Evil and the Mask by Fuminori Nakamura Page B

and under a white half coat I could see a cream sweater and a dark skirt. She climbed into a blue Stepwagon, a courtesy car for the women at the club. The driver was a young man, and the other women in the vehicle were about the same age as Kaori. The vehicle backed up a bit and then turned out of the parking lot. At that moment her profile was visible through the window, head down. The car drove off and the recording ended.
    I lit a cigarette and played it again. Kaori opened the door of the shop, put the receipt in her purse. My heart rate quickened. Above her sweater, the skin around her throat was pale. Since she was on her way home from work, she was still heavily made up. I watched it again, lit another cigarette, watched it once more. Without my noticing it, the piano tune flowing over the stereo had finished.
    MY LIFE SINCE I separated from Kaori had passed uneventfully. I dropped out of high school, took the university entrance exam and went to a college in Tohoku. Perhaps I realized that I could never get on with my life unless I left the estate. Every day I continued to wound the people I met and to harm myself. When I dated girls, Kaori’s shadow was simply overpowering. Towards my friends, too, I couldn’t keep up the pretence for long. Everything was distorted—those past events, which I had made no effort to come to terms with, and my existence since then. I was trapped in my memories of the time I spent with Kaori. After that my life passed as a series of meaningless images. No matter how much I triedto like other women, I just couldn’t do it. Twice I made halfhearted suicide attempts. On the third time, when I climbed to the roof of my condo, I realized that I wanted to see her one last time. I knew that Yoshigaki, one of the servants Kaori had been on fairly good terms with, kept in touch with her from time to time. I got her to email me a photo of Kaori at the women’s university she was attending in Tokyo. She was lovely. I made up my mind to become a statistic, one of the thirty thousand suicides in Japan each year. But then I heard from Yoshigaki that Kaori was having trouble with her boyfriend, and my feelings became confused. It was actually a common enough problem—he was two-timing her. My heart was empty enough to be relieved that she had found a new lover. Then when I heard that she’d finally been dumped, I headed for Tokyo, my mind all mixed up.
    I hired a private eye out of the phone book and got him to approach the guy who broke up with Kaori. He succeeded in getting friendly with him and found out what sort of person he was—one of those guys you find everywhere, who seduce women and then treat them like dirt. I met him several times, posing as the detective’s friend. He was a coward at heart, but that made no difference to me. I set fire to his apartment. I can clearly remember how quiet it was when I lit the match. He wasn’t killed, but suffered burns to the chest. When I heard that he’d quit university I left Tokyo. It wasn’t revenge. I simply wanted to set him on fire. Air, that was the word that came to mind. I felt as little emotion as air. And maybe I thought I was dead already. I went back up on the roof of my building, but then realized I could jump any time I wanted,it didn’t have to be then. After I graduated my eldest brother contacted me about finding a job. I ignored him and stayed in my apartment in Tohoku. Occasionally I’d pick up a hooker, get her to put on a white dress and have sex with her. Lust was depressing, but so was its release. Father had intended me to be a cancer, and I’d ended up this melancholy creature who couldn’t make anyone happy.
    Several years went by, and finally I started thinking about becoming a different person, not so much to start a new life as to make my old self disappear. To extinguish myself, to vanish, to become a bystander in life. The messages I received at infrequent intervals from Yoshigaki told me that Kaori’s life