Grotesque (7 page)

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on the bumper and the lining tore slightly. The woman who was driving stopped and got out of the car. I thought she was coming to apologize but she started yelling at me instead. I didn’t understand what she was saying, but she kept pointing at my coat and railing on and on. Maybe she was saying it was my fault for trying to cross the street with my coat flapping open! I told her I was sorry for the trouble I had caused and went home. When I told your father about it that night he was furious with me. “You should never admit to being in the wrong!” he said. “The minute you do, you’ve lost the battle.

You should have at least gotten money to mend your coat!”

That’s when it dawned on me that your father’s refusal to accept blame comes from living in this country, and so this too has been a lesson.

Three months have passed since we got here. All the furniture we shipped has finally arrived, and this has offered me a bit of relief. But the furnishings don’t really suit the modern apartment we have. Your father is out of sorts about it. “We ought to have just bought furniture here!” he complains. “This Japanese furniture is worthless.” I tell him there’s no way he can get money for new furniture, so he should just stop going on about it. But then he gets even angrier and says we ought to have discussed it beforehand. I think your father’s gradually reverting to his old self. He’s always angry. Now that he’s back in his own country, he’s even more concerned about doing things the right way, and he gets aggravated by all the mistakes I make.

Recently he and Yuriko have been going out together a lot without me. This seems to make Yuriko very happy. She gets along well with Karl’s oldest son (he also works in your uncle’s factory) and they spend a lot of time together.

I was really surprised to find how expensive everything is here. Much higher than I expected. If we eat out it costs more than ¥2,000 a person, and the food isn’t even that good. Something as basic as natto, the fermented soybeans that I like, costs as much as ¥650! Can you believe it? Your father says it’s due to tariffs. But it seems the people here all have very good salaries.

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On another note, your father’s new job does not seem to have taken off quite as he hoped. I don’t know if it’s because he’s not getting along with the other employees or if your uncle Karl’s business isn’t very sound at the moment, or what.

But he sulks around the house as soon as he gets home, and when I ask him about his work he won’t answer. If you were here with us I suspect the two of you would be fighting all the time. So it’s good that you are where you are. Yuriko pretends that she doesn’t notice anything.

The other day we went to your uncle Karl’s for a visit. I made a plate of chirashi-zushi, a chilled rice dish, to take along.

Karl’s wife, Yvonne, is French. They have two children. There’s the son who works in the factory. He’s twenty, and his name is Henri. Then they have a daughter in high school. They told me her name, but I’ve forgotten it. She looks just like Yvonne.

She has light blond hair and a beakish nose. She’s fat and not pretty at all. When Yvonne and Karl saw Yuriko, they were shocked. Karl said something like, “So, if you marry an Oriental you can have pretty daughters like this?” Yvonne just looked sulky.

That reminds me. Whenever your father and I go out for walks with Yuriko, we get strange reactions. The people we meet in the park stare at us with curiosity, every one of them.

Finally someone asked us what country we adopted Yuriko from. There are people herefrom all kinds of other countries, and apparently adoption is quite popular. When I tell them that Yuriko is my own child, they don’t seem to believe me. I guess they can’t accept that a shabby-looking Oriental like me could ever produce a beauty like Yuriko, and the thought makes them very angry. “You’re overreacting!” your father will tell me. But I can’t help it. That’s what I believe. I think they just can’t accept that a member of the yellow race could give birth to something so perfect. It gives me some satisfaction to be able to say, No, Yuriko is not adopted. I gave birth to her myself.

Please write and tell me how you are. Your father needs to send you an update as well. Please give my best to Grandfather.

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T W O • A C L U S T E R OF N A K E D SEED P L A N TS

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T O K Y O D A I L Y , M O R N I N G E D I T I ON

Tokyo, April 20, 2000—On April 19 shortly after 6 p.m., the body of a woman was discovered in unit 103 of the Green Villa Apartments, Maruyama-cho, Shibuya Ward. The apartment superintendent who found the body called 911.

The Investigations Bureau of the Metropolitan Police Headquarters, in cooperation with the Shibuya Ward Police Precinct, launched an inquiry and determined that the deceased was Kazue Sato, 39, a resident of the Kita-Toriyama area of Setagaya Ward and an employee with G Architecture and Engineering Corporation.

Judging from the marks on her neck, the Investigations Bureau has cited strangulation as the cause of death and ruled it a homicide. An investigation is now under way.

According to initial reports, the victim was last seen leaving her house on April 8 around 4 p.m., destination unknown.

Her body was discovered in a six-mat room that had been 4 0

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vacant since August of the previous year. The door to the vacant apartment was unlocked and Sato’s body was found faceup on the floor in the center of the room. Her handbag was recovered at the site, and though she was believed to have been carrying approximately ¥40,000, her wallet was empty.

She was dressed in the same clothes that she had been seen wearing earlier that day.

Ms. Sato entered G Architecture and Engineering Firm after graduating from Q University in 1984. She was assigned to the General Research Department, where she was assistant manager of the research office. Single, she lived with her mother and a younger sister.

hen I read this article in the Tokyo Daily, I knew immediately that it was the same Kazue Sato I had known in school.

Of course, a name like Kazue Sato is not uncommon, and conceivably I was mistaken. But I was convinced. There could be no mistake. How could I be so certain? Because almost two years earlier, shortly after Yuriko died, Kazue had called me. It was the last phone call I ever received from her.

“It’s me,” she had said. “Kazue Sato. Hey, I heard Yuriko-chans been murdered.”

I’d not heard one word from Kazue since university, yet this was the first thing out of her mouth.

“It’s such a shock!”

I was shocked too, not by Yuriko’s death and not even by the fact that Kazue had called me out of the blue. Rather, I was unsettled by the fact that Kazue was laughing on the other end of the line. Her low, whispery laugh lingered like the buzzing of a bee. Maybe she intended the laugh to seem consoling, but I felt it seep into my hand as I clung to the telephone receiver. I’ve said, haven’t I, that Yuriko’s death didn’t particularly surprise me? But at that moment, and that moment only, I felt a chill shoot down my spine.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“Nothing.” Kazue’s response was overly casual. “Well, I suppose you’re sad, aren’t you?”

“Not really.”

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“Oh, that’s right.” Kazue’s tone indicated that she had always been perfectly aware of how I felt. “You and Yuriko-chan weren’t particularly close, as I recall. It was as if you two weren’t even related. Others might not have realized you were sisters, but I picked up on it right away.”

“So what are you up to?”

“Guess.”

“I heard you’d gotten a job with an engineering firm after university.”

“Would you be surprised if I told you Yuriko-chan and I were in the same line of work?”

Detecting the note of triumph in her voice, I was at a loss for words. I had a hard time associating Kazue’s present life with words like men, prostitution, and sex. From what I had heard, she worked for a very reputable firm and was making her way as an elite career woman. When I didn’t respond immediately, Kazue offered the following parting shot and then hung up: “Well, I intend to be careful!”

I stood there for some time looking down at the telephone, wondering whether the person I’d just spoken to was really Kazue. Could it have been someone else claiming to be her? The Kazue I knew had not been so cryptic. She always spoke with arrogant conclusiveness—all the while staring nervously into the face of her audience, terrified of being caught in a mistake. She was incredibly haughty when she spoke about an academic subject. But if the conversation shifted to the latest trends in fashions, restaurants, or boyfriends, she clammed up, relinquished her superiority, and sank into the background. That was the Kazue I knew.

The discrepancy between her confidence and her insecurity was so great, I had almost felt sorry for her. If Kazue had changed, it meant she’d found a new means of doing battle with the world.

This is what you want me to talk about, isn’t it? Of course, I fully intend to return to Kazue and Yuriko in due course, but I seem to continue getting sidetracked. I’m sorry. All these digressions about myself really have nothing to do with the topic at hand. I imagine I’ve bored you to tears by now, as I am sure you would much rather hear about Yuriko and Kazue.

But what is it about those two that interests you, if I may ask? I know I’ve asked this earlier. It’s just that I can’t quite understand the fascination.

Is it because the man accused of the crime—Zhang’s his name, a Chinese national—was in the country illegally? Is it because of the rumors that Zhang was falsely accused?

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Are you suggesting that Kazue, Yuriko, and that man as well each had their own different dark infatuations? I myself do not think so. But I am convinced that both Kazue and Yuriko enjoyed what they were doing, and that Zhang did too. No, no, I’m not saying he enjoyed killing. In fact, I don’t even know if he was the murderer—and I don’t particularly want to know, either.

It’s probably true that the man had relations with both Yuriko and Kazue. Didn’t he say he bought their services for an incredibly cheap sum? Just two or three thousand yen, I think he said, less than twentyfive dollars. If that’s the case, he must have had something they wanted.

I mean, there had to have been some reason for Yuriko and Kazue to do what they did. That’s why I imagine they enjoyed their relationship with him. Why else would they have agreed to sell themselves for such a low price? Wasn’t this the means they had for waging war on the world? This is what I meant earlier in reference to Kazue. But theirs was a method beyond my abilities.

During the three years I spent with Kazue Sato in high school and the four we had in university, my family was undergoing tremendous changes. A big factor was my mother’s suicide in Switzerland just before the summer vacation of my first year in high school. (I believe I showed you my mother’s last letter, didn’t I? I’ll speak to you more about her in due course as well.)

Kazue encountered a similar experience. Her father died suddenly while she was in university. By that time she and I weren’t seeing a lot of each other, so I’m not certain of the exact circumstances, but it seems he had a cerebral hemorrhage and collapsed in the bathroom. For this reason, Kazue’s family circumstances and standing at school were not unlike my own.

I referred to our standing at school just now, and I think it safe to say that she and I were the only ones at our school who had undergone experiences significantly unlike those of anyone else. So it would seem perfectly natural for the two of us to be drawn to each other.

Kazue and I both passed the entrance exam and entered the Q school system in high school. As I am sure you are aware, Q High School for Young Women is extremely competitive and accepts only those with the highest scores on the board exams. Kazue undoubtedly studied hard for the exams while she was in a municipal junior high school and got in. I don’t know whether it was by fortune or fate, but I made it too. Of 4 3

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course, my motivation for giving everything I had to pass the entrance exam was driven by my desire to get away from Yuriko. It wasn’t that I was particularly fixated on Q High School for Young Women itself. But Kazue was different. Ever since she was in elementary school she had set her sights on Q High School, and as she would tell me later she devoted herself to her studies precisely so she might achieve her goal. Here lies the difference between Kazue and me, and it is a big difference.

The Q school organization extends from elementary school through university, meaning that those who succeed in entering at the ground level as elementary students can, for all intents and purposes, glide all the way up to university level without the hellish pressure of additional entrance exams. This particular kind of school structure is therefore referred to as an “escalator” institution. The elementary school enrolled both boys and girls and only admitted around 80 children. In middle school, the number of students doubled. In high school, students were divided by sex, and once again the class size doubled. Therefore, among the 160 students attending the young women’s division in any given year, half would be those who had only just entered the program at the high school level, while the other half would have been there longer, either from elementary school or junior high.

The university, on the other hand, admits students from across Japan, and the number of famous people who claim Q University as their alma mater is impossible to count. Q University is so famous that my grandfather’s elderly friends would all gasp in admiration at the mere mention of the name. That’s because the university doesn’t admit just anybody.

And that is why students enrolled in the Q system—who would be able eventually to glide into the prestigious Q University—felt entitled. The sooner students had entered the system, the more profound their sense of elitism.

It is precisely because of this escalator system that parents with money try so hard to get their children into the school at the elementary level. I’ve heard from others that the intensity with which they approach these initial exams is near hysteria. Of course, I have no child of my own and have no connection to any of this, so I cannot profess to be an authority.