Japanese Portraits: Pictures of Different People (19 page)

Typical, that. If it's paid for it's got to be consumed. Like making yourself eat all the food on the plate whether you want it or not, simply because you bought it. And here I was, lying down to a full dinner I neither needed nor wanted, simply because someone had put down the money for it.

Others might have been tempted to turn chummy, to prop themselves on one elbow and listen to the sad story of her life; but not me, because I really did not like her. She was a shallow, artificial, selfish little girl who seemed unhappy with her work. Maybe I ought to show her just who the boss was.

There I went again! So, shaking my head at myself, I propped it on one arm and turned to look at her. She was lying legs together, arms crossed; eyes shut, and with what I fancied was a martyred expression. Waiting, perhaps. Or asleep—her life was doubtless a tiring one.

I turned back and lay staring at the dim ceiling. Strange thing, apathy. My aversion to her erased any sense of difference. I did not think of her as being Japanese, as being different. Indeed, as I knew from experience, that sense of deep difference, that delicious gulf—Japanese vs. foreign—was truly exciting only when you were carnally interested. And now apathy had made us one. We were of a single race, those whose members do not like each other.

Still, I was male. She was female. Perhaps I ought to uphold my sex, as it were. We men are supposed to make the first move. When you are lying down with a woman and don't, it might be construed as impolite.

So I put my hand over one small breast. She did not move. How far, I wondered, would I have to go before my point was made? I opened her kimono and slipped in my hand. The little breast was cold.

As I warmed it I studied her profile. She looked in that soft light like a young bird, eyelids so thin that every movement was visible. Either she was awake, or asleep and dreaming.

Then I saw the little mouth forming an impatient pout as with one hand she removed mine and, at the same time, as if to show me my business, opened her legs.

I lay there, my own legs closed, my hands in my lap, and decided to sleep. But the minutes passed and sleep, naturally enough, did not come. I listened to the steady breathing beside me. Had she really managed to drop off, I wondered, feeling a small kind of fury.

I, of course, failed to fall asleep at all. So, instead, I thought about why I couldn't close my eyes. It was not because I was aroused, I knew; not even that I was repelled, I guessed: merely that she was there, next to me. The fact of her presence.

And the fact of mine. What, I wondered, did she think about me? That I didn't attract was evident, but perhaps in her line of work few did. Did she find me too large, too white, too logical? What could she be thinking?—if she was thinking at all.

I turned again, head on hand, and stared at her in the light of the night lamp. What was going on up there, I asked myself.

Having thus taken an interest in her as a person—not as a Japanese, nor as a whore, nor even as a girl—I found that we eventually came to make quite satisfactory love.

In the morning she glowered and gave me her card. Like its owner, it had rounded corners. Her name was printed on it: Sonoko Suzuki—a very common name.

And over breakfast as the new sun slid across the mats she allowed herself a small smile. It was not, of course, the smile of a woman fulfilled by sexual attention. I don't think that kind of smile even exists, except in bad books and worse films. Nor was it the blowzy smile of the girl who has found a friend—we were not friends and were anxious, once the rice was down, to part.

No, it was the disinterested smile of the craftsman—the carpenter who has turned a tight joint, the potter who has thrown yet another good pot. It was the quietly self-congratulatory smile of the person who has done well and knows it.

What I had not until this moment understood was that Sonoko Suzuki really wanted to be a proper geisha.

Small, fat, wearing thick-lensed glasses, he often lay on the bench in the corridor. For this he was criticized. Lying down like that, they said, taking up room, making a nuisance of himself. The others wanted to occupy the bench themselves because from there one had a clear view of whoever was going into the men's room. And it wasn't as though he even paid proper attention, they complained. He didn't, never once glanced. Just lay there all fat and pale with his eyes closed.

The others used the bench properly, always paid a lot of attention. Did you see that construction worker? one would ask: He was, I'm not lying,
that
big. Stood right beside him when he pissed.
Honto ni oishi so datta no y
o, looked good enough to eat. Well, I scampered right back here and struck a pose, but he walked right past and out.

Kikuyama did nothing like this, merely got in the way. Initially the others used to talk to him: Hi there, mother. You here yesterday? Oh, you weren't? Well, it was
marvelous—
stud students all over the place. I had three of them, I'm telling you—three!

But Kikuyama did not respond properly. He did not laugh or look jealous. He looked at them seriously and said:
Ah, so desu ka?
He was just no fun to talk to.

Nor did he often go and watch the movie. While the others were moving to and fro, staring at the naked giants on the screen, then running out to cruise around the Coke machine in the corner or down the corridor to the gents', he lay on the bench and stared at the ceiling.

Very occasionally he would venture in. Often he would sit next to someone. Just sit. The others were scandalized: And he just sits there! Really, I ask you, what kind of a place does he think this is? I've never once seen him make a proper pass. And if he sits long enough he falls asleep.

But at least it was better for him to doze off inside amid the smackings and slurpings on the sound track than to sprawl on the bench out there in the hallway. That way he caused less trouble.

- And it isn't as though he's just an occasional either, said one: He seems to come here every day. At least, every time I get here he's already around.

Nonetheless, the others gradually got used to Kikuyama's daily presence. He never tried to cut in when someone was cruising a likely trucker, and he never trailed along when a reluctant country youth was dragged off to the ladies'. He was simply there, part of the furniture, something one learned to ignore.

That is, until an equally fat and bossy sister in horn rims and turtleneck took to coming. He knew Kikuyama and called him
sensei.
This title of respect, overheard by the others, piqued curiosity, a curiosity soon satisfied.

- What, you never saw Kikuyama
sensei?
Still, what can you expect from a bunch of low-class
okama-tachi
like you. I suck cock as well as the rest, but there is such a thing as style. You wouldn't know anything about that, of course.

This tough sister—Kuro-chan, Blackie by name—surveyed the assembled few and then patiently, like a kindergarten teacher with backward pupils, explained. Madame Kikuko here was an artist, a star, the most promising of the young hopefuls in the world of
Nihon
buyo, Japanese classical dance.

- Got her black belt yet? asked Midori-chan, Miss Green, the sassiest of the group.

Blackie turned in a flash: You stupid faggot! That's just the way a common little know-nothing like you would talk. You've no understanding or respect for the finer things.

Then, after a short conference with Madame Kikuko and some hunting about in a wallet:
Hora!
Look here!

He flourished a studio polaroid of a beautiful young girl standing poised in a lilac kimono with a spray of wisteria in her hand, her body curved, grace and elegance in the lithe line, her face turned, the black eyes alive with intelligence. It was a pose from the classical dance
Fuji Musume.

The others, now cowed, oohed their appreciation.

- Oh, she is lovely, murmured Miss Green.

- You bet, snapped Blackie, who then sat down beside Kikuyama and began a discussion of choreographic techniques which soon drove the others away.

They remembered, however. This changed the atmosphere. Though obviously they still went on tracking down the half-reluctant
tobishoku;
though they still said: Oh, what a shame, it was really enormous, I just didn't know what to do, too bad you weren't here (after carefully ascertaining that indeed you weren't); though life continued as usual, there was a difference. This was because they had an artist in their midst.

And a sick one at that. What was the matter—the reason for all this lying on the bench? Well, no one knew. The lungs, perhaps, or the liver, or ... dared one say it: love.

There was the answer: the lovely Kikuko, doomed to live forever inside the ugly Kikuo, had nonetheless found Him,
anohito
, the true Mr. Right—perhaps a virile laborer, a muscular trucker, or a schoolboy sports star, who had seen beneath the unprepossessing exterior and glimpsed her underlying beauty. And there she sat, enchanted maiden on a rock, daily awaiting his return.

Since all of them were waiting for just this sort of thing, and since all were daily disappointed, it was natural they should find this explanation and welcome it. They took to calling this short, recumbent, unattractive man the Sleeping Beauty and wondering about the chances of Prince Charming's ever reappearing. Not likely, they agreed, but they all found his devotion thrilling.

He blinked his eyes, when he was not asleep, and enjoyed this regard, this new respect. When he arrived, sighing with weariness, the two queens already on their corridor thrones would spring to their feet to allow Madame Kikuko to rest. Later, on their way to and from likely prospects in the mens' room, they would tiptoe past lest they awaken the poor sick girl.

And very ill Kikuyama was. He began coughing, a loud, rattling sound which seemed much too large for that fat little body. Then the gagging. And the spitting. No one he now sat near in the peopled dark stayed long. So he stopped going in to watch the film. He stayed in the corridor.

The story was (details courtesy of Blackie) that, some time ago, he found he could no longer run through
Fuji Musume
, let alone
Dojoji,
and so he gave up going to the
keiko-ba
, the practice room. He then took to coming here instead, to the Shinjuku Basement Meigaza, that other theater of illusion, and here he now lay on the bench, dying.

The others brought him tea, coffee, chocolates, noodles, and he would smile his wan smile and sip or crunch, then once again lie down, pulling his coat over him like a coverlet. At first there had been some smart talk about
Tsubaki Hime
, the Camellia Princess, La Traviata herself. Now, however, such levity was suppressed.

- Does the management know? I once asked them.

- About us faggots? But, of course, how else could this flea-pit make any money?

- No, do they know that he's dying?

- Well, how could they? They never come down here to check up on us. They know better. Actually, he's happy, you know. He thinks that
anohito
is finally going to come back again and he'll be seeing him with his dying glance.

He did not, however, return. Kikuyama, I was told, was finally taken to the hospital. There it was discovered that weeks, months, in the damp basement had finally done him in. Coughing, gagging, the fat little man was carried off.

- And then, said Blackie, who had been there: Then the most marvelous thing happened. We took off his glasses and his face smoothed out and there before us lay Kikuko herself, looking so pretty, so like
Sagi Musume
—one of her favorites, you know—that I would have challenged any man, no matter how straight, not to have fallen right in love with her.

Blackie shed a tear: Oh, if only Kikuko had put all this behind her and devoted herself to her art, she might have become a great performer, a great teacher, even eventually a Living National Treasure, for all I know. But she didn't. She threw it all away ... for love.

And all day long no one sat on the bench, even though it provided a perfect view of the men's toilet and whoever was standing there and whatever he had and whatever state it was in.

No—the place was, for a time, holy. There, it seemed, hovered the beautiful, smiling, liberated spirit of this fat little man.

Balancing my plastic tray—a double hamburger and a small Coke—I looked for a vacant table. There were none. There was, however, a young girl sitting alone at a table for two. I asked permission, which she gave with a nod, and sat, unwrapped my hamburger, opened my book.

She too was reading, an English textbook. Though I had noticed that she was pretty, the book discouraged any attempts at conversation.

Thus occupied, we read, sipped, munched for a time until she looked up at me and asked, in Japanese, what I was reading. I told her, then politely noted that she was studying English.

- Yes, I'm going abroad. To America.