I Hear Them Cry (8 page)

And then, I left France. Watching from the airplane window a sea of clouds that stretched on forever, I sat by Shigeki’s side washed in a feeling of happiness so intense it was scary. Good-bye, Jean. Be happy, Anna! My sad, lonesome days of quiet despair were over.
The echoes will finally stop now
, I thought.

PART TWO: IN JAPAN

REIKA: ONE

We were slowly walking around, greeting people at the gala. There were nearly one hundred people there, and most of them were there because of Shigeki, either family or people he knew from work. For me the room was filled with about one hundred strangers, making me uncomfortable. I smiled faintly while acknowledging their congratulatory babble. Somehow I was able to remain calm, thanks to Shigeki, who wrapped his arm around my waist and never let go.

All the faces blended together until I set my eyes on a woman who was leaning against a wall nearby in the back of the hall. A shadow fell over my heart. She was wearing earrings exactly like the ones Shigeki had given me.

I tried to tell myself it was a mistake. But there was no mistake. The diamonds were arranged in the shape of an artist’s palette. Shigeki had custom ordered the earrings for me, the painter. But then I noticed one difference. My pair had rubies—my birthstone—mounted at the center. This woman’s earrings had emeralds.

(So a mere coincidence after all.)

But her eyes, glaring at me over the rim of her wineglass, told me this was more than a coincidence. Her name tag read Reika Terashima.

REIKA: TWO

I felt distant and detached for the rest of the party. Reika Terashima’s presence had soured my mood, choking up my heart. I needed an explanation from Shigeki but was afraid to ask him. The banquet dragged on for an awfully long time, or so it seemed to me. When everything was over, though, we finally found ourselves alone in our hotel room.

“You’re exhausted, aren’t you?” Shigeki noticed tenderly. “Why don’t you take a shower?”

I reminded myself that this was my husband and as his wife I needed to keep calm and maintain my composure. And then—to quickly extract the small bone stuck in my throat—I asked as casually as possible, “Is Ms. Reika Terashima someone you know from work?”

For such a simple question, it took a lot out of me, requiring me to summon all my strength.

“She’s the daughter of the president of Terashima Industries, an important client of ours,” he answered nonchalantly. “Did you know that she designed your earrings? They’re her creation. She insisted on making them. It’s just a hobby of hers, but she’s actually quite good, just like a pro.”

“I noticed that her earrings were almost identical to mine—that’s why I asked about her.”

“She probably wanted to make it known to you, to say, ‘Hey, that’s my work of art you’re wearing.’ Designers! They like to show off.”

(Really?)

I’d dislodged the bone from my throat but still couldn’t breathe. I pretended to be satisfied with Shigeki’s explanation—which he had delivered in such a carefree tone—and put the lid on the topic of Reika Terashima.

There were some nights when Shigeki didn’t sleep at home, saying he needed to take a business trip. I passed the time pondering all the ways I could improve the interior of the new condo. I kept busy, and I was happy.

But after three months of newlywed bliss, I received a phone call from Shigeki’s company that put an abrupt end to my honeymoon.

“I can’t reach the boss on his cell phone. Is he home?”

Pangs of anxiety gripped through me—he was supposed to be at work.

“Look,” I said, gulping down my doubts, “I’ll check around and get back to you immediately, okay?”

It was strange that his company didn’t know his whereabouts. Besides, they wouldn’t be calling his home if it were simply a matter of faulty reception.

(Did he intentionally have his phone turned off?)

At that moment Reika Terashima’s haunting glare vividly came back to life. Those eyes I had tried so hard to forget because I wanted to believe Shigeki—they were shimmering with malice. Reflecting on his breezy explanation filled me with even more dread. If he had noticed the earrings at the same time I did, it wouldn’t be too far-fetched to think that his apparently
spontaneous explanation was anything but that. Had it been a calculated lie?

I felt short of breath, like a fish out of water. I wanted somebody to relieve me of this worry as soon as possible. I needed a lifeline, so I reached out and at the end of my reach was Kanako, my mother-in-law.

I called her.

“Yes, this is Tachibana,” she said faintly and without inflection. She sounded unapproachable and cold, like someone indifferent to the world’s changes. The waves of emotion rippling inside me came to a standstill.

“Mother, this is Mayu.”

“Oh, how are you?”

“I don’t know where Shigeki is right now. The company called trying to find him. Do you have any idea where he might be?”

She hesitated to respond. She knew.

“Well, sometimes my son likes to be at sea. I think he’s on board the boat now. I’ll go ahead and contact him. Don’t you worry, dear.”

I would have done that myself had she given me the number. But there was finality in the way Kanako spoke, forbidding further comment on the matter. I felt left out in the cold when it came to Shigeki’s family. But he’d once told me that the boat had been very important to the father and that is why his mother didn’t like inviting people on it.

My father-in-law, Taichi, had built Tachibana Shoji from the ground up. He started out working for Kanako’s family, who were descended from a long line of distillers. Taichi was an earnest and hard worker and had won the confidence of Kanako’s father before going on to become his son-in-law.

Apparently Taichi had a knack for making sense of the times, and therefore was able to stay one step ahead of cultural shifts and expand the family business to include importing
wine. His venture paid off, and he was able to build the business into an enterprise with an annual turnover of six billion yen. It was this same Taichi who had allegedly fallen overboard during a casual outing and was reported missing. Shigeki rarely talked about the boat.

Since I’d met Shigeki, women had been shadowing him like ghosts. No big surprise there, really. He was a young entrepreneur who drove a classy car, wore designer suits, and had a good command of English. Noriko the flight attendant, Reika the daughter of the undersecretary of foreign affairs, and his amour who bore his child; wherever he went, you were sure to find a woman there.

I wondered if Reika Terashima was on the boat with him.

When we left France, I was punch-drunk, watching the blue sky that went on endlessly above a sea of fluffy clouds. Of course I’d wondered about the other women in Shigeki’s life, about what had become of them, but I hadn’t felt jealous.

Shigeki used to try to shower me with gifts: designer earrings, bags, scarves. Everything he did was right out of the pages of some book about seducing women. I wondered about the worth of such things. After I had come to know Anna’s brutal world, to me the gifts were nothing more than mere material objects that I’d put away in drawers.

“For god’s sake, just tell me what you want,” he once demanded, annoyed by the way I was behaving.

“Really? You really think I
want
something?” I said. “That’s unfortunate.”

His eyes bore the look of a wounded bird. I refused his gifts until the day he came to me with those earrings fashioned after an artist’s palette, saying, “I had them designed just for you.” Despite his typically suave demeanor, he was awkward when it came to saying “I love you.”

I was happy thinking that the earrings were made exclusively for me, that only one pair existed in the world.

But that sharp thorn—the one that pricked me and got stuck when I saw the same earrings dangling from Reika Terashima’s ears—it needled away at me, little by little. Was this jealousy? I needed to hear Shigeki tell me that I was being silly.

While Jean and I were preoccupied with Pierre’s case, Shigeki had been in France trying to set up a branch office, busily hiring employees and preparing for the launch. After finishing his work for the day, he would often come to my apartment stressed out and drained of energy, collapse onto my bed, and fall asleep. At around three in the morning, he would suddenly wake up, call out my name, and begin pawing at me. Then he would bury his head into my breasts and freeze, as if he were holding his breath. Although I wondered if he was actually frightened, I humored him, patting him on the head like he was a child. But before long he would throw himself at me with such mad passion that his cock felt more like a weapon—and I would just let go and cast myself into the depths of this ocean of raging passion. I let myself be pulled down deep, tangled in seaweed and darkness, before our movements floated me up to the surface of pleasure and illumination.

But one time, Shigeki’s whisper-quiet voice was tinged with sadness and fear. He seemed to be weeping, his head buried in my hair, his shoulders trembling. I had imagined all would be well as long as I was by his side.

Now, small waves of unease reached my feet, steadily crumbling away the sand beneath them. Reika Terashima had something I didn’t. Something that seemed to be giving her the confidence to say, “So what if you’re his wife?” By saying this, she implied that she knew Shigeki better than I ever would.

REIKA: THREE

That night Shigeki returned home after midnight, looking tired.

“Where the hell have you been? Even your company called to ask. I couldn’t tell them a damn thing!”

Without even looking at me, he went straight to the living room, removed his necktie and suit jacket, and hurled them against the back of the sofa.

“Your mother seems to know everything, so there’s nothing for me to worry about, right?” I said sarcastically, expecting that soon he would be making excuses.

“Zip it!” he said, slapping me across my cheek. Don’t you ever pester me again about where I go or what I do! Understand?”

I slowly stepped back and escaped into the bedroom. I pushed a sofa in front of the door and waited for him to come and apologize.

(I won’t forgive him! How can I? Even my parents never slapped me. I’m not going to give in. The door to my heart is shut.)

My heart was pounding. I wasn’t so much hurt by the slap as by the coldness in his eyes—they were the eyes of someone trying to drive away a dog.

I heard no sign of him chasing after me. I pressed my ear against the door, only to hear the bathroom door slamming shut, followed by the sound of the shower.

My knees gave way and I sunk to the floor as the tears poured from me. I couldn’t stop them. The sound of the shower was merciless. It widened the wound of my misery, making it bleed slowly. It felt as if I’d ceased to be relevant as a human being—as a presence in his life. He had cast me out.

(Jean, I don’t understand Shigeki. I suppose this means that you were right about him all along. Tell me, Jean? Were you right all along?)

The Shigeki I had met in France was a young, can-do entrepreneur, a man endowed with sound judgment, intelligence, and social grace. Even when he had been told that the way into my heart wasn’t through pricey gifts, he still went to the trouble of having special earrings made for me, which made me happy at the time. He had affirmed his devotion to me.