Audition

by Ryu Murakami

  ‘Yes. Yamasaki Asami.’

  What a voice, thought Aoyama, and Yoshikawa must have had a similar reaction, judging by the glance he shot him. It was a voice that poured into your ears and oozed down the nerves to the nape of your neck – neither high-pitched nor deep or husky, but round and smooth and crystalline.

  ‘You heard about the audition on the radio?’

  Even Yoshikawa seemed a bit nervous as he spoke.

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  Aoyama was more or less face to face with her. Her semi-long, lustrous hair was tied back in a casual way. She obviously hadn’t fussed over it, but neither was there anything even remotely untidy about her appearance. Her features weren’t exaggerated or dramatic, but every expression they assumed made a strong, clear impression. Aoyama thought it was as if her soul, or her spirit, or whatever one wanted to call it, lay just below the surface of her skin.

  Yoshikawa asked if she’d ever worked in television or films, and she shook her head, no.

  ‘There’s been talk a few times, but nothing ever came of it.’

  ‘Why do you suppose that is?’

  ‘I think the fact that I’m not with an agency . . .’

  ‘So you don’t have an agent?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Any reason?’

  ‘Well, once – it was quite a while ago now, when I was still in college – I was . . . scouted? Isn’t that what they call it? Someone stopped me on the street. I suppose I’m to blame for blithely going along with him, but it turned out to be a talent agency for porn actors. The whole experience was so unpleasant that I guess I developed a bias against agencies in general.’

  ‘So you’re completely on your own?’

  ‘I do have a mentor who works for a record company, but I haven’t been in touch with him for some time now.’

  ‘Which record company?’

  ‘Victor.’

  ‘May I ask his name?’

  ‘Shibata-san. He’s a producer in the domestic music division.’

  ‘Thank you. So. You graduated from college and went to work for a trading company. Now that you’ve resigned from the company, may I ask how you’re supporting yourself? Do you have a part-time job of some sort?’

  ‘I help out at a friend’s place three times a week.’

  ‘A restaurant or something?’

  ‘It’s a little neighbourhood bar, a tiny place with just one small counter. The mama-san is a lady I met a long time ago, at voice-training classes.’

  ‘Do you like to drink?’

  ‘Only moderately. Socially.’

  ‘And is three nights a week enough to get by?’

  ‘I also do some modelling now and then.’

  ‘Modelling.’

  ‘I have a friend who’s a stylist, and she helps me get work occasionally. Not for major magazines, of course, but catalogues and newspaper ads and so on.’

  ‘I see. And you live in Suginami? “Casa Prima” – I guess that’s an apartment complex of some sort? You know, people like myself and Aoyama here, we don’t really have much of a window on to the lifestyles of young ladies today. Please feel free not to answer this if it’s too personal, but I wonder how much monthly income someone like yourself requires. A lot of young women seem to be living so extravagantly these days – carrying designer bags that cost tens of thousands of yen, for example – and I can’t help but wonder how they manage that.’

  Yoshikawa looked at Aoyama as if to say, I’m asking this for your benefit, you know.

  ‘To be honest,’ she said, ‘it’s a mystery to me, too.’

  She spoke clearly and unfalteringly, looking at each of them in turn, and she didn’t stretch out the vowels at the ends of words like so many young women, or fill her sentences with meaningless interjections. Aoyama could tell she was a little nervous, though he couldn’t have said how he knew that. Somehow he just felt completely in tune with her feelings.

  ‘However,’ she said, ‘I don’t like to say it, but I suppose a lot of those girls, the ones with the incredibly expensive bags and jewellery and so on, are probably working in the sex industry. As for myself, I have a studio apartment, and the rent’s only a little over seventy thousand yen. I don’t go out that much, and I don’t have any expensive hobbies or tastes, so a hundred and fifty thousand a month . . . might be a little tight, but two hundred thousand or so is enough to pay the bills and buy the books and CDs and things I want.’

  Aoyama piped up for the first time.

  ‘Can you give me an example,’ he said, ‘of what you mean by “expensive hobbies or tastes”?’

  His voice was quavering a bit, and he immediately worried that the question was impossibly inane. But she smiled, and that was all it took to erase his anxiety.

  ‘For example,’ she said, ‘I have a friend who raises tropical fish. She took out a loan to buy this huge aquarium, and now she’s working two jobs just to pay off the loan. And another girl I know was collecting these beautiful wineglasses from Europe. She did word-processing at home and took on so much extra work that she barely had time to sleep and finally made herself ill.’

  Aoyama could relate to this. It was something he himself had often thought about. In the old days, things like tropical fish or imported wineglasses weren’t within reach for the average person. Now when you walked down the street you passed shop windows full of the finest quality goods from around the world. Any of these things could be yours if you were willing to sacrifice a little, and many people ended up sacrificing a lot. It’s difficult to control the desire to accumulate things.

  But it didn’t really matter what she was saying. Aoyama was happy just savouring the sound of her voice. It was a voice that felt like delicate fingers, or a moist tongue, tickling his skin.

  Yoshikawa continued the questioning.

  ‘What kinds of books do you read?’

  ‘Foreign mysteries, mostly. Not any particular author, but . . . I haven’t done much travelling myself, so I love reading about foreign towns and cities. In mysteries and spy novels, you get very detailed descriptions of the streets and the buildings and so on, and I really enjoy that sort of thing.’

  ‘Which country would you most like to visit?’

  ‘I’ve never actually been anywhere except Hawaii, and Honolulu isn’t exactly the most exotic place, is it? Morocco, Turkey, one of the smaller countries in Europe . . . Anywhere would be wonderful, really.’

  When she uttered the names Morocco and Turkey, Yamasaki Asami tilted her head back slightly and a faraway look came into her eyes. Aoyama caught himself imagining the two of them walking down the stone-paved streets of that nostalgic little town in Germany. It would be spring or early summer. A riot of little flowers blooming beneath the eaves of the houses. They hear the songs of skylarks above them as they stroll arm in arm over the ancient paving stones and gaze at the soft sunlight that glitters on the rolling surface of the river. Yes, I lived here for several months, did virtually nothing but go to church and visit that pipe organist at her home, and went to bed early every night. It was very monotonous, the same routine every day, but I remember it as a really special time in my life. I don’t know, this may sound affected, but the beauty and silence of the place filled me with a sort of sublime loneliness. That’s when I realised something. In Japan, even when you’re alone, you’re never really that lonely. But the loneliness you feel living among people with differently coloured skin and eyes, whose language you don’t even speak very well – that sort of loneliness is something you feel down to the marrow of your bones. I always thought that someday I’d come back here with someone I loved, and I’d walk along with my arm around her, just like this, and tell her what it was like being here alone. Of course, I never thought it would turn out this perfectly. This is a dream come true for me, it really is . . .

  He couldn’t believe how sweet this sudden vision tasted. His heart was pounding, and he silently took a few deep breaths to calm himself down. He’d
better ask another question, he thought, or he might just sit there mooning at her, losing himself in daydreams. Besides, he wanted to raise certain core issues that Yoshikawa might not touch upon.

  ‘You,’ he croaked, and cleared his throat. ‘Excuse me. You wrote that you were thinking about going to Spain after leaving the company.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you planning to live there long-term?’

  ‘I have a friend in Madrid, an old friend from ballet school, so it did occur to me to move there. But I haven’t made any actual preparations or anything, which makes me wonder how serious I really am about it all.’

  She lowered her gaze in a melancholy way. Aoyama studied this heart-piercing expression and swallowed.

  ‘May I ask,’ he said, ‘about your experience with ballet?’

  ‘Of course.’ She looked up again and met his gaze.

  ‘You said you injured yourself.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘It must have been awfully difficult to give up on something you’d devoted yourself to for so long. Of course, if you’d rather not talk about it . . .’

  ‘No, it’s fine. I can discuss it fairly objectively now . . . I think.’

  She shot him a lonesome little smile as she spoke these last two words, and again he felt something pierce his heart. It was a smile of resignation, and he recognised it all too well.

  ‘Stop me if this is too personal,’ he said, ‘but in your essay, I believe you wrote that being suddenly deprived of the thing that’s most important to you is in a sense like learning to accept death.’

  ‘I suppose I did write that.’

  She peered at Aoyama inquisitively, wondering, no doubt, where he was going with this, but . . . What a look, he thought. He imagined her peering at him like that up close, in private, and whispering something intense. He’d probably melt into a puddle.

  ‘It moved me,’ he said, and she opened her eyes wide and quietly gasped.

  ‘Ha?’

  ‘I could relate to it. I think almost everyone has had, to one degree or another, a similar experience. Something falls apart on you, or is torn away from you, something that can never be fixed or replaced. You struggle with it and agonise over it and kick and scream, but there’s really nothing you can do. In order to keep on living, you have to learn to accept the reality, accept the loss or the injury, and the wound it leaves. To be frank, I was quite taken aback to see a young woman like yourself selecting such a precise metaphor to describe that sort of acceptance and resignation. When I read it I thought, here’s a person who’s really living her life in earnest.’

  Yoshikawa poked Aoyama’s thigh with his thumb. Meaning, Aoyama assumed, something like ‘Listen to you.’ Yamasaki Asami took a deep breath and slowly let it out.

  ‘I really did suffer a lot,’ she said, ‘and for a lot longer than I even care to remember. I was sure I’d never find anything to take the place of ballet, and it took all my energy just to get through each day. My parents and my friends all said that time alone would heal the wound, and I guess I knew that was true, but I wished I could hibernate or something, and let time go by without having to suffer through it. But of course the clock just kept slowly ticking away. Tick, tick, tick – like it was chipping away at me, at my life. Trying to do other things was painful, but just sitting around and doing nothing was even worse. I don’t know if it’s about resignation so much as . . . Well, death is the worst thing that can happen to you, isn’t it? So in that sense, I thought it was like accepting death.’

  ‘What do you think?’ Aoyama said after she’d left the meeting room and Yoshikawa had sent the photographer out again and told the receptionist they’d take a fifteen-minute break.

  ‘What do I think?’ Yoshikawa said, reaching in his pocket and pulling out a new pack of Lark Milds. He took his time opening the packet, extracting a cigarette, and lighting it. ‘I’m not sure how to answer that,’ he said. ‘There’s definitely something about her that puts a man on edge. I can’t remember the last time just talking to a woman made me want a cigarette.’ He looked at Aoyama and sighed, emitting a stream of smoke. ‘You’re gone, aren’t you. I mean, “Here’s a person who’s living her life in earnest”? Where’d that come from? It’s not something you’d normally say during an audition, that’s for sure. I nearly fell off my chair.’

  Aoyama protested that he was only saying what he really felt. He couldn’t remember, he said, the last time anyone had made that sort of impression on him.

  ‘Well, there’s no denying that she seems earnest,’ Yoshikawa said. ‘But something about her bothers me.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yeah. I can’t put my finger on it, but . . . Well. Anyway.’

  The rest of the auditions were lacklustre. Yoshikawa was tired, not to mention irritated with Aoyama for being so obviously bored and distracted, and he burned his way through the entire packet of Larks. Aoyama, for his part, had only one thing on his mind: how to go about meeting Yamasaki Asami alone next time.

  He returned home an hour earlier than usual. He had the eight-millimetre videotape of her audition and was eager to watch it alone. Rie-san was in the kitchen making dinner and probably wouldn’t leave until Shige got home from school. It was six p.m. now, and since entering high school Shige generally got home at about seven. As soon as he arrived he’d demolish his dinner in the manner popularised by starving lions, and then disappear into his room. Aoyama would have to wait until then to study the tape.

  Once things had progressed a bit, assuming all went well, he’d show the tape to Shige, and of course he’d have to introduce her to him at some point.

  ‘Shige-chan’s kind of late, isn’t he?’ Rie-san said, turning from the potatoes she was slicing. ‘It gets dark by five-thirty these days! Shouldn’t he try to get home a little earlier?’

  Aoyama was at the dining-table, reading the evening paper. Over the years, Ryoko had gradually made improvements on this kitchen of theirs, turning it into a highly functional and invitingly cosy space. During the day it was a better place to relax than even the living-room. The door leading out to the garden was mostly glass, and the big, south-facing windows made this the sunniest room in the house.

  ‘He’s all right. A kid has a lot to do at that age – hanging out with his friends and whatnot.’

  ‘But there’ve been so many muggings and things lately! When I walk home at night, I’m very careful to stick to the streets that are well lit, believe me! If you cross through the park, where the light isn’t so good, you see these kids – teenagers – loitering around in big groups, and, I’ll tell you, it’s very frightening!’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ve schooled him in the ancient art of running like hell if he ever feels threatened. He knows what he’s doing.’

  ‘I know he knows what he’s doing, but they say you can buy anything out there nowadays, even pistols from Russia or China! It’s terrifying!’

  ‘I’ve talked to him about that too. Rie-san, a boy Shige’s age, if he meets a cute girl on the train, for example, he’ll think nothing of spending an hour the next day waiting to see if she shows up on the platform again.’

  ‘As long as it’s something fun and innocent like that, fine, but . . .’

  Rie-san was preparing a creamy stew. She made a lot of stews and soups for them, dishes that could be reheated and eaten right away. Occasionally Aoyama cooked dinner himself, but he made a point of sharing the evening meal with Shige whenever possible. Gangsta was right outside the glass door, and each time Rie-san walked from the counter to the refrigerator he’d bark: Give me food!

  Aoyama imagined Gangsta barking at Yamasaki Asami as she prepared dinner in this kitchen. He even pictured the design and colour of the apron she’d be wearing. Gangsta would be wary of her at first, as he always was with strangers. But after two or three months his bark would change from one of distrust to one like this, imploring her to feed him. Compared to these seven long years, three months was no time at
all . . .

  Shige got home a little after seven and reported, to no one’s surprise, that he was dying of hunger. Watching the news and wondering aloud how Japanese politicians had managed to sink to such depths of depravity, he polished off four bowls of stew, then he retreated to his room, saying he wanted to try out some new software he’d borrowed from a friend.

  Now was Aoyama’s chance to review Yamasaki Asami’s audition video, but he remembered something even more important. He had to arrange to meet with her alone, and the sooner the better. He wondered if he should just call her and tell her the truth, that he thought he was in love with her. Yoshikawa would surely advise against it. Of course he wouldn’t reveal the true purpose behind the audition, but why not candidly confess how he’d felt when reading her essay and speaking with her at the interview? However dubious the circumstances, there was no denying the impact that meeting her had had on him.

  His heartbeat began to race. He had her telephone number. It was just past eight o’clock, so he probably had an hour or so before it might be improper to telephone a young single woman. He sat on the sofa in the living-room and picked up the cordless phone, feeling as if he were Shige’s age and had just spotted the girl he secretly loved on the subway platform. Can’t do it, he muttered to himself and put the phone back down. He opened the drinks cabinet, got out his most expensive bottle of cognac – a grande champagne – and poured a glass.

  At exactly eight-thirty, before he had a chance to get too drunk, he punched out the number on the handset. Yamasaki Asami answered on the first ring.

  ‘Yes?’ she said. Her voice was deeper and thicker than it had been at the audition. Perhaps she’d been dozing.

  ‘Ah, this is Aoyama. One of the producers who interviewed you this afternoon.’

  ‘Oh, hello!’ she said, reverting immediately to the crystalline voice that had haunted him all evening. The change was so abrupt that, had he been in a less agitated state of mind, it might have struck him as odd. ‘Thank you again for your time today.’