by Ryu Murakami
“Not seen him? OK, sorry to bother you,” said D, as if ready to hang up.
“Wait!” said Kiku. “What’s happened to Hashi?”
“Don’t you read the papers?” D said, and the line went dead.
When he had replaced the receiver, Kiku picked up the newspaper and started from the front page, looking for Hashi’s name. As he turned the pages, his sense of foreboding grew into a great, suffocating cloud. He reached the columns listing upcoming radio and television programs, then jumped up from his seat: beneath a picture of Hashi was a caption describing him as a singer left in a coin locker who was about to meet his mother for the first time in seventeen years.
As he hurried around the apartment getting ready to go out, Anemone stopped him, but before she could speak, he put his hand over her mouth.
“I’ll be back, I promise. Just don’t open my present while I’m gone,” he said, ripping a steaming drumstick from the turkey on the table and stuffing it in his mouth as he headed for the door.
“Kiku!” Anemone called, but he was already gone.
The elevator door opened and he crossed the lobby at a jog, then broke into a run when he reached the street. He gnawed at the turkey as he went. Just wait for me, Hashi, he repeated to himself; I’ll help you. He ran into Yoyogi Park, straight to one particular bench in the stadium, and began to dig. In a few minutes he had extracted a package tied with heavy wax paper; inside were four shotguns and a supply of cartridges. A moment later, the guns were loaded and Kiku ran off into the night.
A faint rush of wings over the water, ducks probably, and a cry carried off by the wind. Hashi’s breath was white as he crossed the park for a second time. The bodies of two lovers kissing on a bench made a rustling sound. A cigarette dangled from the man’s hand; her hair had a scorched, dry look. Another rustling sound, their lips still stuck together, and the cigarette went out. It had begun to snow, a light, big-flaked snow so fluffy it hardly seemed to reach the ground, sticking instead to the trees, the lovers, the streetlights, the birds’ wings. A young girl came running up with a dog that started barking at him. The girl jerked the dog’s chain and apologized, then ran on. As she passed, he thought he saw a faint smile on her lips, and he suddenly wanted to call to her, to stop her, to make contact. He wanted to ask her the question that was preying on his mind: if you met the mother who abandoned you, what would you say to her?
It was Neva who had told him, three days earlier.
“It’s a done deal, Hashi, and there’s nothing we can do about it. You’ve got to go through with it. Neither of us is strong enough to stop it. I tried to think of a way out; I knew how much it would hurt you—I swear I want it to hurt me just as much. But the way I see it, we only have two choices: one is for you to act your way through the whole thing; go through with it, meet this woman—who may or may not be your mother—but tell yourself that she means nothing to you, that you just happened to have borrowed her womb for a while. No matter what she does, you don’t get angry, you don’t cry, you just stare at her with a sad look on your face, and that’s that. It’s all over in thirty minutes, and everybody goes home and forgets about it. The audience forgets, you forget, and it’s history. The other choice is for you to go with your feelings, which could be more dangerous, but in a way it could be easier, too. You just do what comes naturally if it’s too hard to control your emotions. But I doubt you’ll feel anything anyway. I bet you when you meet this woman she’ll seem just like a stranger, like anybody else you were meeting for the first time, and it won’t be such a big deal.”
But Neva, thought Hashi, understood nothing, nothing at all. She just didn’t see how it was; she couldn’t understand what hell it had been imagining the sort of woman who might be his mother. The images were never pleasant, the face never smiled, marked for life with the horror of having thrown away a child. The women who lingered at the edges of Hashi’s mind were racked by remorse, doomed to blame themselves continually, eternally. They were crazy old beggars, ugly as sin and draped in stinking rags, their bodies too riddled with disease even for dogs to feed on. In Hashi’s imagination, these broken women were forever being knocked down, bloodied, tortured until they pissed their pants—over and over again, until he felt appeased.
Afterward, he was left with gooseflesh all over his body and a nasty taste in his mouth; and somehow, in the process, he always came to pity them, to feel like weeping for them. He wanted to make their minds whole again, make them ten years younger and not so wrinkled. He wanted to pick them up from the trash heap, comb their hair, bathe them, dress them, put their shoes back on, and set them toddling on their way. He wanted to take them to a hospital and have them cured of their boils, then erase the ugly scars they left. He wanted to dry their tears and send them off for a night on the town, with a nice man to keep them company. He wanted them to find a nice place to get undressed, to show off their freshly healed skin, a little flabby perhaps but clear and pink. He even wanted the man to stick his head between their thighs, to make them groan with pleasure. And then at last he would hear it: the women laughing. Unmistakably, laughing. And that was enough to set him off again—too much, as always, for him to stand. The next moment the women were on the road back to poverty, disease, insanity. No, one thing was quite clear: Neva just didn’t know what it was like.
Still, until yesterday Hashi had thought he would go through with the broadcast anyway, confident that he could keep control of himself, confident of his acting abilities. He had even been in training, convincing himself that the woman he was going to meet, no matter what she might turn out to be like, meant nothing to him, a total stranger. Running away before the broadcast had been the last thing on his mind. Then, this morning, he’d had his first look at Kimie Numata from a distance. D had taken him in his car, and they’d watched her out shopping for her dinner. She was a big woman, tall with a thick neck. Despite the cold, she wasn’t wearing any stockings, and the plastic shopping bag she carried was cheap-looking and dirty. She’d stopped at a grocer’s for a daikon radish and some pickles. While they were wrapping them, she picked up an orange, but reluctantly put it back on the shelf when she heard the price. She’s not exactly rich, Hashi noted.
Her hair, he could tell from the car, was dyed, and her hands were rough. She was wearing a little makeup, but not much. They followed her to a fish store where she bought one dried cod. One—so she must live alone. No husband and no kids. She chatted a while with the fishmonger who must have told a joke because he laughed at it himself. The woman didn’t laugh. Hashi looked closely to make sure: she didn’t laugh. He was trembling, on the verge of tears. He had to grab the seat to keep from shouting, he was so happy. She hadn’t laughed. Finally, he couldn’t stand it any longer and tried to jump out of the car, but D caught him and clapped his hand over his mouth just in time to muffle the scream: “Mother!”
Inside, he was bursting: his mother, the woman who’d given birth to him, WASN’T CRAZY! She wasn’t a beggar, or sick, or ugly. She was just a normal woman! A little down on her luck, maybe, and living alone. She was probably lonely, and she didn’t feel much like laughing. But SHE WAS JUST A WOMAN!… When he finally got himself back under control, Hashi began to feel a little scared: what if this perfect-looking mother just rejected him again? He pictured himself running to embrace her, hoping his feelings for her would be returned, only to find that she was angry, that she wanted to push him away—the thought left him dazed.
That afternoon, he’d slipped out of a bathroom window to escape D’s guard and hurried to the woman’s apartment. She wasn’t home, and he had ended up in this park, crossing it in search of another house in the quiet neighborhood beyond it. By the time he found the gate and rang the bell, the snow made things hard to see. A young woman came out to ask what he wanted, and Hashi answered in a mechanical tone, as if a tiny robot were speaking from the back of his throat:
“My name is Hashio Kuwayama. I’m a singer. I’m seventeen years old. I was found seventeen years ago i
n a coin locker in Yokohama along with a bunch of bougainvillea. A year ago I saw the lady who lives here on TV and she said she once met a woman who left a baby and some bougainvillea in a locker. She was in prison at the time. I want to ask her about that woman; I think she’s my mother. I know it’s late, but I’m afraid it has to be now.”
The young woman frowned. Hashi noticed she was dressed like a nurse.
“I’m sorry. Madam is ill and can’t see anyone,” she said as if repeating a formula, and shut the door in Hashi’s face while he was still considering what to say next. As the bolt clicked into place, he could hear a voice saying, “Please go away.”
He didn’t. The snow was too wet to stick, but his hair was getting soaked as he stood watching the house. The lights were on, but there was no sign of life inside. He found himself counting the snowflakes as they appeared in the circle of light cast by the street-lamp. Unlike insects and moths that usually collect around a light, the snow whirled and drifted silently; in fact, it seemed to deaden all sound, muffling the faint cries of the birds in the park which had been audible until that moment. The sound of cars in the distance had also grown almost too faint to hear, muted by each flake that appeared in the light. Hashi leaned against the gate and relished the damp chill that was overtaking his body, making his teeth chatter and his limbs go numb. Then, just as he was growing too cold to think, he heard the small rattle of a shutter being opened behind him. As he turned, he could see the silhouette of an old woman standing in a patch of light and fresh snow.
“Not as cold as you might think,” said the shadow, ignoring the snow that had begun to collect on Hashi’s hair, as she opened the gate. Circling around to the back of the house through the garden, Hashi noticed a cage containing a pair of peacocks. The hen slept on a nest while her mate stood guard in the snow, his tail spread out full and flashing luminescent green in the light that escaped through the shutters. The snow as it fell was sucked into the brilliant fan of feathers.
“Please come in,” said the old writer, beckoning to Hashi.
When she’d finished massaging her customer, the woman went back to the waiting room for a cigarette—menthol-tipped, extra long. One of the other girls who was done for the night had changed back into street clothes and was nibbling at a piece of cake as she pointed out the window at the snow. The woman peeled off her shorts and rubbed her legs with a towel. As she was wriggling into her pantyhose, she caught them on a nail and started a run at the ankle. Shit. Then she remembered she’d worn her new boots today—more bad luck: she was buying them on time and she’d only made three payments so far. The guy at the shoe store had warned her not to wear them in the rain or snow (actually, he’d said snow was the worst, could shorten the life of the boots by half.) She stared glumly out the window; the streets were still clear, but a light coating had begun to collect on roofs here and there. Another girl looked up from the magazine she was reading.
“Anything interesting going on out there? A while back some guys in hats were messing around with some big lights. Looked like they were setting up for a movie. They still there?”
The woman shook her head. She’d decided what she’d do: as soon as she got home, she would wipe off the boots and rub them down with Vaseline. Once she’d had dinner she tended to lose steam and there was no telling when she’d get around to them, so she had to do them first thing after she got home. That much Kimie Numata had decided.
At various points around the building that contained the massage parlor, four discreetly placed video cameras and a dozen five-kilowatt arc lights were ready and waiting. In a vacant lot fifty meters away were assembled a mobile power unit, an equipment van, a video relay truck for live remotes, and cars belonging to assorted media types. D was in the relay truck staring at a blank monitor but taking frequent glances at his watch. At his side sat Neva, her face buried in her hands.
“I really think it would be better if he didn’t come at all,” she was saying without lifting her head. The phone in the van rang just then, and she pounced on it. “Did you find him?” she asked in a shrill voice, but her expression soon faded to disappointment and she handed the phone to D. He listened for a long while, nodding occasionally, then said, “No, nix that,” and hung up. The call had been from Handy back at the office; it seems a young man in a black suit carrying a gun had come around asking for D. When he was told he wasn’t there, he wanted to know where Hashi would be meeting his mother. Handy had tried to clam up, but the kid had shot a great big hole in the ceiling and frightened the secretaries. One helluva gun. In the end, he’d spilled the beans. Now he was wondering whether he should call the police, or what. It was this last suggestion D had nixed. Instead, he got on his walkie-talkie and told his people in key positions there that if a young man in a black suit showed up, he was to be brought straight to the relay truck.
“Tell him Hashi’s here with me, tell him anything, only no rough stuff. Just bring him to me.” D was looking at his watch again.
Next to Neva in the truck sat the program announcer running through the script one last time. “Ladies and gentlemen, the atmosphere is electric as our true-life drama is about to begin. Think back for a moment to the series of cruel incidents—children abandoned, infants slain—that preceded it. And now, amidst the swirling snow, one of those children, left for dead in a coin locker, and his mother, the woman who left him there, are going to meet for the first time in seventeen years. There is no denying this woman’s guilt, no forgiving her crime; but her son has overcome these hardships and grown up to become a famous singer. And it is our privilege here tonight to watch this incredible encounter. Words alone could never do justice to what we are about to see, but a young French philosopher once wrote: ‘A mother, and the sea: each compelled by rage to kill its child—or is it to give him life?’…”
Neva was remembering how Hashi had tossed and turned the night before, unable to get to sleep. Usually, when his nerves were shot and he was having trouble sleeping, he would ask her to suck him off. Last night, she’d suggested it herself to calm him down, but he had said he’d rather talk about something nice instead. She had gone into detail about the honeymoon they were planning for after the New Year: two weeks in Canada and Alaska. She told him how much he was going to like skiing, how easy it was to learn, and he had listened quietly, his face pressed against his pillow. After a while he interrupted her.
“Neva. Do you think it’s OK to love somebody you’ve never met? Or hate them for that matter?” Neva didn’t answer, but climbed into Hashi’s bed and took him in her arms. “I’m fine,” he had mumbled, “I’m fine. When I meet her, I’ll just say, ‘Long time no see, Mom,’ and leave it at that.”
She was sorry she hadn’t answered him last night, sorry she hadn’t said that a woman has a duty to raise the children she bears, and it would be the most natural thing in the world, the right thing, for him to hate this woman who had failed him. She wished she’d told him he had every right to hate someone he had never met. But she didn’t have time to blame herself more because at that moment the back door of the truck flew open and one of D’s assistants yelled, “Quick! She’s coming out!”
As they jumped from the van, the generator truck came to life with a loud hum and D started shouting:
“When she gets out in the street, surround her. If she tries to get away, use the lights and cameras to hem her in. Forget about keeping this to ourselves, just keep her there! And double the guards to make sure the guy in the black suit doesn’t get through—and that goes for all the other jerks hanging around. But if Hashi shows up, bring him to me; I don’t care what you have to do—tie him up, knock him out—just get him in front of those cameras!”
“Wait here,” Kiku ordered, getting out of the cab without paying. “I’m just going to get somebody and I’ll be right back.” He was gone before the driver had time to object. A few minutes later, while he was running along wondering how he was going to find Hashi in this maze of dark alleys, one of them
suddenly lit up like day.
“Gas, I expect, but where’s the bang?” murmured an old man pushing a cart as Kiku hurried by in that direction. At the head of the alley leading there, however, he ran straight into four men.
“Sorry, buddy, there’s filming going on back there. You’ll have to find another way through,” said one.
“Listen, asshole,” Kiku hissed, “I’m a friend of Hashi’s.”
“No one gets in. We’ve got orders.”
“But Hashi’s my friend!” Kiku yelled. The street was beginning to fill with bystanders. The hum of the generator shook the ground beneath the ring of snow-filled light. In the distance, raised voices could be heard.
“Take me to Mr. D, then! He knows me,” Kiku told the men blocking his path. Silence and shaking heads. The building illuminated by the arc lights was around a corner twenty meters down the alley and to the right. Kiku could see men turning the corner, most of them carrying cameras or other equipment. The crowd behind him pressing to get by the guards continued to grow. From where, they stood, they could hear a woman’s shrill voice. Someone shouted: “He’s here!” The crush increased. “Hashi!” a woman called. The generator groaned a steady counterpoint to the din. Kiku’s voice caught in his throat when he saw Hashi at the far end of the alley, disappearing into the swarm of photographers. He seemed to be smiling.
As he tried again to push his way through the line of guards, the nearest man caught him by the arm. A punch to the jaw sent the guy rolling into the snowy gutter, but when the others closed in from either side and shoved him back, Kiku calmly pulled one of the sawed-off shotguns from his belt and fired at the line of feet ahead of him. Wet snow showered two of the men, who fell to the ground clutching their legs, and Kiku’s “Get back” sent the last one running down the street. Kiku followed. At the corner, he came up against a wall of straining backs and clicking shutters on the other side of which were the lights and an announcer who could be heard starting his spiel. After trying once more to break through the line, he pulled the next gun from his belt. This time he fired over the heads of the photographers, and in an instant every face in the crowd had turned to look at him. Leveling the gun, he marched slowly forward as the wall of people parted.
