After Dark (11 page)

“Hypothetically speaking.”

“If I did that, do you think you would honestly answer yes?”

Takahashi thinks about this for a moment.

“Probably not,” he says. “I’d probably answer no.”

“Why?”

“’Cause it would compromise your sister’s privacy.”

“Kinda like professional confidentiality?”

“Kinda, yeah.”

“Well, in that case, wouldn’t the right answer be ‘I can’t answer that’? If you really have to keep things confidential.”

Takahashi says, “Yeah, but if I were to say ‘I can’t answer that’ in this context, it’d be like a de facto yes. That’s willful negligence.”

“So in either case, the answer would have to be no, wouldn’t it?”

“Theoretically, yes.”

Mari looks straight into Takahashi’s eyes. “To tell you the truth, it doesn’t matter to me either way, even if you slept with Eri—as long as it was something she wanted.”

“Maybe not even Eri Asai has a clear grasp of what Eri Asai wants. Anyhow, let’s stop this. Both theoretically and in reality, the girl I took to Alphaville was somebody else, not Eri Asai.”

Mari releases a little sigh and allows a few seconds to elapse.

“I do wish I could have been closer to Eri,” she says. “I felt it especially in my early teens—that I wanted to be best friends with her. Of course, I idolized her to some extent: that was part of it. But she was already insanely busy even then—modeling for the covers of girls’ magazines, taking a million lessons, everybody waiting on her hand and foot. She just didn’t have any openings for me. In other words, when I needed her most, she had the least freedom to respond to my need.”

Takahashi listens to Mari in silence.

“We were sisters living under the same roof, but we grew up in two different worlds. We didn’t even eat the same food. With all those allergies of hers, she had to have a special diet that was different from what the rest of us ate.”

Pause.

Mari says, “I’m not blaming her for anything. It’s true at the time I thought my mother was spoiling her, but I don’t care about that now. All I’m trying to say is that we’ve got this…
history
between us. So when I hear now that she wishes we could have been closer, I honestly have absolutely no idea what to do about it. Do you understand my feeling?”

“I think I do.”

Mari says nothing.

“It suddenly popped into my mind when I was talking with Eri Asai,” Takahashi says, “but I think she’s always had some kind of complex where you’re concerned—from way back.”

“Complex?” says Mari. “Eri toward me?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And not the other way around?”

“No, not the other way around.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Well, look. You’re the kid sister, but you always had a good, clear image of what you wanted for yourself. You were able to say no when you had to, and you did things at your own pace. But Eri Asai couldn’t do that. From the time she was a little girl, her job was to play her assigned role and satisfy the people around her. She worked hard to be a perfect little Snow White—if I can borrow your name for her. It’s true that everybody made a big fuss over her, but I’ll bet that was really tough for her sometimes. At one of the most crucial points in her life, she didn’t have a chance to establish a firm self. If ‘complex’ is too strong a word, let’s just say she probably envied you.”

“Did Eri tell you that?”

“No, I just picked up on stuff around the margins of what she said, and put it together just now in my imagination. I think I’m not too far off.”

“Maybe not, but I think you’re exaggerating,” Mari says. “It may be true that I’ve lived a more autonomous lifestyle than Eri. I understand that. But look at the actual results: here I am, insignificant and practically powerless. I don’t have the knowledge I should have, and I’m not all that smart. I’m not pretty, and nobody’s much concerned about me. Talk about establishing a firm self: I don’t see where I’ve managed to do that, either. I’m just stumbling around all the time in my own narrow little world. What is there about me for Eri to envy?”

“This is still kind of a preparatory stage for you,” Takahashi says. “It’s too soon to reach any conclusions. You’re probably a late bloomer.”

“That girl was nineteen, too,” Mari says.

“What girl?”

“The Chinese girl in Alphaville—all beat up and stripped naked and bloody. She was pretty. But there aren’t any preparatory stages in the world she lives in. Nobody stops to think about whether she’s a late bloomer or not. See what I mean?”

Takahashi offers his wordless affirmation.

Mari says, “The minute I saw her, I felt—really strongly—that I wanted to be her friend. And if we had met in a different place at a different time, I’m sure we could have been good friends. I’ve hardly ever felt that way about anybody. Hardly ever? Never would be more like it.”

“Hmmm.”

“But it doesn’t matter how I feel: the worlds we live in are too different. And there’s nothing I can do about it. No matter how hard I try.”

“True.”

“I can tell you this, though: I didn’t spend much time with her, and we hardly talked at all, but I feel as if she’s living inside me now. Like she’s part of me. I don’t know how to put it.”

“You can feel her pain.”

“Maybe so.”

Takahashi broods over something for a while. Then he opens his mouth and says, “I just had an idea. Why don’t you look at it this way? Say your sister is in some other Alphaville kind of place—I don’t know where—and somebody is subjecting her to meaningless violence. She’s raising wordless screams and bleeding invisible blood.”

“In a metaphorical sense?”

“Probably,” Takahashi says.

“Talking with Eri gave you this impression?”

“She’s carrying around so many problems all by herself she can’t make any headway, and she’s searching for help. She expresses those feelings by hurting herself. This is not just an impression: it’s clearer than that.”

Mari stands up from the bench and looks at the sky. Then she goes over to the swings and sits in one. The night is momentarily filled with the crackling of the dry leaves under her yellow sneakers. She touches the swing’s thick ropes as if to gauge their strength. Takahashi also leaves the bench and walks across the dried leaves to sit in the swing next to Mari’s.

“Eri’s asleep now,” Mari says, as if sharing a confession. “She’s in a really deep sleep.”

“Everybody’s asleep now,” Takahashi says. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“No, that’s not what I mean,” Mari says. “She doesn’t want to wake up.”

12

S
hirakawa’s office.

Naked from the waist up, Shirakawa is lying on the floor, doing sit-ups on a yoga mat. His shirt and tie hang on the back of his chair, his glasses and watch are lined up on his desk. Shirakawa has a slender build, but he is thick in the chest, and his midsection has no excess flesh. His muscles are hard and well defined. He makes a very different impression when undressed. His breaths are deep but sharp as he quickly raises himself from the mat and twists his torso right and left. Fine beads of sweat on his chest and shoulders shine in the light of the fluorescent lamps. A Scarlatti cantata sung by Brian Asawa flows from the portable CD player on the desk. Its leisurely tempo feels mismatched to the strenuousness of the exercise, but Shirakawa is subtly controlling his movements in time with the music. This all seems to be part of a daily routine whereby he prepares for his trip home after a night’s work by performing a lonely series of exercises on the office floor while listening to classical music. His movements are systematic and confident.

After a set number of deep knee bends, he rolls up the yoga mat and stores it in a locker. He takes a small white towel and a vinyl shaving kit from a shelf and brings them to the lavatory. Still naked from the waist up, he washes his face and dries it with the towel, which he then uses to wipe the sweat from his body. He performs each movement deliberately. He has left the lavatory door open and can hear the Scarlatti playing. He hums occasional passages of this music created in the seventeenth century. He takes a small bottle of deodorant from his shaving kit and gives each armpit a quick spray, then ducks his head to check for odor. He opens and closes his right hand several times and experiments with moving his fingers a few different ways. He checks the back of the hand for swelling. It is not bad enough to be noticeable, but he still feels a good deal of pain from it.

He takes a small brush from the bag and puts his hair in order. The hairline has retreated somewhat, but the well-shaped forehead gives no impression that anything has been lost. He puts his glasses on. He buttons his shirt and ties his tie. Pale gray shirt, dark blue paisley tie. Watching himself in the mirror, he straightens the collar and smooths the dimple below the knot.

Shirakawa inspects his face in the mirror. The muscles of his face remain immobile as he stares at himself long and hard with severe eyes. His hands rest on the sink. He holds his breath and never blinks, fully expecting that, if he were to stay like this long enough, some
other thing
might emerge. To objectify all the senses, to flatten the consciousness, to put a temporary freeze on logic, to bring the advance of time to a halt if only momentarily—this is what he is trying to do: to fuse his being with the scene behind him, to make everything look like a neutral still life.

Try as he might to suppress his own presence, that
other thing
never emerges. His image in the mirror remains just that: an image of himself in reality. A reflection of what is there. He gives up, takes a deep breath, filling his lungs with new air, and straightens his posture. Relaxing his muscles, he rolls his head in two big circles. Then he picks up his personal articles from the sink and places them in the vinyl bag again. He balls up the towel he used to dry his body and throws it in the wastebasket. He turns the light out as he exits the lavatory. The door closes.

Even after Shirakawa has left, our point of view remains in the lavatory, and, as a stationary camera, continues to capture the dark mirror. Shirakawa’s reflection is still there in the mirror. Shirakawa—or perhaps we should say his image—is looking in this direction from within the mirror. It does not move or change expression. It simply stares straight ahead. Eventually, however, as though giving up, it relaxes, takes a deep breath, and rolls its head. Then it brings its hand to its face and rubs its cheek a few times, as if checking for the touch of flesh.

A
t his desk, thinking, Shirakawa twirls a silver-colored pencil between his fingers. It is the same pencil as the one on the floor of the room in which Eri Asai woke up, stamped with the name veritech. The point is dull. After playing with this pencil for a while, Shirakawa puts it down beside the pencil tray containing six identical pencils. These other pencils are sharpened to perfection.

He prepares to go home. He stuffs papers into a brown briefcase and puts on his suitcoat. He returns his shaving kit to his locker, picks up a large shopping bag that he had set down nearby, and carries it to his desk. He sits down and begins taking one item after another from the bag, examining each in turn. These are the pieces of clothing he stripped from the Chinese prostitute at Alphaville.

A thin cream-colored coat and red pumps. The shoe bottoms are worn out of shape. A deep pink, beaded crew-neck sweater, an embroidered white blouse, a tight blue miniskirt. Black pantyhose. Underthings of an intense pink with unmistakably synthetic lace trim. These pieces of clothing give an impression that is less sexual than sad. The blouse and the undergarments are stained with black blood. A cheap watch. Black fake-leather purse.

All the time he inspects the items from the bag, Shirakawa wears an expression as if to say, “How did these things get here?” His look is one of puzzlement, with a hint of displeasure. Of course he remembers perfectly well what he did in a room at the Alphaville. Even if he tried to forget, the pain in his right hand would keep reminding him. Still, nothing here strikes his eye as having any valid meaning. It’s all worthless garbage, stuff that has no business invading his life. He keeps the process going, however, impassively but carefully unearthing the shabby traces of the recent past.

He unfastens the clasp of the pocketbook and dumps its entire contents on his desk. Handkerchief, tissues, compact, lipstick, eyeliner, several smaller cosmetic items. Throat lozenges. Small jar of Vaseline, pack of condoms. Two tampons. Small tear-gas canister for use against perverts on the subway. (Fortunately for Shirakawa, she didn’t have time to take that out.) Cheap earrings. Band-Aids. Pill case containing several pills. Brown leather wallet. In the wallet are the three ten-thousand-yen bills he gave her at the beginning, a few thousand-yen bills, and some small change. Also a telephone card and a subway card. Beauty-salon discount coupon. Nothing that would reveal her identity. Shirakawa hesitates, then takes out his money and slips it into his pants pocket.
Anyhow, it’s money I gave her. I’m just taking it back.

Also in the bag is a small flip phone. The prepaid type. Untraceable. The in-phone answering machine is set to receive. He turns it on and presses the playback button. A few messages play, but all are in Chinese. Same male voice each time. Each sounds like an angry outburst. The messages themselves are short. Shirakawa cannot understand them, of course, but he listens to them all before switching off the answering machine.

He finds a paper garbage bag and throws everything but the cell phone inside, crushes the bundle down, and ties the mouth of the bag. This he puts into a vinyl garbage bag, presses out the air, and ties the mouth of that bag. The cell phone stays on his desk, separate from the other things. He picks it up, looks at it, and sets it down again. He seems to be thinking about what to do with it. It might have some use, but he hasn’t reached a conclusion.

Shirakawa switches off the CD player, places it in the deep bottom drawer of his desk, and locks the drawer. After carefully cleaning the lenses of his eyeglasses with a handkerchief, he calls a cab, using the land line on his desk. He gives them his office address and name and asks them to pick him up at the service entrance in ten minutes. He takes his pale gray trench coat from the coat rack, puts it on, and stuffs the woman’s cell phone into the pocket. He picks up the briefcase and the garbage bag. Standing at the door, he surveys the office and, satisfied that there are no problems, turns off the light. Even after all the fluorescent lamps go out, the room is not completely dark. The light from street lamps and billboards filters in through the blinds, faintly illuminating the room’s interior. He closes the door and steps into the hallway. As he walks down the hall, hard footsteps resounding, he gives a long, deep yawn, as if to say, “So ends another day.”

He takes the elevator down, opens the service door, steps outside, and locks it. His breath makes thick white clouds as he stands there waiting. Soon a taxi arrives. The middle-aged driver opens his window and asks if he is Mr. Shirakawa. His eyes flick down to the vinyl garbage bag Shirakawa is holding.

“It’s not raw garbage,” says Shirakawa. “It doesn’t smell. And I’m going to throw it away near here.”

“That’s fine,” the driver says. “Please.” He opens the door.

Shirakawa gets into the cab.

The driver speaks to him in the rearview mirror. “If I’m not mistaken, sir, you’ve been in my cab before. I picked you up here just about this time. Let’s see…your home is in Ekoda?”

“Close. Tetsugakudo.”

“That’s it, Tetsugakudo. Would you like to go there today, too?”

“Sure. Like it or not, it’s the only home I’ve got.”

“It’s handy to have one place to go home to,” the driver says, and steps on the gas. “But working this late all the time must be rough.”

“It’s the recession. All that goes up are my overtime hours, not my pay.”

“Same with me,” the driver says. “The less I take in, the longer I have to work to make up the difference. But still, sir, I think you’ve got it better. At least the company pays your cab fare when you work overtime. I mean it.”

“Yeah, but if they’re going to make me work this late, they’re going to have to pay for my cabs. Otherwise, I couldn’t get home,” Shirakawa says with a sour smile.

Then he remembers. “Oh, I almost forgot. Can you go right at the next intersection and let me out at 7-Eleven? My wife wants me to do some shopping. It’ll just take a second.”

The driver says to the rearview mirror, “If we go right there, we’re gonna have to get onto some one-way streets and make a detour. There are lots of other convenience stores along the way. How about going to one of those?”

“That’s probably the only place that carries what she wants. And anyhow, I want to get rid of this garbage.”

“Fine with me. It might run the meter up a little extra, though. Just thought I’d ask.”

He turns right, goes partway down the block, and finds a place to park. Shirakawa gets out, holding the garbage bag, leaving his briefcase on the seat. The 7-Eleven has a mound of garbage bags out front. He adds his to the pile. Mixed in with a lot of identical garbage bags, his bag loses its distinctiveness instantaneously. It will be collected with all the others when the garbage truck arrives in the morning. Without raw garbage inside, it is not likely to be torn open by crows. He glances one last time at the pile of bags and enters the store.

There are no customers inside. The young man at the register is involved in an intense conversation on his cell phone. A new song by the Southern All Stars is playing. Shirakawa goes straight to the dairy case and grabs a carton of Takanashi low-fat. He checks the expiration date. Fine. Then he takes a large plastic container of yogurt. Finally it occurs to him to pull the Chinese woman’s cell phone from his coat pocket. He looks around to make sure no one is watching him and sets the phone down next to the boxes of cheese. The little silver telephone fits the spot strangely well. It looks as though it has always been sitting there. Having left Shirakawa’s hand, it is now part of the 7-Eleven.

He pays at the register and hurries back to the taxi.

“Did you find what you wanted?” the driver asks.

“Sure did,” Shirakawa answers.

“Good. Now we head straight for Tetsugakudo.”

“I might doze off, so wake me when we get close, okay?” Shirakawa says. “There’s a Showa Shell station along the way. I get off a little after that.”

“Yes, sir. Have a nice snooze.”

Shirakawa sets the vinyl bag with the milk and yogurt next to his briefcase, folds his arms, and closes his eyes. He probably won’t manage to sleep, but he is in no mood to make small talk with the driver all the way home. Eyes closed, he tries to think of something that will not grate on his nerves. Something mundane, without deep meaning. Or possibly something purely abstract. But nothing comes to mind. In the vacuum, all he feels is the dull ache in his right hand. It throbs along with the beating of his heart, and echoes in his ears like the roar of the ocean.
Strange,
he thinks:
the ocean is nowhere near here.

Having run for a while, the taxi with Shirakawa in it stops at a red light. This is a big intersection with a long red light. Also waiting for the light next to the taxi is the black Honda motorcycle with the Chinese man. They are less than a meter apart, but the man on the cycle looks straight ahead, never noticing Shirakawa. Shirakawa is sunk deep in his seat with his eyes closed. He is listening to the imaginary roar of the ocean far away. The light turns green, and the motorcycle shoots straight ahead. The taxi accelerates gently so as not to wake Shirakawa. Turning left, it leaves the neighborhood.