I Hear Them Cry (17 page)

Staring at the empty glass, the immense weight of loneliness pressed down on me, making me feel all too clearly the anguish suffered by Simone and Kanako. I wondered if I could go on living if I lost Shigeki.

I imagined a rope wrapped around my hand, which dropped down into a dark well. I tugged at it with all my might and when I peered down, I saw Raiki, desperately holding on to the end of the rope. I pulled on the rope with both hands and managed to bring him up closer to me. As he got closer to me, his eyes showed how much he believed in me. I felt the rope tighten. My hand felt like it would snap off.

(Just let go and free yourself.)

Snapping out of the daydream, I hurled the glass into the sink, where it shattered into pieces.

(I’m going to force that bitch out of my life.)

I realized that I had unconsciously been referring to Reika as “that bitch.” It was as venomous as Shigeki referring to Taichi as “that bastard.”

I changed into jeans and put on the belt I’d used to whip Anna.
I am Joan of Arc
, I encouraged myself for the third time. The first time was for Anna, the second time for Raiki, and this time it was for me—for my fight, my crusade.

I called Terashima Industries and asked to speak to Reika. She was out of the office, visiting Crocus, one of the company’s bars in Ginza. I headed there immediately.

Located several blocks behind Harumi Avenue, Crocus faced the street with a massive, stately wooden door. It was 2:00 p.m., and the neighborhood was quiet in the oppressive summer heat.

As I opened the door, a rush of cool air hit me. I inspected the dim and surprisingly spacious room: Reika sat on a stool at the bar. Her hair was shorter than the last time I saw her, and she was wearing a purple dress; the makeup around her eyes and on her lips was exotically dark. Glass in hand, she was staring at me with the same piercing look she had thrown my way at the wedding reception.

She looked like a femme fatale hiding in this valley of skyscrapers, privately nursing an unspoken sadness, looking much older than I’d imagined. Her skin was faded like old paper that had spent years in the sun.

“I’m Tachibana,” I said, my voice raspy with tension.

“Terashima. Sit down, won’t you?” she said, offering me a seat. She got up from her perch at the bar and showed me to a table. Her calm, low voice veiled all emotion. Was her composure just a bold front? A sign of strength? A tacit threat that could turn violent at the drop of a hat? I couldn’t read her mind, and the situation was overwhelming me. I half-expected her to burst
out and say, “So what if you’re the wife. I’ve been with Shigeki for much longer than you.”

In the half light of the bar she was skinny and shabby, but her cleavage was ample, rising and falling with her every breath. I wondered if Shigeki had buried his head there.

“What would you like to drink?” she asked.

“Ginger ale would be fine.”

She gestured to the young man behind the bar, who promptly placed a bottle and an ice-filled glass in front of me.

“You can go now,” she said to the barkeep.

“As you wish. I hope you have a pleasant afternoon,” he said, slightly bowing his head at me before disappearing into the back.

Reika looked at me and waited, tapping her glass of white wine. Her silence was intimidating.

“Now look here,” I began, “I understand you watered the plants.”

She said nothing, but her stone-cold silence was enough of an answer for me. I persisted with whatever false show of power I could muster. “I’m not here to particularly thank you or anything.”

“He told me not to touch anything in the apartment,” she said. “But the plants in the back room, well, they’re living things, too, aren’t they? I was only being considerate, you know—demonstrating my goodwill, I should say.”

It felt as though she was trying to fan the flames of jealousy in me. I sensed, somewhere inside her, the nasty indignation of a scorned mistress.

“I understand you’ve been seeing him for a long time. So why haven’t you married him?” I said.

“I’m not cut out to be a mother,” she said before muttering with a little self-mockery, “and I wouldn’t want to be.”

“You’re clearly not qualified to be a mother, especially not to Sophie’s child.”

Her hostility and confidence in her position of power seemed to make her invincible to anything I said.

“So you think you understand what Sophie’s life was like? Have you any idea of the emotional turmoil girls like her suffer while doing their job? Sophie was born into poverty. Compared to where we live, her birthplace was a garbage dump. To rise out of there she had to come to Japan to make money. But to do that she had to borrow whatever cash was available from her family and relatives, both near and distant. Just imagine the great expectations weighing her down. Her greatest obstacle, though, was Father Time, who waits for no one. Unless she married, she wouldn’t have been able to stay in Japan for long. I offer girls like her lucrative employment, you know. I’m doing them a service, a favor. Don’t you get that? You really have no right to condemn me, not when you’re so clueless.”

It was all just a pretext, her argument. She was just like Kanako. She was just making pretty little excuses for herself. I knew she had a guilty conscience gnawing at her.

“Sophie loved Shigeki, and Shigeki loved her. Were you aware of that fact?” I took a sip of my ginger ale, hoping to temper my fury. But my anger didn’t upset her in the least.

“Sophie?” she said, letting a cold smile break across her lips as she suppressed a laugh. “Are you kidding? The two of them in love with each other? She knew what she was doing when she went to the yacht, what it meant for her to be there.”

Had I been wrong in believing that Kanako and Reika had set a devious trap for Sophie?

“Sophie didn’t have any spare time in her life to chitchat with a man about love. She knew from her escort friends that there was a decent amount of bonus money to be made by working a party on the boat. Escorts will do anything to repay their vast personal debts. Money always comes first, well ahead of any fair-weather romance with a man,” Reika said with authority.

“For these girls men are merely patrons, nothing more than sources of income. As I remember it, Shigeki kicked Sophie out. He may have been deeply hurt and was probably even suspicious that something happened between her and Taichi, but the bottom line is that he told Sophie to go back to where she came from. He didn’t care what she returned to, or what conditions she would find there.”

The air in the bar chilled me to the bone, and my teeth rattled along with the sound of the air conditioner. I couldn’t see any signs of remorse in Reika about Sophie’s death. My words meant nothing to her, but I still wanted to hurt her. I couldn’t stand the casual way she went on about Sophie’s death.

I said, “Have you ever considered why, of all the women he knew, Shigeki chose her to bear his child?”

It was now Reika’s turn to keep quiet.

“He told me he wanted Sophie to be the mother.”

Finally, Reika registered a jolt of surprise. Something I said had made an impact. But it wasn’t enough for me. I stood up and leaned into her ear, my eyes wide open to see every detail of her miserable face as I whispered, “Can you hear him cry?”

SOPHIE: THREE

Reika glared at me, but I didn’t wait for her retort. I was no longer jealous of her.

If Shigeki really needed Reika, he would have been crying into her ear. If she really loved Shigeki, she would have heard the cry and known that he was in pain.

I knew this the moment I saw her baffled look. My strained nerves relaxed, convinced that she didn’t hear, couldn’t hear. I felt victorious in my heart. My blood began to flow freely through my veins. The freezing-cold air in the bar was history, having been blasted away instantly by the warmth of my joy.

But I wasn’t done yet.

“He always hugs me so tightly that he almost squeezes the air out of me,” I whispered, reveling in how much I knew this hurt her. “He cries into my ear, ‘Help. Help. Somebody help. Help me kill the hatred and restlessness in me. Help me from going insane—this pain is driving me mad. I’m afraid I’ll kill someone one day, just like I used to kill all those puppies, one after another.’ ”

The Shigeki I knew was a complete stranger to Reika, a Shigeki beyond her imagination. Now she looked scared. Her
face showed how afraid she was of becoming irrelevant in Shigeki’s eyes.

“Can’t you hear Shigeki crying for help? For someone to save him from losing his mind?”

Her look said it all. I could see that she was in a state of shock, incapable of digesting what she was hearing while recognizing that I had touched upon the truth. It was a truth wedged deep inside Shigeki’s soul, and I had shined a light on it by revealing the words he had pulled out from the dark depths of his misery—for my ears only.

“He was reared by Taichi, a tyrant who abused him and scarred him for life,” I continued. “His mother was helpless and could not save him. Yet he found Sophie and found peace of mind in her company, a serenity he couldn’t attain on his own. He was in love with her, and that’s why he had a child with her. Can’t you see that, Reika? She knew how grateful he was toward her—wouldn’t you say, Reika? Shigeki then chose me to be his wife. Not you, me.”

I moved away from Reika. Her highlighted eyes seemed like two black holes, unable to see anything. I thought she had stopped breathing. But she slowly got off her stool, calmly looked at me, and placed her hand on a button on her thin chiffon blouse. Then, one by one, from the bottom, she began to unbutton the entire blouse. I took a few more steps away from Reika, as her purple lace bra became visible.

Faint blue bruises marked her entire torso, bruises just like the ones I had become familiar with in the back room of Jean’s church, just like the ones I had inflicted on Anna.

“So do you mind telling me what you think I was to him?” Reika muttered, proudly exposing the bruises Shigeki had no doubt inflicted on her.

She probably wanted to hear me say, “Yes, Reika, he needs you, you’re indispensable to him.” But I didn’t answer.

“I taught him the business, showed him the ropes.”

She sounded just like Kanako then.

A phantom flashed in my mind. The dog Shigeki kicked up in the air, the puppy whimpering as it died.

It was Kanako.

Shigeki could never forgive his mother for failing to protect him from Taichi’s abuses. He also hated her for the spartan way she’d tried to educate him, for trying to control him, for hitting him with a slipper countless times. He was denied the one thing he needed the most: a mother’s unconditional love.

Reika stood before me, a sad and wounded ghost. I couldn’t stand looking at her now. She certainly had a place in Shigeki’s soul, but it was a dark, depraved, and devastated place. The truth depressed me, so I left. As I shut the door behind me, I heard the sound of breaking glass.

Help. Help. Somebody help.

The echo was ceaseless, bringing me to the verge of a nervous breakdown. The shards of glass were the broken pieces of Reika’s heart. My heart was as heavy as lead and as gloomy as the descending humid, exhaust-filled twilight.

SOPHIE: FOUR

There was not a single photograph of Sophie in the mansion in Kamakura or in our apartment. I had never seen Sophie’s face. She was with child and had lost her patron; whether she continued to live in Japan or whether she returned to her country, it must have been hell either way. She couldn’t have possibly entertained the notion of raising Raiki in a garbage dump. Did she end her life as a way to force Shigeki into accepting their child?

Taichi’s boat was all about outward appearances. Having ingested a large quantity of sleeping pills and whiskey, Sophie appeared as though she had fallen asleep. Sad as it was, Raiki was entrusted to the Tachibana family, so Sophie’s death was not in vain.

I now had an incredible urge to get to the boat. I wanted to know why Shigeki still went there so often. What did he do there? I decided to take a trip, taking Raiki along with me.

Jean was always frank and open about the truth. He always talked straight, no matter how brutal and cruel the facts were. He also treated children the same as adults, reasoning, “The truth builds trust.” So I decided to tell Raiki everything about his mother. I thought doing so would be the best way to earn his trust.