Why Ghosts Appear. Todd Shimoda
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the clerk was out in the corridor, I skimmed the file he left on his desk. The single complaint was registered three years ago by a man named Obushi. He claimed to have been duped of just over one million yen, the amount paid to the fortuneteller for attempting to contact his wife’s ghost. The contact never occurred and, according to the claimant, “was never intended.”
A series of notes jotted into official-looking boxes completed the report. In the box labeled RESPONSE, I read this:
Contact with Mizuno Rie was made via phone. She expressed dismay that the complaint was made. She had been working with Mr. Obushi over the course of several months and never claimed that she would be successful in contacting the wife’s ghost. In fact, she claimed she told Mr. Obushi several times that there are no guarantees. It was asked of her what types of fortunetelling she conducted, to which she answered primarily teso-style palm reading. Contacting spirits was a rare event, used only in very special cases, she said. Less than once a year on average, she estimated when pressed. She added that she was considering no longer accepting clients for that type of work.
ACTION
Because there is no backup documentation or evidence as to what actually occurred between Mr. Obushi and Mrs. Mizuno, and because Mrs. Mizuno has no other recorded complaints, no official action was taken. Mrs. Mizuno was advised to cease her operations in “contacting ghosts,” to which she agreed. Mr. Obushi was advised of this outcome and it was suggested he should pursue the matter in civil court if he still wants satisfaction.
Wants satisfaction. Oddly put. Who doesn’t want satisfaction yet who ever feels satisfied? Indeed, what is satisfaction? I supposed it is a feeling of completeness, of wholeness, nothing left to act on or desire. In the whole history of the world, of all the billions of people born and dead, there never was a satisfied soul.
Or, maybe it’s just me who is so unsatisfied.
The clerk returned apparently satisfied from his cigarette break, his head lolling on his shoulders like a rag doll’s. I slid the report file across the desk. “What can you tell me about teso?” I asked.
The clerk picked up the file. “Palm reading? What do you want to know?” He put the file back into the cabinet.
“I know the basic idea of palm reading. What I need to know is how it’s done, typical fees, how long a session lasts, customer satisfaction. Details.”
“All that?” The clerk glanced to the clock behind me and slightly to the left. “How about if I show you in situ?”
“You mean… ?”
“Where it’s practiced,” he said with no small amount of impatience.
“I see. All right. I suppose if that’s what you think is best.”
The clerk laughed again. I had no idea why.
My car climbed the steep incline to a row of apartment buildings. The automatic transmission smoothly shifted and the tires bit into the roadway, propelling me with one hundred horsepower into the past. Twenty years ago and with eighty horsepower less, my car barely made it up this incline with its grooves spaced at a precise distance designed to channel rainwater away from the pavement. At the top of the incline, as then, the apartment buildings appeared in a line of near infinite perspective.
The wife of the missing husband surely no longer lived in one of the buildings that had not aged gracefully. The window frames were out of square. Roof tiles were askew. The paint had faded. And yet I drove past her building slowly, as if she might still live there and see me. Her expression of determination and incomprehension would compel me to stop.
A young woman with a canvas shopping bag draped over her shoulder appeared from between the two buildings, a leashed dog towing her. Our gazes locked together for the moment it took for our brains to recognize that we had never seen each other before. Of course it was not the wife. I touched the accelerator and the car sped me away from the woman. For unknown reasons, the brief encounter was unpleasant.
After the case ended, I lost my job as an investigator not because I didn’t find the husband but for being associated with the suicide victim. The victim was an employee in the husband’s company, an innocent subordinate merely taking orders in a complicated scheme to influence government officials. I pushed him hard during the course of the investigation, but the pain in his life was there well before I met him.
More than the mere passing of time, a cloud of regret fogged my memories of the wife. Try as I might, I could not fully form her likeness, conjuring only the gentle curve of her chin, a sensuous droop of an eyelid, a worry crease above her eyebrows, and the freckles under her eyes. I could bring those details to mind but could not put them together. That would be the sum story of my life: he had a great eye for details but couldn’t put them together.
The regrets piled up during the seemingly endless week during which I investigated the disappearance of the husband. Two deaths, the loss of my job, the realization my own marriage could not be saved. And worst of all, the disillusionment of a human being, referring to the wife. Well, all right, to me as well. I also regretted that I found a disturbing trend in my behavior—a crease of selfishness, or self-centeredness, and a penchant for dwelling on the potential effect of my actions. Unfortunately, I discovered the traits were embedded as permanently as reinforcing steel bars in a concrete slab. I could no more extricate them than I could my own skeleton. But I suppose it’s better to know one’s faults than not.
After the case dwindled to nothing but guilt, I thought of continuing to search for her husband. With enough effort I might have found him. But then what? His wife no longer cared if he was dead or alive.
The twenty years had passed in an instant yet seemed like an eternity in a room with no doors, no windows. I drove away from the neighborhood.
▶
I steered my car to the side of the narrow road where the fraud complainant, Obushi, owned a camera and photographic supply store. This was another similarity to the old case of the missing husband, as amateur pornographic photographs surfaced during the investigation. Along the street barely wide enough for two cars to slip past each other were several businesses including a small hardware store with rows of products lining metal shelving, a liquor store plastered with posters, a beauty salon, a handful of tiny bars and restaurants, various professional offices, and a travel agency. The street was too narrow to provide the proper amount of access and parking for all of the activities suggested by the number of enterprises. Plus, a narrow strip of asphalt delimited with white painted stripes and crosshatches designed for pedestrians now served as a loading lane for delivery trucks. And investigators, since that strip was where I sat in my car.
I turned on my emergency flashers and popped open my trunk to give the appearance I was delivering a package and would only be a minute. I checked my mirror before exiting and was glad I did as a flock of school girls on bicycles swooped past. When the way was clear, I got out of my car and carried my briefcase into the camera store. Occupying most of the shop was a long glass case of camera bodies. Without their lenses they looked like boxy, gape-mouthed, fish heads. There was also a rack of lenses behind the case. The largest lens was monstrous, as big as a good-sized telescope. A row of shelving on the other side of the room held smaller items such as film, paper, chemicals, lens cleaners. In one corner, tripods were stacked and tagged with a price. On the walls were framed photographs, mostly of natural scenery—mountains, waterfalls, flower-filled meadows. A few photographs were of old buildings in Europe, or perhaps Latin America.
A man came from out of a door leading to a back room. “Welcome,” he said. “May I help you?” He looked to be forty or so, with a thin, well-tanned face, large eyes, and a softly hooked nose. His hair was on the longish side of well-trimmed but not as long as most artistic types. He wore the casual clothes of a mom-and-pop camera store proprietor, appearing as if he could slip on a photographer’s vest, sling a bag of equipment over his shoulder, and in an hour be out in a field snapping photos of moss.
I set my briefcase