Coin Locker Babies

by Ryu Murakami

  Hashi himself was surprised how easily he was able to manipulate the self inside his head, even down to his memories, to make it resemble the confident person he projected on TV. As he thought back, he decided that Kiku, sailing high above the heads of their classmates on his pole, had never been the hero he appeared, but was actually just a musclebound jock; and the girls at school who had laughed at Hashi as he sat and watched, pale and fragile in his school uniform, were stupid, spoiled things who’d never experienced real feelings. And how would that dumb robot Kuwayama react if he had to face an interviewer’s microphone? He’d faint dead away, that’s how. One by one Hashi reworked each memory, and as he did so, he began to realize that the dividing line between his two selves could be traced to a specific incident. Before the incident he had been a victim, unaware of his real role, his mission, all his powers lying dormant. He had been measured by meaningless, arbitrary standards and judged a weakling; simply because he couldn’t swing on the high bar, he had been found wanting, had learned to despise himself. But since that day, everything had changed; he had discovered his own desires, had realized what it was he wanted—he had begun his search for sound.

  And slowly, as he reshaped his memories, he began to recall the incident itself: it had happened after the hypnotist had conjured up the paralyzing terror in him that day on top of the department store by taking him back to the smells and sensations of the coin locker, the feel of the talcum powder, the smell of the stuff all over his body, the puke in his throat oozing from his mouth to mingle with it. She of the botched eye-job and the dyed red hair, she had brought it all back with a vengeance, and he had fled away from the stage, out of the building and down along the river until he found refuge in a toilet in the park. He remembered the dampness, the view of the harbor through the window where everything—sea, sky, buildings, boats—seemed to dissolve in a gray evening haze. As the lights began to come on, the scene had dimmed and an enormous shadow tanker being pulled out to sea merged with the darkness in the distance.

  While he stood looking out the window, Hashi had suddenly sensed that someone else was in the place: a large man in a straw hat, a bum apparently, was squatting in one corner. Almost as soon as Hashi noticed him, the man began to moan and shake the swollen penis in his hand. Hashi remembered thinking at the time that he was very big, but that his body still seemed light, almost buoyant somehow, as if his veins were full of air rather than blood. If he’d had a pin, he might have slipped it deep into the man’s neck and watched him shrivel up like a balloon and go shooting out the window into the night. This was the man of smoke who appeared from the lamp to aid the hero in his hour of need and then, obligingly, withdrew into the lamp when the wish had been granted. As Hashi had stood there in the half-light that evening, the laughing man of smoke had come to him and pulled down his pants, muttering, “Please, pleeease, pleeeeease. Don’t be afraid.”

  Hashi wasn’t afraid. For him, this slobbering, barefoot character was a genie whom the smoke had changed into a faithful dog, and before Hashi could move, the dog crouching there before him had taken his penis in its mouth, which felt less like a mouth than a cluster of soft sea anemones. Hashi closed his eyes and allowed himself to be sucked. His body became warm, and each time he breathed he felt a little sick, but the faithful dog continued to sniffle and whine before him, lapping with its long, whitish tongue. Suddenly a feeling not unlike the urge to pee swept through his body and gathered behind his eyes. From his eyes it invaded his brain, eating away at a wall of cartilage that had been concealing a part of him that now quivered to life; and with that quiver, Hashi realized that his whole body was trembling. The secret thing that had awakened whispered to him to be still as the moist tentacles of the anemones released him one by one, and he felt all the strength drain from his body. It was then that the memory of a great red lump, shriveling and swelling in turn, had come to him, and he had pulled free from the mouth with a yell.

  “OK!” he had ordered. “You can go now; back into smoke!” As Hashi moved away, the big man had followed, still on his knees, drooling and clutching at Hashi’s cock. But the memory was already huge, raw and red and stirring behind Hashi’s eyes. “That’s it,” he told the kneeling man, “you’ve done what you were meant to do, now get back in the lamp!” The man’s pale tongue arched out of his mouth almost to his chin as his straw hat tumbled to the ground. The head underneath was pointed, and it occurred to Hashi that somewhere at the top of that head there must be a switch of some sort, some way to turn the man off. Grabbing a piece of brick that lay nearby, Hashi swung at the switch with all his might. The brick sank into the man’s skull and a puff of bright red smoke came from his head as he staggered to his feet and disappeared through the door into the darkness. Hashi quickly threw the bloodstained brick into one of the toilets, but it was already mixed up with the memory that had come to him. He could hear it now, this memory, somewhere beyond the wail of the balloon man which still rang in his ears.

  And that was how I first came to remember, Hashi realized; a sound that swirled around, became music of a kind, and wrapped me all up. That night, just before he fell asleep, he had seen tropical fish swimming over a coral reef, giraffes loping across the savannah at dusk, a glider soaring above an iceberg—and faces, Kiku, the nuns, the psychologist, and the room with padded walls in the big gray building—but most of all that sound, the one that had wormed its way into his veins and coursed through his whole body. For some reason, perhaps thanks to that degenerate, he had rediscovered the sound that night in the public toilet by the river, and it had changed him. That night the embryo he carried inside him had burst through—for which he had to thank… a pervert? No way! No, the other thing he had discovered was the courage to split the man’s pointy head open with a brick, and that from time to time it would be necessary to add a lump or two to people’s skulls, even his most loyal followers. Why? Because he found it necessary!

  “Sales to date: 29,111 records. Not bad for a newcomer. But you know, kid, I couldn’t buy the window glass in one of those towers with that kind of money.” D’s body glistened as the black masseuse rubbed it with ram oil. Hashi had been called into the boss’s office to discuss the preliminary arrangements for his second album. For the occasion, the woman rubbing D was dressed in a bikini and high-heeled boots.

  “Now the way I figure it,” he went on, “there are about three hundred thousand people out there who’ve heard of a singer named Hashi at this point. But there must be over a million who’ve heard something about some kid left in a coin locker who’s causing a stir. That’s why this second album is so important, and why we’ve got to get it done pronto. I’ve got the lyrics here; have a look.” D didn’t mention that he was sure that after Hashi was reunited with his mother on national TV, there would be several million more who knew who he was. As D saw it, Hashi’s music was like a narcotic: at first, there was a reaction against it, but once people were let in on the secret—the truth of Hashi’s origins—they would begin to accept it. Born in a coin locker! That’s what set him apart from every other bland singer with a passable voice. If he could only get them to listen to Hashi a third time, they’d be hooked.

  The Story Begins

  Point your finger at the sky

  And shoot the sun!

  Bring it shining down

  To blind the world.

  Gather golden shards,

  Knives of light,

  To pierce your heart,

  To whisper in your ear,

  Dull days are almost done.

  I’ll drive you crazy,

  The story’s just begun.

  Heave a sigh and split the night,

  The world lies tattered,

  Gasping at my feet.

  Take the tatters

  For a velvet cloak

  To steal into your room

  To wake you from your sleep,

  Dull nights are almost done.

  I’ll drive you crazy,

  The stor
y’s just begun.

  I’ll drive you crazy,

  The story’s just begun.

  “Well? You like it? It cost me plenty,” said D.

  “Pretty mushy, seems to me.”

  “But do you think you can sing it?”

  “It won’t be easy, but I’ll give it a try.”

  Rising from the massage table, D stared out at the skyscrapers as he rubbed the oil off with a towel.

  “You’d better,” he said, “because you’re going to buy me one of those, Hashi.”

  The black woman took her money and, pulling free of D’s hand which lingered on her hip, changed into a woolen dress without bothering to remove her boots. She stuffed her wig in her handbag while telling him, in Japanese, that he should stretch his neck and shoulders mornings after he’d been out late. When she’d gone, D gave his shriveled penis a flip and smiled at Hashi.

  “What do you say we go down to The Market and buy us some boys? I hear there’s some new talent around.”

  “D, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

  “What? If you’re after another of those rice omelettes, you’re out of luck—all I’ve got here is some soba.”

  “I want you to make Neva my manager.”

  “That old lady? Why?”

  “She’s a wonderful person.”

  “OK, OK, maybe you’re right. Fine, consider it done. But as I was saying, how about us picking up a couple of kids at The Market and having a little party? It’s been a while… And what’s all this stuff about women all of a sudden? Don’t tell me you’ve suddenly changed your ways. You haven’t started liking all the sloppy things that go on down there, have you?”

  “I don’t do men any more,” Hashi announced.

  “Well, listen to him,” said D. Having finished dressing, he reached for the phone and yelled into the receiver, “Soba—now!”

  A few minutes later, a secretary came in carrying two bowls of noodles. D pulled a blue can from the drawer of his desk and removed the lid, spooning a mixture of chicken fat and pineapple into his soup.

  “Want some? Comes from Taiwan. Can’t beat it.” He licked the grease from his fingers as Hashi shook his head. Hashi ignored his noodles, staring at D, whose lips were glistening. He then said softly:

  “Neva and I are planning to get married.”

  Neva had one ambition in life: to design an angel’s costume.

  Her father had been a musician who played the piano when he was younger, or so she was told, but he had never been able to earn his living that way and finally took a job accompanying singers on an accordion in a cafe. Neva’s mother was a student who had frequented the cafe, and the two had married against their parents’ will.

  Shortly after Neva was born, her mother had developed lung trouble. The doctor said it was probably the result of a new medicine she’d taken during pregnancy to ease the birth. At any rate, the young couple soon realized that it wouldn’t do to have a baby and an invalid living in the same tiny house—all they could afford on an accordionist’s salary—so they swallowed their pride and Neva and her mother went home to live with her parents.

  At her family home, an old inn in Okayama, the reception was less than warm; her parents had been urging divorce for some time, but Neva’s mother refused to listen. Nevertheless, it was beneath the high ceilings of this ill-lit, ancient inn that Neva was raised until she was fourteen. Her mother would sit all day in a murky room, coughing her lungs out and dabbling at her watercolors. Since the lung disease was thought to be potentially infectious, Neva had never been hugged or held close by her, so she was only too willing to pose for her, sitting perfectly still on a chair, hands on her knees, as her mother stared at her for hours on end. Nice, too, was the way she always made her look prettier than she really was. While she painted, Neva’s mother often talked to her, telling her that both of them deserved a better home than this.

  Her accordionist father came to visit twice a year, bringing with him dolls and toys that you couldn’t get in the country. He would pick her up again and again and rub his cheek against hers, and when dinner was over he would sing and play the accordion for them. But somehow Neva always hated this skinny man, perhaps because her mother invariably cried after each of his visits.

  At about the time Neva entered elementary school, the accordion player stopped coming to see them. Her mother’s illness seemed to stay the same, never much worse or much better. Neva was the tallest in her grade and an excellent student, but one didn’t often see her smile. It was in the fifth grade that she first got her hands on some dress material and a needle and thread. She wanted to make a snow-white dress, like the one her mother always painted on the little girls in the pictures for which Neva posed, and having found the right material, she worked on it every evening until late. When it was done, she showed it to her mother before anybody else. “It’s a dress for an angel,” she was told, and was given a big hug.

  After that Neva made any number of white dresses, and with each new dress she received a hug. Once, her mother even began to cry as she held her. As Neva remembered it, this must have happened in summer; her mother’s sweat was cold and clammy, and when she had felt it against her skin she’d had a terrifying thought: when she dies, there will be no one left to touch me at all. Even now she had no idea why this had occurred to her; possibly it was brought on by the excitement of finally being touched by a mother who had kept her distance for so long. At any rate, she had suddenly been convinced that no one would ever hold her close again. And unfortunately the idea caught on, and by the time Neva began attending middle school, it was firmly rooted in her mind. When, for example, the boys in her class refused to join hands with her during folk-dancing practice, she took it as a sign, not of the usual shyness of that age, but that her premonition was coming true, and it made her shiver. She bought a book on sewing and turned out one white dress after another, but now, each time her mother wrapped her arms around her, she felt surer than ever that no one else would do this after she was gone.

  Though her mother was against the move, Neva entered a private girls’ high school in Tokyo that was run by missionaries, and from there went on to university. One summer, during a college festival where she was selling some dresses she’d made, a young man stopped and began talking. It was hot, and the student—a tall, tanned boy—suggested something cool to drink. Neva agreed, and by the time she’d finished her fizzy soft drink, she had decided to marry him. That night, she allowed him to do anything he wanted; she still didn’t know his name, but she did know enough to avoid mentioning marriage or related subjects, and things went fairly smoothly. In the days that followed, she refused him what she had allowed once and instead spoke of a certain Swiss fashion-design prize which, if she were lucky enough to win it, would allow the man who married her to lead a pretty easy life. She also let it be known that her family owned a large inn in Okayama, but these facts came out gradually, almost accidentally, as the occasion arose. A year later, the two were married.

  After graduating, the young man became an utterly average employee in an utterly average company, his only source of pride being his physique. As for Neva, she felt absolutely no love for this muscular husband of hers; he had simply been the first man who had ever tried to touch her. Accordingly, she took no pleasure at all in married life, and one suffocating day followed the next with the one consolation that she was at last free of her old obsession. She resisted her husband’s desire to have children and, not having the money to open a design shop of her own, went to work as a stylist; but with the fading of the phobia went her enthusiasm for angels’ clothes.

  Ten years passed this way, Neva hardly knowing if she was dead or alive, and then one day she discovered a lump in both her breasts. They proved to be malignant. Neva cried when they told her she would lose the breasts, but at the same time she realized that the operation brought with it a strange hope: she would probably be able to divorce her husband afterward. Somewhere in her sadnes
s lay a spark of joy; when her breasts were gone, she could leave this man.

  Her divorce was finalized while she was still in the hospital, and with the marriage now behind her, the old familiar worry was waiting. Who, she asked herself, would want to look at the hideous scars? Who would touch her flat, fleshless chest? This time, however, the thought was not a painful one; nor, in fact, was it an illusion any longer but a reality. Still, there was no reason to fear the truth; she simply faced facts, cried for a few days, and that was that.

  Hashi, however, had opened Neva’s scars and let the loneliness she had stored inside flow out. That first evening, in the taxi home, he had grabbed her hand, and Neva had decided then and there that it was time she gave herself a treat. She had taken him up to the apartment, undressed him, and licked his body all over, and while doing this she felt desire for the first time, felt she wanted him to touch her absent breasts. Neva’s ministrations had given Hashi an erection and he was generally beginning to revive. When she turned on the light and asked him to feel her chest, he blinked and glanced down as if uncertain what he’d find; then he burst out laughing, a deep, pleased laugh. Thinking that he was laughing at the idea of touching someone so ugly, Neva had begun to cry, but Hashi took her in his arms and held her tight. Gently rubbing her flat chest, he licked and nibbled his way down her side as his cock pressed against her thigh. “Heaven,” he had murmured.

  D had been unable to resist a little sarcasm when he agreed to make Neva Hashi’s manager: “You lucky bastard, you. What could be better for a fairy’s first?” As for Neva, even after she understood why Hashi had laughed that night, it made no difference. So what if he was queer? She couldn’t care less; it had been a great fuck, he had lapped her up as no one else had ever done, and those lonely memories of hers were laid to rest where they could no longer do her any harm.