Salmonella men on Planet Porno: stories - By Yasutaka Tsutsui Page 0,34
tips of his fingers twitched convulsively at first, but then stretched out limply. The mother staggered out of the bank with the same empty look in her eyes, leaving the boy’s body on the floor behind her. And still the aftersound of the incident continued to echo in the vaulted ceiling of the bank.
Two or three of us stood up slowly. After checking the expressions of those around him, a middle-aged man in a business suit went up to a security guard and whispered to him. The guard nodded gravely, went over to the body and peered at the boy’s face. Then he went to a nearby telephone, picked up the receiver and calmly started dialling.
Eventually, the police arrived. They questioned two or three people, then turned to me.
“Did you see it all from the beginning?” they asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Could you be sure it was the child’s mother? The woman who killed him?”
“Yes, I think it was.”
“Why do you think she did it?”
I said nothing. How could I possibly know? But I could immediately picture the headline in the newspaper that evening:
“HALF-CRAZED MUM BEATS CHILD TO DEATH
IN FRONT OF BANK CUSTOMERS”
But until she picked up the ashtray stand, there was nothing to suggest she was “half-crazed” at all. And although there were other people in the bank, she wasn’t really “in front of” us. It was absolutely certain that the people who read the article would never see the incident as I’d seen it just moments ago – vividly, with horrible reality.
Everyone in the bank had displayed a kind of indifference when the incident happened. I wondered if all the incidents we read about in our newspapers were actually reported in the same way – with a casual concern akin to indifference. To be sure, a kind of peace was maintained in the process. But I wondered if, perhaps, something really awful might be happening. Or perhaps this incident was just the start of something else.
Why did you just sit and watch so passively? – I asked myself.
It’s not that I was indifferent, I protested in reply. No, I was merely stunned by it all. I’m not like the others. I’m sure I’m not.
As the days went by, abnormal incidents started to happen all over the place. So much, at least, could be gleaned from the newspapers – which, as always, satisfied themselves with nonchalant concern and smug explanations.
“UNBALANCED OFFICE WORKER STABS PASSERS-BY IN BROAD DAYLIGHT”
Despite the use of phrases like “random killing,” most of the perpetrators were paradoxically described as “hysterical” or “unbalanced”. When neither of these applied, mental conditions that are more or less universal – such as “agitation” or “irritation” – were cited as the cause. But you only had to open your eyes just a little wider to realize that these episodes couldn’t be explained so easily.
Meanwhile, our sham family happiness continued as before. The pretence was merely encouraged when my salary was increased to three hundred and twenty thousand yen a month.
Then, in June, I was given an extra day off per week. Other employers were increasingly changing to a four-day week, some even to just three days.
On the last weekend in July, I decided to drive my family to the seaside. I wasn’t all that keen, to be honest, as the holiday season had only just started and the roads were bound to be congested. But I was getting pretty fed up of lounging around at home for three whole days every week. So I resigned myself to the coming “leisure hell” and decided to go. Of course, the others were all delighted.
As we moved out of the city centre, we had little more than light congestion to contend with. But when we turned onto the trunk road leading down to the coast, it was jammed solid with traffic. Each car was packed with family members. We’d remain stationary for several minutes at a time, sometimes up to an hour. When at last we’d start moving, we’d travel for a few hundred yards before stopping again. There was no room to manoeuvre, and it was already too late to turn back. Trains on the line running alongside the road were packed to the rafters. Passengers were piled high on the roofs of the carriages, while others clung onto doors, windows and couplings.
We’d left home in the early hours, but were only halfway to the coast when it began to get dark.