Inhabitation Read online

  Isogai’s face, shadowed by the bunk beds, looked like a bronze bust. Staring at his closed eyes, Tetsuyuki wondered how Yōko would be spending the summer break. Every year she had spent the entire month of August working in the basement grocery section of a department store, using her earnings to travel and returning the day before classes resumed. That one week of travel spent with some close female friends from school had been her only time away from Tetsuyuki; all other times, both on and off campus, she was in close company with him. Even though they did not live together, her friends often teased her, saying that they were just like a married couple.

  The question popped into Tetsuyuki’s mind: Why has Yōko not mentioned her summer plans to me? Usually she began talking well beforehand about her plans for work and travel, but this year she had not touched on it at all. Last year and the year before, by the third day of summer break she would already be standing at a register in the basement of some department store. What plans did she have for this year? They were already ten days into summer break. Tetsuyuki recalled the downcast look on her sunbathed face as she stood on the sidewalk waiting for him.

  “You don’t have to stay here with me all the time.”

  At these words Tetsuyuki looked up with a start: Isogai wasn’t asleep after all.

  “I heard you had a bad time of it today.” Isogai’s eyes remained closed even when Tetsuyuki addressed him. “Did you lift something heavy?” Isogai shook his head. “Or were you running up a flight of stairs?”

  Isogai finally opened his eyes. “I wouldn’t do something that stupid.”

  There are things people dislike mentioning to others, or even hearing mentioned. Acknowledging that, Tetsuyuki added, “The other day, I heard from Section Chief Shimazaki . . . about your mother and father.”

  Isogai cast a glance at Tetsuyuki and muttered, “That guy blabs too much.” Then he closed his eyes again.

  “I think you ought to bite the bullet and have the operation . . .”

  “What’s that got to do with my mom and dad?”

  After hesitating for some time, Tetsuyuki said, “If these attacks keep happening, I’m afraid you’ll end up dying.”

  “You think I’d let myself die from something like this? People make a big deal of it, but I’m used to it. It always passes if I can just rest a bit.”

  “I have this feeling that you’re going to be run over by a train . . .” Tetsuyuki was taken aback by his own words, as if they had come out independently of his will. Realizing how insensitive a remark it was, he lowered his gaze to the green carpet. “That just slipped out . . . What I meant was . . .”

  Isogai cut him off. “I’ve had the same feeling.” Tetsuyuki looked up. “Today I was a bit late getting out of the apartment, and I thought if I had to wait for another train I wouldn’t make it to work on time. When I got to the station, the gate was already lowered, but if I wanted to catch the train for Umeda, I had to get past that to make it to the ticket gate. After the train had gone by I thought the gate had started to rise and was about to hurry across when someone next to me shouted, ‘There’s another one coming the other way!’ I was in such a hurry I’d completely spaced out, and didn’t even notice it.”

  Isogai’s face, which had been immobile, turned toward Tetsuyuki but with his eyes focused on an indefinite point, as if recalling something. At length he resumed his story. For the first time Tetsuyuki was seeing emotions manifest in Isogai’s countenance.

  “As I was waiting for the train my heart began to pound, and I was gripped by a fear that someday I’d end up going the same way as my mom and dad. And not just me, but my kid sister, too. Then, when I was on the train I kept thinking, ‘I can’t go on like this.’ When I arrived at Umeda and was walking to the hotel, everything in front of me started to blank out. I rested a bit in the locker room, but the moment I got to the lobby, I collapsed . . .” Then he fell silent.

  Tetsuyuki’s thoughts raced wildly through his mind in search of the right words that might put Isogai Kōichi at ease and give him some hope.

  Was this the first time he had empathized with someone else so much? It seemed strange to him: a human unable to face another’s suffering as his own. The face Yōko had pulled at him came to mind, and then the image of Kin. And the thought he’d had, if only momentarily, of wanting to kill Kobori. As he mused about these things, he began to talk.

  “My father died and his business fell apart. My mother and I had no idea that the guy he’d depended on as his right-hand man had appropriated the company funds. What’s more, the way he’d managed to put everything in his own name was both clever and legal, and by the time we realized what was going on, it was too late. All we were left with were my father’s debts. Thugs came crashing in, pressing us for payment, so I’m hiding in an apartment outside Daitō while my mother is living where she works, in a restaurant in Kita Shinchi. But one of the thugs sniffed me out. He beat me and kicked me, leaving my face so mangled I couldn’t go out for a week. I was afraid of reprisals, but I reported it to the police anyway. The guy was arrested, but I have no idea when his pals will come to retaliate. I thought of moving to a place even farther away, but a certain situation prevents me from leaving that apartment.”

  Having said all that, Tetsuyuki wondered what it could possibly mean to Isogai. What was he trying to get across? It also occurred to him that Isogai must know far greater unhappiness. By comparison, Tetsuyuki was the rather fortunate one: he was in good health, and his mother was alive. And what’s more, he had a girlfriend: Yōko, whose charm was matchless. Yes, he was certainly blessed. Intending to raise Isogai’s spirits with his life story, he had instead given himself a boost. Yet at the same time part of him fell into deeper dejection than before.

  “Why can’t you leave that apartment?” Isogai listened to the story of Kin, and then slowly straightened himself up with eyes wide. “Is that lizard alive, even now?”

  “Yeah, it’s alive. Before I left today, I gave it water and fed it.”

  “Why don’t you just pull the nail out?”

  “If I did that it might die. I don’t know how many times I’ve thought of just killing it, but I can’t bring myself to do it. After all, I was the one who got it into that situation, even if it was dark and I wasn’t aware of what I was doing.”

  “Can a lizard stay alive if it’s nailed to a pillar?”

  “Well, it is alive.”

  “Is what you’re saying really true?”

  “If you think I’m lying, come take a look.”

  Isogai leaned forward and was about to say something when the door opened and Tsuruta poked his head in. Seeing that Isogai appeared to be feeling better he asked, “Are you all right?” The tone of his inquiry betrayed an indifference to Isogai’s actual condition.

  “Yes, I’m better now. Sorry to have caused so much trouble.”

  “There’s some work I want Iryō to do.”

  “Sure, right away.” Tetsuyuki stood up and, without saying more, brushed past Tsuruta and dashed through the passageway. The party in the banquet room had apparently begun. While he was waiting for the elevator there came a roar from behind the closed door: “Banzai!” shouted three times by hundreds of people. Two men were standing guard in front of the door, casting wary glances all about. Before he knew it, Tsuruta was standing beside him. He threw out a cutting remark. “You’re good at slacking off, huh?”

  “Section Chief Shimazaki told me not to leave Isogai’s side until he had fully recovered.”

  “How noble of you! Maybe Isogai’s just faking to get out of work himself.”

  Tetsuyuki ignored that comment and remained silent inside the elevator. Tsuruta perversely kept up his haranguing until they reached the lobby, at which point the expression on his face immediately tensed. He rushed to overtake Tetsuyuki in response to the professional tone of voice of a front-desk employee as he obsequiously handed over a room key: “Please see these guests to their room.” The guests were the sort of coup
le—a seemingly well-off middle-aged man and a woman in a kimono who looked as if she might be in the nightclub business—that usually slipped a 500- or 1,000-yen tip to a bellboy. But when contrary to expectation no tip was forthcoming, Tsuruta would invariably return to the lobby and take out his irritation on one of the part-timers.

  As Tetsuyuki was standing in the lobby looking forward to the end of his shift in another ten minutes, Isogai tapped him on the shoulder and whispered, “Let me see that lizard.”

  “Sure. When can you come by?”

  “Today.”

  “Today?”

  “Let me stay in your apartment tonight. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “I don’t mind, but do you feel up to it?”

  “I’ll call my sister and let her know. Let’s take a cab back. I’ll pay the fare.”

  Isogai had changed his clothes and was waiting by the employee exit. Tetsuyuki went out to the street and quickly hailed a cab.

  “Please take us to Suminodō.”

  The driver turned his head and looked at them. “Suminodō . . . Where’s that?”

  “You don’t know?”

  The driver made an apologetic gesture with his hand, and explained that he had not been long on the job. Tetsuyuki had never taken a cab home and was at a loss to describe the route.

  “At any rate, go straight on the Hanna Freeway until just before you get to Mount Ikoma. From there I’ll have a general idea.”

  When they set out, Isogai laughed aloud. “Even a taxi driver has never heard of the place, but a collector was able to sniff it out.”

  “Those guys are good at it.” The mood of gaiety affected Tetsuyuki and he joined in the laughter. As they approached the foothills of Mount Ikoma, a sign on the left with an arrow appeared: Suminodō Station. As they turned onto that road and continued some distance, Tetsuyuki guessed that a lane off to the right was the correct way, and told the driver to turn there. It was a dark street, barren except for a telephone booth, the one from which he always placed calls. Never once getting lost, the cab stopped in front of Tetsuyuki’s apartment.

  A rush of hot, humid air issued from inside when Tetsuyuki unlocked and opened the door. He hurriedly turned on the light and fan and opened the window. He wanted to open the screen to improve air circulation, but recalled that the area was infested with mosquitoes. An open screen could result in sleeplessness from bites. He pointed at Kin. “See, I was telling the truth.”

  Tetsuyuki gazed vacantly at Isogai, who was standing rigidly just inside the door, staring at Kin with a startled look. His mouth agape, Isogai’s expression seemed at first glance to be absentminded, but his eyes gleamed with an eerily powerful light. His expression was of the same kind one might see on a person in the throes of madness, an aspect Tetsuyuki had never once seen during the several months of their association.

  Sensing that it was rude of him to stare at Isogai like that, he began his routine. First, he opened the refrigerator, put some ice in a cup, and filled it with water. Then he poured the ice water into a spray bottle and squirted the liquid all over Kin’s body, after which he directed the fan toward the lizard. After nine hours in a hot room full of motionless summer air, Kin was dehydrated and enfeebled, and by the time Tetsuyuki returned past midnight, his limp body was bent over as it hung on the nail.

  Tetsuyuki sprayed Kin’s body again and again, and then gave him water with a spoon in his usual manner. Darting his threadlike tongue out, Kin greedily lapped up the water. He regained his vigor about ten minutes after having drunk the water. The ice water that had been sprayed on him dried in the breeze from the fan, but at the same time the vitality of his skin was restored. Strength came back to his limp body, and when he slowly began to move his legs, Tetsuyuki used tweezers to feed him chestnut weevil larvae. Tetsuyuki always felt a moment of relief and happiness when Kin swallowed the first one.

  Kin consumed five larvae and took a few more laps of water from the spoon. The movement of the lizard’s tongue had become nimbler than at first. As he sprayed Kin one more time to be sure, Tetsuyuki smiled at Isogai. “This is how I wrap up the day.”

  Isogai, who had until then remained immobile, approached the lizard and cautiously moved his pallid face close to it. Kin began to thrash furiously with his long tail.

  “He’s afraid because an unfamiliar human is present.” Showing no response to that warning, Isogai kept the strange glow in his eyes trained on Kin. Tetsuyuki was spurred by a fear that Isogai might be so overly stimulated by the sight that he would suffer another one of his attacks.

  “This is awesome . . .” Isogai’s voice was barely audible. Pointing to the black stains on the pillar by Kin’s tail, he asked, “What are these?”

  “Droppings. I wipe them off every day, but they leave a stain. Someday I’m going to catch it from the landlady.”

  “Would he let me feed him?”

  “Mm, dunno . . .”

  Despite his inquiry, Isogai made no move to try feeding Kin. Instead, without saying a word, he cautiously extended his hand and grabbed the head of the nail. Kin writhed violently, but Isogai held fast to the nail.

  All at once, the sound of croaking frogs broke out. To Tetsuyuki it was an eerie and repulsive sound, a curse pronounced by bizarre creatures portending misfortune. Isogai attempted to move the nail, and Tetsuyuki hurriedly restrained him. Isogai finally shifted his gaze from Kin to the hands grasping his wrist.

  “Pull this nail out!” There was anger in Isogai’s voice. “Why don’t you pull it out? What does it matter if he dies? This lizard doesn’t care if he dies, he just wants you to pull the nail out.”

  The croaking of the frogs abruptly ceased. The sound of a television came from the apartment next door where the middle-aged woman lived.

  “The lizard itself doesn’t think it would be okay to die.” In an instant, Tetsuyuki’s mood had soured, and he glared intensely into Isogai’s pallid face. He thought: It’s not as if I nailed Kin to this pillar for a lark or to suit some kind of fancy. You pull this nail out, if you can.

  Taking a crowbar out of the toolbox in his closet, Tetsuyuki thrust it in front of Isogai. “I can’t pull it out. You do it, please.”

  Isogai forced himself to soften the expression on his face, as if trying to make his own anger back down before Tetsuyuki’s ire. Like a fretful child, Kin struggled and wriggled, bending his body backward. The sight caused both Tetsuyuki and Isogai to step back from the pillar and finally sit on the floor. Isogai bit his nails in silence.

  “Would you like some beer?” Tetsuyuki asked as he got up and went to the kitchen to take some cans out of the refrigerator.

  “If I drink alcohol, I’ll end up dead,” Isogai muttered, staring blankly at the tatami. Then, for the first time, he broke into a smile. “I’ve had a bad heart ever since I was little, and never knew when I might die. Maybe after five minutes, maybe tomorrow morning. I’ve gone through life with that constantly on my mind.” It wasn’t until Tetsuyuki had drunk the last of his can of beer that Isogai continued.

  “Even if I’m reborn, I’ll probably come back with a heart disease.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “If you fall asleep owing money, the debt never disappears before you wake up. I have a feeling that it’s like that for me, so it would be meaningless for me to, say, off myself. When I realized that suicide would be pointless, I was left clueless as to what I ought to do. What do you think I should do?”

  Tetsuyuki opened the screen on the window overlooking the rice paddy and threw his empty beer can into the darkness, aiming at the frogs. The quiet that ensued filled his heart with an even greater loneliness. “If you die, that’s the end. It’s impossible to think that there’s anything like rebirth.” He quickly shut the screen and, clapping with both hands, crushed the mosquitoes that had entered.

  “Where’s the proof that death is the end? Have you ever died?”

  “I don’t remember anything but this life. If I had lived a differe
nt life before being born into this one, then I ought to be able to remember something of it. There’s just this one life, nothing before or after. Death is the end of everything.”

  “There’s no way I could think like that.”

  Tetsuyuki stood there looking at Isogai, who, meeting his gaze with a determined look in his eyes, picked up a book and threw it at him. Tetsuyuki was taken aback, but caught the volume.

  “That book went flying toward you because I threw it. It didn’t go flying off on its own. Before there can be any effect, there has to be a cause. That’s the basis of physics, isn’t it? Is there a single effect in this universe that doesn’t have a cause? Does a tree grow where there’s no seed? Does a nail all by itself pierce a lizard’s back? It’s because everything in this world has a cause that there are effects.”

  Not quite comprehending everything he’d heard, Tetsuyuki stood there with the book in his hands, staring wordlessly at Isogai’s lips.

  “Why are we humans born into this life with differences from each other? There must be some cause for that, too. So then, that cause must have been produced before we were born, right? Doesn’t that make the most sense? Some are born into wealthy families, some into poor ones. Some are born with healthy bodies, some crippled. So then, even though all things have cause and effect, wouldn’t it be odd to say that the differences we are born with have no cause? We certainly experienced lives before being born into this one, we just don’t remember, that’s all. So, I died carrying various debts and then, just like waking up from sleep, I was reborn. But the debts haven’t disappeared . . .”

  Since he had only one set of bedding, Tetsuyuki spread out the futon for Isogai and, arranging the quilt next to it, lay down upon it himself. Staring at the ceiling, he asked, “How long have you been thinking that way?”

  Isogai took off his clothes and, clad only in a tank top and undershorts, sat down cross-legged on the futon. “Since about two years after I started working at the hotel.”