Miyaki and I were asked to come to the village community center, which was located on a slightly elevated plot along the mountain road. The cotton stuffing in the floor cushions was so thin, we could feel the texture of the tatami mats underneath. Across from us sat an elderly man, the mayor of this village, as well as a middle-aged woman, his secretary.
“In a nutshell…”
Miyaki glanced up at me worriedly as I kicked off the conversation. I knew I had a habit of putting my foot in it during these discussions, but there wasn’t very much I could do about that.
“There may be more in store than just eyes and ears falling from the sky. I believe these incidents are a sign that the mountain is attempting to return itself to the earth.”
The secretary was the first to speak.
“And that would mean…?” she said.
“This is all just my conjecture, but considering the size of the parts, if everything was to move at the same time, the damage would probably be a lot more severe than a few sheds or gas stands.”
“No one is saying this will happen immediately, of course. This is just what might happen if enough of the shintai are allowed to gather and mobilize…,” Miyaki said with a mollifying wave of her hands.
The community center must have doubled as an after-school study space as well, because one of the walls was plastered with sheets of calligraphy paper bearing delusional practice phrases such as our taxes, our community or a bright future awaits.
“What is it you think we should do, then?” the mayor asked, rubbing his chin in consternation. The phrase our taxes bracketed his shoulders.
“Well, for starters, you should probably consign the parts that have fallen back to the earth. Also, address the stone statues lying broken by the sides of the roads. You should remake them and return them to their original positions. Scattering them like that is likely what caused the kami’s body to split as well. You may not be able to get rid of the roads that are already here, but this should work as a stopgap measure. The only thing we as humans can do, after all, is to act with intention and demonstrate our sincerity.”
After a moment’s silence, the secretary spoke up timidly, an apologetic smile on her face.
“As for the statues, that shouldn’t be a problem anymore…”
“Excuse me?” I said, my voice unintentionally low.
Miyaki nudged me in the side.
“It occurred to us, too, that scattering those statues might have been a bad idea. First, the arm fell, and then the year after that, an eye, so people naturally started saying we must have made the god angry…”
The mayor continued, picking up where the secretary left off.
“We held a memorial service at the shrine for the broken statues, and we created new ones where the original statues used to stand. The majority of the broken ones were removed and are in an area that’s a little more bustling these days, over on the other side of the mountain. Some were so old that we couldn’t pull them out of the dirt, though, so we left those where they were.”
Miyaki and I were at a loss for words.
We made our way outside. Light was seeping from the community center behind us. The wind, which carried with it the scent of dead leaves and the smells of life from the village down the mountain road, was extremely chilly.
“See, there’s one now.”
The secretary rubbed her arms over her thin suit as if she was cold, then pointed toward an out-of-the-way spot toward the back of the community-center parking lot. A stone statue was sitting there, lost among the camellia trees. Its smooth outline was not that different from the older statues we had already seen, but its limbs and facial features were clearly defined. I crouched down and brushed my fingers along the surface. Feeling some ridges, I looked closer. The words NOVEMBER 3, ’99 had been chiseled into the stone.
“Isn’t this good enough?” the woman asked.
Miyaki seemed unconvinced. I could feel her eyes boring a hole into my back. I stood up, brushing the dirt from my knees.
“We’ll have to get back to you on this matter,” I answered uncomfortably. A fitting response for a civil servant, if you ask me.
“Now what do we do, Katagishi?” Miyaki muttered from behind me as we made our way down the sloping road that led toward our lodgings, having refused the mayor’s offer to give us a ride. The road was devoid of streetlights.
“Do? What else is left to do now other than to bury each of the body parts? We were only sent here in the first place because one of the young people who left the village mentioned something strange was going on. It’s a low-urgency case.”
The road was empty except for scattered pebbles. I felt like I was staring at the surface of the moon.
“Maybe the real problem was splintering up the area with roads. Like you said, though, it’s probably too late to remove them now.”
“Probably.”
“Do you think it’s still upset even though they built new statues? The god?”
“Who’s to say?”
“Could you take this a little more seriously, please? Have you even heard a word out of my mouth?”
I felt like we were missing something. One of the pebbles that Miyaki kicked down the road ricocheted past me, hitting a stone idol by the side of the road.
“That’s bad luck, you know,” I warned. Miyaki chuckled. “By the way, how much of the shintai do they have so far? There’s both eyes, the arms…”
I suddenly remembered what the old woman, the one whose shed had been destroyed, had said to me. She was right. We didn’t know if they were right or left eyes, did we?
I pictured the two eyes that had nearly burst through the classroom doors. The pupil on one of the eyes was a good size or two larger than the other. Could two eyes from one body really be that different? I came to a stop, glancing back over my shoulder.
“Miyaki, the arms. Have the right and left arm both fallen?”
“Hold on, give me a second.”
Miyaki began rifling through her briefcase in the dark. I stepped closer and shone my light inside. Miyaki flipped through the pages of the file folder she pulled out, one by one, before finally muttering with a sigh.
“Of course…”
“Let me see.”
I snatched the folder from Miyaki’s hands and searched for the pages in question. One was the arm that had fallen into the pool, while the other looked as if it had been tossed willy-nilly into the middle of a road, completely bisecting an intersection. Gripping my light between my teeth, I held both pages up to get a better look, but the photo of the arm in the intersection only showed from the crook of the elbow to the wrist. The fingers were hidden by a broken stoplight.
“That’s just great…,” I grumbled, then yanked the light from my mouth. “Miyaki, we’re going to have to go back to the school.”
“Tell me you’re joking.”
Miyaki looked deeply and profoundly displeased. I clapped her on the shoulder and then began rushing down the hill.
I had managed to sneak a peek at the combination to the padlock earlier. The iron gate creaked open loudly. Miyaki sounded distressed as I slipped inside.
“We shouldn’t be doing this. Public servants aren’t supposed to trespass.”
“Relax. No one is supposed to trespass!” I reassured her.