69

by Ryu Murakami

  Mie Nagayama stared at me wide-eyed, so taken aback she forgot to blow the smoke out of her lungs.

  “Me?”

  “That’s right.”

  “The most beautiful girl in Sasebo?”

  “Right.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says the Northern High student council. It was unanimous.”

  She stared at me and Adama and Iwase in turn, then burst out laughing. Her laughter was loud enough to drown out Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony, which was booming over the speakers in Boulevard. She pointed at me and said, “What is this guy, nuts?”

  Adama started laughing, too, and said “Exactly” three times, and then Iwase joined in as well. I was pissed off but had little choice but to laugh along with them. The “Unfinished” Symphony was over before they all settled down.

  “You guys are a riot,” Mie Nagayama said when she’d got her breath back. There were tears in her eyes from laughing so hard. “All right, I’ll do it.”

  There’d been a change in the casting of the leading actress for my play, but at least the two finest specimens of talent and beauty in the English Drama Club had joined the festival staff; the foxy queen of the private Catholic girls’ school, who had a massive following of Greaser fans, had consented to appear in the opening act; the spaced-out Northern High alumnus had, for a measly two free tickets, agreed to lend his name as guarantor for the use of the Workers Hall; and the tickets had been beautifully printed in the Liberal Arts department of Hiroshima University.

  I never got tired of gazing at those tickets.

  Date: November 23 (Labor Thanksgiving Day)

  Time: 2:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m.

  Place: Sasebo Workers Hall

  Presented by IYAYA

  Rock ’n’ roll, independent film, drama, poetry readings, happenings, surprises, excitement and thrills... all at

  THE MORNING WOOD FESTIVAL

  The words were printed in bold type over a picture of a girl putting on lipstick and a volcano erupting inside an erect penis. Admission was two hundred yen. Through members of Vajra, the newspaper club, the English Drama Club, most of the athletic teams, Shirokushi’s gang of juvenile delinquents, and various rock bands, the tickets were distributed not only at Northern High but at all the schools in the area. Iyaya was raking it in every day. I felt as if I was at the center of the world.

  But just as Rockefeller and Carnegie aroused the ill will of the poor, I was to become a target for gangs from other schools.

  LED ZEPPELIN

  Walking through the foreigners’ bar district made your heart beat faster. You realized how indispensable places like this were to the world. The Black Rose was across from a park that was famous for the crowds of homosexuals that appeared there every evening. Black velvet curtains hung over the entrance to the bar, bringing perpetual night to the interior. Sometimes, when the sailors suddenly came ashore at an odd hour of the day, you could hear the bright chatter of hostesses inside it even before noon.

  I led Adama in through the back door. The owner, naked from the waist up, sat in the kitchen playing liar’s dice with a waiter whose bow tie dangled loose.

  “Excuse us. We’re with the band,” I said as we passed through the room.

  “You kids from Northern High?” The owner raised his head. He had a cherry-blossom tattoo on his shoulder—no color, just the outline of a single flower in black.

  “Yes,” I said. Adama was frowning. He wasn’t comfortable in places like this.

  “Still a teacher there named Sasayama?”

  Sasayama was a P.E. instructor who’d been with the secret police during the war. He was over fifty and had lost some of his fire by now, but in his younger days he’d been known to crack students’ skulls open with a wooden sword. My father was always saying that, what with the turmoil and the shortage of men after the war, all sorts of crazy bastards had become teachers; Sasayama was definitely one of them.

  When I nodded, the owner said, “How’s he doin? Give him my regards, willya?” before dropping his dice in the cup and shaking it. What a creep, I muttered to myself, looking at the unfinished tattoo. A guy who didn’t even have the balls to get it colored in was the lowest of the low. Maybe he’d had some sort of run-in with Sasayama—got his head cracked open, probably. I always thought about Japan losing the war, and how pathetic our so-called fighting spirit was, when I ran into people like this.

  They had no pride.

  We went into the bar. Adama scowled even more. The bar smelled of America, which seemed to turn him off. The real America didn’t smell like that, of course, but the houses navy groupies lived in and the hair of half-American kids and the PX at the base did. It was the smell of greasy fat. I didn’t mind it. To me it just smelled of nutrition.

  Coelacanth was playing the Spencer Davis Group’s “Gimme Some Lovin’” without a drummer. Fuku-chan, the bassist, was doing the vocals, while Keiji on guitar and Shirai on the organ had their eyes closed and were whipping their hair around and sticking out their tongues, imagining themselves as Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper. Shirai only knew three chords. In those days that’s all you needed to know to be a rock musician. They waved me over, and I got up on the stage. Adama, still scowling, sat down at the counter, where middle-aged hostesses dressed only in slips were slurping up bowls of noodles. Fuku-chan gestured at the drum set with his chin. He always made a mess of the lyrics when he sang. Whenever he forgot the words, he’d just keep repeating “Don’tcha know, don’tcha know, don’tcha know.” In those days all it took to be a rock singer was the ability to shout “Don’tcha know.”

  There was one customer, a sailor still in his teens who only had to cry “Lassie!” to convince me that he was actually Little Timmy. He was drinking straight from a quart bottle of beer and was desperately trying to get his hand up the slit in the Chinese dress of the hostess next to him.

  “Fruits okay? Fruits okay?” said the woman, who appeared to be at least in her early sixties, and Timmy, suspecting nothing, nodded cheerfully and said, “Sure.” With this, a familiar scene began to unfold. A metal plate loaded with bits of pineapple, mandarin orange, and peach, fresh from the can and adorned with a recycled sprig of parsley, arrived; Timmy, shocked at the price, broke his beer bottle on the edge of the table; the owner came dashing out and called the MPs; and soon poor Timmy, his pockets empty, was being bundled into a jeep.

  Throughout it all, Coelacanth continued playing and Fuku-chan continued singing

  “Don’tcha know, don’tcha know.” When the song was finished, he said

  “Thank you, thank you,” into the mike, though by then his audience of one was gone.

  “Did you arrange things?” I asked him.

  We planned to borrow the amps and mikes for the Morning Wood Festival from Black Rose. To that end, Coelacanth was performing at the bar all afternoon for the nominal fee of a bowl of noodles and a plate of pork dumplings each.

  Fuku-chan shook his head. “I haven’t talked to the owner yet.”

  The hostesses at the counter were teasing Adama.

  “You’re gorgeous.”

  “Have a beer. It’s on me.”

  “You got a girlfriend?”

  “Sure he does. A doll like him?”

  “Do you make out with her?”

  “You better wear a johnny or you’ll end up with a kid.”

  “Aren’t you hungry?”

  “You can have half my noodles.”

  “Want me to order you some stew?”

  To these women, who’d drifted here from towns near and far to bleach their hair and greet old age steeped in the smell of America, Adama must have looked as if a halo were hanging over his head. If he’d started a new religious cult, no doubt they’d have all become believers on the spot. But Adama, who was born and raised among stacks of good, honest coal, was incapable of understanding these rough diamonds who’d contributed so much behind the scenes to Japan’s postwar economy. He was sitting there twitching as
one wrinkled hand after another came to rest on his thigh.

  I turned to a group of three hostesses.

  “Look, I wonder if you could try asking the manager if he’d let us use his amps on November 23. It’s a holiday anyway,” I said. “Yamada here, we call him the Alain Delon of Northern High. If you help us out on this, I could lend him to you for two or three days.”

  “He looks more like Gary Cooper than Alain Delon.”

  “What do you mean, you’ll lend him to us?”

  “You mean we can take him out on dates and everything?”

  “Maybe I’ll introduce him to my daughter. If she had a nice-looking kid like this around, she’d probably drop that black GI she’s hanging out with. She’s already had five abortions. I’m worried about her health.”

  Adama didn’t find this funny. In fact, he got so thoroughly pissed off that he jumped up and ran out of the place. I hurriedly asked Fuku-chan to take care of the amps thing and ran out after him.

  “Can’t trust you, man. You’re so fucking selfish you can’t think about anyone else. You’re going to lend me to those hags? You go around talking shit like that, you think I’m not gonna get pissed off?”

  I said I was sorry thirteen times, but Adama still wouldn’t forgive me.

  “You don’t have to get so angry. It was just a joke.”

  “Joke, my ass. I got your number now, man. You’d do anything to get what you want.”

  “Yeah, but listen, Adama, maybe it’s because there’s people like me that the human race has progressed this far.”

  “Don’t give me that bullshit.”

  He was right, it was bullshit. And Adama knew me too well to fall for it.

  “Look. Those women sold their bodies to get through the bad times right after the war. They sacrificed themselves for us. For the twenty-first century.”

  “That’s got nothin’ to do with it.”

  Right again. It was completely beside the point.

  “Iwase-san came to our classroom and asked us to give you this letter.”

  It was in church—the church Ann-Margret had suggested we use to rehearse the play in—that Kazuko Matsui, lovelier than the Virgin Mary who stood there smiling down on us, said this. The church was on a hill above the station; it was the one you always see in picture postcards of Sasebo. Ann-Margret had apparently been going there every Sunday since she was a little girl. Maybe that explained her enormous boobs. Our Ann-Margret’s boobs were in no way inferior to the real Ann-Margret’s: they were simply magnificent. I doubt if it was true, but a kid I knew whose family ran a cattle farm and who’d once managed to sneak a look during the girls’ medical checkup claimed that Sato’s tits were bigger that those of the cows on his farm. Dear God, please give me big jugs—maybe she’d said a little prayer like this every Sunday of her life.

  In spite of the solemn atmosphere of the church, the rehearsals proceeded smoothly enough because the priest, Father Saburo, was keen on the dramatic arts. The only problem was that, having been in a theater group for six months after graduating, he insisted on interfering with the way I was directing the play. Ann-Margret, for example, acted as if she were doing Shakespeare, throwing her arms wide and declaiming at the top of her lungs, which I thought was overdone and unnatural; but he praised her for it. He also went so far as to try to meddle with the script.

  It was then, when I left that baby boy

  in the snow at the side of the road,

  that I realized what's really important:

  risking your life for the right to say no.

  Only by laying your life on the line

  can you create words

  worth risking your life to create.

  “What does it mean?” he said. “Don’t you think that part about the baby is a bit strong? Can’t we change it?”

  What an asshole, I thought. How could it mean anything? All I’d done was take a bunch of lines from different novels and plays and string them together at random.

  When I saw Lady Jane, though, my irritation vanished. From a seat where each Sunday devout Christians bowed their heads to God, Jane gazed intently at Ann-Margret and me going through our lines on the dais near the altar. She put her elbow on the bible-rack and rested her cheek on her hand. The light of the evening sun poured through the stained-glass windows and illuminated her profile; it was like an Impressionist painting. Just looking at her gave me a deep sense of well-being. It was the same sort of happiness I’d experienced when I was at elementary school and had just bought the latest issue of Boys' Comics and sat down in a pool of sunlight, licking a popsicle, to read the next installment of “The Winning Pitch.”

  I was thinking how perfect this would be if it weren’t for the priest when I glanced at Adama, who was reading Iwase’s letter. He looked depressed.

  Dear Ken-san and Adama,

  I’m pulling out of lyaya. I’m sorry. It's been fun and exciting preparing for the festival with both of you, but I want to do my own thing, and I can't do that as long as I’m doing Ken-san's thing. I know you two can do amazing stuff together. My thing may not be much, but at least it's mine and I want to do it.

  That’s what the letter said.

  Iwase’s house was on the bank of the Sasebo River, way upstream in a neighborhood full of motels that catered to lovers looking for privacy. The front of the house was a shop where they sold buttons and thread, as well as stationery and even some cosmetics. Through the entrance I could see a woman dusting the shelves. Iwase’s mother, presumably. It was a tranquil scene; a shop exactly like a million others.

  As we walked around toward the back, I found myself thinking about the power of culture.

  “Hey, Adama, culture’s sort of an awesome thing, don’t you think?”

  “Why?”

  “Look at Iwase. If all this foreign culture had never come to Japan, he’d be a plain old button seller all his life-—he wouldn’t know about Led Zep or Verlaine or tomato juice or anything. It’s sort of scary, isn’t it?”

  “Well, hell, you could say the same about me and you. You’re just the son of a plain old schoolteacher, right?”

  “Wrong. I’m the son of an artist. I didn’t crawl out of some co—”

  I was going to say “some coal mine,” but I decided not to. Adama still hadn’t quite got over the hostess incident.

  There was a little garden in the back with cosmos in bloom. Laundry was hanging out to dry there. Iwase had four sisters, so it was mostly petticoats and panties and slips, with only a few pairs of men’s shorts. The flowers nodded in the wind, and from the window of Iwase’s room came the sound of someone playing the guitar and singing.

  Shining in a puddle

  is a sky deep blue

  Walking past together

  it’s only me and you

  and it’s always winter

  always winter...

  “What the hell is that? What’s he doing, chanting sutras? Don’t tell me he’s joined Nichiren?”

  Adama got pissed off again and told me to cut the crap. He said we were here to convince Iwase to stay on the production team, dammit. The problem with people from coal-mining towns is that they’re just too serious about everything. Maybe it has to do with all the explosions and cave-ins and what not.

  Adama tapped lightly on the window. Iwase stuck his head out and smiled his embarrassed smile.

  He was a lot more cheerful than we’d expected. He said he was prepared to be in the movie and help sell tickets and set up the equipment in the hall, but he didn’t want his name connected with the production.

  “It’s not your fault,” he told us. “I’m not blaming you guys.”

  Adama, though, had taken Iwase’s letter to heart. He thought that maybe his joining up with us had caused a rift between Iwase and me. After that dreamy session in the church, we’d gone to Boulevard, and it was there that we’d decided to drop in on Iwase and try to persuade him to stick with Iyaya.

  “But, Iwase, I don’t get it,�
�� he said in his calm coalminer’s drawl. “You’re gonna be in the movie, right? You say you’ve got nothing against me or Ken, right? So why you gonna quit?”

  “Adama, you don’t understand, it’s... it’s just that I... I can’t stand myself anymore.”

  Adama and I looked at each other. I can't stand myself. That was one line a seventeen-year-old must never, ever let himself say—unless he was trying to make it with some chick. There was no one who didn’t feel like that from time to time. Any seventeen-year-old face in the crowd in a provincial city, with no money and no pussy, was bound to know that feeling. It was only natural, considering we were right on the verge of being sorted and classified into different categories of domestic animals. But certain phrases were taboo, and you cast a shadow on the rest of your life if you uttered them.

  “Hanging around with you guys, I began to feel like even I was getting to be a bit smarter. It made me feel good, but I didn’t really have anything to do with what was going on, right? I can’t explain it very well, but here I am thinking I’m hot stuff and, I don’t know, it just started to seem ridiculous, you know, I just couldn’t stand it.”

  “Gotcha,” I said. What Iwase was saying was correct, it made sense, but just because something’s correct and makes sense doesn’t mean it’s going to make you feel good about yourself. I didn’t want to hear any more.

  “Oh, by the way, Ken-san, you’re going to use Mie Nagayama in the festival opening, right? Listen, I heard from a friend of mine at the industrial arts school that the head of the gang there who’s in love with Nagayama, he’s going around looking for you and telling everybody he’s going to beat you half to death. Maybe you ought to change your mind about using her.”

  Iwase said this just as we were leaving. He also reminded us that the guy was the captain of the kendo team.

  Adama and I hardly spoke as we walked back along the road beside the river. Iwase was a gloomy fucker. Gloomy people existed by sucking energy from everyone else, and that made them a drag to get involved with. They couldn’t take a joke, either.