by Kōji Suzuki
BHI, BDG
Put it all together: “bhibdg”. Ando didn’t have to go to a dictionary to see that there was no such word in any language. The next step was to break down the numerals into combinations of one- and two-digit numbers. Since there were only twenty-six letters in the alphabet, in terms of a simple substitution cipher this meant that he could, for the time being, rule out numbers larger than twenty-six, such as 78 or 81. He began writing down the possible combinations on the napkin.
17 R
8 I
1 B
3 D
6 G
Or:
1 B
7 H
8 I
13 N
6 G
Or:
17 R
8 I
13 N
6 G
Only one of the combinations produced an actual word: R-I-N-G.
Ring.
Ando thought it over, recalling what he knew about the English word. He was most familiar with its use as a noun to mean “circle”. But he also knew that it described the sound a bell or a telephone makes; it could be a verb meaning “to cause a bell or a telephone to sound”, and by extension, could mean calling someone on the phone or summoning someone by means of a bell.
Was it nothing more than a coincidence? A piece of newspaper sticking out of Ryuji’s stomach, six digits on that scrap of newspaper—and Ando had played with them until he came up with the word “ring”. Was this all pure chance?
Somewhere in the distance he heard an alarm. He remembered the fire bell he’d heard once as a child in the small town he’d grown up in. Both his parents worked overtime and never came back until late, so he was home alone with his grandmother. They covered their ears when the clamor of the bell broke the night’s silence. Ando could remember curling up on his grandmother’s knees, trembling. Their town had an old firewatch tower, and the bell meant that fire had broken out somewhere. But he didn’t know that. All he knew was that the sound carried with it an air of terrible dread. It seemed like a harbinger of tragedy to come. And in fact, a year later on the exact same day, his father died unexpectedly.
Ando found that he’d lost his appetite. In fact, he felt nauseated. He pushed aside the food, which had only just arrived, and asked for another glass of water.
Hey, Ryuji, are you trying to tell me something?
When they’d signed over to the family the coffin containing his body, all hollowed out like a tin toy, Ryuji had seemed to relax his white, square-jawed visage a tiny bit, giving the impression, almost, of a smile. Only an hour ago, Mai had seen that face and bowed, to no one in particular. They’d probably hold the wake tonight, and then cremate the body tomorrow. This very moment, the hearse was probably well on its way to the family’s house in Sagami Ohno. Ando wished he could watch Ryuji’s body turn to ash. He had the strange feeling that his old classmate was still alive.
4
They were to meet at the benches near the library. Ando finished auditing a lecture at the law school on the main campus, checked his watch, and then headed for the appointed spot.
Only the day before, Mai Takano had placed a call to the M.E.’s office. Ando happened to be there—it was his turn on autopsy duty again—and when he heard her voice on the phone, he instantly recalled her face. It wasn’t all that unusual to get calls from relatives or friends of people he’d worked on, but usually they were calling to ask about the cause of death. Mai had a different reason for calling. She said that on the evening of the day of the autopsy, she’d slipped out of the wake early and gone to Ryuji’s apartment. She’d needed to set in order an unpublished manuscript he’d been working on. In the process, she’d discovered something that bothered her. She hinted, subtly, that it might have something to do with Ryuji’s death.
Of course, Ando was interested in anything of value she might be able to tell him, but he was also eager to be in the presence of her pristine beauty again. He’d told her he had to attend a lecture on the main campus, but after that he could make time for her. She could tell him all about it then.
He’d told her when the lecture was scheduled to end, and then she’d suggested the place.
The benches in front of the library, under the cherry trees.
He’d spent two years on the main campus getting his general education requirements out of the way, but he and his friends had never used these benches as a rendezvous point. His future wife, who’d been a liberal arts major at this university, had preferred to meet under the gingko trees.
Before he even got close to the benches he recognized the woman sitting there as Mai. Her one-piece today was a primary color, making her look younger than she had at the M.E.’s office ten days ago. He circled around in front of her to get a look at her face, but she was immersed in a paperback and didn’t look up.
He accosted her, with intentionally loud footsteps, and she raised her head.
“Ms Takano?”
She started to stand up, saying, “Thank you for … the other day.” She plainly couldn’t figure out quite how to greet a man who had just dissected her lover.
Ando was holding a briefcase. His hands looked nimble and his fingers long and thin enough to proclaim what he did for a living.
“May I sit down?”
Without waiting for her reply, he sat down next to her and crossed his legs.
“Have the test results come back yet?” she asked in an inflectionless voice.
Ando glanced at his watch. “How are you for time? If it’s okay with you, why don’t we go have a cup of tea? There are a couple of things I’d like to ask you.”
Without a word, Mai stood up and tugged at the hem of her dress.
They went to a café of her choosing. For a student hangout, it was surprisingly quiet—it felt more like a hotel lounge. They sat at a table next to the window, where they could look out onto the street, and the waitress brought them water and hot towels.
Mai didn’t hesitate before ordering. “I’ll have a fruit parfait.”
Surprised, and unable to settle on anything, Ando could only say, “Coffee for me.” Ten days ago, he’d gotten an impression of meekness from her. That was beginning to change.
“I love fruit,” she shrugged after the waitress left. For a moment, Ando thought she’d said I love you, and then kicked himself for indulging in such a ridiculous fantasy. A man of your age!
It was truly a gorgeous fruit parfait, nestled on wafers and topped with a cherry. From the way she tore into it, it was clear that Mai was partial to this shop’s confections. She had the same kind of intent look that Takanori used to wear when he was eating something he loved. It just about broke Ando’s heart. He didn’t even sip his coffee, but simply marveled at the utter concentration with which she wielded her spoon. Even if he could have convinced his wife to come to a place like this, she wouldn’t have ordered a fruit parfait. She would have stuck to lemon tea, no sugar please, or something like that: she was always on a diet, and never let anything sweet pass her lips. But Mai, at least with her clothes on, looked thinner than his wife had been back in her better days. To be sure, his wife had gotten so thin by the time they’d separated that Ando had often had to avert his eyes; when he thought of her now, however, he always pictured her face as round and soft as it had been when they got married.
Mai took the cherry into her mouth, and then demurely spat the seed out onto an oval-shaped glass dish before wiping her lips with her napkin. He’d never met a woman so fun just to watch. She munched away on the wafers, spilling crumbs on the tabletop, and then gazed longingly at the cream that clung to the bottom of the dish. No doubt she was wondering if she could lick it up.
When she’d finally finished eating, she asked Ando what sort of tests had been performed on Ryuji’s organs after the autopsy. It felt incredibly strange to be talking about the treatment of cutout organs to a young woman whom he’d just watched eat a fruit parfait. But here goes.
Not long ago, he’d gotten
burned trying to explain similar tests to a bereaved family member. There’d been a lapse in communication: the other person hadn’t really understood what was meant by a tissue sample. The family member was imagining his loved one’s organs in jars, pickled in formaldehyde, and Ando and he had wasted a lot of time in meaningless back-and-forth. Tissue samples were as mundane to Ando as ballpoint pens were to an office worker, but he had realized then that most people had no idea what they looked like, how big they were, how they were obtained, etc., unless it was spelled out to them. So he decided to start by telling her about tissue samples.
“It’s almost all lab work, you see. First, we cut out a small piece of the heart in the area where the infarction took place and preserve it in formaldehyde. From it we slice a smaller portion in the shape of a sashimi and embed that in paraffin. You know, wax. Then we slice from that a microscope specimen, take the wax off, and stain it. Then we have a tissue sample, which we send off to the lab for analysis. After that, it’s just a matter of waiting for the results.”
“So I should imagine a thin slice of the organ squeezed between two glass plates?”
“That’s about right.”
“And that makes it easier to examine?”
“Of course. We stain it so its cellular structure can be examined with a microscope.”
“Did you have a look?”
A look? At what? Ryuji’s cells, of course. Regardless, Ando thought Mai’s question had an odd nuance.
“I gave it a quick peek before sending it off to the lab, yes.”
“How was it?” She was leaning forward now.
“There was a blockage in his left coronary artery, just prior to the left circumflex branch. The blood couldn’t get past it, and Ryuji’s heart stopped. As I think I explained, we took circular sections of the tissue in question and examined them under a microscope. I was surprised by what I found. You see, usually, when there’s a heart attack, what’s happened is that the arteries have hardened: cholesterol or other lipids have built up, narrowing the passageway, until one of these atheromas breaks off, clogging the artery. But in Ryuji’s case, while there was blockage, it wasn’t due to hardening of the arteries. That much was clear.”
“So what was it?” Mai’s question was short and to the point.
Ando’s answer was just as concise. “A sarcoma.”
“A sarcoma?”
“That’s right. We haven’t determined yet if the cells belong to a specific tissue or if it’s an undifferentiated tumor, but at the very least, we’ve never seen it before in the tunica intima or tunica media. Simply put, he developed a strange lump that blocked his blood flow.”
“So these were like cancer cells?”
“It’s probably safe to think of it in those terms. But normally, sarcomas don’t occur inside blood vessels. It’s impossible.”
“But when the test results come back, you’ll know what caused the sarcoma, right?”
Ando shook his head, laughing. “Unless there are other symptoms, we probably won’t. I’m sure I don’t even have to mention AIDS as an example …”
Even in today’s world, in which science, seemingly, is omnipotent, there are still a whole host of illnesses whose causes are unknown. There was no way to tell whether the symptom in question would prove to be part of a larger, identifiable syndrome or not.
Ando continued. “There is one more possibility. Ryuji might have had a congenital defect in his coronary artery.”
A layperson could figure out what that meant. If Ryuji had been born with that lump in his artery, it would have seriously impaired his ability to live an active life.
“But Professor Takayama …”
“I know. He was a track star in high school. His event was the shot-put, I believe.”
“Yes.”
“So it’s hard to imagine it had been there since birth. Which is why I want to ask you if Ryuji ever complained about pains in his chest, that sort of thing.”
Ando’s relationship with Ryuji had basically ended upon graduation. They said “hi” if they passed each other in the hall at the university, but that was about it. Ando certainly wouldn’t have noticed any change in Ryuji’s physical condition.
“We were together for less than two years.”
“That’s fine. Did he ever mention anything to you during that period?”
“He was tougher than other people. I can’t even remember him catching a cold. He wasn’t the type to whine, though, so even if he had a problem he might not have mentioned it. I certainly never noticed anything.”
“Nothing? Nothing at all?”
“Well … that’s just it, you see.”
Ando remembered suddenly that he hadn’t called Mai here to give her a report on the autopsy. She had summoned him, to tell him about something that had happened when she’d been going over Ryuji’s papers the night of the wake.
“Right. Well, let’s hear it.”
“I’m not sure if it has any connection with the professor’s death, though.” Mai was maddeningly cute as she dithered. Ando fixed her with an intense gaze, trying to urge her onward.
“Please tell me.”
“Well, ten nights ago, I slipped out of the wake early. I went to the professor’s apartment to put in order an unpublished article of his. While I was doing that, the phone rang. I didn’t know what to do, but in the end I picked up the receiver. It was ‘Asakawa’, a friend of the professor’s from high school.”
“Do you know this person?”
“We’d met once. We ran into each other at the professor’s apartment four or five days before he died.”
“A man?”
“Of course.”
“Right. And?”
“He didn’t seem to know that the professor had died. So I told him, briefly, about what had happened the night before. Mr Asakawa seemed really shocked. He said he’d be right over.”
“Meaning …”
“To Professor Takayama’s apartment.”
“Did he show up?”
“Yes, much sooner than I’d expected. He came in and glanced all around the apartment as if he were searching for something. And he asked me over and over if I had noticed anything. He looked like a man driven into a corner. He kept asking me if I’d noticed anything strange about the place immediately after the professor’s death. But what really struck me as odd was what he said next.”
She paused and sipped some water.
“So … what did he say?”
“I remember it exactly. He said: ‘He didn’t tell you anything there at the end? No last words? Nothing, say, about a videotape?’”
“A videotape?”
“Yes. Strange, isn’t it?”
What an unexpected, inappropriate thing to bring into a discussion about Ryuji’s sudden death the night before. Why bring up such a matter?
“Well, had you heard anything about a videotape from Ryuji?”
“No. Nothing.”
“A videotape, huh?” Ando muttered, leaning back in his chair. He sensed a shadow over the image of this Asakawa who’d visited Ryuji’s apartment the night of the autopsy.
“In any case, I was wondering—I’m not an expert, but is it possible that whatever was recorded on this videotape was so shocking it gave him a heart attack?”
“Hmm.”
Ando thought he understood what had been troubling Mai. She would have been too embarrassed even to bring the matter up until she’d ascertained the cause of death. It reminded him of a thriller he’d seen on TV two or three days ago. A woman is having an affair with one of her husband’s subordinates, but she’s been ensnared. Somebody has videotaped the two of them going at it at a love hotel, catching everything, and the tape is mailed to her with an extortion letter. At home, she puts the tape into the VCR and glares at the screen. Snow, and then an image cut its way in. The naked body of a woman pressed up against a young man’s. Panting. The instant she realizes that it’s her on the screen, she faints. It was such a comm
on and vulgar scene that Ando had felt like a fool watching the drama.
No doubt it was possible to use a videotape to provide simultaneous visual and aural stimulation and shock somebody’s system. If the wrong kind of conditions were met, the possibility of it resulting in death couldn’t be ruled out. But Ando had examined Ryuji’s body in detail. He’d even taken slices of his coronary artery and made tissue samples.
“No, that’s out of the question. He definitely had a blockage in his left coronary artery. Besides, you know Ryuji. Can you really imagine him dying from shock just from watching a videotape?” He laughed as he said that.
“No, of course not …” Mai allowed herself to be coaxed into a weak laugh. Their impressions of Ryuji jibed, then. He’d been a man of almost disgusting daring, real steel in his spine. It would have taken something extraordinary to get to him, body or soul.
“Do you happen to know how I might contact this Asakawa person?”
“I’m sorry …” Mai started to say she didn’t, but then she brought a hand to her mouth. “No, wait, I think I remember the professor introducing him as Kazuyuki Asakawa from the Daily News.”
“Kazuyuki Asakawa from the Daily News.” Ando made a note in his planner. If he called the newspaper, he shouldn’t have much trouble finding the man’s contact info. He might need to talk to the man yet.
Mai seemed to have caught a glimpse of what he’d written in his planner. She brought her hand to her chin and said, “Huh.”
“What?” Ando looked up at her.
“So that’s how you’d write Kazuyuki.”
Ando looked back down at the page.
It took him a minute to get what she meant. There were several different combinations of characters that could be used to spell the surname “Asakawa”. The same was true for the given name “Kazuyuki”. Normally, he would have had to ask which characters were used, or just written the name down phonetically. But instead, he’d written the ideograms without hesitation, as if the name were one he’d known all along.
