“Absolutely not. You’re no help at all!” Kinue’s tone of voice was playful.
“Excuse me, Miss Nomura, but I was wondering what motivated you to get that tattoo?” A young reporter seized on the chance to ask a question.
“I got tattooed because I was deceived by a disgusting, manipulative, lecherous man, just like you!” Kinue shouted. Everyone started to laugh, and the young reporter turned bright red and rushed off toward the meeting hall. The rest of the journalists seemed to realize then that their siege was in vain, and they, too, began to drift away.
“Kinue,” Hisashi said, “I’d like to introduce one of your admirers. Actually, he’s an old school friend of mine. His name is Kenzo Matsushita, and he’s a doctoral candidate at the Tokyo University Medical School.”
Kinue stared at Kenzo in amazement. “So it was you?” she said softly.
“Oh, do you two know each other?” Hisashi said. “Just as I thought, there’s more here than meets the eye.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kinue scoffed. “He just lent me a match a while ago.”
“Hmm, is that so? Sounds pretty fishy to me,” Hisashi said, winking at Kenzo.
“What on earth are you talking about?” Kinue demanded, but she said it with a smile. “Actually,” she said, turning to Kenzo, “my husband Takezo was just asking me about you, too. Don’t tell me you’re another skin-peeler?” She pronounced the last phrase with the bitterest sarcasm, and Kenzo knew right away that she was talking about Professor Hayakawa, who was notorious for his obsession with harvesting and collecting tattooed human skins.
“No, no,” Kenzo said quickly “I have no interest in that sort of thing at all.”
“Forgive me,” said Kinue. “It’s just that when I hear that someone is a doctor, I immediately think they want to peel me like a grape and steal my skin. Listen, why don’t we go over there and have a nice leisurely chat?” She led the way into the garden without looking back.
“Say, Matsushita, do you feel like stopping off somewhere for a drink on the way home’” Hisashi asked as they walked along behind the willowy, glamorous woman in white. Kenzo mumbled something about making it another time, and Hisashi went off on his own. The reporters had all dispersed by this time, and no one pursued Kinue and Kenzo into the dark.
In the shadows of a quiet grove of trees, there was a wooden bench. As they sat down, Kinue looked at Kenzo from under her eyelashes and said, “So, tell me the truth. Were you shocked to see the sort of woman I am?”
“Not in the least,” Kenzo said. “When Hisashi first told me that there was a stunning young woman with an Orochimaru tattoo who was certain to win first place in the contest, I had a feeling it would turn out to be you.”
“But an educated person like you must think I’m a foolish woman. I’m sure you must feel contempt for me for having defaced my body like this.”
“Not in the least,” Kenzo repeated. “The truth is, I took some classes in med school from Dr. Tattoo—that is, from Professor Hayakawa—and I had often heard him talk about the tattoo as an underrated art form, but I didn’t realize how right he was until today. When I saw your tattoo up there on the stage, it was almost like a Zen satori. You know, the flash of enlightenment when everything becomes clear? At that moment, I suddenly understood the beauty of tattooed skin with every cell of my being. There’s absolutely no need for you to be so defensive about it. Better that you should be proud of your tattoo and let the reporters take pictures, instead of running yourself down.”
“The problem is, I really hate reporters. They treat me like a freak, like a two-headed zebra or a sideshow snake-lady, not a human being.”
“There’s probably some truth in that. I’ve always thought that heartlessness must be a prerequisite for a career in tabloid journalism.”
“That’s so true. You’re a very perceptive man, do you know that? You’re not too bad to look at, either.” Kinue Nomura was staring into Kenzo’s eyes with an intensity he had never encountered before.
Kenzo blushed and looked down at his army boots. “I must say, you really handled the reporters.”
“That’s because I’m a woman,” Kinue said. “That’s the one thing I know how to do, handle men.” Seemingly lost in thought, she let out a sigh. Then she said dreamily, “I guess I was born with a taste for tattoos. When I was a child, no matter how hard I might be crying, my tears would stop the minute I saw my parents’ tattoos. It finally got to the point where I couldn’t stand not to have my own tattoos, and I virtually forced my father to tattoo me. It was really unbelievably painful. Even though you’re a doctor, I’m not sure if you could understand that sort of pain unless you had endured it yourself. The process took three years, and it was finished just a couple of months before my father died. When I looked in the mirror and saw that I was finally tattooed all over, I felt like a full-fledged woman for the first time. I was totally happy.”
Just then, Gifu Inazawa came up to where they were sitting, smiling his phony smile. “Doctor Tattoo wants to talk to you about something,” he told Kinue, after treating Kenzo to several deferential hand-puppet bows.
“Don’t you dare go away, Mr. Kenzo Matsushita,” Kinue said with a dazzling smile, and she followed Inazawa to a nearby gazebo, where the professor was waiting.
Shamelessly eavesdropping from twenty feet away, Kenzo could catch only a word here and a phrase there. First Gifu Inazawa took his unctuous leave then Professor Hayakawa said something in a low voice and Kinue snapped, “Over my dead body!”
More maddeningly inaudible murmurs, then Professor Hayakawa said in a normal tone, “Can’t you see that you’re being unreasonable? I’m only asking for a photograph, not your skin.”
“Yes, but we all know it’s my skin you want, to hang in your creepy parlor.”
“Kinue, my dear, I’m deeply hurt.” The professor’s tone was mocking, as usual. “As an old friend of your family, I wish you only the best. And besides, you’ll surely outlive me by a good many years. I just want to make sure that your glorious tattoo is preserved for posterity, that’s all.”
“Well, for your information, I’ve made arrangements to be cremated when I die, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.” Kinue’s tone was defiant.
The two voices lapsed once more into animated whispers for a moment and then Kinue suddenly shouted, “Just stay away from me, you perverted skin-peeler!” There was the sound of a slap, then silence.
A moment later Kenzo heard Kinue’s light footsteps coming back to their bench, and he pretended to be engrossed in winding his watch. He looked up expectantly into her beautiful, stormy face, but it was clear from the stubborn set of her jaw that she didn’t want to discuss what had just happened. She sat down beside Kenzo, and he could almost hear her blood boiling.
“The nerve of some people,” she muttered after a moment. Giving her head a vigorous shake as if to clear her troubled mind, she turned to Kenzo and said, “Look, it’s really impossible to carry on a relaxed conversation in a public place like this with all the annoying interruptions, and I’m afraid that I have to run along now, anyway.” There seemed to be an unspoken invitation hovering in the air, and Kenzo decided to give the bold approach another try.
“I’d like very much to have a long talk with you sometime if your, er, husband wouldn’t mind.” Kenzo was wildly infatuated with the queen of the tattoo contest by this time, and his voice trembled as he spoke.
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” said Kinue blithely. “After all, my husband was saying he’d like to get together with you, too. How about Monday, the day after tomorrow. Are you by any chance free to meet us at my bar in the evening, around nine?”
“Absolutely,” Kenzo said “I’ll look forward to seeing both of you then.”
In his secret, guilty, smitten heart, though, he was praying that the tattoo queen’s porcine “husband” would get hit by a bus, or choke to death on a big chunk of black-market steak.
7
> “This must be the place,” Kenzo said as he rang the bell. The front of the building was shuttered for the night, but if you had happened to pass by in the daytime, you would have seen SOUVENIRS written on the glass door in dubious gold letters. Inside, a jumble of cheap goods—pottery, parasols, yellowing woodblock prints—was arrayed in the hopes of catching the eyes of foreign shoppers. In the evening, the upper floors sprang to life when a gambling club and a members-only drinking place called Serpent opened for business. On this Monday, though, all was dark upstairs as well.
The peephole in the wooden door on the side of the building slid open. “Who’s there, please’” a woman asked in a low voice.
“It’s Kenzo Matsushita. I’m here to see Miss Nomura and, um, Mr. Mogami” Please, Kenzo prayed, let that fat capitalist pig be out of town. The door opened, revealing a narrow, dimly lit staircase. Kinue Nomura was standing behind the door, looking like one of the floating-world beauties in a woodblock print by Utamaro. She greeted Kenzo with a graceful bow and warm words of welcome, then led him upstairs. As he watched her lithe hips moving under the shimmering saffron-colored kimono she wore with a butterfly-patterned obi sash, Kenzo found it difficult to catch his breath. It’s the stairs, he told himself. I’m out of shape.
Kenzo followed Kinue into a deserted room with three tables and a counter along one wall. Above the counter was a tier of mirrored shelves stacked with “keep bottles” of brandy and whiskey, each with a customer’s name written on the label in black ink.
“What is this place?” Kenzo asked, looking around.
“This is the private bar I run, Serpent,” Kinue said. “The police have been giving me a hard time so I can’t put out a sign. In any case, we’re closed until further notice. Don’t worry, it’s perfectly safe. The bell won’t ring and the door is locked from the inside. No one will disturb us. Please relax and make yourself at home. Would you like something to drink?” She glanced at Kenzo, who was still looking around nervously, and held up a bottle of expensive imported whiskey.
“Where’s your husband?” Kenzo asked “Isn’t he supposed to be here too?”
“Oh, he had some sudden business in Nagoya, and he left on the morning express. He asked me to give you his best regards,” Kinue said breezily.
This was the answer to Kenzo’s most fervent prayers, but he was suddenly filled with trepidation about what might happen if he stayed. After all, what could a beautiful, sophisticated woman like this, a woman with a rich and powerful lover, possibly see in an ordinary man like him? What if he made an unwelcome overture and she slapped him, or told her jealous husband?
“I think I’d better be going now,” he said, his voice cracking like a teenager’s. “It doesn’t seem proper to be here alone, just the two of us.”
“I think you’re being very silly, but if you want to go home, go right ahead. No one’s stopping you.” Kinue folded her arms and stared stonily off into space, but there were tears running down her long, perfectly oval face.
Kenzo had been thinking of Kinue Nomura as a very tough type of woman, like the female gamblers in samurai movies who would bare one tattooed shoulder and hurl insults at men. He was totally nonplussed by her tears. “What’s the matter?” he asked gently, placing one hand on her silk-covered forearm.
“Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!” Kinue suddenly began pounding his chest with her fists, sobbing convulsively all the while. “Are you going to force me to say the words out loud? Are you so determined to humiliate me?”
At that moment, Kenzo finally realized what was going on. All the blood in his body seemed to rush to his head, and he was breathing heavily as he tried to subdue his feverishly pounding heart. “What about the room next door?” he whispered.
“It’s used for gambling. You know, mah-jongg, poker, roulette, that sort of thing. There’s no one using it now, so we can relax in there.” Kinue had been perched on a bar stool, delicately blotting her tears with a cocktail napkin. Now she stood up and opened the adjoining door.
The gambling club was a medium-size Western-style room with a white linoleum floor. In the middle of the room stood a black-and-red roulette table, and under the window was a large sofa covered in textured gold velvet. When they entered the room, Kinue closed the door behind her.
“No one will come in here, so please don’t worry,” she said. Kenzo suspected that she had spoken those same words many times before, to many other men, but he didn’t care. He was utterly spellbound, like a frog hypnotized by a voracious, gimlet-eyed snake.
“You may be a doctor,” Kinue was saying, “but I’ll bet you’ve never touched the skin of a tattooed woman.” With a mysterious smile on her lips, she went on talking in a way guaranteed to inflame the passion of any man. “My skin is cold, you know,” she murmured. “It’s like the skin of a carp, or some cold-blooded reptile. Even in the heat of summer, it will chill you to the bone. Come, don’t you want to touch it?”
More than anything in the world, Kenzo thought as he stretched out a trembling hand.
Several hours later, Kinue lay on the sofa like an exquisite odalisque, wearing nothing but her magnificent tattoos. Her long almond-shaped eyes were partly closed, and she made no attempt to wipe away the tears that coursed down her lovely cheeks.
“Are you crying because of what we just did?” Kenzo asked as he lay beside her, stroking her long silky hair. He was perfectly happy, and he wouldn’t have minded a bit if her husband had burst in right then and shot them both.
“No,” Kinue replied in a soft voice. “I’m not worried about my old man, if that’s what you mean. It’s just that it’s a very sad thing to be a woman. I always mean to keep my foolish heart in check, but then I end up doing something reckless and unladylike like this, just because I’m a woman of strong desires.”
“Well, tonight was really wonderful for me,” Kenzo murmured. He felt shy about expressing his true feelings, which were running along the lines of rapture, bliss, and eternal adoration. Instead he said, “For one thing, I had my first glimpse into the mystical ecology of a tattoo. I realized that when a tattoo master designs a tattoo, he has to think about what effect the subtle movements of the human body will have on the picture he paints on the subject’s back. It truly is a living work of art.”
“Of course that’s true. Otherwise we couldn’t bear the discomfort of running a fever every day while we were being tattooed. I got tattooed because I wanted to. The first day the ink was injected into my skin I felt a strange jumble of emotions, and I have to admit I shed a few tears. But I just kept telling myself, ‘In the end, all this pain will be forgotten and you’ll be left with something beautiful that can never be erased.’ I didn’t want to be one of those shameful cowards who gets part of a tattoo, then quits because she can’t stand the pain. Getting tattooed is sort of like a love affair. You have to see it through to the end, no matter how much it hurts.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Kenzo said. He couldn’t help wondering whether she considered their liaison a budding love affair, or just a one-night fling.
She said, “You understand, don’t you, darling Kenzo? I really feel as if you understand me now. Until you make love to a tattooed person, you can never understand the true beauty of the tattoo. But I’m afraid it might be upsetting for someone like you, with your high-class education, getting involved with a woman from the seamier side of life.”
Kenzo felt a frisson of hope, for the word “involved” seemed to imply the possibility of other nights like this one. “It isn’t upsetting at all. On the contrary, it’s the best thing that’s happened to me in years,” he said, planting a light kiss on the top of Kinue’s silky head. “There’s no need for you to speak of yourself in such negative terms. Your tattoo is a splendid and beautiful thing, but there are prejudices in society that make some people perceive even the most artistic tattoo as loathsome and repellent. I really admire someone who would ignore those biases and make such a commitment, who would sacrifice her future possibi
lities and endure so much pain and suffering just to create a thing of beauty.”
“Thank you, darling. You’re the only person I know who would say something like that to me. I’m so glad there’s one man in the world who treats me like a human being.” Kinue stretched like a cat, then snuggled against Kenzo’s naked, sweaty body.
“Tell me how you came to have these tattoos,” he said, tracing the sinuous lines of the snake with his index finger.
“Are you sure you want to hear my boring story?”
“Of course,” Kenzo said. “I want to know everything about you.”
Kinue sighed. “All right, my darling, if you insist. How would it be if I made it like a fairy tale?”
“Anything you want,” Kenzo murmured, wrapping his arms around her from behind, like a boa constrictor.
8
“Once upon a time [Kinue began], there was a famous tattoo master named Horiyasu. In addition to a son, he had two daughters. ‘Please let my daughters’ skin be as smooth as silk, and as beautiful as a precious jewel,’ Horiyasu prayed every night as he gazed at their sleeping faces. His prayer was echoed in the first part of the names of his two girls: Kinu (‘silk’) and Tama (‘jewel’). Sure enough, both his daughters grew up to have pale ivory skin that everyone said was as beautiful as drawing-silk.
“Kinue, the older daughter, had had a secret desire to be tattooed for as long as she could remember. This was hardly surprising, for she grew up surrounded by tattoos. Both her parents were beautifully tattooed, and among the many visitors who came to the house, there wasn’t a single person—male or female—who sported the unembellished white skin he or she had been born with. Naturally, Kinue began to feel ashamed of her undecorated skin as she got older.
“Kinue’s first love affair, at seventeen, was with a good-looking yakuza, a failed photographer who had been tattooed by Horiyasu. ‘Do you really think I would marry a woman with plain white skin?’ this uncouth man used to say, over and over, and Kinue ended up feeling even more certain that her untattooed skin was an obstacle to happiness.
Tattoo Murder Case Page 4