by Susan Barker
Outside, a tofu van rolls by. With the aid of a loudspeaker the tofu-seller alerts the neighbourhood of his wares. My nausea of the night before resurfaces. The man standing in front of me will only be at peace once he has made a trophy of Yuji’s scalp.
‘Go home, Mary,’ he says. ‘Go back to England. I hear that you’re a nice girl. Go away and stay out of trouble. And I wouldn’t bother with the police. They are not going to help you. Unless you get lucky and they deport you.’
Granted permission to leave, I turn and make for the door. I am trembling, shaking all over. I have to get away from here. I have to get to Yuji and make sure that he is OK. In the doorway I hear his voice behind me.
‘Wait.’
I stop but don’t turn round. In my head I see the gun. Steel chamber of possible death. Aimed at my back.
‘When you see your boyfriend,’ he says, ‘tell him Hiro is back.’
My back to him still, I nod and step out into the cool air of the corridor.
14
WATANABE
Yuji tears at the planks nailed across the door, splinters piercing his hands. Knuckle weals on his cheekbones throb and bacteria graze upon his many cuts. Planks cast aside, he rams against the door. I’m done for, he thinks, clutching his battered ribs. The door breaks open and he reels inside. I sit and watch, cushioned on the mossy bank of the railway tracks 19.2 metres away, plaque drilling my tooth enamel as a vitamin C tablet dissolves on my tongue. My hand wanders to the petrol can by my side. Indeed you are, I think, indeed you are.
The shroud of night drapes the globe. Its dark border advances now, across the mountain ranges of Peru, the glaciers of the Arctic circle. The stars recede, echoing red light, and a ghost galaxy twinkles 100 million years in the afterlife. Aeroplane tail-lights blink by, and I spot the famous sumo wrestler Chiyonufuji sitting in business class, eating soya-bean curd in his Playtex trainer bra. I return to the earth and tunnel down, beneath the thousands of squirming annelids, beneath the maggots suckling on the remains of dead cat. I burrow 502.3 metres deep into a strata of Cretaceous-era rock, where the fossil of a megalonyx thrusts forth its mighty tusks and claws, the stunned and terminal expression on its face relaying the exact moment the meteor struck.
In the dark, run-down interior of the Lotus Bar Yuji tumbles into a wooden booth, his exhausted head thudding against the wall. He scarcely recognizes the decaying bar of his youth. Once a thriving den of iniquity, inhabited by sashaying hostesses and wealthy businessmen, the Lotus Bar is now host to a thousand industrious ecosystems: field-mice feasting on seat covers, cockroaches nibbling the peeling wallpaper, vipers in search of furry mammals in which to sink their fangs. Mama-san sent me here once, six and a quarter moon cycles ago, to reinforce the planks nailed across the back door. I found the hammer and nails where she told me I would, corroding in a drawer, glistening with rat urine.
Seven lonely years have gone by since Mama-san was proprietess of the Lotus Bar. It was a business venture doomed to failure. Shortly after the grand opening (which saw hostesses in showgirl costumes handing out free glasses of champagne), Mama-san received a letter informing her that construction of the Kansai line extension was due to begin within literal spitting distance. Despite the lengths Mama-san went to to stop the construction from going ahead (petitioning rail executives, plying them with wine and women, lying prostrate in the path of a bulldozer), within eighteen months bullet trains were whizzing by, a dozen every hour. Each train delivered a miniature blitzkrieg, a seizure that shook the walls and displaced customers from the bar stools. For eleven months Mama-san smiled through the violent intrusions, nimbly catching objects that fell from the shelves, and reassuring customers. But litigation proceedings made by a salaryman knocked cold by a falling bottle of Old Navy rum was the straw that broke the donkey’s back. Mama-san put the Lotus Bar up for sale. It remains on the market to this day.
Though his mother’s nerves were shredded to confetti, Yuji’s time at the Lotus Bar was his halcyon days. The hostesses doted on the prepubescent Yuji like a midget customer, constantly telling him how cute he was, how adorable. Slumped in a fog of pain Yuji rewinds to these happy days. Tiny beetles scamper over the bar top where he used to sit and pretend to do his homework, as hostess Yoko praised his cleverness in her silken tones. The stingray of agony delivers another internal lashing. Yuji moans, half in pain, half in bittersweet nostalgia. He runs his tongue along a fractured edge of tooth and he moans once more.
In shivering confusion, Mary walks the streets 8.3 km southwest. It tore me apart to leave her stranded, it really did. But fate reared up, forked like the tongue of a snake, urging me to make a choice. I desperately wanted to rescue her, to send her home in a Cinderella carriage. But that would only solve her problems in the short term. The petrol will solve them in the long term.
An empty train blasts by, inches from my nose, a trainee driver at the helm. The venetian blinds of the Lotus Bar dance crazily and Yuji’s cranium rattles against the walls. Chairs and tables jump and jive across the floorboards, and the chandelier rocks. The train passes into the distance and the mad oscillations diminish. On the other side of the railway tracks an abandoned refrigerator watches me, a Venus child-trap in waiting, oozing chlorofluorocarbons into the ozone.
I knew that something was afoot tonight. I could sense it in the luminiferous ether of the universe. After work I followed Mary and Yuji through Shinsaibashi. I shadowed them through a covered arcade, past the Citibank tower, past the holy ground of an urban shrine. Though Yuji held the hand of his golden trophy, the corpulent thighs of a prostitute walking in front of them snared his gaze. How could he be so ungrateful of his proximity to Mary, when I am envious of the microscopic mites that live in her eyelashes and the waxy deposits in her ears? When Mary transcends I will ensure she is never neglected again.
Yuji’s friends were waiting for him in a bar. The bar was a real cloven-hoofed pit, awash with anarchist transsexuals and Satan worshippers. My pity went out to these poor, misguided fools. If they ever evolved the hypersense to see what a sad figure Lucifer really is, they would flee the occult scene in a heartbeat. Reduced to being a netherworldly C-lister, nowadays the Devil ekes out a living making guest appearances at black mass and Belgian metal concerts. Enough to make anyone think twice about drinking goat’s blood.
The Satanists did not intimidate me. They were mewling kittens compared with Yuji’s lantern-jawed yakuza friends. As soon as I saw them I knew that they intended to do real and lasting damage to Yuji. ‘Judas will get what’s coming to him,’ one of them muttered as the Judas in question made his entrance.
Panic seared down my neural expressways. Though I have nothing against Yuji being beaten up, Mary would be present. And these guys would sooner knock Mary into a coma than endure her frightened, screaming demands. The three yakuza sat in a testosterone stupor, a colostomy bag of society’s ills where their morality should be. Kenji, the one with the gold caps and double-Y chromosomes, once put his Rottweiler in the bath and threw an electric toaster in. Trixie’s death throes proved so hilarious, Kenji immediately went out in search of more dogs. And Shingo and Toru take it in turns to strangle each other in their basement flat, squeezing until the whites of their eyes roll round. Even in public they are unable to rein it in, blistering each other under the table with cigarette lighters.
While predator and prey exchanged greetings at the table, I slunk away to commune with the shadows. Once seated, Yuji and his friends began to talk, ostracizing Mary.
The hands of the clock moved. Beneath the mantle of Japan, convection currents heaved the land mass by a quarter of a millimetre. Lucifer’s army fed 100-yen coins into the bar jukebox, ensuring back-to-back death metal. Mary drank cocktail after cocktail. She drank to asphyxiate the vines of tedium twisting through her mind, and to stave off the humiliation of being treated like an inanimate blow-up doll. Once Mary discovers the portal into hyperspace she will never be bored again. Dimensional transcende
nce is weed-killer to boredom. Until then I can only observe in sad torment.
Blind to the change in his friends, Yuji was his usual egotistical self. They tolerated his verbal dominance with ease, salivating in anticipation of his violent demise. They had a secret code of smirks and nostril flares, rising in frequency as the night-club crowd thinned out. I deciphered this primitive code to learn that the signal to attack was the departure of the last customer. As the numbers shrank, six yellow eyes were drawn to a stubborn, unmoving figure in the shadows. Me.
The creature of the shadows watched them back, his hyper-intellect thrumming. When the thugs saw I was in no hurry to leave, they grew agitated. The temptation to disobey Yamagawa-san’s instructions was almost too much for them. The bar staff were also agitated – the faster the thugs made their kill, the faster they could clean up the spilt blood and go home. But I was not to be the first domino in the chain. Not me. During my two hours in the shadows I had come up with a plan. All hinged on Mary’s bladder.
I had been monitoring Mary’s waste-elimination system from the moment she sat down. She had urinated twice that night, once at 21.46 hours and again before meeting Yuji at 00.59. By 03.04 hours the tender, springy pillow of her bladder had swollen once more. In the nephrons of her kidneys waste molecules filtered from her plasma. Broken fragments of haemoglobin and five-month-old aspirin trickled through her convoluted tubule. I watched, on tenterhooks to see if she would obey its tug before the patience of the yakuza thugs gave out.
I shuddered with relief as Mary’s daydreams were cut short by a fluctuation in electro-potential relaying her need to urinate. She rose and swayed across the bar, then down the short corridor leading to the women’s toilets. I got up and followed. The door to the Ladies was open. I pulled it shut. Then I clung to the handle for all I was worth.
Meanwhile, in the bar, Toru’s resentment had arrived at critical mass. The last customer was out of sight. That was good enough for him. He stood and swung his arm round like a tattooed scythe, knocking the ashtray and empty glasses to the floor. Veins boiled in his temples as he smashed his anvil fist into Yuji’s face.
‘Traitor!’
The bar staff watched Yuji sail backwards in his chair, wincing at the sound of splintering carpentry. Yuji coughed up the blood seeping into his throat. Shingo and Kenji went next, their faces viciously contorted as they kicked his ribs and arms. At every kick Yuji jerked as if electrocuted.
‘Where . . .’ Kick. ‘Is . . .’ Kick. ‘It . . .?’
Demented with pain, laughter gurgled through Yuji’s blood-sluiced throat. ‘Mary has it . . . Get Mary!’
Tranquillity restored to her bladder, Mary headed for the toilet door. Despite her low muscle bulk and state of inebriation, Mary managed to exert a force of 103.1 Newtons on the door handle, increasing in proportion to her panic to a stalwart 312. I put the sole of my foot against the door jamb and leant back as the door jimmied and shook.
Out in the bar the thrashing ceased as Toru knelt beside Yuji.
‘What did you say?’
‘Mary has it . . . Get her!’
My heart roared in anger. Fortunately, Yuji’s throat was so choked with blood and mucus he was unintelligible. He brayed another geyser of bloody laughter. Toru spat in his face. Yuji was then hauled to his feet and pushed, with his arm twisted behind his back, towards the delivery entrance of the club. The bar staff bowed and waved goodbye to the blood-spattered procession.
Mary and I continued to fight over the door. She hollered: Hello, can someone let me out!? seven times, before turning away in drunken surrender.
I sprinted out into the bar. The bartender sweeping up the shards of broken glass jumped as I rushed past him, my trainers crunching silicon dioxide into the floor, smearing the scattered petals of Yuji’s blood.
Outside, Kenji, Shingo and Toru stood in the flashing blue lights of a patrol car, venting sulphurous emissions as a policeman took down their details in a notebook.
A street away, Yuji hopped towards a vacant taxi, a bird with a broken wing.
Inside my petrol can claustrophobic hydrocarbons ram each other, writhing angrily, ready to combust. These molecules were once Jurassic rainforests and dinosaurs, which dominated this Earth without the slightest inkling they would be squashed for many millennia between sedimentary rock, then siphoned off in oil refineries of the future. I can understand the frustration such a demotion would induce.
On the other side of the railway tracks, Yuji strikes a match. The phosphorus reactive tip flares in the dark of the Lotus Bar, and he watches it burn down before lighting another. Perhaps you have guessed what my petrol can is for – that I intend to do to Yuji exactly what he just did to that match. I expect the morally conscientious among you are appalled, think me a reprehensible monster. But let us try to think rationally for a moment. Extinguish Yuji and the total sum of suffering in the world will be reduced. Allow him to continue to contaminate the Earth with his existence and he will endanger not only Mary’s life but the life of anyone who crosses him in the future. This is not a decision made from the fiery seat of passion; it is a practical one. This is not murder; it is the simple conversion of human flesh into carbon dust and energy. The total sum of matter in the universe will remain constant, and nothing of real significance will be lost. Even his soul will transmigrate into the nearest thing being born. A housefly larva or a hatching nit. Like I said, I have no qualms about this.
In his wooden booth Yuji claws his brain for a way out, unaware that the deus ex machina has already descended. Not once does he regret his attempt to implicate Mary in his crimes. Instead he wonders if he can persuade her to provide an alibi for him, or take some of the blame for his wrongdoings.
An owl spreads its wings in the translunar light. An ice floe the size of China drifts down a Martian canal. A cat prowls the Lotus Bar roof, the green patina of its irises glowing through the dark. I rise to my feet and the cat springs to the ground and pads away, mindful of its remaining three lives. The petrol sloshing at my side, I run across the railway tracks. I scramble up the mossy bank to the hostess bar. For all its ramshackle appearance there are 7.9 trillion kilojoules of energy in this wooden building, just waiting to be exploited.
The Lotus Bar is more than just a thriving ecosphere, repossessed by nature, or a hideaway for fugitive yakuza. It is an archive of hostesses past. Ghostly wisps of them linger in the dark, forgotten moments relived for the benefit of no one. I see the enchantress Kiyoka, who sneaked into Yuji’s bedroom at night to perform tantalizing belly dances for the wide-eyed eleven-year-old; the fun-loving Shizuko, who liked to insert her glass eye into her mouth, a light-hearted joke that redefined eroticism for many; and a younger Mama-san, quite the temptress without that extra layer of subcutaneous fat . . . Mama-san will be quite devastated by her son’s death. Mr Bojangles will have his work cut out consoling her. Mary will also be among the number who will grieve for him. But her sense of loss will quickly vanish once she has transcended.
I tip the can and begin to pour. I walk the circumference of the bar, inhaling the scent of anarchy as the flammable liquid trickles over the weeds. The acrid odour tickles Yuji’s nostrils as well, but he is too captive to self-pity to wonder what it is or where it has come from. Once Yuji is out of the way, Mary’s transformation into a hyper-being will progress at an exponential rate. It unnerves me to think that I will soon be as transparent to Mary as she is to me. That she will soon see the ribosomes zipping about my cytoplasm like lightning; the verruca on my foot and my wonky appendix; the curse of my upbringing and the shadow of my father haunting my soul. At least Mary will know not to expect any cosy family dinners. My father has always strongly opposed my having relations with the opposite sex. Since childhood he has made it clear to me that women are forbidden until I have completed my Ph.D. in economics and have a job in the Ministry of Finance. Only then will he find me a suitable marriage partner.
For most of my high-school years my father’s
instructions were easy to heed. I never really liked girls back then. Not for any misogynistic reasons; it was just that I thought them very stupid and dull. In my senior year, however, one girl came into my life and changed my opinion of women for ever.
There were six of us in accelerated maths: Tetsuya, my ardent ping-pong-player friend; Hide and Jun, genius siblings who never communicated with anyone except each other, and then only in ancient Latin; Yuu Kano, a modestly popular basketball-player who told us that he would rip out our tongues if word got out that he was taking a class with us freaks; and Ai Inoue.
Ai was well known by everyone in our school for two reasons. First, her father was the high-school janitor and they lived together in a wooden shack at the end of the playing fields. Second, from the age of twelve she had worn a hulking metal brace on her back to correct her juvenile scoliosis. It goes without saying her handicap made her something of a scapegoat for bullies. Girls would bring in fridge magnets to stick to her brace, and the boys used to shout, ‘Hey! Iron Maiden!’ when they saw her coming and everyone would fall about, laughing. High-school life for Ai Inoue was hell.
Unlike the rest of the school population Ai did not belong to any clubs or attend a private cram school. After classes she would help her father scrape the chewing gum from under the desks, or wander alone through the bamboo forest, her metal brace clanking a warning to the birds. My most potent memory of Ai is during a typhoon in the autumn term of our senior year. Classes had been cancelled that day due to the hazardous weather conditions, but, braving the gale-force winds, I went in. I was eager to complete my project on electromagnetic induction and my physics teacher, Mr Kazaguchi, had said I could use the laboratory. By mid-morning I had my experiment set up and was busy taking readings from the voltmeter, when something out of the window caught my eye. It was Ai Inoue, standing alone on the roof of the school gymnasium. Her school uniform was drenched and the wind tore at her hair. The rain lashed at her as she stood with her arms outstretched, like the majestic figurehead of a ship on stormy seas. I will never forget the look in her eyes: wild, heroic and insane. I noticed she was not wearing her brace.
