"You're tired of me? But what have I done?" asked Akiko pleadingly.
"Done? Don't you think we've been together long enough. There's no novelty for either of us anymore."
"Novelty? Just what do you mean? What have I been to you all these weeks?"
"A woman," he shrugged.
"Please don't talk like that!" she cried.
"Why not? It's just like I told you once. I'll explain it in simple words, okay? If you stripped bare—naked—you couldn't give me a hard-on now!"
He watched her face turn pale, then he walked off. She did not say a word.
Ishikawa pushed Akiko away, but she clung to him trembling and weeping. He went over to Katsumi and stared at him in astonishment.
"So you're the bastard," he repeated. "We couldn't guess who'd done it and Akiko wouldn't tell us. Now the little mystery's solved, and how convenient for you to meet us here."
"Ah, shut up. I don't know what you have to do with her, but this is not your business."
"Okay, I'll shut up, but I'm going to do what I have to do. No lecture—but no one else knows the whole story of that little adventure. It might be possible to forget the nervous wreck you made of Kyoko. Maybe they should have known better, but after that, when this girl was really serious about you . . ."
Ishikawa cut off his sentence, preferring to finish by six or seven smashing blows to Katsumi's face. Katsumi could only let his head jerk loosely with the blows and endure as well as he could. He felt his flesh swell with the pounding. But Ishikawa had not finished.
Jerking Katsumi's head up by the hair, he spat in his face, then he turned round to Akiko.
"You remember this face, don't you? Changed a bit I guess," he said, pulling her forward by the hand. "Now it's your turn."
Akiko came nearer and looked down at Katsumi without saying a word. The skin was broken on his forehead and around the corners of his eyes. His lips were cut and his whole face was covered with wet slimy blood. He was breathing as it he had just finished a hard race.
He seemed to be trying to look at her with his bloodshot swollen eyes. She wondered if he could see. Maybe he could, for as he raised his head he appeared to recognize her, and then he broke into a grin and suddenly spat out a half bloody mixture that splattered on Akiko's arm. He grinned again in apparent satisfaction and defiance.
Was it this same defiance that had first attracted her to him—this refusal to know defeat? When he had thrown her on the bed that night—and every time afterwards—was it this crazy, sneering grin that appealed to her?
She was revolted at him and at herself. She lashed out blindly at his bloody, swollen face, her hand striking the red ooze again and again. Anything to remove that insane, insensate grin. It was as if she and Katsumi were alone in the room.
She struck at him till her arm ached and tears ran down her cheeks. Her blows often missed their mark, hitting Katsumi's shoulders and neck. The room began to spin round her; she could neither stop nor go on. All at once she collapsed onto Katsumi. She clung to his knees and began to sob bitterly.
"Give him more, Akiko! Don't go soft!" Takeshima and his gang were full of drink and enjoying the spectacle.
She could only hold on to Katsumi's knees and cry.
"Get her away! She's crazy!" shouted Katsumi, and with a fierce upward movement of his knees, he spun her over backwards.
"Hey, he kicked her!"
"Son of a bitch!"
Ishikawa kicked Katsumi full in the stomach sending him, chair and all, flying savagely onto the floor.
Somthing thick and hot filled Katsumi's throat. He was only half conscious now.
Ishikawa pushed his foot in Katsumi's face, which somehow brought him back to his senses.
"That's enough!" shouted Akiko hysterically.
"Shut up!"
Ishikawa found Katsumi's throat and pressed it with his heel. Katsumi twisted himself, vainly trying to escape. In a moment his head was filled with something seething, and red flames doubled and tripled before him. Then he blacked out.
Ishikawa shook him back to consciousness and repeated the treatment.
Each time he came back to his senses Katsumi tried to remember where he was: "Yeah, these bastards are out to kill me." But now all he could do was to take it. It even relieved him. "This is the worst they've managed to do yet," he thought fuzzily.
"If you go too far, you'll kill him." Takeshima said thickly.
The thought seemed to sober them up. Silently they looked at Katsumi and Ishikawa in turn. One of them put down his glass and felt his own neck.
"Apologize to the girl, then," Ishikawa said suddenly.
Katsumi struggled to speak: ". . . go ahead . . . kill me!"
"I'd be doing the world a favor if I did."
He pressed on Katsumi's throat again.
"What's the good? You'll never make him!" Akiko screamed.
"Won't I? Watch me!"
Nobody breathed.
When Katsumi came around again, Akiko pulled at Ishikawa, trying to drag him away.
"Please apologize, Katsumi! Please say you're sorry! Please! Please!" she begged.
Ishikawa lessened the pressure.
"Sorry? Sorry for what?" came Katsumi's voice. He was no longer aware of where he was, of the girl, or of his tormentors.
Although he felt it was not the time to think it over, the matter clung tenaciously to him. The answer did not come to him although it seemed very easy to get it.
Ishikawa kicked his shoulder.
"No—!" The sound from his pained throat could hardly be called a voice.
Just then Kawada burst through the door. "Tez is coming! I found him finally . . . he's bringing Yamayoshi with him."
He was out of breath. Someone handed him a glass of whiskey. He accepted the glass and glanced at Katsumi. "Hmmm, quite a change."
"There's time to finish with him yet, but the expert hasn't shown up. What did Tez say?"
"He's all excited about it—and drunk too!"
"Good, that'll make it worth watching!" he said, standing the chair up and draping Katsumi over it.
They heard heavy footsteps outside. The door opened and Tezuka and Yamayoshi came in, followed by a third man. When they saw Katsumi, their eyes lit up.
"That's as far as we've gone. You've had your share of trouble from this guy so he's all yours now."
"Little turd!" said Tezuka thickly. He walked unsteadily up to the chair, but after planting himself firmly, he delivered several solid punches to Katsumi's head.
"He won't feel that—we've worked his face over," Takeshima said. "Why don't you lay into him, Yamayoshi?"
But Yamayoshi hesitated.
"Go on! What about that little weapon you always carry, the one you don't get much chance to use?"
"Huh? I don't want to fool around with that!"
"What? Are you getting weak!"
"Hey, let . . . let me. I'll do it!" Tezuka slowly pulled a jackknife from his pocket. His fingers trembled as he tried to open the blade.
Takeshima took it from him and opened it. Then he handed it back, handle first.
"Th . . . thanks. Where'll I start on this turd?"
"Where they started on old Yosaburo!" someone yelled.
Tezuka stood up holding the knife, looking around for encouragement. He turned and looked at his bound victim and he began to prick at Katsumi's face with the point. The liquor added momentum to Tezuka's thrusts. Katsumi kept his mouth and eyes shut. Although he had some sensation, the cold steel on his cheek felt almost pleasant, refreshing. The jabbing seemed far away. Katsumi waited in silence for whatever would come next.
Tezuka held the knife firmly and glanced questioningly at the others.
"Go on!" Takeshima shouted. "Finish him off!"
"You can't do that!"
"Afraid, huh? Gimme the knife, pansy!"
"Shut up! I'll do it . . . ."
He turned to Katsumi and slowly raised the knife. In a flash, Akiko was between th
em.
"Wait!" she said. "Let me do it! Please!"
"You? What the hell you talking about?"
"Give it to her! A woman's got more guts than you."
"Akiko, don't . . ." Ishikawa began.
"This is my affair," she retorted and held out her hand to Tezuka. He stared stupidly from Akiko to Ishikawa and back to her.
"Give her the knife! What's keeping you?" someone shouted.
He handed her the knife. She cooly felt the sharpness of the blade.
"Don't cut off the wrong thing!" one of the gang shouted, and they all laughed.
Takeshima shut them up. Akiko moved close to Katsumi.
He shut his eyes, and waited.
She would kill him! The idea had not occurred to him. Now it seemed a natural outcome. This was to be the way it all finished.
He heard someone come nearer. He didn't care, he couldn't fight back. Wasn't it all a dream?
He felt the blade run on his back along the belt. Suddenly his hands fell free.
"Get up! Get away, quick! Someone come and help!" Akiko shouted, her voice rising to a scream.
"You dumb bitch!"
Someone kicked her and sent her sprawling on the floor.
As if by instinct, Katsumi tried to stand, but he fell forward on to his knees; one of his feet had lost all feeling. He tried again. At last he managed to get up. They watched him alertly but without moving. Almost blinded, he stumbled across the room in search of the door. Someone flung a glass of whiskey at his head and the liquid blinded him again. Someone kicked him from behind. Another smashed off the bottom of a bottle against the table and drove its jagged top into Katsumi's middle.
The pain shot through him from his stomach to his back—a searing thousand-bladed pain. Katsumi fell, his hands grinding into the broken glass on the floor. It felt as if his fingers were severed. He tried blindly to pull out the pieces of glass. He heard Akiko shouting. He could feel the blood gushing out of his body. There was glass in his stomach, in his hands, everywhere.
"He's still full of pep!"
Katsumi felt a kick on his head. From far off Takeshima was roaring at the hysterical Akiko: "For God's sake, get out of the way. He won't die. Didn't we make a worse mess of Shiba? He's okay now. Take the bitch away . . . Ishi, get her out of here."
Katsumi lay motionless where he had fallen. Blood surged over the hand that held the wound, spreading all over him, soaking his clothes.
"Throw him in the alley—someone'll pick him up—and keep away from this place for a while!"
"That waitress who came in for bottles won't talk."
Two of them took hold of Katsumi's feet, dragged him through the back door, and flung him out into the alley. Stepping over him, they disappeared down the dark lane.
"Keep on screaming or they'll just think you're a drunk" was the last thing anyone said to him.
". . . eight . . . nine . . . ten . . ." Katsumi counted slowly to calm himself. He was still alive. The lower half of his body was numb and senseless. He moved his hand over his stomach. He felt his entrails sticking out. They were slimy, soft, and heavy. No dream . . . they were in his hand. But he was alive.
"I'm all right inside!"
Protecting his wound, he twisted his body and raised himself up on his side. More thoughts than he could properly consider came flooding into his mind. One was about Yoshimura:
He'll see! Here I am holding my own guts in my hand now. That's something to hold. If Yoshimura should see me now, he'd probably figure he'd won, but it's not that way at all."
Katsumi was also full of feelings of ridicule mingled with happiness, and in the darkness he managed to force the numb muscles of his face into a smile.
He rolled over to ease the pain and blood came streaming out from the wound.
Then the thought that he was dying came to him.
"If I'm finished, it's a lousy way to go! There must be a better way to die . . . there must. But how? Never mind what it is. It's coming, it's closer. This is not the right answer at all, I know . . . killed like this!"
"Am I dying? I still don't know what I'm dying for. All that blood! I'll be done for if someone doesn't see me. If I can only get to that street, I'll be okay."
He looked toward the street at the far end of the alley and saw some people pass by laughing.
"Yeah! I've got to get there . . . got to . . ."
He put his hands down on the ground for support. His face contorted from the pain in his hands.
"God, I won't mind a losing finger or two!" He raised his face and looked again toward the street where it was brightly lighted.
"That's my first goal!"
Again his mind began to ponder: "Why, why am I here in this alley? Because of Ryoji, Tezuka, Akiko—all of them together? They're in it, but besides, there's something in me that dragged me into this. But what? What am I looking for? Ryoji, Akiko, and Tezuka—they're just a start to it. This was a clumsy way—I had to get hurt—but I must be getting closer. I'll still win over it! But maybe this is a dream, all a terrible dream! No! No! I've done just exactly what I wanted to do. I stuck to my ideal, my way. The answer or 'the conclusion'—Yoshimura's word—isn't here, but I can almost see it, far away . . . ."
Covering the wound with his left hand, clearing the way with his crippled right, he crawled inch by inch along the alley toward the street.
THE YACHT AND THE BOY
THE YACHT AND THE BOY
(Yotto to Shōnen)
Solitude, récif, étoile
A n'importe ce qui valut
Le blanc souci de notre toile.
—Mallarmé
After the race around Oshima island on Mr. and Mrs. Higgins's yacht, the boy somehow knew that one day he would have a yacht of his own, no matter how small.
The boy's hazy premonition came true.
The scene the boy had witnessed the first night of the race had played on his emotions, bringing a feeling new to his experience.
What he had witnessed on the second night of the race, while on watch when the boat rounded the island and headed to the goal, had disturbed him even more, making him shiver at the thought of the unknown world's sweet-sadness that had suddenly broken upon him with awing severity and force. The boy had felt a strange rapture possess him as he gazed across the surface of the sea and up at the vast starlit sky. From that time on he was troubled by a sense of loneliness and desire swirling within him but which he could not fully comprehend.
He ran back to his home that night, declining Mr. Higgins's invitation to a party at his home to drink in celebration of the day's victory. Now not a moment was to be lost—the boy wanted to be alone in the quiet of his own home.
That night in bed the boy recalled the two moving scenes he had seen aboard the boat. The pleasant, thrilling feeling assaulted him again.
"What's the race? What's victory? They're nothing to what I saw. I've been left behind—I've been cheated!"
The boy couldn't sleep—his eyes stayed wide open in the darkness. He saw the scenes in succession: one while they were becalmed and the other near the goal. Their images pressed hard against him. Trying feverishly to get rid of the illusions, he tossed about in his bed. But he could not clear his mind, which was attracted to a bittersweet agony he did not understand; yet another self was possessed by anger and impatience. The boy could not tell what sentiment this was.
It might have been indignation towards unseen brutality that had been tormenting the boy, assaulting him with a sharp and thrilling blow against his sex impulses.
What the boy had gained during the great race was not the experience of a glorious challenge, the kind a yatchtsman usually would boast of; it was, instead, a new strange agony that he had experienced while at sea.
Tossing about on the bed, the boy cried out all of a sudden:
"Yes, that's it!"
Thrusting aside the quilt, he suddenly got up.
"I'll get a yacht of my own—even if it's just a small one! I'll bu
y one for myself! And aboard it I'll do just what they did!" he said firm in his decision.
The idea relaxed and satisfied him, and he went back to sleep and to dream. He imagined his yacht scudding across dark waters among the rocks of Sashikiji near Oshima Island; he saw the beautiful white limbs he had glimpsed in the cabin aboard the yacht. The dream changed and he was lying in the light of the moon on the deck of his own small white yacht, a cross between a snipe and a sea horse, guiding the rudder with his toes. The moon became warm sunshine which reminded him of his mother's breast—his mother who had died when he was a child. He was trying desperately to reach for her like a boy that was lost in the night. Thirsting, he clung to the boat—to his mother—to an image that resembled Mrs. Higgins. With a feeling of shame his dream ended there, and he slept peacefully after that. The strain and fatigue of the race were over. The rustle of sails was replaced by the surging sound of the waves on the shore.
It was a Saturday night in May. The south wind was blowing particularly strong, the loudspeakers on the shore gave the signal for all on the boats to synchronize their watches. At the same time they gave warning, both in Japanese and English, that a 12-meter-per-second wind was blowing and was likely to blow up even stronger.
The warning could hardly be heard on board because the noise of booms and stays flapping in the wind and of the waves beating against the sides of the boats almost drowned all other sound. All the crews felt the special excitement prior to the start of a race. But feelings were made more intense by the knowledge of a storm at sea, the signs of which were obvious from the flapping sails and stretched stays. The crews were rather anxious but they grinned at each other when they had to grab on to the nearest firm object each time their boats were jolted by the dark waters of the angry sea.
At such moments the boy experienced an intense awareness of wind and water against his tense, strained body. He tried to pierce the distant darkness with his eyes, but he could only see the stars in the sky.
As the yacht began to make its way to the starting line, he could pick up snatches of words from the loudspeakers: ". . . speed . . . wind . . . 12 meters . . . second . . ." He repeated the words to himself. And then ". . . stronger . . ." The wind would be stronger.
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