He couldn’t believe how sweet this sudden vision tasted. His heart was pounding, and he silently took a few deep breaths to calm himself down. He’d better ask another question, he thought, or he might just sit there mooning at her, losing himself in daydreams. Besides, he wanted to raise certain core issues that Yoshikawa might not touch upon.
‘You,’ he croaked, and cleared his throat. ‘Excuse me. You wrote that you were thinking about going to Spain after leaving the company.’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you planning to live there long-term?’
‘I have a friend in Madrid, an old friend from ballet school, so it did occur to me to move there. But I haven’t made any actual preparations or anything, which makes me wonder how serious I really am about it all.’
She lowered her gaze in a melancholy way. Aoyama studied this heart-piercing expression and swallowed.
‘May I ask,’ he said, ‘about your experience with ballet?’
‘Of course.’ She looked up again and met his gaze.
‘You said you injured yourself.’
‘That’s right.’
‘It must have been awfully difficult to give up on something you’d devoted yourself to for so long. Of course, if you’d rather not talk about it . . .’
‘No, it’s fine. I can discuss it fairly objectively now . . . I think.’
She shot him a lonesome little smile as she spoke these last two words, and again he felt something pierce his heart. It was a smile of resignation, and he recognised it all too well.
‘Stop me if this is too personal,’ he said, ‘but in your essay, I believe you wrote that being suddenly deprived of the thing that’s most important to you is in a sense like learning to accept death.’
‘I suppose I did write that.’
She peered at Aoyama inquisitively, wondering, no doubt, where he was going with this, but . . .
What a look
, he thought. He imagined her peering at him like that up close, in private, and whispering something intense. He’d probably melt into a puddle.
‘It moved me,’ he said, and she opened her eyes wide and quietly gasped.
‘Ha?’
‘I could relate to it. I think almost everyone has had, to one degree or another, a similar experience. Something falls apart on you, or is torn away from you, something that can never be fixed or replaced. You struggle with it and agonise over it and kick and scream, but there’s really nothing you can do. In order to keep on living, you have to learn to accept the reality, accept the loss or the injury, and the wound it leaves. To be frank, I was quite taken aback to see a young woman like yourself selecting such a precise metaphor to describe that sort of acceptance and resignation. When I read it I thought, here’s a person who’s really living her life in earnest.’
Yoshikawa poked Aoyama’s thigh with his thumb. Meaning, Aoyama assumed, something like ‘Listen to you.’ Yamasaki Asami took a deep breath and slowly let it out.
‘I really did suffer a lot,’ she said, ‘and for a lot longer than I even care to remember. I was sure I’d never find anything to take the place of ballet, and it took all my energy just to get through each day. My parents and my friends all said that time alone would heal the wound, and I guess I knew that was true, but I wished I could hibernate or something, and let time go by without having to suffer through it. But of course the clock just kept slowly ticking away.
Tick
,
tick
,
tick
– like it was chipping away at me, at my life. Trying to do other things was painful, but just sitting around and doing nothing was even worse. I don’t know if it’s about resignation so much as . . . Well, death is the worst thing that can happen to you, isn’t it? So in that sense, I thought it was like accepting death.’
‘What do you think?’ Aoyama said after she’d left the meeting room and Yoshikawa had sent the photographer out again and told the receptionist they’d take a fifteen-minute break.
‘What do I think?’ Yoshikawa said, reaching in his pocket and pulling out a new pack of Lark Milds. He took his time opening the packet, extracting a cigarette, and lighting it. ‘I’m not sure how to answer that,’ he said. ‘There’s definitely something about her that puts a man on edge. I can’t remember the last time just talking to a woman made me want a cigarette.’ He looked at Aoyama and sighed, emitting a stream of smoke. ‘You’re gone, aren’t you. I mean, “Here’s a person who’s living her life in earnest”? Where’d that come from? It’s not something you’d normally say during an audition, that’s for sure. I nearly fell off my chair.’
Aoyama protested that he was only saying what he really felt. He couldn’t remember, he said, the last time anyone had made that sort of impression on him.
‘Well, there’s no denying that she seems earnest,’ Yoshikawa said. ‘But something about her bothers me.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah. I can’t put my finger on it, but . . . Well. Anyway.’
The rest of the auditions were lacklustre. Yoshikawa was tired, not to mention irritated with Aoyama for being so obviously bored and distracted, and he burned his way through the entire packet of Larks. Aoyama, for his part, had only one thing on his mind: how to go about meeting Yamasaki Asami alone next time.
He returned home an hour earlier than usual. He had the eight-millimetre videotape of her audition and was eager to watch it alone. Rie-san was in the kitchen making dinner and probably wouldn’t leave until Shige got home from school. It was six p.m. now, and since entering high school Shige generally got home at about seven. As soon as he arrived he’d demolish his dinner in the manner popularised by starving lions, and then disappear into his room. Aoyama would have to wait until then to study the tape.
Once things had progressed a bit, assuming all went well, he’d show the tape to Shige, and of course he’d have to introduce her to him at some point.
‘Shige-chan’s kind of late, isn’t he?’ Rie-san said, turning from the potatoes she was slicing. ‘It gets dark by five-thirty these days! Shouldn’t he try to get home a little earlier?’
Aoyama was at the dining-table, reading the evening paper. Over the years, Ryoko had gradually made improvements on this kitchen of theirs, turning it into a highly functional and invitingly cosy space. During the day it was a better place to relax than even the living-room. The door leading out to the garden was mostly glass, and the big, south-facing windows made this the sunniest room in the house.
‘He’s all right. A kid has a lot to do at that age – hanging out with his friends and whatnot.’
‘But there’ve been so many muggings and things lately! When I walk home at night, I’m very careful to stick to the streets that are well lit, believe me! If you cross through the park, where the light isn’t so good, you see these kids – teenagers – loitering around in big groups, and, I’ll tell you, it’s very frightening!’
‘Don’t worry. I’ve schooled him in the ancient art of running like hell if he ever feels threatened. He knows what he’s doing.’
‘I know he knows what he’s doing, but they say you can buy anything out there nowadays, even pistols from Russia or China! It’s terrifying!’
‘I’ve talked to him about that too. Rie-san, a boy Shige’s age, if he meets a cute girl on the train, for example, he’ll think nothing of spending an hour the next day waiting to see if she shows up on the platform again.’
‘As long as it’s something fun and innocent like that, fine, but . . .’
Rie-san was preparing a creamy stew. She made a lot of stews and soups for them, dishes that could be reheated and eaten right away. Occasionally Aoyama cooked dinner himself, but he made a point of sharing the evening meal with Shige whenever possible. Gangsta was right outside the glass door, and each time Rie-san walked from the counter to the refrigerator he’d bark:
Give me food!
Aoyama imagined Gangsta barking at Yamasaki Asami as she prepared dinner in this kitchen. He even pictured the design and colour of the apron she’d be wearing. Gangsta would be wary of her at first, as he always was with strangers. But after two or three months his bark would change from one of distrust to one like this, imploring her to feed him. Compared to these seven long years, three months was no time at all . . .
Shige got home a little after seven and reported, to no one’s surprise, that he was dying of hunger. Watching the news and wondering aloud how Japanese politicians had managed to sink to such depths of depravity, he polished off four bowls of stew, then he retreated to his room, saying he wanted to try out some new software he’d borrowed from a friend.
Now was Aoyama’s chance to review Yamasaki Asami’s audition video, but he remembered something even more important. He had to arrange to meet with her alone, and the sooner the better. He wondered if he should just call her and tell her the truth, that he thought he was in love with her. Yoshikawa would surely advise against it. Of course he wouldn’t reveal the true purpose behind the audition, but why not candidly confess how he’d felt when reading her essay and speaking with her at the interview? However dubious the circumstances, there was no denying the impact that meeting her had had on him.
His heartbeat began to race. He had her telephone number. It was just past eight o’clock, so he probably had an hour or so before it might be improper to telephone a young single woman. He sat on the sofa in the living-room and picked up the cordless phone, feeling as if he were Shige’s age and had just spotted the girl he secretly loved on the subway platform.
Can’t do it
, he muttered to himself and put the phone back down. He opened the drinks cabinet, got out his most expensive bottle of cognac – a
grande champagne
– and poured a glass.
At exactly eight-thirty, before he had a chance to get too drunk, he punched out the number on the handset. Yamasaki Asami answered on the first ring.
‘Yes?’ she said. Her voice was deeper and thicker than it had been at the audition. Perhaps she’d been dozing.
‘Ah, this is Aoyama. One of the producers who interviewed you this afternoon.’
‘Oh, hello!’ she said, reverting immediately to the crystalline voice that had haunted him all evening. The change was so abrupt that, had he been in a less agitated state of mind, it might have struck him as odd. ‘Thank you again for your time today.’
He tried to disguise his nervousness by getting right to the point and keeping things as businesslike as possible.
‘I was hoping to talk with you a little more and was wondering if you could find the time. Yoshikawa, the other producer, won’t be joining us, so perhaps it might be best to meet during the day. I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea.’
‘I’d be delighted!’
‘When would be good for you?’
‘Whenever you like. I’m not working daytimes now, so . . .’
‘How about the day after tomorrow, then – Thursday, about one p.m.?’
‘Perfect!’
He specified a café in one of the high-rise hotels in Akasaka.
After hanging up the phone Aoyama sank back on the sofa, feeling like a balloon in a warm blue sky. Minutes later, as he was blissfully absorbing his fourth glass of cognac, Yoshikawa called.
‘Sorry to disturb you this late in the evening, but something happened that’s kind of weighing on my mind.’
‘No problem,’ Aoyama said. His own voice sounded embarrassingly giddy, as if he’d been inhaling helium.
‘Look, it’s not that I was suspicious or anything, but after you left I telephoned Victor. Maybe it’s no big deal – just some sort of mistake, probably – but there’s no producer named Shibata in the domestic music division.’
Aoyama’s brandy-soaked brain couldn’t make any sense of this at first.
Victor? Shibata?
‘Or rather,’ said Yoshikawa, ‘not any more, there isn’t. A producer named Shibata Hiroshi used to work there, but he died a year and a half ago.’
5
Aoyama arrived at the hotel a full forty minutes early. The café was on the first floor, off the lobby. He’d phoned the day before to reserve a table for one o’clock, as well as a window-side table in a restaurant on the top floor at one-thirty. He had agonised a bit, wondering if a restaurant on the top floor of a high-rise hotel wasn’t a bit tacky, if it wouldn’t be in better taste to take her for sushi or sukiyaki in the Japanese restaurant in the basement, or to go out to a chic bistro in the town, for example, or a trattoria, or a French restaurant. All day yesterday and all this morning in the office he’d got exactly zero work done. He’d seemed so dazed and distracted, in fact, that several members of his staff had showed concern, asking if he was feeling all right, or if he hadn’t better see a doctor.
The café was jammed with the lunch crowd, and he had to stand with the mob near the entrance and wait for his table. He surveyed the lobby to make sure Yamasaki Asami hadn’t arrived already. Or, more precisely, to make sure she wasn’t watching him stand there like an idiot, fidgeting nervously and checking his watch every few seconds.
‘Listen,’ Yoshikawa had said on the phone the night before last. ‘I know you’re pretty far gone, but try to keep your feet on the ground. Don’t let her set the pace, whatever you do. We don’t know anything for certain about this girl, but I can’t shake the feeling that something’s wrong here. I’m not saying she was intentionally lying, but, come on, there’s something strange about naming a guy who died a year and a half ago as your mentor. He died of a heart problem, apparently, but if he really was her mentor, how could she not know that?’