It was her mother who first realized what had happened. She kept pestering Natsuko, demanding to know why she had quit. More than anything, she was afraid of the idea of her daughter not working. Whether this was because both she and her son were dependent on Natsuko’s income, or whether she wanted her daughter to have a successful career, Natsuko didn’t know. She tried to explain that everything was okay, because she was looking for a new job now, but nothing would soothe her mother’s temper. And having worked herself into a frenzy, her mother ended up striking her. So Natsuko had no choice but to tell her the truth. Not to stop the violence, but to calm her down, to cool her anger however she could. But her mother never considered the possibility that Natsuko had been targeted because of her average looks. She had convinced herself that her daughter was just too attractive, so like herself, and that was why she had been the victim of sexual harassment, until at last she wound up convincing herself that she was the victim, not her daughter.
She grasped Natsuko’s hand tenderly. “I can’t believe that someone would do such a terrible thing to you… It’s unforgivable. We’ll have to sue.”
A court battle would be too hard on her, Natsuko said, trying to steer her away from the idea. Her mother took this so poorly that she slammed her fist down on the table.
“What’s wrong with you? Why won’t you do anything for me? All I want is some money. I’m so miserable. Can’t you see that? What did I do to deserve such an inconsiderate child? Why are you always like this? Don’t you love me? You’re my daughter!” The promise of money that flickered before her eyes for a moment, only to vanish in a puff of smoke. That was her mother’s greatest hate, the thought that got her most worked up.
“Stop it!” Natsuko pleaded desperately, but her mother slapped her with the flat of her hand. She tried desperately to pull away, but her mother’s attack wouldn’t stop, and Natsuko, in terror, cried out: “Get away from me!” She threw a nearby cushion and tissue box at her, struggling to put some distance between them. But then her mother grabbed her, and the two of them began to grapple with one another.
At that moment, her brother raised his voice in a frenzied cry, and started smashing first one windowpane, then the next. When he got like this, neither mother nor daughter could bring him under control. The feeling of indignation that had been churning inside Natsuko, that her mother ought to be aware on some level at least of her insatiable avarice, became cloudy and diluted.
The world in which the court case went forward felt unreal to Natsuko. The man, the full-time employee, seemed to have finally realized what he had done, and immediately offered to settle out of court. But, he said, he still loved her, and he insisted that she would have to accept the money in person at his attorney’s law firm.
She met with the attorney at his office in Aoyama.
“I’m sorry to have to do things this way,” he said. “Please accept my client’s sincerest apologies. He wanted to ensure that you received it safely.”
The attorney offered her an envelope. It passed before her eyes, to her mother, who put it in her handbag. Her brother glared at their mother, as if muttering to himself: “That isn’t yours.” He wasn’t even trying to hide it. Finally, they parted ways with the attorney, and her mother said drunkenly: “Let’s get a taxi.”
The car passed through the streets of Aoyama before stopping in front of a familiar building. The driver followed her brother’s instructions. Natsuko said nothing. She had known from the very beginning that it would come to this.
It was a famous Chinese restaurant. Her mother ordered one dish after the other—Peking duck, chili sauce prawns, okoge—seeming to relish each and every one of them. Her younger brother ordered a bottle of Shaoxing wine. The family sat in silence. Immersed in the food. Silence permeated only by the sound of eating. Neither of them had realized that they could only eat this way because she had been sexually harassed—that they were, in effect, celebrating her suffering. That unending, uninterrupted sound stirred up feelings of disgust in her, resounding again and again in her mind, aggravating her hearing, her nerves, her soul. She just wanted to lose consciousness, to collapse then and there. Not only had the man sexually harassed her—now, her family was tormenting her even more.
Natsuko didn’t know which it was that disgusted her more, the man or the sight of her younger brother sipping that Shaoxing wine. She herself didn’t understand what it was that was hurting her. The series of events surrounding the harassment all converged, and ever since then, she found herself often visited by unpleasant experiences that she couldn’t put into words. And she started to refer to that convergence of events as that life.
And yet it was in the midst of that life that she met a man, Taichi, whom she decided to marry. She understood. That there could be no erasing the memories of those blasphemies, no pretending that they had never existed. That the only thing that she could do was to combine her life with that of someone else—it didn’t even matter if it wasn’t a man—and try to dilute the past.
Maybe if she told Taichi about those blasphemies, he would understand. But what would happen, she wondered, if she tried to confide in him? About what had happened in that restaurant? About how heartily her mother and brother had been eating and drinking? About how unbearable that sound had been? Maybe he would understand, if she tried to tell him about it all, calmly, matter-of-factly. Yes, if she tried to speak to him about them now, he might just understand. You hear about it a lot, don’t you? About people who are able to go through their whole lives without ever complaining about anything. But you know, I don’t know why, but I just can’t hold it in anymore… But if she said that, Taichi might absorb all her suffering. He might accept it all, every last drop of it. He might finally understand. It might leave him weeping, his nose running like a child’s. So she said nothing. She didn’t want to see such a sight—such a pure, thankful sight. Someone like herself, who had passed through that life, didn’t deserve that kind of sympathy.
All of a sudden, Taichi let out a loud burp. “What’s the matter?” Natsuko asked.
“I must have eaten too much at the buffet,” he answered. She seemed to have been standing still, staring at that family portrait for quite some time. “Let’s keep going,” he urged her.
The next painting was of a ripe pomegranate placed on a wooden table. The vivid redness of the fruit was too lively, too warm. It grated against her heart, leaving her feeling painful and cramped. The next one, however, was an abstract painting that looked like some kind of three-dimensional object. She felt at once peaceful, relieved to have found something that she could look at with ease, something with a sense of distance.
In this way, as she stood in front of the pictures, she kept finding herself going through a cycle of fear and relief, over and over. When she felt at ease, and thought to herself that she wouldn’t mind just standing in front of a certain work for a while, Taichi would urge her to take him to the next one. And it would almost certainly be some terrible picture, something made of complex intersections of straight lines that made her think of young men, like her brother. She wanted to run away from such images as fast as she could, but no matter what the picture, Taichi would examine them all carefully, in the same deliberate way. And yet not once did he voice his impressions. “Let’s keep going,” was all he said.