Piercing

by Ryu Murakami

  It might be a good idea to collect racing forms left behind on the train — horse-racing, bike-racing, boat-racing — and plant them in the room. Especially if he could find some from Osaka or Kobe, or a flyer advertising a loan shark or something there, and used a Kansai accent when registering. He had no time to actually make a trip to the Kansai district, but when he bought his bag at Tokyo Station or Haneda Airport he could keep an eye out for such artefacts discarded by travellers. When it came to misdirection, however, it was important to pay attention to even the smallest details. Were it to become clear that deception had been involved, the police would immediately start looking for someone rational and cunning rather than mad or desperate.

  He’d choose one of the hotels in West Shinjuku, where it wasn’t unusual for guests to arrive on foot rather than by taxi. The Park Hyatt, the Century Hyatt, the Washington, the Hilton, the Keio Plaza — he’d make a reservation at each of them under a different name. Then, as soon as possible, he’d go check them all out. The one with the busiest front desk and the worst service would suit him best. Poor service, he wrote, means less attention focused on guests.

  He laid down the pencil and looked at his watch. It was past eleven. Yoko would be going to bed soon. He thought about calling her again but decided that twice in one day might seem unnatural. He still wasn’t hungry. The little refrigerator was stocked with whisky and beer, and he felt so satisfied with the work he’d done that he decided to allow himself a drink. He took a mini-bottle of cheap domestic whisky from the refrigerator, poured it into a glass and had a sip. It was the most delicious thing he’d ever tasted.

  He read over his seven pages of notes, making a few small additions, then put the notebook in his briefcase and spun the dials on the combination lock. He opened the curtains and looked at Tokyo Tower, whose lights were off now, and as he took another sip of whisky he was aware of the heat in his throat and stomach radiating waves of sexual desire through his body. After the second glass he decided not to drink any more, fearing that he might give in to the temptation to call an S&M club and have a woman sent over.

  He hadn’t yet decided how old the victim should be. The idea of someone in her late thirties appealed to him, but he somehow felt it would be more satisfying to plunge the ice pick into a firm, smooth young belly this time, rather than one that was soft and sagging. A young woman, yes, with resilient, snow-white skin.

  As soon as Kawashima made up his mind on this point, he began to ache with desire for an older woman. The whisky-fuelled revelation that the victim should be young, after the excitement of writing out all those notes, had left him helpless with lust. Rationalising that unless he did something about it he’d never get any sleep, which would only hinder his ability to begin preparations tomorrow, he leafed through the sex guide and dialled a place that advertised Erotic Massage by Mature Ladies.

  ‘Good evening. Essence Clinic.’

  It was a man’s voice.

  ‘I’m at a hotel in the city. Is it too late to ask for a massage?’

  He’d never called a place like this before and was surprised at how calm he managed to sound.

  ‘Which hotel, sir?’

  ‘The Akasaka Prince.’

  ‘Thank you. If I may ask your room number, we’ll ring you right back to confirm.’

  About ten seconds after he hung up, the phone rang.

  ‘Sorry to keep you waiting.’ The man had an odd way of intoning his words. ‘We have a thirty-eight-year-old widow who is available immediately.’

  The voice was tranquil and mechanical and gave no sense of the person producing it. It was impossible even to imagine what the man’s face looked like. Kawashima didn’t answer right away, and the voice continued.

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind waiting another hour or so, however, we can send a lady in her early forties.’

  ‘No. Send the one who can come right now, please.’

  ‘The basic massage is 7,000 yen, and the erotic version is 17,000. Which would you prefer?’

  It sounded as if the man were holding a baby as he talked. Or sitting at someone’s deathbed — Kawashima pictured a shrivelled, comatose old man hooked up to an IV drip.

  ‘Erotic.’

  ‘She’ll be at your room in approximately half an hour. Of course we ask you to supply her with taxi fare both ways.’

  Before hanging up, Kawashima ventured to ask if they got many young men requesting these older women. ‘Quite a few,’ the smooth voice said, and replaced the receiver so quietly that he scarcely heard the click.

  What if it turned out to be her? It had been just ten years now, so she’d be forty-eight. The voice had said the woman was a decade younger than that, but it’s not unusual for women in the sex trade to lie about their age. In fact, at the strip clubs where she was working back then, she’d told people she was twenty-eight. How many men could really distinguish ten years one way or the other, after all? If it did turn out to be her, though, what should he say? Would there still be a small round scar, or would it have healed completely by now? They’d spoken very little after she was released from the hospital, but he clearly remembered her mentioning how complicated and time-consuming the treatment was for an ice-pick wound. ‘An unbelievable pain in the ass,’ to use her exact words. Well, he wasn’t holding any grudges. If it turned out to be her, all he needed to say was Long time no see. And maybe ask about the scar.

  He decided to allow himself a little more whisky. After all, his urge to call an S&M club had vanished now that the thirty-eight-year-old was on her way. He opened the third minature bottle and poured it into his glass, his mind replaying the smooth voice’s last words: Quite a few. Beyond the window-pane, veiled with condensation, was the glittering expanse of late-night Tokyo. From up here, the people on the street looked like moving dots. He’d recently watched a daytime talk show with the theme: Young men who can love only women their mothers’ age. A psychologist in a bow-tie had expounded that ‘it’s a perversion of sorts, certainly, an elaboration of the so-called Peter Pan syndrome, and though the symptoms are distinct the pathology is basically the same as that of young men who sexually molest little girls; neither type has the ability to make or maintain normal, healthy relationships.’ In other words, men who were attracted to much older women were sick and abnormal. If I accomplish my mission, Kawashima thought to himself, I’ll go after that psychologist next, for talking such absolute shit.

  The boys in the Home had rarely spoken to one another. He’d roomed with Taku-chan for two years, but it was only shortly before he was released from the place that they’d had conversations of any length. And not even then had they discussed anything very personal.

  Kawashima tried to picture the boys in the Home, to see them with his twenty-nine-year-old eyes. The playroom, its sandbox filled with white sand, all the different dolls and stuffed animals and puppets, the model tanks and cars and toy telephones, the building blocks, the little trampoline, the painting supplies, the children. He managed to envision the entire scene quite vividly: it was as if his adult self were actually standing there, watching the kids. Every imaginable trait that would make an adult despise a child could be found in someone in that room. A hundred out of a hundred grown-ups, being in close quarters with one of these children, would end up with a single thought: What an insufferable little monster!

  These kids wouldn’t say hello or answer when you spoke to them. Call to a boy repeatedly and he’d turn and stare you down, saying something like, ‘Shut up, asshole, I heard you the first time.’ Reprimand another and he’d go feral, throwing things and breaking toys and trying to bite your hand. Many of them ate like animals, even snatching food away from others. There were some who’d curl up in a corner, staring blankly into space only to explode into tears if anyone came near, and others as obsequious as slaves or dogs, anxiously peering up into the attendants’ faces and awaiting orders. There were little girls who would snuggle up to any grown man and try to guide his hand inside their underwe
ar, and there were kids who compulsively bit their own arms. Kids who would suddenly start twitching and banging their heads against a wall, not even stopping when the blood ran down their faces. Kids who waddled around oblivious to the stinking load in their own pants. Watching children like this, it was all too easy to see why their parents beat them. It was only natural to hate such kids, to ignore them and shower only your other children with love. Who wouldn’t?

  But of course that wasn’t the way it really worked. Such behaviours weren’t the reasons parents abused children but the results of abuse. Children are powerless, Kawashima muttered to himself. The tears rolling down his cheeks took him by surprise, and he finished the glass of whisky in one gulp. No matter how viciously they’re beaten, children were powerless to do anything about it. Even if Mother hit them with a shoehorn or the hose of a vacuum cleaner or the handle of a kitchen knife, or strangled them or poured boiling water on them, they couldn’t escape her; they couldn’t even truly despise her. Children would struggle desperately to feel love for their parents. Rather than hate a parent, in fact, they’d choose to hate themselves. Love and violence became so intertwined for them that when they grew up and got into relationships, only hysteria could set their hearts at ease. Kindness, gentleness — anything along those lines just caused tension, since there was no telling when it would turn to overt hostility. Better to cut right to the chase by constantly eliciting disgust and anger. The asshole with the bow-tie had referred to victims of that sort of upbringing as perverts and wrote them off as pathological.

  Focusing alternately on his own reflection in the bedewed window and the nightscape of Tokyo at his feet, Kawashima began to think of himself as a representative. A representative of all the children who’d become insignificant dots in that dark diorama; a martyr armed with only an ice pick, facing down the enemy hordes. Flushed with a sense of omnipotence, he summoned up the faces of the children in the Home one by one and told them: Just wait and see. His lips grazed the window-pane, and several drops of water ran down the glass like little bugs scattering. I’ll kill them all for you, Kawashima muttered again and again.

  6

  ‘YOU REMIND ME OF somebody,’ the masseuse said. ‘I can’t remember the name, but some actor. Do you know who I mean?’

  She was a big-boned woman who talked a lot. She looked so little like the woman he’d stabbed ten years ago that Kawashima couldn’t suppress a wry smile when he first saw her. She wore slacks of a thin, glittery material, a gaudy sweater, and a silver fox half-coat. Kawashima had, as a matter of fact, been told that he looked like certain actors or singers before. But he was sure his resemblance to any celebrity was too tenuous to be fatal, especially if he changed his hairstyle and wore glasses. He offered the woman something to drink. She asked for a glass of beer, and he got one for her and another for himself. Sipping at his beer, Kawashima asked her if it wasn’t dangerous, going to the hotel rooms of men she’d never met.

  ‘Usually you can tell if a guy’s OK just by looking in his eyes, so I haven’t had any real problems personally, but some of the girls have had bad experiences. I don’t mean anything really scary, but, like, letting guys stick their dirty fingers in there to make a little extra money and ending up with an infection or whatever. That’s the sort of thing you hear about, anyway.’

  Kawashima stripped, dimmed the lights, and lay face-down on top of the bedspread. The woman sat on the side of the bed and lightly ran her fingernails over his back and buttocks and hamstrings, tracing leisurely circles on the surface of his skin. He felt like a patient being pampered by a nurse. As she helped ease him over on to his back, the woman was telling him about the man she lived with, explaining that he was the one who’d bought her the fur half-coat. She placed a box of tissues next to her on the bed and rubbed oil into her left palm, then began stroking his already erect penis. He lifted his head from the pillow and asked if she wasn’t going to undress as well. Without pausing the motion of her hand, she told him it would cost an extra ten thousand. ‘I’ll pay it,’ he said, and she wiped her hand with a tissue, reminded him that he mustn’t touch her, and wriggled out of her clothing.

  Wanting to get a better look at her soft belly and the marks left by the elastic of her pantyhose, he switched on the bedside lamp. The woman made no attempt to conceal her body. It was a body that stirred nostalgic feelings in him: skin your fingers could sink into; breasts with visible veins and dark, downcast nipples; arms and waist and thighs that jiggled with the slightest movement; the pathos of pubic hair; the cracked, yellowed nail of a big toe. He’d once been so accustomed to this sort of body that when he first slept with Yoko the firmness of her flesh actually felt strange to him. Yoko was now twenty-nine and had given birth to a child, but when you touched her neck or arm or ass, the flesh still pressed back. Looking at the supposedly thirty-eight-year-old ass flattened against the bedspread, Kawashima thought: There’s something non-threatening about skin like this. Soft as a spongecake left over from Christmas; skin that yielded to your touch rather than resisting defiantly. It was as if the very cells were conscious of their age and had ceased to assert themselves.

  He was drinking this body in with his eyes when he came. The woman wiped him off with a hot, wet towel.

  After handing her over 30,000 yen and sending her on her way, he lay back on the bedspread, still naked. He was enveloped in a sort of weightless tranquillity that was like nothing he’d ever experienced before. Far from any danger of his nervous system going haywire. Kawashima had never understood the how or why of those episodes of his — the explosions of shock and terror and rage, the total loss of control — but they always left him feeling miserable afterwards. He’d often wondered if one couldn’t train oneself to develop nerves that wouldn’t crack like that. But the reality, he thought, staring up at the ceiling, is that I’ll probably have to go through this sort of thing forever. He’d just spurted a large volume of semen, and though it had occasioned him no more excitement than a good sneeze, he was enjoying the after-effects. It felt good just lying there gazing at the ceiling. He was aware that the good feeling existed side by side with a chilling sort of loneliness, but even that wasn’t all bad. He was picturing the masseuse’s bulky thighs when something important occurred to him, and he sat up in bed and reached for his briefcase. He opened it, took out the notes, and added a couple of lines:

  The woman must be not only young but petite. A large woman would be more difficult to control in the event of any unforeseen glitches.

  7

  SANADA CHIAKI WAS AWAKE but needed to lie in bed a while longer. The dial on her electric blanket was turned to high, but because of the Halcion she felt heavy and frozen stiff, from hair to toenails. The phone stopped ringing, and after the high-pitched mechanical whine of her answering machine a subdued male voice eased out of the little speaker.

  ‘Aya-san, are you going to make it to the office today? Either way, give us a call, will you? If you’re not feeling well, you can have the night off, of course, but we need you to call in. We’ve got you down for an appointment this evening, six o’clock at the Keio Plaza, room 2902, a Mr Yokoyama. He’s a new client, but he sounds young, and he sounds like a gentleman. You’ll probably have to go straight there, considering the time, but drop by the office when you finish, no matter how late it is, all right? And please don’t turn off your—’

  A beep signalled an end to the allotted message time. A few moments later the phone rang again.

  ‘I got cut off. As I was saying, we need you to leave your pager on. If you pick up this message from outside and don’t have your toys with you, you’ll have to stop by the office or your apartment first. Whatever you do, don’t show up at the appointment without equipment, all right? Anyway, we’re waiting to hear from you. If you’re running short on time, you can call after you’ve arrived at the Keio Plaza. Your period hasn’t started yet, has it? If it—’

  The machine cut him off again, and this time he didn’t call back. Chiak
i decided she’d better get up and eat something. She looked at the clock and saw that it was already three in the afternoon. The Keio Plaza was only twelve or thirteen minutes away by taxi, but after a three-Halcion sleep she’d need time just to get her blood circulating again. She’d been gradually increasing the dosage recently and knew she’d have to watch that. The pills weren’t cheap, and someone had said that the shop in Shibuya where she bought them was under investigation.

  She rolled on to her side and reached for the CD player remote. She hit POWER, saw the little green light come on, and pressed PLAY. It wasn’t the CD she was expecting. She liked to listen to strings first thing on awaking and could have sworn she’d put in a Mozart disc before going to sleep, but oozing out of the speakers now was the theme song from Wild at Heart, with a tenor sax that dripped like molasses over her nerve endings. It was music she liked to listen to when masturbating. It’s weird I don’t remember, she thought as she turned off the music — and what if it’s not just because of the sleeping pills? The thought triggered a wave of anxiety, and she decided to try to recall exactly what she’d done before going to sleep. According to the clock it was Friday, which meant she’d been asleep for about fifty hours straight. She’d taken the Halcion late Wednesday morning, after an all-night job for which she’d received 150,000 yen. She hadn’t taken the money to the office yet, either, which explained why the manager was so insistent about her calling in.