunch tells me that Mr. Shigeki remains in the dark about the details. Frankly I don’t think he could ever imagine his mother dating at her age.”

  Ms. Sato had shared her life with Kanako for fifty years, so her intuition may have been perfect. But that also explains her sympathy for the woman despite her actions. When Kanako stared off into the distance, her eyes looked like black holes radiating a sort of nihilistic emptiness, the kind you couldn’t fake.

  When I thought of what she had done to Shigeki, Sophie, and her grandson, I didn’t feel sorry for her at all. Whatever darkness might befall her, she had it coming.

  SOPHIE: ONE

  Summer was coming to a close, and Raiki would soon be returning to school. I decided to take home my oil painting, which was almost finished. I was dying to see Shigeki. I still held on to the vivid memory of my dream about my womb. Even more so, now, its meaning was obvious to me. It was Shigeki’s life, his endlessly wounded, tormented soul manifested. He needed a safe space where he could heal the scars.

  As I unlocked the front door, my heart began to beat faster. It was my home, but it still felt like I was entering a place I didn’t know. It was the home I’d fled after Shigeki slapped me. Jean had told me, “There’s an anger seething inside him.” He was right. His prediction had come true. But I was determined to stay and confront Shigeki’s rage. I wanted him back.

  The apartment was hot and stuffy. I threw open the windows. As I slowly looked around, I noticed the place was dusty and the kitchen sink was full of dirty dishes. Obviously, Shigeki had been using them, but to me they were testimony to the absence of a woman in this home. I had been suspicious, but this was a tacit reassurance.

  I set about cleaning, tidying up the bedroom, and doing the laundry. My nest was here, my nest of security and happiness. As the tension inside me unwound, I sprawled out on the sunlit sofa. I text-messaged Shigeki.

  Mayu: I’m back. Can’t wait to see you.

  Shigeki: I’ll try to come home as soon as possible.

  The Shigeki I was waiting for was no longer the rich, good-looking young entrepreneur. I was waiting for another Shigeki, one who wasn’t too good to be true, but who had been compelled to hide in the shadows. Taichi and Kanako had damaged him deeply. When he hit me, I should have seen the desperation, the rage he was struggling to contain. I had to accept him and everything that had shaped him. It was the only way, the only hope I had left of saving him from himself, from his own hell.

  I set the table and prepared a proper home-cooked meal. I felt as happy as a newlywed. The doorbell rang and my heart swelled with joy. I opened the door to find Shigeki standing there, holding a large bouquet of Casa Blanca lilies—a page right out of the handbook on how to be an ideal husband. I had expected to take him into my arms looking all tired and weary, but instead he made me even happier with this symbolic gesture, this thoughtfulness that said he had been thinking about me. I hastily went about arranging the lilies in a vase. As I basked in their exquisite aroma, Shigeki embraced me from behind and whispered into my ear, “It’s about time you came back.”

  That warm lump of flesh deep inside me began to slowly melt away, heating as it spread through my entire being, body and soul. I turned around, looked Shigeki in the eye, and said, “I will never abandon you. I will always be by your side. That’s what I have decided.”

  Shigeki hugged me so tightly that I couldn’t breathe. Apparently my words had pressed the right buttons, but I stopped analyzing. Shigeki and I—enveloped in the crystal-clear glory of our love—faded away as individuals and collapsed into each other to become one.

  He undressed me quickly. I undid his belt. His body moved brusquely into mine, and I welcomed it. He was like a madman rowing across the ocean, and each time an oar rose up, ripples attacked me until they gradually surged into swelling, giant waves, bending my body backward into the deep sea, thrusting and propelling me into a spin in the awesome depths.

  When I floated up as if to wildly shake off the misty sprays, I found my body on top of Shigeki’s. He was at my mercy now. I held his head against my breasts and pinned him beneath me, curled up like an embryo. My carnal center thrust against his, and my spine began to undulate with wild abandon. He gasped for air and turned me over. Then he buried his face in my neck and rasped,

  Mayu. Mayu. Mayu.

  That rhythm began to echo inside my mind again, telling me of Shigeki’s pain, of his sorrow, of his agony.

  Help. Help. Somebody help.

  The scabs on his soul had come off, making him bleed from ancient scars. He was helpless. He didn’t know what to do. I was glad to hear him admit that.

  That night, as we made love many more times, the way he behaved with me was reassuring—it told me that Shigeki was firmly in my grasp, that he had been taken captive and conquered.

  My body was feeling languid
and heavy with sleep, but then a question arose out of the shadows of my mind. Was I the only one who could hear him cry?

  I had tons of questions I wanted to ask Shigeki, especially about Sophie’s suicide, but I knew it might disrupt our happiness. I probably should have carried on pretending as if nothing had happened and let time pass, as Kanako had suggested.

  “What did you think about Sophie?”

  Shigeki had dozed off, with his arm shielding his eyes. I saw small signs of distress on his sleeping face, even after our hours of physical and emotional release. His regular breathing halted for an instant and—after a long, drawn-out exhalation—he gave me a sideways glance.

  “Don’t worry about that. Right now you’re all I have.”

  He pulled me to him, and I peered into his eyes.

  “Did you love her?”

  “Look, most women climb all over me, make more and more demands, and start ordering me around just after a few dates. When they become like that I feel trapped, and the next thing I know I just want to kick them away, out of mind, out of sight. Sophie was different. She was like a quiet cat, cautious yet gentle and submissive. She’d be deeply thankful for just a pittance of money. I’d feel at ease and often found myself spontaneously going to see her. I wasn’t thinking about marriage, though. But then she got pregnant, and I thought it would be nice if Sophie could be around as the mother.”

  He had loved her after all. That paper crane he’d made was a token of his affection for both Raiki and Sophie.

  “When I said I was going to marry her, my mother was furious. I hadn’t seen her look that way in a long while,” Shigeki said rather delightfully, reminiscing. He picked up a cigarette from the side table, lit it, inhaled deeply, and exhaled. “She backed Sophie into a corner.”

  His tone had remained calm, but I could feel deep undercurrents of fury. All of Kanako’s wrongs against him rose up, and he began to go back even further in time, to exorcise his demons. As a child, Shigeki heard noises through the walls that scared him, the sounds of flesh against flesh. There was something wet about those sounds, as if someone was being whipped with a wet rag. Before long he would hear Kanako breathing fast and groaning. When Shigeki opened the sliding door a tiny crack to take a peek, he saw his mother on all fours, naked, with Taichi’s naked, hairy body moving rhythmically against her from behind.

  Shigeki became afraid of the night. He thought his mother was being tortured because of him. He could hear Kanako’s muffled voice reverberating through the darkness of the night. After a while, it grew more intense and turned into a scream. The sounds of his mother’s agony began to live inside Shigeki’s head. But when he came to understand that it was all just a natural part of being an adult, he developed a hatred and repulsion for women. In his eyes, all women were prostitutes.

  When he made love to a woman and heard the moaning and groaning, an uncontrollable anger would well up inside him, and this anger, like an instinct kicking in, kept him from knowing what it meant to love another person.

  “For me,” Shigeki explained, “there is little difference between my mother and Sophie. Women are all the same.”

  He stubbed out his cigarette as if to screw it into the ashtray. He fell on me again, whispering, “But not you. You are unlike anyone else I have ever known.”

  The magical ambience of France, where I’d met Shigeki for the first time, came back to life again. Back when he wished everyone could simply live in the nude.

  SOPHIE: TWO

  I was admiring myself in the mirror, bubbling over with pride now that I had successfully reeled in Shigeki and Raiki. They both needed me. In my mind I saw myself as Jean’s equal. I was that confident. Shigeki was my nourishment, my sustenance, my raison d’être. If he slapped me now, it wouldn’t be the end of the world—because I was all the wiser, all the more capable of isolating and containing the trauma of his childhood.

  I wanted the three of us living together soon. I started doubting whether there really was any need to wait until Raiki’s school year ended. I had visions of converting one of the front rooms, the room I’d used as a studio space, into Raiki’s bedroom.

  When I opened the door, the punchy smell of paints, thinners, and solvents hit me. Shigeki obviously hadn’t been in here since I’d left. I opened up the window to air it out.

  In one of the corners, some houseplants stood happily. I was about to return to the living room, but I did a double take, staring intently at the plants.

  Somebody had been watering them!

  For two whole summer months, I had not entered this room. The plants should have shriveled up by now. An alarm bell went off in my mind, warning me that someone other than Shigeki had been here. The plants were a message for my eyes only, a message only I could understand. I envisioned Reika Terashima sneering while sweetly watering the plants. I could feel my face—which had been shining with great delight only a little while ago—begin to warp with extreme rage.

  I couldn’t fathom that she had invaded our home. I couldn’t forgive Shigeki for letting her in during my absence.

  Earlier I’d been filled with the certainty of my love for Shigeki, but now my feelings U-turned and transformed into hatred and jealousy. I wanted to kill Shigeki. I loved him, but I hated him just as much. Why did he need her when he had me?

  (I will make him choose.)

  Surrendering to intense fury, I stormed into the kitchen, poured a glass of water and drank it in one gulp.

  (Will he choose me?)

  Staring at the empty glass, the immense weight of loneliness pressed down on me, making me feel all too clearly the anguish suffered by Simone and Kanako. I wondered if I could go on living if I lost Shigeki.

  I imagined a rope wrapped around my hand, which dropped down into a dark well. I tugged at it with all my might and when I peered down, I saw Raiki, desperately holding on to the end of the rope. I pulled on the rope with both hands and managed to bring him up closer to me. As he got closer to me, his eyes showed how much he believed in me. I felt the rope tighten. My hand felt like it would snap off.

  (Just let go and free yourself.)

  Snapping out of the daydream, I hurled the glass into the sink, where it shattered into pieces.

  (I’m going to force that bitch out of my life.)

  I realized that I had unconsciously been referring to Reika as “that bitch.” It was as venomous as Shigeki referring to Taichi as “that bastard.”

  I changed into jeans and put on the belt I’d used to whip Anna. I am Joan of Arc, I encouraged myself for the third time. The first time was for Anna, the second time for Raiki, and this time it was for me—for my fight, my crusade.

  I called Terashima Industries and asked to speak to Reika. She was out of the office, visiting Crocus, one of the company’s bars in Ginza. I headed there immediately.

  Located several blocks behind Harumi Avenue, Crocus faced the street with a massive, stately wooden door. It was 2:00 p.m., and the neighborhood was quiet in the oppressive summer heat.

  As I opened the door, a rush of cool air hit me. I inspected the dim and surprisingly spacious room: Reika sat on a stool at the bar. Her hair was shorter than the last time I saw her, and she was wearing a purple dress; the makeup around her eyes and on her lips was exotically dark. Glass in hand, she was staring at me with the same piercing look she had thrown my way at the wedding reception.

  She looked like a femme fatale hiding in this valley of skyscrapers, privately nursing an unspoken sadness, looking much older than I’d imagined. Her skin was faded like old paper that had spent years in the sun.

  “I’m Tachibana,” I said, my voice raspy with tension.

  “Terashima. Sit down, won’t you?” she said, offering me a seat. She got up from her perch at the bar and showed me to a table. Her calm, low voice veiled all emotion. Was her composure just a bold front? A sign of strength? A tacit threat that could turn violent at the drop of a hat? I couldn’t read her mind, and the situation was overwhelm
ing me. I half-expected her to burst out and say, “So what if you’re the wife. I’ve been with Shigeki for much longer than you.”

  In the half light of the bar she was skinny and shabby, but her cleavage was ample, rising and falling with her every breath. I wondered if Shigeki had buried his head there.

  “What would you like to drink?” she asked.

  “Ginger ale would be fine.”

  She gestured to the young man behind the bar, who promptly placed a bottle and an ice-filled glass in front of me.

  “You can go now,” she said to the barkeep.

  “As you wish. I hope you have a pleasant afternoon,” he said, slightly bowing his head at me before disappearing into the back.

  Reika looked at me and waited, tapping her glass of white wine. Her silence was intimidating.

  “Now look here,” I began, “I understand you watered the plants.”

  She said nothing, but her stone-cold silence was enough of an answer for me. I persisted with whatever false show of power I could muster. “I’m not here to particularly thank you or anything.”

  “He told me not to touch anything in the apartment,” she said. “But the plants in the back room, well, they’re living things, too, aren’t they? I was only being considerate, you know—demonstrating my goodwill, I should say.”

  It felt as though she was trying to fan the flames of jealousy in me. I sensed, somewhere inside her, the nasty indignation of a scorned mistress.

  “I understand you’ve been seeing him for a long time. So why haven’t you married him?” I said.

  “I’m not cut out to be a mother,” she said before muttering with a little self-mockery, “and I wouldn’t want to be.”

  “You’re clearly not qualified to be a mother, especially not to Sophie’s child.”

  Her hostility and confidence in her position of power seemed to make her invincible to anything I said.

  “So you think you understand what Sophie’s life was like? Have you any idea of the emotional turmoil girls like her suffer while doing their job? Sophie was born into poverty. Compared to where we live, her birthplace was a garbage dump. To rise out of there she had to come to Japan to make money. But to do that she had to borrow whatever cash was available from her family and relatives, both near and distant. Just imagine the great expectations weighing her down. Her greatest obstacle, though, was Father Time, who waits for no one. Unless she married, she wouldn’t have been able to stay in Japan for long. I offer girls like her lucrative employment, you know. I’m doing them a service, a favor. Don’t you get that? You really have no right to condemn me, not when you’re so clueless.”