The Graveyard Apartment Read online

  In the immediate aftermath of Reiko’s death, everyone around Teppei was amazed by how cool and calm he was. Strangely, he was never suddenly overwhelmed by feelings of remorse, nor did he ever think, I’m entirely to blame for everything. He kept expecting that guilty-conscience revelation to strike at any moment, but meanwhile he and Misao continued to see each other. Time passed and now, seven years later, entire days went by when Reiko’s tragic death didn’t cross his mind at all.

  Although Misao did have a demure side, she was far more modern than Reiko: perpetually cheerful and exceptionally adept at expressing her feelings, which tended to run very deep. But Teppei was aware that while he saw Misao as an unusually genuine and cosmopolitan woman, she probably appeared quite ordinary and unremarkable to Tatsuji. In addition, Tatsuji clearly still saw his brother’s current wife as a woman who had, in effect, murdered Reiko, and no one knew better than Teppei that his brother had taken a deep dislike to Misao from the beginning. It was also obvious that all these years later, Tatsuji still hadn’t begun to forgive Teppei.

  “Earth to Tepp—you’re up! Here’s the mic,” the hostess said perkily, handing Teppei the portable microphone. The recorded instrumental introduction to the song began to play. Looking away in a blatant display of indifference, Tatsuji lit a cigarette.

  Without leaving his seat, Teppei began to sing, keeping his eyes on the page of lyrics on the table in front of him. The balding man abruptly stopped his raucous repartee with the hostesses and fixed his eyes on Teppei. He had a fat, ruddy, oily-looking face—the face, Teppei thought, of someone who might drop dead any moment from a heart attack or a cerebral aneurysm. The man took a big gulp of cognac, then stuck a cigar in his mouth and lit it. He was the type of man who always gave an impression of crudeness and vulgarity, no matter what he was doing. Only the eyes seemed alive in that overstuffed face, glittering ferociously like those of some wild beast monitoring its prey.

  Tatsuji, sitting next to Teppei in the padded booth, made an ostentatious show of glancing at his watch. You little brat, Teppei thought, but he went on singing without missing a beat. You think I wouldn’t rather be on the way home, too? It occurred to him, not for the first time, that going out drinking with his resentful younger brother really wasn’t enjoyable at all.

  The balding man said something to the hostess, then went back to staring at Teppei. The man’s fleshy lips wore a knowing smirk, but there was no laughter in his eyes. Teppei’s already minimal desire to sing had now evaporated completely, and when he reached the end of the second verse he placed the microphone on the table.

  “Wait, what about the third verse?” the hostess asked.

  “That’s okay, I’m done,” Teppei said with a doleful smile. “That song is just too old, and I got sick of singing it about halfway through. Hey, Tats, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to hit the road.”

  “Hang on, I’ll just be a minute,” Tatsuji said as he stood up and headed toward the restroom. The abandoned karaoke track continued playing until it reached the end of the song. The bald man and the three hostesses applauded halfheartedly.

  In the instant before the karaoke machine reverted to background-music mode, a rare silence enveloped the room. Then the shiny-pated man, without removing the cigar from between his teeth, said to no one in particular: “Oddly enough, everyone who sings that song seems to end up dead.”

  “You shouldn’t say such wicked things!” one of the hostesses admonished the man in a low voice—moved, perhaps, by consideration for Teppei’s feelings. The stranger’s gaze seemed to be fixed on something in the far distance, but after a long beat he turned to catch Teppei’s eye and muttered, “Seriously, I’ve personally known three people who died not too long after singing that song.”

  Teppei made no response. Every club or bar seemed to have one or two characters like this man, and the best tactic was to ignore them. Just then Tatsuji returned, and the two brothers left the bar together.

  “Hey,” Teppei said with a laugh as they walked toward the station, “it looks like I’m doomed. That old geezer was saying that everyone who sings the foghorn song ends up dying soon after, as a direct result.”

  “Really?” Tatsuji’s eyes widened in surprise. “That’s hard to believe. Maybe he was thinking about Keiichiro Akagi, who died young in an accident on a movie set?”

  “I don’t know, but when I get home I’m going to ask Misao to scatter some salt on the doorstep, just to be safe,” Teppei quipped.

  “Huh,” Tatsuji snorted. “To me, you always seem like the type of man who wouldn’t die even if someone killed you, as the saying goes. I’m sure you’d be immune to a silly curse like that, if such a thing existed.” On the surface Tatsuji’s words sounded like a compliment, but Teppei thought he detected a needling subtext.

  At the station, as they were about to head off to their respective train platforms, Tatsuji said, “One of these days Naomi and I need to stop by and bring you a housewarming gift. It’s been too long since I’ve seen Tamao and, um, Sis.”

  “It has been a while,” Teppei said. “Please feel free to drop by anytime.”

  “Thanks. We’ll do that soon, for sure. Evenings are probably out, though, since Naomi isn’t big on graveyards after dark.”

  Teppei felt like suggesting that spending a night locked inside a cemetery might improve Naomi’s attitude, but he managed to suppress that impulse.

  Instead, he bid his brother a hasty good-bye, and they went their separate ways.

  4

  March 21, 1987

  When Misao got up that morning and gazed out from the balcony, she saw that the usually deserted graveyard was teeming with families. With all the people running around, it almost looked like one of those hedge mazes sometimes seen at botanical gardens or amusement parks. Children were playing among the rows of neatly laid-out gravestones, and seen from the eighth floor, the legions of long, narrow wooden grave markers simply looked like decorative posts.

  It was the day of the vernal equinox, also known as the spring solstice—the official end of winter. The air was pleasantly warm; there was no wind to speak of, and not a cloud in sight. It was perfect weather for a picnic.

  No doubt the weather reporter on the midday news would say something formulaic, along the lines of “Today is the first day of spring. The Tokyo area will be blessed with clear and cloudless skies, and city dwellers will no doubt be setting out in droves to pay their respects at memorial parks within the city limits and in the outlying countryside, as well.”

  The verbiage never changes, Misao thought. The terms that the newscasters used for describing fine weather on holidays seemed to be set in stone. Really, she couldn’t remember a single time when she had heard one of them use any phrasing other than the predictable “blessed with clear and cloudless skies” or “city dwellers setting out in droves.” The TV announcers were inordinately fond of expressions like “frolic among the gravestones,” as well. In fairness, though, that was exactly what the people outside Misao’s window appeared to be doing at that very moment.

  Just as Misao finished hanging the week’s accumulated laundry out on the sunny, south-facing balcony to dry, Tamao and Teppei returned from taking Cookie for a walk.

  “I only ran a few laps, but look at me—I’m covered with sweat,” Teppei said, swiping at the perspiration that gleamed on his forehead. “It’s really warm out there. Not just that, but you know the little road in front of the temple? There are so many people coming in from outside that it looks like rush hour on the train platform. We saw lots of folks laying out their lunches on the grass at the entrance to the graveyard, too.”

  “I guess visiting your ancestors’ graves on the first day of spring is the next best thing to a picnic in the park,” Misao said. She filled a dish with water for Cookie, then set it on the floor. The dog’s pink tongue splashed water in every direction as she began lapping eagerly from the bowl.

  Tamao showed her mother a fistful of dandelion
s that she had picked along the way. The buds were still tightly closed.

  “Mama, do you think these dandelions will bloom if I put them in water?”

  “They might,” Misao said. “It’s certainly worth a try.”

  “Oh goody. I’ll go stick them in a cup.”

  As she watched her little daughter flying toward the kitchen sink, Misao spoke to Teppei with consciously feigned casualness. “Speaking of visiting graves, do you have any thoughts about how we should spend the day?”

  “You’re talking about Reiko’s grave, right?” Teppei asked as he blotted his sweaty neck with a towel.

  Misao was relieved to hear her husband address the subject so directly. Taking a cue from his decisive manner, she said lightly, “Well, it has been quite a while,” as if she were talking about nothing more fraught than, say, visiting the last resting place of her own grandmother—who had died ages ago, when Misao was only two or three years old. “I remember you were busier than usual at work during the autumn solstice, so we didn’t pay a visit then.”

  “Well, then, shall we go today? Hey, what if we brought lunch? We could join all the picnicking hordes. No, what’s the word they use on TV—‘droves’?”

  “Joining the droves sounds good to me,” Misao said with a grin, and Teppei, too, seemed pleased that the decision had been so easily made.

  This is a perfect plan, Misao thought, still smiling with satisfaction. If we just keep doing normal things, we’ll eventually be able to put the past behind us completely and move ahead with our lives, one step at a time …

  Misao and Teppei were acquainted with a couple who had lost their precious three-year-old son when he wandered into the street and was run over by a three-wheeled trash truck. The bereaved parents had lived in a realm of perpetual grief—a literal vale of tears—and to an outside observer they appeared to be in very real danger of dying themselves, from unbearable sadness. The father was so devastated that he wasn’t able to bring himself to do any work, while the mother spent every day obsessively praying at the family’s Buddhist memorial altar from morning to night. Every month on the anniversary of their son’s death, the couple would make a pilgrimage to his grave. This continued until they had another child. After that, their visits to the graveyard dwindled rapidly, until they reached the bare minimum: once a year. In Misao’s experience it was almost universally true that with the passage of time, the living feel ever more distant from people who have died. Surely the same thing would happen eventually with Reiko.

  “By the way, the occupants of 201 seem to be moving out,” Teppei said offhandedly as he romped around the living room with Cookie.

  “Really?” Misao was standing in front of the refrigerator, peering at the shelves in search of something she could turn into cold dishes suitable for a picnic. “Some company was using 201 as a business office, right?”

  “That’s right,” Teppei said. “There was a moving truck out in front of the building just now.”

  “I’ll bet there were lots of cardboard boxes—you know, the unsold inventory from the health food products they were peddling.”

  “Oh right. Yes, there were tons of boxes. Maybe that company went bankrupt because they couldn’t sell their products.”

  “I doubt that. They’re probably just moving to a better location. I mean, this place isn’t exactly…”

  This place isn’t exactly what? Realizing that she wasn’t sure how to complete that sentence, Misao quickly closed her mouth. After a moment’s reflection she went on, disingenuously, “This location isn’t exactly convenient, being a bit outside the city center and so on. I mean, a retail business wouldn’t really get any walk-in traffic here.” She suddenly remembered the piles of cardboard boxes stored in the basement. Maybe they weren’t excess inventory in the normal sense but, rather, had simply been abandoned when the company found a predictably limited market for extra-fattening protein bars and lost interest in trying to sell them. Misao hadn’t gone back to the basement since her first visit with Eiko, so she didn’t know whether the boxes were still there.

  Tamao returned with the dandelions in a cup of water, which she placed near the balcony. “Look, Mama, if I put them here they’ll bloom soon, right?”

  “Yes, they should, because that spot gets lots of sun.”

  “So if flowers will bloom here, what about a tree? Would it bear fruit?”

  “Sure, I guess that would be a possibility.”

  “Okay, then, could we grow bananas here by the window?”

  “No, I’m afraid it wouldn’t work for bananas. They need a warmer climate than this.”

  “Aw, darn. If we could grow our own bananas here, Pyoko would be really happy. He’s always saying that he wants to eat a banana.”

  Oh, no, not the dead bird again, Misao thought impatiently. She shot a significant glance in Teppei’s direction, but he appeared to be absorbed in perusing the TV listings in the newspaper. After a moment, he looked up. “Pyoko was a funny little bird, wasn’t he?” he said. “I mean, liking bananas so much and all. Hey, how about this? We could pay a visit to Pyoko’s grave today, as well, and we can take him a banana.”

  “Yes! Yes! Let’s do that,” Tamao enthused, clapping her hands.

  When Tamao first mentioned that the dead bird was coming back to life and visiting her in the nursery late at night, Misao had worried that her daughter might be suffering from some kind of mental disturbance. She shared her concern with Teppei, but he dismissed it out of hand, saying, “Come on, it’s just a harmless little fantasy. I think it’s cute.”

  Then he launched into one of his outlandish stand-up-comedy riffs: “Look, here’s an idea. These days they have medical insurance for pets, and we’ve been doing the ad campaigns for one of those companies. So maybe we should have invested in an afterlife insurance policy for Pyoko! It could also cover the survivors, in case they need therapy after having nightmares or seeing ghostly apparitions. And the copy could be something like, We’ll watch over you and your beloved pets, even after they’re dead. What do you think? Genius, right?”

  Teppei took a dynamic, laissez-faire approach to child-rearing, and Misao often thought that her husband’s easygoing attitude made it necessary for her to pay extra attention to the nitty-gritty details. Having to be the pragmatic one occasionally made her uneasy, and at times she even wondered whether the fact that she wasn’t working outside the home might be causing her to fixate on minor matters. She remembered something one of her female friends had said, years before: that when you quit your job and start staying home all day, little things that wouldn’t have fazed you in the past begin to bother you, a lot. Maybe her friend had been right. Perhaps she had too much time on her hands, and it had turned her into a chronic worrywart.

  Misao thought about the “Who, What, When, Where” game she had delighted in playing when she was a young child. The participants cut paper into small pieces, then wrote a phrase that fell into one of the W categories on each slip. The scraps of paper were then sorted into face-down stacks, and players would pluck one from each category, in order. This often resulted in boringly anodyne sentences—for example, “My friend sneezed last week at school”—but the real fun began when the sequence of phrases, while still grammatically coherent, conjured an outlandish or even outré situation. Misao still recalled one particularly naughty combination: “My teacher was sweeping up a pile of excrement yesterday at the department store.”

  Remembering the hilarity that had ensued, Misao thought wistfully about how free and imaginative her young mind had been. Maybe filtering her present concerns through the lens of that childish game would help her to laugh off her worries, and let them go. Tamao was chatting up a storm with a dead bird yesterday in the nursery. Or how about this: My hedonistic self-indulgence drove Reiko to hang herself from the rafters seven years ago, in her own entryway, while Teppei and I were enjoying an adulterous romantic getaway.

  Misao shrugged her shoulders as if to dislodge the invisi
ble demons perched there, then forced herself to return to the present. Opening a cold bottle of Calpis, she filled three glasses with the tartly sweet, milky-looking soft drink.

  Out in the living room, Teppei turned on the television. Two brassy-voiced women, both speaking in affectedly high-class tones, were discussing an education issue on a daytime talk show.

  Cookie padded up to Teppei and sat down expectantly next to the sofa. The animated buzz of people reveling in a day of recreation drifted in through the open doors to the balcony. As she was carrying the cold drinks from the kitchen, Misao glanced at the TV screen and noticed something odd.

  The majority of the screen was taken up by the two women, who were both in late middle age. The face of one was covered with fine wrinkles and crowned with what was almost certainly a wig, styled in a jaunty bob. The other woman sported a pair of oversized eyeglasses with lavender frames. Misao had never seen either of them before, but she deduced that they were probably professors at some university.

  The talking head with the purple glasses was intoning, “That’s why it’s important to implement appropriate countermeasures in the home,” when a shadow appeared in one corner of the screen. It was a dark, dense shadow, unmistakably shaped like a human being. The shadowy figure seemed to be fidgeting restlessly, in a way wholly unrelated to the action on camera.

  Misao went up to the TV set and rubbed the dark patch with one finger. The friction of flesh on glass made a squeaking sound, and she felt a swift jolt of static electricity. She snatched her finger away, and once again examined the screen intently. “It isn’t dirt,” she said after a moment.

  “What isn’t dirt?” Teppei asked.

  “There seems to be something on the screen. See here? The black spot.”

  Teppei joined Misao in front of the TV screen. After staring for a minute or two, he said, “You’re right. I see it. Maybe something blew out in the cathode ray tube or something.” He picked up the remote control and began to cycle through the channels. The humanoid shadow wasn’t visible on any other stations, but when Teppei returned to the original channel, it immediately appeared again. “There must be some kind of static or interference,” he declared confidently.