Underground (9 page)

It takes about forty minutes to get from my house to the office. I take the Chiyoda Line from Machiya Station to Nijubashi-mae Station,
walk to Yurakucho Station, then change to the Yurakucho Line for Shintomicho Station. I generally get to the office around
9:05
. Office hours start at ten after, so I aim for ten to twenty-five minutes’ leeway. I’ve never been late. I catch the same trains every day.

They’re, like, supercrowded. The Chiyoda Line between Machiya and Otemachi is impossible. You can’t even move your arms. When you get on they shove in—
oomph!
—from the back, then just pile in willy-nilly. You get “feelie” guys too, sometimes. No fun.

At Otemachi there are all these connections, but once past there it clears out a bit. Nijubashi-mae’s only the next stop, so it’s pretty much crowded the whole way for me. From Machiya to Nishi-nippori, Sendagi, Nezu, Yushima, Shin-ochanomizu, Otemachi … can’t do a thing. You’re just trapped there. Once I’m on, I stand by the door just leaning into this solid mass of people, maybe sleeping. Yeah, that’s right, I can doze off standing up. Almost everyone does. I just close my eyes nice and quiet. Couldn’t move if I wanted to, so it’s easier that way. People’s faces are so up-close, like this, right? … so I close my eyes and drift off …

March 20 was a Monday, wasn’t it? Yeah. Mondays around then our section had meetings first thing at
8:30
. So that day I had to go in earlier than usual, left the house about
7:50
. Took a different train than usual. Earlier, so a bit emptier. I actually felt I had some room. So I get on, settle into my nook between the seat and the door, just the perfect setup for a nice little nap.

I always board the front car, second door down. I head for the corner, hide in there, and don’t move. But at Nijubashi-mae Station the door opens on the opposite side from Machiya, and at Otemachi I have to move to the other door.

So that day I’m trying to do that, getting ready to open my eyes. I can’t move without opening my eyes, right?
(laughs)
Only I notice it’s hard to breathe. It’s like, there’s this tight pressure in my chest, and as much as I try to inhale, no breath comes in … “That’s odd,” I’m thinking, “must be because I got up early”
(laughs)
. I thought I was just spaced out. I’m pretty bad at waking up anyway, but this was just a little too stuffy.

It was okay while the door was open and let in some fresh air, but once the door closed at Otemachi the stuffiness got worse. How
can I describe it? It was as if the air itself had shut down, even time had shut down … no, that’s a bit exaggerated.

“Strange,” I’m thinking. That’s when the people hanging on to the handstraps started coughing. The car was pretty empty by then, maybe three or four people still standing in front of the seats. But I was so short of breath, I just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. All I could think was, “Can’t this train go any faster?” It’s two, maybe three minutes between Otemachi and Nijubashi-mae, and all that time I was desperate for air. When you fall down and you wham your chest, sometimes you can’t breathe. You inhale all right, but can’t push the air out again—it was kind of like that.

That’s when I look, and by the door opposite me there’s something wrapped in newspaper. I was standing right in front of it and hadn’t even noticed. It was about the size of a lunch box and the newspaper it was wrapped in was dripping wet. Water or some kind of liquid seeping out all around. I took a closer look, and the thing was sloshing around to the rhythm of the train.

I’m a downtown girl, so I know when you go to the fish shop, they wrap it in newspaper. That’s what I thought it was: someone had bought fish or something and left it behind. But who’d buy fish and be traveling on the train first thing in the morning? One middle-aged man also seemed to think it was odd and had gone over, just staring at it. He was forty-something, a salaryman. He didn’t touch it, though, just peered at it like, “What’s that?”

Meanwhile the train reaches Nijubashi-mae, so I get off and everyone else who gets off with me is coughing. I’m hacking away, too. About ten people got off and every one of them was coughing, so I knew there had to be something, it wasn’t just me. I knew I had to rush if I was to be on time. My heart was pounding and I ran along the platform, went straight up the passageway, and suddenly was out of breath. I slowed down and felt much better, but now my nose was running like mad. My heartbeat was back to normal, though.

By the time I got to the office and we were in the meeting, I Started to feel really sick, like I’m going to throw up. Then it came on the news that something had happened on the subway, and I think, “Aha, so that’s it!” When I heard I felt faint … I’m a real coward. I went straight to St. Luke’s Hospital.

They put me on a drip for two hours and ran blood tests, then told me, “Okay, you can go home now.” The tests didn’t show up anything out of the ordinary. I showed no sign of contracted pupils, I just felt sick. I was still wearing the same clothes. I was really suffering then, but I’ve gotten better over time. Luckily I was dozing off. That’s what a detective told me. My eyes were shut, and my breathing was lighter and shallower
(laughs)
. Just lucky, I guess.

My wife and I live alone. We married at 24, so that makes thirteen years. We live in Chiba. I leave the house around
7:30
and catch the
8:15
Chiyoda Line from Matsudo. Needless to say, I can never get a seat on the Chiyoda Line. I’m standing for forty-five minutes throughout. I can sometimes get a seat at Otemachi. I’m still half asleep, so if I can get a seat, I’ll sit. Getting a seat means a good fifteen minutes’ rest.

On March 20, I left the house thirty minutes early. I had a bit of business I wanted to take care of before work. It was the show season and I had a lot of little things to do for that. Added to which we’re in sales, and it was almost time to start cranking out the figures—how many units of what item sold for the whole month. We’ve got our quotas—this much we have to sell—based on budget projections. I had to get the figures in to Head Office during the course of that week, then put in an appearance at a meeting the following week.

Actually, March 20 was the day my wife left the company where she’d worked for six years. It was an editing job at an advertising magazine, really demanding work that was wearing her down so she wanted to leave. Now she freelances as a copywriter. And also that day was her birthday, too. Which is why I remember the events of March 20 so clearly.

I always take the first car at the front of the train. That puts me nearest the exit, which brings me out by the Hanae Mori boutique building at Omote-sando. That day I happened to get a seat all the way from Shin-ochanomizu. I’d gotten up early and was pretty beat, so I was thinking, “Ah, what a break!” As soon as I sat down I was fast asleep. I woke up at Kasumigaseki Station, four stops later. I felt like I was going to cough and that’s what woke me. And there was this weird smell. A lot of people were moving to the next car down. They were opening and closing the doors between the cars.

When I opened my eyes, I saw a station attendant in a green uniform coming in and out. The floor was wet, too. The wet patch was maybe five meters away from me. The criminals had pricked their bags of sarin and got off at Shin-ochanomizu. But anyway I’d been fast asleep and hadn’t seen a thing. The police questioned me over and over about it, but what I didn’t see I didn’t see. They
thought that sounded suspicious. I was traveling to Aoyama and the Aum headquarters are in Aoyama.

The train continued on to the next stop, Kokkai-gijidomae, where we all had to get off. No explanation was given over the PA, just, “This train is going out of service—all passengers please disembark.” But between Kasumigaseki and Kokkai-gijidomae I was really in pain. I was coughing, I couldn’t breathe. When we reached Kokkai-gijidomae there were people near me who couldn’t even move. One woman in her fifties had to be lifted off by the station attendants. There were maybe ten people in the car and some of them held handkerchiefs over their mouths, coughing.

“Hey, what’s going on here?” I thought, but I had to get to work. I had a whole list of things to do. Stepping out onto the platform, who knows how many people were squatting there? The station attendants had rounded up all those who were feeling sick, there must have been fifty in all. Two or three were completely immobilized, one or two lay stretched out on the platform.

Oddly enough, though, the atmosphere wasn’t tense at all. Even though I was feeling strange. I’d inhale and no breath would come. It was almost as if the air was running out. I could still walk, though, so I thought I was fine. Instead of joining the “sick” group, I just caught the next train. It came straightaway, but no sooner had I gotten on than my legs started to feel shaky. My eyes stopped working. Suddenly it was as if night had fallen. “Damn,” I thought, “I should have stayed back there with the others.”

When I got to Omote-sando Station, I asked the attendant, “I don’t know why I’m feeling so out of sorts … did something happen in the subway?” And he said, “There seems to have been an explosion at Hatchobori.” “There was something wrong with the train I was on just now, too,” I said, but this was explained away as “gasoline or something has been spilled inside.” Totally mixed-up information. Then I went to the stationmaster’s office and I told them, “I feel awful. I can hardly see,” but news had yet to reach Omote-sando Station. Their response was, “Why don’t you just sit down for a bit? Would you like a cold drink?” Very kind, but they didn’t have a clue.

“This is useless,” I thought, so I gave up and I went out above ground. It was a wonderful clear day, but everything was dark. “Uh-oh,
this looks bad.” I went to a hospital, near the office, but when I got there I couldn’t really explain what had happened. “This is probably an emergency: I just left the subway and …” You know, I spelled it out as clearly as possible, but they couldn’t see me straightaway. I called the office: “I’m not feeling so good. I’ll be a little late.” In the end I waited there for three hours. Three hours and they didn’t do a damn thing! My breath was getting shorter and shorter, my eyesight dimmer and dimmer … I was going out of my mind, so I telephoned the Subway Authority, just to get some kind of explanation. After all, they had rounded up on the platform those people who were feeling ill. I wondered what had happened to them. But I couldn’t get through on the phone.