Last Stories and Other Stories (9780698135482)

by Vollmann, William T.

  Atsumori, the flute-playing boy warrior, turned his horse in the middle of the paper river because a Genji warrior had taunted him with cowardice. He rode back to be decapitated—a fact of desperate pathos to my friend and neighbor the terminated salaryman who, unable to inform his family that he was unemployed, had long since become an emperor thin as paper, staggering in the darkness. And on the far bank, a Heike retainer whose crimson stick-body was crisscrossed with long narrow isosceles triangles of pink paper, tips pointing upward, began to draw his sleeves across his eyeless face in token of weeping. If only he had dared to rescue Atsumori, or at least die with him! Having stood ready to reward his fidelity with silver coins, which I planned to make for him by cutting out circles from a soapland advertising flyer, I now enjoyed the pleasure of despising him, while he wept and wept until we could all begin to see straw-islets in the lavender mirror of marsh water behind him. Atsumori’s head was an oval of crinkled silver paper, with a crisp black topknot. For a moment it lay in a polyhedron of pink blood. Then the Genji warrior picked it up, along with the turquoise sliver of his victim’s flute. Thus he had won two trophies. The child’s head would be displayed in the capital, against the will of the Cloistered Emperor. The flute would eventually lead the killer to the Pure Land of Enlightenment, for it uttered notes like night rain. Meanwhile the retainer, yearning and despairing, opened his belly, and the blood was as scarlet as the ribbon in a maiko’s hair. As for the killer, when he mounted his brown paper horse, his yellowish-green paper trimmings rose behind him into a ducktail.

  Although robbing me would have been as easy as snipping off a paper ghost’s topknot, no one ever did it, in part because I shared whatever food I had, and it may be that some people feared that I might be magically protected. Dreaming away my days, praising moon-minted autumns, while Yokihi’s or Nakano’s fragrant black hair bloomed in my heart, and the paper Heike ghosts sang of creeping their forlorn way through wet bracken, I enjoyed the world beyond the paper bridge. A branch of flowers waved in the wind beneath a single cloud. I finally bought scissors at a convenience store. Sometimes I cut out swords or horses for my paper ghosts. A policeman bowed to the Kamakura Regent. Once two uniformed schoolchildren took photographs.

  By now I had learned to hear my ghosts without my thousand-yen note, which had long since gone for less noble purposes. The Cloistered Emperor was always whispering: Disregard these hateful commoners! They are not human beings.

  Just after the first freeze, that bent old crone who had first addressed me in front of the Miu Miu department store became one of us. My tent was in the park, while she was one of those who slept in box houses beneath that long overpass there in Shinjuku. Come winter she thickened herself in so many cast-off jackets that her stoop nearly disappeared within her teardrop waddle. Creeping toward the public toilet, she smiled at me.

  The former soapland employee became my friend, because he adored beauty of all sorts, and had nothing to live for. He pretended that we were two Genji warriors striding shoulder to shoulder, with our swords raised as we prepared to engage the Heike. Once he had owned a magnifying glass solely in order to inspect the minute black strokes of an ukiyo-e print’s willow-shaped eyebrows; and when a portrait of some bygone courtesan especially allured him, he employed it to count her pubic hairs. Like me, he had been idle and extravagant. We agreed on lacking regrets, although his eyes were sad and he ached in his bones. Soon he was sitting beside me for half the day on my scrap of cardboard, sharing cheap sake with me, watching my paper ghosts and describing all the women whom he had loved. In particular, he remembered two sisters named Yoko and Keiko—especially when two of my paper ladies in white-crested pink kimonos began to stride past a lacquered drum which I had cut out for them from a rice cracker package; their mincing little feet barely cleared my shoulder, and the former soapland employee said: Yes, they looked just like that, so beautiful! and he clapped his hands.— Now, that girl in the red kimono’s a paper ghost, he said to himself, or perhaps to me. No, her hand’s warm from the sake we drank together, so I know she can’t be a ghost . . .— He was far more lonely than I. The paper he had been cut from was as black as the opened mouth-square of the Noh knee-drummer who glares straight ahead. No one gave him money, so I took care of him. Once when I came back from buying sake at the convenience store, I found him bent over my paper ghosts (who without me lay dead together in a plastic bag), and he was imploring: If you are someone from the capital, please inform the Emperor that I continue to exist.— He tried to steal Yokihi, soiling her in his attempts to lick the triple tines of naked skin on the back of her white-stenciled neck, but since she was nothing without me, he returned her with apologies, after which we became still closer.— When pneumonia descended on him, as it had last winter and the winter before, the old woman and I cooked soup for him whenever we could afford to do so. Just as the sun of late afternoon pinkens the lobe of a maiko’s ear, so his face grew flushed with fever and drunkenness. If you remember that famous Kabuki scene when Kiyomori confines the Cloistered Emperor in the Prison Palace, you will visualize my friend’s papery gestures of sadness on the night when he told me how sick and desperate he was. He had always been one of those successful prophets who foresaw the worst, did nothing to avoid it, and then exclaimed in agony. Do you remember the Dragon God’s final torment, when a gold-winged bird swoops down to steal his retainers? My bravely defiant friend performed the dance of losing, so that he grew bereft of all his supports. Then he disappeared beneath a flat moon of yellow paper. I could have been a retainer in search of his master. He had always been as invisible as a ghost hidden in skyscraper-shade, so without hope I hunted him here and there, attended by my faithful paper ghosts, who made my living for me even when I felt too dispirited to watch; my life remained as charmed as before, except that I worried about him as I never had about myself, or even Etsuko, who was surely better off without me. I could feel the corners of my mouth pulling down. Wait awhile; wait awhile, sang my paper ghosts. I bit my lip, warming my nose in my mitten or counting cracks in the sidewalk while my paper ghosts performed; sometimes I heard a coin fall into my hat. Then I wandered beneath another overpass. If I could have found him, what a fine dance Yokihi would have accomplished for his rapture! Even the Pale Lady would have entertained him, for she was an accomplished tease. Then he would have laughed between his coughs, which resembled the crying of migrating cranes.— It was not I but the man who eternally read yesterday’s newspaper who found him dead in a public toilet. For a week I felt heavyhearted. But it was cold, and I too felt unwell; I had no strength to grieve for what could not be helped.

  One evening the ancient woman, creeping toward me, with a cane in each hand and a garbage bag tied to her back, lifted up her head with effort, composed herself and inquired: Excuse me, but what do you pray for nowadays?

  Although her question surprised me, I lacked any reason not to answer it, so I said: I prefer not to give up my hopes and desires completely. I hope not to freeze to death before spring. I always desire a little more sake than I have, but perhaps such wishes are permissible in my situation.

  Do you expect your wishes to be fulfilled?

  Well, I’ve left my expectations. Anyhow, I have my paper ghosts.

  That’s right. You’re getting famous in Shinjuku. Even the Yakuza* are talking about you!

  We seated ourselves on a piece of cardboard. My paper ghosts began to play, and so the Genji lady Tomoe, blackhaired and lovely, decapitated Muroshige of Musashi at full gallop, and his corpse took on the many delicious blues and violets in the kimonos and sky of an old ukiyo-e print of Kabuki actors. Yoritomo hanged Yokihi from a flowering cherry whose silhouetted branches writhed into brushstroked Japanese characters. One and all, they watched me serenely, as glad as I that they were dead to me.

  A rich lady approached, carrying a shopping bag in each hand. Her hair reminded me of the wet sparkle of Nakano’s spangled handbag and silver rain
coat, so I smiled at her. She glanced at us in horrified sorrow, then hurried on without giving anything.

  The old woman sat smiling down into the earth. I asked her: You’re a goddess, aren’t you? Did you give life to my paper ghosts?

  Never mind. Would you like to be with Etsuko and her mother again?

  Thank you, but I would rather not be selfish.

  Commendable! said the old woman. You may come to me.

  When she removed her mask, she became a young girl. She had long black hair like the Pale Lady, and when she smiled at me, I seemed to remember an ancient moon rising over reeds.— I bowed until my forehead touched the sidewalk.

  Then she removed her young girl’s mask, and showed herself as an ancient skull. I was afraid for a moment, but I bowed again.

  She said: Are you disappointed?

  No, goddess—

  Just as in a blast of sunlight cherry blossoms may grow so distinct as to resemble paper representations of themselves, so this divinity became ever truer or more false with each unmasking of herself, but in any case no more known; therefore, I supposed that some further aspect of her, no matter whether I ever saw it, might lie beneath the skull, which anyhow grinned at me as easily as did every significant entity in my life—and, after all, who can hope to rob the grave of its mask?

  Come to Mirror Mountain now, she said. I felt free because my heart did not follow after her. Her bent spine was as erotic as the back of a maiko’s neck. So I entered her house, where the summer gardens and winter gardens of richness walled themselves around us both—but only for a moment, to remind me of the paper world I forsook. Our paper ghosts danced for us one more time, although they had all become skeletons. They sang a song about returning to the capital. Yoritomo raised his ribbed paper lance, which was more narrow and three times longer than a chopstick, and then the Pale Lady chanted: Now I sink beneath this mound of grass; now I will fly for awhile.— Then the magic went out of them. I had no complaints; the old woman and I were fond of each other. We earned hundred-yen coins and entertained our friends by acting out the old Kyogen skit about the man who sings best while drunk and in his wife’s lap.

  WIDOW’S WEEDS

  1

  Mrs. Wenuke Lei McLeod was an elegant widow of about forty-five. I met her through her younger sister Rileene, a former lover of mine who happened to be one of my wife’s best friends. While we were intimate, Rileene had led me to believe that she and Wenuke must be estranged, so it was half a surprise when she invited me to meet her at Wenuke’s place; but only half, because when love ends, many impossible things become possible.

  Rileene had been a dark brown slender girl with curly black hair; I especially used to prize the sparkle of ocean spray on her bare brown breasts. She had wanted to marry me; I never trusted the stability of her inclinations. Indeed, less than two weeks after my wife’s death Rileene was unfaithful to me with a Cuban woman named Carmen, who knew how to cook so well that Rileene now went around in maternity dresses. Once her waist had begun to spread, I took equal delight in watching how her fat buttocks swung apart whenever she squatted down. As for the perilous transmutation of love into mere friendship, that Rileene and I had accomplished with small graceful sadnesses and scarcely any resentments. Over time we grew proud of one another. Strange to say, Carmen disliked me. I certainly bore her no grudge.

  Apparently Carmen did not care for Wenuke, either. I was led to believe that Rileene found herself easily bored in her sister’s company; so, since her best companion could not be bothered to join her, Rileene picked up her little mobile phone, which was studded with miniature cowrie shells, and dialled me up.

  The McLeod property had been in the Captain’s family since the very end of the nineteenth century; and at one time it must have resembled the residence of a Yankee sea-trader right down to the widow’s walk on the roof, but since the death of Wenuke’s husband, if not before, the jungle had nourished itself on the place. Creepers grew up the shuttered windows, and the front porch was rotten enough that Rileene, who knew it so well that she must bring guests here frequently, had to show me where not to walk. The roof was sagging with greenery. Orchids grew down from the knocker of the front door.

  As for Wenuke, she wore green and seemed exceedingly quiet. Her youthfulness surprised me. The instant I saw her, I had to have her.

  Watching me, she smiled, her slit skirts half revealing her thighs, in the fashion of banana leaves in the wind. Rileene soon departed. Wenuke awarded her a fluttery little wave.

  As I sat with her beneath a grand old banana tree, whose broken dark leaf-sails shook in the wind, spewing lovely drops of rainwater into our faces, we rocked in a rickety lovers’ swing. Other men might have wondered how many had sat there with her, and whatever became of them. As for me, I was content with adoring the crescent-shaped shadows beneath her eyes. The Captain drowned in a tidal wave, Rileene had said. Fortunately, I have never been attracted to lucky women. Whenever a raindrop fell on her cheek, Wenuke licked it up with her surprisingly long tongue. My heart pounded. Presently she took my hand and led me inside the mildewed old house. I glimpsed vines growing up from the kitchen sink, a bathroom which was now a black hole in the rotten floor, bookcases screened by descending stalks of greenery. Wenuke took me up the black, rotten stairs, pointing to the places that were unsafe. Her bedroom was gloriously overgrown with ferns whose sweet scent masked the putrescence in the walls. The Captain’s photograph still hung from a rusty nail which I could have pulled out with two fingers. He wore a worried look, and mold freckled his bearded face. I cannot believe he would have liked me. But Wenuke, seeing me study the portrait, insinuated herself and turned it against the wall. When the nail slipped out, the picture shattered on the floor, releasing a fat old beetle, perhaps the Captain’s incarnation, that twiddled its feelers indecisively for a moment, then marched into a hole in the wall. Wenuke shrugged. I have never been attracted to sentimental women.

  The bed was a stout mahogany four-poster whose canopy had rotted into something like a spiderweb; impatiently, Wenuke pulled it away by the handful, and once I saw what she was doing I helped her. We ripped away the sodden sheets. The mattress had long since reverted to moss of an almost shockingly emerald brightness. Wenuke was already unbuttoning her dress, which fastened from the back; I undid the last button for her.

  2

  I had guessed what she was, but that only increased my relish; for I knew myself to be a man of experience. Before I was entirely naked, she was already swarming all over me. Even her hair seemed to be twining itself around my throat. Her breath and body were deliciously humid, so that when I lay in her arms I felt all at once refreshed, intoxicated and suffocated. In any event, I could not get enough of her. The coffee-like odor of her armpits, her breasts like a cluster of green papayas around a white trunk, the perfect softness of her legs, her cool ginger-ginseng scent, these were like various desserts set before me on a porcelain plate at a fancy restaurant.

  When she climaxed, she gave off a sudden medicinal smell.

  3

  On closer inspection I learned that the hair in her armpits was actually delicate green vines with leaves like miniature pearls. Her pubic hair was coarse and reddish-brown, like coconut fibers. Her saliva tasted like rainwater. There was a faintly sour-salty smell about her crotch after she had urinated, which she did only rarely and then in transparent brownish-green gushes.

  She had a way of wrapping herself around me and drinking my sweat with her entire body; I could feel the trillion little mouths of her skin.

  Just as influenza sometimes announces herself with a sweetly feverish lassitude—one wants nothing more than to remain on one’s back, enjoying the ceiling through drooping eyelids; and it’s only upon attempting to sit up that the discomforts of sickness become apparent—so what Wenuke was doing to me seemed but part of the sexual act itself, when she let down her long hair-vines and wrapped us bot
h in cool green leaves. Sometimes I would dig my face into the crook of her arm, just to catch my breath, and afterward I would never be sure whether I had slept. In those years I often experienced dizzy spells, as do many men my age; and this sweet greenskinned woman of mine made me a trifle dizzier, but only when I sat up. But there came the time when I finally rose to dress, and she pulled me back down on top of her. Letting her win that contest, I entered her in a frenzy while she twined her legs around me, pulsating, biting me and sucking me. We slept. Then I truly needed to go; I had an appointment. I tried to sit up, but she would not disengage her arms. When I said her name, she opened her evil eyes with the sudden threatening boom of a wave against a lava-cliff.

  4

  Having enjoyed several experiences with supernatural lovers in the past, I was not in the least alarmed. The beautiful Chinese fox-spirits who suck semen out of a man until he dies can be beaten at their own game: sustained, repeated, remorseless penetration will kill them first, so that suddenly, in the middle of the act, the lovely longhaired lady squirming on the bed becomes a sad little fox-corpse with its tongue hanging out. As for the elf-ladies of Central Europe, I’ve found them innocuous, since all they truly desire is a man’s happy surrender for twenty or a hundred years, which in any case spend themselves ecstatically, like a single night. What he-man would pass that up? Everyone you used to know will be gone, of course, but one can’t be miserly in the game of love.