(2005) In the Miso Soup

by Ryu Murakami

  I’d spent two evenings with Frank but had only just met the people who died in that pub. I wondered if the reason I couldn’t sympathize with the victims was that I’d come to empathize with Frank, but that didn’t seem true. I had no affection for Frank. I don’t think it would have bothered me if he were arrested, or even killed. But those people in the omiai pub had been like androids or something. Lady #2, Yuko, had said she was there because she felt “kinda lonely.” She would actually have preferred to be doing something else but had no idea what that might be so decided to check out a match-making pub and at least talk to somebody. Lady #3 was the same. She didn’t know what she wanted to do, so she ended up singing an Amuro song all by herself in that lonely place. Mr. Children was intent only on hooking up with Lady #5, whose only reaction to insults like “I can tell you’re the type of broad who works those telephone clubs” was a simpering grin. The manager had been the classic Kabuki-cho lifer. Utterly resigned, the type of guy who’d numbed out his feelings of jealousy and futility to such a degree that even if his woman or the woman of a friend were to do whatever with another man, he’d be able to let it go. The waiter, on the other hand, was one of those young-dude-in-a-band types. He wouldn’t have known anything much about music or ever tried to learn, having joined a band simply because he wanted friends. They were like automatons programmed to portray certain stereotypes, those people. The truth is it had bugged the hell out of me just to be around them, and I’d begun to wonder if they weren’t all filled with sawdust and scraps of vinyl, like stuffed animals, rather than flesh and blood. Even when I saw their throats slit and the gore oozing out, it hadn’t seemed real to me. I remembered thinking, as I watched the blood drip down from Lady #5’s throat, that it looked like soy sauce. Imitation human beings, that’s what they were. Lady #1, Maki, had never once given any thought to what was really right for her in her life, simply believing that if she surrounded herself with super-exclusive things, she’d become a super-exclusive person.

  What did I have in common with the victims? Just that we were all human trash. I couldn’t kid myself—I wasn’t so different from them. That’s why I understood them, and that’s why they bugged me so much. At the entrance to the girlie bar diagonally across from the police box stood a young barker in a silver lamé suit and red bow tie. He was rubbing his hands together for warmth and calling out to everyone who passed. Above him was an arch of sequentially lit neon that made his face glow orange one moment and purple the next. When no one was on the street, he’d step back and yawn, and a minute ago I’d seen him tickle a passing cat behind the ears. My job was guiding foreigners to bars and strip joints and date clubs and helping them hook up with women. Nothing to be proud of and nothing that distinguished me in any way from the guy in the silver suit. But after nearly two years of working with foreigners, I’d discovered one thing: what makes somebody nice or unpleasant to be around is the way they communicate. When people are fucked up, their communication is fucked up. The communication in that omiai pub was all lies. It was a bar in Kabuki-cho, of course, which more or less precluded anyone telling the full truth or discussing serious issues. But that’s not what I mean. Women in Chinese or Korean clubs, for example, will think nothing of lying to you if it means a better tip, but most of what they make they send back home, investing their capital in prolonging the lives of family members. It’s the same for Latin American prostitutes in Japan—they sell their bodies to buy things for the folks back home. These women are serious and focused, because they know exactly what they want. They don’t dither or feel lost, and they don’t feel “kinda lonely.” You wouldn’t show your child a place like that omiai pub. Not because it was depraved or whatever, but simply because the people in there weren’t living life in earnest. It wasn’t as if the place had something any of them couldn’t live without. They were just killing time there because they were “kinda lonely”—even the manager and waiter, really. All of them had been like that, not really living even when they were still alive.

  I had no interest whatsoever in going to the cops and putting myself through a big pain-in-the-ass ordeal for people like them, but at some point I found myself walking toward the police box again. Part of me had surrendered to the inevitable. I couldn’t very well go searching for Frank in the love hotel. I couldn’t go back to my apartment and tell Jun: Guess what, I saw some people murdered tonight. Going to the police was the only possible course of action. But I hadn’t taken more than a few steps when a horrible feeling came over me. My body was sending me a signal. A danger signal.

  It seemed to be coming from my feet, or maybe one of my internal organs. Something wasn’t right about this. I began to see that I was falling for something I never would have if shock hadn’t scrambled my senses. That I was fooling myself, in other words. I had reached the cinderblock wall again, and as I leaned against it I decided to run through all that had happened, to try and get it straight in my mind. I didn’t see much point in trying to understand what had triggered Frank to suddenly start slaughtering people. There was no way I’d ever understand that, no matter how long I puzzled over it. But why hadn’t he murdered me? Call me in an hour, I’d told Jun—in English so Frank would understand—and if I don’t answer, go to the police. I had no idea how much time had passed since then, pathetic as that may sound. I looked at my watch. It was just past midnight. Tiny specks of blood clung to the crystal, some of them not quite dry. Had Frank spared me because of Jun? Was he afraid she’d call the police?

  As I was asking myself these questions the fear came creeping back. I felt I was on the verge of uncovering something my conscious mind didn’t want uncovered. My mind was refusing to remember the really scary stuff. The fear had crept up through the soles of my feet and shivered through all my sinews, and now it was surging against my temples. Sheer, unbridled terror makes it hard to think clearly, and my brain was refusing to do its job. Think, I commanded myself. But just remembering Frank’s face and voice turned my stomach, and suddenly I was vomiting. The Java Tea numbed my throat as it came back up and gushed from my mouth. I recalled that when Frank was in the midst of his killing and I was paralyzed with fright, unable to move or respond, I’d managed to get a small part of myself back by spitting forcefully. I hacked up a mixture of tea and saliva, and spat. It must be because of Jun that Frank didn’t kill me, no other reason made sense. I didn’t believe he felt any differently toward me than the others. Or even if he did, it wasn’t to the extent that he’d hesitate to kill me. The point of that long, thin knife had been closing in on my throat when Jun called. And yet, what did Frank say to me just a while ago? “Go to the police, Kenji, I’m putting my fate in your hands.” He’s lying again. No sooner did this thought crystallize than the hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I turned around to see Frank. And only Frank.

  He was standing right behind me, between me and the police box, blocking my vision entirely and so close that it was like he was preparing to absorb me. By some miracle I managed to remain both conscious and on my feet. Frank seemed much bigger than before. He was looming over me, and looked as if his weight alone could crush me like a bug, should he decide against swallowing me whole. I felt like a miniature version of myself.

  “What the hell are you doing, Kenji?”

  His voice wasn’t very loud, but it nearly lifted me out of my shoes. Hadn’t he gone into the love hotel with that Latin American woman? A car came down the street. Its headlights illuminated Frank’s face as he spoke again, and this time I saw something in his mouth.

  “Why didn’t you go to the police?” he said.

  He was rolling something around on his tongue.

  “Is that gum you’re chewing?”

  Don’t ask me why I asked him that. I was neither responding to his question nor ignoring it. I mean, it wasn’t what you could call conversation. I don’t think I was mentally capable of conversing just then. It was more like pulling your hand away from a hot fying pan—an automatic response. No
chain of reasoning. I’d simply reacted out loud to the first thing that caught my attention—that stuff in his mouth.

  “Oh, this?”

  Looking pleased that I’d reminded him, Frank spat the thing out into his hand and showed it to me. It was like a ring made of ivory or something, in the shape of a snake swallowing the sun.

  “That woman gave it to me. She’s from Peru, but she speaks a little English. She said they find this substance in the sea, near the Incan ruins. What did she call it again? Lime sponge? Made of the bones of sponges with a high lime content, which they harvest and process and mold into these lozenges. Excellent source of calcium. Apparently the Mayans, the Toltecs, and the Aztecs all practiced cannibalism because their diet lacked calcium, but the Incans didn’t, not so much because they had llamas and guinea pigs but because they had this lime sponge. Did you know calcium relaxes you, makes you more emotionally stable? She really understood me, that woman. Wasn’t it nice of her to give me this? When I suck on it I feel totally at peace.”

  Frank was beaming. He wiped the lozenge off on his sweater and held it up before my eyes.

  “Frank, are you sure she gave it to you? You didn’t kill her and take it?”

  I was shocked that I’d said this. It was as if a separate person were asking these questions. Both my own voice and Frank’s seemed to reverberate, as though we were inside a cave. My heart was palpitating so bad I couldn’t even feel the separate beats, and I thought my jaw was going to shake itself right off its hinges.

  “I didn’t kill her.”

  Frank looked off down the street. The woman with the vinyl bag was standing there, in pretty much the same spot as before. He gave her a little wave, and she waved back.

  “Where’d you go?” I asked him. My voice was still saying things all by itself. “I lost sight of you both.”

  Frank said they’d stood in the entrance to the hotel talking awhile, then circled around behind the building and watched me from just over there.

  “Oh, is that where you went!” I said. And to my own astonishment I smiled at him. “I thought you’d gone inside the hotel with her.”

  It wasn’t like deciding to say something, choosing the words, putting them together into sentences in my mind, and then speaking. It was like I’d loaned my body to someone else, and they were doing the talking for me. I wondered again if I wasn’t in some sort of trance.

  “Frank, did you just hypnotize me?”

  “No,” he said, looking puzzled.

  I was honestly afraid I was losing my mind. Blathering away without showing any other evidence of brain activity. I had no will or intention to speak, but the words kept popping out of my mouth. The trembling in my jaw was getting more severe, and trying to stop it just made it worse. My teeth began to chatter like castanets.

  “You all right, Kenji?” Frank said and peered at my face. “Your eyes look funny, and you’re shivering. Are you sick? Kenji, it’s me, Frank! Do you know who I am?”

  I laughed and said in a strangely high-pitched voice: “Frank, that sounds funny coming from you!” The words echoed in my skull, and I couldn’t stop laughing for a while. Now I know I’m going mad, I thought. My brain was in utter chaos, with different parts of it seeming to operate independently. One part was searching furiously for words. It didn’t seem to matter what the words were as long as they kept turning up, and any random memory or thought that happened along was automatically verbalized. It was as if my speech function was the only thing that still worked, and it had seized the opportunity to take control. If a dog passed by right now I’d probably say: Oh, look, a dog. Then I’d probably remember my boyhood pooch and tell Frank: I had a dog when I was small.

  “Are you going to kill me?” I asked him. Exactly like a little kid, blurting out the first thing that occurred to me. But to my amazement I got some feeling back in my jaw when I said this.

  “I was going to,” he told me, “but I decided against it.”

  Tears welled up in my eyes. I bowed my head, not wanting Frank to see. As my teardrops fell to the dry pavement, I thought: It was only fear. It was fear that had befuddled my mind. At the sudden reappearance of Frank, I’d just lost it. All this turmoil was caused by fear. A fear so powerful I didn’t even recognize it for what it was. It had filled my entire body and brain, and instead of screaming I’d begun nattering away, randomly and involuntarily. Just because Frank said he’d decided against killing me didn’t mean he wouldn’t, of course, but even if it was a lie it relieved the fear for a moment. I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my overcoat. I wanted to say: Really? You really won’t kill me or anything? But I didn’t. I reminded myself he could always change his mind. The police box was behind Frank. If I ran for it now, I knew he could grab me and snuff me out before I took two steps. Mr. Children had had his neck broken in a heartbeat. Besides, my kneecaps were still bouncing around. I couldn’t have run if I tried.

  Frank threw an arm around my shoulders and off we went, with him all but carrying me. He looked back once at the Latin American prostitute, and she waved again.

  “What a swell lady she was,” Frank sighed, as if remembering an old friend.

  The next thing I knew we were strolling past the glass-walled police box, bathed in the pharmacy’s gaudy lights. At the entrance were traditional New Year’s decorations of pine sprigs and bamboo and woven straw and cloth, which looked to me like symbols of everything imbecilic in this world. Inside, three policemen drank steaming cups of tea and talked and laughed. Meanwhile, I thought, a mass murderer fresh from the kill is walking right past you. The cops didn’t know anything. Not that they should or could have. The security shutter was closed at the omiai pub, and no one who happened by would think twice about that. Even if Noriko’s hypnosis wore off and she went back to the place, she’d probably just assume they’d decided to close early for one reason or another. It’s not as if anyone would suspect that the place was littered with corpses. It might be days before anybody discovered or reported anything. Frank turned his poker face toward the police box as we passed and asked me again why I didn’t go to the cops. I told him I was just going to when he appeared. Aha, said Frank, popping the lozenge back in his mouth. Everything was very strange. It was as if the universe had cracked open and time had got scrambled. As if the Great Omiai Pub Massacre had happened a decade ago and everyone but me had long since forgotten about it.

  “Is it because you think of me as a friend?” Frank asked solemnly after looking back a couple of times at the police box receding behind us. “Is that why you didn’t report me?”

  “No,” I said truthfully. “I don’t really know why I didn’t go.”

  “It’s a citizen’s duty to report any crime he witnesses. Did you think I’d kill you if you did?”

  “No. I thought you’d gone into the hotel. I didn’t realize you were watching me.”

  “Oh,” Frank said, then muttered: “It’s a good thing we didn’t miss each other.”

  Miss each other? I thought. How can I miss you when you won’t go away?

  “I wanted to test you,” he said. “Whether you really considered me a friend or not. That’s why I left you alone by the police box and watched from nearby. I thought if I saw you going toward it all I had to do was kill you. You see, in my book nobody reports their own friends to the cops, and anybody who does deserves to die. But what do you think, Kenji? You think it’s okay to rat on your friends?”

  I don’t really know, I was going to say, when my mobile rang. A truck was approaching, and it was noisy on the street, so I huddled against a wall, cradling the phone in both hands, and turned it on. It was Jun.

  “Kenji?”

  “Yeah, it’s me.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “I meant to call earlier, but I was on my way home. Sorry.”

  “That’s all right, don’t worry about it.”

  “Are you with Frank?”

  “That’s right,
still in Kabuki-cho. It’s good you decided to go back home.”

  “I was a little worried. I mean, when I called earlier. You said something in English about the police and then hung up before I could say anything. And before that, when you called me, Frank got on the line and . . . What was going on, was he drunk?”

  “Drunk, yeah.”

  “You said something about going to the police if you didn’t answer, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to tell them. ‘There’s this gaijin named Frank, and my boyfriend’s with him, and he seems like a dangerous guy’—I mean, it’s hard to imagine they’d take me seriously.”

  “You’re right, they wouldn’t have.”

  “Kenji?”

  “What?”

  “Are you really okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  She didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then: “Kenji, your voice is shaking.”

  Frank was watching me with his usual blank, cowlike expression. “I’ll call again later,” Jun said. “Or you call me. I have my mobile, and I’ll be waiting up to hear from you.”

  “Okay,” I said and turned off the phone, wondering if my voice had really been shaking just now. I thought I had it under control. Apparently I wasn’t even in touch with what was going on with myself, I needed someone else to tell me. I wished I had someone who was absolutely rock-steady to compare myself with—someone I liked and trusted, if possible. To have them tell me that I was acting a little weird or that I seemed perfectly fine or whatever. It was strange talking even briefly to Jun because it gave me a glimpse of who I used to be in the old days, before the Great Omiai Pub Massacre. When I turned off the phone and looked at Frank, though, I felt as if I were being dragged right back into the hole I’d just crawled out of. I’d experienced the sunlit world for a minute, and now I was back in my prison cell.