Grotesque

by Natsuo Kirino

  Johnson was convinced that I was crazy about sex and too stupid to do schoolwork. Just like Kijima’s son. Just like my sister. I normally never got angry when people made fun of me, but for some reason I suddenly felt like challenging Johnson. He’d spilled bourbon on the sheets and now they were stained with the brown liquid. Masami was going to have a fit, and it wouldn’t be Johnson who’d get in trouble but me.

  “I named the tortoise Mark, after you,” I told him.

  Johnson shrugged his shoulders exaggeratedly. “I’d rather be the snail. Let’s name the tortoise Yuriko, after a woman who lives off of eating men. I bet Kijima what’s-his-name would like to crawl into the aquarium and get snapped up by Yuriko. So why do you think Kijima has never tried to make it with you? Do you suppose he thinks you would sell yourself to a teacher?”

  “No, it’s because my manager is Professor Kijima’s son.”

  Johnson rolled over on the bed in great gales of laughter, clapping his hand over his mouth to stifle the sound. “So that’s why? Wow, this is just like some crazy soap opera!”

  It wasn’t that funny. After I’d advanced a grade, to Q High School for Women, I’d occasionally run into Professor Kijima. Whenever he saw me he’d greet me stiffly with a perplexed expression on his face. Just beneath his overly serious expression, I sensed a warm fear.

  It happened at the end of my second year of high school. When Professor Kijima caught sight of me, he waved me over toward him with insistent gestures. He was wearing his usual starched white shirt. The long fingers that clutched his textbooks were coated white with chalk dust.

  “I’ve heard something I’d like you to clear up. It’s my hope that you’ll be able to tell me it’s not true.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it concerns your honor.” Professor Kijima spoke bitterly. “I’ve heard rumors that you’ve been involved in very inappropriate behavior, that you’ve completely shamed yourself. I can’t believe what I’ve heard.”

  “What rumors?”

  Professor Kijima looked down to his side and bit his lip. The disgusted expression did not suit such a good-natured man. In the blink of an eye he’d turned into an entirely different man, a sexual man. I found him very appealing.

  “They say you’re taking money to sleep with other students. If it’s true you’ll be expelled. Before the school launches its own investigation, I wanted to ask you myself. It’s not true, is it?”

  I was puzzled. If I said it was a lie I’d probably escape expulsion. But I’d already had enough of the cheerleaders’ squad and the all-girl classes. Expulsion didn’t sound so bad.

  “It’s true. I’ve just been following my own path, doing what I enjoy doing. It’s my little moneymaker. Can’t you just leave it be?”

  Kijima started to tremble and his face reddened.

  “Leave it be? But you’re defiling the very core of your existence—your soul! You can’t do that sort of thing!”

  “My soul can’t be damaged by something like prostitution!”

  When he heard the word prostitution Kijima grew so angry that his voice shook.

  “Maybe you don’t notice it, but you’re defiled. Your soul is defiled.”

  “Well, Professor, what about your decision to moonlight as a tutor making fifty thousand yen for a two-hour session and using the money to take your family on vacation to Hawaii? Is that not disgraceful? Have you not defiled your family?”

  Kijima stared at me in blank amazement. How could I have possibly known about that, he seemed to be thinking. Clearly, he had no idea.

  “Well, it is a disgrace. But my spirit is still pure.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well, I suppose because it’s like a reward for hard work. I work hard at my job. But I don’t sell my body, and neither should you. It’s wrong. You’re a beautiful woman. That’s not something you chose to be or something you had to work hard to become. You were fortunate enough to be born beautiful. But to live off of exploiting yourself defiles who you are.”

  “I’m not exploiting myself. No more than you are with your moonlighting.”

  “It’s not the same. In your work you hurt the people who care for you. They’ll stop loving you. They won’t be able to love you.”

  That was a new thought for me. My body is my own, why should anyone else think they owned it? Why should a person who loved me think he should be entitled to control my body? If love was that restricting, I was happy to live without it.

  “I don’t need anybody’s love.”

  “What an incredibly arrogant thing to say. Just what the hell kind of person are you anyway?”

  Kijima looked at his chalk-covered fingers in exasperation. His forehead was deeply wrinkled, and strands from his smooth hair slipped down over it. What startled me was the discovery that Kijima didn’t want my body, he wanted to have me. He wanted to know what was going on in my heart. My heart. This was the first time I’d ever met someone who wanted to get to know that part of me I never showed to anyone else.

  “Professor, is it that you want to buy me?”

  Kijima was silent for a minute, unable to answer. then he raised his head and said plainly, “No. I’m a teacher and you are my student.”

  But you know I’m stupid, so why did you let me into this school? I started to ask this and then stopped, startled. Here was a man who wanted what no one had wanted before: he wanted to get to know the inner workings of the doll-like woman who was me. Karl wasn’t interested in me; neither was Johnson. But Kijima’s father liked me for who I was. The realization left me feeling numb. I was touched. But being touched is not the same as feeling desire. And I didn’t exist without desire. If I didn’t exist, then what?

  “Professor, if you aren’t going to buy me, I don’t want you.”

  Kijima stared at me until his red face drained entirely of color.

  “Besides, your son is my pimp. Did you know that?”

  Kijima slipped deeper and deeper into silence until finally he drew in a deep breath.

  “No, I didn’t know. I’m very sorry.”

  Kijima bowed in apology and then turned and walked away. I watched his back as he retreated. I realized that he was going to have to expel both me and his son. I didn’t tell Johnson that part.

  In May, a month after beginning my senior year, I met up with Kijima, the son, outside the school gate. The navy-blue blazer of his school uniform was open, revealing a bright red silk shirt. He had a gold chain around his neck and was driving a black Peugeot. All were items bought on the sly from the money I’d earned. Kijima was born in April, so he’d just gotten his driver’s license.

  “Yuriko, get in.”

  I slipped into the snug seat alongside him. The girls on their way home from school glanced at us, their eyes flashing with envy. They weren’t jealous of the car or of Kijima and his flashy clothes. They were jealous because Kijima and I were able to enjoy ourselves so freely, both inside school and outside it. And at the top of the list of jealous girls was Kazue Sat.

  Kijima lit a cigarette angrily and took a deep drag before he turned to me and said, “What the hell did you say to my father? You bitch! We’ll probably get expelled, you know. They’re going to meet over the holidays and decide what to do with us. My father told me about it last night.”

  “Is your father going to resign too?”

  “He might.” Kijima turned away with a disgusted look. His expression was the spitting image of his father’s. “What’ll you do now?”

  “Well, I could get a job as a model. The other day a scout showed up and gave me his business card. And there’s always prostitution.”

  “Can I stay on with you then?”

  “Sure,” I nodded, staring at the girls who were walking in front of the car. One turned around and looked back at me. It was my sister. Bitch. She formed the words with her mouth without making a sound: bitch, bitch, bitch.

  Johnson all of a sudden climbed on top of me and started to strangle me. Stop!
I shouted and flailed away at him in an effort to get out from under his heavy body. But he pinned my arms and legs down and brought his mouth up close to my ear and shouted, “Professor Kijima likes Yuriko!”

  “Probably.”

  “He’d be crazy to get mixed up with a girl like Yuriko. A first-class idiot.”

  “You’re right. But it’s too late. Professor Kijima has already gotten us both kicked out of school.”

  “What the hell?” Johnson let go of me as he spoke.

  “We got caught. Me and Professor Kijima’s son. We have to withdraw. And it looks like Professor Kijima’s going to resign.”

  “Have you embarrassed Masami and me, Yuriko?”

  Johnson’s face flushed red, and not just from the bourbon. He was angry. I lay there waiting for him to do whatever he would. If he wanted to kill me, then that was that. Why is it that men who crave the flesh are so incapable of seeing the heart? Johnson was out of control. He knocked the bottle of bourbon over on the bed and I watched as the liquor seeped over the sheets, leaving an ever-widening brown stain. And not just the sheets—I was sure it was going through to the mattress as well. I was afraid of being scolded by Masami and grabbed for the bottle, but it fell to the floor with a thud

  “You’re just a heartless whore. A cheap slut. You make me sick!”

  Johnson threw me down and started climbing over me violently, spewing out insults in a low voice. Was this a new game for him? I couldn’t tell. I just lay back and looked up at the ceiling. I wouldn’t feel anything. Ever since I became an old woman at the age of fifteen I haven’t felt a thing, and ever since that night when I was seventeen I’ve been frigid.

  All of a sudden there was a loud knock on the door.

  “Yuriko-chan? Are you okay? Who’s in there?”

  Before I could answer the door burst open and Masami flew in with a golf club in her hand. She screamed when she saw me naked on the bed, a man savagely straddling me. But when she realized the man was her own husband, she collapsed on the floor.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Just what it looks like, dahling!”

  Johnson and Masami stood at the side of the bed shouting insults at each other while I lay faceup, looking at the ceiling, naked.

  I had just entered my senior year—and I had been living in Johnson’s house for two and a half years—when I was advised to withdraw from school. It was the same for Kijima. Professor Kijima, assuming responsibility for his son’s dereliction, resigned his own teaching post. I hear he became the superintendent at some company dormitory in Karuizawa. I imagine he’s spending his time collecting all kinds of insect specimens. But I wouldn’t know. I’ve not seen him since.

  After Kijima and I withdrew from school we’d still meet up at the same café in Shibuya. Kijima would wave me over to where he sat in a dark corner of the restaurant. He’d always have a cigarette in one hand and a sports paper in the other; he never looked like a high school student. He looked more like a young tough who’d lost his gang. Kijima would fold his paper up with a rustling snap and stare at me.

  “I’m going to transfer to another school. A man can’t get by these days without finishing school. How about you? What’d Johnson say?”

  “He told me to do whatever I wanted.”

  And so I had to live off the sale of my body, with no one to look out for me. Just as I do now. Nothing has changed.

  FOUR • WORLD WITHOUT LOVE

  • 1 •

  Please listen to my side too. I can’t let all the lies Yuriko wrote go uncontested. That wouldn’t be fair, would it? You don’t agree? But Yuriko’s journal is so filthy I can’t bear it. After all, I have a respectable job at the ward office. You have to let me try to explain.

  I’m sure someone impersonating Yuriko wrote that journal of hers. I’ve already noted on a number of occasions that Yuriko didn’t have the cleverness to organize her thoughts or write any kind of extended composition. Her schoolwork was always sloppy. I have an essay she wrote when she was a fourth-grader. Let me show it to you.

  Yesterday I went with my older sister to buy a red goldfish, but the goldfish store was closed on Sunday, so I couldn’t buy a red goldfish and that made me sad so I cried.

  This is all she could manage as a fourth-grader. But just look at the handwriting. It looks like a grown-up’s, doesn’t it? I suppose you’re thinking that I wrote this and am now trying to pass it off as Yuriko’s. But that’s not the case. I found it the other day tucked in the back of my grandfather’s closet when I was cleaning out his apartment. I used to correct every single one of Yuriko’s wretched compositions, rewriting each word for her. I did everything I could to cover up the fact that my younger sister was dim-witted and morally corrupt. Now do you understand?

  Well, then, shall I tell you more about Kazue in high school? I mean, since Yuriko wrote about her in her journal, I think I should. When Yuriko was admitted to the junior high division of the Q School system, even the girls in the high school went ballistic. Their excitement was only natural, I suppose, but it still posed considerable difficulty for me, as her older sister. I remember it very clearly.

  Mitsuru was the first to ask about her. She came over to my desk during our lunch break carrying a large reference book. I had just finished eating the lunch I’d brought: stewed radishes with fried bean curd. It’s what I’d fixed for my grandfather the night before. How can I remember such minute details? Well, I remember because I accidentally knocked the container over and the stew spilled on my English notes. Mitsuru looked at me sympathetically as I madly blotted away at my notebook with a damp handkerchief.

  “I hear your little sister has entered the junior high division.”

  “So it would seem,” I said, without looking up. Mitsuru tilted her head to the side, startled by the iciness of my answer. Her eyes grew wide and lit on me with bright alacrity. Mitsuru really was just like a squirrel! I was very fond of her, but at the same time I thought her rodent ways were often just too ridiculous.

  “So it would seem? What kind of answer is that? Aren’t you the least bit concerned about her? She is your sister.” Mitsuru smiled warmly at me, flashing her big front teeth.

  I stopped dabbing at my notebook and said, “No, actually I’m not the least bit concerned.”

  Mitsuru’s eyes grew wide again. “Why? I hear she’s very pretty.”

  “Who told you that?” I shot back. “And who cares anyway?”

  “I heard it from Professor Kijima. Apparently your sister’s in his group.”

  Mitsuru waved the book she was holding in front of my nose. It was a biology reference book written by a Takakuni Kijima. In addition to being in charge of the junior high division, Professor Takakuni Kijima was our biology teacher. He was a nervous type who wrote on the chalk-board with letters that were so perfectly square you’d have thought he’d measured them with a ruler. I couldn’t stand the way he always looked: so proper, everything so perfect. I hated him.

  “And I really respect him,” Mitsuru said, without even waiting to hear what I had to say. “He’s brilliant and he really looks out for his students. I think he’s a great teacher. He was the one who took us on our overnight field trip when I was in junior high.”

  “What did he say about my sister?”

  “He asked me if the older sister of a junior high transfer student was in my class. When I said I didn’t know anything about it, he said that wasn’t likely. So when I asked him for more details I finally figured out he had to be talking about you. It was such a surprise.”

  “Why? Is it hard to believe?”

  “Because I didn’t even know you had a younger sister.”

  Mitsuru was too smart to say that she found it hard to believe that I had a sister who looked so little like me, a sister who was so incredibly beautiful she looked like a monster. Just then we heard a commotion down the hall. A great crowd of students came pressing into the corridor, clamoring to look into the classroom where we sat. They wer
e clearly from the junior high division. There were even a few boys among them, hanging back in the rear and looking a little sheepish.

  “I wonder what’s going on?”

  But when I turned toward the door, a hush fell over the crowd of students. A large girl with curly hair dyed a reddish brown pushed her way through the crowd and stepped into the room. She was clearly the ring-leader. From the haughty self-assured way she carried herself it was also clear that she was an insider, and the insiders in my class called out to her familiarly. “Mokku, what’re you doing here?” This girl, Mokku, strode confidently into the classroom without answering and planted herself in front of my desk.

  “Are you Yuriko’s older sister?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  I didn’t want any dust to get into my lunch box, so I snapped the lid down. Mitsuru clutched the biology reference book to her breast, looking uneasy. Mokku gazed down at the stain that had seeped over my English notebook.

  “What did you have for lunch today?”

  “Stewed radish with bean curds,” the student next to me answered. She was affiliated with the modern dance club and was a complete witch. Every day she looked over my shoulder at what I was eating and snickered, screwing her face into a smirk. Mokku paid her no attention, completely disinterested. Instead she fixed her sights on my hair.

  “Are you and Yuriko really sisters?”

  “Yes, we really are.”

  “I’m sorry but I just don’t believe you.”

  “I don’t care whether you believe me or not.”

  I had no interest in talking to someone so presumptuous. I stood up and stared Mokku straight in the eye. She flinched and took a few steps back. I could hear the sound her big behind made as it bumped into the desk of the student in front of me. Everyone in the room was staring at us. Mitsuru, who was so short she barely managed to come up to Mokku’s shoulder, grabbed Mokku by the arm and admonished her in a fairly sharp tone. “Stop poking your nose in other people’s business and go back to your own classroom!”