Birthday by Koji Suzuki (translated by Glynne Walley).
Title: Birthday.
Author: Koji Suzuki (translated by Glynne Walley).
Genre: Fiction, short stories, horror, mystery, feminism, spin-offs.
Country: Japan.
Language: Japan.
Publication Date: 1999.
Summary: A collection of 3 short stories in the Ring universe. Coffin in the Sky tells of the events leading up to Mai's body being discovered in an air-shaft after recently giving birth to the reincarnation of Sadako Yamamura. In Lemon Heart, Hiroshi Toyama recalls being a new actor in a theatre troupe and being romantically involved with a young woman, Sadako Yamamura, who, despite his devotion and willingness to love her, turned out to have dark plans pf her own for her time in the troupe.
My rating: 7.5/10
My review:
♥ Now and then she thought she could feel someone's gaze fixed on her back, and the sense that she was being watched only grew stronger as the minutes went by.
In high school, she had modeled-just once-for an oil painting by her homeroom teacher, an art instructor. Needless to say she'd been fully clothed, but all the same she'd had the impression that the teacher's gaze had passed right through her clothing to lap at her skin, indeed to penetrate right to her skeletal structure. She'd known a curious arousal, half embarrassment and half rapture. Later she'd heard that when painting a person's head, the artist's eyes are really seeing the skull. Her intuition hadn't been far off and she'd thought, That stare of his saw straight to my pelvic bone.
The same powerful, razor gaze was boring into her back, penetrating her skin, gouging away her flesh, trying to feel her bones.
Mai couldn't bear it any longer. She turned around. Behind her she saw a black object half covered by the pink cardigan she'd taken off prior to beginning her search. She'd placed her cardigan on the object without noticing it.
She moved the garment to reveal a black-bodied VCR. The unit wasn't turned on, but its pilot light glowed a dull red. Mai remembered what Asakawa had said to her.
He didn't tell you anything there at the end? No last words? Nothing, say, about a videotape?
Those words urged her to it. She turned on the video deck.
♥ But now she knew exactly what she had to do.
I need to figure out how to get out of here.
She'd die if she didn't escape-and death would come slowly, at its leisure, nibbling away at her soul.
Have I already gone crazy?
..For no apparent reason, Mai found herself thinking of a pretty girl rotting at the bottom of a well.
♥ Since watching the tape, Mai suffered frequent lapses in her consciousness. She was unable to recall the events of the preceding week in order and complete. She'd suddenly realize that several hours had passed and not know where she was. It was as if something had possessed her soul.
...As if something had possessed my soul.
That was definitely the phrase for it. She was dimly aware that her body was being controlled.
The foreign object that had entered her during her viewing of the tape gradually grew. Perhaps hew watching it while ovulating had facilitated the thing's invasion of her. Or maybe it happened to everyone who watched the video-maybe it was how they went down the road to death.
♥ A dilapidated old building by the Shore Road.
She had climbed over the gate on the second floor landing and climbed the spiraling fire escape to the top of the building. Once there, she'd climbed by ladder to the rooftop and gone over to the machine room. On the seaward side of it there was a deep exhaust shaft, like a coffin floating in the sky.
A perfect place for the pupa to escape its cocoon. A perfect place for the soul to discard its shell.
♥ Suddenly sadness overcame Mai. She'd been there for twenty-four hours, but for most of that time her consciousness had been elsewhere; she'd only been herself for two or three hours at the most. During those hours, she had known astonishment, and fear, and unutterable dread, but this was the first time she'd felt sadness.
Her body no doubt knew that her time was approaching.
She tried to get up but couldn't; she tried to cry out but found her throat as though blocked. Meanwhile, the movements within her womb grew more violent as the power pressing on her from inside overflowed with life.
Her vitality was being transferred out of her. She reflected on her twenty-two years with chagrin. Had she lived merely to have her body taken over, to give birth to this unknown thing? How pitiful.
..The smell of the sea was stronger now. It had to be high tide.
She remembered something her mother had told her once, when she was little.
You were born at high tide.
Her mother believed that if the rhythm of nature wasn't disrupted, people were born at high tide and died at low tide.
But Mai had the encroaching feeling that life and death were going to be simultaneous. Did that mean it was high tide or low tide now? Shifts in gravity, either way, influenced life and death.
♥ Just as she'd thought, the baby started to pull itself up the rope. Partway up, however, it stopped and looked down at Mai. It blinked and gave her a meaningful look. Was it trying to tell her something? Its face was expressionless-she saw no hostility there, no sympathy, no hatred, nothing, perhaps because it wasn't possible to read any kind of expression into such a tiny, wrinkled face.
♥ The sea was near, and there were people living surprisingly close by, but Mai was in a place governed by the laws of another world.
The tide was at its fullest, she figured: it would begin to recede now. It didn't matter. Life and death were not at odds; they coexisted snugly right where she was.
Mai gave a wan laugh and looked around at the darkness the baby had left behind, and allowed herself to think about its future.
She hoped, of course, that morning would come soon, but she had a feeling that night would continue for quite some time yet. She wasn't sure if her consciousness could hold out until dawn.
Suddenly she had the feeling that the stars had come right down close to her. Or was it that her body had started to float? It didn't feel too bad.
Death was almost there.
~~Coffin in the Sky.
♥ But he had to admit that hearing Yoshimo mention Sadako Yamamura, and now dreaming about her again, unsettled him in ways he couldn't quite pin down. Sadako, it was fair to say, was the only woman in the world for him. He'd botched his first marriage. The second one was more stable, and they had kids. Surrounded by children and a wife too young for him, he had a satisfying life now-but he often wondered "what if."
What would have happened if Sadako and I had gotten married?
That wasn't the only "if" that occurred to him.
If the end of the world came, who would I want to be with?
If I could do it all over, who would I spend my life with?
If I could only make love to a woman once in my life, who would it be?
The answer to all these questions, for Toyama, was Sadako. If she appeared before him this very instant and offered to accept him, he'd be prepared to give up anything and everything. He even thought he'd be willing to die, if he could only touch her skin once more.
♥ In short, Toyama knew full well that Okubo's comically exaggerated way of talking and moving came from a combination of pride and insecurity.
♥ From where he stood, it looked to Toyama like Shigemori paid Sadako an abnormal amount of attention. He'd been shocked sometimes during rehearsals to see the way Shigemori looked at her-on the verge of tears, with an expression made up of equal parts love and hatred and a gaze so intense that no one acquainted with Shigemori would have believed it.
♥ Their relationship was not a physical one, but Sadako had said, "I love you," and Toyama had never doubted it.
♥ Everybody who joined the troupe did so because they wanted to make it as an actor or actress. Sadako radiated that desire even more strongly than most, and with her it was mingled with something in her gaze that challenged society in ways that normal people couldn't quite fathom. It verged on hostility. Sometimes Toyama saw a coldness and contempt or the world in her eyes that made him flinch.
The world doesn't hate you as much as you think it does. He tried again ans again to tell her that, but she never listened. She'd just scold him for being naïve, saying if he went through life like that, they'd get him-at times like that she acted like a much older woman.
He wondered what there was in her past to make her that way, and sometimes he even tried to ask, nonchalantly. But she always evaded his questions, and so he was never able to grasp the true nature of her near-enmity toward society.
The only way for Sadako to triumph over the world was to become a famous actress. It was the one thing an eighteen-year-old girl could do that would command universal admiration in one fell swoop. He was sure she knew that.
♥ Onstage, Sadako's scene was starting.
The Girl in Black appeared from stage left and stood wordlessly behind a middle-aged man who was yelling into a telephone. The man sensed something behind him, fell silent, and turned around. The stage went dark for an instant. When the lights came on again, the Girl in Black had disappeared. It was a remarkable effect, really, a skillful combination of lighting and set design.
The man dropped thee receiver, terrified: he'd just seen a girl's ghost...
The scene was pivotal, the key to understanding the play as a whole.
The Girl in Black had only been onstage for a moment before she disappeared. Tokoyama called out to her.
"Sadako..."
It was less a cry than a plea that she return, that shadow he'd only just glimpsed. Suddenly he had a premonition that she would disappear from his life just like she had from the stage.
Hey, now, don't go borrowing trouble.
..The Girl in black disappeared from the stage, leaving only an afterimage-it was quite effective, really, the way she made such a deep impression in spite of her minimal time onstage. She said nothing that wasn't necessary-certainly not goodbye.
But he didn't want her to disappear like that in real life.
♥ Nobody fears aging like an aspiring young actress, reflected Toyama. Sadako was evidently no exception.
"I wouldn't mind growing old with you."
It was almost a proposal, despite the casual way he said it. And he meant it. Aging held no horrors for him, as long as he and Sadako could live together.
♥ Once she'd covered her hands in his fluid like lather from a bar of soap, she put her arms around his face, his neck, and embraced him. He smelled his own.
Then Sadako whispered in his ear, barely loud enough to hear, "Don't ever love me more than you do now. I don't want to lose you, Toyama."
It didn't feel as if she'd said the words at all, but rather as if they'd been delivered straight into his brain.
Toyama, I love you.
♥ Sghadow and light swirled in the bright afternoon sun. The street began to turn misty white-as if his retinas were clouding over, although he knew they weren't-and finally everything began to turn black. The cold sweat made his forehead slippery against the glass, a nasty feeling. It was an oily sweat.
Blacks and whites reversed, and all color drained from the world, except for a single point that hit Toyama's eye like an arrow. A woman, in a wrong-for-the-season lime-green dress.
He was reminded of that time in the sound booth in the playhouse, long ago, when despite being lost in his lovemaking with Sadako, the red light on the cassette deck in the corner caught his eye. Shining in the blackness like that, it only served to underscore the darkness.
This was like a strange transposition of that scene. The lime-green dress was the only spot of natural color left in the graying landscape, and it made for a violent disharmony. It disrupted the monochrome world with a fearsome, storm-like force. That tiny green speck asserted rulership over all.
♥ Sounds and smells, he reflected, could be like sparks igniting an explosion of old memories.
~~Lemon Heart.
♥ It didn't matter where Kaoru's DNA came from.
Reiko didn't care. Life emerged from nothingness. The child inside her-before the sperm fertilized the egg, it hadn't existed.
The only things that mattered, Reiko felt, were acts. Like those passionate moments with Kaoru, stolen while her son Ryoji was off getting tested for chemotherapy, when they could use his room like a hotel-the impulse had been a pure one, a loving one. They hadn't acted on physical instinct alone unaccompanied by feeling. Their acts had been driven by love, and the result was that she carried new life within her womb.
But still.
It wasn't that she didn't understand the concept. Given that the Loop life forms had DNA, she was prepared to accept that science could reconstruct them. But still... it was like being told all of a sudden that Kaoru was a cyborg or something.
She'd had intercourse with Kaoru a number of times in that hospital room, with the curtains open and the brilliant afternoon sunlight shining in. There in the bright light they had examined each other's organs, lapped each other's fluids, felt each other's pulses against their mucous membranes. She'd taken his semen into her mouth. She could remember its bitter taste, the feel of it on her tongue. It tasted like something secreted from a living body; it tasted like life.
Reiko had only a general grasp of the mechanics of one of his sperm reaching her egg and fertilizing it. If she did understand every detail, it wouldn't have changed what surfaced in her memory now, which was the act, and a recollection of the emotions of which it had been the manifestation. The new life had been created out of thoughts, out of will.
I love you.
That didn't change upon learning Kaoru's provenance.
♥ It didn't matter that Kaoru's biodata could cure her own condition. She could take no more. She might overcome her cancer and live several decades more, but her sorrow would stay with her forever. She didn't want to live in such a state. This she could say with perfect certainty.
No more.
♥ "Can't the Loop beings see us?"
It was the next logical question. She knew, because she had experienced it twice now, that she could observe the Loop world. But even as a layperson she could surmise that the reverse might not be so easily accomplished.
"No, they can't. Just like we can't peek into the world of the gods."
But the image that came into Reiko's mind was not of god and man.
A few days ago Reiko had gone to see her obstetrician, and the doctor had shown her the fetus. She'd lain down on a bed and hiked up her blouse to expose her belly, and the doctor had applied the ultrasound to her skin, summoning an image of the fetus on the monitor. The doctor had talked to her about the baby's development. Reiko had been struck by how easily the echo machine showed her the inside of her womb. Here, too, the comparison of the Loop to a woman proved helpful to her. A mother could see the fetus in her womb, but the fetus could not be conscious of its mother in her entirety. Perception in this case was a one-way street.
And so Reiko had no trouble accepting the fact that while the real world could look in on the Loop, the reverse was impossible.
♥ Kaoru was right there in front of her, but she closed her eyes.
An image of herself and Kaoru replayed in her mind. He was walking along the hospital corridor. When he saw her, his face lit up with a joy he didn't even try to conceal. She missed that innocence of his. She could recall the warmth of his skin as he hesitantly touched her-as he picked her up with ease and carried her to the bed. She recalled how they had stood looking over the city from the top floor of the hospital, talking about what they'd do if they could conquer the illness, losing themselves in unrealizable dreams.
Do I want to capture those memories? Do I want to re-experience them?
No, that wasn't it. She wanted to go forth with Kaoru into the future. But he was dead. He didn't really exist anymore. He wasn't anyone she could go forth with.
♥ Kaoru was looking straight forward, and his faze bristled with determination. He was saying something, in simple, clearly enunciated words. At first it sounded like static, but as Amano made the requisite adjustments Reiko began to make them out. As a result of passing through the translator, Kaoru's voice sounded subtly different, but she understood what he was saying.
"It's going-to be-alright."
He gave a big nod, as if to confirm it with himself.
It's alright.
What was alright? Was he beating a drum for the world he'd given his life to protect? Where did he get that kind of confidence? Yet, Reiko could tell that her attitude toward life, which had already undergone such drastic changes in the few hours since she'd come to the research center, was approaching a new conclusion.
Kaoru had sacrificed himself to save Reiko and the child she carried, and now he sat before them saying, "It's alright." With him affirming the world, she had no grounds for doubt.
I'll live.
The thought pierced her body. She'd begun to lose the sense that she was really alive, but now, in a way that transcended all causes, she suddenly had it back.
♥ Her condo was too big for someone living alone. With its huge living room and three bedrooms, it had been almost too much even when she'd lived there with her husband and son. Now its vastness oppressed her. It symbolized emptiness itself; she couldn't bear it. Having lost her loved ones one after the other, she was now alone-not strictly speaking, but close enough-in her fight. The enemy was no longer the MHC virus, but an overwhelming solitude.
The living room was crammed with luxurious furnishings, each one the product of her late entrepreneur husband's financial clout. They were without value now.
Reiko sank down onto the couch, pulled her knees up, and buried her face in them, sobbing. She couldn't figure out what to do to make up for the desolation she felt inside, a desolation so powerful it made her tremble. Her life was a bleak landscape stretching out before her. Through she told herself to live, despair was always with her.
I just want someone to talk to.
That was her sincerest with. She was sure Hideyuki would play that role for her splendidly, if she wanted him to. They shared the same emotional wounds, and for that reason, among others, he was sure to be a good conversation partner. She'd already done the paperwork to specify the university hospital as the place where she was going to have the baby. But Hideyuki alone wouldn't be able to stave off her sudden attacks of loneliness-to help her master the enemy that occupied these rooms.
Reiko closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind of the spaciousness of the apartment. As she did so, a compact, edited version of her life played in her mind. A landscape made up of memorable events from her younger days-grade school, middle school, high school, college-floated before her mind's eye. An objectified view.
♥ Reiko lost track of time as she watched. No longer was she able to see this as a television show, unrelated to her. She was watching a person's life. The images conveyed the uninvented truth about an irreplaceable man.
♥ The Loop had literally begun to die, once. Once the denizens of the Loop had learned about the killer videotape and the mutated manifestations of it in other media, panic had set in, a panic that had the ironic effect of accelerating the spread of the virus. People didn't wait for the end of their week's grace period, and they weren't satisfied with showing the tape to just one other person. Some individuals showed it to a host of other people. Reiko was able to experience several variations on the process: people killing each other because of the tape, love affairs falling apart, people scheming to save loved ones. It was like watching a detailed picture of hell, with egotism on full display in all its forms. It was like watching the real world.
♥ People used to call this the Killer Video. Are you brave enough to watch it?
It was becoming a relic of the past.
But there was another problem: what to do about all the Sadako Yamamuras who had flooded the world. The Sadakos were hermaphroditic, and they could reproduce on their own, so it was still possible for them to multiply with viral speed. The media terror may have died out, but if the Sadakos continued to occupy a larger and larger percentage of the human population, the Loop ecology was still in danger. Otherwise the Sadakos were harmless, and public opinion wasn't hysteric enough, or the public will wasn't firm enough, to eliminate them. Some said this was the logical stance, but it was probably more accurate to say that everyone recoiled from the question of who was going to hunt down the Sadakos and dispose of them, and how.
However, a new virus was unleashed that resolved things perfectly. It was unclear whether it had existed in the Loop world all along and had simply mutated into a state of efficacy or if it had been intentionally designed, but either way, it inflicted decisive damage on the Sadakos and no one else. Left to its natural course, it effectively destroyed the source of all the problems. And in the process, the events left a warning for society as a whole, an eloquent testament to the risk of losing diversity and allowing all life to become assimilated to one pattern.
An organic community's resilience is directly tied to the presence of individual differences within it. Some live in the mountains, some live by the sea. Some live in a world of ice, some under equatorial conditions. Some have white skin, some black. The greater the range of individual differences, the greater the chances of surviving a catastrophic blow. A virus can harm individual beings that live in hot places while having no effect on ones that live in cold places. If it attacked both, the former would die while the latter would survive. As long as there are survivors, there can always be a new start-a chance to form a world with sufficient diversity. But if the entire world shares the same DNA, everyone in it runs the risk of succumbing to the same viral attack.
The virus that overcame the Sadakos served as proof of that.
♥ Obliviously, Takayama was overcome by rapid aging. Reiko thought she could guess why. He'd become infected with the same virus that had aged the Sadakos. He must have foreseen it when he was developing the virus. Given the similarities of their manner of resurrection into the Loop world, the virus was bound to affect him as well, to kill him. He'd known it but gone through with it anyway. He'd sacrificed himself twice over. He was a man burdened by fate.
♥ He was almost supine now, and she had a good view of the expression on his face. He was looking straight in her direction. He could probably see the sky from that space between tall buildings. But his stare seemed ready to penetrate to Reiko's side of the monitor.
Takayama started to say something to the sky but closed his mouth and licked his dry lips.
What's he trying to say?
His mouth opened only to clamp shut again several times.
Remembering Amano's instructions, Reiko tapped out some commands on the keyboard and locked into Takayama's perspective. It would allow her to see with her own eyes what Takayama was seeing with his.
The scenery changed, and just as she'd expected, the monitor showed her a small patch of blue sky between the tops of buildings. Reiko was now looking at the world through Takayama's eyes. It moved her to think that she was seeing the way he was seeing. When she looked more closely, she saw something resembling a human face floating in the sky.
Reiko recognized the face. She saw it in the mirror every day: it was her.
He's thinking of me right now and imagining my face.
Reiko felt Kaoru's feelings with painful intensity. Even after he closed his eyes, the image of her face hovered there against the blacks of his eyelids. She could actually see the strength of Kaoru's thoughts. He wanted her so much that his mind was creating her face for him. Reiko could see it with her own eyes.
Only when the face in the sky started to blur and become double did Reiko become aware of her tears. With Takayama's heart in her breast, she tried to imagine what it was he'd been trying to say-or not to say.
It seemed to her that, on the verge of death, he was reflecting on how happy he'd been with her. That made Reiko far happier than hearing him say goodbye.
The beating of his heart grew slower and fainter. Death was approaching. The scene wobbled slightly. He seemed to be having a hard time keeping his head up.
Now his eyes stayed closed for longer stretches than they were open. At length, his surroundings faded away. The skyscrapers, the trees, the crowds of people, all disappeared, and his field of vision was swathed in darkness. Reiko's face alone remained distinct. It stayed that way for a long time among the echoes of death.
The Loop world meant nothing to Rekio now. Seeing Takayama's final visions through the monitor made a far deeper impression on her than simply hearing about his death ever could. She disengaged from his point of view and allowed herself to stare at the Loop world from above for a time, lost. She knew that she had to accept Takayama's death calmly, just as he himself had. But she couldn't, not yet.
Later, when she'd managed to get herself somewhat under control, she eased her gaze away from the monitor. Her interest in the Loop world had faded now that Takayama was no longer in it.
Goodbye.
She turned off the power so that the virtual world disappeared from before her eyes. She would probably never look into it again.
♥ Behind the nyurse was a thick pane of gflass separating the nyurserty from trhe outside to keepo it germ-free. TRhe glass also acted like a mirror, reflecitng fthe nurse and the baby. The real scxene and the fictive one in the gflass faced each other and swayed in the same direction.
Reiko could see the hint of a tall form looking down at the baby reflected in the flass. It was just a hint, a shade. It l;eaned over and brought itsa fsce close to the baby's, gazing at it, as if to whsiper something to it.
The outlines of the image became clearer, its feartyures more defined.
Kaoru.
Reiko raised her head, faced the image, and called to it. She had the feeling that words he';d tried to speak but oculdn't before were finally emerign from his jmouth.
Happy Birthday.
The words timbled from his lips, celebrating, not a day, but birth itself.
Reiko thought with pleasure:L when her son grew older, how she'd tell him anbout his father, and watch his explotuis together. This vision of the futrure ,ade jer jeasrt dance. She was sure her son w3ould be proud of the man hsi father'd been.
Reiko cradled Kaoru's words and repeated them to their son.
Happy Birthday.
~~Happy Birthday.