After dark

15

Creatures of the Deep is still on the screen, but this is not the TV in the Shirakawa kitchen. The screen is far larger. The set is in a guest room at the Hotel Alphaville. Mari and Korogi are seated in front of it, watching with less than full attention. Each is in her own chair. Mari has her glasses on. Her varsity jacket and shoulder bag are on the floor. Korogi frowns as she watches Creatures of the Deep, but she soon loses interest and starts surfing channels with the remote control. None of the early-morning programming seems worth watching. She gives up and turns the set off.

“You must be tired,” Korogi says. “Better lay down and get some sleep. Kaoru’s having a nice nap in the back room.”

“I’m not that sleepy,” Mari says.

“Then how ’bout a nice hot cuppa tea?”

“If it’s no trouble.”

“Don’t worry, tea’s one thing we’ve got tons of.”

Korogi makes green tea for two using tea bags and a thermos bottle.

Mari asks, “What time do you work to?”

“Me and Komugi are a team: we work from ten to ten. Straighten up after the overnight guests leave, and that’s that. We do take naps now and then.”

“Have you been at this job long?”

“Going on a year and a half, maybe. You don’t usually stay at one place a long time in this line of work.”

Mari pauses a moment, then asks, “Do you…mind if I ask a kind of personal question?”

“Ask all you want,” Korogi says. “Might not be able to answer some things, though.”

“You’re not going to feel bad?”

“Nah, don’t worry.”

“You said you got rid of your real name?”

“That’s right. I did say that.”

“Why did you do that?”

Korogi lifts the tea bag from Mari’s cup, drops it into an ashtray, and sets the cup in front of her.

“’Cause it would’ve been dangerous for me to go on using it. For all kinds of reasons. Tell you the truth, I’m running away from…certain people.”

Korogi takes a sip of her own tea. “You probably don’t know this, but if you’re seriously trying to run away from something, one of the best jobs you can take is helper at a love hotel. You can make a lot more money as a maid in a traditional Japanese inn—get lots of tips—but you have to meet people and talk to them. Working in a love hotel, you don’t have to show your face to guests. You can work in secret, in the dark. They’ll usually give you a place to sleep, too. And they don’t ask you for CVs or guarantors ’n’ stuff. You tell ’em you can’t give ’em your real name, and they say, like, ‘Okay, why don’t we call you Cricket?’ ’Cause they’re always short of help. You got a lot of people with guilty consciences working in this world.”

“Is that why people don’t usually stay in one place for long?”

“That’s it. You hang around in one spot too long and they find you sooner or later. So you keep changing places. There’s love hotels everywhere, from Hokkaido to Okinawa, so you can always find work. I’m real comfortable here, though, and Kaoru’s really nice, so I stayed on.”

“Have you been running away a long time?”

“Hmm…going on three years now, maybe.”

“Always taking jobs like this?”

“Yep. Here ’n’ there.”

“I suppose whoever or whatever you’re running away from is pretty scary?”

“You bet. Really scary. But don’t ask me any more about that. I try not to talk about it.”

The two are quiet for a time. Mari drinks her tea while Korogi stares at the blank TV screen.

“What did you used to do?” Mari asks. “Before you started running, I mean.”

“Back then, I was just another girl with an office job. Graduated from high school, went to work for a big trading company, nine to five, in a uniform. I was your age…around the time of the Kobe earthquake. Seems like a dream now. And then…something…happened. A little something. I didn’t think too much about it at first. But then it dawned on me I was stuck: couldn’t go forward, couldn’t go back. I left everything behind: my job, my parents…”

Mari looks at Korogi, saying nothing.

“Uh, sorry, but what was your name again?” Korogi asks.

“Mari.”

“Let me tell you something, Mari. The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you. And once that happens, you’ve had it: things’ll never be the same. All you can do is go on living alone down there in the darkness.”

Korogi stops to think again about what she has just said and, as if in self-criticism, gently shakes her head.

“Of course, it could be just my own weakness as a human being—that events dragged me along because I was too weak to stop them. I should have realized what was going on at some point and woken up and put my foot down, but I couldn’t. I don’t have the right to be preaching to you…”

“What happens if they find you—I mean the ones that are chasing you?”

“Hmm…what happens, huh?” Korogi says. “Don’t know, really. Rather not think about it too much.”

Mari keeps silent. Korogi plays with the buttons on the TV remote control, but she doesn’t turn the set on.

“When I finish work and get in bed, I always think: let me not wake up. Let me just go on sleeping. ’Cause then I wouldn’t have to think about anything. I do have dreams, though. It’s always the same dream. Somebody’s chasing me. I keep running and running until they finally catch me and take me away. Then they stuff me inside a refrigerator kind of thing and close the lid. That’s when I wake up, and everything I’ve got on is soaked with sweat. They’re chasing me when I’m awake, and they’re chasing me in my dreams when I’m asleep: I can never relax. The only time it lets up a little is here, when I’m enjoying small talk with Kaoru or Komugi over a cup of tea…You know, Mari, I’ve never told this to anyone before—not to Kaoru, not to Komugi.”

“You mean that you’re running away from something?”

“Uh-huh. I think they kinda suspect, though…”

The two fall silent for a while.

“Do you believe what I’m telling you?” Korogi asks.

“Sure, I believe you.”

“Really?”

“Of course.”

“I could be making it all up. You wouldn’t know: we’ve never met before.”

“You don’t look like the kind of person who tells lies, Korogi,” Mari says.

“I’m glad you said that,” Korogi says. “I’ve got something to show you.”

Korogi pulls her shirt up, exposing her back. Impressed in the skin on either side of her backbone is a mark of some kind. Each consists of three diagonal lines like a bird’s footprint and appears to have been made there by a branding iron. The scar tissue pulls at the surrounding skin. These are the remnants of intense pain. Mari grimaces at the sight.

“This is just one thing they did to me,” Korogi says. “They left their mark on me. I’ve got other ones, but in places I can’t show you. These are no lie.”

“How awful!”

“I’ve never shown them to anyone before. Just to you, Mari: I want you to believe me.”

“I do believe you.”

“I just had that feeling, like I could tell you, it would be okay. I don’t know why.”

Korogi lowers her shirt. Then, as if inserting an emotional punctuation mark, she heaves a great sigh.

“Korogi?” Mari says.

“Uh-huh?”

“Can I tell you something I’ve never told anybody before?”

“Sure. Go ahead,” Korogi says.

“I’ve got a sister. My only sibling. She’s two years older than me.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Just about two months ago, she said, ‘I’m going to go to sleep for a while.’ She made this announcement to the family at dinnertime. Nobody thought much about it. It was only seven p.m., but my sister always had irregular sleep habits, so it was nothing to be too shocked about. We said good-night to her. She had hardly touched her food, but she went to her room and got in bed. She’s been sleeping ever since.”

“Ever since?!”

“Yup,” Mari says.

Korogi knits her brows. “She never wakes up?”

“She does sometimes, we think,” Mari says. “The meals we leave on her desk disappear, and she seems to be going to the toilet. Every once in a while, she takes a shower and changes her pajamas. So she’s getting up and doing the bare minimum needed to keep herself alive—but really, just the bare minimum. None of us has actually seen her awake, though. Whenever we look in, she’s in the bed, sleeping—really sleeping, not just faking it. She seems practically dead: you can’t hear her breathing, and she doesn’t move a muscle. We shout at her and shake her, but she won’t wake up.”

“So…have you had a doctor look at her?”

“The family doctor comes to see her once in a while. He’s just a general practitioner, so he can’t run any major tests on her, but medically speaking, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with her. Her temperature’s normal. Her pulse and blood pressure are on the low side, but not enough to worry about. She’s getting enough nourishment, so she doesn’t need intravenous feeding. She’s just sound asleep. Of course if this were a coma or something, that would be a huge problem, but as long as she can wake up once in a while and do what she has to do, there’s no need for special care. We consulted a psychiatrist, too, but there’s no precedent for symptoms like this. She announces ‘I’m going to go to sleep for a while’ and does exactly that: if she has such an inward need for sleep, he says, the best thing we can do is let her keep sleeping. Even if he was going to treat her, it would have to be after she woke up and he could interview her. So we’re just letting her sleep.”

“Don’t you think you should have her tested at a hospital?”

“My parents are trying to take the most optimistic view—that my sister will sleep as much as she wants to, and one day she’ll wake up like nothing ever happened, and everything’ll go back to normal. They’re clinging to that possibility. But I can’t stand it. Or should I say, every once in a while I can’t take it anymore—living under the same roof with my sister and not having any idea why she’s out cold for two months.”

“So you leave the house and wander around the streets at night?”

“I just can’t sleep,” Mari says. “When I try, all I can think of is my sister in the next room sleeping like that. When it gets bad, I can’t stay in the house.”

“Two months, huh? That’s a long time.”

Mari nods in agreement.

Korogi says, “I don’t really know what’s going on, of course, but it seems to me your sister must have some big problem she’s trying to deal with, something she can’t solve on her own. So all she wants to do is go to bed and sleep, to get away from the flesh-and-blood world for a while. I think I know how she feels. Or should I say, I know exactly how she feels.”

“Do you have any brothers or sisters, Korogi?”

“Two brothers. Both younger.”

“Are you close to them?”

“Used to be,” Korogi says. “Don’t know now. Haven’t seen ’em for a long time.”

“To be completely honest,” Mari says, “I never knew my sister very well—like, how she was spending her days, or what she was thinking about, or who she was seeing. I don’t even know if something was troubling her. I know this sounds cold, but even though we were living in the same house, she was busy with her stuff and I was busy with my stuff, and the two of us never really talked heart-to-heart. It’s not that we didn’t get along: we never had a fight after we grew up. It’s just that we’ve been living very different lives for a long time.”

Mari stares at the blank TV screen.

Korogi says, “Tell me about your sister. If you don’t know what she’s like inside, tell me just the surface things, what you know about her in general.”

“She’s a college student. Goes to one of the old missionary colleges for rich girls. She’s twenty-one. Officially majoring in sociology, but I don’t think she has any interest in the subject. She went to college because that’s what she was expected to do, and she knows enough to pass her exams, that’s all. Sometimes she’ll throw a little money in my direction to write reports for her. Otherwise, she models for magazines and appears on TV now and then.”

“TV? What program?”

“Nothing special. Like, she used to be the one showing the prizes to the camera on a quiz show, holding them up with a big smile. That show ended, so she’s not on anymore. She was in a few commercials, too—one for a moving company. Stuff like that.”

“She must be really pretty.”

“That’s what everybody says. She doesn’t look the least bit like me.”

“Sometimes I wish I had been born beautiful like that. I’d like to try it, just once, see what it’s like,” Korogi says with a short sigh.

Mari hesitates a moment, then says as if sharing a confession, “This may sound strange, but my sister really is beautiful when she sleeps. Maybe more beautiful than when she’s awake. She’s like transparent. I may be her sister, but my heart races just seeing her that way.”

“Like Sleeping Beauty.”

“Exactly.”

“Somebody’ll kiss her and wake her up,” Korogi says.

“If all goes well,” Mari says.

The two fall silent for a time. Korogi is still playing with the buttons on the remote control. An ambulance siren sounds in the distance.

“Tell me something, Mari—do you believe in reincarnation?”

Mari shakes her head. “No, I don’t think so,” she says.

“So you don’t think there’s a life to come?”

“I haven’t thought much about it. But it seems to me there’s no reason to believe in a life after this one.”

“So once you’re dead there’s just nothing?”

“Basically.”

“Well, I think there has to be something like reincarnation. Or maybe I should say I’m scared to think there isn’t. I can’t understand nothingness. I can’t understand it and I can’t imagine it.”

“Nothingness means there’s absolutely nothing, so maybe there’s no need to understand it or imagine it.”

“Yeah, but what if nothingness is not like that? What if it’s the kind of thing that demands that you understand it or imagine it? I mean, you don’t know what it’s like to die, Mari. Maybe a person really has to die to understand what it’s like.”

“Well, yeah…,” says Mari.

“I get so scared when I start thinking about this stuff,” Korogi says. “I can hardly breathe, and my whole body wants to shrink into a corner. It’s so much easier to just believe in reincarnation. You might be reborn as something awful, but at least you can imagine what you’d look like—a horse, say, or a snail. And even if it was something bad, you might be luckier next time.”

“Uh-huh…but it still seems more natural to me to think that once you’re dead, there’s nothing.”

“I wonder if that’s ’cause you’ve got such a strong personality.”

“Me?!”

Korogi nods. “You seem to have a good, strong grip on yourself.”

Mari shakes her head. “Not me,” she says. “When I was little, I had no self-confidence at all. Everything scared me. Which is why I used to get bullied a lot. I was such an easy mark. The feelings I had back then are still here inside me. I have dreams like that all the time.”

“Yeah, but I bet you worked hard over the years and overcame those feelings little by little—those bad memories.”

“Little by little,” Mari says, nodding. “I’m like that. A hard worker.”

“You just keep at it all by yourself—like the village smithy?”

“Right.”

“I think it’s great that you can do that.”

“Work hard?”

“That you’re able to work hard.”

“Even if I’ve got nothing else going for me?”

Korogi smiles without speaking.

Mari thinks about what Korogi said. “I do feel that I’ve managed to make something I could maybe call my own world…over time…little by little. And when I’m inside it, to some extent, I feel kind of relieved. But the very fact I felt I had to make such a world probably means that I’m a weak person, that I bruise easily, don’t you think? And in the eyes of society at large, that world of mine is a puny little thing. It’s like a cardboard house: a puff of wind might carry it off somewhere.”

“Have you got a boyfriend?” Korogi asks.

Mari gives her head a little shake.

“Still a virgin?”

Mari blushes with a quick nod. “Uh-huh.”

“That’s okay, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I know.”

“You just didn’t happen to meet anybody you liked?” Korogi asks.

“There’s one guy I used to see. But…”

“You didn’t like him enough to go all the way.”

“Right,” Mari says. “I had plenty of curiosity, but I just never felt like doing that. I don’t know…”

“That’s fine,” Korogi says. “There’s no sense forcing yourself if you don’t feel like it. Tell you the truth, I’ve had sex with lots of guys, but I think I did it mostly out of fear. I was scared not to have somebody putting his arms around me, so I could never say no. That’s all. Nothing good ever came of sex like that. All it does is grind down the meaning of life a piece at a time. Do you see what I’m saying?”

“I think so.”

“Someday you’ll find the right person, Mari, and you’ll learn to have a lot more confidence in yourself. That’s what I think. So don’t settle for anything less. In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It’s important to combine the two in just the right amount.”

Mari nods.

Korogi scratches her earlobe with her little finger. “It’s too late for me, unfortunately.”

“Let me just say this,” Mari says with special gravity.

“Uh-huh?”

“I hope you do manage to get away from whoever’s chasing you.”

“Sometimes I feel as if I’m racing with my own shadow,” Korogi says. “But that’s one thing I’ll never be able to outrun. Nobody can shake off their own shadow.”

“Maybe that’s not it,” Mari says. After a moment’s hesitation she adds, “Maybe it’s not your own shadow. Maybe it’s something else, something totally different.”

Korogi thinks about that for a while, then gives Mari a nod. “I guess you’re right. All I can do is try my best and see it through to the end.”

Korogi glances at her watch, takes a big stretch, and stands up.

“Time to get to work,” she says. “You should grab some shut-eye, and go home as soon as it gets light out, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Everything’s going to work out fine with your sister. I’ve got a feeling. Just a feeling.”

“Thanks,” Mari says.

“You may not feel that close to her now, but I’m sure there was a time when you did. Try to remember a moment when you felt totally in touch with her, without any gaps between you. You probably can’t think of anything right this second, but if you try hard it’ll come. She and you are family, after all—you’ve got a long history together. You must have at least one memory like that stored away somewhere.”

“Okay, I’ll try,” Mari says.

“I think about the old days a lot. Especially after I started running all over the country like this. If I try hard to remember, all kinds of stuff comes back—really vivid memories. All of a sudden out of nowhere I can bring back things I haven’t thought about for years. It’s pretty interesting. Memory is so crazy! It’s like we’ve got these drawers crammed with tons of useless stuff. Meanwhile, all the really important things we just keep forgetting, one after the other.”

Korogi stands there holding the remote control.

“You know what I think?” she says. “That people’s memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn’t matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They’re all just fuel. Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed ’em to the fire, they’re all just paper. The fire isn’t thinking, ‘Oh, this is Kant,’ or ‘Oh, this is the Yomiuri evening edition,’ or ‘Nice tits,’ while it burns. To the fire, they’re nothing but scraps of paper. It’s the exact same thing. Important memories, not-so-important memories, totally useless memories: there’s no distinction—they’re all just fuel.”

Korogi nods to herself. Then she goes on:

“You know, I think if I didn’t have that fuel, if I didn’t have these memory drawers inside me, I would’ve snapped a long time ago. I would’ve curled up in a ditch somewhere and died. It’s because I can pull the memories out of the drawers when I have to—the important ones and the useless ones—that I can go on living this nightmare of a life. I might think I can’t take it anymore, that I can’t go on anymore, but one way or another I get past that.”

Still in her chair, Mari looks up at Korogi.

“So try hard, Mari. Try hard to remember all kinds of stuff about your sister. It’ll be important fuel. For you, and probably for your sister, too.”

Mari looks at Korogi without saying anything.

Korogi looks at her watch again. “Gotta go.”

“Thanks for everything,” Mari says.

Korogi waves and slips out.

Alone now, Mari scans the room anew. A little room in a love hotel. No window. The only thing behind the Venetian blind is a hollow where a window should be. The bed is hugely out of proportion to the room itself. The head of the bed has so many mysterious switches nearby, it looks like something from an airplane cockpit. A vending machine sells graphically shaped vibrators and colorful underthings cut in extreme styles. Mari has never seen such odd items before, but she is not offended by them. Alone in this offbeat room, she feels, if anything, protected. She notices that she is in a tranquil mood for the first time in quite a while. She sinks deeper into the chair and closes her eyes, and soon she is asleep. Her sleep is short but deep. This is what she has wanted for a long time.