I gazed in wonder at the tiny body, the delicate hands, her bony shoulders. Was she being serious? I lay my arm demonstratively alongside hers. My forearm was twice the size of hers, the biceps even more than that, and at the shoulders I was perhaps three times thicker. I was no hunk, by Israeli standards. I don’t think an Israeli girl would have been impressed by my physique. On the beach, most of the guys were taller and more muscular than I was. Army service as a combat sapper demanded courage, perhaps, but not much strength and unlike some of my friends, my shoulders, thighs and chest had not grown much during my training. Despite this, I had gone through basic training without too much difficulty, and after that a squad commanders’ course and, later, an officers’ course. I felt strong, and I was strong, and next to your average Japanese man I must have looked pretty bulky. Some nerve she had, this little thing.
“Let’s try it some time,” I said, and she replied, “Let’s.”
I was thrilled. I’m set for tonight, I thought. A judo match between us could lead nowhere but to bed. But then I asked her how she made a living, and it was my turn to gulp down the spaghetti without chewing. “I’m a hostess,” she replied.
Before my trip I’d read about the night life of Japanese businessmen and office workers. I knew there were special clubs that catered to them in certain parts of Tokyo. Not many of the salaried workers could afford what they offered, but sometimes their companies paid for a night out as a bonus, or as part of a team-building programme, or as hosts to visiting western businessmen. Niki had wanted to get to know the geisha culture, but quickly learned that to do that she would have had to be a pure Japanese and to study for years. She had to make do with being a hostess in a modern businessmen’s club in the Asakusa neighbourhood. She performed the traditional tea ceremony for them there, but what they wanted was mainly to practise their broken English on her. She was especially valuable when they were entertaining visiting westerners: her mastery of both Japanese and English helped the conversation flow more freely.
Niki apparently noticed my astonishment. She knew, as I did, that there were people who confused geishas and hookers, and even those who know better still thought hostesses were on a lower level than geishas. She said this without relish but she certainly wasn’t apologetic.
She didn’t allow me to pay for her meal. “You’re a backpacker and can’t have too much money,” she said, in a final humiliation, without letting me tell her that in my year as a regular army officer, after my compulsory three years as a conscript, I had managed to save quite a lot. When I asked if we could meet again, she said she was working that night and she never made plans for tomorrow. The next day would take her wherever it took her, just as today had taken her to me for a while, and she was grateful for that.
I was forced to admit that I had failed to leave an indelible impression on Niki, like all the girls I had met so far. But her magic had worked on me and I did not mean to give up.
Holding my bag of bicycle gadgets, and full of hope and expectation, I arrived at the Asakusa district in the early evening. It isn’t particularly large, but in Tokyo every neighbourhood is inhabited by hundreds of thousands of people. I assumed that the nightclubs would be close to the office buildings and they wouldn’t spill over into the surrounding residential areas. This time, I exited the subway alongside more modern corporate buildings. The nightclubs would probably start coming to life at the end of office hours, I thought, at around five p.m.
Swarms of workers who looked as if they were coming off a mass-production assembly line working at a dizzying pace streamed out of the doors of the steel and glass high-rises. Everyone wore white shirts, cotton trousers and black leather shoes. Most of the men wore jackets and ties. I stood and watched this human river. The assembly line had ensured that they would all be the same height, more or less the same as me, and all have the same straight black hair. From behind, it was hard to tell which of them were men and which were women. The majority flowed towards where I had come from, and were swallowed up by the entrance to the subway station. I trailed after a drizzle of people trickling off in a different direction, but realized this would not take me where I wanted to go. Some of them headed for taxi stands or various garages, and others disappeared down side streets whose neon signs, which flickered on as darkness fell, turned them into a completely different city – night-time Tokyo, all bars and little sushi restaurants, sex clubs, with a barker standing outside each establishment proclaiming the wares available inside and trying to lure in passersby. On each corner, my eyes – and ears – lit upon slot machine arcades, and especially the noisy pachinko parlours where long rows of men sat facing the machines, their attaché cases on shelves above them, with boxes of small iron balls at their feet, carried away by the mesmerizing movement of the balls, over which they had no control, and cheering when they won the prize – more balls.
This, I guessed, was not where I would find respectable clubs of the kind where, I assumed, Niki was working, and I rambled on in the hope that I’d somehow come across one.
In a quiet alley, where most of the buildings were old, a modern, glass structure that didn’t belong there caught my eye, with a prominent sign on its ground floor, in English: “Karaoke” and below it a notice – surprisingly also in English – indicating a number of clubs on the upper floors.
I went up one floor in the elevator. To the left and right of a narrow, meandering and gloomy corridor were three heavy, carved doors with some well-tended greenery next to them. At the side of each door was a sign, in English and Japanese giving the opening hours and the prices. I discovered that I was early. The clubs opened at eight p.m., and for the first hour the entry fee was around seven thousand yen – a few dozen dollars at the exchange rate at that time. An hour later the price jumped to ten thousand yen and by the hour.
I went up to the second and third floors, and the same picture greeted me. Only the prices and the decorations on the doors differed slightly. It was here, perhaps, that she worked, this Niki who I felt was being relentlessly driven into my heart like a screw.
I returned to street level, wandered through the nearby alleys, and passed other clubs. Just before eight p.m. I returned to the first building I had found, took up a position in a doorway opposite it, and waited. I knew Niki could be working at any number of other places, but the cluster of clubs here increased my chances.
It was pitch dark. Taxis began arriving sporadically. Well groomed, quiet Japanese women got out of some, and boisterous men, both Japanese and western, from others. My eyes were straining in the dark, and twice I called out “Niki” to someone who wasn’t Niki. The third time it was Niki. She turned around, surprised, and came up to me with a stern look on her face.
“You are not supposed to be here,” she said, serious and even a little pale. “It’s not good for me, and it’s very bad for you.” There was a warning in her voice.
“The yakuza?” I tried to be funny.
She laid a finger on my lips. “You don’t even joke about it,” she whispered.
I saw a young man standing at the door to the building staring at us. Niki followed my gaze.
“Now go away and don’t come back.”
I tried to give her a hug. She was wearing a dark blue evening dress with a bare back, and had a light coat over her arm. Her back trembled under my hands. She was wearing makeup, with scarlet lipstick, a fine line that made her eyes look slanted, her face whitened, and she was taller – under her long gown she must have been wearing high heels. Her hair was braided and held back by a large pin, and it was still damp and gave off a fresh scent of shampoo.
“You are so beautiful,” I couldn’t resist saying. I felt an intense urge to kiss her, but when I leaned towards her she broke away, muttered “Go now,” and hurried with short, quick paces back across the street.
The guy in the doorway began moving in my direction, and another bouncer took his place. I was prepared to take on a small Canadian-Japanese girl, even though she
came from a long line of samurai and specialized in judo, but not a trained yakuza thug. I wasn’t a combative type and didn’t like fighting and avoided it as far as possible; it was not the kind of experience I would choose of my own free will. And now there wasn’t even a real reason for it, and I guessed that my chances were not good. The second man would certainly intervene if the first one was in trouble and that wouldn’t happen if he had any skill at all.
I turned away and walked up the street at a measured pace. The footsteps that I heard behind me, the heavy steps of steel-tipped boots, quickly stopped, to my relief, and I felt myself breathing normally again.
I went into a small Japanese restaurant. I assumed that in a few hours, Niki’s shift would be over and I wanted to be there when she came out. It surprised me that I didn’t feel strange. In their desire to respect the privacy of others, the restaurant’s customers, all local people, refrained from even stealing glances at me. I lingered over my meal, and then retraced my steps and took up a position outside a house further up the street, with a clear view of the club building, but out of sight of the bouncer. Long nights of lying in ambushes near Israel’s border with Lebanon had trained me to stay still in the dark and keep my eyes open. I focused on the strip of pavement outside the door of the building. It never crossed my mind that this would be the first of an endless number of urban lookouts and ambushes that were in store for me across the globe in years to come.
As the evening wore on, the stream of men swelled, arriving mostly in small groups. No more women turned up, and I realized that those I had seen earlier were hostesses. Towards midnight, the flow was reversed, with empty taxis drawing up to collect groups of men, swaying and laughing, and parting from each other with what seemed to me somewhat exaggerated bows. The women were apparently waiting until the last men had left.
It was a hot and humid summer’s night, by evening the sky had already clouded over, and all of a sudden a heavy, monsoon-like downpour struck. I got as close as I could to the door of the building where I was sheltering, but I soon realized that this way I wouldn’t recognize Niki when she came out. So I came out of my hiding place each time a woman emerged from the club building and scurried with little steps towards the taxi that had arrived for her. Inevitably, I was sopping wet when I saw Niki exiting the building. What now?
She climbed into the back seat of the cab on the side nearest the building, and I had no alternative but to run up, open the door on the other side, and plunk myself down next to her. The driver turned to me, surprised and angry, and Niki was also stunned, but she quickly recovered and said something in Japanese to the driver. He unwillingly turned back and looked the other way, at the doorman, who despite the dense rainfall had apparently seen what was happening and had come out of the building. Niki spoke again and the driver moved off.
“You are crazy, you know that?” she told me, as could only be expected, but instead of shock and anxiety, there was now a broad smile on her face. I moved towards her, but she quickly blocked me with her hand. I understood that she had her limits, and limits were also certainly a part of the norms of behaviour that prevailed here.
“Your place or mine?” I ventured, far more daring than I had ever been with any girl. Niki, or Tokyo, had scrambled everything that I had been before I encountered them.
“Neither,” she answered, and said something else to the driver. Again, I was at a loss as to where I stood. The cab stopped, and Niki got out and pulled me after her. Firmly, she ordered the driver to drive off, and she hailed another taxi.
“He was one of their drivers. We couldn’t stay with him,” she said, without explaining, and looked back to make sure that her employers weren’t following. Her nervousness gripped me too.
The second taxi dropped us off in a neighbourhood flooded with neon lights. The rain had stopped, and hundreds of people, perhaps thousands, mostly young, were milling around. It was an astonishing scene. There were droves of punk rockers, boys and girls in leather and amazing get-ups, and all kinds of shops, restaurants and bars, altogether a dazzling sight.
“Doesn’t anyone sleep in this town?”
“Not here, in Shinjuku. But don’t worry. Everyone will go to work tomorrow morning at 8, in suits. But come let’s see what to do about ourselves.” She had once again picked up the reins and she led me into a small bar.
“I won’t drink, because I’ve already had at least ten drinks,” she said, “but I’ll order you something, preferably hot. You’re soaked.”
The word “soaked” was said in a voice that combined pity and admiration. Apparently her samurai loyalty had kicked in.
As if she owed me some explanation, after realizing that I’d waited for her for hours, she described in brief what she did in the club – which she named – in order to get it out of the way.
“Businessmen turn up after work. Usually groups of a few employees with their boss, who pays. Sometimes with visitors from abroad. They come to relax and have some fun. To drink, to dance. Each group sits around a table, and my boss sends over as many hostesses as there are men. We chat, that’s all. The nice atmosphere makes them order more and more drinks, and we also order, and they pay. So I’m already quite drunk.”
“Ten drinks,” I said admiringly, “and you’re still on your feet. I’d already be wallowing in my own vomit.”
“My drinks are diluted,” she said, extricating me from yet another inferior situation. “Now let’s think about us.”
Niki suddenly got practical, as if it was obvious that after my noble deed we were going to spend the night together. Very quickly “my place” was ruled out – I was staying at a youth hostel with another three foreigners in my room – and so was hers; she was lodging with a local family. Neither of us had the money for a regular hotel, so Niki suggested we go to a “love hotel”. I’d heard the term before, but hadn’t yet had the occasion to try one of them.
The sign at the entrance was in Japanese only, and of course I couldn’t understand it, but the place didn’t look like a hotel, more like an apartment house with the entrance at the rear. In the small lobby there was a sofa and a table, but no desk. A small hatch in the wall next to the price list was knee-high so we couldn’t see who was behind it. And they obviously couldn’t see anything but our legs.
“How long for?” Niki asked me.
“Till morning, no?”
“It goes by the hour. Till morning, the Hilton would be cheaper.”
“Let’s start with two hours,” I said sorrowfully and hopefully.
Niki quickly opened her purse and held out a 10,000 yen note. An unseen hand gave her 5,000 back, and a key. I took out my wallet to reimburse her, but she pushed it away. “We’ll settle up afterwards.”
The hatch closed and we walked to the elevator, where I kissed her for the first time.
Niki didn’t play coy, and with her tongue in my mouth she gave me a taste of something I had never tasted before. I felt a little dizzy, but a hard bite brought me down to the ground. The elevator door opened.
I thought I’d kiss her some more and begin undressing her as soon as we got into the room, which was simple, sparklingly clean, with two mattresses on the wooden floor, and a robe and towel on each one. But Niki said we must first take off our shoes, and she slipped out of her dress while I took off my wet clothes. The moment I finished, she slithered underneath me, slung me onto her back for a second and then tossed me over her shoulder onto a hard mattress.
“Ippon!” she exclaimed with a little jig. My back hurt from the fall, and I’d also taken a knock to my head.
“This is for all the grief you’ve given me!” she snarled as she came at me, gripping my throat and squeezing until I stopped breathing. Her eyes glittered like happy green lanterns in the dimly lit room.
I managed to free myself from her grip. In nature, whoever has the greater body mass usually wins, and mine was twice hers. I’m not tall, but still a head taller than her, and with all due respect to judo, it can
tip the balance only up to a point.
To an onlooker, what happened next may have looked like rape. It’s just not clear who raped whom. When we were finished, spent and scratched, Niki said, “It’s never been so good for me before.”
“I thought that because of your Japanese half you’d be more delicate,” I said, still panting.
“I don’t think that applies in bed. And definitely not in a love hotel.”
She still had the half-crazed look that I had seen in her eyes, a few minutes before, cat-like, almost non-human, as she approached her climax. She was still hungry, and I also wanted more.
Only after the second time did we calm down a little and begin to gently explore each other’s bodies, with our eyes, our fingers, our tongues. It was then that I discovered that Niki had one inverted nipple.
“It can be fixed with a simple operation, if I want,” she said shyly. I said I’d make do with sucking it out with my mouth, but that didn’t work. For her part, Niki found the scar under my right shoulder, a memento from a fragment of a mortar shell that had been fired at our position in Lebanon and hit me in the back. It was childish of me, I know, but I was really sorry that the wound was on my back. A scar on the front, I thought would have been much sexier, and I was somewhat apologetic as I told Niki about the incident. Then I showed her another lesion, much smaller, from a fragment that had hit me in my buttocks.
A soft bell rang when we were in the middle of the third time. My heart jumped for a moment when I thought the yakuza had arrived. But it was merely a reminder that our two hours were up.
“Now I’ll pay,” I said as if it was obvious we would go on, and I donned a robe and went down to the lobby.
We’d worn ourselves out with the things that I knew, and with all the things she knew and I hadn’t thought were at all possible. It was so very different from everything I’d experienced until then. Apart from one romance that had lasted up until I left on this trip, I’d had only brief affairs, and the sex had been OK, at best. I had been so focused on making it OK, that I’d never even tried any of the things that Niki dragged me into doing and never had nights like this of doing it again and again – each time with innovations and inventions, quite a little carnival of our own.
Final Stop, Algiers: A Thriller Page 2