Hotel Iris (17 page)

The sea was gray and dotted with bits of garbage that had washed out from the river. Clouds streamed across the sky, but there were no shorebirds in sight.

“The rail is wet,” he said, wiping it with his handkerchief.

“What should I tell Mother?”

“Tell her you went out to the island and couldn’t get back. That’s the truth, isn’t it? Just say they let you stay the night at the sanatarium.”

“But what will I tell her about my hair?”

“Leave the scarf on. It’s lovely, and I’m sure your mother will like it.”

I put my hand to my head. The material was stiff where the bloodstains remained. A gust of wind tugged at the scarf, and the translator reached out to tie the knot more tightly.

The town was coming into view. First the church steeple and the tower on the town hall, and then the seawall, which seemed to float above the sea. The boat slowed and blew its horn, making a lazy turn to the right. I squeezed his hand. The man at the coffee stand was washing my cocoa cup.

We could see a crowd gathered on the pier, as though the tourists had been waiting all this time for the boat to arrive. We made a quarter-turn and approached from the stern, the horn blowing a deeper note this time.

“We can say good-bye here,” I said.

“No, I’ll see you as far as the clock.”

“But I’ve got to run home. The guests will be checking out.”

“I’ll write you then.”

“I’ll be waiting.” He touched my cheek and then closed his hand carefully, as if to preserve the sensation. There was a buzzing in the distance, and I thought I heard someone calling my name.

“Mari! Mari!” The people on the dock were looking up at us, and they were not tourists. There was a waiter in an apron, a taxi driver, a middle-aged woman in her bathrobe—
all whispering to one another. A police car and an ambulance were parked in front of the waiting room. I recognized the young musician from the plaza at the back of the crowd. His accordion was around his neck as usual, but he was not playing.

“Mari! I’m here! Mari!”

It was Mother. She was screaming from the dock. But why was she calling my name over and over? It struck me as very strange.

The engine rattled to a stop. Two young men came running up on deck and shouted something at us. They were yelling, but I couldn’t understand a word. One would shout a few words, and then the other, but in my ears there was nothing but silence. No sound reached me, as though my eardrums had suddenly evaporated.

The translator let go of my hand and stumbled away, fleeing across the deck. One of the men ran after him while the other came and put his arms around me. He was still talking, but I heard nothing.

The translator tripped over an ashtray. The man from the coffee stand caught him, pinning his arms in back, but he managed to shake free and ran toward the bow of the boat. The scene played out in silence.

Just as they were about to catch him, he leapt into the sea. Without a word of farewell or even a smile in my direction, he threw his leg over the rail, curled in a ball, and fell. There was a splash, and at that instant my hearing returned.

“Are you hurt?” The young man peered into my eyes. His tone was gentle.

“He jumped! Lower a lifeboat.” Footsteps running across the deck. A clamor of voices. “Get a life preserver!”

The young man tried to touch the scarf, but I brushed his hand away and crouched down on the deck.

“Mari! You must have been terrified! But you’re safe now. I nearly died when they told me you’d been kidnapped. And look what he’s done to you. You’re not hurt anywhere? What a monster! But I’m glad you’re all right. That’s the most important thing. And thank you, Officer. You’ll be taking her to the hospital? In an ambulance?” Mother rambled on, her voice slipping around and around me, tighter and tighter, but it was the sound of the translator sinking into the sea that echoed in my ears.

His body surfaced three days later. The police diving team found it, swollen and half naked. The head had ballooned to twice its normal size, and the face was almost unrecognizable.

I learned he’d had a criminal record. More than four years ago, he had attacked the owner of a clock shop in a dispute about some purchase. He had beaten the man with one of his clocks. Now, his fingerprint record from that old arrest had made it possible to identify his body when it washed ashore.

I spent only one night in the hospital. The doctors examined every inch of me, checking each little bruise and
scrape and recording it on my chart. They discovered that my head was covered with countless tiny cuts that must have been from the blades of the scissors. They stung when I rubbed against the pillow.

The police inquiry was careful but discreet. It was conducted by a female detective, who was sometimes accompanied by a psychiatrist or a counselor. But I simply told them that I had no memory of anything that had happened. They assumed this was the result of the shock, and they concluded that, since the suspect was dead, there was little point in pursuing an inquiry that could have little benefit for the victim and was likely to prolong her suffering.

There had been a tremendous uproar at the Iris when I didn’t return on the night of the storm, and my absence had been reported to the police. At first they’d assumed I had been carried away by a wave or drowned in a flash flood. But in the morning, the waiter from the coffee stand on the boat said that he’d seen me with a suspicious-looking man. I learned the details from the maid. She talked breathlessly, unable to contain her curiosity but realizing she had to appear sympathetic at the same time.

But none of it meant anything to me. The translator was dead. That was my only reality.

I didn’t return to my duties behind the front desk, preferring to avoid the eyes of the guests. It took more than ten months for my hair to grow back. But even when it did, Mother no longer insisted on putting it up for me. Eventually, the camellia oil dried in the bottle.

No one came to claim the translator’s body, and it was cremated and placed in the public grave. The nephew was never seen in town again.

I did ask the police to look for the translation of the novel about Marie, but they were never able to locate it. All they found were endless rolls of film filled with pictures of me.

Since 1988, Yoko Ogawa has written more than twenty works of fiction and non-fiction, and has won every major Japanese literary award. Her fiction has appeared in the
New Yorker
,
A Public Space
, and
Zoetrope
. Harvill Secker published
The Diving Pool
, a collection of three novellas, in 2007 and her novel
The Housekeeper and the Professor
in 2009.