“Good evening to you, sir!”
The same voice again. From the light filtering through the living room curtain, it must have been obvious to whoever was outside that there was someone at home.
“Oh, damn it all!”
Shinzaburō got up from the sofa, slowly crept toward the door to avoid his presence being discovered—though he knew from long years of experience that such a thing was impossible—and peered through the peephole.
Outside the gate stood two women. They were dressed in practically identical outfits: black suits, white shirts, sheer tights, and black pumps. One was somewhere between forty and fifty, and the other looked to be in her early thirties. The elder was staring with terrifying intensity at the peephole, while the younger was shyly inspecting her feet. They made for an altogether peculiar pair. Immediately, alarm bells went off in Shinzaburō’s head. No one in his right mind would involve himself in a situation he knew would be troublesome from the outset. In this particular period of his life, Shinzaburō did not have the mental energy to spare on that kind of nonsense.
The women seemed to sense Shinzaburō’s presence in his cramped entranceway, and the elder one piped up again. “Good evening to you, sir!”
Shinzaburō guessed she must be the one who had done all the speaking so far. The younger one kept her head down, not moving a muscle. Something about the way she held one cheek angled toward the door suggested she was invested in what the person on the other side thought of her. Indeed, the way she carried herself was common among highly self-conscious women, thought Shinzaburō. The observational skills he had cultivated during his years as a sales representative, which enabled him to pick up on these little details about people, were a source of great pride to him.
Very cautiously, Shinzaburō opened his mouth. “Yes, what is it?”
“Oh, good evening, sir,” began the elder woman with an affected smile on her face. “We are door-to-door sales representatives, visiting the homes in this area in the best of faith. We are terribly sorry to disturb you at this hour, but we were wondering if you might be able to spare us a couple of minutes of your time.”
Something about the woman’s voice filled Shinzaburō with instantaneous exhaustion. He felt nothing but loathing for these stupid women who’d invaded his precious relaxation time and forced him to walk all the way to the front door. Don’t you know that I’m exhausted? he wanted to say. For six whole months now, I’ve been totally and utterly exhausted.
“No, thanks, I’m afraid not. It’s late.”
No sooner had Shinzaburō delivered his curt answer, which he had hoped would make them go away, than the younger one, who had been examining the floor so intently, raised her head to look toward the peephole, and said in a weak, sinuous voice, “Come now, don’t be so inhospitable! Open up!”
If a willow tree could speak, Shinzaburō thought, this is the kind of voice it would have. He blinked and found himself in the living room, the two women facing him across the coffee table. As if that wasn’t bad enough, they were sitting on the sofa, while Shinzaburō had been relegated to one of the more uncomfortable kitchen chairs he and his wife had bought online. He had no memory of carrying it into this room. Sandwiched beneath his buttocks was one of the Marimekko cushions his wife loved so much. Shinzaburō still had no idea what its pattern was supposed to represent, although right now that was hardly his most pressing concern.
While Shinzaburō was still wondering how on earth he had wound up here, the women sat looking at him, their four stockinged kneecaps arranged into a perfect row of iridescent silver. Seeing that they had his attention, they both pulled the same inscrutable expression and handed him business cards as white as their papery faces.
“Allow us to introduce ourselves.”
Flummoxed by being handed two cards at exactly the same time, Shinzaburō somehow managed to accept both and examined the names printed on them. The elder woman was Yoneko Mochizuki, the younger Tsuyuko Iijima.
Just then, Shinzaburō’s eyes fell on three steaming cups of green tea placed on the coffee table. Did I go and make tea without realizing it? he thought. Surely these two didn’t sneak into the kitchen and make it themselves? What’s more, he noticed that the yōkan he’d been saving for a special occasion was there too, cut into neat slices. As Shinzaburō was trying to wrap his head around all this, Yoneko spoke.
“We took the liberty of examining the nameplate outside your door. It’s Mr. Hagiwara, is that right? Oh, good. Forgive our impertinence, but may we ask your first name?”
Why did they need to know? “It’s Shinzaburō,” he found himself saying, though he’d had no inclination to answer the question. It was as if his mouth was moving of its own accord.
“Shin-za-bu-rō,” Tsuyuko pronounced slowly.
Having his first name spoken like that by someone he’d only just met made him shudder. It was much too intimate.
“It’s an absolute pleasure to make your acquaintance, Shinzaburō.”
Between this woman’s honeyed tone and her flirtatious manner, there was definitely something overfamiliar about her. Shinzaburō averted his eyes. Did she think her looks would allow her to get away with such behavior? Sure, with her alabaster skin, her hair lustrous as a raven’s coat, and all those coquettish sideways glances, she was undoubtedly beautiful. And yet, despite all these gifts, the epithet that seemed to fit Tsuyuko like no other was misfortunate.
Without waiting for an invitation, Tsuyuko took a sip of tea from her cup, leaving a sticky red lipstick mark on its rim. It came to Shinzaburō in a flash that as far as sales work was concerned, this woman was probably utterly incompetent. The same went for her companion, too.
“Well, if you don’t mind, we’ll get down to business,” said Yoneko, projecting her gray-haired head forward like a tortoise emerging from its shell. Shinzaburō nodded reluctantly, resolving to hear out their patter and then get them to leave. Changing the key of her already gloomy expression so it was positively funereal, Yoneko began to speak.
“Miss Tsuyuko here has had the most lamentable of lives, Mr. Hagiwara. She was born into a family of great repute and prestige, and yet here she is now, as you see, working all day long as a mere saleswoman. The cause of this tragic downfall was that her beloved mother passed away at a young age, leaving poor little Tsuyuko behind. Her father was a kind man, but rather weak of character, and it wasn’t long before he developed an intimate relationship with the maidservant. As sad as it is to admit, it would appear that there are a great many weak-willed men out there. As for the maidservant, well! I know that of late people take leaks of personal information and so forth awfully seriously, but we do so much wish you to hear this story in its entirety, so I will on this occasion divulge that her name is Kuniko. Now, Mr. Hagiwara, we do most earnestly beseech you to exercise the utmost caution around women going by the name of Kuniko. For the thing is, you see, this Kuniko utilized her feminine wiles to claw her way to the stature of second wife. As if that wasn’t enough, she then resolved to gain sole possession of Tsuyuko’s father’s fortune, and began spoon-feeding him all kinds of groundless fabrications about Tsuyuko, morning and night . . . he was not a man of strong character. Honestly, men like that really are the worst, aren’t they, Mr. Hagiwara? Anyhow, predictably enough, he foolishly believed every word that Kuniko spouted, and began to look coldly upon his daughter. Unable to bear this cruel treatment, Tsuyuko left home without even finishing high school. Her life from that point on has been one tear-inducing episode after another. To start—”