Coin Locker Babies

by Ryu Murakami

  A young couple spread a blue towel on the rocks just above where Hashi was diving and sat down in the sun. Every day this couple, or another like it—they all seemed interchangeable—spread out the same blue towel printed with the name of the local inn. The woman’s predictably pale skin, slathered with sunscreen, was marked here and there with red blotches left by insect bites. Hashi, cradling his bucketful of shells and sea urchins, reported to Kiku that there were no abalone below, then turned his attention to the newcomers.

  “That lady has a cat, you can bet on it,” he concluded after a quick look.

  Kiku had begun to practice vaulting, using a bamboo pole and the sea as a landing pit. He hadn’t quite got the hang of it yet, but one thing he had figured out was the need for speed in the approach. The faster he could run, the further and higher he would fly; so the first problem was to work out how to run faster. He decided his stance at the start was wrong, recalling the way Bob Hayes had crouched before the finals of the hundred meters at the Tokyo Olympics: legs set, back extended, every muscle tensed, as if his body were itself a pole. That way, the body would just shoot forward on its own when the strength gave out in the lead leg. He remembered that Hayes had adjusted his stance again and again, checking it against some mental ideal of the perfect sprinter. That must be it, Kiku thought: running was just leaning so far forward you were about to fall on your face and then sticking out the other leg before you actually fell. The first ape to struggle up from all fours must have done it like that, and if it was good enough for him, it was good enough for Kiku. So, whenever he raced along the beach, sweat dripping, limbs growing heavy, he pictured his precarious ideal to himself, running on until he was exhausted and the idea of another step had become unbearable.

  As Hashi sat on the rocks drinking orange juice from a thermos, the young man with the blue towel approached and asked whether there were any jellyfish in the water.

  “No, the water’s still warm. They don’t come till mid-August,” Hashi told him.

  The man gave him five hundred yen for the shellfish and sea urchins, which Hashi spent later on a new face mask. The man picked his way back over to the woman and began cracking the shells of the sea urchins with a broad knife. The sound of the blade penetrating the shells distracted the woman, and she stopped fixing her makeup to watch him scrape the ocher roe onto the blade, which he then held up for her to lick with a deft tongue.

  Kiku and Hashi watched the whole scene, riveted.

  “It looks like he’s trying to kill her,” Hashi said. Kiku felt a bit sick imagining the soft yellow eggs dissolving in her warm mouth and sliding down her throat. As a sequel to this, the woman got one of the spines from a sea urchin stuck in the back of her leg, and she bent over while the man tried to extract it with his teeth. He must have tickled her, as she let out a high-pitched laugh that set Kiku’s teeth on edge. Against the dark rocks and the sea, her wriggling leg seemed sickeningly white, and, suddenly despising all women, Kiku spat in the sand.

  “I’d like to beat her to a pulp,” he muttered, as the feverish feeling that had been pent up in his head spread gradually throughout his body. Closing his eyes, he thought murderous thoughts as he mumbled, “Why do they let such gross people on the beach? Why do they let them live?”

  After a while he forgot about the woman, but by then his whole body was burning with the fever. He walked over to the firm wet sand at the water’s edge and pressed his heel into it, lightly at first but then harder and harder. Eventually, he stopped and crouched down, spreading his legs to take the pose of a runner in a racing start. Back arched, palms down, he held his breath and focused on the stretch of beach in front of him. Watching the waves being sucked into the tiny crevices in the sand, Kiku suddenly had a blinding vision of himself running, the vision splitting the air several steps ahead of where the real Kiku was crouching.

  “Go!” yelled Hashi, and Kiku did, as if trying to catch the image of himself speeding away a few steps ahead. At about the third stride in the hard sand, he suddenly felt lighter, as though he had actually merged with the vision and was no longer running but being hurled along. Somewhere just beneath the skin, his muscles seemed to be splitting open, cracking their spiny shell and coming to life. The heat that coursed through him, having nowhere else to go, pumped in bursts to his legs. Feeling on the verge of taking off, of simply flying up into the air, Kiku let out a tremendous yell. I’ve got it, he thought; that spinning metal thing that’s been scaring me all along… it’s in me now!

  4

  The year the boys graduated to junior high school, they had outgrown all their clothes, so Kazuyo took them shopping in Sasebo on the mainland. This was not their first trip to the town, but every time they’d been there it was raining, so Kiku and Hashi always pictured the place as gray and plain. The only thing they liked about it was the seal that lived in a tank on the roof of the department store.

  The store was unusually crowded that day, but they managed to finish their shopping quickly, ate some rice omelettes in the cafeteria, and headed up to the roof. Right where the giant spinning coffee cup usually stood, a temporary stage had been set up; on it was a man, apparently an emcee, wearing heavy stage makeup, a silver suit, and butterfly-shaped sunglasses, and a woman with dyed red hair in a dress dotted with artificial roses. Balloons had been strung up around the stage, and to one side were five fairly elderly-looking men with instruments—a band of some sort, it seemed. Beyond the stage Kiku and Hashi could see the seal’s cage, but the crush of people kept them from getting any closer. After a little introduction, the red-headed woman started a song-and-dance routine to music so loud Kazuyo and the boys could hardly hear one another, and Kiku thought he would slip away to the pet shop to check on the German shepherd puppy he and Hashi had decided to buy with their allowance. But again the crowd was so thick he could hardly move, and eventually all three were pushed gradually toward the stage. From close up, they could see that the woman with red hair was covered all over with powder which was beginning to run in the heat, making weirdly shaped stains on her nylons. When she finished her song, the man in the silver suit came out applauding and babbling compliments in a voice like a crackly radio. The woman, “Miss Kanae,” was sweating hard now, the powder washing from her face to reveal the coarse skin underneath, but she launched gamely into the next song, during which she plucked the artificial roses from her dress and tossed them into the crowd.

  Kiku was starting to feel suffocated and the constant tug of the shopping bags hurt his fingers, while Kazuyo had long since begun looking for somewhere to sit down. But Hashi, who loved singing, was thrilled. He had given his bags to Kiku and squirmed up to the front row to watch the red-headed woman dance around in her snakeskin high heels. At the end, she went into a ballerina’s pirouette with one leg extended, as the aging musicians fumbled with their sheet music. When she finally came to rest, the silver-suited emcee reappeared blowing soap bubbles at the singer.

  “Now, let’s see if we can’t prevail on Miss Kanae to treat us to a spectacle from her first career!” he said, as big red and green balls were brought on stage. Rapidly changing her high heels for crepe-soled shoes, Miss Kanae obligingly hopped up on one of the balls.

  “Right you are! Miss Kanae was a circus star! But she tells me that her real specialty wasn’t acrobatics but riding an elephant or a lion through a sea of fire!” Before he could finish, Miss Kanae had jumped down from the ball and taken the microphone.

  “Yes, dear, but my real forte was hypnotism, you know.”

  “Hypnotism! Isn’t that amazing! I don’t suppose you’d still be able…”

  “I’ve probably forgotten how…”

  “How about it, ladies and gentlemen? Who’d like to be hypnotized by Miss Kanae?” Several hands shot up. “This is a brave crowd—I don’t think I’d be willing—they say it’s a bit dangerous, isn’t it? Well, then, who’ll it be?…”

  “I know how we’ll pick him,” said the singer. “Four years bac
k I had a record; not a very good one, I’m afraid—it never sold much—but is there anyone out there who remembers the title of my record?” The crowd fell silent and the emcee looked a bit embarrassed, but just as he was about to give them a hint, a small voice spoke up.

  “What was that? Louder, please.”

  “Petals of Sorrow.”

  “That’s right. Thank you for remembering,” said the redhead, gesturing in the direction of the owner of the voice. It was Hashi.

  As she prepared to hypnotize Hashi, Miss Kanae asked that the audience refrain from making any noise to allow her to focus her powers. Hashi, seated tensely on the stage, gave a cautious wave at Kazuyo and Kiku. The emcee asked if he had ever been under psychiatric care, to which Hashi answered “No.” A large black box was brought out on stage, Hashi and the woman went inside, and when they emerged ten minutes later, Hashi’s eyes were shut tight. A murmur went through the audience, and the woman put her finger to her lips.

  “Your name and age?”

  “Hashio Kuwayama, thirteen.”

  “Hashio, tell me, where are we now?”

  “Hawaii.”

  “Where in Hawaii?”

  “Near… no, on the sea.”

  “And how is it here in Hawaii?”

  “Hot!”

  The crowd, bundled against the cold, burst out laughing. Hashi, however, was actually sweating and began to take off his coat.

  “What are you doing here in Hawaii, Hashio?”

  “Taking a nap.”

  “You’ve finished your nap, haven’t you?”

  “Yes. I’m fishing.”

  “By yourself?”

  “Kiku’s here too.”

  “And who’s Kiku?”

  “He’s my brother, or my friend, really.”

  “And besides Kiku?”

  “Mr. Kuwayama.”

  “Mr. Kuwayama?”

  “I mean, my father…”

  Kazuyo had begun to look uneasy, and Kiku, thinking he should put a stop to the whole thing, was trying to make his way toward the stage. Hashi was beginning to look pale and anxious, scratching absently at his throat from time to time.

  “Well, Hashio, that’s about enough. What do you think? Hawaii’s too hot anyway. How about going home? Shall we go home?”

  “Where? Home where?”

  “Hmm… Good question. This time, Hashio, why don’t you go back to when you were a little boy; in fact, all the way back to when you were a tiny baby. That’s it, the clock is running backward, back to the time when you weren’t even a year old, to when you were a baby… Well, how does it feel?”

  “Hot.”

  “What? No, you’re home from Hawaii now. Where are you?”

  “It’s hot… so hot it’s killing me.”

  “Hashio, you’ve left Hawaii! You’re a newborn baby.”

  “Stop it!” yelled Kiku at that point, but just as the red-haired woman turned to hush him, Hashi, trembling all over, looked up at the cloudy sky and let out a wail that sent shivers down the spine of everyone within earshot. Startled, the woman clapped her hands three times near Hashi’s head. At this, Hashi opened his eyes, rose from the chair, and began to stagger around the stage. Forcing his way through the front row of spectators, Kiku jumped up and cradled Hashi in his arms as the redhead, the silver suit, and everyone else watched blankly. For some reason, their uncaring eyes made Kiku furious, and in an instant he had left Hashi, decked the emcee with one punch, and was kicking the woman in the stomach. The audience continued to scream until he was subdued by the doddery band. Having watched all this with a mournful expression, Hashi leapt down from the stage and ran through the crowd, which parted before him; only Kazuyo made any move to stop him, but, caught in the crush and unable to make herself heard, she could only watch helplessly as Hashi disappeared down the stairs. Meanwhile, the band held Kiku pinned face down on the stage, arguing about whether they should call the cops. And, above everything, the seal barked cheerfully.

  Hashi had stopped going to school and even refused to speak to anyone, much as he had at the orphanage when he’d retreated into his miniature kingdom. After he fled the department store, he had been missing overnight, and was discovered the next day unconscious and naked from the waist down in a public toilet in the park along the river.

  This time, instead of building toy kingdoms, he took to watching TV. From the time he got up in the morning until the last station signed off at night, he never left the television. If Kuwayama or Kazuyo so much as mentioned turning the set off, he flew into a rage. Kiku was the only one he spoke to, and then only when they were alone.

  “Do you know how nasty I really am?” was the kind of thing he said most often.

  Kuwayama made plans to send Hashi away for help, but Kazuyo blamed herself and spent a lot of time praying at the local shrine. Hashi refused to speak to either of them, making Kiku his only confidant.

  “I’m not really crazy; I’m just trying to figure something out. Do you remember when we used to go to that hospital and they showed us those movies? Waves and gliders and tropical fish and stuff? Well, when I was hypnotized I realized that all that time we were supposed to be watching movies we were actually listening to some sound; I even heard it again while she had me under, real clear. It was beautiful! So beautiful I felt like I wanted to die just listening. And that’s why I’m watching all this TV; I’m trying to find that sound, and TV’s the best chance I’ve got here on this island. Cooking shows are really good: dishes and glasses clinking, eggs hitting a hot frying pan, sounds like that. Then there’s the sound of guns shooting or bombs exploding, airplanes, the wind, accordions, cellos—I know all the instruments by now. The sound a woman’s skirt makes, kisses, high heels on a metal staircase; I sit in front of the TV, shut my eyes, and listen… By the end of it I’ll know all the sounds in the world. But I won’t go back to school until I figure out what it was we heard at the hospital.”

  Kiku listened quietly, but this time he wondered if Hashi wasn’t, in fact, a bit crazy. His face had the same blank expression as when they’d first met at the orphanage—you felt invisible again when you talked to him. But as it occurred to Kiku that Hashi would probably end up in a hospital, he remembered the time with the play kingdom and how the awful spinning thing had appeared almost as soon as Hashi left him. And now, again, his head began to ache, as if his eyeballs were drying out, and the space right in front of his nose which he could only see when cross-eyed turned a deep, rich green. The colored patch slowly began to expand until it covered both eyes, and everything became very still. Then this blind spot gradually hardened and seemed to grow heavy, becoming a dull metallic wheel; the spinning started… and the buzzing again. As its speed increased, the wheel expanded, until a huge, vague ring hung in the air. Kiku still had no idea what it was, but this time he wasn’t afraid. This time he learned to cope: at the first sign of pain in his eyes, he would set out for a run on the beach, and as he picked up speed the blind spot between his eyes would recede; as the strength flowed into his body, the metal ring would fade and vanish.

  One day, after running on the beach and doing practice jumps with the bamboo pole, Kiku headed for the deserted town. A bright green snake slithered from the shattered entrance to the colliery; everything seemed alive, fluttering in the wind, except Kiku’s own heavy shadow. It had been a long time since he had taken a walk alone, and he used the time to think.

  Sunshine like this feels like midsummer to me, no matter what time of year it is; always has, ever since I was born. They say I went on crying in that locker till they found me… all sweaty; I don’t remember, of course, but it must’ve been hot… Nine others, panting away, but they all died. Hashi and I made it because it was summer… heat and sweat brought us back to life! Must have been summer! That’s why other seasons hardly exist for us… Just heat, light, and shadows…

  I wonder if they’ve still got that paper bag at the orphanage? Books on lace-making she left in the locker with
me. Police checked the fingerprints but couldn’t find a match; at least she didn’t have a record. Must’ve liked making lace… Maybe that’s why I always feel funny when I see lace… All Hashi’s got is those flowers—bougainvilleas his mother left. Keeps those dried petals like they were some kind of charm.

  The wind howled through the streets past peeling signs for empty shops: Shirayama Meats, Harbor Lights Dance Hall, Kamijima Bicycles, Bar Niagara, Restaurant Hanabusa.

  As Kiku turned the corner, Gazelle, busy repairing his bike, looked up to greet him.

  “Alone today?” he asked. Kiku nodded. Gazelle had bleached his hair into a brilliant blond helmet, but his face was black with grease and sweat. “The carburetor’s busted,” he explained.

  “Have you got a bit of bread I could have?” said Kiku.

  “Hungry?”

  “I don’t need much.”

  “I’ve got some cold noodles you’re welcome to,” he offered.

  “I’d just as soon have the bread.”

  “This for you?”

  “No…” said Kiku.

  “For the dogs?” Kiku nodded. Gazelle was back in a minute carrying a small piece of French bread. “They like this stuff best,” he said, handing it over. “But if you’re thinking of doing a little dog-hunting, today’s not the day. It’s the Festival of the Dead this week, and you don’t want to go messing with souls right now, not even dog souls.”

  Breaking the bread in half, Kiku put a piece in each pocket, mumbled, “Thanks, Gazelle,” and turned to go.

  “Kiku, hold on a second. Didn’t you tell me one time that you were thrown out as a baby?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So do you hate your mother for it?” he continued.

  “You mean the woman who left me in the locker?”

  “Right. Do you hate her?”