Grotesque (3 page)

“I’m really interested in the O.L. Murder, as they call it. I suspect you hear that from a lot of people. It just boggles the mind. What would drive her to do something so shocking? How could she have had such dark impulses? I mean, wasn’t she a career woman employed by some construction-firm think tank in Otemachi? And a graduate of Q University on top of it. Why would such an elite professional become caught up in prostitution? You must know something about it.”

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So there it was! Yuriko had already been forgotten. If a woman who is beautiful but has no other redeeming value turns tricks until she’s ancient, no one gives it a second thought. But Kazue s turn to prostitution left everyone racking their brains to figure out why. A career woman by day, a prostitute by night. Men everywhere were beside themselves trying to work that one out. That the section chief would lay bare his curiosity in this way struck me as particularly offensive. He must have noticed my expression because he began to stammer out an apology.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m being callous.” And then he added, as a joke, “It’s not sex-harass, so please don’t be angry!”

Our conversation shifted to his Sunday baseball games. When he invited me to come watch one sometime I nodded appropriately and finished my ramen, making every effort to appear nonchalant. Finally, I understood. Mr. Nonaka wasn’t interested in me. He was interested in the Yuriko-Kazue scandal. Wherever I go those scandals pursue me.

And just when I thought I had finally found a worthwhile job! I was tired of this worrisome chain of events at my workplace, but I didn’t feel like resigning. It wasn’t just the job. It was that a whole year had passed since I’d started working there, and I found comfort in the regularity of the hours.

After I graduated from the university and before I took the job at the P Ward Office, I did all kinds of things. I worked for a while in a convenience store, and I went door-to-door trying to sell subscriptions to a monthly study guide. Marriage? No. I never gave it a moment’s thought.

I’m really proud to be a middleaged, parttime, unattached freelancer.

That night, before I went to bed, I fantasized about the child I would have with Mr. Nonaka. I even drew a picture of it on the back of an advertisement leaflet. The child was a boy with very dry skin. He had Mr.

Nonaka’s fat gabby lips and short stocky legs that made him swagger when he walked. From my side he took big, bright white teeth and tapered ears. I was pleased to see that the boy’s features gave him a demonic look. And then I thought about what Mr. Nonaka had said to me. “When you talk, your voice is high-pitched, but when you laugh it’s low. Eee-hee-hee-hee. That’s how you laugh.”

His observation had shocked me; I’d never paid attention to my own laughing voice. And so I tried laughing there by myself. It’ll probably come as no surprise that the laugh I produced was hardly natural. I won-1 4

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dered which parent my laughter resembled. But I don’t have any recollection of either my father or my mother ever laughing, so there was no way to judge. This was because the two of them never really laughed much. Yuriko, too, never raised her voice in laughter. She simply smiled mysteriously, maybe because she knew smiling showed her beauty to greatest effect. What a strange family! Suddenly the events of one winter day came flooding back.

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Let’s see. I’m thirty-nine years old now, so it must have been twentyseven years ago. We spent our New Year s family vacation in our mountain cabin in Gunma; I suppose I should call it our “vacation cottage.” It was just an ordinary house, no different from the surrounding farmhouses, but my father and mother always referred to it as our mountain cabin, so that was what I called it too.

When I was little, I could hardly wait for our weekends at the cabin.

But once I entered junior high it became a real hassle. I hated the way the people there made such a fuss over my sister and me and our family—

silently comparing us to each other. It was mostly the local farmers. Still, I couldn’t very well stay behind by myself in Tokyo over the New Year’s vacation, so off I went to Gunma—reluctantly—in the car my father drove. I was in my first year of junior high; Yuriko was in sixth grade.

Our cabin was in a small enclave of about twenty or so vacation homes of varying sizes and styles clustered at the foot of Mount Asama. With the exception of one third-generation Japanese family, almost all the houses were owned by foreign businessmen who had Japanese wives.

Although an unwritten rule, it was as if Japanese people were not allowed in. In sum, it was a village where Western men married to Japanese women could escape their stifling Japanese companies and come to catch their breath. There must have been some other interracial chil-1 5

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dren like my sister and me, but either they were already grown up or they weren’t living in Japan, because we rarely saw any young people.

That New Year’s we were the only children, as usual.

On New Year’s Eve my family and I went to a nearby mountain to ski.

On our way back we stopped by a hot spring with an outdoor bath. As always this was my father’s idea. He seemed to enjoy startling people with his foreign presence.

The outdoor bath was built alongside a river. The pool in the middle was for mixed bathing, but there were pools on either side partitioned off for single-sex use. The women’s side of the bath was surrounded by a bamboo hedge, so you couldn’t see in from the outside. As soon as we started taking off our clothes in the changing area, I began to hear the murmurs.

“Look at that girl.”

“Why, she looks just like a doll!”

In the changing room, in the passage to the bath, and even from within the steam of the bath waters, the women whispered among themselves.

Old women stared openly at Yuriko without the least bit of reservation, and young women made no attempt to hide the shock on their faces as they nudged one another with their elbows. Children, too, went out of their way to draw closer and stare with their mouths agape at the naked Yuriko. That’s always the way it was.

Ever since she was a baby, Yuriko had been used to being ogled by perfect strangers. She’d strip naked without the slightest hesitation. Her body was still undeveloped and childlike, showing not the slightest suggestion of breasts. But even so, with her tiny little face and her fair complexion, she looked just like a Barbie doll. To me she looked like she was wearing a mask.

I had planned to take off my clothes, fold them carefully, and then walk down the narrow passage to the open-air bath while everyone was fixated on Yuriko.

“Is she your daughter?” a middleaged woman sitting in a chair suddenly called out to my mother. She must have steeped herself too long in the hot waters of the bath because she looked hot sitting there, fanning her pink flesh with her damp towel.

Mothers hands stopped midair as she was pulling off her clothing.

“Is your husband a foreigner?” The woman glanced in my direction. I lowered my eyes and said nothing. The idea of pulling my underwear 1 6

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off was now disconcerting. I wasn’t like Yuriko. I was sick and tired of being the object of curious stares. If I’d been by myself, I wouldn’t have been so obvious. But thanks to the fact that I was there with the monster Yuriko, I couldn’t slip by unnoticed. The woman kept pushing the point.

“So, I take it your husband’s not Japanese?”

“That is correct.”

“Well, that explains it! I’ve never seen such a pretty girl!”

“Thank you.” A wave of pride flashed across my mother’s face.

“But it must be odd to have a kid who doesn’t look a thing like you.”

The woman muttered this casually as if she were speaking to herself.

My mother’s face fell. “Hurry,” she said to me and gave my back a soft poke. When I saw how her face had hardened, I knew the woman’s words had hit home.

Outside, night had fallen and the stars were out. The air had turned cold. A cloud of white steam hovered over the bath. I was unable to see the bottom of the pool; it looked eerie, like a black pond. There was something glittery and white out in the middle.

Yuriko was floating on her back in the steamy water, looking up at the sky. Women and children, submerged in water up to their shoulders, surrounded her and stared at her wordlessly. I looked at Yuriko s face and was horrified. I had never seen her look more beautiful. She was almost godlike. It was the first time I had ever had that experience. She seemed to be more an effigy than a human being, too beautiful to be a creature of this world.

Mother called out, “Yuriko, dear?”

“Mother?”

Yuriko’s clear voice rang out over the water, and the eyes that had been trained on her suddenly shifted to me and my mother. They returned to Yuriko once again and then pivoted back to me: eyes that were busy comparing, their curiosity overflowing. I knew it would not take long for them to determine which of us was the superior and which the inferior. Yuriko wanted those around her to see that she was nothing like her mother and older sister, and that is why she had answered when Mother called. That’s the way my younger sister was. Yes, you’re right. I never once felt any love for Yuriko. And my mother without a doubt had to do regular battle with the odd feeling that the pink woman had just mentioned.

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I stared at Yurikos face. Her brown hair clung to her exceptionally white forehead. Her brows arched in a bow. And her large eyes slanted downward slightly. Child though she was, the bridge of her nose was straight and perfectly formed. Her lips were plump, just like a doll’s.

Even among interracial children, a face as perfectly proportioned as Yurikos was hard to find.

As for me, my eyes turned upward and my nose was as aquiline as my fathers. To top it off, my body was squat and pudgy like my mother’s.

Why were we so different? I couldn’t figure out how Yuriko had managed to inherit a face that was so superior to that of both her parents. I searched madly for some trace of them in her features, but no matter how hard I looked, I could only conclude that she was some land of mutation.

Yuriko turned back to look at me. Strangely, the beauty that earlier had been so incredible that it seemed divine had now suddenly vanished.

Without thinking, I let out a scream.

Startled, my mother turned toward me. “What’s wrong?”

“Mother, Yurikos face is creepy!”

I had suddenly noticed what it was: Yurikos eyes gave off no light.

Even a doll’s eyes will have a white dot painted in the center to suggest light, won’t they? As a result, a doll’s face is sweet and charming, yet Yurikos eyes were dark ponds. The reason she had looked so beautiful floating in the bath was because the light from the stars had been reflected in her eyes.

“That’s no way to talk about your little sister!”

Mother pinched my arm hard under the water. The pain caused me to scream again, even louder.

“If that’s what you think, you’re the one who’s creepy!” she said, with palpable loathing. Mother was angry. She had already become Yurikos slave. By that I mean she worshiped her beautiful daughter. She was utterly intimidated by the fact that fate had given her such a lovely child.

If Mother had admitted Yurikos creepiness to me, I wonder if I would have been able to trust her. But Mother’s outlook was different. I didn’t have a single ally in the family. That’s the way it looked to me when I was in junior high.

That night there was a big New Year’s Eve party at the Johnsons’ cottage.

Usually we girls were not permitted to attend the adult parties, but since we were the only children in the entire mountain resort that night, 1 8

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we were included. Yuriko, my parents, and I headed along the dark path to our neighbors’ house. Snow was falling lighdy. The trip took several minutes, and Yuriko, who loved festive displays, skipped the whole way, kicking happily at the snow.

Johnson was an American businessman who had not owned the cabin long. His face was handsomely chiseled, his hair a golden brown. He was the kind of man who looked good in a pair of jeans, like the actor Jude Law. But I’d heard that he had a few screws loose.

For example, he took an ax and chopped down the saplings that had been planted in front of the bedroom window because, he said, they blocked his view of Mount Asama. He whacked a few miniature bamboo stalks off at the root and stuck them in the ground where the saplings had been, not even bothering to plant them properly. The community landscaper was furious. Johnson, of course, was delighted with the way the bamboo looked. I remember hearing my father scoff. “Well, leave it to an American to be satisfied with short-term remedies!”

Johnsons wife was a Japanese woman who went by the name of Masami. It seems she had met Johnson while working as a flight attendant.

She was a beautiful and vibrant person, but she still found time to be friendly to Yuriko and me. She was never without her perfectly applied makeup or her humongous diamond ring, even when she was out in the middle of the mountains. She wore these like armor—behavior that struck me as downright odd.

When we got to the party, I found that the Japanese wives had left the main room where the party was and were squeezed into the tiny kitchen, a habit I found peculiar. One by one they were bragging about their own cooking. It almost sounded like they were quarreling with one another.

Occasionally foreign women would visit one of the families in the resort. When they did, they would sit on the sofa in the living room, conversing elegantly, while the white men stood around the fireplace drinking whiskey and speaking in English. It was weird to see each group forming such perfectly separate spheres. Only one Japanese wife would ever enter the circle of laughing men: Masami. She’d stand at Johnson’s side, and occasionally I’d hear the cloying trill of her high-pitched voice cut across the monotonous murmurs of the men.

When we got inside, Mother immediately headed toward the kitchen, as if eager to claim a spot. The men called my father to the fireplace and handed him a glass of liquor. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, so, 1 9