Popular Hits of the Showa Era

by Ryu Murakami

  No one was putting any thought into the question of why the general energy level was so low, but it didn’t help that snacks were also in short supply. Nobue had extracted from the fridge a long, vacuum-sealed, fish-meat sausage with the legend MARUHA written vertically down the length of the wrapper, an item that hangs in convenience stores like a relic of the nineteenth century, but it never occurred to him to slice it up into little pucks and hand them around. Instead, he squeezed a tip-of-the-pinky-sized dollop of mayonnaise onto one end and laughed for no apparent reason—Ah, ha ha ha ha ha!—before biting off about two centimeters, peering at the toothmarks in the new end of the sausage and laughing again, then carefully adding another dollop of mayonnaise and repeating the sequence. Ishihara had apparently arrived hungry: along with his One Cup Sake, he’d brought three croquettes in convenience-store packaging—a styrofoam tray sealed with industrial-strength plastic wrap. Nobue hadn’t set out any chopsticks or sauce, however, and the obvious fact that one couldn’t eat croquettes without chopsticks or sauce somehow failed to penetrate Ishihara’s enervated brain. He just sat there playing with the unopened package, making little dents in the taut bubble of plastic wrap with his index finger. Normally even this level of mindless diversion would have triggered audible risibility, but tonight, what with his empty stomach and overall lack of vitality, he hadn’t so much as chuckled. It was extremely unusual for someone of Ishihara’s psychological makeup to go any length of time without laughing. Not even being beaten half to death could keep him from erupting with meaningless laughter—and this is no mere conjecture. Late one night some three years before, he’d been walking through Shinjuku’s Central Park, drunk, and had jumped up on a park bench and begun singing Japanese pop songs at the top of his lungs. When he ignored the repeated cries of “Quiet!” and “Shaddup!” issuing from the darkness on all sides, three middle-aged homeless men approached, dragged him down, pounded him to a pulp, and then, with tears of rage streaming down their cheeks, made a sincere attempt to strangle the life out of him. Homicides of just this sort are not uncommon in places like Shinjuku and Shibuya, but Ishihara survived. Symptoms of cyanosis had already begun to appear on his face, in all their blue and purple glory, when he’d suddenly started laughing so uncontrollably that his startled attackers backed off. Nobue, on first hearing this story, had expressed amazement that anyone could manage to laugh at a time like that. “I don’t know why, but it was really funny,” Ishihara had said, and laughed again at the recollection. “There was this flood of light and sound that was like from a different world, and it cracked me up, and I figured it would be a waste not to laugh, because if you laugh you feel better even if you don’t have any reason to. But mainly I just didn’t want to miss a good opportunity.”

  Kato was eating grapes, of all things, with his wine. The store he’d bought the wine at had been hosting a promotional campaign for the vineyards of Yamanashi Prefecture, and when he paid for the bottle a strikingly unattractive young woman dressed in indigo work pants, like a farm girl from the past, had presented him with a complimentary bunch of fat purple grapes. Eating grapes with wine struck even Kato as odd. “It’s a natural match, I guess,” he mumbled to himself, “like corn and bourbon, or soba noodles and buckwheat gin—except those sound good.” Yano was drinking the most authentic beverage—that mini-bottle of Early Times—but was on much less solid ground when it came to munchies. He had to make do with the eight salted beans he’d discovered in the pocket of his vinyl windbreaker, a predicament reminiscent of that of Japanese soldiers in the last days of the Pacific War. Yano thought of himself as possessing a mathematical mind, and he had removed his octagonal Casio wristwatch and was staring at the digital numbers. When exactly three and a half minutes had gone by he would make a high-pitched Beep! with his voice and pop a bean into his mouth, rolling it around on his tongue for precisely a minute and a half as he contemplated the salty taste, then biting into it and chewing slowly, grinding the bean into a fine mush before swallowing. At the moment of biting down, his face would relax into a smile of genuine bliss. Sugiyama was even worse off. He had nothing at all to eat. He gazed in turn at the fish-meat sausage, the grapes, the croquettes, and the salted beans and ranked them in order of desirability: croquettes, sausage, beans. He considered grapes more appropriate for dessert, an opinion he voiced in a mumbling undertone, interspersed with remarks calling for the withdrawal of American forces from Somalia, but the sad fact remained that he had nothing at all to nibble on.

  None of the five thought to wonder about the cause of their malaise, much less to encourage the others or try to raise everyone’s spirit. The obvious fact that the party might come to life if they pooled their money to buy a large jug of sake or a small keg of beer or a bottle of cheap bourbon for all to share, had not occurred to any of them. While none of these young men were from particularly deprived backgrounds, neither were they familiar with the concept of going out of their way to help others. They lacked the imaginative powers necessary to intuit what others might want or need, having had it impressed upon them since kindergarten that such powers were nothing but a hindrance to survival. Growing up, none of them had possessed any conceivable potential for becoming popular, and none had had even a single experience of being encouraged by anyone else. When one goes through childhood without ever receiving encouragement, one loses the ability to give it, or even to recognize it when it’s offered.

  Sugiyama was down to his last swig of beer, and though the poignant image of what would become of him after it was gone hadn’t even formed in his head yet, he knew he felt terribly alone. His mournful eyes wandered to the window across the room, and then, suddenly, he was on his feet. “Whoa!” he woofed, abandoning the can on the table and making it to the windowsill in what amounted to a properly executed triple-jump. Knowing what lay beyond that window, the other four were close on his heels, taking their drinks and eats with them, and now all five were cheek to cheek at the window, their noses all but pressing against the glass. Through the lace curtain of the window of the apartment across the parking lot, they could make out a familiar silhouette. It was impossible to tell for sure if the woman with the unbelievable body was completely nude. She might have been wearing underclothes or a body suit or leotard, but she definitely wasn’t in a skirt or blouse or trousers or robe or kimono or pajamas. “Whoa” was the only word any of them could come up with to express what they were feeling. Faintly the sound of music with an insistent beat reached their ears, and now they realized that the woman with the unbelievable body was dancing. It wasn’t a frenetic, aerobic-or disco-style of dance, but a sensual affair that involved such movements as whirling in a slow circle with outspread arms, and as they drank in her languidly pirouetting silhouette, with its incredibly long legs, proud, pointed breasts, and firm, round buttocks, Nobue and the others crossed beyond admiration and lust to an overpowering sense of awe. They were aware of the desire to bow and scrape and lift their hands toward heaven like savages deifying a graven image. Yano actually scooted to one side, got down on his knees, and began to pray.

  His prayer was in the form of a song—Nishida Sachiko’s classic “After the Acacia Rain.”

  III

  Like Messiah or Requiem, the song swelled to include the others’ voices as well. The five of them lost all sense of time, muttering, “Whoa…whoa,” in the intervals between lines of the lyric as they watched the woman with the unbelievable body dance. They had sung five choruses when the silhouette slid off the curtain and disappeared into some other part of the apartment—presumably the shower room. But the five maintained their prayerlike positions. In the space of about ten minutes, everyone had undergone a complete spiritual renewal.

  “That was awesome,” Kato said with a sigh when they’d returned to the table. “Hey, O-Sugi, have a beer,” Nobue barked, and handed Sugiyama another can. Ishihara chomped hungrily into his croquettes but neglected to remove them from the packaging first. Styrofoam—or perhaps plastic wrap�
�got caught in his throat, and as his face turned blue he began laughing and spraying croquette crumbs. This long-awaited laughter from Ishihara sealed the collective mood-shift, and Yano tossed all three remaining salted beans in his mouth at once, clapped his hands, and shouted, “Everyone! May I have your attention, please!” He supervised an impromptu scraping-together of capital, and the party-as-usual began.

  When Yano and Kato suddenly appeared at the top of the metal staircase on the old wood-frame, two-story apartment building and came clattering down, Henmi Midori, who’d just relieved Suzuki Midori on stakeout, tensed up. Thinking the enemy was on the move, she immediately pressed the SEND button on her mobile phone. Tomiyama Midori and Takeuchi Midori were already stationed near the deserted cove above Atami, but Suzuki Midori had parked her car at a family restaurant about a hundred meters up the street from Nobue’s and was inside drinking a cappuccino. She had taken only three sips when her beeper went off. Her throat instantly went cotton-dry, but the cappuccino was still too hot to gulp down. Reminding herself that she mustn’t let on to the other customers or the waitresses how nervous she was, she stood up and strolled woodenly toward the public phone near the entrance. In fact, no one was paying any attention to her whatsoever, but as she slowly approached the green telephone, she was internally rehearsing her role: I’m a naughty suburban housewife, and I’m about to arrange a rendezvous with my secret lover….

  “Hi, sweetie. It’s me. Any news?”

  Sorry. Looks like I jumped the gun.

  “Oh…so you’re still at the office?”

  Yes. I thought everyone was leaving, but it was only a couple of them going on some sort of errand. I’m afraid I’m still stuck here.

  “I’ll be waiting, darling.”

  Suzuki Midori went back to her seat and thirstily swallowed half of the now-lukewarm cappuccino.

  Henmi Midori had come to understand, over the past few weeks, just how difficult it is to perform surveillance on a building. Nothing looks more unnatural in contemporary suburban Tokyo than loitering on the street at night, no matter who you are or how you’re dressed. She had given a great deal of thought as to how one could best blend into the scenery, however, and had shared her ideas in the study groups. Perhaps best of all would be to bring an infant or a small child or an elderly person with you. No one would be suspicious if you were with someone who required care and assistance—unless it was the middle of the night, maybe. But a dog was the perfect accessory at any time of day or night. Henmi Midori had once staked out Nobue’s apartment in the company of a friend’s Shih Tzu—an adorable, shaggy little thing. What with cleaning up after the Shih Tzu using the reversed plastic bag technique and having college girls stop to pet the beast and squeal “Kawaii!” she had begun almost to feel like an actual resident of the neighborhood. She often wore a jogging suit and carried a sports drink. Tonight she was dressed casually in sweater and sneakers and jeans, dangling a shopping bag, and keenly alive to the fact that the later it got, the more unnatural it looked for her to be there.

  Yano and Kato returned bearing plastic bags from both the convenience store and the liquor shop and bounded up the metal stairs. This neighborhood was right on the border between the shopping and residential districts. With the twenty-four-hour convenience store just down the street, people came and went at all hours, but after midnight, when the liquor shop and the video rental shop on either side of the convenience store closed, the street would grow dark and quiet. Once the last train on the Keio Line had gone, passersby would be few and far between.

  About ten minutes before the video shop would close its shutters and call it a night, a drunk approached Henmi Midori and asked for directions. He had climbed unsteadily out of a taxi and shouted after it as it drove away—“Asshole!”—then staggered toward Henmi Midori and said, “Excuse me, is Block Two of Section Two around here?” She couldn’t get a clear sense of the man’s age from his face or clothing—he might have been considerably younger than herself, or considerably older—and she wondered anxiously if he wasn’t a plainclothes policeman putting on a drunk act.

  “I’m just waiting for a friend who lives in that apartment building there, so I’m afraid I don’t know this area well, but, let’s see…. I wonder if it isn’t straight up this street? I know Block Six is over that way, and this is Block Seven—you see the sign on that telephone pole? So…”

  That’s right, that’s exactly right, the man said in a defeated voice.

  “I’m going back to my house. Not really a house, it’s an apartment. I’m alone right now. Been alone for three months. Sachiko said the reason she was leaving was because I didn’t get that post in Singapore, but sure enough it turns out she had another man. Some guy who lives a real flashy lifestyle, they tell me, drives a Jaguar and everything, but, you know, about six months ago, this bottle of baby oil came tumbling out of her handbag, and I picked it up and said, ‘What’s this?’ and she said she uses it to keep her skin from getting too dry, but I bet she was actually using it to do nasty things with this flashy man of hers. Exactly what kinds of nasty things, I couldn’t tell you, but maybe rubbing it here and there, or using it to make things slide easier, and so forth. Er, forgive me. I already knew where Block Two was, but I asked you anyway because I wanted to have, you know, a normal conversation. Just a regular conversation. After the Singapore thing fell through, all Sachiko and I ever did was argue. And with women in bars it’s just, ‘Come on, let’s go to a hotel!’ ‘No way!’—like that. I tried ordering in one of those, you know, erotic massages, but it was fifteen thousand yen an hour, so forget about normal conversation. But you, you very kindly tried to help, and I really appreciate that, I really really appreciate it. But, listen, I have a favor to ask you….”

  Even after he’d gone on and on like this, Henmi Midori still had no clue as to the man’s age. It wasn’t that it was too dark to see his face; it was just that there was nothing in his features or voice—or anything else about him—that suggested the energy of a living being. He was like a ghost drifting between death and birth, and you got the sense that if you reached out to touch his raincoat your hand might go right through him, as if he were made of thin air.

  “Don’t hurt anybody, okay?” the man said. “I don’t mean me, I mean I hope you won’t hurt anyone. It’s not good to hurt people. Definitely not a good thing.”

  “I understand,” Henmi Midori said, and the man said, “Thank you, thank you,” any number of times as he staggered off. She watched him until he was well down the road and then muttered, “Idiot.” What do you know about being hurt? she thought. What about people who’ve been murdered? Ever since the death of Iwata Midori, Henmi Midori had made a practice just before going to sleep or just after waking up, not of masturbating, as she had previously done every other day or so, but of pinching the flesh of her own cheeks or lips, hard. The bullet had made a fist-sized hole in Iwata Midori’s face, and there wasn’t much the mortician could do to fix that for the wake. The open casket had been horrible to behold. Poor Wataa! It must have hurt so bad! Even now, Henmi Midori’s eyes would fill with tears each time this thought occurred to her. Just pinching your own face really hurt—what if a hot piece of lead chewed a big, ragged hole in it? What if something like that happened to a member of your family, right before your eyes? The mere thought was like a fire in Henmi Midori’s inner workings. It nauseated her just trying to imagine how she would feel if her own father or mother or son or daughter had a hole blasted in their face or chest and died crying out in agony. She had always thought of people who did terrible things to other people as a completely different species of human being, but…

  A lot of noise was now coming from the apartment she was watching. She could hear the dirtbags’ laughter from here. It sounded as if they were playing rock-paper-scissors. Over the weeks of surveillance, Henmi Midori had come to know all their faces. Even putting aside what they’d done to Wataa, there was something repulsive and unpardonable about those fa
ces. What sort of upbringing could have resulted in features like that? She often thought how good it would feel to slaughter them all, along with all their parents and brothers and sisters, in the cruelest way imaginable.