The Graveyard Apartment (24 page)

“I still don't understand what happened,” Teppei said over and over again during the weeks following his misadventure in the basement. “I can't even begin to wrap my mind around it. I mean, what in the world was going on down there? What were they trying to do to us? And who, or what, are
they
?”

The doorbell of the Inoues' apartment chimed, followed by a cheery greeting: “Hello! Anybody home? I'm from the soba shop—sorry I kept you waiting!” Clutching two thousand-yen bills in his little hand, Tsutomu raced to the front door.

“I wish I'd thought to order some noodles for you, too,” Eiko told Misao as she trotted by, a few steps behind Tsutomu. “The thing is, we didn't have time to eat breakfast, so I wasn't thinking too clearly when I made the call.”

“Please, don't give it another thought,” Misao said with a smile.

Eiko, meanwhile, had joined Tsutomu at the door to their apartment, with her husband close behind. “You're awfully late, you know,” she groused, glaring at the uniformed deliveryman. “We've been waiting for ages.”

“I'm really sorry,” the young man replied as he handed the takeout orders to Mr. Inoue. “The thing is, the front door of the building was closed when I got here, and it took quite a while to get the caretaker to open it.”

“Closed?” Eiko echoed in surprise. “In the middle of the day?”

“That's right,” said the deliveryman. He pocketed Tsutomu's eagerly proffered payment and smiled at the little boy in a friendly way.

“You mean it was locked?” Eiko sounded incredulous.

“I don't know whether it was locked or what, but it wouldn't open. I kept banging on the glass and after a while the caretaker must have heard me, because he came out and opened the door from the inside. I'm sorry, but I need to get back to work now. Please just put the empty dishes in the hall outside your apartment, and I'll pick them up later today. Thank you very much!”

After the deliveryman had taken his leave, the family trooped back into the living room. Mr. Inoue wore a troubled frown as he distributed the bamboo plates. Everyone had ordered
zaru
soba: a heap of cold buckwheat noodles topped with strips of seaweed, accompanied by a soy-based dipping sauce and tiny pyramids of wasabi and finely grated daikon radish for each diner to stir into the sauce, to taste.

“Whatever the Tabatas may have suffered through the other night, this is going too far,” Eiko complained. “I mean, locking the front entrance during the day? That's unheard of. And today, of all days, when they know very well that we're moving out. What if the truck had shown up while the door was locked? That would have been a major hassle.”

“Poor old Mr. Tabata has really been on edge since that night,” Misao said. “He probably just inadvertently turned the lock or something.”

“Still, that's no excuse. I mean, what were the postal carrier and the newspaper person supposed to do when they couldn't get into the lobby?”

While Misao watched, the Inoues began to slurp up their cold noodles in the traditional manner—that is, as noisily as possible. Without air conditioning, the living room was suffocatingly warm and humid.

Looking out beyond the balcony, Misao said, “Speaking of the mail and the newspaper, it looks as if it'll just be us and the Tabatas from now on. We're really going to be lonely here without all of you. I can't believe it's come to this: an entire apartment building with only two occupied units.”

“But what about you?” Eiko began, quietly laying down her chopsticks and turning to look at Misao. “Have you been giving it any thought?”

“It? Oh, you mean moving?”

“Of course. What else?”

Misao lowered her eyes. “As a matter of fact, we have been thinking about that,” she said. “Quite seriously, too.” She found it hard to believe that she was having a conversation like this barely three months after moving into the building. Three months ago she and her family had arrived here so full of hope and anticipation, and now …

Mr. Inoue looked at Misao with a sympathetic expression. “Finding a place to move to isn't that easy, especially when most of your capital's tied up,” he said. “We were lucky to have family in the city, with extra space.”

“Well, Teppei and I agreed early on that we would never even think about moving in with either of our parents, so that isn't an option for us,” Misao said.

Eiko used the palm of her hand to wipe away a trickle of sauce that was running down her chin. “Well, for us, I mean … this time last year we were making do in a tiny rental apartment no larger than an eel's bed, scrimping and saving so we could buy a place of our own, and for what? To have it turn out like this? I mean, it would almost be funny if it weren't so tragic.”

“I'm sure this apartment will sell before too long.” Misao spoke the requisite words in a determinedly upbeat tone, but she could tell that both Eiko and her husband were struggling to remain optimistic. Kaori, meanwhile, was beaming fondly at Misao. Smiling back, Misao said, “Tamao and I will definitely come to visit, Kaori. We'll stop by one day soon, I promise.”

Kaori bobbed her head in an exaggerated manner, as children do. “There won't be any spooky things at our new house,” she declared in an extra-loud voice. “That's why we're moving, to get away from all the scary stuff.”

“Yes, of course it is,” Misao responded automatically.

Eiko and her husband just went on inhaling their noodles, without saying a word. Large drops of rain began to pelt the balcony's sliding doors, leaving dark splotches on the glass.

When Misao remarked, “Hey, it's raining again!” Eiko furrowed her brow and muttered sarcastically, “Oh, perfect. That's just what we need.” Then she added in a normal tone, “I hope the truck will get here on time, at least.” At that, Misao took her leave, promising to return later to see the Inoues off.

It was Saturday and Teppei had the day off from work for once, so Misao had sent him to pick Tamao up after school. St. Mary's Kindergarten had only a half-day session on Saturdays, and father and daughter returned around 12:30. Tamao was wearing a lightweight pink vinyl raincoat with a hood that kept her dry when the sudden downpour began, but Teppei had left the house without an umbrella, so he was soaked to the skin from head to foot.

“Papa ran all the way home,” Tamao reported enthusiastically as they shed their soggy shoes in the entryway. “I mean,
all
the way. He ran from my school to our house, carrying me on his back. It was amazing!”

“Since when did you turn into such a superhero, honey?” Misao teased. “Was it when you noticed you were getting a little paunchy around the middle?”

“A mere woman can never know the pleasure of running through a June rainstorm, carrying a rather large child,” Teppei retorted with a laugh as he darted past her on his way to the bathroom. “I really feel sorry for you.”

Misao couldn't help feeling that her husband's show of lightheartedness was just a facade.

Teppei turned around in the hallway and said, “Oh, by the way, the Inoues' moving truck showed up. They were loading the boxes and furniture as fast as they could, but I could tell the rain was making things difficult for them. Eiko was grumbling nonstop, of course.”

“I told them we'd go down later to see them off,” Misao said. “So please hurry up—you need to take a shower and change into some dry clothes.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.” Teppei gave an ironic salute as he disappeared into the bathroom. After a moment the sound of the shower's vigorous stream was joined by his strong tenor voice, singing some old tune.

Tamao had left her wet raincoat in a heap on the floor, and Misao said sternly, “You know you're supposed to put your coat away, sweetie. Stick it on a hanger and we'll leave it out on the balcony until it dries. Otherwise the water will get all over the living room.”

“Woa-kay,” Tamao said, responding with an obscure colloquialism. It wasn't something either of her parents would ever say, and Misao wondered fleetingly where her daughter had picked it up. Probably at school, or perhaps from watching TV.

As Tamao was jamming her pink slicker onto a cream-colored plastic coat hanger decorated with a picture of a rabbit's face, Cookie approached and nudged the child's hand with her snout, clearly wanting to play. Giggling with delight, Tamao stroked Cookie's fur affectionately while she murmured, “Aw, such a good little girl.”

Suddenly, it all struck Misao as impossibly artificial.
Everything Teppei and I do these days—no, really, everything the four of us do, including Tamao and even Cookie—somehow feels as if we're all acting in a play,
she thought.
A theater-of-the-absurd play about the daily routine of an utterly ordinary family living in a beautiful, sunny apartment, without a care or worry in the world. Just an average family, living in a perfectly normal building, playing their parts to the hilt. Except that something isn't quite right about this idyllic tableau …

Misao went into the kitchen and began whipping up a batch of Chinese-style fried rice, using some cooked white rice and vegetables left over from the previous night's dinner. Soon a light, pleasant sizzling sound rose from the wok, along with a delicious aroma. As she stirred the ingredients with deliberately histrionic hand movements, like a stage actress portraying a housewife, Misao reached out and switched on the radio they kept on the kitchen counter. A young woman's voice was delivering an updated traffic report.

“On Metropolitan Expressway Route Four, near the Shinanomachi area, there is a two-kilometer stretch of slow-moving traffic because of routine congestion. Metropolitan Loop Line Number Eight, in the vicinity of Roka Park, is experiencing extreme gridlock as the result of a rollover accident involving a truck. The Metro Expressway Route One has been severely congested due to an accident during the morning hours, but as of midday all the lanes are open again and traffic flow has returned to normal.”

When Misao thought about the traffic accidents, and the clogged roads, and the cranky drivers trying to get from point A to point B out there in the world, it felt very strange to her. The things that had happened in the basement of this bright new apartment building had just been too unfathomably alien, as if that underground room were part of some eerie parallel universe.

The three Kanos sat down to a late lunch, during which they carried on a conversation that struck Misao as almost theatrically boisterous. The rain outside the windows was pelting down harder than ever.

It was around two o'clock when the entire Inoue family showed up at their door to say good-bye. “These are for Tamao,” Kaori and Tsutomu chorused, holding out their parting gifts: a lollipop wrapped in polka-dot paper, a handful of multicolored marbles, and a small plastic action figure of a cyborg.

“Can you stay for a cup of tea?” Misao asked, but Eiko shook her head regretfully. “We're already running late,” she said, “and my folks are getting impatient. They keep calling and asking when we'll be arriving.”

It occurred to Misao that this might be the last time she ever saw Eiko's smiling face in her doorway, and she was suddenly overcome by a feeling of profound loneliness. It wasn't as though their friendship had a long history. They were just a couple of neighbors who had hit it off, and now one of them was moving away; that was all. Misao felt as if she had turned into a weak, pathetic person, to be taking Eiko's departure so hard.
It's probably because my nerves are basically fried,
she thought. Too many weird things had happened lately, and the parade of distressing events had taken a toll on her mental state.

Teppei looked at Eiko and her husband and said, “We're really going to miss you,” in a way that came across as sincere rather than emptily formulaic. Then he added in a more jocular tone, “I mean, who am I going to run my ad copy past to find out if it works or not, now that the perfect family is moving away?”

It was a rather meager attempt at a joke, but everyone chuckled nonetheless.

The entire Inoue clan, along with Teppei, Misao, and Tamao, crowded into the elevator, filling the air with animated conversation. Even Cookie was allowed to join the party, to the dog's tail-wagging surprise. The mood was buoyant, but all the adults were making a conscious effort to avoid looking at the indicator panel. No one wanted to see (or even think about) the “B1” button.

When the group disembarked on the ground floor, Mitsue and Sueo Tabata emerged from the caretakers' apartment to join them. Being surrounded by such a large group of people was more excitement than Cookie could handle, and her loud, staccato barks filled the lobby.

After the Tabatas and Inoues had voiced the usual expressions of reciprocal gratitude and farewell, Sueo patted Kaori and Tsutomu on their heads and handed them each a piece of candy wrapped up in old-fashioned handmade Japanese paper. No one made any mention of the basement.

Beyond the glass entrance door, the graveyard fence was clearly visible through the mist. The Inoues' car, a gray Honda Civic, was parked in front of the building, off to one side. The rain was still pelting down.

“It's just now hitting me that this is really good-bye, and I'm starting to get all soppy and sentimental,” Eiko said, looking at Misao. “Please take good care of yourselves, okay? And do come and visit us sometime very soon.”

“Of course we will,” Misao said. As she was speaking, she and Tamao both put their hands on the glass door. The entrance, usually a neutral zone, now seemed to be transmitting a tangle of heavy, dismal, depressing feelings directly into the palm of Misao's hand.

“Well, then, shall we be on our way?” Mr. Inoue said in a firm voice. Misao gave the glass door a push.

The door didn't budge.

“Huh,” Eiko said, turning to look at the Tabatas. “Did you lock the door again? The guy from the noodle shop was saying that—”