by Kōji Suzuki
No sooner had Mai rung the doorbell than Ryuji's mother appeared at the door. She'd been waiting impatiently for Mai, and showed her up to the second floor, to the room Ryuji had studied in from grade school on through his sophomore year at college. After his junior year, Ryuji had moved out of the house, even though it was well within commuting distance, and taken a room near campus. The only times the room had been used as a study since were when Ryuji had come home to visit.
Ryuji's mother set down a plate of shortcake and a cup of coffee and left the room. As Mai watched her shuffle down the hall, head drooping, she was touched by the woman's grief at losing her son.
Left alone, Mai took her first good look around the room. It was a Japanese-style room with a matted floor. In one corner a carpet had been spread out under a desk. Bookshelves lined the walls, but she could only see their upper portions; the lower shelves were hidden by the confusion of cardboard boxes and appliances that littered the floor. She took a quick count of the boxes. Twenty-seven. These held everything that had been carted over from Ryuji's East Nakano apartment after his death. The larger furniture-the bed, the desk, etc.-they'd given away. The boxes seemed to contain mostly books.
Mai sighed, then seated herself on the floor and had a sip of coffee. She was already trying to resign herself to the possibility that she wouldn't be able to find it. Even if it were in there somewhere, it'd be quite a task to find a few manuscript pages among all those things. Perhaps the pages weren't even in those boxes.
The twenty-seven boxes were all sealed with tape. She took off her cardigan, rolled up her sleeves, and opened the nearest one. Paperbacks. She picked up a few. One turned out to be a book she'd given him as a present. Longing washed over her. The smell of Ryuji's old apartment clung to the cover.
This is no place to let yourself wallow in emotion.
She choked back her tears and went back to work taking things out of the box.
But when she got to the bottom, there was still no sign of the pages. Mai tried to deduce what they could have gotten mixed in with. Maybe one of the books he'd been using as a reference, or one of the files in which he'd kept his research materials. She kept breaking the seals on the boxes.
Her back started to break into a sweat. Taking books out of boxes and putting them back in was surprisingly strenuous work. After she'd finished her third box, she took a breather and entertained the idea of filling in the missing pages by herself. Ryuji's challenging theory of symbolic logic had already been made public, albeit in piecemeal form, in specialist journals. The project at hand, however, wasn't quite so esoteric. Ryuji had also been writing a book-length study aimed at the general reader that dealt with logic and science in the context of various social problems. What he was saying in it wasn't too difficult. In fact, the work was being serialized in a monthly put out by a major publisher. Mai had been involved from the start, when she'd volunteered to make clean manuscript copies of what Ryuji wrote; she'd even attended meetings with his editor. As a result, she felt she had a good handle on the flow of Ryuji's argument as well as on his writing style. If one or two pages were all that was missing, she felt confident she could come up with something to fill in the gap without creating any inconsistencies.
But that's only if I could be sure only one page is missing.
If that were the case, she'd probably give in to the temptation. Each installment had averaged forty manuscript pages, but that was only an average. They'd ranged from thirty-seven to forty-three. This was the twelfth and last installment, and she had no idea how many pages Ryuji had actually ended up with. That meant she had no way of knowing how many were missing. When she'd slipped out of the wake to put the manuscript in order, she'd found the installment, thirty-eight handwritten pages. The final page was numbered thirty-eight, and there were thirty-seven pages preceding it. So she had no inkling at first that anything was amiss. What with the funeral and all, she was late in sitting down to make a clean copy, and the deadline was upon her when she finally sat down and read through it. It was then that she realized that there was a lacuna between the last two pages. In terms of page numbers, they looked okay-thirty-seven was followed by thirty-eight-but something important was missing. In fact, the conclusion. And without it the argument made no sense. The last two lines of page thirty-seven had been crossed out in ballpoint pen, with an arrow leading to the edge of the page. But the next page did not contain the head of that arrow. She could only surmise that he must have added something and that that something had disappeared.
Turning pale, she'd read the whole thing again from the beginning several times. But the more she read, the more obvious it was that there was a gap at the end. His line of reasoning, which had been reiterated and expanded upon in installment after installment, came to a sudden halt with the words, "However, for that very reason…" The phrase seemed to promise an antithesis, but the sentence was cut off there. The deeper she got into his train of thought, the more she was convinced that a very important passage, probably several pages long, had disappeared. And the whole thing-twelve installments, some five hundred pages-was already slated for publication in book form. This was the conclusion she was dealing with. This was serious.
So she had immediately called Ryuji's parents and explained the situation to them. Within two or three days of the funeral, they had emptied out Ryuji's apartment and had had all his books and personal effects brought to his old room. If the missing pages had gotten mixed in with something else, they had to be somewhere in the room, Mai had explained to Ryuji's parents. She needed their permission to look through Ryuji's things.
But now, confronted with the stacks of boxes, she felt like whining.
Oh, why did you have to go and die on me?
What a feat, though, drawing his last breath immediately after finishing his manuscript. She found it hateful.
I want you to come here right this minute and tell me what happened to those pages!
She reached out for her coffee, now quite cold. If only she'd read through the manuscript sooner, she wouldn't have been in this mess. She couldn't regret that enough. If she couldn't find the missing pages, she'd have no other option but to try to supply them herself. She shrank in fear from the thought that what she wrote might diverge from Ryuji's intentions. It would really be quite presumptuous of her. True, she had already been accepted into graduate school, but for a girl barely twenty to doctor the conclusion of the very last work of a logician from whom everybody had expected such great things…
I can't do it.
Telling herself she'd just have to find the pages, she opened the next box.
Sometime after four, the room, which faced east, began to get dark, so she turned on a light. It was November, and the days were getting noticeably shorter. But it wasn't cold. Mai got up and drew the curtains. For a while now, she'd been bothered by the feeling that someone was watching her through the window.
She'd already gone through half the cardboard boxes, and she hadn't yet found the missing pages.
Suddenly, Mai could hear her heart beating. The inside of her chest was pounding. She stopped what she was doing and sat there, one knee up, back bent, waiting for the palpitations to subside. This had never happened to her before. She pressed a hand over the left side of her chest and tried to figure out what was causing it. Was it guilt over having lost her teacher's work? No, that wasn't it. Something was hiding in the room with her. A minute ago, she'd thought it was outside the room staring at her, but evidently she'd been wrong. She half expected a cat or something to dash out from behind a box.
She felt something cold on the back of her head and neck. A stabbing gaze. She turned around. She saw her pink cardigan draped over a box where she'd left it when she got to work. The spaces between its fibers glittered like eyes, reflecting the lamplight. Mai picked up the cardigan to reveal a video deck.
The jet-black deck sat on top of a box, its cords wrapped around it. It had to be the one that had been in Ryuji's apartment.
There was no TV set to be seen, however, and the deck hadn't been hooked up.
Gingerly, Mai reached out and touched the edge of the deck. The cords were wrapped around its middle, top to bottom, leaving the deck resting on them as on a see-saw.
Did I put my cardigan on this?
She couldn't remember. Of course, there was no other explanation. Before starting on the boxes, she'd taken off her cardigan and carelessly laid it on the video deck. That had to be it.
She locked gazes with the deck for perhaps a minute, and all thoughts of the missing pages disappeared from her mind. In their place swirled questions about a video.
She couldn't forget what Kazuyuki Asakawa had asked her the day after Ryuji's death. "He didn't tell you anything there at the end? No last words? Nothing, say, about a videotape?"
Mai uncoiled the cords from around the body of the machine. She picked out the power cord and looked for an outlet. An extension cord lay unassumingly under the desk. She plugged the deck into it. Four zeros started flashing on the machine's timer display-its pulse, like that of a dead person brought back to life. Mai extended her right index finger and waved it around in front of the deck. She couldn't decide what to do. A voice told her not to touch it. Mai pushed EJECT anyway. The slot opened, a motor whirred, and a videotape emerged. There was a label on the spine, and a title written on the label.
Liza Minnelli, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr/1989
Sticking out of the deck like that, the tape looked like a huge tongue. The deck resembled an obnoxious child, winking and wiggling his tongue at her.
Mai took firm hold of the black tongue and pulled it out.
10
Just when it was about to pull up to the hospital, Ando's cab was overtaken by an ambulance whose siren was wailing. They were on a narrow, oneway street lined with shops, and in order to let the ambulance pass, they had to wedge the car between two delivery trucks parked on the side of the road. It looked like it might take a while to pull out again, so Ando decided to get out then and there. The eleven-story hospital towered over them, almost close enough to touch. It would be quicker to walk.
As he stepped off the street toward the main entranceway of the hospital, Ando could see the ambulance that had just passed them pull into the space between the old and new wings. It had taken the ambulance so long to negotiate the narrow streets that it had ended up arriving at the same time as Ando had on foot.
The siren fell silent, but the ambulance's rotating light remained on, throwing its red mottled pattern onto the hospital walls. Stillness descended from the clear blue sky and created a zone of silence around the ambulance like the circle of brightness from a spotlight. To go in, Ando had to walk past the ambulance. The red light finally stopped rotating, and the echoes of the siren were disappearing into the sky. The atmosphere was thick with the prospect that, any second now, the back doors of the ambulance might burst open and spew forth emergency medical personnel unloading a stretcher-but nothing happened. Ando stood and watched. Ten seconds, twenty seconds passed, but the doors didn't open. Silence prevailed. Thirty seconds. The air was frozen. Nobody came running out of the hospital, either.
Ando snapped out of his reverie and resumed walking. And suddenly, the ambulance doors opened with great force. A paramedic jumped out and helped his colleague inside the ambulance unload a stretcher. Ando didn't care what had prevented them from carrying out the patient immediately-these guys were too damn slow. Now they were holding the stretcher at a slant, and Ando's face came momentarily level with the oxygen-masked face of the patient. Their eyes met. The patient seemed to twist toward Ando, and stopped just as abruptly. His eyes were lifeless. He'd been picked up in critical condition, and now he'd met his end. In his line of work, Ando had witnessed any number of deaths. But never like this, by chance. Taking it as an ill omen, Ando averted his eyes from the dead man. He was no different from Miyashita with his astrology. First the snake on the embankment, and now this chance encounter with death. Lately, Ando had been looking for meaning in a lot of trivial events. He'd always scoffed at people who believed in jinxes and fortunes, but now, he realized, he was one of them.
Shinagawa Saisei Hospital was a general hospital connected to Shuwa University, and the man Ando was going to see, Dr Wada, actually belonged to the university. Kurahashi, his superior, seemed to have contacted him already. No sooner had Ando stated his business than he was shown to a room on the seventh floor of the west wing.
Ando peered into Asakawa's eyes where he lay prostrate on his sickbed, and was immediately reminded of the eyes of the patient he'd just seen. Asakawa's eyes had the exact same quality to them: they were the eyes of a dead man.
Arms hooked up to a pair of I.V.s, face turned toward the ceiling, Asakawa moved not a muscle. Ando didn't know what the man used to look like, but he guessed the poor soul must have been at about half his normal weight. His cheeks were sunken and his beard was turning white.
Ando moved to the bedside and addressed him gently. "Mr Asakawa."
No answer. Ando thought to touch him on the shoulder, but hesitated and turned to Dr Wada for permission. Wada nodded, and Ando placed a hand on Asakawa's shoulder, The skin under his gown had no resilience. Ando could feel the shoulder blade, and drew back his hand involuntarily. There was no reaction.
"Backing away from the bed, Ando turned to Wada and asked, "Has he been like this the whole time?"
"Yes," Wada answered flatly, Asakawa had been brought in from the accident site on October 21st meaning that for fifteen days now he hadn't spoken, hadn't cried, hadn't laughed, hadn't gotten angry, hadn't eaten, hadn't evacuated his bladder or his bowels on his own.
"What do you think is causing it, doctor?" Ando asked in his politest voice.
"At first we thought he'd sustained a brain injury in the accident, but tests showed no irregularities. We suspect a psychological cause."
"Shock?"
"Most likely."
Probably the shock of losing his wife and daughter at the same time had destroyed Asakawa's mind. But Ando wondered if that had been the only cause. Probably because he'd seen the photos of the accident scene, Ando had a surprisingly clear image of the moment of the collision. And every time he envisioned it, his gaze was drawn to the passenger seat and the video deck enshrined thereon. It loomed larger and larger in his imagination. Why had Asakawa been transporting a VCR? Where had he gone with it? If only the man could explain himself.
Ando pulled a stool up next to Asakawa's pillow and sat down. He stared at Asakawa's face in profile for a while, trying to imagine what dreamland the poor man was lost and floating in. Which was more pleasant to live in, he wondered, the world of reality or the world of delusion? Probably Asakawa's wife and daughter were alive in his dream world. He was probably holding his daughter to his breast and playing with her right now.
"Mr Asakawa," said Ando, with all the sympathy of one who felt the same grief. Since Asakawa had been a high-school classmate of Ryuji's, he must have been two years younger than Ando. But to look at him one would have thought he was past sixty. What had brought about such a change? Sadness accelerated the aging process. Ando was aware that he himself had aged rapidly over the past year, for instance. He used to be told he looked young for his age, but now, people often thought he was older than he really was.
"Mr Asakawa," he called a second time.
Wada couldn't bear to watch. "I don't think he can hear you."
It was true. No matter how many times Ando called Asakawa's name, there was no reaction. He gave up and got to his feet.
"Will he recover?"
Wada threw up his hands. "God knows."
Patients like Asakawa could get better or worse without warning. Medical science was usually helpless to predict what lay ahead in cases like these.
"I'd like to ask you to notify me if there's any change in his condition."
"Understood."
There was no point in staying any longer. Ando and Wada left togeth
er. At the door Ando stopped and took one last look at Asakawa. He couldn't detect the slightest change. Asakawa kept his dead gaze fixed on the ceiling.
11
Mai reclined the adjustable backrest as far as it would go, and then lay back and stared at the ceiling. This was what she did when she was at an impasse. With her back arched like this she could read the titles on the bookshelves behind her, upside down. Not minding that her still-damp hair was touching the carpet, she closed her eyes and stayed in that awkward position for a while.
Her whole studio apartment, including the bathroom and kitchenette, measured less than two hundred square feet. One entire wall was taken up with bookshelves, leaving her without enough room for a bed or a desk. At night, she pushed the low table she used in lieu of a proper desk into the corner so she could unroll her futon. She'd had to sacrifice space in order to afford a place near campus on just her monthly allowance from home and the money she earned tutoring.
Her three conditions for an apartment had been that it be close to school, that it have its own bath and toilet, and that it offer some privacy. Rent accounted for nearly half of her monthly expenses, but even so, she was satisfied with the arrangement. She knew that if she relocated a little farther out toward the suburbs she'd be able to find a bigger place, but she had no intention of moving. She actually found it convenient to be able to sit at her table in the middle of the room and have everything she needed within arm's reach.
With her eyes still closed, she felt around until she found her CD player and turned it on. She liked the song. She tapped her thighs in time with the music. She'd been on the track team in junior high and high school; she'd been a sprinter, and her legs were still pretty firm. She regulated her breathing until her chest, under her flowered pajamas, swelled and fell along with the music. She opened and closed her nostrils in rhythm, praying for a flash of wisdom. The discomfort of knowing that she had to finish the manuscript this very night had totally zapped her concentration.
