Fuminori Nakamura - Evil and the Mask

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.”

The sun had almost set.

“That’s what I think at the moment, anyway. It’s just because my life has been like this that I’m determined to survive. And why shouldn’t I enjoy what the world has to offer until I grow old and die?”

Ito looked away, staring at a patch of dirt. The slanting sunlight cast long shadows.

“You sure do talk a lot.”

“Because with you, it’s like I’m talking to myself.”

Ito may have been exhausted, but he still seemed able to dress with care. Deliberately, he took off his beanie and tossed it to me. The breeze ruffled his medium length hair.

“I’ll leave this with you until next time we meet. In return for your long speech. Until then, I won’t do anything.”

I held his hat in my right hand.

“Next time I’m planning something, I’ll ask your opinion, because we’re both cancers. And I’ll pay you back the money some time too. I want to be even with you.”

I passed him a paper bag full of cash and a page torn from a notebook.

“I’m leaving the country for a while. Use this email address to contact me. And if you need to change your face, I know a good plastic surgeon.”

Ito put the money in his backpack, the paper in his pocket, and got to his feet. He started to walk off, then turned back and hesitated.

“I really never imagined I’d meet you like this.”

“Me neither.”

“Funny, eh.”

With that he walked slowly away. I stayed where I was and lit a cigarette. The wind was growing stronger.

It would have been easier to catch a cab if I went in the same direction as Ito, but I headed the other way instead. I walked towards a main road, through the puddles drying on the pavement. In a small park a little girl was tearing around merrily, her mother watching and laughing. The child was running as hard as she could, but then stopped abruptly as though she’d found something. She pushed her face close to whatever it was she had discovered, studying it with a big smile.

I couldn’t see what it was, a flower or an insect, but that instant of the child’s rapt attention seemed to hold some special meaning. Though her intellect and reason were still unformed, her eye was drawn to things around her with friendly interest, as though they were drawing her in. Perhaps Kaori would have a baby one day too. That was up to her, of course, but maybe she would. Idly I imagined what her child would be like when it grew up. It would be nice if the world was a bit easier to live in then than it was now. I wasn’t sure if I really hoped that but at any rate, when the idea popped into my head, I couldn’t reject it out of hand.

The sun had almost disappeared below the horizon. Once again, the light began to give everything an orange hue.

YAEKO AND SAE Suzuki’s graves were in a cemetery on a small hill on the outskirts of Tokyo.

Their headstones stood in the clear air and stillness. As I placed my flowers in front of them, I noticed that the ones already there were still fresh. I decided to give them some water. The detective, who had accompanied me, gave me a hand.

“You’re not directly related to them, you know,” he said quietly.

“I know, but I still thought I should come.”

I lit a stick of incense with my cigarette lighter and then stood, looking at the graves in front of me. Silently I informed them that Koichi Shintani was dead too.

• • •

WE RETURNED TO the car without speaking, and the private investigator drove. The road to Narita Airport was fairly quiet, so we were soon on the expressway. A commercial was playing on the radio.

“But still,” he said, hands resting on the steering wheel, “I think you did really well. For example, that JL guy who was on the run, I hear he was spotted near Ms. Kaori’s condo. Maybe he was waiting for her to come home or planning to break in. You were wise to send her to Konishi’s place.”

I started to answer, then stopped, looking out the window. Below the expressway I could see acres and acres of sleeping houses.

“Takayuki Yajima too,” he continued. “I think you had no choice but to do that. Of course, that’s assuming you put more value on Ms. Kaori than on society’s opinion. Even if you’d turned him in for drugs, as a first offender he’d have got probation, not jail time. And if you reported him for fraud it would have been difficult to prove, because the victims are usually reluctant to come forward. He was a textbook example of a marriage fraudster, because even if he was exposed, he could still put on a real performance and ingratiate himself with the ladies. Romantic attraction is a powerful thing, and he was very adept at using it. Plus he used drugs. When I was talking to his victims, I was often surprised that almost all of them still can’t forget about him, even though they know he lied to them. They’d all gone through a stage where they wouldn’t listen to anyone’s advice. Even though they’d been reluctant to do drugs at first, eventually they became dependent, so they were ashamed and couldn’t accept help from others. Drug addiction’s a nasty business.”