Liza Minnelli, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr/1989 4 page

As he stepped off the street toward the main entranceway of the hospital, Ando could see the ambulance that had just passed them pull into the space between the old and new wings. It had taken the ambulance so long to negotiate the narrow streets that it had ended up arriving at the same time as Ando had on foot.

The siren fell silent, but the ambulance's rotating light remained on, throwing its red mottled pattern onto the hospital walls. Stillness descended from the clear blue sky and created a zone of silence around the ambulance like the circle of brightness from a spotlight. To go in, Ando had to walk past the ambulance. The red light finally stopped rotating, and the echoes of the siren were disappearing into the sky. The atmosphere was thick with the prospect that, any second now, the back doors of the ambulance might burst open and spew forth emergency medical personnel unloading a stretcher-but nothing happened. Ando stood and watched. Ten seconds, twenty seconds passed, but the doors didn't open. Silence prevailed. Thirty seconds. The air was frozen. Nobody came running out of the hospital, either.

Ando snapped out of his reverie and resumed walking. And suddenly, the ambulance doors opened with great force. A paramedic jumped out and helped his colleague inside the ambulance unload a stretcher. Ando didn't care what had prevented them from carrying out the patient immediately-these guys were too damn slow. Now they were holding the stretcher at a slant, and Ando's face came momentarily level with the oxygen-masked face of the patient. Their eyes met. The patient seemed to twist toward Ando, and stopped just as abruptly. His eyes were lifeless. He'd been picked up in critical condition, and now he'd met his end. In his line of work, Ando had witnessed any number of deaths. But never like this, by chance. Taking it as an ill omen, Ando averted his eyes from the dead man. He was no different from Miyashita with his astrology. First the snake on the embankment, and now this chance encounter with death. Lately, Ando had been looking for meaning in a lot of trivial events. He'd always scoffed at people who believed in jinxes and fortunes, but now, he realized, he was one of them.

Shinagawa Saisei Hospital was a general hospital connected to Shuwa University, and the man Ando was going to see, Dr Wada, actually belonged to the university. Kurahashi, his superior, seemed to have contacted him already. No sooner had Ando stated his business than he was shown to a room on the seventh floor of the west wing.

Ando peered into Asakawa's eyes where he lay prostrate on his sickbed, and was immediately reminded of the eyes of the patient he'd just seen. Asakawa's eyes had the exact same quality to them: they were the eyes of a dead man.

Arms hooked up to a pair of I.V.s, face turned toward the ceiling, Asakawa moved not a muscle. Ando didn't know what the man used to look like, but he guessed the poor soul must have been at about half his normal weight. His cheeks were sunken and his beard was turning white.

Ando moved to the bedside and addressed him gently. "Mr Asakawa."

No answer. Ando thought to touch him on the shoulder, but hesitated and turned to Dr Wada for permission. Wada nodded, and Ando placed a hand on Asakawa's shoulder, The skin under his gown had no resilience. Ando could feel the shoulder blade, and drew back his hand involuntarily. There was no reaction.

"Backing away from the bed, Ando turned to Wada and asked, "Has he been like this the whole time?"

"Yes," Wada answered flatly, Asakawa had been brought in from the accident site on October 21st meaning that for fifteen days now he hadn't spoken, hadn't cried, hadn't laughed, hadn't gotten angry, hadn't eaten, hadn't evacuated his bladder or his bowels on his own.

"What do you think is causing it, doctor?" Ando asked in his politest voice.

"At first we thought he'd sustained a brain injury in the accident, but tests showed no irregularities. We suspect a psychological cause."

"Shock?"

"Most likely."

Probably the shock of losing his wife and daughter at the same time had destroyed Asakawa's mind. But Ando wondered if that had been the only cause. Probably because he'd seen the photos of the accident scene, Ando had a surprisingly clear image of the moment of the collision. And every time he envisioned it, his gaze was drawn to the passenger seat and the video deck enshrined thereon. It loomed larger and larger in his imagination. Why had Asakawa been transporting a VCR? Where had he gone with it? If only the man could explain himself.

Ando pulled a stool up next to Asakawa's pillow and sat down. He stared at Asakawa's face in profile for a while, trying to imagine what dreamland the poor man was lost and floating in. Which was more pleasant to live in, he wondered, the world of reality or the world of delusion? Probably Asakawa's wife and daughter were alive in his dream world. He was probably holding his daughter to his breast and playing with her right now.

"Mr Asakawa," said Ando, with all the sympathy of one who felt the same grief. Since Asakawa had been a high-school classmate of Ryuji's, he must have been two years younger than Ando. But to look at him one would have thought he was past sixty. What had brought about such a change? Sadness accelerated the aging process. Ando was aware that he himself had aged rapidly over the past year, for instance. He used to be told he looked young for his age, but now, people often thought he was older than he really was.

"Mr Asakawa," he called a second time.

Wada couldn't bear to watch. "I don't think he can hear you."

It was true. No matter how many times Ando called Asakawa's name, there was no reaction. He gave up and got to his feet.

"Will he recover?"

Wada threw up his hands. "God knows."

Patients like Asakawa could get better or worse without warning. Medical science was usually helpless to predict what lay ahead in cases like these.

"I'd like to ask you to notify me if there's any change in his condition."

"Understood."

There was no point in staying any longer. Ando and Wada left together. At the door Ando stopped and took one last look at Asakawa. He couldn't detect the slightest change. Asakawa kept his dead gaze fixed on the ceiling.

Mai reclined the adjustable backrest as far as it would go, and then lay back and stared at the ceiling. This was what she did when she was at an impasse. With her back arched like this she could read the titles on the bookshelves behind her, upside down. Not minding that her still-damp hair was touching the carpet, she closed her eyes and stayed in that awkward position for a while.

Her whole studio apartment, including the bathroom and kitchenette, measured less than two hundred square feet. One entire wall was taken up with bookshelves, leaving her without enough room for a bed or a desk. At night, she pushed the low table she used in lieu of a proper desk into the corner so she could unroll her futon. She'd had to sacrifice space in order to afford a place near campus on just her monthly allowance from home and the money she earned tutoring.

Her three conditions for an apartment had been that it be close to school, that it have its own bath and toilet, and that it offer some privacy. Rent accounted for nearly half of her monthly expenses, but even so, she was satisfied with the arrangement. She knew that if she relocated a little farther out toward the suburbs she'd be able to find a bigger place, but she had no intention of moving. She actually found it convenient to be able to sit at her table in the middle of the room and have everything she needed within arm's reach.

With her eyes still closed, she felt around until she found her CD player and turned it on. She liked the song. She tapped her thighs in time with the music. She'd been on the track team in junior high and high school; she'd been a sprinter, and her legs were still pretty firm. She regulated her breathing until her chest, under her flowered pajamas, swelled and fell along with the music. She opened and closed her nostrils in rhythm, praying for a flash of wisdom. The discomfort of knowing that she had to finish the manuscript this very night had totally zapped her concentration.

She had an appointment tomorrow afternoon with Kimura, Ryuji's editor. She was supposed to turn over the clean copy of the last installment then. And she still hadn't come up with a solution for what to do about the end. She hadn't found the missing pages at Ryuji's parents' house, and she had no more time to spend looking for them. She'd even started to wonder if there were any pages missing to begin with. Maybe Ryuji had meant to add something later but died before he had the chance. In which case, she'd be better off giving up the search and concentrating her energies on coming up with adjustments worthy of the final installment.

But she'd been stuck for words for ages now. She hadn't written a line. She'd taken a shower to clear her head, but still her pen would not produce. She'd write something only to cross it out, to tear up the paper and throw it away.

Suddenly it struck her. She opened her eyes. You 're not getting anywhere because you 're trying to add something.

All her suffering came from the fact that she was trying to fill in the blank towards the end of the book with her own words. But it was only to be expected that she'd find it impossible to guess where Ryuji's line of thought would have gone. It tended to skip and jump at the best of times. It followed, then, that the best she could hope to do was to delete passages before and after the blank and smooth things over.

Mai got up and fixed the backrest so that it was nearly vertical. She'd been a fool. Taking words out was a lot easier than putting any in. Ryuji himself would undoubtedly have preferred it that way, even if it meant leaving some of his thoughts unexpressed. That would be far better than seeing them twisted beyond recognition.

Mai felt herself relax, now that she'd hit upon a solution. And as though to seize upon her relaxation, the videotape leapt into sight. She'd brought it back from Ryuji's parents' house without telling them. Ever since she'd discovered it there in the study, she'd wanted to see what was on it. But there hadn't been a TV set in the room, and the deck hadn't been hooked up. The only way she could watch the tape was to bring it home with her. At first she'd fully intended to ask Ryuji's parents if she could borrow it. But when she'd finally decided to leave, having given up on finding the pages, all the phrases she'd prepared vanished, and she couldn't figure out how to broach the subject.

Excuse me, but this videotape has really got me intrigued. Would you mind if I borrowed it?

What a vague way to put it. What did "intrigued" mean, anyway? If they asked her, she wouldn't be able to answer. So at last she'd simply left with the tape hidden in her bag.

Liza Minnelli, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr/1989. Chances are he'd just recorded a music show; the cassette itself was totally ordinary. And yet it had taken hold of her. She couldn't even remember when she'd taken it out of her bag. There it was, sitting on top of her fourteen-inch combination TV/VCR, tempting her. Even in Ryuji's room, when it had been shut inside the deck, that mechanical box, the tape had been attracting her in some way. Now, out of its shell, exposed, it seemed almost to have the power to suck her in whole.

The title didn't seem to mesh with Ryuji's taste in music. As a matter of fact, as far as she knew, he didn't listen to music all that much. When he did, it was light classical. In any case, from the handwriting on the label it was clear enough that the tape hadn't belonged to Ryuji. Someone else had made it. In the course of events, it had been taken to Ryuji's apartment in East Nakano. And now, it was in Mai's own apartment.

Without getting up, Mai reached over and put the tape in the VCR. The machine switched on automatically. She turned to the video channel and pushed PLAY.

Mai heard a thunk as the tape started to roll, and she hurriedly pressed PAUSE. What if it was something she was not meant to see? She balked. Once certain images were burned into your brain, she knew, it was impossible to wipe them away- to ever return to a state of purity. Maybe she'd better stop now before she regretted it. But in the end her doubts couldn't overcome her curiosity, and she released the pause button.

There was the sound of static as the picture wobbled. A second later, the screen went black as if ink had been splashed over it. There was no going back now. Mai braced herself. What then unfolded before her eyes was a series of scenes whose meaning she could not understand and whose nature she could never have guessed from the title.

As soon as she'd finished watching it, Mai felt like throwing up, and she ran into the bathroom. She wished she'd turned it off halfway through, but she couldn't resist the power of the images. She'd watched until the very end. No, it was probably more accurate to say that she was shown it. She simply couldn't press the stop button.

She was drenched with sweat and was shivering. She felt something force its way up from her stomach into her throat. She felt more revulsion than fear-something had come inside her, deep inside her. She knew she had to get it out. She stuck her finger down her throat, but she only vomited a small amount. She choked on the taste of bile, and tears streamed from her eyes. Turning a hollow, helpless gaze around the room, she slumped to her knees. For a while she could feel herself being destroyed-and then her consciousness receded, to some place far, far away.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 744