Coin Locker Babies (34 page)

“Now where’s my daughter gone? Down to the village, I suppose.”

“Who the fuck’s this old guy?” said Nakakura in a loud whisper.

“Shhhh!” said Hayashi, glancing nervously at a guard standing nearby.

“When do the babes come on?” Nakakura muttered, wrapping his arms around his legs.

“He said something about his daughter, so there’ll be some later,” Kiku whispered in his ear.

Unfortunately, the “babes” were slow to appear. Old Sahei had a string of visitors to the mountain hut—villagers, travelers, woodcutters, and trappers—but there wasn’t a woman among them.

The plot of the play went something like this: the girl raised by Sahei as his daughter was actually his granddaughter, abandoned by her mother, Torie, who had run off with a passing traveler soon after her husband’s death. Together Sahei and his granddaughter had endured the rigors of life in the mountain cottage, until one spring day when the girl was almost fourteen they were visited by a fine gentleman who introduced himself as her mother’s secretary, Torie now being the manager of four circus troupes, apparently. The visitor informed Sahei that Torie now wanted her daughter back, but the old man chased him away with a shower of abuse. It was at about this point that Yamane dozed off, but Nakakura was watching with rapt attention.

“Right on!” he muttered. “Serves her fuckin’ right for running off like that. He shoulda wasted her!”

Finally, the daughter made her entrance. Nakakura nearly jumped out of his seat, but Hayashi and Kiku each grabbed a handful of uniform to hold him down. The pair of legs below the girl’s short skirt drew a long ovation before she started her song and dance.

A figure wrapped from head to foot in vines appeared on stage: Queen Akebi, spirit of the mountains, mistress of the wild things.

The girl, however, was at a loss for an answer.

The queen whirled the vines around her as a flash of magnesium and a billow of smoke obscured the stage, and while the prisoners in the front rows coughed, a statue of the girl appeared. Her voice could be heard sobbing from speakers offstage.

“Nasty,” said Nakakura. “That’s one nasty goddess, turning little girls into stone.” The play, however, had a happy ending: unaware that her daughter has become a statue, Torie and her
secretary reveal their evil intentions, the girl finally realizes that it’s her grandfather who really loves her, and Queen Akebi restores her to life. In the last scene, the girl sang one more song.

The play had a big effect on Nakakura, who talked about it all the way back to the cell.

“Still seems like a pretty crummy thing to do—turning that little girl to stone,” he said, his eyes misting over.

“Don’t you get it?” said Hayashi. “The story was meant for us; we’re supposed to sit it out here like good little statues and everything’ll be fine in the end.” Yamane was nodding in agreement.

“Bullshit,” said Nakakura firmly. “That bad mother who ran off with another guy was the whole point of it. Good thing the girl ended up with her grandfather.” Hayashi and Yamane looked at one another and laughed, so he tried to get Kiku to back him up. “What do you think? Bullshit or not bullshit?”

“Nah, I thought it was pretty interesting,” said Kiku, turning to look back at the others who were walking behind.

“Interesting? What was interesting?” said Yamane.

“The part where the girl got turned to stone.”

“What?!” said Nakakura. “That’s
cold
, man. That was the saddest part.” Kiku laughed.

“Not the way I look at it. Seems to me it would be just fine if people who don’t know what they want got turned to stone. That queen was right. People who don’t know what they want won’t get it anyhow, so they’re pretty much stone as it is. If you ask me, they should have just left that dumb girl a statue.”

Hashi had developed a strong aversion to anything that could reflect an image. Mirrors horrified him, as did windows at night, polished black marble, shiny chrome bumpers, or a still body of water.

The concert was over, and with a manic wave of his hand toward the audience, he made his way back to the dressing room, only to find a whole wall of mirrors there, and in them reflected the face of a man who had held sway over a band and several thousand people for the past two hours.

“Who the hell
are
you?” he muttered at his own reflection. He felt it wasn’t Hashi staring back at him. Though bleached by hundreds of popping flashbulbs, a smile still played across the face, turning quickly to a look of phony rage, but the mouth hurried on as if the question were urgent: “Who
are
you? And what the hell are you doing in my body?… Yeah, ever since then… I used to hate myself, I was a creep, a puny little guy who spent all his time worrying what other people thought of him. But then I realized I’d never become a great singer like that. I was taught how to put on an act, and I was
good
. Anyone can act in front of a camera, but I was really
good
. And the act was to pretend I didn’t give a damn what anybody else thought. Evade questions and just keep pounding away at my own opinions, rubbing their noses in bullshit and riddles. Once you’ve got that down, people
have to start worrying about what
you
think… I don’t remember exactly when, but at some point I started growing this other thing inside me, all so people would notice… all so they’d have to listen to what
I
think.”

Hashi could remember a story the nuns had read to them back in the orphanage about a man who had made a bargain with a goblin. In exchange for success in business, he had agreed to swallow a horrible little egg that was almost too tiny to see. The egg stuck to the wall of his gullet and made a cocoon out of spittle, eventually becoming a tough little chrysalis that started giving the man the advice he needed to succeed in business: “Why don’t you try holding your head up a little and sticking your chest out when you walk?” “Your best bet is to look the guy straight in the eye when you’re talking to him.” But when the chrysalis hatched and the bug itself began flying around inside the man, the suggestions turned to orders delivered in the bluntest terms.

That was when the thing living inside me first started giving orders, Hashi told himself: “Cut off your tongue,” it had said. But what is this thing I’ve got growing in there? Some little bug with wings… When I cut my tongue, the bug didn’t feel anything. And when I picked up the tip, it was just a bit of gristle. I remember the sound it made when I squeezed it in my fingers, kind of spongy, and it must have been right then that the bug’s shell cracked; the second I squeezed that bit of my tongue, the bug hatched, wings and all. And now it’s taking over, eating me away to change me from the inside out. It’s the bug that’s going to make the tour a success; that’s why it’s always talking to me, giving me orders. But whenever I ask it anything, there’s no answer, there’s no way for me to talk to it. All I get is a string of abuse from it, the bug telling me I’m weak, the bug promising to make me strong…

The night the group finished its last show in Kyushu, Hashi announced that he wanted to go home to the island, just for a day or so. Neva thought it was a good idea and wanted to go with him, but Hashi insisted on going alone. The band had a standing rule that off days were devoted to practice, so Neva was sent to make Hashi’s excuses, but instead of the objections she expected, she found that they also thought he needed a rest. It had become a visible strain for him to keep the manic concert atmosphere from overwhelming him, and he hardly answered any more when spoken to. Except for rehearsals, he stayed locked away in his own room, refusing to allow even Neva in to see him. Completely unable to sleep, he had apparently started taking her sleeping pills.

He wasn’t the only one suffering, however; between morning sickness and worrying about her husband, Neva’s nerves were also shot to hell. She found herself constantly calling in the doctor who had been hired to look after them and asking him about Hashi.

“Not to worry,” he told her. “Just about any performer will get a slight case of burnout over the course of a long tour. Add to that a natural fear of the responsibilities of becoming a father, and you’ve got a pretty normal reaction. He’ll be fine. You say he wants to take a look around his old stamping grounds? What could be better? That’ll fix him up in no time.”

Hashi took the train to Sasebo, where he had a longish wait for the bus that would drop him off at the ferry terminal. He decided to go and have a look around a certain department store: the one with the roof garden where he’d been hypnotized all those years ago. Just as he had always found before, Sasebo was a town where the sun never seemed to shine. Along the shadowless streets, he felt as if a wave were being generated by the people passing,
the buildings, every feature of the scene. It was something he’d come across before in the other, nameless towns they had visited on tour; not sound or color, not a smell or some vague breeze, but a warping of the space between himself and the people and buildings as the distances that separated them continually expanded and contracted. Yet the city itself hadn’t changed at all. He and Kiku had enjoyed walking along this wide street from the station to the shopping district. In the tinted windows of the dance halls that lined both sides, languid couples clung to one another as they swayed to the music, while flocks of birds wheeled in the air high above the spire of a nearby church. Wherever there was room, someone had set up a stand to peddle fruit or spices or something, and fishmongers pushed their carts between them. Nothing had changed in the cloudy city.

Hashi decided to make a detour through the market. Near the entrance he noticed a water tank that was writhing with hundreds of eels. He could remember how he used to watch a man wearing white gloves trying to scoop them out in his hands. The process had fascinated him, and he had stayed watching for as long as he was allowed. Once, the man had thrust an eel in front of the boys and the squirming, slimy body had slapped them both across the face. Their screams had sent the adults standing around them into fits of laughter. The eels today had all gathered in one corner and were lined up in the same direction, piled one on top of another, like a woman’s long black hair floating in the bath. Hashi was sure the same thought had occurred to him the last time he’d looked into this tank.

Leaving the market, he passed a movie theater and then crossed the street. As he cut through a little park, he caught sight of the department store. Once inside, he took the elevator straight to the floor where the restaurant was and ordered a rice
omelette, but it was disappointing when it came. Worse, one of the waitresses had started to stare at him, and no matter how hard he tried to avoid her, she was constantly craning her neck around to get a better view. Finally she called another waitress over and whispered something as she pointed in his direction. When they approached his table, he could hear them egging each other on: “You say it.” “No,
you
say it.” Hashi stared resolutely at his plate.

“Uhhh, sorry to bother you, but you’re Hashi, aren’t you?” one of them finally managed, her face turning bright red. Hashi wanted to tell them they were wrong, wanted to send them away thinking they’d made a mistake, but he heard himself say something altogether different when he looked up.

“Yes, I’m Hashi. What can I do for you?” The two girls clapped their hands and jumped up and down.

“Oooooh! Ya
see
! I
told
you it was him!” By this time the other customers were looking. The waitresses had already produced autograph books, and the kitchen staff were peering out from behind the counter chattering among themselves.

“He looks shorter than he does on TV,” someone said. Hashi signed whatever was put in front of him with a practiced hand. A woman in a kimono came up with her child and spread out a handkerchief for him to sign.

“Would you mind shaking hands?” the woman asked. Hashi went one better; taking her hand, he gallantly kissed the back of it. At this, there was a general uproar, and the customers and employees—waitresses, cooks, manager and all—came pressing in around his table.

“Hang on, folks!” he called, standing up and smiling at the crowd. “I’m not going anywhere, so let’s just take our time. How about forming a line, and everybody’ll get a chance.”

“Do you like rice omelettes?” asked a shopgirl as she had him
sign the back of her sweaty blouse. Hashi nodded, noticing his own warped face reflected on the back of his spoon. The face was laughing.

A business card was shoved under his nose and a man who introduced himself as a reporter from the local newspaper launched straight into a string of questions while a photographer’s flash went off in intermittent bursts.

“When will your new record be coming out?” the reporter wanted to know. A girl in a school uniform standing behind Hashi was trying to touch his hair, and the next person in the autograph line was a woman with a dye job who wanted him to sign a pair of panties she’d just bought.

“I’ll sign ’em for ya, honey,” yelled an old man who had been drinking. “My autograph good enough for you, baby?” Pushed by the crowd, a child started to fall, and its mother, trying to catch it, knocked into a table and sent dishes and bottles flying. One bottle burst as it hit the floor, and the reporter’s suit was ruined.

“Quit pushing!” someone yelled.

“So your trip here is strictly personal?” the man continued. The schoolgirls just behind him were taking turns touching Hashi’s hair, while the wall of people on all sides grew thicker. Somewhere a child was crying. Hashi went on signing: autograph books, scraps of paper, handkerchiefs, satchels, shopping bags, wrapping paper, underwear, blouses, hands, jewelry, socks, and so on. His table had begun to list to one side, and flashbulbs exploded again and again in front of his eyes. A pair of glasses fell from the face of one of the hair feelers, sending her diving down to retrieve them from under a crush of feet.

“Would you say there’s any connection between your concerts and culture in the provinces?” the reporter was asking as the table went into its final dive. The plate with what was left of the rice
omelette, spoon still aboard, came sliding by, giving Hashi a final glimpse of that bulging face.

“Who are you?” he murmured at it.

“Whatda, whatda, whatda, whatda fuck’s goin’ on here?” roared a young drunk, wading onto the scene at this point. “Whatda… hey, waida minute. You really Hashi?” The funhouse face tumbled with the spoon to the floor where the girl was still groping about in a pool of ketchup for her glasses. “Heeeeeey! You really Hashi?!” the young man went on shouting. His feet squirming on bits of rice, ketchup, egg, and broken lens, Hashi nodded.

There were fewer ferry boats running to the island than there had been, and the little stand that sold soft drinks and snacks next to the bus stop had been torn down—the stand where long ago the welfare officer had bought Kiku and Hashi a half-melted ice cream. An old familiar sign showing a young girl licking a stick of candy lay buried beneath a layer of dust. The island crouched on the horizon like a sleeping animal.

Hashi’s reason for going home was simple: he wanted to see the dog. He wanted to see Milk, Kiku’s present to him as a child. He liked the idea that the dog wouldn’t know he was now a famous singer with over a million records sold. He wondered whether Milk would remember him, how the dog would react if the bug inside him really had gained control and he was now someone else. If Milk barked and tried to bite him, then that would decide it: he would give in, become the bug’s slave. But if Milk was the same old Milk, whimpering and rubbing against his leg, then perhaps they could go down to the beach and have a romp together. That was all he wanted; that would probably be enough for him to remember… whatever it was. Maybe he would recall some shining time, long before the bug was born. Maybe.

Aboard the ferry, nothing had changed: the oily smell you never got used to, the rusty rails, the frayed seat covers, the rumbling of the engine that shook you deep down. The island grew gradually larger until it filled the windows of the cabin, and Hashi came out on deck. The sea was calm, with only the gentlest swell and almost no spray where the bow cut the water. The breeze carried off the stench of oil and brought a salt sea smell in its place. The green lump on the horizon had gradually taken shape, slowly increasing in substance until now it dominated the whole scene. As it loomed nearer every second, with the engines humming in his gut, Hashi found himself groping for some much earlier memory, but what it was he couldn’t think, and all he could call to mind was his first ride on this ferry with Kiku. For a moment, the sticky sensation of the ice cream melting in his mouth came back to him vividly, and his eyes misted over. The ship slowed, and a rope was thrown over to the pier. Halfway up a hill in the distance, the rows of abandoned apartment blocks were visible.

“I’m home,” Hashi muttered just loud enough to be heard.

“Milk!” Hashi called as he neared the lane leading up to his foster father’s house. The distance from the paved bus route seemed shorter than he remembered it, the slope less steep, but the left bank was still thick with clumps of canna lilies. At one spot where they had been cleared away, a telephone pole had been put up with a small streetlight attached. Hashi remembered that if you turned to look exactly three steps after the pole, you could see the ocean. He stood looking out over the water for a moment and then retreated to the road. On the right bank some white flowers were in bloom; though he could never remember what they were called, he did remember that just where the smell of these flowers
was strongest you came to a kumquat tree, and a little beyond it, if you called out “Milk,” a billow of white fur would come swooping around the corner ahead. Finding the spot, he stood and called the dog’s name again and again, but Milk did not appear. Maybe he’s tied up, Hashi thought to himself. But that wouldn’t stop him barking. Beginning to feel uneasy, he climbed the last few steps to the house.