He shouted in a raucous, tipsy voice, with the microphone turned on, You’re one heck of a funny guy, aren’t you? Think you can come here just to hook up with some gorgeous dame on the sly? Without even singing a single ditty? In the old days, all the young greenhorns, chosen or not, would gladly belt out two, three songs without complaining. So get your ass up on the stage right this minute, rookie, and start entertaining. That’s an order! Alcohol always brought out the worst in him.
I turned my stool to face the man and told him loudly that it was against my policy to sing at a place like this because I was a terrible singer, and that enforcing this policy was the only way to guarantee that the evening wouldn’t get spoiled for everyone. Momentarily, the place exploded with laughter, but his royal highness wasn’t too pleased.
Quit stalling, he shouted again, and hurry the fuck up! He must have mistakenly believed that I’d mocked him. The party dried up all at once. Eriko was facing the counter, looking awfully embarrassed. I whispered in her ear, This is all your fault and got down from the stool to walk over to the stage.
I was handed the microphone but placed it back on its stand and, instead, borrowed a classical guitar from one
of the band members and began to slowly sing the full chorus to April Come She Will. Eriko watched me, amazed.
Following a huge round of applause, the boorish editor in chief, with a cigarette pressed between his lips, gestured for me to sing another tune, but I returned the guitar and went back to my seat next to Eriko’s. After emptying in a single gulp her glass of whiskey and water, in which the ice had already melted, Eriko rested her chin on her hand and fixed her gaze on me.
You’re a big fat liar, she said. You can actually sing well, and you’re probably, like, really versatile, so what’s with that long face of yours? Why do you always look so jaded? It’s so yesterday, you know, that dark and broody air of yours.
I glared at Eriko and thought about getting teary-eyed, but that was too much trouble, so I decided on a slightly different tack.
Momma has terminal cancer, I said. She was admitted last summer and had an operation once, but it didn’t go well. It’s going to become critical soon and the doctor said she might not be around to enjoy the next New Year’s holidays. I grew up in a fatherless family, so it was always just her and me. I can’t help feeling weighed down.
Eriko’s face turned grave. I’m so sorry. How horrible of me.
That’s okay.
I feel so bad. But thank you for telling me. If you hadn’t, I …
Seeing her get so timid, I burst out laughing.
Like I said, you’re convinced too easily. My god, you’re so gullible! One moment you’re calling me a liar, the next you’re getting duped again.
For a moment Eriko looked confused, trying to make sense of my facial expression, and finally went on to say in a serious and strained manner that such a lie was unduly vicious. I dismissed her comment and excused myself, telling her that I needed to get outside for some fresh air soon because I was seriously drunk now. Eriko said she’d leave with me, so I got annoyed, but when I asked where she lived she said Ningyocho, which was in the same direction as Morishita, my place of residence.
Hey, we’re neighbors, huh? Eriko said rather happily, getting down from the stool first.
When I stepped out and felt the cold wind blowing, I sensed my body straightening up, and then said, I know just the place for someone like you. Want to go? Eriko nodded so we walked for approximately ten minutes until we reached Azabu.
The place I brought her to was Mister Donut. When I told her that a glassed-in, well-lit shop like this one—which was brighter than daytime inside—perfectly suited someone who resembled a mannequin like her, Eriko looked terribly uncomfortable. Seeing her like that, I laughed, saying, You’re such a hothead! and then sank my teeth into a sticky doughnut that was nothing but sweet. I suddenly felt nauseous, however, and rushed into the toilet to vomit.
Around ten minutes after I’d crouched down in the restroom, undergoing so much pain and discomfort that I’d completely forgotten about my date, there was a knock at the door. It’s unlocked, I said.
Eriko entered and was about to rub my back but I brushed away her hand, stood up immediately, and went outside the shop.
We then took a taxi to a bar in Nihonbashi where I was a regular, and drank until early morning.
At that shop I began to talk, slightly at length, about Yukio Mishima, the topic that had begun our acquaintance. Eriko seemed to have read Mishima’s novels in her own unsystematic, hopscotch fashion, but was unfamiliar with his superior essays. In a rather unintentionally condescending manner, I explained the evolutionary journey his ideas had gone through, beginning with his call to action and ending in his ritual suicide by disembowelment, his harakiri.
I told her that this is what Mishima wrote.
Life works in such a way that unless it becomes comfortable with the risk of death, its true power can never be evidenced, along with one’s inherent, human tenacity. Just as you can’t prove a diamond is a diamond unless you test its firmness by rubbing a hard, composite ruby or sapphire against it, to test the firmness of life, or to show proof of existence, life perhaps needs to collide with the definitive concreteness of death. Consequently, any life that gets hurt and broken the moment it comes into contact with death perhaps amounts to nothing more than brittle glass.
However, where life is concerned, we live in an ambiguous age. Except for perishing in car accidents, we rarely die these days, completely sustaining ourselves with medicine while managing to entirely elude the threat of tuberculosis, which used to threaten sickly men and women, and the threat of military service, which used to threaten healthy young men. And in a realm devoid of the danger of death, the impulse to affirm your life, to prove your existence, inevitably gets sublimated into the mad exploration of sex on the one hand, and into political action for the sake of violence, on the other. And then, amid such a situation, there is born a frustration so restless that even art ceases to have any meaning. This is because art is meant to be enjoyed by the fireside.
Watching me recite Mishima’s prose from memory, Eriko flashed an envious look. I had to explain to her then that, just like her good looks, her envy was of no consequence in the grand scheme of things. So perhaps, I then said, Mishima, having made his own life collide against his own death with all his might, had, in the end, been instantly shattered like glass. But even if that were the case, I believe he lived a life imbued with more integrity and honesty than any writer of this nation, dead or alive.
10
AFTER THAT DAY, WE met three times in two weeks. But our dates never lasted longer than two hours; we used to part ways as soon as we finished dinner. Although Eriko would return straight home, I’d hurry back to my office to manage my ever-increasing workload; it was the year-end, which was a busy time for me.
Our fourth date took place on December 14, which fell on a Friday I believe. Eriko arrived a little late at the restaurant where we agreed to meet, and as soon as she sat down across from me, she conveyed the news—which she herself had learned only yesterday—that the two of us had become the talk of her office. Apparently, an acquaintance of hers had spotted us eating at an incredibly expensive restaurant in Nogizaka on a previous date.
I told her that it was no big deal, that everyone at my office already knew about us anyway.
Looking surprised, she said she’d been to my office the day before yesterday, but no one there was talking about us.
Of course not, I said. No one’s so tactless as to bring up the subject in front of you to see if the rumor’s true. But, I can tell you for certain that, in my office, we’re a hot topic, you and I. It’s a bit of an incident, after all.
How’d they come to know so easily?
I found it funny how suspicious Eriko was all the time.
The answer’s elementary. I let everyone know about us.
I went on to explain that my stock had
risen just because I was going out with her, and then laughed, saying that it went to show, I suppose, how much she’d been feared all this time. Eriko slowly raised the coffee cup, which had just been brought over to her, and after taking a sip, she fell silent for a while. I told her that if she was uncomfortable, we didn’t have to see each other anymore, but I also added that we weren’t doing anything wrong.
How could we? she asked.
How indeed, I answered.
After leaving the coffee shop, we took a cab to Asakusabashi and ate sushi at a shop where I was a regular. While drinking sake, I reminded her repeatedly about the sequence of events, that at first she’d been interested in me, constantly looking my way, and that only then did I start to gradually take interest in her before we ended up meeting together like we were then.
It was you who began speaking like we were old acquaintances when we first met, Eriko argued at first.
But she got drunk soon, and by the time we left the shop she didn’t give a damn anymore about the matter, admitting, Yeah, it’s more or less as you say.
After that I was led to a bar in Harumi, which was apparently a hangout for Eriko and her friends. There, I sat down on one of the uncomfortable, long-legged chairs lined up in front of a glass counter, downing many glasses of bourbon and soda while silently listening to Eriko talk about various things. Every now and then, she’d glance at my sloshed, vacant face to say, Hey, are you listening? Each time I’d reply, And then what? to urge her to go on, but truth be told, for the most part I was just calmly taking in the view of the busily changing expressions on Eriko’s face, not listening to anything she was saying.
Since we both drank a lot, we ended up laughing very loudly, and Eriko would, over and over again—every couple of minutes, in fact, while pushing back her hair from her forehead with both hands—open her mouth widely and burst out laughing. This gesture was, in a word, stagy. While drawing a picture of a rabbit with drops of booze spilled on the counter, only to erase it and draw it all over again, I wondered why nothing ever penetrated deep inside me; everything just got repelled, like all this water on the surface of the glass counter.
Having become awfully tired, when I boarded the taxi to get home, I rested my head against the window and fell asleep at once. I awoke with Eriko shaking my body. The car had stopped in front of a building I’d never seen before.
When I asked, Where is this? Eriko said, My apartment.
I’m sorry for the hassle, I said, I think I’ve gotten completely drunk.
The taxi door opened and Eriko attempted to pay the driver. For an instant, I thought about restraining myself, but out of my mouth, in a very sleepy tone, came words that were totally opposite to such an intention.
Could you let me, I said rubbing my eyes, have a cup of coffee in your room, if that’s okay? Eriko nodded, so both of us got out of the car.
After passing through the entrance to a large, newish apartment, we got into the elevator, where I gazed on
Eriko’s profile illuminated by the bluish light of a fluorescent lamp. I wondered whether I was going to make love to her tonight in the tired condition I was in, both in terms of mind and body. There wasn’t an iota of excitement left in me, but the moment the offer of soft flesh is made, the due formalities for the male-female transaction are semi-automatically set in motion.
I recalled a passage in a novel I’d read.
Desire, you know, always comes from the outside. It’s not the case that people choose to entrust themselves to their own desires. Desires choose the people they want, and then people just get on board. Fear, humiliation, desire—they’re all just roller-coaster rides that come to a screeching halt before you. These guys are our bosses, see, and we’re not even their drivers. They’re, see, always taking us for a ride, is all.
Although Mishima wrote that launching a mad exploration into sex is how people can affirm their lives—or prove that they exist—in this day and age when death is far removed from everyday reality, I for one can’t possibly imagine sex to be so noble a thing as to warrant some label like exploration. Sex is just like alcohol or narcotics; for both men and women, it’s like being dosed with an injection and becoming mindless.
Eriko’s apartment consisted of a living room and a dining room the size of around twenty tatami mats and a bedroom of around ten tatami mats with a huge walk-in closet. After making a general survey of the place and receiving a cup of espresso from Eriko, I sat down on a leather sofa in a corner of the living room. The bitterness of the coffee coated my mouth, relieving the drowsiness I was feeling until a moment before. I looked at a large photographic portrait hung on the wall. It had caught my eye as soon as I entered the room; in fact, I was so astounded by it I wondered what she was thinking by having that stuff up there. Eriko sat next to me with a large mug in hand. I stood up and approached the wall. After scrutinizing the portrait I looked back and asked, What the hell is this nonsense?
Putting her unfinished cup on a small table before the sofa, Eriko wore a slightly embarrassed face, and then mentioned the name of a certain well-known photographer, adding that after she stood in front of his camera for a test shot during a studio shooting, he’d taken the trouble to enlarge the positive of that shot to its present a gargantuan size and gave it to her as a gift.
Unsatisfied with her account, I walked around the wide living room while sipping my coffee. Upon careful examination, I realized the place was filled with snapshots of Eriko, taken on a trip to some foreign country, framed and displayed on the dining table, shelves, and even on top of the television set.
Looks like you’re a frequent flyer, I said after returning to the sofa.
I simply couldn’t understand how she could go on living so unfazed, gazing at her huge self-portrait every day, and I also couldn’t appreciate the fact that she’d travel overseas often just for the sake of bringing back picture-perfect memories, which she could then carefully frame and preserve.
What do you do there, in all those foreign places? What do you see?
Don’t you like to travel? Eriko responded, genuinely amazed by my question.
Not sure. I haven’t traveled that far, other than for work. Besides, I’ve never felt there’s really anything worthwhile to see out there that would make me want to spend a bucket load of money, or go out of my way to make the time I really can’t, you know. It’s not worth the trouble. The thing about people is that while they’re yearning for faraway places and things, they tend to fail to really see anything all that well, when in reality, they need to be paying attention to what’s near them. What I’m saying is that there’s really nothing important a lavish use of money can ever help us achieve—nothing that really matters, that is.
Besides, I added, I’m tired enough here, so I can’t even begin to think about going anywhere else.
Eriko picked up the mug again, and, wrapping both her hands around it, thought for a while. And then she stood up from the sofa to sit up straight on the deep-pile carpet below, with her legs folded underneath, before looking me straight in the eye and saying, Even so, I’m never satisfied with anything until I see it with my own eyes. When I travel I always gain something, and even though I have no idea how it’ll benefit me, I get all kinds of impressions on the spot, and I think about those impressions later, in retrospect, see, which is why I try to travel alone as much as possible, whenever I travel far.
You gain something, huh? I said. Just what kind of gain do you attain by seeing things with your own eyes?
Eriko broke her posture, stretched her legs, muttered Yeah, and began talking, but not before shyly prefacing with the words, "it’s not really anything serious.
"For example, when I went to a rural town in Thailand, I saw that all the dogs there were afflicted with skin
diseases. Their hair had fallen off from various parts of their bodies, and they were all skin and bones. They all had adorable faces though, with such lovely eyes you’ve never seen in your life, always teary. You ju
st want to, like, get close to them and lift them up and hold them in your arms. But when you see their bodies, all swollen red and scab-ridden, you just can’t get yourself to touch them. You just can’t get up the nerve to, you know, because you feel like you’ll catch whatever they have if you touch them, even though all the Thai kids don’t mind pulling their cheeks and slipping them into their inside pockets, you know. Since public health over there isn’t properly run like it is in Japan, you find a lot of these stray dogs wandering all over town. But I can’t help thinking that, with our achievement in sanitation, we ended up losing something precious in the process."
I got down from the sofa as well with my cup in hand, and sat down on the floor to face Eriko across the table, deciding to listen to her story with an erect posture.
When you travel in Europe, even trains have international routes, right? she went on. "It’s all a single continent, and the nations are actually accessible from one country to the next. When I was standing in the train station in Paris, I could see multitudes of different skin colors, eye colors, and hair colors, surging into the platform, each of them carrying just one small piece of luggage.
"But you know what? The only thing truly different about them was their language. Anybody and everybody was laughing in the same way, embracing the people they were expecting to see in the same way, all the while speaking in entirely different languages. Even though the scene—once you get used to it—ceases to appear strange, the voices you hear never do, the babel of tongues clashing against each other, never becoming one. Do you know what you end up actually hearing when a lot of languages get jumbled up? A sharp, piercing cry, as sharp as a splinter of glass, the kind of noise that makes you want to cover your ears; it’s all so unbearably hideous to me.
The Part of Me That Isn't Broken Inside Page 11