Piercing

by Ryu Murakami

  The client had been a mild, middle-aged man who after half-heartedly tying her up and poking her with the vibrator had taken her hand and asked her to sleep next to him. She wasn’t sleepy, and because she was concerned about her libido having gone missing the past month or so, and because he wasn’t a type she found repulsive, she’d been prepared to have normal sex with him, as long as he used a condom. So naturally this was the one time the client just wanted to sleep by her side. He fell asleep right away, with his mouth open, and she couldn’t bear even to look at him. He wasn’t a smoker, but his breath was bad and smelled faintly of alcohol, and soon he was snoring loudly without loosening the tight grip he had on her hand. He hadn’t paid her yet, so she couldn’t have left anyway, but her muscles tensed up when she tried to lie still, and the more she told herself she had to sleep, the more it felt as if someone had turned a spotlight on her brain.

  Don’t tell me it’s starting up again, she remembered thinking, and the thought had terrified her and made her think it really was starting up. Any minute now she’d become aware of What’s-her-name lurking up there at the corner of the ceiling, staring down at the man and her.

  What’s-her-name had first appeared when Chiaki was in middle school. In the beginning, she’d begged her not to look, but What’s-her-name would just snicker, in a voice that apparently only Chiaki could hear.

  This time, as it turned out, What’s-her-name never did materialise, but because her handbag was out of reach Chiaki couldn’t get to the Halcion and had to lie there until dawn, wide awake. By then her muscles were so rigid it hurt, and she was scared. But what really tormented her was the fact that she couldn’t detect so much as zero point one milligram of sexual desire anywhere in her body. If this had happened in the old days, before she’d changed her personality, she probably would have shaken the man awake and demanded sex.

  She wasn’t like that any more, though. She’d revamped her personality on the hundred and twenty-fourth day after her eighteenth birthday, the year she graduated high school and entered junior college. In junior college she’d had just one friend with whom she’d go out for tea and share lecture notes and so on, and when she told her about it this girl had said, ‘No way! Is it even possible to change your personality overnight?’

  I did, Chiaki told herself. I changed my personality just like that. I became modest and reserved, even a little withdrawn, and after that there were lots of people who wanted to be my friend. Not that we necessarily stayed friends very long, but still, I made the change because I realised something: that the sex you have with a man at your own suggestion is just never that good. After all, if you have to ask for sex, it means the man isn’t really into it, right? And guys are never sweet or gentle or thoughtful in bed if they’re not really into it. There’s nothing cute about their faces when they come, either, and you end up wondering what’s the point of rubbing your flesh and organs together like that, having this thing flopping around inside you. It makes you feel even lonelier than if you were alone. And then, after he comes, the man makes an even worse face. What am I doing with a slut like this? That’s what the expression on his face says.

  A slut like this, Chiaki muttered, imitating a gruff, masculine voice as she struggled up on to her elbows. How low can you get?

  Looking down at her T-shirt, she could see the outline of the nipple ring. She’d done the piercing herself seventy-one days ago. It had hurt when she pushed the needle through, and again when she pulled it out, but it had been a total success. After about a week all the pain was gone. And by the thirty-third day not a trace of scabbing or scarring remained. Chiaki was proud of herself. And the guys at the body-art shop in Shibuya, a hundred and sixty-three steps from the entrance to Tokyu Hands, had been so helpful and nice. Next she wanted to get a tattoo. To be able to choose your own pain — it’s a little scary, she thought, but it’s wonderful, too. She tugged at the neck of her T-shirt and peeked down at the ring.

  Her clients lately had all been of the worst sort — men who weren’t interested in the more exciting types of play but only in getting their rocks off as quickly as possible. In private life she’d been dating three different guys, but each of them had stopped calling recently, for various reasons — like the way she tended maybe to overreact when they messed up her room. Judging from the Wild at Heart CD and the fact that she wasn’t wearing panties, she must have masturbated before sleeping, probably for a long time. She seemed to recall it vaguely: spurred on by her desire to feel desire when there was nothing there, reaching for it until her own moaning sounded fake to her and she began to fear that it would turn into someone else’s voice altogether, but being spared that when the third Halcion tablet kicked in and sucked her down in a whirlpool of sleep.

  Things had not been going well lately. She stroked the silvery ring with her index finger and thought: This is all I can really believe in right now. Even when she caressed it herself, it felt like someone else’s touch. It was a fourteen-gauge surgical stainless steel ball-closure ring with an inner diameter of twelve point seven millimetres. ‘What’re you, nuts?’ her customers often asked her. ‘Why would you do that to yourself? ’ Piercings scared them, like tattoos on yakuza thugs, and inwardly Chiaki would sneer at these men: Because I enjoy watching worms like you squirm.

  She was thinking she’d have to pierce the other nipple sometime soon, when the blood finally began coursing through her Halcion-frozen body. A piercing took courage, though. First she’d need to reclaim her sex drive. Not that being horny made you brave, but the total absence of lust frightened her because it had always been the first stage of that awful cycle, the one she’d never been able to tell anyone about. The cycle of terror that took hold with the sudden realisation that she alone was to blame for all the bad things happening around her. Once the Nightmare began, she wouldn’t be choosing her own pain any longer — it would be choosing her — and courage would be the last thing she’d be capable of.

  She climbed out of bed and stood there on the carpet for a moment, checking herself for dizziness or nausea. She found both, naturally, along with a chill that vibrated in her bones. What she needed was some vitamin C and stomach medicine. She took a step towards the refrigerator, measuring her stride so that she’d arrive in precisely five steps. She could pour some Vittel mineral water into the 8,935-yen Baccarat tumbler she’d bought a hundred and eighteen days ago, then drop in some cherry aspirin and two Alka-Seltzers. Just watching the millions of tiny bubbles might calm her down some, she was thinking, when she reached the refrigerator and noticed her shiny red Swiss Army knife in a wicker bowl on the dining table. Knife, scissors, can opener, bottle opener, corkscrew, file — it had everything. I have to remember to take that with me, she thought. She’d been forgetting about what the customer she’d had a hundred and seventy-one days ago had shown her. With surgical precision, he’d used a pair of scissors to extract the elastic band from a plastic shower cap. He positioned the elastic band between her legs and passed a rope through the loops, front and back, then tied the rope around her waist, making a sort of open-crotch thong. He arranged it so that only her clitoris was protruding between the strands of elastic. That was exciting. Maybe if she did it again, her libido would have no choice but to come rushing back. Before opening the refrigerator, Chiaki slipped the knife into her handbag.

  8

  KAWASHIMA LOOKED AT HIS wristwatch for about the twentieth time, checking it against the digital clock embedded in the side-table, but it was still only two minutes past six. No reason to expect a woman in that line of business to be punctual, of course. She was coming by taxi, and an unexpected traffic jam could easily eat up half an hour. Even the masseuse he’d called the other night had been almost forty minutes late, after all. He kept telling himself things like this, but it wasn’t doing much good.

  He had turned off the heat a while ago, and the room was cooler now, but his hands were still perspiring. The brand new black leather gloves looked slightly ridiculous wit
h sweat soaking through the palms. He decided to review his notes, to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything vital.

  So far everything had gone like clockwork. He’d taken a hotel bus from the west exit of Shinjuku Station and arrived at the entrance to the Keio Plaza right on schedule, at two-fifty-five. It was Friday afternoon and an auspicious day according to the lunar calendar, which made for a lot of weddings. The lobby swarmed with reception guests, and since the hotel was also hosting a gathering of Shinjuku-ward accountants and a conference for computer manufacturers, the counters at the front desk were swamped. Kawashima scarcely drew a glance from the beleaguered and somewhat grumpy desk clerk, and none of the bellboys got anywhere near him. He scoured the crowd in the lobby but saw no one he knew.

  The room, on the twenty-ninth floor, looked out on the Tocho — the soaring new Municipal Government Office complex. The ice pick and knife and change of clothes were in paper sacks inside the overnight bag he’d bought at a shop in Haneda Airport — a dark brown synthetic leather bag like you might find anywhere. He’d changed into the cheap new suit and donned the glasses inside a stall in the airport restroom, and had managed to find a discarded sports daily from the Kansai district. Because of the crush in the lobby, he’d exchanged only a few words with the clerk when checking in, and though he’d used a Kansai accent, it was unlikely the clerk would even remember that. Whether to proceed with the misdirection scheme by leaving the sports daily in the room was something he could decide later on, after it was all over.

  Reviewing the notes helped calm him somewhat. He looked out at the Tocho, with its hundreds of lighted windows. On the street below was a tour bus from which family groups had spilled out to take photos and videos with the futuristic building as backdrop. From beyond the glass came a sound like a brewing storm. The winter solstice was near, and it was shockingly cold out there, but these tourists from the hinterlands didn’t seem to mind. He could see their scattered camera flashes, like the last bursts of life from the firework sparklers of his childhood. Since getting together with Yoko the sensation hadn’t been quite as pronounced, but even now, whenever he saw families together, a cold little wave seemed to ripple through him. This wave was now lapping against his memory banks, uncovering an image from the past. Mother smiling as she poses the beloved little one for photos in front of the house. It’s a sunny day, but she’s using a flash. The beloved one waving me over to pose with him. I shake my head, and now Mother’s smile vanishes. Holding the camera in both hands, she turns to stare at me with empty eyes. Get angry, I’m thinking. Hurry up and hit me. She just stands there with that stony expression. Come on, do it. Staring right through me, as if I were a piece of furniture or a rock or bug rather than a human being.

  To sweep this image from his mind, Kawashima tried to conjure up the firm white abdomen of the young woman who was presumably making her way to his room. On the phone, the man at the S&M club had said she was petite and fair-skinned and a bit shy. This man’s voice and way of speaking had been very much like that of the man at the massage service. As if he were sitting at someone’s deathbed. If a voice like that were to tell you there was nothing to worry about, Kawashima thought, you’d almost certainly begin to panic. He looked at his watch. More than twenty minutes past six. He thought of Yoko but knew he couldn’t phone her, because the hotel computer would record all his calls. Best to forget about Yoko anyway, until the ritual was over. The person staying in this room wasn’t Kawashima Masayuki, but Yokoyama Toru. As he repeated this made-up name beneath his breath, he almost began to believe that that was who he really was — a different person, with a different history.

  He’d just begun to consider phoning the S&M club when the door chime sounded. On his way to the door, Kawashima stopped at the thermostat to turn on the heat. The room needed to be warm enough for her to be comfortable taking off all her clothes. He removed and pocketed his gloves and took out a handkerchief to palm in his right hand.

  9

  It seems like forever since I’ve been to one of the big hotels, Sanada Chiaki was thinking as she gazed up at the cluster of highrises in West Shinjuku. S&M hotels, with their floors dotted with hardened globs of candlewax, tended to take all the romance out of things. For tonight’s client, whom the manager had described as a gentleman, she was wearing her Junko Shimada one-piece mini with black stockings and a beige cashmere coat, and she’d taken extra pains with her make-up. In order not to be late, she’d boarded a taxi in front of her building in Shin-Okubo at twenty to six. Traffic was a little congested on the big overpass, but she’d still arrived at the entrance to the Keio Plaza with five minutes to spare.

  People were queued up outside the entrance waiting for taxis, and luckily the doorman was busy herding them into their rides and didn’t approach her. It always made Chiaki nervous when some big doorman with braid on his shoulders came up and said, ‘Welcome to the Such-and-such Hotel, may I take your bag?’ She’d removed the batteries from the vibrator, and all her toys were in separate opaque vinyl pouches in case anyone saw inside her bag, but still. There was something about the way doormen looked at you.

  The lobby was packed with people emerging from a big wedding reception. They were dressed in formal suits and gowns and kimonos and holding gift bags embossed with the name of the hotel, and their voices reverberated off the ceiling and walls so loudly that Chiaki couldn’t even hear her own footsteps. She headed towards the public telephones to call her office, having decided that if the client was a first-timer, as the manager had said, he might be put off by her making that call right in front of him. ‘I’ve arrived at the gentleman’s room’ — it just sounded so cold and mercenary.

  All four of the green pay phones were in use. As she approached them, she got out her wallet and extracted a telephone card — the one with the cartoon bunny. She stopped a short distance from the bank of phones and was trying to guess which of the four people would finish first, when she noticed the man on the second phone from the right leering at her. He was in his late thirties or early forties, wearing an overcoat with prominent stains, and he was looking her up and down and grinning. But no sooner had she noticed him than, without warning, he began yelling into the mouthpiece, so loudly that the people on either side of him flinched and turned to look. ‘Just shut up and take care of it, bitch!’ he shouted and slammed the receiver down as if he meant to break it.

  Chiaki stood there thunderstruck, petrified by the instantaneous transformation from leering grin to violent, red-faced rage. When the man spun on his heel and marched towards her, it was only by tensing every muscle in her body that she managed not to scream. She didn’t notice that the telephone card had slipped from her fingers until the man bent down before her to pick it up. As he stooped, she turned and staggered away, her body stiff with tension.

  It’s no one I know, I’ve never met or even seen him before, there’s nothing to worry about, she told herself, suppressing the urge to run. Where to go? She no longer knew which hotel this was or even why she was here. After twenty-one steps she stopped to look back. She was surrounded by people in suits and gowns and had to stand on tiptoe to scan the room for the man in the overcoat. Not seeing him anywhere, she began to breathe again and ploughed ahead in search of a restroom. She wanted to be alone, somewhere her pounding heart would have a chance to settle down.

  In the restroom she entered a cubicle and sat on the closed lid of the toilet seat, still wearing her coat. She didn’t understand what was happening. Again and again she reminded herself that she didn’t know the man in the overcoat, had never met him. But his outburst had brought her to the verge of remembering something. It was as if all the little clumps of dormant memories stashed in various parts of her body had wriggled to life at once.

  Her pulse wouldn’t slow down. She stood up and shed the cashmere coat, hanging it from a hook on the stall door. She closed her eyes and tried to chase away the image of the man on the phone by touching her dress where it covered the nipple ri
ng. The material of the Junko Shimada was too thick for her to catch the ring between her thumb and finger, but she managed to confirm the hard, metallic feel of it, a faint reminder of the pain she’d felt the night she did the piercing. Help me, Chiaki whimpered, stroking the outline of the ring. This was what always happened when she lost her sex drive for any length of time: something would jog those sleeping memories and set off a terrifying sequence of events. Still stroking the ring, she thought: I want to be somewhere else. And in the instant of thinking this, she remembered where she was.

  It’s the Keio Plaza Hotel, and a gentleman is waiting for me on the twenty-ninth floor.

  She looked at her watch. It was almost six-twenty. Maybe, she thought, the young gentleman would help get her sex drive going again, and all the little memories would go back to sleep.

  10

  ‘I’M AYA,’ THE GIRL said when Kawashima opened the door. He noticed that she turned her head to look down the corridor before stepping inside.

  ‘Hello.’ Using his handkerchief, he shut the door and set the chain lock. He’d already hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the outer knob. The girl apologised for being late and asked in the same breath if she could use the phone.