Almost Transparent Blue (13 page)

The surface of the glass clouded whitely and steam began to rise. The trembling flame of the alcohol lamp was reflected on the window. Lilly's huge shadow moved on the wall. Small dense shadows from the electric bulb on the ceiling and large faint shadows from the alcohol lamp overlapped and the overlappings moved complexly, like living things, just like amoebas dividing and redividing.

"Ryū, are you listening?"

Uh-huh, I answered. My voice, stopping on my hot dry tongue, seemed to come out like the voice of a completely different person. Feeling uneasily that perhaps it wasn't my own voice, I was afraid to talk. Toying with a feathered hat, sometimes opening her negligee to scratch her chest, Lilly said, "And this guy, you know, he makes a whore out of this girl who was his best friend back in high school."

Okinawa, the last to leave, had put on his smelly work clothes and closed the door behind him without saying good-bye.

"And this guy is the bastard kid of some whore, too, but his father was the crown prince of some little country, he's the kid left by this crown prince who came to Las Vegas in disguise to have some fun."

What could Lilly be talking about?

My sight wasn't normal. Everything I saw was strangely misty. It was as if the slime in the milk bottle on the table beside Lilly were spreading. The stuff was even on her as she bent forward. Rather than just being on the surface, the stuff seemed to have appeared after the skin was peeled off.

I remembered a friend who'd died of a bad liver, and what he'd always said.

Yeah, he'd said, maybe it's just my idea, but really it always hurts, the times it don't hurt is when we just forget, we just forget it hurts, you know, it's not just because my belly's all rotten, everybody always hurts. So when it really starts stabbing me, somehow I feel sort of peaceful, like I'm myself again. It's hard to take, sure, but I feel sort of peaceful. Because it's always hurt ever since I was born.

"This guy goes to the desert, at dawn, flying along in his car he goes into the Nevada desert."

Into the bubbling, boiling glass sphere, Lilly spooned black powder from a brown can. The smell drifted to me. When Jackson and Rudianna had straddled me, I really thought of myself as a yellow doll. How had I become a doll then?

Now, bent over, her red hair dangling down her back, Lilly looked like a doll. An old, moldly smelling doll, a doll that says the same words over and over when you pull a string, and when you pry open a lid in its chest there'd be some silver batteries, a doll made so that its eyes flash when it talks. The crisp red hairs had been inserted one by one, if you put milk in its mouth, the sticky fluid would drip out a hole in its bottom. Even if you banged it hard on the floor, as long as the tape recorder inside wasn't broken the doll would go on talking. Ryū, good morning, I'm Lilly, Ryū, how are you? I'm Lilly, good morning, Ryū, how are you? I'm Lilly, good morning.

"And this guy, in the Nevada desert, he sees where the H-bombs are kept. H-bombs as big as buildings all lined up, on a base at dawn."

Back there in my room the cold all around me had slowly gotten worse. I'd put on more clothes, crawled under the blankets, drank whiskey, opened and closed the door and tried to sleep. I drank strong coffee, did some exercises, smoked I don't know how many cigarettes. I read a book, turned off all the lights and turned them on again. I opened my eyes and stared for a long time at the spots on the ceiling, then closed my eyes and counted them. I remembered the plots of movies I'd seen long ago, and Male's missing tooth, Jackson's prick, Okinawa's eyes, Moko's butt, Rudianna's pubic hair.

On the other side of the closed veranda doors several drunks passed, loudly singing an old song. I thought it was like a chorus of prisoners in chains, or a war song sung together by badly wounded shell-shocked Japanese soldiers before they threw themselves off a cliff. Turned toward the dark sea, bandages on their faces, holes oozing pus or with maggots crawling on their thin bodies, Japanese soldiers bowing to the East without any light in their eyes—it sounded like a sad song they would sing.

As I listened to the song and gazed vacantly at my distorted self reflected on the TV, I felt sunk in a deep dream from which I couldn't rise no matter how I struggled. My self reflected on the TV and the Japanese soldiers singing behind my eyes overlapped. And the black dots making those overlapping images, the black dots clustering to make the images float up, crawled in swarms inside my head just like the numberless caterpillars that thrive and squirm on peach trees.

The ragged black dots rustled and formed an unnerving shape without a shape, and I realized I was covered with gooseflesh. My muddy eyes on the dark screen buckled as if melting, and I muttered to that self, who are you? What are you afraid of, I'd said.

"These missiles, hey, you know, these ICBMs, they were all lined up in that wide empty Nevada desert. On the desert where people look just like bugs.

These missiles were there, missiles just like buildings."

The inside of the glass sphere was boiling. The black fluid bubbled, Lilly slapped a flying insect. She peeled off the dead insect that become a single line on her palm and threw it in the ashtray. Purple smoke rose from the ashtray. It mingled with the steam rising from the black liquid. Lilly's slim fingers held a cigarette, she covered the alcohol lamp to put it out. The huge shadow on the wall spread throughout the entire room for a moment and then faded. The shadow disappeared just like a ballon pricked with a pin. It was sucked up by the smaller, denser shadows made by the light bulb on the ceiling. Lilly handed me a cup of coffee. When I looked in, my reflection trembled on the surface.

"And when this guy, he yells at the missiles from the top of the hill, a lot had happened to him and he didn't understand why. he didn't understand what he'd been doing up until then, or who he was then, or what he should do from then on, and he didn't have anyone to talk to, and he was just feeling fed up and all alone. So he turned toward the missiles and yelled in his head Blow up! Go on and blow up for me!"

I noticed a growth on the surface of the black liquid. When I was in grade school, my grandmother had gone into the hospital with cancer.

She'd had an allergy to the pain-killer the doctor gave her, and her whole body had broken out in a rash and the rash had changed the shape of her face.

When I went to see her, she'd said, clawing at the rash, Little Ryū, your granny's going to die, I have this thing and it's going to take me to the next world, your granny's going to die. Something just like that rash on my grandmother was floating on the surface of the black liquid. At Lilly's urging I drank. When the hot liquid entered my throat, I felt the cold already there inside of me mix with the growth on the surface of things.

"Ryū, isn't that like you somehow, that's what I thought, when I first started reading, I thought it was like you."

Lilly talked while sitting on the sofa. Her leg made an odd curve and was swallowed up in a red slipper. Once when I'd dropped Acid in a park, I'd felt the same way I did now. I could see the trees stretching up to the night sky and some foreign town between the trees, and I walked there. In that dream town nobody passed me, the doors were all closed; I walked alone. When I walked to the outskirts of the town an emaciated man stopped me and told me to go no further. When I went on anyway, my body began to grow cold, and I thought I was dead. Face pale, my dead self sat down on a bench and began to turn toward my real self, who was watching this hallucination on the screen of the night. My dead self came nearer, just as if it might want to shake hands with my real self. That's when I panicked and tried to run. But my dead self pursued me and finally caught me, entered me and controlled me. I'd felt then just the way I felt now. I felt as if a hole had opened in my head from which consciousness and memory leaked out and in their place the rash crowded in, and a cold like spoiled roast chicken. But that time before, shaking and clinging to the damp bench, I'd told myself, Hey, take a good look, isn't the world still under your feet? I'm on this ground, and on this same ground are trees and grass and ants carrying sand to their nests, little girls chasing rolling balls, and puppies running.

This ground runs under countless houses and mountains and rivers and seas, under everywhere. And I'm on it.

Don't be scared, I'd told myself, the world is still under me.

"I thought about you, Ryū, as I read that novel. I wondered what you're going to do from now on, I don't know about this guy in the book—haven't finished reading it yet."

When I was a child, whenever I used to run and fall, I'd get stinging scrapes, and I liked to have them painted with a piercing, strong-smelling medicine. On the bloody scraped place something was always stuck, earth or mud or grass juice or crushed insects, and I liked the pain of the medicine as it soaked in with its bubbles. My play over, watching the sun go down, I'd frown and blow on the wound, and then I felt a sense of peace, as if I and the gray evening landscape were confiding in each other. Just the opposite from heroin or melting together in a woman's juices, the pain made me stand out from my surroundings, the pain made me feel as if I were shining. And I thought this shining self could get along well with the lovely orange light of the setting sun. Back in my room, as I'd remembered this, I'd tried to do something about the unbearable cold, and I'd put in my mouth the wing of a dead moth that had been lying on the rug. The moth had stiffened, green fluid had come from its belly and hardened slightly.

The gold scale-dust shone on my finger, the little black spheres, the eyes, drew threads after them when they separated from the body. When I broke the wing and put it on my tongue, its fine hairs stabbed my gums.

"Is the coffee good? Say something, Ryū, Ryū, what's the matter? What are you thinking about?"

Lilly's body, made of metal. If the white skin were peeled off, a sparkling alloy might appear.

Yeah, uh-huh, it's good, Lilly, good, I answered. My left hand twitched. I took a deep breath. On the wall was a poster—a little girl, who'd cut her foot on glass while jumping rope in a vacant lot. There was a strange smell around. I dropped the cup of hot black fluid.

What are you doing, Ryū? What's the matter with you, anyway?

Lilly came over, holding a white cloth. The white cup had broken, and the carpet sucked up the fluid. Vapor rose. The liquid became lukewarm and sticky between my toes.

You're shaking? What is it, what's the matter? I touched Lilly's body. It seemed hard and rough like stale bread. Her hand was on my knee. Go wash your feet, the shower's still working, go wash them, quick. Lilly's face was twisted. She bent over to pick up the broken pieces of the cup. She put them on the smiling face of a foreign girl on the cover of a magazine. Some coffee was left in one of the pieces, and she poured it into the ashtray. A smoldering cigarette hissed as it went out. Lilly noticed that I'd stood up. Her face shone with beauty cream. I thought something was funny from the beginning, she said, what is it with you?

Anyway go wash your feet, I won't have you staining the rug. Drawn by the sofa, I started walking. My forehead was hot and I felt dizzy from the spinning and tilting of the room. Go wash quick, what are you staring at? Go wash up.

The tiles of the shower stall were cold and the dangling hose reminded me of a death chamber with an electric chair I'd seen in a photo sometime. There was red-stained underwear on the washing machine, a spider ran around drawing a thread along the yellow tile wall. Without making any noise I ran the water over the soles of my feet. The netlike cover of the drain was blocked by a piece of paper. As I'd come here from my place, I'd passed through the hospital garden, where the lights were out. Then, aiming at a bush, I'd thrown away the body of the moth I'd been holding tightly. The morning sun would dry up the fluids, and maybe some starving insects would feed on it, I thought.

What are you doing? Hey, Ryū, go home, I can't get along with you. Lilly looked at me. Leaning on the door post, she tossed the white cloth she held into the shower stall. It was a little stained by black fluid. Like a newborn baby opening its eyes for the first time, I stared at Lilly in her whitely shining negligee. What's that fluffy stuff, what are those turning, shining balls under it, and the bulge with two holes under that, what is that black hole enclosed by those two soft pieces of flesh, what are the little white bones inside, what is it—that moist red thin piece of flesh?

There was the sofa with its pattern of red flowers, the gray walls, the hairbrushes with red hairs caught on them, the pink rug, the spotted cream-colored ceiling with dry flowers hanging from it, the cloth cord wound around an electric wire that hung straight down, the trembling flashing light bulb under that twisted cord, and a thing like a crystal tower inside the bulb. The tower whirled at a tremendous speed, my eyes hurt as if burned, when I closed them I saw the laughing faces of scores of people and I had trouble breathing. Hey, tell me what's wrong, you're so jittery, are you going crazy? The red afterimage of the light bulb spilled over Lilly's face. The afterimage spread and warped and broke like melting glass, and scattered into spots across my entire field of vision. Lilly's red-spotted face came close and she touched my cheek.

Hey, why are you shaking? Say something.

1 remembered a man's face, his face had spots, too. It was the face of an American medic who'd rented a house of my aunt's in the country. Ryū, you're all covered with goose bumps, really, what's the matter? Say something, I'm scared.

When I'd gone to collect the rent for my aunt, the medic had always let me see the hairy crotch of a thin monkey-faced Japanese woman there. I'm O.K., Lilly, yeah, O.K., it's nothing. I just can't calm down, it's always like this after a party.

In the medic's room, in that room decorated with New Gui-nean spears, their tips smeared with poison, he'd showed me the crotch of that heavily madeup woman, her legs beat the air.

You're stoned, aren't you? Is that it?