Hey, now. Asakawa shook his head as he walked. A virus that causes sudden heart failure? Come on.
He climbed the stairs, muttering to himself, a virus, a virus. Indeed, he should start out with attempts at scientific explanation. Well, suppose there was a virus that caused heart attacks. At least it was a little more realistic than imagining that something supernatural was behind it all; it seemed less likely to get him laughed at. Even if such a virus hadn’t yet been discovered on earth, maybe it had just recently fallen to earth inside a meteor. Or maybe it had been developed as a biological weapon and had somehow escaped. You couldn’t rule out the possibility. Sure. He’d try thinking of it as a kind of virus for a while. Not that this would satisfy all his doubts. Why had they all died with looks of astonishment on their faces? Why had Tsuji and Nomi died on opposite sides of that small car, as if they were trying to get away from each other? Why hadn’t the autopsies revealed anything? The possibility of an escaped germ weapon could at least answer the third question. There would have been a gag order.
If he were to pursue this hypothesis further, he could deduce that the fact that there hadn’t been any other victims yet meant that the virus was not airborne. It was either blood-borne, like AIDS, or was fairly noncontagious. But more importantly, where had these four picked it up? He’d have to go back and sift through their activities in August and September again and look for places and times they had in common. Since the participants’ mouths had been shut permanently, it wouldn’t be easy. If their meeting had been a secret among the four of them, something neither parents nor friends knew about, then how was he to ferret it out? But he was sure that these four kids had some time, some place, some thing in common.
Sitting down at his word processor Asakawa chased the unknown virus from his thoughts. He needed to get out the notes he’d just taken, to sum up the contents of the cassette he’d made. He had to get this article finished today. Tomorrow, Sunday, he and his wife Shizu were going to visit her sister, Yoshimi Oishi. He wanted to see with his own eyes the spot where Tomoko had died, to feel on his own flesh whatever air still lingered. His wife had agreed to go to Honmoku to console her bereaved older sister; she had no inkling of her husband’s true motives.
Asakawa started pounding the keys of the word processor before he’d come up with a decent outline.
Shizu was seeing her parents for the first time in a month. Ever since their granddaughter Tomoko had died, they came to Tokyo from their home in Ashikaga whenever they could, not only to console their daughter but to be consoled in turn. Shizu only understood this today. Her heart ached when she saw her aged parents’ thin, grief-stricken faces. They had once had three grandchildren: their oldest daughter Yoshimi’s daughter Tomoko, their second daughter Kazuko’s son Kenichi, and Shizu’s daughter Yoko. One grandchild from each of their three daughters—not all that common. Tomoko had been their first grandchild, and their faces had crinkled up every time they had seen her; they had enjoyed spoiling her. Now they were so depressed that it was impossible to say whose grief was deeper, the parents’ or the grandparents’.
I guess grandchildren really mean a lot.
Shizu had just turned thirty this year. It was all she could do to imagine what her sister must be feeling, putting herself in her sister’s place, contemplating how she’d feel if she lost her own child. But really, there was no comparison to be made between her daughter Yoko, only a year and a half old, and Tomoko, who had died at seventeen. She couldn’t fathom how every passing year would deepen her love for her child.
Sometime after three in the afternoon, her parents began to get ready to go home to Ashikaga.
Shizu could hardly contain her surprise. Why had her husband, who always protested that he was too busy, suggested this visit to her sister’s house? This was the same husband who’d skipped the poor girl’s funeral, pleading that he had a deadline to meet. And now here it was almost dinnertime, and he wasn’t showing the slightest inclination of leaving. He’d only met Tomoko a few times, and had probably never talked with her for very long. Surely he wasn’t feeling detained by memories of the deceased.
Shizu tapped Asakawa lightly on the knee and whispered in his ear, “Dear, it’s probably about time …”
“Look at Yoko. She’s sleepy. Maybe we ought to see if we could let her take a nap here.”
They had brought their daughter. Normally, this was nap time. Sure enough, Yoko had started blinking like she did when she was sleepy. But if they let her sleep here, they’d have to stay in this house for at least two more hours. What would they find to talk about with her grieving sister and her husband for two more hours?
“She can sleep on the train, don’t you think?” said Shizu, dropping her voice.
“Last time we tried that she got fussy, and it was awful all the way home. No, thanks.”
Whenever Yoko got sleepy in a crowd, she got unbelievably fidgety. She’d flail her little arms and legs, wail at the top of her lungs, and just generally make life difficult for her parents. Scolding her only made it worse—there was no way to calm her down except to try to get her to sleep. At times like that Asakawa became intensely conscious of the looks of people around him, and he’d start sulking himself, as though he were the prime victim of his daughter’s shrieking. The accusing stares of the other passengers always made him feel like he was choking.
Shizu preferred not to see her husband in that state, with his cheeks twitching nervously and all. “All right, then, if you say so.”
“Great. Let’s see if she’ll take a nap upstairs.”
Yoko lay in her mother’s lap, eyes half closed.
“I’ll go put her down,” he said, caressing his daughter’s cheek with the back of his hand. The words sounded strange coming from Asakawa, who hardly ever helped with the baby. Maybe he’d had a change of heart, now that he’d witnessed the sorrow of parents who’d lost a child.
“What’s come over you today? It’s spooky.”
“Don’t worry. She looks like she’ll go right down. Leave it to me.”
Shizu handed the child over. “Thanks. I just wish you were like this all the time.”
As she was transferred from her mother’s bosom to her father’s, Yoko began to scrunch up her face, but before she had time to follow through she had fallen asleep. Asakawa climbed the stairs, cradling his daughter. The second floor consisted of two Japanese-style rooms and the Western-style room which had been Tomoko’s. He laid Yoko on the futon in the Japanese-style room that faced south. He didn’t even need to stay with her as she fell asleep. She was already out, her breathing regular.
Asakawa slipped out of the room and listened to see what was going on downstairs, and then entered Tomoko’s bedroom. He felt a little guilty about invading a dead girl’s privacy. Wasn’t this the kind of thing he abhorred? But it was for a good cause—defeating evil. There was nothing but to do it. Even as he thought this, he hated the way he was always