I Hear Them Cry (14 page)

“Where are you, Raiki? Come out, come out, wherever you are,” I said loudly so as not to surprise him. But in the next moment, when I opened the doors wide, I was the one who got surprised.

Inside the closet were a cardboard box and a heap of clothing that Raiki had thrown out so that he could hide in the box. They were all undergarments, and very colorful ones at that. In fact, by all appearances, they looked like nothing but what a prostitute appearing in Western films would wear: red, black, and purple panties, and teddies with vulgar designs. The place was overflowing with them.

“Now it’s your turn, Mom,” Raiki said with a broad smile as he stuck out his head from the box. My heart was beating fast. It felt like I had seen something I wasn’t meant to, something forbidden. I quickly put away all the underwear, worried that Kanako would show up that very minute.

“All right, Raiki, it’s time for your nap now,” I said. “Let’s go to the other house.”

“But why? It’s my turn to be it,” he replied, pouting. I couldn’t think of anything to say to coax him, so once everything was put away, I dragged Raiki out to the garden. Kanako was out there too. Her Venetian-glass necklace of bold red, green, and golden hues stood out, reflecting sunlight onto her navy blue dress. I was too embarrassed to meet her eyes, which were studying my drawing.

“It would be better if you could accentuate the ambience of a dilapidated house more,” she said. “It’s nicely done, though. I’ll give you that. At any rate, I can’t wait for you to complete it, dear.”

“Are you heading out already?” I asked.

“Yes, I was going to get my bag.”

She was just on her way to that room, I thought, dazed—but I quickly snapped to and asked, “Should I go get it for you?”

“Why, you know where I keep my bag, do you? The shelf it’s on?”

“No, oh, no. Is it in that room in the back? If you let me know, I’ll just go and get it for you.”

“I know where,” Raiki declared. “It’s in the room with the photographs of Grandpa and Grandma, right? There were lots of bags there,” he said, looking up at me to drive home the point.

My try at playing dumb had backfired, and I ended up digging my own grave. I couldn’t think of anything to say in return and merely looked down.

“That’s all right,” Kanako said after staring at me for a while. “I haven’t decided which one to take along, so I’ll just go see for myself.”

That night Kanako summoned me to her room.

It turned out to be the beginning of a long night…

KANAKO: ONE

I arrived at Kanako’s room with some whiskey and water.

She had invited me after dinner, saying, “Why don’t we enjoy a few drinks together?” But as Ms. Sato prepared the drinks, she warned me, saying, “Madam Kanako was born into a sake maker’s family. She will drink you under the table.” And then she whispered into my ear, “Mind you, if she brings up that story, please be sure to behave as though you are hearing it for the first time.”

When I entered her room, Kanako was seated before her dresser, wearing a lemon-yellow bathrobe. She had just taken a shower. The room was decorated in a modern Italian style. The curtains and bedcover were both the same shade of pale green, and the dresser was an elegant piece inlaid with an elaborate floral pattern. There was absolutely nothing in here that conjured Kanako’s mother, unlike the antique darkness of the lacquered
Kamakura-bori
cabinet, where you could practically feel her presence.

Kanako was devoted to skin care. Her makeup had been completely washed off with cream, and her clean face now showed the signs of her true age, exposing her crow’s feet, sagging cheeks, and red spots.

“It’s so dreadful—all these blemishes worsen with age.”

“You’re a beautiful woman, Mother. There’s nothing to worry about; they’re barely noticeable.”

“I’m thinking about having work done to fix them.”

“You mean laser treatment?”

“Not really,” she said, picking up her glass and stirring the drink with a swizzle stick. “The treatment involves having my entire face exposed to a beam of light that makes the melanin embedded deep inside the skin rise, and once it’s surfaced, that’s when it will be removed. In essence, the treatment eliminates the root cause.”

She then fell silent for a while. I had no intention of hiding the fact that I had seen her belongings inside that cabinet. If pressed, I intended to apologize. I waited for her next move.

“Since you’ve arrived, Raiki has become rather animated. I suppose the two of you get along well.”

(Yes, both Raiki and I are lonely.)

That’s what I wanted to say, but I swallowed the words. If I had said such a thing, it would have seemed as if I were blaming someone, and I would have become even more lost—as lonely as a person can be. But then again, Kanako was even lonelier than I was. Her desolation was a world beyond my imagination.

I let the whiskey burn and numb my throat before saying, “What kind of a person was Father-in-Law?”

Kanako met my eyes for the first time and said with a slightly ironic smile, “Well, let’s see. He was arrogant, domineering, a womanizer, and above all else, he hated me. He would humiliate me by treating me like a whore, and by demonstrating total control he would reaffirm his place in the world and make a show of his authority and power. That’s all he was capable of doing, really, that pathetic nonperson.”

She had spoken without flinching even once. It then became clear to me that I had my answer to the mystery of those undergarments.

Kanako drank her whiskey in one gulp and went on. “That person used to be taciturn, very sincere, and hardworking back when my parents were still alive and well. They were sure fond of him, but I could never tell what was going on in that mind of his. Naturally, they liked him. That wasn’t surprising, seeing that they were into anyone who would answer to their beck and call and toil away for them day in, day out, you see.”

Kanako stared into the amber liquid before moving on to tell her tale with deadpan indifference: her passionate college years, Shigeki’s birth, and her reluctant marriage to Taichi.

“You see, I hate my parents. I sometimes still wonder why they chose Taichi to be my bridegroom instead of Nakahara. They knew I loved him, yet they would say things about him like, ‘He’s an uneducated nobody from nowhere.’ Well, if that was the case, then what do you call their lousy choice for heaven’s sake? Now there’s an uneducated nobody for you! But I’m certain they chose him because he didn’t have any troublesome relatives except for his mother. Yes, to my parents Taichi was merely an expedient choice that served their purpose well, the purpose of protecting the Tachibana estate. That’s all they were concerned about, really. Nakahara was a musician and dreamed of going to America. But I think there’s one more reason. I think they meant to punish me.”

“Punish you?”

“Yes,” Kanako went on, allowing herself to reveal something she’d kept hidden for a long time. “It was simply inconceivable to my parents that their daughter would go against their will and wind up getting pregnant. They were past the stage of rage. They were in that strange state of mind. How does that saying
go? The greatest hate springs from the greatest love? At any rate, my feelings didn’t matter at all.”

Kanako explained to me that after her father passed away, Taichi’s former self vanished and was replaced by someone who began to dominate Kanako and Shigeki. Kanako and Taichi were man and wife only in name, and Kanako, unable to forget her beloved, never shared a bedroom with Taichi. But the night of her father’s funeral, when Kanako had been inconsolable, Taichi walked into her bedroom without a warning.

“Good god, the look he had on his face then. Just remembering it now gives me the shivers. His face had completely transformed. He didn’t look at all like the conscientious, modest clerk I had come to know. His face was, how should I say, the face of a shameless man—no, of a beast. He was a brazen-faced beast.”

A chill ran down my spine.

“I hadn’t even untied the sash of my mourning dress yet,” Kanako continued. “He just stood there. I was frozen in place as he stared quietly, as if to devour me with his eyes. He said, ‘As long as I’m around, I’ll see to it that neither you nor your mother ever ends up out on the street.’ Right then it became clear to me what position this man had put me in. I wanted to flee, but I simply couldn’t leave behind my child and mother, and it was also inconceivable to carry on being a Tachibana without his support. So I was now completely under his control. He had been waiting for this moment to arrive, you see. I had no choice but to let him overpower me.”

Help. Help. Somebody help.

KANAKO: TWO

“He became strict with Shigeki, telling him that he needed to discipline him. If anything Shigeki said displeased that man, Taichi would tie my boy to a chestnut tree in the backyard, even during the winter. He’d even rouse him out of bed at the crack of dawn to make him clean the pond, tearing off his futon cover and forcing him to wash his face with the icy water.

“Even during dinner, if Shigeki happened to spill his food or leave it unfinished on his plate, Taichi would grab him by his collar and take him to the hill out back, wrap him up in a hemp sack, and roll him down the hill. Before long the child turned into a nervous wreck. How could he not? The mere shadow of Taichi would land him in the grip of terror. Whenever I confronted Taichi, he’d simply overwhelm me with force. Seeing me beaten and kicked, my dear Shigeki would try to protect me, rushing over to receive Taichi’s punishment in my place, saying, ‘Father, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ ”

Anna. Anna, you live here, too.

I was speechless.

“That man tormented the two of us, Shigeki and me—mother and child. I don’t know how many times I thought about strangling him to death as he slept.” Kanako looked into her empty glass. “As if to follow my father to the other side, my mother’s heart gave out. Good thing, though. I’m glad she died sooner than later. The hell she ended up experiencing here on earth was brief.”

Kanako told me that Taichi’s abuse ended when Shigeki was in the fifth grade and the wine-importing business took off, helping improve the company’s overall performance. That was also when Taichi began womanizing. But Kanako found something new to live for. She became driven to see Shigeki admitted into a famous junior high school.

“Every day I looked forward to Shigeki’s return from school. Once he was home, I would take him to an after-school tutor for advanced lessons. At night, I’d help him review his homework and would be glad at times, sad at others, about the test results he’d bring back. Our lives were fulfilling then; the two of us were working together in solidarity to survive the exam wars. And my, what drive, what resolve we had! Shigeki’s history lessons also used to take place as he climbed up the staircase. I had plastered the steps with flash cards in chronological order, you see.”

(And you also swatted Shigeki on the head with a slipper, let’s not forget!)

“But then one time,” Kanako continued, “I realized that his pet puppy became frightened every time he approached. It reminded me of Shigeki getting scared whenever my husband approached. The dog would edge back into a corner of the room, trembling. Shigeki would say the dog ran away, and on many occasions it didn’t return. One day I followed Shigeki and saw him take the puppy to that hill out back. He put the dog inside a hemp sack and tied it shut before kicking the poor thing up into
the air, like a soccer ball. The puppy’s bawling was a hideous sound made all the worse by the silence that followed.”

I thought of Pierre with blood oozing from his lips after being punched by Shigeki. My head began to reel. I couldn’t tell if it was the whiskey or hearing Kanako confirm the truth of Shigeki’s cruelty. But Kanako couldn’t care less. She was too absorbed in the telling of her story to register my state of mind. The last wailings of the dog remained stuck in my ear for a while.

“The child was doing what was done to him,” Kanako said.

She eventually withdrew from Shigeki’s studies. But even though his grades suffered as a result, he still managed to pass his entrance exam and get admitted to a prominent junior high school. At the same time he had a growth spurt, after which he towered over Kanako and Taichi.