Fuminori Nakamura: Evil and the Mask

While that big case was moving towards an unexpected solution, the fact that several unnatural deaths surrounded it was barely mentioned. Their exact relation to the case is still unclear, and now that the most important evidence has disappeared it will be impossible to uncover the truth. I was only responsible for investigating one man, but in retrospect it should have been a couple, a man and a woman. Even though I was just a single member of the inquiry team, I wondered at the time if our solution was acceptable. Maybe I was operating under a serious misconception all along. Reflecting on it now, I can’t help thinking that perhaps by some chance I alone was the closest to the truth about that entire sequence of events, which could have been linked but never were .

I still don’t fully understand that couple’s relationship. Right from the beginning, however, I was obsessed with a single hypothesis. If he offered to explain everything he knows about those mysterious events and about his own life, I’d love to hear it. Not so much to solve the case — I’d love to hear it as a fellow human being .

As a detective, I’ve always been involved in other people’s lives. Looking back, I’ve hardly lived my own life at all. I’ve spent my career prying into their affairs, sticking my nose in, prodding their lives in the right direction. It may be an odd way of putting it, but the main character has always been the criminal. I’ve spent more time thinking about them than about my own life. In that sense, I’ve allowed other people to take the lead and I’ve been merely an observer .

If this case were fiction, I would obviously have a supporting part, appearing only rarely, a genuine bit player. But still, I’d like to talk some more with that man, who was born and raised in that peculiar family and who, if my guess is correct, ended up choosing the wrong path in his life. Now I want to know everything about him .

Not as a detective, but as a man. As a man who, in spite of being a detective, has always borne a grudge against society .

“NOW I’M GOING to tell you some important facts about your life.”

I was eleven, and my father had called me to his study. In his black suit he leaned back heavily on the leather sofa, perhaps because he was already an old man and standing tired him. A ray of the setting sun peeped through a crack in the curtains. With the orange light behind him, his face was in shadow. Clutching a red, radio-controlled car, still with dirt on its tires, I was aware of how small I was in the center of the large, cold room. Father’s breath smelled faintly of alcohol.

“About your education. This does not mean, though, that I hold any great hopes for you. It’s just that I intend to leave a ‘cancer’ in this world. Under my guidance, you will become a cancer. A personification of evil, you could say.”

I couldn’t see my father clearly, but it was hard to imagine that he was smiling. No doubt his face was as immobile and expressionless as ever.

“My other children are already adults, occupying important positions in society. That is because they came into the world uninvited, and were free to choose their own paths. Your life, on the other hand, I created on purpose, when I was already past sixty. This is something of a practice in my — no, our — family.”

I still couldn’t see his face.

“By ‘cancer’ I mean a being that will make this world miserable. That will make everyone wish that they had never been born, or at least make everyone think that the light of virtue does not shine in this world.”

There was a knock at the door, and at his signal a young servant girl entered. Her lips and nose were narrow, her eyes large and clear. I thought she was probably my father’s type. On our estate there were at least seven domestic servants. When she whispered something to him he nodded. “Send her in,” he muttered, then turned back to me. “The most recent recorded example was in the Taisho era, almost eighty years ago.”

The servant left the room silently.

“Our ancestor revived the custom when he was over sixty years old — the custom of delivering a cancer into the world. He seems to have realized that his own life was nearing its end, and that even though he would die, the world would carry on. That was something he was unable to forgive. In his life he had obtained everything he wanted and he was arrogant, as I am. If his life was going to end, then everything must perish. So on June eighteenth, nineteen fifteen, a young woman gave birth to his child. To bring this world to an end — no, to be precise, to be a negative force, to make the world as unhappy as possible. He raised that child to be a cancer on society, and the boy was excellent. He turned into a creature who was destined to make many peoples’ lives hell, who was destined to increase the number of people who believed that life wasn’t worth living. They say that when the old man was on his deathbed, he was no longer afraid. He thought the unhappy people created by that cancer would create more unhappiness, and cancer would spread like gushing foam. If that continued, the world would begin to fail. Well, he thought, at the very least I have been able to create a person who will spread a stain over the light of the world in my stead after I am gone. In his bed, the old man heard the news of the outbreak of the war in the Pacific. That cancer had nothing to do with the events leading up to the war, but as a high-ranking officer he committed all manner of atrocities — so much evil that God covered his eyes.”

The door opened and a girl I had never seen before entered. Cold air from the rest of the house flowed in, and she walked toward us on skinny legs. Her face was immediately flushed with the slanting orange sunlight, and her large eyes stood out vividly in her face. I caught my breath, confused, as though I was threatened by the unexpected presence of those eyes, as though they were going to vanish into the light. I was careful not to show it, however. My father gave no reaction to the girl’s entry.

“With our wealth and power that have been passed down through the generations, we can use this life to do whatever we want. Then when we feel that our time is running out, by breeding one of these cancers we can mask the fear of death with amusement at the entertainment it provides. Of course this custom is not observed in every generation. From time to time, however, it is remembered and put into practice. I have revived it once more. A number of years ago a religious group occupied a nuclear power plant. When their plan was foiled by Public Security, they all committed suicide. While that group was in the process of turning into a cult, one student from Tokyo University played a leading role. His roots can be traced back to that cancer clan. Namely, he was the son of that soldier, from a lesser branch of our family tree.”

The girl was about my age, wearing a white dress and carrying a large bag. She stared at my father and me in wonder. I looked idly at the nascent bulge of her breasts. Even after I turned back to my father, his face still hidden in shadow, the image of her white dress, tinged with orange, stayed in my mind’s eye.