by Ryu Murakami
Whose bed was this?
The light fixture he’d glimpsed above him, on the ceiling, was unfamiliar. Maybe, he thought for a moment, he was still dreaming. But the numbness in his temples and the pain behind his eyes said no, it wasn’t a dream. Then he remembered. He was in the hotel room he’d come to with her. He reached out with his left hand, but no one was there. Gritting his teeth, he opened his eyes once more, but when the light flooded in he reflexively squeezed them shut again. He’d have to open them little by little. He let the lids ease to a slit and peered through quivering lashes wet with tears that blurred his field of vision. His pulse was irregular and weak, but it began to speed up as he gradually opened his eyes and a certain fact crystallised in his mind.
She was gone.
The room was as brightly lit as a convenience store but absolutely silent, with no hint of another’s presence. Aoyama was naked, his shrunken penis hanging limp and matted with strands of semen-caked pubic hair. He listened carefully for signs of someone using the bathroom or taking a shower, but there were none. Perhaps, seeing how soundly he was sleeping, she’d decided to let him rest and gone down to the bar or dining room on her own . . . But no. Her travel bag was gone. Yamasaki Asami had vanished.
His body felt impossibly heavy and sluggish, as if his veins coursed with mercury. His right hand brushed against something hard – his wristwatch, wedged between folds of the bedspread. He snagged it and held it up before his eyes. It was a little past three, and the date had advanced a day. Caught in the steel band was a long hair. Hers.
She had been here in this room with him. There could be no doubt about that.
Aoyama wound the hair around his finger. He was conscious of two different strands of memory. One was in the form of vivid flashbacks: her face, beaded with perspiration. Her pink tongue. Tangled, sweat-soaked hair plastered to her forehead and cheeks. Her tumescent nipples. And her wet, slick crevice oozing a cloudy white secretion as it parted to receive his member. Along with the flashbacks were sounds: sighs and moans, squeals and whispers . . .
The second strand of memory unreeled bit by bit, falteringly. There had been a conversation. He’d told her about Shige. But was that before they’d started having sex or after? Before her first orgasm, or after she’d cried out and clung to him desperately any number of times? He wasn’t sure, but he knew that at some point he’d told her about Shige. How had she reacted? He couldn’t remember.
What in the name of heaven had happened here? He didn’t even remember ejaculating. He reached down and felt his penis. His semen and her fluids had dried to crusty patches on his skin. He remembered her gripping his erection and stroking it. And saying something just before she took him in her mouth. She’d been holding him in her right hand, stimulating him with the fingernails of her left, and she’d said something and then begun using her tongue and lips. Was that before or after he’d told her about Shige?
He rolled on to his side, placed his right palm on the bedspread, and tried to push himself up. Pain shot through his temples and his chest, and he abandoned the effort and flopped face-down on the bed, grimacing. He was breathing hard, his heartbeat was racing, and his torso was so heavy and so devoid of sensation it might have been made of stone. She must have done something to him.
The thought shocked him, but it was nothing compared to the shock of finding her gone. A faint fragrance clung to the bedspread – the same fragrance he’d noticed when she undid her hair. The green bedspread had absorbed the smells of her cologne and make-up and sweat and secretions, but that one fragrance alone held sway over his numbed senses. Flashbacks of rapturous sex continued to flicker in his mind, and with each one he slipped deeper into the fear that he’d lost her for ever. The intervals between the flashbacks gradually diminished, and two images began to predominate: her face and her vagina. Each time he’d thrust his organ deeply into her, her face had distorted. But even with her brow furrowed into a mass of wrinkles, or her eyes wide and unfocused, or her jaw going slack and her tongue lolling out, her features never lost their beauty. And nothing in this world ever looked more deliciously lascivious than that vagina of hers, every wrinkle and fold of which was wet with the juice that issued forth endlessly, sluicing down the trough between her buttocks and dripping to the velvet bedspread. From time to time, when her moans turned to orgasmic squeals, Aoyama had pulled out to lift her to the next level of anticipation and pleasure. Each time he did so, the squeals turned to something like sobs. The small hole in the pink that peeked out between the lips of her vagina would remain open at those times, the white, milky fluid oozing out of it like some primitive, crawling thing. But even then her face had maintained an unimpeachable beauty, and the disconnect between that face and her hungry, lust-crazed pussy had only excited him all the more. That dark pink slit, surrounded by the white flesh of her inner thighs, was the doorway to her inner temple, and assailing it gave Aoyama a taste of cruel and infinitely salacious delight. He had no idea how long the sex had lasted, but he remembered feeling as if it might never end; he’d remained erect and rock-hard until it was actually painful, the skin of his penis stretched so thin it seemed on the verge of splitting open. Now, with his senses dulled and the alternating images of her face and vagina flaring in his brain, the thought that such pleasures might be lost to him for ever was more than he could bear. Gone. A chill ran through him, and he began to gag, as if something were stuck in his throat. He didn’t want to cry – somehow he felt that tears would mark the end – and was repressing the impulse, biting his lip, when the phone rang. He jerked involuntarily, then clawed his way across the bed to the instrument.
‘Mr Aoyama?’ It was a man’s voice. Aoyama’s disappointment drained him of any strength he’d mustered. He’d hoped to hear her voice: It’s me. Thank goodness you’re still there! I was afraid you might have left . . .
‘This is the front desk. Is that Mr Aoyama?’
‘Yes,’ he managed to reply in a miserable croak. ‘Yes, this is Aoyama.’
‘Forgive me if you were sleeping, sir. We called several times earlier but there was no answer, so we thought it best to keep trying in spite of the hour. When Mrs Aoyama left, we—’
‘What time?’
‘It’s a little past three-thirty a.m.’
‘No. What time did she leave?’
‘Sir?’
Aoyama explained that he’d taken some cold medicine and fallen asleep.
‘She dined alone, sir, and called for a car at about eight o’clock, saying she had urgent business in Tokyo.’
Struggling with the irregular thumping of his heart and the rising nausea, Aoyama said yes, that was right, something had come up.
‘Shall I send the hotel doctor up to see you, sir?’
‘No, I’ll be all right.’
‘Please feel free to let us know, sir, if you need anything at all. And . . . May I ask if you’re still planning to check out tomorrow? We do need to confirm that.’
‘I should be fine after a good night’s sleep.’
‘Very well, sir. Terribly sorry to bother you. Good night.’
Aoyama hung up the phone and lay there at the edge of the bed. He was not feeling at all well. A cold sweat rolled down his temples and jaw and dripped to the bedspread, but it didn’t feel as if it could possibly be his own perspiration, and he actually looked up to see if the ceiling were leaking. He wiped his temples with the back of his hand, and then he checked his pulse. It felt weak again, slow and gurgly. Something bitter was working its way up from his stomach, and he swallowed hard, to try and hold it down. Sleeping tablets, he thought suddenly. A large dose. He’d been drugged into unconsciousness and then awakened by his own jangled nerves. He wondered if he should try regurgitating but decided there was no point – too much time had passed. By now the medicine had all been digested and delivered to the capillaries in the farthest reaches of his body.
She had fed him sleeping tablets, he was sure of it.
Several ti
mes during the evening, he remembered, she’d torn herself away from him and slipped into the bathroom. He’d thought nothing of it at the time. He knew that prolonged stimulation of the clitoris could cause a woman to pee a lot, and they’d both thirstily guzzled drinks from the minibar as well – beer, cola, whisky. He’d also drunk directly from her mouth. Straddling him, riding him with the motion of her hips, she’d taken mouthfuls of whisky or beer and then transferred them to his mouth with kisses. He remembered squeezing the perfect white globes of her ass as they kissed: he wouldn’t have noticed if she’d slipped him sulphuric acid that way, let alone powdered sleeping tablets.
He propped himself up on one elbow and looked at the telephone. Next to it was a memo pad, and something was written on the top sheet, in an almost childish scrawl.
No forgiveness for lies
—The Woman Who Lost Her Name
Lies? Aoyama was puzzled momentarily, and then somewhat relieved – obviously she’d misunderstood something he said. He reached for the phone and dialled her number. No one answered. He tried several more times before giving up, but by then he was feeling much better.
She was a pure and innocent but spirited girl. She’d taken something the wrong way and got angry and left. Wanting to avoid a confrontation, she’d slipped him some of her own sleeping tablets so she could leave without having to explain. She would have brought sleeping tablets, he reasoned, because she was nervous and excited about their first trip together and afraid she wouldn’t be able to sleep.
He’d call her tomorrow afternoon and resolve everything; she’d probably end up apologising.
For now it was best to get some sleep. He fumbled with the controls on the side-table, setting the alarm for shortly before checkout time and turning off all the lights, then crawled under the covers. A powerful undercurrent immediately began dragging him down, and sleep washed over him like surf. Just before succumbing, while still on the border of consciousness, he had a very strange sort of dream.
In a small, shabby room a man of fifty or so sits on worn tatami mats. He’s dressed in long underwear and drinking. He holds a large bottle of cheap whisky on his knee and pours it into a glass that’s cloudy with fingerprints. The man drinks the whisky slowly and takes deep drags on a cigarette. He has no feet. The stubs of his ankles protrude from his long underwear like the ends of oversized sausages. The only thing visible from the room’s one small window is the outer wall of the building next door. Gnats are bouncing against a fluorescent light above the table, and one of them has fallen into the man’s glass. Furious that he can’t stand up and chase the gnats away, he lets out a drunken bellow.
Separated from this room by a torn paper screen is an even smaller room with no windows at all. Inside, in the shadows, a little girl is putting on a pair of ballet shoes. The shoes are worn out, scuffed and torn and no longer pink but a sooty flesh-tone. Once they’re snugly on her feet, she stands up. It’s summer, and she opens the paper screen slightly to let in a little air. Beads of sweat dot her forehead. What little breeze there is carries the smell of whisky and cigarette smoke – his smell – mixed with an odour of rotting vegetables.
As she’s adjusting the screen, the man’s expression undergoes a change. His eyes were wild with rage just moments ago, as he grumbled and shouted at the gnats, but now he looks desperate and craven, like a condemned criminal begging for his life. He sets his glass down and glances nervously around behind him, then tries to peer through the partly open doorway. The girl’s silhouette flits past the opening as she crosses the dark little room. Her small, slender hands; her undeveloped chest and hips; her lissome legs, glistening with sweat.
The girl knows that the man is watching her and takes care not to give him more than brief glimpses through the opening. He peers down at the stubs of his legs for a moment, then inserts his right hand into his waistband. She’s practising the few simple steps she’s mastered, her head tilted at an angle that best emphasises the beauty of her face, as she’s been taught to do at ballet school. She knows what the man is doing with his right hand, and she’s seen the thing he’s holding. He’s been doing this almost every night for the past few weeks, whenever she practises. He doesn’t yell at her any more when she’s dancing, or call her names. Instead he gets drunk and watches her out of the corner of his eye, fumbling in his underwear and looking as if he’s about to burst into tears. When she senses him moving that hand and making that face, as if begging for mercy, something evaporates from her body, and something else enters to replace it – something dark and indelible . . .
‘I don’t know what to do. I can’t get her on the phone, and I realise now that I don’t even know her address.’
Two weeks had passed since the trip to Izu. Aoyama had managed to continue working somehow, and to spend time with Shige, but Yoshikawa was the only one he could really discuss this with. He was calling from a public phone.
‘She doesn’t answer?’
‘It’s worse than that. I get a recording saying the number’s no longer in service. It’s been that way since a few days after Izu.’
‘What happened there, exactly?’
‘Only what I just told you.’
‘But why would she suddenly vanish?’
‘I don’t know. She must’ve misunderstood something I said or did. I’m sure we could clear it all up in about two minutes, but I have no way of getting in touch with her.’
Yoshikawa was silent for a moment. Then, in a quiet voice, he said, ‘You should just let it go.’
Aoyama wanted to smash the receiver against the glass wall of the phone booth. He was literally trembling with rage and exasperation. Since Yamasaki Asami’s disappearance he hadn’t been able even to eat properly, and his nerves were like live, sizzling wires.
‘I know you’re not going to listen to anything I tell you,’ Yoshikawa said, ‘but I’m partly responsible, and I have to say this: I think you should forget about her.’
‘You don’t get it, Yoshikawa. It was just a little misunderstanding, dammit. I need to find her, and all I’m asking is if you have any ideas. She said she was living in Nakameguro, and I thought you might know the address.’
‘Look, the only address I ever saw was the one on the résumé, the one in Suginami, and somebody else lives there now. I told you that before, right? I don’t know anything about Nakameguro. Besides, we’ve already tossed all the résumés . . . Hello? You still there?’
‘Yeah. All right. Later,’ Aoyama said and hung up the phone.
11
The new year arrived without any word from her. Aoyama had been showing up at work every day, and he tried hard to be himself around Shige in spite of the emotional torture he was going through. But he couldn’t hide the physical toll it was taking.
In the two months since Izu he’d lost six kilos. Not even when Ryoko died had he ever found himself in such a state that he couldn’t get food down. Ryoko’s death, devastating though it was, had been gradual. Seeing her weaken day by day was agonising, but it had given him time to assimilate and process what was happening. To this day he remembered with gratitude the courage Ryoko had shown in those final days. Her gentle resignation in the face of such pain and fear had been a wonderful parting gift to those who loved her.
But Yamasaki Asami had disappeared suddenly. Without any warning or foreshadowing whatsoever – they hadn’t even argued or exchanged bitter words – she’d vanished from the hotel room and seemingly from the face of the earth. It was all just some sort of misunderstanding: he still believed this, and that belief was one of the things impeding his recovery. He’d revisited Nakameguro any number of times in the past two months. Starting at the big intersection where the taxi had dropped her off after some of their dates, he’d wandered aimlessly through the maze of side streets. He was fully aware of how pathetic this was and didn’t really expect to find her there, but it was all he could think of to do. Nakameguro was the only thread he had left to cling to.
No for
giveness for lies.
He still didn’t know what she’d meant by that. All his memories of her were ambrosial and poisonous, in equal measure. He remembered with brutal clarity every detail of every date, to say nothing of those last, ecstatic hours in Izu. And beautiful memories, he’d come to realise, were the sledgehammers of despair.
He’d had dozens of telephone conversations with Yoshikawa, and met with him several times for dinner or drinks. And he’d even discussed the situation with Takamatsu and other members of his staff. But the discussions were usually more about baring his soul and bemoaning his loss than soliciting comfort or advice, and eventually even Yoshikawa tired of hearing it.
I mean, how crazy is this, Yoshikawa? I didn’t do anything! Nothing I know of anyway, and up till then everything had been going so well! It would be ridiculous to end it like this . . .
Shige, on the other hand, was a rock. Aoyama wondered how it was possible for a boy his age to have such a firm grasp of this sort of situation. Shige seemed to realise that the worst thing you can do for someone in psychological distress is to give them special treatment. He acted as always towards his father and never once asked about Yamasaki Asami. And when Rie-san rather too persistently expressed concern for Aoyama’s health, Shige covered for him, saying, ‘Sometimes a man just doesn’t feel like eating.’ He’d learned about loss when his mother died, and he knew things that Aoyama himself had apparently been forgetting: that pouring your heart out to someone affords only temporary relief at best; that you just have to resign yourself to a period of suffering, somehow going about your everyday business as you slowly find a way to assimilate the loss.
