BIG DOG

You know what I mean? That, uh, huge, what do you call it?’ Mr. Nakano asked as he took off his black apron. There weren’t any pickups scheduled for that day, but a customer had called a little while ago to request an appraisal. Appraisals were not Mr. Nakano’s strong suit, but the customer had been most persistent, and now it seemed he had no choice but to go over and take a look.

‘A big what?’ I followed up.

As usual, Mr. Nakano’s conversation was unexpected.

‘With long hair, and kind of . . . like a woman who is a bit hard to approach,’ Mr. Nakano went on, unfazed.

‘Do you mean a woman?’

‘No, no—I’m not talking about a person.’

‘Not a person?’

‘A dog—I’m talking about a dog,’ Mr. Nakano said impatiently as he tossed his apron into the shop’s tatami room at the back.

A dog, I repeated.

Right, a dog, you know. One of those—what do you call it—like those tall, long, and thin ones that are always frolicking around the gardens of aristocrats.

I laughed at Mr. Nakano’s words. The expression ‘frolicking around’ didn’t seem to go with the idea of ‘aristocrats.’

‘All right, I’ll be off then,’ Mr. Nakano said as he ran his hands through the many pockets of his nylon vest.

See you later, I responded.

I heard the clear sound of the engine. Last week, the Nakano shop had, in the parlance of Mr. Nakano, done a ‘full change-up’ on the truck’s engine. It wasn’t just the battery that was kaput; the drive belt was practically ready to snap, as they had found out during the last vehicle inspection.

Takeo and I were used to driving this truck, so we were pretty good at getting around using the belt as it was. Mr. Nakano went on, grumbling endlessly to himself as he eyed the bill from the repair shop. Can he really be serious when he says that? I tried to ask Takeo furtively; he nodded with an earnest look. He’s definitely serious, Mr. Nakano.

In any event, the truck’s engine had come through its ‘full change-up’ without a hitch, and Mr. Nakano was completely recovered from his injury as well. Having undergone a thorough examination while he was in the hospital, he had been diagnosed with a predisposition for diabetes, which resulted in a tendency to spout copious and dubious information about calories at mealtimes. Otherwise Mr. Nakano seemed quite back to himself again, as he manipulated the truck’s steering wheel with one hand, making a wide turn onto the street.

The rays of midsummer sunlight came into the shop, high and strong. I sat on a chair and massaged my own shoulders.

 

The incident with the dog frolicking around in the aristocrat’s garden had all started with Mr. Maruyama, Masayo’s whatever-he-is (that was Mr. Nakano’s name for him).

‘You know, I hear Maruyama lives in an apartment in the next neighborhood over,’ Mr. Nakano had said, a hint of displeasure in his voice. Really? I replied.

‘I mean, if he’s my sister’s whatever-he-is, they ought to live together. Her house is big enough.’

Masayo lived in the house left by Mr. Nakano’s and her late parents; it is an old but quite magnificent home.

‘There’s something cheeky about them insisting on living apart, isn’t there?’

I always suspected that Mr. Nakano might have a bit of a sister complex. Perhaps, I offered reasonably.

‘And, you know, there’s the landlord at his apartment building . . . ’ Mr. Nakano said and then paused meaningfully. I ignored his suggestive silence and continued to busy myself with pasting rough paper together to make bags. When customers bought large items, we put them in paper shopping bags with handles that came from department stores or boutiques, but for things that weren’t so big, like smaller delicate items, the Nakano shop provided simple paper bags—flat square ones like you used to get at the greengrocer’s.

‘Hitomi, you make pretty bags,’ Mr. Nakano said, admiring my work.

Really? I replied.

‘Yeah, you are good with your hands. I think the bags you make may even be that much neater than my sister’s.’

Really? I said again. The reference to his sister had brought Mr. Nakano back to the topic, and he started off again about ‘the dog in the aristocrat’s garden.’ This was the gist of the story.

 

The landlord of Mr. Maruyama’s building was a heartless miser.

The apartment was called ‘Maison Kanamori 1’ and, first of all, despite it being a forty-year-old building that was showing its age, the landlord shamelessly charged rent that was almost the same as for a newly constructed building. He even paid careful attention to refreshing the paint and changing the wallpaper—the kind of work that keeps up outward appearances—so that inside and out it bore enough of a resemblance to a new construction.

Tidy rooms with a spacious layout like you used to see, plenty of closets. His modus operandi was to trick foolish tenants into paying a deposit right away, before they noticed the hidden truths of ‘Maison Kanamori,’ such as the voices from neighboring apartments that could be heard distinctly, the floors that were on a slant, and the numerous cockroaches that came up out of the drain as soon as night fell to run rampant around the apartment.

What made things even worse was that Maison Kanamori was blessed in its surrounding scenery. Even tenants who had steeled themselves against the sloping floors or the vague signs of vermin would, nine times out of ten, break into a smile the instant they laid eyes on the landlord’s garden—his ‘pride and joy’—which was directly opposite Maison Kanamori. Verdant was the perfect word to describe it.

Buildings one to three of Maison Kanamori were built in a row on the landlord’s property. These buildings as well as the main house where the landlord lived were surrounded by his ‘pride and joy’ on all sides. The landlord was constantly making improvements to the garden. Mixed in among a grove of ornamental trees such as Japanese oaks, silver birches, southern magnolias, and maples, were fruit trees such as persimmons, peaches, and summer mandarins, in addition to showy varieties like fragrant olive trees, azaleas, and hydrangeas, all growing together in a jumble. The undergrowth was a mass of English-style flowering grasses with tiny white and blue blooms, and over the entrance to the premises was an arch with large roses.

‘It sounds like a garden with no particular rules,’ I remarked to Mr. Nakano, who nodded in agreement.

‘But, you know, Maruyama is enough of a scatterbrain to get caught up with someone like my sister, so he was easily taken in by that heartless landlord,’ Mr. Nakano said sagely, shaking his head.

If it was only that the rent was expensive, I’d say just deal with it, but Maison Kanamori’s heartless landlord is hostile towards his tenants, Mr. Nakano explained.

‘Hostile?’ I said.

‘Yes, hostile,’ he replied in an overdramatic, low voice.

The landlord and his wife were so crazy about their garden that if a tenant did the slightest harm to it, they held an implacable grudge. But they didn’t just show hostility towards a tenant who had damaged the garden in the past, they even got really tough with the tenants who hadn’t done anything. Mr. Nakano went on, I hear that, when showing the apartment, they are terribly courteous, if anything they seem like a timid and naïve married couple, only to change their manner abruptly as soon as the lease is signed, scolding and rebuking for all sorts of things.

‘Scolding and rebuking?’ I repeated with surprise.

Mr. Nakano laughed. ‘For instance, you know, if someone parks their bicycle in a corner of the garden, less than an hour later, they might find it covered with stickers that say DO NOT LEAVE BICYCLES HERE or TO BE REMOVED, so I hear.’

‘Stickers?’

‘The landlord and his wife must have had them made up for just this purpose.’

Isn’t that a bit scary? I said.

Mr. Nakano nodded. ‘And if that weren’t enough, apparently those stickers are impossible to peel off.’

Why can’t people leave their bikes there in the first place?

‘They say it affects the way the sunlight falls on the grass, and the flowers might get crushed.’

Maruyama’s not a very good judge of character, Mr. Nakano went on gleefully, and stood up. Should we call it a day? he asked as he started to tidy up the things on the bench out front.

As a matter of fact, I already knew about Maison Kanamori. It was less than a five-minute walk from Takeo’s house. Once, for some reason, I accompanied Takeo home (of course I didn’t go inside or meet anyone there), and on the way, we passed Maison Kanamori. It did have the feeling of a dense and contained forest, and the landlord’s garden—his ‘pride and joy,’ as Mr. Nakano put it—was certainly something to be proud of, which is to say that it was rather tasteful.

‘This place seems like it belongs somewhere else,’ Takeo said, staring deep into the garden.

‘Should we go in?’ I said, but Takeo shook his head.

‘One mustn’t enter someone else’s garden without permission. My grandpa taught me that, a long time ago.’

Hmm, I said. I was slightly annoyed that Takeo had opposed my suggestion. I had thought about giving him a big wet kiss, right there on the spot, but I gave up on the idea.

So, what does this have to do with the landlord and the aristocrat’s dog? I asked, but Mr. Nakano was preoccupied with closing the shutter, and didn’t seem to hear what I said. That’s how he was. It’s still hot even after the sun has gone down, I called out as I stepped outside the back door. Beside the half-moon hanging clearly in the sky, the same star that I had seen on the way home from visiting Mr. Nakano in the hospital stood out white and glistening.

See you later, I called back towards the inside of the shop, but sure enough, there was no response from Mr. Nakano. I could hear him humming over the clatter of the shutter.

 

In the end, it was Masayo who revealed the full details of the aristocrat’s dog.

‘I mean, the landlord and his wife’s children have been independent for a long time already,’ Masayo began, almost as abruptly as Mr. Nakano, a few days after I heard the story of Maison Kanamori from him. For the first time in a while, Mr. Nakano, Takeo, me, and Masayo—the so-called full members of the Nakano shop—were gathered together there. It’s the first time since Haruo was in the hospital, isn’t it? Masayo said as she looked around at us all.

‘Speaking of which, what is happening to the woman who stabbed Mr. Nakano?’ Takeo asked.

‘I think she’s in detention,’ Masayo answered briskly.

I see, Takeo replied. After that, nobody asked for any other details, such as when the trial might be, or what kind of charges were to be expected. It was less out of tact or restraint than because we were not well versed in discussing such worldly matters.

‘So, going back to the landlord and his wife, they didn’t know what to do with themselves, so they ended up getting an enormous Afghan hound,’ Masayo continued.

I see, I replied this time.

‘And that dog became even more important to them than their garden.’

I see. Takeo’s turn.

‘One time, Maruyama ran into the landlord and his wife while they were taking the dog for a walk.’

I see. Me again.

‘Not only did they scowl at him, on top of that, they told him to go away.’

So, what did Maruyama do? Takeo asked.

‘He went away, he said,’ Masayo replied, and then after a moment she giggled. I laughed too. Takeo’s mouth relaxed just the slightest bit. Mr. Nakano was the only one who seemed annoyed for some reason.

Come on, come on, don’t be such a lazybones. We’ve got Kabukicho, so hop to it, Takeo, will you? Mr. Nakano said with the same annoyed look on his face. That day both Mr. Nakano and Takeo were supposed to go on a pickup at an apartment in Kabukicho, the red-light district. Apparently there was only one item in the pickup, and ordinarily, either one of them could go and take care of it on their own, but according to Mr. Nakano, there was something about this customer that seemed fishy.

‘What makes you say that?’ I had asked, and Mr. Nakano had thought for a moment before replying, ‘When he called on the phone, he was terribly over-polite.’

After Mr. Nakano and Takeo left, Masayo stayed behind at the shop for a little while. Four customers came in, one after another, and all four bought something that Masayo casually recommended—a chipped plate, or a glass with a beer logo on it, or some such.

I hope everything is all right with that customer in Kabukicho, I said after a lull in customers. Masayo tilted her head and said lightly, Everything will be fine.

Maruyama’s landlord and his wife sound like strange people, I said after another pause. Masayo tilted her head even more than before. They are, indeed, and Maruyama is a good man. I just hope they don’t create any problems for him, she said, sounding deeply concerned now.

Masayo went home soon after that. Once she was gone, the customers suddenly petered out. With nothing to do, I tried to remember what an Afghan hound looked like, but I kept mixing it up with a borzoi or a basset hound, and I couldn’t quite picture it.

That means that the landlord and his wife are keeping that Afghan hound inside their house, Masayo had said. People say that they even specially ordered a double-size futon, so that the dog can sleep with them. You mean a futon, not a bed? I asked, and Masayo had nodded.

As I was daydreaming about the idea of that big dog spread out on top of a futon, the phone rang. Startled, I jumped up from my chair. The person on the phone wanted to know how much they could get for a rice cooker from 1975 or so. I told them when Mr. Nakano would be back and hung up. Until Mr. Nakano and Takeo came back, there wasn’t a single customer.

 

‘Was a helmet,’ Takeo said.

He was sitting on the yellow stool that had no back, as usual. I was on a chair that looked like something a elementary-school student would sit on. This seat wasn’t from Mr. Nakano’s shop; I got it at a church bazaar that was near the place where I used to live.

Over the course of visiting my place numerous times, at some point Takeo seemed to have fallen into the habit of sitting on the yellow stool. But whenever he sat down on it, he did so in such a cautious manner that I wondered if it might be the yellow color of the chair that he disliked.

‘A helmet?’ I repeated.

‘And, just as Mr. Nakano suspected, the guy was a yakuza mister,’ Takeo said, putting his elbows on the dining table.

‘A yakuza mister?’ I laughed—it sounded odd to call a yakuza ‘mister.’

‘Well, he’s still a customer. And compared to some of the others, he seemed like a pretty nice guy.’

The yakuza mister’s place was on the top floor of an elegant building that faced the street where the Kabukicho ward office was. They had looked for a parking spot but the streets were packed so tightly with black Lincolns and Mercedes and Presidents, there was nowhere to park. They had no choice but to put the truck in a faraway lot, and Mr. Nakano and Takeo ended up being late for their appointment.

‘Mr. Nakano was kind of freaked out,’ Takeo said as he swung his upper body back and forth on top of the stool.

What’s Mr. Nakano like when he’s freaked out? I asked. Takeo stopped swinging to and fro.

‘He becomes terribly over-polite.’

No way, come on! You mean, just like the yakuza mister? I had a good laugh, and Takeo started swinging his upper body again. The cushioned part of the stool was making a squeaking sound.

In spite of their late arrival, Mr. Nakano and Takeo were greeted politely. The yakuza mister’s beautiful wife appeared, carrying a tray with fragrant black tea served in Ginori teacups that she offered to them. There was heavy cream and rose-shaped sugar cubes. Encouraged by their hosts, Mr. Nakano and Takeo hastily drank their tea.

‘I drank it too fast—I burned my tongue.’ Takeo relayed this abruptly.

There was cake too. It was deep, dark black. It wasn’t very sweet; it was made almost entirely of chocolate.

‘You ate that too fast too?’ I asked. Takeo nodded emphatically.

‘Did it taste good?’

‘Amazingly good.’

Takeo let his gaze briefly wander through the air. Takeo, I said, you like sweets, don’t you? But he shook his head slackly. Was hardly sweet at all, it was so dense, he said. Stop making the cushion squeak, I said. Takeo looked surprised. Then his torso went limp and he stopped fidgeting.

Once Mr. Nakano and Takeo had finished eating the cake, the yakuza mister clapped his hands together. A door opened suddenly, and two men carried in a helmet and a suit of armor laid out on a plank. The two men were wearing white shirts with dark trousers. One of them looked even younger than Takeo and wore a tightly knotted tie. The one without a tie had a shaved head and round John Lennon glasses. After they placed the helmet and the armor on the floor, the two men quickly left.

‘How much would this go for, approximately?’ the yakuza mister asked in a composed voice.

‘Lemme think.’

Influenced by the yakuza mister’s Kansai accent, Mr. Nakano had assumed a similar intonation.

‘Does Mr. Nakano know how to appraise things like that?’

‘Guess helmets and armor have a general market price,’ Takeo said, looking down. Now that he could no longer swing his body around, he must be bored. I pretended not to notice.

Mr. Nakano offered a price of 100,000 yen. I have no objection to that, the yakuza mister said in a deep voice. His beautiful wife instantly appeared, bringing out whisky. She poured it into shot glasses and served it neat, with a chaser of mineral water in a Baccarat glass. Takeo left his untouched but Mr. Nakano drained three shot glasses full, one after another.

It might have been that the alcohol went straight to his head, but Mr. Nakano grew bold. Do you have any other items to sell? he asked without any hesitation, which made Takeo nervous. The yakuza mister was silent, sinking into his easy chair. His wife piped up, ‘I keep unusually shaped bottles that I came across at the bar.’

She went on, ‘Glass liquor bottles are pretty, aren’t they? I have a little collection.’ She looked from Mr. Nakano to Takeo.

‘She was what they call a stunner,’ Mr. Nakano said to Takeo later when they were back in the truck. He speculated that she must have been a hostess in what they call the water trade. Mr. Nakano went on, I bet she worked in the kind of bar that you and I will never go to, pushing the kind of expensive booze that we’ll never drink in our whole lives.

Each time they stopped at a traffic light, Takeo could hear what sounded like things moving around in the back of the truck. The lightly packed helmet and armor were probably sliding around. When they got onto the Koshu Kaido road, Takeo pulled over onto the side. Mr. Nakano had been dozing for a little while. Takeo got out and carefully positioned the helmet and armor in between the cardboard boxes that had been piled up in the truck. When he got back into the driver’s seat, Mr. Nakano was still asleep. His mouth was half open and he was snoring softly.

 

‘This meal is really delicious,’ Takeo muttered once he’d finished telling the story of the yakuza mister.

Really? I answered coolly.

I had put an unusual amount of effort into cooking that night’s dinner. Shrimp au gratin. Tomato and avocado salad. Soup with shredded carrots and peppers. Since I rarely ever cooked a proper meal, it had taken me two hours to make it all.

‘It’s no big deal,’ I replied, scooping up some of the gratin and bringing it to my mouth. It needed salt. Just a little bit more. Next I tasted the soup; it was too salty.

Takeo and I ate dinner, neither of us saying much. We finished two cans of beer. Takeo hardly drank at all that evening. Even though I still had half of my food left, Takeo had already finished. Was delicious, he said, swinging his torso a little bit. Then right away, he said to himself, Ah, and was still.

‘Hey, what kind of a dog is an Afghan hound?’ I tried asking Takeo. He said, Hmm, and knitted his brows together for a moment. Then he pulled over a memo pad that was on the corner of the dining table and did a quick sketch with a pencil. With a pointed nose and long legs, it was a perfect illustration of what an Afghan hound looked like.

‘Takeo, you’re so good at drawing!’ I cried out. Not really all that, he said, and again started to swing his torso. Hey, so next, draw a borzoi, I asked and, still swinging his torso, Takeo ran the pencil several times over the pad. And in no time at all, the shape of a borzoi appeared on the page. Amazing! That’s amazing, Takeo! I said, and Takeo rubbed the tip of his nose with the knuckle of his index finger a few times.

At my request, Takeo drew pictures on the memo pad of a basset hound, a rice cooker from the 1970s, and Masayo’s doll creations, one after another. Just like that, we moved to the bed, where Takeo then began to draw me at full length. Takeo sketched quickly as I posed like Goya’s Maja. ‘This is like his Clothed Maja,’ I said, but Takeo didn’t seem to know what I meant.

After sketching me for a while, Takeo suddenly let out a brief exclamation. What is it? I asked, and just at that moment he stood up and leaned over me.

Takeo quickly took off his jeans. As I tried to take my own off, Takeo took over. My jeans were a little tight so it took some effort, but he managed to get them off as though he was peeling a fruit. We had sex, briefly.

Hey, that was nice, Takeo, I said afterwards, and Takeo looked at me intently.

He didn’t say anything, but he was still clothed from the waist up, so he took off his T-shirt. I was still wearing my T-shirt too, and I thought Takeo might take it off for me, so for a moment I didn’t move. But he didn’t. I debated whether or not to keep it on or to take it off. Takeo had a blank look on his face. I said his name, and with the same expression on his face, he said my name softly in reply.

 

We had several days of blazing summer heat. Just when I thought the searing heat would never end, it suddenly turned cool, like the weather in early autumn. The Nakano shop continued to thrive; the helmet and armor that Mr. Nakano had bought from the yakuza mister had sold for just over a million yen, and the bidding for an ordinary-looking Daruma doll that cost 1,000 yen had gone all the way up to 70,000 yen in an online auction. ‘At this rate, I’ll be able to hire two or three more of you, Hitomi,’ Mr. Nakano gloated.

‘But it’s not as if our salary will go up, I bet,’ Takeo and I had said furtively to each other, though at the end of the month when our wages were handed over, there was a bonus of 6,500 yen. There was something about the amount that was just like Mr. Nakano.

On payday, Takeo and I went out drinking for the first time in a while. Lured by a happy hour offering hundred-yen glasses of beer until seven o’clock, we went to a Thai restaurant in the same building as the train station. We drank until after eight, and Takeo ordered his usual rice to finish, scooping it up with nam pla-flavored fried chicken. When we went to split the bill and leave, we saw that Masayo and Mr. Maruyama were sitting near the entrance.

‘Oh, my goodness,’ Masayo said brightly. Takeo took half a step back.

‘Have a drink with us before you go?’ Masayo said. Before we could answer, she quickly moved around the table to sit beside Maruyama. Then she pointed to the chair where she had been sitting and to the one next to it.

‘That’s extremely mysterious,’ Masayo started in as soon as we sat down.

What? We responded in unison.

‘Lately, he says that he hasn’t seen the dog,’ Masayo says, bringing her mug of draft beer to her lips. A waiter was standing beside the table. Oh, I guess we should order. Is beer all right? A bottle, please. And not Singha—regular Japanese is fine, Masayo briskly instructed the waiter.

‘Right?’ When the waiter left, Masayo seemed to peer into Mr. Maruyama’s face, seeking a response. Maruyama nodded with his usual vague look.

‘Is the dog she’s talking about the Afghan at your landlord’s place?’ I asked Mr. Maruyama, who nodded lightly.

‘And what’s more, the stickering is getting much worse, isn’t it?’ Masayo said, peering at Mr. Maruyama again. The waiter brought the beer. Masayo placed glasses in front of Takeo and me and swiftly poured some for us. It was all foam, and Takeo’s glass overflowed. Masayo paid no attention and kept chattering away.

‘Just recently, Maruyama here stopped for a few moments to admire the fragrant olive in the landlord’s garden, and the next day, he says, there were three stickers stuck on his door.’

‘Three stickers?’ I said. Takeo meekly took sips of the foam on his beer.

‘All of the stickers had “Be mindful of the plants and trees in the garden” printed on them,’ Masayo said in an indignant tone. Mr. Maruyama nodded again vaguely. I nearly burst into laughter, but since no one else was laughing, I held back.

‘Where on the door were the stickers?’

‘On the edge, underneath where they put the ones for the census or to show you’ve paid the NHK license fee.’

Wow, Takeo said as if he were exhaling. Masayo glanced at Takeo pointedly. Takeo hastily looked down.

‘It’s difficult to remove them.’ This was the first time Mr. Maruyama had spoken. His voice was pleasant, deep and resonant.

‘I suppose the door actually belongs to the landlord, so it’s probably not illegal for him to put stickers on it,’ Masayo went on animatedly. I see, I replied. Takeo was silent.

Mr. Maruyama drained the beer in his glass mug. Masayo paused to catch her breath, and drank her beer. I picked up my own glass. It wasn’t very cold. When I took a sip, there was only the strong taste of alcohol.

Mr. Maruyama took a piece of fried chicken with his chopsticks. It was the same thing that we had eaten. Masayo reached with her chopsticks at the same time. While the two of them were eating the chicken, neither Takeo nor I said anything. Takeo was tapping his foot along with the beat of the Thai music that was playing in the restaurant. There was no distinct rhythm to the music, though, so the beat that Takeo’s foot was keeping time with was on the late side.

Well, I guess we’ll be on our way.

I stood up, since all I had been doing was watch Mr. Maruyama and Masayo eat their chicken. Takeo got up too, as if he were being dragged. Masayo looked up at the two of us, with an expression that said, Oh, you’re leaving already? Her mouth was full of chicken, so she didn’t say anything.

I made a slight bow. Takeo did the same. Just as we were turning our backs on them, Mr. Maruyama wiped his fingertips on his paper napkin and said, in his low and resonant voice, ‘It seems that the dog has died!’

 

‘Hitomi, do you like dogs?’ Mr. Nakano asked.

‘Generally,’ I replied.

‘Losing a pet must be terrible,’ Mr. Nakano said as he flipped through the pages of the notebook.

‘Do you think so?’ I replied. I have never had a dog or a cat. When Takeo and I were on our way home from the Thai restaurant where we ran into Mr. Maruyama and Masayo, Takeo had muttered, ‘It’s so hard when a dog dies.’

Did you have a dog, Takeo? I asked. Takeo nodded deeply.

‘I started working at Mr. Nakano’s because my dog died.’

Really? I asked, but Takeo did not offer much further explanation. All he said was, The mutt I’d had since kindergarten died last year. Then he fell silent.

I’ll see you home tonight. Takeo had been so sad after our conversation about the dog that night that I had walked with him all the way to his house. By the time we got close to where he lived, Takeo had cheered up a little bit. Now it’s my turn to see you home, he had said and started to turn back towards the station, but I stopped him.

Once Takeo disappeared through the gate, I turned on my heel and headed for the station. I should have made it to the station in about ten minutes, but at some point I found myself walking along unfamiliar streets. The surroundings all looked the same to me. I seemed to be a little lost.

I thought I was following a street with regularly spaced street lights when suddenly I was in the dark. There were rows of old-looking apartment buildings. There was no sign of anyone around. As I braced myself for a moment, wondering if this was a cemetery or something similar, I heard a dog bark in the distance. Just as I was about to turn back, I realized with a start where I was.

This was Mr. Maruyama’s landlord’s property.

I just stood still for a moment. I recalled Takeo’s voice, saying, It’s so hard when a dog dies. Mr. Maruyama’s evasiveness also came to mind, albeit faintly.

Okay, let’s go, I said out loud as I headed straight for the landlord’s ‘pride and joy’ garden. All three of the apartment buildings were quiet, and I saw no lights on in the main house where the landlord and his wife lived. Passing under the arch with its roses, I strode into the landlord’s garden. The night-blooming vines and creepers were entwined around the trunks of big trees, with huge white flowers in bloom. My shoes made a rustling sound as I stepped on the grass.

As I walked a bit further, I came to a place where the ground was piled up. The earth was heaped in a mound that was just about the length and width of a person lying down. It was the only place where there weren’t any plants. There was the fresh scent of earth that has been dug up and then reburied.

I came to a stop right beside the mound. As I stared at it for a moment, my eyes adjusted. At one end of it stood a cross. Leaning against the cross, there was a photograph of a dog with a long snout. There was a sticker on the top part of the cross. Written on the sticker, it said, HERE LIES PES.

I let out a cry and leapt away from the earth. I hastily made my way out of the garden. I was aware that I was recklessly trampling the grassy undergrowth, but I broke into a run anyway. I was still walking at a quick pace when I reached the station. My fingertips were trembling as I reached into my wallet for some change to buy a ticket. Once I was on the train, the fluorescent lights were uncomfortably bright.

 

‘I’m thinking of getting a dog,’ Mr. Nakano said with nonchalance.

‘Sure,’ I replied flatly. I hadn’t told anyone about what I had seen that night in Maruyama’s landlord’s garden. Not even Takeo, of course.

The heat has returned, Mr. Nakano said, stretching. When it gets too hot, the customers don’t leave their houses. Hey, Hitomi, if we go into the red, would you give me back that sixty-five hundred yen? Mr. Nakano laughed and stretched again.

Not a chance, I replied. Mr. Nakano stood up and went into the back room. I hear Maruyama is moving, you know, Mr. Nakano said from within. What? Is he going to live with Masayo? I asked. Nope, apparently the landlord’s sticker offensive was too much for him, so he got scared and found a cheaper apartment nearby.

As I contemplated the fact that Mr. Maruyama didn’t strike me as someone who would be afraid of the likes of the landlord, a customer came in and I nodded in greeting. The customer stood in the corner where the picture frames were and sized up what was there. He was picking up each of the five frames that were lined up, one by one, turning them over and bringing them close to his face.

After a while, the customer held out a small frame and said, I’ll take this one. Is the picture inside included in the price? he asked. I looked to see that the frame held a sketch of a woman holding a pose like The Nude Maja. It looked exactly like what Takeo had drawn when he had been over at my apartment the other night.

I let out a little cry. I thought the sketch he had done was a Clothed Maja, but the woman in the drawing in the frame was naked. I was disoriented, my mouth agape. Mr. Nakano called out a welcome to the customer as he came in from the back. The glass of the frame caught the afternoon light, sparkling in reflection.