The Graveyard Apartment

 

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BRAND-NEW LUXURY

APARTMENTS FOR SALE

• All units boast sunny southern exposure.

• Quiet, peaceful, and private.

• Resident managers on the premises, 24-7.

• Convenient access to shopping and public transportation.

• Enjoy a lush greenbelt view, right in the middle of the city!

• All apartments priced to sell at ¥35,000,000.

PROPERTY DESCRIPTION

• Name: Central Plaza Mansion.

• Location: 4 Takaino, “K” Ward, Tokyo.

• Construction: Reinforced concrete; eight floors, plus basement.

• Total number of units: 14.

• Floor plan: 2LDK.

• Total area: 900 square feet (approximate).

• Balcony area: 100 square feet (approximate).

• Date of construction: August 1986.

• Monthly maintenance fee: ¥18,200.

• One elevator serves all units.

• Basement features a designated storage compartment for each unit.

• On-site parking.

• Developer: The Green Corporation.

 

1

March 10, 1987

When they got up that first morning, the little white finch was dead. The bottom of the cage was covered with a thick layer of loose feathers, and it looked as if there had been a violent struggle before the bird finally gave up the ghost.

“I wonder if it was just his time to go,” Teppei Kano said softly. “How old was he, anyway?”

“He was only four years old,” replied Teppei's wife, Misao. “We bought him right after Tamao was born, remember?”

“Oh, right. That seems like an abnormally short life, even for a bird. Maybe he was sick or something.”

“Or he might have hit his head during the move and gotten injured somehow, maybe when the cage was jostled. I think that's more likely.”

Misao opened the door of the metal cage and gently placed the dead bird in the palm of her hand. The tiny body was already cold. When Misao held it up to her nose, she caught a faint whiff of dried grass—the same earthy scent the little finch had given off when he was alive. Hot tears filled her eyes.

Making an effort not to cry, Misao stroked the stiffening corpse with her forefinger. “Poor little Pyoko,” she murmured. “You were so cute.”

“He really was,” Teppei agreed.

The family's mixed-breed dog, Cookie, trotted up and laid her front paw on Misao's knee. The dog's nose twitched convulsively as she sniffed the air.

“Your friend Pyoko went and died,” Misao said. Choking back another sob, she held out the bird's lifeless body, now cradled in both her hands, until it was nearly touching Cookie's muzzle. The dog inhaled deeply, taking in the dead bird's aroma, then wagged her tail and looked up at Misao with sorrowful eyes.

“We'll bury him later, outside,” Teppei said, putting his hand on Misao's shoulder. “It's kind of ironic that our new location is already coming in handy. At least when we need a graveyard, there's one right in front of our building.”

“Oh, don't say things like that! Anyway, I thought we agreed not to talk about the cemetery.” Misao was feeling distinctly depressed about the fact that a living creature they'd been caring for had died so soon after their move to a new place.
What on earth happened overnight?
she wondered. As recently as yesterday the little bird had been in fine shape, chirping merrily away like an avatar of good cheer, both while he was riding in the back of the moving truck along with Cookie and after his cage had been installed in the living room. And yet now …

“Mama?” Misao's reverie was shattered by the sound of her daughter's voice coming from the child-size bedroom—which they called, aspirationally, the nursery—down the hall. Tamao always went to sleep docilely enough, but as soon as she woke up in the morning she would call out for her mother in a whimpering voice that sounded, to Misao's ears, like an abandoned puppy.

Handing the little bird's corpse to Teppei, Misao responded in a perfectly normal, everyday tone, “Good morning, sleepyhead! Time to get up!”

A few seconds later Tamao's face peeked around the corner of the door to the living room. It was a beguiling little face, with her father's large, bright eyes and her mother's sharply chiseled features, framed by soft, slightly wavy black hair. Every time Misao saw her daughter she thought,
She looks as if she could turn into an angel on the spot, if you just attached a pair of wings to her back
.

“Sweetie, come here for a minute, okay?” Misao said in a subdued voice, beckoning with one outstretched hand.

Tamao's big brown eyes flicked quickly to the birdcage by the window, then back to her mother. “Where's Pyoko?” she asked.

“He's right here,” Teppei said quietly, holding out his cupped hands.

Tamao's bare feet slapped on the floor as she nimbly threaded her way among the jumble of packing boxes to join her father. Teppei opened his hands and showed Tamao the tiny, motionless bird. Tamao took a quick peek, then looked up at her father. “Is he sick?” she asked anxiously.

Teppei shook his head, while Misao explained, “Listen, sweetie, I'm really sorry, but Pyoko's dead. He's in heaven now.”

Tamao stared at her parents for a long moment. She looked utterly stupefied, and her thin chest was heaving under her Snoopy-patterned pajamas. Then, very timidly, she stretched out a plump pink finger and began to caress the dead bird. “Poor little thing,” she said.

“Later today we'll all go outside together and dig a grave,” Misao told Tamao. “We'll make it extra-specially nice, because Pyoko was such a good friend of yours.”

Tamao was a delicate, sensitive child. As Misao watched helplessly, tears welled up in her daughter's eyes and rolled down her rosy cheeks. “Poor Pyoko,” Tamao moaned. “Poor little Pyoko.”

Misao nodded, fighting back the urge to burst into empathetic tears. “Yes,” she said, “it's very sad that Pyoko's gone. That's why we have to make a really nice grave for him.”

How on earth did this happen?
Misao wondered again, with a growing sense of uneasiness. It really looked as though the entire cage had been attacked and mauled by a cat, and the water dish was filled with the bird's minuscule feathers, possibly shed (Misao theorized) in a life-or-death battle. Could a rat have gotten into the cage during the night? But surely there wouldn't be rodents running around in a sparkling new apartment building like the Central Plaza Mansion.

“It's really strange, though, isn't it?” Misao said, cocking her head and attempting to dispel the melancholy atmosphere in the room by changing the focus from loss to cause.

“Definitely,” Teppei agreed. “It occurred to me that Cookie might have been trying to play with Pyoko and things just got out of hand. But the cage was latched, so that explanation doesn't hold water.”

“Besides, Cookie would never do something like that!” Tamao declared indignantly, roughly wiping away her tears with both hands. “Cookie's a very nice dog, and she and Pyoko were really good friends.”

“You're right, of course,” Misao said in a soothing tone. “Cookie would never do anything to hurt Pyoko, but it's just so mystifying. I mean, what could have happened? What do you think, Tamao?”

“I have no idea,” Tamao said, shaking her head.

“We were all sleeping like a pile of logs last night, so we wouldn't have heard anything,” Teppei said, as he carefully wrapped the bird's remains in an old newspaper, then laid the bundle on a nearby packing box. “Hey, maybe it was a giant monster cockroach, almost as big as Tamao.
Grrrr!
”

Tamao's eyes were still brimming with tears, but now they crinkled around the edges and she began to giggle. There was something a bit forced about her laughter, but she was clearly doing her best to play along with her father.

“Could there really be cockroaches on the eighth floor of a new building? And wouldn't March be a little early for them to show up, in any case? If this apartment has cockroaches, even if they're just the normal size, I'm going to move out right now!” Misao said playfully.

Scooping Tamao into his arms, Teppei said, “Did you hear that? Your silly mom got totally hysterical at the very mention of a bug. Who's afraid of the big bad cockroach? Not I!” he chanted in a comical singsong.

Tamao laughed outright at this, and Cookie began capering manically around the room, apparently sensing the change in mood. Misao was relieved to see that things seemed to be returning to normal. Briskly, she picked up the empty birdcage and took it out to the balcony. After sending Tamao off to wash her hands, she set about brewing a pot of coffee.

The spacious, south-facing living room was flooded with morning light.
Okay
, Misao told herself,
it was a terrible shock to find that Pyoko had died in the night, but now it's time to put aside our feelings of sadness and confusion, and get to work
.

The to-do list for the day was as long as Misao's arm. For starters, she needed to clean and organize the kitchen; go out and buy enough groceries to keep them going for the next couple of days while they were settling in; and air all the quilts and other bedding, which had no doubt picked up some dust during the move. She could put Teppei to work hooking up the electrical appliances and pushing the furniture into place, but she would still need to give the toilet, washroom, and bathroom a thorough scrubbing, and arrange both bedrooms for comfort and convenience. There were so many stacks of cardboard boxes waiting to be unpacked that just looking at them made her feel slightly ill.

Still, compared with the rather dark, cramped rental apartment they had lived in until yesterday, their new home seemed like a vacation condo at some glamorous seaside resort. The eight-story building had only fourteen units, not counting the husband-and-wife caretakers' quarters on the ground floor. There were two units per floor, and while the floor plans of those units were mirror images of each other, the placement of the balconies differed a bit from apartment to apartment, so the building's facade had an interesting irregularity when viewed from outside.