I ask him if the photocopy of a student identification card attached to each item is authentic.
“I never deal with the fake. Although I carefully erase eyes, mouth, and name out of the photocopy for her safety, her facial contour, school name, and its emblem is still there to authenticate the item. Besides, my customers need at least some physical evidences, no matter how insignificant they look, to construct the profile of the desired. Branding is everything, don’t you think?”
I approach the service counter and look up at the man in kimono.
“If I were actually here to sell my undies, how would you like to do business with me?”
“Is this for some kind of school assignment? You don’t look like an undercover police officer to me.”
“I need to know it for future business.”
“I see.” He grins at me knowingly and continues, “Okay. When a girl, like you, comes to my shop to offer her precious item, I courteously ask her to show me her student identification card first and make sure that she is indeed a high-school student, hopefully a prestigious one. Then I politely ask her what she wants to offer.”
“How about a pair of panties?”
“Sure, that’s the most popular item. But I do not take, this is very important by the way, I repeat, I do not take anything if you’re not wearing it right now, at this very moment. It means that you the seller are expected to bring spare undies with you, if necessary. Now, perhaps you want to know about how I set a price on each item, don’t you? It depends on two factors; what she is offering and how prestigious her school is.”
“Thank you. It was very instructive.”
“No problem,” the owner says, again rubbing the brim of his ten-gallon hat with three fingers.
His gaudy kimono for women is glittering under a bluish fluorescent light and a pinkish light bulb. I think that the owner is such a character that he could have become a popular television personality. He also seems to have a lot of things to say. But, of course, it would be also impossible not to make any mention of Yukio who has never missed making comments on almost anything we can think of.
Last night I searched his e-mails stored in my Mobile by the keyword FETISH and this is what I found: We tend to embrace the past when we see no hope in the future. A yearning for things past also bears a revulsion against things present. Things change too rapidly, too abruptly, and too ruthlessly. Just like our Archipelago. Just like Tokyo. Just like the plastic cityscape of our hometown.
Maybe some of us no longer want to move forward.
Maybe some of us want to leave society or reality or both at once. Maybe some of us want to escape to the remembrance of things past.
For most of us, the past signifies youth, purity, and potentiality. It would therefore be natural for some of us to dream of repeatedly inseminating the past or being inseminated by the past even if it were only a fragment of the past, just as our historians or archaeologists do to our homeland or foreign soil on occasion. They subconsciously understand very well that their dreams can be fulfilled only through fragments. They understand that it is the only way to secure their present and future. What they are afraid of is the hypothesis in which if the past were to be brought back to life as a whole, it would be nothing but a zombie. They abhor change as much as they adore the imaginary past.
A part that is severed from its whole cannot be changed or transformed into something else even if the whole keeps changing. Once it is removed from a city, for instance, a single board of traffic sign becomes something that is as eternal as the imaginary past. It is now crystalized and secured as had been always in the past. In other words, the board of traffic sign becomes as eternal as a pair of panties, while the ever-changing city is the same as the growing body which used to wear it.
History never repeats itself. This is an unrelenting truth.
Although it appears to repeat itself at times, the past can never be brought back to life exactly as it was. Once it is gone, it has been gone forever. Most of us know it by experience. The proverb such as that it is no use crying over spilt milk really sounds deep when we lost someone we loved. What is lost is lost forever. Time is never the great healer. This is the truth. Because of this, some of us still want to see, smell, and try to touch some fragments of the past. They are the seeds of memories. And those seeds of memories have been our most seductive fetish and will be so as long as we remain to be humans.
Banzai.
Say sayonara with a sneer.
*
Before long I have found a photocopy of recognizable student identification card, probably Maya’s, and, next to it, the item offered by her. It is a pair of cotton panties, white, with a print of a swallow-tailed butterfly right above the crotch. I look into the owner’s note on which the words ‘This item has been with her for two consecutive days’ are printed as its selling point. The moment I am about to ask him a question, a familiar voice can be heard from behind.
“Look at me.”
I quickly turn around and catch sight of Maya by the jet-black door of MEMORABILIA as she aims her Mobile at me.
A flare of flashlight hits me in the eye.
“I caught you, Luna.”
“No, no. This is not what you’re thinking, Maya.”
“What a pervert. I took a picture of you already,” she says flatly and flings off the door.
“No, please, Maya, wait a minute.”
I rush out of the door and start running down the stairs the moment I have noticed the position indicator of the elevator flashing at the second floor. But as I approach the landing for the second floor, I remember that I have left my umbrella in MEMORABILIA. I hurry back, grab my umbrella, and again run down the narrow stairs. I see the elevator having already arrived at the ground floor.
“Maya, please wait.”
I am about to dash out into the sidewalk from this building when I violently stumble over the umbrella Maya thrust out right in front of my shin. The next moment I have fallen into a puddle with a splash.
Maya chuckles wickedly as she elegantly opens her umbrella. I glare up at her on my hands and knees. My sailor middy top and short pleated skirt are both wet with splash. The winter rain is cold and the illuminations of Shibuya indifferent. I feel my whole face burning with humiliation and Maya begins taking pictures of me in quick succession with her Mobile.
She politely says in a girlish voice.
“Could you please raise your face a little bit more?”
*
The flash from Maya’s mobile reminds me of a sudden spotlight thrown over the stage. I was five years old and playing the role of one of ordinary ducklings by that well-known Aesop’s Fable. I was wondering why we the ordinary ducklings remained to be the ordinary ducklings, while that single most ugly duckling succeeded in transforming itself into a beautiful swan. It would be unfair to us, to everyone else, would it not? I couldn’t understand the reason why we had to play the part of such unfortunate ducklings in front of our parents. It felt so miserable that I forgot my lines altogether in the middle of the play.
*
Maya peeks into a glass of strawberry soda and says, “Some witch is shaking Tokyo again.”
I swiftly hold a cup of cocoa that starts vibrating in front of me with a clinking sound made by a teaspoon on its saucer.
Other customers also seem to recognize this feeble vibration. I am able to hear them whispering the word ‘earth tremor’ and ‘earthquake’ here and there in this cafe located on the fifteenth floor of a slim high-rise office building. We are seated ourselves at a table for two by a window.
“At last Tokyo becomes the target,” says Maya twisting her lips. “And it’s a fair manner, I think.”
“I’m not sure.”
“My father often says that we tend to believe things to be right until it gets wrong.”
I am busy pressing a napkin against the hem of my short pleated skirt. My right knee has been covered by her handkerchief.
Before long th
e earth tremor has subsided. I look around and see that eighty percent of the tables are occupied by cheerful customers and that the night view of Shibuya looks indeed charming. But it would be a disaster if we were caught in the act of tea drinking by a teacher from the guidance section of our gakko.
I have no doubt that we would be suspended from school for at least five days.
“No, I’m not worrying about teachers,” says Maya dreamily with her distinctive lisp. “We are in Shibuya and we are like two tiny transparent marbles in a sandy beach. Who can find us?”
“But an accident happens.”
“When you fell to the puddle back there, by the way, you became the center of attention for about half a minute. That was quite an achievement. You should be proud of it. Look at me.”
And Maya takes a snapshot of me with her Mobile.
As my mother keeps warning me, I shouldn’t be in the spotlight under any circumstances.
Maya raises her eyelashes as if to have recalled something offending.
“Because of you, Luna, I’ll be no longer visit MEMORABILIA. Never again.”
“So?”
“There is a big sign of No Photography on the wall behind the service counter. Have you ever noticed it? The owner, Mr. Sweet Papa, have seen me violate it. I won’t be welcomed.”
“So? He still needs suppliers. Everything is for business you know. “
“You don’t understand it. I’m an outcast now because of you.”
“You deserved it, Maya.”
“Oh, I see. Finally, Madomoiselle Pervert starts talking.”
“Don’t you feel any shame at having called me a pervert?”
But Maya is already gazing fixedly at some beacon flashing on and off on the top of a high-rise office building.
Resting her cheeks on her both fists, Maya says sleepily that she took a snapshot of me when I was looking into some bottled panties and that she thought she would upload it on some popular Web sites if her secret had leaked out.
“No, you can’t. We’re in the same boat,” I say, casting a malevolent glance at her.
“You never know,” says Maya.
I glances down at a boulevard congested with headlights and taillights.
“Tell me why you did that, Maya.”
“Did what?”
“Selling your undies.” I lower my voice.
“Tokyo is, you know, populated by a plenty of socially isolated people. Autistic grown-ups, sex addicts, and perverts. Most of them are, I believe, single middle-aged men.”
“Well…that’s what the media tells us. I don’t know whether it’s reliable.”
“Because it’s real. For most Japanese men, you know, the most powerful incentive to hard work is the image of a schoolgirl in a sailor middy top and a short pleated skirt. I don’t care whether it reminds them of the image of his daughter or that of his young mistress.”
“It sounds like an over-simplification to me.”
“But it’s true.”
“Oh, really.”
“Besides, the world boys are seeing and the world we girls are seeing is fatally different. And I am an artist you know.”
“No objection to that. But what does that have something to do with selling your undies, Maya?”
“An artist must deal with a demon.”
“Oh, I see. A demon. So, in your case, the demon was a pair of panties.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It was a substitute for your artistic inspiration, was it not?”
“You understand me quite well.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m an artist you know, so I’m naturally tolerant toward the deviant, I mean, I’m supposed to be, no, I should be, because we are now being forced to live in a world where there is no single deviant to be permitted.”
“Well…I’m not so sure about that.”
“Just think about our gakko, for example. If there is no margin in which some deviants are allowed to exist, there is no room for art to breath. The same is true of our society at large. This is the rule.”
“Maya, you’re super intelligent.”
“You know, I’m offering a little treat to a lonely grown-up. That’s all.”
“Oh, I see.”
“I was doing it not for money because you know I have plenty of weekly allowance.”
“So?” I grin at her and say, “Still, it doesn’t make any sense.”
“Ah, well.” Biting her lower lip, she again takes a snapshot of me with the Mobile and flatly says, “I’m always wondering why so-called fetishists are mostly men.”
“We girls don’t care much for collecting things. We’re more interested in collecting things that are meant to show off ourselves. You know…things we can show to others in public.”
“I’m different. I’m collecting visual fragments in private.”
“I wonder if selling your panties might have been a performance art, just like, say, dropping things from that bridge with your eyes closed.”
“A sort of.” Maya gives me a satisfied smile.
“But, still, it sounds phony to me.”
“You’re so mean.”
“Of course, I am.”
“Okay. I was doing it just for fun, just for the thrill of it, you see? I could be expelled from school if I were caught in flagrante delicto. It’s subversive and I want to be a risk-taker. Because I AM an artist.”
“That’s why you must sell your panties. I see. It does make sense.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” says Maya doubtfully and starts drinking the glass of strawberry soda through a bending straw whose color is vivid green.
Then she adds, “You think you’ve found out my deepest secret. But, actually, that was not. Selling my undies wasn’t recorded in Cahier de Secret. You are the only one, in Yukio’s circles, who has not been aware of my hobby.”
“Was that your hobby then?”
“A sort of. For the meantime, yes.”
I am startled at the fresh information but trying to keep my face look untroubled. I have recalled what Yukio said in his DVD: ‘I promise not to reveal your secret to anyone else but me. In fact I promise to keep your secret from our closest friends. This is a one-on-one deal.’
Maya rests her chin on her fists and steals a curious look at my eyes.
“I seem to have let you down, don’t I?” she whispers.
“Don’t worry about me. I won’t give up. I’ll dig up your real secret sooner or later.”
“Good luck. I think I have come to dislike you.”
“Could you tell me then, Maya, how you’ve come to know the content of Yukio’s DVD?”
“That was a pathetic story. I didn’t know he had younger brother. I feel sorry for Yukio.”
“That’s how he could let you open your heart to him. He took advantage of your sympathy for him.”
“Are you up to something?”
“He was clearly making good use of his confession to coax some secret out of you as well as of Reiko and Takeshi.”
“Are you putting down his confession, Luna?”
“Was I?”
“You’re just incredible. I think confession is not something to be made fun of and laughed at. And it’s not an instrument to take advantage of other people, either.”
“So you believe. That’s exactly what Yukio took advantage of. Think about it, Maya.”
And the moment she shrugs off my words, we begin to hear a couple talking about a breaking news that seems to be made public only several minutes ago. Maya loses no time in browsing the headlines of the Web News by her Mobile.
“I am the first to know.”
“No, you’re the second,” I say.
“I’m quick.”
“So am I. Look,” I say, showing the touchscreen of my Mobile to her.
According to the Web News, a fifteen-year-old boy has appeared at a police station in Nagoya with two severed human heads in his school bag and calmly reported having murd
ered his parents few hours before. The police have soon found, in his house, two headless torsos that have been confirmed as his parents’. Strangely enough, his father’s arms were both amputated and placed on his mother’s underarms so that his mother looked as if she had been lying on her back with four outstretched arms and two open legs. The fifteen-year-old boy who is now in the custody of the police has allegedly said that his mother was an insect, specifically, a mantis.
‘I just did a little work to ensure myself against the menace of the monster,’ explained the boy.
“He’s extreme, isn’t he?” I say.
“Yes, this boy has something about him.”
Maya smiles softly as if to admire what the boy has done.
Mantis
There is a bamboo grove right behind our gakko. It has been there for a long time. I sometimes stop to take a view of the grove. The sound of car horns and street noises fade like a glass of water spilled in the Sahara.
The bamboo grove appears like a still photograph at first, serene and silent. But once a gust of wind blows, I cannot help but prick my ears up. Here comes a sound of the bamboo grove rustling of its leaves, like that of water flowing with a rushing sound.
My grandfather used to say, ‘The sound of a bamboo grove purifies you and reminds you of who you are.’
To our regret, his scrotum did not look pure to an eleven-year-old girl.
*
Today it has been windy from dawn till dusk and daytime temperature has reached as warm as that of a day in mid spring. The stillness of the night in suburbia is so dense that I feel as if I were able to hear the row of vending machines humming a theme tune of a popular animated cartoon in a low frequency from the opposite sidewalk.
I have finished a classic glass bottle of Coca-Cola and an original Cup-Noodle. If there were neither of them on my desk, I would never be able to retain my optimal level. Even my emotional equilibrium might have been thrown into disorder a long time ago. I am afraid if this particular craving could have been caused by some genetic defect I have inherited from someone in my family line.
A Japanese Schoolgirl Page 10