As I warmed it I studied her profile. She looked in that soft light like a young bird, eyelids so thin that every movement was visible. Either she was awake, or asleep and dreaming.
Then I saw the little mouth forming an impatient pout as with one hand she removed mine and, at the same time, as if to show me my business, opened her legs.
I lay there, my own legs closed, my hands in my lap, and decided to sleep. But the minutes passed and sleep, naturally enough, did not come. I listened to the steady breathing beside me. Had she really managed to drop off, I wondered, feeling a small kind of fury.
I, of course, failed to fall asleep at all. So, instead, I thought about why I couldn't close my eyes. It was not because I was aroused, I knew; not even that I was repelled, I guessed: merely that she was there, next to me. The fact of her presence.
And the fact of mine. What, I wondered, did she think about me? That I didn't attract was evident, but perhaps in her line of work few did. Did she find me too large, too white, too logical? What could she be thinking?—if she was thinking at all.
I turned again, head on hand, and stared at her in the light of the night lamp. What was going on up there, I asked myself.
Having thus taken an interest in her as a person—not as a Japanese, nor as a whore, nor even as a girl—I found that we eventually came to make quite satisfactory love.
In the morning she glowered and gave me her card. Like its owner, it had rounded corners. Her name was printed on it: Sonoko Suzuki—a very common name.
And over breakfast as the new sun slid across the mats she allowed herself a small smile. It was not, of course, the smile of a woman fulfilled by sexual attention. I don't think that kind of smile even exists, except in bad books and worse films. Nor was it the blowzy smile of the girl who has found a friend—we were not friends and were anxious, once the rice was down, to part.
No, it was the disinterested smile of the craftsman—the carpenter who has turned a tight joint, the potter who has thrown yet another good pot. It was the quietly self-congratulatory smile of the person who has done well and knows it.
What I had not until this moment understood was that Sonoko Suzuki really wanted to be a proper geisha.
Kikuo Kikuyama
Small, fat, wearing thick-lensed glasses, he often lay on the bench in the corridor. For this he was criticized. Lying down like that, they said, taking up room, making a nuisance of himself. The others wanted to occupy the bench themselves because from there one had a clear view of whoever was going into the men's room. And it wasn't as though he even paid proper attention, they complained. He didn't, never once glanced. Just lay there all fat and pale with his eyes closed.
The others used the bench properly, always paid a lot of attention. Did you see that construction worker? one would ask: He was, I'm not lying, that big. Stood right beside him when he pissed. Honto ni oishi so datta no y o, looked good enough to eat. Well, I scampered right back here and struck a pose, but he walked right past and out.
Kikuyama did nothing like this, merely got in the way. Initially the others used to talk to him: Hi there, mother. You here yesterday? Oh, you weren't? Well, it was marvelous—stud students all over the place. I had three of them, I'm telling you—three!
But Kikuyama did not respond properly. He did not laugh or look jealous. He looked at them seriously and said: Ah, so desu ka? He was just no fun to talk to.
Nor did he often go and watch the movie. While the others were moving to and fro, staring at the naked giants on the screen, then running out to cruise around the Coke machine in the corner or down the corridor to the gents', he lay on the bench and stared at the ceiling.
Very occasionally he would venture in. Often he would sit next to someone. Just sit. The others were scandalized: And he just sits there! Really, I ask you, what kind of a place does he think this is? I've never once seen him make a proper pass. And if he sits long enough he falls asleep.
But at least it was better for him to doze off inside amid the smackings and slurpings on the sound track than to sprawl on the bench out there in the hallway. That way he caused less trouble.
- And it isn't as though he's just an occasional either, said one: He seems to come here every day. At least, every time I get here he's already around.
Nonetheless, the others gradually got used to Kikuyama's daily presence. He never tried to cut in when someone was cruising a likely trucker, and he never trailed along when a reluctant country youth was dragged off to the ladies'. He was simply there, part of the furniture, something one learned to ignore.
That is, until an equally fat and bossy sister in horn rims and turtleneck took to coming. He knew Kikuyama and called him sensei. This title of respect, overheard by the others, piqued curiosity, a curiosity soon satisfied.
- What, you never saw Kikuyama sensei? Still, what can you expect from a bunch of low-class okama-tachi like you. I suck cock as well as the rest, but there is such a thing as style. You wouldn't know anything about that, of course.
This tough sister—Kuro-chan, Blackie by name—surveyed the assembled few and then patiently, like a kindergarten teacher with backward pupils, explained. Madame Kikuko here was an artist, a star, the most promising of the young hopefuls in the world of Nihon buyo, Japanese classical dance.
- Got her black belt yet? asked Midori-chan, Miss Green, the sassiest of the group.
Blackie turned in a flash: You stupid faggot! That's just the way a common little know-nothing like you would talk. You've no understanding or respect for the finer things.
Then, after a short conference with Madame Kikuko and some hunting about in a wallet: Hora! Look here!
He flourished a studio polaroid of a beautiful young girl standing poised in a lilac kimono with a spray of wisteria in her hand, her body curved, grace and elegance in the lithe line, her face turned, the black eyes alive with intelligence. It was a pose from the classical dance Fuji Musume.
The others, now cowed, oohed their appreciation.
- Oh, she is lovely, murmured Miss Green.
- You bet, snapped Blackie, who then sat down beside Kikuyama and began a discussion of choreographic techniques which soon drove the others away.
They remembered, however. This changed the atmosphere. Though obviously they still went on tracking down the half-reluctant tobishoku; though they still said: Oh, what a shame, it was really enormous, I just didn't know what to do, too bad you weren't here (after carefully ascertaining that indeed you weren't); though life continued as usual, there was a difference. This was because they had an artist in their midst.
And a sick one at that. What was the matter—the reason for all this lying on the bench? Well, no one knew. The lungs, perhaps, or the liver, or ... dared one say it: love.
There was the answer: the lovely Kikuko, doomed to live forever inside the ugly Kikuo, had nonetheless found Him, anohito, the true Mr. Right—perhaps a virile laborer, a muscular trucker, or a schoolboy sports star, who had seen beneath the unprepossessing exterior and glimpsed her underlying beauty. And there she sat, enchanted maiden on a rock, daily awaiting his return.
Since all of them were waiting for just this sort of thing, and since all were daily disappointed, it was natural they should find this explanation and welcome it. They took to calling this short, recumbent, unattractive man the Sleeping Beauty and wondering about the chances of Prince Charming's ever reappearing. Not likely, they agreed, but they all found his devotion thrilling.
He blinked his eyes, when he was not asleep, and enjoyed this regard, this new respect. When he arrived, sighing with weariness, the two queens already on their corridor thrones would spring to their feet to allow Madame Kikuko to rest. Later, on their way to and from likely prospects in the mens' room, they would tiptoe past lest they awaken the poor sick girl.
And very ill Kikuyama was. He began coughing, a loud, rattling sound which seemed much too large for that fat little body. Then the gagging. And the spitting. No one he now sat near i
n the peopled dark stayed long. So he stopped going in to watch the film. He stayed in the corridor.
The story was (details courtesy of Blackie) that, some time ago, he found he could no longer run through Fuji Musume, let alone Dojoji, and so he gave up going to the keiko-ba, the practice room. He then took to coming here instead, to the Shinjuku Basement Meigaza, that other theater of illusion, and here he now lay on the bench, dying.
The others brought him tea, coffee, chocolates, noodles, and he would smile his wan smile and sip or crunch, then once again lie down, pulling his coat over him like a coverlet. At first there had been some smart talk about Tsubaki Hime, the Camellia Princess, La Traviata herself. Now, however, such levity was suppressed.
- Does the management know? I once asked them.
- About us faggots? But, of course, how else could this flea-pit make any money?
- No, do they know that he's dying?
- Well, how could they? They never come down here to check up on us. They know better. Actually, he's happy, you know. He thinks that anohito is finally going to come back again and he'll be seeing him with his dying glance.
He did not, however, return. Kikuyama, I was told, was finally taken to the hospital. There it was discovered that weeks, months, in the damp basement had finally done him in. Coughing, gagging, the fat little man was carried off.
- And then, said Blackie, who had been there: Then the most marvelous thing happened. We took off his glasses and his face smoothed out and there before us lay Kikuko herself, looking so pretty, so like Sagi Musume—one of her favorites, you know—that I would have challenged any man, no matter how straight, not to have fallen right in love with her.
Blackie shed a tear: Oh, if only Kikuko had put all this behind her and devoted herself to her art, she might have become a great performer, a great teacher, even eventually a Living National Treasure, for all I know. But she didn't. She threw it all away ... for love.
And all day long no one sat on the bench, even though it provided a perfect view of the men's toilet and whoever was standing there and whatever he had and whatever state it was in.
No—the place was, for a time, holy. There, it seemed, hovered the beautiful, smiling, liberated spirit of this fat little man.
Keiko Matsunaga
Balancing my plastic tray—a double hamburger and a small Coke—I looked for a vacant table. There were none. There was, however, a young girl sitting alone at a table for two. I asked permission, which she gave with a nod, and sat, unwrapped my hamburger, opened my book.
She too was reading, an English textbook. Though I had noticed that she was pretty, the book discouraged any attempts at conversation.
Thus occupied, we read, sipped, munched for a time until she looked up at me and asked, in Japanese, what I was reading. I told her, then politely noted that she was studying English.
- Yes, I'm going abroad. To America.
- You'll certainly need it there, I said and waited.
But she did not try out her pronunciation on me. Instead, she said: I'm leaving this spring, so I should study harder than I am.
- You seem to be studying hard.
She smiled—she was very pretty indeed when she smiled: Not really. The fact is I want to leave Japan more than I want to go to America.
Since she was this direct, I too could be. Why, I wanted to know.
She looked at me as though gauging my character, as though trying to determine whether she could trust me. Having, apparently, decided, she said: Trouble with my parents.
She wanted to talk, though not about English, so I asked what kind of trouble.
It all came out at once, the way it sometimes does. She had been in love with a young man of whom her parents disapproved. They disapproved of him because he was of Korean ancestry though, like her, born in Japan. She had left home to go and live with him. But, this being Japan, with pressure from her parents, and his, from their schools, their friends—after a month they had parted. She never saw him again and that was now a whole season ago. So she wanted to leave Japan.
- Is America like that? she wanted to know.
- Yes. But there would be places for you both to go there. You could get married.
- Not here ... Is it true that a girl never forgets her first love?
- They say so. It isn't true only of girls, either. I've never forgotten mine.
She looked at me for a second, then said: I'm not a virgin any more. I loved him that much.
- Did that upset your parents?
- Yes, they're old-fashioned. They think a girl ought to be a virgin when she marries.
All of this had occurred within ten minutes of my sitting at her table. This happens occasionally. One is chosen for sudden confidences. There seems to be a compelling combination of difference and safety. But I had never experienced such revelations so swiftly. I, in turn, became suspicious.
- Going to America will solve no problems. He won't be there.
- I know. But it will solve one problem. I won't be here. You speak the language well but I wonder if you really know Japan. People talking about you, criticizing you, making you live the way everyone else does ... the gossip in this country!
- Yes. I realized long ago that if I were Japanese myself I wouldn't stay here. But I'm not and so none of this affects me. Foreigners are so different that the Japanese don't bother to gossip about them.
- I envy you that. If it were that way with me I wouldn't have to leave. But if I stay I'll have to get married to someone I don't even know, have his child, and then live with him till I die. I don't want that.
- You're brave, I said.
- I'm desperate, she said and smiled again, that lovely smile.
I regarded it with more suspicion. What was she after? Was I supposed to do something, make some kind of offer?
Suspicion is always vulgar, even when merited—like jealousy. I realized that and saw that the oddity of our meeting, our conversation, alone had aroused suspicions. I was no better than her parents.
- Is there anything I can do? I asked to open my thoughts, to rid myself of them.
This, however, made her suspicious: Like what? What could you do?
- I don't know. I have friends in America. Introduce you, perhaps, so you wouldn't have to be alone.
- No, I think I want to be alone for a while.
Then, with that pertinence which young girls often have: I'm only telling you this because I don't know you, because you're sympathetic, because I won't see you again.
- Did it hurt? I asked: I've always wondered about that. Does it hurt to lose your virginity? One hears all sorts of stories.
She thought, suspicions oddly laid at rest by my question, then: Yes and no. It hurts, but it's a different kind of pain. Maybe it's like having a child. My mother told me that that hurt but afterward she couldn't remember the ... well, the quality of the pain.
- Can you remember the quality of the pain?
- Not really. Anyway, it didn't last long.
- Then the pleasure?
- Yes, the pleasure, but that too was different.
There we sat amid our plastic debris, a young Japanese girl and an older foreign man. I was as frank as she was and before long we were telling each other intimate details. But it was all in the spirit of sharing knowledge, as though we were both already quite old, as if we knew that this single conversation was only for itself.
We sat there an hour or more and came to know, if not each other, at least our ideas of our selves. She approved of mine; I approved of hers. The conversation never became oppressive because it never became self-conscious. Neither was in any way investing in the other. Both were aware that it had no continuation.
As I listened, talked, I also saw how my awareness had been dulled by what I had taught myself to believe about the Japanese. None of my many generalizations about the people, necessary enough, I suppose, if I were to live here, would have allowed for this conversation. And it was the same with her: whate
ver general ideas she may have formed about the character of foreign men were not being upheld by me.
We were two strangers who, because of this, could reach out with a degree of honesty and trust. That she was Japanese, that I was not—slowly these facts and the ideas they habitually trailed after them faded away. We were simply two people talking.
The ending, however, was Japanese. She could not bring herself to simply smile, stand up, say goodbye—a possible "American" conclusion. Instead, on a paper napkin, she wrote her name, address, and telephone number. I responded with mine.
Then, each still holding on to a part of the other, we parted, conventionally enough, with my wishes for her safe and happy journey.
The napkin is here before me, which is why I know her name was Keiko Matsunaga. Somewhere in this vast city, or in some vast city over there, perhaps my name on a paper napkin also exists.
But I will not call her. And she will not call me. This too was understood. We have had our talk. Our next conversation would have been much less interesting because then "we" would have had a future, and when one has that, the present vanishes.
I see her now, existing as she existed then: securely in the present tense.
Hidetada Sato
The new delivery boy at the nandemoya, the no-matter-what store, the local emporium, was tall, nineteen or so, with a round face and cheeks as red as the apples grown in the northern province from which he came. His name was Sato, a name as common as apples themselves.
Surrounded by shelves piled with brushes and pots and towels and bottles of detergent, strainers for bean curd, sukiyaki pans, soap flakes, rubber gloves, and no-matter-what, I asked for the single object I couldn't locate, a pumice stone for rubbing the soles of my feet in the bath.
After a protracted search Sato came back with word that they had none.
- You're supposed to have no matter what, I said sternly.
- I'm very sorry, replied apple-cheeked Sato, redder than ever. Newly acquired Tokyo accent forgotten, his apology was in the broadest of Akita dialects.
Japanese Portraits: Pictures of Different People Page 14