Almost Transparent Blue (12 page)

"Well," he said, "I'm here to get my neck jerked around for me." White withered hairs straggled from his chin, and he watched the woman's regularly moving hands with slitlike eyes that were hard to tell from his wrinkles.

"And that really hurts, let me tell you, it hurts so much you'd rather die and you wonder why you don't. You get good and sick of it, you can be sure of that, I wonder if they can't do something else, what they do is just for old people."

Without resting her hands, the thick-necked dark woman looked at the old man, who put his hand on his neck and gave a wheezing laugh.

"My, that's just awful, isn't it?"

The old man's laugh turned into a hacking cough. He stroked his red- and brown-blotched face.

"Well, well, anyway old men shouldn't drive cars after all, my daughter-in-law said don't drive anymore, and she won't let me have the car anymore."

A cleaning woman in a white turban came along to wipe up the spots of Yoshiyama's blood from the floor.

The round-faced woman, bent over and carrying a mop and bucket, turned and called back loudly toward the end of the hall, "Kashi, Kashi, I'm O.K., just forget it."

At her voice, all the people sitting in the waiting room raised their heads. The woman began to mop, singing an old popular song.

"A suicide, is it? Well, since you're not dead it's just attempted suicide, but the fact is, you didn't do things right. Even cutting your wrist, well, human beings are pretty well put together, so as to keep on living. You'd have to press your wrist hard against a wall or something and pull up the skin to get the vein to stand out and then slash it. But if you were serious about it, if you really and truly want to die, you'd cut here, look here, under the ear, with a razor, and then even if an ambulance brought you to me right away there'd be no saving you."

That was what the doctor who fixed Yoshiyama's wrist had said. Yoshiyama had kept rubbing his eyes hard.

I thought he hadn't wanted this middle-aged doctor to know he was crying.

The old man with the bandaged neck spoke to the cleaning woman. "Does it clean up?"

"Huh? Well, if I get to it while it's still wet, yes, it cleans up pretty well, but you know how it is."

"That's awful, isn't it?"

"Huh, what's that?"

"I mean, it must be awful mopping up blood."

Children in wheelchairs were playing in the garden, throwing a yellow ball to each other. There were three of them, they all had very thin necks. When one of them missed, a nurse picked up the ball. As I looked closely I saw one boy had no hands; he joined in the game by batting the ball with his arms. Though the nurse threw the ball gently, it always veered off to one side when he hit it. He showed his teeth in laughter.

"I mean, I guess blood like that must be a bother. Well, I didn't go to the front lines in the war so I haven't seen much blood, and I was shocked to see it there, it's awful."

"I didn't go to the front lines either." The cleaning woman sprinkled white powder on the remaining blood. She got down on her knees and scrubbed with a brush.

The ball rolled into a puddle, and the nurse wiped it off with a towel. The child without hands, perhaps too excited to wait, shouted and waved his short arms.

"Hydrocholoric acid or something would clean it right up, wouldn't it?"

"That's for toilets. If you used it here, it'd ruin the whole floor."

The trees in the distance were shaking. The nurse went on tossing the ball to the children. A crowd of bulging pregnant women trooped off the bus and headed this way. A young man with a bouquet bounded up the stairs, and the woman who was knitting looked toward him. The cleaning woman hummed the same old song as before ; the old man, whose neck wouldn't bend, was holding a newspaper up high to read it.

Yoshiyama's blood, mixed with the white powder, lay in pink bubbles on the floor.

"Ryū, I really was rotten, I-I'll get together some bread and go to India, work on the docks and get some bread, you know, I won't lay down any more hassles, I'm sorry, I'll go to India."

Yoshiyama kept on talking like that on the way back from the hospital. There was blood on his rubber sandals and on his toes, and sometimes he touched his bandage. His face was still pale, but he said, It doesn't hurt. The pineapple I'd thrown away had rolled right beside the poplar tree. It was evening, no birds were in sight.

Kazuo wasn't in the room; Reiko said he'd gone home soon after everything happened.

"He should learn about guts from Yoshiyama, I wonder if he's kind of off somehow, he just doesn't understand anything," she said.

Okinawa shot up for the third time and rolled on the floor ; the swelling on Kei's face had pretty well gone down. Yoshiyama sat in front of the TV.

"It's a movie about Van Gogh, Ryū, you should watch it."

Reiko didn't answer when we asked for coffee. Yoshiyama told Kei he'd decided to go to India. Yeah, was all she said.

Reiko stood up and shook Okinawa's shoulder—he had a cigarette in his mouth and didn't budge—and she asked, Hey, where did you put what was left? When he said, Shit, it's all gone, that was the last, if you want some go buy it, she kicked his leg as hard as she could. Cigarette ashes spilled onto his naked chest. He laughed softly but didn't move, Reiko smashed his syringe on the concrete of the veranda. "Hey, clean that up," I said.

Without answering she crunched and swallowed five Nibrole pills. Okinawa kept on laughing, his body shaking.

"Hey, Ryū, won't you play your flute some?" he said, looking at me.

On the TV Kirk Douglas playing Van Gogh was shakily trying to cut off his ear.

Kei said, "Yoshiyama just copied this guy, everything ya do is jes' copying, right?"

Van Gogh let out a terrible yell and everyone except Okinawa turned toward the TV.

Stroking his bloody bandage, Yoshiyama spoke to Kei now and again. Is your stomach really O.K.? Today was really a breakthrough for me, and when I go to India, Kei, you can come with me as far as Singapore, and then I can see you off for Hawaii. Kei didn't say a word.

Okinawa's chest heaved slowly.

"Me," Reiko yelled suddenly, "I'm going to sell my body and I buy smack, like Jackson told me! Ryū, take me to Jackson's house! He said I could come over anytime, I won't ask Okinawa anymore, take me to Jackson's place!"

Okinawa laughed again, his body shook.

"So go ahead and laugh, you damn junkie! Aren't you just a bum, in those lousy clothes, nothing but a bum? I'm sick of sucking your stinking limp prick! Me, I'm going to sell my bar, Ryū, and then I'll come out here and buy a car, buy smack, and then I'll go be Jackson's woman. Or Saburô would be O.K., too! I'll buy a camper, a bus I can live in, and have parties every day! Hey, Ryū, find that kind of bus for me.

"Okinawa, I guess you don't know what long pricks those blacks have. Even when they shoot up, they're still just as long, they go all the way into me. Hey, what have you got, you bum, do you know how much you stink?"

Okinawa got up and lit a cigarette. Without looking anywhere in particular he puffed the smoke out weakly.

"Reiko, you go back to Okinawa, I'll go along with you. That'd be the best thing, study at a beauty parlor again, I'll talk to your mother for you, this place is no good for you."

"Don't give me that, Okinawa, you just go back to sleep, next time even if you slash yourself up or you come crying and begging to me, I won't lend you any money, so you go back to Okinawa. You're the one who wants to go back, aren't you, but even if you want to, I won't give you the money to do it. Just try coming and crying to me when you're going cold turkey, just try crying and begging—lend me some bread, even a thousand yen'd be O.K.—I won't even give you one yen! You're the one who should go back to Okinawa!"

Okinawa lay down again and muttered, "So do what you want. Hey, Ryū, play the flute."

"I said I don't feel like it, didn't I?"

Yoshiyama silently watched the TV.

Kei, still seeming to be in some pain, crunched a Nibrole. There was the sound of a pistol shot, Van Gogh's neck twisted, and Yoshiyama muttered, Aw, he got it.

There was a moth on the pillar.

At first I thought it was just a spot, but as I stared at it, it changed its position slightly. There was a faint down on the ash-gray wings.

After everyone had left, the room seemed darker than usual. It wasn't that the light was weaker ... I seemed to have moved far away from the source of light.

A lot of stuff had fallen on the floor. That rolled-up ball of hair must be Moko's.

The wrapping paper from a cake Lilly had bought, bread crumbs, red and black and translucent nail parings, flower petals, dirty tissue paper, women's underwear, Yoshi-yama's dried blood, socks, stubbed-out cigarettes, glass, bits of aluminum foil, a mayonnaise bottle.

Record jackets, film, a star-shaped candy box, a syringe case, a book—the book was a collection of Mallarmé's poetry that Kazuo had forgotten. On the back cover of Mallarmé I squashed the belly of a moth with black and white stripes. There seemed to be a little cry, different from the sound of the fluid bursting from its swollen belly.

"Ryū, you're tired, your eyes look funny, shouldn't you go home and get some sleep?"

After I'd killed the moth, I'd felt strangely hungry. I'd gnawed on some leftover roast chicken from the refrigerator. But it had gone completely bad ; its sour taste stabbed my tongue and spread through my head. When I'd tried to pull out the sticky lump stuck in the back of my throat, a chill wrapped my whole body. It was intense and sudden, as if I'd been beaten. No matter how much I rubbed at my gooseflesh, it stayed on the back of my neck, no matter how often I rinsed my mouth, I could still taste the sourness and my gums felt slimy. The chicken skin caught between my teeth numbed my tongue. The piece of chicken I'd spit out, wet with saliva, floated soggily in the sink. A small cube of potato blocked the drain, and grease made rings on the surface of the dirty water. When I seized the cube between my fingernails and pulled it out, trailing strings of slime, the water began to go down, the piece of chicken moved in a circle and was sucked into the hole.

"Shouldn't you go home and get some sleep? Have all those weirdos left your place?"

Lilly was straightening her bed. I could see her buttocks swelling under her translucent negligee. In the red light from the ceiling, the ring on her left hand sparkled, a light of the same size glinting in its facets.

The big lump of roast chicken had caught in the drain. With a sucking sound it stuck to the four small holes there. On the sticky lump, even though it had been gnawed by my teeth and partly dissolved by saliva, I could still see the feather holes clearly, and some bristles like plastic. A smelly grease clung to my hands, the smell didn't come off even when I washed them. Then when I went back from the kitchen into the living room, while I was walking over to get a cigarette from on top of the TV, I was seized with an indescribable uneasiness. It was as if I'd been embraced by an old woman with skin disease.

"Have all those weirdos left your place? Ryū, I'll make some coffee for you."

The round white table Lilly was always so proud of, made by convicts in Finland, reflected the light. I could just make out a faint green tint on its surface.

Once I'd noticed it, that special green grew stronger in my eyes ; it was like the faint green next to the orange trembling on the sea at sunset.

"Why don't you drink some coffee? I'll even put in some brandy, you need a good sleep. I've been feeling kind of funny, too, since that night, I haven't been going to work. And I've got to get the car fixed, it's terribly scratched up, you know, it didn't get dented but the cost of painting's so high these days, I really don't know what I'll do. But I'd like to try it once more, you know, Ryū."

Lilly stood up from the sofa. Her voice was muffled. I felt like I was seeing an old movie, like Lilly was far off and sending her voice through a long tube. I felt that what was here now was an elaborate Lilly-doll. It moved just its mouth, and a tape recording made long ago was being played.

No matter what I'd done, I couldn't get rid of the cold that had wrapped my body back in my own room. When I took out a sweater and put it on, when I closed the veranda doors and pulled the curtains, I began to sweat, but even then the chill was still there all the time.

The sound of the wind in the closed room became faint, it only sounded like a ringing in my ears. Not being able to see outside gave me the feeling of being trapped.

I hadn't much noticed what was outside before, but just as if I'd been staring at the scene for a long time, the drunk crossing the street, the red-haired girl running, the empty can thrown from a passing car, the poplars stretching up blackly, the bulk of the hospital at night and the stars all floated before my eyes with a mysterious clarity. And at the same time, shut away from the world outside, I felt cut off and thrown away. The room was filled with unusual vapors; I had trouble breathing. Cigarette smoke rose and from somewhere came the smell of melting butter.

As I looked for the place where that smell leaked in, I stepped on some dead insects, and their juices and dusty scales dirtied my toes. I heard a dog howl ; when I turned on the radio, there was the Van Morrison song "Domino." When I turned on the TV, there was suddenly a close-up of a raging shaven-headed man yelling, "Isn't that just what anyone would expect!" When I turned it off, the screen darkened as if it had been sucked up and my own distorted face appeared. My image on the dark screen, flapping its lips, saying something to itself.

"Ryū, I found a novel with someone just like you in it, really like you."

Lilly sat on a chair in the kitchen, waiting for the water to boil in a round glass perculator. She batted at a small flying insect. I sank down into the sofa where Lilly's body had been and ran my tongue over my lips again and again.

"Well, this guy has some whores working for him in Las Vegas and so he gets women for parties for a lot of rich people—isn't that like you, Ryū? But he's still young—I thought that's like you, too. You're nineteen?"