Grotesque

by Natsuo Kirino

  “Hey, isn’t that your sister?” Johnson asked.

  “Yep. Doesn’t it just overwhelm you with nostalgia?” I answered, biting back my laughter.

  “Well, she’s the one who brought us together—our own little Cupid,” Johnson fired back, in flawless Japanese, letting go with a laugh. We sprawled across the bed in gales of laughter, putting a quick end to our sex.

  “Cupid, huh? I doubt she’d think of it that way.” My ugly older sister with her warped personality! In order to put me back in the mood, Johnson reached over and nuzzled my neck. I tilted my head to the side, accepting his kisses, and gazed at the brown freckles sprinkled across his broad shoulders. His body has grown thick and heavy, and his beautiful hair is now mostly gone. Johnson is already fifty-one.

  When we first met, I was still just a little girl, but even so I knew immediately that this man wanted me. Johnson couldn’t speak much Japanese at the time, and I didn’t know any English. But we still managed to understand implicitly what it was the other wanted to say.

  Hurry and grow up! That’s what he was thinking.

  I will; wait for me.

  Each time my older sister tormented me I fled to the Johnsons’ cabin. Regardless of whether or not Johnson was in the middle of an important business call or entertaining guests, the minute he saw me his face would light up with pleasure. Despite herself, therefore, my sister deserves a good deal of thanks for sending me into Johnson’s arms with her bullying. The biggest obstacle I had to confront was Masami’s kindnesses. She was Johnson’s wife and a former Air France flight attendant. Johnson was five years younger than Masami and was her absolute obsession. She was captivated by his financial stability and his social standing and scared to death of being dumped by him. So if Johnson was sweet on me, Masami had to do her best to act the same. She was constantly plying me with candy and stuffed animals. What I really wanted was the Revlon nail polish she had lining her dressing table. But at least while she was around I had to act like a little girl. I understood that this was for the best.

  I was ecstatic, therefore, when my father said I could stay at the Johnsons’ the day after my sister and I had our big fight. Johnson and I got a bit carried away and did something extremely risky. We slipped sleeping medicine into Masami’s drink. Once she started snoring, we spent the rest of the night cuddling in the bed right there beside her. At other times, when Masami was in the kitchen grilling meat or something with her back turned to us, I would sit in the living room watching TV while Johnson fondled me. I’d have my jeans on the whole time, but he’d rub his hands over me down there. And he’d put my hands around his thing, once it was hard. That was the first time I’d ever touched a man there. I was convinced that Johnson would be my first lover.

  From the very start I believed that I would never have a Japanese boy for a lover. In the first place, they never came anywhere near me, acting like they were terrified of me because I was half and somehow beyond their reach. But as a result, groups of them would gang up on me and play all kinds of nasty pranks. Encountering a bunch of high school boys on the train was always the worst. They’d paw at me so violently that they’d come close to yanking my hair, and I had no choice but to put up with it. One time a group of boys surrounded me and tore off my skirt. My lessons came at a very early age. I learned that in order to survive there was only one way I could fight a man.

  “Well, I’d better be on my way, or I’m going to be late for class.”

  Johnson made a bitter face and pulled himself up, folding his enormous body into two. He was so large that whenever he lay on my narrow bed half his body jutted over the side as if it were about to slide off. Johnson was an English teacher. He taught in a classroom in front of a station on the daky Line. It took just over an hour from here on the express train. He said about twelve women squeezed into the classroom, all local housewives.

  “A fifty-one-year-old English conversation teacher is not very popular, you know. They all want some cute young fella. Why is it that the only ones in Japan who want to study English are young women? If I want to teach I’ve gotta go all the way to a little country town like that. Otherwise I won’t have any students.”

  When Masami filed for divorce, Johnson lost his dignity, his good name, his money, and everything else. He was dismissed from his job as a foreign securities trader. The divorce settlement he had to pay was so exorbitant he might as well have had his skin ripped right off. His relatives, members of some illustrious family from the northeastern part of the United States, turned their back on him and absolutely forbade him ever to see me again. Masami, of course, had aired all our dirty laundry in court, telling the world about Johnson’s relationship with me. “Even worse than a traitor, my husband’s a criminal. He took advantage of the fifteen-year-old girl who had been placed in his care. Those two sneaked around behind my back and did their business in my very own house. You ask how it is I didn’t realize what was happening, since it took place over such a long period of time? I cared for that child! I was so fond of her. I would never in a million years have imagined she could do something like that. I was betrayed not only by my husband but by that girl as well. Can you possibly understand how I feel now?”

  Afterward Masami went to great lengths describing exactly how she had discovered what we were up to. She spared no detail in divulging all our little secrets. Masami was so thorough that before long even the judge and the lawyers were blushing in embarrassment.

  I was still thinking about the past when Johnson, who had finished dressing, gave me a kiss on the cheek. “See you later, my darling,” he said, as he always did. “Bye, honey.” Our parting words—ever the same—were half in jest.

  I was still going in to work at the time. While I stood in the shower, washing away Johnson’s sweat and other bodily fluids, I thought back on the strange fate that had befallen the two of us. No matter how I had wished otherwise, Johnson had not been my first man. The blood that courses through my veins is far more given to lasciviousness than what someone might consider normal. My first man was my father’s younger brother, Karl.

  • 2 •

  It is quite clear to me now. When I was a girl I was abundantly endowed with that certain something that attracts older men. I had the power to arouse a man’s so-called Lolita complex. As fate would have it, though, the older I’ve become the harder it is to retain this charm. It didn’t abandon me all at once. I was still able to turn it on to a certain degree while in my twenties. And because I was born with a beauty far surpassing that of the ordinary woman, I’m still attractive now that I’m thirty-six. But now I work as a hostess at cheap clubs and occasionally I’ll work as a prostitute. I suppose, in the true sense of the word, I’ve grown ugly.

  My lascivious blood leaves me no choice but to lust for men. No matter how common I become, how ugly, how old, as long as there is life in my body I will go on wanting men. That’s just my fate. Even if men are no longer amazed when they see me, even if they no longer desire me, even if they belittle me, I have to sleep with them. No, I want to sleep with them. It’s the retribution for a divinity that no one can sustain forever. I suppose you could say my “power” was little more than sin.

  My uncle Karl came to meet us at the Bern airport with his son, Henri. It was early March, and the air was still crisp with frost. Karl wore a black coat and Henri a yellow down jacket. Wispy-soft whiskers had begun to grow around his lips. Karl looked nothing like my skinny golden-haired father. He was dark and solid. If anything, with his upturned almond-shaped eyes and his black hair, he had an Asian look about him. Karl wrapped Father in a hug, happy to see him again, and then he shook my mother’s hand.

  “Welcome! Welcome home. My wife wants you to come over to our house right away.”

  Mother nodded slightly, withdrawing her hand from Karl’s grasp as soon as she could. Unable to disguise his embarrassment, Karl turned his gaze on me and then backed away. In that instant I knew. Karl was just like Johnson.

  W
hen Johnson and I met, I was twelve and he was twenty-seven, so even though I could hear him murmur in his heart, Hurry and grow up, there was no answer I could give immediately. But when I met Karl I was already fifteen. I recognized at once the lust that lingered in his gaze, and I decided it was time to answer.

  I soon became friends with Henri, who was closer to me in age; he was twenty. He took me to movie theaters, cafés, to the slopes where he skied with his friends. Whenever one of his friends asked, “Who’s she?” he answered, “She’s my little cousin, hands off!” But going out with Henri grew tiresome. All he wanted to do was show me off.

  I noticed something strange. With boys like Henri and classmates who were close to my own age, I was not able to exert the same kind of magical power that I held over grown men. It was practically as though they did not feel my charm. To the boys I was just an ordinary girl, hardly a goddess. Even though they fussed over me, I was not able to arouse in their eyes the same kind of excitement I found in older men. Bored with Henri, I began to devise ways to be alone with Karl.

  One afternoon I stopped by Henri’s house on the way home from school, pretending to have misunderstood when it was we had agreed to meet. I knew at that hour Henri would still be at the factory. I also knew that my aunt Yvonne would be at the bakery where she worked part-time and that Henri’s younger sister would be at school. No one else would be home. My father had told me Karl had to go home shortly after noon to meet with the accountant. Karl was surprised to see me.

  “Henri won’t be home until after three.”

  “Really? I must have misunderstood the time he said. What should I do?”

  “Want to come in and wait? I could make you a cup of coffee.” I couldn’t help but notice the way his voice trembled.

  “Well, if I’m not interrupting anything…”

  “Not a problem. We’re just finishing up anyway.”

  Karl ushered me into the living room. The accountant was in the midst of collecting his papers. I sat on the sofa, which was covered in plain cloth upholstery, and Karl brought me a cup of coffee and a plate of cookies my aunt had baked. The only thing my aunt’s cookies had going for them was their sweetness. Otherwise, they were awful.

  “Have you gotten used to your school?”

  “Yes. Thank you for your concern.”

  “And you seem to have no problem with language.”

  “Henri’s taught me.”

  Karl always wore jeans at the factory, but today he wore a crisp white shirt with gray trousers and a black leather belt. Businessmen’s attire did not suit Karl; he looked stiff and uncomfortable. He sat down across from me, fidgeting, his eyes darting from my legs, stretching out from under my short school uniform skirt, to my face. The tension was growing tedious. I began to believe I was stupid to think that I could get Karl to act. But just when I glanced at my watch, he said, in a voice hoarse with desire, “Oh, if only I were Henri’s age!”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are so charming. I’ve never met anyone as beautiful as you.”

  “Because I’m part Japanese?”

  “Well, let’s just say I was smitten the moment I laid eyes on you.”

  “I like you, Uncle Karl.”

  “Too bad it’s taboo.”

  “Why is it taboo?”

  Karl blushed just like a schoolboy. I got up and went over and sat on his lap, wrapping my hands around his shoulders, just as I had done so many times with Johnson. His hard thing pressed against my backside. It was just like it was with Johnson. Could something that hard and big really fit inside me? How it would hurt!

  “Ahhh.” I let slip a small sigh, just imagining what it would be like. That was the signal Karl needed. He plastered his lips over mine in a hungry kiss. With trembling hands he tore impatiently at the buttons on my school blouse, the hooks of my skirt. They fell to the floor around us, along with my shoes and socks.

  Once he’d stripped me down to my underwear, Karl lifted me in his arms and carried me into the bedroom. I lost my virginity there on the hard oak bed that Karl shared with his wife. It hurt a lot more than I had expected, but at the same time it brought such complete pleasure that I was convinced I liked it more than I could stand.

  “Oh, my God. How could I have raped a child—and my own niece at that?”

  Karl pulled away from me so quickly he practically threw me off the bed and covered his head with his hands, muttering as if in pain. What was so horrible, I wondered, in what we’d just done? It had been wonderful. I was disappointed with the way Karl, who was overcome with regret, returned so quickly to reality. But for his part Karl too felt dis-enchanted. The awe and admiration that I had found in Karl’s gaze disappeared after he had finished with me. That was the first time I noticed that the men who embrace me, every single one of them, end up with an expression of emptiness when they are done, as if they have lost something. Maybe that is why I am always in search of a new man. Maybe that is why I am now a prostitute.

  After that, I met Karl on the sly any number of times. One time, I can’t remember when, he picked me up in his Renault on my way home from school and drove, with me in the backseat, without looking at me once. We went to a cabin owned by a friend of his at the foot of a mountain. It was off season and no one was around. The cabin was dark and the water had been turned off. Careful not to get the carpet dirty, we spread out newspapers and had ourselves a little picnic of wine and salami slices between pieces of bread. Karl undressed me and arranged me in various poses on the white bedspread of the double bed. He took pictures with a single-lens reflex camera. By the time he finally came to join me on the bed, my passion was as chilled as my body.

  “Uncle Karl, I’m cold.”

  “Just put up with it.”

  Before we started having sex, I knew it was inappropriate behavior for blood relatives. And we were blood relatives. The one person we could absolutely not let find out about our relationship was Karl’s older brother, my father. We feared his reaction. Inevitably, after Karl had finished, he would mumble nervously, “If my brother knew about this he’d kill me.”

  Men live by rules they’ve made for themselves. And among those rules is the one specifying that women are merely commodities for men to possess. A daughter belongs to her father, a wife to her husband. A woman’s own desires present obstacles for men and are best ignored. Besides, desire is always for the man. It’s his role to make advances on women and to protect his women from the advances of others. I was a woman who was seduced by a member of her own family. Among the rules in a man’s world, this was a big taboo. And for that reason, Karl was terrified.

  I didn’t want to be anyone’s possession. In the first place, my desire was not some paltry affair that could easily be protected by some man. But that day Karl was different. He bad-mouthed my father.

  “My brother isn’t what he says he is. He’s lousy at keeping the accounts. When I pointed this out he got angry. To make it worse, the way he treats his wife is unforgivable. He acts like she’s just his housekeeper.”

  Karl wouldn’t understand if I explained that it was Mother who wanted to be a maid. After Mother came to Switzerland, she became self-conscious about being Japanese. Every day she made Japanese dishes out of really expensive foods, and when no one could eat all she’d made she’d stash it away in the freezer. It wasn’t long before the freezer was crammed with Tupperware containers filled with boiled hijiki or nikujaga stew or sliced burdock root. Those containers spoke to me of my mother’s gloom and left me with an ominous feeling.

  “Uncle Karl, do you hate my father?”

  “I despise him. You mustn’t tell anyone else, but he has a Turkish mistress. I know all about it, you see. He has a soft spot for black hair and dark eyes.”

  The woman was an immigrant laborer who’d come over from Germany. Unable to keep their passion for each other a secret, my father and his mistress spent their days exchanging warm glances.

  “What do you suppose Mother wou
ld do if she found out?”

  Karl looked pained by my question. Undoubtedly he was equally concerned with what she’d do if she found out about us. Karl and me; my father and his Turkish mistress…. It seemed we had a lot of secrets to hide from Mother. But there was no one here who would tell her. She’d lost all her friends when she came to Switzerland, and she was unable to learn the new language. So she retreated deeper and deeper into her shell, refusing to come out.

  “I certainly don’t want her to know,” Karl said.

  “But it’s okay for me to know?”

  Karl looked at me in surprise. I averted my eyes and gazed up at the dark ceiling of the mountain cabin.

  My mother hated me. Giving birth to a child who looked so unlike herself threw my mother into a tailspin from which she never recovered. She was still living in shock. After I reached maturity it became worse, and when it was decided that we would move to Switzerland, my mother became the only Asian person in the family. As a consequence, my mother began to feel closer to my older sister, who was still in Japan and who was more Asian than I was, or so my mother thought. My sister’s well-being weighed on my mother. She was constantly saying over and again, “I worry about that child. Do you suppose she thinks I abandoned her?”

  My sister did not think anything of the sort. If my mother had abandoned anyone, it was me. I didn’t look like anyone in the family. I’d been left to my own devices. The only people who paid me any attention were the men who desired me. As a child I first became aware that my existence had a purpose when I realized men lusted after me. And that’s why I will lust forever after men. Before I even began to worry about homework or any of those school things, I began having secret liaisons with men. And it is men who give me the proof I need now to feel I’m alive.