A Wild Sheep Chase (4 page)

It came back to me, that giant whale’s penis, after having intercourse with a girl for the very first time. What twists of fate, what tortuous circumnavigations, had brought it to that cavernous exhibition room? My heart ached, thinking about it. I felt as if I didn’t have a hope in the world. But I was only seventeen and
clearly too young to give up on everything. It was then and there I came to the realization I have borne in mind ever since.

Which is, that I am not a whale.

In bed now with my new girlfriend, running my fingers through her hair, I thought about whales for the longest time.

In the aquarium of my memory, it is always late autumn. The glass of the tanks is cold. I’m wearing a heavy sweater. Through the large picture window of the exhibition room, the sea is dark as lead, the countless whitecaps reminiscent of lace collars on girls’ dresses.

“What’re you thinking about?” she asked.

“Something long ago,” I said.

She was twenty-one, with an attractive slender body and a pair of the most bewitching, perfectly formed ears. She was a part-time proofreader for a small publishing house, a commercial model specializing in ear shots, and a call girl in a discreet intimate-friends-only club. Which of the three she considered her main occupation, I had no idea. Neither did she.

Nonetheless, sizing up her essential attributes, I would have to say her natural gifts ran to ear modeling. She agreed. Which was well and good until you considered how extremely limited are the opportunities for a commercial ear model, how abysmal the status and pay. To your typical P.R. man or makeup artist or cameraman, she was just an “earholder,” someone with ears. Her mind and body, apart from the ears, were completely out of the picture, disregarded, nonexistent.

“But you know, that’s not the real me,” she’d say. “
I
am my ears, my ears are me.”

Neither her proofreader self nor her call girl self ever, not for one second, showed her ears to others.

“That’s because they’re not really me,” she explained.

The office of her call girl club, registered as a “talent club” for appearances, was located in Akasaka and run by a gray-haired Englishwoman whom everyone called Mrs. X. She’d been living in Japan for thirty years, spoke fluent Japanese, and read most of the basic Chinese characters.

Mrs. X had opened an English-language tutorial school for women not five hundred yards from the call girl office and used the place to scout promising faces for the latter. Conversely, several of the call girls were also going to her English school. At reduced tuition, of course.

Mrs. X called all her call girls “dear.” Soft as a spring afternoon, her “dears.”

“Make sure to wear frilly undies, dear. And no pantyhose.” Or “You take your tea with cream, don’t you, dear?” She had a firm understanding of her market. Her clientele were wealthy businessmen in their forties and fifties. Two-thirds foreigners, the rest Japanese. Mrs. X expressed a dislike for politicians, old men, perverts, and the poor.

A dozen long-stemmed beauties she kept on call, but out of the whole bouquet my new girlfriend was the least attractive bloom. As a call girl, she seemed no more than ordinary. In fact, with her ears hidden, she was plain. I couldn’t figure out how Mrs. X had singled her out. Maybe she’d detected in her plainness some special glimmer, or maybe she thought one plain girl would be an asset. Either way, Mrs. X’s sights had been right on target, and my girlfriend quickly had a number of regular customers. She wore ordinary clothes, ordinary makeup, ordinary underwear, and an ordinary scent as she’d head out to the Hilton or Okura or Prince
to sleep with one or two men a week, thereby making enough to live on for a month.

Half the other nights she slept with me for free. The other half I have no idea how she spent.

Her life as a part-time proofreader for the publishing house was more normal. Three days a week she’d commute to Kanda, to the third floor of a small office building, and from nine to five she’d proofread, make tea, run downstairs (no elevator in the building) and buy erasers. She’d be the one sent out, not because anyone held anything against her, but because she was the only unmarried woman in the company. Like a chameleon, she would change with place and circumstance, able, at will, to summon or control that glimmer of hers.

I first became acquainted with her (or rather, her ears) right after I broke up with my wife. It was the beginning of August. I was doing a subcontracted copywriting job for a computer software company, which brought me face-to-face, so to speak, with her ears.

The director of the advertising firm placed a campaign proposal and three large black-and-white photos on my desk, telling me to prepare three head copy options for them within the week. All three photos were giant close-ups of an ear.

An ear?

“Why an ear?” I asked.

“Who knows? What’s the difference? An ear it is. You’ve got a week to think about ears.”

So for one whole week I ear-gazed. I taped the three giant ears to the wall in front of my desk, and all day, while smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, clipping my nails, I immersed myself in those ears.

The job I finished in a week, but the ear shots stayed taped up on my wall. Partly it was too much trouble to take them down, partly I’d grown accustomed to those ears. But the real reason I didn’t take the photos down was that those ears had me in their thrall. They were the dream image of an ear. The quintessence, the paragon of ears. Never had any enlarged part of the human body (genitals included, of course) held such strong attraction for me. They were like some great whirlpool of fate sucking me in.

One astonishingly bold curve cut clear across the picture plane, others curled into delicate filigrees of subtle shadow, while still others traced, like an ancient mural, the legends of a past age. But the supple flesh of the earlobe surpassed them all, transcending all beauty and desire.

A few days later, I rang up the photographer for the name and number of those ears.

“What’s this now?” asked the photographer.

“Just curious, that’s all. They’re such striking ears.”

“Well, I guess as far as the ears go, okay, but the girl herself is nothing special. If it’s a young piece you want, I can introduce you to this bathing-suit model I shot the other day.”

I refused, took down the name and number of the ears, thanked him, and hung up.

Two o’clock, six o’clock, ten o’clock, I kept trying her number, but got no answer. Apparently she was going about her own life.

It was ten the next morning before I finally got ahold of her. I introduced myself briefly, then added that I had to talk to her about some business related to the advertisement and could she see clear to having dinner with me.

“But I was told the job was finished,” she said.

“The job is finished,” I said.

She seemed a bit taken aback, but didn’t inquire further. We set a date for the following evening.

I called for a reservation at the fanciest French restaurant I knew. On Aoyama Boulevard. Then I got out a brand-new shirt, took my time selecting a tie, and put on a jacket I’d only worn twice before.

True to the photographer’s warning, the girl was nothing special. Plain clothes, plain looks. She seemed like a member of the chorus of a second-rate women’s college. But that was beside the point as far as I was concerned. What disappointed me was that she hid her ears under a straight fall of hair.

“You’re hiding your ears,” said I, nonchalantly.

“Yes,” said she, nonchalantly.

We had arrived ahead of schedule and were the first dinner customers at the restaurant. The lights were dimmed, a waiter came around with a long match to light the red taper on our table, and the maître d’hôtel cast fishy eyes over the napkins and dinnerware to be sure all was in place. The herringbone lay of the oak floorboards gleamed to a high polish, and the waiter walked about with a click of his heels. His shoes looked loads more expensive than mine. Fresh bud roses in vases, and modern oils, originals, on white walls.

I glanced over the wine list and chose a crisp white wine, and for hors d’oeuvres
pâté de canard, terrine de dorade
, and
foie de baudroie à crème fraîche
. After an intensive study of the menu she ordered
potage tortue, salade verte
, and
mousse de sole
, while I ordered
potage d’oursin, rôti de veau avec garnie persil
, and
a salade de tomate
. There went half a month’s salary.

“What a lovely place,” she said. “Do you come here often?”

“Only occasionally on business,” I answered. “The truth of the
matter is, I don’t usually go to restaurants when I’m alone. Mostly I go to bars where I eat and drink whatever they’ve got. Easier that way. No unnecessary decisions.”

“And what do you usually eat at a bar?”

“All sorts of things. Omelettes and sandwiches often enough.”

“Omelettes and sandwiches,” she repeated. “You eat omelettes and sandwiches every day at bars?”

“Not every day. I cook for myself every three days or so.”

“So you eat omelettes and sandwiches two days out of three.”

“I guess so,” I said.

“Why omelettes and sandwiches?”

“A halfway decent bar can make a pretty good omelette and sandwich.”

“Hmm,” she said. “Pretty strange.”

“Not at all.”

I couldn’t figure how to get out of that, so I sat there quietly admiring the ashes in the ashtray.

She turned on the juice. “Let’s talk business.”

“As I told you yesterday, the job is finished. No problems. So I have nothing to say.”

She fished a slender clove cigarette out of her handbag, lit up with the restaurant matches, and gave me a look that said “So?”

I was about to speak when the maître d’hôtel advanced on our table. He showed me the wine label, all smiles as if showing me a photo of his only son. I nodded. He unscrewed the cork with a pleasant pop, then poured out a small mouthful in my glass. It tasted like the price of the entire dinner.

The maître d’hôtel withdrew and in his place appeared a waiter who set out the three hors d’oeuvres and a small plate before each of us. When the waiter departed, leaving us alone again, I blurted out, “I had to see your ears.”

Speaking not a word, she proceeded to help herself to the
pâté
and
foie de baudroie
. She took a sip of wine.

“Sorry to have imposed,” I hedged.

She smiled ever so slightly. “Fine French cuisine is no imposition at all.”

“Does it bother you to have your ears discussed?”

“Not really. It depends on the angle of discussion.” She shook her head as she lifted her fork to her mouth. “Tell me straight, because that’s my favorite angle.”

We silently sipped our wine and continued our meal.

“I turn a corner,” I offered, “just as someone ahead of me turns the next corner. I can’t see what that person looks like. All I can make out is a flash of white coattails. But the whiteness of the coattails is indelibly etched in my consciousness. Ever get that feeling?”

“I suppose so.”

“Well, that’s the feeling I get from your ears.”

Again, we ate in silence. I poured wine for her, then for myself.

“It’s not the scene that comes into your head,” she asked, “but the feeling, right?”

“Right.”

“Ever have that feeling before?”

I gave it some thought, then shook my head. “No, I guess not.”

“Which means it’s all on account of my ears.”

“I couldn’t swear to it. There’s no way I could be that sure. I’ve never heard of the shape of someone’s ears arousing anyone this way.”

“I know someone who sneezed every time he saw Farrah Fawcett’s nose. There’s a big psychological element to sneezing, you know. Once cause and effect link up, there’s no escape.”

“I’m no expert on Farrah Fawcett’s nose,” I said, taking a sip of wine. Then I forgot what I was about to say.

“That’s not quite what you meant, is it?” she said.

“No, not quite,” I said. “The feeling I get is terribly unfocused, yet very solid.” I demonstrated, holding my hands a yard apart, then compressing the span to two inches. “I’m not explaining this well, I’m afraid.”

“A concentrated phenomenon based on vague motives.”

“Exactly,” I said. “You’re seven times smarter than I am.”

“I take correspondence courses.”

“Correspondence courses?”

“That’s right, psychology by mail.”

We split the last of the
pâté
. Now I was completely lost.

“You still haven’t gotten it? The relationship between my ears and your feelings?”

“In a word, no,” said I. “That is, I have no firm grasp on whether your ears appeal to me directly, or whether something else in you appeals to me through your ears.”

She placed both her hands on the table and shook her head gently. “Is this feeling of yours of the good variety or the bad variety?”

“Neither. Or both. I can’t tell.”

She pinioned her wineglass between her palms and looked me straight in the face. “It seems you need more study in the means of expressing emotions.”

“Can’t say I’m too good at describing them either,” I said.

At that she smiled. “Never mind. I think I have a good idea of what you mean.”

“Well then, what should I do?”

She said nothing for the longest while. She seemed to be thinking of something else entirely. Five dishes lay empty on the table, a constellation of five extinct planets.

“Listen,” she ended the silence. “I think we ought to become friends. That is, of course, if it’s all right with you.”

“Of course it’s all right with me,” I said.

“And I mean very close friends,” she said.

I nodded.

So it was we became very close friends. Not thirty minutes after we’d first met.

“As a close friend, there’re a couple things I want to ask you,” I said.

“Go right ahead.”

“First of all, why is it you don’t show your ears? Second, have your ears ever exerted any special power over anyone besides me?”

Without a word, she trained her eyes on her hands resting on the table.