by Nick Mamatas
TO BE CONTINUED.
“Yes, of course I was pleased with the Last Jew’s fake German identity—the colonel’s name I made from adding together the names of Fredrick Viter and Walther Rauff, both rather obscure historical figures. The contents were harder, the sense of something major happening almost—or so I like to think—palpable,” Hanzi said. He was sitting in a coffee shop on Göring Strasse with his friend.
His friend was also a colleague. They worked for Deutsche Bank together. His name was Hermann.
“I also enjoyed your Nazi Biker Sluts—Why Won’t You Come Out Tonight? “ Hermann now said. “Quite risqué, I thought.”
“I hope so,” Hanzi said. They were quite alone. No one was listening.
“And I thought Nazi Super Sex Toys Last All Summer Long was almost poetic,” Hermann said. He was something of a fan, and he began to look shiny with perspiration. “Too bad the Last Jew had to come to an end.”
“I couldn’t keep it up,” Hanzi said. The last installment of The Last Jew and the Virgins of the Rhein was published just as he got the job. His parents had died soon after, in a train crash when they went to visit relatives in Vienna, and Hanzi stayed to live alone in the family home.
“I also liked your monograph on The Fetishizing and Eroticizing of the Jew,” Hermann said. “Thought provoking.” He coughed and looked at his feet. “So what are you working on now?”
Hanzi smiled. It was a strange, almost ethereal smile. “I’ll show you,” he said. “Meet me next week, at the house.”
They drank the rest of their coffee in silence and admired the girls who passed them by.
The house was at number 304, Adolf Hitler Strasse. It was a comfortable white-fenced house in a quiet suburb of Berlin, with neatly-trimmed lawn at the front. But when Hermann arrived there, Hanzi was gone.
His last story was found on his desk, uncompleted. Hermann found the house undisturbed, the door open, Hanzi’s ancient Pravetz still turned on, the word-processing program still running, the story incomplete on the screen. Hanzi’s special books and magazines lay in plain sight over the desk: it was as if Hanzi, perhaps getting up to answer a knock on the door, had then simply disappeared.
The story was called Hershele Ostropol in the Stalag of Death, and it began like so:
Hershele Ostropol in the Stalag of Death
When they came for him it was not at night but in the middle of the afternoon, and the two women came quiet and with no warning, with just a polite knock on the door. He had taken it to be the postman, carrying a late delivery of one of his special magazines; but the two who stood in the doorway wore no uniforms, and only their eyes betrayed who, and what, they were.
Hanzi knew then that it was over; the knowledge washed him in lethargy, and a sense of futility made him open his hands as if in a shrug, his slim fingers opening limply, sweat dampening his palms.
They had interrupted him writing, it was another one of his stories. The computer was left switched on in his small study, and his special books and magazines lay in plain view on the desk.
He knew then that it was over; and he went with them without a fight and let them steer him into the dark Mercedes that waited for him, as he knew it would, outside.
The two female S.S colonels sat opposite him in the car, leather skirts riding up their pale thighs. Their lips were colorless, without lipstick, and their blonde hair gathered like dew on their shoulders.
“What will you do with me?” he whispered, unconsciously licking his lips. The woman on his left had brought out a horse whip and was stroking it, almost tenderly.
“What will we do with you?” she asked. A gold swastika plunged from her neck into her bosom, hung on a thin necklace. She looked out of the window. “We will teach you what it really means,” she said, “to be treated like a Jew.”
The car purred as it went into motion; and soon it was gone from Adolf Hitler Strasse, heading towards . . .
TO BE CONTINUED.
Lavie Tidhar grew up on a kibbutz in Israel, lived in Israel and South Africa, travelled widely in Africa and Asia, and has lived in London for a number of years. He is the winner of the 2003 Clarke-Bradbury Prize (awarded by the European Space Agency), was the editor of Michael Marshall Smith: The Annotated Bibliography (PS Publishing, 2004) and the anthology A Dick & Jane Primer for Adults (The British Fantasy Society, 2006), and is the author of the novella An Occupation of Angels (Pendragon Press, 2005). His stories appear in Sci Fiction, ChiZine, Postscripts, Nemonymous, Infinity Plus, Aeon, The Book of Dark Wisdom, Fortean Bureau and many others, and in translation in seven languages.
THE MOBY CLITORIS OF HIS BELOVED
Ian Watson and Roberto Quaglia
Yukio was only a salaryman, not a company boss, but for years he’d yearned to taste whale clitoris sashimi. Regular whalemeat sashimi was quite expensive, but Yukio would need to work for a hundred years to afford whale clitoris sashimi, the most expensive status symbol in Japan.
Much of Yukio’s knowledge of the world came from manga comic books or from anime movies which he watched on his phone while commuting for three hours every day. He treasured the image of a beautiful young ama diving woman standing on the bow of a whaling boat clad in a semi-transparent white costume and holding sparklingly aloft the special clitoridectomy knife. An icon far more wonderful than that of Kate Winslet at the front of the Titanic! Americans might have their Moby Dick, but Yukio’s countrymen (or at least the richest of them) had their Moby Clitoris Sashimi.
The beautiful young ama woman would take a deep breath, dive, swim underneath a woman-whale, grasp her 8-centimeter clitoris, then with one razor-sharp slash cut off the clitoris and swim away very fast. On the deck of the whaler the crew would wait for the ama to climb back aboard, her costume now see-through due to wetness.
And then the whalers would harpoon and kill the whale, because it would be too cruel to leave a female whale alive after amputation of her clitoris. In this respect the Japanese differed very much from certain Islamic and African countries which cut off the clitorises of human girls, so that men should not feel inadequate about their own capacity for orgasms.
Whenever the Japanese were criticised for hunting whales, it was the harvesting of clitorises which empowered them to continue. And of course Japan observed a strict clitoris quota, so that enough female whales would continue to copulate pleasurably and repopulate. Thus, while it was true that whale clitoridectomy directly pleasured only the richest individuals, every Japanese citizen who enjoyed eating whales also benefitted.
This Yukio knew. Yet he still yearned to taste whale clitoris sashimi for himself! Most men have licked a woman’s clitoris, although probably they haven’t eaten one; but the organ of ecstasy of a female whale sliced thinly was said to possess a taste beyond words.
When Yukio’s vacation came—the usual very hot and humid fortnight in August—he didn’t surrender his holiday back to the Nippon Real-Doll Corporation, as he had done in previous years, in the hope of more rapid promotion through the copyright department. Instead, he took a train from Tokyo (and then a bus) the hundred kilometers to Shirahama City where ama diving women lived. He would seduce an ama to love him. They would marry. She would get a job on a whaling boat. For him she would smuggle clitoris sashimi . . .
To his consternation Yukio soon discovered that the ama women of Shirahama, who dive for red seaweed, sea snails and abalone, looked nothing like the icon in his mind. For one thing, they weren’t slim but were muscular from exercise—and chubby, to cope with cold water. For another, their faces were darkly tanned, not a lovely creamy-white. For a third, their voices were loud and raucous, perhaps due to damage from water pressure; and their speech was quite vulgar. For a fourth, they didn’t wear semi-transparent white garments, but orange sweatshirts, thermal tights, and neoprene diving hoods. And for a fifth, their average age seemed to be over sixty. Even if one of those fat vulgar grannies wanted a lover and husband, how could Yukio excite himself enough to woo
her?
Disconsolate, he went to get drunk. Presently he found himself outside The Authentic Ama-Geisha Inn. The name seemed promising.
Inside, he was amazed to find waiting several beautiful, slim young hostesses dressed in the correct long, white semi-transparent costumes, and also wearing white high heels. Perched jauntily on their foreheads were diving masks. One hostess wore her very long hair in an oily black rope which would excite a bondage fetishist or a flagellant considerably.
Soon this hostess, whose name was Keiko, was leading Yukio into a private room—which contained a low table, plastic cushions, and a small, blue-tiled pool set in the floor of tatami matting, which was plastic too; plastic would dry more quickly than straw matting. He knelt. Keiko knelt and poured some Johnnie Walker Black Label. She giggled and said sweetly, “You may splash me whenever you wish!”
Thus revealing more of her breast or thigh or belly . . .
“But you’re the ama of my visions!” Yukio exclaimed. “Why aren’t you diving in the sea? You would look so beautiful.”
Already he was a bit in love with Keiko, even though the plan had been for an ama to fall in love with him.
“I’m an ama-geisha,” Keiko explained. “Only you can wet me, not the sea.”
“I’ve seen amas just like you with the whaling fleet! Only,” and he recollected his apparently foolish plan, “not with such wonderful hair as yours. They dive for whale clitorises,” he added.
Keiko giggled again. “A real ama does that.”
“A fat old granny?”
Keiko’s job was to please him, and Yukio seemed to prefer intellectual stimulation rather than getting drunk and splashing her, so the astonishing truth emerged—a truth known to most inhabitants of Shirahama, but which the media patriotically chose not to publicise.
Each whaling ship carried a real ama and also a false ama (or rather an authentic iconic ama). The real ama, old and fat, foul-mouthed and lurid, would harvest the clitoris while the false ama—who looked more real—would wait in the water beside the ship. The false authentic ama would then take the clitoris from the real inauthentic ama and would climb a steep gangplank back on board deck, her garment delightfully see-through. Meanwhile the old fat ama would sneak on to the ship from the rear, using the ramp up which dead whales were winched.
This substitution made whale-hunting seem graceful and elegant and sexually exciting in the eyes of the world—slightly akin to marine bull-fighting—and justified the high price to gourmets of clitoris sashimi.
Yukio stared at Keiko. “Wouldn’t you rather be on a whaling ship, than here? With your wonderful rope of hair you’d set a new style for cartoon books and films. I can license your image for you.” Yukio’s work did indeed consist in copyright matters concerning Real Dolls modelled upon porn stars. “I’m a specialist. You’d earn a big fee.” And Yukio would be the lovely Keiko’s agent and manager, and because of this, he would become her Beloved! And at last he would eat whale clitoris sashimi.
Keiko was wide-eyed.
“Agreed?”
Before Keiko could change her mind, Yukio picked up his glass of Johnny Walker Black Label and threw the contents over her, wetting and revealing a delightful breast.
“Kampai!” he exclaimed, to toast her—but in his mind he was shouting ‘Banzai!’ for victory.
The whaling industry normally recruited deep-sea ama from communities such as Shirahama, but Yukio needed Keiko with him in Tokyo to register her image. Keiko could stay in his little apartment in a highrise in the suburbs.
So Keiko exchanged her authentic ama costume and high heels for jeans and a blouse, and piled her rope of hair upon her head, hiding it with a scarf, because nobody must steal her image on a phone en route! Already Yukio felt paranoid and jealous.
On the train Yukio looked at the news on his own phone, and a headline caught his eye: THROW THE WHALE AWAY!
A meeting in South Korea of the International Whaling Commission had ended in confusion. As usual the dispute was about whether to save whales or eat them. The Japanese delegate had suddenly declared that whale clitoris sashimi was a cultural treasure unique to Japan. If foreigners forced the Japanese to stop eating whalemeat, the Japanese would continue to harvest whale clitorises—but to please world public opinion they would throw the rest of the whale away. They would accomplish this grand gesture by compassionately exploding all clitoridectomised whales using torpedos packed with plastic explosive, since nuclear torpedos were unacceptable.
“That will make clitorises even more valuable and prestigious,” Yukio said to Keiko.
“I have a clitoris too,” she replied.
“But not a whale clitoris.” Or at least not yet, he thought.
Maybe the Japanese delegate’s statement was intended to bewilder the World Wildlife Fund, which had been picketing the meeting. Under the United Nations’ Declaration of Cultural Rights, it was forbidden to attack or slander any country’s unique cultural icons, such as the Golden Arches of MacDonald’s or the Eiffel Tower. Now that Japan had registered whale clitoris sashimi as a cultural treasure, that gourmet experience was protected from criticism—and if there were no clitorises to be sliced, obviously the experience would become extinct. To preserve the cultural experience, the Japanese must continue to hunt whales.
Yukio’s apartment was a four-mat one, which was better than living and sleeping in a room only the size of three tatami mats; but still it was rather crowded by two people, unless those two people were intimate. So Yukio found himself examining Keiko’s clitoris, causing her to sigh with pleasure. Then he went to sleep and dreamed that every century a magical woman-whale would appear offshore, to provide sashimi from her clitoris for the Empress of the time. On the brow of this whale: a white mark exactly like a chrysanthemum flower. During the subsequent hundred years, the whale’s clitoris would regenerate.
Yukio awoke in the morning, thinking immediately about the possibilities of cloning clitoris. Keiko had already risen and was now kneeling, dressed in her authentic iconic ama costume which real ama no longer wore. Truly she had the graces of a geisha. Obviously a woman’s clitoris couldn’t possibly taste as wonderful as a whale’s, yet what if cloned human clitoris could be marketed profitably enough so that the genius who thought of this became rich enough to afford to eat whale clitoris?
Since Yukio had no idea how to clone anything, an alternative occurred to him. These days, because pigs and people are very alike, pigs provided transplant organs for human beings. Maybe a million people had inside them pig hearts or lungs or livers or kidneys. When the pigs were sacrificed to provide transplants, the rest of the pig, including the clitoris in the case of female pigs, would probably go into pet food.
What if Yukio were to buy the sex organs of pigs, to provide a source of clitorises? These could be packaged in tiny jars as human clitorises, and sold over the internet! Upon the label, a photo of a genuine human clitoris, with a certificate of authenticity which would be correct since the picture at least was genuine. Delicious clitorises, cloned from this very clitoris you see! Realistically, Keiko might not obtain a job on a whaling ship—yet she could still help Yukio to achieve his goal.
Truly, his trip to the seaside had inspired him, probably because the clean air contained more oxygen in it than in the city.
Yukio took his phone, and soon he was photographing Keiko’s clitoris while she assisted him. He wasn’t quite sure if her clitoris was the usual size but it was certainly very noticeable. Using Photoshop, he could get rid of the surrounding flaps of flesh familiar to users of porn magazines, leaving only the clitoris itself in the picture. His computer could print many labels. In a truly iconic sense he would indeed be cloning Keiko’s clitoris, or at least its image. In his excitement he almost forgot to go to work.
On the commuter train, he used his phone to search for Pig Organ Farms and for Food Bottlers. Genius is to perceive connections where none were seen before.
When he returned home that
night, Keiko was already lying asleep on the futon, still dressed as an ama and wearing her diving mask for even greater authenticity. Her long rope of hair seemed like an oxygen tube. The TV set was showing young men eating as many worms as they could as quickly as possible. It was the popular weekly show Brown Spaghetti Race, sponsored by the Dai-Nippon Cheese Company. The more Parmesan the contestants poured on the wiggling worms, the less difficult it was to pick them up using smoothly lacquered chopsticks.
Would consumers be more excited by “genuine canned cloned human clitoris sashimi” or “genuine ama clitoris sashimi (cloned)”? Maybe the label should show Keiko smiling as she held her photoshopped clitoris to her own lips with chopsticks? Would the suggestion of auto-cannibalism excite buyers? Was his ideal market gourmets who couldn’t afford whale clitoris, or sexual fetishists? Or both?
Yukio sat on the edge of the futon beside Keiko and regarded her tenderly. He lifted her rope of hair, closed his lips upon the end of it, and blew into the hair as though to supply her with more oxygen, such as she had been accustomed to at the seaside. Maybe, subconsciously at least, that was the reason why she had put on the diving mask.
“Keiko-san,” he told her politely, although she was asleep, “there is a change of plan.”
It took Yukio some hard work and organisation and most of his savings to set up the Genuine Cloned Ama Clitoris Sashimi Company, or GCACSC for short. The sexual organs of organ-donor pigs must be rushed by courier, refrigerated and ultra-fresh, to the Greater Tokyo Bottling Company, where a dedicated employee dissected out the clitorises for bottling. Irrelevant vaginas and labia and also penises and balls were cooked and minced and canned to become Luxury Pig-Protein sent as food aid to starving Communist North Korea, with the full co-operation of the government’s Japan-Aid programme, which subsidised the project and praised Yukio’s initiative and sense of social responsibility, while respecting his wish to remain anonymous. The donor farm believed that the complete sexual organs were being processed, which in the case of male pigs was true; and Yukio had no wish to enlighten them.