The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (63 page)

She sat there thinking for a long time. While she was thinking, I ate my salad.

“Let’s see, now: you need a suitable name you can use for things like calling me from behind, correct?”

“That’s pretty much it.”

“So it doesn’t have to be my real name, correct?”

I nodded.

“A name, a name … what kind of name would be best?”

“Something simple, something easy to call out, I would think. If possible, something concrete, something real, some
thing
you can really touch and see. That way, it would be easy to remember.”

“For example?”

“For example, I call my cat Mackerel. In fact, I just named him yesterday.”

“Mackerel,” she said aloud, as if to confirm the sound of the word. Then she stared at the salt and pepper shakers on the table for a while, raised her face to me, and said, “Nutmeg.”

“Nutmeg?”

“It just popped into my head. You can call me that, if you don’t mind.”

“No, I don’t mind at all. So what should I call your son?”

“Cinnamon.”

“Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme,” I said, with a hint of melody.

“Nutmeg Akasaka and Cinnamon Akasaka. Not bad, don’t you think?”

Nutmeg Akasaka and Cinnamon Akasaka: Wouldn’t May Kasahara have been shocked if she knew that I had made the acquaintance of such people! “For heaven’s sake, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, why can’t you ever get involved with people who are a little more normal?” Indeed, why not, May Kasahara? It was a question I could never have answered.

“Come to think of it,” I said, “last year I met two women named Malta Kano and Creta Kano. As a result of which, all kinds of things happened to me. Neither of them is around anymore, though.”

Nutmeg gave a little nod but offered no opinion in response.

“They just disappeared somewhere,” I added feebly. “Like the dew on a summer morning.” Or like a star at daybreak.

She brought a forkful of something that looked like chicory to her mouth. Then, as if suddenly recalling a promise made long before, she shot her hand out and took a drink of water.

“Don’t you want to know about that money? The money you got the day before yesterday? Am I wrong?”

“No, you are not wrong. I would very much like to know about that.”

“I don’t mind telling you, but it could be a very long story.”

“One that would end by dessert?”

“Probably not,” said Nutmeg Akasaka.

SETAGAYA, TOKYO: THE MYSTERY OF THE HANGING HOUSE

Who Bought Jinxed Land After Family Suicide?
What’s Going On in Posh Neighborhood?

[From
The ——— Weekly
, October 7]
————

Locals call this plot in ——— 2-chome, Setagaya, the “hanging house.” Located in a quiet residential neighborhood, this 3,500-square-foot piece of prime real estate with fine southern exposure is a virtually ideal location for a home, but those in the know agree on one thing: they wouldn’t take it if you gave it to them. And the reason for this is simple: every known owner of this property, without exception, has met with a terrible fate. Our investigations have revealed that, since the start of the Showa Period, in 1926, no fewer than seven owner occupants of this property have ended their lives in suicide, the majority by hanging or asphyxiation.

[Details on suicides omitted here]

————

The most recent in what can hardly be considered a coincidental string of tragedies is the murder-suicide of the family of Kojiro Miyawaki [photo],
owner of the long-established Rooftop Grill restaurant chain, headquartered in the Ginza. Miyawaki sold all his restaurants and declared bankruptcy two years ago in the face of massive debt, but thereafter he was pursued by several nonbank lenders with ties to organized crime. Finally, in January of this year, Miyawaki used his belt to strangle his fourteen-year-old daughter, Yukie, in her sleep at an inn in Takamatsu City, after which he and his wife, Natsuko, hanged themselves with ropes they had brought with them for that purpose. The Miyawakis’ eldest daughter, a college student at the time, is still missing.

When he bought the property in April 1972, Miyawaki knew of the ominous rumors surrounding the place, but he laughed them off, declaring, “Those were just coincidences.” After purchasing the land, he had the long-vacant house demolished and the lot graded. To be on the safe side, he called in a Shinto priest to exorcise any evil spirits that might still be lurking there, and only then did he have his new, two-story home built. Things went well after that. The family led a tranquil life. Neighbors agree that the Miyawaki home appeared to be harmonious, the daughters bright and happy. But after ten years, the family fortunes took that sudden, disastrous turn.

Miyawaki lost the house, which he had put up as collateral, in the fall of 1983, but squabbling among his creditors with regard to the order of reimbursement kept final disposal of it in abeyance until a court-mediated settlement last summer, which opened the way for sale of the land. It was purchased initially by a major Tokyo real estate firm, ——— Land and Buildings, at a price far below current market value. The company proceeded to demolish the Miyawakis’ house and tried to sell it as an empty lot. A prime piece of Setagaya property, it attracted much interest, but every deal fell through when buyers heard about the jinx attached to the land. According to Mr. M, head of ——— Land and Buildings’ sales division:

“Yes, of course we had heard some of the bad stories connected with the property, but finally it’s a great location, and everybody’s so desperate for prime real estate these days, we figured if we set the price low enough somebody was bound to buy it. We were being optimistic. It hasn’t budged since we put it on the market. People don’t care about the price—they back out as soon as they hear the stories. And talk about bad timing! The poor Miyawakis committed suicide in January, and all the news reports mentioned the land. Quite frankly, we didn’t know what to do with it.”

The lot finally sold in April of this year. “Please don’t ask me the buyer or the price,” says Mr. M, so details are hard to come by, but according to the real estate grapevine, ——— Land and Buildings had to let it go for something far below the asking price. Better to take a fair-sized loss than continue paying the bank interest on a property that would never sell. “The purchasers knew exactly what they were getting
into, of course,” says Mr. M. “We are not in the habit of deceiving our customers. We explained everything beforehand. They bought it knowing the entire history of the place.”

Which leads us to the question of who would choose to buy such a jinxed piece of land. Our investigation has been far more difficult than we had imagined. According to the ward office registry, the purchaser is a company with offices in Minato Ward known as Akasaka Research, which claims to be involved in “economic research and consulting,” their purpose in buying the land being listed as “construction of corporate residence.” The “corporate residence” was, in fact, built this spring, but the firm itself is a typical “paper company.” We visited the Akasaka 2-chome address listed in the documents but found only a small plaque, “Akasaka Research,” on the door of one apartment in a small condominium building, and no one answered when we rang the bell.

————

The present “former Miyawaki residence” is surrounded by a wall far higher than any other in the neighborhood. It has a huge, solid, black iron fence built to discourage peeping (see photo) and a video camera atop the gate pillar. We tried ringing the bell, but there was no response. Neighbors have seen the electric gate open and a black Mercedes 500SEL with tinted windows go in and out several times a day, but there has been no other sign of entry or egress, and no sounds are ever heard from the place.

Construction began in May, but always behind high fences, so neighbors have no idea what the house looks like. It was built with incredible speed: two and a half months from start to finish. A local caterer who delivered lunches to the construction site told us: “The building itself was always hidden behind a canvas screen, so I really can’t say, but it sure wasn’t a big house—just one story, kind of like a concrete box, real plain. I remember thinking they were building a kind of air-raid shelter. It didn’t look like an ordinary house that ordinary people live in—too small and not enough windows. But it wasn’t an office building, either. The landscapers came in and planted some really impressive trees all over the place. The yard probably cost a bundle.”

We tried calling every major landscaping firm in Tokyo, until we came up with the one who had worked on the “former Miyawaki residence,” but the owner could tell us nothing about the party who had ordered the job. The construction company had supplied them with a map of the garden and written orders calling for a good assemblage of mature, well-shaped trees. “Our bid was high, but they accepted it and never tried to bargain.”

The landscaper also told us that while they were at work on the garden, a well-digging company was called in and dug a deep well.

“They built a scaffolding in one corner of the garden to bring up the dirt. I got a good look at the job because I was planting a persimmon tree right close by. They were digging out an old well that had been filled in. It still had the original concrete tube. They seemed to have an easy time of it, because it had just been filled in not long before. The weird thing is, they didn’t strike water. I mean, it was a dry well to begin with, and they were just restoring it to its original condition, so there was no way they were going to find water. I don’t know, it was weird, like they had some special reason for doing it.”

Unfortunately, we have been unable to locate the company that dug the well, but we have been able to determine that the Mercedes 500SEL is the property of a major leasing company with headquarters in Chiyoda Ward and that the vehicle was leased for a year beginning in July by a company in Minato Ward. The identity of their customer could not be revealed to us by the leasing company, but judging from the confluence of events, it is almost certainly Akasaka Research. We might point out that the estimated annual leasing fee for a Mercedes 500SEL is ——— yen. The company offers a chauffeur with every car, but we have been unable to determine whether this particular 500SEL came with a driver or not.

People in the neighborhood were not anxious to speak with us about the “hanging house.” This is not an area known for its neighborhood socializing, and most people probably do not want to become involved. Local resident Mr. A said to us:

“I used to keep my eyes open and tried to figure them out when they first came in here, but I’m sure these aren’t mobsters or a political organization. Too few people go in and out of the place for that. I don’t really get it. It’s true they take some pretty impressive security measures, but I have no reason to complain, and I don’t think any of the other neighbors are concerned. This is a whole lot better than having that vacant house with all the weird rumors.”

Still, we’d like to know who the new owner is and what this “Mr. X” is using the place for. The mystery only deepens.

I climb down the steel ladder anchored in the side of the well, and in the darkness at the bottom, I feel for the bat I always leave propped against the wall—the bat I brought home with me all but unconsciously from the house where I had followed the man with the guitar case. The touch of the scarred old bat in the darkness at the bottom of the well fills me with a strange sense of peace. It helps me, too, to concentrate.

When I find the bat, I form a tight grip on the handle, like a baseball player entering the batter’s box, assuring myself that this is
my
bat. I go on from there to check that nothing has changed down here in the darkness, where there is nothing to see. I listen hard for anything new; I take a lungful of air; I scrape the ground with the sole of my shoe; I check the hardness of the wall with a few taps of the bat tip. These are just rituals designed to calm me down. The well bottom is like the bottom of the sea. Things down here stay very still, keeping their original forms, as if under tremendous pressure, unchanged from day to day.