Memoirs of a Shattered Soul — 07: News from Home

For the next few weeks my Aunt Hanami will be visiting us from Japan. She brought us news from home, but not the news we had been longing to hear...

April 15, 2013

Today was a long and tiring day… a harder day than I expected. To be honest, I’m still trying to process how I feel about it. I guess that’s the whole point of writing this journal, though. So I’ll try.

I should mention that for the next few weeks my Aunt Hanami will be visiting Switzerland. She arrived yesterday at the airport in Bern, and my father and I went to meet her. Today we were all doing some sightseeing together. It allowed me to share my new love of the Swiss Alps and the waterfalls in the region with someone else who had never seen them.

“Don’t you have classes at school, Yukiko?” she asked.

I grinned. “Online tutors only, obasan. And they have very flexible schedules. You know my father: he believes in hands-on learning too, which today includes chasing waterfalls with you!”

Hanami gave my father a look of mock exasperation. “If you love a child, let the child travel. Is that right, Take-san?”

My father also grinned. “It’s the wisdom of our Japanese ancestors. Not for me to contradict!”

My aunt grew quieter once we were on the road and the beauty of our surroundings impressed itself on her consciousness. At certain moments she took out her Nikon camera and began taking pictures, each one perfectly framed and worthy of being in a picture gallery.

My aunt is actually a professional photographer and occasional photojournalist. She always joked that she first learned the craft by watching all the camera crews that followed my mother everywhere during her career as an actress, model and singer. Although Aunt Hanami always laughed when she said this, I did used to wonder how it affected her self-esteem to see her older sister idolised that way.

To be honest, though, my aunt is also a very beautiful woman, and at thirty-eight years old she is in the prime of her life now. On that account she has no reason to envy my mother. I’m sure that she could have had her pick of suitors if she ever wanted to marry. Apparently, though, that never interested her.

When we reached Staubbach Falls and my aunt had taken the pictures she wanted, we all sat quietly for a moment, listening to the thunder of the falling water.

Then my father asked the question which had been hanging over us all day. “Hanami-chan… Can you give us any news about Tomie’s condition? Dr. Hanagata never tells us anything definite, perhaps because he doesn’t want to give us false hope…”

Hanami shook her head. “No, Takeyoshi. Dr. Hanagata is only being honest with you. There is nothing to report. Her condition has not changed at all. I’m sorry…”

My father’s face fell. It’s true that Dr. Hanagata had done nothing to deceive us, but even so hope has a habit of growing in the darkest places, even if it only breaks your heart.

Hanami said softly, “Takeyoshi, have you checked the information I gave you?”

My father looked away. “I’ve been very busy since we arrived here, Hanami…”

Her voice grew softer still. “You know that he exists, Take-san. You knew even before I told you I met him all those years ago, and now the videos prove it. So why do you refuse to do anything about it?”

Something at the back of my brain was beginning to buzz. Grownups have a certain way of talking around children when they don’t want to reveal secrets. They start speaking in code. I recognised it instantly, but now I wasn’t a child. I was almost sixteen and not so easily fooled.

I blurted out in a manner that even to me seemed clumsy and impolite, “Obasan, are you talking about the surveillance videos? The ones that show my mother being attacked?”

My aunt’s silence spoke volumes. She and my father exchanged a glance. All at once I found myself wondering just how much the two people who loved my mother and me most in the whole world had been hiding from me.

“Who is he?” I asked. My head was reeling with possibilities. If the videos were not faked, if the man in those images was not wearing a mask… then who was he, and why did he look exactly like my father? Who was this man whose very existence had started the scandal that had shattered our lives?

I realised that there were tears flowing down my cheeks. “Who is he?” I repeated stupidly. “Why did he come to our house?” And although I didn’t voice it, the question still hung in the air: Why did he want to hurt us?

Hanami said, “I’m sorry, Yukiko-chan, but we don’t really know. Many people have Doppelgängers. It’s more common than you might think. I ran into this man years ago completely by accident and at first thought he was your father. The resemblance is uncanny. But since then…”

A Doppelgänger. However implausible it might seem, I suppose that I had been hoping that my mother’s assailant was wearing a mask. The idea that someone might actually have the same face as my father disturbed me. It was spooky, like the old Japanese stories about the Nopperabō, the legendary faceless yōkai that can disguise themselves as humans, make themselves look like any human being on earth. It made me feel as if there was something supernatural here that we could never fight or even understand.

My aunt fell silent as I was processing her words. For a long moment there was no sound except the dull roar of the waterfall.

Finally she said, “Yukiko, we have reasons to believe that your father’s Doppelgänger is involved in the Yakuza.”