by Ryu Murakami
“My girlfriend here,” he begins, looking over at the frightened woman in the corner. She seems to know what he’s going to say and shakes her head violently again. He gets up and walks over to her, lays a hand on her shoulder, and tells her in a soothing tone of voice not to worry. I’ve never heard a voice quite like it before. Somewhat hoarse but soft and tranquil, a voice that would put anyone at ease.
“Don’t worry, Eriko. He’s not a cop, and he’s not yakuza. He’s Sakurai Yoichi’s friend. I know it’s true, because I asked him a lot of questions as we were driving here, about where he went to high school and everything, and it all checks out. This man was a classmate of Sakurai’s. They’re old friends. So I just want to explain how all this happened. It’s best to let him know we weren’t out to cause trouble or hurt anybody, right?”
The girl’s pointed chin is trembling as she nods twice, then a third time. The guy sits down next to her.
“I never lie,” he says to me. “Eriko here doesn’t either. She’s way more sensitive than most people, and super shy, and it’s not easy for her to talk to strangers. But she’s not the only one in the world who’s like that, and I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about her. I won’t bother you with our whole story, but when Eriko and I decided to live together we made just one vow—that we’d never lie to each other. Or to other people either, no matter what anybody said or did to us. So, Eriko and I, one thing we always do is tell the truth.”
“I believe you,” I tell him, adding, in the gentlest tone I can muster, “Lies don’t exist in this room, then. I’m no liar either.”
“My dream is to become an actor,” he goes on, “and I’m a huge Sakurai fan. I respect him a lot, and I’ve read everything I can find about him. Eriko works as a maid at the Regent Park Hotel, and... Well, I guess you can imagine the rest.”
I nod.
“She didn’t even know he keeps a room there, but when she found out it was on her floor she got all excited about it, knowing how much I admire the man. She thought the video might be an unreleased film of his, and that I’d be thrilled if she brought it home.”
“Makes sense, with that title printed on the spine.”
“She planned to return it after we made a copy. But when we watched it... well, we knew it would be wrong to copy it, and now she was afraid even to return the thing, so we just held on to it.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course. Anything at all.”
“Why did you show it to me?”
“No real reason. I just wanted us all to watch it together one last time. I know it’s only a private home movie, so to speak, but that last scene is fantastic. The music’s good too.”
“Billie Holiday?”
“Is that the name of the singer?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m not crazy about her voice, but it’s a great song. Eriko loves it too. I checked out a lot of CDs with that song on it, looking for a vocal Eriko might like, but couldn’t find one that really worked for me.”
“Wait a minute,” I tell him. “I’ll be right back. Do you have a cassette player here?”
He gives me a puzzled look but nods.
When I open the door of the Corolla, Sakaki, who was fast asleep, jerks awake and shouts something. I ignore him, eject the cassette from the car stereo, and take it back upstairs to the freezing apartment.
I cue up Xiomara Laugart’s version of “All of Me.” The arrangement, by the brilliant flautist and brass arranger José Luis Cortés, is stunning. The drums kick in and are followed immediately by the intro melody, played by what may be the world’s finest brass section—Juan Munguía on trumpet, Herman Velasco on alto sax, and Carlos Averhoff on tenor. All three are ex-members of the legendary Cuban band Irakere. The string players and other musicians are at the top of their game as well, which is essential: a single sub-par musician will muddy an ensemble’s entire sound. The tone colors are vibrant, and as usual I find myself visualizing the notes as glittering gems. And then, after that brief, sparkling intro, Xiomara Laugart’s vocal wafts into the cold room like a warm breeze. Soft and pliant, with a hint of huskiness, her voice enfolds the world in its embrace.
“I want to hear it again,” says the girl Eriko, when it ends. This is the first time she’s said anything out loud. She still looks scared, but while the song was playing I noticed her tapping time with the one bare foot that protrudes from the blankets. I want to tell her that not even the most bashful or hypersensitive person in Japan, or the world, for that matter, could keep from moving to the music of Cuba’s best bands.
“Listen to it all you like,” I tell her. “You can keep the cassette.”
And with that I make my exit. As I’m going down the dark metal stairway and walking toward the Corolla, I’m thinking about Sakurai’s promise to use my Cuban tapes in his next film, and deciding I’ll suggest some of the Xiomara Laugart vocals. Not “All of Me,” though—I don’t want him to suspect that I’ve watched the video.
“Mission accomplished,” I tell Sakaki, and I’m about to climb in the car when I hear Xiomara’s voice issuing faintly from the upstairs apartment.
Yo te di
Todo lo que hay en mi...
For some reason, as I strain to listen, the last shot of Sakurai’s video replays in my mind: Akagawa Mieko’s hand, with its encircling fingers and red nails, moving in slow motion and finally freezing in time.
Swans
When I see the Domtoren tower from the bus, an ominous feeling flashes like a strobe light inside me.
The ominous feeling screams as it dives from the top of the tower.
“Here we are,” says the round-faced man in the dark blue suit. The church tower is the centerpiece of Huis Ten Bosch, a Netherlands-themed amusement park in Kyushu. I won this trip in a magazine contest.
The man with the round face gives us our tickets and we file through the entrance gate. As soon as I step inside I can sense the bubbly atmosphere you always find in places like this, where everyone’s having fun, and it reminds me of the two times Takaaki and I went to Tokyo Disneyland. The memory sends a chill down to the tip of my tailbone. This always happens when I think about him, and I have to wonder if it isn’t abnormal to still feel this way. It’s been half a year now since we stopped seeing each other.
My friends all said I was lucky when I told them about winning this trip, and I surprised myself for a minute by thinking maybe they were right.
I got the news one evening just a week ago, after spending the whole day thinking about suicide.
Takaaki was twelve years older than me. He was an event planner, coordinating receptions and parties and things, mostly at those big nightclubs in Tokyo’s wharf district. He’d bring in a DJ from London, or put on a fashion show for a Moroccan designer, or stage a performance where artificial blood was splattered all over the place. He had a wife and two kids, but we slept together the first night we met. He wasn’t that tall, and wore glasses, and was getting a little thin on top, but I fell in love with him. He was different from the other guys I’d been with. In bed at the hotel that first night, I told him about my father. I’d never opened up like that to a man before.
My father had been a salaryman in Urawa, but when I was in high school he made some kind of blunder at work and stopped going to the office. Not even my mother knew all the details, but it seems a young department head from Tokyo had bawled him out for forgetting to fill out a form or something. He wasn’t fired for the mistake, but he quit going to work, and then, after a while, stopped leaving the house altogether. At first he’d shout at my mother when she suggested he see a doctor, but eventually he didn’t have the energy even to do that and pretty much stopped talking at all. Sometimes I’d catch sight of him crying quietly in his room.
We had a small apartment behind the house that we let out, and my mother found a part-time j
ob, so we managed to get by, but as soon as I graduated from high school I left Urawa and started living on my own in Tokyo. This was in the good old days, when a real estate office would pay you hundreds of thousands of yen a month just to show up. I began hanging out with some of the flashy, fun-loving girls I got to know through work, and it was during this period of partying that I met Takaaki.
Lying there naked in bed that first night, I started crying as I told him the story. He said it was important not to hate or look down on my father.
“I’ve never had anything like that happen to me,” he said, “so I can only guess how hard it was for you. But the one thing you mustn’t do is hold a grudge against him. You don’t have to force yourself to like him either, but... How can I put it? To me, it’s about freeing yourself. Thinking about your father makes you miserable, but because he is your father you can’t help thinking about him. You have to free yourself from the trap of your own emotions. Imagine you’re a Formula One driver, with the same problems you have now. If you let them weigh on your mind, there’s no way you can compete. When you’re racing, you need to constantly size up the next turn, picture precisely where to brake and what line to take. And while you’re doing that, all the troubles inside you disappear. That’s the state of mind you have to aim for at all times. That’s what it means to be free.”
Nobody had ever talked to me like this before. Takaaki and I saw each other for a little over a year. Eventually I got pregnant, and we had a terrible fight, and I ended up feeling pretty disillusioned. But I never stopped trusting in the things he said.
Not long after all those articles started appearing in the papers about scandals at banks and financial firms, Takaaki’s business dropped off. Toward the end he was producing cheap commercials for a crab restaurant franchise in Nagoya, and it got so that he didn’t talk much when we met. I was the one who suggested we break up. I was scared: what if he stopped talking completely and just holed up in his room? I told myself it couldn’t happen, that he’d get back on his feet, but the thought of him recovering frightened me too. I knew it would just make me wonder why my father couldn’t do it.
Even after we broke up, he used to phone me every night, and we’d say “I love you” and things to each other. But I wouldn’t meet him. After a while he stopped calling as often, and then, when a couple of months had gone by, he stopped calling altogether. I kept telling myself it was all for the best, but night after night I couldn’t sleep, and finally I just kind of lost the will to do anything. I got laid off from my job and couldn’t pay my rent, and defaulted on payments for clothes and other stuff I’d bought.
I really can’t say why I entered the competition to win a trip to Huis Ten Bosch, at a time when I didn’t feel like doing anything at all. Even eating was more trouble than it was worth—the inside of my mouth was always dry and my throat seemed lined with cotton. I didn’t have any desire to be out and about but felt if I didn’t do something I’d probably go nuts. So I leafed through all the magazines I had lying around and killed time taking personality tests or answering questionnaires for matchmaking services and what have you. It must have been in the same sort of spirit that I filled out the postcard for the drawing—simply for lack of anything better to do. And then, just when the suicide thoughts that kept popping up were starting to scare me, a letter arrived saying, “Congratulations!”
On the morning of my departure, I surprise myself a little by taking extra care with my makeup. I even put on the black lingerie that Takaaki liked so much and, without really understanding why, choose a designer dress I bought long ago and never wore. The other contest winners are mostly girls around my age, but looking at them I feel old. We stroll through the grounds of Huis Ten Bosch in a group, along with people from the magazine and the travel agency and a woman who acts as our guide, and while I’m admiring the windmills and canals and things, I keep wondering how the others must see me. All I have to do is think If Takaaki were here, and tears well up. Most of the girls have already made friends and are chattering away and exchanging cameras to take photos of one another.
A girl comes up to me and says, “Imai-san? I think we’re going to be sharing a room.”
We’re all wearing name tags, and the rooms have been allocated in alphabetical order. My name’s Imai Yurika, and hers is Imamura Yumiko. She’s a pretty girl from Fukuoka, a year younger than me, and she speaks in a quiet, shy voice.
After checking in at the Hotel Europa, as we’re sitting having some tea on the café terrace overlooking a canal, Yumiko suddenly blurts out:
“I think I might have AIDS.”
“What?”
I say this a little too loudly, and she hangs her head and says, “Sorry.”
The café has high ceilings and a big chandelier with an old-style Europe feel to it, and the furniture and tableware and things are all of the highest quality. I’m sipping my tea in my own little world, without paying much attention to anyone else. When you’re surrounded by beautiful things you can forget the unpleasant stuff in life. It was Takaaki who said that, and it’s true. If Yumiko weren’t attractive, I might not have had tea with her in the first place—or I might have been put off by her sudden confession. She’s small and doesn’t have much of a fashion sense, but she’s very pretty.
“I’m sorry,” she says again. “I know it’s crazy to say something like that when we’ve just met. But I have a feeling you’re someone I can talk to.”
“I’m listening.”
In Fukuoka, working at a fairly well-known designer’s boutique, she had sex a few times with a concert promoter from Tokyo and found out later that the guy was extremely promiscuous. That’s the gist of the story.
“He was always going abroad, and buying... you know, women?”
She bows her head again and blushes. I’ve never seen a girl’s cheeks turn red from such close range before. I smile at her.
“Prostitutes?”
“Right. It seems he did it everywhere he went—America, Brazil, Mexico. Europe too.”
“And how did you find out about this?”
“I took all my vacation time and went to Tokyo to see him, but when I got to his condo he pretended he wasn’t home, so I went to his office—I’d been there before—and talked to some of the people there, and they told me.”
The guests coming and going in the lobby and the café terrace are all Japanese, of course, but this doesn’t spoil the mood for me. It’s true that their appearance isn’t exactly appropriate for a hotel like this—you see a lot of golf wear and sneakers, and older men with fanny packs, and groups of middle-aged women in glittery gowns like the things nightclub hostesses might wear. The entire staff, from doorman to front desk to porters, are well trained and attentive, but since the guests aren’t used to the system, there’s a certain awkwardness to all the interactions. The marble of the lobby floor, the revolving door’s spotless glass, the hundreds of lilies arranged in a giant vase, the tapestries, the Rembrandt on the wall, the carpet, the chairs, and even the ashtrays, all have a presence that outshines the human beings in the place. There’s real power in the genuine article. The elderly fanny-packers look forlorn and bewildered walking beneath that grand chandelier: a herd of Orientals who’ve lost their way in an unfamiliar world.
There I go again. Who am I to judge? I don’t exactly match the atmosphere myself. Neither, for that matter, does the adorable, gabbling Imamura Yumiko.
“Are you sure they weren’t just messing with you?”
“Yes. One of them took me into a little waiting room where nobody else could hear and told me everything. He said I shouldn’t go out with someone like that.”
“Did he ask you to go out with him?”
“He said we should have dinner sometime.”
Yumiko doesn’t seem like a stupid girl. Maybe she’s extremely nearsighted, or maybe her parents were older and didn’t dote on her enough, or
maybe she’s had more bad luck than I can imagine. But either she has no idea how attractive she is, or simply assumes that she’s the most beautiful woman on earth. It has to be one or the other.
“So, how did you know the guy was pretending not to be home?”
“At the condo?”
“Yes.”
“I could hear music coming through the door.”
“You should have pounded on it. Kicked it and stuff.”
“I was scared to. I thought I heard a woman’s voice.”
“What kind of music was playing?”
“The Rolling Stones.”
We have dinner together and watch the laser show, then stop off in the wine bar and drink too much port. Yumiko puts away about twice as much as I do. Her cheeks turn bright red, her earlobes pink.
“Imai-san,” she says, “have you ever wondered what you’d do if you got AIDS? The truth is, the guy I was with before the concert promoter was almost as bad. He was a local TV director, and he traveled overseas a lot too, so right after I stopped seeing him I went and had a proper test, because, I mean, you never know when you might meet someone really special, and when you do you want to have a clean bill of health, right? Don’t you think like that?”
And what if that special someone has AIDS, I want to ask but don’t. I’ve always thought that men who tie women up and lash them with whips and things were just filthy perverts, but looking at Yumiko I begin to think I understand them a little. As she gibbers away, I stare at her pink left earlobe. It’s pierced, with a small pearl earring.
“Shall we head back to the room?” I suggest.
Walking behind her, I think to myself: Who’d have thought there were girls who still dressed like this? Black pumps, red skirt, white blouse, yellow cardigan, Meet the Beatles hairstyle, and of course—the pièce de résistance— white bobby sox.
