Ever since I started living with Naoki and Misaki in this apartment I haven’t watched the tape. When I used to live alone in Yutenji sometimes, when I couldn’t sleep, I’d play it.
For some strange reason, whenever I watched these spliced-together rape scenes it calmed me down. My feelings of how cruel, miserable, and pitiful it all was gradually faded away, and the expressions of the faces of the rape victims ended up looking like people having a great time at a festival. The timidity I’d had, the sort of vague dread and insomnia, were steadily numbed. Watching these women – men pressing their hands on their mouths, forcing their arms and legs down, prying open their thighs, the women struggling without being able to scream – I came to enjoy it, as if they were dancing in time to music.
3.13
Naoki had come home slightly tipsy, and Ryosuke was clinging to him, apparently begging him to lend him ¥30,000. ‘I promise I’ll pay you back when I get paid for my part-time job at the end of the month,’ Ryosuke pleaded. Koto and I were on the sofa eating ice cream, enjoying this little scene played out before us.
‘What’re you going to use it for?’ Naoki asked.
We could hear them in their room now, where it seemed like Naoki was taking off his suit and Ryosuke was hanging it up for him. ‘So if you could just see your way to lending it to me,’ Ryosuke said, continuing to pester him.
‘I’ll lend it to you if you’ll tell me what you’re going to use it for.’ Naoki had now stripped down to his underwear. He strode out into the living room with Ryosuke trotting along behind him, his bath towel in hand.
‘If I tell you, will you really lend it to me?’
‘Sure. As long as it’s not for something weird.’
‘It isn’t. I need it for a date.’
‘A date? With Kiwako?’
‘Of course. Who else?’
Seated next to me, licking her green tea ice cream, Koto said, ‘Ryosuke already asked Satoru.’ She sounded a bit disgusted by it.
‘You begged an eighteen-year-old for money?’ I burst out. ‘Don’t you have any pride?’
‘Yeah, but he’s loaded.’
‘He’s right,’ Koto said, nodding deeply. ‘When I went to play pachinko with him he pulled out ¥10,000 bills from his pocket one after another.’
I wondered whether male prostitutes these days were really doing that well, but all I said was ‘Hmmmm’ and let it go. Naoki grabbed the bath towel out of Ryosuke’s hands, said, ‘Okay. I’ll give it to you,’ and went into the bath. Ryosuke stood there in front of the closed bathroom door and gave a triumphant fist pump.
‘Where’re you going to go with ¥30,000?’ I asked.
‘It’s a secret,’ Ryosuke replied slyly, and retreated back into the guys’ room.
‘It’s a kind of talent,’ Koto murmured beside me.
‘What is?’ I asked.
‘How he can coax people to do things.’
Ryosuke really does have that ability. The fact that he doesn’t realise it makes you think that all the more, but sometimes you just can’t help stepping in to take care of him, when he acts so helpless it makes you mad. I imagine that talent alone – the ability to get people to do what he wants – should be enough to get him through life.
That’s right – the other day Ryosuke finally brought Kiwako, whom we’d heard so much about, back to the apartment. When I got back from work Koto and Satoru were already in the midst of the stupid little play Ryosuke had scripted, repeating their lines like a pair of mynah birds. Kiwako had long since seen through their act, and when I came into the living room she sidled up to me and said, ‘They’ve got to stop reading those lines. I can’t take it.’
Before I actually met her, I was sure that Kiwako, who was clearly cheating on her boyfriend with a younger guy, must be a terrible sort of woman. But actually she turned out to be quite nice. I could understand how Ryosuke would fall for her, and I even found myself hoping that she would take Ryosuke, who acts pretty spoiled, and turn him into a stand-up guy. Not that the kind of man I see as decent is the type who other people would call decent.
That evening, after we had a lively dinner, Ryosuke went to the car park to get Momoko – a good twenty-minute walk – and while he was gone Kiwako and I were standing outside our building, talking.
We were talking about her younger brother she was living with – he wanted to be a musician – when she suddenly asked, ‘Oh – I wanted to ask you this, but is Ryosuke kind of . . . fragile? Like, has he ever suddenly burst into tears?’
‘Burst into tears?’
‘Um. Has he?’
‘Well, I’ve never seen him . . . Did he do that with you?’
‘Not really.’
She clammed up and right then Ryosuke pulled up alongside us in Momoko. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting!’ he called out, and seeing that happy-go-lucky face I couldn’t picture him as ever fragile enough to burst into tears.
3.14
I was bar hopping in Shinjuku with Laula, amongst the nightclubs and gay bars – Laula had just declared that her dream was to be the matron of a dorm for a high school baseball team – when we saw Satoru and a young colleague of his, seated on a park bench, clearly not having much luck attracting customers.
Thinking I’d surprise him, we scrambled over the park fence and came up behind them, and as we did we heard Satoru speaking in a very heated voice. Laula was about to spring out of the bushes but I held her back and we eavesdropped on their conversation for a while.
‘So he tied up my arms and legs, and I was on the floor like a sushi roll, when three more guys came out, all built like pro wrestlers like him. They must have been hiding in the next room.’
‘Are you serious? And all of them did you?’
‘Not just that, they kicked me and beat me, and the next morning I had to go to the hospital.’
‘Did they pay you?’
‘Yeah, but I had blood coming out of my arse for a week, and my face was so bruised nobody else would buy me for a while. It was awful.’
‘We’re bound to get killed someday.’
‘Either that or not be marketable any more. One or the other.’
Laula was fighting off the mosquitoes in the bushes, and she loudly slapped at one. Satoru and his friend instinctively turned at the sound and started to run away. ‘It’s not the police,’ I called out to them. ‘It’s me!’
After that I took Satoru and the other boy, who called himself Makoto, out drinking. However many bars later we got to be friends with a man, a well-off manufacturer of sweets from Kobe, and rented out the bar for the rest of the night so we could have our own private karaoke party. As Satoru hooted at the older customers to get lost, and started a strip show on top of the counter, I began belting out my favourite golden oldie, Naoko Kawai’s ‘Smile for Me’.
Satoru and his friend must have been on something before we hooked up with them, since they were totally high. Before I knew what was going on they’d both stripped naked, raced out of the bar, and made a human pyramid on the street outside.
I can’t remember how late we stayed. All I recall is Satoru carrying me on his back to the next bar.
I came to in a taxi. Satoru was beside me and when I asked where we were he said, ‘We just got in a taxi. We’re outside Isetan department store.’
I started acting up again but he restrained me.
‘It’s warm tonight so why don’t I take you to this nice place I know.’
We were getting on Kyukoshu Kaido Boulevard when he said this.
‘I hope they have something to drink at this nice place?’ I asked, but he didn’t answer.
I’m in my seventh year in Tokyo but this was the first time I’d ever set foot in Hibiya Park. Like Satoru said, it was a peaceful spring night, and once inside the park grounds you could still feel on your skin the strong odour of warm grass from the daytime. We cut through a square surrounded by dark trees and came to a quiet pond and a fountain reflecting the moon. We looked at our ref
lections on the surface of the water. Following Satoru’s lead, I dipped my finger in the water and watched the ripples shake, ever so slightly, the image of the moon.
Where he led me was an outdoor amphitheatre.
‘Is this it?’ I asked.
‘Right. Inside there,’ pointing to the top of a fence.
‘We’re climbing over it?’
‘Yep.’
With Satoru pushing my bum from behind, I scrambled over the fence.
A series of benches radiated out from a round stage. Since this was an outdoor concert venue, there was no roof, just the purple urban sky overhead. The place could easily hold five hundred people. I stood there alone for a while.
Satoru finally climbed over the fence and asked, ‘So, do you like it?’
‘Like you ever had any doubt,’ I grinned back.
As he led me by the hand past the seats towards the stage, Satoru said, ‘I’ve spent the night here sometimes.’
‘Isn’t it cold in the winter?’
‘I don’t stay in the winter. I’d freeze to death.’
‘Before you came to our place, where did you sleep?’
‘Different places. At saunas, at friends’.’
‘In clients’ apartments?’
‘Yeah.’
I lay down on top of the stage. It felt like I hadn’t looked straight up at the night sky for ages. Satoru sat down next to me and clutched his knees. He pulled out an assortment of things from his jeans pocket and lined them up next to him. A crumpled ¥10,000 bill, a piece of already-chewed gum in a silver wrapper, an army knife, a wire, a condom. In a crushed box of Mild Seven cigarettes there were a couple of joints mixed in. I had him light one up for me and took a hit as I gazed up at the sky.
‘Do you smoke in our apartment?’ I asked him. The purplish smoke lazily rose into the night sky.
‘No, I don’t. I did it once and Naoki yelled at me, told me to go smoke on the balcony.’
‘Makes sense. He doesn’t even drink coffee – he says it’s healthier not to.’
For a while we gazed up at the sky. ‘At times like this,’ Satoru muttered, ‘people tend to talk about childhood memories.’
‘Is that what you want to do?’ I teased him. I was definitely not at my most charming.
‘Not particularly.’
‘Why not? This is the perfect moment, so you should go ahead.’ I poked him on the shoulder.
‘I don’t mind,’ he said, laughing. ‘I mean it’s all made up anyway.’
The thought suddenly hit me: there are types of lies where you announce them ahead of time.
3.15
For the first time in a long while, I left work without having a drop to drink. When I got home I could hear Ryosuke and Satoru’s voices from the guys’ room. Koto was apparently out on a date with Tomohiko, their first in quite a few weeks. The living-room table was full of her make-up clutter. Naoki was still at work. I gargled in the bathroom and plonked myself down in the living room, unoccupied for once, picked up the remote from the floor and switched on the TV. I was eating a Karasu bento, my second in two days, when the TV reception started to go crazy. I stood up, disposable chopsticks clamped in my mouth, and smacked the right side of the TV three times: once hard, then hard again, and then softly, just like Koto had taught me. Usually when the TV set was zapping you could still hear the audio, but recently there was static in the audio, too. I smacked it again – hard, hard, then soft. The picture wavered a lot, then settled back as before, like nothing had happened. And then I heard Ryosuke’s voice from his room.
‘It’s kind of embarrassing to say this, but I really respect my dad.’
Ryosuke respecting his father? That was news to me. I’d never heard him say this before.
‘Did I ever tell you this?’ he went on. ‘My father runs a sushi shop. Not that that’s relevant, but anyway when my dad was young it seems he ran around a lot. Maybe this is strange coming from his son, but he was sort of a leader, and took good care of the people he hung out with. So even now the guys in his crew when he was young still follow him, call him Chief. When I see that side of him, it’s like, I don’t know – I don’t think someone like me can ever be better than him as a person, and when I’m with him I feel like I sort of shrink back. I’m always wondering how I should respond to him to make him happy, what I can do to win his approval. That’s all I can think of when I’m with him, even now.’
I don’t know if Satoru was seriously listening to Ryosuke or not, but from the living room I couldn’t hear his voice at all.
‘You know, it’s like unconsciously the reason I came all the way to Tokyo was so I could outdo my dad at something. But here I am, and there’s not a single person who wants to imitate me, and I seriously doubt I’ve become the type of person anybody would feel that way about.’
As I listened to Ryosuke’s earnest confession, I tried to keep from bursting out laughing. Here was a guy who had no qualms about hitting up a younger guy for money; and now he was desperately hoping to be admired. It was laughable.
‘You know, one time – just once, mind you – there was a guy I’m pretty sure depended on me. He was a classmate of mine in junior high. His name was Shinya. He really counted on me. At least I’m pretty sure that’s what was going on . . .’
‘So what happened?’ Satoru asked. ‘When this Shinya guy was depending on you so much?’
‘Huh? Well . . .’ Ryosuke began and then fell quiet.
Silence for a while and then I heard Satoru’s voice, trying to stifle his laughter: ‘So you couldn’t be counted on after all?’
‘Knock it off! . . . What I think is, when people count on someone, when they’re seriously counting on them, the person they’re counting on doesn’t realise it. I mean – they might notice it, but they don’t understand how seriously, how desperately, the other person’s depending on them.’
I’d finished my bento and tossed it in the bin. I felt like taking a shower, so I went to the girls’ room to get some clean underwear. When people count on someone, the person they’re counting on doesn’t realise it. For some reason, I couldn’t shake Ryosuke’s words.
I was on my way to the bathroom, clean underwear in hand, when this time I heard Satoru’s voice. I stopped outside the guys’ bedroom and listened in.
‘I was an only child and my mum raised me all by herself,’ Satoru was saying. ‘I always wanted someone like an older brother, someone I could talk to, and get advice from. I wouldn’t mind if we fought most of the time, and I couldn’t stand the sight of him. That’d be okay with me. When something came up, it would have been great to have someone I could talk to, even if he lived far away. If I had that, I think I could handle almost anything.’
This was so absurd I had to step away from their door. I understand – really understand – why guys like Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian, or those silly action films from Toei V Cinema. Still, Satoru was a complete fraud. I remember him telling Koto how his parents were still crazy about each other, which totally enraptured Koto, who’s in the middle of her own hot and heavy love affair. And how he told Naoki he went to the same elementary school and junior high as Naoki, and how they got all excited, going on and on about an old abandoned hospital in the neighbourhood. Who can tell what’s true and what isn’t?
I remembered Satoru’s face, how he laughed the other day when he took me to the outdoor concert hall in Hibiya Park and said, ‘I don’t mind. I mean it’s all made up anyway.’ I don’t think he meant any harm by it. He simply has no respect for the past. In that sense he’s a lot like me. Still, he went too far – these false histories he was spouting were becoming way too convenient.
3.16
I was back from work and my legs were swollen from being on my feet all day, so I was stretched out on the floor, massaging them, when Koto came out of the girls’ room, all fidgety, and started pacing back and forth between the living room and the kitchen.
‘Could you be any more a
nnoying?’ I asked, and she came to a halt.
‘How can you just sit there?’ she asked and resumed pacing.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Ryosuke’s gone undercover, as we speak.’
Her words reminded me of this morning, when Ryosuke, tense and apparently not having slept a wink, emerged from the guys’ room, eyes bloodshot, to complain that ‘This is asking too much of me.’ Their plan: he needed to go so far that he was assigned a girl, but then he could call it a day. He was supposed to come back without laying a finger on any of the girls, but seeing how on edge he was it looked like he had other ideas.
Right then there was a sound at the front door, and Koto leapt towards it. ‘So how’d it go? He’s busted, right?’ I went to the entrance, half intrigued by the idea of seeing what kind of look Ryosuke would have on his face right after doing it with a girl.
Ryosuke looked at the two of us in turn, then shouted, ‘That was no brothel!’
‘What? It wasn’t?’ Koto asked.
‘No way! It’s a fortune teller’s!’
‘Are you kidding?’
‘That guy is a fortune teller! He’s famous among people who know about these things, and the word is his readings are always spot on. He only reads fortunes three days before and three days after a full moon or a new moon, and his readings for teenage girls and men in their sixties are especially right on target.’
As I listened to Ryosuke, half upset and half relieved at missing a chance to have sex on Koto’s money, I burst out laughing.
According to Ryosuke, apartment 402 was dimly light with a red lamp or something. He was shown into a small room, sort of a reception area. A young woman was seated there. Ah! This is the one I get to sleep with, he was sure, trying to keep his heart from bursting from excitement. But then the man came in, asked him to write down his name and date of birth, and handed him a sheet of white paper. Why do they need my name and date of birth for me to have sex with a woman? Ryosuke wondered and decided it was best to write down phony information. Maybe because he was basically an honest guy, or maybe because he’s a little slow on the uptake, but with the man watching him he couldn’t for the life of him come up with a phony name and birth date. Panicking, he scribbled down Naoki’s name and date of birth. When he finished, the man escorted him to a back room. There was a table with a crystal on it, and five or six cats at his feet.
Parade Page 11
