by Ryu Murakami
He’s a real artist. He’s mostly known as a singer-songwriter, but he also makes movies and paints pictures and things, and even writes novels sometimes. He must be over forty by now, but he just gets better looking all the time.
Right after bursting one of my internal organs he gets into a red sports car. I stand there breathing the aura he left behind and watching the car until it disappears in traffic. I’m feeling a lot better now, and a funny thought occurs to me—that if I were someone my mother’s age I’d probably still be bowing in his direction.
Next to the Italian restaurant he came out of is a jewelry store. I go inside, and the manager, a thin, bearded man in a three-piece suit, smiles gently at me and looks at my hands. “Fingers like that deserve a topaz,” he says.
I’m still thinking about him, my mind full of his face and paintings and music, and when I hear the word “topaz” it’s almost as if he’s the one saying it.
So I take out the ten-thousand-yen bills I got from the customer I couldn’t stand, who less than an hour ago in that highrise hotel room was having his way with my body, leaving it covered with sweat and other sticky fluids. But when I put the ring on my finger, in my imagination I’m my artist’s mistress, and I murmur, I bought it because you recommended it; and though it’s been just thirty minutes since I took a shower I can feel myself starting to get wet down there.
I use three of the semen-soiled bills as a down payment on the ring. Then, in spite of having started the day feeling heavy and tired, and being kind of sick to my stomach the whole time I was tied up having a vibrator stuck in me and smelling that customer’s bad breath, I look at the sign and the menu and the front door of the Italian restaurant my artist came out of and decide to step inside. It feels a little like stepping into a church. A tall waiter shows me to a corner table.
“Something to drink?” he says. I ask for a glass of beer, and when he hands me the menu with a pretty painting of a kitten on the front, I mention the artist’s name and say, “I heard he comes here often, is that true?” The waiter smiles warmly and says, “Actually, today is the first time we’ve seen him for about two months now.”
While eating the little marinated fish the waiter suggested and sipping the beer, I begin to imagine again that I’m my artist’s mistress. We’ve just spent a pleasant time together here, joking about who was more of an animal in bed last night and so on, but since he’s famous and easily recognized he had to leave separately, just a few minutes ago... And as I’m beginning to really enjoy this little fantasy, my beeper goes off.
The sharp, staccato sound cuts through my daydream like a buzzsaw through cardboard, and the smile melts from my face.
A telephone is right next to the cash register. The waiter who’s been so nice is writing something on a long strip of paper but gives me a sympathetic look, as if to say, Busy, aren’t we? Listening to Mama-san’s voice ooze through the receiver, I feel as mortified as I would if my own mother were here having sex, and my heart starts pounding.
“What the hell are you doing, Akiko? It’s Saturday, you know. The phone hasn’t stopped ringing all day!”
Her thick, phlegmy voice is like the sticky goo on one of those plants that eats insects, sucking the shreds of my daydream down a dark red hole, and in a small voice I tell her I’m sorry.
“Where are you now? Aoyama? Eating, eh? Well, the doctor from Kyoto—you know, Yoshie’s client? Dr. Yamagishi. Yoshie’s off today, she’s having her period, so I want you to go in her place. He said two hours, but if you do right by him he’s good for a lot longer. Yoshie always gets him to go an extra two or three hours and comes back with as much as a couple hundred thou. So I want you to go straight to the hotel now, okay? The New Otani. Oh, and he’s into enemas, so don’t eat too much or you’ll be sick.”
When I hang up it seems to me the waiter’s smile is gone. My cheeks are hot, and as I walk out of the place I can hear the S&M toys in my big black bag rattling around. I feel the way I do when a customer makes me say shameful and humiliating things, and though I keep searching for some remnant of my little dream, there’s nothing left of it now.
The client, Yamagishi, is in his early thirties and tall and wiry, not a type I dislike, and he has a nice face and long pianist’s fingers, and he’s wearing a cologne I’ve never smelled before, all of which makes me a bit shy about getting undressed in front of him.
“Could we make it darker in here?” I ask. He laughs and turns out the lights but opens all the curtains and tells me to stand right there in the curved window of the New Otani Tower. The evening sun is pouring in, and all the cars and trucks on the Shuto Expressway down below look like caterpillars or centipedes, little creepy crawly things.
Then he takes a silver bathing cap from his briefcase and tells me to tie up my hair and put it on. I do so, and he says, “You’ve got an awfully big face, haven’t you.” I’m standing there in just my high heels and panties and bra. He takes a beer out of the refrigerator, has a sip, and says, “Shake your ass and peel off your panties like an office girl who’s really shy and ashamed of herself but dying to be fucked.”
I start swiveling my rear end, which is a little hot where the sun’s hitting it, but he says, “What the hell is that—it looks like you’re exercising,” which makes me giggle. He slams his beer down on the table, and with a scary look on his face he shouts, “Don’t laugh, dammit!” He walks up to me and yanks down my bra and pinches my nipples between his fingers.
“Here. This is you. Here and here,” he says, and grabs me down there. “Don’t you dare laugh, you fucking moron,” he says. “You’re nobody, understand? You have no identity. Even you, with your worm-eaten brains, must know what the word ‘identity’ means. You don’t have one. You’re nobody. How can a nobody have feelings, or laugh?”
He’s still squeezing one nipple and jiggling my crotch, and it hurts so bad I think I’m going to pee, but I’m afraid he’ll yell at me again so I hold it in and keep my head down and just keep saying I’m sorry.
“When you think, you think with this and this, you understand? Nod your fucking head or something, dammit.”
He finally lets go and plops down on the sofa, and with my bottom still quivering from the pain, I get on my knees in front of him and take his toes in my mouth one by one and ask him to forgive me. He taps his other foot against the bathing cap on my head and laughs in a clear, cheerful voice like the man on the weather forecast.
I look at the silver cap reflected in the mirror as I tell him I know I’m a moron, and before long I begin to feel like the tips of my breasts and the mound and slit between my legs are the only parts of me that are really alive, and those parts actually seem to be expanding. It’s like those icebergs in Antarctica or wherever, that have just the tip sticking up out of the water: my breasts and pussy seem like that, like they occupy my whole body but only show themselves there, and as soon as that thought occurs to me, other nasty thoughts come crowding in, and I remember how good the sex was with the used computer salesman I was seeing till a couple of months ago, how I felt like one big pussy from head to toe. And with my smooth silver dome reflecting the light of the sinking sun I keep grinding my hips real slow. He makes me do it again and again till I get it right, and finally he tells me to slip my panties off.
Play with Yamagishi lasts about four hours, during which I come more times than I can keep track of and he comes twice in my mouth. While we’re resting between the first and second times we watch a Hungarian film, which he brought in his briefcase along with a little video player, about a boy who has this passion for pigeons.
Before he comes the second time, he has me call a number in Kyoto that I guess is a bar or club he often goes to. This is after he gave me a 400cc enema in the bathtub instead of on the toilet, and I’m pushing a vibrator in and out of myself as I say to the woman on the phone, “I’m about to poop,” and, “The vibrator feels good,” and, �
��I’m sucking Dr. Yamagishi’s cock as we speak”—things like that. The woman starts getting excited and giggles in a weird voice, saying, “Oh, my!” and “How nasty!” and “Make sure you swallow!” And in the end, as he’s coming in my mouth, Yamagishi takes the receiver and calls the woman’s name in a voice like a little kid and says, “I love you!”
He gives me even more money than expected, which makes Mama-san happy when I phone in, so I’m feeling really good as I leave the room and take the elevator down. Walking through that long, long corridor on the main floor of the New Otani I stop in front of a men’s clothing store to look at an Italian coat. I’m thinking about my artist and how good the coat would look on him, when suddenly I realize the topaz ring isn’t on my finger.
I call Yamagishi’s room right away but the operator says, “The guest has requested that no calls be put through.” I can’t think what to do, but finally I go into one of the stalls in the restroom. I spread out everything in my bag on the toilet seat to see if my ring is in there somewhere, but it isn’t.
As I’m putting the things back in my bag—ropes, enema kit, vibrators—I drop a big red candle shaped like a penis, and it rolls out through the gap at the bottom of the door. Three girls are standing by the mirrors, and when I come out one of them has the candle in her hand, looking at it kind of mystified. “Here,” she says and holds it out to me. They must be college girls having a graduation party or something, because two of them are wearing fancy kimonos and the one holding the candle is in a velvet evening gown. All three of them are taller than me and a lot prettier. I can feel myself blushing as I snatch the candle away, and when I turn to leave the one in velvet says, “Just a minute, you,” and grabs me by the arm.
The other girls are telling her to let me go, that I’m not right in the head, which is even more humiliating, and I’m thinking that these are the kinds of women who really do dine with that artist at Italian restaurants and get him to buy them jewelry and things, and I notice that the velvet girl is wearing a ring with a green stone in a really lovely design. I’m feeling kind of panicky and try to pull my arm free but can’t, and she sneers at me and at the wax dildo in my other hand and says, “You’re one of those disgusting women, aren’t you, who make money doing filthy things.”
She’s about ten centimeters taller than me, with big eyes and slender wrists, and my eyes fill with tears, and when she tells me I’m not leaving until I apologize, I don’t know why but I bite her on the wrist.
As I’m running out of the restroom I hear them saying they should call a security guard, so even though what I really want to do is stay and look for my ring I just cut across the lobby to the exit and get in a taxi.
“Are you all right, miss?” the driver says, looking at me in the rearview mirror, and when I put my hand to my face I find tears running down my cheeks. “As a rule I don’t stick my nose in my passenger’s business,” he says, “you’ll have to excuse me, but I’ve got a daughter just about your age, you know, so, look, cheer up, you might think it’s strange coming someone like me, but life’s not all bad, you know,” and blah blah blah. If I had a knife I’d probably stab him.
“I often tell my daughter, you know, people say times have changed, well, I understand that, I do understand that, but there are some things that, well, how should I put it, that transcend the times. I know that sounds kind of hifalutin, but I really do think that, you know.”
He has yellow eyeballs and a face like a lizard, and listening to him blabber on like this is like having someone with really foul breath lick your face, and finally I just shout, “Shut up!” at the top of my voice, and he slams on the brakes. “Fuck you, you pig-faced bitch, get out!” he says, and opens his door and spits on the street.
When I get back to the office Mama-san praises me for getting four hours of play out of the doctor and gives me a Chanel scarf. I’m hungry, so I have a bowl of udon and fried tofu, and then she says I can go home if I want, but I’m hoping there might be a call from a customer that will take me back to the New Otani. I end up waiting in the office till after midnight, but no such luck. When I finally leave I walk around and think for a while, then try calling Yamagishi again, but sure enough the operator won’t put me through. I decide to go back there anyway.
Thinking I might have dropped it in the corridor, I’m walking along very slowly with my head down, until a bellboy comes up and says, “Are you looking for something, miss?” I just shake my head and hurry away, then duck into the cocktail lounge. I sit at the bar and order a gin and tonic.
My heart feezes when I notice some young women all dressed up at a table in the corner. At first I think they might be those college girls, but they aren’t, and while I’m deciding that if I ever see those girls again I’ll kill them, a chubby man with a very pale face says, “May I?” and sits down next to me.
After we sit there side by side for about five minutes he tries to strike up a conversation. He’s wearing Armais cologne, which I hate the smell of.
“Excuse me, but may I buy you a drink? I got some good news today.”
When I don’t say anything he tells the bartender to fix me a cocktail I’ve never heard of, but it’s sugary and easy to drink.
“Those may be sweet, but they’re very strong, made with tequila, so be careful if some dirty old man ever tries to get you to drink a lot of them.”
He smiles as he says this, then tells me he works for a music magazine and shows me a copy. Inside, where they interview people with new records, who do you think they’re featuring but my artist, and I want to rip the page out and gobble it up.
“I’m a fan of his,” I tell him.
“That’s unusual for someone as young as you,” he says, and lights one of his long, skinny foreign cigarettes. “But, then again, I guess the old boy’s as big a star as ever, isn’t he?”
“Do you know him?”
“Ever since he got his start in the business, yeah. Still play golf with him once in a while. He’s... what can I say? He’s one of a kind.”
Then he calls the artist and lets me listen to his actual voice on the answering machine. The way my heart is pounding I think it’s going to explode, and I can’t say anything, but I’m so happy I could cry. So I go with him to his room and suck his thing, which is even paler than his face, and let him stick it inside me and everything.
I’m not sure if I should do it, but I’m feeling brave after the drinks and finally go to Yamagishi’s room and ring the bell.
After a minute he opens the door in a bathrobe. He reaches in his pocket and takes my hand, then puts the topaz ring on my finger. “It’s a bit loose,” he says. “Take it back where you bought it and have them tighten it.”
I start crying, and he mutters, “Oh what the hell,” and lets me in and offers me a beer.
“I don’t need any money, but can I stay here tonight?” I ask, but he tells me he has to work early the next morning, and after kissing me on the forehead and cheek he sees me to the elevator.
When I get back to my place the first thing I do is take the magazine the pale-faced man gave me and cut out the artist’s photo and tape it on the wall and say, “I love you,” very quietly, and kiss the photo, and it’s a very nice feeling, like having a doll you really like, and I call a friend from my high school days and tell her I heard his voice, and then, for almost an hour, I just gaze and gaze at my topaz.
The Wild Angels
I came to Tokyo in 1970 from a town with an American navy base on the western edge of Kyushu.
Some traces of the late-Sixties tumult still hung in the air over Tokyo, but to my eighteen-year-old eyes, accustomed to the excitement of our navy town, the big city just seemed dull.
I was enrolled in a quirky private institute named The Art School, but it wasn’t long before I stopped attending classes. I had arrived in Tokyo with some high-school friends who hoped to make it as a blues
band, but I’d soon parted ways with them and begun living alone. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t study, and I didn’t exercise or take a part-time job or get involved in community service or political activism. It wasn’t so much that I hadn’t found what I was meant to do, as that I was dedicated to the proposition of doing nothing at all.
Not long after arriving, I met a woman named Yoko. She was five years my senior, an office worker who did some oil painting as a hobby and had a voracious appetite for sex—so much so that you had to wonder if the word “nympho” didn’t apply.
Yoko lived in a small rented house alongside the tracks of the Inokashira Line, and we spent weekends there together. Which is to say we were alone in that little house from late afternoon on Saturday, when she got home from work, to Monday morning. I don’t remember ever going out to shop or eat. We didn’t go to any movies, either, or watch television or talk about our lives over drinks. We spent almost all of that time in bed. It didn’t feel as if we were actually in love, or even particularly horny. It was more like being involved in a sport or a club activity, and we went about it with all the zeal of high-school students staying late to rehearse a play or practice baseball. “You must think I’m an absolute sex maniac”—if I heard Yoko say that once, I heard it a hundred times.
In late 1970, however, I met someone else, a married woman named Kimiko, and moved with her to the town of Fussa, next to Yokota Air Base.
The breakup with Yoko was calmer than I’d anticipated. I told her the truth: that I’d met another woman and was going to live with her. Normally Yoko would become furious if I so much as mentioned my first crush in middle school, so I was expecting a fairly violent reaction.
