be blind, Mariko-san. I was glad not to see the firebombing in ’forty-five, and I’m glad not to see these awful, awful pictures coming out of Terminal 2. It’s bad enough just to hear about it—”
Just like that she was crying again. Mariko hurried out of the room, mostly to give Shoji a moment of privacy but also to fetch a tissue box. When she returned, her old friend had composed herself. “I’m so sorry, dear.”
Mariko didn’t know what to say. Handling emotional stuff came about as naturally to her as handling snakes.
Shoji folded the tissue into a neat triangle and raised her sunglasses just enough to dab at her eyes. “I have a guess,” she said. “Furukawa-san is not dead, and neither is he in trouble with the law. Does that mean he made contact with you?”
“Wow, Shoji-san, you must be psychic.”
“Don’t mock what you don’t understand, dear.”
“Sorry.” Mariko gave a little bow, as was customary with an apology. As soon as she did it, it occurred to her that with someone who couldn’t see, the bow was probably moot. “Um, yes, he called me. We talked.”
“About my son?”
“No. I told you, I didn’t know you had a son.”
“About Keiji-san, then.”
“Yes.”
“And he told you some things you didn’t want to hear.”
“Yes. How do you—?”
“My son is a schizophrenic,” Shoji said.
Mariko didn’t see how that was relevant, but she didn’t want to interrupt. Shoji took a deep breath before she went on—to steel her nerves, by the sound of it, so now she even had Mariko bracing herself for what was to come. “It is a terrifying disease. Terrifyingly powerful. Visions, voices, delusions, these were my son’s bullies in childhood. They toyed with him, Mariko-san. Without medication, he had no chance for a normal life.”
Shoji’s every word dripped with humiliation. Mariko had a good guess as to why. Most people in her culture saw mental illness as a cause for shame. Mariko was more sympathetic—Saori’s meth addiction had opened her eyes to a few things—but people of Shoji’s generation would be much less so. “That must have been awful,” Mariko said. “This was, what, the sixties?”
“Yes.”
“So when it came to treating something like schizophrenia, pretty much everyone had their heads up their asses.”
Shoji tsked her. “Language, Mariko-san.”
“Sorry.”
“The truth was worse than you imagine. It’s easy for young people to forget, but as a country we were a very long time convalescing from the war. We rebuilt ourselves on manufacturing—Honda, Toyota, Sony, all the worldwide names. But who did we have developing new medicines? We were decades behind. I would hear outlandish stories in the news—first a heart transplant, then the artificial heart, and none of it happening here. Even the Germans made medical advances we would not see for years. And the British? The Americans? They were like sorcerers. Every day I wished one of them would whisk me away. I know I’m not supposed to think that way, but what else was I to do? I had a very sick boy; I needed help.”
Mariko nodded sympathetically, and realized belatedly that Shoji couldn’t see her. “Of course you did,” she said. “But Shoji-san, there’s no need to be ashamed. Any mother wants what’s best for her child.”
“Yes, but I . . . I made compromises. I talked to Furukawa Ujio. He told me of an organization that . . . well, there was no place they could not reach.”
A cold wave washed over Mariko’s skin, raising goose bumps up and down her arms. “You? No. You couldn’t have.”
“My son was sick. He needed better medicine. Furukawa’s was state-of-the-art.”
Mariko’s heart sank. “But he didn’t give it away for free, did he? And he didn’t help just any schizophrenic kid, either. How did he know you were a goze?”
Shoji sniffed and dabbed the tissue to her eye. “I don’t know. But what was I to do? The best antipsychotic drugs in the world, and all I had to do was tell him what I saw. I was going to see it anyway. All I had to do was tell him. . . .”
She broke down crying again. “I never knew,” she said. “I swear to you, I never knew what would happen.”
“Shoji-san, I don’t understand what you mean.”
“I had a vision. When Furukawa-san came into our lives, when I accepted his help, I saw the future. The day would come when I had to make a choice: save my child or save all the others. I had no idea what it meant.