Read Online Last Winter We Parted by Fuminori Nakamura - Free Book Online Page B

extremely narrow, his skin pale. His long hair has a gentle wave and is neatly arranged.
    “I heard that used to be taboo.”
    “Yes. But if they keep asking for it …”
    “I also heard that one doll told the guy to kill the real woman she was based on.”
    Suzuki looks at me with pity when I say this. Even though he is the one who has created such a doll.
    “What a shame. Really, such a shame. But I am simply the doll maker. All I’m doing is actualizing people’s desires. Once actualized, certain things also become apparent.”
    I drink the tea that the woman has prepared and brought out. The doll creator is sitting directly on the tatami, so I sit down myself. Right in front of the dolls. At some point the woman has disappeared.
    “Is she …?”
    “Oh, she’s a doll.”
    “… What?”
    “Ha ha ha, it’s a joke.” The doll creator laughs with real delight. “No, she is a sort of apprentice. She came to me so that I could make one of her husband who passed away. She sleeps with me regularly but her heart still completely belongs to her husband.”
    “… And what about your heart?”
    “My heart?”
    Suzuki looks at me.
    “… I have no such thing.”
    The cat from earlier comes into the room. It prowls around us, then seems to lose interest and vanishes again. I sip the tea that the woman has made, and Suzuki does the same. After a while, he smiles.
    “That’s a lie. I was joking with you again. She’s only sleeping with me so that I’ll make her a doll. A doll has to be a copied after a person. It shouldn’t be copied after a doll. That’s why I need to have contact with people.”
    “You …”
    “Ha ha ha, you’re not here to talk about me, are you? But rather about Kiharazaka.”
    He looks at me through his narrow eyes.
    “He was a top-notch photographer. But unfortunately … hetried to go beyond that. Perhaps what he sought to be doesn’t even exist. Take a look over there.”
    I let my gaze follow Suzuki’s hand. At one side of the room, past all the other dolls, there is one that appears to be in the process of being made. It has no hair, its flesh-colored body is exposed, it isn’t wearing any clothes. Neither the face nor the body have the texture of real skin.
    “That doll does not yet have any life in her. The doll does not resemble anyone, or have any distinctive characteristics. That’s the one—the one that appears in the background of his photo,
Butterflies
.”
    “… What?”
    “His desires were all imitations of someone else. That is to say, there was nothing inside him.”
    The doll creator is still looking at me.
    “We did an experiment, when it was just me and him. He asked me to create what would be his ideal woman, so I picked up a pencil and sketched it out. But no matter what, the face of the woman he described always resembled someone else. His sister or his mother, a celebrity, the waitress he had just seen … Our predilections—what we call our desires—I guess that’s just how they work. But then, seeing what I had inadvertently drawn, I decided to test him. I said, ‘I prefer this kind of woman.’ And then he too gradually took a liking to the same things. After a while he started saying,with considerable enthusiasm, Make me a doll like this … Then, in the midst of it all, he realized what had happened and he went quiet.”
    Suzuki draws in a quick breath, and calmly continues.
    “What first got him interested in cameras was a commercial he saw with a friend. In the commercial, a cool-looking guy was using a camera in a cool way. As they were watching, Kiharazaka’s friend beside him said, ‘Sure would be nice.’ With a look of envy, he had said, ‘It sure would be nice to have that.’ At that moment, Kiharazaka felt just the slightest desire for the camera. And from then on, he told me, his desire for the camera grew stronger and stronger.”
    “That’s just …”
    “There is nothing inside him. He fell in love with his