Popular Hits of the Showa Era by Ryu Murakami Page A

took a Chanel handkerchief from her Lancel bag and pressed it against her temples and forehead and neck. “What is she, though? Is she really an earthling, with the same kinds of genes and everything as us? When I saw that face, and heard that voice…”
    “You lost the will to live, right?”
    “Yes! No matter what anyone said, even if my spirit couldn’t be reborn in the Pure Land, I just wanted to sink to my knees and beat my head against the pavement.”
    “I know. But listen—I just realized something big.”
    No sooner had Suzuki Midori said this than the junior college girl reappeared, skipping toward them with her hands linked behind her back. The two Midoris understood what it must feel like when the torturer returns with a fresh list of questions. Both experienced a wave of vertigo, and each opened her stance and bent her knees slightly, bracing herself to keep from collapsing.
    Taking care not to look directly at the girl’s face, Suzuki Midori copied Ishihara’s number down in her organizer.
    “Are you sure you won’t have some apple tea?” the junior college girl said. “I’ve also got a pumpkin pie I bought. I was hoping to share it with somebody in the dorm, but I’d be—”
    They interrupted to explain in a jumble of words that they were terribly busy helping Sugioka-kun’s mother with her memorial album and goodness look at the time, and with that they spun on their heels and ran like hell. Not until they had turned a couple of corners did they slow to a stop and try to catch their breath.
    “So tell me. What’s the big thing you realized?”
    Though she’d just sprinted a good hundred meters, Henmi Midori’s face wasn’t flushed but grayish blue. One sensed that if she hadn’t spoken she’d have dissolved in tears, or possibly died.
    “Well, think about it,” Suzuki Midori said. “This friend of Sugioka’s, this Ishihara, gave that girl his telephone number, right?”
    “Eh?” Henmi Midori stared at her with a wild surmise. The hand lifting a handkerchief to her brow froze in midair as the look of astonishment turned to one of disbelief and disgust. “That’s right! And she said they went to an ice-cream parlor together!”
    “Would a normal person go out for ice cream with a girl like that?”
    “Not even the worst sort of pervert would. Not even a man who’d just got out of prison after twenty years.”
    “Well, that proves it,” Suzuki Midori said, and started walking.
    “Proves what?”
    “We’re dealing with maggots. Our dear Wataa…was murdered by maggots.”
     
     
    All four members of the Midori Society met after work at Shinjuku Station. They took a train to Ohtsuki, whence they made their way to a Japanese-style inn on the shore of Lake Yamanaka, a place Suzuki Midori had visited several times many years before. About a month and a half had passed since Iwata Midori’s funeral. Lake Yamanaka no longer buzzed with the crowds of summer, and though it was a Saturday night, there weren’t many people or cars. The inn was a short walk from the place where you boarded the famous white swan paddleboats. This was the first trip any of them had taken for some time, and as they walked toward the entrance of the inn, where a sign said LAKESIDE LODGE , they chattered gaily.
    “A place near the water is romantic even at night, isn’t it?”
    “Three years ago I came to Lake Yamanaka with the only man I ever cheated on my husband with….”
    “It used to be my dream to ride in a swan boat….”
    “Those rugby players looked like a bunch of idiots, didn’t they? Jogging by all bare-chested….”
    They had made a reservation, and a late dinner was waiting for them after they’d bathed. At this particular inn, the food wasn’t brought to the rooms, so they gathered in the dining hall at long wooden tables reminiscent of old-fashioned grade-school desks. The chairs weren’t the normal pipe-and-plastic sort but those good old round, backless, three-legged stools