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  The man looked annoyed. “Did your grandfather put you up to this?”

  I shook my head from side to side.

  He smirked. I realized he wanted to get revenge on my grandfather. “I see. Well, I’ll give you a fine price for it then. How does five thousand yen sound?”

  Disappointed, I held up two fingers. “Can’t you give me two bills for it? Twenty thousand yen? My grandfather says it’s a fine nandina.”

  “Young lady, this bonsai is not worth that much.”

  “Okay, fine. I’ll take it to someone else.”

  The probation officer immediately doubled his price, offering ¥10,000. I countered that the pot itself was worth that much. After he thought that over, he offered in a wheedling voice, “It must be heavy,” and put his hands over mine, encircling the pot. The hard skin of his hands had the luster of finely polished leather and was strangely warm. Repulsed, I drew my hands away instinctively, letting go of the pot. When I did, the bonsai slipped between us and struck one of the garden stones, smashing to pieces. The roots of the nandina, released from bondage, sprang out in all directions. The young people who’d been cleaning up around the garden stopped what they were doing and looked up in alarm. The probation officer bent over and began picking up the pieces in great agitation, glancing at me with nervous apprehension as he did so.

  In the end I got thirty thousand yen for the deal, broken pot and all. I decided to deposit the money I had left after paying the phone bill in my savings account. I never knew when I’d need to come up with quick cash for a class field trip or something. At Q High School for Young Women we were always being pressured to contribute to events, from the annual school festival to some birthday celebration. None of the other students thought anything of it. The extra cushion in my savings account would be for my own protection.

  My grandfather didn’t notice a thing that night, but the next morning, when he stepped out onto the veranda, he let out a heartrending cry.

  “Mr. Nandina! Where have you gone?”

  I went about fixing my lunch as if I hadn’t noticed. Grandfather rushed into the cramped sitting room and raced around in search of the nandina. He opened the closet and then peered up on the shelving along the ceiling in the smaller room. He even went out in the entryway and rummaged through the shoe cupboard.

  “It’s nowhere to be found! And such a nice bonsai it was. Where could it be? Come out, come out, wherever you are! Please, Mr. Nandina. I’m sorry if I neglected you. I didn’t mean to. But my daughter just died, you see, and it’s been hard on me. I’m heartbroken. I’m sorry, really I am. Please come out. Please don’t pout.”

  Grandfather searched the house like a madman, until I guess he just wore himself out. Crestfallen—his shoulders curling inward—he stared off into space. “He went off to guide her to the next world.” My grandfather was much practiced in the ways of swindling others. But it never once occurred to him to doubt me or the insurance lady or the security guard or any of the other people who were around him all the time. He hadn’t even the slightest suspicion. It looked like this was the end of the absurd event, so I went off to school feeling relieved. Visiting Kazue’s house had been the cause of one misfortune after another.

  When you think of it, though, my mother’s sudden suicide resulted in the scattering of the entire family. I stayed with my grandfather, Yuriko ended up with the Johnsons, and my father remained in Switzerland, where he started a new family with that Turkish woman. For my father, Japan would always be associated with my mother’s death. Later I learned, to my great surprise, that the Turkish woman was no more than two years older than me. She gave birth to three children, I learned, all boys. The oldest child is now twenty-four, and I’ve been told he plays for a Spanish soccer team. But since I’ve never met him and have no interest in soccer, it’s as if we’re from completely different worlds.

  But in the world of my hypothetical chart, Yuriko and I and our stepbrothers are all swimming vigorously in the bright blue of the brackish sea. If I draw another analogy to the Burgess diagram of the Cambrian Period I love so much, Yuriko, with her beautiful face, is queen of the watery realm. So she has to be one of those animals that devours all others. That would make her the Anomalocaris, I suppose, the ancestor to the crustacean, a kind of creature with massive forelegs, like a lobster’s. And then my younger brothers, who must certainly have dark heavy eyebrows on account of their Middle Eastern blood, would be those insects that live all clumped up in a pile—either that or jellyfish-type creatures that cruise through the sea. Me? Without a doubt I’d be the Hallucigenia, the thing that crawls through the mud of the ocean floor covered in seven sets of quills, looking for all the world like a hairbrush. The Hallucigenia feeds on carrion? I didn’t know that! So it survives by eating dead creatures? Well, then, it fits me to a T, since I live by soiling the memories of the corpses of the past.

  Oh, about Mitsuru and me? Well, Mitsuru went on to pass her boards at Tokyo University Medical School, just as she’d hoped. But after that her life headed in a completely different and entirely unpredicted direction. She seems to be well—but she’s in the penitentiary. Once a year I get a New Year’s card from her, heavily excised by the censors, but I’ve never once replied. Do you want me to explain? I’ll be sure to do so as soon as I’ve wrapped up this part of the story.

  To continue, then, just the other day something completely unexpected happened. I haven’t wanted to talk to anyone about it, but if I’m going to continue with my account I have no choice but to reveal everything. It was about a week before the opening day of the trial. The two murders had been linked—for convenience I suppose—and were being dubbed “The Case of the Serial Apartment Murders.” At first the mass media had a field day over Kazue’s murder, which they referred to as the “Elite Office Lady Murder Case.” But once they connected Zhang to Yuriko’s murder as well, they changed their headlines. Yuriko had been murdered first, and when the case initially involved just a middle-aged prostitute, there’d been no reason even to create a headline.

  We’d heard reports that an off-season typhoon was threatening to move in on Tokyo. It was a disquieting day. An unseasonably warm wind rattled through the city, growing increasingly loud and strong. From the window of the ward office I watched the gale tear through the leaves of the sycamore trees outside as if to rip them from their branches. It toppled the bicycles in the parking lot like dominoes. It was a nerve-racking day, let me tell you, and made me feel somehow on edge.

  I took my seat at the Day Care consultation counter as usual. But no one came to apply for day care, and I lost myself to my thoughts. With the typhoon approaching, all I could think of was how I wanted to head home. Then an elderly woman appeared at my counter. She was wearing a smartly tailored gray suit, very subdued and classy. A pair of silver-rimmed reading glasses were perched on her nose. She seemed to be in her mid-fifties. Her graying hair was pulled back in a tight bun, and she had a severe manner, like a German woman. I was used to seeing no one but young mothers with children in tow at this particular window. I figured this woman must have come to inquire about putting a grandchild in day care, so with obvious reluctance I said, “May I help you?”

  At this, the woman let out a short snort and pulled her lips back. There was something about her teeth that struck me as familiar.

  “My dear, don’t you know who I am?”

  Even when I stared long and fast at her face, I couldn’t recall her name. The skin on her face—which bore not so much as a trace of makeup—was brown. She wore no lipstick. Here was an elderly woman wearing no makeup with a face like a fish. How was I supposed to distinguish her from any other woman her age?

  “It’s me, Masami. Masami Johnson!”

  I was so startled I let out a little gasp. I would never have expected Masami to turn into such a subdued modest-looking woman. The Masami of my memory would forever be a garish woman out of sync with her surroundings. She was the woman who strolled along the mountain paths o