Liza Minnelli, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr/1989 1 page

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He tried assigning each letter of the alphabet a number from 0 to 25, so that A equaled 0, B equaled 1, C equaled 2, and so on. This would make it a simple substitution cipher, the most basic kind of code. He decided first to treat each number as a one-digit numeral, substituting the corresponding letter of the alphabet for each.

BHI, BDG

Put it all together: "bhibdg". Ando didn't have to go to a dictionary to see that there was no such word in any language. The next step was to break down the numerals into combinations of one- and two-digit numbers. Since there were only twenty-six letters in the alphabet, in terms of a simple substitution cipher this meant that he could, for the time being, rule out numbers larger than twenty-six, such as 78 or 81. He began writing down the possible combinations on the napkin.

Only one of the combinations produced an actual word: R-I-N-G.

Ring.

Ando thought it over, recalling what he knew about the English word. He was most familiar with its use as a noun to mean "circle". But he also knew that it described the sound a bell or a telephone makes; it could be a verb meaning "to cause a bell or a telephone to sound", and by extension, could mean calling someone on the phone or summoning someone by means of a bell.

Was it nothing more than a coincidence? A piece of newspaper sticking out of Ryuji's stomach, six digits on that scrap of newspaper-and Ando had played with them until he came up with the word "ring". Was this all pure chance?

Somewhere in the distance he heard an alarm. He remembered the fire bell he'd heard once as a child in the small town he'd grown up in. Both his parents worked overtime and never came back until late, so he was home alone with his grandmother. They covered their ears when the clamor of the bell broke the night's silence. Ando could remember curling up on his grandmother's knees, trembling. Their town had an old fire-watch tower, and the bell meant that fire had broken out somewhere. But he didn't know that. All he knew was that the sound carried with it an air of terrible dread. It seemed like a harbinger of tragedy to come. And in fact, a year later on the exact same day, his father died unexpectedly.

Ando found that he'd lost his appetite. In fact, he felt nauseated. He pushed aside the food, which had only just arrived, and asked for another glass of water.

Hey, Ryuji, are you trying to tell me something?

When they'd signed over to the family the coffin containing his body, all hollowed out like a tin toy, Ryuji had seemed to relax his white, square-jawed visage a tiny bit, giving the impression, almost, of a smile. Only an hour ago, Mai had seen that face and bowed, to no one in particular. They'd probably hold the wake tonight, and then cremate the body tomorrow. This very moment, the hearse was probably well on its way to the family's house in Sagami Ohno. Ando wished he could watch Ryuji's body turn to ash. He had the strange feeling that his old classmate was still alive.

They were to meet at the benches near the library. Ando finished auditing a lecture at the law school on the main campus, checked his watch, and then headed for the appointed spot.

Only the day before, Mai Takano had placed a call to the M.E.'s office. Ando happened to be there-it was his turn on autopsy duty again-and when he heard her voice on the phone, he instantly recalled her face. It wasn't all that unusual to get calls from relatives or friends of people he'd worked on, but usually they were calling to ask about the cause of death. Mai had a different reason for calling. She said that on the evening of the day of the autopsy, she'd slipped out of the wake early and gone to Ryuji's apartment. She'd needed to set in order an unpublished manuscript he'd been working on. In the process, she'd discovered something that bothered her. She hinted, subtly, that it might have something to do with Ryuji's death.

Of course, Ando was interested in anything of value she might be able to tell him, but he was also eager to be in the presence of her pristine beauty again. He'd told her he had to attend a lecture on the main campus, but after that he could make time for her. She could tell him all about it then.

He'd told her when the lecture was scheduled to end, and then she'd suggested the place.

The benches in front of the library, under the cherry trees.

He'd spent two years on the main campus getting his general education requirements out of the way, but he and his friends had never used these benches as a rendezvous point. His future wife, who'd been a liberal arts major at this university, had preferred to meet under the gingko trees.

Before he even got close to the benches he recognized the woman sitting there as Mai. Her one-piece today was a primary color, making her look younger than she had at the M.E.'s office ten days ago. He circled around in front of her to get a look at her face, but she was immersed in a paperback and didn't look up.

He accosted her, with intentionally loud footsteps, and she raised her head.

"Ms Takano?"

She started to stand up, saying, "Thank you for… the other day." She plainly couldn't figure out quite how to greet a man who had just dissected her lover.

Ando was holding a briefcase. His hands looked nimble and his fingers long and thin enough to proclaim what he did for a living.

"May I sit down?"

Without waiting for her reply, he sat down next to her and crossed his legs.

"Have the test results come back yet?" she asked in an inflectionless voice.

Ando glanced at his watch. "How are you for time? If it's okay with you, why don't we go have a cup of tea? There are a couple of things I'd like to ask you."

Without a word, Mai stood up and tugged at the hem of her dress.

They went to a cafe of her choosing. For a student hangout, it was surprisingly quiet-it felt more like a hotel lounge. They sat at a table next to the window, where they could look out onto the street, and the waitress brought them water and hot towels.

Mai didn't hesitate before ordering. "I'll have a fruit parfait."

Surprised, and unable to settle on anything, Ando could only say, "Coffee for me." Ten days ago, he'd gotten an impression of meekness from her. That was beginning to change.

"I love fruit," she shrugged after the waitress left. For a moment, Ando thought she'd said I love you, and then kicked himself for indulging in such a ridiculous fantasy. A man of your age!

It was truly a gorgeous fruit parfait, nestled on wafers and topped with a cherry. From the way she tore into it, it was clear that Mai was partial to this shop's confections. She had the same kind of intent look that Takanori used to wear when he was eating something he loved. It just about broke Ando's heart. He didn't even sip his coffee, but simply marveled at the utter concentration with which she wielded her spoon. Even if he could have convinced his wife to come to a place like this, she wouldn't have ordered a fruit parfait. She would have stuck to lemon tea, no sugar please, or something like that: she was always on a diet, and never let anything sweet pass her lips. But Mai, at least with her clothes on, looked thinner than his wife had been back in her better days. To be sure, his wife had gotten so thin by the time they'd separated that Ando had often had to avert his eyes; when he thought of her now, however, he always pictured her face as round and soft as it had been when they got married.

Mai took the cherry into her mouth, and then demurely spat the seed out onto an oval-shaped glass dish before wiping her lips with her napkin. He'd never met a woman so fun just to watch. She munched away on the wafers, spilling crumbs on the tabletop, and then gazed longingly at the cream that clung to the bottom of the dish. No doubt she was wondering if she could lick it up.

When she'd finally finished eating, she asked Ando what sort of tests had been performed on Ryuji's organs after the autopsy. It felt incredibly strange to be talking about the treatment of cutout organs to a young woman whom he'd just watched eat a fruit parfait. But here goes.

Not long ago, he'd gotten burned trying to explain similar tests to a bereaved family member. There'd been a lapse in communication: the other person hadn't really understood what was meant by a tissue sample. The family member was imagining his loved one's organs in jars, pickled in formaldehyde, and Ando and he had wasted a lot of time in meaningless back-and-forth. Tissue samples were as mundane to Ando as ballpoint pens were to an office worker, but he had realized then that most people had no idea what they looked like, how big they were, how they were obtained, etc., unless it was spelled out to them. So he decided to start by telling her about tissue samples.

"It's almost all lab work, you see. First, we cut out a small piece of the heart in the area where the infarction took place and preserve it in formaldehyde. From it we slice a smaller portion in the shape of a Sashimi and embed that in paraffin. You know, wax. Then we slice from that a microscope specimen, take the wax off, and stain it. Then we have a tissue sample, which we send off to the lab for analysis. After that, it's just a matter of waiting for the results."

"So I should imagine a thin slice of the organ squeezed between two glass plates?"

"That's about right."

"And that makes it easier to examine?"

"Of course. We stain it so its cellular structure can be examined with a microscope."

"Did you have a look?"

A look? At what? Ryuji's cells, of course. Regardless, Ando thought Mai's question had an odd nuance.

"I gave it a quick peek before sending it off to the lab, yes."

"How was it?" She was leaning forward now.

"There was a blockage in his left coronary artery, just prior to the left circumflex branch. The blood couldn't get past it, and Ryuji's heart stopped. As I think I explained, we took circular sections of the tissue in question and examined them under a microscope. I was surprised by what I found. You see, usually, when there's a heart attack, what's happened is that the arteries have hardened: cholesterol or other lipids have built up, narrowing the passageway, until one of these atheromas breaks off, clogging the artery. But in Ryuji's case, while there was blockage, it wasn't due to hardening of the arteries. That much was clear."

"So what was it?" Mai's question was short and to the point.

Ando's answer was just as concise. "A sarcoma."

"A sarcoma?"

"That's right. We haven't determined yet if the cells belong to a specific tissue or if it's an undifferentiated tumor, but at the very least, we've never seen it before in the tunica intima or tunica media. Simply put, he developed a strange lump that blocked his blood flow."

"So these were like cancer cells?"

"It's probably safe to think of it in those terms. But normally, sarcomas don't occur inside blood vessels. It's impossible."

"But when the test results come back, you'll know what caused the sarcoma, right?"

Ando shook his head, laughing. "Unless there are other symptoms, we probably won't. I'm sure I don't even have to mention AIDS as an example

Even in today's world, in which science, seemingly, is omnipotent, there are still a whole host of illnesses whose causes are unknown. There was no way to tell whether the symptom in question would prove to be part of a larger, identifiable syndrome or not.

Ando continued. "There is one more possibility. Ryuji might have had a congenital defect in his coronary artery."

A layperson could figure out what that meant. If Ryuji had been born with that lump in his artery, it would have seriously impaired his ability to live an active life.

"But Professor Takayama…"

"I know. He was a track star in high school. His event was the shot-put, I believe."

"Yes."

"So it's hard to imagine it had been there since birth. Which is why I want to ask you if Ryuji ever complained about pains in his chest, that sort of thing."

Ando's relationship with Ryuji had basically ended upon graduation. They said "hi" if they passed each other in the hall at the university, but that was about it. Ando certainly wouldn't have noticed any change in Ryuji's physical condition.

"We were together for less than two years."

"That's fine. Did he ever mention anything to you during that period?"

"He was tougher than other people. I can't even remember him catching a cold. He wasn't the type to whine, though, so even if he had a problem he might not have mentioned it. I certainly never noticed anything."

"Nothing? Nothing at all?"

"Well… that's just it, you see."

Ando remembered suddenly that he hadn't called Mai here to give her a report on the autopsy. She had summoned him, to tell him about something that had happened when she'd been going over Ryuji's papers the night of the wake.

"Right. Well, let's hear it."

"I'm not sure if it has any connection with the professor's death, though." Mai was maddeningly cute as she dithered. Ando fixed her with an intense gaze, trying to urge her onward.

"Please tell me."

"Well, ten nights ago, I slipped out of the wake early. I went to the professor's apartment to put in order an unpublished article of his. While I was doing that, the phone rang. I didn't know what to do, but in the end I picked up the receiver. It was 'Asakawa', a friend of the professor's from high school."

"Do you know this person?"

"We'd met once. We ran into each other at the professor's apartment four or five days before he died."

"A man?"

"Of course."

"Right. And?"

"He didn't seem to know that the professor had died. So I told him, briefly, about what had happened the night before. Mr Asakawa seemed really shocked. He said he'd be right over."

"Meaning…"

"To Professor Takayama's apartment."

"Did he show up?"

"Yes, much sooner than I'd expected. He came in and glanced all around the apartment as if he were searching for something. And he asked me over and over if I had noticed anything. He looked like a man driven into a corner. He kept asking me if I'd noticed anything strange about the place immediately after the professor's death. But what really struck me as odd was what he said next."

She paused and sipped some water.

"So… what did he say?"

"I remember it exactly. He said: 'He didn't tell you anything there at the end? No last words? Nothing, say, about a videotape?'"

"A videotape?"

"Yes. Strange, isn't it?"

What an unexpected, inappropriate thing to bring into a discussion about Ryuji's sudden death the night before. Why bring up such a matter?

"Well, had you heard anything about a videotape from Ryuji?"

"No. Nothing."

"A videotape, huh?" Ando muttered, leaning back in his chair. He sensed a shadow over the image of this Asakawa who'd visited Ryuji's apartment the night of the autopsy.

"In any case, I was wondering-I'm not an expert, but is it possible that whatever was recorded on this videotape was so shocking it gave him a heart attack?"

"Hmm."

Ando thought he understood what had been troubling Mai. She would have been too embarrassed even to bring the matter up until she'd ascertained the cause of death. It reminded him of a thriller he'd seen on TV two or three days ago. A woman is having an affair with one of her husband's subordinates, but she's been ensnared. Somebody has videotaped the two of them going at it at a love hotel, catching everything, and the tape is mailed to her with an extortion letter. At home, she puts the tape into the VCR and glares at the screen. Snow, and then an image cut its way in. The naked body of a woman pressed up against a young man's. Panting. The instant she realizes that it's her on the screen, she faints. It was such a common and vulgar scene that Ando had felt like a fool watching the drama.

No doubt it was possible to use a videotape to provide simultaneous visual and aural stimulation and shock somebody's system. If the wrong kind of conditions were met, the possibility of it resulting in death couldn't be ruled out. But Ando had examined Ryuji's body in detail. He'd even taken slices of his coronary artery and made tissue samples.

"No, that's out of the question. He definitely had a blockage in his left coronary artery. Besides, you know Ryuji. Can you really imagine him dying from shock just from watching a videotape?" He laughed as he said that.

"No, of course not…" Mai allowed herself to be coaxed into a weak laugh. Their impressions of Ryuji jibed, then. He'd been a man of almost disgusting daring, real steel in his spine. It would have taken something extraordinary to get to him, body or soul.

"Do you happen to know how I might contact this Asakawa person?"

"I'm sorry…" Mai started to say she didn't, but then she brought a hand to her mouth. "No, wait, I think I remember the professor introducing him as Kazuyuki Asakawa from the Daily News."

"Kazuyuki Asakawa from the Daily News." Ando made a note in his planner. If he called the newspaper, he shouldn't have much trouble finding the man's contact info. He might need to talk to the man yet.

Mai seemed to have caught a glimpse of what he'd written in his planner. She brought her hand to her chin and said, "Huh."

"What?" Ando looked up at her.

"So that's how you'd write Kazuyuki."

Ando looked back down at the page.

It took him a minute to get what she meant. There were several different combinations of characters that could be used to spell the surname "Asakawa". The same was true for the given name "Kazuyuki". Normally, he would have had to ask which characters were used, or just written the name down phonetically. But instead, he'd written the ideograms without hesitation, as if the name were one he'd known all along.

Mai's eyes opened wide as she asked, "How did you know it's written that way?"

Ando couldn't answer. Was this some sort of premonition? He felt he'd be coming into close contact with the man fairly soon.

For the first time in nearly a year and a half, Ando had allowed himself some sake with his dinner. This was the first time since the death of his son that he'd even wanted alcohol. He had liked to drink. It wasn't that he'd given it up out of a sense of guilt for the boy's death. Alcohol tended to amplify whatever mood he was in to begin with. If he was in a good mood, it made him jubilant; if he felt sad, it just made him sadder. For the last year and a half he'd been shrouded in grief, and so naturally he'd been unable to drink. He had the feeling that if he took one swallow he wouldn't be able to stop until he was falling-down drunk. He was afraid he'd be unable to control an impulse to die should it arise. He didn't have the courage to go there.

It was raining, rare for late October. It was a misty rain, wafting underneath his umbrella like smoke, wetting his neck. He didn't feel cold. A faint glow from the sake warmed his body. As he walked back to his apartment, he kept sticking his hand out from beneath the umbrella to see if he could catch raindrops on his palm, but it didn't work. The rain seemed to be coming not down from the sky, but up from below.

On his way down the road from the station, he wavered in front of a convenience store, thinking to buy a bottle of whiskey. Brightly lit skyscrapers towered over him. The cityscape was more beautiful than any natural landscape. The government edifices, all lit up, glowed cannily in the rain. He stared at the flashing red light at the very top of a building until it began to seem like a message in Morse code. It flashed on and off, slowly, like some thickheaded, barely articulate monster.

Ever since he'd separated from his wife he'd been living in a dilapidated four-story apartment building facing Yoyogi Park. It was definitely a step down from the South Aoyama condo he'd lived in before. There was no parking, so he'd had to give up his brand-new BMW. In his miserable little studio apartment he felt like he was a student again. There was nothing in the place to suggest that he cared about how he lived. The only furniture was a bookcase and an aluminum bed.

He went inside and walked over to the window to open it. The phone rang.

"Hello?"

"It's me."

He recognized the speaker immediately. There was only one person who'd start a conversation with him like that, without bothering to identify himself: Miyashita, another classmate from his med school days. Miyashita was currently an Assistant Researcher in Pathology.

"Sorry not to call earlier." Ando knew why Miyashita had called, so he apologized before he could be reproached.

"I was at your lab today."

"I was at the M.E.'s office."

"Must be nice having two paying jobs."

"What are you talking about? Your job's tenure track."

"Never mind that. You haven't RSVP'd about Funakoshi's farewell party."

Funakoshi, over at Internal Medicine, was leaving to take over his father's clinic back home, the old man was retiring. Miyashita had taken it upon himself to organize a send-off for him. He'd already told Ando the time and place, and Ando was supposed to get back to him right away to tell him whether or not he'd be attending. He had gotten wrapped up in other things and forgotten. If his son hadn't died, Ando would probably have been the one getting the big send-off. His stint in forensics was only supposed to be temporary, a stepping-stone. He'd planned to get the basics down pat, then switch to clinical work in preparation for taking over his wife's father's clinic… One moment of carelessness, and the whole blueprint had been ruined.

"When is it again?" Ando wedged the receiver in between his ear and his shoulder as he flipped through the pages of his planner.

"Next Friday."

"Friday, huh?" He didn't need to check his schedule. Only three hours ago, as he and Mai had parted, they'd made a dinner date for that evening. Six o'clock next Friday. It was clear which commitment should take priority. For the first time in ten years, he'd asked a young woman out to dinner, and somehow, she hadn't bolted. There was no way he was going to send things back to square one. Ando felt the date could be the moment of truth as to whether or not he was ever going to wake up from his long nightmare.

"So how about it?" Miyashita nagged.

"Sorry, but I can't make it. Prior engagement."

"Really? You sure this isn't the same old thing?"

The same old thing? Ando didn't know what that meant. He couldn't remember if he used any excuse habitually to turn down his friend's invitations.

"What same old thing?"

"Your not being able to drink. When I know for a fact you used to drink like a fish."

"It's not that."

"Look, if you don't want to drink, you don't have to. Fake it with oolong tea or something. But you've got to be there."

"I said it's not that."

"So you can drink?"

"Sort of."

"Wait-is it some girl you're after?"

Miyashita's intuition was sharper than one would have guessed from his rotund physique. Ando always tried to play things as straight as he could with Miyashita, but he wasn't sure he could say he was "after" a woman he'd only met twice. He didn't know how to respond, so he said nothing.

"She must be something if she made you forget Funakoshi's send-off."

Ando still had nothing to say.

"Well, I'm happy for you. Don't worry-hey, why don't you bring her along? We'd welcome her, you know? With open arms."

"We're not at that stage yet."

"You're taking things slowly?"

"I guess you could say that."

"Hey, I won't twist your arm."

"Sorry."

"Do you know how many times you've apologized during this conversation? I get the picture. I'll put you down for a no-show. To make up for it, I'm going to spread the word that you've got a girl, so brace yourself."

Miyashita laughed, and Ando knew he wouldn't be able to get mad at the guy. The only comfort Ando had been afforded during the gut-wrenching da' s after his son died and his wife left him had come from a present Miyashita had given him. Miyashita hadn't told him to "cheer up" or anything meaningless of that sort; instead he'd given Ando a novel, saying, "Read this." It was the first Ando had heard of his friend's interest in literature; he also discovered for the first time that books could genuinely give strength. The novel was sort of a Bildungsroman, the story of an emotionally and physically scarred youth who learns to overcome his past. The book still occupied an honored place on Ando's bookshelf.

"By the way," said Ando, changing the subject, "did you learn anything from Ryuji's tissue sample?"

It was Miyashita's Pathology Department that usually handled any diseased samples that needed to be analyzed.

"Oh, that." Miyashita sighed.

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know quite what to tell you. I'm at my wits' end with that. What do you think of Professor Seki?"

Seki was the doctor in charge of the pathology lab. He was famous for his research on the initial formation of cancer cells.

"What do I think of him? Why?"

"The old man says some funny things sometimes."

"What did he say?"

"It's not the arterial blockage that he's focusing on. You remember the throat was ulcerated?"

"Of course."

It wasn't very noticeable, but he definitely remembered it. He'd overlooked it until his assistant had drawn his attention to it. After the autopsy, he'd cut the affected portion out complete.

"He took one look at it with his naked eye, and what do you think the old man said it looked like?"

"Knock it off and just tell me."

"Alright, alright, I'll tell you: he said it looked like what you see on smallpox victims."

"Smallpox?" Ando yelped in spite of himself.

Smallpox had been stamped out through a concerted global vaccination effort. Since a case in Somalia in 1977, not a single patient had been reported worldwide. In 1979, the WHO had declared the disease eradicated. Smallpox only infects humans. No new victims meant that the virus itself had effectively ceased to exist. The last specimens were being kept frozen in liquid nitrogen in Moscow and in a lab in Atlanta, Georgia. If a new case had appeared, it could only have come from one of the two research facilities, but, given the tight security the virus was under, it was unthinkable.

"Surprised?"

"It has to be a mistake."

"Probably is. Still, that's what the old guy said. Respect his opinion."

"When will you have the results?"

"In about a week. Listen, if we actually do turn up the smallpox virus, it'll be huge for you."

Miyashita sounded bemused; he didn't believe it himself. He was sure it was an error of some sort. It was only natural, since medical professionals their age had never even had the chance to see a real smallpox patient. The only way for them to learn about the illness was through specialist works on viruses. Ando had seen a picture once, in a book, of a child covered with smallpox eruptions. A cute kid, mercilessly defiled by the pea-sized pustules, turning a hollow gaze on the camera. Those sores were the primary visible characteristic of smallpox. Ando seemed to remember reading that they reached their peak seven days after infection…

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 761