The doctor greedily stuffed the pills into his mouth as he continued to speak. “Therefore, if you persist in asserting your own sanity, it proves, conversely, that your environment is in fact normal, but that you alone are abnormal. If you consider your environment to be abnormal, then by all means lose your mind!” He took a bottle of ink from his desk and gulped down the blue-black liquid until it was empty. Then he collapsed onto the couch beside him and fell asleep.
“On a mad, mad morning in May, two lovers drank dry a bottle of bright blue ink,” hummed a nurse as she entered the treatment room, completely naked. In one of her hands she held a huge bottle of ink, from which she took the occasional swig before draping her body over the doctor’s on the couch.
So I left the clinic without receiving a satisfactory answer. The sun was going down, but it still felt oppressively hot.
As soon as I was back at my desk, Akiko Mikawa called me from Admin. “Thank you for inviting me out yesterday,” she said. “I’m really sorry I couldn’t make it.”
“That’s all right,” I replied with undue reserve.
She said nothing for a while. She was waiting for me to ask her out again. She’d obviously noticed that public opinion was starting to shift towards me, and was probably worried that she would now become the butt of media vitriol. She’d called me in the hope of accepting an invitation.
We both remained silent for a few moments.
I sighed before plunging in. “How about today, then?”
“I’d love to.”
“All right, I’ll see you in the San José after work.”
News of our arrangement must have been reported immediately. For, as I walked into the San José, it seemed unusually busy. Normally, it wasn’t that kind of place. All the customers were couples, making it impossible to tell which were reporters and which merely curiosity-seekers. But whichever they were, they’d obviously come with one aim in mind – to observe my date with Akiko. While of course feigning a lack of interest, they would give themselves away by glancing over at us every now and again.
Needless to say, for the whole hour that Akiko and I were in the café, we sat in stony silence with our drinks in front of us. For if we’d discussed anything even slightly unusual, it would immediately have been reported in a three-column article with a massive headline.
We parted at Shinjuku Station, and I returned to my apartment. I hesitated for a while, but eventually switched on the television.
In a change to the evening’s schedule, they were showing a panel discussion.
“Now, I think we come to a very difficult question at this point,” said the presenter. “If events continue to unfold at this pace, when do you think Morishita and Mikawa might be booking into a hotel? Or do you think it might not come to that? Professor Ohara?”
“Well, this Akiko is a bit of a shy filly, if you know what I mean,” said Professor Ohara, a racing expert. “It all depends on Morishita’s persistence and determination in the saddle.”
“It’s all in the stars,” said a female astrologer, holding up a card. “It’ll be towards the end of the month.”
Why on earth would we want to go to a hotel, I wondered. If we did, our voices would be recorded and our positions photographed. The whole thing would be reported all over the country, exposing us to universal shame.
Things continued in a similar vein for the next few days.
Then, on my way to work one morning, my heart sank when I saw an ad for a women’s magazine inside the packed commuter train.
“READ ALL ABOUT IT- TSUTOMU AND AKIKO’S CAFÉ DATE!”
– it said in large bold letters, next to a photo of my face. And underneath that, in smaller type:
“Morishita masturbated twice that night”
I was boiling with rage and grating my teeth. “Don’t I have a right to privacy?” I shouted. “I’ll sue for defamation! Who cares how many times I did it?!”
On my arrival at work, I went straight to the Chief Clerk’s desk and presented him with a copy of the magazine, which I’d bought at the station. “I’d like permission to leave the office on personal business. I assume you know about this article. I’m going to complain to the company that publishes this magazine.”
“Of course, I understand how you feel,” the Chief Clerk said in a faltering voice, evidently trying to pacify me. “But there’s surely no point in losing your temper, is there? The media are too powerful. Of course, I’d always give you permission to leave the office on personal business. As you know, I’m quite flexible when it comes to that kind of thing. I’m sure you’re aware of that. Yes. I’m sure you are. But I’m just concerned for your welfare, you see. I agree, it’s pretty disgraceful. This article, yes, it’s disgraceful. Yes. I can certainly sympathize with your predicament.”
“It really is disgraceful.”
“Yes, utterly disgraceful.”
A number of my colleagues had come to stand around me and the Chief Clerk. They all started to sympathize with me in unison. Some of the female clerks were actually weeping.
But I wasn’t going to be taken in by that. Behind my back, they were all swapping nasty rumours about me and cooperating with the media coverage. Theirs was the inevitable duplicity of those who surround the famous.
Even the company president came over to have his say. So I abandoned the idea of complaining to the publishing company. Now, the strange thing was that, even though I’d ranted and raved like a lunatic, not a word of it was reported in the TV news that day. Nor was it mentioned in the evening paper. So I took a long, hard look at the way in which news about me had been reported over the past few days.
Everything I did in awareness of the media was omitted from the news. For example, the fact that I’d tried to shake off my pursuers, or that I’d lost my temper and shouted about the magazine article. These were either ignored altogether, or reported in a different context. Not only that, but news of the helicopter that crashed into a building while following me was reported as if it were a completely unrelated event. In this respect, the coverage was quite different to that usually given to celebrities. To be more exact, the media were presenting a world in which they themselves didn’t exist.
But therein lay the reason why the news about me was gradually growing in scale, why people were taking an interest in this news. I’d become a nobody who was known by everybody. One day, for example, the morning paper had an article about me, written with a huge headline straddling six columns on the front page:
“TSUTOMU MORISHITA EATS EELS!
FIRST TIME IN SIXTEEN MONTHS”
Occasionally, I’d stumble across people secretly trying to collect information about me. After using the company toilet, I would half-open the door to the next cubicle, only to discover a knot of reporters crammed into it, tape recorders and cameras dangling from their shoulders. Or on my way home, I’d rummage about in the bushes with the tip of my umbrella, only for a female TV announcer holding a microphone to dash out and run away shrieking.
Once, while watching television in my apartment, I suddenly leapt up and slid open the door of my built-in wardrobe. A huddle of four or five journalists (some female) tumbled out of the wardrobe onto the floor. Another time, I pushed up a ceiling panel with a broom handle. A photographer hiding in the attic, in his frantic effort to escape, put his foot through the ceiling and fell to the ground. I even pulled up my tatami matting and looked under the floorboards. A melée of reporters and hangers-on crouching in the floorwell hollered and fled in panic.