Japanese Portraits: Pictures of Different People (32 page)

On his knees, giving his famous crooked smile, he'd say: But I need it now—next week's. It's not much anyway.

Sometimes the charade of the weekly allowance would be dropped. He would come home, fling off his clothes, wander around naked, say he was going to take a bath but not take one till afterward, then try to touch me for a bit more.

- Look, Koichiro, this isn't going to work. Your mother asked me to look after you, not keep you.

- It's the same thing. You're my father.

- I am not.

- What are you, then? He had an ugly way of thrusting out his lower lip when crossed.

- Does the money go to them? I wondered.

- Who's them? he asked.

And so, day by day, our differences grew. Autumn came, then winter. He would sit morosely in the pool of warmth seeping from the gas heater. Then, still in his student uniform—a delinquent student—he would fling himself out of the house and leave me sleepless.

One day my trepidation multiplied when he slyly opened his uniform jacket to show me a long, cloth-wrapped object which he had stuck in his belt.

- Know what this is? he asked. It was a knife, plain wooden handle in a wooden sheath, the kind they kill themselves with in samurai movies but larger.

- That's a fish knife, I answered, determined to remain unruffled.

- Kind of. Friend gave it to me. To protect myself.

- Against whom?

- Oh, people.

He took off his pants to look at a scabbed knee, scratched his balls, said he was sleepy.

Unimpressed though I pretended to be, I was now beginning to be frightened. Not so much of Koichiro—who was just a big boy—but rather of his unknown friends and what seemed to be their increasing demands for further funding. My imagination slowly enlarged on it: anonymous phone calls, shattered windows, midnight invasions, blood on the tatami.

One freezing, sunless winter day I called up his mother, told her it wasn't working out, that her youngest was a gangboy. Ah, she said, just as she had feared. And so I was handing him back to her. It sounded like a failed business deal, which in a way it was. Well, no, that wasn't possible, she said. She wouldn't have him in the house.

- But he's your son.

- No, he's ours.

At that point the unwanted child walked in, so I hung up.

Then one snowy February day I threw him out. Not physically; he was much the stronger of us two. No, I took advantage of his manners—made him feel he couldn't stay where he was no longer welcome.

In the hallway, carrying his karate gear, he bowed deeply and thanked me in true gang fashion—as seen in the movies—for having taken care of him. Then he left me alone in the frigid house to dwell on thoughts of snarling phone calls, midnight bangings on the door, sharp samurai knives.

None of this occurred. He did, however, send long, self-justifying letters, all carefully written out in roman letters, the only form of Japanese I can read. But since his prose was formal and he did not know how to transcribe it properly, these letters found me reading things into them. I will tell your people about you. Or, perhaps: I was telling people about him. Or, maybe: people were telling him something about me. The ambiguities worried me, made the unknown darker still. But then the letters stopped coming altogether.

I would lie awake as the nights slowly grew warmer. I would gaze at the square sheet, whitened by the moon, remembering when it had held his naked, sprawled-out, sleeping body.

I missed him, wanted him back, and yet I started at every nocturnal sound in dread that it was him. I had made an important discovery: it is possible to be afraid of what you love.

Ten years later. A telephone call. I recognized the voice immediately, but now with no damp palms, no lifting of the heart.

It had been a long time, he said. It was wrong of him not to have kept in touch but he hoped I was well. The manner was polite, for Koichiro had always been a polite boy. And, though he knew it was impolite to ask, would it be possible to see me? I, also a polite boy, refrained from saying that I no longer had any money for him, but, remembering the knife, suggested a crowded place for us to meet—in front of the Wako windows in the Ginza, a popular rendezvous.

He was right on time. No more keeping me waiting hours while the dinner got cold. Just as the clock had finished chiming he stood there in the winter sun. A blue businessman's suit, white shirt, quiet tie, company badge discreet in one lapel.

Older now, small wrinkles no longer the creases of an adolescent's smile. And something tamed about him. Over our coffee, it all came out, smooth as a school report: he now worked for the Tobacco Monopoly Board, not a bad job, and—smile—he still smoked. The best part, though, was that he was now manager of the company baseball team. Played Gifu Tobacco Products last week and won. Also, his boss had introduced him to this girl and they had married and as a matter of fact she was expecting their first child even as he spoke.

He sat before me, reformed. Any lingering fears I may have had now shrank, ashamed of themselves, and vanished. Thinking as a parent, I remembered his mother and said that I imagined she was happy.

He nodded. She was, but now she had this high blood pressure. Then, reminded that his other parent sat facing him, he straightened his shoulders and bowed over his coffee.

- Thank you for everything you did for me. I owe you a real debt of gratitude.

- You mean it worked? I straightened you out?

He smiled, as though at his own formality, then said: I mean it.

- I thought I'd failed.

- Well, later I thought a lot about it, our life together. You tried to be good. I was still a kid.

Now he was grown-up, a member of society—and I realized that I had already begun regretting the disappearance of the dangerous youth.

- You were a handful, I said: I was even afraid of you.

- I wanted you to be.

- Was it only money, then?

He looked into his cup, as if embarrassed. Then, apparently deciding to be responsible, he looked at me and said: No, I just wanted more than you gave me. I was disappointed in you. I wanted you to really see, well, all of me.

I remembered the square of moonlight with a body in it, a fine body, but just a body.

- I'd figured it out for myself, he continued. Anyone could have. Except my mother. But I saw it, well, as kind of a beginning. And for you it was the end. That was all there was. So finally I got mad at you. And then I saw you were scared of me. I liked that, and even stole that dumb knife to frighten you more. And you thought I'd joined a gang and I let you think it.

He looked down, then raised his eyes: There's no apologizing for what I did. You ought to have told my mother.

- I did. She didn't want you back.

He smiled and looked at his hands. The knuckles were big—karate.

- You didn't talk with my brother about me?

- Ichiro? No, I didn't.

- Why? He would have straightened me out.

- I was embarrassed, I said. And as I spoke I felt my face redden. Ichiro, so kind, so good, so unexciting.

Koichiro gave me his bright, inquiring glance: I was embarrassed too, he said.

But this talk of embarrassment had now managed to embarrass both of us and soon he was buttoning his blue jacket, becoming as formal as he used to get when he made his cup of ceremonial tea.

- So I just wanted to see you again and tell you how much I appreciate what you did for me.

I knew what he was feeling. He wanted to settle accounts. Not with me—with himself. Then he needn't feel as though he had been ungrateful or bad or misunderstood. And after saying this, he gave a little nod which meant: there, that's fixed now.

- No, no, that's mine, he said, picking up the bill. It was the first time I had seen him pay for something on his own.

- Keep in touch, I said.

Then we stood and looked at each other, this company man and me.

- And let me know about the child.

I had almost offered to be its godfather but decided that this wouldn't be tactful. So I said: Name it after me. That wasn't tactful either but it allowed Koichiro to give me his wonderful smile one last time before he turned away into the Ginza crowds and I saw his shoulders slope like everybody else's.

An old man came once a week to the Underwear Snack. He came every Sunday at ten in the evening, drank a cup of Nescafé, smoked several Kents, then slipped his cigarettes and lighter back into his kimono sleeve, and was gone by eleven. They called him the old man. The manager of the place said that he was even older than he looked, had a lot of money, wanted to die.

That he wanted to die impressed none of the girls. No one that age would want to live on. That he had money impressed them all at first. Particularly Miki. She sat on his kimonoed lap and wriggled her hips while he, pleased and embarrassed as a boy, was careful to blow his smoke elsewhere. When he rested his old hand on her young rump she lightly slapped his face.

Actually, when one was that old it took a hard slap to make you feel anything, was Miki's opinion. The skin had grown that thick. Still, he was cute.

The other two girls agreed. He was cute as a little boy, always so carefully dressed in his kimono, shaved, hair parted, sitting there so straight, like a big doll, always smiling.

He wanted to die while he's doing it, Miki would say—not that he could, she added. Still, he wanted to have his eyes full of flesh when he finally closed them. Sex, after all, no matter what else you might say about it, was alive. It was, let's face it, the opposite of death. That was why he turned up every week. The others nodded, but one said that he was, well, kind of repulsive too.

Yet he made no demands. Understanding this, the girls made offers. Miki revealed a breast to a gaze greedy as a child's. When he nuzzled her, she laughed and called him her baby, her old, hungry baby.

Little by little his story became known. His life had been ordinary— an ordinary husband, ordinary father. Then his wife had left him or else died, and the children, all grown up, had scattered. And this extraordinary thing had happened to him: he didn't die; instead, he grew older and older. But his distinction was also his calamity. He had no friends, everyone he had known having long since turned to ashes. Also, he became ill. Sometimes he turned pale and put his hand on his carefully tied sash. Cancer—they were certain it was cancer.

Imagine that, the girls would say. He was just like everyone else and then he got old and became a pervert. But, of course, everyone old was kinky. All they could do was finger and lick, and they liked being slapped, as though it made them feel younger. Or worse.

Worse was what they did with each other. Everyone knew that schoolboys messed around. Well, when you were really getting on, it all came back again. One of Miki's boy friends told her that he had once seen two old fogies handling each other in a toilet. He said it disgusted him. It didn't disgust her; it seemed natural that when you got very old you might turn queer again.

Her old man, however, was still interested in women. Yet this interest seemed detached. Never once did the blunt, veined hands stray. A palm on Miki's bottom—that was as far as it went. If it went further it was because she herself had moved his hand.

Since he demanded no attention, he created it. He became over the months a mascot. On Sundays around ten the girls began to wonder if their old man was coming or not. When he had first appeared there was a show of distaste at the idea of doing anything other than tolerating him; but now the girls laughed and dared each other to poke around under that fine kimono. One evening Miki did just that. He smiled throughout it, as though it was he who was tolerating her.

Down there, she later reported, he was just like anyone else, not shriveled away to nothing at all. Admittedly, it hadn't moved, but it had been warm. The other two shook their heads and said they just hoped he wouldn't die in this place, implying that they hoped he would.

Then one night Miki insisted on going home with him. She said it was because of the money, because he might be persuaded to change his will. No one believed her. She was interested in him. They all were.

They all had fathers, living or dead; they respected age, respected anyone who had endured this long. He was a survivor, from war, from earthquake, from history itself. He had experienced what they could only guess at. Every line on his face spoke for itself. Miki said she did it for the money. She didn't.

Later she said it was like lying down with a skeleton. That was what they had done—lain down. She had put his hand on her and he had stroked her. Then he had cried, but he was so dry that no tears came. This had affected her. A good man come to this, she moralized. The others laughed and said that if nothing else happened it was her fault, failing to excite him like that.

Going back with him to his bare little room eventually became a ritual. She always went home with the mascot on Sundays. Side by side they lay until the early morning. Then he slowly made ordinary green tea for her after they had sat up. She received no money. It was restful, she said, companionable too, though they never talked.