Grotesque (24 page)

“Hey, fellas, want to go somewhere for a cup of tea?”

The men looked at Kazue and then at me and hurried away as quickly as they could. Kazue dashed after them. The faster they went, the faster she ran.

“What’s the rush?” she called after them, in a coarse voice. “There’re two of us, one for each of you. We’ll give it to you cheap and then you can trade partners. Look, she’s half. And I’m a graduate of Q University.”

“What a crock of shit,” one of the men jeered.

“Its true. I’m not kidding,” Kazue said, pulling out her ID card to show the man. He refused to look at it and knocked Kazue roughly out of the way as he pushed past her. Even as Kazue fought to keep her footing she chased after the man.

“Wait! Wait, why don’t you?” Giving up, Kazue finally turned back to look at me and laughed. I didn’t have experience chasing down Johns. It looked like I would have a lot to learn from Kazue.

On my way home I stopped at a twenty-four-hour supermarket in Kabuki-cho and bought a jet-black wig with hair that fell as far as my waist, just like Kazue’s.

I’m now standing in front of my mirror wearing the black wig. I’ve painted bright blue eye shadow over my eyelids and red lipstick on my lips. I wonder if I look like Kazue. I’d just as soon not look like her.

Kazue had decked herself out to look like a prostitute so she could go stand on the corner in front of that statue of Jizo, benevolent protector of the damned, guardian of lost children. I’ve dressed myself in the same costume and will stand in the same place.

The phone rings. A customer, perhaps? I answer hopefully. It’s Johnson.

He’s supposed to come see me the day after tomorrow but he has called to beg off. His mother in Boston has died, he says.

“Are you going to go to the funeral?”

“You know I can’t. I don’t have the money. Besides, I’ve been disowned, remember? I’ll just go into mourning here.”

1 4 7

N A T S U O K I R I NO

Johnson says he’ll go into mourning, but he doesn’t do anything special.

He said the same thing when his father died.

“Do you want me to go into mourning with you?”

“You don’t need to. It has nothing to do with you.”

“True, it’s none of my business.”

“That was cold, Yuriko.”

Johnson’s laugh was tinged with sorrow. Related. After he hung up I thought about my relations with others. Earlier I wrote that I imagine I became a prostitute because I didn’t want to have long-lasting relationships with other people. Other than my father and my sister—to whom I’m related by blood—Johnson is the only person with whom I’ve had a lasting relationship. But this doesn’t mean I love him. I’ve never loved anyone, not once. That’s why I’m able to get along just fine without an intimate relationship with another person. Johnson’s the only exception, and that’s because I had a child with him fourteen years ago. No one else knows: not my father, not my sister, not even the child.

Johnson is raising the child himself: a boy. He’s now a second-year student in junior high. Johnson told me his name but I forgot it. The reason Johnson stays in touch with me and comes to see me four or five times a month is because of the child. Johnson has faith that I secretly cherish a love for this child. I find his faith annoying, but I won’t affirm or deny it.

“Yuriko, the boy seems to have a lot of musical talent. That’s what they say at his school. Doesn’t that make you happy?”

“The boy has really grown. He’s already over six feet tall. He’s such a handsome fellow, why won’t you at least meet him?”

I have no use for a child who shares my blood. And Johnson’s appeals to a mother’s love only make me wince. Still, because I’ve been a prostitute for all these years and have only gotten pregnant once, it makes me think that my child with Johnson must have a very strong tie to this world.

I withdrew from Q High School for Young Women before I turned eighteen.

I had just entered my senior year. It was because Masami found out about Johnson and me.

Around that time Johnson would sneak into my bed every night, 1 4 8

G R O T E S Q U E

knowing full well how dangerous it was. He didn’t come just to have sex with me. He wanted to hear about the men Kijima had introduced me to.

“After the kid on the baseball team screwed you, what did he say?”

“He said that if I slept with him again he’d hit a home run.”

“What a jerk!” Johnson laughed as he gazed appreciatively at my naked body. He enjoyed any sort of affirmation that I, his possession, was perfect. If Johnson had only just listened to my stories and then gone back to his own bed—but no, he’d get excited by the details I shared with him and would have to have me all over again. Just as Masami couldn’t go to sleep without her nightcap—into which Johnson had secretly taken to putting sleeping pills—Johnson’s day wouldn’t end until he’d heard my stories.

That particular night he must have had a difficult day at the office. His face was drawn with weariness and he had me tell him stories again and again. He lay on the bed beside me, drinking bourbon straight out of the bottle. That was the first time I’d ever seen him so disheveled.

“Tell me more!”

I’d run out of my usual fare, so I started to talk about Kijima’s father.

“If someone has an interest in me, he’ll always let me know. But there’s one person who won’t approach me specifically because he’s interested, and that’s Kijima’s father, Professor Kijima. The biology teacher.”

“What kind of teacher is he?”

Usually when I stared at Johnson, his eyes looked like those of some land of bird of prey—a vulture or a hawk. But tonight they were murky and dull.

• 8 •

Johnson had absolutely no interest in my academic life. Not in my grades, my experience on the cheerleaders’ squad, or even my first 1 4 9

N A T S U O K I R I NO

encounters with Mokku. But from time to time when he’d come to my room he’d make me put on my cheerleader outfit. He’d run his fingers over the gold and blue pleats of my miniskirt and smile bitterly. Your school’s just imitating American cheerleaders. What a bunch of copycats.

Johnson couldn’t stand Japanese girls. Maybe he hated me too, and Japan as well.

Mine was a strange existence. Not Johnson’s daughter and hardly his wife. To put it bluntly, I was nothing more than the daughter of an acquaintance who was there for his sexual pleasure, so of course he didn’t feel the need to play a parental role. Sure, Johnson was immoral. It was clear that he expected me to provide him sexual services in return for the portion of the exorbitant tuition fees that he paid.

“Tell me about Professor Kijima,” he said.

I was exhausted and wanted to sleep. But Johnson was drunk, his eyes awash with lust. I suppose he suspected my story about Professor Kijima would reveal a new source of sexual excitement, and it was to my benefit if I could entertain Johnson night after night with fascinating stories—

just like the beautiful maiden Scheherazade in the thousand and one tales of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. But I had no idea what about my stories would excite Johnson, so all I could do was just tell them as they happened. I rolled over on my back and began my story, slowly, haltingly.

“He is the professor who approved my admission to the Q School system.

On the day of the interview, when I entered the classroom, there was a huge brown turtle that they were raising in an aquarium. I’d just flown in from Switzerland and was about to die of exhaustion. On top of that, my marks on the entrance exam had been really bad. I knew I wasn’t going to get in so I was totally depressed. And then I saw the turtle.

There was this snail crawling slowly along the glass of the aquarium, and the turtle just stuck out its neck and snapped the snail up, right in front of my eyes. Professor Kijima asked me what kind of turtle it was. I told him it was a tortoise, which apparently was the right answer. Since Professor Kijima is the biology teacher, that was enough to satisfy him and he decided to pass me.”

Johnson erupted in laughter, letting the bourbon dribble out the side of his mouth.

“Ha! It wouldn’t have made a bit of difference if you’d called it a tor-1 5 0

G R O T E S Q U E

toise or a terrapin. ‘What’s this square thing?’ Kijima could have asked.

‘Oh, it’s a desk,’ you’d have said, and he’d have passed you!”

Johnson was convinced that I was crazy about sex and too stupid to do schoolwork. Just like Kijima’s son. Just like my sister. I normally never got angry when people made fun of me, but for some reason I suddenly felt like challenging Johnson. He’d spilled bourbon on the sheets and now they were stained with the brown liquid. Masami was going to have a fit, and it wouldn’t be Johnson who’d get in trouble but me.

“I named the tortoise Mark, after you,” I told him.

Johnson shrugged his shoulders exaggeratedly. “I’d rather be the snail.

Let’s name the tortoise Yuriko, after a woman who lives off of eating men. I bet Kijima what’s-his-name would like to crawl into the aquarium and get snapped up by Yuriko. So why do you think Kijima has never tried to make it with you? Do you suppose he thinks you would sell yourself to a teacher?”

“No, it’s because my manager is Professor Kijima’s son.”

Johnson rolled over on the bed in great gales of laughter, clapping his hand over his mouth to stifle the sound. “So that’s why? Wow, this is just like some crazy soap opera!”

It wasn’t that funny. After I’d advanced a grade, to Q High School for Women, I’d occasionally run into Professor Kijima. Whenever he saw me he’d greet me stiffly with a perplexed expression on his face. Just beneath his overly serious expression, I sensed a warm fear.

It happened at the end of my second year of high school. When Professor Kijima caught sight of me, he waved me over toward him with insistent gestures. He was wearing his usual starched white shirt. The long fingers that clutched his textbooks were coated white with chalk dust.

“I’ve heard something I’d like you to clear up. It’s my hope that you’ll be able to tell me it’s not true.”

“Why?”

“Because it concerns your honor.” Professor Kijima spoke bitterly.

“I’ve heard rumors that you’ve been involved in very inappropriate behavior, that you’ve completely shamed yourself. I can’t believe what I’ve heard.”

“What rumors?”

Professor Kijima looked down to his side and bit his lip. The disgusted 1 5 1

N A T S U O K I R I NO

expression did not suit such a good-natured man. In the blink of an eye he’d turned into an entirely different man, a sexual man. I found him very appealing.

“They say you’re taking money to sleep with other students. If it’s true you’ll be expelled. Before the school launches its own investigation, I wanted to ask you myself. It’s not true, is it?”

I was puzzled. If I said it was a lie I’d probably escape expulsion. But I’d already had enough of the cheerleaders’ squad and the all-girl classes.

Expulsion didn’t sound so bad.

“It’s true. I’ve just been following my own path, doing what I enjoy doing. It’s my little moneymaker. Can’t you just leave it be?”

Kijima started to tremble and his face reddened.

“Leave it be? But you’re defiling the very core of your existence—

your soul! You can’t do that sort of thing!”

“My soul can’t be damaged by something like prostitution!”

When he heard the word prostitution Kijima grew so angry that his voice shook.

“Maybe you don’t notice it, but you’re defiled. Your soul is defiled.”

“Well, Professor, what about your decision to moonlight as a tutor making fifty thousand yen for a two-hour session and using the money to take your family on vacation to Hawaii? Is that not disgraceful? Have you not defiled your family?”

Kijima stared at me in blank amazement. How could I have possibly known about that, he seemed to be thinking. Clearly, he had no idea.

“Well, it is a disgrace. But my spirit is still pure.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well, I suppose because it’s like a reward for hard work. I work hard at my job. But I don’t sell my body, and neither should you. It’s wrong.

You’re a beautiful woman. That’s not something you chose to be or something you had to work hard to become. You were fortunate enough to be born beautiful. But to live off of exploiting yourself defiles who you are.”

“I’m not exploiting myself. No more than you are with your moonlighting.”

“It’s not the same. In your work you hurt the people who care for you.

They’ll stop loving you. They won’t be able to love you.”

That was a new thought for me. My body is my own, why should anyone else think they owned it? Why should a person who loved me think 1 5 2

G R O T E S Q U E

he should be entitled to control my body? If love was that restricting, I was happy to live without it.

“I don’t need anybody’s love.”

“What an incredibly arrogant thing to say. Just what the hell kind of person are you anyway?”

Kijima looked at his chalk-covered fingers in exasperation. His forehead was deeply wrinkled, and strands from his smooth hair slipped down over it. What startled me was the discovery that Kijima didn’t want my body, he wanted to have me. He wanted to know what was going on in my heart. My heart. This was the first time I’d ever met someone who wanted to get to know that part of me I never showed to anyone else.

“Professor, is it that you want to buy me?”

Kijima was silent for a minute, unable to answer, then he raised his head and said plainly, “No. I’m a teacher and you are my student.”

But you know I’m stupid, so why did you let me into this school? I started to ask this and then stopped, startled. Here was a man who wanted what no one had wanted before: he wanted to get to know the inner workings of the doll-like woman who was me. Karl wasn’t interested in me; neither was Johnson. But Kijima’s father liked me for who I was. The realization left me feeling numb. I was touched. But being touched is not the same as feeling desire. And I didn’t exist without desire. If I didn’t exist, then what?

“Professor, if you aren’t going to buy me, I don’t want you.”