Out

by Natsuo Kirino

  'Somebody's here. It must be your son.' Masako shook her head.

  Nobuki almost never came home at this hour.

  'It's probably Jumonji,' she said.

  'You're right,' said Yoshie, relaxing slightly. When Masako looked through the peephole, she saw Jumonji standing outside, struggling with an unwieldy load of boxes. She helped him carry them in, and they both went through to join Yoshie.

  'I got them,'Jumonji told her.

  'Just in time,' Yoshie said, adopting the tone she used with junior employees at the factory.

  'How many do we need?' he asked. Masako held up eight fingers. The man had been small, and the bags were less bulky than they'd expected. Besides which, Jumonji had decided to carry the head and clothes, which could be most easily identified, rather than ship them.

  'Eight?' he said, looking surprised. 'I would have guessed more.'

  'Do you think anybody saw you?' Yoshie asked.

  'I don't think so.'

  'You didn't see anyone watching the house?' Masako added, giving him a searching look. It could be disastrous if those other, unknown people learned what they were up to.

  'No one,' he said. 'Except...'

  'Except who?'

  'There was a woman standing in the lot across the way. Though she left as soon as she saw me.'

  'What did she look like?'

  'Plump, middle-aged,' he said. Obviously the woman who had come with questions about the lot.

  'Did she seem to be watching the house?' Masako said. 'No, I think she was just looking around. Otherwise, I only saw a couple of other people, probably out shopping. I don't think they noticed anything.' It had been a mistake to insist that he use his own car; next time, her Corolla would be less conspicuous. They loaded the boxes in the car, and as soon as it was done Jumonji drove away.

  'Like the foreman wheeling away a stack of boxed lunches,' said Yoshie, which made them burst out laughing. Then they took turns cleaning up in the shower, and scrubbed the bathroom.

  Realising that Yoshie was beginning to worry about the time, Masako went to get her share of the money.

  'Your fee,' she said as she gave it to her. Holding it at arm's length, as if it were filthy, Yoshie quickly stuffed it in the bottom of her bag.

  'Thanks,' she said, sounding relieved.

  'What are you planning to do with it?'

  'I thought I'd use it to send Miki to junior college,' she explained, smoothing back her tangled hair. 'How about you?'

  'I'm not sure.' Masako now had five million of her own, but she didn't know what she'd wanted it for.

  'I have to ask you this,' Yoshie said, hesitating a moment, 'but don't take it the wrong way.'

  'What?'

  'Did you get a million, too?'

  'Of course,' said Masako, looking her straight in the eye. Yoshie reached into her bag and pulled out the stack of bills.

  'Then I want to pay back the money I owe you.' Masako had forgotten she'd lent her money for her daughter's school trip.

  Yoshie peeled off eight ¥10,000 bills and bowed as she handed them over. 'I still owe you ¥3000, but I don't have change. Can I give it to you at work?'

  'Sure,' said Masako. A loan was a loan. Yoshie looked at her a moment longer, perhaps half expecting her to refuse the money, but when it became clear she wasn't going to, she stood up. 'I'll see you tonight,' she said.

  'Tonight,' said Masako. They were used to the night shift, and it felt wrong somehow to be working during the day.

  APARTMENT 412

  1

  When she woke in the evening, Masako felt vaguely sad. The early sunset, signalling the onset of winter, was depressing. She lay in bed, watching as the light in the room gradually faded, leaving her in the dark. This was the sort of moment that made the night shift seem unbearable, and made it seem almost inevitable that so many of the women who worked it should end up slightly crazy. But it wasn't the winter dark that led to depression so much as the strain of living a life turned upside down from the normal, everyday world.

  How many busy, 'normal' mornings had there been in her life? Always the first one up, in order to make breakfast for everyone, to pack lunches. Hanging the laundry up to dry, getting dressed, putting Nobuki through his paces, getting him off to day care. Constantly keeping an eye on the clock on the wall or sneaking a peek at her watch; working like a dog at the office. No time to read the newspaper, let alone a novel; cutting back on sleep to have time to get everything else done; and then, when the rare vacation rolled around, catching up on the endless laundry and cleaning. Busy, 'normal' days, free from loneliness or guilt.

  She had no desire to go back to them, no desire to change the way things were now. When stones lying warm in the sun were turned over, they exposed the cold, damp earth underneath; and that was where Masako had burrowed deep. There was no trace of warmth in this dark earth, yet for a bug curled up tight in it, it was a peaceful and familiar world. She closed her eyes. Perhaps because her sleep was so shallow and irregular, her body felt heavy and she never seemed to recover from the exhaustion of the factory. Eventually, she descended slowly into unconsciousness, as if dragged down by gravity, and soon she was dreaming.

  She was going down in the old elevator at T Credit and Loan, staring at the familiar, pale-green panelling. The panels were pockmarked from innumerable collisions with the cart used to move cash around the building. Masako herself had lugged heavy bags of coins from this elevator more times than she could count. The elevator stopped at the second floor, which housed the finance office - her old workplace. The doors opened and she gazed into the dark, empty room for a moment. It was all so familiar she could have found her way around with her eyes closed, but she had no more business here now.

  Just as she pressed the button to close the doors, a man slipped into the elevator with her. It was Kenji, who she'd thought was dead. She suddenly found it hard to breathe. He was wearing a white shirt, grey pants and a plain tie: the same outfit he'd been wearing that day. He greeted her politely and then stood with his back to her, facing the door. She studied the nape of his rieck, which was partly covered by his shaggy hair, but then drew back in horror, realising that without thinking she'd been checking for scars from the cuts that she'd made there.

  The elevator was painfully slow, but at last it reached the ground floor and the doors opened. Kenji walked off into the dark, disappearing in the area where the reception desk should have been. Masako could feel her body breaking out in a cold sweat as she stood alone in the elevator, wondering whether she should follow him into the blackness.

  It was then, when she made up her mind and stepped off the elevator, that somebody jumped out at her from the dark. Before she could get away, long arms had closed around her from behind and she couldn't move. She tried to scream for help but her voice died in her throat. The man's hands tightened around her neck. She tried to struggle, but her limbs seemed paralysed. Sweat began to flow from her pores, as if her frustration and terror were seeping from her body. The fingers tightened, and Masako went rigid with fear. But then, slowly, the warmth of his hands, the rough breathing on her neck, began to arouse a buried impulse in her: the urge to surrender, to relax and allow herself to die. Abruptly, her fear began to dissipate, as if floating weightlessly away, and in its place came a sense of blissful pleasure. She cried out in delight.

  -

  She opened her eyes and found herself lying face up in bed. Her hand moved to her chest, feeling the throb of her heart. It wasn't the first erotic dream she'd had, of course, but it was the first time that her pleasure had been so inextricably linked to fear. She lay for a while in the dark, frozen by the discovery of this scene that had been hidden in her subconscious. Who was the man in the dream? As she tried to remember exactly how his arms had felt around her, she considered the possibilities. It wasn't Kenji. He had appeared as a ghost who lured her on toward her fears. It wasn't Yoshiki, either. He had never raised a hand against her in all their years together. N
or did the arms feel like the Brazilian's, Kazuo. Then she could only assume it was that unseen figure watching her, who had taken shape in her dream. But what did it mean that her fear had been tied to such intense sexual pleasure? She lay for a moment, lost in a sensation she had nearly forgotten.

  She got up and turned on the light. Pulling back the curtains, she sat down at the dressing table. Her face frowned at her from the mirror, pale and sickly in the fluorescent light. It had changed since that day; she knew it herself. The lines between her eyebrows had deepened, and her eyes had a more piercing look. She seemed older, probably. But her lips were slightly parted, as if she were about to call someone's name. What was going on? She raised her hand to cover her mouth, but there was no hiding the light shining in her eyes.

  A noise brought her back to reality. Probably just Yoshiki or Nobuki coming home. She checked the clock by the bed: nearly 8.00 p.m. She quickly combed her hair, threw a cardigan around her shoulders, and left the room. The sound of the washing machin e could be heard from the bathroom . Yoshiki was apparently doing his laundry after work. For several years now, he had been washing his own underwear and other clothes.

  She knocked at the door to his room. There was no answer, but she opened the door and found him sitting with his back to her, still in his dress shirt, listening to music on his headphones. The room was small to begin with, but it seemed impossibly crowded after he had moved in a bed, bookshelves, and a desk, setting himself up like a student in a dorm room. She tapped him on the shoulder. Startled, he pulled off the headphones and turned to look at her.

  'Are you sick?' he said, eyeing her pyjamas.

  'No, I just overslept.' Feeling a sudden chill, she began buttoning her sweater.

  'Overslept? It's eight o'clock,' he said in a flat voice. 'It always sounds strange, put that way.' His comment came from across the divide, from the daylight world.

  'I know,' said Masako, leaning on the window-sill. 'It does sound strange.' She could hear classical music seeping from the headphones lying on the bed, but the piece was unfamiliar.

  'You've stopped making dinner,' Yoshiki observed, without looking at her.

  'Yes,' she said.

  'Why?'

  'I just decided not to.'

  'It's fine with me,' he said, refraining from pressing for a reason. 'But what are you doing for dinner?'

  'I just eat whatever we have.'

  'And we can just fend for ourselves?' he asked with a twisted smile.

  'I suppose so.' It was better to be honest. 'I'm sorry, but I thought you'd get things you wanted.'

  'But why stop?' he said.

  'I guess you could say I'm turning into a bug. I just want to be left alone to curl up out of sight, somewhere underground.'

  'That might be okay if you were a bug, but... '

  'You think I'm better off as a woman?'

  'I suppose so.'

  'I think you'd be happier as a bug, too.'

  'What do you mean?' he said, giving her a puzzled look.

  'In a way, that's what you are already. You've shut yourself away in your own little world. After work you come in here and ignore us - you might as well be living in a rooming house.' She waved her hand around at the place.

  'Yes, well . . . ,' he said, picking up the headphones. The conversation had taken a turn he preferred not to pursue.

  Masako stood staring at him. He had changed since they'd first met: his hair was thinner, and greyer. He'd lost weight as well, and he constantly smelt of alcohol. But more than the physical changes, she was struck by the sense that his search for whatever it was - some sort of personal integrity - had become more desperate. Even back in the old days, Yoshiki had valued his freedom more than other people and had wanted to live with a certain level of intensity. His work had claimed much of his time even then, but when he was free, he had been a warm and generous man. Masako, who had been young and naive in those days, felt lucky to have his love; and in turn, she had loved and trusted him.

  But now, when he could escape from work it seemed that he also wanted to escape his family. The world around him was so manifestly corrupt; his job - unspeakably so. But even Masako kept him from the freedom he needed, and now Nobuki, too, had failed. The more he focused on his own integrity, the less tolerant he apparently became of those who failed to live up to his standards. But if his solution was to hide away, to give up on everyone and everything, then he'd wind up a hermit. And Masako had no intention of living with a hermit. It occurred to her that this resolve was related somehow to the pleasure she'd felt in her dream just now. Something inside her had been set free.

  'Why don't we sleep together any more?' she asked, raising her voice to be heard through the headphones.

  'What?' he said, pulling them from his ears again.

  'Why do you want to be in here alone?'

  'I guess that's it: I want to be alone,' he said, staring at the perfectly aligned spines of the books on his shelves.

  'But we all want to be alone,' she said.

  'I suppose so.'

  'Why did you stop sleeping with me?'

  'It just happened,' he said, flinching slightly and looking away. 'You seemed tired, too.'

  'I suppose I was.' Masako was trying to recall the circumstances

  - four or five years ago it would be now - that had made them retreat to separate rooms. But it hadn't been any one thing, just an accumulation of trivial grievances whose details she'd long forgotten.

  'Sex isn't the only thing that links two people to one another,' he said.

  'I know that,' she murmured. 'But you seem to be rejecting everything else as well, as if you couldn't stand having anything to do with Nobuki and me.'

  'You were the one who decided to take that night shift,' he said, sounding vaguely indignant.

  'I had to,' she said. 'You know I'd never have found another job in my field.'

  'You can believe that if you want to,' Yoshiki said, looking her in the eye now, 'but you know you could have found something in accounting at a smaller company. The fact is, you were hurt, and you weren't willing to risk letting it happen again.' It was hardly surprising that someone as intuitive as Yoshiki should have sensed this; and Masako suspected that he had even felt the pain with her.

  'So you're saying things began to go wrong when I started working nights?'

  'No, but I think it's obvious that we both wanted to be alone.' Masako realised that he was right, that they had chosen separate paths. There- was nothing particularly tragic in that, but it did make her feel lonely. They were silent for a moment.

  'Would it surprise you if I left?' she asked at last.

  'I suppose it would if you just disappeared. I'm sure I'd worry.'

  'But you wouldn't come looking for me?'

  Yoshiki thought for a moment. 'Probably not,' he said, putting the headphones back over his ears to show that the conversation was over. Masako stared at him. She had made up her mind to leave this house, and the encouragement she'd needed was hidden beneath the bed she'd just left, in a box among her nightclothes: five million yen in cash. Opening the door as quietly as she could, she stepped out into the corridor. There she found Nobuki, standing in the dark. He looked flustered at her sudden appearance, but held his ground. Masako closed the door to Yoshiki's room behind her.

  'Were you listening?' she said. Nobuki looked away in confusion but said nothing. 'You may think you can escape everything unpleasant in life just by keeping your mouth shut,' she told him, looking up at his eyes, 'but it doesn't work that way.' He was taller than her now. Was it really possible that this huge boy had come out of her own body? She had watched him gradually retreat from her, but now she found that she was the one who was about to break the bond. 'There's a good chance I'll be leaving,' she said. 'But you're grown up now. You should do as you see fit. Go back to school if you want to; or just get out of here if that would suit you better. You'll have to make those decisions for yourself.' She gazed at his hollow cheeks, search
ing for a sign that he might say something; but though his lips trembled for a moment, no words emerged. Then, as she turned and started down the corridor, a great bellow, hoarse with adolescent anguish, broke over her back.

  'Thanks for nothing, bitch!' It was the second time she'd heard his voice this year. It sounded older, more a man's voice now than a boy's. She turned back to look at him. There were tears in his eyes, but when she tried again to speak to him, he turned with a violent lurch and charged up the stairs. Her chest ached, but she knew she didn't really want to find a way back.

  -

  For the first time in some months, she headed toward Yayoi's house on her way to work. Dry leaves blown up from the road brushed the windshield with a pleasant swishing sound. Feeling a cold draught from the window, she began to put it up; but a beetle flew in just then and began buzzing around the dark interior. She was reminded of the night she'd driven down this road trying to decide whether she should help Yayoi or not, when the scent of gardenias had drifted in for a moment. It had been only last summer, but it seemed years ago now.

  There was a noise from the back seat. She knew it was probably nothing more than the map book sliding to the floor, but she couldn't shake the feeling that it was really Kenji, who had decided to join her on this visit to his wife.

  'Glad you could come along,' she said aloud, glancing back into the darkness. She had seen him so often in her dreams that he'd come to seem almost like an old friend. They would go together to check up on this woman, Yoko Morisaki, who was staying with Yayoi's boys while she went to work.

  Just as she'd done on the night she picked up the body, Masako pulled into the alley in front of Yayoi's house and parked. A warm yellow light was coming through the curtains in the living-room window. She rang the buzzer on the intercom, and Yayoi's anxious voice answered.

  'It's Masako,' she told her. 'I'm sorry to bother you so late.' Yayoi gave a cry of surprise, and a moment later Masako could hear the sound of footsteps hurrying toward the door.

  'Is something the matter?' Yayoi said. Damp strands of hair were hanging on her forehead, as if she'd just got out of the bath.