Popular Hits of the Showa Era

by Ryu Murakami

  “Hear, hear! What would the last two be then, a cross-talk act?”

  “And if we were only one…Miyako Harumi?”

  They all helped themselves freely to the Canadian Club during this exchange of ideas. And as the alcohol kicked in, the atmosphere of the old six-member Midori Society gradually returned.

  “We all know who’s behind this,” Suzuki Midori said. “The ones trying to turn us into the Kashimashi Sisters or Simon and Garfunkel are those cretinous friends of Sugioka.”

  The following day, Suzuki Midori accompanied Henmi Midori to the scene of Sugioka’s murder. They were standing beneath their parasols, at the very spot where he’d been stabbed in the throat, speaking in hushed tones, when the junior college girl with the indescribably disturbing face and voice—the one who’d caused Nobue and Ishihara such distress—approached.

  “Excuse me, may I help you?”

  The two Midoris hadn’t been behaving as if they were looking for help or trying to find an address, and they were startled to be accosted so unexpectedly—doubly so by someone with such a face. It was a face that instantly robbed those who gazed upon it of a good thirty percent of the energy they needed to go on living.

  “We’re f–fine, thanks.”

  Suzuki Midori and Henmi Midori exchanged looks. They were both the sort of people who tend to gauge where they rank on the happiness scale by comparing themselves to others, so when they saw this girl they both experienced a sense of superiority welling up from deep inside and thought something along the lines of, What a face! I guess being young isn’t everything after all! They soon became aware of a second, more powerful reaction, however—a sudden desire to go somewhere far, far away and fling themselves off a rock-bound cliff—and that swelling sense of superiority dissolved in their throats.

  “And you are…?” Henmi Midori asked, enduring the sensation that a heavy, bitter liquid was surging up toward her esophagus from the gap between her stomach and liver.

  “I’m a Flo-Ju student. I live in this dormitory.”

  The junior college girl’s voice made every hair on their bodies stand on end and quiver. Their pubic hairs, and even the freshly shaved stubble under their arms, seemed to wave and ripple in a hideous breeze.

  “Flo-Ju?”

  Suzuki Midori thought maybe the word was student slang for dripping snot or something. The girl’s nose wasn’t actually running, she noticed, but on a face like this a bit of dripping snot—or even dripping tears or dripping poop or dripping menstrual blood—could only have been an improvement.

  “Flower Petal Junior College, we call it Flo-Ju for short, but I have another aspect to my identity, which is that I’m also a witness.”

  The junior college girl puffed out her chest in her white cotton blouse. A tepid wind began to blow and a shadow suddenly blocked out the sun that had been shining merrily all day.

  “Witness?” the two Midoris squeaked in unison. The tips of their pubic hairs continued to undulate sickeningly as a feverish sort of chill shuddered through them, like the prelude to an eruption of foul-smelling secretions from every pore.

  “Don’t you remember? A while back, right about there, where you’re standing now, a young man with everything to look forward to in life was murdered, and I saw it all. And then after that I was honored to cooperate with the police in their investigation, and later I met two of the victim’s friends and went with them to an ice-cream parlor, where we had the opportunity to discuss various topics of interest to young people like ourselves.”

  As the junior college girl spoke, Henmi Midori, whose bushy area was still billowing like the grassy meadow where Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind lies sleeping, began to feel as if the creepiest man in the world were licking her all over. But she screwed up her courage and croaked:

  “His friends?”

  “Such funny, cheerful boys, and the short one gave me his telephone number, and maybe I’m just a coward but I still haven’t called him yet.”

  Don’t do it—all the optic fibers will disintegrate at the sound of your voice, Suzuki Midori thought as she asked, “Do you happen to know the young man’s name? We’re friends of poor Sugioka-kun’s mother—the boy who was murdered?—and she wants to put together a memorial album of his life.”

  “Ishihara-san,” said the junior college girl, with a sparkle in her misaligned eyes.

  III

  Suzuki Midori riffled through her Louis Vuitton personal organizer. She found a blank page and with a pencil wrote the name in katakana:

  “Do you know the kanji?” she asked. “Ishi like ‘stone’ and hara like ‘field’? And if you could give me his phone number too—after all, we won’t be able to contact him if we don’t have his telephone number, isn’t that so?”

  “I don’t know the kanji.”

  The junior college girl twisted the corners of her lips in what was probably meant to be a mischievous smile. It was a smile like rotten eggs and mildewed cheese and poisonous toadstools. Suzuki Midori and Henmi Midori, receiving the full impact of this smile from a mere seventy centimeters away, felt their stomachs shrivel, along with two or three other internal organs, and a greasy sweat oozed from their temples.

  “You see, girls of our generation, we write boys’ names in katakana, like you do for foreign words, instead of kanji, probably because a young man’s existence itself doesn’t mean much of anything anymore, so their names are just sounds that don’t have any meaning, like Toshi-chan or Fumiya or Jun or Takashi or Takeshi or Yoshihiko or Kazu or Tomo or Yuki or Akira or Yasushi or Keisuke or Kohji or Yohsuke or Satoshi or Tohru or Yuji or Potato or Jello or Cheeto or Tofu or Edamame or Monkeystoolmushroom or Bouillabaisse. I guess that’s just the way we girls of today are.”

  From their temples, the drops of greasy sweat slid down the hair tucked behind their ears to the nape of the neck and around to the base of the throat, finally soaking into the silk of their blouses. This sweat seemed many times heavier—hundreds of times heavier—than the sort one produces when in a sauna or playing tennis, and it made a deep, rumbling sound as it rolled past their ears. Another five minutes face-to-face with her, Suzuki Midori thought, and I won’t even know who I am anymore. The girl wasn’t tremendously ugly or disgustingly unkempt or anything like that. It was just that vague asymmetry of her eyes and face that seemed to suck energy like a black hole.

  “But, oh, the telephone number, it’s in the drawer of my desk, shall I go get it? Or—it’s only a small room, but would you like to come in? This is a women’s dormitory, of course, so there’s a strict rule against having men in your room, but there’s no problem whatsoever with having other women visit you, especially such elegant and sophisticated ladies as yourselves. You don’t look like cult members or anything, and a friend of mine who’s studying in London sent me some apple tea, and I’d love for you to try it.”

  Before I’d sit sipping apple tea brewed by you, and looking at that face of yours, thought Suzuki Midori, I’d strip naked before a handsome young male friend and suck jam through my nose. “That’s very nice of you,” she said, “but we too, when we were in junior college, lived in women’s dormitories very much like this tranquil sanctuary of yours, and although there’s nothing we’d like better than to visit your room, it wouldn’t be right, really. After all, a women’s dormitory is one of the few truly sacred places left in this nation of ours!”

  When the junior college girl nodded and trotted back to the dorm to retrieve Ishihara’s number, Henmi Midori’s head drooped, and she wobbled on her feet. Suzuki Midori lent her a supportive arm.

  “Be strong,” she said. “If we fall down now, how will we ever avenge Wataa?”

  “Yes. Yes, you’re right.” Henmi Midori took a Chanel handkerchief from her Lancel bag and pressed it against her temples and forehead and neck. “What is she, though? Is she really an earthling, with the same kinds of genes and everything as us? When I saw that face, and heard that voice…”

  “You lost the wi
ll to live, right?”

  “Yes! No matter what anyone said, even if my spirit couldn’t be reborn in the Pure Land, I just wanted to sink to my knees and beat my head against the pavement.”

  “I know. But listen—I just realized something big.”

  No sooner had Suzuki Midori said this than the junior college girl reappeared, skipping toward them with her hands linked behind her back. The two Midoris understood what it must feel like when the torturer returns with a fresh list of questions. Both experienced a wave of vertigo, and each opened her stance and bent her knees slightly, bracing herself to keep from collapsing.

  Taking care not to look directly at the girl’s face, Suzuki Midori copied Ishihara’s number down in her organizer.

  “Are you sure you won’t have some apple tea?” the junior college girl said. “I’ve also got a pumpkin pie I bought. I was hoping to share it with somebody in the dorm, but I’d be—”

  They interrupted to explain in a jumble of words that they were terribly busy helping Sugioka-kun’s mother with her memorial album and goodness look at the time, and with that they spun on their heels and ran like hell. Not until they had turned a couple of corners did they slow to a stop and try to catch their breath.

  “So tell me. What’s the big thing you realized?”

  Though she’d just sprinted a good hundred meters, Henmi Midori’s face wasn’t flushed but grayish blue. One sensed that if she hadn’t spoken she’d have dissolved in tears, or possibly died.

  “Well, think about it,” Suzuki Midori said. “This friend of Sugioka’s, this Ishihara, gave that girl his telephone number, right?”

  “Eh?” Henmi Midori stared at her with a wild surmise. The hand lifting a handkerchief to her brow froze in midair as the look of astonishment turned to one of disbelief and disgust. “That’s right! And she said they went to an ice-cream parlor together!”

  “Would a normal person go out for ice cream with a girl like that?”

  “Not even the worst sort of pervert would. Not even a man who’d just got out of prison after twenty years.”

  “Well, that proves it,” Suzuki Midori said, and started walking.

  “Proves what?”

  “We’re dealing with maggots. Our dear Wataa…was murdered by maggots.”

  All four members of the Midori Society met after work at Shinjuku Station. They took a train to Ohtsuki, whence they made their way to a Japanese-style inn on the shore of Lake Yamanaka, a place Suzuki Midori had visited several times many years before. About a month and a half had passed since Iwata Midori’s funeral. Lake Yamanaka no longer buzzed with the crowds of summer, and though it was a Saturday night, there weren’t many people or cars. The inn was a short walk from the place where you boarded the famous white swan paddleboats. This was the first trip any of them had taken for some time, and as they walked toward the entrance of the inn, where a sign said LAKESIDE LODGE, they chattered gaily.

  “A place near the water is romantic even at night, isn’t it?”

  “Three years ago I came to Lake Yamanaka with the only man I ever cheated on my husband with….”

  “It used to be my dream to ride in a swan boat….”

  “Those rugby players looked like a bunch of idiots, didn’t they? Jogging by all bare-chested….”

  They had made a reservation, and a late dinner was waiting for them after they’d bathed. At this particular inn, the food wasn’t brought to the rooms, so they gathered in the dining hall at long wooden tables reminiscent of old-fashioned grade-school desks. The chairs weren’t the normal pipe-and-plastic sort but those good old round, backless, three-legged stools that were never perfectly stable and tended to clatter back and forth whenever you shifted your weight. As they seated themselves, a small window behind the counter opened, and an elderly woman in an apron—born thirty years or so too soon to have been a member of the Midori Society—spoke to them in a voice like tiny glass bells, a voice that might have belonged to a schoolgirl.

  “I’ve heated up some miso soup, so if you wouldn’t mind coming up to the counter and helping yourselves…”

  The miso soup contained potato slices and leeks, and it was soon joined on the table by festive platters of macaroni salad, stuffed green peppers, and teriyaki chicken.

  “Isn’t this great?” Suzuki Midori said. “It must be ten years since I’ve been to this inn, but nothing’s changed.”

  “Most places—even ski lodges—used to have this same system for dining,” Henmi Midori observed, and there followed the usual gabbling babble. Waah, what fun! This really takes me back! The green pepper’s yummy! Do you think these potatoes are organic?

  Takeuchi Midori got everyone’s attention by holding up an index finger. “Something’s missing,” she intoned solemnly. “And that something is…”

  “Beer!” they all cried in unison.

  And at precisely the same moment, a great BOOM! shook the earth beneath them. More booms followed shortly, rattling the empty glasses on the table. They also heard, at irregular intervals, a dry, staccato ta ta ta ta ta ta ta! The Midoris remained silent, listening, even after the oversized bottles of beer arrived.

  “Excuse me.” Suzuki Midori made a show of calling to their elderly hostess in the kitchen. “What are those sounds?”

  “It’s Kita-Fuji,” the old woman replied in her young girl’s voice. “There’s a Self-Defense Forces training area there, you know, on the north side of Mount Fuji. Nighttime artillery drills.”

  Suzuki Midori turned back to the others and said, “You see?”

  All of them nodded. They saw.

  6

  Rusty Knife

  I

  “I told you. This area has always been popular with young couples and all that, but not many people know that it’s also a treasure trove of weapons.”

  Suzuki Midori poured herself some beer from one of the big bottles as she said this, not forgetting to tilt the glass to stifle the foam. Ever since Iwata Midori had taken the bullet that made such a mess of her face and robbed her of her life, Suzuki Midori had gradually assumed, if only tacitly, the role of leader, and now the other Midoris followed her example by filling their own glasses as well. To pour one’s own drink was contrary to custom, and all four of them exchanged glances, fully aware of the significance of their break with convention. It was a bold expression of the plain fact that none of them had a special someone in her life to pour for her, or for whom to pour. This was something they’d never thought about when they were six. Whenever they’d gathered at someone’s apartment or condo in those days, they had always poured for each other in a random sort of way, saying things like, You’ll have some more, won’t you? or Allow me! Three of the surviving Midoris worked in business environments, and they all knew that in Europe and America it was common for gentlemen to pour for ladies and for the host of a party to pour for each of his guests—especially when fine wines were involved. Further complicating the matter was the fact that recently in their own country there had been incidents in which certain business executives, who’d insisted during company R&R trips that female employees pour the drinks, had been sued for sexual harassment. In any case, it was decidedly not in a spirit of loneliness that each of the four surviving Midoris poured her own beer and watched the others do the same.

  “Well, then,” Suzuki Midori said, and they raised their glasses.

  Since the deaths of their two comrades, all of the remaining Midoris had come to a more or less unconscious realization. None of them had ever found, aside from their respective fathers, a man who made them feel from the bottom of their hearts that they wanted to pour his beer or have him pour their wine; and now that they were heading into their late thirties it was extremely doubtful whether any of them ever would find such a man. It wasn’t a question of lonely or not lonely, however. Each was convinced that the fact that she’d never burned with passion for a man was due to various circumstances in her life that mitigated against such passion—circumstances in her fami
ly, for example, or in her social milieu or workplace or community. And they realized now that their mindless “You’ll have some more, won’t you?” had only served to obfuscate reality by keeping things vague and ambiguous.

  But why had this realization, unconscious and unformulated though it may have been, come to them now? Put this too down to the sudden and unexpected deaths of their comrades. The two departed Midoris hadn’t had the opportunity to experience such revelations, and now they never would. It was in order to honor the memory of these unfortunate two that the survivors had filled their own glasses and now prepared to drain them with quiet dignity. It had nothing to do with loneliness. All four shared an unconscious and unspoken conviction that for them, at least, certain possibilities still remained.

  “Kanpai!”

  They quietly clinked their glasses together.

  “To a successful operation.”

  The Midoris awoke early on Sunday. To pass the time until evening, when they had an appointment to meet with a certain man, they rented bicycles and explored the roads that rose toward the foothills. Later they would stop for lunch at an Italian restaurant in the forest, a place with an extravagant interior, an impressive menu, and all-but-inedible food. Later yet they’d play tennis and then, toward the end of the day, paddle about the lake in a swan boat.

  “I once almost got serious with a man who, whatever vacation spot we went to, could only think of one thing—renting bicycles. It seems like a long, long time ago now, but…I guess it’s only been seven years or so.”

  The bicycle rental shop was a tin-roofed shed about ten minutes on foot from the inn. They’d found the straw-hatted old man who ran the place stretched out on a deck chair, roused him, and rented two pink and yellow tandem “Lovers’ Cycles.” They were now pedaling these up a narrow paved road away from the lake, where the fragrance of earth and grass wafted through remnants of morning mist.