What You Do Not Know You Want
David Mitchell
David Mitchell
WHAT YOU DO NOT KNOW YOU WANT
MY THREE A.M. NIGHTMARE DISPERSED like a disappointed audience as I tried to find the Coke machine. A woman passed, in her fifties maybe, cuddling, saying, “All I want out of life is a good night’s sleep.” Too woozy to reply, I just smiled back. The second person I met at that sweltering hour was a barefoot girl of eighteen or nineteen, kneeling before the Coke machine, extracting a can from its cumbersome mouth. Pixie-nosed, Oriental, wearing surfer’s clothes for pajamas, not an ounce of fat on her, bony as macaroni in fact. “You can’t sleep either, huh?” I asked. Apparently she hadn’t heard. I raised my voice. “So you can’t go to sleep either, huh? We should throw us a party for insomniacs.” The machine relinquished her 7Up but she still refused to acknowledge me. Her dead eyes bore through me. “Sure was a pleasure meeting you,” I thanked her retreating figure. Bitch. But particles of the girl remained in the air. These I breathed in. Musk, salt, lime.
Back in room 404 my sheets were chewy with sweat. Jesus Molten Christ, where was the Hawaiian ocean breeze tonight? A double dose of aspirin downed with whiskey and Coke—revolting—helped my mind cut its tight moorings. Each lush leaf on the lime trees lining the Ganges at Varanasi, you once told me, houses a soul for forty-nine days before the soul is reincarnated. Did you make that up? Remember the crows on the floating carcasses, eating their rafts? I thought about the Oriental girl, lying on her bed, sipping her 7Up. Her blanking out of me belittled—erased—me more than any verbal insult. Oriental? Who knows? Anyone in Hawaii could be from anywhere, no matter how they look. Who was she thinking about now? Me? Doubted it, but. Hotel rooms store up erotic charge, and men sleeping alone are its copper wires. Once upon a time she would have smiled, stroked her midriff, struck up a conversation. One thing might have led to It. Was she sleepwalking? Or is my voltage weakening now I’m thirty-six? Mirrors are my friends no longer. Nightingale picks through my golden locks for gray hairs. I must laugh along.
“Not this way! Not this way.” Jesus Jackhammer Christ, who fell out of that nightmare? A minute passed, two, five, thirty, but I heard nothing more. Hush now, I told my wild pulse, hush, it’s tomorrow morning already. I read Confessions of a Mask until Waikiki’s tourists, elevators, juicers, chambermaids, toilets, showers, bellboys, lifeguards, deliverymen and waitresses resumed their appointed function in this three-square-mile vacation machine. My Marc Jacob shirt, I decided, should send the right signal to the police. On my way out through reception I was surprised to see not the miserable werewolf who had checked me in, but the Oriental girl from the Coke machine, reading a Chinese paperback with a demon doll on the cover. “Good book?” I asked. “Stephen King,” she replied, glancing up, but making no reference to the previous night. “Chinese?” I asked, indicating the book. “Me? The book? Breakfast?” As you know, my interpersonal skills include both patience and charm, so I learned that Wei is from Hong Kong and has helped her uncle in the running of Hotel Aloha since his wife killed herself one year ago. “Sleeping pills,” Wei volunteered this detail. “Enough to kill an elephant.” “How tragic,” I responded. Uncle? If that hairy Caucasian belch really is her uncle then I really am Richard Nixon.
My attention drifted over the lost-property form like a balloonist surveying a strange city. Name, address, occupation. Occupation… how would “Dealer in esoteric memorabilia” sound? I nearly decided the form was a waste of time. Was that fat custodian of justice, picking his nose and wiping it under the seat of his chair, really going to get me nearer my holy grail? One Nozomu Eno at Runaway Korso and even Werewolf at Hotel Aloha were far likelier leads. In the end I wrote, “Trader,” figuring officialdom may as well be on my side as not. Truth needed to be cut to size, however. The “missing item” I registered, therefore, was “an ivory-handled ornamental bread knife (approx. 40 cm) last housed in a flute case.” That this knife was crafted by the Master Kakutani of Old Edo in 1868, I omitted to mention. That the Yukio Mishima had disemboweled himself with this very blade and attained his gory apotheosis on an otherwise nondescript November 25, 1970, I omitted to mention. That one month ago my business partner, Zachary Tanaka, was approached by one of the writer’s ex-lovers, now an alcoholic dentist in Tokyo with debts up to his cancerous throat, for quick cash and no grief from the Mishima estate in return for this knife plus certificate of authenticity sealed by Mishima himself—verified by ourselves—I omitted to mention. That one week ago Zachary Tanaka had flown to Honolulu, phoned me in Yerbas Buenas to confirm he had receipt of the knife, then jumped to his death from the roof of Hotel Aloha here in Waikiki, I omitted to mention. That the dagger had not been found and that an ultranationalist emperor worshiper in Kyoto had upped his offer to ¥25 million—what, five years of police pay?—I damn well omitted to mention. “Ivory-handled ornamental bread knife, huh?” snorted the cop. “Is that for slicing ornamental bread?”
Wei studied her admirable reflection in two mirrors held in exact positions. “If you look at your face from different places,” the girl explained, “you are reminded that we are not a Me, but an It who lives in a Me.” I showed her your photograph, the one I took of you by your glider. “Never seen him.” Wei shook her head. “Is he famous?” He is—was, I prompted—a Japanese-American named Zachary Tanaka who had stayed here two weeks ago. “So? Waikiki is Japan’s national playground. Even we have hundreds stay here, every year, all shapes, all sizes,” said Wei. Yeah, I said, but how many throw themselves from your roof? Wei did an oh face. “Uncle handled all of that. I slept through it, believe it or not. I sleep like a baby in this place. Ask Uncle about him.” Disappointing. Werewolf was a last resort. Hotel owners are hustlers, and if “Uncle” scented how valuable this artifact might be, and if it was in his possession, well, it may as well be guarded by lasers. So I just asked Wei what happened to Zachary Tanaka’s belongings. “The cops took everything,” stated Wei. “It was just clothes and pilot magazines, I heard.”
An hour in the creamy Hawaiian surf was an inviting prospect after a day of precinct offices. Were you on the bus to Koko Head, Vulture? Did you see that bullish ocean kicking up three-meter waves? Grace would say you were watching me lick up those spectacular rollers. For thirty pure minutes I achieved a state of grace with the sea. Everything I tried came off, but then, scanning the beach for admirers, I neglected a fundamental rule: Never rest idle with your back to the ocean. A godalmighty breaker crashed down on me, forcing me way under, where a churning riptide pulled me deeper. Stay calm, and normally the air in your lungs tells you which way is up, right? Not off Koko Head. No up, down, sound—save a dim roaring—and an inner voice lamenting, Drowning, you’re drowning, and my lungs collapsing and ABBA, amazingly, singing Supertrouper lights are gonna blind ya to scenes flashing by. Not scenes of my life but of clays after my death. Of my missing body, eaten by skipjack tuna. Of Wei or Werewolf reporting my absence to a nose-picking cop. Of Nightingale, assuming I’d bottled out of the wedding. I tell you of my dip with death, Vulture, to illustrate my conviction that ninetynine deaths in one hundred—accidents, disease, old age, you name it—are banal. There. My Big Thought. Only suicides can truly say, Yes, here is my reason for dying, crafted by my hand according to my logic.
A second breaker tumbled my puny ass farther up the sucking beach. Jesus Half-dead Christ, a gallon of Pacific or more I barfed up, then crawled to the high-water mark and lay prostrate and eyed the murderous surf. Funny, none of the other copper-skinned surfers had even noticed I’d almost died. A geriatric jogger passed at slower-than-walking speed, grinning at me without teeth or sanity. Finally I heaved myself over
to my gear, then waited for the bus back to Waikiki. Another fundamental rule: Don’t be caught on American soil without a car. My second reason for telling you all this is to explain the eat-now-for-tomorrow-we-die frame of mind of this week. If my cruelty to others is casual, I only follow the world’s lead. And look, I’m paying for it now, aren’t I? Oh, it’s a fucking butcher’s shop down here.
Nightingale called me from L.A., where she’s spent the week modeling for a chain of cosmetic surgeons to check for the nth time about Not Having u Veil. Sure, honey, I crooned, veils are too Barbie doll. Nightingale went stony on me, so I agreed with whatever guff the bounteous moo spouted next, so of course that added condescension to my list of sins against womankind. Premenstrual sadism, I hope. The shinier the apples of attraction, Vulture, the wormier their maggots of repulsion. Afterward, I shaved, aftershaved with a Hugo Boss scent—an expensive mistake—put on my Paul Smith suit, waxed my hair and was leaving when I saw these words doodled on the phone pad:
long live the emperor i don’t think they even heard me
You will recognize Yukio Mishima’s final words, but I needed a minute to trace them to their source. That my unconscious mind had not only digested his last utterance whole, but excreted it during an earwigging from Nightingale is further proof that our brains are dark globes lit by very distant stars.
Werewolf acted pissed that I’d assumed he’d know of Runaway Horses. “Bars spring up and die like weeds around here,” he said. “Find it in a phone book.” I asked him for a phone book. “Ain’t got one. So sorry.” All hail the service economy. Were his cracked eyeballs the last ones to see you? I was tempted to pluck them out to look for you, nickel-sized and inverted, impressed there. On Olohana Street I paid a Tin Man mime artist a dollar to direct me up to the intersection with Kunhio Avenue and down a flight of steps. Runaway Horses might have been any gaijin-friendly basement bar in Tokyo with a clientele three-quarters Japanese, one-quarter Western. I asked the barman if he had Sapporo beer. “Sure I do,” he replied, opening one for me. I said, “Nozomu-san, I’m Vulture’s associate.” My clever opener shot my foot off. “That settles it!” growled the barman, “I’m changing the name tomorrow, new sign, everything, and screw ‘Runaway Horses, Established 1998.’ I am not Nozomu Eno. I am Shingo Ogawa, okay? I own this bar now. Eno skipped town a week ago. Yes, gambling debts. No, I don’t know what stone he’s hiding under. No, I’m not his friend, I don’t know his friends, and no, his debts are nothing to do with me.” The man went on in this vein at length, but I’d glazed over. That your last known lover disappears at the same time that this singular artifact vanishes into thin air pointed to an obvious conclusion. I persuaded Shingo Ogawa—just—to write down my details, in case Nozomu showed up. Then, casually, I mentioned an ivory-handled ornamental bread knife left here by another friend. Shingo Ogawa clenched his jaw. “Nothing like that here,” he said, but I got a list of other Japanese bars you might have hung out at. One, I recognized from your last e-mail.
Bar Wardrobe, slotted above Waikiki Hula Karaoke Palace, was well named: cramped, dark, hot, varnished. Two inhabitants dwelt within. One lay slumped in a pool of mahogany light, as if shot ten seconds ago. His companion was semiobscured by gloom. Was this Bar Wardrobe? I asked, just to ask something. Her nod said, Stupid question. When would the barman be back? She blew smoke over the snorer to indicate, That’s him. Great. How could I get a drink? She shrugged. Well, how had she gotten hers? This time she deigned to answer verbally, “I have an arrangement with the management.” So I clipped a $10 bill to the till and helped myself to a Kilmagoon and soda. No sign behind the bar of a battered flute case or a pre-Meiji-period knife. The woman lit a match whose flare-up lit a face younger than her voice. Hooked nose, defiant lips, Hawaiian blood or maybe Filipina, I guessed. Birthmark like a wine stain but my right hand brushed my left to confirm my engagement ring was in my soap bag at the hotel. Blemishes fasten memories. Don’t you look at me that way, Vulture; when did you ever turn down a little entertainment? “You are a model,” I began, “am I right? It takes one to—” She cut in. “Wanna hear funny joke!” Okay, I said. “Okay. Tall blond American marine walks into a bar in Manila, where he chooses a cute native girl. So lucky she feels! She, a trainee hairdresser in her first month in Manila, already on her way to luxury apartment in Beverly Hills or Honolulu. Not like cousins in sweatshops or worse. No way, not her. River of dollars, many drinks. You can’t get pregnant your first few times, the marine laughs, later, on her back, then her front. A medical fact, he says. Sure, a warning goes off, but she’s too drunk now to fight—stop me if you know this joke, okay?—and he does call her next weekend, and the next, and the next. ‘My boyfriend this, my boyfriend that,’ she says to make the other hairdressers jealous. Three months the doctor gives her the news. You guess it yet! Pregnant as Queen Turtle. Funny, hey? Her boyfriend tells her their baby will be a beautiful Filipino-American son, okay, no problem, they move to California, okay. She weeps with joy. Good man, good father, not like her father, the fat sweaty incest pig. He promises to phone next night from base. Guess what? No call. Two weeks later an officer at the base tells her she isn’t the first girl to be duped by an American saying, ‘Hey, babe, I’m a marine, stick with me.’ She has no one to discuss pregnancy to, so she begs and borrows and spends everything on a private clinic. Keep it secret. The operation is a five-star fuckup. Half her womb gets sucked out too. She can’t stand for six months. Blood all the time. Well, this joke’s over almost. Years later the same girl, she lives in Honolulu. She does hair for rich wives. Hears their chatter about husbands, about affairs, about babies. Some days she wants cut their wrists, some days hers, some days the wrists of this world. So. Whatever line you’re to begin, don’t. All of them I heard already, okay?”
“Do I look like a fucking marine?” I shut the door.
“What did you do to the door? Monday night in room 404 was no more restful than Sunday. “What did you do to the door?” Hearing someone jibber at whatever stalks their dreams unnerves the lemon yellow shit out of me. Wallpaper and paste is what separates our waking selves from those jibbering night stalkers. I padded down to the Coke machine at the end of the corridor, hoping to encounter Wei. All I met were black moths. Back in my room i took it round of aspirin, stripped, and watched my body in the mirror to see too, was an It inhabiting a Me. The jury was out. I took the elevator up to the roof to try to see your last view, but the tiny access stairs were locked by the shiny new padlock. The replacement for the one you’d cur through. So I had to make do with sitting on the steps. Back in my room I read a story from Death in Midsummer called “Patriotism,” where a military husband and wife commit seppuku together. Sex in death and death in sex. You loved it too; you’d underlined your favorite passages. I smoked a spliff but couldn’t stop crying. Sadness is fertile and thorny and takes root in any soil.
Werewolf was all sympathy when I complained about my nightmareprone neighbor. “The Holiday Inn’s the eighty-floor fucker out by the lagoon. They insulate the walls there. Four hundred bucks a night. You’d like it. You’d sleep like a baby.” Little wonder your wife checked out early, I very nearly told him. I walked to Shore Bird Beach Broiler for the breakfast buffet and the view of bikinis in the sun. Options re: Yukio Mishima’s knife had dwindled to a pretty pathetic clutch. The police had not contacted me. In the Hawaii Times I saw that my personal ad—“Nozomu, contact me about Vulture”—had been misprinted as “Nozomi, contact me about vultures.” Jesus Vegetable Christ. I caught a bus to Honolulu Center and spent the day making inquiries at various lost-property offices in museums, malls and the bus station, wherever I could think of; consulted the owners of antique shops; considered engaging a private detective, for ten seconds, before I realized how stupid I’d sound. Real-life Maltese Falcon quests are wastes of time. You do not find a lost object in a city unless you know exactly where to locate it, in which case it isn’t really lost. The place itself got to me. Nightingale may love it
here, models are paid to love Hawaii, but I wouldn’t be sorry if Oahu sinks under a tsunami and soon. Palm trees are tarantula ugly. Honolulu is concrete ugly. Waikiki is glitzy ugly. Jetloads of Westerners microwaving themselves are pink ugly. Ala Moana Center, a monstrous cuboid vagina for Japanese tourists to ejaculate yen during seven-day orgies of spending, is unthinkably ugly. Mildewed side streets where syringes roll in weedy doorways of the Polynesian poor are just ugly, but fat vacationers paying fat prices for fat fat in fat seats in fat diners by fat parking lots of fat cars by fat freeways are ugly ugly ugly ugly. Wipe them out or wipe me out.
Nightingale called most evenings at nine. Matrimony, dear Vulture, is a political act. Don’t look at me that way. Nightingale is attracted to my assets-depleted by the purchase of Yukio Mishima’s knifeand I am aroused by hers. You Asians have always been pragmatic about this. Romantic marriage is a European fantasy, and Jesus Legal-aid Christ, we have the divorce rates to prove it. Fidelity is the smuggest elf of the love fantasy, so every evening by ten I was in Runaway Horses trying to get laid without lowering my standards too drastically. In L.A. Nightingale was shining up that Czech photographer’s zoom lens, doubtless. Why should I mind as long as she is as discreet as I am? Marriage is a public act; sex is a private one. What I mind is that my forget-me-not eyes are not what they were. What I minded was Wei’s mockery when I returned alone. What I minded is that Bar Wardrobe was locked by the time I scaled its stairs. Here’s another Big Thought, one that most men do not know they know, although Mishima says it without spelling it out: Sex is not, as cliché claims, a little death—sex is man’s ‘fuck you!’ to death. When we are inside another body, death is not inside ours. Hence the absence of sex drives men to folly, lunacy or even worse.
What You Do Not Know You Want Page 1