The Graveyard Apartment (10 page)

Eiko opened her eyes in surprise. “Really? That's news to me. So, what's the scoop?”

“Well, these days the area around the north exit of Takaino Station is a thriving shopping area, but apparently there was a time, many years ago, when the south side of the district was where the action was, and it was even livelier than the north side is now. Add to that the fact that it isn't a very long walk from the main Japan Rail station to South Takaino Station, and some municipal developers evidently decided it would make sense to create an underground road lined with shops to connect the two stations. From what I heard, they figured an underground shopping mall would attract customers from farther downtown, as well, although that could have been wishful thinking.”

“Huh.” Eiko sounded amazed. “What time frame are we talking about?”

“Well, this is just what my husband heard from the lady proprietor of a bar near the station that's been there forever, but I gathered it was sometime in the 1960s. Maybe 1964 or thereabouts? I'm not sure. Anyhow, they got as far as starting the underground excavation, and then the project was shut down.”

“Why? What happened?” Misao asked. Instead of replying, Mitsue burst into mirthless laughter, as if to disguise the fact that she really didn't know very many details.

“I'm just guessing now,” Mitsue admitted, “but maybe the loan they got wasn't enough to cover the expenses? Or else maybe the merchants down at the north end were unhappy about the prospect of competition and made such a big fuss that the project was abandoned?”

“So they went to all the trouble of digging an underground hole up to some point between the two stations, and then they filled it back in when the project fell through?” Eiko inquired.

“I'm not too clear about that,” Mitsue replied. “It wouldn't be safe to leave a big gaping hole like that, so I imagine it would have been filled in.”

“It's a shame it didn't work out,” Misao said. “If they had been able to build that underground shopping mall, the land value around here would have shot up, and maybe the temple would have been forced to move the graveyard to another location.”

“That's a good point,” Mitsue nodded. “Yes, if things had gone differently, this entire area could have been unbelievably prosperous right about now.”

“But instead we get to live near an abandoned underground shopping street,” Eiko remarked to Misao, twisting her features into an exaggeratedly jocular expression. “There's nobody around except us, and of course there are no underground shops. All that's left is a phantom road to nowhere … I mean, if that road really does exist, it could be interesting. You know, like those stories you hear about the sewer system in New York City, where people flush baby alligators down the toilet, and then those creatures somehow survive and grow up to be enormous, and they're all running around under the city streets? I mean, maybe something could be living in that big underground hole! Hey, Tsutomu?” Eiko raised her voice and called out to her son, who was playing nearby. “What was the name of that TV program we were watching the other night? You know, the one where a giant crocodile was chasing people all over the place, like Godzilla or a dinosaur or something?”

“The show was called
Alligator
,” Tsutomu said complacently. “That's another name for crocodile, of course. You really didn't know that, Mama?”

“Of course I did,” Eiko said. Then she added, laughing, “This kid cracks me up. He's at the stage where his idea of fun is trying to make his mother look like a fool.”

Eiko's phrase, “phantom road to nowhere,” stayed with Misao, fermenting deep inside her mind like some kind of fetid psychic sediment. Whether or not the urban legends about reptiles running amok belowground were true, the mere idea that the remnants of a subterranean hole might still be in place near this building seemed utterly absurd. At the same time, there was something surreally amusing about the image of a busy shopping area beneath the temple and the cemetery, where merchants would hang their “AMAZING BARGAINS!” banners from a ceiling that was only separated by a thin layer of wood and plaster from the decaying bones of human beings.

After making desultory chitchat, Misao said her good-byes and left the Inoues' apartment with Tamao in tow. Mitsue Tabata was all smiles as she saw them off, but she showed no signs of being ready to leave herself.

Misao and Tamao were in the elevator, going up, when Tamao suddenly exclaimed, “Oh, no!”

“What's wrong?”

“I left something behind! I took off my cardigan, and then I forgot to put it back on again.”

“Where did you leave it? At Kaori's house?”

“Uh-uh. In the basement.”

“No worries,” Misao said. “I'll go down and get it later.” She suppressed the words she really wanted to say:
I wish you wouldn't play down there too often … or at all
. As Teppei had pointed out more than once, constantly nagging Tamao or giving her too many rules to follow was not the way to go. You had to let children get a few scrapes and bruises, and deal with some unpleasant experiences; that was a natural part of growing up. It was their duty as parents to try to avoid burdening their daughter with a long list of taboos derived from their own fears and concerns.

After settling Tamao on the sofa with a snack and a pile of picture books, Misao returned to the elevator and went down to the basement alone. The children had apparently forgotten to hit the off switch when they left, because the entire space was ablaze with light.

The first thing Misao saw, standing out in the open, was a lone tricycle—Tsutomu's, no doubt—that appeared to have been cast aside. In front of the storage compartment marked “402” there was a stack of newspapers tied up with string, probably put there by Eiko.

Tamao's cardigan—yellow cotton, with a rabbit embroidered on one tiny pocket—lay in a heap next to the bundle of newspapers. As Misao bent down to pick it up, she heard a faint rustling sound from somewhere nearby.

Startled, she straightened up and looked around. All she saw were the innumerable exposed pipes that crisscrossed the ceiling; the neat rows of large, square, white-painted storage compartments; and the mountainous pile of cardboard cartons left behind by the departed occupants of unit 201.

“Hello? Is someone there?” After blurting out those words, Misao felt a cold shiver of fear for the first time.
I should have kept quiet,
she thought. Hastily, she grabbed Tamao's cardigan, balled it up, and wedged it tightly under one arm. She felt a sudden, unnaturally frigid gust of wind nipping around her ankles. It wasn't the kind of draft you might expect to feel in a basement—that is, a breeze that originated outdoors, where the landscape was still bathed in warm late-afternoon sunlight, then floated through the treetops with their branches heavy with buds, and somehow found its way into the building. This current of air was considerably colder, and it carried a faintly unpleasant odor, too.

Something rustled again, not far away, and Misao felt chilled to the very core of her being. “Must be a mouse,” she said, deliberately speaking in a strong, clear voice. She began walking down the row of storage lockers, making her footsteps as noisy as possible and peering inside each locker as she passed. Even if the noises had been made by a mouse, that creature was hardly likely to respond with “Yes! I'm a mouse!” But still …

Once again, Misao spoke aloud. “That really isn't acceptable,” she said. “I mean, a new building like this shouldn't have a rodent problem already.”

There didn't appear to be anything amiss in or around any of the storage compartments, and there was no sign of a mouse, or a cat, or even a spider. Misao had the distinct sensation that the breeze had grown stronger, and she stopped in her tracks. It wasn't so much that the wind had picked up speed in a natural way; rather, it felt as if the ambient air itself was somehow being engulfed or devoured by the chilly draft.

Misao heard a familiar
ga-tonk
sound. Someone on a floor above must have called the elevator back up from the basement.

She looked carefully around her once more, then continued toward the exit.
I'm just being silly,
she thought.
Nothing has happened, so why am I panicking? I mean, come on, even little kids feel safe playing down here.

When she got to the elevator, the indicator light above the doors showed that it was stopped on the fourth floor. Mitsue Tabata must be on her way home. But after a few minutes, during which the elevator remained on the fourth floor, Misao realized that Mitsue was probably still chatting with Eiko in the hallway while one of them held the elevator doors open.

After a moment, from very far away, there came the sound of liquid—water, perhaps?—falling steadily onto the ground. It was like the inexorable dripping you might hear in some dank underground cavern filled with limestone stalagmites and stalactites.

Misao turned to look behind her, then peered up at the ceiling with its convoluted network of pipes. Perhaps one of them had sprung a leak, or maybe someone had stashed a container of liquid in a storage compartment and it had spilled.

The chilly draft was climbing now, insinuating its way from Misao's ankles up to the small of her back, and she got the uncanny feeling that it had deliberately chosen to wrap itself around her. For a brief instant, she found herself regretting the fact that she was an adult.
If I were a child,
she thought,
it would be perfectly all right for me to let out a long, loud scream right now
.

At long last, the elevator began to move: 3 … 2 … 1 …

Misao opened her mouth with the intention of singing something, to pass the time and dispel her nervousness. However, her mind had suddenly gone blank, just as it had earlier that day in the Ginza, so she settled for humming a wordless tune.

On the elevator panel, “B1” finally lit up and the door slowly slid open. There was something inside the elevator, but for an instant Misao couldn't tell who or what it was, and she let out a small involuntary shriek.

“Oh, Mrs. Kano!” Mitsue Tabata sounded cheery and relaxed. “I didn't know you were down here.”

Misao forced her face into a reasonable facsimile of a smile, then said, “Sorry, I was just surprised. I didn't expect anyone to be on the elevator.”

“Were you doing something with your storage locker?”

“What? Oh, no, Tamao just left something down here, that's all.”

She held out the yellow cardigan, and Mitsue peered at it, beaming. “What darling embroidery,” she said. “Did you do that yourself?”

“Oh, gosh, no. Not at all. I bought this at a store…” Trailing off, Misao made an effort to summon up another pleasant smile.

Mitsue pointed in the direction of the storage lockers. “I just decided to put on my chef's hat and make some pickled vegetables today, from scratch,” she said. “I came down here to get my pickling stone, to put on top. My husband adores
tsukemono
, but even so, he's always teasing me and calling me ‘Auntie Pickle.' Of course, he has no idea how much work goes into making the pickled veggies he loves so much.”

Misao conjured up yet another polite smile, then stepped into the elevator. For some reason, the innocuous sound of Mitsue's slip-on sandals slapping on the bare floor as she walked away into the basement echoed in Misao's ears for a very long time.

 

6

April 7, 1987

After Teppei got off the train at Takaino Station, he brushed past a noisy group of people on the platform, evidently on their way home from an evening of celebrating the cherry blossoms. There were five or six men and three women, and they were laughing and squealing and generally raising a ruckus. One of the women, who was obviously several sheets to the wind, appeared to be on the verge of vomiting at any moment. Even so, her pale face wore a broad grin as she stumbled along, drunkenly clutching the arm of one of the young men.

There was a small but renowned grove of cherry trees near South Takaino Station, and Teppei guessed that the rowdy group had gone there for a picnic dinner (featuring copious quantities of alcohol), and then had walked or taken a taxi to Takaino Station. Teppei had recently been invited to a couple of blossom-viewing parties by his colleagues at the advertising agency, but he had begged off because he was swamped with work. Also, there were plenty of cherry trees in bloom near his apartment building, and if he wanted to see them all he had to do was to step out onto the balcony. The trees dotted around the cemetery were at their glorious peak right now, and the abundant greenery created a lush backdrop for the fluffy pink-petaled domes.

Teppei's younger brother, Tatsuji, had dropped by three days earlier with his wife, Naomi, and she'd gone into extravagant rhapsodies over the cherry blossoms. “Oh my god, what an absolutely exquisite view,” she sighed, as if she had momentarily forgotten that the beautifully blooming trees were surrounded by tombstones, burial mounds, and grave markers.

Ha
, Teppei had thought.
If that woman had come to visit us during the bleak, gray winter and saw the view then—nothing but legions of dark, dingy gravestones, with the leafless tree branches lancing the air like crooked needles—she would probably have said something like, “Oh my god, what a dreary view. Why, you half expect a vampire to jump out at any moment!”

As a housewarming gift, Tatsuji and Naomi had brought a set of linens: a white lace tablecloth, with napkins to match. The cloth was a perfect fit for the dining table, and Misao was delighted.

Teppei strongly believed that his wife's intelligence and tact were the main reasons she was able to maintain a reasonably amicable relationship with her sister-in-law. He often thought that to get along with someone like Naomi you had to be either very clever or else a natural-born coward like Tatsuji.
Oh well
, he thought.
She isn't my problem, so I'm not going to lose sleep over it.