It was summer break at the university, and among Tetsuyuki’s classmates, there were several whose employment following graduation had already been secured. If nothing else, he could always do as Section Chief Shimazaki recommended and take full-time employment at the hotel. This offer had dampened his ambition to take the examinations for more desirable jobs.
When he arrived at the employees’ entrance to the hotel a little before five o’clock, as usual, he found Yōko standing on the adjoining sidewalk, trying to avoid the foul-smelling effusion of the exhaust. Bathed in the setting sun of summer, half of her body was tinted red, giving her features a melancholy cast. She trotted across the street, breaking into a smile only after reaching the other side. Tetsuyuki had also dashed out into the street, dodging traffic to meet her.
“What’s wrong?” Yōko returned his gaze in silence. They turned down an alley and entered a coffee shop. During the month that had passed since they last met they had only talked on the telephone.
Until summer break arrived, Yōko had been attending lectures every day, and after that various errands seemed to come up for her, leaving them no opportunity to get together. Ever since the incident with the collector, Kobori, Tetsuyuki had told Yōko not to come to the apartment. On his days off he had always tried to arrange for them to meet in Umeda, but each time she either had errands to run for her mother, or she had to go help clean and do laundry for a cousin who had just given birth, and they were not able to meet.
Sitting at the very back of the coffee shop with bossa nova music in the background, Tetsuyuki studied the expression on Yōko’s face.
“Did you cut your hair?”
“Yeah, it was getting hot, so I ended up cutting it.”
“This is the first time I’ve seen you with short hair.”
“This is the shortest it’s been since I was in middle school. You don’t like it?”
“It looks good on you.” Then he asked again, “What’s wrong?”
“When you’ve had a day off, I’ve had errands, and when I have time, you always have to work . . .”
It was his least favorite time of the day, and yet he felt happy. He glanced at his watch: the same 4:40 as when he arrived at Osaka Station. He took the watch off and held it to his ear, shook it and tapped it lightly, but it didn’t move.
“Ah, it’s stopped. It was cheap, so it was just a matter of time till it broke.” He threw it down on the table. Yōko took a watch out of her purse, an old Rolex that had belonged to her father and that she had begged him for. She always kept it in her purse.
“I’ll lend this to you.”
“It would look odd for a hotel bellboy to wear an elegant timepiece like this.”
“Yes, but you have to have a watch, don’t you?” Then, quickly pulling the watch back from his hand as he tried to take it, she added it a jesting tone, “Now, you mustn’t take it to a pawnshop.”
Laughing, he put the Rolex on his wrist. “I’ve had my eye on this. I thought if I married you, it’d be mine.”
“No matter how much I begged, ‘Dad, pretty please,’ he wouldn’t give in. He’d say, ‘What would a woman do with a man’s watch?’ or ‘It has too many fond memories for me,’ and wouldn’t part with it.”
“I’m surprised he gave it to you, then.”
“He got a new Rolex at discount, and finally let me have this one.”
“Why were you so set on having a man’s watch like this?”
“You can’t find vintage Rolexes like this anymore. And besides, I really liked it for some reason.”
“These are the toughest ones in the world.”
“Take good care of it, okay?”
It was 5:30. Finishing her iced coffee, Yōko stood up. At the sight of her breasts through the thin material of her blouse, Tetsuyuki felt a sudden surge of desire, darkening his expression and rendering him mute. Her words as they left the coffee shop were answered only with silence. He just ran his eyes from her lips to her breasts to her crotch, and then back down to the sidewalk.
“What’s wrong? Are you angry about something?” Yōko cocked her head slightly, but Tetsuyuki only stared silently at the sidewalk. “Again! It’s always like this . . . you suddenly fall into a foul mood . . .” She seemed now to be in a bad humor herself. They crossed the street and parted, and he watched her as she mixed into the crowd. Abruptly, she turned and made a derisive gesture toward him, pulling against one eye and sticking out her tongue. Several passersby looked at her in surprise.
Tetsuyuki changed into his uniform and hurried to the office.
“You’re forty minutes late.” Tsuruta, one of the bellboys, was sitting at the desk.
“I’m sorry.” In spite of Tetsuyuki’s apology, Tsuruta punched the time card himself and then wrote in some numbers with a red pencil.
“You’re paid by the hour, so I’m docking forty minutes from your pay.” Such determinations were supposed to be made by the bellboy captain, Isogai, but Tetsuyuki just meekly voiced his acknowledgment and headed toward the lobby. Tsuruta walked up behind him and whispered, “For the time being, I’m substituting as bellboy captain.”
After escorting guests to their rooms, Tsuruta was in the habit of killing time by shooting the breeze with female employees in the bellboy stations on each floor. Scrutinizing his acne-studded face, Tetsuyuki asked, “Has something happened to Isogai?”
“He collapsed again, before noon. He’s resting in the nap room now. The section chief asked me to fill in for him.”
After escorting a foreign couple to a room on the fourteenth floor, Tetsuyuki headed for the nap room. Preparation was under way for what appeared to be a major event, with waiters and waitresses busily carrying plates and cups. One of them almost bumped into Tetsuyuki, nearly dropping his plates. Coming to a standstill, he said with a sigh, “Hey, if you’ve got that much time on your hands down in the lobby, help us out here. We have to prepare a buffet for eight hundred people by seven o’clock.”
“What kind of event is it?”
The waiter named a well-known politician from a conservative party. “It’s to celebrate his seventy-seventh birthday, but that’s only the outward reason. It’s really a membership event to raise campaign funds.”
Promising that he would inquire at the front desk and come back to help out if permission were given, Tetsuyuki proceeded through the narrow passage to the nap room. Upon gently opening the door and looking inside, his eyes met those of Section Chief Shimazaki, who was sitting on the bed. Tetsuyuki tiptoed up beside him and sat down. Isogai appeared to be asleep.
“It’s been rather hectic today.” Shimazaki spoke softly. “He collapsed in the lobby. I was about to call an ambulance, but it so happened that there was a cardiologist right there who attended to him. He was here for some university class reunion, and there were about twenty doctors altogether. One of them had some medicine with him that saved Isogai’s life.”
“What did the doctor say?”
“He said to make sure Isogai received a thorough examination at a specialized hospital. He mentioned, too, that operations for valve disorders now have a fairly high success rate compared with other kinds of heart surgeries.”
The door opened and a clerk from the front desk called for Shimazaki, who came back to the bedside after exchanging words with her. “Something’s come up and I have to return to the office. Iryō, you stay with him for a while.” As he was about to leave, Tetsuyuki hurriedly interjected. “Please tell Nakaoka at the front desk and the bellboy Tsuruta that you have asked me to remain here, or I’ll be accused of goldbricking.”
Shimazaki nodded and walked off with his usual brisk gait. When the metal door was closed, the bustle and noise of preparation in the banquet room ceased and the dimly lit nap room returned to silence.
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 couple—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 different 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.”
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.
As he walked down the road to the station, he recalled his own words to Isogai: “I don’t remember anything but this life . . . There’s just this one life, nothing before or after. Death is the end of everything.” Somehow he felt that the pitiful form of Kin yielding to the caress of his fingertip wordlessly denied that statement.