A SHINAGAWA MONKEY
Recently she’d had trouble remembering her own name. Mostly this happened when someone unexpectedly asked her name. She’d be at a boutique, getting the sleeves of a dress altered, and the clerk would say, “And your name, ma’am?” Or she’d be at work, on the phone, and the person would ask her name, and she’d totally blank out. The only way she could remember was to pull out her driver’s license, which was bound to make the person she was talking with feel a little weird. If she happened to be on the phone, the awkward moment of silence as she rummaged through her purse inevitably made the person on the other end wonder what was going on.
When she was the one who brought up her name, she never had trouble remembering it. As long as she knew in advance what was coming, she had no trouble with her memory. But when she was in a hurry, or someone suddenly asked her name, it was like a breaker had shut down and her mind was a complete blank. The more she struggled to recall, the more that featureless blank took over and she couldn’t for the life of her remember what she was called.
She could remember everything else. She never forgot the name of people around her. And her address, phone number, birthday, passport number were no trouble at all. She could rattle off from memory her friends’ phone numbers, and the phone numbers of important clients. She’d always had a decent memory—it was just her own name that escaped her. The problem had started about a year before, the first time anything like this had ever happened to her.
Her married name was Mizuki Ando, her maiden name Ozawa. Neither one was a very unique or dramatic name, which isn’t to say that this explained why, in the course of her busy schedule, her name should vanish from her memory.
She’d become Mizuki Ando in the spring three years earlier, when she married a man named Takashi Ando. At first she couldn’t get used to her new name. The way it looked and sounded just didn’t seem right to her. But after repeating her new name, and signing it a number of times, she gradually came to think it wasn’t so bad after all. Compared to other possibilities—Mizuki Mizuki or Mizuki Miki or something (she’d actually dated a guy named Miki for a while)—Mizuki Ando wasn’t so bad. It took time, yet gradually she began to feel comfortable with her new, married name.
A year ago, however, that name started to slip away from her. At first this happened just once a month or so, but over time it became more frequent. Now it was happening at least once a week. Once “Mizuki Ando” had escaped, she was left alone in the world, a nobody, a woman without a name. As long as she had her purse with her she was fine—she could just pull out her license and remember who she was. If she ever lost her purse, though, she wouldn’t have a clue. She wouldn’t become a complete nonentity, of course—losing her name for a time didn’t negate the fact that she still existed, and she still remembered her address and phone number. This wasn’t like those cases of total amnesia in movies. Still, the fact remained that forgetting her own name was upsetting. A life without a name, she felt, was like a dream you never wake up from.
Mizuki went to a jewelry shop, bought a thin simple bracelet, and had her name engraved on it: Mizuki (Ozawa) Ando. Not her address or phone number, just her name. Makes me feel like I’m a cat or a dog, she sighed. She made sure to wear the bracelet every time she left home, so if she forgot her name all she had to do was glance at it. No more yanking out her license, no more weird looks from people.
She didn’t let on about her problem to her husband. She knew he’d only say it proved she was unhappy with their life together. He was overly logical about everything. He didn’t mean any harm; that’s just the way he was, always theorizing about everything under the sun. That way of looking at the world was not her forte, however. Her husband was also quite a talker, and wouldn’t easily back down once he started on a topic. So she kept quiet about the whole thing.
Still, she thought, what her husband said—or would likely have said if he only knew—was off the mark. She wasn’t worried or dissatisfied with their marriage. Apart from his sometimes excessive logicality, she had no complaints about her husband, and no real negative feelings about her in-laws, either. Her father-in-law was a doctor who operated a small clinic in Sakata City, in the far north prefecture of Yamagata. Her in-laws were definitely conservative, but her husband was a second son so they generally kept out of Mizuki’s and her husband’s lives. Mizuki was from Nagoya, and so was at first overwhelmed by the frigid winters in Sakata, but during their one or two annual trips there she started to like the place. Two years after she and her husband married, they took out a mortgage and bought a condo in a new building in Shinagawa. Her husband, now thirty, worked in a lab in a pharmaceutical company. Mizuki was twenty-six and worked at a Honda dealership. She answered the phone, showed customers to the lounge, brought coffee, made copies when necessary, took care of files and updating their computerized customer list.
Mizuki’s uncle, an executive at Honda, had found the job for her after she graduated from a women’s junior college in Tokyo. It wasn’t the most thrilling job imaginable, but they did give her some responsibility and overall it wasn’t so bad. Her duties didn’t include car sales, but whenever the salesmen were out she took over, always doing a decent job of answering the customers’ questions. She learned by watching the salesmen, and quickly grasped the necessary technical information, and the knack of selling cars. She’d memorized the mileage ratings of all the models in the showroom, and could convince anyone, for instance, how the Odyssey handled less like a minivan and more like an ordinary sedan. Mizuki was a good conversationalist herself, and that and her winning smile always put customers at ease. She also knew how to subtly change her tack based on her reading of each customer’s personality. Unfortunately, however, she didn’t have the authority to give discounts, negotiate prices of trade-ins, or throw in options for free, so even if she had the customer ready to sign on the dotted line, in the end she had to turn over negotiations to the sales staff. She might have done most of the work, but one of the salesmen would take over and get the commission. The only reward she could expect was the occasional free dinner from one of the salesmen sharing his windfall.
Occasionally the thought crossed her mind that if they’d let her do sales they’d sell more cars and the dealership’s overall record would improve. If these young salesmen, fresh out of college, only put their minds to it, they could sell twice as many cars. Nobody told her, though, that she was too good at sales to be wasting her time in clerical work, that she should be transferred to the sales division. That’s the way a company operates. The sales division is one thing, the clerical staff another, and except in very rare cases, these were unbreachable boundaries. Besides, she wasn’t ambitious enough to want to try to boost her career that way. She much preferred putting in her eight hours, nine to five, taking all the vacation time she had coming, and enjoying her time off.
At work Mizuki continued to use her maiden name. If she officially changed her name, then all the data concerning her in their computer system would have to be changed, a job she’d have to do herself. It was too much trouble and she kept putting it off, and finally she just decided to go by her maiden name. For tax purposes she was listed as married, but her name was unchanged. She knew it wasn’t right to do that, but nobody at work said anything (they were all far too busy to worry about details), so she still went by Mizuki Ozawa. That was still the name on her business cards, her name tag, her time card. Everybody called her either Ozawa-san, Ozawa-kun, Mizukisan, or even the familiar Mizuki-chan. She wasn’t trying to avoid using her married name. It was just too much paperwork to change it, so she managed to slip by without ever making the changes. If somebody else would input all the changes for her, she thought, she’d be happy to go by Mizuki Ando.
Her husband knew she was going by her maiden name at work (he called her occasionally), but didn’t have a problem with it. He seemed to feel that whatever name she used at work was just a matter of convenience. As long as he was convinced of the logic, he didn’t complain. In that sense he was pretty easygoing.
Mizuki began to worry that forgetting her name so completely might be a symptom of some awful disease, perhaps an early sign of Alzheimer’s. The world was full of unexpected, fatal diseases. She’d never known, until recently, that there were diseases such as myasthenia and Huntington’s disease. There must be countless others she’d never heard of. And with most of these illnesses the early symptoms were quite slight. Unusual, but slight symptoms such as—forgetting your own name? Once she started thinking this way, she grew worried that an unknown disease was silently spreading throughout her body.
Mizuki went to a large hospital and explained the symptoms. The young doctor in charge, however—who was so pale and exhausted he looked more like a patient than a physician—didn’t take her seriously. “Do you forget anything else besides your name?” he asked. No, she said. Right now it’s just my name. “Hmm. This sounds more like a psychiatric case,” he said, his voice devoid of any interest or sympathy. “If you start to forget things other than your name, please check back with us. We can run some tests then.” We’ve got our hands full with a lot more seriously ill people than you, he seemed to imply. Forgetting your own name every once in a while is no big deal.
One day, in the local ward newsletter that came in the mail, she came across an article announcing that the ward office would be opening a counseling center. It was just a tiny article, something she’d normally have overlooked. The center would be open twice a month and feature a professional counselor who, at a greatly reduced rate, would advise people one-on-one. Any resident of Shinagawa Ward over eighteen was free to make use of its services, the article said, with everything held in the strictest confidence. Mizuki had her doubts about whether a ward-sponsored counseling center would do any good, but decided to give it a try. It couldn’t hurt, she concluded. The dealership she worked at was busy on the weekends, but getting a day off during the week wasn’t difficult and she was able to adjust her schedule to fit the schedule of the counseling center, which was an unrealistic one for ordinary working people. The center required an appointment, so she phoned ahead. One thirty-minute session cost two thousand yen, not an excessive amount for her to pay. She made an appointment for one p.m. the following Wednesday.
When she arrived at the counseling center on the third floor of the ward office, Mizuki found she was the only client. “They started this program rather suddenly,” the woman receptionist explained, “and most people don’t know about it yet. Once people find out, I’m sure we’ll get more people coming by. But now we’re pretty open, so you’re lucky.”
The counselor, whose name was Tetsuko Sakaki, was a pleasant, short, heavyset woman in her late forties. Her short hair was dyed a light brown, her broad face wreathed in an amiable smile. She wore a light-colored summer-weight suit, a shiny silk blouse, a necklace of artificial pearls, and low heels. She looked less like a counselor than some friendly, helpful neighborhood housewife.
“My husband works in the ward office here, you see. He’s section chief of the Public Works Department,” she said by way of friendly introduction. “That’s how we were able to get support from the ward and open this counseling center. Actually, you’re our first client, and we’re very happy to have you. I don’t have any other appointments today, so let’s just take our time and have a good heart-to-heart talk.” The woman spoke extremely slowly, everything about her slow and deliberate.
It’s very nice to meet you, Mizuki said. Inside, though, she wondered whether this sort of person would be of any help.
“You can rest assured that I have a degree in counseling and lots of experience. So just leave everything up to me,” the woman added, sounding like she’d read Mizuki’s mind.
Mrs. Sakaki was seated behind a plain metal office desk. Mizuki sat on a small, ancient sofa that looked like something they’d just dragged out of storage. The springs were about to go, and the musty smell made her nose twitch.
“I was really hoping to get one of those nice couches so it looks more like a counselor’s office, but that’s all we could come up with at the moment. We’re dealing with a town hall here, so you can always count on a lot of red tape. An awful place. I promise next time we’ll have something better for you to sit on, but I hope today you won’t mind.”
Mizuki sank back into the flimsy old sofa and began to explain how she’d come to forget her name so often. All the while Mrs. Sakaki just nodded along. She didn’t ask any questions, never showed any surprise. She hardly even made any appropriate sounds to show she was following Mizuki. She just listened carefully to Mizuki’s story, and except for the occasional frown as if she were considering something, her face remained unchanged, her faint smile, like a spring moon at dusk, never wavered.
“That was a wonderful idea to put your name on a bracelet,” she commented after Mizuki had finished. “I like the way you dealt with it. The first thing is to come up with a practical solution, to minimize any inconvenience. Much better to deal with the issue in a realistic way than be tormented by a sense of guilt, brood over it, or get all flustered. I can see you’re quite clever. And it’s a gorgeous bracelet. It looks wonderful on you.”
“Do you think forgetting one’s name might be connected with a more serious disease? Are there cases of this?” Mizuki asked.
“I don’t believe there are any diseases that have that sort of defined early symptom,” Mrs. Sakaki said. “I am a little concerned, though, that the symptoms have gotten worse over the past year. I suppose it’s possible this might lead to other symptoms, or that your memory loss could spread to other areas. So let’s take it one step at a time and determine where this all started. I would imagine that since you work outside the home, forgetting your name must lead to all sorts of problems.”
Mrs. Sakaki began by asking several basic questions about Mizuki’s present life. How long have you been married? What kind of work do you do? How is your health? She went on to question her about her childhood, about her family, her schooling. Things she enjoyed, things she didn’t. Things she was good at, things she wasn’t. Mizuki tried to answer each and every question as honestly, as quickly, and as accurately as she could.
Mizuki was raised in a quite ordinary family, with her parents and older sister. Her father worked for a large insurance company, and though they weren’t affluent by any means, she never remembered them hurting for money. Her father was a serious person, while her mother was on the delicate side and a bit of a nag. Her sister was always at the top of her class, though according to Mizuki she was a little shallow and sneaky. Still, Mizuki had no special problems with her family and got along with them all right. They’d never had any major fights. Mizuki herself had been the sort of child who didn’t stand out. She was always healthy, never got sick, which doesn’t mean that she was particularly athletic—she wasn’t. She didn’t have any hang-ups about her looks, though nobody ever told her she was pretty, either. Mizuki saw herself as fairly intelligent, but didn’t excel in any one area. Her grades were all right—if you were looking for her name on the grade roster, it was faster to count from the top of the ranked list than from the bottom. She’d had some good friends in school, but they’d all moved to other places after getting married and now they seldom kept in touch.
She didn’t have any particular complaints about married life. In the beginning she and her husband made the usual, predictable mistakes young marrieds make, but over time they’d cobbled together a decent enough life. Her husband wasn’t perfect by any means (besides his argumentative nature, his sense of fashion was nonexistent), but he had a lot of good points—he was kind, responsible, clean, would eat anything, and never complained. He seemed to get along fine with everyone at work, both his colleagues and his bosses. Of course there were times when unpleasant things did arise at work, an unavoidable consequence of working closely with the same people day after day, but still he didn’t seem to get too stressed out by it.
As she responded to all these questions, Mizuki was struck by what an uninspired life she’d led. Nothing approaching the dramatic had ever touched her. If her life were a movie, it would be one of those low-budget environmental documentaries guaranteed to put you to sleep. Washed-out scenery stretching out endlessly to the horizon. No changes of scene, no close-ups, nothing exciting, just a flatline experience with nothing whatsoever to draw you in. Nothing ominous, nothing suggestive. Occasionally the camera angle would shift ever so slightly as if nudged out of its complacency. Mizuki knew it was a counselor’s job to listen to her clients, but she started to feel sorry for the woman who was having to listen so intently to such a tedious life story. Surely she couldn’t suppress a yawn forever. If it were me and I had to listen to endless tales of stale lives like mine, Mizuki thought, at some point I’d keel over from sheer boredom.
Tetsuko Sakaki, though, listened intently to Mizuki, taking down a few concise notes. Occasionally she’d ask a quick question, but for the most part she was silent, as if focusing entirely on the process of listening to Mizuki’s story. The few times when she did speak, her voice revealed no hint of boredom, rather a warmth that showed her genuine concern. Listening to Tetsuko’s distinctive drawl, Mizuki found herself strangely calmed. No one’s ever listened so patiently to me before, she realized. When their meeting, just over an hour, wound up, Mizuki felt a burden lifted from her.
“Mrs. Ando, can you come at the same time next Wednesday?” Mrs. Sakaki asked, smiling broadly.
“Yes, I can,” Mizuki replied. “You don’t mind if I do?”
“Of course not. As long as you’re all right with it. Counseling takes many sessions before you see any progress. This isn’t like one of those radio call-in shows where you can easily wrap up things and just advise the caller to ‘Hang in there!’ It might take time, but we’re like neighbors, both from Shinagawa, so let’s take our time and do a good job.”
“I wonder if there’s any event you can recall that had to do with names?” Mrs. Sakaki asked during their second session. “Your name, somebody else’s name, the name of a pet, name of a place you’ve visited, a nickname, perhaps? Anything having to do with a name. If you have any memory at all concerning a name, I’d like you to tell me about it.”
“Something to do with names?”
“Names, naming, signatures, roll calls…It can be something trivial, as long as it has to do with a name. Try to remember.”
Mizuki thought about it for a long while.
“I don’t think I have any particular memory about a name,” she finally said. “At least nothing’s coming to me right now. Oh…I do have a memory about a name tag.”
“A name tag. Very good.”
“But it wasn’t my name tag,” Mizuki said. “It was somebody else’s.”
“That doesn’t matter. Tell me about it,” Mrs. Sakaki said.
“As I mentioned last week, I went to a private girls’ school for both junior and senior high,” Mizuki began. “I was from Nagoya and the school was in Yokohama so I lived in a dorm at school and went home on the weekends. I’d take the Shinkansen train home every Friday night and be back on Sunday night. It was only two hours to Nagoya, so I didn’t feel particularly lonely.”
Mrs. Sakaki nodded. “But weren’t there a lot of good private girls’ schools in Nagoya? Why did you have to leave your home and go all the way to Yokohama?”
“My mother graduated from there and wanted one of her daughters to go. And I thought it might be nice to live apart from my parents. The school was a missionary school but was fairly liberal. I made some good friends there. All of them were like me, from other places, with mothers who’d graduated from the school. I was there for six years and generally enjoyed it. The food was pretty bad, however.”
Mrs. Sakaki smiled. “You said you have an older sister?”
“That’s right. She’s two years older than me.”
“Why didn’t she go to that school?”
“She’s more of a homebody. She’s been sort of sickly, too, since she was little. So she went to a local school, and lived at home. That’s why my mother wanted me to attend that school. I’ve always been healthy and a lot more independent than my sister. When I graduated from elementary school and they asked me if I’d go to the school in Yokohama, I said OK. The idea of riding the Shinkansen every weekend to come home was kind of exciting, too.”
“Excuse me for interrupting,” Mrs. Sakaki said, smiling. “Please go on.”
“Most people had a roommate in the dorm, but when you got to be a senior you were given your own room. I was living in one of those single rooms when this all happened. Since I was a senior they made me student representative for the dorm. There was a board at the entrance of the dorm with name tags hanging there for each of the students in the dorm. The front of the name tag had your name in black, the back in red. Whenever you went out you had to turn the name tag over, and turn it back when you returned. So when the person’s name was in black they were in the dorm; if it was red it meant they’d gone out. If you were staying overnight somewhere or were going to be on leave for a while, your name tag was taken off the board. Students took turns manning the front desk and when you got a phone call for one of the students it was easy to tell their status just by glancing at the board. It was a very convenient system.”
Mrs. Sakaki gave a word of encouragement for her to go on.
“Anyway, this happened in October. It was before dinnertime and I was in my room, doing homework, when a junior named Yuko Matsunaka came to see me. She was by far the prettiest girl in the whole dorm—fair skin, long hair, beautiful, doll-like features. Her parents ran a well-known Japanese inn in Kanazawa and were pretty well-off. She wasn’t in my class so I’m not sure, but I heard her grades were very good. In other words, she stood out in a lot of ways. There were lots of younger students who practically worshipped her. But Yuko was friendly and wasn’t stuck up at all. She was a quiet girl who didn’t show her feelings much. A nice girl, but I sometimes couldn’t figure out what she was thinking. The younger girls might have looked up to her but I doubt she had any close friends.”
Mizuki was at her desk, listening to the radio in her room when she heard a faint knock at her door. She opened it to find Yuko Matsunaka standing there, dressed in a tight turtleneck sweater and jeans. I’d like to talk with you, Yuko said, if you have time. “Fine,” Mizuki said, frankly taken aback. “I’m not doing anything special right now.” Mizuki had never once had a private conversation with Yuko, just the two of them, and she’d never imagined Yuko would come to her room to ask her advice about anything personal. Mizuki motioned for her to sit down, and made some tea with the hot water in her thermos.
“Mizuki, have you ever felt jealous?” Yuko said all of a sudden.
Mizuki was surprised by this sudden question, but gave it serious thought.
“No, I guess I never have,” she replied.
“Not even once?”
Mizuki shook her head. “At least, when you ask me out of the blue like that I can’t remember any times. Jealousy…What kind do you mean?”
“Like you love somebody but he loves somebody else. Like there’s something you want very badly but somebody else just grabs it. Or there’s something you want to be able to do, and somebody else is able to do it with no effort…Those sorts of things.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever felt that way,” Mizuki said. “Have you?”
“A lot.”
Mizuki didn’t know what to say. How could a girl like this want anything more in life? She was gorgeous, rich, did well in school, and was popular. Her parents doted on her. Mizuki had heard rumors that on weekends she went on dates with a handsome college student. So how on earth could she want anything more?
“Like what, for instance?” Mizuki asked.
“I’d rather not say,” Yuko said, choosing her words carefully. “Besides, listing all the details here is pointless. I’ve wanted to ask you that for a while—whether you’ve ever felt jealous.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
Mizuki had no idea what this was all about, but made up her mind to answer as honestly as she could. “I don’t think I’ve ever had that sort of experience,” she began. “I don’t know why, and maybe it’s a little strange if you think about it. I mean, it’s not like I have tons of confidence, or get everything I want. Actually there’re lots of things I should feel frustrated about, but for whatever reason, that hasn’t made me feel jealous of other people. I wonder why.”
Yuko Matsunaka smiled faintly. “I don’t think jealousy has much of a connection with real, objective conditions. Like if you’re fortunate you’re not jealous, but if life hasn’t blessed you, you are jealous. Jealousy doesn’t work that way. It’s more like a tumor secretly growing inside us that gets bigger and bigger, beyond all reason. Even if you find out it’s there, there’s nothing you can do to stop it. It’s like saying people who are fortunate don’t get tumors, while people who’re unhappy get them more easily—that isn’t true, right? It’s the same thing.”
Mizuki listened without saying anything. Yuko hardly ever had so much to say at one time.
“It’s hard to explain what jealousy is to someone who’s never felt it. One thing I do know is it’s not easy living with it. It’s like carrying around your own small version of hell, day after day. You should be thankful you’ve never felt that way.”
Yuko stopped speaking and looked straight at Mizuki with what might pass for a smile on her face. She really is lovely, Mizuki thought again. Nice clothes, a wonderful bust. What would it feel like to be like her—such a beauty you stop traffic wherever you go? Is it something you can simply be proud of? Or is it more of a burden?
Despite these thoughts, Mizuki never once felt envious of Yuko.
“I’m going back home now,” Yuko said, staring at her hands in her lap. “One of my relatives died and I have to go to the funeral. I already got permission from our dorm master. I should be back by Monday morning, but while I’m gone I was wondering if you would take care of my name tag.”
She extracted her name tag from her pocket and handed it to Mizuki. Mizuki didn’t understand what was going on.
“I don’t mind keeping it for you,” Mizuki said. “But why go to the bother of asking me? Couldn’t you just stick it in a desk drawer?”
Yuko looked even deeper into Mizuki’s eyes, which made her uncomfortable.
“I just want you to hold on to it for me this time,” Yuko said, point-blank. “There’s something that’s bothering me, and I don’t want to keep it in my room.”
“I don’t mind,” Mizuki said.
“I don’t want a monkey running off with it while I’m away,” Yuko said.
“I doubt there’re any monkeys here,” Mizuki said brightly. It wasn’t like Yuko to make jokes. And then Yuko left the room, leaving behind the name tag, the untouched cup of tea, and a strange blank space where she had been.
“On Monday Yuko still hadn’t returned to the dorm,” Mizuki told her counselor, Mrs. Sakaki. “The teacher in charge of her class was worried, so he phoned her parents. She’d never gone home. No one in her family had passed away, and there had never been any funeral for her to attend. She’d lied about the whole thing and then vanished. They found her body the following week, on the weekend. I heard about it after I came back from spending the weekend at home in Nagoya. She’d killed herself in a woods somewhere, slitting her wrists. When they found her she was dead, covered with blood. Nobody knew why she did it. She didn’t leave behind a note, and there wasn’t any clear motive. Her roommate said she’d seemed the same as always. She hadn’t seemed troubled by anything. Yuko had killed herself without saying a word to anybody.”
“But wasn’t this Miss Matsunaka trying to tell you something?” Mrs. Sakaki asked. “That’s why she came to your room, left her name tag with you. And talked about her jealousy.”
“It’s true she talked about jealousy with me. I didn’t make much of it at the time, though later I realized she must have wanted to tell someone about it before she died.”
“Did you tell anybody that she’d come to your room just before she died?”
“No, I never did.”
“Why not?”
Mizuki inclined her head and gave it some thought. “If I told people about it, it would only cause more confusion. No one would understand, and it wouldn’t do any good.”
“You mean that jealousy might have been the reason for her suicide?”
“Right. If I told people that, they might start thinking something’s wrong with me. Who in the world would a girl like Yuko be envious of? Everybody was pretty confused then, and worked up, so I decided the best thing was just to keep quiet. You can imagine the atmosphere in a girls’ school dorm—if I’d said anything it would have been like lighting a match in a gas-filled room.”
“What happened to the name tag?”
“I still have it. It’s in a box in the back of my closet. Along with my own name tag.”
“Why do you still keep it with you?”
“Things were in such an uproar at school then and I lost my chance to return it. And the longer I waited, the harder it became to just casually return it. But I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away, either. Besides, I started to think that maybe Yuko wanted me to keep that name tag. That’s why she came to my room just before she died and left it with me. Why she picked me, I have no idea.”
“It is sort of strange. You and Yuko weren’t very close, were you.”
“Living in a small dorm, naturally we ran across each other,” Mizuki said. “We exchanged a few words every once in a while. But we were in different grades, and we’d never once talked about anything personal. Maybe she came to see me because I was the student representative in the dorm. I can’t think of any other reason.”
“Perhaps Yuko was interested in you for some reason. Maybe she was attracted to you. Maybe she saw something in you she was drawn toward.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” Mizuki said.
Mrs. Sakaki was silent, gazing for a time at Mizuki as if trying to make sure of something.
“All that aside, you honestly have never felt jealous? Not even once in your life?”
Mizuki didn’t reply right away. “I don’t think so. Not even once.”
“Which means that you can’t comprehend what jealousy is?”
“In general I think I can—at least what might cause it. But I don’t know what it actually feels like. How overpowering it is, how long it lasts, how much you suffer because of it.”
“You’re right,” Mrs. Sakaki said. “Jealousy goes through many stages. All human emotions are like that. When it’s not so serious, people call it fretting or envy. There are differences in intensity, but most people experience those less intense emotions as a matter of course. Like say one of your co-workers is promoted ahead of you, or a student in your class becomes the teacher’s pet. Or a neighbor wins the lottery. That’s just envy. It seems unfair, and you get a little mad. An entirely natural reaction. Are you sure you’ve never felt that? You’ve never even envied someone else?”
Mizuki gave it some thought. “I don’t think I have. Of course there’re plenty of people more fortunate than I am. But that doesn’t mean I’ve ever felt envious of them. I figure everybody’s life is different.”
“Since everybody’s different it’s hard to compare them?”
“I suppose so.”
“An interesting point of view…,” Mrs. Sakaki said, hands folded together on top of the desk, her relaxed voice betraying amusement. “Anyway, those are just mild cases, envy as we’ve said. In cases of intense jealousy, things aren’t so simple. With jealousy a parasite takes root in your heart, and as your friend said, it becomes like a cancer that eats away at your soul. In some cases it may even lead the person to death. They can’t control it, and their life does indeed become a living hell.”
After Mizuki got back home, she took out an old cardboard box wrapped in tape from the back of her closet. She’d put Yuko’s name tag in there along with her own, inside an envelope, so they should still be there. All sorts of memorabilia of Mizuki’s life were stuffed inside the box—old letters from grade school, diaries, photo albums, report cards. She’d been meaning to get rid of it, but had always been too busy, so she’d dragged it along every time she moved. But the envelope was nowhere to be found. She dumped out the contents of the box and sorted through them carefully, but came up empty-handed. She was bewildered. When she moved into the condo she’d done a quick check of the box’s contents and distinctly remembered seeing the envelope. So I still have it, she’d thought then, impressed. She’d sealed the name tags back inside the envelope and hadn’t opened the box once since then. So the envelope had to be here. Where could it have disappeared to?
Since she started going to the ward counseling office once a week and talking with Mrs. Sakaki, Mizuki didn’t worry as much about forgetting her name. She still forgot it about as often as before, but the symptoms seemed to have stabilized, and nothing else had slipped from her memory. Thanks to her bracelet, she’d avoided any embarrassment. She’d even begun to feel, occasionally, that forgetting her name was just a natural part of life.
Mizuki kept her counseling sessions a secret from her husband. She hadn’t intended to hide it from him, but explaining the whole thing just seemed like more trouble than it was worth. Knowing him, her husband would demand a detailed explanation. And besides, forgetting her name and going once a week to a ward-sponsored counselor weren’t bothering him in any way. The fees were minimal.
Two months passed. Every Wednesday Mizuki made her way to the office on the third floor of the ward office for her counseling. The number of clients had increased a little, so they had to scale back their one-hour sessions to thirty minutes. The reduced time didn’t matter, though, since they were already on the same wavelength and made the best use of their time together. Sometimes Mizuki wished they could talk longer, but with the absurdly low fees, she couldn’t complain.
“This is our ninth session together,” Mrs. Sakaki said, five minutes before the end of one session. “You aren’t forgetting your name less often, but it hasn’t gotten worse, has it?”
“No, it hasn’t,” Mizuki said. “The symptoms are holding steady.”
“That’s wonderful,” Mrs. Sakaki said. She put her black-barreled ballpoint pen back in her pocket and tightly clasped her hands on the desktop. She paused for a moment. “Perhaps—just perhaps—when you come here next week we might make great progress concerning the issue we’ve been discussing.”
“You mean about me forgetting my name?”
“Exactly. If things go well, we should be able to determine a definite cause and even be able to show it to you.”
“The reason why I’m forgetting my name?”
“Precisely.”
Mizuki couldn’t quite grasp what she was getting at. “When you say a definite cause…you mean it’s something visible?”
“Of course it’s visible,” Mrs. Sakaki said, rubbing her hands together in satisfaction. “Something we can set down on a platter and say, Here you go! I can’t go into details until next week. At this point, I’m still not sure whether it will work out or not. I’m just hoping that it will. And if it does, don’t worry; I’ll explain the whole thing to you.”
Mizuki nodded.
“At any rate, what I’m trying to say is, we’ve gone up and down with this but things are finally heading toward a solution. You know what they say—about life being three steps forward and two steps back? So don’t worry. Just trust good old Mrs. Sakaki. I’ll see you next week, then. And don’t forget to make an appointment on your way out.”
Mrs. Sakaki punctuated all this with a wink.
The following week at one p.m. when Mizuki entered the counseling office, Mrs. Sakaki sat there behind her desk with the biggest smile Mizuki had ever seen on her.
“I’ve discovered the reason why you’ve been forgetting your name,” she announced proudly. “And we’ve found a solution.”
“So I won’t be forgetting my name anymore?” Mizuki asked.
“Correct. You won’t forget your name anymore. We’ve solved the problem and taken care of it.”
“What in the world was the cause of it?” Mizuki asked doubtfully.
From a black enamel handbag beside her Mrs. Sakaki took out something and laid it on the desk.
“I believe this is yours.”
Mizuki got up from the sofa and walked over to the desk. On the desk were two name tags. Mizuki Ozawa was written on one of them, Yuko Matsunaka on the other. Mizuki paled. She went back to the sofa and sank down, speechless for a time. She held both palms pressed against her mouth as if preventing the words from spilling out.
“It’s no wonder you’re surprised,” Mrs. Sakaki said. “But not to worry, I’ll explain everything. Relax. There’s nothing to be frightened of.”
“But how did you—?” Mizuki said.
“How did I happen to have your high school name tags?”
“Yes. I just don’t—”
“Don’t understand?”
Mizuki nodded.
“I recovered them for you,” Mrs. Sakaki said. “Those name tags were stolen from you and that’s why you have trouble remembering your name. So we had to get the name tags back so you could recover your name.”
“But who would—?”
“Who would break into your house and steal these two name tags? And for what possible purpose?” Mrs. Sakaki said. “Rather than having me respond to that, I think it’s best if you ask the individual responsible directly.”
“The person who did it is here?” Mizuki asked in astonishment.
“Of course. We captured him and took back the name tags. I didn’t nab him myself, mind you. My husband and one of the men under him did it. Remember I told you my husband is section head of the Shinagawa Public Works Department?”
Mizuki nodded without thinking.
“So what do you say we go meet the culprit? Then you can give him a piece of your mind face-to-face.”
Mizuki followed Mrs. Sakaki out of the counseling office, down the hallway, and into the elevator. They got off at the basement, walked down a long deserted corridor, came up to a door at the very end. Mrs. Sakaki knocked, a man’s voice told them to come in, and she opened the door.
Inside were a tall, thin man around fifty, and a larger man in his midtwenties, both dressed in light khaki work clothes. The older man had a name tag on his chest that read “Sakaki,” the younger man one that read “Sakurada.” Sakurada was holding a black nightstick in his hands.
“Mrs. Mizuki Ando, I presume?” Mr. Sakaki asked. “My name’s Yoshio Sakaki, Tetsuko’s husband. I’m section chief of the Public Works Department here. And this is Mr. Sakurada, who works with me.”
“Nice to meet you,” Mizuki said.
“Is he giving you any trouble?” Mrs. Sakaki asked her husband.
“No, he’s sort of resigned himself to the situation, I think,” Mr. Sakaki said. “Sakurada here has been keeping an eye on him all morning, and apparently he’s been behaving himself.”
“He’s been quiet,” Mr. Sakurada said, sounding disappointed. “If he started to get violent I was all set to teach him a lesson, but nothing like that’s happened.”
“Sakurada was captain of the karate team at Meiji University, and is one of our up-and-coming young men,” Mr. Sakaki said.
“So—who in the world broke into my place and stole those name tags?” Mizuki asked.
“Well, why don’t we introduce you to him?” Mrs. Sakaki said.
There was another door at the rear of the room. Mr. Sakurada opened it, and switched on the light. He made a quick sweep of the room with his eyes and turned to the others. “Looks OK. Please come on in.”
Mr. Sakaki went in first, followed by his wife, with Mizuki bringing up the rear.
The room looked like a small storage room of some kind. There was no furniture, just one chair, on which a monkey was sitting. He was large for a monkey—smaller than an adult human, but bigger than an elementary-school student. His hair was a shade longer than is usual for monkeys and was dotted with gray. It was hard to tell his age, but he was definitely no longer young. The monkey’s arms and legs were tightly tied by a thin cord to the wooden chair, and his long tail drooped on the floor. As Mizuki entered the monkey shot her a glance, then stared back down at the ground.
“A monkey?” Mizuki asked in surprise.
“That’s right,” Mrs. Sakaki replied. “A monkey stole the name tags from your apartment.”
I don’t want a monkey running off with it, Yuko had said. So that wasn’t a joke after all, Mizuki realized. Yuko had known all about this. A chill shot up Mizuki’s spine.
“But how could you—?”
“How could I know about this?” Mrs. Sakaki said. “As I told you when we first met, I’m a professional. A licensed practitioner, with lots of experience. Don’t judge people by appearances. Don’t think somebody providing inexpensive counseling in a ward office is any less skilled than someone working in some fancy building.”
“No, of course not. It’s just that I was so surprised, and I—”
“Don’t worry. I’m just kidding!” Mrs. Sakaki laughed. “To tell the truth, I know I’m a bit of an oddball. That’s why organizations and academia and I don’t exactly get along. I much prefer going my own way in a place like this. Since, as you’ve observed, my way of doing things is pretty unique.”
“But very effective,” her husband added.
“So this monkey stole the name tags?” Mizuki asked.
“Yes, he sneaked into your apartment and stole the name tags from your closet. Right around the time you began forgetting your name, about a year ago, I believe?”
“Yes, it was around then.”
“I’m very sorry,” the monkey said, speaking for the first time, his voice low but spirited, with almost a musical quality to it.
“He can talk!” Mizuki exclaimed, dumbfounded.
“Yes, I can,” the monkey replied, his expression unchanged. “There’s one other thing I need to apologize for. When I broke into your place to steal the name tags, I helped myself to a couple of bananas. I hadn’t planned to take anything besides the name tags, but I was so hungry, and though I knew I shouldn’t, I ended up snatching two bananas that were on the table. They just looked too good to pass up.”
“The nerve of this guy,” Mr. Sakurada said, slapping the black nightstick in his hands a couple of times. “Who knows what else he swiped. Want me to grill him a little to find out?”
“Take it easy,” Mr. Sakaki told him. “He confessed about the bananas himself, and besides, he doesn’t strike me as such a brutal sort. Let’s not do anything drastic until we hear more facts. If they find out we mistreated an animal inside the ward office we could be in deep trouble.”
“Why did you steal the name tags?” Mizuki asked the monkey.
“It’s what I do. I’m a monkey who takes people’s names,” the monkey answered. “It’s a sickness I suffer from. Once I spot a name I can’t help myself. Not just any name, mind you. I’ll see a name that attracts me, especially a person’s name, and then I have to have it. I sneak inside people’s homes and steal those kinds of names. I know it’s wrong, but I can’t control myself.”
“Were you the one who was trying to break into our dorm and steal Yuko’s name tag?”
“That’s correct. I was head over heels in love with Miss Matsunaka. I’ve never been so attracted to somebody in my life. But I wasn’t able to make her mine. I found this too much to handle, being a monkey, so I decided that no matter what, at least I had to have her name for myself. If I could possess her name, then I’d be satisfied. What more could a monkey ask for? But before I could carry out my plan, she passed away.”
“Did you have anything to do with her suicide?”
“No, I didn’t,” the monkey said, shaking his head emphatically. “I had nothing to do with that. She was overwhelmed by an inner darkness, and nobody could have saved her.”
“But how did you know, after all these years, that Yuko’s name tag was at my place?”
“It took a long time to trace it. Soon after Miss Matsunaka died, I tried to get hold of her name tag, before they took it away, but it had already vanished. Nobody had any idea where. I worked my butt off trying to track it down, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t locate it. I didn’t imagine at the time that Miss Matsunaka had left her name tag with you, since you weren’t particularly close.”
“True,” Mizuki said.
“But one day I had a flash of inspiration, that maybe—just maybe—she’d left her name tag with you. This was in the spring of last year. It took a long time to track you down—to find out that you’d gotten married, that your name was now Mizuki Ando, that you were living in a condo in Shinagawa. Being a monkey slows down an investigation like that, as you might imagine. At any rate, that’s how I came to sneak into your apartment to steal it.”
“But why did you steal my name tag too? Why not just Yuko’s? I suffered a lot because of what you did. I couldn’t remember my name!”
“I’m very, very sorry,” the monkey said, hanging his head in shame. “When I see a name I like, I end up snatching it. This is kind of embarrassing, but your name really moved my poor little heart. As I said before, it’s a kind of illness. I’m overcome by urges I can’t control. I know it’s wrong, but I do it anyway. I deeply apologize for all the problems I caused you.”
“This monkey was hiding in the sewers in Shinagawa,” Mrs. Sakaki said, “so I asked my husband to have some of his young colleagues catch him. It worked out well, since he’s section chief of Public Works and they’re in charge of the sewers.”
“Young Sakurada here did most of the work,” Mr. Sakaki added.
“Public Works has to sit up and take notice when a dubious character like this is hiding out in our sewers,” Sakurada said proudly. “The monkey apparently had a hideout underneath Takanawa that he used as a base for foraging operations all over Tokyo.”
“There’s no place for us to live in the city,” the monkey said. “There aren’t many trees, few shady places in the daytime. If we go aboveground, people gang up on us and try to catch us. Children throw things at us or shoot at us with BB guns. Huge dogs tear after us. If we take a rest up in a tree, TV crews pop up and shine a bright spotlight on us. We never get any rest, so we have to hide underground. Please forgive me.”
“But how on earth did you know this monkey was hiding in the sewer?” Mizuki asked Mrs. Sakaki.
“As we’ve talked over the past two months, many things have gradually become clear to me, like the fog lifting,” Mrs. Sakaki said. “I realized there had to be something that was stealing names, and that whatever it was it must be hiding underground somewhere around here. And if you’re talking about under a city, that sort of limits the possibilities—it’s got to be either the subway or the sewers. So I told my husband I thought there was some creature, not a human, living in the sewers and asked him to look into it. And sure enough, they came up with this monkey.”
Mizuki was at a loss for words for a while. “But—how did just listening to me make you think that?”
“Maybe it’s not my place, as her husband, to say this,” Mr. Sakaki said with a serious look, “but my wife is a special person, with unusual powers. Many times during our twenty-two years of marriage I’ve witnessed strange events take place. That’s why I worked so hard to help her open the counseling center here in the ward office. I knew that as long as she had a place where she could put her powers to good use, the residents of Shinagawa would benefit. But I’m really glad we’ve solved the mystery. I must admit I’m relieved.”
“What are you going to do with the monkey?” Mizuki asked.
“Can’t let him live,” Sakurada said casually. “No matter what he tells you, once they acquire a bad habit like this they’ll be up to their old tricks again in no time, you can count on it. Let’s destroy him. That’s the best thing to do. Give him a shot of disinfectant and that’s all she wrote.”
“Hold on, now,” Mr. Sakaki said. “No matter what reasons we might have, if some animal rights group found out about us killing a monkey, they’d lodge a complaint and you can bet there’d be hell to pay. You remember when we killed all those crows, the big stink about that? I’d like to avoid a repeat of that.”
“I beg you, please don’t kill me,” the bound monkey said, bowing its head deeply. “What I’ve done is wrong. I understand that. I’ve caused humans a lot of trouble. I’m not trying to argue with you, but there’s also some good that comes from my actions.”
“What possible good could come from stealing people’s names? Explain yourself,” Mr. Sakaki said sharply.
“I do steal people’s names, no doubt about that. In doing so, though, I’m also able to remove some of the negative elements that stick to those names. I don’t mean to brag, but if I’d been able to steal Yuko Matsunaka’s name back then, she may very well not have taken her life.”
“Why do you say that?” Mizuki asked.
“If I had succeeded in stealing her name, I might have taken away some of the darkness that was hidden inside her,” the monkey said. “Take her darkness, along with her name, back to the world underground.”
“That’s too convenient. I don’t buy it,” Sakurada said. “This monkey’s life is on the line, so of course he’s going to use any tricks he can to explain away his actions.”
“Maybe not,” Mrs. Sakaki said, arms folded, after she’d given it some thought. “He might have a point after all.” She turned to the monkey. “When you steal names you take on both the good and the bad?”
“Yes, that’s right,” the monkey said. “I have no choice. If there are evil things included in them, we monkeys have to accept those, too. We take on the whole package, as it were. I beg you—don’t kill me. I’m a monkey with an awful habit, I know that, but I may be performing a useful service.”
“Well—what sort of bad things were included in my name?” Mizuki asked the monkey.
“I’d rather not say in front of you,” the monkey said.
“Please tell me,” Mizuki insisted. “If you tell me that, I’ll forgive you. And I’ll ask all those present to forgive you.”
“Do you mean it?”
“If this monkey tells me the truth, will you forgive him?” Mizuki asked Mr. Sakaki. “He’s not evil by nature. He’s already suffered, so let’s hear what he has to say and then you can take him to Mount Takao or somewhere and release him. If you do that, I don’t think he’ll bother anyone again. What do you think?”
“I have no objection as long as it’s all right with you,” Mr. Sakaki said. He turned to the monkey. “How ’bout it? You swear if we release you in the mountains you won’t come back to the Tokyo city limits?”
“Yes, sir. I swear I won’t come back,” the monkey promised, a meek look on his face. “I will never cause any trouble for you again. Never again will I wander around the sewers. I’m not young anymore, so this will be a good chance for a fresh start in life.”
“Just to make sure, why don’t we brand him on the butt so we’ll recognize him again,” Sakurada said. “I think we have a soldering iron around here that brands in the official seal of Shinagawa Ward.”
“Please, sir—don’t do that!” the monkey pleaded, eyes welling up. “If you put a strange brand on my butt the other monkeys will never let me join them. I’ll tell you everything you want to know, but just don’t brand me!”
“Well, let’s forget about the branding iron, then,” Mr. Sakaki said, trying to smooth things over. “If we used the official Shinagawa seal, we’d have to take responsibility for it later on.”
“I’m afraid you’re right,” Sakurada said, disappointed.
“All right, then, why don’t you tell me what evil things have stuck to my name?” Mizuki said, staring right into the monkey’s small red eyes.
“If I tell you it might hurt you.”
“I don’t care. Go ahead.”
For a time the monkey thought about this, deep frown lines on his forehead. “I think it’s better that you don’t hear this.”
“I told you it’s all right. I really want to know.”
“All right,” the monkey said. “Then I’ll tell you. Your mother doesn’t love you. She’s never loved you, even once, since you were little. I don’t know why, but it’s true. Your older sister’s the same. She doesn’t like you. Your mother sent you away to school in Yokohama because she wanted to get rid of you. Your mother and sister wanted to drive you away as far as possible. Your father isn’t a bad person, but he isn’t what you’d call a forceful personality, and he couldn’t stand up for you. For these reasons, then, ever since you were small you’ve never gotten enough love. I think you’ve had an inkling of this, but you’ve intentionally turned your eyes away from it, shut this painful reality up in a small dark place deep in your heart and closed the lid, trying not to think about it. Trying to suppress any negative feelings. This defensive stance has become part of who you are. Because of all this, you’ve never been able to deeply, unconditionally love anybody else.”
Mizuki was silent.
“Your married life seems happy and problem-free. And perhaps it is. But you don’t truly love your husband. Am I right? Even if you were to have a child, if things don’t change it would just be more of the same.”
Mizuki didn’t say a thing. She sank down onto the floor and closed her eyes. Her whole body felt like it was unraveling. Her skin, her insides, her bones felt like they were about to fall to pieces. All she heard was the sound of her own breathing.
“Pretty outrageous thing for a monkey to say,” Sakurada said, shaking his head. “Chief, I can’t stand it anymore. Let’s beat the crap out of him!”
“Hold on,” Mizuki said. “What this monkey’s saying is true. I’ve known it for a long time, but I’ve always tried to avoid it. I always closed my eyes to it, shut my ears. This monkey’s telling the truth, so please forgive him. Just take him to the mountains and let him go.”
Mrs. Sakaki gently rested a hand on Mizuki’s shoulder. “Are you sure you’re OK with that?”
“I don’t mind, as long as I get my name back. From now on I’m going to live with what’s out there. That’s my name, and that’s my life.”
Mrs. Sakaki turned to her husband. “Honey, next weekend why don’t we drive out to Mount Takao and let the monkey go. What do you say?”
“I have no problem with that,” Mr. Sakaki said. “We just bought a new car and it’d make for a nice little test run.”
“I’m so grateful. I don’t know how to thank you,” the monkey said.
“You don’t get carsick, do you?” Mrs. Sakaki asked the monkey.
“No, I’ll be fine,” the monkey replied. “I promise I won’t throw up or pee on your new car seats. I’ll behave myself the whole way. I won’t be a bother at all.”
As Mizuki was saying goodbye to the monkey she handed him Yuko Matsunaka’s name tag.
“You should have this, not me,” she said. “You liked Yuko, didn’t you?”
“I did. I really did like her.”
“Take good care of her name. And don’t steal anybody else’s.”
“I’ll take very good care of it. And I’m not going to ever steal again, I promise,” the monkey said, a serious look on his face.
“But why did Yuko leave this name tag with me just before she died? Why would she pick me?”
“I don’t know the answer,” the monkey said. “But because she did, at least you and I have been able to meet and talk with each other. A twist of fate, I suppose.”
“You must be right,” Mizuki said.
“Did what I told you hurt you?”
“It did,” Mizuki said. “It hurt a lot.”
“I’m very sorry. I didn’t want to tell you.”
“It’s all right. Deep down, I think I knew all this already. It’s something I had to confront—someday.”
“I’m relieved to hear that,” the monkey said.
“Goodbye,” Mizuki said. “I don’t imagine we’ll meet again.”
“Take care of yourself,” the monkey said. “And thank you for saving the life of the likes of me.”
“You better not show your face round Shinagawa anymore,” Sakurada warned, slapping his palm with the nightstick. “We’re giving you a break this time since the chief says so, but if I ever catch you here again, you aren’t going to get out of here alive.”
The monkey knew this was no empty threat.
“Well, so what should we do about next week?” Mrs. Sakaki asked after they returned to the counseling center. “Do you still have things you’d like to discuss with me?”
Mizuki shook her head. “No. Thanks to you, I think my problem’s solved. I’m so grateful for everything you’ve done for me.”
“You don’t need to talk over the things the monkey told you?”
“No, I should be able to handle that by myself. It’s something I have to think over on my own for a while.”
Mrs. Sakaki nodded. “You should be able to handle it. If you put your mind to it, I know you can grow stronger.”
“But if I can’t, can I still come to see you?” Mizuki asked.
“Of course!” Mrs. Sakaki said. Her supple face broke into a broad smile. “We can catch something else together.”
The two of them shook hands and said goodbye.
After she got home Mizuki took the name tag with “Mizuki Ozawa” and the bracelet with Mizuki (Ozawa) Ando engraved on it, put them in a plain brown business envelope, and placed that inside the cardboard box in her closet. She finally had her name back, and could resume a normal life. Things might work out. And then again they might not. But at least she had her own name now, a name that was hers, and hers alone.
—TRANSLATED BY PHILIP GABRIEL
HARUKI MURAKAMI
BLIND WILLOW, SLEEPING WOMAN
Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into thirty-eight languages, and the most recent of his many honors is the Yomiuri Literary Prize, whose previous recipients include Yukio Mishima, Kenzabur? ??e, and Kobo Abe.