Yoko Ogawa - Revenge

I recall that one of my aunts spread the rumor that the two old ladies shared my uncle’s sexual services between them. At the time, I couldn’t conceive of what this might mean, but she seemed disgusted when she said it, so I knew it was nothing to be proud of.

“They’re absolutely identical,” my uncle said. “From the build and voice to their taste in clothes and makeup, even their wrinkles. Exactly the same.”

“Do you ever get them mixed up?” I asked.

“No, there’s really nothing to mix up. A or B, B or A—it makes no difference. They’re just one person.”

“But what does a butler do?”

“My job is a bit different from your average butler.” His tone was boastful as ever. “Mostly, I look after the Bengal tiger.”

“Tiger?” I blurted out.

“That’s what I said. He lives in the garden. They got him when they were traveling in India, while he was still young.”

“But he got big?”

“He got huge! So huge you can’t get your arms around him, and his legs are like iron poles. The claws could tear you apart, and the ground shakes when he walks across the yard.”

“Aren’t you scared?”

“Sure I am! That’s why I have to be on my guard all the time. He could charge at any moment, but that danger is what makes him so beautiful. His fur shines and the stripes on his back ripple, and there’s this deep rumble in his throat. He’s absolutely perfect, but it’s the kind of perfection you can’t touch, even when it’s right there in front of you.”

He closed his eyes, as though trying to remember every detail of the tiger.

“To tell the truth, the biggest problem with the tiger is the odor—it’s overpowering. It gets into your pores, right down the roots of your hair. That’s why I always wear my cologne. It was a present from one of the ladies. Not sure which one. Anyway, it cost plenty.” At this point, he moved closer until his chest was almost touching my face. “Nice, isn’t it?” he said. He had apparently acquired expensive tastes from living among the wealthy, though the experience had made him no richer himself.

“But the old ladies are really more interested in all different kinds of torture,” he went on without opening his eyes. “They go all over the world, buying anything that could be used to inflict pain, and my job is to take care of all the things they bring home.”

“That’s a pretty strange job,” I said.

“At first I thought it was torture enough being left alone with the tiger, but I have to admit that some of the devices they bring back are pretty interesting: a hatchet for breaking ankles, a stretcher to rip open your mouth, a knife for flaying human skin.”

He described these “devices” one after the other, and I found it difficult to picture what they looked like. Some of them, though, reminded me of that brace of his.

The image of my uncle that remains clearest in memory for me is of his back as he is leaving our house. No one ever knew where he was going, and no one asked. He left with little more than a “See you later.”

When he returned, he was carrying nothing. He never had a suitcase, and I wondered what he did for clean underwear and the like. Perhaps he kept these things tucked away somewhere in his pockets—like the gifts he brought me.

“I’ve had a wonderful time,” he would tell us when he was ready to go again, and he apparently meant it. And then he might tell me how important it was to study hard. “Even if something seems pointless at the time, you mustn’t take it lightly. You’ll see how useful it is later on. Nothing you study will ever turn out to be useless. That’s the way the world is.”

He would pick me up and rub his cheek against mine. Sometimes I would struggle to escape and muss his carefully combed hair in the process, but he never seemed to mind. Then he would bow and thank my parents, smoothing his hair with his hand.

“When will you be back?” I would ask. It still amazes me that I could have been so blunt as a child—but I truly wanted to know.

“I wonder…” He was incapable of making promises of any sort.

His last visit was after the old ladies had died and the house was turned into a museum of torture, for which he was to serve as curator. I was by then too old for our little games.

That time, too, a hired car came to take him to the station—spotless, black and impressive. He tripped on the front stairs, and when I went to help him he thanked me in a raspy voice. I caught a whiff of his favorite cologne.

It shocked me to realize that he suddenly seemed old—so frail that the slightest push would have sent him tumbling. The body I had felt when I’d gone searching for my hidden presents had been sturdier; and though I had always thought of him as tall, he was now much shorter than me.

I realized I had no idea how old he was—I suppose I’d thought that something as mundane as age could never apply to him.

“Give my regards to the tiger,” I said, leaning in the car window. He nodded, but it was unclear whether he had heard me. “My regards to the tiger,” I said again. He had no other family in the world, as far as I knew.

He waved with his usual theatrical flair, like a king bidding farewell to courtiers. When the car finally pulled away from the curb, I could see him through the rear window, thin and frail and growing smaller in the distance.

“Well then,” said my father, turning to go back into the house. My mother followed him, nodding and muttering. I stayed behind to watch until the car was out of sight. He never turned around.

The funeral was over quickly. Only a few people had attended, and no one cried. They just took their turns lighting incense in front of the family altar, looking a bit lost. Not lost in grief; they seemed to be lost in thought, wondering perhaps what they were doing in such a place.

“They said he wasn’t murdered but he died of asphyxiation,” I heard someone whisper. “It seems odd.”

“He was terribly weak,” said another voice. “A wardrobe fell and trapped him underneath.”

“I bet someone pushed it over. He had plenty of enemies.”

“They said he was nothing but skin and bones, he would have starved to death anyway.”

His troubles had started when one of his neighbors told the police that he was bringing underage girls into the Museum of Torture and doing indecent things to them. In fact he had been involved with an eighteen-year-old woman, a beautician, who had moved into the museum. But she never filed a complaint against him and the whole thing had eventually blown over.

“I’ll bet he was torturing her,” my father said.

“Why do you say that?” I asked, a bit shocked.

“The place was full of that stuff. What else could they do with it?”

But almost immediately after that affair was over, the police arrested him for embezzling from the old ladies’ estate. He had apparently gone through quite a bit of their money in the few years since their deaths, and so, for a second time in his life, my uncle found himself in jail.

Worse still, they closed the museum while he was away and he lost his home.

He had asked me repeatedly to come visit him while he worked there, but I never managed to make the trip. I’m not sure why; I didn’t dislike museums in principle and I wasn’t trying to distance myself from him. I suppose I was preoccupied with my studies and extracurricular activities, and in the end I missed my chance.

He sent me a card every Christmas with a photograph of himself posing in front of the museum displays. Bow tie, starched shirt, his chest puffed out. He was usually pointing at one of his treasures, smiling happily; he seemed to be assuring the viewer that the device was a genuine instrument of torture.