Fuminori Nakamura - Evil and the Mask

For instance, our homeroom teacher was so fat that he always seemed in danger of bursting. He also had the habit of saying, “To give a concrete example,” and then following up with an explanation that wasn’t concrete at all. I christened him “Concrete Bomb.” During lessons I would count how many times he said, “To give a concrete example,” and tell my classmates. The big blob’s lectures were full of statements like, “To give a concrete example, the numerator and denominator are like curry and a sweet bun.” We had gotten it into our heads that if he used the phrase more than forty times his stomach would explode, so we were always keyed up in his classes. I felt terrible about deceiving people around me to hide my darkness, but later I learned that many people actually live like that when they are young.

Kaori was in the same class as me. Since she was tall with large eyes, she attracted a lot of attention. Concrete Bomb told the class, falsely but thoughtfully, that she was a distant relative of mine. On her first day there we did the high jump. When she leapt higher than all the other girls, a small cheer went up. But I was less interested in the height of the jump than in her white legs sticking out of her gym shorts on top of the blue mats. I was still young and felt a deep shame at my lustful urges. If my father said we had to become intimate, that was a sure sign that we shouldn’t. I looked away, but a child’s will is weak, and before I knew it I was staring at her again.

Kaori and I went home from school together. Since Father had dismissed the estate’s driver, it had become my habit to walk home.

“It must be great being rich,” Kaori said on that first day.

“No, it’s not.”

“It must be. And I hear you’re good at studying too? I’m hopeless.”

She laughed innocently, showing her teeth. With her long limbs, I couldn’t imagine a girl who would look odder wearing a child’s school bag than her.

“Even if I am rich, it’s not like I earned it. And the only reason I am able to study is because I’ve got a tutor. There’s nothing impressive about it. Not at all.” In those days I had the habit of forgetting to pretend and rebelling against even the smallest things.

She looked pensive. I had to keep talking so she wouldn’t think I was being perverse.

“So I’ve got to grow up. If I can do something for myself, that will be impressive.” I didn’t really believe this.

She gave me a puzzled look, and we walked in silence for a while. Then she laughed.

“But weren’t you the one who gave Concrete Bomb his name?”

MY FATHER HAD five other children — my older brothers and sisters — but at that stage I’d never met any of them. Most of them lived in Tokyo and never came near the mansion — they hadn’t even come to see me when I was born. My father’s name was Shozo, but none of my siblings, not even the eldest son, had inherited any of the Chinese characters in his name. Twenty-five years separated me from my oldest brother; from the next, twenty-three; from my oldest sister, eighteen; my third brother, fifteen; my second sister, twelve. I also knew that the Tokyo University grad student my father had talked about, the one who was in the cult, had a son the same age as me. I wondered if he had become a cancer, and vaguely expected that I’d meet him sometime, along with my brothers and sisters.

When we reached the gloomy house, the Muscleman was standing outside the gate. He grumbled that I was late, but then he noticed Kaori. Immediately he held out his hand and introduced himself, using his nickname. She hesitated before shaking his hand, perhaps intimidated by his physique, perhaps put off by the fact that he was sweating even though it wasn’t hot.

“You said I was late, but I’ve still got five minutes, haven’t I?”

“Well, I don’t care,” he mumbled. “But my muscles do.”

He wiggled his pecs. Laughing in surprise, Kaori cried out, admiring his pointless muscles. Then, with his usual lack of tact, he looked at her and said, “Maybe you and Fumihiro will get married.” I was struck dumb, but Kaori turned to look at the dark buildings.

“If I do, I’ll live like a princess, won’t I?” she said and laughed carelessly.

From a distance it would have looked like a happy scene. And who knows, maybe at that time we were still happy.

THAT NIGHT, OR perhaps the next, my father summoned me. It was the first time he had called me since the day he told me of his plans for my education. Until then, he had never shown the slightest interest in me. When I heard that he wanted to talk to me again, I was certain it would be more on the same subject. And even if it wasn’t, just meeting him was enough to make me nervous. Stifling my panic, I took a bunch of stickers from my desk drawer and clutched them in my hand.

The room to which I was called was large, with a long table, a television and a carpet of a dull purple-red. Here Father always dined alone, and he had decreed that Kaori and I would eat with the servants in another room.

There was no answer to my knock, so I opened the door quietly. Father was sitting in one of the six dining chairs, smoking and watching TV. His face was blank, and I couldn’t tell what sort of mood he was in. This time too he smelled of alcohol. It occurred to me that he never used to drink that much. The room was dark, but I could still make out his face. With a big nose and abnormally narrow eyes, he was quite ugly. Half of his left ear was missing, I didn’t know why.

“My second son is involved in this war,” he said, still gazing at the screen and not looking in my direction.

The news was showing a report on a civil war in a small African country I knew nothing about. The anchor was reading out the number of deaths.

“You should remember this. They’re calling it an ethnic conflict, but that’s a lie. Someone is stirring up trouble between them. My son’s got the rights for postwar reconstruction. I don’t remember raising him as a cancer, but somehow he keeps acting like one. I need to do something about that.”

He turned to me and gestured slightly with his fingers. I didn’t understand what he meant, but he pointed at my stickers.

“Put those in the ashtray. Don’t bring things like that in here.”

My legs went weak and my heart was racing. As instructed, I put the bundle of stickers in the clear ashtray, and Father placed his half-smoked cigarette on top of them. He didn’t stub it out, just rested it there, still smoldering.

The surface of the stickers scorched and then caught fire. Small, red flames flickered in the noise of the war report on TV. Looking at the orange glow, I couldn’t prevent my brain from going foggy. I was unable to gauge my father’s thoughts, whether he was burning the stickers because I valued them or because the cheap, sparkly things offended him. The flames grew larger, and a curl of smoke rose from them. When the stickers started to give off an unpleasant odor, Father doused the fire with the liquor from the glass he was holding. His expression didn’t change. I realized that he wouldn’t even register the smell, the price of his own spite. My stickers turned to wet, black ash among the cigarette butts. I thought of the hell that Father had promised to show me someday.

The stickers weren’t important to me, though. I was only carrying them to make myself look childish, and the flames caused me no pain at all. I looked away from him, my mind in a whirl. My father was wrong. I was beyond his control. But straight after that I thought of Kaori.

“That’s enough,” he said softly. “Go. What are you so upset about? You’re even forgetting to act childishly. You still haven’t perfected your role. Fool. There is nothing so foolish as a child.”