but only truly cool actors dare act uncool roles.’ Machiko shows me her holiday photos and gives me a picture I like of an orange orchard vanishing up a rain-hazed hillside. We talk about Nero’s for a while. Machiko has this gift of making me feel I am interesting – and I nearly tell her about Ai but I am afraid I would sound slushy, and besides, there still is not much to tell, so I climb up to my capsule.
‘Eiji-kun! I forgot to give you this. It was delivered this morning.’ I turn around, and go back down for the package – one of those padded envelopes, the smallest size they come in. The addressee is Mr Fujin Yoda – who? – living in Hakodate up in Hokkaido. An INCORRECTLY ADDRESSED message has been stamped on the front. On the back is my name and address, printed under SENDER on a stick-on label. ‘Anything wrong?’ asks Machiko.
I keep my wits about me and say, ‘Nothing.’ Something is wrong, however – I never posted it. Up in my capsule a shredded tea towel puts the mysterious package out of my mind – Cat, purely out of spite, because she slept alone last night. I hope she stops shredding before she starts on my shirts. I shower, tidy up the scraps of clawed cloth and thrash out a Howlin’ Wolf version of ‘All You Need Is Love’ on my guitar. I should be dropping with tiredness, but I am immune to sleep. Then I remember the package. I slit it open. Inside is a computer disk wrapped in a letter. I twist some ice from the ice-tray into a glass and fill it with water. I love the sound the cubes make as fissures shoot through.Tokyo, 1st OctoberMy name is Kozue Yamaya. However unlikely or brutal this account of the last nine years of my life appears, I ask you to read it until the end. In your hands is my final testament. I shall ask you to be my legal executor.Endings are simple, but every beginning is made by the beginning before. The one I shall choose is a night in the rainy season nine years ago. In those days my name was Makino Matani. She was a housewife with a two-year-old son, and married to the owner of a financial services company. She was a recent graduate in Business Studies from a respectable women’s college in Kobe. Every New Year she exchanged greetings cards with her ex-classmates who were married to dentists, judges and civil servants. An ordinary life. The rainy season came. I remember those last moments perfectly – my son was playing with a plastic train set, and I was cleaning the rainy-season mould in the shower cubicle. I could hear the television reporting flash floods and landslides in western Japan.The doorbell rang. I answered it, and three men barged the door and snapped the chain my husband had trained me to use. They demanded to know where my husband was hiding. I demanded to know who they were. One slapped me hard enough to dislodge a tooth. ‘Your husband’s case officers,’ he snarled, ‘and we ask the questions.’ He and another searched the house while the third watched me try to reassure my screaming son. He threatened to maim my son if I didn’t tell him where my husband was. I called my husband at work and discovered he had phoned in sick that morning. I called my husband’s mobile and discovered the number had been disconnected. I called his pager – dead. I was nearly hysterical by now – the thug poured me a shot of my husband’s whisky, but I couldn’t swallow it. My son watched with big scared eyes. The two other thugs returned with a box of my husband’s personal effects and all of my jewellery. Then the bad news really began. I learned then my husband had run up debts of over fifty million yen with a Yakuza-backed credit organization. Our life assurance policy had been doctored to name this organization as sole beneficiary in the event of his suicide. The house and contents were their property if my husband defaulted on repayments. ‘And that,’ said the most violent of the three, ‘includes you.’ My son was taken into the next room. I was told I was now responsible for my husband’s debts. I was then beaten and raped. Photographs were taken ‘to guarantee my obedience’. I had to endure this