Audition (18 page)

    Nor had Yamasaki Asami ever overcome, as Aoyama had believed, the trauma of being raised by a stepfather who beat and abused and reviled her. She still carried that trauma, still lived with it every day. Any man who betrayed or lied to her was the same as her stepfather; therefore, according to her reasoning, such men should have their feet severed to resemble him more closely. When not working at the part-time job that covered living expenses, she spent all her time preparing for the next operation. She would become intimate with a man and simultaneously begin forging a plan to cut off his feet should he prove to be just like her stepfather. In her teens, she’d only dreamed up the plans and never carried them out. She didn’t have a proper tool, for one thing. It was while watching a cooking show on TV that she’d discovered the wire saw – a thin steel cable with teeth, and a ring attached to either end. The TV chef had used it to cut effortlessly through a ham on the bone, saying that there was simply no other tool to match it for this sort of task. The wire saw had made everything possible. She read up on pharmaceuticals as well, and found a way to get her hands on whatever drugs she needed. Thorazine, benzodiazepines, meprobamate, Valium, medazepam, Librium, nitrous oxide, muscimole, amphetamines, psilocin, LSD. She had cased Aoyama’s home a number of times and even broken in before. Having lurked outside since morning, she knew the housekeeper hadn’t shown up, and she’d seen Shige leave with his skis. She’d slipped inside the house the moment Aoyama stepped out to the market. On his return he’d gone to the bathroom, and she’d taken that opportunity to add a muscle relaxant to the honey and yogurt mixture. If he hadn’t made things that easy, she would have been prepared to walk right up to him, say hello and spray him with mace; but he would have collapsed to the floor, and she much preferred having him propped up on the sofa like this. It would facilitate her work and make for a far more interesting picture.

    She went outside and came back with Gangsta in her arms. She plopped the dog down on the coffee-table, between Aoyama’s outstretched legs, and that was when the terror kicked in. Gangsta was as limp-limbed as a Beanie Baby, but at least that meant he was probably still alive. Brushing the beagle hairs from her black sweater, Yamasaki Asami went to the entryway, where she’d placed a photographer’s equipment bag. She took out a square black leather case, opened it by pressing on the corners, and pulled out something that looked almost like a portable headphones set – a thin, silvery, metallic cable wound in a circle, at either end of which was a ring the size of a large coin. She put her index finger through one of the rings and let go of the loop of cable. The glittering wire saw unwound with a sound like crossed swords. She wrapped the cable around the joint of Gangsta’s hind leg, then took firm hold of both rings and looked up at Aoyama. Aside from the fact that she wasn’t wearing make-up, her face was the same as ever.
Are you sure it’s all right? I’m so glad. I’ve never had anyone I can discuss my problems with before. Can I really count on you to call?
Nothing in her expression distinguished her from the Yamasaki Asami who’d once said things like this to him. No psychotic gleam shone in her eyes, her hair wasn’t standing on end, her mouth wasn’t twisted in a maniacal grin.

    She pulled the rings in opposite directions, as if stretching a chest-expander. There was a popping of ligaments and the awful sound of bone snapping, and Gangsta’s leg became disconnected from the rest of him. The white fur of his stomach was instantaneously awash in red. Yamasaki Asami quietly extracted the saw and began winding it around Gangsta’s other hind leg. Aoyama tried to tell her to stop, but he had no voice. The Verdi overtures were still playing, at a low volume.
Aida
.

   
Stop it
. He mouthed the words soundlessly.

    ‘What’s that?’ she said. ‘Did you say something?’

   
Not the dog
, he tried to say.
Do me, not the dog
. And as he struggled to move his lips, he pictured Shige. Without a way to stop the bleeding, Aoyama knew he could die from an amputation like that. Then Shige would be truly alone. Shige was a good kid. The thought of making him suffer, of causing him any more pain, was unbearable.

    He had to fight back somehow.

    ‘The dog first, then you,’ she said. ‘Don’t you want to watch him lose his head?’

    Having finished wrapping the instrument around Gangsta’s other leg, she pulled on the rings. The same awful sound. This time the blood splattered more, and some of it landed on the back of Aoyama’s hand. Was there a way to stop this? If only someone would come. Not a salesman or delivery person, who would simply leave when no one answered the door, but someone who’d notice something amiss and investigate. If he could somehow toss one of Gangsta’s severed legs out into the front yard, a passer-by might see it and . . . No. The two fur-covered objects lying there on the table were scarcely recognisable even to him. Anyone who’d never seen the severed leg of a dog might take it for a broken umbrella, or an odd-shaped handbag.

    Maybe he could start a fire. If the house were burning, the fire department would come. But would they find him in time to save him? He couldn’t walk, but maybe he could get to the floor, roll to the sliding glass doors and escape to the yard. No matches or lighters were at hand, however, and he wouldn’t have been able to manipulate them anyway. The
Aida
overture was nearing the end. The next selection was
Masquerade Ball
, and then
Aroldo
. What if he raised the volume? With an awkward jerk of his arm he reached the remote control beside him on the sofa. Yamasaki Asami, winding the wire saw around Gangsta’s neck, looked up at him. With unfeeling fingers he pressed the + key on the volume control, and when it reached maximum, he punched lock. Then, twisting to the left, he managed to force the remote control down between the back cushion and the springs. At full volume, the Bose speakers literally rattled the windows and caused the curtains to sway. Yamasaki Asami calmly stepped to the sofa and tried to retrieve the remote control, but it was wedged between the springs and she couldn’t get it out even after flinging the cushion aside. Aoyama remembered that once, when Shige was blasting a Mr Children CD, a neighbour had rung up to complain. According to Shige the caller had been ‘some old biddy’ who’d threatened to call the police if he didn’t turn it down. If only she’d ring up again and then, not getting an answer, call the police! Yamasaki Asami gave up on trying to extract the remote control and walked over to the audio rack beside the drinks cabinet. She seemed to be spewing some sort of abuse at him, but he couldn’t hear her over the roar of the Berlin Philharmonic. She tried turning the volume dial on the amp and then pushing the stop/open button on the CD player, but with the remote control on lock none of the functions could be activated manually. The wall socket was behind the massive drinks cabinet, and there was no way to pull the plug. The music blasting through the living-room only heightened the unreality of the scene. A beagle with two severed limbs lay on the coffee-table in a pool of blood between the outstretched legs of a paralysed middle-aged man, while a beautiful young woman in a black sweater, jeans and sneakers moved about serenely in the background.

    When Gangsta opened his eyes, Aoyama screamed – or tried to. His frozen vocal cords produced only a feeble squawk that not even he himself could hear over the thunderous music. The dog, whether because of the pain or because of whatever drug he’d been administered, was unable to bark or move, but his eyes said it all. They were the eyes of a creature gazing at its own death, a creature who’d been robbed of every last vestige of courage and dignity, and they filled Aoyama with horror. Never before had he seen in any eyes, animal or human, such a look of utter despair.

    Yamasaki Asami walked to the entryway and turned on the lights. Then she opened her equipment bag and took out a knife.

12

It wasn’t a weapon, only a small penknife of the sort one might use to clean one’s fingernails. The handle was pink, and the tip of the blade was rounded. There was nothing frantic or even hurried about Yamasaki Asami’s movements, and her face was still a placid mask, as it had been even during the severing of Gangsta’s legs.

    She was looking for a place to cut the electrical cord. The amp and CD player and cassette deck were all combined in one unit that fit snugly into a custom-built shelf and couldn’t be removed without disassembling the entire audio rack. The rack was flush against the side of the big drinks cabinet, and both were bolted to the wall at the back to prevent them from toppling in the event of an earthquake. She fetched Aoyama’s fork from the coffee-table and inserted it in the narrow space beneath the amp, trying to snag the cord. If she could draw it out and cut it with her little knife, the music would stop, and his meagre rebellion would be quashed. He was going to die in the midst of this chaos and madness. It was too sudden, too soon, but maybe that was always true of death. It was probably best to resign himself after all, and to face the end with some measure of equanimity. Yamasaki Asami was still fishing for the cord. Even with the lights on, the narrow space beneath the amp was pitch dark, and she had to work purely by feel.

    Aoyama had avoided looking at Gangsta since seeing him open his eyes, but now he realised with a gasp that the dog was dead. The light and lustre were quickly receding from those desolate eyes, and an astonishingly long grey tongue had slithered out from his open mouth. It was as if an enormous parasite were exiting the animal’s corpse to seek another host. Aoyama wondered if the same would happen to him. He remembered reading somewhere that when prisoners were executed, their bowels and bladders emptied and their tongues hung out long and distended. He envisioned people looking down at his corpse, with his ankles severed, his tongue touching his chest, his trousers soiled, and the light gone from his eyes. It was a vision of astonishing clarity, as if he were actually witnessing the scene from somewhere outside himself: policemen milling about the room, a white-coated coroner examining his eyes, trying to judge the time of death by the degree of moisture remaining on them. Eyes that had lost the lustre of life, like the glass facsimiles on stuffed tigers or bears. Rie-san weeping into the skirt of her apron. Shige standing there numb with shock.

    Where had this grim and vivid vision come from? He was thinking that it must be the drugs when he felt something explode in the pit of his stomach. It wasn’t a nameable sensation like nausea or vertigo or heartburn but an oppressive, violent sort of eruption. Whatever it was, it caused his blood to start circulating again, if only tentatively, and his legs began to tremble. It was as if something inside him were rebelling against the brain’s command to surrender to death, refusing to give in.

    He had to escape. He tried to flex the muscles of his legs, but they seemed to be disconnected from his brain. He had regained some control over his hands, however, and he clenched and unclenched his fists. Gradually the feeling began to return to his fingers. He could move his head as well. He hunched over and grabbed his right hand with his left, then lifted it and bent his head forward to bite the palm. He could feel the bite, but just barely. Yamasaki Asami turned to look at him, and he knew she’d finally snagged the electrical cord. He chewed furiously on his hand, biting down rhythmically, and was getting some feeling back all the way up his left arm. Just as he went to switch to his right palm there was a loud
pop
, the music stopped in mid-note, and all the lights went off. Apparently Yamasaki Asami, slicing through the cord, had caused a short and triggered the breaker.

    It was quite dark outside now, and even darker in here. Yamasaki Asami had melted into the shadows, but her voice came from right beside him.

    ‘Where’s the breaker? You ought to be able to talk by now. Where is it?’

    Though she was close enough to reach out and touch, it was too dark for him to see more than the bare outlines of her face. But it was unmistakably the very face he’d once kissed and caressed, and dreamed of again and again. She might have been about to close her eyes and search for his mouth with her own. How many hundreds – no,
thousands
– of times had he pictured those features, so beautiful even when contorted in the throes of passion? For a moment he almost forgot about everything – his agony, his determination to escape – but the moment ended with a hard right hook to the side of his face. The punch was a shockingly powerful one, delivered with the fist that still gripped the fork. It wasn’t as if she’d lashed out impulsively, compelled by some extreme emotion. It was, rather, a calm and methodical blow, intended only to reaffirm who was in control here. The tines of the fork had struck the corner of his mouth, splitting his lip. Blood ran down his chin, and the pain seemed to pierce his skull. Aoyama bent forwards and covered his head with both hands.

    ‘The breaker,’ she repeated, but without any inflection or affect in her voice. Obviously she hadn’t the slightest compunction about inflicting injury and pain.

    ‘Kitchen,’ Aoyama said in what came out as barely more than a whisper. The breaker box was in fact built into the wall of a utility room next to the kitchen. In the darkness, it would take her some time to find the door and then to locate the box above the washing machine. Enough time, perhaps, for him to crawl up the stairs to the second floor, where the bedrooms were. Shige’s room could be locked from inside, and had a telephone with a separate line.