Yoko Ogawa - Revenge

Thanks to the coat, I didn’t feel the cold at all. I felt as though I were being embraced by big, strong arms, and with each step I caught a whiff of my uncle’s cologne. The fur was so soft, I found myself rubbing it against my cheek.

I wasn’t sure how to get back, and the snow had covered and obscured all landmarks, so I could do nothing but walk straight ahead. The flakes that fell on the fur melted almost immediately. I turned one last time, but the building had vanished, and a trail of my footprints in the snow stretched back into the darkness.

Then I realized that the left sleeve had fallen off the coat. As I picked it up, I noticed a loose string hanging from it—and a large black stain on the lining. Before I knew what was happening, the right sleeve dropped off, too, and the cold crept in. I walked along, clutching the sleeves, but then the seams at the sides began to come apart as well. The collar came loose and the pockets fell off.

The fur shimmered in the white snow as I knelt to gather up the scattered bits of the tiger.

I left the bypass and followed the road south along the river, then hesitated just as I was about to cross the bridge. If I turned and headed downtown, I could be at her apartment in just a few minutes.

It was a stifling afternoon. The breeze had died and the trees along the avenues seemed to wilt in the heat. The air shimmered above the burning asphalt; the sunlight reflected from the oncoming cars was blinding. Even on full, the air-conditioning did little against the heat coming through the window. The steering wheel burned my hands.

I had been playing a game with myself from the moment I left the house. If the next stoplight was red, I would make a U-turn and go home. If the silver sports car passed me, I would keep going. If the terrier puppy I’d seen yesterday in the pet shop window had been sold, I’d turn back. If there were more than three buses parked at the terminal around the next corner, I would go on to her apartment.

I’m not sure why I found myself hoping that the sports car would turn off, that the cage would be empty. I seemed to believe it still possible to turn back, despite my apparently firm decision to confront her.

Just before I reached the bridge, the traffic suddenly slowed to a crawl. It was probably an accident, since they had closed one lane. I turned on the radio, but the reception was so bad I turned it off again. I rode the brake as we inched forward.

What was I going to do when I saw her? It was a question I had asked myself a thousand times. Slap her? Scream insults? Demand she give my husband back? How ridiculous. It would be better to lose him than look so utterly foolish.

Good afternoon. I would probably just wish her “good afternoon” like an idiot, as though she were a teacher at my daughter’s kindergarten.

My husband had left for the United States three days earlier to attend a medical conference. I would never have found the spine to do this if I thought I might actually catch him at her place, so I waited until he was gone before setting out. I wasn’t really looking for a confrontation with the two of them, and I don’t think I would have been especially upset even if I had found them naked in each other’s arms. That was, after all, what they had been doing in secret all along. That much was obvious. I simply didn’t want to make things more complicated than they already were, so it was better to see her when he wasn’t there, when the two of us could sit down and discuss matters calmly and equitably. Or so I had been telling myself.

What was the name of his conference? I’d forgotten. My husband’s specialty is respiratory medicine, specifically the treatment of a syndrome called pulmonary infiltrates with eosinophilia, though I don’t really know what that means. He hasn’t bothered to explain it to me, and I’m not particularly interested in finding out. But I suspect she knows. She’s a highly regarded secretary at the university hospital.

I know it’s ridiculous to be jealous about the name of a conference, but not about seeing them naked together, but that’s just the way it is. Jealousy seems to make me suffer in the most unexpected ways.

The traffic crept along. A family was having a cookout under the bridge, and the smell of roasting meat wafted down the road, making the heat seem even more oppressive. Some seagulls were preening themselves, perched on posts in the sandbar. The river was dotted with windsurfers and small fishing boats. At the sound of an impatient honk the gulls fluttered up into the air. As I squinted into the sunlight I could see the ocean shining in the distance.

A truck had overturned on the bridge. It was probably going too fast and had hit the median. At any rate, the cab on the driver’s side was crushed, and a tire had come loose and jumped the guardrail. An ambulance and a wrecker and several police cars were pulled up at the scene with emergency lights flashing.

I was pretty sure the driver was dead. His bones and organs would have been crushed by the steering wheel. But somehow this seemed less shocking to me than the fact that the surface of the road was covered with tomatoes. Not that I realized what they were right away. At first I thought I must have driven into a field where an unfamiliar red flower was blooming. Or that the driver’s blood was covering the whole road.

But it was tomatoes—flawless, ripe ones—shining in the sunlight. A workman with a shovel was trying to gather them up, but he was making no visible progress. A number of people stood near the accident looking dazed, and some men were trying to cut open the cab of the truck with an electric saw.

Some tomatoes rolled in front of my car and must have been crushed under the tires, but I could barely feel them. They offered no resistance, as though they had wanted to be smashed all along, smeared across the road.

The other cars swerved to avoid the tomatoes, but I decided to try to hit as many as possible. If I got more than ten, I would go on, I would follow the road where it led. In the rearview mirror, I could see a strip of crimson stretching out behind the car. Did hitting tomatoes feel the same as hitting a person? I began to count: one, two, three, four, five …

I’ve seen her only once, from a distance. My husband had forgotten some research notes he needed for work, and when I went to take them to him, I stopped by the secretarial pool and peeked in. I knew right away which one was his girlfriend, even though I had never seen any of them before. I knew because she fit so perfectly in the various scenes I had imagined on the nights he failed to come home—a room in some apartment, a table at his favorite restaurant, the deserted lot behind the hospital.

Still, I have no memory of the face I saw that day. I can’t recall how she wore her hair or makeup. The only thing I remember is that she was busy with some sort of complicated task.

She was standing at her desk, sorting documents. Thumbing through them impatiently, she would write on some, tear others to pieces, and attach labels to still others. Her face was half hidden by her limp, sweaty hair. When the phone on her desk rang, she called rudely for someone else to get it. Finally, it seemed she had finished putting all the papers in order, but then something must have happened because she made a disgusted noise audible even from where I stood and started the process again from the beginning.

But no matter how many times she started over, it didn’t seem to work out. Something always went wrong. She was constantly erasing things she had just written, folding and refolding, stamping something here and there—as though trying anything that came into her head. But the longer she worked—and it seemed as though she might go on forever—the more chaotic the papers became. Nor, through all this, did anyone come to help her.