Audition

by Ryu Murakami

  As he talked, Aoyama emptied five of the little Mikawachi-yaki cups of warmed ginjoshu. Talking too much, he thought, and reminded himself that he’d better ease up – he would be ill-advised to discuss his personal life while drunk. Yamasaki Asami laid down her chopsticks and peered at him. What a beautiful face, he thought, and what a mysterious face. It seemed different from every angle.

  ‘Do you always think about things like this?’ she said.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘The things you were just talking about.’

  ‘Not always, no. I guess it’s just a matter of living a long time – the thoughts accumulate, especially the useless ones.’

  She helped herself to the last piece of yellowtail sashimi.

  ‘I think you have the most original ideas,’ she said. ‘I could listen to you for hours.’

  Aoyama hoped he wasn’t blushing. The barefooted assistant brought another small bottle of warmed saké, along with more starters – grilled eel, steamed kyoimo taros, and shimeji mushrooms in a black-pepper sauce.

  ‘You may be the first man I’ve ever gone out with,’ Yamasaki Asami said, ‘who spoke to me as if I had a brain.’

  The three old gentlemen had finished their dessert of dried persimmons, and now Kai was helping them on with their coats. Their amiable conversation continued as they prepared to leave: ‘Shall we stop by Ginza?’ ‘I can’t, I’m off for Seattle early tomorrow morning.’ ‘Those long flights are hard on the immune system, they say, not to mention the lower back.’ Passing behind them on the way out, the gentlemen murmured ‘Excuse us’ and ‘Good night’, confirming what Aoyama already knew – that those with real power are unfailingly courteous.

  ‘Most men,’ Yamasaki Asami continued, ‘don’t seem to take young women like me seriously.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid I’ve been babbling a bit.’

  ‘I think what you were saying was very perceptive. And interesting.’

  He took another sip of saké and smiled sheepishly.

  ‘Just talking off the top of my head, really,’ he said. ‘The truth is, I love sushi.’

  Yamasaki Asami laughed. Kai was seeing the old gentlemen off, and the assistant was in the back somewhere, so the two of them were alone for a moment. Aoyama laughed too, not because what he’d said was very funny, but because some of the tension had finally evaporated. It was time to broach the subject foremost in his mind. Kai came back in but sat in the far corner of the room and lit a cigarette. She smoked non-filtered Peace.

  ‘I wanted to discuss something else fairly serious tonight,’ Aoyama began.

  Yamasaki Asami glanced up at him, sensing his nervousness, and immediately set down her chopsticks. Her cheeks were faintly flushed. She folded her hands in her lap and lowered her gaze, listening.

  ‘I haven’t told you anything about my private life,’ he went on. ‘My wife . . . Seven years ago she died of cancer.’

  At the word ‘wife’, Yamasaki Asami tensed up visibly. At the word ‘died’, she turned to face him.

  ‘I haven’t had a real relationship with anyone since her death. Which is not to say I’m some sort of paragon of morality, mind you. But after she died, I just buried myself in my work. I told you about the German pipe organist. Well, it was right after my wife died that I got involved in that project. I used to come to this restaurant with her a lot – but please don’t take that the wrong way. It’s not that I’m looking for a replacement for my wife, or that you remind me of her, or anything like that. You’re a different person, of course, completely different – in fact, I think you’re utterly unique. Which is why, as I’ve come to know you over the past couple of months, I’ve . . . Well, I’ve started to think about getting married again.’

  He couldn’t help noticing that Yamasaki Asami was not taking this well. The rosy flush had drained from her cheeks, and now the shoulders of her glossy black dress were trembling.

  ‘Forgive me if I’m putting you on the spot,’ he said. ‘I know what a farce this is if you don’t feel the same way, but I decided I had to ask anyway. I’m a widower, and I’m tired of being alone. I’d like to continue seeing you, with an eye to getting married eventually.’

  She looked up at him, then immediately dropped her gaze. She tried awkwardly to twist her lips into a smile but soon abandoned the effort and shook her head.

  ‘I’m not that sort of person.’

  There was something unsettling about her voice as she said this. Aoyama felt as if a cold wind had swept over him. Not that sort of person. What did it mean? That she had no intention of being tied down? Or simply that she wasn’t taking their relationship as seriously as he was?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said and stood up. Kai glanced over at them.

  Aoyama felt as if his biggest fear had been realised. He knew he had to act but couldn’t think of anything to do or say. He sat there paralysed as Yamasaki Asami took her leather coat from the hook on the wall.

  ‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘I want to go home now.’

  The expression on her face was strangely vacant and frigid, and Aoyama didn’t know how to react. All he could do was watch in a kind of daze as she walked out and quietly closed the door behind her. Kai stubbed out her cigarette and said, ‘What are you waiting for? Go after her.’

  Leather coat in hand, Yamasaki Asami was all but running as she threaded her way through the streetwalkers. Aoyama had to sprint if he wanted to catch her before she reached the main street.

  ‘Asami-san!’

  He called her name, but his throat was so tight and dry that his shout came out more like a whimper. The streetwalkers’ alley seemed surreal to him now. The faces of the ladies in their gaudy clothing and the boys with their thick make-up and bizarre wigs seemed to leap at him in a series of close-ups. He felt as if he’d been thrust into a Fellini film, or a nightmare. A chaos of colours flashed before his eyes – a green bouffant hairdo, metallic silver toenails in purple high heels, the scarlet lipstick of a male hooker, the vivid pink of a pair of lamé stockings. He felt disorientated and had no idea what he was doing, or what he was going to say to her. The cold night air on his face was all that seemed to connect him to reality.

  ‘Asami-san!’

  When he yelped her name for the third time, she turned and stopped to wait for him. He got close enough in the dim light to see that her brows were knitted with what looked like annoyance.

  ‘I’m sorry for suddenly blurting out such a thing. It was stupid of me. At least let me help you find a taxi. You can respond to what I said next time, or on the phone if you prefer. Or maybe it’s not even something you have to think about, but that’s all right too. I just felt I needed to say what I said.’

  She shook her head with the same irritated expression and muttered something. He could see her breath in the night air but couldn’t hear what she said. The odd sense of being in a movie still hadn’t left him. Only the white vapour of his own breath seemed unambiguously real.

  She peered up at him as if she were about to speak but then turned, letting her head droop, and slowly continued towards the street. So slowly that it was difficult to keep from outpacing her. Aoyama paused every few steps and gazed blankly at the distant cluster of skyscrapers that loomed over the buildings ahead. Red lights flashed atop them, each blinking at its own regular pace, as if registering a different heartbeat. When they reached the street they stopped and turned to face each other. Neither made any attempt to hail a taxi. She was still carrying her coat. He gently lifted it from her arm and draped it over her shoulders, and as he did so, she teetered forwards and threw her arms around him, burying her face in his neck. Her shoulders were trembling violently, and the embrace was an extremely awkward one. Aoyama was too stunned to know what to do. He held her as if to keep her from falling, the cold leather of her coat slipping under his fingers. Then she let go of him and took a step back.

  ‘You’re not just toying with me, are you?’ Her voice was an unfamiliar, icy whisper, and her
face underwent a sudden and startling transformation as she spoke. It was as if she were shedding some sort of membrane. A wave of goose-pimples rippled over Aoyama’s flesh.

  ‘Of course not,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I’ve never been more serious.’

  He watched her face return to normal. As if that transparent membrane were slowly re-adhering to her skin. It didn’t seem like something she was doing consciously – putting on a mask to hide her true self, for example, or to protect herself from the eyes of others – but rather a natural process, a physical response. As natural as laughing when something was funny, or seething over an insult.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, reverting to the voice he knew so well. A taxi pulled up beside them at the kerb, and she climbed inside. ‘And thank you for tonight.’ Aoyama bent down and kissed her on the cheek, and she turned to look into his eyes. ‘I love you,’ she whispered, and pressed her mouth against his.

  ‘Same here,’ Aoyama said some moments later.

  She waved to him from the back seat of the taxi until it melted into the traffic and was gone.

  ‘Where did you meet her?’

  When Aoyama got back to the restaurant, Kai was waiting with another bottle of warmed saké and got out her own Arita-yaki cup to help him drink it. He told her about the audition and about Yamasaki Asami’s background and responded frankly, if somewhat mechanically, to her questions. To his own ears his voice sounded like that of a child in a state of shock. He still hadn’t recovered from that kiss. Yamasaki Asami’s lips were cold and soft and sweet, and the moment the kiss was over he’d experienced, along with exhilaration, a bizarre sense of guilt, or shame. It wasn’t quite like anything he’d ever known before – a sense of having done something that can never be retracted, or forgiven. It was a bitter, almost painful, sort of feeling, but it was also intoxicating. Just to taste those lips again, Aoyama thought . . .

  I’d probably give up everything I own.

  Kai sat facing him across the counter, smoking another Peace, and poured them both some saké. Kai was a classic beauty, but right now all Aoyama could see were the lines of age on her face.

  ‘So, what do you think?’ he asked, but not in the spirit of actually soliciting her opinion. It was more of an attempt to confirm what he already knew: She’s really something, isn’t she? You just don’t find young women like her any more. You see that, don’t you?

  ‘Strange girl,’ Kai said, exhaling smoke.

  ‘Strange?’

  ‘I’ve never met a girl quite like that before.’

  ‘Well, it’s a whole new generation, Kai.’

  ‘That’s true, but some things never change. What’s most important to a person, that’s the question. Always has been and always will be. When I meet someone, I can usually tell within a minute or two what it is they value most. The young people nowadays – men and women, amateurs and pros – generally fall into one of two categories: either they don’t know what it is that’s most important to them, or they know but don’t have the power to go after it. But this girl’s different. She knows what’s most important to her and she knows how to get it, but she doesn’t let on what it is. I’m pretty sure it’s not money, or success, or a normal happy life, or a strong man, or some weird religion, but that’s about all I can tell you. She’s like smoke: you think you’re seeing her clearly enough, but when you reach for her there’s nothing there. That’s a sort of strength, I suppose. But it makes her hard to figure out.’

  ‘She’s nice, though, right?’ Aoyama said.

  Kai seemed taken aback by this. She shook her head and stubbed out her cigarette.

  ‘Is that really what you think?’ she said.

  A simple question, but it rocked him. He knew perfectly well that Yamasaki Asami wasn’t simply a nice girl, and yet that was how he’d chosen to think of her. Kai had put her finger on this bald self-deception, and he had the odd sensation of wanting to be surprised but not being able to.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I’m sure she’s not a bad person. I’m pretty serious about her.’

  Kai frowned and shook her head again.

  ‘Nice person, bad person – that’s not the level this girl is at. I can see you’re crazy about her and probably won’t be able to hear this, Ao-chan, but I think you’d be better off staying away from someone like her. I can’t read her exactly, but I can tell you she’s either a saint or a monster. Maybe both extremes at once, but not somewhere in between.’

  9

  The next morning, around nine-thirty, Yamasaki Asami telephoned the office. It was the first time she’d ever called him.

  ‘Aoyama-san, there’s a Miss Yamasaki on line four.’

  Takamatsu, a young female staff member, had taken the call. The office was one large room, and Aoyama had no private quarters of his own. His employees called him simply ‘Aoyama-san’ – with the exception of Tanaka, an accountant in his fifties, who preferred the more conventional ‘Chief’. Takamatsu would naturally have asked what the call was in reference to. What had her reply been?

  ‘It’s me,’ she said when he picked up the phone. ‘I’m sorry to bother you at work.’

  The staff would hear his side of the conversation – but so what, he thought. He’d eventually have to fill them all in anyway. Marrying a woman who was nearly twenty years younger than himself, and more beautiful than your average film star, was likely to earn him some teasing, but he was sure they’d all be happy for him.

  ‘Is it a bad time?’

  ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘I was thinking of calling you anyway.’

  ‘I just couldn’t wait any longer to hear your voice.’

  ‘I know. Same here.’

  Takamatsu, tapping at her computer keyboard, glanced over at him. Takamatsu was twenty-five. After graduating from college she’d spent a year in London, and upon returning to Japan she’d worked for a small TV station in her home town. But she’d left that job and applied to Aoyama’s company because of her burning ambition to work on real documentaries. At her interview she’d come across as fairly impertinent, and the senior staff members had opposed hiring her, but Aoyama was impressed with her English skills and her fire. He put her in charge of licensing foreign documentaries and facilitating joint projects with production companies overseas. Unlike so many young people, she managed to remain both passionate and objective about projects she worked on, not letting her own personal tastes cloud her judgement. Her boyfriend was a foreigner.

  ‘I’m sorry about last night,’ Yamasaki Asami said. ‘I guess I kind of lost it.’

  ‘There’s nothing to apologise for. It was my fault for bringing up something like that out of the blue.’

  ‘Do you understand why I’m calling?’

  ‘I think so. I wanted to hear your voice too.’

  There was a subtle difference in the way she spoke to him now. Polite and refined as always, but she was using somewhat less formal language, and her voice seemed somehow more intimate, more trusting. That, Aoyama realised, was a direct result of last night’s kiss, and the fact that they now shared a secret of sorts. Aoyama welcomed this change, of course, and he found her voice more bewitching than ever. He had to concentrate to keep from breaking into a goofy smile.

  ‘I still don’t completely understand,’ she said. ‘Or, rather, I still don’t completely believe it.’

  ‘What I said last night?’

  ‘Of course. What else?’

  ‘It was all so sudden, after all.’

  ‘But it’s true . . . isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s true. Everything I said last night is the truth.’

  He hadn’t got around to telling her about Shige, but that wasn’t a lie. Hearing her voice, he wished he could see her, be with her. And once that thought had occurred to him, every nerve in his body seemed to crackle with desire.

  ‘Can we meet again soon?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course. I wish it could be right now.’

  He told her he’d call back later in the d
ay to arrange something.

  Takamatsu was watching him and smiled when he ended the call. He wondered if he should confide in her, ask her advice. He didn’t know what his next step with Yamasaki Asami should be. There was the question of sex, for example. Having confirmed their mutual feelings with that kiss, should they nonetheless wait until they were married to make love? He had hinted at this question to Kai the night before.

  ‘Should you sleep with her?’ Kai had said. ‘You got me. Young women today are all over the map on that one. Some are offended if men try to have sex with them and some are offended if they don’t. So I have no way of knowing, particularly when it comes to a girl who’s so hard to read. But one thing I can say for sure is that the more intimate you become with her, the more obsessed you’re going to get. You’ve got to carve it into your skull, Ao-chan, that you don’t really know anything about this girl. And it’s not as if there’s some infallible method for getting at the truth. You know, there’s something old-school about this one, in a way. Back in the day, in the geisha world, you’d run across a girl kind of like her every now and then. Breathtakingly beautiful, very popular with the clients, nothing but the top class of patrons, but basically unfathomable. They’d have an almost unnatural sort of beauty, the sort of beauty that made you wonder if it hadn’t been nourished by all the misery and misfortune in the world. The sort of beauty that can destroy a man. And of course that sense of danger, too, seems to drive men wild. The old femme fatale thing.’

  Aoyama invited Takamatsu out to lunch. He phoned from the office to reserve a table at what she said was her favourite restaurant in Tokyo, an Indian place in Jingu-mae. There were only eight tables, and people without reservations were queuing. Takamatsu was a regular, apparently: the head waiter knew her and seated them next to a window with a view of the Jingu woods.