Audition (6 page)

    His flippant use of the diminutive ‘chan’ was all it took to stir Aoyama’s own anger.

    ‘Yoshikawa, I think you know damn well how serious I am about this.’

    ‘I’m serious too, you ass. So don’t expect me to be thrilled that you’ve made up your mind on the basis of a photo and an essay.’

    ‘You’re the one who said the essays give you the best sense of who a person is. The written word doesn’t lie. You can always tell if it’s coming from the heart or not.’

    Yoshikawa was silent for a moment.

    ‘That’s bullshit,’ he said softly. ‘But all right. I’ll pay special attention to her too. Just please ask a few questions of the others as well. I called in a lot of favours to get that programme on the air – and even to secure this room.’

    ‘Fair enough.’

    The candidates represented a variety of types. One was a 28-year-old who’d graduated in French studies from a national university, spent three years in Paris as a member of a project team for a major trading company, become a clothing designer on her return to Japan, opened a boutique in Los Angeles and lived another three years in Malibu, then got bored with it all and began drawing illustrations for children’s books. She was built like a fashion model and was wearing an outfit of woven hemp dyed in primary colours that she attributed to some Moroccan designer. She was also trained in classical ballet and said she felt that she alone was capable of undertaking such a ‘sensitive and nuanced’ role. Aoyama was sure there was no way he could keep up with a woman like this. Another applicant had appeared in over thirty ‘adult’ films, had twice tried to commit suicide, had been institutionalised three times and was now, at thirty-three, a yoga instructor. She showed them the scars on her left wrist as if displaying her most valued treasure. Several of the women came with their managers in tow. One of the managers literally got down on his hands and knees, prostrating himself. ‘Please favour us with your consideration!’ he screeched, as if begging for his life. One of the women claimed to be psychic and offered to describe the guardian spirits attached to both of them: Aoyama’s turned out to be a painter who’d died young, and Yoshikawa’s was a flying squirrel. A number of the women insisted on dancing for them, and one began shedding clothes as she did so. Aoyama wanted to stop her, but Yoshikawa overruled. She ended up completely nude, right there in the drab meeting room, and left saying she felt like a new woman. A girl still in her teens spoke at great length about her tumultuous sexual history. There were several women in their thirties. One had taken an aeroplane all the way from Hokkaido just for this audition, and proudly told them that she was known as the Queen of the Discos in Sapporo. ‘Men have made a fuss over me ever since I was a little girl,’ she said, ‘so it seems only natural to have them flocking around me at discos, but I make a point of never giving my heart – or my body – to anyone. When people ask why that is, I tell them it’s because I’m an actress. Not that I’ve ever done any actual acting
per se
, but I know in my heart that I was born to be a star.’ One explained that she was eager to start an acting career because her husband had caught her cheating and was threatening divorce. Another, who’d shrugged off her trench coat to sit before them in a string bikini and high heels, said she’d appeared nude in a number of magazines but never got a true sense of fulfilment from that and realised when she heard about the audition that destiny was calling. A few brought portable karaoke sets and sang for them. They saw a nurse, a poet and a vocalist in a band, a woman with a seventy-year-old sugar daddy, a nursery-school teacher, a very tall African-Japanese, a baton-twirler and a rhythmic gymnast.

    And then, at exactly three-fifty p.m., she made her appearance.

4

‘Next, please,’ came the voice of the hottest girl in Section Two, and Yamasaki Asami materialised in the doorway.

    Silhouetted against the off-white walls, she walked to the chair, bowed with modest grace and sat down. That was all, but Aoyama had a very distinct sensation that something extraordinary was happening all around him. It was like being the millionth visitor to an amusement park, suddenly bathed in spotlights and a rain of balloons and surrounded with microphones and flashing cameras. As if Luck, normally dispersed in billions of tiny, free-floating, gemlike particles, had suddenly coalesced in a single beatific vision – a vision that changed everything, for ever. He was aware of an indescribable, fizzy sort of feeling in the pit of his stomach, and of the voice of Reason in his own head chanting the refrain:
This can’t be right, it doesn’t make sense, things like this aren’t supposed to happen
. But the voice grew weaker as the fizziness seeped into his bloodstream and spread through his system.

    She was even more beautiful than her snapshot had led him to believe. And when she smiled as if to herself and shyly looked down at the floor, all his worries seemed to dissolve and leave him afloat in a warm bubble of bliss. He felt like a deaf man whose ears had been healed with exquisite music, and it almost struck him as odd that music
didn’t
begin playing: in a movie, this was where the poignant love theme would have swelled. He glanced at the hottest young lady in Section Two and wondered how she was managing to maintain her composure. Faced with such beauty, she should have swooned with shame and slumped to the floor.

    Yoshikawa began the questioning.

    ‘You’re, let’s see, Yamasaki Asami-san?’

    ‘Yes. Yamasaki Asami.’

    What a voice, thought Aoyama, and Yoshikawa must have had a similar reaction, judging by the glance he shot him. It was a voice that poured into your ears and oozed down the nerves to the nape of your neck – neither high-pitched nor deep or husky, but round and smooth and crystalline.

    ‘You heard about the audition on the radio?’

    Even Yoshikawa seemed a bit nervous as he spoke.

    ‘Yes, that’s right.’

    Aoyama was more or less face to face with her. Her semi-long, lustrous hair was tied back in a casual way. She obviously hadn’t fussed over it, but neither was there anything even remotely untidy about her appearance. Her features weren’t exaggerated or dramatic, but every expression they assumed made a strong, clear impression. Aoyama thought it was as if her soul, or her spirit, or whatever one wanted to call it, lay just below the surface of her skin.

    Yoshikawa asked if she’d ever worked in television or films, and she shook her head, no.

    ‘There’s been talk a few times, but nothing ever came of it.’

    ‘Why do you suppose that is?’

    ‘I think the fact that I’m not with an agency  . . .’

    ‘So you don’t have an agent?’

    ‘No, I don’t.’

    ‘Any reason?’

    ‘Well, once – it was quite a while ago now, when I was still in college – I was . . . scouted? Isn’t that what they call it? Someone stopped me on the street. I suppose I’m to blame for blithely going along with him, but it turned out to be a talent agency for porn actors. The whole experience was so unpleasant that I guess I developed a bias against agencies in general.’

    ‘So you’re completely on your own?’

    ‘I do have a mentor who works for a record company, but I haven’t been in touch with him for some time now.’

    ‘Which record company?’

    ‘Victor.’

    ‘May I ask his name?’

    ‘Shibata-san. He’s a producer in the domestic music division.’

    ‘Thank you. So. You graduated from college and went to work for a trading company. Now that you’ve resigned from the company, may I ask how you’re supporting yourself? Do you have a part-time job of some sort?’

    ‘I help out at a friend’s place three times a week.’

    ‘A restaurant or something?’

    ‘It’s a little neighbourhood bar, a tiny place with just one small counter. The mama-san is a lady I met a long time ago, at voice-training classes.’

    ‘Do you like to drink?’

    ‘Only moderately. Socially.’

    ‘And is three nights a week enough to get by?’

    ‘I also do some modelling now and then.’

    ‘Modelling.’

    ‘I have a friend who’s a stylist, and she helps me get work occasionally. Not for major magazines, of course, but catalogues and newspaper ads and so on.’

    ‘I see. And you live in Suginami? “Casa Prima” – I guess that’s an apartment complex of some sort? You know, people like myself and Aoyama here, we don’t really have much of a window on to the lifestyles of young ladies today. Please feel free not to answer this if it’s too personal, but I wonder how much monthly income someone like yourself requires. A lot of young women seem to be living so extravagantly these days – carrying designer bags that cost tens of thousands of yen, for example – and I can’t help but wonder how they manage that.’

    Yoshikawa looked at Aoyama as if to say,
I’m asking this for your benefit, you know
.

    ‘To be honest,’ she said, ‘it’s a mystery to me, too.’

    She spoke clearly and unfalteringly, looking at each of them in turn, and she didn’t stretch out the vowels at the ends of words like so many young women, or fill her sentences with meaningless interjections. Aoyama could tell she was a little nervous, though he couldn’t have said how he knew that. Somehow he just felt completely in tune with her feelings.

    ‘However,’ she said, ‘I don’t like to say it, but I suppose a lot of those girls, the ones with the incredibly expensive bags and jewellery and so on, are probably working in the sex industry. As for myself, I have a studio apartment, and the rent’s only a little over seventy thousand yen. I don’t go out that much, and I don’t have any expensive hobbies or tastes, so a hundred and fifty thousand a month . . . might be a little tight, but two hundred thousand or so is enough to pay the bills and buy the books and CDs and things I want.’

    Aoyama piped up for the first time.

    ‘Can you give me an example,’ he said, ‘of what you mean by “expensive hobbies or tastes”?’

    His voice was quavering a bit, and he immediately worried that the question was impossibly inane. But she smiled, and that was all it took to erase his anxiety.

    ‘For example,’ she said, ‘I have a friend who raises tropical fish. She took out a loan to buy this huge aquarium, and now she’s working two jobs just to pay off the loan. And another girl I know was collecting these beautiful wineglasses from Europe. She did word-processing at home and took on so much extra work that she barely had time to sleep and finally made herself ill.’

    Aoyama could relate to this. It was something he himself had often thought about. In the old days, things like tropical fish or imported wineglasses weren’t within reach for the average person. Now when you walked down the street you passed shop windows full of the finest quality goods from around the world. Any of these things could be yours if you were willing to sacrifice a little, and many people ended up sacrificing a lot. It’s difficult to control the desire to accumulate things.

    But it didn’t really matter what she was saying. Aoyama was happy just savouring the sound of her voice. It was a voice that felt like delicate fingers, or a moist tongue, tickling his skin.

    Yoshikawa continued the questioning.

    ‘What kinds of books do you read?’

    ‘Foreign mysteries, mostly. Not any particular author, but . . . I haven’t done much travelling myself, so I love reading about foreign towns and cities. In mysteries and spy novels, you get very detailed descriptions of the streets and the buildings and so on, and I really enjoy that sort of thing.’

    ‘Which country would you most like to visit?’

    ‘I’ve never actually been anywhere except Hawaii, and Honolulu isn’t exactly the most exotic place, is it? Morocco, Turkey, one of the smaller countries in Europe . . . Anywhere would be wonderful, really.’

    When she uttered the names Morocco and Turkey, Yamasaki Asami tilted her head back slightly and a faraway look came into her eyes. Aoyama caught himself imagining the two of them walking down the stone-paved streets of that nostalgic little town in Germany. It would be spring or early summer. A riot of little flowers blooming beneath the eaves of the houses. They hear the songs of skylarks above them as they stroll arm in arm over the ancient paving stones and gaze at the soft sunlight that glitters on the rolling surface of the river.
Yes, I lived here for several months, did virtually nothing but go to church and visit that pipe organist at her home, and went to bed early every night. It was very monotonous, the same routine every day, but I remember it as a really special time in my life. I don’t know, this may sound affected, but the beauty and silence of the place filled me with a sort of sublime loneliness. That’s when I realised something. In Japan, even when you’re alone, you’re never really that lonely. But the loneliness you feel living among people with differently coloured skin and eyes, whose language you don’t even speak very well – that sort of loneliness is something you feel down to the marrow of your bones. I always thought that someday I’d come back here with someone I loved, and I’d walk along with my arm around her, just like this, and tell her what it was like being here alone. Of course, I never thought it would turn out this perfectly. This is a dream come true for me, it really is  . . .