Coin Locker Babies

by Ryu Murakami

  “That’s not what I mean,” said Noriko, sucking in a mouthful of green jello before continuing. “You know how there are some girls who you think are a mess and are going to end up having a hard time but secretly, deep down, you envy them anyway? Well, that’s the kind of girl I think Anemone is; that’s the kind of girl I’d like to be.”

  “Thanks,” Anemone had said, vaguely sensing that she’d been paid a compliment. “Thanks, but I’m still not going crazy.”

  She had done everything just as Kiku had told her to. First, she’d bought some clothes for him and hidden them in a spot he could easily find near the docks in the town where the ship was to pay a visit. Then she got hold of a motorboat—a big one—and had it tied up at a marina they both knew near Tokyo, filling it with food, water, and diving equipment.

  And now, watching the Yuyo Maru disappear into the distance, she pulled a key from the pocket of her sweaty blouse and spun it on her finger as she headed back to her car: a red, four-wheel-drive Landrover with “DATURA” painted on the side. But how was he going to escape, she wondered, as she started the engine and set out for the ship’s first port of call.

  She opened the windows but the sweat had already soaked her underwear. The countryside shimmered in the air above the steamy asphalt. It was the season when crocodiles thrashed their tails in the water with glee, the season she had first met Kiku: summer. The book Noriko had given her lay on the seat next to her. Bored with waiting for Kiku’s ship to finally leave the harbor, she’d thought she might have a look at it, but the small print had made her eyes ache and she’d given up almost immediately. Now, as she drove, the pages flipped open in the wind, and when she stopped at a light, a line caught her eye. She liked the sound of it and whispered it to herself as she waited: “There’s nothing attractive about a serious girl, and so I have no desire to become serious.”

  28

  Neva had started going to a Yoga for Pregnancy class. Hashi had fallen into a serious depression during a three-week break between the end of the concert tour and the beginning of recording sessions for his next album, and the strain of looking after him had exhausted Neva to the point that she was afraid of losing the baby. The yoga class was her way of coping with the stress and sleeplessness without resorting to drugs.

  Hashi’s new routine was to spend whole days doing absolutely nothing, sprawled out on a couch he had dragged into his darkened room. “Someone’s after me,” he would announce from time to time. “But it won’t do any good to run, they’ll catch me sooner or later.” For the time being, though, his behavior seemed harmless enough; he’d done nothing violent so far and there were no signs that he was suicidal. He was even eating a little, and Neva, as far as possible, clung to the idea that it was all brought on by exhaustion. D, however, was in favor of putting him in a mental hospital.

  “We could do a TV show from the hospital,” he suggested, his mind apparently on the boost that news of Hashi’s insanity might give to his slowing record sales.

  It took a visit from two members of the band to get Hashi to leave his room. Toru had brought a present with him: a harmonica.

  “Music is the best cure for anything,” he said. Hashi seemed to perk up and immediately started playing a blues in G. Matsuyama got a guitar they had hanging on the wall, Toru picked up some bongos lying on the floor, and suddenly they had a jam session going. Neva was thrilled as she watched Hashi play; his eyes were closed, and there was a contented look on his face she hadn’t seen in a long time. If playing really has this effect on him, we ought to book more concerts right away, she thought.

  Piggybacking on the blues they’d been playing, Toru started a song about a down-and-out musician riding the rails.

  Deserted station, the dead of night,

  and I’m tossing down this tattered bag.

  The train roof’s high, the platform’s low,

  gently does it, go easy now.

  Gently does it, treat it nice,

  that’s a clarinet I’ve got inside.

  Crack in the mouthpiece cuts like a knife,

  take my music and you take my life.

  Without it I’m a broken man,

  standing there without a hope.

  Lights go flying away in the dark,

  red one’s my lover, blue one’s my heart…

  Neva’s applause drew an embarrassed laugh from Toru.

  “Hashi, since when did you start playing harmonica?” he asked. Hashi, however, was still going strong and didn’t seem to hear.

  “You’ll have to do something with it for the next tour,” said Matsuyama. This time there was the vaguest of nods from Hashi as he continued to play a riff from “Midnight Rambler” at an incredibly fast tempo. Watching him sitting hunched over the harmonica, Neva recognized a feeling that she had all but forgotten, the feeling she’d had the first time she’d heard him sing, the one she’d felt the first time he took her in his arms. She had felt she could now forgive herself, free herself, be good to herself. She remembered how she had resisted the idea that a man so much younger than her could have such power over people. She remembered thinking that he had come out of nowhere, survivor of some early trauma she could only begin to imagine, and that the waves he gave off when he sang were his attempt to soften the memory of that time. But she didn’t believe that any more; Hashi’s hell wasn’t behind him, it was still there inside him, like a malignant growth, and he sang to get this torment out of him, to spread it around, so as to retain some sort of balance.

  “I’m beat,” Toru said finally, and Matsuyama nodded.

  “I’ll make some tea,” said Neva, hurrying into the kitchen. As she was waiting for the water to boil, she heard first the drums, then the guitar, stop playing. She listened to Hashi’s harmonica playing on alone, thinking how happy she was. But just as the apple tea had finished brewing, Matsuyama came into the kitchen looking worried.

  “What’s wrong with Hashi?” he asked.

  “He’s been a bit tired lately, but your visit’s done him wonders. I haven’t seen him look so good in ages,” said Neva.

  “Look so good? He looks like hell, like he’s out of his mind. Go take a look. He’s playing so hard his lips are all bloody. Toru told him to cut it out, but he doesn’t seem to even hear.” When they went back into the room, Toru was sitting with both hands held out above him in a gesture of despair. A bright red smear was spreading from Hashi’s mouth.

  “Hashi!” Neva shouted, but there was no response.

  “You want us to stop him?” Toru asked. “If we don’t do something, he’ll cut himself to shreds.”

  “Please,” she whispered. Toru moved in on him, but as he reached out to take the harmonica Hashi’s leg snapped out, catching him in the stomach. With Matsuyama circling behind him, Hashi edged over to the window keeping his back to the wall, but Toru jumped him, grabbing him by the hair and throwing him to the floor. Even on the ground, though, he kept the harmonica pressed tightly to his lips, playing as best he could as Matsuyama tried to pry it from his hands. Neva covered her ears to shut out the screeching chords that, combined with Hashi’s voice, were like the squeal of an animal being strangled. Finally, Matsuyama managed to extract the bloodstained harmonica from Hashi’s grip.

  “You dumb fuck! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he wailed, trying to wipe Hashi’s lips with his handkerchief. “You’ve got to try to keep a lid on it, man. We can’t have you looking like a crazy.”

  “Isn’t that what being a pop star’s all about?” Hashi muttered through his tattered lips, eyes staring at the ceiling.

  Later that evening, he sat looking out the window as Neva tried to make up her mind about putting him in a hospital. Both Matsuyama and Toru were in favor of some sort of therapy, preferably abroad, but Neva knew that no matter where they went D would find them and send teams of reporters and photographers after them. The fact was that she was the only one who could help him, but she wondered if she was strong enough to join him in his
fight, to face up to all the horrors he carried around inside. She knew it would mean not only having to fight with Hashi but against him if he was to keep his balance when he stood right on the brink like this.

  Hashi was staring at something down in the road below, a grayish blotch that was apparently a dog or a cat that had been flattened by traffic; judging from the shape, it was probably a cat. He stared at the spot for a long time, then abruptly left the room. Neva knew exactly what he had gone to do: he was going out into the street to scrape up what remained of the animal and bury it somewhere. She knew because he had a habit of burying dead moths and cockroaches and mice whenever he came across them. After a while he returned, face white as a sheet, but Neva ignored him and went into the bedroom, where she soon fell asleep over a book on pregnancy.

  She awoke some time later with a strange feeling. The sight of Hashi standing beside the bed startled her and she almost cried out. His whole body was shaking. Screwing up what courage she could, she looked straight at him.

  “Neva, how’s the baby doing?” he asked quietly. “Seems to me the kid would be better off dead, you know. I just can’t see me setting it a good example, I’d never know what to tell it… Neva, I’ve been wanting to tell you: I’ve got a fly inside my head, one with a human face, and it’s giving me these orders. ‘Kill Neva,’ it keeps saying… You see, there’s this sound, one I’ve just got to hear, and the price you pay to hear it—Kiku knows this too—is doing something awful, killing somebody… somebody you love. I can’t help it, I was born to hear that sound… I buried that cat out in the flower bed, and those moths—I buried them in the flower pots—so when I kill you and the baby, maybe they’ll go easy on me… I’m sure of it: this kid of mine would be better off dead.” Gooseflesh rose on his neck as he slowly lowered his eyes to Neva’s swollen belly.

  “I don’t want to do it,” he said, shaking uncontrollably, “I really don’t, but I won’t ever hear that sound otherwise. And I’ll wind up”—his bloodshot eyes were bulging—“as a man with A FLY’S FACE.”

  Neva was struggling not to lose control. Again she wanted to cry out, but her throat was dry as dust and the sound died before it could emerge. Maybe it would be better if both of them were dead, she thought, the baby and herself. And suddenly she knew she no longer loved this man. She realized too that up to then her fear had not been for her own safety but that Hashi would become a murderer. The thought made her feel much lighter, and with it came the feeling that he was ugly! Something caught deep down in her chest, then pushed its way up her throat and out of her mouth:

  “Your kid is not going to die!” she yelled, as Hashi’s body stiffened. “Even if you dug it out of me, even if it was the tiniest embryo and got flushed down the drain, it would survive. You forget: this kid’s father made it out of a coin locker. So it’s going to live, and grow, and come looking for you. You’ll be a fly by then, but you won’t be able to hide, and it’ll crush you underfoot—this kid who’s going to live!”

  29

  The Yuyo Maru was following a southerly course along the Pacific coast of Honshu. On board were twenty-two men: fifteen trainees and a crew of seven that included the captain, the chief engineer, the first mate, a radio officer, someone from Supervision, and two guards. The nine prisoners in the deck crew section were taking turns at the helm, with six men at any one time crowded into the little wheelhouse: Captain Eda, the radio officer, the trainee at the helm, another watching the radar screen and the other instruments, and two more reading navigational charts. On the second day out, it was Kiku’s turn at the wheel, while Yamane watched the radar, and Nakakura and Hayashi studied the charts.

  One of the exercises on their agenda was an open-sea rescue drill. Captain Eda had just asked Nakakura for their position—142°39’ east by 40°44’ north—when the loudspeaker announced:

  “Man overboard on the starboard side.”

  “Man overboard,” Kiku shouted, throwing the lever into neutral and turning the wheel hard right. The aim, he’d been taught, was to try to approach the man in the water without cutting him to ribbons in the propeller; thus the stern of the ship had to be kept at a distance. Once the turn was completed, the ship proceeded, slow ahead, until visual contact was made and a life preserver could be thrown in his direction. Then, keeping the person constantly in sight, they approached from the leeward side within twenty to thirty meters, when the engines were stopped again and the boat was allowed to drift slowly in. For the purposes of the drill, a red beach ball was standing in for the fellow in the water, which was just as well since it didn’t quite go as planned. Kiku failed to take into account the roughness of the open sea, which changed the maneuver completely from the practice they’d had in calmer harbor waters. Out here, it was vital to position the ship so the port side took the brunt of the waves, but Kiku had come around so that the starboard was facing the weather, and he could only watch as they drifted away from what would soon have been a drowned sailor.

  “What’s the matter, Kuwayama? Too tough for you?” laughed the captain.

  “I didn’t realize how rough the sea was,” said Kiku defensively. Eda then asked Hayashi for a reading from the latest weather map.

  “There’s a stable high pressure system in the direction of the Bonin Islands. Wind’s out of the south. Looks as though a cool high pressure system is developing over Southern Siberia and will spread south.” Captain Eda nodded as he listened to his summary.

  “Under these conditions, what do we have to be on the lookout for?” he asked.

  “Squalls,” Nakakura almost shouted as the radio officer started giving the local maritime weather forecast.

  “A small typhoon has developed, but it’s expected to fizzle out somewhere south of Okinawa without making landfall.” Outside there was a hint of a breeze, with an occasional school of flying fish breaking the surface of the sea, but the wheelhouse was stifling. Sweat dripped in steady streams onto the charts, and Kiku’s arm rose at regular intervals to wipe his forehead with his sleeve as he stared at the gyrocompass.

  The third night, they put in at Shichigahama in Miyagi Prefecture, anchoring against a seawall lined with drab-looking warehouses. Once the mooring lines had been secured, there was a buzz of excitement among the prisoners; this was the night they were allowed to have visitors. Those whose family and friends had applied in advance were given an hour with them after dinner. As the sun set, the visitors gathered on the road that ran along the breakwater while the guards checked names and numbers against their list. Finally, they began calling the prisoners’ names one by one until everybody except Kiku had gone ashore. Yamane was met by a woman holding a baby, presumably his wife; a young couple, a brother or sister and spouse, had come to see Hayashi; and Nakakura had his mother. When his name was called, Nakakura had hesitated, a less than happy look on his face. The streetlights behind had turned this scene of muffled reunions into a cluster of shadows, though Kiku could just make out Yamane holding his child overhead.

  “Feeling a little lonely?” asked the captain, coming up beside him as he stared across at the laughing shapes. Kiku turned and for a long moment studied the captain’s sunburned profile.

  “Seems like they’re enjoying themselves,” he said at last.

  “They tell me you’re an orphan,” said the captain, the reflection of the town’s lights playing on his face. “Must be tough, in a lot of ways.” The lights formed a shimmering pattern that made it seem as if his expression was constantly changing too. “I’ve known two orphans in my life,” he continued. “Both of them had a rough time of it when they were young. It used to be, in the old days, guys like that couldn’t even get a job in a big company, just because they had no parents. So my two friends, both of them, ended up getting pretty messed up. I’ve heard it said there are two types of orphans: guys who spend their whole lives fighting against everything with all they’ve got, and guys who are always trying to put one over on everybody. How about it, Kuwayama? Which kind are you?
” The captain’s deep, rasping voice was somehow reassuring. The salt breeze had begun to cool Kiku’s overheated body and soothe the fatigue from the day’s sailing.

  “You got me,” he said.

  “Fair enough. No reason for you to know yourself. And anyway, I imagine both types get lonely just the same.” Kiku said nothing. “You see that?” the captain went on, pointing at the silhouettes lined up on the seawall. “That’s family. I’ve got two daughters myself, and a grandchild on the way. Now I know you may have come this far all on your own, but that’s no reason you can’t make yourself a family in the future. Kuwayama, my boy, that’s what you need to do: make yourself a family—a family that starts with you.”

  Kiku was trying to make out Yamane, Nakakura, and Hayashi among the shadows. Eventually he noticed Hayashi sitting with his legs dangling over the wall, holding a scrap of paper that appeared to be a photograph up to the light. Yamane, his baby riding on his shoulders, was waving in Kiku’s direction.

  “Hey, Kiku! Come here a minute!” he called.

  “Go on,” said the captain, patting him on the shoulder. Yamane met him as he came ashore.

  “This is my son,” he said, proudly holding out the baby for his inspection. “I’m going to make a real sailor out of him. Kid’s not even a year old yet and already he can swim.” There was an enormous grin on Yamane’s face. Kiku leaned down and pressed his ear against the little chest. Startled, the baby began to wail.

  “Could you hear it?” asked Yamane. Kiku nodded, as his friend swung the boy about and broke into song:

  I’m a child of the sea,

  Here among the pines,

  By the sounding sea…

  The song drifted over those around them, bringing a smile to the captain’s face as he stood listening on the deck. After a few bars, he joined in loudly, and Kiku too began to sing, though more quietly. There was a round of applause when the song was over.