YUKITOSHI SHIMIZU LIVED IN A cheap cut of Nagasaki—low-level office workers, factory workers, and hard-luck families. The billboard above his apartment building was being offered for advertising but nobody was interested.
At dawn, Sakai knocked lightly on the door. A small, elderly man opened. Heart beating, she held up her ID.
“Are you here about my daughter?” His voice was a soft croak.
“That’s right.”
The tiny apartment, while neat, was tellingly sparse—it had the damp smell of long-standing grief. The old man made tea, returning with a trembling tray. They sat at a cheap table and drank in silence for a while. Shimizu’s face was like that of a faded statue, a man familiar with nothingness.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve had a visitor.”
“I’m sorry for imposing on you, Mr. Shimizu.”
“Not at all. Please ask your questions.”
“Thank you. I don’t have many. Let me begin by asking you, when was the last time you saw Keiko?”
“May 15, 1982. She was going away with friends for the weekend on a camping trip, but she never came back.”
“Did you ever find out where she went?”
“No. She sent me a letter a few months after her disappearance. It just said that she was happy. She talked about nature, the mountains, finding herself. A year or two later, she sent another. This time there was a photograph.”
“Mr. Shimizu, apart from these letters, she never got in contact with you?”
“Oh she called me once or twice but never said anything coherent. She wouldn’t tell me where she was. I begged her to come back, of course, but she told me she was happy with her new life and that was that.”
“She used those words? ‘New life’?”
“Yes.”
“So the next you heard was after the incident at the ropeway?”
“That’s right. The police questioned me.”
Sakai sat back. She considered the old man before her. Could she picture him hurting Keiko? Abusing her? She searched for old lies in this man but could find only grief. She considered his small head, the thatch of white hair in his ears, the papery lips wet from tea, the ancient folds of his eyelids. It was clear to Sakai that Yukitoshi Shimizu would live out the rest of his days in a bubble of painful irresolution.
“Sir, I have to ask. Why do you think she did what she did up on that ropeway?”
“I don’t know. But … I must blame myself. What alternative is there? Her mother died when she was young. I was not a good father to her.”
Shimizu’s eyes were pink. His voice had furrowed deep in his chest.
He sipped tea to steady himself and breathed deeply.
“I met Keiko’s mother at university. It was a period of change for Japan, and I suppose back then I stood for something. I think that’s what appealed to her. At first, I thought it was some joke, or some kind of trick—a woman like that loving me. But she did. We used to wake up early and plan out our days carefully. At ten we’ll do this, at eleven we’ll get custard buns. But we never did any of it. We just stayed in our little room. Japan was tearing itself apart but we just slept straight through.”
Shimizu ran out of words as he lost his smile. He peered into his tea.
“Are you married, Inspector?”
Sakai shook her head.
“Perhaps it’s better that way. At night, I always felt this dread. This looming sadness. The inescapable reality of the ending night—somehow it would get to 1:30 A.M. and we would have to face our dreams alone. The next day of classes alone. I realized that we could only ever be together in snatches. That the dread would never go away, it would always win out in the end. Turning off that bedside lamp each night wasn’t just darkness, it was separation…”
Shimizu remembered to blink.
“They say meeting someone is the first step to losing them. Have you heard that saying?”
Sakai nodded.
“Well, that’s how it felt each night. And it felt no different in the hospital at the end. Turning off my wife’s life support was the same as turning off the bedside lamp after a long day. I don’t know why I thought of this at such a time … perhaps the mind focuses on the small details to stop one from contemplating the enormity of one’s loss.”
He folded his hands in his lap.
“She was so young. I suppose I just had nothing left for Keiko after that.”
Sakai nodded once, fingering away a tear.
“I’m sorry,” she said thickly.
“No, it’s me who should apologize. You didn’t come here to listen to my past.”
She cleared her throat.
“Did Keiko have any problems in her life that you knew of? Any enemies, for example?”
The old man looked up at the ceiling.
“Honestly, I don’t know. I was never close to her. So much time has gone by now…”
“Mr. Shimizu, why do you think she left?”
“I don’t know. I think I loved my wife too strongly to give my child that same devotion. It’s hard to tell you but it’s the truth. When she was born, in among all my anxiety, there was … something else. Like a voice trying to warn me that I would fail this child. And then she was born, and she cried whenever I held her. Even later, she would never take to my games. The only one she liked to play was the cloud game. You know the one? You look up to the sky and find animals or princesses in the clouds. She liked that one. For some reason, we always found elephants. Elephant clouds, she would say.”
Another painful smile faded from his lips.
“Could I see that photograph she sent you, sir?”
Yukitoshi Shimizu nodded. For several minutes, Sakai heard the room next door in motion. The old man had buried it deep.
When he finally returned, he didn’t look at the photograph as he handed it over. Sakai glanced down and saw the picture of his daughter.
Her breath caught.
Keiko was beautiful and familiar. She was standing in a forest, holding a baby, looking down at it lovingly. With one hand she was brushing back the hair from her face. Golden sunlight, faded by time, slanted around them.
“I don’t even know if that’s my granddaughter,” he said quietly.
Sakai searched the image for any kind of useful detail but it gave nothing away other than a date stamp: June 1984.
Sakai was about to hand it back when she saw Keiko’s wrist. Squinting, she made out a tattoo.
“Could I use your magnifying glass, Mr. Shimizu?”
Shimizu took it from the top of a bundle of old newspapers and handed it over. Sakai enlarged Keiko’s wrist and blinked.
She was looking at a black sun tattoo.
* * *
Kosuke is dreaming of his new life in America. He is just a few weeks away from leaving the orphanage. Leaving Japan. His mother is coming for him with a new father—an American.
A car door slams and Kosuke opens his eyes.
It is a moonless summer night, but light is filling his room. Blue light. Then pink. He wraps the quilt around his shoulders and pads over to the window. Outside, he recognizes the policeman who brought him here. He looks much older now, smaller in his uniform. He is talking to Mr. Uesugi while behind them, policemen are passing around flashlights. Kosuke sees that Mr. Uesugi is gesticulating wildly, occasionally clutching his head in his hands. In the pink and blue light, it looks like a terrible dance. The night is warm and a red fringe of dawn has surfaced at the horizon.
Kosuke gets into his shorts and tennis shoes and hurries downstairs as quietly as he can. In the foyer, the main door is ajar and he can hear the voices.
“How can I be calm, Tamura? The very reputation of this facility depends on the safety of these children.”
“I appreciate that, but Mr. Uesugi—”
“It’s just a bear, Sergeant. One solitary bear! How hard can it be to find?”
“That’s a story, sir. It’s more likely the boy wandered off by himself.”
“Then you get out there and you find him!”
Kosuke hears footsteps and he hides in a lagoon of shadow. Uesugi shuts the door behind him and sags against it. Christ looks down on him. Fallen saints watch on. Black-and-white photographs of former pupils, Uesugi at the front of each class, smiling broadly.
We are together and we are joyous. For whomever is delighted in solitude is a wild beast or a god.
With a trembling hand, Uesugi wipes sweat from his forehead. He looks at his wet palm and, for some reason, he shakes his head at it. He takes out a handkerchief and wipes the back of his neck and under his armpits. He is having trouble breathing.
Kosuke steps out of the shadow.
“Why are they here?”
Uesugi gasps and flinches.
“Iwata.” He chuckles. “You gave me a fright.”
“Why are they here?”
“Don’t worry yourself. It’s very late, you must go back to bed.”
Kosuke can only make out Uesugi’s teeth in the dark blue gloom. Old wood creaks. The grandfather clock ticks. Then he realizes.
“Where is Kei?”
The question rings out in the hall. Uesugi’s mouth becomes a tight line.
“Get back to bed, boy.”
Above them, Sister Mary Josephine appears on the landing. Uesugi glances up at her, seems to change his mind about something, then walks away, his footsteps echoing in the darkness.
Kosuke looks up at the nun and her gaze falls to the floor.
He runs out of the orphanage, as fast as he can go. He runs through the field, a sea of gossamer webs lit up silver by the rising sun. He runs for the forest, its treetops lambent in the warm light. He runs for the whirlpool, forgotten by the world. But Kosuke knows, deep down, he will not find Kei.
Nobody will.