Almost Transparent Blue (8 page)

I'm cold, as if I were dead, Lilly said.

She was shaking and pulled me back toward the car. The classrooms seen through the windows seemed ready to devour us. The desks and chairs in regular rows reminded me of a mass grave for unknown soldiers. Lilly was trying to escape the silence.

Running with all my might, I cut across the grounds. Lilly yelled after me.

Come back, I'm begging you, you just can't go!

I struggled up to the wire fence around the pool, and started climbing it. On the water below, ripples and counterripples blended into each other, looking just like a TV screen after all the day's broadcasting has ended. The water glittered, reflecting the lightning.

Do you know what you're doing? Come back, you'll die, you'll end up dead!

Her arms hugging her body, her legs twisted around each other, Lilly was yelling in the middle of the grounds.

Tense as a deserter from the army, I dropped down beside the pool. Thousands of ripples were forming constantly, the water looked like translucent jelly—I hurled myself in.

Lightning lit up the inside of Lilly's hands on the steering wheel. Blue lines lay buried in the transparent skin, water drops rolled down her muddy arms. On the road like a twisted metal tube, the car ran along beside the barbed wire enclosure around the Base.

"Hey, I completely forgot."

"What?" she asked.

"In the city in my head I forgot to put in an airport."

Strands of Lilly's mud-smeared hair clung together. Her face was pale, tiny veins pulsed in her neck, her shoulders were covered with goose pimples.

I saw the water drops rolling down the windshield as being just like the round beetles of summer. Just like the little beetles that reflect the whole forest on their rounded backs.

Lilly kept mixing up the accelerator and the brake, her white legs stretched out stiffly and she shook her head violently to clear it.

"Hey, the city's just about done, but it's a city under the sea. So what'll I do about the airport, don't you have some idea, Lilly?"

"Look, cut out the stupid talk, I'm scared, we've got to get back."

"You should have washed off the mud, too, Lilly, won't it feel bad when it dries?

It was beautiful in the pool, the water was glowing. That's when I decided to make it an undersea city, you know."

"I said cut it out! Hey Ryū, tell me where we are now. I don't know where we're going, I can't see too well, hey, pull yourself together. We might die, dying is all I've been thinking about. Where are we, Ryū, tell me where we are!"

Suddenly a metallic orange light flashed as if exploding in the car, Lilly wailed like a siren and let go of the steering wheel.

At once I pulled the hand brake and the squealing car slid to the side, mauled the barbed-wire enclosure, hit a light pole, and stopped.

A-ah, it's a plane, look, it's a plane!

The runway swarmed with all kinds of light.

A sheaf of searchlights revolved, the windows of buildings twinkled, guide lights along empty spaces flashed.

The deafening roar of the sparkling, polished jet standing beside the runway shook everything around.

There were three searchlights on a tall tower. After their cylinders of light passed us—necks of dinosaurs—the distant mountains shone. One lump of rain over there, cut away by the light, congealed into a sparkling silver room. The strongest searchlight turned slowly, lighting fixed areas, lighting another runway a short distance from us. We had lost our willpower in the shock of impact. Like cheap robots wound up and set to walk a certain direction, we got out of the car and walked toward the runway, closer to the jet roar shaking the ground.

Now the light picked out the sides of the mountains in the opposite direction. Its huge sweeping orange circle peeled off the night, easily peeled off the night stuck to and wrapped around things.

Lilly took off her shoes. She threw the muddy shoes against the barbed-wire enclosure. The light soon swept through the woods alongside it. Sleeping birds were startled into flight.

It's going to be soon, Ryū, I'm scared, it's going to be soon.

The barbed wire flared gold, and the light seen up close was like a red-hot iron bar. The circle of light stopped nearby. Steam rose from the earth. The earth and grass and runway turned the white of molten glass.

First Lilly entered the whiteness. Then I did. For a moment we couldn't hear anything. In a few seconds unbearable pain struck our ears. It was as if they had been pierced with hot needles. Lilly clutched hers and fell backward. My chest was filled with the odor of burning.

The rain stabbed us, the way skinned meat hung in a freezer is speared with iron rods.

Lilly was searching for something on the ground. Like a nearsighted soldier who'd lost his glasses on the battlefield, she felt around frantically.

What was she looking for?

The thick drooping clouds, the ceaseless rain, the grass where the insects slept, the whole ash-gray Base, the wet runway reflecting the Base, and the air moving like waves—all were controlled by the jet spouting its enormous flames.

It started down the runway slowly. The earth shook. The huge silvery metal gradually picked up speed. Its high-pitched whine seared the air. Close in front of us, four enormous tube-shaped engines spouted blue flame. The stench of heavy oil and the violent blast of air blew me off my feet.

My face distorted, I hit the ground. My clouded eyes tried desperately to see. As I was thinking the white belly of the plane had just floated off the ground, before I knew it, it was sucked toward the clouds.

Lilly was looking at me. There was white froth between her teeth, and a trickle of blood as if she'd bitten the inside of her mouth.

Hey, Ryū, what about the city?

The plane came to rest in the middle of the sky.

It seemed to have stopped, a toy hanging by a wire from the ceiling of a department store. I thought we were the ones moving away with tremendous force. I thought the earth spreading away from our feet and the grass and the runway had all plunged downward.

Hey, Ryū, what about the city? Lilly asked, lying sprawled on her back on the runway.

She took lipstick from her pocket, tore off her clothes and smeared it on her body, laughingly drawing red lines on her belly, chest, neck.

I realized that my head was full of nothing but the stench of heavy oil. There was nothing like a city anywhere.

Lilly drew a design on her face with lipstick, becoming one of the African women who dance crazily at festivals.

Hey, Ryū, kill me. Something's weird, Ryū, I want you to kill me, Lilly called, tears in her eyes. I threw myself off the runway. My body was clawed by the wire. The barbs bit into the flesh of my shoulder. I thought I wanted a hole opened in me. I wanted to be free of the oil stench, that was all I thought.

Concentrating on that I forgot where I was. Groveling on the ground, Lilly called to me. Her legs flung out, naked, bound redly to the ground, she kept saying, Kill me! I went close to her. Her body shaking violently, she sobbed aloud.

Kill me quick, kill me quick! I touched her red-striped neck.

Then one side of the sky lit up.

For an instant the blue-white flash made everything transparent. Lilly's body and my arms and the Base and the mountains and the cloudy sky were transparent.

And then I discovered a single curved line running through the transparency there. It had a shape I'd never seen before, a white curving, a white curving that made splendid arcs.

Ryū, you know you're a baby? You're just a baby after all.

I took my hand from Lilly's neck, and scooped the white froth from her mouth with my tongue. She took off my clothes and embraced me.

Oil flowing from somewhere separated around our bodies; it was colored like a rainbow.

Early in the morning the rain let up. The kitchen window and glass sliding doors shone like sheets of silver.

While I was breathing in the scents of the warming air and fixing coffee, the outside door suddenly opened. There stood three cops, their thick chests wrapped in sweaty-smelling uniforms, white braid hanging from their shoulders.

Startled, I spilled the sugar on the floor. One of the younger cops asked me,

"What're you kids up to in here?"

I just stood there without answering, and the two cops in front pushed me aside and came into the room. Ignoring Kei and Reiko lying there, they stood with folded arms before the veranda door, then violently yanked the curtain open.

At that sound and the strong light pouring in, Kei leaped to her feet. With the light behind them, the cops looked very big.

The older fat officer left standing in the entranceway nudged aside the shoes scattered there with his foot and slowly entered the room.

"Well, we don't have a warrant, but you're not going to make any fuss about that, are you? Is this your place? Is it?" He seized my arm and checked it for needle marks.

"You're in college?" The fat officer's fingers were short and his nails were dirty.

Although he wasn't holding me very hard, I couldn't shake free. I gazed at the hand, washed with morning sunlight, of the officer who had caught me so casually, as if I had never seen a hand before.

The other people in the room, all almost naked, were hurrying to put on their clothes. The two young cops were whispering together. From where I stood I could hear words like "pigsty" and "marijuana."

"Get dressed fast, hey you, put on some slacks."

Kei, still just in her panties, pouted and glared at the fat officer. Yoshiyama and Kazuo stood by the window, their faces frozen. As they rubbed their eyes, one cop ordered them to turn off the noisy radio. By the wall, Reiko clawed through her handbag, found her hairbrush and straightened her hair. The cop with glasses picked up her purse and dumped its contents out on the table.

"Hey, what are you doing, quit it," Reiko protested in a faint voice, but the cop just snorted and ignored her.

Moko, naked, was still lying flat on her stomach on the bed, making no effort to get up, her sweaty flanks exposed to the light. The young cops stared at the black hair sticking out from between her buttocks. I went over and shook her shoulder, saying, Get up, and covered her with the blanket.

"You, get on some slacks, what are you looking at me like that for, huh?" Kei muttered something and turned away, but Kazuo tossed her some jeans and she pulled them on, clicking her tongue. Her throat trembled.

Hands on their hips, the three looked around the room and checked the ashtray.

Moko finally opened her eyes and mumbled Huh? What? Who are these guys?

The cops snickered.

"Hey, you kids, you've got it too much your own way, it bothers us, all of you lying around naked in the daytime, maybe it doesn't matter to you, but some people—not like you punks— know how it is to feel ashamed."

The older officer opened the veranda window, letting out a shower of dust.

The morning town seemed too bright to make out details. The bumpers of cars passing on the road glinted and I felt sick.

The cops seemed one whole size larger than any of the rest of us in the room.

"Uh, is it O.K. if I smoke?" Kazuo asked, but the cop with glasses said Forget it, took the cigarette from between his fingers, and put it back in the pack. Reiko helped Moko put on some underwear. Very pale and shaking, Moko hooked on her bra.

Fighting my rising nausea, I asked, "Has there been some trouble?"

The three looked at each other and laughed loudly.

"Trouble? Hey, that's good, coming from you! Listen, you just don't show your butts in front of other people, maybe you don't know it, but you shouldn't act like dogs.

"You kids got families? They don't say anything about the way you carry on?

They don't care, huh? We know how you swap each other around. Hey you, you'd probably do it with your own daddy, huh? I mean you!"

He turned and spoke loudly to Kei. Her eyes brimmed tears.

"Hey, you little bitch, did I make you feel bad?"

Moko kept on trembling and didn't seem likely to stop, so Reiko buttoned her shirt for her.

Kei started for the kitchen, but the fat officer grabbed her arm and held her back.

After Yoshiyama, the oldest, had turned in the standard apology forms at the dusty smelling police station, without going back to the apartment we set out to hear a performance by the Bar Kays at the Hibiya Park open-air concert stage.

We were all tired from lack of sleep. No one spoke on the train.

"Yeah, it was real lucky they didn't find that hash, Ryū. Even though it was right there in front of them, they just didn't know it. It was real lucky they were fuzz from the substation and not security cops, real lucky," Yoshiyama sneered as we got off the train. Kei made a disgusted face and spat on the platform. In the station washroom Moko passed out Nibrole pills to everyone.

Crunching his pill, Kazuo asked Reiko, "Hey, what were you talking about with that young cop, out there in the hall?"

"He told me he's a Led Zeppelin fan. He'd been to a design school, he was an O.K. guy."

"Is that right? You should have told him about somebody stealing my strobe."

I crunched a pill, too.

When we came in sight of the woods around the place, everybody was already stoned. From the outdoor theater in the woods, the rock music sounded loud enough to shake the leaves. Children with roller skates on their feet were looking through the wire fence around the place at the long-haired people leaping on the stage. A couple sitting on a bench saw Yoshiyama's rubber sandals and chuckled to each other. A young mother holding her baby frowned after us. Some little girls, running along holding big balloons, stopped short when they were startled by the sudden shriek of the vocals. One let go of her ballon and looked ready to cry. The big red balloon danced slowly upward.

"Hey, man, no bread," Yoshiyama said to me as I bought a ticket at the entrance. Moko said she had a friend working with the concert and started toward the stage. Kei bought her own ticket and hurried on in.

When I said, I don't have enough for two, he said, So I'll climb over the fence again, and started toward the back, inviting Kazuo, who didn't have any money either, to come with him.