Coin Locker Babies

by Ryu Murakami

  “There’s one that’s still alive,” cried the old man. “Fight them. Don’t let them stick it to you.” An attendant broke away to yell at him, but a shout from the doctors brought him back. The man had bent his body into an arch, a wrestling bridge, making the leather straps bulge along the muscles in his chest; and as they reached their limits, the straps began to tear with an awful grating sound. The teeth inside the man’s head were grating too, until Hashi thought they might snap off at the roots; but suddenly the belts gave way, one after another, with loud cracks. One of the attendants went rolling across the floor, apparently hit in the eye by a buckle, drawing even louder cheers from the hall. Hashi, however, was more interested in the strange smell that seemed to be coming from the man’s mouth, a smell like burning flesh. Somehow, he found it disturbing, and then remembered that he’d smelled it before, in the bathroom where he had stabbed Neva. But before he could give it much thought, the old man across the corridor had launched into a wild tirade.

  “He wakes! The steel giant wakes! Long, long ago he rose from the sea, with the blood of life streaming from his belly. And then they buried him with thunder… and… carrots… at Stonehenge. But now he wakes again. The Age of Rotten Fish is over; the Age of Steel and Bombs is upon us. And he has come to give us life and strength, to free us from these cells, to restore us once again to baseball and pingpong! Sent by God from the Great Beyond!!!”

  Meanwhile, the doctor holding the needle was looking for a chance to use it; but just as he was about to jab it into the man’s neck, an arm burst free from the straitjacket and grabbed one of the attendants by the throat. The attendant groaned as the fingers dug right in, but he managed to draw a hard rubber sap he was carrying and take a good swing with it. There was a thud, then a sort of gargling, laughing sound from deep inside the jacket. With the arm still in front of him, the doctor decided to plant the needle in it right away, but no matter how hard he pressed it wouldn’t penetrate, until it finally bent in half. By this time, some yellowish-looking stuff was beginning to trickle from the nose and mouth of the choking attendant; his tongue, Hashi noticed, had turned white and hung limply at his chin. Working as fast as he could, the doctor prepared a thicker needle, which he then aimed at the artery bulging in the man’s neck. This time it broke the skin, but the pressure underneath was so great there was no way to pump the sedative in.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he muttered, shaking his head, but his voice was drowned out by the other patients’ cheers.

  In the commotion, Hashi slipped out of the cell and trotted off down the hall. The linoleum floor of the examination room was sticky with a soup of medicines spilling out of broken bottles as he picked his way through. There was debris everywhere: stethoscopes, a blood-pressure cuff, a muzzle, I.V. tubes, white jackets, tweezers, and an assortment of pills.

  Outside it was midday. He passed unchallenged through the barbed-wire fence and cut across the courtyard. Nobody around. He headed for the gate, passing beds full of sunflowers that were swarming with bugs. The humming of wings was the only sound in the deserted yard. For some reason he found himself thinking that a mental hospital without patients was very like a prison yard being prepared for an execution, and wondered who the condemned man might be. He went up to an oval pool with a fountain playing in it. He wanted a drink, wanted to wash away the burning feeling in his throat left by the smell from the steel giant’s mouth. Glancing about him, he scooped up a handful of water and held it to his lips; but as he opened his mouth, he gave a little scream. The water was black with dead insects.

  The iron gate that led to the outside world stood wide open. In the street beyond, a car had been abandoned, its windows shattered. There were no dents or other signs of an accident, yet when he looked inside, Hashi found that the back seat was covered with blood and one door had been nearly ripped from its hinges. He set off down a road sandwiched between a large apartment complex and a fireworks factory, noting a strong smell that the wind seemed to blow in from time to time. It was so sharp that it stung his eyes as he walked along, and he could barely keep them open. Still, he was grateful for the smell, since he felt that it was somehow responsible for his being able to walk on and on with nobody to stop him. Eventually, though, when he realized that there was no sign of life in either the factory or any of the apartments, he began to wonder whether his mind wasn’t playing tricks on him. Crazy or not, however, he was all alone, so he might as well use this stench to keep him moving. Who knows, he thought, without it he might just be standing here exhausted, unable to go on.

  He came to an intersection where several cars were standing, but no one was inside. Here, too, there was no sign of an accident, and the traffic light seemed to be working normally, blinking from red to green and back again in pointless repetition. The keys had been left in one of the cars, so Hashi switched on the radio and spun the dial. At the first station, he turned up the volume to find a man’s voice slowly repeating the same message as though reading a weather report.

  “Please shut off your main gas valve. When evacuating, do not take any personal belongings with you. Children under six years of age and women more than eight months pregnant will be given priority on all evacuation routes. Only these groups will be provided with armored escorts… Please shut off your main gas valve. When evacuating, do not take any personal…” He tried other channels, but it was the same on every one. He got out of the car and walked on, following the smell. His steps took him across an empty school playground that seemed somehow familiar, until he remembered that Kiku and he had played in a place just like it back on the island. The yard was littered with tiny shoes and gym clothes and backpacks still filled with schoolbooks. The limer for drawing lines on the volleyball court had stopped halfway through the job, after completing only a right angle.

  Leaving the school, he passed down a narrow street lined with shops. The stink of rotting meat rose from a bag of groceries someone had left in front of a bank, and a hamburger, dropped on a restaurant counter, still had a fork stuck in it. An empty turntable revolved in the window of a record shop, and the slimy mess of trampled grapes, pears, and bananas attracting flies in front of a fruit stand had not yet dried.

  At last he came to the source of the smell: it seemed to be coming from a layer of white powder that had been spread over a park bordered with bamboo. As he was crossing the park, hand over his nose, he realized that beneath the powder about half the area was covered with blue plastic sheeting. The flies were as thick as they had been at the fruit stand. He cautiously lifted one flap of the plastic, then stepped back, shoving his hand in his mouth to stifle a scream: a human foot was visible. He was too frightened to notice the faint smell of burning flesh that clung to his hand. Hearing cicadas singing in the bamboo grove and thinking he might be better off there himself, he made a dash in that direction, fighting the urge to puke.

  Perhaps because the thick leaves blocked out the sunlight, it was humid in the grove and the soft earth sucked at his shoes, making walking difficult. When he reached a clearing, he found the body of a dog, its head split wide open. He stopped, thinking he should bury it; he would dig a deep, deep hole, and while he was digging, perhaps the nausea would go away, letting him calm down enough to think clearly about what he’d seen. The soft earth made for easy digging, and he found himself thinking of the time he had buried the dead child in Toxitown. A breeze rustled the bamboo overhead. He had been right: he was feeling better; even his throat felt less parched. In fact, as he worked, he noticed that his whole body seemed to be growing lighter. A warm, pleasant sensation spread from his throat down through his belly, and he began to feel positively cheerful. That smell. Burning flesh again. This time it was too strong to miss. Feeling a bit light-headed, he had finished the hole and grabbed the dog by one leg when it hit him: a sense of burgeoning power swept through him, and with it an overwhelming urge to tear the dog to bits. The feeling took him completely by surprise. He could feel it exploding in his body
, and closing his eyes and shaking his head did nothing to stop it. He tried to drop the dog on the ground, but his hand resisted him, and a searing pain shot through his head. Despite himself, he held the dog in a tighter grip, and the pain receded. He then found that he’d picked up another of its legs, hearing a voice from somewhere say: “Tear it to bits.” Startled, Hashi looked around, but there was no one else in sight. “Rip it up. Tear it to bits,” the voice said again. Hashi clenched his teeth as gooseflesh rose on his body. It was his own voice. Maybe he really was crazy. Again he tried to let go of the dog, but his head threatened to split open; it was as if someone had cut a hole in it and poured boiling oil over his brain. “Tear it to bits.” The voice spilled out of his mouth of its own accord. “That doesn’t make sense,” he managed to reply. “Years ago, a dog saved me from a coin locker. Why would I want to mangle a poor dead dog?” With a yell, he flung the thing down and staggered away, driven by the pain in his head. His eyes wouldn’t open, and about the only thing he could be sure of, and that vaguely, was the way the asphalt burned beneath his feet. He felt around on his skull, searching for the hole, the one through which the hot oil was pouring in… or was it animal fat? Whatever, it made his blood race, coating his flesh and rotting his muscles as his whole body stiffened. Realizing that his thighs were hot, too hot to bear, he broke into a run, bumping into one obstacle after another with his eyes still shut: a poplar tree, garbage bags, a cinderblock wall, a telephone booth, lampposts, a car’s bumper. From the wet blood running down his face, he could tell that he must have cut his head, but there was no pain. Each time he collided with something, his muscles just grew harder. Finally, he stumbled and fell into a narrow ditch; but no sooner had he come to rest in the warm, murky water that had collected in it than he realized somehow there was someone else nearby. Opening his eyes just a crack, he saw a leg dangling in the ditch, and once again the impulse he had felt before swept over him. His eyes opened wide. He found himself on a tree-lined street, ripples of heat rising from the pavement. Close by, a woman in a polka-dot dress sat with one leg in the ditch, her eyes glassy and unfocused. From a corner of his own mouth something greenish dribbled down. He had the weird sensation that he’d become a giant—that he could kill her with his little finger. He drew nearer and discovered that the woman was pregnant. She seemed to have hurt her left shoulder. She sat stirring the dirty water with her foot, then, noticing Hashi standing there, smiled weakly at him.

  “Hey, Doc. Once the morning sickness passes, they say it’s OK to have a beer. But not me; I’ve hardly felt sick at all, but I’ve been laying off the beer anyway.” As she chattered on, he came a step closer, the muscles in his cheeks relaxing as he did so. In his mind, he could see himself putting one hand on either side of her mouth and tearing her head apart like a ripe fruit. Rip her open, he said to himself. Rip her! He noticed the way her throat bobbed as she swallowed, and he could hear himself laughing—a rasping, gargling laugh. A wave of excitement broke over him and he reached for his groin, spraying a wad of cum almost instantly, merely from the pleasure that surged up in him from the hot pavement. But this wasn’t any old climax: this time it didn’t stop, as if gushing up from every pore in his body. He ran his fingers through the woman’s hair and then, closing them into a fist, pulled her out of the ditch. Before she could cry out, he shoved his right hand into her mouth. Sour bile leaked from the back of her throat and her tongue curled into a tight ball as he let go of her hair and wrapped his left hand around her jaw. It was only then that his orgasm subsided, and he felt a soft, cool breeze touching him. But it was more than a breeze: a sense of bliss. Beside himself, he went on pulling, but just as the corners of her mouth began to tear, a shudder ran through his body. He’d heard it: the sound of a heart beating! It seemed to come from far away. Of course! It had to come, the heartbeat, surrounding him, enfolding him at the peak of pleasure, as he put this woman heavy with an unborn child to death. The heartbeat! But… whose? His own? This woman’s? Hashi peered deep down into the dark throat in front of him, and somewhere beyond the web of veins and sinews, at the deepest place of all, he could just make out a thin, clear membrane covered with white spots. And there, on that tissue, an image began to take shape, something familiar, something he knew from long ago: a bird spreading its tail against a background of falling snow—a peacock—the one he had seen that Christmas Eve when Kiku had shot the woman. And in the shadow of those green and silver wings stood a sick old woman smiling calmly. Then the madness took hold of him, and he reached out to rip away the old writer’s skin, only to find another woman concealed within, one he had never seen before. But suddenly he knew: “It’s you. You’re the one who left me in that locker,” he whispered, reaching out again to tear her chest open. In he dived, pushing aside other organs until he came to a warm, slippery, twitching red lump: her heart.

  “At last!” he shouted. “This was the heart! My mother’s! The sound I heard every second of my life until the day I was born!” He gave thanks, thanks to that heart, that sound which had filled his own heart with joy, with the strength to grow, and as he did so, all trace of anger vanished. How could he hate that sound? How could he not forgive his mother? He thanked the old writer and her peacock; and as his mind retreated, back through the maze of veins, back up the dark hole, past the rigid tongue, he realized he no longer wanted to kill the woman he held in his hands. Please, he pleaded, drain this strength from my body, drain every last drop of blood; wrap me back up in a straitjacket, but please don’t let me kill her. Frantically, he searched every corner of himself for some organ, some part of him that hadn’t been affected by that smell, that couldn’t be made to do the bidding of the burning oil. He pleaded with himself, every atom of him from the tips of his toes to the end of each hair, but the oil seemed to have power over every cell. Then, at the last moment, something somewhere gave a twitch. His mind ran desperately through his body once again, searching until he found it: his tongue. But not the part that remained; the last free bit of Hashi’s body was the memory of the tip he had cut off his tongue a long time ago. At once, the memory began probing the spaces between his clenched teeth, then further inside, little by little regaining control over the rest of the tongue. I won’t give in, he chanted to himself. I won’t kill this woman. I won’t stop the beating of her heart. As the mutinous tongue forced its way out, his teeth bit down, trying to sever it, but the pain slowly spread through his mouth, gradually dissolving the oil that coated his vocal chords. Hashi knew then that the madwoman’s heart was still sending its message, the same message as always, still reaching the child deep inside her. He took a deep breath, soothing his tongue and throat with the cool air. The message that the heartbeat carried to the child within was one that never changed. He drew another breath, feeling it refresh his lips, and then a sound emerged—the cry of a newborn baby. Never, he told himself, will I forget what my mother’s heart was telling me. Live! it said. You shall not die! Live! Yes, live! Each beat drummed out the message, imprinting it on my muscles, and veins, and on my voice.

  Hashi let his hands fall from the woman’s mouth. Leaving her, he walked into the heart of the deserted city, his cry melting into a song.

  “Can you hear?” he whispered to the towers in the distance. “Can you hear? It’s my new song.”

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  About the Author

  Born in 1952 in Nagasaki prefecture, RYU MURAKAMI is the enfant terrible of contemporary Japanese literature. Awarded the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1976 for his first book, he has gone on to explore with cinematic intensity the themes of violence and technology in contemporary Japanese society. His novels include Coin Locker Babies, Sixty-Nine, From the Fatherland, with Love and Popular Hits of the Showa Era, all published by Pushkin Press, as well as Audition and In the Miso Soup. Murakami is also a screenwriter and director; among his films are Tokyo Decadence, Audition and Because of You.

  Copyright

  Pushkin Press,

  71-75 Shelton Street,

  London, WC2H 9JQ

  Original text © 1980 by Ryu Murakami.

  English translation © 1995 by Kodansha International Ltd.

  This ebook edition first published in 2013

  ISBN 978 1 782270 34 8

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