The Pornographers Read online

  And, Subuyan calculated to himself, once that five thousand is gone, she’ll be around quick enough for more.

  The film of the man and the girl, thanks to Banteki’s scrupulous editing, came out with most of its rough edges smoothed. Hack titled it Two in a Boat, for the image most appropriate to these two, as caught by the camera, was that of a small craft pitching up and down in the troughs of huge waves.

  Banteki had hired Rie’s partner to work on the film ordered by the doctor in Fusé and now he was anxious to get started on it as soon as possible. He expressed his opinion of the just-completed film in unequivocal terms. “I’m the one who made it, and when I look at it, it’s not the kind of thing that moves me. It’s no masterpiece,” he said. And furthermore he wanted nothing to do with retailing it. Hack could handle that.

  Subuyan, who after all was putting up the money, found Banteki’s remarks irritating.

  “What the hell do you mean? You’re talking about your individual taste. What we got to think about first of all is to turn out films that the customers go for,” he retorted.

  But surprisingly, the usually mild Banteki flared up. “If it’s not a film that moves me, I don’t care how much the customers go for it.”

  “You’re a damned fool, Banteki! Look, what do you have to keep thinking of when you make a film? I know what you have to do. You and I, we’re both pros as far as the film business is concerned. And so if we go making a film for the ordinary guy with nothing but our own pricks in mind, it’s going to be way over his head.” And so the two went at it in earnest.

  “ ‘Move me,’ ‘move me,’ you’re always saying. What’s the matter, Banteki, won’t it stand up for you unless you’re watching a movie?” Subuyan flung at him, at last overstepping all bounds of common decency.

  Banteki crumpled, his expression pitiable. Then he straightened up and spoke. “That’s it right there. It gets hard only when I’m making a film or watching it. Even going to prostitutes doesn’t work.”

  The victorious Subuyan was exultant. “Well, don’t worry about it so much,” he laughed. “You’re too serious. Take it easy and you’ll be all right.”

  In good spirits now, Subuyan turned over the business of the doctor’s film to Banteki, Hack, and also Cocky, who had now taken to carrying around match boxes crammed with baby cockroaches. And while waiting for a favorable response from Matsue, he applied himself to giving some attention to the customers he had been neglecting for some time.

  “Hey, how about coming to meet some people with me tonight?” importuned Kanezaka, a young advertising man of about thirty, who had been overjoyed when Subuyan had appeared at his office near Osaka Station. Kanezaka was one of Subuyan’s main customers and could always be depended upon to dispense a huge supply of merchandise to his agency’s clients during the holiday banquets—such old standby aphrodisiac devices as the ram’s eye, the tinklers, and the dimpled sheath.

  “I mentioned you to a couple of board members of Marugata Industries, and they said that they really wanted to meet you. I’ve got nothing on for tonight, so it’ll be just right. Can you make it? Sure you can!” urged Kanezaka, unwilling as ever to take no for an answer.

  What Kanezaka demanded of Subuyan this time was his services as a kind of court jester—a type of performance that seemed to be especially titillating to clients who had grown impervious to other forms of stimulation. The method was simply for Subuyan to sit down over saké or beer with two or three such gentlemen and regale them with fictitious narratives of sexual adventure.

  His appointment was for seven o’clock at a restaurant in Soémon; but before then he had some profitable uses to put his time to. First he picked up a commission of fifteen thousand yen by selling seventy packs of pictures to a plastics firm; the pictures would be passed out to customers in the company’s showroom. Besides this, never one to let a chance for expanding the business slip by, Subuyan stopped in at several shops in the neighborhood and, saying, “Excuse me, I was just passing by, and I thought I might drop in,” left at each one a book from Hack’s stockpile. This sort of technique was part of long-range public relations. And at the end of all this running about, his taxi fare came to thirty-eight hundred yen. For Subuyan had made it an inviolable rule of conduct, no matter how short the distance, never to walk as long as he was carrying merchandise with him. For the longer on the street, the greater the risk of arrest.

  His customers realized that his was the sort of business in which sudden arrest was an occupational hazard, and if he were so much as a minute late for an appointment they would begin to grow uneasy. And because Subuyan was so intent upon avoiding any sort of mistrust, he made a point of being exceedingly scrupulous in this regard, sometimes going so far as to jump out of a taxi stalled in traffic at Midosuji to rush ahead on foot, if he felt he might be late otherwise. And so tonight, at five minutes to seven, he appeared at the restaurant designated by Kanezaka. They were already waiting for him when he entered the private room, and his reputation seemed to have preceded him: the two guests of honor eyed him like men viewing a strange new species.

  “Well, should we start off with a beer?” said one of them, pushing a bottle Subuyan’s way.

  “No, thank you very much. It’s not my sort of thing, I’m afraid,” said Subuyan. Kanezaka then jumped in like a comedian on cue.

  “What this fellow says is that if you drink, the old stamina goes down. Especially beer, which has female hormones in it. So he never touches it,” he assured the men.

  “Is that so? Well, what do you think of saké with viper’s blood?”

  Subuyan crooked his neck slightly. “Well, now, maybe it’s all psychosomatic, as they say, but if a man thinks that that will do something for him, then I suppose it will.”

  “You yourself, you don’t drink any of these tonics?”

  “No, I don’t believe in tonics. But raw meat and raw tuna are both good.”

  “Raw meat? Well, you’ve got more dedication than I do.”

  To top it off, the waiter brought in some raw beef mixed with eggs, which Subuyan would eat during the course of his performance. At the right moment, however, he planned to get up and go to the toilet and swallow some pills he had brought along. His stomach was rather weak.

  “Well, we’ll have to look pretty hard for something interesting to talk about, since just about everything is probably old stuff to you gentlemen. But anyway, as for myself, it’s been my experience that no thrill is bigger than that you get out of a good multiple rape,” said Subuyan in a coolly detached tone as his clients edged forward slightly.

  “Three is just about the right number. You get more men than that in on it, and it’s a little too much, you see?” said Subuyan, a twist of his features expressing a nuance beyond words. “Once you go at the woman, the trick is to get the panties first.” Subuyan deliberately slurred his pronunciation to suggest rough obscenity. “To get them off right, you’ve got to be fast.” From here on he became liberal in the use of hand and body gestures. “As soon as you get your hands on her, the woman is sure to double up to protect herself. But then she has to stick her rear out, and so you start peeling them off from there. You start from the front instead, and you’ll run into trouble with that butt jutting out back there.” All joined in a lewd laugh and Subuyan plunged still deeper into his wildly fanciful explication of gang rape.

  If Subuyan were to be casually appraised even now as he squirmed on the mat floor or rolled over on his back and thrust his hips upward, he would hardly pass for anything more than an ordinary officeworker; and it was just this that gave the “smell of reality” to his performance. He was like a colorless medium. Each of the guests was able to pass easily beyond Subuyan’s words and gestures and to unroll in his imagination a highly colored erotic tapestry of his own lascivious improvisation. For those jaded with films and exotic novelties, this was often the best method.

  “Thanks a lot. It was a pleasure. Here, take this,” said Kanezaka, thrusting a ten-th
ousand-yen bill on Subuyan, who took it and left. Not without reason, he felt extremely weary. And he found himself longing for the familiar flesh of Oharu.

  One week after he had made his gambit with Matsue, she telephoned him at his office in the Dojima Building. “Excuse me, but is Mr. Kiso there please?” As soon as Subuyan heard the tone of her voice, he knew that he had won. He rushed to her apartment at once.

  “Now there are all kinds of marriages. This is a somewhat different arrangement. If it were a matter of your marrying some man whose wife had just died on him, leaving him with six children, everything would be pretty simple. But you’re still young, Miss Matsue. What do you say to giving one of these very clear-cut contract arrangements a try?”

  “Contract arrangements?” said Matsue, somewhat perturbed.

  “Yeah, with a limit of, say, one year, two years. You can have a carefree life living in an up-to-date apartment. Of course, there’d be no need to worry about what kind of man your companion was. He’d be a first-class gentleman whom I’d introduce to you. Why, I’ve known of arrangements of this kind that lasted for a lifetime. Then, too, if there’s something you don’t like about it, you’re always free to call it quits. What do you think? Would you at least be willing to meet with somebody, with maybe this as a possibility?”

  As Subuyan finished, he looked complacently about the seedy room. Most likely the time limit allowed in the eviction notice had already expired.

  “Well, as far as a meeting goes … I’d be willing to do that.”

  “That’s the idea. Now you better start thinking about clothes, huh? I’ll help out. Everything comes in the merciful providence of Buddha,” said Subuyan, leading her on with a dash of theology. He gave her ten thousand yen for clothes, which brought his total investment to fifteen thousand. Struggle as she might, the fly was not likely to get out of the web.

  Subuyan picked a television writer as a likely companion for Matsue.

  “If she’s not your type, give her five hundred yen. She’s a thorough amateur, remember, so whatever you do, please don’t hurt her feelings. Make up some kind of excuse, like some business has come up suddenly and I’ve got to go, so here take this and get some lunch. If you think she’s okay, though, then give her six thousand, and I’ll take two thousand. After that you can work things out with her as you like. If it’s possible, it would be nice if you could make the arrangement a long one. That’s what she’s looking for.” Such were Subuyan’s words, but if in fact the arrangement actually did endure, Subuyan could hardly scrape by on just the initial commission. However, the varied crew of lechers who resorted to Subuyan for women were not likely to undergo sudden character transformation. And so it stood as a foregone conclusion that the girls would soon be passing with profitable efficiency from hand to hand.

  “You’re not a kid any more. When you meet him, there’ll be none of this business of saying ‘Goodbye now’ and going home. I hope you’ve got that much through your head.” Since Subuyan by now knew all about the woman from her flight from Hokkaido to her current tribulations, the hand he held was unbeatable.

  Then he brought the two together in a teashop on the south side. “Since this is by mutual agreement, if you don’t get along well, there’s no need for things to be disagreeable. This gentlemen will make an appropriate settlement, and that will be that.” Then, without further charade, the two got up and went out. And Subuyan had the satisfaction of seeing them disappear up a narrow lane leading to one of the inns in the neighborhood. “Okay, we’re in business!” he chortled, elated at the successful launching of yet another enterprise.

  Banteki’s film was also progressing well. Since Subuyan could not be at the actual shooting, he wanted at least to see the rushes, and so Banteki and the others brought the film and the equipment over to his house one night. The stars of this production were Rie’s partner and the faithful model who had appeared in the two previous films.

  Wherever he had gotten the inspiration, Banteki had succeeded in creating a set catching the precise atmosphere of a schoolgirl’s room—a delicate mélange of lace curtains and dolls. The doctor in Fusé would be delighted.

  In such a setting, the combination of the man, conducting himself with a rough violence utterly at odds with his behavior at Ashiya, and the by now rather competent model was charged with an electricity that flashed through even these unedited rushes, testifying to Banteki’s tenacity of purpose.

  “How is it, pretty rigid?” asked Subuyan, turning away from the screen.

  “No complaints, thank you,” answered Banteki, smiling complacently.

  “You’ve done it this time. Maybe we’ll get an Academy Award. I think it’ll really sell.”

  “Don’t rush things. I think we can sell only about three copies of this particular one. The guy has on the white gown in it, like the doctor wanted. But besides this, when we edit the film, we can make another one with a different story.”

  As the two were talking casually, a black shadow suddenly loomed up in front of the brightly colored screen and struck out at it, knocking it over. Then the figure began clawing at the splotch-covered wall as though attempting to tear away the erotic contortions still being projected there. It was the girl, Rie, who up to that moment had been sitting unnoticed behind her partner.

  The startled Hack stopped the projector and turned on the lights. Rie stamped her feet and beat her fists against the wall in rage, as though the vanished images had escaped her vengeance. Then she turned and plumped down upon the floor, her breath harsh and ragged. Finally her disordered gaze found the man, and she scrambled to him on all fours. She threw herself into his lap, wound her arms around his neck, and rocked her body back and forth, greedy for caresses.

  “Well, I’ll be damned!” said Subuyan.

  Everyone gaped in amazement. Finally Cocky understood.

  “I get it! She’s jealous. It’s always been her, and now she saw him loving up some other woman,” he explained.

  “I was bad. I did something bad. I won’t do it any more. Don’t be mad at me. Daddy was bad,” the man said, rubbing the girl’s back soothingly.

  “Daddy!” The word had not escaped Subuyan’s ready ear. “ ‘Daddy,’ you said? Is she your daughter?”

  The man answered almost in a whisper. “I didn’t exactly try to hide it. Yeah, she’s really my daughter.”

  The man had been born in a fishing village on Awaji Island, at the edge of Osaka Bay, and had worked as a fisherman until 1943, when he had left his pregnant wife to go into the army. He had been taken prisoner by the Russians and had not returned from Siberia until 1947. He had found that he had a young daughter, whom his parents were taking care of, since his wife had disappeared during the turmoil surrounding Japan’s defeat. So he had taken his growing daughter to live with him and had become a fisherman again, catching mackerel and flounder with his fellow fishermen as he had done before the war. But then Rie had come down with a fever. He had watched anxiously as it grew worse and finally had taken her to a doctor. The disease was meningitis, and although by some miracle she had survived, her intellectual growth was stunted and would never go beyond infancy.

  “She made all this fuss just now, but she’s usually quiet —has been ever since she was little. And even then everyone said she was going to turn into a real beauty. And since her mother was gone, this really used to get me down.”

  The girl had become like a doll, the only difference being that she whined like an animal when she was hungry. Then, as she grew older, all the signs of womanhood, cruel though the circumstances were, had appeared; her body began to show a woman’s voluptuous promise. And then while her father was away fishing she had been raped by a man passing through the village. Ugly though the incident was, perhaps the only pleasure open to an idiot girl of more than normal attractiveness was to be used as a plaything.

  “I thought about dying a lot of times. She liked the ocean. So I decided to take her in my arms and keep on walking out into the bay
. But I was a fisherman, and it turned out that I just wouldn’t sink. And Rie was enjoying herself just like she was a little fish. She held on tight to my neck and we floated there for maybe two or three hours. And so we didn’t die.” The girl was an idiot and she had liked the first man who had had her; and, being unable to tell the difference, she would go to anybody at all, clinging and crying out pitifully. And so the young men of the village had taken to passing her around.

  “I couldn’t stand it any more. So I brought her here to Osaka. I didn’t know what to do at all.” And then he explained how he had at last decided to satisfy the craving that becoming a woman had aroused in his daughter and give her the one pleasure that made life worthwhile for her.

  “Since I didn’t know how to do anything else to make a living, I started putting on those shows with Rie. What I wanted to do was to save up a little money and go away somewhere beside the ocean and live there with Rie, just the two of us. When I take her in my arms, she’s not a woman to me. I have a father’s feeling, a father holding his daughter. A father, that’s it …”

  The man called Rie with the voice of one gently offering a bottle to a fretful baby. “Should we go home now? We’re finished. Come on, now, let’s go. You’ll come, won’t you?” he said, gently working loose, one by one, the fingers wrapped tightly around his neck as she continued to cling to him. Finally the two stood hand in hand.

  “I’ll really work hard. If there’s another job, please call me again. It’s not just Rie—it’s the same with me. I don’t know how to do anything else either,” he said, muttering the last as if to himself. Then he turned and walked out with the girl.