Nagasaki (5 page)

A strange noise woke me. Something falling? Not in here – the other two are asleep and nothing has fallen over. Must have come from another cell.

Or maybe it was the rats.

I can read the time by the nightlight: almost 4 a.m. No stars in the sky, it’s overcast. The only star we see in here is the spy hole. When it doesn’t shine, it means a screw’s watching us from the corridor. I freeze when that happens, stop thinking. Put my life on hold until the eclipse is over. The snitch … It was something similar that got me arrested, the lawyer told me. They put eyes everywhere. And there I was, going about the house without a care in the world until late afternoon … Without the camera that exposed me it would all have gone on much longer. I really liked it there. The bedroom
got the sun from 1 p.m. and I used to settle down on the mats and leaf through a magazine or do nothing but top up my tan, opening the window a crack to let the air in: his tatami mats had seen better days and smelled musty. Yes, it could have gone on and on and that would have been fine by me. I always stayed on my toes, of course. When it came to my bathroom, for example, I only used it in the mornings so that everything would be dry by the time he got home. After I’d finished, I would put everything back where I had found it, just as I did in the kitchen. That meant memorising exactly where an object was before moving it out of place.

The more at home I felt there, the more wary I had to be; the temptation to let my guard down was stronger, the risk of slipping up even higher. My biggest fear was that I might shout out during a nightmare. He would have had the shock of his life hearing his cupboard scream. Having given myself away, I would have had to come up with an explanation; he would have kicked me out in the middle of the night or kept me there and called the police. To begin with, I could hardly sleep, scared
stiff I was going to lose this haven where I was rebuilding myself, recovering from the bumps and bruises life had given me. Of course, I could tell myself I didn’t often have nightmares. It must have been several years since I last had one and I was a long way from my past worries here. But who knows what’s going to float back up to the surface? A hidden door can suddenly open in the night, letting the baddies in to take their revenge for being banished from your waking thoughts. You thought you’d seen the last of them, but they were only waiting for the clocks to strike midnight before reappearing in our night-time dramas, getting down from their Trojan horses and sowing terror around them.

In the kitchen I had to be even more attentive, to the point of obsession. Most of the time, I helped myself to food from the bins behind a local 24-hour self-service café which, by throwing out products barely past their sell-by-date, was unwittingly keeping me fed. When there was torrential rain, or if I wasn’t feeling well, I drew modestly on my host’s supplies, making do with rice or pasta. I took nothing he would miss. Almost
nothing. Very rarely, I gave in to the temptation of a yogurt or a drop of fruit juice. That’s all. With time, I had come round to his tastes; I even appreciated them.

But careful as I was, did he really notice nothing? I sometimes told myself he had found me out but was putting up with me.
And
was putting up with me. And, or but? Either way, he was working around me, the way people sometimes live alongside a mouse for a while: out of curiosity or pity. Then one day they get the traps out and the mouse is gone before you can say cheese.

In the space of a year, however, there was only one red alert. It was an afternoon in springtime, at a time of day when theoretically there should have been no need to keep an ear out. I didn’t hear him come home early. The sun was so nice on the tatamis! Just right, not a ray too much. I was reading a novel I had picked at random from the bookcase in the living room. It was based on the idea of doubles and I couldn’t put it down. I was lost to the world; I didn’t hear the cars driving round the centre or the little Shiba yapping next door. That’s when he opened the front door. The vibration of
his footsteps on the floor warned me just in time. I disappeared inside the oshiire; the sliding door was open just wide enough. My leap wasn’t human but an animal act, precise and soundless. A few steps more and he came into my room. I held my breath, terrified he would notice me. My final hour in this paradise had come for certain. I was wrong … A few seconds later, he put a large cardboard box down on top of the tatamis. So his coming into the room had nothing to do with me. I began to breathe again, very softly. A thin stream of air. He could have flung open the closet to put the box away inside, but he didn’t. Instead, he took out a computer and various accessories.

All the time he was standing there, I only saw him in profile. His appearance up close didn’t really surprise me since I had glimpsed him on the street at a distance before letting myself into his house: dull-looking, nothing special.
A decent sort
. There are hundreds of people with the same kind of nondescript face in every city. Before he had come in, I had managed to slide the door of the oshiire back across, so I was able to get a good look at him through the narrow opening without
fear of being seen. There were not two metres between us. And while he stood there, I studied him intently. He was thoughtful, concentrating on the business of unpacking. It was clear he was thrilled with his gift to himself. Then he left the room. I was worried. What was he going to do with this PC? Could he be planning to connect it in here and turn the space into an office, where for all I knew he would spend the best part of his evenings surfing the web? After dinner, he returned to take everything away and set it up elsewhere, in the living room. I breathed a sweet sigh of relief. On top of that I now had a much better idea of who I was dealing with, a matter of no small importance to me. I had given human form to the footsteps, voice and cough I had overheard, and this form reassured me. He wasn’t the violent sort, liable to kill me in a moment of madness or rage. And then there was the coincidence – unsettling, to say the least – that we were more or less the same age.

The next day, the way he slammed the front door and forcefully turned the key in the lock woke me with a start, as usual. But for once I didn’t go back
to sleep: I had an investigation to carry out. It would last for weeks and remain unfinished on the day of my arrest. Probably the most meticulous investigation ever conducted by a stranger on another stranger. I began by opening all the drawers I had been walking past without touching for months. Before long I was going through all his photos from various times in his life, some of which I recognised him in. None were labelled, so I had to rely on guesswork to establish the links between him and the people he was pictured with. Brothers, sisters, close or distant relatives, one-time lovers? Which of them did he still see, and what were his feelings for them? Which were still of this world? Everything in the house exuded an air of modesty, as it always had. I went through his payslips, those of a low-earning meteorologist. Bills informed me of his water and electricity consumption. As for phone calls, he was very sparing and never rang abroad. My investigation was stalling. I sensed an innocuous character, a simple man of the masses. I carried on regardless. Hadn’t I fought for the common people, back when I was another woman?

I returned to the photos another day. As I looked
through them, I tried to establish a chronology and work out the ties that link, or linked, the people together. There was nothing attention-grabbing in Shimura’s past.
Shimura Kobo
. Most likely nothing will remain of him, any more than it will of me, when he and I are gone. When I talk about myself, I have in mind my current identity, of course. The previous one has been swept under the carpet, never to be seen again, and who would be interested in that woman anyway? That’s what I have in common with him, something to be neither proud nor ashamed of: being a nobody. Other than that, nothing connects us. Nobodies often differ wildly from one another. When it came down to it, there was really only one thing I wanted to find out from my fingertip search of his house, and that was when he moved in.

It’s this man – not in the least attractive though by no means repulsive – who will be standing in the witness box tomorrow. I could tell the judge exactly where he hangs the suit and tie he will be wearing, the distinctive clean smell of which has stayed with me.

When I entered the courtroom he was already there, but we didn’t make eye contact then or afterwards. I know he had already seen me through the lens of a video camera, but I thought he might still be curious to know what I looked like in real life. Was it a mark of supreme indifference on his part, or an expression of still-raw resentment? There was no doubt I was going to pay dearly for my stay with him. I would be handed a hefty bill for all those nights. Charged high-season rates. To be clear, I felt guilty of nothing. I was, more prosaically, embarrassed. Embarrassed to know the brand of underwear my accuser wore, his culinary and televisual tastes, what he liked to read. For I had searched everything that could be searched in this man’s home, and now knew at least as much about him as his sister in Nagoya
whose few letters I had read, most of them written to explain the fact that no, she wouldn’t be able to come down for the holidays this time, but she would definitely visit soon. There was nothing I didn’t know about his routines or obsessive tidiness, which frequently both irritated and worried me at the same time: the slightest thing out of place might prove my undoing.

Now he was calmly answering the questions put to him. I recognised the voice I had heard muffled through the sliding door of my refuge when he spoke on the phone of an evening or provided a running commentary on the NHK news for no one’s benefit but his own, to the extent that I know better than anyone his tired and meek opinions and respect, bordering on deference, for the old boys’ network that governs us.

Shimura did not seek to condemn me. Choosing his words carefully, he simply spelled out the situation as it was, emphasising the fact I had not stolen or broken anything in his house. Other than pinching a few things from the kitchen, which is what had eventually aroused his suspicions. Ah, so that was it! Otherwise, everything he said was
to my credit. My one and only crime was having been somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be. The trial must have bored him. It was boring all of us, so we did our best to get it over with as quickly as possible. Only once did Shimura’s voice sound strained. It wavered slightly with emotion, and its reproachful tone came as a shock:

‘I don’t feel at home in my own house any more.’

I looked up at him at that point, knowing his eyes were turned towards the judge. It was the left side of his face again, as if he didn’t have a right side, or kept it under wraps. He didn’t look at all comfortable. He must have been desperate to get home. Perhaps he no longer felt bitter? Who could tell. I heard him say, referring to me,
the accused,
or
the woman in my house
. He never once called me by my name or pointed in my direction. The judge seemed ill at ease too, as if it was dawning on him that the case before him went beyond the generally accepted confines of decency, falling outside the bounds of the justice system, where textbook criminal law held no jurisdiction.

I got five months and no fine. ‘That’s a very
light sentence,’ gloated my lawyer. ‘You’ll be out in a month since you’ve already served four on remand.’

I should have felt something at that stage. I knew I would eventually, but for the time being I couldn’t bring myself to care about such minor victories.

It’s very early on a late-autumn morning. For the past month, I have been living for this day, whose dawning I am witnessing through the barred window. Since yesterday or the day before, I have hated my cellmates less, feared them a little less. Exactly when they are going to come and fetch me, as they fetched Hiromi last month, I obviously have no idea. I’m waiting for these words: ‘Pick up your stuff, you’re leaving.’

Today is a Monday. Day after day, I have been hoping to be called to the visiting room. ‘Visitor for you!’ He must know I will soon be disappearing into the city again, maybe even moving away. I’m not the slightest bit attracted to the man and, to tell the truth, everything about the way he lives
his life makes my hackles rise; but even so, I would have liked him to come and ask for an explanation. I would have liked to express my gratitude for his clemency – or was it indifference? Shimura-san, I would have begun. And then what? Perhaps I would have been so bold as to present him with the excuses that didn’t come to me in court. The law has no place for excuses, and my explanations would only have made the judge smirk. It’s to Shimura, and Shimura alone, I would have liked to confide all my little secrets. At the close of the trial, our eyes had met in passing for a good, slow second, and he didn’t try to look away. That empty, weary gaze had well and truly fallen on me, I knew, because a shadow suddenly passed over his face; then they took me out of the courtroom.

It must be starting to feel like winter out there. It’s been a bit fresh lately in the walkways. I’ll end up cold when I’m free. I worry about that. It was so snug in my little nest, when our friend was none the wiser … I’m bound to feel very uncomfortable turning up in front of this Shimura, but it has to be done. Now that I have the strength to explain everything, now I’ve paid for my ‘wrongdoing’. Is
it because I was wrested from that house without warning that I’m so keen to return to it?

People are generally let out of prison in the morning, a fact she was able to ascertain for herself. It symbolises the start of a new life. You forget the what-am-I-going-to-do-and-how questions, forget the purgatory you are emerging from, and the first few hours are spent on cloud nine. They didn’t amount to much, her prison wages, and she knew they wouldn’t get her very far. Still, she deserved a good meal, and it was almost lunch time; she had been walking so long, she was almost drunk with walking. The restaurant windows were mouthwatering, filled with examples of the dishes on the menu. A plate of champon noodles, yes please. It had been so long … Didn’t get that in prison … Satisfy your stomach and your mind’s fretting will slow down.  

Her first meal out since the beginning of the downturn, when she had had to give up her little furnished flat. Afterwards, she set out again. It was early afternoon. He wouldn’t be getting off the tram for another three or four hours, but she had her heart set on seeing the place again on her own straight away; to renew the link with the day the police led her out in handcuffs and show herself there was continuity, or some at least. And so she made her way towards the little house she had been thrown out of and when it came into view, she smiled. She had told herself it was important to see it again. Yet a few dozen footsteps from the front door, her blood suddenly ran cold. A ‘For Sale’ sign was hanging outside. Before she knew it she was crashing back in time, landing with a thud as an eight-year-old when, for the very first time, she had had the terrible sensation that part of her life was being torn from her. Half a century on, the memory was still painful.

When she was eight, then, less than a year after she and her parents had moved house, her father had taken her for a walk one evening in the rainy season. It was late and humid but he was
determined, and so she had gone along. They got off at a familiar tram stop in the area where they used to live. These were the pavements she had run about on with her first little playmates under the watchful eye of Mrs Kawakami. As they turned the corner, he had said, ‘Look at that,’ and for a long time they had both stood looking wordlessly at their former apartment block, which had been ripped wide open so that it resembled a cross-section in a geology textbook or an anatomy diagram, its rooms half devoured by bulldozers. What?! She saw the bedroom in which she had slept for the first eight years of her life as she had never seen it before: from the outside, like a tiny segment of a doll’s house. One with all the furniture missing at that. Everything else was there though: the wallpapers, the doors. A sink dangled in the void. Why were her formative years being taken to pieces? Who would commit such sacrilege? That’s life, her father replied, taking her into his arms, just life, and she had started to cry. I wanted to show you the house before they finish demolishing it, he whispered in her ear.

Today, the woman she had become knew better
than to leave memories knocking about in a hall of mirrors where they would go mad, like a seagull trapped inside a room. Incredulous, rooted to the pavement, she read the sorry sign once more. Then she stepped closer. She rang the doorbell, but there was no reply. A glance inside: the furniture was gone. There was a phone number on the sign which she noted down on the palm of her hand: an estate agent. A little later, the same hand pushed a coin into the slot of a pay phone. Still unbelieving, she asked if the house really was for sale and, if so, since when. Two weeks, she was told. We’re holding an open house in an hour if you’re interested? Caught off guard, she agreed.

What can have happened to the man? she worried to herself, sitting with the beer she had ordered. Then she remembered something. On the day of the trial, hadn’t he said, rather dramatically, something along the lines of: I don’t feel at home in my own house any more? So it was true … So true that he had decided to move out? Looking in the mirror in the toilets, she composed her face in a suitable expression. Soon the hour would be up: it was time to go.

So, after several months, here she was again inside the house, with nothing to fear this time. Just being there. It was incredible. She could have simply stayed outside and put her questions to the estate agent on the doorstep, could have said the house meant nothing to her in itself; but she crossed the threshold with the others. There were five of them, buzzing to and fro like flies on shit and asking damned stupid questions. The estate agent waited, answered. The woman lingered a while in the kitchen, then in the living room. Seeing the rooms now empty unsettled her and she feigned interest in the sale in order to hide her unease. For in its empty state, the house took her a long way back. Not a few months back, to the Shimura period, but much further into the depths of time. A thought that struck her as almost biblical crossed her mind: happy are the amnesiacs, for the past is suffering. Our creditors devoted most of their energy to snatching the possession that was our only source of riches.

Still, she was determined to complete the tour; she walked along the little corridor and went in. The others hadn’t spent long in this room – rather poky and cut-off, when all was said and done – and had returned to the main part of the property. Same old tatami smell, same late-afternoon light. Her hand hesitated before sliding the cupboard door across. Same scraping of the rollers. Same shadows inside. She remained standing in front of it. Didn’t hear at first when someone called her a few minutes later. It was the estate agent, standing in the doorway.

‘Excuse me, madam? The visit’s over now, if you wouldn’t mind … Madam?’

She caught the words ‘visit’ and ‘over’, and it made her think of the prison visiting room. She must have slipped into a trance, so he repeated himself, expressing concern at how pale she had gone.

‘Is everything all right, madam?’

She shuddered and turned to face him. ‘I’m coming, sorry. I was miles away.’

Then she plucked up the courage to ask her
question. The owner. Was it possible to contact him directly?

‘The sale has to go via us, I’m afraid.’

‘No, you misunderstand me, it’s not so that I can buy it. That’s not it. It’s difficult to explain. I need to contact him for personal reasons. What address can I use to write to him? That’s all I want to know.’

‘In that case …’ The agent thought about it, and then smiled. ‘In that case, send us a letter and we’ll forward it, no problem.’