The Graveyard Apartment (29 page)

So she had taken the sensible route and replied calmly, “At this point there is only one family still living in the building, and they'll be gone before long, too, so there's really no need for resident managers anymore. Beyond that, though, my husband's heart condition has been steadily getting worse, and he keeps saying he'd like to move somewhere less populated, with cleaner air.”

For their part, the management company's agents were busy with other projects, and they had no valid reason for trying to prevent Mitsue and Sueo from going elsewhere.

After the resignation had been tendered and accepted, Mitsue spent several long days working the phone and visiting employment offices, gathering information about possible situations from various sources. As a result of these networking efforts, she ended up learning that a certain placement firm was advertising for a permanent resident manager (or managers) for an office workers' dormitory in the seaside resort of Izu. She quickly dispatched a joint résumé to the firm's main office; it was evidently well received, and on the day of the interview she bundled her ailing husband into a taxi and the two of them went to the company's headquarters.

The interview seemed to go well, but they didn't hear anything for four or five days. Then, at last, they received the hoped-for notification that their application had been approved and the position was theirs. Mitsue was so thrilled that she spontaneously threw her arms around her husband's neck in a joyful embrace—something she hadn't done in a dozen years, at least.

The Tabatas' resident manager obligations in Izu weren't scheduled to commence until August, but they were told that they were welcome to move into their new living quarters ahead of time, if they wanted to.

Now it was the first of July, and a small truck from a local moving company had just pulled up in front of the Central Plaza Mansion. The two workmen who came with the truck weren't particularly personable or outgoing, but Mitsue couldn't have cared less about such trivial details. Although it was the middle of the rainy season, they had gotten lucky with the weather and it was a beautifully clear day. Sueo had regained his health and mobility, and he willingly took charge of the logistical aspects of the move.

No matter how unpleasant the experiences at a particular post might have been, Mitsue usually felt some sentimental stirrings when it was finally time to leave, but in this case her resolve didn't waver in the least. She was filled with happiness at the prospect of escaping from this accursed building, and her thoughts were focused on the pleasures of their new home and their new life near the sea.

In the place where she and Sueo would be living from now on, there was no graveyard, no temple, no crematorium belching black smoke. In their new building, the elevator never stopped working for no apparent reason, and the electricity didn't suddenly go off, and people didn't get injured in the basement by some ridiculous weasel wind. No ghoulish handprints had ever appeared on the glass of the entry door, either. (Mitsue still felt like vomiting every time she remembered that horrifying experience.) Instead, in Izu there was an abundance of gorgeous greenery, and the soothing murmur of the ocean, and fresh seafood, and endless sunshine …

While Sueo fretted briefly about the fact that they would be moving to an area where earthquakes were relatively frequent, Mitsue's feelings ran more along the lines of “Compared to the unnatural things that have happened in this building, an earthquake here or there is nothing to be afraid of.”

Mitsue did feel a fleeting twinge of concern about leaving the Kano family behind to fend for themselves, but she concluded that their future wasn't her responsibility. Besides, from what she'd heard, it wouldn't be much more than a week before they followed suit and moved out, as well.

“Only another week or so,” Mitsue muttered under her breath, counting off the days on her fingers. Just a week. That family would probably be all right here for a little while longer. No, not probably; they would
certainly
be fine for another week.

Making up their minds to leave had surely been the hard part, and now they just needed to endure a few more days in the building. True, it was incredibly bad luck that the house with a garden the Kanos had originally planned to move into had been destroyed in a fire, but at least they had a backup plan: a tiny two-bedroom rental apartment. That unit wasn't immediately available, so their moving date had to be postponed—albeit only for about a week.

Besides
, Mitsue thought,
the brutally honest truth is that at this point in our lives, Sueo and I really don't have time to worry about other people's problems
. Those selfish words seemed to stick in her throat like a drink that's gone down the wrong way, but sometimes you just had to look out for yourself. There was another element at work, too, which was completely unrelated to the need to concentrate on her own and her husband's welfare. Since Mitsue was in total-candor mode, she couldn't deny that, as a member of the same gender, she had some feelings of envy and resentment toward Misao.

The younger woman appeared to be blessed with a successful marriage to a charismatic man—or if there were any problems, they weren't apparent. She was the mother of an adorable child; she was still young, and very attractive; and on top of everything she even had artistic talent and some interesting part-time work. The truth was, Mitsue was perpetually irritated by what she perceived as Misao's unfairly charmed existence.

Mitsue and Sueo had never had any children, though not by design. They had simply waited for a pregnancy to occur naturally, and it never did. Needless to say, in their younger days infertility science hadn't been nearly as advanced as it was now, but in any case they both believed that becoming parents was a gift rather than something to be actively pursued, so they had never taken any medical steps toward trying to achieve that goal. Fortunately, no rifts had developed between the couple over the issue, as often happens; on the contrary, Sueo seemed to feel that their lives had been easier without children. Mitsue, though, wasn't able to be so cavalier about their inability to start a family, and for the entire course of the marriage she had been haunted by feelings of loneliness and longing.

As a woman, and as a human being, too, she felt somehow unrealized and incomplete.
If only we could have had one child
, she would think, almost daily. Of course, by now that child would have grown up and moved out, but there would be visits from time to time, and he or she would surely have been able to help resolve the practical problems that plague an aging couple.

Mitsue had lived her life with the constant sense that something was broken or missing, and as a result she had a sizable inferiority complex. This made it difficult for her to interact with a woman like Misao, whose life appeared to be idyllic and enviable in every regard.

However, Mitsue would never have dreamed of trying to make mischief, or of fabricating mean-spirited rumors about anyone. She was philosophically opposed to behaving in such a despicable way, and she knew if she ever stooped to such shameful tactics she would only make herself more miserable. Mitsue's personal credo went something like this:
Don't ever let yourself turn into one of those women of a certain age who are perpetually consumed by feelings of envy, and who do nothing but grumble and gripe about their ill-starred lot in life.

After the Tabatas' possessions had been loaded onto the truck, Sueo sent the moving men on their way with an envelope containing a modest tip. Then he and Mitsue quickly changed into the traveling clothes they had laid out earlier. Locking the door of the empty caretakers' apartment behind them for the last time, they got into the elevator and rode up to the eighth floor to say their final good-byes to the Kano family. It was a Wednesday, so Teppei had gone to work as usual, but Misao was at home.

“Well, it looks as though we'll be leaving before you do, after all,” Mitsue said as she bowed in the entryway, wearing an amicable smile.

Misao's face looked rather gaunt, and she appeared to be uncommonly tense and jittery, but she smiled broadly in return. “I'm happy that things worked out so well for you,” she said. “Your new situation sounds wonderful!”

“We hope you'll come visit us before too long, perhaps during the summer holidays—and by all means, bring Tamao, too!” Sueo said jovially. “It only takes five or six minutes to walk to the beach from our new place.”

“Thank you so much for the invitation,” Misao said. “We'll be looking forward to taking you up on your kind offer in the near future. Do you have time to come in for a cup of tea?”

Mitsue shook her head with what appeared to be genuine regret, but the truth was that she didn't want to spend another minute in this wretched building. “We want to try to get to Izu ahead of the moving truck, so we need to be on our way as soon as possible,” she explained.

“Oh, of course.” Misao nodded. Mitsue was secretly pleased to notice some fine wrinkles around Misao's eyes; they might have been a new development, or perhaps Mitsue simply hadn't noticed them before.

“Well, this is a pretty kettle of fish, isn't it?” Sueo shook his head. “I mean, who would have dreamed that every single tenant in the building would end up moving out? And if we tried to explain the reasons to an outsider, no one would ever believe us—not in a million years.”

“It's going to be lonely without you,” Misao said with genuine sadness. “Look, I know you need to run, but won't you come in just for a minute? Please? The thing is, I just received a very upsetting phone call, and I really don't want to be alone right now.” While she was speaking, Misao's face seemed to be growing ever paler, even as—perhaps in some kind of distorted physiological counterpoint—the whites of her eyes began to look more and more bloodshot. Her breathing had become labored, too, and her chest was heaving violently under the loose, bluish-gray summer sweater she wore.

Mitsue Tabata shot a quick glance at her husband, then asked, “What's wrong, Mrs. Kano?”

Looking as if she might be about to burst into tears, Misao pushed her bangs off her forehead with one hand, then took a deep breath. “Well, I just got a call from the rental agency we've been working with. It was about the apartment we were planning to move into at the end of this week…”

“Oh, did something happen?”

“Yes, it did.”

“So your moving day had to be postponed, or something like that?”

Misao took another deep, racking breath, then shook her head slowly from side to side. “No, she died,” she said, barely suppressing a sob.

“Died?” Mitsue gasped. “Who died?”

“The woman who was living in the apartment we were supposed to move to this week just dropped dead last night,” Misao said. Her cheek muscles were twitching as she added, “I really can't believe it.”

Mitsue put both hands to her own cheeks. “What? Not again! But why?”

“I have no idea,” Misao said.

“Was that person getting along in years?”

“No, on the contrary,” Misao said with a weak, unnatural-sounding laugh. “She was actually quite a bit younger than I am, and she looked very robust and healthy. I got the impression that she was around twenty-three or twenty-four. We met her when we went to see the apartment, and she was in high spirits because she was engaged to be married. That's why she was getting ready to move out. And now, suddenly, she's dead.”

“Oh my goodness, how awful,” Mitsue said, shivering involuntarily. “That's just too awful for words.”

“I know,” Misao said with a listless nod. “And we don't have anywhere to move to now, because apparently that apartment has to be left untouched until they can determine the cause of death. Beyond that, though, the idea of moving into an apartment where someone just died under suspicious circumstances doesn't exactly seem inviting, any way you look at it…” She stopped speaking in midsentence and got a faraway look in her eyes. After a moment she said, “To be honest, I'm really frightened.”

“Of course you are,” Mitsue said as she and her husband nodded sympathetically, in unison. “Who wouldn't be?”

Some words began to bubble up in Mitsue's throat, but she managed to swallow them just in time. A moment later, though, Misao gave voice to the exact same thought: “It's really starting to feel as if our attempts to get away from this place are doomed, or cursed,” she said. “Every time we try to leave, something disastrous seems to happen and we end up being stuck here.”

Mitsue didn't know how to respond, and when she looked up at her husband she noticed immediately that his neck had broken out in goose bumps. Sueo returned his wife's look of dismay, but he remained silent, too.

“I really don't think it was a coincidence that the little house we were supposed to rent burned down before we had a chance to move in,” Misao continued after a long pause. “And now our second choice is out of the picture, too, because somebody suddenly died there. I mean, come on, this is really getting scary, don't you think?”

Misao locked eyes with Mitsue, then let out a long sigh while she distractedly twirled her bangs with one forefinger. “Oh dear, I'm so sorry,” she said. “This is a day of celebration for you—you're finally making your escape!—and here I am detaining you with my boring problems. Sorry, I just kind of…”

“That's all right,” Mitsue said, gently taking hold of Misao's forearm with both hands. “Don't give up the fight, Mrs. Kano. You have to keep looking for a good place to move to. Please, hang in there! This latest development is lamentable, to be sure, but it has to be a coincidence. That's right. All these setbacks in your housing search are just chance occurrences.”

Even as she spoke, Mitsue was thinking that her attempt at encouragement rang false and discordant under the circumstances. Coincidence? A house the Kanos were about to move into suddenly burns down, and not long after that the healthy young woman living in the apartment that was the family's backup option suddenly drops dead of unknown causes, thus making the apartment unavailable—not to mention undesirable. Of course, stranger things happened every day, but Mitsue couldn't help seeing a pattern.