by Ryu Murakami
She was silent for some moments and then, in an anxious voice, asked what it might be.
“Meet with me again, and allow me to apologize face to face. Even five or ten minutes would do.”
“I... I’m afraid I don’t really understand. As I wrote in my letter, I always wanted to work in the actual travel business, rather than for a magazine, and—”
“Yes, I know, but that’s not what I mean. I feel bad about my attitude that day. I was extremely rude to you.”
“Not at all. There’s no need to apologize.”
Maybe not, but I wanted to see her anyway. I felt I had to see her. It was because of her that I’d finally realized what a shithead I’d become. So I decided, after some hesitation, to be completely frank. If she refused nonetheless, at least I would know I’d told the truth, which might make it easier to swallow.
“I need to explain something,” I said. “Can you spare another two or three minutes right now?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t want to be anything less than honest with you, or with myself. This is really more about rescuing myself than offering an apology. The truth is, when I saw you, I was reminded of my ex-wife.”
“I’m sorry?”
I could see her puzzled expression.
“I’m sure you know my reputation. I’ve led a somewhat, ah, disorderly life. But please don’t think I have some dodgy ulterior motive in telling you this. Your hands... your hands are exactly like my ex-wife’s.”
“My hands?”
“Yes. You see, my wife... well, I mistreated her. I didn’t realize it at the time, or even when she left me, but I’ve been suffering for it ever since. And I didn’t even know I was suffering.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“I know. And forgive me if this is all just a nuisance for you, but I need to say it. When I looked at your hands, it made me remember that I had hurt someone really important to me, that I’d done things that can’t be undone. Which doesn’t explain why I want to meet you, I know. I know it’s not logical. But for my own satisfaction, my own selfish reasons, I’d like to apologize properly, in person. If you feel you can’t trust me, you can bring a friend, your boyfriend, anyone you like. Please. Would you be willing to meet, even for just five or ten minutes?”
I knew how ridiculous it all sounded. A voice in my head was asking what good it would do to see her, and though I had no answer for that I still felt I should. If the memory of my wife’s hands was a symbol of all that had been missing from my life these past few years, this woman’s hands were the living image of it.
We agreed to meet five days later, in the lounge of my hotel. During those five days, I didn’t touch a drop of alcohol.
I arrived there fifteen minutes early. She showed up seven minutes late. She was wearing another springlike outfit, a dress the color of vanilla ice cream.
“I’m late,” she said, “I’m so sorry. Did you wait long?”
I tried not to look at her hands, afraid that if I did so I’d lose my focus. Fortunately she held them in her lap, under the table.
“Just got here,” I said. She glanced at my empty coffee cup and the cigarette butts in the ashtray and pursed her lips in a little smile.
“Anyway, thanks for coming,” I said. “I know it was an odd request, especially after our first encounter.”
“I’m honored. As I said before, I’m a big fan.”
“Well, I don’t really know how to respond to that. I hardly deserve it. Did what I was trying to say on the phone make any sense to you at all?”
“I think so. You said I reminded you of your wife?”
“When I saw your hands, it did something to me.”
She put them on the table and looked at them quizzically.
“They’re nothing special,” she said, and smiled in an embarrassed way. Seeing those hands in combination with that smile gave me an odd sensation. My heartbeat quickened, but on a deeper level I felt a soothing sense of comfort and ease.
“They’re beautiful. Not in a soap commercial sort of way, maybe, but the proportions are... I don’t know how to put it. They’re so graceful and... alive.”
“Your wife is... ?”
“We divorced. Four years ago.”
“I’m sorry. You said that already, didn’t you.”
“She was an ordinary person. But by ‘ordinary’ I just mean that she didn’t have any need to dramatize herself. It’s not a criticism. I don’t think of the urge to perform as something that adds to a person’s character. If anything, it’s a defect, especially when it’s coupled with a need to compete. Caring for a woman who’s involved in the performing arts requires a lot of effort and understanding. It’s hard work, and some men are good at it and some aren’t, but... I’m sorry. Is this boring for you, this kind of talk?”
“Boring? Certainly not.”
“So, anyway, I was seeing an actress at one point, the lead in one of my films. Like a lot of actresses, she was incredibly good-looking. I was crazy about her, and it was a boost for my male ego too. ‘Look who I’m with’—that sort of thing. Well, I lost my wife as a result of the affair. And then, when the actress found out I wasn’t casting her as the lead in my next film, she dropped me too, just like that. It seemed to me that I’d lost everything, and to distract myself from the loneliness I felt, I began living a pretty eccentric life. Some would call it decadent. But I still felt horribly alone at times, and whenever I did, I would remember my wife’s hands. I met her when I was just starting out, at the ad agency where we both worked. As I said, she was an ordinary woman. But when I remember her hands, it’s like remembering everything I forfeited. Seeing yours made me think of her, and to be honest it rattled me. Rattled me so much I didn’t know what to do, and ended up being unforgivably rude. And I want to apologize for that.”
I stopped talking, and she just sat there peering at me, as if trying to think of something to say. Finally she put her hands back on her lap and said, I see.
We got together regularly from that day on. At first it was only once every couple of weeks or so, for coffee or dinner. We always parted before midnight, and I didn’t escort her home, but it wasn’t as if we’d discussed it and planned it that way. I think we were both maintaining a certain protective distance.
She liked red wine, but we were careful never to drink too much. We probably averaged a couple of glasses each when we met. I felt from fairly early on that we both wanted to take the relationship to the next level, but we weren’t able to let down our guard. I was afraid of alienating her by coming on too strong, and I suppose she was wary of becoming just another of my women.
We’d meet for tea somewhere, take in a movie, have dinner, and say goodnight. Things went on like this for almost half a year, by which time we were both conscious of a certain urgency. I was worried that at this rate our mutual affection might begin to cool, that the special feelings we had for each other would end up as nothing more than close friendship. Male–female relationships are always in transition. If there’s no forward progress, things tend to slip backwards.
I gradually stopped seeing other women, wiping the slate clean. I wrote screenplays for TV dramas, directed some commercials, made preparations for my next movie, and began to think about marrying Mieko. I felt reenergized, and excited about the next film.
We had sex for the first time on a cold and windy night in late October. It began with a pair of satin gloves I gave her. They were pale blue and embroidered with an intricate design. Because the light in the restaurant was too dim to appreciate the embroidery, I invited her to my suite before handing over my little gift. It was the first time she’d set foot in that room since the disastrous interview. She loved the gloves. She put them on and held them up to the light, marveling at the color and texture.
After a while she said it was a little warm in the room
for gloves, though. I sat down next to her on the sofa and helped her peel them off. As those hands reappeared, my heart started pounding. It was more exciting than seeing any woman strip naked. I softly kissed both hands, and the next thing we knew we were in bed.
We agreed to marry. And for the next several weeks everything seemed perfectly easy and right. But it’s during such times that the buds of disaster quietly form.
About two months after the night of the gloves, Mieko came to the studio where I was filming a commercial. It wasn’t her idea; I had caught a cold and asked her to bring me some medicine. The commercial was for a rent-a-car company, and the sound stage had been converted into a tropical beach with a painted sea and sky, a truckload of white sand, and some palm trees. A girl wearing only a T-shirt was to walk away from the camera in slow motion, toward the sea. The young model had been chosen for the shape of her bum. The camera was focused on the background, so that on screen her bare behind would be somewhat blurred, and I had to instruct her repeatedly on how best to move in order to show off her assets. I was intent on getting the sexiest walk possible out of this bottomless twenty-year-old, but I had to be careful not to hurt her feelings or put unnecessary pressure on her, which would have only achieved the opposite effect. As is my style, I tried to maintain a cheery atmosphere, cracking jokes and so on, to keep tension on the set to a minimum. My method is to guide rather than dominate. At one point the girl burst out laughing in a cute but piercingly high-pitched voice, and as she did so I remembered that Mieko was still there, standing against the wall behind me. I sensed something ominous in the air and turned to look at her. She was staring at me, and she wasn’t smiling, much less laughing along.
That night I saw an unforeseen side of her. We were in my suite at the hotel, where she now spent about half of each week.
“So that’s the kind of ass you like.”
The onslaught began with this.
“I’m not angry, and I’m not jealous. I shouldn’t have gone to the studio. I hate myself right now for saying this, but the reality is that before we met, you were always around girls with asses like that, weren’t you, and you’re going to keep on meeting and working with them. You told me you think my hands are beautiful, and I believed that, and it made me happy. But part of me always knew that you belong to a different world. It’s a world I was glad not to be exposed to. I didn’t want to have to see it. But I saw it today, and it really hit me. I realized I don’t belong there at all. The people around you are completely different from me, the way they dress and act, and I felt lost and out of place, and far away from you. I’m not blaming you for that, and I’m not criticizing you. I have a career too, so I know how important work is, and I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with what you’re doing.”
Throughout her offensive, Mieko addressed me as anata, the most neutral term for the second person. For the past couple of months she’d been calling me Yoichi, and before that it had always been Sakurai-san. I didn’t like her calling me anata; it worried me. I knew from past experience that suddenly changing the term of address for one’s partner is a prelude to a storm. Mieko didn’t have the courage to demand that “Yoichi” redress her grievance; by calling me anata she was attempting to put me in a separate box.
My wife was a quiet person by nature, and when we divorced she left without so much as a word of complaint. Her silence was in itself a rejection of rational dialogue, but it was a lot easier to deal with than hysterical rage, which was where Mieko was heading. When people lose control of their emotions, they tend to seek absolute satisfaction from the object of their fury. And since absolute satisfaction does not exist in this world, I knew she was going to rave on until she reached a state of exhaustion, and a certain queer sense of fulfillment.
“I should never have gone to that place. From now on, whenever you’re away working somewhere, I’m going to have to imagine you laughing and chatting up some girl like that. I’m not pretty like her. I’m what you yourself call an ‘ordinary woman.’ The fact that you’re fond of me in spite of that makes me happy, but the truth is, staying here in this suite with you, I always feel I’m out of my league. And today I realized I really am.”
Against my better judgment, I decided to test her. Common sense told me that it would be best to apologize profusely and comfort and reassure her. But if I did that it might just establish a pattern that would tend to repeat itself. Hers was a mildish form of hysteria, but I needed to know whether it was just a passing thing brought on by stress, or an inherent part of her personality, something I’d have to put up with again and again. If I had thought of her merely as a sexual partner, I would have gone to any lengths to console her, apologizing dozens of times if necessary, and repaired the damage in bed. But I wasn’t some horny twenty-year-old.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.” It wasn’t until I said it that I realized it was the same line I’d used the day she came to interview me. She looked at me now with a similarly stunned expression on her face. I sensed that she didn’t know whether to burst into tears and beg my forgiveness or ramp up the vitriol.
“Mieko, you know I’ve done nothing wrong. I was just doing my job, and it’s not as though I touched that girl’s ass. You know what my work is like. My directing style is the same whether I’m shooting a young woman or a herd of elephants: I like to keep the atmosphere free and easy. Listen. If you wanted to discuss this calmly, I wouldn’t mind talking about it all night. But being with you right now, in the state you’re in, is just a waste of time. Go home.”
It was, as I said, a sort of test. She looked shocked, even horrified for a moment. I wasn’t asking her to apologize; she would have passed the test if she’d merely nodded agreement, calmed down a bit, and reflected objectively on her behavior. By telling her to leave I was providing her with the opportunity to regain her composure. But Mieko wasn’t having it.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” she shouted, completely undermining my expectations. “You didn’t touch her ass? That’s because you were at work! Once work’s done, you take her out for some fancy French or Italian, ply her with liquor, and then touch that ass all night long! I know. I know what kind of life you were leading before we met. Everybody knows. Do you have any idea what people in the business call you? Does ‘jizz dispenser’ ring any bells? You did nothing wrong? Oh, no, you’re never wrong, are you? You’re better than everyone else, is that what you think? You think you’re better than everyone else? Do you really think you’re better than everyone else?”
She burst into tears as she continued the refrain. I knew that anything I might say would only get her even more worked up. She hadn’t reached the point of exhaustion, and any further reactions from me might have made her spin out of control and resort to more extreme behavior. I reached out to put my arms around her. Still sobbing, she pushed me away, pushed and resisted, but finally gave in to my embrace. “I’m sorry,” she said, suddenly and unaccountably. “Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me.”
It wasn’t just a passing thing, as it turned out. From that night on, the storms recurred at frequent intervals. But I didn’t break up with her. The episodes became almost like a game, but a game that always ended in extremely intense sex. The somewhat sadistic pleasure I took in the post-hysteria love-making was what kept me from calling it quits—that and my obsession with her hands. I had previously dated three or four women who were prone to hysteria, but Akagawa Mieko was the only one whose outbursts inevitably led to sensational sex. I even wondered at times if it all wasn’t just an act, a kind of ritual foreplay. After abusing me at length in the foulest language, yelling through her tears, she would suddenly turn submissive, pleading for forgiveness and begging me not to leave her. She scared me once when she wound a stocking around her neck and told me to pull it tight at the moment she reached orgasm. It scared me, but it was also the most incredible sex I’d ever had.
We were to be to
gether for three years, repeatedly playing the same wicked game, but from quite early on I stopped thinking seriously about marrying her. It seemed to me that marriage with a woman like this would make my work impossible. And of course my foot-dragging was a frequent trigger for her. She’d ask why we still weren’t married, I’d tell her the time wasn’t right, she’d spiral into a cyclone of emotion, and when it was over I’d fuck her brains out. I have to admit that I’d learned to enjoy the pattern, but marriage no longer seemed an option. Meanwhile, of course, I failed to see how deeply she was being hurt by it all. The bud of disaster that emerged the night of our first fight had quietly continued to swell.
She dropped the bomb on a Saturday afternoon. The bud had suddenly burst into flower.
“Sakurai-san, I’m not going to see you any more.”
There was no high emotion, and I had no idea what had brought this on, but I began to panic a bit. She hadn’t addressed me as “Sakurai-san” for at least three years, since the very beginning.
“Did something happen at work?” I asked her.
She rarely talked about her job, but shortly after quitting the magazine she’d begun working in the marketing department of a big travel agency. She shook her head.
“No. Nothing like that,” she said, and laughed, as if it was a silly question.
I had an ominous feeling about this, but it turned out to be worse than I could have imagined.
“Several times over the past year, I told you I had to go out of town on business and wouldn’t be able to see you for a couple of weeks or so. The truth is, it had nothing to do with business. It had to do with dance.”
“Dance?”
“Cuban dance. I kept it to myself because I enjoyed having a secret part of my life that you knew nothing about, but I started following this Cuban dance troupe around, going to all their performances. I thought eventually I’d drag you along to see them too, but then I began taking lessons with them, and I got involved with one of the dancers.”
