As he ran he noticed out of the corner of his eye a movement in the trees. The autumn was closing and the grey November skies augured several months of a grey lid over the city, till the snow fell and the wind swept through. For the moment, it was chilly, but still bearable. Wearing black clothes to be invisible in the dark as he ran round the park, he made no noise, a lone shadow in the dark. He circled round quietly and went to see what had caught his eye. He stopped short and only just prevented himself from exclaiming out loud.
Ivanka, wearing a thick fur coat, was tied to a tree. Her legs were splayed and her ankles were chained to the tree. A rope was wound twice around her neck and tied to the branches behind her. Her arms were pinned to her sides by a man, whose posterior Jorge could see with startling clarity: a sagging bottom, with a patch of ginger hair just above the bottom crack. The man was stark naked. Clearly rather heavy, he half turned and picked up a scarf from a pile of clothes at Ivanka’s feet. He stuffed the scarf into her mouth with one hand, keeping her pinioned with the other. Then he slowly unbuttoned her fur coat, revealing a startlingly white naked body decked with only a string of diamonds at her neck.
Jorge wondered what to do. Normally he would have intervened, but the particular attire of Ivanka suggested that she had been prepared and that this was not a random attack. He decided to wait and watch.
Ivanka remained glacially immobile. Her fur coat kept her arms and back warm and prevented the tree bark from chafing her skin. Ivanka spat out the scarf and moved her head sideways. The man slapped her. She did not react. He picked up the scarf again and this time tied it over her mouth. As Ivanka’s arms were free, she reached down to the man’s sex and started pumping it. The man hissed, “slower, slower”. She slowed down. Jorge changed position, feeling his own sex rising. He could see that the man was well hung: an enormous pink penis swollen and engorged profiled itself in the dark. Ivanka murmured, “I can’t lick you, you have tied me up too tight. Let me go, let me go.”
The man grunted and moved forward to Ivanka. He put his hand over her pubis, then slid two fat fingers into her sex. “Take this bitch!” She arched her back as he explored her innards, and then began to stroke her clitoris with more force. Her strokes on his penis became more rapid.
“No no, slow down. I want to fuck you first” and simultaneously he pulled his fingers out, swept her hands away and lunged forward and up, thrusting his penis into her. Jorge heard her intake of breath as the large member slid in.
“Feel me?” Ivanka didn’t react. “Do you feel me bitch?” She stayed silent and immobile. He got more frenzied, stabbing at her ferociously, using the tree’s strength to make his jabs more forceful. Jorge could see his buttocks clenching and unclenching and the swing of the ginger-haired testicles as he thrust and danced in front of his ice queen. “Tighten up you bitch. Your cunt is too loose. Grip me. Tighter.”
Jorge didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Should he intervene or should he pass on by? Ivanka did not look as if she were suffering, nor did she look as if she were enjoying it. If he intervened the other man might get violent. He decided to wait and see. The man was accelerating his movements. Ivanka managed to free one of her arms and pushed him back violently. She twisted against the tree, baring her behind. The man assaulted her posterior, punching her stomach as he dipped into her from behind. “Take this, and this. You are a bitch. You will kiss my feet afterwards. I’ll fuck you. I’ll fuck your mother and your grandmother.”
The language was coarse and the man was getting more and more het up. Jorge could not see his face, but could see that the man was more and more excited by the fact that his scrotum was getting tighter and higher. Ivanka gave a violent counterthrust of her gracious hips and the man fell back, his glistening sex retreating from her cunt with a sucking sound. Jorge made a note to himself that she was wet, so perhaps she was enjoying it after all. The man threw himself at her, pulling on the rope that held her neck. “I’ll kill you for that.”
He yanked her head up and, as he did so, penetrated her with a groan. He slumped forward, convulsing as he came.
Jorge fingered his own sex. He was hard and throbbing. He had never seen anything like this. He pulled his penis out of his shorts and started stroking himself. His penis felt really sensitive, almost as if the violence Ivanka had experienced had been transferred into his own dick. He stroked himself softly, pressing on the thick central vein, cupping his balls with his other hand. The Beatles were singing Strawberry Fields in his earphones. He felt the orgasm coming just as the man pulled himself up and untied Ivanka, forcing her onto her knees, her fur coat draped around her. She swore at him. A stream of filthy words came out of her sexy mouth and, to Jorge’s amazement, he could see the man’s sex rising again. She flipped up the back of her coat, crouching on all fours. The man mounted her from behind. She moved into him and they lurched together drunkenly till they climaxed, this time together.
Jorge looked around, suddenly realizing that he was not alone in the observation. Several other men were dotted around the bushes, each one with a hand deep in their own trousers. Suddenly he felt ashamed, caught in a voyeuristic pose that others had shared, each taking solitary pleasure from a coitus that was not theirs. He padded off, feeling disgruntled and dirty. Ivanka could go to hell. He would have no further truck with her.
The next day he was coming in from work when Ivanka stepped into the lift with him. He blushed furiously and mumbled a greeting. She looked him straight in the eyes and said hello. She was wearing a scarf round her neck and there was no sign of her fur coat or any jewellery. “Would you like to come to my place for a drink now?” she asked.
“No, thanks, I’m... well no I can’t really.”
“Oh,” she sounded disappointed. “Another day?”
“We’ll see.” He stumbled out of the lift in front of her, turning his back on her while he unlocked his door. He could feel her puzzling after him. Normally he was the one who suggested they met, had a drink, chatted. He had been fumbling and inadequate, but perhaps she would just put it down to a hard day’s work. He hoped so.
A little while later, the doorbell rang. He went to open the door and found Ivanka dressed in her fur coat standing in front of the door.
“Care to join me?” she asked.
He blushed again. Perhaps she had seen him after all. He stammered “To do what?”
“I am going for a walk in the park. I know you jog at night, so perhaps you can jog with me. I don’t feel safe.” She put on her most winning smile. His heart missed a beat. Perhaps she would do those things to him.
“Wait a second, I will just put on my jogging gear.”
He dashed back into his room and quickly changed, joining her once again on the doorstep. They sauntered down to the park, chatting amiably about their respective days and how the weather was getting worse – banalities that enabled Jorge to overcome his unease. Once they got onto the path in the park, she urged him to jog ahead, saying that he could catch her up on his second run around. He slipped on his earphones and the Beatles’ voices occupied his eardrums. He got his pace right and ran round the park. As he got to the tree, he saw Ivanka standing against the tree with her fur coat open. He slowed down and ran to the tree, stopping in front of her.
“Ivanka, what are you doing?” he asked.
“Let’s have sex here,” she replied.
“Here? Why?”
“For the fun of it.” He stepped closer. He could see blue bruises where the other man had punched her.
“What happened?” he asked, as if he didn’t know.
“Oh nothing special. Come, let’s have some sex.”
Jorge could not believe what he was hearing. It was such a turn-off. This woman who had caused him wet dreams, been the object of his idle fantasies, and who he had built into an ice goddess was some vulgar little tramp who needed to satisfy her own insatiable appetite.
“I... I don’t think so,” he stuttered, backing away.
“How do you think I earn my living you stupid boy?”
“No, I... I mean I never thought about it... I...” Jorge stumbled away, tears in his eyes. He heard her laughing behind him. He gathered up speed and turned the volume of his iPod up. He would have to change his jogging patterns now, to avoid the park entirely. Lady P was so much more elegant and infinitely more faithful, she would follow him wherever he went.
TOKYO
Ortensia Visconti
Ortensia Visconti was born into the world of Italian cinema, and has spent her life in the arts. She studied French and Comparative Literature at the Sorbonne and at the London School of Photojournalism. In 2000, Ortensia travelled to Algeria as a reporter for the Washington Post, where she covered the civil war that had plagued the country for nearly a decade. After Algeria, Ortensia travelled to Palestine where she began reporting as a journalist for Italian newspapers. Her career as a war reporter took her to Afghanistan in 2001, where she travelled with the Northern Alliance, documenting the fall of Kabul and the American military response to 9/11. Ortensia spent seven years reporting on Afghanistan, crossing into Pakistan’s tribal areas and northern borders, writing not only on the constantly unfolding war, but also on the plight of Afghan women. Her first novel, Stregonesco, was published in Italy in 2004. ‘Tokyo’ is taken from her short story collection L’Idée Fixe (2013).
Ma, the pause between two notes.
The space between the lines of a haiku, the silence between one drop and the next, running down Eve’s leg.
Ma, the empty space full of meaning.
Eve is sleeping. She floats on the large branch of a dead camphor laurel, her kimono loosened at the waist to reveal her adolescent breasts and falling open over her thigh, which dangles in the air, the drops running down it into the still surface of the ocean.
Ma.
The interval of each instant.
The Tsukiji fish market is drenched with a fine rain. The fog is clearing in the grey dawn, under the neon tubes that flood the auction with dazzling light. The bodies are lined up, like the aftermath of a massacre. Frozen white, the thick slabs of meat are gutted, labelled, marked, sold. The gills are punctured and the fins cut off. They lie in rows on the ground, in a trail that leads the way out of the vast, ugly market. Outside, the trail continues, but here the fish are thawed, grey, shiny-salted, mouths open in grimaces, fins sticking out as though they are still at swim in the sea. The men don’t notice anything. They drive the loaded forklifts, darting between the polystyrene aisles, paying no attention to the obstacles. There is no more sea in the sea. Blood drips through the cracks in the wooden trestles, trickles down and fills the vats below to the brim. The present stretches out like a worn elastic band and the blood gurgles and bubbles. Tentacles emerge, their stiffening suction cups like blossoms, reach out, grip the edges. Tako, anago, ika – octopus, sea eel and squid. The shells clack like jaws, mark the rhythm of the waves in their polystyrene containers. Scallops, limpets, oysters, clams.
Scales, still slimy, slide against shards of ice, gills breathe in air, dull eyes turn shiny again. Hamachi, hirame, kanpachi, saba, tai, Suzuki – amber fish, halibut, Japanese yellowtail tuna, mackerel, snapper and sea bass.
Swollen with poison, the fugu, the pufferfish, glide up to the dock, roll into port; for a few moments, before diving, they float like excrement.
Past and future converge on the present. Now. The moment has come. The earth is stone and sand, lava and ash, caked among the roots of semi-tropical vegetation. Below it there is a monster, as big as the island, who thrashes about. There is only one point in Japan that is inactive: it is the handle of the fan, the join of four tectonic plates. The rest is earthquakes, typhoons, tsunamis, cyclones, eruptions, tremors, fires, nuclear action.
Now the monster heaves its scaly back. The concentric circles from the drops that run down Eve’s leg and into the sea, the silence between them, drive him crazy. Ase, chi, zamen? Sweat, blood or semen? His long, scaly head approaches, his nostrils dilate, his forked tongue quivers. He lifts the sleeping girl’s body, and she lets him caress her as she gracefully raises a hand: her slender fingers clasp the two ribbons of tongue like creeping tendrils. The monster’s eyeballs bulge, his claws shoot out from his reptilian body, sink into Eve’s childish knees and spread them apart. Nicha-nicha, the slick secretion of his scales, sticks to Eve’s skin; he slides over her. The kimono rips and shreds of silk drift to the flat surface of the sea.
Eve screams. “Please, I beg you, no!”
The sea begins to churn. Pocha-pocha. Tentacles surface. Eight huge arms, with two hundred and forty suction cups, attached to three hearts and a brain that lusts. Muku-muku. Up close, its eyes are opaque, inky globes. The camphor branch snaps, the dragon’s head is caught in a knot and Eve is plunged into the sea. The suckers aspirate her, drawing her blood through her skin, while a tentacle explores her mouth. Tsupa-tsupa. Eve cannot cry out. The viscous arms spread her thighs open, bind her arms, pin her head back; her throat is swollen, she cannot breathe. Then the octopus’s mouth finds her sex and begins to suck. He drains her fluids and goes on sucking. Tears blind her as a tentacle reaches her anus and finds its way inside her.
The dragon has cracked the handle of the fan and shrugged Japan off his back, leaving it floating in the ocean like a walnut. He is flushed and furious, and his fire melts the octopus’s suction cups, while his claw tears through its head, splitting into two purple slabs.
Eve screams. “No more, enough.” The sea spills over, submerges, engulfs. Muka-muka. Its surge sweeps away the Tsukiji market, now empty of fish. It washes away Tokyo the way a gust of wind scatters the petals of a flowering cherry tree.
Ma.
Tokyo burns, lit by a reddish light, covered by a cloud of chemical vapours. The men are dead and the alarms go on wailing.
BRINNG
“Baku.”
BRINNG
“Baku, eat.”
“Yes, hello?”
“Were you sleeping, Ichiro-san?”
“Who is this?”
“The concierge. I’m sorry to wake you.”
“Has something happened?”
“Yes, something serious.”
BRINNG
What the hell. Ichiro slides over the futon to reach his alarm and hits the off button.
“You said something serious?”
“I was sweeping the entryway between the cherry tree, which started blooming this morning. I overheard a conversation between these two guys – gangsters, I promise you. They were talking about breaking into 17F – by Friday.”
“Oh...”
“Everything okay, Ichiro-san?”
*
Ichiro is sleepy, but even so he looks as though he’s concentrating intensely. It’s his expression – as if he were taking an exam or piloting an airliner. When all he’s doing is getting up from the futon. He runs his hands through his short-cropped hair, trying to take in the information he’s just been given. The shreds of a dream mingle confusingly with the concierge’s story. Watch out. He pushes a button and the shutters all rise at the same time. The view of Tokyo, dazzling and dense with concrete, calls up another feeling from his dream, vague and alarming. He puts his slippers on and slides open the rice paper screen. The flat is cluttered. It wouldn’t be such a mess, but it’s too small to hold a television, stereo, computer, cello, chairs – and a large, lacquered, inlaid wooden chest that looks like a coffin. And then there’s the Buddhist altar. Ichiro opens the cabinet doors and bows a greeting to his mother’s photograph. He nods, satisfied; he’ll see to the offerings later. He leaves his slippers outside the bathroom and slips on his geta. When he looks at his reflection in the mirror, he relaxes the frown on his forehead. Gangsters, I promise you. He has a habit of doing this before he brushes his teeth. They were talking about breaking into 17F. With the toothbrush whirring, he returns to the living room, stepping out of his geta and back into his slippers. He goes over to the wooden chest, which is line
d up between the TV and the Playstation 3. He frowns again as he runs his hand over the lacquer, between the inlay and the precious seals. He shakes his head. By Friday! He heads back into the bathroom, taking off his slippers, slipping into the geta, and spits the toothpaste into the sink.
*
The train is overflowing with salarymen. As rigid as though undergoing group hypnosis, all of them in neckties, their expressions like those of karoshi, men dead from overwork. By a stroke of luck, an elderly man – who appeared to have fallen asleep two stations ago – suddenly rises and gets off the train. Ichiro, incredulous, takes his seat. He gains a few inches of space. He leafs through the manga he always keeps in his inside jacket pocket, but something stops him. He stares straight ahead, concentrating like a child sitting on the toilet. Ma, he thinks, is where the art begins. Ma is the length of silence between two sounds. Music values the interval of each moment, at the expense of the overall structure. It is on ma that he must compose if he wants to make the next Sony campaign succeed. A loud brand like that should use the elegance of silence to sell even more. Higengo komyunikeshon.
Suddenly a cloud of pink tulle brushes against his ear. The edge of the gothic Lolita’s tutu is level with his face. Ichiro peeks down: she’s wearing pale blue lace-up shoes with a round toe. Her stockings stop just below plump knees that curve slightly inward. Her panties are visible, at least to him: a series of small flounces that remind him of cherry blossoms. Ichiro stretches his neck to see over the cloud of tulle and look at her face. The blonde curls that fall down over her chemise are caught up by a blue ribbon tied tightly in a bow. Below her bangs, her face is covered with rice powder, impassive, like a porcelain geisha. Her gaze is fixed, with the lifeless expression of a shojo.
When Ichiro sits back, his eyes below her dress again, his heart pops in his chest like an air rifle. Something is shaking the cherry blossoms, a frenetic movement among the gothic Lolita’s ruffles. Ichiro sinks down in his seat, lowering his gaze a few more inches. Slender, almost feminine fingers grab the elastic edge of the girl’s panties and move them aside, revealing her smooth, hairless mound. Ichiro is so confused that his vision fogs over; impulsively, he moves his hands, as though he were using his Playstation console. But the controls don’t respond and the fabric of his suit stretches, tugging between his legs. He quickly places the comic book from his pocket over his crotch, but he can’t stop himself from watching. He wonders if the girl waxes, or if she’s really that young. The fingers slide into her sex like the tentacles of an octopus. Tsuru-tsuru. Ichiro straightens up in his seat: the gothic Lolita’s face is doll-like in its innocence. Ichiro’s eyes travel from the jerking wrist, up along the culprit’s arm, and stop at the man’s pelvis. He too has an erection, and he doesn’t cover it with a book of manga, but drives it between the girl’s buttocks.
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