In the Miso Soup (13 page)

To hear him use that word was somehow both funny and depressing. Like listening to a prostitute denounce promiscuity. But it was true, the karaoke had been turned up to a nearly intolerable level. The civil servant, a man in his mid-forties or so, was butchering the latest song by Mr. Children, and the girls were clapping along apathetically. He’d clearly chosen this song to appeal to them. Anyone could have told him that just singing a Mr. Children song wasn’t going to make him popular with young women, but he was giving it all he had, belting out the lyrics so passionately that veins bulged in his throat. Frank gestured to me that it was too loud even to talk and sat there looking disgruntled. I was none too gruntled myself. I was concerned about Jun, and I was worried about Noriko out on the street and probably still in a trance, but more than anything I was consumed with my own distrust and fear of Frank. The last thing I needed right now was to have someone belt out, at earsplitting volume, a song I didn’t even like. People in this country have no consideration for others, no glimmer of comprehension that they might be annoying those around them. There was something very ugly about this man contorting his face as he struggled with the high notes. It wasn’t a good key for him, and in any case it wasn’t a song he’d chosen out of an actual desire to sing it. He’d chosen it to ingratiate himself with the girls, and he didn’t seem to notice that the girls were all but yawning and rolling their eyes. In other words, he was the only one who failed to realize that what he was doing was completely useless. And infuriating. I was getting genuinely pissed off and beginning to wonder if we really needed people like this in the world. For a moment I thought: He should be put to death, this guy. And at that very moment, Frank looked at me and nodded and smiled as if to say:
Exactly
. An electric shiver ran through me. Frank had been devising a new name for himself on Yuko’s napkin. Having already written
FRANK
, he’d started to scrawl the
O
of
DE NIRO
when he gave me this conspiratorial glance. The timing was just like when you say to someone “I could kill that guy” and they shoot back, “Yeah, I know what you mean.” What was going on with this guy? Had he really just read my mind?

Now Frank was shouting in my ear to ask me to interpret something for him. Yuko was apparently a big fan of Robert de Niro’s, and had nearly wet herself when informed that Frank had the same last name.

“Kenji, listen, these girls don’t speak any English. I want to tell them that Robert de Niro means ‘Robert of the House of Niro.’ ” He spoke rapidly between choruses of the song. My pulse was galloping again. It was all I could do to say I’d tell them when the song was finished. The apprehensions that had been building inside me suddenly coalesced into one big ball of anxiety. I had a horrible feeling that something very bad was about to happen. Frank had changed—his appearance, his personality, even his voice. He’d given Noriko and me some phony name and tried to hypnotize us both. He’d sent her off in a trance, he’d hijacked my phone call to Jun, and now he was reacting to my thoughts as if by telepathy. What the hell was going on here?

The song finally ended. There was a pathetic smattering of applause, and the civil servant guy made the peace sign and went: “Yay!” I decided not to look at him. To pretend he wasn’t even there.

When I explained the meaning of de Niro, Yuko gazed admiringly at the napkin and said that names were fascinating, weren’t they? But Maki let out a nasty snorting laugh, like a sneer.

“They may share the name,” she said, “but that’s all they’ve got in common.”

Of all the women you see in Kabuki-cho, Maki’s type is the lowest of the low, if you ask me. Unattractive, riddled with complexes, and dumb as a post, but because of the worst sort of upbringing ignorant even of her own ignorance. Convinced she ought to be working in a classier place and living a better life, and equally convinced that it’s other people’s fault she can’t pull it off. Envious of everybody else and therefore eager to blame them for everything. Treated so badly all her life that she thinks nothing of doing the same to others by deliberately saying things that hurt them.

“What did she say?” Frank asked me.

I told him.

“Oh?” he said. “And what’s so different about me and Robert de Niro?”

“Everything,” Maki said and snorted again.

I was at a loss. Should I make this idiot woman across from us shut up? Should I get Frank out of this pub? Or should I pretend I needed to use the restroom and run like hell? So many things had happened in so little time that I couldn’t marshal my thoughts. The narrowness of the sofa had something to do with it. Because Frank’s thigh was pressed right up against mine, part of me had already abandoned all hope of escape. When the body’s constrained, so is the spirit. I knew this was no time for getting worked up about the karaoke singer or Maki, but when you’re in an extreme situation you tend to avoid facing it by getting caught up in little details. Like a guy who’s decided to commit suicide and boards a train only to become obsessed with whether he remembered to lock the door when he left home. All the same, I kept trying to devise a way of taking Maki down a notch or two. And I couldn’t come up with anything. Women like her have a nearly impenetrable barrier of stupidity. I could put it to her straight—
You’re a moron
—but that wasn’t likely to produce much more than an angry
What’s that supposed to mean?

“Everything. Everything!” she said again, looking at Yuko for confirmation. “Right?”

“Um, I don’t know,” Yuko said, opting to keep it vague.

“But they’re totally different. The face, the style, the body, everything.”
Snort
.

“Have you ever met the real de Niro?” Frank asked her. “He’s got a restaurant in New York, and I’ve seen him there two or three times. Bob’s not that tall, and he’s very unassuming, just a regular fellow. Jack Nicholson lives on the West Coast, which may be why he has that movie star air about him, but de Niro really seems like just a normal person. That’s how you know he’s a great actor. That mood, that intensity you see on screen, is something he has to work very hard to create.”

I didn’t see what good it would do, but I translated this too. Meanwhile the waiter with the piercings brought two orders of
yaki-soba
and potato chips to our table. I told him we hadn’t ordered them. “
I
did,” Maki said, snatching one of the plates of grilled noodles and veggies. “You have some too,” she told Yuko.

“Kenji, did you translate what I just said?” Frank asked, watching the girls dig in. I told him of course I did. What were we doing here anyway, he wanted to know.

“Did we come here to watch two broads eat noodles? I want to have sex. Noriko said there were hookers in this place. Are these two hookers?”

I translated the question. “What a jerk,” Maki said through a mouthful of noodles. “Right?” she said to Yuko. “That’s what’s wrong with places like this, you get all the losers, know what I mean?” Yuko gave me a troubled look before saying: “But I can see how he might misunderstand.” “Don’t be silly,” said Maki, “we’re not the ones who asked them to join us.” She waved her hand dismissively as she spoke, and part of a sauce-covered noodle fell on her dress. “Shit!” she shrieked, wetting a handkerchief and dabbing frantically at the spot. “Bring me a hand towel!” she shouted at the waiter standing by the counter, loud enough to drown out the Ulfuls, whose album was back on the sound system. She scowled at the dark stain on her white dress and wiped at it with the moist cloth the waiter had fetched, but the stain wouldn’t come out. Maki was short, with a round face and rough, swarthy skin. To think there were men who’d pay good money even for a woman like this. Men today are such a lonely breed that any woman who wants to sell it, as long as she isn’t absolutely hideous to look at, will find a buyer. Which is partly why women like Maki get so full of themselves.

“Look what a pretty pattern it made,” Frank said with a smile. I translated this.

“What’s he talking about, he doesn’t know anything!” Maki spat back, refolding the hand towel and dabbing at the stain some more. Yuko clucked sympathetically: “That’s a Junko Shimada, right?” “That’s right,” said Maki, glaring at Frank and me and adding pointedly: “I’m glad somebody knows quality when they see it. You might not think it to look at me, but I’ve always worked in the highest quality places, even as a student working part-time, and not just nightclubs, either, my first part-time job was at a market in Seijo-Gakuen where they had nothing but the best gourmet foods that only rich people could afford, like sea bream sashimi, five slices in a pack, ¥2000. Tofu too, I couldn’t believe it at first, they had tofu made by hand somewhere near Mount Fuji that they can only make five blocks of it a day, and it was ¥500 for one piece.”

Making a point of ignoring Frank and me, Maki had turned to Yuko, the only one here who could possibly understand. Yuko nodded and sucked up her yaki-soba as she listened. Lady #4 was leaving. She’d been left on her own after the Mr. Children guy chose Lady #5. Of the five women present, #4 and #5 were dressed in the most conventional clothes—sweater and skirt, sweater and slacks—but as it turned out, they were the true professionals. The Mr. Children guy, familiar with places like this, had sniffed it out. The only one left alone now was Lady #3, who was holding the karaoke mike and leafing through a song catalogue. She was wearing a suit, but she was young. She was also the prettiest woman here. It was just past ten o’clock, so I figured her for a hostess on the late shift—midnight till four or five in the morning. This place was more like the waiting room in a train station or something than a pub: a random mix of men and women killing time till something happened. They say that not just in Kabuki-cho but in entertainment districts around the country there are fewer and fewer customers whose main goal is sex. I know of a street in Higashi-Okubo where older men form a queue for a chance to talk—just talk!—to high-school girls. The girls hang out in coffee shops on that street and get thousands of yen an hour for chatting with these guys. Lady #1, who was still going on about how she’d lived her entire life in contact with items of the very finest quality, had probably once done similar things. Maki sincerely believed that because she’d come up surrounded by ¥500 tofu and ¥2000 sashimi and whatnot, nothing but the best was good enough for her. Naturally the Junko Shimada dress didn’t suit her in the least, but she didn’t have a single friend who would point that out to her. Then again, even if such a person were available, she’d have made sure to avoid them.

I once heard a psychiatrist type say on TV that people need to feel they’re of some value to go on living, and I think there’s something to that. It wouldn’t be easy to keep going if you thought you were of no use to anyone. I looked at the manager of this place, who was standing at the counter tapping away on a calculator. He might have been the prototype of men in the sex industry. You could tell by his face he’d long since stopped even asking himself if his life was of any value. Men like him, managers of soaplands and Chinese clubs and S&M clubs, not to mention gigolos and pimps—men who eke out a living exploiting women’s bodies—all have one characteristic in common: they look as if something has eroded away inside them. I talked about this with Jun once but couldn’t explain it very well. I tried to describe it in a lot of different ways, saying it was as though they’ve given up hope, or lost their pride, or lied to themselves too long, or have no emotions left whatsoever, but she didn’t really get it. Only when I described their faces as blank—only then did she say she understood, kind of. About two or three weeks after that, I saw a news report on North Korea. It was about how people were starving there, and they had shots of some of the children. And in the faces of those skinny, dying kids was the same whatever-it-is that you see in the faces of men who live off the traffic in women’s bodies.

The waiter, slouching against the counter next to the manager, wasn’t in that category. Men who make a living off women don’t pierce their noses and lips. He was probably in a band. The band not being successful enough to pay the bills, one of his buddies may have helped him land this job. There’s an astronomical number of young dudes playing in bands, and in Kabuki-cho you can hardly spit without hitting one. Ours was miles away, his eyes staring at nothing anyone else could see. In a small voice, Lady #3 had begun singing an Amuro tune—something about how lonely everybody is deep down inside —but the waiter didn’t look at her, didn’t even seem to be aware of the fact that someone was singing. Meanwhile, the Mr. Children guy had loudly and brazenly opened price negotiations with Lady #5, who I now realized was probably over thirty. The room was warm and she’d perspired a bit, dissolving some of her makeup, and you could see some serious wrinkles on her neck and around her eyes. Mr. Children was badgering her: I bet you work the telephone clubs, I’ve met loads of women like that, and I know one when I see one, honey. Maybe #5 was in desperate need of cash, because nothing he said seemed to piss her off. She sat with her hands on her knees, simpering and shaking her head from time to time or looking up at the door as if willing a more appealing man to enter. Something’s wrong with me, I thought. I don’t normally spend so much time studying other people, especially in places like this. Maki was still blathering away. Yuko had finished her yaki-soba. Frank asked me to translate what Maki was saying, and I did, mechanically.

“After I quit the job at the market I took some time off for a while and then I started working in nightclubs, but I told myself I would never work in a low-class place, because the only people you get in low-class places are low-class people, right?”

“Just a minute,” Frank interrupted her.

“What?” Maki said, but her face said: Put a sock in it, Fatso.

“What are you doing here? What is it you came here to do? That’s what I can’t understand.”

“I’m here to talk to people,” Maki said. “I’ve got the night off at this exclusive club I work at in Roppongi and normally I don’t come to Shinjuku that much but sometimes I come here just to talk to people, and people usually get a kick out of my stories because they’re full of things hardly anyone knows about. When I say ‘my stories’ I mean like, for example, I’m the sort of person who even going to America or someplace I never want to fly economy, you know what I mean?”