The Boy in the Earth Page 6

  Yet no matter how far I walked, there was no change in my surroundings. The trees stood indifferent to my presence; sometimes there would be a slight incline or slope, the ground was covered everywhere with dirt and fallen leaves. The almost total lack of variation gave me the creeps, as if I were walking around in circles, and bit by bit I started to freak out. All around me were cold, vast rows of trees—a series of straight lines extending to the sky, enclosing me, confining me within their bounds, deliberate and calculating. My legs ached, and sweat poured from all over my body. But once the wind blew, my surroundings were completely transformed. Within the howling that seemed to cut through the air, all of the trees began to sway. In the darkness, those writhing clusters of leaves seemed to press upon me like a single enormous living thing, and I had the impression they were coming after me as they raised a thunderous roar that sounded like a shriek. I cowered in fear—there was no way I could keep walking. I picked up a thick branch that had fallen off a tree and clutched it with all my might. Regardless of my fear, I had to keep walking in the same direction, I told myself. Even if it were the wrong direction, I had no other choice.

  I saw a shadow move before me, and I couldn’t breathe—my entire body convulsed with fright. There were two creatures, about as tall as my chest, that were slowly, slowly moving toward me. They were stray dogs. These were distinctly different from house dogs; they were fat, their howling yelps murky, their ragged and damp breathing asserting their hunger and clearly signaling that whatever action I might take would have no effect. I was filled with despair. It seemed as if my whole body was plunging further and further, ceaselessly. The fact that I didn’t have any food with me could only mean that I was their target. That must be the case, I thought. After all that, this was to be my fate; I had managed to break free from that confined room and that earthen tomb only to be met with obstacles at every turn. I no longer had the strength to run. Slowly, the dogs closed the distance between us.

  But right at that moment, I felt a great emotion stir within me like a furious maelstrom. This burgeoning swell seemed to seize control, overwhelming my frightened self and taking over, so that before I knew it, I had let forth a piercing cry, wrenched from my guts. This despite the fact that I thought my voice was gone. At that moment, my cry was not directed toward the dogs. It was directed beyond them, beyond even the people who had tormented me, toward the unseen fate that I was sure existed, deep within the darkness, the fate that brutally manipulated people and living things—I was railing against all existence. I am alive! Against all of your expectations! I have no intention of obeying you. With my own hands, I will defeat whatever obstacles you throw at me.

  Clutching with both hands the wooden bough I had been holding, I sprang toward the dogs. With all my strength, I let out a keening shriek as I brought the branch down without knowing where it would land. A dull vibration ran through both my arms, and enduring the numbing desire to let go, I waved and swung the tree limb, striking out again and then again. The instant I heard a growl behind me, I turned around and raised the branch. I held my arms overhead and tried to make myself appear as large as I could. I knew I had to move faster than my opponents. There was no time for hesitation. My blow missed its mark, but the dog turned its back and ran away. I let out another cry and, adrenaline rushing through me, I swung the bough and made as if to chase after it. As I watched the dog flee, the strength drained from my entire body and I nearly crumpled on the spot. I made myself keep walking. There was still no change to the surrounding landscape. The vast rows of trees were all the more indifferent as they maintained their silence.

  After that I don’t know how far I walked. I crossed over countless slopes, drank from countless puddles, passed amongst countless trees. My surroundings gradually turned blue, and when they became illuminated by a faint glow, I realized how long it had been since I had seen the light of day. I was in a daze, and as I felt myself awash in the sunlight, I collapsed where I was. The rays were warm and gentle, and they did their best to infuse the slightly chilled air with heat. When I closed my eyes, I saw pale blue behind my eyelids and I smelled the warm scent of earth. My memory broke off at that point.

  In the end, I was found by a middle-aged couple who were out for a walk, and they brought me to a hospital. There was a hiking trail on the mountain where I had been buried, and without realizing it, I had made my way to one of the branches of the trail before lying down.

  When I awoke in the hospital bed, the doctors had all sorts of questions for me. In those dim and empty surroundings, left with only myself to rely on, I calmly conveyed the facts as I remembered them, one by one. “They” showed up while I was sleeping and made certain threats, but this was after I had told the doctors everything. The man made a fist, and his face was ugly as he muttered at me. Later the detectives arrived and arrested them, and there was an article in the newspaper.

  Mr. Yamane took me in a car that went up the small hill toward the orphanage. That road seemed incredibly long—it truly felt as if it would never end. During the ride, Mr. Yamane’s shoulders were slumped, and he looked like he was holding back his anger. Although he didn’t say a word, it seemed he was terribly disappointed in my real parents’ indifference once the authorities had located them and told them what had happened to me. Mr. Yamane was emphatic as he explained to me how to get past this. “Grow up big and strong. If you do that, then you’ll be able to live your own life, for yourself.”

  For me, whose life had always been empty, it wasn’t until about a month had passed that I understood my new surroundings. I started school, and while sitting out in gym class, I would suddenly feel as if I had awakened from a light sleep. “Is this what he meant by living my own life?” I remember wondering, as my brain sorted out the same eerie parade of images, one after another. The smiling faces of my classmates throwing a ball back and forth, and the amused voice of the teacher as he called out directions. Me, sitting beside the blue podium for the morning assembly with my knees pulled up to my chest. These images flitted through the back of my mind; the days after I left the hospital were like a fog. Was this my reward? I had dug myself out of the violence, I had crawled from inside the earth, I had come down from the mountain—was this day-to-day routine all I got for it? I didn’t understand why they were smiling and laughing. Was there something I was missing? I wondered if there was joy in this world equivalent to the level of violence I knew—like the sheer joy I felt when I’d survived, when my entire body would not stop trembling—did anything like that exist here?

  I grew even more introverted than I had been before, and I started reading books. As I read the stories written by those who had come before me, I tried to discover just what this world was about, and what was symbolized in these depictions of life.

  Once there was a fire at the orphanage, and the novels that I had been collecting over the years were burned. A student who lived nearby had failed his university entrance exams and he was the one who set the fire. The old wooden orphanage must have looked like it would easily catch flame, and the sight of us running this way and that trying to escape probably made him feel superior. After the fire, I wept. You can buy new books, Mr. Yamane said, but I found it difficult to restrain my tears.

  10

  I drove my tenth customer of the night to a business hotel, then got out of the car and lit a cigarette. The last train on the Yurakucho line would be leaving soon, so if I hung around downtown, I could still pick up another fare. It might have been because I had changed to a twenty-one-hour split shift, but I was feeling better. Today’s take was already more than fifty thousand.

  I switched off the taxi radio and, in the stillness that enveloped the buildings, stared up at the moonless night sky. The confusion that I had felt at the orphanage unexpectedly flitted through my mind, but I tried my best not to think about it. Anyhow, I needed to allow the flow of daily life to carry me along. That meant going to work, paying back the loan in a
timely manner and, one by one, fulfilling the responsibilities that came from living a life. My only endeavor was to bury myself in just that kind of everyday routine. A call came in on the radio dispatch, but the pickup location was miles away. Work was work, but there was still some luck involved.

  As I was writing in my fare log, a couple of young guys approached the cab and gave the name of a hotel as their destination. I wasn’t familiar with the hotel, but they said it was along the Arakawa River, so after they got in I hit the gas without even looking at a map. I asked them for more details about the location and realized it wasn’t far away at all. If I hurried back, I could probably still get a good spot in the line of taxis waiting by the bars. I had turned the radio back on for the customers, and today’s news was on. A little girl had been killed by her mother. The mother had held the child underwater in the bath until she stopped moving. The announcer read the mother’s statement as if it were nothing. No matter what kinds of tragedies occurred, the world kept spinning—perhaps it was the natural order of things. The news ended, a pop song came on, and there was a plug for the latest movie. Amongst the laughter, a dispassionate sorrow glimmers, a guest commentator intoned about the film.

  And then there was a knife pointed at my neck. “Shut up and drive.” As the low voice echoed in my ear, my entire body went rigid, and a strained vigor rose in my throat, suffocating me. His voice a drawl, the second guy mumbled something in a language I didn’t recognize—not Japanese or English. The guy with the knife tried to grab my bag by the driver’s seat.

  My arms tensed as they gripped the steering wheel. I hadn’t realized it until now, but my taxi was the only car on the road. It took me a while to grasp the situation. Was this a taxi robbery? The moment the thought occurred to me, the words almost escaped my lips, but somehow I managed to suppress them. The money I had worked for all day long was about to be stolen from me. I felt a shooting pain in my neck, and then what I assumed were warm drops of blood. My heart was pounding, and because I was driving, my gaze was straight ahead, but the scenery didn’t register. I no longer even knew where we were. The knife at my throat barely touched my skin, then it moved away, and then I felt it again. The guy speaking a foreign language was saying something. As I tried to settle my ragged breathing, I repeated to myself, Get it together, over and over in my mind. Should I slam on the brakes, grab back the bag, and get the hell out of the car? Or should I just stay calm and accept that the money was gone? These conflicting ideas collided bewilderingly as fear maintained its steady grip on me, until I didn’t think I’d be capable of carrying out whichever course of action I decided to take.

  “That’s right, don’t get any ideas. Just keep driving.”

  The second man spoke to him in whatever the foreign language was.

  “What? No, we don’t have to go that far, do we?”

  The guy I couldn’t understand was shouting something. The guy holding the knife was trying to calm him down, but that only seemed to make him more insistent.

  “No, with this much money, we don’t need to bother with that,” and then something unintelligible.

  They went back and forth; I couldn’t comprehend what they were saying to each other. As if an indeterminate anxiety were seeping through my body, my focus blurred and the strength drained unpleasantly from my arms, making it difficult to drive. They were still arguing, and when I checked to see them in the rearview mirror, the guy speaking a foreign language was violently bashing the seat, over and over and over again. The guy holding the knife was trying to persuade him. But the guy speaking a foreign language refused to be convinced.

  I felt thirsty, but a prodigious amount of sweat poured from all over my body. At the very least, my attempt to figure out what they were saying helped to focus my attention on listening. I still had no idea what language they were speaking.

  Their argument ended, and a tense stillness descended inside the car. Despite the fact that I was the one driving, I had the impression that the taxi was taking me somewhere of its own accord. There were no cars anywhere nearby. No cars, and not even a single shop’s light could be seen.

  “. . . Come on, you don’t have to be so scared,” the guy holding the knife muttered in my ear.

  His expression was distinctly different from before. His eyes were bloodshot, his face pale, his breathing rough—it seemed like he had decided on something and was worked up about it. The guy speaking the foreign language had curled his lower lip into a strange angle. From where I sat, it appeared to be a smirk of satisfaction.

  “Let’s do it here, stop here.”

  We were at a construction site surrounded by tall buildings. An excavator had been left sitting there, along with various iron and steel materials and a pile of excavated sand, with the steel framework of the building towering above, seemingly floating in midair. I was pulled by the hair, the knife still held to my throat as we got out of the taxi. The breeze carried a chill that instantly cooled my perspiration. There were several streaks of blood trickling down my neck. I was pushed down onto the mound of sand.

  “Sorry . . . It wasn’t the plan, but . . . now you have to die.”

  I was helpless as the man who had been holding the knife strangled me. His fat fingers tightened around my throat. I pushed back against him with both hands, trying to escape, but I had no strength. I gasped for breath, feeling the bile rise in my throat, but I couldn’t even manage to throw up. I grabbed the guy’s sleeve, but there was nothing else I could do. I didn’t have the strength for it. Blood rushed to my face and my skin felt like it would burst. My eyes watered. They felt as if they were about to pop out of my head as I struggled, and the hideous face of the guy before me, a half-smile on his lips, went blurry. Not in a place like this, I thought, and at that moment, my field of vision went white and, incredibly, the pain gradually eased. Sleep, I thought. No! This isn’t sleep! This isn’t sleep . . . My young self was there before me. Or rather, this was the me here now. I was clinging to the balcony railing. Before now, I had never had any memory of this. But there it was, having appeared within my mind as if it were right in front of me, as clear as day. The man’s massive arms held my sides and tried to hoist me up. There was no strength left in my right hand, which was clutching the railing and, irrespective of my will, my grip released as simply as that. The man was drunk. “It’s only the second floor, so you won’t die,” he sang in a loud voice. “It’s only the second floor, so you won’t die,” he sang as he held my frail body high in the air. My body cowered in terror and tears sprang to my eyes, but at that moment an emotion stirred within me—a single determination welled up like a mass of energy. “Enough!” The word flashed in my head. I didn’t need to keep enduring this. There was no need to be afraid. He might really intend to hurl me by the force of his arms. And if I fell from this height I might actually die. But I tried to accept the fear. This fear was like my own flesh and blood . . . and it was at that moment when I felt as though I had surpassed them—me, in my wretched squalor. I do not fear your violence. It has no effect on me. Not all the violence in the world—no matter how wanton or unreasonable—I refused to be afraid of it. I tried to smile. There was no need for me to surrender. I would die smiling. Maybe I could use this—so that even if I died, I still won. My body rose in the air, and I started to fall. The ground—and my own death—was speeding toward me. I could hear the man’s laughter ring out like a shriek. But I was the one who would conquer. I would not surrender—not to any of the foolish people in this world, not to any of the violence or atrocity . . .

  When I came to, I was lying on my back in the earth. Amid the sound of the shovel digging up the earth and the beam of a flashlight feebly illuminating the darkness, I coughed. Or I tried to. The guy who had been holding the knife was on top of me, looking down at me with wide, wild eyes. I tried to cough a few more times, and each time, it felt as though I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs. The guy let out a yell a
nd reached for my throat again. I was in agony. But despite the intense pain around my neck, I became aware of something stiff in my pocket. It was the ballpoint pen I had been using to write in my fare log. Somehow I got it out and thrust it into the guy’s thigh. He screamed and slumped over, away from me. Still coughing, I ran toward the taxi. The guy speaking a foreign language came running after me, shouting something. He grabbed my shoulder, and I spun around and tried to punch him in the face. My fist missed him, but he stumbled, his movements sluggish. I opened the car door, got in, and started the engine. I stepped on the gas. I put all my energy into the foot that was on the gas pedal. I turned the steering wheel onto the road. They were far away from me. I just kept on going straight, the only car on the deserted night streets.

  I burst into tears as I drove away. The tears were partly from relief, partly from sadness—I didn’t really know. I thought about the fact that I was still alive and, as I gripped the steering wheel, I exhaled deeply in an effort to control my breathing. As I recalled an image I had caught a glimpse of, I thought to myself, What if that medical resident had been wrong? What if victory, not fear, was the thing that I wished for? There was a way to conquer the fear that had taken root within me—a way that others might find perplexing—but perhaps I had created the fear just so that I could overcome it, as my own form of resistance to my fate? The road stretched out before me, the light from the evenly spaced streetlamps uninterrupted and unending. Yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that, inside me, something wasn’t quite right. It was trivial, but the more I tried to put it out of my mind, the more it became a twinge in my stagnant consciousness, the more it clamored within me. My right foot was heavy on the gas, as if compelled by that twinge. Could I really know for sure? I murmured the words as the needle on the speedometer slanted to the right, as if it were being spurred in that direction. I feel kind of strange, I thought, and right at that moment it was as if my body were falling at an accelerated speed. My heart experienced a heavy shock, as if I had been struck. There was a sharp curve in front of me. As if I could see the scene in miniature, it seemed to be heading toward me with tremendous speed. That is the ground, I thought. Everything sped up. I kept going faster, and I kept falling. The white of the guardrail was right before me. It expanded, as if it were going to attack me, trying to crush me. My heart throbbed with palpitations, and I could not move, as if my muscles were frozen. It felt as if the only thing left inside my body was a single mass, and it was falling. I had left my fear behind me. When I saw the guardrail close at hand, its white color seemed to glimmer warmly and gently at me. As the crush of the impact ripped through my body and the various noises swelled, crashed, then subsided, I felt as if I were filling up with something soft and cool.