by Unknown
She was listening to the music! She was afraid she’d scare the music away if she moved.
‘Well, have you got it or haven’t you?’ One of the cut-out girls squawked. It must take a long time to train your voice to be so annoying.
Another giggled.
The leader’s pocket phone trilled and she got it out.
I was angry with them for making me look away from her.
‘This is a disc collector’s shop. There’s a toyshop in the shopping mall by the metro station that sells the kind of thing you’re looking for.’
Rich Shibuya girls are truffle-fed pooches. The girls at Mama-san’s, they have all had to learn how to survive. They have to keep their patrons, keep their looks, keep their integrity, and they get scarred. But they respect themselves, and they let it show. They respect each other. I respect them. They are real people.
But these magazine girls have nothing real about them. They have magazine expressions, speak magazine words and carry magazine fashion accessories. They’ve chosen to become this. I don’t know whether or not to blame them. Getting scarred isn’t nice. But look! As shallow, and glossy, and identical, and throwaway, as magazines.
‘You’re a bit uptight aren’t you? Been dumped by your girlfriend?’ The leader leaned on the counter and swayed, just a few inches away from my face. I imagined her using that face in bars, in cars, in love hotels.
Her friend shrieked with laughter and pulled her away before I could think of a witty retort. They flocked back towards the door. ‘Told you!’ one of them said. The third was still speaking into her pocket phone. ‘I dunno where we are. Some crappy place behind some crappy building. Where are you?’
‘You coming?’ The leader said to the one still staring into space, listening to Mal.
No, I thought with all my might, Say no, and stay with me in my space.
‘I said,’ said the leader, ‘are – you – coming?’
Was she deaf?
‘I guess so,’ she said, in a real voice. A beautiful, real voice.
Look at me, I willed. Look at me. Please. Just once, look straight at me.
As she left, she looked at me over her shoulder, my heart trampolined, and she followed the others into the street.
The cherry trees were budding. Maroon tips sprouted and swelled through the sealed bark. Pigeons ruffled and prilled. I wish I knew more about pigeons. Were they strutting about like that for mating purposes, or just because they were strutty birds? That would be useful knowledge for school syllabuses. None of this capital of Mongolia stuff. The air outside was warmer and damp. Being outside was like being in a tent. A jackhammer was pounding into concrete a few doors down. Takeshi said that yet another surf and ski shop was opening up. How many surfers and skiers are there in Tokyo?
I put on a Charlie Parker anthology, with the volume up loud to drown out the ringing of metal. Charlie Parker, molten and twisting, no stranger to cruelty. ‘Relaxin’ at Camarillo’, ‘How Deep is the Ocean?’, ‘All the Things You Are’, ‘Out of Nowhere’, ‘A Night in Tunisia’.
I dressed the girl in calico, and she slipped away through a north African doorway.
Here, being as different as I am is punishable.
I was in Roppongi one time with Koji, he was on the pull and got talking to a couple of girls from Scotland. I just assumed they were English teachers at some crappy English school, but they turned out to be ‘exotic dancers’. Koji’s English is really good – he was always in the top class at school. English being a girl’s subject, I didn’t study it much, but when I found jazz I studied at home because I wanted to read the interviews with the great musicians, who are all American. Of course reading is one thing, but speaking is quite another. So Koji was mostly doing the translating. Anyway, these girls said that everyone where they come from actually tries to be different. They’ll dye their hair a colour nobody else has, buy clothes nobody else is wearing, get into music nobody else knows. Weird. Then they asked why all girls here want to look the same. Koji answered, ‘Because they are girls! Why do all cops look the same? Because they’re cops, of course.’ Then one of them asked why Japanese kids try to ape American kids? The clothes, the rap music, the skateboards, the hair. I wanted to say that it’s not America they’re aping, it’s the Japan of their parents that they’re rejecting. And since there’s no home-grown counter culture, they just take hold of the nearest one to hand, which happens to be American. But it’s not American culture exploiting us. It’s us exploiting it.
Koji got lost trying to translate the last bit.
I tried asking them about their inner places, because it seemed relevant. But I just got answers about how tiny the apartments were here, and how houses in Britain all have central heating. Then their boyfriends turned up. Two bloody great US marine gorillas. They looked down at us, unimpressed, and Koji and I decided it was time for another drink at the bar.
But yeah, it’s certainly different here. All through my junior high school days people hassled me about my parents. Finding part-time jobs was never easy, either: it was as tough as having Korean parents. People find out. It would have been easier to say they’d died in an accident, but I wasn’t going to lie for those knob-heads. Plus if you say someone’s dead, then it tempts fate to kill them off early. Gossip works telepathically in Tokyo. The city is vast, but there’s always someone who knows someone whom someone knows. Anonymity doesn’t muffle coincidence: it makes the coincidences more outlandish. That’s why I still think one of these days my father might wander into the shop.
So, from elementary school onwards I used to be in fights. I often lost, but that didn’t matter. Taro, Mama-san’s bouncer, always told me it’s better to fight and lose than not fight and suffer, because even if you fight and lose your spirit emerges intact. Taro taught me that people respect spirit, but even cowards don’t respect cowards. Taro also told me how to headbutt taller adversaries, how to knee in the balls and how to dislocate a man’s hand, so that by the high school nobody much bothered me. One time a gang of junior yakuza were waiting outside school for me, because I’d given one of their kid brothers a nose-bleed. I still don’t know who tipped Mama-san off – Koji, most probably – but Mama-san sent Taro along that day to pick me up. He waited until they had formed a ring around me down an alley, and then he strolled along and scared seven shades of shit out of them. Now I think about it, Taro’s been more like a dad to me than anyone else.
A leathery man in a blood-red jacket came in, ignoring me. He found the Charles Mingus section and bought about two-thirds of the stock, including the collectors’ items, peeling off ten-thousand yen notes like toilet paper. His eyeballs seemed to pulse to the bass rhythm. He left, carrying his purchases in a cardboard box which he assembled himself on the counter. He hadn’t asked for a discount, though I would have gladly given him one, and I was left with a wad of money. I phoned Takeshi to tell him the good news, and that it might be best if he came to pick the money up himself that night. I knew he had a cash-flow problem.
‘Ah,’ gasped Takeshi. ‘Baby! That’s the way. That is very, very, very good!’
There was hallucinogenic music on in the background that sounded like a migraine, and a woman being tortured by tickling.
Feeling I’d phoned at a bad time I said goodbye and hung up.
And still only 11 in the morning.
Koji was the class egg-head at high school, which made him an outsider, too. He should have gone to a much better high school, but until he was fifteen his dad was always being transferred so it was never that easy for him to keep up. Koji was also diabolically bad at sport. I swear, in three years I never saw him manage to hit a baseball once. There was one time when he took an almighty swing, the bat flew out of his hands and hurtled through the air like a missile, straight into Mr Ikeda, our games master who idolised Yukio Mishima even though I doubted he’d ever got through a whole book by anybody in his entire life.
I was doubled-up laughing, so I didn’t realise nobo
dy else was. That cost me school toilet-cleaning duty for the whole term, with Koji. That’s when I learnt Koji loved the piano. I play the tenor saxophone. That’s how I got to know Koji. A winded games teacher and the foulest toilets in the Tokyo educational system.
One of our regulars, Mr Fujimoto, came in during the lunch hour. The bell rang and a gust of air rustled papers all around the shop. He was laughing as usual. He laughed because he was pleased to see me. He put a little parcel of books down on the counter for me. I always try to pay for them, but he never lets me. He says it’s a jazz disc consultancy fee.
‘Mr Fujimoto! How’s work today?’
‘Terrible!’ Mr Fujimoto only has one voice, and that is very loud. It’s as though his greatest fear is to not be heard. And when he really laughs the noise almost pushes you backwards.
The shop is smack bang between the business district of Otemachi and the publishing district around Ochanomizu, so our salaryman customers usually work in one or the other. You can always tell the difference. There’s a certain look that mega-Money bestows on its handlers. A sort of beadiness, and hunger. Hard to put your finger on, but it’s there all right. Money is another of those inner places, by the way. It’s a way to measure yourself.
The publishing salarymen, however, often have a streak of manic jollity. Mr Fujimoto is a prime specimen. He puns regularly and appallingly. For example:
‘Afternoon, Satoru-kun! Say, couldn’t you get Takeshi to give this place a new coat of paint? It’s looking kind of run down.’
‘Do you think so?’ I can smell the pay-off approaching.
‘Definitely! It’s positively seedy!’
Uh?
‘Seedy! CD! See-Dee!’
I wince in genuine pain and Mr Fujimoto gurgles appreciatively. The worse the better.
This lunchtime Mr Fujimoto was looking for something Lee Morgan-ish. I recommendedHank Mobley’s ‘A Caddyfor Daddy’, which he promptly bought. I know his tastes. Anything on the loony side of funky. As I handed over his change he suddenly became serious. He switched to a more formal mode of speech, took off his heavy glasses, and started cleaning the lenses.
‘I was wondering whether you might be planning to apply for college next year?’
‘Not really, no . . .’
‘So, would you be thinking about entering a particular profession?’
He’d rehearsed this beforehand. I guessed what was coming.
‘I don’t really have any plans at the moment. I guess I’ll just wait and see.’
‘Of course, Satoru, it’s absolutely none of my business, and please forgive me for interfering in your plans, but the only reason I’m asking is that a couple of positions in my office have just become available. Very humble. Just glorified editorial assistants, basically, but if you were interested in applying then I’d be happy to recommend you for one of them. Certainly I could get you to the interview stage. And it would be a foot in the door. I started out myself this way, you know. Everybody needs a step up, occasionally.’
I looked around the shop.
‘That’s a very generous offer, Mr Fujimoto. I’m not sure how to answer.’
‘Think it over, Satoru. I’m going to Kyoto for a few days on business. We won’t start interviewing until I get back. I’d be happy to have a word with your present employer on your behalf, if that’s what’s worrying you . . . I know Takeshi has a lot of respect for you, so he wouldn’t stand in your way.’
‘No, it’s not really that. Thank you. I’ll think seriously about it. Thank you . . . How much are the books?’
‘Nothing. Your consultancy fee. They’re just a few samples, we give ’em out free to people in the trade. These pocket paperback classics, they walk off the shelves. I remember you said you enjoyed The Great Gatsby – there’s a new Murakami translation of Fitzgerald’s short stories we’ve just brought out, The Lord of the Flies, that’s a laugh-a-minute, and a new García Márquez.’
‘It’s very kind of you.’
‘Nonsense! Just give the idea of publishing a serious think. There are worse ways to make a living.’
I’d thought about the girl every day since. Twenty or thirty or forty times a day. I’d find myself thinking of her and then not want to stop, like not wanting to get out of a hot shower on a winter morning. I ran my fingers through my hair and contemplated my face, using a Fats Navarro CD as a hand-mirror. Could she ever feel the same way back? I couldn’t even remember accurately what she looked like. Smooth skin, highish cheekbones, narrowish eyes. Like a Chinese empress. I didn’t really think of her face when I thought of her. She was just there, a colour that didn’t have a name yet. The idea of her.
I got angry with myself. It’s not as if I’m ever going to see her again. This is Tokyo. And besides, even if I did see her again, why should she be in the least bit interested in me? My mind can only hold one thought at a time. I may as well make it a thought worthwhile.
I thought about Mr Fujimoto’s offer. What am I doing here? Koji’s getting on with his life. All my high school classmates are in college or in a company. I am unfailingly updated on their progress by Koji’s mum. What am I doing?
A guy in a wheelchair flashed by outside.
Hey, hey, this is my place, remember. Time for jazz.
‘Undercurrent’ by Jim Hall and Bill Evans. An album of water, choppy and brushed by the wind, at other times silent and slow under trees. On other songs, chords glinting on inland seas.
The girl was there, too, swimming naked on her back, buoyed along by the currents.
I made myself some green tea and watched the steam rise into the disturbed afternoon. Koji was knocking on the window, grinning at me berkishly, and pressing his face up against the glass so he looked like a poison dwarf.
I had to grin back. He came in, walking his loping bumpy walk.
‘You were miles away. I came via Mister Donuts. Vanilla Angel Donuts okay?’
‘Thanks. Let me make you some tea. This great Keith Jarrett record came in yesterday, you must give it a listen. I can’t believe he makes it up as he goes along.’
‘A hallmark of genius. Fancy a couple of drinks later?’
‘Where?’
‘Dunno. Somewhere frequented by nubile girls on the prowl for young male flesh. The Students Union bar perhaps. But if you’re busy sorting out the meaning of existence we could make it another night. Smoke?’
‘Sure. Pull up a chair.’
Koji likes to think of himself as a ruthless womaniser like Takeshi, but really his emotions are as ruthless as a Vanilla Angel Donut. That’s one reason I like him.
We lit up. ‘Koji, do you believe in love at first sight?’
He rocked back on his chair and smiled like a wolf. ‘Who is she?’
‘No no no no. No one. I was just asking.’
Koji the philosopher gazed upwards. At length he blew a smoke ring. ‘I believe in lust at first sight. You gotta keep a certain hardness, or you just turn to goo. And goo isn’t attractive. And whatever you do, don’t let her know how you feel. Or you’re lost.’ Koji went into Humphrey Bogart mode. ‘Stay enigmatic, kid. Stay tough. You hear?’
‘Yeah, yeah, like you, for example. You were as tough as Bambi when you were last in love. But seriously?’
Another smoke ring. ‘But seriously . . . well, love has got to be based on knowledge, hasn’t it? You have to know someone intimately to be able to love them. So love at first sight is a contradiction in terms. Unless in that first sight there’s some sort of mystical gigabyte downloading of information from one mind into the other. That doesn’t sound too likely, does it?’
‘Mmm. Dunno.’
I poured my friend’s tea.
The cherry blossoms were suddenly there. Magic, frothing and bubbling and there just above our heads filling the air with colour too delicate for words like ‘pink’ or ‘white’. How had such grim trees created something so otherworldy in a backstreet with no agreed-upon name? An annual miracle, beyond my understa
nding.
It was a morning for Ella Fitzgerald. There are fine things in the world, after all. Dignity, refinement, warmth and humour, where you’d never expect to find them. Even as an old woman, an amputee in a wheelchair, Ella sang like a girl who could still be at high school, falling in love for the first time.
The phone rang. ‘It’s Takeshi.’
‘Hi, boss. Are you having a good day?’
‘I am not having a good day. I’m having a very bad day.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘I am a fool. A bloody fool. A bloody, bloody fool. Why do men do this?’ He was drunk, and me still on my morning tea. ‘Where does this impulse come from, Satoru? Tell me!’ Like I knew but was refusing to grant him enlightenment. ‘A sticky wrestle in an anonymous bedroom, a few bitemarks, about three seconds’ worth of orgasm if you’re lucky, a pleasant drowse for thirty minutes and when you come to you suddenly realise you’ve become a lecherous, lying sleazebag who’s flushing several million sperm and six years of marriage down the toilet. Why are we programmed to do this? Why?’
I couldn’t think of an answer that was both honest and consoling. So I went for honesty. ‘No idea.’
Takeshi told the same story three times in a loop. ‘My wife dropped by to pick me up for lunch. We were going to go out, talk things over, maybe sort things out . . . I’d bought her some flowers, she’d bought me a new striped jacket she’d seen somewhere. Hopelessly uncool, of course, but she remembered my size. It was a peace-pipe. We were just leaving when she went to the bathroom and what did she find?’
I almost said ‘a nurse’s corpse’, but thought better of it. ‘What?’
‘Her bag. And dressing gown. The nurse’s. And the message she’d written to me, in lipstick. On the inside of the mirror.’
‘What was the message?’
I heard ice cubes crack as Takeshi poured himself another drink. ‘None of your business. But when my wife read it she calmly walked back into the living room, poured vodka on the jacket, set it alight, and left. The jacket shrivelled up and melted.’