Coin Locker Babies

by Ryu Murakami

  Anemone thought she would go easy on her makeup for the occasion. It took, she knew, no more than fifteen minutes to reach the detention center even in some traffic, so she planned to leave her apartment at precisely 1:45; if she arrived early she would have to hang around in that dark, hateful building. She’d had some trouble deciding what to wear, but in the end had settled on a white silk blouse and a red flared skirt with a light coat to wear over the outfit. For shoes, she decided on gray flats. Everything had been bought recently, after a bit of careful study, to fit in with the other girls at the bakery. Kiku had never thought much of her other clothes anyway, telling her more than once that what she had on was loud or cheap-looking. His tastes seemed to run more in the direction of the uniforms bank tellers wore. This should suit him just fine, she thought, giving herself one last inspection in the mirror. The alarm clock, set for 1:43, went off. Anemone ran a comb through her hair and dabbed just a hint of perfume at the nape of her neck before charging out the door.

  Fifteen minutes later, a young guard was ushering her into a dim-lit room divided down the middle by a rusty wire screen. On either side was a single metal folding chair.

  “This is the second-class visitors’ facility,” said the guard apologetically. “Another year and he’ll qualify for the first-class room—there’s no screen in there. Guess you can’t do much kissing through this,” he laughed, apparently trying to help her relax.

  As soon as he’d gone, Anemone fumbled in her purse for a scrap of paper on which she’d written some notes: “If Kiku’s smiling, say ‘You’re looking great’; if he’s moody, just say, ‘Hi, honey,’ really sweetly; if he looks sad, don’t say anything, just pat him on the shoulder.” She hadn’t figured on the screen and now found herself desperately trying to come up with something to say in case he looked sad. But everything that occurred to her sounded dumb; and anyway she could hardly concentrate when she knew that any minute now the steel door opposite her would open and Kiku would come through it. Her heart was pounding, her palms sweaty, and her throat had gone dry. As she sat twisting her handkerchief into knots, she reminded herself that she wouldn’t be much use to him at all if she couldn’t get a grip on herself. When she pictured him, she saw only the timid, hangdog figure in the courtroom.

  She took a deep breath and tried again to calm down, deciding she would tell him to “cheer up,” regardless of whether he was smiling or glum. Drawing a mental picture of Kiku seated across the way, shoulders drooping and eyes downcast, she began to rehearse quietly. “Cheer up, Kiku.” No, it sounded forced; it needed a lighter touch. “Cheer up, Kiku.” This time it came out a bit cold, schoolteacherish. “Cheer up, Kiku.” That wasn’t it either; she sounded like she was scolding a naughty child. No, she needed to sound warm and natural, yet firm, all at once. “Cheer…,” she was just trying again when the door swung open, bringing with it a familiar smell of male sweat.

  “Anemone!” Kiku cried, throwing himself against the screen and shaking it. Reddish dust showered down around them, and the wire creaked as though it might give way.

  “Hey, get off there!” barked the guard who had followed him into the room.

  “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it,” Kiku muttered, finally letting go of the wire and sitting down. Pressing his nose against the grill, he sat grinning at Anemone who was grinning back. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but nothing came out.

  “You’re looking great,” she managed, fighting back tears. Kiku nodded slightly. “I made some curtains,” she said, starting in on the first subject that came to mind in order to keep from crying. “I got a job in Hakodate in a bakery called Guten Morgen—that’s German for ‘Good morning.’ Strawberry shortcake’s our biggest seller, but seems like people are finally getting tired of it; some days the kiwi or the peach shortcake does a lot better. I made a friend, a really nice girl called Noriko, we’ve been twice now to the movies together. She likes to read a lot and is always lending me books, but you know me and books—I fall right asleep. They’re all good ones, though, by famous writers, and one’s by the wife of this famous painter. What do you think, Kiku, you think I should be reading these books?” Anemone knew herself that she was talking nonsense, but she chattered on, afraid she might scream if she let herself just look at him. Kiku gazed at her and smiled. “Next door to the bakery is this department store and on the fifth floor there’s a watch shop. The son of the guy who owns it has been trying to hit on me. The guy’s a real creep, drives some lousy foreign car—even gets in it to go a few meters to our shop. He’s always rattling on about some dumb thing or other, how his father gave him half the stock in the company, how he has these three dobermans and the police are always giving him some certificate of merit, how he’s friends with a guy who’s a professional kick boxer, blah, blah, blah. He kept after me so long I finally agreed to go out with him once just to shut him up. We went to this cafe, and as soon as we got there I told him I had a boyfriend who was in jail and if he ever touched me I couldn’t be responsible for what would happen to him. What do you think he said? He told me I was a juvenile delinquent… I laughed right in his face.”

  Kiku was still staring at her but he didn’t seem to be listening.

  “How’s Gulliver?” he asked suddenly. “Still growing?” Anemone wet her lips.

  “He’s dead,” she said, her voice almost inaudible.

  “That so?” he muttered absently. “Poor baby.”

  “Yeah. But it’s all right now.”

  “What’s all right?”

  “I mean, I’ve got used to it.” Again Kiku fell silent. He was studying her hair, her hands, her breasts.

  “Kuwayama, you got another five minutes,” said the guard from the corner of the room.

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Kiku without taking his eyes off Anemone.

  She was looking at her watch, suddenly realizing that twenty-five minutes had passed and they hadn’t really said anything.

  “Anemone,” he whispered, too low for the guard to hear, “could you do something for me? Could you stick the end of your tongue through the screen?” As soon as her tongue was through the hole in the wire, he fastened his mouth on it and stayed that way for several seconds. When he pulled away, a fine strand of saliva hung in the air between them. “I’m going to start training to be a sailor…” he started to say.

  “Time’s about up,” announced the guard.

  “Just a few seconds more,” said Kiku, going on in a rapid whisper: “You still have some money?” Anemone nodded. “Then listen carefully. Before long I’m going to be going on this practice shakedown cruise for the sailing program. I’ll write you somehow and let you know where we’ll be heading. You just be sure to follow us on land and meet the boat when we put in to shore. You got that?” By now the guard had come too near for him to continue, but as he rose and walked away, Anemone just had time to shout after him:

  “Kiku! You haven’t forgotten about the DATURA, right?” He nodded and then was gone. Her eyes gleaming, Anemone swirled a few bits of gritty rust around in her mouth and spat them out on the floor.

  24

  More flowers were being delivered to the dressing room: roses. “Who from this time?” Toru yelled at the delivery boy.

  “From a food company, canned tuna and crab…” the boy started to explain, but Toru was no longer listening. Matsuyama was standing in the middle of the room checking the tuning on his guitar for the hundredth time. For the occasion he had painted himself from head to toe—hair, skin, and all—lavender on one side and pink on the other. John Sparks Shimoda was submerged in a deep leather couch twirling a drumstick on the tips of his fingers as if rattling an invisible cymbal floating somewhere overhead. A cake arrived, and Matsuyama sent a roadie to find a knife.

  “Let’s do it!” he shouted, attacking the cake.

  “You can’t eat sweet stuff before you go on stage,” warned Toru, “you’ll throw up.”

  “Who gives a shit? Don’t matter if I
’m puking my brains out or half-unconscious, I can still kick ass on that guitar,” he said, taking a fistful of cake in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other. Tokumaru stood in the corner with two smooth-skinned youths trying to tie his bow tie.

  Hashi, in the meantime, was pacing in a tight circle, his face slightly flushed, and holding forth at full volume to a ring of reporters and photographers. “I’m going to save the world with my songs,” he was saying. “That’s all I’m here for: to bring comfort to the hungry, to those in pain and suffering who no longer even realize their need.” It was always like this before a concert. As he explained it, he had to empty himself of everything before he could get charged up again. And there were various ways of doing this; one, today’s, was to talk a lot of bullshit to a pack of journalists, inviting a barrage of stupid questions.

  “So let me get this straight: you’re saying that your music is not just giving a bunch of Japanese kids a thrill but a way of saving the world’s starving masses?” Hashi charged around the room, eyes flashing, with two makeup people circling him, as if in orbit, to set his hair with egg whites.

  “Does that make your music some kind of religion?” asked another reporter as a pair of video cameras swooped in, lights blazing, to catch a closeup of Hashi’s patent leather shoes. In the background, Kitami could be heard neighing his way through a B-flat scale. “It sounds to me like you’re calling it a religion,” the reporter persisted. “Is that fair to say?”

  Neva’s voice on the intercom broke in at that point to announce five minutes to curtain. “There are fifty guards out there tonight, so no funny business and no stirring up the crowd like last time,” she warned them. Matsuyama smashed his champagne glass on the floor and ran a wet comb through his brilliant hair.

  “A religion? Not at all,” said Hashi. “It’s more like an explosion in a subway station, with dead people blown all over the place and somebody’s ass hanging from the kiosk like a peach on a tree.” Hashi’s pace had speeded up.

  “So you’re saying that to you salvation is an act of terrorism?” said another reporter, tapping Hashi on the shoulder to get his attention as he whirled by.

  “Don’t touch me!” yelled Hashi. Shoving the reporter back on his heels, he ran over to Matsuyama, grabbed the cake, and hurled it against the mirrors that lined the room. Gobs of icing splattered in every direction just as Neva rang the buzzer to signal their entrance.

  “Let’s do it!” shouted Toru, winding a vinyl scarf around his neck. Kitami stopped for a second to gargle with a little Coke, before they all followed Hashi on the run.

  In the first days after the start of their concert tour, newspapers around the country printed reviews along these lines:

  Bad taste at rock concerts is nothing new, but the current tour by Hashi and company raises it to new heights. It is difficult to find words to describe what goes on, but the reader might begin by imagining a wake at which someone drinks too much, makes a complete fool of himself, and then feels the usual self-loathing afterward. The “entertainment” begins with a slash-and-burn drum solo followed by Hashi’s interminable, painful renditions of standards such as “Meet You in Yurakucho” or “Love You Most of All.” In these, as in everything that follows, the sound is chilly, with a percussion line that is as raw as it is uninteresting. Meanwhile, Hashi himself slumps around the stage cracking a thick leather whip in an apparent, though vain, attempt to keep this death rattle going.

  The most surprising, not to say shocking, thing about all this is how much Hashi’s vocals have changed in the two short months since the appearance of his album, Brimstone Island. The voice on the album might fairly be likened to that of an autistic youth recently kicked out of a church choir, while the Hashi now on tour sounds more like a seal in full rut. The “new” voice, if we can call it that, clings to you like a coating of oily sludge that refuses to be washed away in even the longest, hottest shower. We had the opportunity to question Hashi about the origins of this newfound tunefulness, but he declined to answer seriously, ascribing it to the fact that he had snipped off the end of his tongue with a pair of scissors.

  They say that interrogators during witch trials used to pour hot animal fat into the ears of their victims in order to extract confessions. Nothing could better describe the effect that Hashi and his band seem determined to have on their audience. The rhythm section runs mindlessly along, while the accordion, abetted by the empty wailing of the guitar and sax, grinds out some nauseating melody in the minorest of keys. We found ourselves imagining a tune sung by a dropout, hat in hand, and an old beggar wandering along a narrow alley sandwiched between a highway full of whizzing cars and a skyscraper being smashed to pieces by a wrecking ball and dynamite.

  But to someone in the audience listening to the words Hashi always started with—“A sweet blues about love and waiting for you in the rain, about worrying you’ll get wet, about waiting at a certain cafe”—it’s like a nocturne played by a blind pianist in wartime London amid a hail of buzzbombs, about the pleasure of watching, bound hand and foot, as a pretty woman types away in a sunlit room, her skin glowing, just the faintest hint of sweat on the curve of her backside… From somewhere beyond the detonations of the rhythm section, Hashi’s nocturne seems to rise out of nowhere, planting the seeds of terror in his ear. Terror. Not the fear that the bombs will get through, penetrate deep into the ground, into his bomb shelter. No, not that at all; rather, the fear that he’ll give in to the urge to see the rockets flash and go running out of the shelter into the night; the fear that he’s about to do something horrible… rape and murder that woman sitting next to him, perhaps, or set fire to his seat; fear that begins to buzz around in his head the moment Hashi starts to sing. And once it gets to him, it won’t let go, from the first scream, more shrill than feedback, a scream that gets right under his skin, that boils the hot animal fat inside his ears and sends it pouring from his eyes and nose and mouth… Soon, every last person in the hall jumps up, staring transfixed at the stage, as if Hashi were a hypnotist. Like some ingeniously lifelike mural, the gargantuan pig gets dissected again on the dome overhead, out-sized organs pulsing to the rhythm of the bass. Why should those ropes of crimson, undulating veins and muscles remind them of the sea? Not limpid depths inhabited by schools of angelfish—not that sea, but the turbid seas of Genesis, roiling up into a leaden sky pierced now and then by flaming meteors, those ancient oceans where shreds of carbon were sparked into the first signs of life. As they listen, undersea volcanoes dye the ocean floor scarlet with belch after belch of impervious flame.

  “Come!” orders Hashi. “At my feet!” says the song. You know so little, though you think you know it all. Loosen those screws in your heads and let the fat flow in. Let your bodies shake; that’s the first step, and soon you’ll be walking down the rail tracks at dawn, waist deep in the bodies of stray dogs, the wind tugging at their entrails. Don’t worry—the train will explode seconds before it runs you down, and lines of girls, dripping with amber-colored jewels, will greet you, their hair dusted with broken glass. You’re king! To hell with that tired old scene you say makes you sick. It’s a mirage, a lie, your own personal magic lantern show. You know what you’ve got to do: smash the projector, torch the whole show! You’re inches away from this pale, thin membrane and, beyond, a scummy wall and, beyond and beyond, pig guts and, beyond them all, a rainy, fruit-juice universe.

  His tongue clicking sharply into the mike, Hashi reeled off the names of the band members as shreds of glittering foil rained from the ceiling marking the end of the concert. “Thank you. Thank you,” he murmured. “We couldn’t do it without your love. Tonight I want you to pray with me for the souls of three girls attacked in a park in Yokohama almost seventy years ago. A sailor on leave butchered them, gouged out their stomachs, and jerked off inside those hollow things. Tonight, let’s pray for their souls; let’s pray for love, as only love is going to save this world, my friends. Thank you.” As Hashi finished, a line of club
-wielding security guards with attack dogs flanked the stage and headed toward the front row of the audience while the band broke into their theme song.

  “The story’s just begun,” Hashi sang, ratcheting up the already drum-tight atmosphere in the hall. Everyone was standing, straining, the front row on the verge of rushing the stage but held in check by the barking dogs. Then, in mid-phrase, Matsuyama launched his pick into the audience and the stage went black. The band disappeared, replaced by the guards, and in one instant the mirage vanished, bombs, pigs, animal fat and all, and the crowd, as if reluctant to be left alone with the aftermath, headed en masse for the exits, trading mindless smiles and platitudes with one another.

  Hashi ran straight to the dressing room, where Neva was waiting to fold him in her arms. For a moment or so they sucked at each other’s lips, then Hashi poured half a bottle of beer over his head, draining the rest in one gulp and smashing the bottle on the floor.

  “How many times do I have to tell you?” someone shouted. “Excited is one thing, but you’ve got to stop acting like some dumb kid.”

  Matsuyama, after stripping to the waist, wandered over to Hashi and began licking at the beer and sweat dripping down his neck and jaw.

  “So, whaddya think? Am I a genius or what?” Hashi asked him. “Have I got a throat like an aluminum bellows or what?”

  Kitami was snickering as he poured a stream of beer over Shimoda, who had collapsed on the couch. Then he too smashed the bottle, adding to the layer of shards and suds that already covered the floor. When D came on the intercom to announce that he’d arranged a party in a suite on the top floor of their hotel, they made their way through the crush of groupies waving flowers and stuffed toys at them to a line of limousines waiting near the back entrance.