Grotesque Read online

  Such a simple, wonderful desire. I felt I’d struck oil by coming across a boy as pure as Yurio. Like thick black liquid bubbling up from the earth’s core, my maternal instincts bubbled up within me. I would earn money for him. I had to buy him a computer. I decided to beg money from my father in Switzerland. I searched for my old address book and found my father’s phone number.

  “Hello. It’s me. Your daughter.”

  A woman responded in German. It had to be the Turkish woman my father had married. She put my father on the phone right away. He sounded old, and he could hardly understand Japanese anymore.

  “No press please.”

  “Father. Did you know Yuriko had a son?”

  “No press.”

  He hung up. I looked back at Yurio, disappointed. He had an expression on his face that seemed to say, I could have told you this would happen. He turned his face away—his profile the spitting image of Yuriko’s—and closed his eyes. I wondered if in his world he created beautiful shapes out of sound. I couldn’t accept anything I couldn’t see. I could see beauty. Yurio’s sightless beauty held no meaning for me. Even though I had a beautiful child in my life, I wasn’t able to share his world. It was terrifying, wasn’t it? And sad. I felt my heart fill with a giant sorrow, as if I were suffering unrequited love. I wanted to curl up in pain. I had never in all my life had these feelings before.

  “Someone’s here.”

  Yurio pulled the headphones off and listened but I couldn’t hear a thing. Just as I was looking around the apartment suspiciously, I heard a knock at the door. Yurio’s sense of hearing was uncanny.

  “It’s me! Mitsuru.”

  Mitsuru was standing in the filmy darkness of the housing complex hallway. She was wearing a vivid blue suit and had a beige coat folded over her arm. It was an outfit for spring and she made the dingy hallway pulse with brightness.

  “I can’t believe you’re still living exactly where you lived when you were in high school! Do you mind if I come in?”

  Mitsuru peered past me into the apartment somewhat timidly, as if she were afraid of barging in. I had no choice but to invite her in. She offered the perfunctory greetings, removed her high heels, and placed them neatly by the door. Her gaze landed on Yurio’s big sneakers lined up next to her shoes, and she gave a slight smile. I wondered why she’d come. She was even livelier than she had been when I saw her at the courthouse. Yet she seemed completely poised. She was gradually returning to her old self.

  “Sorry to pop in like this. I had some news I wanted to share with you.”

  Mitsuru settled down by the tea table and placed her coat and handbag neatly at her side. They were both brand-new and without a doubt expensive. I boiled a kettle of water, keeping an eye on Mitsuru out of the corner of my eye, and made us each a cup of tea. I used the same kind of Lipton tea bags I’d used when Grandfather was living here. I was stubborn that way. Once I found something I liked, I hated to have to change it.

  “You said you had some news?”

  “I’ve gotten a divorce and I’m going to marry Kijima.”

  Kijima? Which Kijima? Surely not Takashi Kijima. Had she come to take Yurio away? Seeing my look of panic, Mitsuru laughed and shook her head.

  “The father, you dummy. Professor Kijima. We’ve been corresponding, and we finally decided to marry. This is the way Professor Kijima put it: Marrying you will be the last task I have as an educator.”

  “My, my. Well, congratulations.”

  I offered my best wishes stiffly. Of course, I had Yurio so I wasn’t particularly jealous. I was just feeling sad that Yurio had a world of music I couldn’t enter, that was all. I couldn’t muster up genuine joy. My armor of malice was gradually growing thin. Mitsuru was glowing with happiness.

  “So Professor Kijima feels duty bound to rescue his brilliant student, does he?” I asked, somewhat snidely. “And is he going to make you the stepmother of his corpulent son?”

  “I suppose. That’s why I’m here today, with a message for you from Takashi.” Mitsuru pulled an envelope out of her purse. “Here. My stepson, as you say, told me to hand this over to you. Won’t you please accept it?”

  I peered into the envelope, hoping it contained cash. Instead I found two notebooks that looked like old ledgers of some sort.

  “Those are Kazue Sat’s journals. She sent them to Kijima just before she was murdered. Kijima felt he should give them to the police when he learned about the crime. But she writes about his occupation, so he was afraid he’d get arrested for aiding and abetting prostitution. He came to the courthouse that day to see how to get rid of them. He tried to give them to me, but of course I’m worried myself about being under police surveillance and don’t need to get involved in any more trouble. But you’re the older sister of one victim and friend to the other. No one had a closer relationship to the two of them than you. If anyone should have the diaries, it’s you. So, please don’t make a fuss; just take them.”

  Mitsuru spilled all that out in one breath and then shoved the package across the table toward me. Kazue was murdered and now here were her journals. Somehow they seemed ominous. Without thinking, I pushed the package away. Mitsuru slid it back across the table in front of me. We played our little game of back and forth a few more times, shoving the package across the narrow table, and then Mitsuru grew frustrated. She stared at me hard. I glared back. The last thing I wanted was Kazue’s journals. I mean, really! I didn’t care whether Zhang killed Kazue or if she was killed by someone completely different; it had nothing to do with me, but Mitsuru would not let up.

  “Please,” she begged. “Just take them. And read them!”

  “I don’t want them. They’re bad luck.”

  “Bad luck?” Mitsuru looked offended. “Are you saying they’re bad luck because they’re affiliated with a woman like me? A woman with a criminal history?”

  I could feel an incredible power coursing through Mitsuru, one I had never felt before now. I shrank back. I suppose it was the power of love. Water a plant and it comes to life, sinking its roots deep into the black earth and raising its head up high, afraid of neither rain nor wind. That’s the impression Mitsuru made on me. Women who need water all become domineering. Yuriko had been the same way. Finally, I replied, “I don’t think you’re bad luck or anything of the sort. With you it was a question of religion.”

  “Blaming it on religion is a bit facile, don’t you think? I was undone by my own weakness. That’s what led me to join that organization in the first place. I get confused even now when I think about it. Staring at your own weakness is horrible. Unimaginably painful. But you’ve never once even thought about your weaknesses or tried to overcome them, have you? I know about the complex you harbor toward Yuriko. It’s practically debilitating. Especially because you don’t fight it.”

  “Don’t patronize me. What have these journals got to do with me?”

  It was all so baffling. Why did Mitsuru want me to read the diaries so badly?

  “I think it would be best for you to read them yourself and find out. Takashi said so too. Because you and Kazue were close. You ought to read them. Kazue sent them to Takashi because she wanted someone to read them; of that there can be no doubt. She didn’t want them read by the police or a detective or the judge. She wanted them read by someone from the real world…her world.”

  What kind of proof, I wonder, did she have for making such assertions? As you well know, Kazue and I were not very close at all. We entered high school at the same time. She started talking to me, and I had no choice but to answer. That’s all there was to it. We had misunderstandings and would patch them up from time to time. But after the incident of the love letters she sent to Takashi Kijima, her pride was wounded and she avoided me.

  “You’re the only one who ever visited her house, aren’t you? She was a loner, just like you.”

  “I think Takashi should keep them. She sent them to him because she liked him. Wasn’t there a letter?”

&n