Grotesque

by Natsuo Kirino

  The scent of the tangerine suddenly disappeared and was replaced by a horrible odor. The door to the toilet had opened. Everyone immediately turned their heads away and trained their eyes downward. This was because a yakuza type had emerged from the toilet. Most of the people on the train were dressed in soiled Mao suits. But this fellow was wearing a smart-looking gray suit jacket, a red turtleneck sweater, and baggy black trousers. He had a white scarf tied around his neck. His clothes were good quality. But his eyes glinted shiftlessly just like Gen-de’s had. He was clearly a tough customer. When the toilet door opened I could see two other men inside, both dressed just like him, smoking cigarettes.

  “Those bastards have laid claim to the toilet and now no one else can use it,” the man standing alongside me muttered bitterly. He was a head shorter than I.

  “Well, then what are we supposed to use?”

  “The floor.”

  I was shocked. But when I looked down at my feet I saw that the floor was already damp. I thought I’d smelled something foul when we got on the train. Now I knew what it was: human piss.

  “What if you need to take a shit?”

  “Well….” The man laughed, revealing that he only had one tooth in the front of his mouth. “I have a plastic bag with me, so I’m going to use that.”

  But once the bag was full I had no doubt that he’d drop it on the floor of the train. He might just as well take a crap on the floor to start with. “Why don’t you just do it in your hands?” the pimple-faced teenager behind me cut in.

  The people around us laughed, but half of them looked pretty desperate. It was pathetic. No matter how poor my family was, even though we lived in a cave, we never would have considered soiling our home with our own excrement. Human beings just don’t live that way.

  “Are all the cars like this?”

  “They’re all the same. The first thing a person does when he gets on is try to secure the toilet. A seat comes second; he heads right for the toilet. See, if the train gets packed like this, even if the toilet is empty you can’t get to it. Far better to try to occupy the toilet. Sure, it may stink. But if you bring a board with you and place it over the hole, at least you can sit down in there; you can even stretch your legs out and sleep. And you can lock the door, see, and ensure that no one gets in but you and your friends.”

  I craned my neck to look around me in the car. People were packed together, standing in the aisles and even in between the seats, and small children and young women were stretched out in the luggage racks above the seats. The seats accommodated four people, face-to-face, but all I could see of those seated was the black hair on the top of their heads. They were crammed so tightly into their seats that they couldn’t move and had no choice but to do their business right there in front of everyone.

  “It’s not so bad for men, I suppose, but it must be hard on the women.”

  “Well, they can pay those fellows to let them use the toilet.”

  “They have to pay?”

  “Yep, that’s the business they’re in: charging money for the toilet.”

  I looked stealthily at the yakuza. He must have gotten bored inside the toilet and come out to look around. He stared at the group of girls, seeming to size them up. Then he watched the mother nurse her baby. When the group of girls turned away bashfully, the man next set eyes on my sister. I was alarmed and tried to hide her from his line of vision. I began to feel worried by her beauty. The man glared at me. I looked down.

  The man shouted in a loud voice, “The toilet costs twenty yuan to use. Any takers?”

  Twenty yuan would amount to about three hundred yen in Japan. A paltry sum, perhaps. But I made only one yuan a day when I worked at the factory.

  “That’s expensive,” said the girl who had been eating the tangerine, throwing out a challenge.

  “Well, then, I guess you won’t be using the toilet.”

  “If we don’t we’ll die.”

  “Suit yourself. Go ahead and die.”

  The man spit this out and slammed the door shut. Three men were in that tiny toilet. What were they doing? I had no idea. All I knew was that there was far more room in the toilet than standing in the aisle.

  “I wish I were a baby,” my sister said, as she gazed enviously at the infant in its mother’s arms. “I could wear diapers, drink breast milk, and not worry about a thing!” My sister’s face was pale and streaked with dirt. Dark circles had formed under her eyes. That was to be expected. Before we waited hours to board the train we had stood on a cramped and jostling bus for two days. We were totally exhausted. I told my sister to lean on me and try to get some sleep.

  I’m not sure how much time had passed, but over the tops of people’s heads I caught a glimpse of the sun setting outside the window. Everyone in the train was quiet, squished together. We swayed to the rhythm of the train, everyone moving as one. My sister awoke and looked up at me. “How much farther to Chongqing, do you think?”

  I didn’t have a watch, so I had no idea what time it was. The man with no front teeth overheard her question. “We get to Chongqing in about two more hours. And there’ll be people there who’ll want to get on. It’ll be interesting.”

  “At Chongqing will we be able to buy food and water?” I asked.

  When he heard my question the toothless man snickered. “What kind of wishful thinking is that? Do you suppose you can get back on the train if you get off? That’s why everyone brought water and food with them.”

  “Is there anyone who’ll share with us?”

  “I will.” I swung around when I heard someone answer. A man in a tattered and patched Mao suit was waving a grimy-looking bottle filled with water. “One drink for ten yuan.”

  “That’s too much.”

  “Then go without. This is all I’ve got; I’m not giving it away.”

  “Let us each have a drink for ten yuan.” I looked at my sister’s face in surprise. She wore a determined look.

  “You drive a hard bargain. All right then.”

  When he struck the deal a young woman at the other end of the aisle held up a tangerine and shouted, “You want this for ten yuan?”

  My sister’s response was curt. “I’ll let you know after I’ve had a drink of water.” When she had drunk her fill she handed the bottle to me and mumbled, “If you’re smart, you’ll drink as much as you can. We’re paying ten yuan for it, after all.”

  “True.”

  My sister’s expression startled me. I brought the bottle to my lips and drank. The water was warm and tasted rusty. But it was all the water I’d had in over half a day. Once I started drinking, I couldn’t stop. “That’s enough!” the man shouted angrily, but I played the fool. “I’m just taking my drink,” I said. The people around us laughed scornfully.

  “Pay up now!” the man said.

  I pulled the money out of my pocket. I had all the bills rolled up together and bound with a rubber band. The murmur that shot through the crowd around me when they saw the wad of bills was nearly deafening. Of course, I had not wanted to show all my money to strangers, but I had no other way of getting ten yuan out of my pocket.

  My hand trembled so badly I could hardly count the bills. Not just because everyone’s eyes were riveted on me, but because I’d never paid ten yuan for anything back home. I heard my sister swallow. I suppose she too was anxious.

  How absurd to have to lay out so much money just for a drink of water. I was appalled by such meanness. And yet I had to pay. The callousness of those around me was shocking. And yet it was a valuable experience. We were heading for the city, where we were sure to see and hear things we had never before imagined. This was a good introduction. I can still remember how shocked I was when I came to Japan and saw the way people spent money like water, without a care. It made me so angry I wanted to curse them all.

  At any rate, I finally counted out ten one-yuan bills and handed them to someone who gave them to the man who’d sold us the water. When I did, the man grew eve
n more irritated. “You act like such a country bumpkin, and there you are with all that cash, you bastard! I ought to have charged more!”

  The young woman who had earlier tried to sell us the tangerine started to ridicule the man. “Don’t be so greedy. You only have yourself to blame, not knowing the first rule of sales! Before you start criticizing our country cousins here you ought give your own hollow head a whack! It might knock some sense into you!”

  The people standing around her laughed.

  “Those two are loaded! They have to be carrying close to five hundred yuan!” The man with only one front tooth spoke so loudly everyone in the train car heard. Everyone started to mumble and murmur. The group of four girls turned to stare at us, their mouths agape.

  “Mind your own business,” I told the man. But he just laughed at me like I was an idiot.

  “You don’t know shit about the world, do you?” he taunted. “You ought to divide your cash into smaller wads and tuck it in different places. That way one person can’t make off with it all at once.”

  Right. Right. The people surrounding the man—people who had nothing to do with any of this—nodded in agreement. Mr. Tooth continued ribbing me.

  “No doubt about it, you’re a bona fide hick. Haven’t you ever heard of a wallet? I bet you come from a village that’s so poor you’ve run out of wives.”

  “Well, it takes one to know one! You sure do stink. Haven’t you ever heard of a bath? Or maybe peeing on the floor is the custom at your house. Hey, I’ve a favor to ask you. Take your filthy hand off my ass!” my sister shouted.

  When they heard the way my sister responded, the rest of the car burst into laughter. Mr. Tooth turned beet red and looked down with embarrassment. I clasped my sister’s hand. “Way to tell him, Mei-kun.”

  “You can’t let people get away with stuff like that, Zhe-zhong. Before long they’re going to be throwing themselves at our feet, each and every one of them. We’re going to become movie stars, beloved throughout the land and rich to boot.”

  My sister poked me in the ribs with her elbow to emphasize each of her points. Yes, it is true. I had come to depend on my little sister with her quick wit and strong will to pull me along in life. And yet I ended up in this foreign country without her. I hope you can understand just how difficult it has been for me, how lost I have been.

  Sometime later, the train jerked suddenly and the passengers toppled forward. Outside I could see telephone poles and the lights of tall buildings. It was a city. I started to grow excited. We’d reached Chongqing! It’s Chongqing! Chongqing! The people around me began to clamor nervously, expectantly, uneasily.

  Mr. Tooth, who had grown quiet after being shamed by my sister, said just behind me, “You two don’t have tickets, do you? I know you sneaked on.” He waved a pink-colored ticket in my face. “If you don’t have a ticket, they take you off the train and throw you in jail.”

  My sister looked up at me in shock. Just at that point the train glided into the station. Chongqing was a big city, but it was the first station the southbound train had entered. The platform was swarming with people, all farmers, waiting there to transfer to our train. They began scrambling to board. The yakuza type picked up a heavy stick and walked toward me. I assumed he was going to use the stick to menace anyone who tried to board the train, but he handed the stick to me. “Give me a hand, why don’t you?”

  I had no choice but to comply. I got ready to spring into action, but when the door opened no one was there to get on. I was caught off guard. And then a young pistol-wielding station guard appeared in front of me, so I quickly brought the stick down to my side.

  The guard shouted roughly, “Ticket inspection. Present your tickets for inspection. If you don’t have a ticket, get off the train.” The passengers around me lifted their pink-colored tickets high above their heads.

  My sister and I looked down. Packed in like sardines among all those people, we were the only ones without tickets.

  “You have no ticket?” I started to explain to the station policeman that I’d had no time to purchase one, but before I could the yakuza type held me back with his hand.

  “He’ll pay no matter the cost.”

  The guard turned immediately to the station official at his side and whispered in his ear. After a moment’s consultation he said to me harshly, “It’s two hundred yuan to Guangzhou.” As a rule the ticket was usually no more than thirty yuan a person.

  “Haggle!” I heard someone say from within the car.

  “Two hundred yuan for two,” I said.

  “Get off the train,” the station official said. “You’re under arrest for boarding the train without a ticket.”

  The guard pointed his gun at me.

  Desperate, I tried again. “Two for three hundred yuan.”

  “It’s two for four hundred yuan.”

  “That’s no better than when we started. How about two for three hundred and fifty yuan?”

  Again the guard conferred with the station official. I waited nervously. In a minute he turned back to me with a solemn countenance and nodded. When I pulled the money from my pocket, the station official pressed two tickets on thin pink paper into my hand and shut the door.

  My younger sister and I had endured hunger and thirst as we headed to Guangzhou, refusing offers from surrounding passengers to sell us food and water. My hands had barely stopped trembling from the ordeal of counting my money in front of others. But of everything we had started out with, we had only a tiny sum left. I was overcome with remorse. If only I’d thought to stock up on food and water before we got on the train, I would not have had to squander my sister’s precious betrothal gift. I certainly was naïve. Why hadn’t I realized that there would be others, lots of others, trying to migrate to the city just like us? By the time we got to Guangzhou we had barely one hundred yuan left.

  In the farming villages of China there are over two hundred and seventy million people, more than the arable land can feed. The farms produce only enough to support a hundred million, fewer than half. Of the remaining hundred seventy million people, about ninety million work in local factories. The other eighty million have no choice but to head to the cities to look for work. At the time this influx of surplus labor was referred to in China as the Blind Flow. Now of course it’s known as the Pool of the People’s Workforce. But blind flow better captures the reality of a desperate people groping about in darkness, struggling to follow the beacon of light glittering off the money available in the city.

  All this I learned while aboard the train from the pimple-faced college student who stood behind me. Pimple’s name was Dong Zhen. He was tall and lanky, with shoulders that jutted out like a clothes hanger. His face was covered with festering pimples that oozed a yellow pus. “Zhe-zhong,” Dong Zhen asked me, “can you guess how many people will migrate from Sichuan to Guangzhou after New Year’s on the lunar calendar has passed?”

  I tilted my head to the side. I came from a village of four hundred. It was impossible for me to imagine a large gathering of people. Even if I’d been told it would be the whole of Sichuan, it wouldn’t have made much impact on me because I’d never seen a map.

  “I don’t know.”

  “About nine hundred thousand people.”

  “Well, where are they all going to go?”

  “Just like you—to Guangzhou and Zhu Jiang, the Pearl River Delta.”

  I couldn’t believe there’d be enough work to go around if more than nine hundred thousand people crowded into the same city. I was being carried along by bus and train, but I still had no idea what a city was.

  “Will there be a place we can go to get help finding a job?”

  Dong Zhen laughed. “You really are an idiot. No one will help you. You have to do it on your own.”

  When I heard this I was beset by doubts. All I’d done up to now was tend goats and make straw hats. What kind of work was I going to be able to find? I recalled that my friend Jian Ping had worked in construc
tion, so I asked Dong Zhen. “What about construction work?”

  “That’s the kind of job anyone can do, so the competition’s stiff.”

  Dong Zhen took a swig of water out of his canteen as he answered. I gazed at the water longingly.

  “Would you like a sip?” he asked. And he let me take a drink. The water smelled stale and fishy, but I was grateful all the same to have been given a swallow without having to pay. In the entire train car only one person was heading to university, and that was Dong Zhen. I imagined that as a member of the intelligentsia he would look down on simple farmers, but Dong Zhen was unexpectedly kind.

  “I’m sure there’s a section of town where they pick up day laborers. You ought to go there and wait. I’ve heard that if you carry your own shovel and tools you’ll get hired right away.”

  “What about my little sister? What kind of work could she get?”

  “Women can get all kinds of jobs from babysitters, maids, nurses, laundresses, and the like to mortician assistants in the morgue. Then there’re jobs as guides at the crematorium, tea servers, and so on—every one of them low paying.”

  “How come you’re such an expert?”

  “It’s just common sense. But I guess I would look smart next to you; you really don’t know much about anything! You’ll see. Fellows who come to the city looking for work tend to talk a lot, and news travels by word of mouth. Before you know it, you’ll have heard it all.”

  Dong Zhen leaned over to me.

  “Your little sister doesn’t look the type to take to the kind of dreary jobs I mentioned,” he whispered in my ear.

  Mei-kun had gone to the toilet, and I suddenly noticed that she had not yet returned. I looked around and saw that she was standing by the toilet, the door open wide, talking intimately with the group of young thugs. What was so funny? I wondered. They had suddenly started to laugh. All the other passengers on the train turned—as if on signal—and stared at the four of them. I kept my eye on my sister as she gazed up at the yakuza. She was flirting with him. It made me feel queasy. Dong Zhen poked me in the ribs.