Fuminori Nakamura - Evil and the Mask

The following morning I couldn’t get out of bed. The next thing I knew, my father was lying right beside me, bent with age, naked, throat parched, desperately trying to lick the sweat off my body. As he licked me, he was begging for more perspiration. I pinched my arms and legs fiercely to wake myself up so I wouldn’t dream any more, but I didn’t have the strength to lift myself out of bed. When the servant came to check on me, I told her I was taking the day off school. Kaori looked in and the woman whispered that I’d probably caught a cold.

In fact I did have a temperature that day. I felt like the blood that I’d seen had entered my eyes and was circulating throughout my body. And indeed, my father’s genes, his blood, really did exist inside me. The realization that I’d killed a man struck me much more violently than I’d expected, shaking me to the core. I had nightmares, and when I woke I urgently demanded food and drink. Even though I was delirious with fever I stuffed them in my mouth and vomited immediately. It’s revulsion as a living creature, my father had said. It’s the feeling of your body rejecting the fact that you’ve murdered your own species, another human being. Maybe that revulsion was what was making me crave food, and then throw it up when I ate it. I grew thin, extremely thin, and the fever just wouldn’t abate.

While I was sick in bed, changes were happening on the estate. Three and a half months after my father’s disappearance his oldest son — my brother — turned up. He was middle-aged and had taken over the Kuki Group after Father retired. From time to time his face would appear in the media. With small eyes and a big nose, he bore an uncanny resemblance to my father. He stuck his head in my door for a second, muttered something about not wanting to catch a cold and left immediately. He showed no interest in me whatsoever.

My brother dealt with the business from the company and secretly asked the police to start a search. Even though Father had already retired, he was still chairman of the Kuki Group, and apparently his disappearance had to be kept from the affiliated companies. My brother made sure that it didn’t leak to the media, just contacting my other siblings through back channels.

When he went back to Tokyo, my second brother and eldest sister came to take his place. My brother, who Father had called a cancer, didn’t visit my room, but my sister barged in. I was still in bed, but she pestered me with rude questions about what my mother was like. She was more somber than I’d expected, but scruffy and loud. Like my brother, she looked horribly like my father. She had married the president of a realty firm, one of the companies in the Group, and my brother was running another subsidiary, a trading company. My second sister and third brother didn’t come to the estate. There was a rumor that daughter number two was the director of some religious organization, and son number three was overseas. No one seemed to know what he did for a living. While I’d been ill, the housekeeper Tanabe, who had been there since time immemorial, returned. I felt uneasy, but I had no resources to dwell on it.

Drifting in and out of my fever, I told myself what I’d known all along. That I’d decided to kill him, that I’d done it to remove a danger to Kaori and myself. He’d said he would never give up his plan of making my life hell and defiling Kaori, at any cost, as long as he was alive. He’d said he couldn’t stop it. Since that was the case, what choice did I have? Faced with such a powerful madman, what else could I have done?

Even if I’d gone to the police and Kaori had been sent back to the orphanage, Father would have used any means possible to get her away again, because he was surrounded by people who were willing to break the law and take the penalty. Taking the blame was almost a business in itself. There were plenty of people, mainly foreigners trying to provide financial security for their families back home, who would commit crimes for cash. He’d persuade them by promising to hire top lawyers so they’d be out in a few years. The law and punishment meant nothing to my father. What sort of deterrent would work against that mad old man, his blood thickened by alcohol, who carried around poison for his own suicide? The only way to thwart his plans was to lock him up.

I thought I could live happily ever after. I cared about no one but Kaori, and apart from her everything was worthless. The problem was what she would think of what I’d done. Should I tell her or not? I agonized over that question. It wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that she would say something bizarre, like that was the role she was destined to play in life. Raised as an orphan, Kaori was diffident about happiness, and she seemed to be used to bottling up her feelings. Probably what made her like that was her family that abandoned her, and the society that had created that family. In spite of this, she was always trying to fit in, always adjusting herself to her surroundings.

During my nightmares I once saw myself from somewhere up above, groaning in my sleep. I wasn’t floating, only my eyes were up there. The door was open and a man and a woman were observing me. After a while she disappeared, leaving only the man, tall, dark as a shadow, just staring at me. I merged with his gaze as though I was being absorbed. I was watching myself dreaming through his eyes. Sensing danger, I tried to get out of bed. That woke me up. The door was closed.

Two weeks passed and I left my sickbed. My body was weak but I couldn’t stay lying down forever. I went to the bathroom to clean myself up. As I stood under the shower I told myself that I was washing everything away.

I was still apprehensive, however. I tried to shake it off by taking another shower, unsure what this disturbance meant. I was scared of finishing. As I dried myself off, I was terrified. My heart was pounding, fast and uncontrollable. Gripping the washbasin with both hands, I looked at the mirror in front of me.

There I saw my reflection, painfully thin with bulbous eyes. No doubt about it, traces of my father were visible in my face. Until now I’d thought I had my mother’s eyes, her nose and lips. Only the overall shape of my face resembled his, and there were even times when I doubted whether I was his child. But the face looking back at me today, while it was mine, obviously shared his features, even his aura. Cursed, that was the word that sprang mysteriously to mind. I washed my face, but no matter how much I scrubbed, it didn’t improve.

While I was laid up in bed, Kaori came and nursed me every day. I remembered that I had caught her stealing glances at my face. Maybe she’d seen him in me too. I tried to convince myself that I’d return to my old self as I regained weight, but I couldn’t help feeling that once Father’s image had revealed itself, like some hidden creature oozing to the surface, it would remain as though it was engraved there. And that’s what happened.

I returned to school and my classmates welcomed me back. Laughing, they said, “You’re really skinny,” and “God, you look like a thug!” but I was unable to laugh with them. Kaori was watching me from a distance. Our eyes met and she smiled, but I could see the fear in her face.

As always, though, she was constantly at my side. We talked together, and in the evenings we’d go for walks, but I never touched her and she never touched me. I could see the horror in her eyes when she looked at me. Then I’d tell myself that I’d imagined it, but it was definitely there. I would stare at my face in the mirror, not knowing what to do.

One day when it was raining heavily Kaori’s practice was cancelled and we walked home from school together. She was the same as ever, smiling and chattering about her club and her friends. Suddenly I couldn’t stand it any longer, and took her hand. Then I moved my face close to hers and kissed her. She let me do it, but her expression was tense.