Coin Locker Babies
Page 41
At first, Hashi was happy she had gone. Without her around, he thought, the overwhelming urge to kill her might begin to go away. But he soon realized he was wrong, that the longer Neva was gone the more likely he was to do something the next time they met. He didn’t want to kill her; in fact, there was nothing he wanted less to do… yet that, he feared, was exactly why he had to do it. And fear was what seemed to control Hashi, not a run-of-the-mill fear of death or starvation, but a more basic, paralyzing one: the fear of time. It was something he knew instinctively, remembered in his cells, the way a baby does. Hashi had spent thirteen hours in that coin locker, thirteen summer hours. Thirteen hours of dogs barking, loudspeakers announcing the name of the station, bicycle bells, vending machines, a blind man tapping his cane, trash blowing about, music from a radio in the distance, children jumping in a pool somewhere, an old man’s cough, a bucket being filled from a faucet, brakes screaking, the chirp of birds building a nest, women scratching, voices laughing… The feel of wood, plastic, steel, a woman’s soft skin, a dog’s tongue; the smell of blood, sweat, shit, medicine, perfume, oil; and every sensation linked to the next by fear, by fear alone. Hashi was listening to a voice his cells remembered. You are unwanted, it told him. Nobody needs you.
The black woman was giving D a massage on the roof of his building. The roof featured a tennis court carpeted in pink astroturf and a trellis covered with wisteria blossom, in whose shade D was lying. The bright sun as Hashi emerged from the elevator made him reel, and he quickly put on a pair of dark glasses—ones he had bought to send to Kuwayama. The sun and a few wispy clouds floating west turned the glass towers surrounding D’s place into long waterfalls of light. Hashi looked at the orange rim of the clouds, thinking that if Kuwayama were ever dragged out here, his eyes would be wrecked almost right away. He slipped under the arch of wisteria, not a drop of sweat on his pale, powdery skin, though a few seconds of sun had made it begin to tingle. Despite the heat, a man and woman dressed only in bathing suits were out on the tennis court hitting the ball back and forth.
“Hashi! You heard? That brother of yours has escaped, flown the coop. He’s nothing but trouble, that one,” said D, thumbing through the newspaper lying at his side. Hashi read only the parts written in bold type: Desperate Escape, Whereabouts Still Unknown, Five Dead, Man Injured in Shootout Dies in Hospital, Were There Outside Accomplices?, Well-Planned Operation, Say Investigators. “Go on, read it. You get a mention as brother of one of the escapers. Looks like we could sell some records thanks to your Kiku.”
“Why’d you call me?” asked Hashi.
“Why’d I call you?” He gave a hoot of disbelief. “What’s the matter with you?! Who do you think you are, putting off the recording sessions a month? And where are the songs you’re supposed to be writing? You got them?” The black woman wiped the sweat from his back with her long, thin fingers and sprinkled him with a gray powder before beginning the massage. The powder smelled of peppermint.
“They’re not done yet, but I’m writing poetry,” said Hashi, taking a scrap of paper from his pocket and beginning to read.
My sheep, my sister,
My ship, my garden:
My eyeball stolen from my head…
“OK, OK, I get the idea,” said D, stopping him. Behind him, the couple on the tennis court snickered. The woman, who was a good deal taller than Hashi, wore her hair brushed perfectly smooth on her head. Her pointy breasts pushed up into a thin fiberglass bra.
“‘Eyeball stolen from my head…’ I mean, wow!” said the woman. Hashi noticed a little pool of sweat collecting in her navel. Still, it hurt to have her laugh at him, and when she stared in his direction he wanted to disappear, vanish—gold lamé shirt, gray corduroy pants, snakeskin boots and all. Her tennis partner brought her a glass of Perrier.
“Hashi, your contract’s up soon,” D was saying as the masseuse climbed on his back and began crawling around on her elbows and knees. Barely restrained by the shorts, her ass bounced high in the air, as sweat trickled from her thighs onto D’s hips. “I’ve been meaning to ask you what you’re going to do. Thinking of re-upping? I can tell you right now, without Neva you’re up shit creek.”
The building to the right of D’s cast a deep, oblong shadow across one side of the roof. Hashi suddenly forgot why he was standing on this blazing roof, with this couple in bathing suits, a black woman, and his boss, all talking apparently at random. For a moment, he was seized with the idea that the hot, flat square and the great towers beyond were just a mirage that had popped up before him, as if something from somewhere in his body—a tube in his inner ear, perhaps—had poked out of his eye and begun sucking in air, swelling up until this rooftop square had formed.
“Hashi! What the hell’s going on? I told you to bring a copy of the contract. Hey! You hear what I’m telling you? What are you doing here?”
Hashi reached for the glass of water sitting on the table. Lines of bubbles floated to the surface as he held the glass to his forehead and cheeks. It was only slightly cool, but he drank it down in one gulp.
“Hey!” said the man in the bathing suit, “—that’s mine.” Hashi had hardly had anything to eat, and the lukewarm water had a viscous, stringy feel as it ran down into his stomach. Suddenly he felt sick and clutched his hands to his throat. The glass fell and broke, the hot concrete sopping up the foaming liquid. Hashi caught the man and woman exchanging looks and it occurred to him that everyone must think he was a pain. He started muttering to himself.
“I may creep around like a stray but I’m not begging… No. I’m an embarrassment—they make it pretty obvious… That big black woman—bet the sweat under those arms is sour… I may never have had trendy drinks in high places without making a mess, or seen a play, or been to a museum or a stadium, but what’s wrong with that? Why does everybody look at me that way?…”
“Hashi! What’s the matter? Hashi!” D had wrapped a towel around himself and come over to give him a good shake.
“Oh, it’s you,” he mumbled. “D, tell me something: am I any use to you? Do you really need me?”
“What the hell are you talking about? Stop talking crap and get a grip on yourself.”
“But it’s important,” said Hashi. “I’ve got to know. Do you think anybody out there needs me? That they’re happy because of me? That’s all I want; I don’t need any of the rest of it, D, really—I don’t want the money, I just want people to smile. When I ride around in that big car Neva bought, everybody looks at me like they’re envious, but I’m really not that happy. D, why do you suppose people aren’t nice to me? I’m just trying to make them happy, but they all seem to be avoiding me. Neva’s gone off and left me, and Kiku too. Kuwayama’s turned into a bug; Matsuyama and Toru bugged out. Kazuyo’s dead, and the nuns have this sad look, and I seem to be nothing but a bother for everybody. I just want them to like me, that’s all. I want them to tell me they really enjoy just being with me. It’s not too much to ask. But I never had a chance—they threw me out at the very start, left me in this great big coin locker.”
Hashi was clinging to D, sweat pasted to parched skin.
“Let go of me!” said D. “You’re gross—let GO!” But Hashi held on, beginning to tremble.
“Somebody’s gone a bit screwy,” the woman in the swimsuit said to the masseuse with a you-know-who look.
“What’s the matter with you, man? You can’t hear what I’m saying to you?” said D, roughly pushing him away. As Hashi stumbled out into the sunlight, the bottle of sleeping pills fell from his pocket and rolled glinting across the roof before he caught it at the edge. His vision warped, the thirteen towers seemed poised to fall on him, and he longed for somewhere to go home to. Dumping three pills into his hand, he shoved them in his mouth, but as he began to chew them, he coughed up a yellowish liquid that dribbled onto the hot concrete. He was vaguely aware that D and the tennis players were watching him. The black woman walked toward the elevator and disappeared inside.
I am not. He chewed the pills up and swallowed a mouthful of chalky spit. I am not nuts—just sad that everybody hates me.
The streets, crowded during the summer holidays, smelled of melting rubber in the heat, making Hashi feel as if heavy, glutinous strings were stretching out behind his feet—as if everyone he passed in this canyon of glass and steel and concrete was trailing these strings, weaving a great white chrysalis. The whole town was a shiny chrysalis, wrapped around the heat radiating from the earth, and slowly swelling; but when would the giant butterfly emerge? He knew at least that when it did, it would float up into the sky and there its belly would split open, releasing millions of flies with human faces that would bury the city. He could already hear the buzzing of their wings.
He was walking under a bridge painted red, just as a train passed overhead. The bridge seemed to wheeze from the weight and heat. Each breath left a film of steamy air on his throat. The faces of those he passed wobbled in the haze, and the road itself seethed like a river of slow-moving sludge. As he flopped down on a bench outside a tropical plant garden, the tramp sitting cross-legged at the other end asked if he had a cigarette. The man had bread crumbs in his beard and one eye was bloodshot. A milk bottle filled with whiskey hung by a cord from his belt, and he wore mittens on his hands despite the heat. Hashi laid a ten thousand yen bill on the man’s gloved hand and leaned over to whisper in his ear.
“I’d like you to suck me off and then let me hit you on the head with a brick. There’s another ten thousand in it for you when we’re done.” The tramp, looking down into his lap, began to nod and laugh.
“You’ve got yourself a deal, buddy, but first how about buying me some ice cream?” A few minutes later, he set out across the garden licking a green popsicle and beckoning Hashi to follow him. They entered a maze of alleys and made several quick turns, coming out at last on a street lined with bars and small night clubs, all of which were closed. Piles of moldering garbage lay on the sidewalk, empty kerosene cans full of fish heads with running eyes, overturned liquor bottles oozing nameless brown liquids. The tramp slipped into a tight passageway between two bars and, stopping in front of a tiny public toilet, pointed with a laugh at a pair of feet visible under the broken wooden door. A woman in a flesh-colored slip emerged and studied them for a moment before disappearing down the alley. They went in.
“Could you wait a second? I have to go find a brick to hit you with,” said Hashi, and he was just about to leave when the tramp grabbed him by the hair.
“What the fuck d’you mean? Brick? Your kind’s fucking filthy, man. Fucking vermin!” he said, shaking him about. “Repeat after me, ten times: ‘I’m filth.’ I want you to confess your sins right here in front of me. Your kind’s no better than dogs or pigs—disgusting! You know that?” Suddenly, Hashi was frightened as it dawned on him that this bearded guy was not at all like the one he’d met in that other toilet long ago, was not conjured up out of air, not the reincarnation of some big, gentle dog. “The wrath of heaven be upon you!” the man was shouting. “The Flood is coming, and only those like myself who’ve got nothing to lose will be saved. Sinners like you will meet your doom in the wild, your skulls strewn across the earth for rats to nest in. You faggot filth!” Hashi tried to get away, but this time the man hit him hard in the stomach, banging him up against the wall, where he slid to the floor. The tramp then searched his pockets for money and took his shoes. “This, pigfucker, is your penance. I want you to thank me for it. You may still go straight to hell, but with my prayers you’ll at least be allowed to pluck out your own tongue, that evil thing. So pray, pervert! Shed your own blood and pray!” The tramp left the toilet counting ten thousand yen bills.
“Pray!” he yelled over his shoulder again before he vanished.
That night, Neva came home for the first time in four days and apologized to Hashi for walking out on him.
Hashi knew he would have to screw up his courage, have to stir up other parts of himself, if he was ever to go through with it. The voices he heard, the ringing in his ears, the pulse of blood through his veins, the Hashi who stared back from the mirror, the phantom Hashi who lurked in window panes—all of these would have to be called upon. And he would find them, he realized, in the little rubber and glass soundproof chamber he had built in order to search for that sound. The rubber portion of the walls of Hashi’s chamber had been fitted with speakers, and the thickness of the glass insured that not even the faintest unwanted noise could get in from outside. As he always did, Hashi entered the room, closed the door, and crouched in the cramped space listening for the sound; the only difference now was that there was nothing coming from the speakers. He was listening for the roar inside his own head, the sounds that arose in the absence of sound. I have to kill Neva, he thought, and that’s a terrifying thing; give me the courage to overcome that fear and suffering. In the pitch darkness, he closed his eyes, sensing the blackness spread out around him, as if heavy velvet curtains had been drawn across his retina and he were receding into some inner distance, receding to the far limits of darkness beyond which gray dots began to appear. The spots collected in long, thin furrows and then slowly began to take on color, growing in number as they deepened in tone. Rather than cells dividing and dividing again, the new dots seemed like previously hidden lights suddenly switched on, the whole process being sustained by the color changes in existing spots, as if he were watching a film of fireworks played backward. Gradually, the spots grew denser until they resembled a field of glowing tomatoes, or tuberculosis germs teeming on a slide under a microscope, glittering brighter than the powder rubbed from a moth’s wings, undulating like the muscles in the chest of a dissected cat, multiplying like gold dust lying dormant in a riverbed until a volcano sends lava streaming down to boil the gold to the surface. Then, as always happened, just as the spots were gathering into a great mass for the final eruption, each one separately began to glow with rage, each one in the swarm was brandishing a torch. Soon the torches would go out one by one and the whole galaxy would be transformed into the sea at noon. But this time there was one difference: there was no other sound, only the high ringing in his ears like a steam whistle in the distance. A huge jet was streaking across the sea, its shadow passing in the space of a second from the glittering waves to the cliff from which, just at that moment, he was falling. Hitting the water, he floated briefly and then started to sink. Beneath the surface, the sea had a sticky, slimy feel to it, and as he drifted down toward the bottom, the water around him grew redder and redder. His legs got tangled in a kind of seaweed with human fingers, binding him fast to a crag jutting from the ocean floor.
Suddenly, a powerful shudder went through him and he opened his eyes. He had heard the sound: the sound of blood pumping through his own body, through the veins in his arms; little waves, spaced out at even intervals. Straining to catch the sound, he muttered: “That’s the one. That’s the one that will help me kill her, the one that’ll give me the strength: the beating of my heart.” Hashi burst out of the chamber and went looking for Neva. Finding her discarded clothes in the dressing room, he realized she must be in the shower. A moment later, in the kitchen, as he wrapped his fingers around the handle of a large knife, his heartbeat began to play a frantic tune, and a wave of bliss swept through him as he started back toward the bathroom. He squeezed the handle, sniffing at a strange smell like burning flesh. Through the steamed-up glass door of the bathroom, he could see Neva’s silhouette, stomach bulging nicely, and he knelt before the door giving thanks to the beating of his heart. With the sound thundering inside him, radiating out to rattle the floor, the room, the whole building, he opened the door. There stood Neva, water beaded over her body, and as he raised the knife to strike, for one fleeting second he found himself wondering whose heartbeat it was that they had heard long ago at the hospital. Still, the thought didn’t keep him from finishing the stroke and, taking aim at the bulg
e of Neva’s belly, he plunged the knife in. At the moment he did so, the beating stopped, and with it came a shock: Hashi’s bliss had, in a fraction of a second, been traded for terror. A moment too late he wished he could stop his arm, the very instant the tip of the blade came to rest in Neva’s side.
31
At last, thought Anemone, the Kingdom of the Crocodiles! They had been cruising for hours, and now suddenly the sun seemed to have grown enormous, fierce. A moment or two out on deck would turn one’s skin the color of nicely braised rabbit. A new piece of jewelry adorned the tanned ring finger of her left hand: a coral band Kiku had bought for her on Ogasawara. They had been married, with Nakakura officiating, in a small chapel left over from the American Occupation. Afterward the four of them had gone swimming in a quiet lagoon, their first dip in the ocean they’d been racing over. The break was also an opportunity for Nakakura to teach the rest of them some of the finer points of diving, picked up from his days on a salvage ship, and for Hayashi to show off his amazing speed in the water—the latter while they were poking around a mass of table coral jutting out from a rocky ledge. Suddenly, Hayashi darted away, chasing something at a furious pace, leaving the others to stare after him as they hovered at the bottom. The oval shape he was pursuing made for the surface and then plunged into the darkness of a deep spot. As it went by they could see the beautiful shell of a sea turtle. Making full use of his flippers, Hayashi gave chase and nearly managed to grab the thing, but each time he closed in, it would change course at the last moment and dodge away. After a few minutes of this, however, Hayashi was getting tired and launched what seemed to be his final effort: allowing the turtle to get some distance ahead, he sank down ten meters or more below its level. Then, like a rocket, he kicked off the bottom, angling up behind it, and just as the turtle sensed his approach and started to escape, Hayashi’s hands clamped down firmly on either side of the shell. Holding it ahead of him, he spurted to the surface, the speed carrying him out of the water almost to his knees, and like a water polo player with a shot at goal, he tossed the thing far up on the beach.