Inhabitation Page 9

  Pulling off his horizontal-striped polo shirt had mussed Isogai’s usual flawlessly arranged hair. The unyielding professional demeanor that he forced himself to maintain, and which thus appeared to come naturally from within, had disappeared. In its place was a look enfolded in the same kind of fright that Tetsuyuki sometimes saw in his own face when he looked at himself in the mirror.

  Seeing Isogai in such a state, Tetsuyuki regretted having brought him home to spend the night. He had wanted to laugh, to gossip about the other bellboys, to criticize the affected expressions the clerks at the front desk adopted toward guests, and to fall asleep in good spirits. Otherwise, the retreating figure of Yōko as she walked away looking more forlorn than usual—and her ambiguous smile as if she were hiding something—would come to mind and he would end up feeling restless.

  The frog chorus started up again.

  “By that equation, then, even if you die you’ll be reborn?” Tetsuyuki wanted to get away from the topic, but was unable to think of anything else to say.

  Isogai nodded feebly. “Yeah. I think we die and are born, die and are born, again and again. There isn’t an ‘other world’; we’re reborn in this one.”

  With a broad yawn, Tetsuyuki rolled over, turning his back to Isogai. “I don’t much care either way. I don’t feel like discussing such dreamlike stuff seriously. Let’s go to sleep.” Asking Isogai to turn off the light, Tetsuyuki closed his eyes. He wanted to walk alone down the unlit path and call Yōko. But it was already past one thirty, and everyone at her house would be asleep. As soon as he got up in the morning, he’d call her and arrange to meet somewhere. He became aware that Isogai had remained sitting cross-legged, as still as could be. Isogai made no move to stand up and turn off the light, nor did he lie down to sleep, but just sat there absolutely motionless. Tetsuyuki opened his eyes and looked at Kin, sensing that Isogai was also directing his gaze at the lizard.

  He turned toward Isogai and said sharply, “You’d better not do anything to Kin while I’m asleep.”

  Not taking his eyes off Kin, Isogai muttered, “What do you mean by ‘anything’?”

  “You know very well what I mean.”

  At that, Isogai finally stood up and switched off the light. “I’m the one who wants the nail pulled out.”

  “In that case, why don’t you just make up your mind to have surgery? Section Chief Shimazaki said that operations for valve disorders have the highest success rate of all heart surgeries.”

  Isogai said something in a small voice, but it was drowned out by the croaking of the frogs.

  “Huh? What was that? The frogs are so noisy, I couldn’t hear.”

  Isogai put his mouth near Tetsuyuki’s ear. “What I’m afraid of isn’t an operation.”

  “What are you afraid of, then?”

  “Trains.”

  This time it was Tetsuyuki who sat up on the quilt, crossing his legs and looking down at Isogai. “How can you cancel the debt of being hit and killed by a train?” Anger had risen in Tetsuyuki’s heart, along with a vague uneasiness. “Just because your parents were hit and killed by trains, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you will be. Before you seek the help of a cardiologist, you need to go to a psychiatrist. That has priority here.”

  Tetsuyuki went to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and drank a can of beer as he stood there. A stream of sweat ran from behind an ear, dropping down onto his shoulder. He took his time downing the beer, which increased his agony with each mouthful. A large cockroach scampered across his big toe. Even in the dimness, he could tell it was a cockroach.

  Taking a damp towel out of the sink, he threw it at the insect, closing off a way for it to run into the main room. The cockroach spread its wings and set off in flight, buzzing once around Tetsuyuki then bumping into his forehead, after which it fell to the floor and escaped behind the refrigerator. Tetsuyuki hurriedly turned on the faucet and washed his forehead with soap.

  “What’s wrong?” Isogai’s voice came from the other room. Tetsuyuki repeatedly washed his forehead, and said as he was wiping it, “A flying cockroach hit me in the forehead.”

  A muffled laugh came from Isogai. “You’re afraid of cockroaches?”

  “I’m not afraid of them, except when they fly. I really lose it when one flies and hits me.”

  “But you’re not afraid of a lizard that’s been nailed alive?”

  Tetsuyuki returned to his futon and turned his back to Isogai, remaining silent as he felt the alcohol beginning to course through his veins.

  “This is the first time in my life I’ve seen something so frightening. Seeing you spray a lizard’s body to keep it moist and feed it with tweezers . . . it gives me the creeps. You go to a psychiatrist. You may be different from me, but both of us are sick.”

  “I showed it to you because you said you wanted to see it. If it scares you that this lizard is alive, then get out of my apartment now.”

  After some silence, Isogai asked, “How long would it take to get to a place where I could catch a cab?” Tetsuyuki replied that it would be a thirty-minute walk to Suminodō Station, but at this hour, he couldn’t be sure any cabs would be there.

  “Then I have no choice but to have you put me up.”

  “In that case, please just go to sleep. Right now I don’t feel like having complicated discussions about cause and effect, about this world or the other world, or about repeatedly dying and being reborn. I just want to sleep. It’s just natural that people die, and it’s all the same to me.”

  Thus reminding his guest that he would no longer respond to anything said, Tetsuyuki closed his eyes. Undeterred, Isogai mused aloud, “I wonder why people die.” Exasperated, Tetsuyuki again sat up facing Isogai. “Would you please stop talking about that? It’s not as if I were the main character in Tokutomi Roka’s novel Namiko and could make a vow about how I’d be reborn. How would I know why people die?”

  “Namiko? You know a lot of old stuff, huh?” Isogai’s suppressed laughter filled the muggy room.

  Tetsuyuki was not amused. Muffling the volume of his own enraged voice, he shouted in a whisper. “If people didn’t die, what would become of this world? It’d be repulsive if geezers and grannies 680 years old—or 1,360 years old—were hanging around, and they’d be wishing that they could somehow just die. And besides, if people didn’t die no matter what, then they’d lose their fear of everything and just turn into specters consisting of nothing but desire. The world would be a mess, because no one could die anyway. They’d do evil things, taking from each other by force whatever they wanted. Then they wouldn’t even be human any longer. Just beasts.”

  Tetsuyuki felt silly for having gone on about such things and, forcing a long sigh to convey to Isogai that he would absolutely not respond to any further talk, he again lay down.

  “My little sister is really a sweet girl . . .” Tetsuyuki ignored Isogai’s words and kept his eyes closed. “When my mom died the same way as my dad, I was really worried that my sister would go insane. It’s only recently that she’s been back to normal.” He shook Tetsuyuki’s shoulder. “Hey, my sister’s a real knockout. There aren’t many women as good-looking as she is.”

  “That’s a big brother’s blind partiality.” No sooner had Tetsuyuki spoken than he thought, Damn! Now that I’ve responded, I’ll have to play company to his prattle. But as the night wore on, no further utterances issued from Isogai’s mouth.

  And then a thought came to Tetsuyuki—that it must be precisely because of the certainty of death lying in wait that human beings know happiness. It seemed to him that it was because of death that people are able to live. He recalled his mother’s scent. Pleasant memories of his father while he was still alive surged like waves into the recesses of his heart. He felt enveloped by the palpable warmth of Yōko’s smile and by the purity of her body. There came back to him also the sensation of relief he felt when, after returning to his apartment and feeding Kin, he would strip down to his shorts and have a beer. For
him, those things could all be called “happiness” and these words formed in his mind: it is because there is death that people feel happiness. It was the first time he had entertained such a thought, and it echoed within him as if some larger-than-life entity had whispered it, revealing the true form of happiness.

  And yet he was not able to see it clearly, and the concept emerging in his mind caused the image of happiness to flicker and finally disappear. Past life, next life, past life, next life . . . At first, those words were a flame no bigger than a pinhead, but it gradually swelled into a raging blaze scattering innumerable thornlike sparks. What stoked this inferno was the strange dream that he’d had, a dream that provided the flame from beneath with inexhaustible fuel. The dream that had taken place during a mere forty-minute doze, in which he had gone through several centuries of life and death as a lizard, was pried open as if by the gentle yet tenacious power of a sorcerer’s hands.

  He was certain that the dream had come to him the night after Kobori, the collector, had come to beat him, bloodying his nose and lip. He groped in the darkness to feel Kin. A narrow thread of light was shining from someplace, illuminating Kin’s body. It seemed as if Kin—nailed alive to a pillar—were a messenger that had been sent to him by something. He felt a joy so intense that, in spite of himself, he almost cried out.

  But in the next instant, that joy turned into fear: perhaps Kin had been sent to let him know that he would be reborn as a lizard in the next life. An enormous something had carefully placed Kin on the four-inch-wide pillar in the cramped room of that dark apartment in order to serve notice. If that were not so, then a small lizard could not possibly remain alive for several months with its body pierced by a thick nail. Moreover, the enormous something had not only sent him the dream of several centuries of life as a lizard, but had brought to his room this man Isogai, who believed in the existence of past and future lives. As soon as that crossed his mind, he sat up and looked down at Isogai’s recumbent figure.

  “Even if you’re reborn, you won’t necessarily come back as human.”

  “What’s wrong?” Isogai was almost asleep and muttered in a muffled voice, sounding rather annoyed.

  Tetsuyuki related the dream to Isogai. “But when I awoke and looked at the clock, it had lasted only forty minutes.”

  “So, this is about a dream?” Isogai rolled over with his back toward Tetsuyuki.

  “Even though I had turned into a lizard and gone through centuries of life and death, when I woke up and licked my lips, I was my same old self. Don’t you think that’s strange?”

  “Well, naturally you were the same. That’s just a matter of course.”

  “It’s that ‘matter of course’ that frightens me.” Tetsuyuki kept on talking to Isogai, who was craving sleep. “You seem to think that you’ll be reborn with a heart disease, and you sensed that your parents would be hit by a train . . . but you might not even be reborn as human. That’s even scarier, isn’t it?”

  Isogai didn’t reply. Tetsuyuki was irritated, finding it selfish of Isogai to have brought up such a complicated question in the first place and then ducked out. But out of consideration for Isogai’s physical condition, he hesitated to disturb his sleep any further. Isogai said, “I have to leave early. I need to be at the hotel by eight. Tell me how to get to Osaka Station from here.”

  Tetsuyuki mentioned the train connections, then added that he would accompany Isogai to Osaka Station.

  “What will you do if you get to Osaka Station so early?”

  Certainly, eight in the morning was too early to arrange a meeting with Yōko.

  “I’ll just leave your apartment on my own, so you stay in bed.”

  At length, Isogai’s rhythmic breathing indicated that he was asleep. Tetsuyuki wondered if he would have that dream again tonight, and didn’t want to fall asleep. He had a feeling that next time he wouldn’t wake up but would just remain a lizard forever.

  Tetsuyuki kept his eyes open almost until daybreak, but he closed them inadvertently, and fell asleep feeling a slight coolness around his feet and shoulders. It was a little past noon when he awoke. Isogai was nowhere to be seen. Hurriedly washing his face and brushing his teeth, he got dressed and said to Kin, “Wait a bit. I’ll be right back.”

  He raced down the apartment stairs and hurried along the path under the heat of the summer sun. On both sides were vacant lots overgrown with weeds. It was always at night when he walked to the phone booth, so he had not known what lay along the unlit road, and now for the first time realized that it ran between huge empty factories whose rusted steel frames stood at equidistant intervals. On one of them was written in red paint: WE DENOUNCE THE PLANNED BANKRUPTCY OF YAMAOKA INDUSTRIES!

  Leaving an observer uncertain whether they had finished blooming or were about to bloom, some meager-looking sunflowers were bent like bows, bearing only a few petals. After making his way to the phone booth, Tetsuyuki realized that there was no need to have come so far; he could have used the phone in the general store near his apartment. Clicking his tongue, he looked up at the sun and wiped the sweat from his brow.

  It was like a greenhouse inside the phone booth, and the receiver was so hot that he could barely hold it. Mosquito carcasses, like leavings from an eraser, were scattered across the phone book’s shelf. Yōko was not at home. Her mother said she had already left, and might return rather late.

  “She’s not working during the summer break, is she?”

  “That’s right, it seems she isn’t.”

  Judging from her mother’s tone of voice, Tetsuyuki realized that something was being kept from him. He returned to his apartment and drank some cold milk. The only thing he could imagine was that another man was involved. There could be nothing else that Yōko and her mother would have to hide from him. He felt sick at heart and restless. Almost unconsciously he filled a cup with water and, with a spoon in one hand, approached Kin.

  “You must be sick of chestnut weevil larvae, huh, Kin? Wouldn’t you like some crickets or caterpillars once in a while for a change?”

  After feeding him weevil larvae until his tongue no longer darted out, Tetsuyuki realized that he had been offering Kin his meal with his bare fingers, not using the tweezers at all. Kin was no longer afraid of him. He caressed Kin’s head and lower jaw. Kin showed no resistance, yielding to Tetsuyuki’s finger as if he expected it. He felt sad, sad for Kin that he had no choice but to allow a human to caress him. Tetsuyuki opened the closet and took a knife out of his toolbox, intending to kill Kin. If he sliced off its head quickly, the lizard would die without suffering. Tetsuyuki extended the knife toward Kin.

  “Kin-chan, in the next life, I’ll be a lizard, and I’ll probably never again be born as a human. A lizard can’t do what it takes to create a cause to be born human. Once I become a lizard, I’ll be one forever. Yōko has found another man she likes. It was written all over her face yesterday. She came to see me, but she’s a lousy liar. It’s going to take years for me to pay back my dad’s debts, a little every month. My mom is also having years taken off her life, being pushed around by her whimsical, former geisha of a boss. There’s not a single thing to feel good about. When that Kobori gets out of prison, he’s sure to come and get back at me. It’s hard on me if you’re alive. Your staying alive is a way of getting back at me. You and I should both just die.”

  As he spoke, Tetsuyuki actually began to think of killing Kin, and then dying himself. The stuffy heat in the unventilated room seemed to transform him, moment by moment, into a different person. He felt that the loss of Yōko’s broad-cheeked smile amounted to the vanishing of any potential happiness for himself. That in itself wasn’t a reason to die, and he knew that the misfortunes that beset him would seem trivial compared to the suffering many others endured. Yet he felt a desire to die. The heat, the figure of Kin before his eyes, the already faraway mind and body of Yōko, the paltry sum of the debt . . . all of these things seemed to concentrate in the point of the knife in his right
hand, urging him to be quick and decisive.

  “Die, you wretched creature!” Kin writhed at Tetsuyuki’s screaming, desperately flailing with his legs as if he wanted to climb up the pillar in spite of being nailed down. He shook his head back and forth and wriggled his tail, moving like mosquito larvae in a gutter. Tetsuyuki cried. He didn’t want to, but he let himself anyway, and tears gushed forth.

  He threw the knife down and ran out of the apartment, down the stairs to the path he had just traversed, fighting his way into a thicket of weeds, stirring up pollen from goldenrod blossoms. Clouds of mosquitoes, flies, and other nameless flying insects rose up, drawn to him like metal shavings to a magnet. The searing heat burned his neck and back.

  A grasshopper jumped onto the leg of his trousers, and he gathered it up in one hand. Something bumped into his face, and it seemed to him like a giant, mutant flea. He dived into the thicket in pursuit of that insect that showed such remarkable leaping ability. He got close enough to grab it, returning to the roadway after verifying that it was unmistakably a cricket. With a grasshopper in his left hand and a cricket securely enclosed in his right, he trudged back home, sneezing several times as he went.

  “Let’s save the tasty one for later.” With that, he held the small grasshopper in front of Kin, who took two or three minutes before shooting his tongue out to wrap it around his prize. Putting the cricket into the box containing the weevil larvae, Tetsuyuki took off his clothes, tossing everything he had on into the washing machine, an older model that the owner of an appliance shop had sold to him at a discount. Goldenrod pollen and flying ants were clinging to his forehead and neck, and had even gotten into his ears and navel. Having carefully wiped himself with a wet towel, he began to prepare his meal, clad only in undershorts.

  His intention to kill Kin had vanished suddenly, as well as his thought to die himself. In place of those feelings, his entire mind was occupied by a determined resolve not to let Yōko be taken from him. Finishing his meal, he once again gave Kin water, sprayed him thoroughly, and then left the apartment.