Free Last Winter We Parted by Fuminori Nakamura Page B

to have an impact on him? And also, I’m the one who made Saito’s doll in the first place. That makes me the root of all his evils.”
    “Do you really think so?”
    “What?”
    “I mean …”
    I hold my tongue. I want to say something, but I can’t find the words.
    It is raining heavily now. The doll maker parts the curtain slightly and is facing outside but his eyes don’t seem focused on anything. I reach for my cup only to realize that it is empty. The doll maker looks at me again pensively.
    “Well, the first victim, Akiko Yoshimoto, burned to death. It was deemed an accidental fire, because Kiharazaka suffered major burns as well, and his studio was completely destroyed. But, I knew it then. That it hadn’t actually been an accident.”
    “… What do you mean?”
    “I saw the photographs he took.”
    Suzuki looks directly at me with his narrow eyes. My heart starts to race.
    “Photographs of Akiko Yoshimoto, in the raging fire. Are you familiar with the story, ‘Hell Screen’?”
    “… Yes. By Ryunosuke Akutagawa.”
    “That’s right. Kiharazaka was morbidly fascinated by that story. There must have been somebody who had casually recommended it to him … He set fire to his lover, and then took photographs of her. But he didn’t show them to anyone. Of course not. If such photos existed, they would find out what he had done. After all.”
    The doll maker draws in a quick breath.
    “
He thought they would become more beautiful—the photos he took of her—if she were to die
. Once the real her was dead. Like Saito’s doll. Like that doll made by the doll maker during the Onin War. Kiharazaka tried to create art that he shouldn’t have. Just like me. He ventured into territory where he didn’t belong. Akiko was visually impaired. To do such a thing to a woman like that. And in imitation of someone else.”
    “… Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s ‘Hell Screen’ is based on
The Tale of Uji Shui
and the
Kokon Chomon
, isn’t it?”
    “Yes. The work has a cultural lineage. That’s what he was trying to do with his photographs. But it led him to a strange question. Which photos were actually more beautiful—the photos of his lover on fire? Or did the photos he had already taken of her gain in beauty, now that she was dead?”
    He shows me several photographs. I reach my hand out to them. My fingers are trembling slightly.
    The first one is a photograph of Akiko Yoshimoto on fire.Her eyes are closed as she is engulfed by intense flames. The second one is a photograph of the interior of the room, engulfed by the same inferno. The third one is a photograph of Akiko Yoshimoto, the victim, taken when she was alive. She is in the studio, seated in a chair, her eyes closed, a faint smile on her lips. There are also photographs of the other victim, Yuriko Kobayashi. One photo of her engulfed in flames, another of the room as it looked at the time, of the walls and equipment about to collapse. There are numerous other photographs as well. Of the flames, of the women as they are burning, of the studio on fire.
    But, I think to myself. But …
    “Do you see? They’re quite terrifying, aren’t they?
This is his failure. He photographed women to their death
. What’s more, his photos of them aren’t even particularly powerful. He was in the midst of a slump at the time. He took these photos in an attempt to break out of his slump. I say slump, but it’s not what an ordinary photographer would consider a slump. What I mean by slump is, well, ruin. And by ruining himself, it’s not just that he would be rendered incompetent—he would have driven himself mad in the process, creating photographs that should never have existed. But he failed. There have been whispers from various quarters about the mystery of why, if he went to the trouble of burning these two women, did he not take any photographs, but the reason is simple. He didtake photographs, and he failed. He couldn’t show them to anyone. He