“I did actually,” I said. “Seeing as you killed him, good manners would dictate that you should sit this one out.”
“I don’t have good manners,” she said. “Besides, I only killed him because I loved him.”
“That is not love.”
“And what would you know about love, liebchen? Did you marry Yuji for love?”
I pushed her against the casket. We were attracting the attention of other funeral-goers.
“He betrayed me,” Sophia insisted. “You know that he did.”
I felt my fingers begin to spread toward my machete. I thought of Yuji asking me to kill her, but for better or for worse, I was still not the murdering kind. Sophia Bitter had committed atrocious acts, but in my memory flashed a picture of the girl Yuji had described. Sophia had once been young and unpopular and embarrassed. She had thought herself ugly, though she couldn’t have ever been more than plain. She had murdered perhaps the only person in the world who had loved her. And for what? For power? For money? For chocolate? For jealousy? For love? I know she told herself it was for love, but it could not have been.
“Go,” I said. “You’ve paid your respects, for what they are worth, and now you should leave.”
“I will be seeing you, Anya. Good luck opening the rest of the clubs in Japan.”
“Is that a threat?” I imagined her making a disturbance at one of our openings.
“You’re a very suspicious young woman,” she said.
“Probably so. If we were in America, I’d have you arrested.”
“But we are not. And poisoning is the perfect crime. It takes patience, but it’s so very hard to prove.”
“By the way, what are your plans after the funeral?”
“Will we be having lunch?” she asked. “Girl talk and chocolate. Unfortunately, I leave tomorrow. You are not the only one with a business to run, though you act as if you are. This leaves no time for you and me to catch up. What a pity.”
“I feel so sorry for you,” I said. “He loved you, and you killed him, and now no one will ever love you again.”
Her eyes turned black with hate. I knew even as I was saying it that nothing except the belief that others found her pitiable could have had such an effect on that woman. She lunged toward me, but I wasn’t scared of her. She was weak and stupid. I called Kazuo over and asked him to show her the door.
XIX
I VOW TO BE ALONE
THOUGH IT WAS THE MIDDLE of the day, I went back to Yuji’s house to my room to sleep. I was psychically tired, if not physically so. I lay down on my bed, not even bothering to remove my black kimono.
When I awoke, it was past midnight, and the room felt cramped and musty. My clothes reeked of incense, and I craved a walk, a bit of fresh air. Though I was not particularly concerned for my safety, I strapped my machete underneath the kimono.
I took the same stone path I had traveled with Yuji not so many days earlier. I arrived at the koi pond and sat down on the ancient stone bench. I watched the orange, red, and white fish as they swam and jumped about. I contemplated these fish. It was so late—were these a peculiar breed of party fish? When did fish sleep? Did they sleep?
I loosened my kimono, which the servant had tied too tightly.
I looked at my hands and at my wedding band. So much for that experiment, I thought.
There was much moonshine that night, and I was able to see my reflection in the water. I looked at Anya Balanchine as the fish swam across her face. She seemed on the verge of tears, and I hated her for that. I took off my wedding band and threw it at her. “You chose this,” I said. “You don’t get to feel sad.”
I was twenty years old. I had married and now I was a widow. In that moment, I determined that I would never marry again. I did not like the jewelry that said you were owned, the pretentious pageantry of weddings, or the fact that joining your life to someone meant inviting sadness in your door. For love or for any other reason, I was not for marriage, or perhaps marriage was not for me.
The business had made sense with Yuji, but the whole arrangement had become so complicated. I could see no reason to join my life to anyone else’s in the future. If you married for love, you always fell out of love (cf. my parents, Win’s parents). If you married for business, the relationship refused to stay business. Furthermore, I had worked hard, made tough choices, and built something other than a starry-eyed teenager’s house of dreams. I did not wish to inherit anyone else’s history and mistakes nor did I wish mine on anyone. Besides, who could I be with who wouldn’t judge me? Who would ever understand why I had done all these things I’d done? I sat on that rigid stone bench in a foreign country in the middle of the night, and I thought, Why on earth would I ever get married again?
So I determined to be alone. Maybe occasionally, I would take a lover. (The Catholic schoolgirl in me was scandalized by the thought; I told her we’d been thrown out of Catholic school so she should shut up.) Theo had effectively been my lover, and look how well that had worked out. Definitely better to be alone. I would fill my spare time with productive hobbies. I would take up reading like Imogen, go to cooking school, learn to dance, volunteer with orphans, become a more involved godparent to Felix. I would write my memoirs.
(NB: Even many years later, it is hard for me to admit this. Marrying Yuji Ono, despite the good it had done the Dark Room, would probably go down as the worst mistake of my life. As anyone who has read these accounts knows, I have made many. That night, I was not quite ready to admit that the error had been mine and not perhaps the institution of marriage itself.)
In the middle of having these thoughts, I felt something hit me in the back, underneath my left shoulder blade. It felt wrong, but that said, it did not feel significant either. It felt blunt, of medium size, harmless. It felt like a softball or a grapefruit. But when I looked down, my chest was pierced by the sparkling tip of a blade. Suddenly, the blade retracted and I began to bleed. It did not hurt much, but this was just adrenaline. I tried to retrieve my machete from beneath my kimono, but the garment was so voluminous, I could not reach it quickly. As I turned my neck to see what was coming, the blade penetrated again—this time, somewhere in my lower back. I tried to stand, but my right foot gave out, and I fell, slamming my chin and neck on the stone bench. Above me, Sophia Bitter held a sword. The look in her eye said she would not stop until I was dead.
How had she broken in to the estate? Who else was with her? I did not have even a moment to contemplate. I wanted to live. I needed time to get to my machete, so I decided to talk to her. “Why?” My voice was barely more than a whisper—I had injured my larynx when I’d fallen into the bench. “What have I ever done to you?”
“You know what you’ve done. I would rather poison you, but I have neither the time nor the access. I’ll have to make do with this.” She drew back the sword and she raised it in the air.
“Wait,” I whispered as loudly as I could. “Before you kill me … Yuji said to tell you something.” It was a pathetic ploy on my part, and I had almost no faith that it would work.
She rolled her eyes but lowered her weapon. “Speak,” she said.
“Yuji told me—”
“Louder,” she said.
“I can’t. My throat. Please. Closer.”
She crouched down so that we were eye to eye. I could feel her breath on my cheek. The scent was slightly acrid, like she had been drinking coffee. I thought of Daddy making coffee for my mother on the stovetop. Oh Daddy, it might be nice to see you again. I felt my eyelids start to drop.