Birthday (11 page)

What she was saying didn't sound all that far-fetched—no doubt that day was fast approaching.

"I'm sure we will, sooner or later. Maybe someday we'll be able to sit at home and watch one of your movies on TV."

"But that's a long way off, isn't it?" She sounded depressed about it.

"It's not impossible, though. You could do it."

"But it would be too late."

"What do you mean?"

"By that time, I'd be an old woman."

She had a point. Even assuming Sadako kept steadily maturing as an actress, by the time a cassette-like image-storage system came into widespread use, she'd no longer be considered young.

"Don't be in such a rush."

"I don't want to get old. I want to stay young forever. Wouldn't that be great?"

Nobody fears aging like an aspiring young actress, reflected Toyama. Sadako was evidently no exception.

"I wouldn't mind growing old with you."

It was almost a proposal, despite the casual way he said it. And he meant it. Aging held no horrors for him, as long as he and Sadako could live together. And when he finally died of old age, he could do it with a smile on his face provided she was there beside him. For an instant Toyama imagined dying in Sadako's arms. She was gazing into his eyes while the world receded spinning into the distance. He was old...but for some reason Sadako was still her present age. In his head the image was startlingly clear.

The muscles around Sadako's mouth relaxed as she realized that Toyama really did want to be with her. She knit her brow and said, a little defensively, "You're under the impression that I like Mr. Shigemori, aren't you?

You've got the wrong idea."

"Well, I don't want to think that. But considering what I saw you do—"

She wouldn't let him finish. She shook her head and said, "No, no. You misunderstand. I can't stand him. He comes on way too strong. In fact, he scares me. It's like he's obsessed with me—he's just creepy. I hate it. Why can't he be a little more laid back—especially at his age?"

So even Shigemori had struck out with Sadako.

Toyama actually began to feel a little sorry for him—was it possible that he was seriously in love with Sadako, at age forty-seven?

"To be honest, it's really hard for me—I don't know how to tell you what I really feel. I want to believe you, Sadako, but..."

Sadako leaned forward in the folding chair and put a hand on Toyama's knee.

"Toyama," she said.

She was only nineteen, but it seemed she knew just how to relieve the frustration of a man suffering from jealousy.

She stood up and turned off the lights. Once she'd turned out the desk light, the booth was dark except for what light found its way through the window from the stage below. It was enough to dimly illuminate Sadako's body. But then the last actors left the stage, and that light too was extinguished. All was black except for the tiny red glow of the record light on the cassette deck in the corner.

Something clicked in the darkness. Sadako must have locked the door from the inside. After a while, Toyama felt her weight on his knees. So slender to look at, she was surprisingly heavy.

He could see nothing: only by her weight did he know she was there. She guided his hands as he undressed her. They unzipped her dress in the back, and then she slipped it off over her head. Now Sadako was straddling him in her underwear as he sat there.

At the soft touch of her skin, the outlines of Sadako's body took shape in Toyama's mind. She'd taken off her dress, but ironically she was now becoming the Girl in Black herself. The fact that he couldn't see her in the darkness only stimulated his imagination as her naked form took on solidity in his mind's eye. The red glow from the tape deck only made her blacker.

As he savored the satisfaction of having her all to himself at last, Toyama's frustration and jealousy melted away.

He lost track of time. He forgot himself completely as they touched each other's bodies, as he stroked her hair, as he lifted her head and ran his lips over her neck; naturally, his desire progressed to the next level. But every time he started to reach a hand between her legs, she would stop his hand—sometimes gently, and sometimes brusquely. Finally, as if to distract him, she reached into his shorts.

It took him no time at all to climax: her hands moved, and in response Toyama finished, stifling a moan.

Not a drop of his ejaculate hit his clothes or the floor: Sadako caught it all in her hands. In his abandon, Toyama was unable to figure out what she was doing now. From the sounds, he thought she might be rubbing her hands together in it. Once she'd covered her hands in his fluid like lather from a bar of soap, she put her arms around his face, his neck, and embraced him. He smelled his own.

Then Sadako whispered in his ear, barely loud enough to hear, "Don't ever love me more than you do now. I don't want to lose you, Toyama."

It didn't feel as if she'd said the words at all, but rather as if they'd been delivered straight into his brain.

Toyama, I love you.

Was he hallucinating from the strength of his desire? No—her voice pressed itself directly into his mind.

These were the words he wanted everyone to hear—

if indeed he was hearing them himself. He especially wanted Shigemori to hear them.

"Sadako," he whispered, in a dry, scratchy voice,

"you'd make me so happy if you'd just say you love me in front of everyone..."

But she shook her head.

At that moment his foot hit the cabinet. He heard something fall. He'd forgotten himself in his love for Sadako, but just for an instant his attention was claimed by the altar hidden at his feet, and the offering lain in front of it.

Toyama, I love you.

Again, her voice coming into his brain—and together with it he thought he heard, from somewhere, the sound of a baby crying. It wasn't his imagination: he definitely heard a newborn baby crying, behind Sadako.

November 1990

Every cell in his body was reliving the touch of Sadako's skin. This wasn't like a mental recollection: it felt as if the memory were engraved in his very DNA.

He told Yoshino about that episode from his youth, but he didn't go into every single little detail. He just gave him the general outlines, the salient points of the day of the final dress rehearsal. But as he spoke he was remembering Sadako's voice, the softness of her skin, the feel of her hair, as if it were yesterday.

Toyama, I love you.

Her voice still lingered in his ear—whether he'd really heard it or only hallucinated it, he could recreate its resonance, its mysterious ambience, exactly. It was the voice of the only woman he'd ever met with whom he could have been truly happy.

He wanted to see her again, if at all possible. Where was she now? What was she doing? The fact that Yoshino couldn't find her was at least proof that she hadn't made a name for herself as an actress. That in itself he found unbelievable, for a woman with such a unique allure as hers. He began to feel uneasy.

He found it took courage just to ask. But somehow he managed to voice his query. "By the way, Mr.

Yoshino. What do you think Sadako's doing now? Please, don't keep anything back from me—whatever you might know."

Yoshino rested his chin on his hand; he licked the cover of his fountain pen with the tip of his tongue.

"Of all the ridiculous... I'm trying to find out what happened to her. How could I have any idea what she's doing now?"

"I think you people know something. Don't you think it's a bit unfair for you to ask me all these questions and then not answer mine?"

"But..."

Toyama leaned forward earnestly and looked Yoshino square in his bearded face.

"Is Sadako alive?"

He had to come straight out and ask it: otherwise they'd keep going in circles.

Yoshino looked taken aback by Toyama's serious-ness. He made a strange face, then shook his head twice, gently.

"I hate to say it, but she's probably..." Warning him that nothing was definite yet, Yoshino told Toyama that the information his colleague Asakawa had come across gave them reason to speculate that Sadako Yamamura was no longer alive. There was a possibility that she'd been involved in some kind of incident, and that it had happened right after her disappearance from the troupe twenty-four years ago. Again, it was still only specula-tion. But...

But it was enough. It was the development Toyama had feared, and it didn't surprise him. He'd had a feeling, for he didn't know how long now, that Sadako was no longer of this world.

Still, hearing Yoshino state it as a near-certainty caused a physical reaction in Toyama that was far more honest than he'd expected. To his surprise, tears began not just rolling down his cheeks, but actually falling to splash on the floor. In his forty-seven years he'd never dreamed his body was capable of such a thing. She was the one burning love of his life... But that was twenty-four years ago. He was more experienced now—he knew he was even something of a playboy—and now he was weeping over confirmation of Sadako's death. He couldn't help but see something comical in it.

Startled, Yoshino searched in his satchel until he found a tissue. Wordlessly he offered it to Toyama.

"Sorry, I don't know what..." Toyama trailed off and blew his nose.

"I know how you must be feeling."

But Yoshino's words sounded utterly fake. 

How 
could you know?

Toyama started to blow his nose again, but then decided to ask something that had been on his mind all along.

"By the way, you said you'd talked on the phone with some of my old colleagues from the troupe."

"Yes. Iino, Kitajima, and Kato."

"And that they all knew I had a relationship with Sadako."

"That's right."

That didn't sit right with Toyama, given the excessive care Sadako had taken to ensure that their relationship wasn't made public. Toyama, too, in response to her demands, had made a point of not mentioning it to anybody. In spite of all that, they knew. He wondered how.

"I don't get it. I was pretty sure we'd kept it under wraps."

Seeing that Toyama had gotten his emotions under control, Yoshino ventured a smile.

"You were fooling yourself, my friend. When two people are in love, people notice, no matter how much they try to hide it."

"Did they say anything specific?"

Yoshino gave a little half-laugh, half-sigh. "Oh, maybe you didn't know about this. Well, it seems someone played a trick on you."

"A trick?"

"This is twenty-four years ago we're talking about, after all, so it seemed pointless to me at first, but hearing what you had to say has cleared something up for me.

Things make sense now."

Yoshino then told Toyama something he'd heard from Kitajima. Not precisely as Kitajima had told him—

he blended what he'd gotten from Kitajima with what he'd just learned from Toyama to come up with his own version of what had happened.

It was an April afternoon, the closing day of their three-week run.

It was closing day, and the interns were all gathered in the big room behind the dressing rooms, enjoying a rare moment of leisure. After that day's performance, a late matinee, the play would be over: they'd break down the sets and lighting, and then the wrap party would begin. A week or more's vacation awaited them after that. For the first time in three months, they'd be able to really relax.

Already feeling somewhat liberated, Okubo had gathered everybody to watch him do impressions again.

Kitajima was still among them at this point, cheering him on with the rest.

It wasn't clear who had brought it up. Once Okubo was all revved up, though, somebody mentioned the tape they'd recorded him on last time. This brought back memories: oh, that's right—we sure had fun that time, etc. etc. Meanwhile Okubo lost interest in his impressions and started gathering wool. Then he suddenly started to worry about that cassette, asking everybody what had happened to it. Nobody knew. Finally he realized if anybody would know, it was Toyama, he being in charge of the tape deck.

That tape constituted a grave danger to Okubo. If Shigemori found it, then at the very least his week's vacation might be canceled. He decided that he wouldn't be able to make it through closing day with any peace of mind unless he disposed of the tape.

So he said he was going up to the sound booth to look for it. As Okubo lost interest in his impressions in order to concentrate on finding the tape, Kitajima lost interest in Okubo. He left the room, heading for the restroom off the lobby. Before the doors to the theater opened, that restroom was usually empty, and Kitajima always went there when he needed to sit down to do his business.

He walked together with Okubo as far as the lobby, then they separated, Okubo climbing the spiral stairs to the sound booth and Kitajima going into the empty restroom.

He took his time. When he was finished he made a call from the pay phone to check on some tickets, and when he finally returned to the big room he almost ran into a red-faced Shigemori rushing from the room. At that moment Kitajima sensed that something bad had happened, but since Shigemori didn't seem to notice him at all he decided that he wasn't the target of the director's anger, and so he relaxed.

In terms of timing, it seemed likely that Shigemori had learned of the cassette and was overreacting to it.

But as Kitajima watched to see what Shigemori would do next, he saw something unexpected.

Shigemori was definitely flustered, but Kitajima couldn't tell if he was angry or disturbed. He opened the door of the women's dressing room and called for Sadako Yamamura repeatedly, in a low voice.

Kitajima watched from behind the sink. A woman came to the door in response to Shigemori's call. Probably Sadako, but since she didn't step into the hallway where Shigemori stood, Kitajima couldn't see her at all.

From what Shigemori said next, though, it was clear who it was.

"I don't believe you, Sadako."

Shigemori seemed to have a hand on her shoulder, now shaking her, now stroking her, now with a pleading look on his face, now with a threatening scowl, but looking straight at her all the while. Sometimes his eyes seemed to brim with tears. In profile, as Kitajima saw him, Shigemori was showing commingled love and hatred.