Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination (13 page)

At this point, the girl hears the mans heavy breathing behind her and knows that he has been gradually creeping closer and closer. She tells herself that the time had come. She feels his trembling hands suddenly grab her shoulders. They begin to push. . .harder. . .harder. At the precise moment when his hands shove for a final push, she jumps aside in a flash.

Losing his balance, the man staggers forward, clawing wildly at empty space. The next instant, his feet are treading thin air, and his body goes hurtling down into the yawning chasm.

Moments later, the merry chirping of birds is heard from amidst the surrounding foliage. In the distance the sinking sun is like a flaming ball, dyeing the hovering clouds a deep red.

The girl stands stock-still atop the cliff. Then, slowly and mechanically, she beings to mumble to herself.

G
IRL
: Self-defense again. How funny! A year ago Saito tried to kill me. But he was the one who was killed, not I. And now that fool tried to push me off this cliff. But he was the one who fell off. . . . I was the real killer of both. But the law won't punish me. . . . How-easy it is to kill! Who knows, maybe I really am the witch I seem. . . maybe I'm destined to go on forever, killing one husband after another. . . .

Like a lone pine, the girl continues to stand motionless on the edge of the cliff, gradually fading from view as darkness descends.

            HELL of
             MIRRORS

O
NE OF THE QUEEREST FRIENDS
I ever had was Kan Tanuma. From the very start I suspected that he was mentally unbalanced. Some might have called him just eccentric, but I am convinced he was a lunatic. At any rate, he had one mania—a craze for anything capable of reflecting an image, as well as for all types of lenses. Even as a boy the only toys he would play with were magic lanterns, telescopes, magnifying glasses, kaleidoscopes, prisms, and the like.

Perhaps this strange mania of Tanuma's was hereditary, for his great-grandfather Moribe was also known to have had the same predilection. As evidence there is the collection of objects—primitive glassware and telescopes and ancient books on related subjects—which this Moribe obtained from the early Dutch merchants at Nagasaki. These were handed down to his descendants, and my friend Tanuma was the last in line to receive the heirlooms.

Although episodes concerning Tanuma's craze for mirrors and lenses in his boyhood are almost endless, those I remember most vividly took place in the latter part of his high-school days, when he was deeply involved in the study of physics, especially optics.

One day while we were in the classroom (Tanuma and I were classmates in the same school), the teacher passed around a concave mirror and invited all the students to observe the reflection of their faces in the glass. When my turn came to look I recoiled with horror, for the numerous festering pimples on my face, so greatly magnified, looked exactly like craters on the moon seen through the gigantic telescope of an astronomical observatory. I might mention that I had always been extremely sensitive about my heavily pimpled face, so much so that the shock I received on this occasion left me with a phobia of looking into such concave mirrors. On one occasion not long after this incident I happened to visit a science exhibition, but when I spotted an extra-large concave mirror mounted in the far distance I took to my heels in holy terror.

Tanuma, however, in sharp contrast to my sensitive feelings, let out a shrill cry of joy as soon as he got his first glance at that concave mirror in the classroom. "Wonderful. . .wonderful!" he shrieked, and all the other students laughed at him.

But to Tanuma the experience was no laughing matter, for he was in dead earnest. Subsequently his love for concave mirrors grew so intense that he was forever buying all sorts of paraphernalia—wire, cardboard, mirrors, and the like. From these he mischievously began constructing various devilish trick-boxes with the help of many books which he had procured, all devoted to the art of scientific magic.

Following Tanuma's graduation from high school, he showed no inclination to pursue his academic studies further. Instead, with the money which was generously supplied him by his easy-going parents, he built a small laboratory in one corner of his garden and devoted his full time and effort to his craze for optical instruments.

He completely isolated himself in his weird laboratory, and I was the only friend who ever visited him, the others having all given him up because of his growing eccentricity. On each of my visits I began to feel more and more anxious over his strange doings, for I could see clearly that his malady was going from bad to worse.

About this time both his parents died, leaving him with a handsome inheritance. Now completely free from any supervision, and with ample funds to satisfy his every whim, he began to grow more reckless than ever. At the same time, having now reached the age of twenty, he began to show a keen interest in the opposite sex. This interest intermingled with his morbid craze for optics, and the two grew into a powerful force in which he was completely enmeshed.

Immediately after receiving his inheritance he built a small observatory and equipped it with an astronomical telescope in order to explore the mysteries of the planets. As his house stood on a high elevation, it was an ideal spot for this purpose. But he was not one to be satisfied with such an innocuous occupation. Soon he began to turn his telescope earthward and to focus the lens on the houses of the surrounding area. Fences and other barriers constituted no obstacle, because his observatory stood on very high ground.

The occupants of the neighboring houses, utterly unaware of Tanuma's prying eyes peering through his telescope, went about their daily lives without any reserve, their sliding paper windows wide open. As a result Tanuma derived hitherto unknown pleasures from his secret explorations into the private lives of his neighbors. One evening he kindly invited me to take a look, but what I saw made me blush a deep crimson, and I refused to partake any more in his observations.

Not long after he built a special type of periscope which enabled him to get a full view of the rooms of his many young maidservants while he was sitting in his lab. Unaware of this, the maids showed no restraint in whatever they did in the privacy of their own rooms.

Another episode, which I can never erase from my mind, concerned insects. Tanuma began studying them under a small microscope, deriving childish delight from watching both their fighting and their mating. One particular scene which I had the misfortune of seeing was that of a crushed flea. This was a gory sight indeed, for, magnified a thousandfold, it looked like a large wild boar struggling in a pool of blood.

Some time after this, when I called on Tanuma one afternoon and knocked on his laboratory door, there was no answer. So I casually walked in, as was my custom. Inside, it was completely dark, for all the windows were draped with black curtains. And then suddenly on the large wall ahead of me there appeared some blurred and indescribable object, so monstrous in size that it covered the entire space. I was so startled that I stood transfixed.

Gradually the "thing" on the wall began to take definite shape. The first shape that came into focus was a swamp overgrown with black weeds. Beneath it there appeared two immense eyes the size of washtubs, with brown pupils glinting horribly, while at their sides there flowed many rivers of blood on a white plateau. Next came two large caves, from which there seemed to protrude the black bushy ends of large brooms. These, of course, were the hairs growing in the cavities of a gigantic nose. Then followed two thick lips, which looked like two large, crimson cushions; and they kept moving, exposing two rows of white teeth the proportions of roof-tiles.

It was a picture of a human face. Somehow I thought I recognized the features despite their grotesque size.

Just at this point I heard someone calling: "Don't be alarmed! It's only me!" The voice gave me another shock, for the large lips moved in synchronization with the words, and the eyes seemed to smile.

Abruptly, without any warning, the room was filled with light, and the apparition on the wall vanished. Almost simultaneously Tanuma emerged from behind a curtain at the rear of the room.

Grinning mischievously, he came up to me and exclaimed with childish pride: "Wasn't that a remarkable show?" While I continued to stand motionless, still speechless with wonder, he explained to me that what I had seen was an image of his own face, thrown on the wall by means of a stereopticon which he had had specially constructed to project the human face.

Several weeks later he started another new experiment. This time he built a small room within the laboratory, the interior of which was completely lined with mirrors. The four walls, plus floor and ceiling, were mirrors. Hence, anyone who went inside would be confronted with reflections of every portion of his body; and as the six mirrors reflected one another, the reflections multiplied and re-multiplied ad infinitum. Just what the purpose of the room was Tanuma never explained. But I do remember that he invited me on one occasion to enter it. I flatly refused, for I was terrified. But from what the servants told me Tanuma frequently entered the "chamber of mirrors" together with Kimiko, his favorite maid, a buxom girl of eighteen, to enjoy the hidden delights of mirrorland.

The servants also told me that at other times he would enter the chamber alone, staying for many minutes, often as long as an hour. Once he had stayed inside so long that the servants had become alarmed. One of them mustered up enough courage to knock on the door. Tanuma came leaping out, stark naked, and without even a word of explanation, fled to his own room.

I must explain at this juncture that Tanuma's health was fast deteriorating. On the other hand his craze for optical instruments kept increasing in intensity. Continuing to spend his fortune on his insane hobby, he kept laying in bigger and bigger stocks of mirrors of all shapes and descriptions—concave, convex, corrugated, prismaticas well as miscellaneous specimens that cast completely distorted reflections. Finally, however, he reached the stage where he could no longer find any further satisfaction unless he himself manufactured his own mirrors. So he established a glass-working plant in his spacious garden, and there, with the help of a select staff of technicians and workmen, began turning out all kinds of fantastic mirrors. He had no relative to restrain him in his insane ventures, and the handsome wages he paid his servants assured their complete obedience. Hence I felt it was my duty to try and dissuade him from squandering any more of his fast-dwindling fortune. But Tanuma would not listen to me.

I was nevertheless determined to keep an eye on him, fearing he might lose his mind completely, and visited him frequently. And on each occasion I was a witness to some still madder example of his mirror-making orgy, each example becoming more and more difficult to describe.

One of the things he did was to cover one whole wall of his laboratory with a giant mirror. Then in the mirror he cut out five holes; he would thrust his arms, legs, and head through these holes from the back side of the mirror, creating a weird illusion of a trunkless body floating in space.

On other occasions I would find his lab cluttered up with a miscellaneous collection of mirrors of fantastic shapes and sizes—corrugated, concave and convex types predominating—and he would be dancing in their midst, completely naked, in the manner of some primitive pagan ritualist or witch doctor. Every time I beheld these scenes I got the shivers, for the reflection of his madly whirling naked body became contorted and twisted into a thousand variations. Sometimes his head would appear double, his lips swollen to immense proportions; again his belly would swell and rise, then flatten out; his swinging arms would multiply like those found on ancient Chinese Buddhist statues. Indeed, during such times the laboratory was transformed into a purgatory of freaks.

Next, Tanuma rigged up a gigantic kaleidoscope which seemed to fill the entire length of his laboratory. This was rotated by a motor, and with each rotation of the giant cylinder the mammoth flower patterns of the kaleidoscope would change in form and hue—red, pink, purple, green, vermilion, black—like the flowers of an opium addict's dream. And Tanuma himself would crawl into the cylinder, dancing there crazily among the flowers, his stark naked body and limbs multiplying like the petals of the flowers, making it seem as if he too were one of the flowery features of the kaleidoscope.

Nor did his madness end here—far from it. His fantastic creations multiplied rapidly, each on a larger scale than the previous one. Until about this time I had still believed that he was partly sane; but finally even I had to admit he had completely lost his mind. And shortly thereafter came the terrible, tragic climax.