Coin Locker Babies (37 page)

“All done?” asked the guard. Kiku nodded in silence and set off down the corridor, trying to forget what he’d just seen. He tried to drive from his mind the image of Hashi’s ghostly face as he struggled with the woman. There was only one thing like it he’d seen before: the look on Kazuyo’s face, of blood about to come oozing out from the eyes and nose and mouth of a body whose arms and legs had gone stiff and cold—a look he never wanted to see again as long as he lived. He was just thinking how thin Hashi’s arms had looked when a voice called out behind him.

“Kiku!”

“Dumb shit,” Kiku muttered as he walked on. “It’s his own fault he looks like that.”

“He’s calling you,” said the guard.

“Kiku!” Hashi yelled again. His clipped little shout seemed to rattle the doors of the one-man cells that lined the corridor, as though a Hashi clone sat shrieking in each cell he passed. Kiku stopped and the voice broke off. A vision took shape in his head of Hashi’s body lying stiff as a board with blood leaking from his eyes and nose and mouth, and with a shudder he ran back toward the visitors’ room. Don’t die, Hashi, he thought, running as fast
as he could. It took the guard a moment to unlock the door, but when Kiku burst into the room, he found Hashi plastered limply against the wire screen, hanging like a monkey in a zoo. His eyes were wild and staring, his jaw working as he chewed at something. Kiku caught a glimpse of a white paste in his mouth: the pills he and Neva had been fighting over. Neva was standing to one side, her face buried in her hands, and Hashi suddenly jerked his head in the direction of the door, signaling her to leave. For a moment she hesitated, looking back and forth between them.

“Get out!” Hashi screamed, sending a stream of chalky spit toward her face. Her shoulders heaved as she wiped the stuff away. When she glanced in his direction, Kiku was instantly reminded of two other women: Kazuyo and the one who had left him in the locker, the person he had killed. He had seen this pained expression on their faces, too.

“Get out!” Hashi repeated, but Kiku shut him up by punching him hard through the wire barrier, sending him sprawling back against the wall. Neva was about to go and help him when Kiku stopped her.

“Sorry, but you’d better leave us alone for a bit,” he said. Hashi lay on the floor rubbing flecks of rust from his eyes, then eventually staggered to his feet. He wiped his lips with his jacket sleeve, leaving an ostrich feather stuck to the corner of his mouth, and slumped onto a stool.

“Why’d you hit me?” he asked.

“Since when did you start playing Mr. Tough Guy with women?” Kiku countered.

“You didn’t hurt me, you know. I’m too spaced out for that.” Hashi still hadn’t raised his eyes, and they remained firmly fixed on his lap as he continued. “So, you’re looking pretty fit. You know, this is the first time you’ve ever hit me.
I’ve seen you hit plenty of other people, but never me… until now… Kiku, I wanted to see you.” He stopped suddenly and looked up, his eyes pleading. It was an old trick, one he had learned in dealing with adults long ago at the orphanage; he would begin talking, voice low, and then slowly, timidly, look up to catch their expression. In that instant he could judge the other person’s attitude: was he liked, was he loathed, would they treat him kindly, or were they going to hurt him in some way. “Kiku, what kind of person was I? I don’t know any more myself; what was I like?”

“Forget that for a minute. What I want to know is why you’ve come,” said Kiku.

“I’ve changed, I’m not the same as I was… Hey, you remember the time we went to check the results of the entrance exams for high school? Kazuyo wanted to go with us, but her low blood pressure used to make her a bit sluggish when she took a bath in the morning, so we went without her. You remember? The bus was really late, so the guy with the jeep from city hall gave us a ride. You remember all that?”

“You’ve been back to the island, haven’t you?” said Kiku.

“Did Neva tell you?”

“How was Milk?”

“Fine. And he remembered me. I’m sure he still remembers you too. I ran into the old lady who had that grocery store; she said I’m the pride of the island. Said you put them to shame.”

Kiku was quiet as he watched a smile curl the corners of Hashi’s mouth.

“You know, I thought you’d look worse than this,” Hashi continued. “Surprised me to see you looking so good. You looked like hell during the trial, and I thought maybe if you were still having a rough time, it might help to think through together this
problem I’ve been working on. It’s that sound; you know the one. The doctors played it to us in that room. You don’t remember?”

“I remember.”

Hashi looked up again, startled. “You do?”

Kiku nodded.

“Then what was it? What was the sound?”

“I’ve forgotten.”

“But when did you remember that they were playing a sound for us?” Hashi pressed him.

“After I shot that woman. I heard the same sound for a long time after that, but it’s gone now.” Hashi began to tremble as Kiku spoke. His eyes opened wide and he started to fidget, thrusting his hand in his pocket for more pills, which he tossed in his mouth and chewed up.

“Kiku, I’m scared,” he said. “I look in the mirror and I don’t recognize the face staring back at me. It’s like my body’s split down the middle and the two halves aren’t always doing the same thing. You know what it is? It’s this fly; you see, in every ten thousand flies, there’s one that has a face like a human being, and somehow I swallowed one of them. I figured it out: these human-looking flies are people who did such godawful things in a previous life that they have to come back as flies. That’s what’s buzzing around inside my head trying to tell me what to do… That’s it,” he said, as if suddenly working something out, “yes, I’m sure of it: it’s got to be murder… You see, I’ve only heard that sound once since then. It was in a public toilet down by the river in Sasebo. There was this pervert who was messing with me, and I hit him on the head with a brick; knocked his brains out—I heard it then, but not since.

“Now there’s this fly inside me telling me to do all these bad things; things like cutting off my own tongue, or sticking a chain
up some girl’s ass, or grabbing the mike stand and flattening people who climb up on stage. The weird thing is, the more I do this stuff, the better things seem to go, the more famous I get, the more money I make. But I can’t get away from this feeling that I’m splitting in two, this pain in my head… So that’s why I have to hear that sound again. And it was the fly that told me how I could: it said I had to kill the person I loved most in the whole world and then I’d hear it. I had to sacrifice that person and then it’d grant me anything I wished. I know what it said’s the truth; the proof is I heard it when I killed that pervert. I killed him while he was sucking me off; I must have loved him more than anybody else right at that moment, right when he was blowing me, right when I slammed that brick into his skull. That’s when I heard it. And it was the same with you. That woman was your mother, and you heard the noise too when you killed her. I knew it! The fly wasn’t lying. You’ve got to kill the one you love! Don’t you see? That stuff about God being kind and good was bullshit; this world’s being run by the biggest sinner of them all, so when you’ve got a favor to ask, you’ve got to do something terrible to make it happen. That’s it! That’s why I’ve got to kill Neva. You see, Neva’s pregnant, and I’m the father, so if I kill her, I’ll be killing
two
people. And I’ll hit the jackpot; I’ll hear the sound again! That’s got to be it. Right, Kiku? Right?”

Just at this point the guard poked his head in. “Time’s up,” he said as Hashi rose and headed for the door.

“Thanks, Kiku,” Hashi said. “It’s all clear now.”

“Time,” the guard repeated. Kiku sat in a daze, rooted to his chair.

“Bye, Kiku. Take care of yourself,” said Hashi, and he was gone.

“Wait! Hashi, wait!” Kiku called after him, jumping to his feet, but the guard caught his arm.

“Your time’s up, Kuwayama,” he said. “You’ve had thirty minutes.” Kiku realized he should try to get hold of the woman, but he couldn’t remember her name.

“Ma’am! Ma’am!” he tried yelling, and to his surprise she appeared in the doorway. The guard was tugging on his arm. “Lady, what’s happened to him? He’s crazy, you know, stark raving mad. Who did this to him? Who made him crazy?” But two more guards came in and, grabbing Kiku by both arms, dragged him away. Neva stood staring after him, utterly bewildered.

Hashi was at it again, he thought, on his way back down the hall; as fucked up as ever. It made him want to spit with rage. The same old story: armies of assholes, total strangers, telling them lies. Nothing had changed, not one thing—not since he’d let out that first scream in the coin locker. The locker was bigger, maybe; the new one had a pool and gardens, with a band, people wandering about half-naked, and you could keep pets—yes, this one had all kinds of shit: museums, movie theaters, and mental hospitals—but it was still a huge coin locker, and no matter how many layers of camouflage you had to dig through if you felt like digging, in the end you still ran up against a wall. And if you managed to scramble up the wall, there they were with those sneering faces ready to kick you back down. Knock you down and knock you out, and when you wake up it’s back to jail, back to the bughouse. It’s all cleverly hidden behind potted palms and sparkling pools, behind cuddly puppies and tropical fish, movie screens and exhibitions and layers of smooth lady-skin, but behind it all there’s always the wall, the guards prowling around, the high watchtower. Whenever the gray fog lifts for a second, there they are: the wall, the tower. They scare you stiff, they make you mad, but there’s less than nothing you can do about them; and when you can’t stand it any more and the fear and rage
get you moving, get you started doing something, there they are again, waiting for you: the prison, the nuthouse, the lead box for your bones. There’s only one solution, one way out, and that’s to smash everything around you to smithereens, to start over from the beginning, lay everything to waste…

Kiku stopped and turned as if he’d just remembered something.

“Hashi!” he shouted, making a break back in the direction of the visitors’ room. The guards stopped him. “Hashi! That sound! It’s a heartbeat! Do you hear? Hashi! It’s your mother’s heartbeat!” His voice echoed up and down the hall.

“Looks to me like
you’re
the crazy one,” a guard said, laughing.

Anemone stood on the breakwater staring through her binoculars at the
Yuyo Maru
leaving the harbor. She was wondering how he was going to escape.

Two days earlier, she had quit the bakery. Noriko had cried, saying she would miss her, and four of the girls from the shop had given her a going-away party. They had rented a room in a restaurant and each one had bought her a present; hankies, a key holder, that kind of thing. Noriko had given her a book wrapped in some bright paper.

“The girl in here reminds me of you,” she’d said. “She’s the wife of this writer who gets to be really rich and famous while he’s still young, and they run all over the place partying until she starts to go crazy. Her name’s Zelda.”

“And what’s it about her that’s like me?” Anemone had asked. “I may not be so bright, but I’ll tell you one thing, I’m not going crazy. So what is it?” Noriko had thought for a moment.

“Well, first of all, you’re both good-looking. And even though you say you’re not smart, I think you really are, smart and pretty. But sometimes it seems like there’s something missing, something
important—like a shortcake where somebody forgot to put in the vanilla extract.” Noriko took a bite of her jello.

“But that goes for everybody,” one of the other girls put in. “Nobody’s perfect; everybody’s missing something somewhere.” They all nodded.

“That’s not what I mean,” said Noriko, sucking in a mouthful of green jello before continuing. “You know how there are some girls who you think are a mess and are going to end up having a hard time but secretly, deep down, you envy them anyway? Well, that’s the kind of girl I think Anemone is; that’s the kind of girl I’d like to be.”

“Thanks,” Anemone had said, vaguely sensing that she’d been paid a compliment. “Thanks, but I’m still not going crazy.”

She had done everything just as Kiku had told her to. First, she’d bought some clothes for him and hidden them in a spot he could easily find near the docks in the town where the ship was to pay a visit. Then she got hold of a motorboat—a big one—and had it tied up at a marina they both knew near Tokyo, filling it with food, water, and diving equipment.

And now, watching the
Yuyo Maru
disappear into the distance, she pulled a key from the pocket of her sweaty blouse and spun it on her finger as she headed back to her car: a red, four-
wheel-drive
Landrover with “DATURA” painted on the side. But how was he going to escape, she wondered, as she started the engine and set out for the ship’s first port of call.

She opened the windows but the sweat had already soaked her underwear. The countryside shimmered in the air above the steamy asphalt. It was the season when crocodiles thrashed their tails in the water with glee, the season she had first met Kiku: summer. The book Noriko had given her lay on the seat next to her. Bored with waiting for Kiku’s ship to finally leave the harbor,
she’d thought she might have a look at it, but the small print had made her eyes ache and she’d given up almost immediately. Now, as she drove, the pages flipped open in the wind, and when she stopped at a light, a line caught her eye. She liked the sound of it and whispered it to herself as she waited: “There’s nothing attractive about a serious girl, and so I have no desire to become serious.”

Neva had started going to a Yoga for Pregnancy class. Hashi had fallen into a serious depression during a three-week break between the end of the concert tour and the beginning of recording sessions for his next album, and the strain of looking after him had exhausted Neva to the point that she was afraid of losing the baby. The yoga class was her way of coping with the stress and sleeplessness without resorting to drugs.

Hashi’s new routine was to spend whole days doing absolutely nothing, sprawled out on a couch he had dragged into his darkened room. “Someone’s after me,” he would announce from time to time. “But it won’t do any good to run, they’ll catch me sooner or later.” For the time being, though, his behavior seemed harmless enough; he’d done nothing violent so far and there were no signs that he was suicidal. He was even eating a little, and Neva, as far as possible, clung to the idea that it was all brought on by exhaustion. D, however, was in favor of putting him in a mental hospital.

“We could do a TV show from the hospital,” he suggested, his mind apparently on the boost that news of Hashi’s insanity might give to his slowing record sales.

It took a visit from two members of the band to get Hashi to leave his room. Toru had brought a present with him: a harmonica.

“Music is the best cure for anything,” he said. Hashi seemed to
perk up and immediately started playing a blues in G. Matsuyama got a guitar they had hanging on the wall, Toru picked up some bongos lying on the floor, and suddenly they had a jam session going. Neva was thrilled as she watched Hashi play; his eyes were closed, and there was a contented look on his face she hadn’t seen in a long time. If playing really has this effect on him, we ought to book more concerts right away, she thought.

Piggybacking on the blues they’d been playing, Toru started a song about a down-and-out musician riding the rails.

Neva’s applause drew an embarrassed laugh from Toru.

“Hashi, since when did you start playing harmonica?” he asked. Hashi, however, was still going strong and didn’t seem to hear.

“You’ll have to do something with it for the next tour,” said Matsuyama. This time there was the vaguest of nods from
Hashi as he continued to play a riff from “Midnight Rambler” at an incredibly fast tempo. Watching him sitting hunched over the harmonica, Neva recognized a feeling that she had all but forgotten, the feeling she’d had the first time she’d heard him sing, the one she’d felt the first time he took her in his arms. She had felt she could now forgive herself, free herself, be good to herself. She remembered how she had resisted the idea that a man so much younger than her could have such power over people. She remembered thinking that he had come out of nowhere, survivor of some early trauma she could only begin to imagine, and that the waves he gave off when he sang were his attempt to soften the memory of that time. But she didn’t believe that any more; Hashi’s hell wasn’t behind him, it was still there inside him, like a malignant growth, and he sang to get this torment out of him, to spread it around, so as to retain some sort of balance.

“I’m beat,” Toru said finally, and Matsuyama nodded.

“I’ll make some tea,” said Neva, hurrying into the kitchen. As she was waiting for the water to boil, she heard first the drums, then the guitar, stop playing. She listened to Hashi’s harmonica playing on alone, thinking how happy she was. But just as the apple tea had finished brewing, Matsuyama came into the kitchen looking worried.

“What’s wrong with Hashi?” he asked.

“He’s been a bit tired lately, but your visit’s done him wonders. I haven’t seen him look so good in ages,” said Neva.

“Look so good? He looks like hell, like he’s out of his mind. Go take a look. He’s playing so hard his lips are all bloody. Toru told him to cut it out, but he doesn’t seem to even hear.” When they went back into the room, Toru was sitting with both hands held out above him in a gesture of despair. A bright red smear was spreading from Hashi’s mouth.

“Hashi!” Neva shouted, but there was no response.

“You want us to stop him?” Toru asked. “If we don’t do something, he’ll cut himself to shreds.”

“Please,” she whispered. Toru moved in on him, but as he reached out to take the harmonica Hashi’s leg snapped out, catching him in the stomach. With Matsuyama circling behind him, Hashi edged over to the window keeping his back to the wall, but Toru jumped him, grabbing him by the hair and throwing him to the floor. Even on the ground, though, he kept the harmonica pressed tightly to his lips, playing as best he could as Matsuyama tried to pry it from his hands. Neva covered her ears to shut out the screeching chords that, combined with Hashi’s voice, were like the squeal of an animal being strangled. Finally, Matsuyama managed to extract the bloodstained harmonica from Hashi’s grip.

“You dumb fuck! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he wailed, trying to wipe Hashi’s lips with his handkerchief. “You’ve got to try to keep a lid on it, man. We can’t have you looking like a crazy.”

“Isn’t that what being a pop star’s all about?” Hashi muttered through his tattered lips, eyes staring at the ceiling.

Later that evening, he sat looking out the window as Neva tried to make up her mind about putting him in a hospital. Both Matsuyama and Toru were in favor of some sort of therapy, preferably abroad, but Neva knew that no matter where they went D would find them and send teams of reporters and photographers after them. The fact was that she was the only one who could help him, but she wondered if she was strong enough to join him in his fight, to face up to all the horrors he carried around inside. She knew it would mean not only having to fight with Hashi but against him if he was to keep his balance when he stood right on the brink like this.

Hashi was staring at something down in the road below, a grayish blotch that was apparently a dog or a cat that had been flattened by traffic; judging from the shape, it was probably a cat. He stared at the spot for a long time, then abruptly left the room. Neva knew exactly what he had gone to do: he was going out into the street to scrape up what remained of the animal and bury it somewhere. She knew because he had a habit of burying dead moths and cockroaches and mice whenever he came across them. After a while he returned, face white as a sheet, but Neva ignored him and went into the bedroom, where she soon fell asleep over a book on pregnancy.

She awoke some time later with a strange feeling. The sight of Hashi standing beside the bed startled her and she almost cried out. His whole body was shaking. Screwing up what courage she could, she looked straight at him.

“Neva, how’s the baby doing?” he asked quietly. “Seems to me the kid would be better off dead, you know. I just can’t see me setting it a good example, I’d never know what to tell it… Neva, I’ve been wanting to tell you: I’ve got a fly inside my head, one with a human face, and it’s giving me these orders. ‘Kill Neva,’ it keeps saying… You see, there’s this sound, one I’ve just got to hear, and the price you pay to hear it—Kiku knows this too—is doing something awful, killing somebody… somebody you love. I can’t help it, I was born to hear that sound… I buried that cat out in the flower bed, and those moths—I buried them in the flower pots—so when I kill you and the baby, maybe they’ll go easy on me… I’m sure of it: this kid of mine would be better off dead.” Gooseflesh rose on his neck as he slowly lowered his eyes to Neva’s swollen belly.

“I don’t want to do it,” he said, shaking uncontrollably, “I really don’t, but I won’t ever hear that sound otherwise. And I’ll
wind up”—his bloodshot eyes were bulging—“as a man with A FLY’S FACE.”

Neva was struggling not to lose control. Again she wanted to cry out, but her throat was dry as dust and the sound died before it could emerge. Maybe it
would
be better if both of them were dead, she thought, the baby and herself. And suddenly she knew she no longer loved this man. She realized too that up to then her fear had not been for her own safety but that Hashi would become a murderer. The thought made her feel much lighter, and with it came the feeling that he was ugly! Something caught deep down in her chest, then pushed its way up her throat and out of her mouth:

“Your kid is
not
going to die!” she yelled, as Hashi’s body stiffened. “Even if you dug it out of me, even if it was the tiniest embryo and got flushed down the drain, it would survive. You forget: this kid’s father made it out of a coin locker. So it’s going to
live
, and grow, and come looking for you. You’ll be a fly by then, but you won’t be able to hide, and it’ll crush you underfoot—this kid who’s
going to live
!”