The Boys' Farm
from The Coat that Covers Him & Other Stories
First segment
When Keiko Noguchi became pregnant three years after little Susumu's murder, her husband Ryunosuke had an idea which he wondered whether to broach, and, if so, how. The idea was to name the baby, if it was a boy, Susumu. True, they had talked in a general way about this second child being a kind of substitute for the one who had been so tragically lost, but actually giving him the same name - was it wise? How would Keiko respond? Perhaps it is a measure of how little Ryunosuke knew his wife, in spite of all their years together and all they had been through, that he simply had no idea; of all the possible responses that played themselves out in his imagination, from violent revulsion to joyful assent, he could dismiss none as foreign to her nature.
Dr. Arai, the therapist, did not actually say so - he never "actually" said anything - but the trace of a frown he permitted himself suggested he thought it a bad idea. Noguchi had phoned him from his office and they met for lunch at the Imperial Hotel. A kind of sympathy had grown up between the two men over the years, and they occasionally met like this, not as counselor and patient but as friends, over lunch or drinks.
"It's taken you both so long to put your lives back together again," he said in his slow, thoughtful, slightly abstracted manner.
Noguchi nodded. An elaboration might have seemed in order, but that was not the doctor's way. In the early days of their association Noguchi's impatience had sometimes got the better of him.” Well?" he would prod with ill-concealed snappishness, "what follows from that? What is your opinion? We are here, after all, to hear your professional opinion, aren't we?" But the doctor would regard him imperturbably through sad, slightly watery eyes, as if this very impatience were a symptom of the tragedy he had suffered, pardonable on those grounds but - also on those grounds - not to be indulged. The doctor refused to be hurried. He refused to say more than he felt necessary. As time passed, Noguchi learned to appreciate this quality of Arai's. He noticed the soothing effect it had on Keiko. "Well," he said to himself, "I suppose there are no easy answers. He, being older, understands that. I guess I have some growing up to do."
Noguchi had been known in his milieu as a rising star. His milieu was banking. He had entered it when bankers were the superstars of corporate Japan, and now that the banks had fallen on hard times and were being blamed for the under-performing economy, prominent people had their eyes on him as one of the brilliant young visionaries who could, if anyone could, shake things up and get things moving again.
Then had come the murder of little Susumu. The three of them had gone to the Mitsukoshi Department Store. It was a Sunday afternoon in late winter. They were in the basement buying a French bread, and suddenly Susumu was not there. He had been holding his father's hand - when had he released it? Ryunosuke had never been able to fully reconstruct the scene in his mind. He could see the milling crowds, hear the incessant shouts of the vendors, feel the stuffiness of the overheated air, and recall how eager he was, to the point almost of desperation, to get out of that place, and then suddenly, while Keiko was at the cash paying for the loaf, he became aware that Susumu's hand was not in his. Where had he gone? He was not alarmed, only annoyed - the child was forever straying somewhere; now, hot and tired, they would have to push their way through the crushing throng looking for him, and who knew how long it would take to find him? He had a strange sensation, as of walls closing in on him. "Su-chan's wandered off," he grumbled when Keiko rejoined him with the bread. She too was calm; it had happened often enough before. "You stay here," she said, "in case he comes back. I'll see if I can find him." "No, you stay, I'll go." "Better let me go. Remember that time - " They smiled, recalling how Ryunosuke had once actually failed to recognize the boy in the funny hat he had on.
She was gone a long time. Ryunosuke glanced at his watch; it was after five already; he was expecting an important phone call at six; if they didn't hurry he would miss it. What could be keeping them? Keiko returned, her face white. "Don't panic," said Ryunosuke, in a voice he hoped did not reflect his own rising panic. They went to the information desk and had an announcement made. Then the police were called. Next morning the child's body was found, battered and mutilated, in a dark corner of a parking garage a block from the department store. A week later the culprit was arrested on his way to school. He was a twelve-year-old boy.
***
One of the bank's clients was a publisher, and one evening over drinks he hinted that if Noguchi were to write a book about his experiences his firm would be happy to publish it. The remark, gauche and tactless, was attributable no doubt to tipsy exuberance and had no consequence beyond causing Noguchi to reflect that even if he wanted to, he would never be able to write such a book. How had they survived those three years between Susumu's death and Keiko's discovery that she was pregnant? How had they gone on living? It was not their failure to commit suicide that perplexed him, but the fact that a deliberate act of suicide was necessary, that their lives hadn't simply come to a natural end without their throats having to be cut, or their brains blown out, or their blood poisoned. Pain, at least for him, was the least of it. It was the sheer absurdity of the whole thing. Little four-year-old Susumu, so excited about starting nursery school in April, dead at the hands of a twelve-year-old sexual deviant! For such the murderer turned out to be. Prey to homosexual impulses he himself did not understand, he had molested several small boys before luring Susumu away and torturing him to death in the parking garage. Too young to be tried as a criminal, he was sent by a Family Court judge to an institution of some kind, where he was treated and released after a year and a half, supposedly rehabilitated. He was given a new face and a new identity. Where he and his family were now no one knew. Noguchi imagined him in twenty years' time, a prosperous businessman applying to the bank for a loan and he, Noguchi, not of course knowing who he was, approving the application.
Somehow they had pulled through, testimony to their deep love for one another and to Dr. Arai's skills as a therapist - though bumbling rather than skilful would have been the natural assessment of anyone sizing him up without the benefit of long acquaintance. Noguchi's meteoric rise was stalled, he simply no longer had the drive and ambition to maintain his old pace, but even at half strength he was an asset, and his superiors hoped that, given time, he would yet justify their hopes in him. Keiko, on the other hand, positively threw herself into her work. A marketing consultant before Susumu's birth, she returned to her old firm and resumed her interrupted career. It was possible - not always of course, but a good part of the time - to associate with the Noguchis, either together or separately, and completely forget that they were the victims of one of the most grotesque crimes ever committed in Japan.
***
"Let's name him Susumu."
Keiko had come home from an ultra-sound test with the news that the baby was a boy, and Ryunosuke, his excitement getting the better of him, blurted out his proposal in spite of his resolve, following his conference with Dr. Arai, to proceed slowly and cautiously if at all. His breath caught in his throat. "What have I done? I've ruined everything!" But it was not so. Keiko gasped with joy, threw her arms around him, and said she had been thinking the same thing but had hesitated to mention it, fearing he would think her mad - or worse.
Ryunosuke smiled. "What's worse than mad?"
"Oh, I don't know. Insane. Perverse."
"Is it perverse, do you think?"
"It is, a little."
"Why?"
"Well..."
"Here's the way I look at it. We know nothing, nothing, about what happens to us after death, right? I mean... think about it for a minute: after thousands of years of philosophy and hundreds of years of science we're as much in the dark about that as the first humans out of the trees - or as some of the people I deal with who don't know philosophy from sumo wrestling or Newton from... from who? From George Washington. So. Supposing I say, 'We're bringing Susumu back to life.' Who can contradict me?"
"That's the way I feel about it."
"The mere fact that the same idea came to us separately is significant, don't you think? If we were mad, it's not likely we'd be mad in the same way."
"What then? The higher powers are sending us hints?"
"Supposing I say yes?"
"Who could contradict you?"
"Exactly. I don't know about higher powers... Look. There are certain subjects that, whatever you say about them, you can't help sounding foolish. Human language evolved to deal with sensory experience. We can maybe stretch it a bit beyond that - God, gods, angels, devils, ancestral spirits, what have you. But there are spheres that language simply can't reach."
"What a mystic you've become."
"Have I? I don't know... It's true, though, that having been through what we've been through, you can't help thinking about things in new ways."
"Ryunosuke Noguchi, mystic banker."
"So we're agreed, then, that the baby is Susumu."
"We're agreed."
"What will your mother say?"
"I can't imagine."
***
There was a guilty secret in Noguchi's life. Her name was Michiyo. She was one of the bank's "office ladies" or OLs, as the female clerks were called - a girl in her early twenties with dyed reddish hair and a face altered by plastic surgery to look as if it had sprung from the pages of a teen fashion magazine. Sometimes Noguchi looked at her and saw a cartoon character rather than a human being. How had a man like him, a man of his stature, with a brilliant and beautiful wife besides, got mixed up with a girl like Michiyo? It had started a year after Susumu's murder, when the strain of Keiko's seemingly incurable revulsion to sex was growing intolerable. He understood, of course; he did not blame her; he even looked with disgust upon his own undiminished drives, thinking them rather brutish under the circumstances, but self-reproach did not weaken them, and Michiyo's stupid but oddly irresistible flirtatiousness made it inevitable that sooner or later he would succumb. Having done so, he hated her and himself, and resolved to have nothing further to do with her - a resolution that did not last the week. If with the passage of time she came to regard herself as his mistress, Noguchi could only admit that she had every right to. Still, he made up his mind at last to have done with her once and for all.
A slight hardening of her expression about the corners of her lipsticked mouth persuaded him, as he launched awkwardly into his explanation, that the matter would not be so simple. She was a child only when she wanted to be. Otherwise, she knew how to take care of herself. For all her virginal airs, she had probably been around a good deal. Girls nowadays were experienced far beyond their years. Noguchi had heard of children as young as twelve selling themselves on the street to passing strangers. He himself had been propositioned once or twice. It was done without shame and without the pinch of necessity - unless an apparently universal and overpowering craving for expensive brand name clothing and accessories could be called necessity. As to what Michiyo had been through in that regard Noguchi neither knew nor cared; in any case, here she was confronting him, and though she had not yet spoken a word her expression said plainly enough that she did not intend to be cast aside at his convenience. He broke off. What a fool he had been, what an incredible fool. One word from her to the bank vice-president and his career was ruined; one word to Keiko and his marriage was finished. Supposing I kill her, he thought. He would not have to dirty his own hands with the job. In his profession - in the upper reaches of most professions - one came into contact with all kinds of people, and for less money than it would take to buy her silence (assuming, once paid off, she would keep her end of the bargain, a doubtful assumption at best) he could arrange for her to meet with an accident that would never be traced to him.
"What a coward I am," he thought on the train home. Killing aside, there was only one way out: a full confession to his wife and boss. Of his boss' support he could be fairly confident. Men tend to sympathize with one another in situations like that, even apart from the extenuating circumstances of his son's horrible murder and his highly valued abilities. But what of Keiko? How would she react? Once again, he found himself utterly stymied with regard to the woman who had shared his life for nine years of marriage and four before that of more or less living together. If there was anyone on earth he could claim to know, Keiko was surely that person, and yet... What would she say? What would she do? How would she feel? She might forgive him altogether; she might flounce out of the house and never be seen again; she might say she forgave him but harbor malice in her heart, which may - or then again may not - erupt in the future; she might fling herself at him and claw his eyes out. Was it a failure of his own perceptions that was to blame for his uncertainty, or was Keiko really unfathomable to that degree?
He arrived to find her packing and felt a momentary clutch of alarm, as though his thoughts had somehow communicated themselves to her and she had made up her mind. But no - she was off to Fukuoka on business, she cheerfully informed him; she would leave first thing in the morning and be gone three days. Did she have a lover? How odd. The thought had never occurred to him before, had never so much as crossed his mind. And yet, wasn't it more likely than not, an attractive woman like her? She traveled, met people... Well, well. So here was one more thing he didn't know about her.
"What's on your mind?" she asked, giving him a playful peck on the cheek. "Go have a bath and we'll have dinner. I bought a bottle of wine. It's chilling in the fridge even as we speak."
"Even as we speak, eh? What's the occasion?" he said, forcing himself to fall in with her light-hearted tone.
"The occasion is I want to get drunk. I'm tired of sobriety. I want to float in defiance of the law of gravity."
"Don't they arrest people for that?"
"A good lawyer will get me off."
"You shouldn't drink much, in your condition."
"Just one glass. You'll drink the rest, and I'll get drunk watching you."
He emerged from the bath to find her in tears. "I had a dream last night," she said through sobs. "Susumu came to me and he said, 'Mummy, when I come back will you still love me?' And I said... I said... 'My darling, I will love you more than ever' - but..." She raised a contorted, tear-stained face to him - "I don't think he heard me."
Second segment
Susumu was a strange child. Almost from his birth Keiko detected, or thought she did, a certain withdrawn quality about him. She said nothing to Ryunosuke, and, seeing his total unconcern, tried to convince herself it was her imagination, but her fears grew, as the child reached his first birthday without having articulated his first word, that he was autistic, or had Down's syndrome. In her anguish she began to suspect that the morbid circumstances surrounding his birth were coming back to haunt them, that there was more to the first Susumu's murder than the cruel act of a deranged boy, that some sort of curse had been laid on the family. These were horrible thoughts to bear alone, but what was the point of confiding in Ryunosuke? He evidently saw nothing, and perhaps after all there was nothing to see.
Dr. Tamazawa, the gruff but kindly pediatrician at the Nerima Children's Hospital, heard her out in surprise. Absurd, he said, absurd - in that paternally indignant way he had. There was nothing, nothing wrong with the child. On the contrary, the boy was if anything above rather than below average in intelligence. "Down's syndrome? Autism? Nonsense! Just what craziness are we talking ourselves into here? Believe me..." He was so persuasive that Keiko came away reassured.
In his fifteenth month, Susumu suddenly began making up for lost time. How had it happened? Had Keiko missed something? Had her attention been elsewhere? One day, it seemed to her, the boy had no language at all, and the next day he was talking as coherently as a child twice his age. Ryunosuke smiled at her excitement - but really, he said, wasn't she exaggerating? Of course he was a very clever little fellow; what child of theirs could fail to be? Still... His face grew grave as, with a certain uneasiness, he made up his mind to bring up a matter that had been on his mind for some time. "Do you know, Keiko, I think you're a little... hm... a little too wrapped up in the child - wait, hear me out," he said, seeing her about to flare up. "It's not just me; Arai said the same thing - "
"You've been seeing Arai? Talking to Arai about me? Behind my back?"
"Behind your back! You know very well I see Arai every now and then."
"What did he say, exactly?"
Ryunosuke laughed. "When does Arai ever say anything exactly? He hinted, in response to a direct question from me, that it might not be a bad idea if you went back to work."
"I see. I need a distraction, a diversion. 'Too wrapped up in the child,' you say. What do you and Arai think, that I should be like you, hardly aware of his existence?"
"Keiko! That's unfair!"
He was genuinely stung, but she was too roused to give ground. "When is the last time you sat down and played with him? When is the last time you read him a story?"
"Well... the last time... I don't know when the last time was... All right, I admit, I've been busy, maybe not as attentive as I should be, but you..."
"Well? What about me?"
"I don't know, your whole life seems to revolve around him; it's almost... unhealthy."
"I see. And Dr. Arai agrees."
"Dr. Arai - "
"Maybe you're right. Maybe it's time we let the kid fend for himself. He's a year and a half old, after all. Maybe we should just - "
"Keiko, please, please. Nobody said anything about letting him fend for himself. There are daycare centers - excellent ones. And maybe it really is better for a kid to be a little less... you know... fawned on."
***
Nothing changed as a result of that conversation. Keiko made no move to go back to work, and Ryunosuke did not mention the subject again. He continued to fear, however, that the child was growing up spoilt. It was not only Keiko who "fawned” on him. Her mother, Susumu's grandmother, was as bad, if not worse. She loved the boy dearly, extravagantly; she indulged his every whim. Even more than Keiko, she seemed to see the child as his brother resurrected. Mingled with her love was a kind of awed reverence.
Ryunosuke saw the severity he increasingly applied as a necessary corrective. "A child must have some discipline, after all!" That was all very well, but - was it Keiko's imagination? - there seemed as time passed to be a hint of cruelty, almost of sadism, in his "discipline." Not physical cruelty - she had searched the boy's body for evidence of it and found none (but wasn't the fact she felt impelled to search suggestive in itself?) "If you don't behave I'll send you to the Boys' Farm," he would say, not raising his voice but in a tone that left no doubt the Boys' Farm was a place where they knew how to deal with misbehaving children. Susumu never, to Keiko's knowledge, asked what this Boys' Farm was. The mere words cowed him into whimpering submission. Once, when this submission was a little slow in coming, Ryunosuke strode to the telephone and snatched the receiver, muttering, "That does it, I'm calling the Boys' Farm!" Susumu shrieked, sobbed, swore he'd be good. "Don't!" said Keiko, wresting the receiver from Ryunosuke, who made a show of surrendering it grudgingly.
There was something else: Ryunosuke's growing coldness towards her. His philandering, of course, was nothing new, it went back years. The first affair she found out about occurred before their marriage, while they were living together in his two-room apartment with the understanding that they would get married "as soon as they got around to it." He broke down in tears when she confronted him and swore it would never happen again. Actually he exaggerated her distress. He was a handsome, vigorous, outgoing man, in a position to meet pretty women; she did not expect "monkish devotion" from him (she put it this way to herself, not to him), and was prepared to be tolerant, the more so as she, if the truth be known, had had one or two little flings of her own.
But those were mere incidents, passing infidelities on his side and on hers, occurring as the opportunity arose and forgotten soon after. Their devotion to each other was too firm to be shaken by them. Or so it had seemed. But Ryunosuke had changed. He seemed bored, restless in her company. He was preoccupied, his thoughts were elsewhere. Had he fallen seriously in love with someone? Under the influence of doubts such as these, she had taken a good look at herself in the mirror, and sure enough, she was aging. Soon she would be forty. He too, of course, but he could still pass for twenty-five. Strange, how little their shared tragedy had marked him.
Susumu at this time was three. One Saturday afternoon, two days before the seventh anniversary of the first Susumu's murder, Keiko went shopping and came home with a memorial candle, the kind that burns for a full day. It was a prelude to a serious talk she meant to have with Ryunosuke. If worse came to worst, she would take the child and leave. She had mentally prepared herself for that outcome. It would be up to him to convince her to stay, if he felt so inclined.
"Where's Susumu?"
"At my mother's. Ryu, listen to me - "
"I quit my job." He was not looking at her.
"You.... what?" She was stunned.
"I don't want to be a banker any more. You go back to work. It's your turn. I'll stay home and take care of Susumu."
***
She could have put her foot down, but the ground beneath her seemed to have vanished; in quitting his job and serving out his notice before speaking to her he had effectively burned his boats.
"Have you spoken to Arai about this?"
"Yes."
"And he agrees?"
"Well, you know Arai... Why not speak to him yourself?"
She would, she thought - but there was someone else she wanted to speak to first. Seizing an opportunity when Ryunosuke was out, she said pointblank to Susumu, "From now on daddy's going to stay home and take care of you, while mummy goes out to work." Her eyes were fixed intently on the boy's face, so that not the faintest flicker of emotion would have escaped her. But no, there was nothing. No panic, no fear, not a shadow of unhappiness. He received the news with perfect calm. Well, so he wasn't afraid of his father after all; the supposed violence Ryunosuke inflicted on the boy, psychological if not physical, existed only in her own overheated imagination. So it was she who was crazy, not he. Maybe Ryunosuke had been right all along. She was a talented businesswoman, her considerable abilities were going to seed, her housebound condition had warped her judgment.
"Okay," she said to Ryunosuke a few days later, foregoing a consultation with Arai. "Let's go ahead and see what happens."
Time passed, and her misgivings faded. Ryunosuke proved himself an excellent father. "I'm a father, not a banker," he had said, meaning to reassure her that he knew his own mind. He certainly looked like a man who did, but did that prove anything? As thought madmen didn't behave sanely in pursuit of their insane ends!
Third segment
One day when Susumu was nine years old Ryunosuke received a phone call from the boy's fourth-grade teacher. Would it be convenient for him to drop by the school for a little chat? Certainly, said Ryunosuke - was something wrong? No, said the teacher, not wrong exactly... "I'll be right over." It was four o'clock. Susumu was in his room doing his homework. "Su-chan!"
"What?"
Ryunosuke ran up the stairs to Susumu's room and opened the door. Susumu, seated at his desk, turned in his chair to face his father standing in the doorway. "Listen. I have to go out for a bit. Will you be okay?"
"Sure."
"Okay. I'll be back in an hour."
"Are you going to see Mr. Obara?"
Ryunosuke's surprise showed before he could repress it. "Yes, as a matter of fact. How did you know?"
"I deduced it." It was an expression he had picked up from Sherlock Holmes.
"Has there been any trouble at school?"
"No."
"Well then why..." He broke off. He would find out from the teacher soon enough. "Be a good boy. There are cookies in the pantry if you're hungry. I'll be back as soon as I can."
"Is mummy coming home for supper tonight?"
"I think so. If not she'll call."
The school was a ten-minute walk from the house. It was late June, supposedly the height of the rainy season, and yet the sun shone bright in a cloudless sky. How strange the weather was lately, Ryunosuke thought - strange enough at least to baffle the weather forecasters, who seemed not to know what to make of it. It mocked them, raining when they predicted sunshine, shining when they predicted rain. The matter preoccupied him unduly, to the point that the weather report, dismissed in his banking days as unworthy even of cursory attention, was the first thing he turned to as he unfolded the morning newspaper. It was not that he cared one way or the other how the weather turned out, but surely all those PhD meteorologists, analyzing all that data from all those weather satellites, should be achieving rather better results, instead of demonstrably worse ones, than anyone would achieve by simply flipping a coin. Were the scientists incompetent, was the equipment defective? Or had nature entered a new phase, leaving science behind?
Ryunosuke and Mr. Obara, Susumu's teacher, had met once before. One day each May, about a month after the start of the school year, the school invited parents to drop by and watch a lesson in progress. Those attending were almost all mothers, and so Ryunosuke naturally stood out. Mr. Obara was not a young man - his egg-bald head and rotund figure made it impossible to mistake him for one - but he was new to the school, and the parents observed him with the closeness normally reserved for a novice. Ryunosuke, for his part, was singularly impressed with the man's teaching abilities. His somewhat comical appearance not such as to command respect, he all the same, without theatricality, with no apparent effort, engaged the children's attention to such effect that they seemed altogether to forget the parents' presence. The class was social studies, and Mr. Obara began by explaining that, with fewer and fewer children being born and people living to be older and older, soon one Japanese in four would be over sixty-five. A girl's hand shot up. Why, she inquired, were fewer children being born? A good question, said Mr. Obara. Did anyone have any ideas? Ryunosuke tried to suppress a smile as he imagined some squeaky-voiced smartass piping up, "Because people are screwing less." But no, there was nothing like that, and somewhat to his surprise the children seemed aware of the issue and had some notion of the underlying causes: people were marrying late, many women were choosing careers over motherhood, daycare centers were in short supply, and so on. It was a refreshing change from other lessons Ryunosuke had witnessed, where the teacher droned on and the children listened in bored silence.
One thing disturbed him: Susumu took no part in the discussion. He seemed attentive and interested, but he volunteered not a word. This was all the more strange in that this particular topic had come up for discussion at home, and Susumu was at least as knowledgeable about it as anyone else. After the lesson Ryunosuke had introduced himself to Mr. Obara, and mentioned his surprise at Susumu's silence.
"He's a quiet child," said Obara. "Very bright, but very quiet."
"How do you know he's bright then?"
"His writing, his drawing."
"Is his quietness anything to worry about, do you think?"
"Well, let's just watch it before we start worrying about it."
Ryunosuke began to explain something of the family history, but Obara raised a hand to indicate no explanation was necessary. "I know," he said. "I was told. I'm very sorry. While we're on the subject - how much does Susumu know?"
"Nothing."
"I see. Of course he's very young."
"We've been talking about whether we should tell him, and if so how."
"It's very difficult, of course. Still, it might be best if he heard about it from you first."
"'First' meaning...?"
"'Rumor is a pipe blown by surmises, jealousies and conjectures,' as Shakespeare said."
"I see."
Thus had their first interview ended - inconclusively, but on a note of mutual understanding.
"It's good of you to come on such short notice," said Mr. Obara, greeting his visitor with a bow at the classroom door. "It's such a beautiful day for the time of year."
"Have you noticed," Ryunosuke said, "how totally, totally off the weather forecast has been lately?" He felt himself blush. He was here, after all, not to pass the time of day but to discuss some trouble his child was in - possibly serious trouble; serious enough at any rate to warrant a summons. "I was just thinking about it on my way over," he murmured as though by way of apology. But Obara apparently saw nothing inappropriate in Ryunosuke's observation. "I have noticed," he said. "It's quite amazing. As a matter of fact I've been thinking of introducing the topic as a class project - having the kids chart the weather, compare it to the forecasts. And then maybe we can take our results to the weather office and see what they have to say for themselves."
"An excellent idea."
"Please, sit down." Closing the classroom door, Obara waved his guest into a hard green leather armchair that had evidently been brought in and placed across from the teacher's desk specially for the occasion. The late afternoon sunshine pouring in through the windows made the classroom almost unnaturally bright.
"Shall I close the blinds?" said Obara, seeing Ryunosuke squint.
"No, really..."
"Are you sure? Well... here," he said, squeezing his stout frame into his somewhat confining chair, "let me show you something." He bent to open a desk drawer, which momentarily caught on something and required a sharp tug, and withdrew a paper, which he handed to Ryunosuke. It was a drawing, a child's drawing, in crayon, an arc-shaped object in various shades of black. Ryunosuke examined it in puzzled silence.
"Is it Su-chan's?"
"Yes."
"Hm."
"It's very striking, don't you think? Children so young are generally not drawn to black. Older children, yes... thirteen, fourteen. But in a nine-year-old it's unusual. I asked him what it was. Do you know what he answered?"
"No, what did he answer?"
"'Black rainbow.'"
"Black rainbow."
"You know, of course, the artist Teitaro Ichikawa."
"The artist... no, I'm sorry..."
"No? Well, take my word for it, he's a name to reckon with in the art world. He also happens to be my cousin." An impish grin flitted across the teacher's ugly thick lips, followed by a self-deprecating shrug. "I showed him your son's picture. He was astonished."
"You don't say," murmured Ryunosuke.
"Astonished. He couldn't believe it had been done by a nine-year-old. He actually used a word I had never ever heard him utter before, except with reference to himself: 'Genius.'"
"Genius!" Ryunosuke exclaimed.
"Genius."
Ryunosuke examined the picture again. Obara leaned back in his chair, as though to give Ryunosuke all the space he needed for quiet contemplation. The silence lasted some time. It was broken by a slightly foolish laugh from Ryunosuke. "I'm sorry, I... I don't know what to say. You say genius, and yet... I'm no judge, of course..." To him it looked like something anybody could have drawn - even himself, and though he was not by any means lacking in self-respect, he would never dare claim artistic talent for himself. Keiko, perhaps, was another story.
"Well, I thought I should mention it to you, in case you wanted to... you know, cultivate his talent."
"Cultivate... yes," he said. "Yes, certainly, talent should be cultivated..." He stood up. "May I take this home with me? To show my wife?"
"Certainly." The teacher too rose to his feet. "Mr. Noguchi, there is one other matter." He paused. Perhaps it was a trick of his profession - he never spoke more than a few words, Ryunosuke had noticed, without requiring an answer, however perfunctory, from his interlocutor.
"Yes?"
"Please, sit down. I know you're in a hurry..."
"No, not a hurry exactly," Ryunosuke hastened to assure him, resuming his seat as the teacher did likewise. "It's just, Su-chan is alone at home..."
"I understand. I won't keep you long." He picked up a pencil lying on the desk, seemed to regard it with momentary interest, and then lay it down again. "There was a fight in the playground on Monday. Perhaps Susumu mentioned it to you?"
"No..."
"Besides being extremely quiet, extremely intelligent and extremely talented, your boy is also, it seems, extremely strong. From what I hear he did not start the fight. The other boy did. The other boy is considerably bigger. If he thought he could pick on Susumu with impunity, he was soon disabused." Once again his lips shaped themselves into a mischievous grin. Evidently something in the story he was telling gave him pleasure, either his way of telling it or Susumu's unexpected triumph over a bully whose character would only benefit from the sharp lesson he'd been given.
"No, he didn't mention it," said Ryunosuke, no more pertinent remark occurring to him.
"Mr. Noguchi." The teacher leaned forward slightly. "Do you remember what we talked about in May?"
"About... telling him?"
"About having him hear about it from you before rumor starts piping."
"Yes, I remember. Unfortunately..."
"I know how difficult it is. Or maybe I have no right to say 'I know.' Let's say rather, 'I can imagine'. Still - "
"You're right, you're absolutely right."
"It seems the fight started over some unpleasant allusion the other boy made."
"Oh?" Ryunosuke tensed. "What allusion?"
"The report I have is he said something like, 'Su-chan's a ghost, he was murdered and came back to life.' Then the other kids started in, 'A ghost! A ghost! Su-chan's a ghost!'"
"I see. Mr. Obara" - once again he rose - "thank you for... for everything; for this" - he indicated the picture in his hand - "and for... for your advice. I'll talk it over with my wife this evening, and we'll take the matter in hand. You are right, of course. It's high time we did."
"If there's anything I can do..."
"Thank you, thank you."
Out at last in the unseasonal June sunshine, he breathed a deep sigh of relief.
***
Fourth segment
IV
The simplicity of Dr. Arai's appearance belied the complexity of his character. His face, though blandly pleasing, was so unremarkable, left so vague an impression, that even people who had known him for many years would have been at a loss if asked to describe him. His one distinguishing feature was a tiny wart in the middle of his forehead, and Keiko had once joked to her husband that if not for it she would not know him if she chanced to meet him outside his office. "It's his third eye," Ryunosuke had quipped in reply.
When he first knew him Ryunosuke had thought of him as "a man of about fifty," and now, nearly twenty years later, he still thought of him that way. He was neither tall nor short, neither fat nor thin, rather soft from lack of exercise, neither elegant nor slovenly. His thin graying hair did not make him look old, any more than his fresh, unwrinkled face made him look young. He wore steel-rimmed glasses, which in the course of an interview he would take off and put on any number of times, seemingly unconsciously. He said little, and when he did speak it was in a low, murmuring voice that made his words difficult to make out. He cleared his throat frequently.
And yet as a therapist he was remarkably successful. Something about him put people at ease. They would spend fifteen minutes with him and leave feeling better. They didn't know why. Neither did the therapist himself, who did not conceal the fact that his success puzzled him. It even unsettled him. He knew only too well that he did not have the wisdom people attributed to him, and one of these days, he thought, whatever inexplicable power he possessed would desert him, and then his downfall would be abrupt and awful.
Dr. Arai was a bachelor. He lived alone. He had always lived alone. His younger sister, who he loved and who adored him, begged him to move in with her after her husband left her, but he was not to be persuaded. "A man's home is his shell," he liked to say, accompanying the mild witticism, one of his very few, with a timid smile. He could no more conceive of having someone live in the same house with him than he could imagine someone joining him inside his shirt or his trousers.
"Don't you ever get... you know, lonely?" Noguchi had once asked him.
"No."
"Don't you ever" - they had had a few drinks; otherwise he would never have dreamed of putting the question - "don't you ever feel the need for a woman?"
"No. Never. It's a peculiarity of my nature, I suppose."
"Very peculiar indeed."
"Once..."
"Yes? Once?"
"Once I did desire someone..."
"And?"
"She died."
"Oh! I'm sorry."
"I was eight. She was seven."
Without his expression changing in the slightest, Arai's face seemed to close, seemed to say, "Let's not pursue this, if you don't mind." Later, recalling the scene, Noguchi could not be sure how much of it had actually occurred and how much he had imagined.
***
Was the failure Arai had so long dreaded finally upon him? What made it worse was that it concerned Susumu Noguchi, the son of a man he might almost call his friend, and a boy, moreover, whose progress through life he had watched with a more than professional - with an almost paternal - interest.
To him, in the end, had fallen the responsibility of telling Susumu what it seemed he would have to know sooner or later, preferably sooner. Ryunosuke had emerged from his talk with the boy's teacher so overwhelmed by the enormity of it all that, clutching the "Black Rainbow" rolled up in his right hand, he staggered rather than walked home, and then, when Susumu met him at the door with the news that Keiko had called to say she wouldn't be home for dinner after all, his sense of being alone against circumstances that were simply too much for him was such, though only for a moment, that - as he later confessed to Arai - "If at that moment there had been a gun within reach I think I would have grabbed it and blown my brains out."
"What's that?" asked Susumu, pointing to the drawing, and Ryunosuke rallied sufficiently to explain that Mr. Obara had liked his picture very much and thought he had real potential as an artist. "What do you think?" he asked the boy. "Would you like to take drawing lessons?"
"I don't know."
"Well, think about it. Mr. Obara thinks you're really good."
He said nothing about the other matter, but on the pretext of having some work to attend to before supper slipped into his study and, sinking into his chair, dialed Arai's number.
"Keiko's forgotten the kid's existence altogether. I'm all alone with this. I have no idea... no idea... My God..."
"Calm down." It was the only unequivocal advice Arai ever gave, perhaps the only unequivocal advice he had it in him to give; he seemed to feel that calm was the one thing missing from the world, and that all would be well if only it could be restored. Oddly enough, his vacuous exhortation was effective; it actually did seem to calm people down.
"I'm sorry, I'm hysterical," said Ryunosuke with a forced laugh. "I don't know what came over me."
"Are you all right?"
"Yes, thank you. I'll tell him tonight."
"If there's anything I can do..."
"What you've done for us already is more than I will ever, ever be able to... to... " There were tears in his eyes. "Goodbye. I'll call you tomorrow."
He did call the next day, but not, as he had planned, to tell the therapist how his talk with Susumu had gone but to confess that he had been unable to broach the subject after all. "I can't, I - I just can't do it!" He realized now, he said, what a colossal mistake it had been to name the child Susumu - "I should have listened to you." How could he possibly explain to the boy an impulse he himself no longer understood? Would Susumu think of himself as some sort of grotesque reincarnation of the tortured and murdered older brother whose existence he (presumably) did not so much as suspect? How would a child of nine assimilate all that? When Keiko came home around midnight, slightly drunk and so pleased with herself over some business triumph she had scored that it was hopeless to try and distract her, he felt a stab of something almost like hatred for her. How could she carry on as if nothing had happened? Did she ever think of the dead child? She never mentioned him. Neither did he, of course, but the child was never, not for a moment, absent from his waking thoughts, and at night, not every night but often, he dreamed of him. And where was the murderer now? He had been twelve at the time; he'd be a man of twenty-five now, "rehabilitated." He imagined himself seeking him out, confronting him, reminding him of his crime in case he'd forgotten it, in case the rehabilitators had rearranged his neurons and synapses to make him forget. Perhaps he had a child of his own... Just the other night Keiko had shaken him awake. "You screamed," she said. His body was soaked in sweat. "What were you dreaming?" "I don't remember.” In fact he remembered all too well: in his dream he inflicted the same tortures on the murderer's child that the murderer had inflicted on Susumu.
"What should I say to him, doctor? For God's sake, tell me what to say!"
"Perhaps I should have a word with him..."
Ryunosuke sensed the weariness in the therapist's voice, the reluctance to take upon himself a responsibility that properly belonged to the parents, the contempt - no, contempt was too strong a word, Arai was too familiar with human inadequacy to be seriously contemptuous of it, but mingled with his sympathy was the perception that people tended to resign themselves a little too easily to their own helplessness; of Noguchi in particular, more might have been expected. "No, no, I'll do it, I'm his father..." That, Ryunosuke knew, is what he should have said; it was on the tip of his tongue; but in a surge of emotion he heard himself say instead, "Oh, doctor, would you?"