Snakes and Earrings

by Hitomi Kanehara

  "If you report him missing, Ama might get caught by the police. If he found out the police were looking for him and he's on the run, he might have a better chance of getting away if we pretend we don't know anything about him."

  "But I'm worried about him. It hurts not to know where he is, what he's doing and what he's thinking. I know that Ama wouldn't try to run away on his own. He would have said something to me. He would have wanted to take me with him."

  "Okay then. Let's go."

  Shiba-san closed the store and we headed to the police station. Shiba-san filed a missing person's report and handed the policeman a photograph of Ama with his top off.

  "I didn't know you had his photograph," I said.

  "Huh? Oh, yeah, I took it when I did his dragon."

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  "Mr. Kazunori Amada...," said the policeman, looking at the form. And that was the first time I'd ever heard Ama's real name.

  It wasn't Amadeus after all, I thought. I told myself I'd give him a hard time about that as soon as I could see him again, and the very thought

  brought tears to my eyes. At first, just a little. Then in floods that I couldn't stop. I felt completely calm, and yet the tears kept pouring out.

  "You okay?" asked Shiba-san, stroking my hair. But I couldn't stop myself crying, and I walked to the entrance of the police station and flopped down on a bench. Why? Why did he disappear so suddenly? I bent over and cried out loud.

  A little while later Shiba-san came over, having finished all the paperwork. My vision was still blurry, and still I couldn't stop my tears. I felt like a child as I wiped them on my coat sleeve.

  Shiba-san and I took a taxi back to Ama's place.

  "Ama?" I called out from the door, but there was no response. Shiba-san stroked my head from behind me, and wiped my tears when they came pouring out again. Once inside, I sat on the wooden floor, and cried again. Shiba-san sat on the bed and watched me as I kept on crying. "Why?

  Why!" I screamed, and punched the floor. The ring Shiba-san had given me made a

  dull thud on the wood of the floor, and for some reason the sound brought more tears to on the wood of the floor, and for some reason the sound brought more tears to my eyes. Why?

  Why did he leave me all alone? Once my tears stopped, I 70

  could feel the anger building inside me. I clenched my teeth, until my jaw began to hurt and I heard something crack in the back of my mouth. I felt around my mouth with my tongue and found I'd chipped a tooth with a cavity. I crushed the splinter between my teeth and swallowed it. Become a part of me, I thought. Become my flesh and blood. Because I wanted everything to become a part of me. Because I so wanted Ama to melt into me. He loved me and I would rather have him become one with me than disappear from my life. Then I'd never have to be away from him ever again. He said I was important to him. So why did he leave me? How could he leave me?

  The silence of the room was shattered with a wail of pain coming from deep within me. I opened the jewelry box I shared with Ama and took out a tongue stud. I'd stretched the hole to a 2g only yesterday, and there was no way it would stretch further. But I took out a short square stud—the Og milestone—and saw the color drain from Shiba-san's face as he suddenly understood what I was going to do.

  "Is that a 0? You were wearing a 4 only yesterday."

  I didn't turn around to acknowledge Shiba-san's words.

  Instead I faced the mirror, took out the 2g stud and began to force in the Og stud. When it was halfway in, a sharp pain shot through me, but instead of stopping, I pushed the stud all the way in. Shiba-san shot his hand out, to try to take it off me, but it was already too late. The stud was embedded firmly in my tongue. "What the hell are you doing?" Shiba-san opened my mouth and looked into it with a frown on his face.

  "Stick out your tongue."

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  I did as I was told, and blood trickled down my tongue and dripped onto the floor, along with the tears that were rolling off my cheeks. "Take it out."

  When I shook my head, his face fell. "I told you not to overdo it," he said, and held me tight in his arms.

  It was the first time he'd ever held me. Not knowing what to do, I just sat there in his arms, swallowing the blood that was streaming out of my tongue.

  "I'm going to split it after I put in a OOg," I said. My words were slurred and sloppy, like Ama's smile.

  "Okay. Okay."

  I realized my tears had stopped. I wondered what Ama would say when he saw the Og stud in my tongue. I was sure he would smile and be happy for me. He would say "Not long to go now."

  I drank beer and cried and cried and waited for Ama.

  Shiba-san was looking at me the entire time but didn't say anything. Eventually night came. The room grew cold and I began to shiver. Without saying anything, Shiba- san turned on the heater and put a blanket over my shoulder as I sat there without moving. My tongue had stopped bleeding, but the tears continued to come and go. My feelings moved back and forth between sadness and anger. Eventually the clock struck seven—the time Ama usually came home from work. I looked up at the clock every ten seconds and kept opening and shutting my cell phone. I called Ama's phone a few times, but all I got each time was the voice mail.

  "You know what store Ama works at?"

  "You don't?" said Shiba-san, looking surprised.

  He was right. Ama and I knew nothing about each other.

  "No, I don't."

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  "It's a secondhand clothing store. You guys really don't know anything about each other, do you? So you haven't contacted them yet?" "No."

  Shiba-san flipped open his mobile and clicked through his address book.

  "It's me. I'm calling about Ama. . . Yeah. Just didn't come into work, huh?. . Yeah. He hasn't come home Don't know yet . . . Yeah. I'll contact you as soon as I know something."

  It was obvious that nobody at the store knew anything.

  Shiba-san hung up and sighed.

  "The guy said that he left work at the usual time yesterday, but he didn't come in today. Didn't call in sick or anything. The guy was pissed off. Said he tried calling Ama's cell but couldn't get through. I know the owner of the store. Actually, he hired Ama as a favor to me."

  I knew nothing about Ama. Until yesterday, I'd thought that all I needed to know about Ama was what I saw with my own eyes. But now I realized I was blind because that's all I looked for. Why hadn't I asked his name or asked about his family?

  "Doesn't Ama have any family?"

  "I'm not sure. I think he has at least one parent. I think I remember him talking about his dad."

  "Right," I muttered and once again began to cry.

  "Let's go get something to eat. I'm starving."

  As soon as Shiba-san said that, I started to cry again. It reminded me of how I would fill myself up on beer, and how Ama would always go on about how he was starving then drag me out to get something to eat.

  "I'll stay here. But you should go, Shiba-san."

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  Shiba-san said nothing. He just walked over to the kitchen and began rummaging through the contents of the fridge. "All you've got is alcohol," he said, then took out a pack of salted squid. At that moment, Shiba-san's phone rang.

  "It's ringing," I said. My voice much louder than I'd expected. My heart beat so hard I felt sick. I put a hand against my chest, picked up the phone with the other hand, and threw it to Shiba-san. He caught it and answered it.

  "Hello?. . . Yes . . . Ah, yes. I understand. We'll head over straightaway."

  When Shiba-san got off the phone, he put a firm hand on my shoulder and stared into my eyes.

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  "They found a body in Yokosuka. It might not be Ama, but the body has a dragon tattoo on it. They want us to go over to the morgue to identify the body." "Right."

  Ama was dead. The Ama I saw at the morgue was no longer a human being but just a body. The person named Ama no longer existed. I almost fainted when I saw the photographs of how they'd found
him. A weblike pattern was carved into his chest with a knife, and he had cigarette burns all over his body.

  All his nails had been pulled off, and something that looked like an incense stick was sticking out of the tip of his penis. His short hair had been torn out in places, and his scalp was all ripped and bloody. Someone had put him through hell before they killed him. This person who was mine, tortured and killed by a total stranger. I'd never experienced so much pain and despair as I did at that moment right then.

  Ama's body was taken away for an autopsy—to be cut up even more—and my tired mind couldn't even feel any anger.

  My last words to Ama had been "Take care!" I had shouted them to him without even turning around as my mind had been on my plans to visit Shiba-san. Shiba-san lent me his hand each time I staggered, and he caught me when I collapsed to my knees at the mortuary.

  I had been right. There was no light in my future.

  "Pull yourself together, Lui."

  "I can't."

  "At least eat something."

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  "I can't.": ,

  "Then at least try to get some sleep." "Can't."

  After they found Ama's body, I had gone to stay with Shiba-san for a while, and we had this same conversation many times.

  Then he'd tut and say, "Can't even have a normal conversation."

  The autopsy revealed that Ama had been strangled, but he'd still been alive through all the horrific mutilation.

  I didn't give a shit about those kinds of details, though. I just wanted them to find out who'd done it. Surely there must be clues. At first I could only imagine that it was friends of the guy from that night in Shinjuku, but after I saw the body I somehow changed my mind. It just seemed too extreme, not like the work of some low-level mob guy at all. No gangster would risk leaving the evidence of so many cigarette burns or push an incense stick up his penis.

  Whoever it was, I wished they'd thrown the body into Tokyo Bay. At least that way it might never have been found and I could have gone on believing that he was still alive somewhere.

  There was no doubt that Ama had killed the guy. But now that both the victim and perpetrator were dead, the incident had been rendered meaningless.

  I went to Ama's funeral. Ama's father had a kind face and he welcomed me. It didn't seem to bother him at all that my blond hair was totally out of place for the occasion and horribly 105

  obvious against my black suit. At the crematorium they opened the lid of the coffin partway to show Ama's face, but I couldn't look in. I didn't want to say goodbye. I wanted to believe that the Ama I had seen at the morgue was still alive, and that the person inside the coffin was someone else. All I could do was escape from reality, but every time I tried to escape from the pain, that same pain told me that I had probably been falling in love with him.

  "When will the murderer be caught?" I asked the police after the funeral.

  "We are doing what we can."

  "And what are you doing exactly?"

  "Lui, stop it," said Shiba-san, holding me back. What were they doing at the funeral when they couldn't even catch the murderer? I couldn't hold back my anger.

  "What? You think I'm out of line? That I'm being out of place by telling you to do your job? You're just going to let it go, though, aren't you? You think you can cut corners in your work because Ama killed someone. You can all go to hell. Make everyone happy."

  "That's enough, Lui. You're being hysterical."

  I collapsed onto the ground and broke down in tears. Screw you. Go to hell, you fuckers. I wish I had a greater vocabulary to fully express the extent of my pain and ha¬tred. But I don't. I'm just pathetic. That's all I am.

  Five days had passed since Ama died, but still they hadn't found the killer. During that time I hadn't left the house once since coming out of the hospital that Shiba-san had taken me to, so Shiba-san asked me to come work with him at the store.

  Sometimes he would try to have sex with me, but he couldn't 106

  manage it, as I would remain ex¬pressionless even when he strangled me. I wanted him to just go ahead and kill me. If I'd actually told him so, he probably would have done it gladly. But I never did. I didn't know if that was because it was too much trouble, because I still had the desire to live, or because I wanted to believe that Ama was still alive. In fact, the only thing I did know was that I was still alive. I was living a boring existence without Ama. A monotonous, sexless life. And to make matters worse, I'd also stopped eating altogether and had gone from 42

  kilograms to only 34 kilograms in just six months. I felt there was no point in eating when all we do is just shit it out anyway.

  Though I did actually still need to go to the bathroom, even though I was con¬suming nothing but alcohol. That's due to what they call fecal impaction, apparently, where there's pretty much al¬ways a kind of reserve of shit in your system. That's what the doctor told me anyway. He also told me very kindly that I'd die if I kept on losing weight the way I had been. He recommended that I stay at the hospital, but Shiba- san declined.

  I couldn't understand why he bothered to take care of a girl he couldn't even fuck.

  "Lui, can you organize the stuff on this rack."

  I did as I was told and picked up some bags of earrings I had just priced and headed toward the rack. Shiba- san was cleaning the store from corner to corner. Trying to blow the cobwebs away and start anew, I thought. It reminded me that the year was coming to an end. That the weather was getting colder. That Christmas was just around the corner. In fact, come to think of it, maybe Shiba-san was just following the New Year cleaning tradition.

  "Shiba-san."

  "Don't you think it's about time you dropped the san ?"

  I wondered if that meant he thought we were an item.

  "My names Kizuki Shibata."

  10

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  I'd already known this, as I'd seen the nameplate outside his apartment.

  "Sounds like a girl's name, doesn't it, 'Kizuki.' I don't know why, but everyone calls me Shiba." "What should I call you?"

  "Kizuki is fine."

  Ama and I had never had a conversation like this. A conversation like those of normal couples. Perhaps that was why I had so many regrets and I couldn't let him go. I regretted not having talked about normal things with him; about family, the past, names, ages, and so on. At the funeral, I learned for the first time that he was eighteen years old. I only found out that I'd been going out with a guy younger than me for the first time in my life after he'd died. I was nineteen, so that made me a year older than him. It was something normal couples would have talked about the first day they met.

  "Kizuki."

  It felt strange calling him that, but I decided I would anyway.

  "What is it?"

  "This rack's already full. I can't put any more on it."

  "Just put them anywhere. Put them on the next rack over if you like. Or just stuff them in there."

  I pushed the bags of earrings into the rack. It was a really tight squeeze but the bags somehow fit in. Watching the earrings made me think of Ama. After he'd died, I couldn't even be bothered to stretch my tongue hole any further, even though the pain had subsided a while ago. Perhaps my tongue hole had no meaning now there wasn't anyone to praise me for it. Perhaps I'd been trying to get a forked tongue just to share the same feeling with Ama. If I stretched the hole by one more gauge, I would reach OOg. That was the point where Ama had

  split his tongue. But my strong desire had suddenly fizzled out 108

  just a step away from the finish line. After all, what was the point of a forked tongue now I had lost Ama and all interest? I returned to the counter, sat down on a pipe chair, and stared into space. I didn't feel like doing anything.

  "Lui, mind if I ask you what your name is?"

  "You want to know?"

  "That's why I'm asking you."

  "Its Lui for Louis Vuitron."

  "No, your real name."

  "Lui Nakazawa."<
br />
  "So Lui is your real name. How about family? Do you have any parents?"

  "People always assume I'm an orphan, but yes, I do have parents. They live in Saitama."

  "Really. I didn't expect that. I guess I'll have to go introduce myself sometime."

  I wondered why people always took me for an orphan. In reality, both my parents were alive, and there was no trouble in our family. Shiba-san carried on dusting the racks, and I just spent the day watching him.

  The next day I didn't go to Desire. Instead I went to the police station. They had called in the morning to say they had come across some new information. Shiba-san had to go and open the store, so I decided to go by myself. I put on some makeup and a dress that Ama had liked, with a cardigan and coat over it to keep out the cold.

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  "All the cigarette burns were from Marlboro Menthols," said the policeman, "and we're having the saliva analyzed. Also, the incense stick that was inserted into his penis. It's a brand called Ecstasy. Imported from the U.S. Musk."

  So fucking what? What good is that information to anyone, I thought, the anger inside me welling up even more.

  Ama, Shiba-san, Maki, me; we all smoked Marlboro Menthols. It didn't mean anything.

  "You can buy incense anywhere," I said abruptly.

  "Well, yes. But this one is only sold in the Kanto region.

  There's um . . . something else we wanted to ask you today too."

  I noticed a nervous flicker in his face.

  "Do you know if Mr. Amada had any bisexual tendencies?"

  That was it. My anger hit the roof. I was well aware he meant no offense, but I still wanted to drill the ring on my index finger—the one Shiba-san had given me—right into his face.

  "Why do you ask? Was Ama raped?"

  "The autopsy did indicate that, yes."

  I took a deep breath and traced back my memory. Ama didn't have any abnormal sexual tendencies. We had sex almost every day, but it was straightforward to the point where I was starting to lose interest in it. He couldn't have been bisexual. It made me sick to even think he'd been raped by another guy.