A Japanese Schoolgirl

by Kajihara, Yoko

  All I can see is you.

  Can you hear my heartbeat?

  Feel it, daddy.

  I’m not afraid.

  ‘Tell me why you look so desperate,’ my father asked.

  ‘I’m not desperate.’

  ‘No, you’re, Reiko.’

  ‘I’m only desperate to have a new experience.’

  My father gave me a wry smile and started his Bentley.

  When we came back to Otemachi where the party had been given, I began sobbing. And that apparently seemed to upset him.

  ‘Is this something that I said?’ my father asked.

  I shook my head weakly. I don’t know why I started crying.

  Maybe I was irritated by my clumsiness or became sad simply because Saturday was closing down already.

  My father parked his car in the underground parking lot and I felt the chill of fluorescent lights. There were no signs of life around. I think I was wondering if a parking lot had any nationality. I could smell rubber and gasoline and the leather interior of a brand-new Bentley. The smell of leather always reminds me of my grandfather’s favorite briefcase.

  ‘Reiko, you’d better not make such a sad face. It spoils your good looks.’

  ‘Because you don’t understand me. No, because you don’t want to understand me. After all, you’re an American and I’m a Japanese. It’s the answer, isn’t it?’

  ‘What is it that makes you speak such a nonsense?’

  ‘You, father, my sweet daddy.’

  ‘Did you drink anything with alcohol in it while you were in the party?’

  ‘I only had two glasses of mango juice.’

  In that moment I was self-consciously watching the development of events I happened to have created.

  It was rather exciting to see how we responded to each other. It felt as if I were reading some lines for a romantic scene of a serial television drama. What was happening between us was so really incredible I made up my mind to leave things to chance instead.

  When my father was about to get out his car, I asked him to kiss me. And the moment he kissed me on the forehead, I spontaneously threw my arms around his neck.

  ‘I love the scent of your cologne.’

  ‘Reiko, you’re fourteen already.’

  ‘No, I’m fifteen. You forget everything.’

  ‘Well then, you’re no longer a little girl. Could you just take your arms off my neck?’

  ‘Am I troubling you?’

  ‘Yes, you are. And you sound too cheerful to be considered a good girl. Stop acting like a spoilt child.’

  ‘Say it. Please tell me that I’m troubling you.’

  ‘You’re troubling me.’

  ‘Good, daddy. There, there, there’s a good daddy.’

  I chuckled and took my arms off him and we both got out the car and walked into an elevator.

  Two months later, I made a telephone call to my father’s office from my room that had been air-conditioned all day.

  The spring passed all too soon.

  ‘I miss you,’ I whispered in the Mobile.

  My father answered that he had been busy, was busy, and would be busy until next Friday.

  The following weekend, while my mother was away to the northern part of Japan to see the Bon Festival, the Festival of the Dead, with several friends from her college days, my father took me to Yokohama to see a display of fireworks at a harbor.

  I was dressed in a casual cotton kimono for summer wear.

  It was colorful with an air of coolness but probably appeared to be, as was typical of kimono, vulnerable to the invasion of strangers’ hands. And that was the part of my plots to get his attention. My father seemed to be impressed by my kimono as well as my tightly-done hair so much that he started acting like a high-school boy and I felt a little embarrassed by him.

  The display of fireworks was far better than what I had expected, probably because my father had parked his Bentley in a well-known hilltop park with a view of the bay. I kept watching the flowers of fire open and wither in a split second. It colored both the night sky and the surface of the sea.

  ‘If there were no ripples, nor waves, I think, I’d never be able to tell the sky from the ocean.’

  ‘That’s an interesting perspective.’

  ‘You know, the sound of a blast always reaches us late. It makes me feel sad.’

  ‘Sad?’ said my father.

  ‘If we were to be left from here, the sound might never be able to catch up with us.’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘How can we believe that everything we saw was real then?’

  ‘It’s fun to think with, isn’t it?’

  According to my mother, I was six when I told him that I would like to marry him. And it was the first time I ever spoke my mind to this new daddy since my mother had left my biological father.

  I was an infant of four while my mother had been asking my father, no, her indecisive Japanese husband to sign a divorce paper. Her parents were trying to avoid bringing the matter to a family court in order not to disgrace each parental family. My mother married my new daddy Earnest Kaufman a year later. He was fluent in Japanese and I instantly fell in love with him even though I was only a girl of five and knew no ways to express such unfamiliar feelings.

  Both in public and in company I tried hard not to look and act like a girl who was crazy about her stepfather. I kept my subtle distance from my American father and I think I could manage to do it pretty well. Before I was aware, I had become secretive. When I wanted to talk, I did it through my eyes using a glance, a stare, or a gaze more often than words. My mother said I came to appear at once quiet and inviting but what she didn’t know was that it was the fruit of constant practice. It also made me look a little older than I actually was. Perhaps I was lucky, for I took after my Japanese biological father in my appearance. I heard from many people that my biological father was often asked by a headhunter from a model agency, during his college years, if he was interested in becoming a male fashion model for men’s magazines.

  At the age of seven, I danced a short ballet piece before my new daddy with a tutu and a pair of toe shoes on. I did it as a birthday gift for him.

  At the age of ten, I became absorbed in sending a self-made greeting card to his office once a week. And it lasted for about three months. My father was so delighted that he bought the latest Mobile for me.

  At the age of thirteen, I did something very charming for my father’s birthday. Unfortunately, neither of my parents nor I myself can recall specifically what I did, only my parents still remember that something which I did was indeed very charming.

  Then, last year, in Yokohama, under the night sky being brightly decorated with fireworks, I confessed to him that I used to be and was still the perfect stalker of my own father.

  ‘Would you mind my calling you Daddy Dee?’

  ‘It sounds like I’m a member of lowlife, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Maybe it does make you be freer, don’t you think?’

  ‘Where did you get such a funny idea?’

  ‘From the Net, of course. Pleease let me call you Daddy Dee whenever we are alone like this.’

  ‘I think you’re not aware of what you’re saying and what you’re doing.’

  ‘No, daddy, this is just a pretense.’

  ‘Well then, have you ever been aware that I can slip my hands into your kimono anytime I want?’

  I was taken aback by what he had just said, but he also seemed to be bewildered by his own words. I stretched my neck to kiss him on the mouth, and then whispered, ‘It’s all right.’

  My father started kissing me on the mouth when I took his hand and guided it to the slit of kimono. It slipped under the kimono and I felt it getting the brush from my upper arm, shoulder, and then my bare breast. I felt as if I were hypnotized by the sound of fireworks.

  ‘Oh my god,’ my father uttered in English.

  I remained silent.

  ‘Oh my god. What am I doing?
’ He repeated in a shaky voice.

  He started his car and, on his way to Tokyo from Yokohama, he parked his car at an unabashedly illuminated Love Hotel that looked like a luxurious ocean liner being at anchor on a moonless night.

  Shortly after we entered a spacious room with a large round bed, I rushed into a bathroom and vomited up what I had had at dinner. I scrupulously washed my mouth and then threw a peppermint candy into my mouth.

  As I came back to the bedroom, my father looked me in the eyes.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  I nodded without a word, smoothing down my kimono.

  ‘You’ve suddenly become quiet, Reiko.’

  ‘This is my usual me.’

  ‘I had vasectomy five years ago. Do you know what it means?’

  ‘Yes, I do. The Net teaches us everything.’

  ‘But you have no experience, don’t you?’

  ‘Would you like to try a peppermint candy?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Give it to me.’

  We sat down on the rim of the round bed. I could hear the faint sound of flushing toilet somewhere above and my father kissed me on the mouth. Before long I started giggling.

  I said, ‘I’m sorry,’ while wriggling my shoulders.

  ‘It’s all right,’ my father said, tapping my nipple with the tip of the middle finger, ‘It tickles at first. Let us take time.’

  I rose from the bed and tried to slip out of my kimono as smoothly as an elegant Chinese actress had done in a Hollywood-made samurai movie, but I failed. It was quite difficult to take the traditional clothes apart.

  ‘Let me try. I’m made to be cheerful during crisis,’ said my father the investment banker.

  He let me lie down on the round bed and began undoing the knot of an obi, which is a broad sash worn around the waist.

  I looked up at the ceiling that was being covered all over by wallpapers on which the copies of Monet’s famous Water lilies were printed. I started wondering why my biological father had deserted his wife and his only daughter. Although I still have a DVD, which contains hundreds of his pictures and some family movies, in my treasure box on a bookshelf, I can barely remember how he actually talked, walked, and smelled.

  Since my mother seems to dislike anything that would remind her of her former husband, I have decided early in life not to bring up any questions concerning him. I was only told that my Japanese biological father had come of a distinguished family in Kobe and that he was handsome, elegant, well-mannered, and highly educated. When my mother married him, he was still receiving support from his parents. He wanted to be an artist of a traditional Japanese-style painting using the gilt, for he had been fascinated by paintings on Japanese folding screens. After the marriage, he was immersed in painting like Vincent van Gogh. Unfortunately, he had a long run of bad luck and showed no signs of success. He came to believe that he had the whole of the Japanese art world against him. When his parents stopped sending him an allowance, however, he quickly gave up the idea of becoming an artist and, suddenly, retired into religion. He said that he renounced the world in order to be a bonze. In fact, my biological father, now a Buddhist priest, is in a well-known temple in Mt. Hiei in Kyoto. His ex-wife, my mother, however, has not taken me to the temple even once. She says that she has almost a physiological aversion to temple because the smell of incense always reminds her of the memory of the past which she had shared with him.

  Whatever he is doing now as a bonze, I think, it would be difficult for him to wipe out the fact that he has never been able to protect his own family from the harsh realities of life.

  He failed my mother to be a breadwinner.

  But my new American father did, does, and will do what a man has to do, I believe. As compared with my American stepfather, my Japanese biological father seems weak, naive, and undependable. He is merely an arty child by the side of my new father. My mother has once told me that she has been always looking for someone to whom she can be dependent, no, even obedient. I think that there is nothing obsolete about her idea if it is what makes her happy. And I am glad that she could finally find the Mr. Right. What my mother doesn’t know is that he will be mine in time. I promise the reward to myself. I would study hard and enter the best medical school and become a good-looking doctor and make a lot of money and snatch his heart away from my mother.

  ‘That’s all right, Reiko. Breathe in and breathe out. Slowly and deeply.’

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘In a hotel room. We’re on this round bed.’

  ‘Did you undress me?’

  ‘No, you yourself did, Reiko. You subconsciously succeeded in undoing the knot of this obi.’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘I know and it’s all right.’

  ‘I’m starving, daddy.’

  For the next two months, I came to be very much fond of his lips and fingers, although I kept my virginity intact.

  I learned everything by the senses. I became able to hear his fingers whispering, mumbling, and chatting.

  I lost my virginity on the 15th of October. It was two days after the first midterm. I was beginning to be afraid that my future plan might be doomed to fail because of my body that had been slowly transformed into something my father desired it to be. I learned how to sex from the Net and these days I enjoy riding on my father to observe how he starts losing control of himself. He often pleads with me to stop and not to stop by turns. When it happens he comes to sound so desperate he looks irresistibly cute.

  I am however getting anxious that this forbidden relations with my father might be found out.

  There is another disturbing thought creeping into my head: At a certain point, during this short period of time in which I am having sex with my father, my body suddenly seems to become unreal. Without noticing it, my whole body leaves myself and something else takes its place so that my father becomes able to treat me like a puppet on the string. He steals from me something by which I can remember how I used to be.

  I find pleasure relentless in such an instant.

  I even feel it cruel and feel as if my father were an Oni.

  I have learned that we are only in control until we are not.

  But, in spite of all this, I am also able to look at my plaything-like situation from a different point of view.

  Which of the two perspires the most from the indecent movement of the body, a puppeteer or a puppet?

  It’s obvious, isn’t it?

  A doll never perspires.

  So the one who has been holding strings and manipulating my father could be me. Actually I can even switch the direction of his desire from my ears to my lips or from lips to armpits or from armpits to nipples rather easily.

  All I have to do is simply to look him in the face with my special glance while chanting my usual spell in the back of my head.

  Look at me, daddy.

  All I can see is you.

  Can you hear my heartbeat?

  Feel it, daddy.

  I’m not afraid.

  Strangely, this works. Perhaps my eyes can communicate better than my mouth.

  And it seems quite economical, doesn’t it?

  *

  Another thirty minutes had been passed since I had finished rereading Reiko’s confession, yet Takeshi didn’t show up. I went home and had my mother’s homemade croquettes, spring rolls, and two bowls of miso soup. About seven-thirty, my father called my mother and told that he wouldn’t be able to have dinner at home with us, for he was busy socializing with his clients, specifically, Chinese Black Vinegar makers, and had to dine out with them again tonight.

  My mother kept wearing a poker face until she tapped the Mobile off. Then she gave me her usual benevolent smile, saying: ‘I’ve heard recently that major car manufacturers all over the world are voluntarily trying to recall defective cars for safety reasons. I wonder why there’s no law by which it’s mandatory to recall defective persons as well. Your father is one of them, because he carries some defecti
ve parts with him. He should be recalled and repaired for family safety.’

  Yakuza

  Sitting in the rear seat of a car, I keep watching the wipers hypnotically waving their arms. They look like the shafts of two metronomes set in an adagio tempo.

  A man in a dark three-piece suit stifles a yawn in the same rear seat of this immaculately polished dark Mercedes-Benz.

  He, who has been seated on my right, would definitely be a man of over forty. He appears to be courteous and quite different from a typical Yakuza the Japanese gangster depicted in Japanese television and movies. In fact, this middle-aged man who is about to lay his hand on my right shoulder looks rather like a top executive in a stock brokerage firm.

  “Miss, you’re the classmate of my nephew Takeshi. Am I right?” asks the man.

  “Yes, sir.”

  My lips is quivering and my voice trembling. I am actually on the point of shedding tears for my grave situation.

  “I’m honored. This is the first time we ever share this car with a schoolgirl. Are you nervous now?”

  “Yes, very much, sir.”

  “Good for you. It tells you that one of your defense mechanisms is working properly. I’m sure that it would save your life some other time.”

  He has a polite manner of speaking and it terrifies me even worse.

  In the front passenger seat sits another Yakuza in a dark suit, who is now struggling to unwrap a tiny cubic chocolate with his fat fingers.

  He turns his head and smiles at me with the upper lip that bears possibly a knife-scar.

  “Do you want some, Miss?”

  “No, thank you, sir. Can I go home now? Please.”

  “Sh, shhh.” The man on my right narrows his eyes as if in agony and says, “Let us enjoy this night drive for now, shall we? As you have already heard, I did call your mother and gotten permission from her, didn’t I? There’s nothing to worry about. Just relax.’

  ‘Sir, please let me go. Pleease.’

  ‘Shut your mouth up, will you?’ His voice hardens.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I’m really truly sorry for whatever I did,’ I say in a scarcely audible voice.

  ‘You know, we Japanese value formality and good manners. We mumble SHIT only in the toilet. We utter FUCK only in the bedroom. We say ASSHOLE only in the sauna where queers, no, I’m sorry, male homosexuals, prowl. And we shout BITCH only when we are entrapped by a particular type of women who give us pain in the neck. We become, however, utterly wordless when things don’t come up as we have expected, don’t we?”