by Arturo Silva
–That’s not really Mejiro.
–Well, I thought it was.
–You saw Sanda? What was she doing?
–Posing. Being beautiful.
–Nothing pornographic about the place, then.
–Not in your mind, perhaps.
***
Tortured, twisting Tokio, Kazuko ponders, we pray for you – but at what shrine?
***
At about eight that evening, work finished for the day, Kaoru joined a small group of coworkers for a typical evening out. That is to say, drink, eat, drink, talk, drink. The first place they went to was the nearby hostess bar his company frequently used to entertain clients. There they snacked on dried fish, nuts, and rice crackers, while drinking a few very expensive beers, as well as some Suntory whisky. (Kaoru had only had imported whisky once in his life, and it did not suit him. Too good, he thought.) While putting in a comment now and then to the conversation – the current job, the clients they had to deal with – he was more interested in observing the hostesses as they seemed to take shifts in their movement from table to table. His group was turn and turn about visited by an obvious novice to the game. Slender, perhaps eighteen or nineteen, she had already learned how to make light talk, light cigarettes, keep the men drinking – thus increasing the tab – and meanwhile pouring her own tea, disguised as whisky. Too thin for Kaoru, he politely but indifferently kept her busy hands at bay. It was the foreign woman who kept his attention. But she was in demand from the five or six tables of businessmen, and so she had little chance to converse with Kaoru and his friends. Her short skirt, low décolletage over what looked like large breasts, set his imagination afire. During the seven or eight times she sat next to or near him he was able to learn that she was studying anthropology at Tokyo University, and planning to study the folklore of Akita prefecture. While he could have maintained a conversation with her in English, she insisted on speaking Japanese with him, even tracing various kanji on his palm from time to time. It was exasperating. She knew that his view of her thighs and breasts would keep him in thrall to her, while at the same time he could only gaze – and converse. A third hostess was somewhat older, perhaps in her late twenties. She was adroit at all the hostess’s arts, from cigarettes and drinks again, and especially to saying nothing while seeming to say everything – the promise of a night. A night, he knew, that would come to nothing. This woman was for him the best of all; while not young, she did have the figure he craved. Too, she knew when to be quiet, or better, when only to sigh and nod assent. Compliance was what he wanted. No one who would talk back to him, no jabber. He missed his wife back in Takasaki as much as he felt indifferent toward her. And she? No, he decided, only loathing. She had his steady income, their children. Sex had never interested her – or so he had convinced himself. While not an arranged marriage, it had come to be so, merely an arrangement between them to save their families’ faces. Enough of that. Kaoru however had never had the nerve to pursue his sexual inclinations. An occasional flirtation, perhaps, but nothing ever beyond that. He had always hoped that somehow the woman – any woman; this hostess here – would make the overture, invite him for a private drink … and then the night. But no one ever had. He wondered why: I’m not bad looking, I present no risks, I may not be a great conversationalist, nor love-maker, but I am, well, steady, dependable, upright. Surely those qualities are attractive to some sexy women. (Yes they were – to his wife back in Gunma Prefecture.)
After a couple of hours, one of his colleagues suggested they move on to the next place, this being a yakitori-ya near Shimbashi. There they could converse more freely about the things that really concerned them: baseball, the office girls, the slow service at the local post office. Besides the yakitori, they ate ice-cold tofu, some fried chicken, a variety of vegetables and roots and radishes, and finally green tea over rice. Saké was the drink of choice, with an occasional beer. A group of young people was at the next table. They too were eating and drinking the same, but they seemed so much more lively. No displays of affection, but such zest in their gestures. Kaoru’s fantasy mechanism began to run at full speed. He imagined the young men – so self-confident – easily taking the girls home, and then their sexual acts. His vision – he was easily half-drunk by now – kept blurring between sights of the young women – in t-shirts and slacks, sweat-shirts or short leather jackets – as actresses in the porno movies he occasionally rented from his local shop, going home with pairs of boys, sucking their cocks submissively, happily, them spraying their sperm on the girls’ hair – and the actual women in front of him, going home with only one of the boys each, making some goodnight tea, watching television or reading a comic, and then going to bed, and at most, simply masturbating or fellating him because she was having her period, or he was drunk, or simply they were both too tired to even undress.
He broke out of it. He and one co-worker who lived nearby, took a taxi in a mutual direction home, but before going there they went to one last “restaurant.” This was a small ramen stand – a push-cart with a battery to keep the stove running, an upturned bench for customers. Ramen was his favorite meal. His father had subsisted on it during the post-war years, and had instilled in his son a taste for it as being a real man’s meal, “you could survive on it. I did.” By now the saké had run out, and so they were left with shochu, that hard wheat-based distant cousin of vodka. The conversation was minimal; there were no women present.
On his short walk home Kaoru stopped into his local video store. He rented three porno films. Though a well-known customer, he’d never had the nerve to ask about under-the-table, uncensored movies, those without the masking over the genitals. But the presence of the masking didn’t really bother him, it only fired his lust more.
Home at last, he poured himself one last Suntory, and proceeded to watch the videos. The first featured Shiomi Mizutani, a newcomer to the scene. A horsey mouth with large lips, she was ever over eager to undress the all-too-familiar cast of men: the bodybuilder, the student-type, the dandy. But oh how she sucked cock! This was her drawing card. The (seeming) enthusiasm, the slobbering all over, the rapidity with which she could move from one to two to three without missing a beat, even the most ‘hardened’ costars expressed wonder at her skills. But for all her delights, she wasn’t having the hoped for effect upon Kaoru tonight, and so he switched to a video with both the hugely breasted Akiko Ito and Rika Sugai. In this, they played “bat girls” to a baseball team. Swinging the bats around, gazing upon their length and breadth, one thing lead to another, and soon the girls were fucking the pitcher, catcher and an umpire. It was all too silly, but briefly, very surprisingly for this man who was not inclined to serious thinking, while pausing on the close-ups of the women’s breasts, he wondered if this were indeed the source of our fascination with film. Finally, he put on the film with Masumi Tachibana, his favorite of all porno actresses. Her breasts were too perfect, perfect in shape and size, nipples the size of ten-yen coins, stretched taut tips. Her crow-black hair like a perfect helmet. A thin waist, long legs, a nectarine ass, and smallish cunt (through the filter). And her face: a long, thin smile, pert nose, and oh so Asian eyes: perfectly dumb. For Kaoru, Masumi could do anything and it was a turn-on; add being fucked and sucking cock and he was over the ass-shaped moon; it was enough to watch her bend over to grab a prick to excite him –her ass raised just so, her breasts hung within the shot so that Kaoru could see both them and her submissive cock-sucking (the man obligingly out of frame). She took her time, sucking slowly at first, then furiously, and in some strange reversal of power, commanding the man’s submission.
Kaoru watched in wonderment. His whisky was forgotten. He stroked, he pulled, he tugged at his cock. He squeezed, he stretched. He wanted to moan, to cry out, but did not for fear of his neighbors. Finally, when one small drop of sperm emerged, he cursed his prick (“fishpaste!”), and knew the night was over (he might try again in the morning). He recalled the sexual pleasure he had experienced
with his wife during the first few months around their marriage. It had been a real sexual joy. But now he felt nothing. Or almost: while he knew that all was not lost, that he was not wholly lonely, he also knew that he would never eat ramen with his father again, that while his colleagues were all nice guys, he missed a few people from his youth, from better, less stressful days. He felt the same loneliness that he was sure Lang felt, that Roberta possibly sometimes felt too, that certain times could never be recaptured – that first sexual attempt in his second year at University; that walk in Yoyogi-koen with his then fiancée; the birth of their daughter followed by her mother’s milky breasts; the sex they enjoyed some months afterwards; their second child, again a daughter, no, he would never even have the luxury of every man’s right, a son; the coldness that later set in; the job transfer to Tokyo; the occasional visits back home and the less than occasional and all too workmanlike sex they then had; the real loneliness he sensed everyday at the borders of feeling.
***
Worldly passions bring enlightenment,
life and death embody Nirvana.
– Kodama Ukifune
***
Marianne is wandering around Lake Shiroyama. We see the Lake, and then we see some hills variously resembling Switzerland, the Piedmont, areas in Japan. Marianne is alone, working on her Japanese verbs, occasionally humming “I Can See Everybody’s Mother” to herself.
Liang did not know at all how he’d come to China all the way from the hills of Lake Shiroyama where his dream began. He is in Shanghai, where he runs into a van Zandt who is not quite the VZ he knows. He reads a billboard about “ten-thousand generations of flotsam and jetsam.” He sees a black building missing a wall; and then a woman in red whom he feels should be holding a fan – “Where’s her fan, dammit? What happened to her fan?,” he keeps shouting to passersby. He sees another billboard, this time advertising “Headgear worn by a good for nothing young man from a wealthy family – or for a literary hack.” He wonders if VZ had written it as a taunt. He runs into Roberta and has to explain to her, “I meant it literally: at the Szechuan restaurant the waitress puts her hand in to your wallet. I never meant it to hurt you, to make you jealous.” Then within the dream he has another horrible dream in which he is living with van Zandt – again, the “different” VZ – and six others – bikers, Chinese bikers – a gang that includes an abacus whiz. The radio is playing a Gospel song; Liang hears Marion Williams singing. Then the radio suddenly switches to a Japanese narrator telling the story of the love between Blue Snake and White Snake. Liang thinks of Mei Lanfang, and his last thought is a desire to see Roberta.
***
A beautiful sentence this, from the Patsy Cline bio.: “I guess you could say he was what you’d now call a swinger.” The speaker is lost, afraid, adrift, hesitant, would make a hell of an historian. But listen again: the sentence itself swings! It reminds me of Barbara Stanwyck.
***
–Awful.
–Awful man.
–Awful people.
–Awful woman.
–Good beer.
–Fair.
–Good tsuyu.
–Middling.
–Cute waitress.
–Awful teeth.
–Nice smile.
–But awful people, really.
–Really awful.
–Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
–The waitress?
–No, no, those people.
–“Those people” – isn’t that what they usually call us?
–Perhaps, but I’m not thinking about we Japanese.
–Then of whom?
–Those – you know, those Americans.
–The ones we run into now and then?
–Yes, yes.
–Roberta and Arlene?
–No, no, Roberta and Lang.
–But Lang isn’t from America.
–He’s not? Oh well, what matter, same difference, all the same. Where is he from then?
–Europe. Austria. Vienna.
–Is he now?
–Oh yes, but I think they met in Amsterdam. And they’ve lived in America too. Perhaps that’s what confused you.
–How could their having lived in America confuse me? He’s a foreigner, I assumed he was from America. There’s nothing confusing there.
–Nonetheless, not all foreigners come from America.
–Perhaps not; nonetheless.
–Yes, I see your point.
–Vienna, you say?
–Yes, you know, the waltz.
–Oh, I know.
–Do you? Have you been there?
–Yes, I have. Before entering my company, with a few friends.
–Is it – is it …
–Like in the movie? Then you know the Tora-san.
–That’s not exactly what I was about to ask.
–Nonetheless, it is very much like.
–Lots of us Japanese go there.
–Oh yes, we’re not unlike, you know. Baby-talk, finger-food, a glorious past. Wonderful people, really.
–Some might not see that in a positive light.
–Then they haven’t the spirit of “gemootlick …” – or however you pronounce it.
–[Whistles a bit of a waltz.]
–But Lang, really, from Vienna? Hardly seems like it. I’d never have thought it. Doesn’t seem the type, really. No, no, hard to believe. Nonetheless.
–Yes?
–Oh yes, nonetheless, an awful man.
–Yes, and Roberta.
–That must be why they are together, you know, two awfulnesses attracted to one another.
–But each awful in his or her own way.
–Oh certainly. Separate awfulnesses, united only in their being awful.
–But are they indeed united? I thought they’d split apart, or separated.
–Oh yes, clever that – united in their separateness. In their awfulness.
–But they are apart. He’s living in Kichijoji, and she’s at least an hour away on the Chuo line. Lives somewhere in Bunkyo-ku.
–Not another gone native? What do these people see in our culture?
–Oh she’s not too far gone as far as I understand, nonetheless.
–Yes, but going. And he’s in Kichijoji, you say? Can’t see a Viennese liking it there.
–You’ve got a point. Perhaps Setagaya-ku would be more to his liking. A little more toney, that is to say.
–Yes, better housing, cleaner children, a certain elegance in the women. Less fun really is what we’re talking about. A good place to grow old in. Perhaps that is why he is in Kichijoji. An awful Viennese – can you imagine it? But too, what is she doing in Bunkyo-ku?
–Oh, the atmosphere, one assumes. You know, those Americans.
–Yes, all over the place. Poking their noses, poking their elbows. I wonder who is jealous of whom.
–Japanese of Americans, of Viennese, you mean?
–Oh no, no, Lang of Roberta, or vice-versa.
–But jealous of what?
–Well, there must be something that keeps them together?
–But they’re not together!
–Of course they are; this living apart is just an indirect way of expressing their longing, their bond, their inseparable union. You don’t understand these foreigners the way that I do. I’ve been to America too, I’ll have you know. I’ve seen the old world, and the new.
–But they live on different sides of the city!
–Of the same, single city. And besides, they are both awful people. They are a hegemony. They have the same laugh, you know.
–Really? I hadn’t noticed, but now that you mention it.
–Oh yes, I’ve heard it often enough, really, how an Austrian can learn to cackle like an American, it’s surprising really how low one can go.
–That bad, eh?
–Awful. Have you also noticed or not that they always order the same foods in restaurants? But I will say he is a bit more daring
when it comes to sushi, and she genuinely does seem to like natto, I will give her credit there.
–Yes, yes, credit there, credit there.
–No, they are not stupid when it comes to food.
–And her Japanese is quite good.
–Oh now, how preposterous!
–No, no, I have to say, that she really can carry on a conversation, she goes on and on from one point to another and somehow manages to maintain a thread throughout, carries you along though often you’re not sure what she is getting at, and manages to tie it all up together at the end too. Snap! And it is conversation too, a real give and give.
–Give and take, she’s American recall.
–Yes, but no, give and give. Oh, she speaks Japanese alright.
–A mystery. A mystery to me. Well, I am not convinced.
–I’m not trying to convince you. See for yourself. She’ll be visiting my home next weekend. She takes calligraphy lessons from my mother.
–Oh, this is really going too far!
–I thought so too. But the truth is, she does have a certain feel, a genuine touch. I certainly do not.
–Nor I, I am ashamed to say. But really, she is visiting you next week?
–Well not visiting me, the lesson is with my mother. But as we are acquainted via our mutual friends, I do join them during their tea break. Seriously, you’re more than welcome to come. There is also a good sushi-ya nearby, we could go there in the evening, and perhaps Roberta would join in.
–Perhaps I might. Whereabouts do you live, Hiro?
–Setagaya.
–Ahh, and with your parents? Of course, after all you are single.
–Yes, well, I’m in no hurry to leave. I fulfill my duties, and we leave each other alone.
–Living together and living alone.
–In a manner of speaking.
–Do they interfere?
–Oh, the usual.
–I envy you, I do.
–“A place to grow old in”?
–“Toney.”
–Oh, come now, it’s not a retirement village, after all.
–No, it’s not. If I lived in Tokyo, or I should say, if I were a proper Tokyoite, I suppose I would want to live in Setagaya. It has a good balance of the old and the new.