Nan-Core

by Mahokaru Numata

  “So the one who was killed was …”

  “Misako.”

  The characters of the name written in faded ink on the threadbare sheet of Japanese paper floated up in my mind’s eye—Misako. The lock of hair had belonged to my real mother, to the real Misako. So that was it.

  The fog that had shrouded my thoughts was gradually lifting. After he told me, it felt like that had been the only possible answer. If I had gone one step further I would have realized the truth. Why hadn’t I?

  The thought came to me suddenly that my younger brother might have worked it out already. If he’d compared what he already knew with the information in the old register, it was possible he’d found his way to the same conclusion. And didn’t that explain why he’d decided to stay in Tokyo, and why he hadn’t been in touch since coming back? Maybe because he didn’t want to talk about it he was actively avoiding me.

  At some point Dad had opened his eyes, which were fixed on the ceiling again.

  “Why did you have to kill her? Was it because she tried to kill me?”

  Dad shook his head very slightly, almost like a denial, but he didn’t answer. I gave up on the questions and silently waited. When Dad began to speak at last, his lips trembled, as though he had to force each word out.

  13

  The three of us, Misako, myself, and you, still a young child, were staying at her parents’ house in Maebashi when it happened.

  It was the middle of the night and I suddenly woke for some reason. The futon next to mine was empty. I wondered if Misako had taken you to the bathroom, but the sheets were cold to the touch. On top of which, there was an indistinct breeze in the air. I instinctively checked the wristwatch next to my pillow. It was nearly two in the morning.

  When I got up to check I saw that the sliding screen leading to the corridor was open, as was the glass door facing the garden. The door had been unlocked and left several inches ajar. I tried calling Misako’s name but there was no reply. It was a mild night in early July, and the garden was still and aglow with pale moonlight.

  I could sense that something terrible had happened. I shoved my feet into the wooden garden clogs and quickly searched the grounds, checking out beyond the fence. Then I went back to the house to look through the other rooms. It was so late that the trains were no longer running and I didn’t imagine Misako had taken you back to the apartment without me, but I called anyway for the sake of trying. After that, I woke Misako’s parents.

  My mother-in-law was distraught, insisting we call the police. I did my best to calm her down. I thought it would be faster if we searched ourselves, as I doubted the police would mount a proper search, not for a wife and child who happened to have left the house in the middle of the night. And truth be told, I was also concerned about those detectives who had come to question her. I was afraid that if she caused any trouble they might start treating her as a suspect.

  I called Misako’s younger sister Emiko instead, knowing she lived nearby. She had a car she could use. I gave her a quick summary of what had happened, apologizing for the late hour, and asked if she could go to our apartment, just in case. Misako hadn’t answered when I tried calling, but there was still a slight chance that she had gone back there. Besides, if the worst happened and she got into some kind of accident, the apartment would be the first place anyone would call.

  Emiko agreed without hesitation. She needed to come over and pick up a spare key, but it was late so she could still reach the Tokyo apartment in a little over an hour if she hurried.

  My father-in-law and I split up in our search, while my mother-in-law stayed in the house. With an unspoken understanding, we headed towards the river, not the train station. You probably don’t remember, but there was a branch of the Toné River just north of the house, dividing the residential area from a stretch of farmland. When we went on walks we usually went as far as the riverbank.

  We continued our search upstream, my father-in-law on the south bank, while I crossed a bridge to look on the north side, checking the undergrowth and bushes and sometimes calling your names. I could hear the sound of the water burbling as the moonlight glinted and shattered on the river’s surface. The leaves on the trees and ground shone as though they were coated in a film of mercury, and I had a clear view of my father-in-law jogging up and down the far bank. Despite this, I felt somehow that I wasn’t seeing what I really needed to see, and it made me so anxious I felt like I was about to choke.

  Time slipped away. After a while the concrete dike gave way to weeds which grew up from the side of the path, and it became harder to see to the bottom of the riverbank, but easier, from where I was, to see the riverbed on the opposite side, where my father-in-law was.

  We followed a wide curve in the river and that was when I caught sight of a small figure standing a ways off on the opposite bank. A little boy in his pajamas, looking like he was about to step into the river at any moment.

  “Over there!” I yelled towards my father-in-law, pointing from across the river. I broke into a run and saw him do the same out of the corner of my eye.

  “Ryosuke!”

  “It’s dangerous! Stay out of the river!”

  We were both calling out to you but I couldn’t tell whether you could hear us. You were already ankle-deep in the water, looking like you were trying to cross the river.

  “Ryosuke, don’t move! Wait right there, I’m almost there!”

  You looked over briefly but didn’t show any signs of giving up. You took another step and in that instant you appeared to slip in an unexpected deep section and to be pulled into the water, re-surfacing quickly as you began to be carried downstream. I scrambled down the incline of the bank. Then I heard a splash as someone else jumped into the river farther upstream on my side. I was sure it was Misako. I assumed you’d been trying to reach her on the other side.

  I kicked off my shoes and jumped into the water and immediately sank in up to my shoulders. The current was faster than I’d expected and I was rapidly swept further in, reaching a point where it was too deep to stand. We were on a bend in the river, and the bed near my side was deep where it had been eroded.

  I struggled to swim against the current, but it was impossible to progress upstream. I craned my neck and looked around, doing what I could to avoid being swept downstream.

  I saw Misako floating towards me. She had you in one arm, the other arm thrashing so as not to sink. I reached out to grab her but there was no way I could reach her. My hand barely grazed her as she passed by in a flash. I followed after her, summoning all the strength I had left. I was single-minded in my focus. Each time I tried to shout I swallowed water. Each time I thought my fingers touched her body, the distance between us would open up again.

  The current weakened once we were clear of the bend. Misako had started to drift as though she’d given up, constantly dipping under the surface of the water, pulling you under as well. I finally caught up just as she was about to go under again, and managed to catch her from behind. Her eyes—your eyes too, you were still in her embrace—were wearily closed, and neither of you seemed to be breathing. My father-in-law was shouting something from the edge of the river. I struggled to pull you both in his direction, and eventually I managed to secure a foothold on the riverbed.

  I lay the two of you onto the grassy bank and my father-in-law and I began emergency resuscitation. You’d only been in the water for something like three minutes, so I was sure you’d be okay. And thankfully you were quick to cough up the water and start breathing again. We needed to get you both into an ambulance as soon as we could, so my father-in-law decided to carry you and run to the nearest house to wake up the residents and ask to borrow a towel and use their phone. We didn’t have mobiles in those days.

  I stayed behind and tried to help Misako by continuing artificial respiration. She still had a pulse and was breathing, if weakly and in spasms, but she wasn’t regaining consciousness. Her face was deathly pale. I wanted to warm her up but I
had no means to do so. After about five minutes her breathing began to stabilize, so I stopped forcing air into her mouth.

  It was then that I saw that her left wrist was sliced open. The cut was deep and ugly, like she’d made a number of incisions in the same place. Having been rinsed clean by the water the bleeding had stopped, revealing split flesh that looked inky black in the moonlight. I had no idea how much blood she might have lost before jumping into the river. I was terribly upset to see she that she had intended to die. I couldn’t figure it out. All I could think was that it had something to do with the murder those detectives had mentioned. She’d been acting oddly ever since the questioning, and the whole incident had bothered me more than it should have.

  But even so, I’d never thought she would do something like that.

  I seriously considered whether the too-bright moonlight was the culprit, whether it had somehow driven her mad.

  I realized she was looking at me, her eyes just slightly open. It was the same look she sometimes got when she was watching me—just observing. She was pale and expressionless and tears were streaming down her face, her eyes the only part of her that seemed alive. I knew then that she really had killed someone. But as she watched me like that after having failed to take her own life, I felt paralyzed, unable to speak a word. And even though my mind was still reeling, I knew one thing for sure. The sole reason she wanted to die was that she couldn’t bear the thought of losing me.

  Inexcusable, isn’t it.

  I still think so. If she’d tried to kill herself out of guilt for what she’d done, that would have been somewhat more justifiable. But that wasn’t the sort of woman she was. It simply couldn’t be helped. She’d always been strangely naive, or rather simple-minded, and she couldn’t really grasp ideas like temperance or moderation. She was ill-formed that way, yet for some reason I couldn’t help loving her.

  As she continued to watch me I stared back, feeling like I might be sucked into her eyes, and suddenly I wanted to help her to die. I was seized with an odd sense of obligation to help her die, if this woman for whom living was so difficult yearned for me so. I would only have had to press down on her nose and mouth for a while. It would have been easy. I could tell my father-in-law that she’d drowned, that she hadn’t started breathing again, and that would be it. I knew it would make her happy …

  I didn’t do it, of course. I massaged her cold body in silence, continuing until the paramedics arrived with a stretcher. I didn’t say a word the entire time.

  That was all that happened that night. You were both held at the hospital but in stable condition. I called our apartment from the hospital and told Emiko everything that had happened. It came as such a huge shock that she couldn’t summon the strength to drive home, and she told me she’d stay the night. In truth, she had already started reading Misako’s notebooks. Later on she told me she had found them in a stack on the table, placed there like a will. In light of the contents, she had decided not to say anything about them until the next day at the earliest, when things would be a little calmer.

  Everything was frantic for the next few days. Just as I’d feared, the hospital got in touch with the police. They tried to interview Misako, but she was no longer speaking. The doctor said it was probably stress-induced retrogressive mutism, not her just being willfully silent. My father-in-law and I told them what we had seen, as well as our supposition that Misako had gotten out of bed and that her son had wandered out after her, still half-asleep.

  So listen carefully: Your mother had wanted to die alone. That much was clear. I know what she wrote in the notebooks, but even under all that stress, when she was wandering the borderline between sanity and madness, she didn’t hesitate to choose to end her own life. She was never capable of killing you. She doted on you. It was almost painful to see how much she loved you.

  The police told us to look after each other, but that was the end of their involvement. The detectives from earlier never showed up, they probably didn’t even hear about it. You were discharged after a couple of days, but not Misako. It was a general hospital with a psychiatric department and the doctors wanted to keep her under supervision, so it took longer for them to release her.

  Meanwhile, even though you’d been discharged, your condition started to deteriorate again. I took you in for a check-up after an extended fever had left you worn out, and was told you had pneumonia. Something nasty had found its way into your lungs from the river water. It apparently happens sometimes to people that have nearly drowned. The doctor said there was a chance of dangerous sequelae in such cases and gave me a letter of introduction so you could be admitted to a hospital in Tokyo that had a specialist on staff.

  I couldn’t take much time off work and was exhausted from having to shuttle between the office, your hospital, and Misako’s hospital in Maebashi. I briefly spoke with my in-laws when we met at either of the hospitals or when we needed to talk on the phone, but I didn’t have the time to sit down and discuss things properly. It was on a Sunday two days before Misako was due to be discharged when I finally managed to make time to visit the house in Maebashi. It was a hot and humid night, with thunder rolling in the air. Emiko was there, too, and that was where I was first shown the notebooks.

  “Just read them,” she said.

  I cooped myself up in another room and went through them all in order.

  I couldn’t stop shaking. It was like the words on the page were twining themselves all around me. My head swam and I couldn’t think. When I returned to the living room everyone had their eyes pinned to the ground—Misako’s mother, her father, Emiko—and none of them dared to glance at me. I got the impression that they hadn’t said anything or even moved for the entire two hours I’d spent reading the notebooks, as if they had hunkered down and turned into stone statues.

  When Emiko finally opened her mouth to speak, the voice that emerged was a cracked falsetto, like she had to force it through a throat that was pinched tight.

  “We can’t let her stay with the child,” she said.

  Her parents remained utterly silent. I think they were all starting to come to that particular conclusion. They were just too afraid to come to terms with it, all three silently pondering their own convictions. Like I said to you just now, I don’t believe, based on what I saw, that Misako actually tried to put you in harm’s way. I can see that quite clearly now, but I was beside myself at the time, having just read the notebooks, and I fell under the illusion that she had actually tried to carry out what she’d written. I thought that she’d failed once but might one day try again, and actually succeed. Then there was the fact that she’d killed so many other people, and, more than anything, the truth of what happened in the park … I couldn’t accept any of it.

  “For a while, we weren’t sure if we should let you read them. If it might be better for us to handle this by ourselves.” My father-in-law was talking to me, but he still wouldn’t look my way. “But that just wasn’t possible. There is your son to think about. Whatever we end up doing, we need your help.”

  “What do you mean, ‘whatever we end up doing’?” I retorted automatically, my head still numb.

  “Under normal circumstances, we would try to get her to turn herself in. Don’t think we didn’t consider that.”

  My mother-in-law broke into tears. “But we can’t, not that. How many times have I told you? She really will go mad if we do that.”

  Do you remember Misako mentioning in her notebooks her fear of being shut up in a confined space? She couldn’t even ride elevators, you know. Maybe it was something like claustrophobia. She hated walking underground or taking the subway. It would have been the cruelest torture for her, being locked up for any prolonged amount of time. Emiko, her parents—they knew that all too well.

  “If only she’d drowned, been carried away. Then we wouldn’t have to …” There was a clap of thunder just as Emiko spoke, and we suddenly lost power. We sat for a while in the dark, unable to see each other’
s expressions, no one getting up to fetch a flashlight. “… We wouldn’t have all had to get involved in this freakish situation. If she’d just died I wouldn’t have had to tell you any of this, not you, not Mom, not Dad … I could have gotten rid of the damn notebooks without any of you knowing. She’s a killer. She’s not my sister anymore, not family, not anything.”

  Under the cover of darkness I couldn’t see the expression on Emiko’s face as she said all of this, but the more she spoke the more her voice began to sound bold and reckless.

  It marked the beginning of what became a bizarre family discussion.

  We all poured out our innermost thoughts, provoked by the darkness. It was hard to tell who we were talking to, or if we were all just talking to ourselves.

  … how to make her take responsibility … we can’t just do nothing … it’s unforgivable … she’d just get the death penalty anyway … the poor girl … shouldn’t we at least be the ones to do it … even just to see it through … we’re the ones left … all those people Misako killed … we’ll forever carry the burden of her crimes …

  Our faces resembled white, expressionless masks floating in the dark. Even there I felt like my drowsiness might get the better of me as I hadn’t slept properly for ages. I wanted to nod off, to not have to think or feel anything, to simply fade away. I recalled, as if it had all been a dream, all the times we had gathered around the same table to drink under bright lights.

  I should have killed her when I’d helped her half-drowned body onto the bank. The thought wouldn’t go away. She’d wanted it, her eyes had begged me to do it.

  “Let’s do it. It’s the only thing we can do, Dad. It’s for her own good.”

  I remember Emiko saying that.