by Ryu Murakami
At this point Hayashi and Yamane came by carrying some old tires that were hung over the side to protect the hull while they were docking.
“Kiku’s girl’s come out to watch,” Nakakura told them. “Let’s all yell her name as loud as we can. Should give her a bit of a thrill.” They nodded.
“You’ll get us in trouble,” said Kiku, trying to stop them, but it was too late. Waving their hands frantically, all three cried out at the top of their lungs:
“DATURA!”
The red umbrella waved merrily in response.
Kiku was writing a note.
Dear Anemone:
At long last we’ll be leaving next week on our shakedown cruise. We’re due to be gone nine days. I’m so excited I can hardly stand it. Our ports of call are the same as I wrote earlier. There’ve been no changes.
When he was finished he looked up, seeming to notice for the first time that there was sunlight streaming into the room. Hopping up and going to the window, he looked out on a world of bright light and deep shadows.
“Summer!” he shouted.
“Asshole,” muttered Nakakura, sprawling on the floor. Hayashi and Yamane laughed. “Hadn’t you noticed? It’s been summer for weeks.” Scratching his head, Kiku gave the wall a few kicks.
“Could you keep it down?” said Yamane looking at him a bit suspiciously. “What’s all the excitement about anyway?”
“Nothing. Just that I’d forgot about summer. And I love it!”
Nakakura rolled over, his tongue clucking irritably. “Asshole,” he repeated. “Summer in jail is hell, man. Look at these windows: no screens. At night you’re soaked with sweat and covered with mosquitoes. Like I said: hell.” Just then a guard opened the peephole in the door.
“Kuwayama, out—now! You’ve got a visitor.”
“Visitor? Shit! She’s here almost every week,” grumbled Nakakura, getting to his feet. “That little Miss Datura is a sweetie, isn’t she?” Kiku buttoned up his uniform and was about to leave.
“Seems it’s your brother,” said the guard.
“My brother? Hashi?” said Kiku, stopping short. The guard nodded.
“The same. I’ve seen his picture in magazines. Some kind of singer, isn’t he?”
“I don’t want to talk to him,” said Kiku, heading back into the cell, but the guard grabbed his arm.
“You don’t have to stay long. Seems he’s sick.”
When Kiku entered the visitors’ room, there was no sign of Hashi, just a large woman with slanty eyes. Thinking they’d put him in the wrong room, he was turning to go when the woman spoke.
“Uh, I’m…. Hashi’s…,” she said, stopping him in his tracks. He suddenly remembered the woman he’d seen with Hashi on TV, the one he’d married. He turned back to look at her but didn’t sit down. “He was here till just a minute ago,” she told him in her deep voice. She rubbed her lips together to smooth the dark red lipstick, looking up at Kiku and motioning him into the chair. “I tried to make him stay, but when he heard you coming down the hall, he ran off saying he had to go to the bathroom. He’s scared stiff of seeing you.” When she moved, the smell of cigarette smoke and perfume wafted from her body. Kiku said nothing. Neva sat, hands clasped under her purse, darting glances at the ceiling or door from time to time. She seemed glad there was a rusty screen between them, making the suffocating closeness a bit easier to take.
“Who are you?” Kiku asked. Neva gave herself a little shake before meeting his gaze.
“I’m Hashi’s wife,” she said, calmly and clearly. Up to this point she had been on the verge of tears, but the words seemed to restore her composure. “Hashi is exhausted,” she went on. “He began acting a bit strange a few weeks ago. He’s been on tour without a break for months, but till recently there was no sign of any problem as long as he was on stage. Then some of the staff began to notice that he wasn’t calming down after the concerts, and he’d stopped talking almost completely. He seems on edge most of the time. When we were in Kyushu, he suddenly decided he wanted to pay a visit home, and he came back from the island in much better shape. But it wasn’t long before he began complaining of insomnia again and he was taking more sleeping pills than before. The doctor said he should take a break from work and have a thorough checkup, and I suggested we cancel the few shows left on the tour and go away somewhere, but he wasn’t interested. He wanted us to book more dates for the tour; he said it was only the concerts that were keeping him alive. And it’s true: when he was on stage he was the same old Hashi, but the rest of the time he just shut himself in his room and sat in the corner talking to himself. When I went in to try to talk to him, it was like he didn’t even know I was there. The last few days he’s taken to sticking black paper over the windows to make the room dark.”
“What does he do in his room?” Kiku asked.
“He listens to tapes,” said Neva. “And usually that wouldn’t matter—it’s part of his job—but the stuff he listens to is weird—animal cries, helicopters, water dripping, the wind, things like that. He brought them back with him after his trip home, and he bought a bunch of sound-effect tapes to add to them. That’s all he listens to. Then, the day before yesterday, he suddenly decided he wanted to come see you. He wouldn’t tell me why—not that he tells me much of anything any more…”
As she finished speaking, Neva noticed Kiku’s eyes shift slowly from her face to the door behind her and she turned to look. Hashi, white-faced, in a white ostrich feather jacket, was standing there with a little cellophane bag of white pills he’d just taken from one pocket. Neva gave a shout when she saw him tear it open and raise it to his mouth. One of the little capsules fell to the floor as she tried to pry the others loose, and Kiku watched it roll away like a fat grain of rice. Then, while the two of them were still wrestling together, he walked to the door, knocked on it for the guard, and left the room without even glancing back. If he hadn’t knocked over his chair when he stood up, Neva wouldn’t have seen him go.
“All done?” asked the guard. Kiku nodded in silence and set off down the corridor, trying to forget what he’d just seen. He tried to drive from his mind the image of Hashi’s ghostly face as he struggled with the woman. There was only one thing like it he’d seen before: the look on Kazuyo’s face, of blood about to come oozing out from the eyes and nose and mouth of a body whose arms and legs had gone stiff and cold—a look he never wanted to see again as long as he lived. He was just thinking how thin Hashi’s arms had looked when a voice called out behind him.
“Kiku!”
“Dumb shit,” Kiku muttered as he walked on. “It’s his own fault he looks like that.”
“He’s calling you,” said the guard.
“Kiku!” Hashi yelled again. His clipped little shout seemed to rattle the doors of the one-man cells that lined the corridor, as though a Hashi clone sat shrieking in each cell he passed. Kiku stopped and the voice broke off. A vision took shape in his head of Hashi’s body lying stiff as a board with blood leaking from his eyes and nose and mouth, and with a shudder he ran back toward the visitors’ room. Don’t die, Hashi, he thought, running as fast as he could. It took the guard a moment to unlock the door, but when Kiku burst into the room, he found Hashi plastered limply against the wire screen, hanging like a monkey in a zoo. His eyes were wild and staring, his jaw working as he chewed at something. Kiku caught a glimpse of a white paste in his mouth: the pills he and Neva had been fighting over. Neva was standing to one side, her face buried in her hands, and Hashi suddenly jerked his head in the direction of the door, signaling her to leave. For a moment she hesitated, looking back and forth between them.
“Get out!” Hashi screamed, sending a stream of chalky spit toward her face. Her shoulders heaved as she wiped the stuff away. When she glanced in his direction, Kiku was instantly reminded of two other women: Kazuyo and the one who had left him in the locker, the person he had killed. He had seen this pained expression on their faces, too.
“Get out!”
Hashi repeated, but Kiku shut him up by punching him hard through the wire barrier, sending him sprawling back against the wall. Neva was about to go and help him when Kiku stopped her.
“Sorry, but you’d better leave us alone for a bit,” he said. Hashi lay on the floor rubbing flecks of rust from his eyes, then eventually staggered to his feet. He wiped his lips with his jacket sleeve, leaving an ostrich feather stuck to the corner of his mouth, and slumped onto a stool.
“Why’d you hit me?” he asked.
“Since when did you start playing Mr. Tough Guy with women?” Kiku countered.
“You didn’t hurt me, you know. I’m too spaced out for that.” Hashi still hadn’t raised his eyes, and they remained firmly fixed on his lap as he continued. “So, you’re looking pretty fit. You know, this is the first time you’ve ever hit me. I’ve seen you hit plenty of other people, but never me… until now… Kiku, I wanted to see you.” He stopped suddenly and looked up, his eyes pleading. It was an old trick, one he had learned in dealing with adults long ago at the orphanage; he would begin talking, voice low, and then slowly, timidly, look up to catch their expression. In that instant he could judge the other person’s attitude: was he liked, was he loathed, would they treat him kindly, or were they going to hurt him in some way. “Kiku, what kind of person was I? I don’t know any more myself; what was I like?”
“Forget that for a minute. What I want to know is why you’ve come,” said Kiku.
“I’ve changed, I’m not the same as I was… Hey, you remember the time we went to check the results of the entrance exams for high school? Kazuyo wanted to go with us, but her low blood pressure used to make her a bit sluggish when she took a bath in the morning, so we went without her. You remember? The bus was really late, so the guy with the jeep from city hall gave us a ride. You remember all that?”
“You’ve been back to the island, haven’t you?” said Kiku.
“Did Neva tell you?”
“How was Milk?”
“Fine. And he remembered me. I’m sure he still remembers you too. I ran into the old lady who had that grocery store; she said I’m the pride of the island. Said you put them to shame.”
Kiku was quiet as he watched a smile curl the corners of Hashi’s mouth.
“You know, I thought you’d look worse than this,” Hashi continued. “Surprised me to see you looking so good. You looked like hell during the trial, and I thought maybe if you were still having a rough time, it might help to think through together this problem I’ve been working on. It’s that sound; you know the one. The doctors played it to us in that room. You don’t remember?”
“I remember.”
Hashi looked up again, startled. “You do?”
Kiku nodded.
“Then what was it? What was the sound?”
“I’ve forgotten.”
“But when did you remember that they were playing a sound for us?” Hashi pressed him.
“After I shot that woman. I heard the same sound for a long time after that, but it’s gone now.” Hashi began to tremble as Kiku spoke. His eyes opened wide and he started to fidget, thrusting his hand in his pocket for more pills, which he tossed in his mouth and chewed up.
“Kiku, I’m scared,” he said. “I look in the mirror and I don’t recognize the face staring back at me. It’s like my body’s split down the middle and the two halves aren’t always doing the same thing. You know what it is? It’s this fly; you see, in every ten thousand flies, there’s one that has a face like a human being, and somehow I swallowed one of them. I figured it out: these human-looking flies are people who did such godawful things in a previous life that they have to come back as flies. That’s what’s buzzing around inside my head trying to tell me what to do… That’s it,” he said, as if suddenly working something out, “yes, I’m sure of it: it’s got to be murder… You see, I’ve only heard that sound once since then. It was in a public toilet down by the river in Sasebo. There was this pervert who was messing with me, and I hit him on the head with a brick; knocked his brains out—I heard it then, but not since.
“Now there’s this fly inside me telling me to do all these bad things; things like cutting off my own tongue, or sticking a chain up some girl’s ass, or grabbing the mike stand and flattening people who climb up on stage. The weird thing is, the more I do this stuff, the better things seem to go, the more famous I get, the more money I make. But I can’t get away from this feeling that I’m splitting in two, this pain in my head… So that’s why I have to hear that sound again. And it was the fly that told me how I could: it said I had to kill the person I loved most in the whole world and then I’d hear it. I had to sacrifice that person and then it’d grant me anything I wished. I know what it said’s the truth; the proof is I heard it when I killed that pervert. I killed him while he was sucking me off; I must have loved him more than anybody else right at that moment, right when he was blowing me, right when I slammed that brick into his skull. That’s when I heard it. And it was the same with you. That woman was your mother, and you heard the noise too when you killed her. I knew it! The fly wasn’t lying. You’ve got to kill the one you love! Don’t you see? That stuff about God being kind and good was bullshit; this world’s being run by the biggest sinner of them all, so when you’ve got a favor to ask, you’ve got to do something terrible to make it happen. That’s it! That’s why I’ve got to kill Neva. You see, Neva’s pregnant, and I’m the father, so if I kill her, I’ll be killing two people. And I’ll hit the jackpot; I’ll hear the sound again! That’s got to be it. Right, Kiku? Right?”
Just at this point the guard poked his head in. “Time’s up,” he said as Hashi rose and headed for the door.
“Thanks, Kiku,” Hashi said. “It’s all clear now.”
“Time,” the guard repeated. Kiku sat in a daze, rooted to his chair.
“Bye, Kiku. Take care of yourself,” said Hashi, and he was gone.
“Wait! Hashi, wait!” Kiku called after him, jumping to his feet, but the guard caught his arm.
“Your time’s up, Kuwayama,” he said. “You’ve had thirty minutes.” Kiku realized he should try to get hold of the woman, but he couldn’t remember her name.
“Ma’am! Ma’am!” he tried yelling, and to his surprise she appeared in the doorway. The guard was tugging on his arm. “Lady, what’s happened to him? He’s crazy, you know, stark raving mad. Who did this to him? Who made him crazy?” But two more guards came in and, grabbing Kiku by both arms, dragged him away. Neva stood staring after him, utterly bewildered.
Hashi was at it again, he thought, on his way back down the hall; as fucked up as ever. It made him want to spit with rage. The same old story: armies of assholes, total strangers, telling them lies. Nothing had changed, not one thing—not since he’d let out that first scream in the coin locker. The locker was bigger, maybe; the new one had a pool and gardens, with a band, people wandering about half-naked, and you could keep pets—yes, this one had all kinds of shit: museums, movie theaters, and mental hospitals—but it was still a huge coin locker, and no matter how many layers of camouflage you had to dig through if you felt like digging, in the end you still ran up against a wall. And if you managed to scramble up the wall, there they were with those sneering faces ready to kick you back down. Knock you down and knock you out, and when you wake up it’s back to jail, back to the bughouse. It’s all cleverly hidden behind potted palms and sparkling pools, behind cuddly puppies and tropical fish, movie screens and exhibitions and layers of smooth lady-skin, but behind it all there’s always the wall, the guards prowling around, the high watchtower. Whenever the gray fog lifts for a second, there they are: the wall, the tower. They scare you stiff, they make you mad, but there’s less than nothing you can do about them; and when you can’t stand it any more and the fear and rage get you moving, get you started doing something, there they are again, waiting for you: the prison, the nuthouse, the lead box for your bones. There’s only one solution, one way out, and that’s to s
mash everything around you to smithereens, to start over from the beginning, lay everything to waste…
Kiku stopped and turned as if he’d just remembered something.
“Hashi!” he shouted, making a break back in the direction of the visitors’ room. The guards stopped him. “Hashi! That sound! It’s a heartbeat! Do you hear? Hashi! It’s your mother’s heartbeat!” His voice echoed up and down the hall.
“Looks to me like you’re the crazy one,” a guard said, laughing.
Anemone stood on the breakwater staring through her binoculars at the Yuyo Maru leaving the harbor. She was wondering how he was going to escape.
Two days earlier, she had quit the bakery. Noriko had cried, saying she would miss her, and four of the girls from the shop had given her a going-away party. They had rented a room in a restaurant and each one had bought her a present; hankies, a key holder, that kind of thing. Noriko had given her a book wrapped in some bright paper.
“The girl in here reminds me of you,” she’d said. “She’s the wife of this writer who gets to be really rich and famous while he’s still young, and they run all over the place partying until she starts to go crazy. Her name’s Zelda.”
“And what’s it about her that’s like me?” Anemone had asked. “I may not be so bright, but I’ll tell you one thing, I’m not going crazy. So what is it?” Noriko had thought for a moment.
“Well, first of all, you’re both good-looking. And even though you say you’re not smart, I think you really are, smart and pretty. But sometimes it seems like there’s something missing, something important—like a shortcake where somebody forgot to put in the vanilla extract.” Noriko took a bite of her jello.
“But that goes for everybody,” one of the other girls put in. “Nobody’s perfect; everybody’s missing something somewhere.” They all nodded.
