Evil and the Mask (31 page)

“Um,” said Kaori softly, after a long silence.

She was watching me with troubled eyes, brushing away tears, as if trying to make up her mind. I grunted in reply, keeping my eyes on the road, feeling a sense of dread. We turned at an intersection and entered a residential area.

“Are you … are you really happy?” Her voice was low but I could hear her clearly.

“Yes.”

I don’t know how I managed to get the words out. My voice was still shaking.

“I’m married, so I probably shouldn’t say this, but you really are beautiful, you’re wonderful.”

I could see Konishi’s condo. The white building gradually grew nearer, and I stopped the car out front. I hardly knew if I was still crying or not, but I wanted to see Kaori one last time. Whether I was Fumihiro or Shintani, that no longer seemed important. I twisted around in my seat, taking in her eyes and lips, her thin neck and shoulders. She was as lovely as ever, so lovely that I wanted to find some good in the world, no matter what happened to me.

“I love you.”

This was the second time I had made that confession to her.

“So it’s probably better if we don’t see each other again. Since I’m married.”

I turned to the front again and unlocked the doors. She hesitated, but then started to move. I kept my eyes averted, and finally I heard her getting out. She walked around and stood by the driver’s side door, peering at me through the
glass, her figure lit by the setting sun. Dazzled, I wound down the window.

“Today,” she started, “I, um …”

Her whole body was bathed with an orange light.

“I’m still a bit confused, but …”

I handed her a paper bag.

“Sorry, I forgot to give you this. It’s a small present. A white hair-tie.”

Kaori smiled weakly, her eyes red.

“Please use it from time to time, at the end of the day.”

I took a breath. Tears welled in my eyes again.

“I’m really glad I met you.”

I drove slowly away. I didn’t know if she was watching me leave, but I knew that once I turned the corner it would be over. I searched for a place where I could pull myself together. After a few minutes I spotted a park. I stopped the car and got out, gently distancing myself from the lingering scent of her perfume. In a haze of tears I staggered to a bench and collapsed onto it. It seemed to embrace my crumbling body and spirit.

I sat there and wept. Perhaps from time to time I cried out. When I was finally able to stand, it was already quite dark.

THE RAIN THAT had started abruptly several days before had stopped, giving us a brief respite. A distant sun cast rays through gaps in the low, heavy clouds. Since morning, rain that couldn’t make up its mind to become snow had formed countless puddles on the pavement, throwing random reflections of the strengthening sunshine. I’d stepped in several of these by accident and my leather shoes were soaked. The woman who doubled as receptionist met me as before, smiling and without make-up. When she ushered me into the reception room the doctor stood, looking at my face.

I sat on the white sofa and he pushed an ashtray towards me. As always, it didn’t feel like a hospital. The surgeon was
dressed in ordinary clothes, and his rigid smile was hardly a smile at all. The potted plants had grown a bit since last time, and the room seemed to be buried in soft foliage.

“I’ve decided to leave Japan for a while,” I said.

He nodded slightly.

“I want to take some time to think things over. Everything that’s happened. There’s been too much going on.”

The warm air gently stroked my cold skin. Without getting up, I took off my coat.

“But do you really have to leave to do that? And will you ever come back?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure. I just want to get away from it all for a while … think things over.”

He nodded again, but I couldn’t tell if he approved or not.

“I see,” he said. “Well, I’ll give you several months’ worth of pills. They’re just a precaution, but it’s best if you keep taking them.”

“Thanks.”

The woman entered with tea. Steam rose from the white cups, hanging in the air for ages. She walked out again silently, her smile still firmly in place.

“I worked on her face too,” he said, lifting the cup to his mouth.

The tea must still have been piping hot, but he drank it calmly without blowing on it first. It was as strong as ever.

“You two are mysterious,” I said.

“You’re pretty mysterious yourself.”

I looked around the room, filled with green like a conservatory.

“What’s your …?”

He didn’t seem surprised by my unfinished question.

“What kind of life she and I lead, how we got here … that’s another long story.”

He grinned and wiped the corners of his mouth.

“I’ll give you three guesses, and I’ll tell you which one is closest.”

His smile seemed more definite than usual. I felt my own lips curving as well.

“Okay, how about this? You’re at the end of a tragic love affair.”

“So you’re really going to play? Fine. You’ve got two left.”

“The two of you killed someone precious to you.”

“And the last?”

“You’ve used up your will to live. You committed some kind of crime and were persecuted by people, by society.”

He slowly drank his tea.

“Perhaps all of them hit on part of the truth. But one thing’s certain. This is the last refuge for both of us.”

I gazed around the room once more. It was getting warmer.

“By the way, your face is looking good,” he continued, turning a mirror towards me.

I saw my face, still glowing with cold from outside. My eyes were large, my chin tucked in, my cheeks slightly hollow.

“It’s still new, but it already belongs to you. It’s bonded to your own muscles and it looks truly yours. You’ve passed through something, am I right? I don’t know if it was good or bad, but it shows in your face. I can tell because I’m a professional. It’s better than it was before.”

“No, that’s not right. There’s nothing admirable about what I’ve done.”

My inner clock told me it was time to go. My body seemed to want to sit there forever, and I tried to make myself get up but couldn’t. Just after midday I was due to meet Ito from JL.

“It’s almost time for you to leave, isn’t it?” The doctor stood. “I can always tell, even without people looking at the clock.”

He gave another proper smile.

“Not because I’m a plastic surgeon, though. It’s because I can often read what other people are thinking, what’s bothering them. When I was a kid, my parents fought all the time. I’d get between them when it looked like they were about to start, and I grew up always conscious of their moods. It’s funny that as an adult it seems to be a useful skill in life, one of my good points.”

The doctor opened the door and I went into the corridor. He came after me.

“One last thing, though,” he said softly. “If you’ve stumbled into a problem that can’t be solved by humans, if you’ve taken someone’s life … Overseas they have this concept of God.”

The hallway was much colder than the room had been.

“People who believe in God, when they’re suffering because they’ve killed someone, as long as they feel properly repentant, they can commend it to him. Thinking they can’t be forgiven, that’s just their own pride, because the only being in the universe with the power to absolve sin is God. Only God, far superior to humans, is able to forgive.”

I said nothing.

“In some places in Africa, when young people who were abducted as children by guerrillas or revolutionaries and forced to fight as soldiers returned to their villages, they hold
this ceremony. They tell them that if they go through this ritual, if they cross this line, they will be cleansed of the guilt that torments them, the guilt of murder. In fact, lots of young people have been saved that way.”

He stood next to me as he spoke, studying my expression.

“Murder is beyond human judgment. For that, you have to turn to a concept greater than us.”

I hesitated for a moment, then walked away. He followed me without a word. At the entrance I stopped to put on my shoes.

“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it,” I said. “We could seek redemption like that. Every killing is different.”

I turned to face him again.

“But holding on to it, leaving it unresolved, I think that’s right for me. I think I want to carry that perpetual burden, the knowledge that I’ve harmed others, I want to carry it for my whole life. I’m sure that’s best for me.”

He smiled serenely.

“That’s why I like you, because you say things like that.”

I GOT OUT of the cab, walked along a narrow street lined with rundown apartments and turned a corner past some shuttered-up shops. Opposite a prefab with a rusty traffic accident prevention sign on the wall was an empty factory. I stepped over the useless, twisted fence, and there was Ito. He was wearing the same gray beanie with a lightweight black coat and expensive denim jeans, sitting on a heap of scrap metal. When he noticed I was there he glanced at me briefly. Beside him lay a large backpack. For some reason I got a feeling of déjà vu.

“Are you sure you weren’t followed?”

“I changed cabs, then walked the rest of the way. It’s fine, I think.”

On the ground, the puddles had largely dried up.

“The guy they were hunting is dead. Of the two who were on the run, he was closest to me. Did you know that?”

“It was on the news.”

Ito was playing with the strap on his left wrist with his right hand. His cheeks twitched as though he was grinding his molars. Even when I lit a cigarette, he didn’t look at me.

“The bastard’s dead. All they said was that the body was found on the street, but it sounds like he jumped off a building. Still wearing his backpack with the evidence linking him to me in it. Stupid prick. Guys like that, they can dish it out but they can’t take it when it looks like it’s going to come back on them. They’ll probably catch the other one soon too. JL will be finished.”

He let go of his wristband, as though he’d finally run out of energy. His silver earrings glinted in the sun.

“Have you got the money?”

“Before that … have you really never killed anyone?”

Ito drew his brows together.

“Not yet. But don’t get the idea it’s because I’m chicken.”

His eyes were slightly sunken and he looked thinner than before.

“It’s just that it was too soon. That’s why this has happened. We should have done the killing all at once, after we’d grown much bigger. Pull off one trick after another to cause the maximum confusion, and then do it all in one fell
swoop. When they were told that what the prank they pulled with the TV commentator was lame, they just went crazy. Because they got such a big reaction from the media, they got an inflated idea of their own importance. Dickheads. What we were trying to do wasn’t just about our own egos.”

“But still, you should forget about killing.”

Ito laughed derisively.

“What’s with the preaching? Go fuck yourself.”

“I’m Fumihiro Kuki.”

“Huh?”

The sun was gradually sinking lower in the sky. A breeze touched my bare cheeks. Next to the scrap metal was a rusted steel drum. A few grains of sand, carried by the wind, hit the side of the drum with a faint noise. He was staring at me.

“I’m a cancer, same as you,” I continued. “I changed my appearance. I murdered my father before he could finish my education, so I’m incomplete. Your first instinct was right.”

He kept looking at me.

“When you kill someone, it leaves a feeling that you’ll never be able to wash off. It stays inside you forever. It continues to affect your judgment and thinking. It narrows down your life significantly. You don’t have to put yourself through that.”

He didn’t move, but he was still watching me. I remembered what we’d talked about before.

“What are you living for? I guess everyone has different reasons, but for me, it’s because I’ve got memories that I don’t want to lose. I don’t know about you, but you never know, do you, what’s going to happen in the future? You can’t tell whether your life has been happy or unhappy until you’re at death’s door, through
sickness or old age or whatever. There must be some warmth in everyone’s life, in the long vector lines that stretch from the past to the future. The fact that you were thinking about killing in the first place, doesn’t that prove that you’re interested in other people? Because without other people you can’t put your own thoughts and ideas into practice. Besides …”

I breathed in quietly.

“There are things that only people like us can do, that only people like us can think of. Right? Maybe I’m saying this to you because it’s still hard for me to say it to myself—no one has to disappear. It’s not necessary. If you can change yourself, it’s okay to do it a little at a time. And if you don’t want to change, then you don’t have to. It doesn’t matter if you’re a useful member of society or any of that crap. You don’t have to tell everyone what you’re thinking, you can just quietly let your acquaintances know, if you like. Or you can just keep your thoughts inside your head. You can think calmly, can’t you, without becoming desperate? You can brood about things, can’t you? If happiness is a fortress, then it doesn’t matter what you do. People who’ve got happiness to spare can give others a hand.”