A Quiet Place (6 page)

“Either's fine.”

“This way, please.”

The maid led him along the path to the left. In the darkness, he could just make out a small thicket of bushes.

He was shown to a small Japanese room. The sleeping area was behind a sliding paper partition, decorated with a classic pattern of tiny birds and blue waves.

An
ukiyo-e
painting hung in the alcove above a small flower vase. The wall was ochre. There was a television in the corner; next to it was a phone. As Asai sat down at the red lacquered table, the maid withdrew to the doorway, knelt and placed both hands on the tatami flooring.

“Welcome to the Tachibana. Will the… er… other party be joining you later?”

“No.” Asai gave a short laugh. “There's no one else. I'm on my own.”

“I see.”

She didn't seem particularly surprised. Apparently single men did come to this hotel. And she had already anticipated the next question.

“I'm very sorry, but we're not able to perform that kind of service. I hope you understand.”

“Oh no… I think we've had a misunderstanding. That's not why I'm here. Actually, I have a small favour to ask you.”

“I'm sorry?” She regarded him uncertainly.

“I'm afraid I have rather an embarrassing question to ask. Would you mind coming a little nearer?”

The woman looked to be around forty years old and was sturdily built under her purple apron. Still kneeling, she scooted a little closer to Asai.

“Thank you. I… um… well, it's a little difficult for me to say. Still, I've made up my mind to talk openly about it. You see, about two weeks ago my wife left me for another man – someone I've never met.”

The woman's eyes didn't leave his face.

“Well, a little while back I found evidence that she'd been using this hotel. Actually, it was that box of matches – the ones by the ashtray over there. The other day, I found the same matches in my wife's handbag.”

There was no response from the maid.

“I have two small children at home. The only reason I've swallowed my pride and come here to ask you these questions is because my kids are missing their mum. I just want to find her and bring her home. But right now I haven't a clue where she might be. To keep up appearances I don't want to get the police involved. I thought that if I came here, I might be able to find out what kind of man my wife was here with. If I just knew what he looked like I might be able to guess who he is… Oh, I was forgetting: I brought a picture of my wife with me.”

The humiliated husband produced his wife's photo from his pocket, and handed it to the maid.

“I hope you'll forgive me if I don't tell you my name.”

6

Asai had decided that posing as an estranged husband whose wife had walked out on him was a sure way of gaining sympathy from a woman – particularly from the maids who worked at the hotel. Every day in their jobs, they witnessed other women's sexual infidelities. He was certain that off the job they would be inclined to pity a man with a cheating wife. Asai imagined this from a psychological point of view: women like these, who had been trained to act indifferently towards openly immoral behaviour, had to be repressing all kinds of feelings. Outrage for sure, a touch of jealousy; maybe even downright hatred.

This maid was now carefully examining Eiko's photo. But there was no sign that she recognized his dead wife.

“I'm sorry. I don't remember her. Should I ask some of the other maids to take a look? I don't meet all the guests who come here.”

“Of course. Yes, please could you ask them?”

The maid hesitated. She was making a show of being uncomfortable disclosing his private affairs to other people, but at the same time it was obvious that she was dying to share this with her colleagues.

“Please, go ahead. I mean, that's what I came here for in the first place – to ask people about my wife. Could you just make sure it stays within these walls?”

Asai's voice was filled with distress, but the maid reassured him.

“I understand. When you work in this business, keeping secrets is part of the job description. You've nothing to worry about.”

“Then if you don't mind…”

The maid's gaze returned to the photograph. She sighed.

“My, what a beautiful wife you have.”

“Really?”

Asai had never thought of Eiko as a great beauty, but the photo had captured her at her best. She looked younger than her age, fresh-faced and modern.

“She looks like the quiet type.”

“I used to think she was the perfect wife.”

“Clearly she fell under someone's evil spell. Otherwise she'd never have left her children like that.”

“Do you think the quieter types tend to be more susceptible to that kind of temptation?”

“You might be right on that. I wouldn't say it's the rule, but we do see a lot of women like that in here.”

“I know it sounds strange coming from the estranged husband, but my wife never even had male friends. I didn't think she had the slightest interest in men at all.”

“Although I hate to say it, that's even more dangerous.”

“Why?”

“Women who spend a lot of time in the company of men learn to express their feelings better. They're also
better at seeing through all the charming things that men say, and don't tend to fall for all that rubbish. And the kind of wives who go out looking for affairs, well, that's a completely different story.”

Asai was shocked into silence.

“And then the ones who don't have male friends – I mean those who don't have a good relationship with an acquaintance who also happens to be a man – tend to keep all their feelings bottled up inside, and then those feelings all come flooding out the moment the opportunity presents itself.”

In other words, the maid was saying that an introverted personality, one who kept her emotions sealed up inside, would be easy prey to seduction. Asai, remembering his quiet marriage “as natural as air or water”, realized that she was probably right.

“I imagine your wife was on her guard against those kinds of men,” the maid added, continuing her professional observations. “But I think she let her guard down when she met this one. She'd been wary of men for so long that she didn't really know enough about them any more. She had a mental image of what a man was like, but the one she met was completely different from this, and in an unguarded moment she let him in. Men these days know all sorts of tricks to pick up women.”

So, according to the maid, a man with a few tricks and a bit of knowledge could worm his way into a naive woman's affections and then demolish her defences. That was surely what had happened to Eiko. This knowledge wasn't something the maid had picked up from the pages of a women's magazine. She was relating what her own
eyes saw day in, day out. Asai found himself persuaded by her argument.

“So, in your experience, what happens after a married woman falls for a man like that?” he asked.

The maid looked modestly down at the floor, but a hint of a cold smile played on her lips.

“To begin with, the woman is uncomfortable coming to a place like this with him. She's married to someone else, and I imagine she feels terribly guilty. At first she's timid and fearful, but over time she begins to get used to it and begins to relax more on her visits. By the end of it, it's the woman who has taken the lead. She becomes so brazen that at times we can hardly believe she's the same person. Her passion for the man gets obsessive. It's not unusual for them to start coming here in the middle of the day. If she's a housewife, it's easier to arrange that way.”

The maid's last words really hit home. There was no hint of irony; they were plain and honest. And Asai recognized the pattern. Eiko used to go out in the daytime two or three times a week. All she had to do was be back before her husband got home from work.

“Why don't these couples go to several different hotels? The men too, but particularly the women – surely it feels weird for them to run into the same staff all the time.”

“The young ones like to mix it up, but middle-aged couples don't; staying at several different hotels means they'll be seen by many more people. And that feels even more shameful.”

“I see.”

“And older couples are much more likely than young ones to form a kind of attachment to a particular hotel.”

The maid took Eiko's picture away, leaving Asai alone in the room. While he waited for her to return, a younger maid appeared with a tray of tea and cakes. He hadn't ordered anything, but she assured him that it was on the house. He realized that his story of being abandoned by his wife had aroused sympathy among the hotel staff. He could practically hear the maids crying, “Oh the poor thing!” If he could just put up with the humiliation a little longer, it would really help his investigation.

After about forty minutes the first maid returned, accompanied by a slightly older woman dressed in the same purple apron. She introduced herself as the head housekeeper and offered her sympathies to Asai.

“I'm very sorry to hear about the situation you're in. We've shown your wife's picture to all the maids who work here, but I'm afraid that nobody recognizes her. And there are several of our staff members who never forget a face.”

The first maid carefully returned Eiko's photo to Asai. He didn't think that they were lying. They'd been nothing but compassionate right from the beginning.

“I see. Then this can't be the right hotel.”

In one sense, Asai was disappointed, as he'd been so sure that his hunch was correct. On the other hand, he was slightly relieved.

“You said your wife had a box of our hotel's matches, is that correct?” the head housekeeper asked him.

The matches had been a fabrication that had got Asai the information he needed. He could hardly go back and admit he'd lied.

“Now that I've looked more closely at the matches you have here, I think the box my wife had in her bag was just
very similar. I never really picked them up and examined them closely. My memory is a little hazy, now that I think about it. But what I do know for certain is that an eyewitness saw her walking up the hill that leads to this place. That's what made me think that she must have been heading here.”

The housekeeper and maid exchanged a look. Then the housekeeper spoke.

“We're not the only hotel on this hill; there are two more beyond us. One, the Midori, is just close by, and the other's a little further up – the Mori. But there's another, more direct route that leads to the Mori, so I'd say if your wife was seen walking up the hill, then she was probably heading to the Midori.”

Asai decided now that he'd turned himself into a desperate husband whose wife had walked out on him, he might as well continue carrying her photo around other hotels, and show it to even more of their employees. He was going to have to endure further humiliation if he was going to get the information he needed.

“I'm sorry for all the trouble I've put you to,” he said with feeling.

“Oh, you're welcome. I hear that you have children. I hope you all find a way to be happy again. I'm sure that your wife will return for their sake.”

With these words of comfort, the housekeeper and maid showed him out.

Asai exited the Tachibana's main gate and stood for a moment at the top of the hill, looking down. The street just below him was lined on both sides by wide-roofed mansions and was completely dark. Way down below that,
the lights of the bustling city stretched out before him. Everything looked peaceful from up here.

Eiko wasn't coming back. She'd been turned to ash and was waiting at the local temple for the engraver to finish her memorial stone. Then she'd be laid to rest beneath it.

Who was responsible? Where was the man whose charm had tempted her all the way to her death? And how had this man managed to get close to Eiko in the first place? Asai hadn't the faintest idea, and had no clue as to the mystery man's identity.

He kept walking southwards, up the slope. The Hotel Midori's gaudy neon sign flashed against the night sky. He imagined the flaming red lights were designed to stimulate sexual appetite, luring men and women to a den of mind-numbing pleasure.

In just five minutes Asai was at the hotel's gate. The exterior was pretty similar to that of the Tachibana, and the concept more or less the same – the tiny pebbles and the plants glowed in the darkness from the light of low stone lanterns.

While he was hesitating outside, a man and a woman hurried past him through the gate. They were young, and didn't speak as they crunched their way along the pebble path. Asai waited a couple of minutes, then followed them inside. To his left, what looked a lot like a roadside tea house was the only place that was brightly lit. From that direction he heard a woman's voice.

“
Irrashaimase
– welcome.”

A maid had stepped out to greet him, and he realized at once that this must be the hotel's reception.

“Will someone be joining you later?”

The same question as at the Tachibana.

He guessed there must be about ten maids working at this hotel. Assuming there were about the same number at the previous hotel, then he'd end up showing his wife's picture to over twenty people. He could ask them to keep it among themselves, as it was such a personal matter, but he knew this would be futile. The story was going to spread. Each maid who promised faithfully to keep it secret was bound to leak it to one or two other people. As long as he didn't give his real name, then it wouldn't be too terrible if they discussed his story. But sneaking around and flashing Eiko's photo about like this was a really low thing to do. He felt wretched. And he might not have any luck at this hotel, either. If they hadn't seen her here, would he then have to move on to the next one? And then another, and another, until he'd visited all the hotels, inns and hostels in the neighbourhood?

The Midori's head housekeeper listened sympathetically to his heartbreaking tale. She took the photo, but when she still hadn't returned after forty minutes, he imagined how the conversation might be going.

“His wife ran off with another man. Left two children at home! The husband's going crazy searching for her. Wants her to come home for the sake of the kids. He's got no shame. Lost all self-respect, poor thing. Hey, this is her. He brought her photo. Wants to know if she came here with her lover. Have you seen her? It's okay if you have; just tell him. I feel sorry for him.”

Each maid's expression when she was handed Eiko's picture would be slightly different, but by the end they'd all pretty much be close to pity.

When the housekeeper finally returned, she was accompanied by a younger, shorter maid who knelt nervously on the tatami behind her.

“I've asked everybody, but they all say she's never been to our hotel. No one has ever seen her here before,” explained the housekeeper. She went on to emphasize that everyone who worked at the hotel had a good memory for faces. She indicated the young maid sitting behind her.

“This young woman says she's never seen your wife at the hotel, but she did see someone outside on the street who resembled the woman in the photo. Go on, Senko.”

At her boss's urging, the twenty-something, red-cheeked maid shuffled a little further forward.

“I can't be absolutely sure that it was her, but she looks a lot like a lady I met about two months back who was walking up the hill. I was going downhill at the time, so we passed each other.”

“Do you remember what day it was?” Asai asked.

The maid was still examining the photo as if trying to compare it to the woman in her memory.

“I don't remember the date exactly, but it was the middle of the month.”

“About what time?”

“Around two in the afternoon.”

“Why do you remember her so clearly?”

“Because there was hardly anyone in the street. That lady and I were the only ones around. Normally I pass lots of people when I'm walking, but it was so quiet that day. I remember thinking it felt a bit weird, and then she walked by and I had the chance to take a good look at her face.”

“And she looked like my wife in the photo.”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember what she was wearing?”

“I think it was a beige two-piece suit. The jacket was open at the neck and I could see a maroon-coloured scarf underneath. Her handbag was made of leather – it looked like crocodile – and it was dark red.”