A Quiet Place (8 page)

His tone was patronizing and suggested that Asai was somehow indebted to him.

Asai bowed deeply. “Thank you for all you did for her.”

Back out on the road, he lingered a while, deciding whether to go further up or back down. In his head he was going over the conversation he'd just had with the doctor. The idea that the time of death could have been thirty minutes off was nagging at his brain. In this case, the doctor had relied on Chiyoko Takahashi's word when making his judgement. Asai couldn't call it a mistake; it would be more accurate to think of it as a margin of error.

If he walked uphill, he'd be able to visit the hotel he hadn't been to yesterday. However, his interest had been piqued by the fact that Takahashi Cosmetics had been closed when he'd passed by in the taxi, so he started off downhill instead.

In less than five minutes he was in front of the boutique. The front door and the display window were blocked off with a heavy brown curtain. He understood why the shop might have been closed the previous evening, but he wondered why it was shut today. There was no notice in the window. And there was no sign of the proprietor. Maybe because she was on her own she was free to open or close the boutique at will.

Nobody was on the street. It was a typical peaceful afternoon in a residential neighbourhood. He remembered what the young maid at Hotel Midori had said. It had been a quiet moment like this when she had passed Eiko in the street. In her story, it had been around two o'clock. It was just after one now.

Asai approached the front door of the boutique and peered in through the gap between the curtains. The opening was very small, and all he could see was the dark interior and the faint glint of metal from something in the nearest showcase. It didn't look as if Chiyoko Takahashi was there. He continued to spy, hoping to see a sign of movement inside.

Then, feeling a presence behind him, he turned away from the window. About ten yards further up the hill there was someone watching him. It was a tall man, maybe in his thirties, wearing a grey sweater and pale-coloured trousers, with a German shepherd on a lead. The man, obviously a local resident out walking his dog, was staring at him suspiciously. The light was behind the man, so Asai couldn't make out his features; all he could tell was that he had a long face and wore glasses.

Afraid that he would be mistaken for a prowler or a thief checking out a target, Asai moved ever so casually away from the door.

8

All of Asai's investigations after that came to nothing. He took Eiko's photo to the Hotel Mori, but no one remembered having seen her. He even visited one other place, a small, Japanese-style inn a little further off the route, but again, no luck.

On his way up and back down the hill he checked out Takahashi Cosmetics. This time the boutique was open. He could see Chiyoko Takahashi in her white coat, but he wasn't brave enough to go inside. He didn't have any excuse to talk to her; they weren't on close enough terms for him to say he'd just dropped by because he happened to be in the neighbourhood. And he certainly couldn't pretend he was there to buy make-up. The only reason he could possibly be there was that he was obsessively attached to any trace of his dead wife.

As time passed, the story he'd heard from the maid began to seem less real to him. Taken out of context, it was no proof of anything. After all, the young woman didn't know Eiko; the two had never even spoken. Having a good memory didn't mean she couldn't have been mistaken about the identity of the woman in the photograph. After all, that day was probably the first time Eiko had been on the premises of the cosmetics boutique.

Although he hadn't given up all hope, Asai decided for now to forget about the hill and everything that was on it. Maybe something would pop up again sometime in the future that offered a clue to what had happened to Eiko. He just had to be patient. There was no point in rushing things. Just like at work – sometimes if he simply waited and didn't go chasing after solutions to the most challenging problems, they'd come to him of their own accord.

And anyway, he had his job. He really didn't have time to investigate all the circumstances of his wife's death. And it was exhausting to keep going back to it a little bit at a time. It called for continuity, persistence. And so, promising himself that he would give it his full attention if there were any developments, he decided to concentrate on his work for the time being. He was the most experienced person in his section. Even the division chief depended on him completely.

And then, five months after the trail had gone cold on the hill in Yoyogi, there was a development.

It was August. Within his section, people were planning their summer holidays. Asai thought he'd ask for the last week in September. He didn't like to take his leave during the hottest weather. He had no interest in going to the mountains or the sea. He'd never been much into sports, and he didn't have any kids to pester him to take them.

Asai had been deliberately vague about the time he wanted off, and had no specific plans. There was nowhere he really wanted to go. To tell the truth, he was busy at work and didn't really mind giving up his holidays. He'd
always been like that; he enjoyed working. Relaxing was for the idle. Asai supposed that from an outsider's point of view he must have seemed like a very boring kind of husband.

One day towards the end of August, Asai was on the underground. He wasn't like the young people today, commuting by car. He hated the traffic – it made him irritable and wasted time. It was much cooler and quicker by train. He opened the weekly news publication that he'd just bought at the station. There was a special feature:
How many people would perish if a massive earthquake were to hit Tokyo?
That's right, thought Asai, five days from now it'll be 1 September – Disaster Prevention Day. Every year the newspapers and weeklies were full of these kinds of articles. Asai wasn't old enough to have experienced the Great Kanto Earthquake.

On 1 September 1923, the Great Kanto Earthquake hit. In Tokyo its magnitude was 7.9 on the Richter scale; 6 on the Japanese scale. It took the lives of 600,000 residents; in fact, far more died in the ensuing fires than were crushed to death in the quake itself. The current population of Tokyo is twelve million, about three times what it was in 1923. Tokyo today has a high concentration of high-rise buildings, and densely packed residential areas in which multi-unit apartment blocks proliferate. And it is forever expanding. If, for example, an earthquake of the exact same magnitude as 1923 were to strike present-day Tokyo, just how many victims would it claim? We took the predictions of several eminent authorities and prepared…

Because this was a disaster that could happen to anybody, the article was trying to stir up a mix of curiosity and unease in its readers. It also included lessons about what to do when the critical moment came.

Asai rested the back of his head against the train window and kept reading. He was dressed in a short-sleeved shirt and tie. He'd folded his jacket neatly and placed it on his lap. It was vital to have a jacket with you, even in the middle of summer, in case you had to meet an important client. And the tie was a mark of dignity among government officials at the ministry.

The article went on to say that if an earthquake the size of the Great Kanto one were to hit today, at least 560,000 people would be killed. According to different data, the number might reach one million. Of these, only around two thousand would be crushed by falling structures; the rest would die in fires, a repeat of the past.

In the worst possible scenario, the roads would become jammed with traffic, preventing people from escaping on foot. Because of huge crowds of people all trying simultaneously to escape, getting away by car would be an impossibility. There'd be jostling between pedestrians and drivers. Fights would break out. Everything would be overcome by fire and smoke, and there'd be nowhere left to run. Human beings would be burned alive.

Cars would catch fire, too. All along the streets, vehicles would start exploding. It would be as if petrol tanks had been lined up along all the streets of Tokyo. And the petrol stations as well. Every five hundred yards or so throughout the city each petrol station would ignite, adding to the fires. It was possible that more people would die from these fires
than from being trapped inside a burning building. This was something that hadn't happened in 1923.

Throughout the city there were designated evacuation points, in parks, schools and the grounds of shrines or temples, but they wouldn't be able to accommodate the flood of people. Many would be burned before they even got there. The only thing this kind of evacuation plan was good for was to reassure people that there were measures in place. The underground gas lines that crisscrossed the city would be exposed by cracks in the ground and shoot flames into the air.

This is not a fairy tale. There is a real chance that this kind of extreme disaster could occur. Almost half a century has passed since the Great Kanto Earthquake. Everyone lives in fear of what might happen. This year alone, there have already been twenty-three earthquakes that could be detected by humans. Eleven of these measured 2 on the Japanese scale, and three measured 3. Of these, the level 3 earthquake that hit on 7 March at 3.25 in the afternoon caused many objects to fall off shelves. A significant number of people ran out into the street. Even though top experts claim that this is not a sign that the big one is imminent, the citizens of Tokyo cannot be reassured by words alone. There is no such thing as an absolute guarantee.

Asai went about his working day as usual. But that morning, something was bothering him and affecting his ability to concentrate: the newspaper article predicting the massive earthquake in Tokyo. Well, not the whole thing.
It had been just one short phrase buried in the middle of the scaremongering article that had disturbed him: “…
the level 3 earthquake that hit Tokyo on 7 March at 3.25 in the afternoon
…”

He'd been in Kobe on 7 March, so he hadn't been aware there had been an earthquake in Tokyo. Doctor Ohama had estimated his wife's time of death at around 4.05 p.m. that day. Was there some link between the earthquake and Eiko's death?

Asai pondered this possible connection. He wouldn't have said that Eiko was particularly afraid of earthquakes. If you lived in Tokyo, you got used to them. Even with the heart trouble that she had, the shock of a tremor probably wasn't enough to trigger a heart attack. He couldn't recall her ever panicking before when an earthquake had hit.

Asai went downstairs to get lunch at the staff canteen. As he ate his curry and rice, he decided to ask a question of the young man sitting across from him, sipping a glass of cream soda.

“Have you read that article in the latest edition of
R-Weekly
predicting a huge earthquake in the Tokyo area?”

“No, I haven't seen that one.” The other man pulled a face, as if to say he had no interest in anything other than the immediate present.

“Well, in the article it said that there was a strong earthquake on the seventh of March in Tokyo. Do you remember?”

“The seventh of March?” The man raised his eyes to the ceiling, apparently in an effort to recollect the date.

“I was on a business trip to Kansai, so I wasn't here at the time, but according to the article it was a level 3 – strong
enough for things to fall off shelves. It said quite a number of people ran out into the streets. Level 3 is pretty strong.”

“Now you mention it, there was an earthquake,” replied the young man. “I couldn't tell you the exact date, but there was one around the beginning of spring. This building was fine, but my wife said that a few things fell off the shelves at home. She said that our neighbour's grandfather clock stopped.”

“Was your wife frightened?”

“She said it wasn't particularly scary. The house creaked and groaned a bit, but it soon stopped. It was cold, so she didn't bother going outside.”

In Tokyo, for earthquakes to be a lively topic of conversation they had to be fairly significant. People were never particularly surprised by a couple of lightweight items falling from shelves.

Asai went back up to his division and entered the reference room. He borrowed a pocket digest of March newspaper articles, and turned to the 8 March morning editions. There was a very small feature on the earthquake towards the end.

At 3.25 p.m. on 7 March, there was a strong level 3 earthquake in the Tokyo area. Local residents were startled by items falling from shelves. According to the meteorological office, the earthquake was centred off the Boso Peninsula, at a depth of fifty kilometres below sea level.

Well, not all residents had been startled; that was embellishment on the journalist's part. Asai flicked through some of the previous pages and came across a weather map.

From the evening of the 6th and lasting all day of the 7th, a cold front will pass through the Kanto area. Temperatures will be around three degrees cooler than average. There is a possibility of snow in mountainous areas.

Asai left the reference room.

“It was cold, so she didn't bother going outside.” This was what the junior colleague had said. It had been warm in Kansai. By the time Asai had arrived back in Tokyo the next morning, the cold front had already passed on, and he didn't recall it being particularly chilly.

Still, he couldn't connect the 7 March earthquake with Eiko's heart attack, and the presence of a cold front even less. He decided to banish the magazine article to the back of his mind.

On 1 September there was no earthquake.

One Sunday in the middle of September, a member of Eiko's haiku circle turned up to deliver a copy of the Haiku Association's newsletter. Mieko Suzuki was the woman who had encouraged Eiko to join – one of her old school friends.

Written on the cover page of the newsletter was the title “Eiko Asai Memorial Collection”.

After paying her respects at the family's Buddhist altar, Ms Suzuki explained about the special collection.

“Our teacher selected around fifty poems out of the hundred and fifty or so that Eiko had composed,” she explained.

“Eiko wrote a hundred and fifty haiku?”

Asai's lack of interest in haiku meant that he'd never paid any attention to the poems his wife had written. He'd felt the same way about the singing and the painting lessons, and hadn't realized that his wife had been such a prolific writer.

“It was a case of quantity over quality, I imagine,” he said.

“No. Absolutely not. They were true works of art. If only she'd lived longer, she'd have ended up with a body of work that none of us could have held a candle to. Our teacher was truly devastated by her death. It's not flattery – it's the truth.”

“I'm sure Eiko would have been happy to hear that.”

Asai began to flick through the magazine. The memorial collection appeared right at the beginning, arranged by date of composition, and spanned the last two years.

Asai stopped at two of the most recent poems:
“Solemn Somin Shorai and the spring cow”
and “
The blossoming light of the golden Yamaga lantern”
. He looked puzzled.

“What do these two titles mean?”

“Somin Shorai is the name of a god who protects against evil. The haiku was written about a kind of amulet that you can get from a temple. This one is a little hexagonal tower, carved out of wood and bearing Somin Shorai's name. Apparently it's hand-painted and very delicate. Depending on the region it comes from, the shapes, sizes and designs of these amulets are different. But they all have a solemn or majestic quality.”

“Is it a religious artefact?”

“More like a kind of talisman.”

“What about the spring cow?”

“There was a cow in the temple grounds where she got the talisman. The contrast between the solemn talisman and the laid-back cow in the springtime was amusing.”

“Is there a temple like that in or around Tokyo?”

Eiko had taken part in tours that visited famous spots, seeking inspiration for her poetry. She'd often wandered around by herself too.

“Hmm. I'm not sure. I've never heard of a place like that, but it might not be real. It might be a landscape that she imagined in her poem.”

“And what's the Yamaga lantern in this other poem?”