The Pornographers Read online

  Subuyan took advantage of the vibration of the moving car to shift Keiko slightly in his arms, and with the same motion, knowing just what he was doing, he pressed the palm of his left hand against her breast. No reaction from Keiko. Subuyan’s heartbeat quickened almost to a frenzy. His fingers began massaging her breast softly through the elastic of the brassiere. At first she wiggled a bit, but not as though she were offering any opposition.

  “Okay, stop at that next place on the right, driver.” He spoke in a strained voice.

  Keiko got out and went into the house first, but instead of going into her room, she sat down in the barber chair. Subuyan shut the door and pulled the curtain. Then he came over to Keiko. He pushed the lever at the side of the chair that lowered its back. Then he pressed his right hand to her breast and bent over and kissed her. To his great surprise, the full, soft lips parted and Keiko’s wet tongue darted out as she gave a soft cry. Whatever else, she had at least had some experience in kissing, it seemed.

  “I love you, Keiko. I don’t want to let you go.”

  At that point, he tried to pick her up, just as he had seen done so many times in the movies. But strain as he would, he could not. He compromised by putting his arms around her and pulling her to her feet. Then another greedy embrace; but this time, just at the instant he was shutting his eyes, Subuyan happened to glance in the mirror. He saw two figures clutching each other, one in a middy blouse, the other himself; and the shock unnerved him. But then Keiko spoke.

  “I thought that this would happen someday.”

  He spread the mattress out on the floor of Keiko’s room, and just as he was going to lie down with her on it, she stopped him.

  “Wait a minute,” she said, “I don’t want to get my skirt all wrinkled.” Quickly she removed it and then lay down beside him, whispering in his ear.

  Subuyan’s sexuality, however, no matter how hard his heart was thumping, had not yet begun to stir at all. He removed her blouse. Then, after he had turned off the light, he began to take off her slip. As was not too surprising, other than pressing her legs together slightly, Keiko offered nothing at all in the way of resistance, and Subuyan stripped away unhindered till finally only a single garment remained. Here Keiko spoke again. “Okay. Here, let me get it,” she said, and twisting her hips and legs, she rid herself of it too. The stage was set, but the star was in no condition for an entrance.

  For all the tingling sensation in his fingertips as her breasts surged against them, for all the smooth softness of her plump thighs beneath his palms, and for all the delicious intermixture of both, there was not stimulation enough for the despairing Subuyan to manage an erection.

  “Wait a second. It would be a real mess if there was a baby,” he said, using the need for a condom as a pretext for getting up.

  “I think it’s all right,” said Keiko. “This isn’t my ovulation time.”

  “Even so, we don’t want to take any chance. I’ll be right back,” he said, skulking miserably away and climbing wearily to the second floor. He took a contraceptive from a dresser drawer, the first time in many months that he had had the pack in his hand. Then he looked down fixedly at what was failing him in the present crisis. A pitiful sight! That evening of competition at the inn in Arima—where was the poise and grandeur so much in evidence then? Not a trace of it. Its head drooped. Its whole aspect was worn and exhausted.

  “What am I going to do, anyway?”

  He tried twisting it as one would a cork. He tried pulling it as one would bubble gum. But nothing worked. In the past, when he had been with Oharu, he had often roused his passions to the right pitch with the wild phantasm of intercourse with Keiko. Now it was not a wild phantasm at all. Keiko was right there within his grasp, and so imagining she was did not do the least good at all. In a discordant way he tried to conjure up prize scenes from pornographic movies and to remember those passages that Hack had lavished the most care upon. But all this effort stirred not even the tiniest tremor of a reaction.

  With a heavy heart, he dragged himself downstairs again. He was confronted once more with the precipice. Again he laid his hands upon Keiko, and then he began to move them in rhythm with a fervent petition repeated over and over: “Hail, O great Bodhisattva Hachiman, if you’re the right one. Restore my vigor, I implore thee!” At this crucial juncture, Keiko suddenly had a question.

  “Who’s nicer, me or Mom?”

  “Huh? Keiko! You can’t go making comparisons like that. You’re young. And it’s not just that you’re young. You’re very pretty.”

  “That hand hurts.”

  Subuyan removed the hand, which was massaging the back of Keiko’s neck, and she took advantage of this to roll over on her side, facing Subuyan. She was primed and eager for the main event.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  Keiko stared wonderingly at Subuyan as he desperately contorted himself in one last effort.

  “I think I drank a little too much. If you drink too much, it sometimes happens like this.”

  “Are you impotent, Dad?”

  Keiko had struck him with the cruel word.

  “No, no, I’m not impotent. This is just a passing thing, that’s all. I can’t understand it.”

  “I’m not pretty?”

  “No, Keiko, no! That’s not it at all. You don’t understand what it’s like with a man. If he loves somebody a whole lot, and then all at once he’s with her like this, it can be just too much for him.”

  “I guess I just don’t have it. You can’t forget Mom.”

  “No, no, I tell you! You’ve got it all wrong. Just be patient a minute. Everything will work out okay.”

  But Keiko abruptly rolled over and turned her back to him. “Don’t go knocking yourself out. Go on up and get to bed. It’s okay,” she told him.

  “Keiko, please—” Subuyan’s tone had become a wretched plea. He was thoroughly unnerved. In bed with a virgin and then hit with impotence! A dismaying phenomenon to account for. Events, it seemed, had moved too rapidly for Subuyan; and this was evidently the root cause of his shattered self-possession. At any rate, tonight was obviously not the night. And so, after having strained his virility to the utmost, he decided to withdraw to avoid a setback even more ignominious.

  “Well, then, I’m going upstairs, Keiko. Good night.”

  Keiko turned on the lamp beside her bed and looked at him. “I guess it must be Mom’s curse,” she said, and as she spoke—perhaps it was the way the light caught her features—her face was Oharu’s.

  The next morning, Keiko’s movements downstairs woke Subuyan, and he instinctively hunched himself into a fetal position as waves of shameful self-reproach rolled over him. He strained every nerve in an attempt to ascertain her disposition from her way of moving around. But since nothing seemed to be out of the way, he gradually relaxed; and his mood underwent a radical change. His palms tingled once more with the feel of Keiko’s skin. He could even smell the warm sensuality of her body. And just as on a morning in his adolescence, the area of his groin throbbed with a sultry warmth.

  “Ahah! Tonight I’ll make up for everything. Maybe I’ll take a swig of tonic just to make sure.”

  After Keiko had left, Subuyan, anticipating what the night was to bring, kept up his solitary delectation, the pleasures of which were suddenly shattered by the noise of the front door being slid unceremoniously open and the echo of a rough masculine voice.

  “Hey, Kiso, are you home?”

  Subuyan did not recognize the voice at all, but there was something about its overfamiliar tone that caused him to spring from his bed at once and run to the rear window. There in the alley behind the house a second man was standing. It was the police—no two ways about it. But what were they after? Was it the women? The films? Suddenly the affair of the Rokko doctor flashed across his mind. Had he gone to the police? As he was trying to think, the man below called out again.

  “Kiso! How about it?”

&n
bsp; “Yeah, yeah, I’m here,” answered Subuyan and reluctantly came downstairs.

  Flashing a search warrant, the two detectives pushed in willy-nilly and rummaged around, searching the dressers, closets, the cheap altar, and even the ceiling. Subuyan, having expected the worst, kept all his merchandise locked in a bank vault, and so all the efforts of the police turned up nothing. But, claiming they wanted some information from him, they told him to come to the station with them.

  Even after they had entered the police car, a large one of venerable vintage, the two detectives gave no hint of the charges against him; and, while he was still unfortified with a plausible story, the car arrived at Moriguchi Police Headquarters. Here Subuyan was at once confronted with the manager of the finance department of a large company, a man who was one of his clients.

  “He says that he bought a pornographic movie from you. We’ve got his official statement on it. The deal took place at the Rosemarie teashop, right near Moriguchi Station.”

  After Subuyan had duly protested that he had never heard of the Rosemarie, he was brought there and, constrained by handcuffs, forced to walk up and down in front of it a few times. The waitresses, of course, peered out every now and then, but nothing definite could be concluded from this.

  The problem was to what extent he could maintain his denials. At this point the adversary’s strategy was not yet clear. If the police had gotten their hands only on the film, the situation was not too threatening. The manager, however, had been one of Subuyan’s first customers, and because of the cordial relationship between them, Subuyan had been liberal in giving him all sorts of books and pictures on holiday occasions and so on. If all this had been picked up, the setback was a major one.

  “So you think you’re going to get by with this, huh? Just where the hell do you think you’re at? You’re dealing with Moriguchi Police Headquarters,” said the assistant inspector with a snarl.

  Moriguchi Police Headquarters! thought Subuyan in exasperation. I wouldn’t feel so bad if they had pulled me in at Sonezaki or Nishinari. But my God! Moriguchi! Why, even the semi-express doesn’t stop here. What the hell is he going on about? Him and his big-time Moriguchi Police Headquarters!

  But however violent his interior protests, Subuyan maintained an exterior of prudent deference from first to last, his head bent forward, revealing the sparseness of his beard in the area below the nose.

  “And when we write up the charges on you, believe me, we won’t forget this attitude of yours one bit,” angrily declaimed the assistant inspector before abandoning the stage to a middle-aged detective who passed him in the doorway, and who immediately brought to bear upon Subuyan a warm, human sympathy that revolted him.

  What do they think they’re doing, anyway, he muttered to himself in disgust. Is this a TV drama or something? Do they think I’m like one of these murders or thugs? Do they think I’m going to break down and cry just because the good guy comes in after the nasty guy and gives me a cheap cigarette or two? The hell I am!

  So it went for five more days. By that time Subuyan had learned something at least of how things stood. The manager had decided to use his office to show some of Subuyan’s films for his friends. Unfortunately, the police had apparently been forewarned of this and they had staged a raid, seizing the projector and other equipment and three films. Among the films was one of the perverse creations of the Rokko doctor, which Subuyan had just recently sold to the manager.

  The manager had been planning to run in the next city-council election and so had stirred up the enmity of the council establishment. This was most likely the behind-the-scenes cause of the little tragedy.

  Whenever something like this happened, it was usually an inside job. If the screening was at a restaurant, perhaps a waitress or geisha would tip off the police. If it was at a company, word might get out thanks to the grumbling of discontented lower-echelon employes not invited. Often the background was one of labor disputes or election campaigns. A union, for example, might strike at a hated and formidable executive’s Achilles heel, his fondness for this sort of entertainment. Then too, a political opponent might be struck down by stirring up a scandal. And so in the course of such maneuvering, information was often leaked to the police; and pornographic films sometimes came to have a starring role in public affairs.

  “Now, when you get right down to it, every guy’s about the same when it comes to this kind of thing. I don’t pretend not to have a certain interest myself,” said the Tokyo-born prosecutor jovially, doing his best to put on an earthy Osaka manner. “Now you didn’t murder anybody. You didn’t beat anybody up. So it’s kind of a waste of time, don’t you think, to make all this fuss over a couple of lousy films. We know you sold the films. So if you keep on denying it like this, you can’t expect us to take as lenient a view of it as we might. And if you get these detectives any more stirred up, it might be just too bad for you.”

  Every other day, Subuyan had been obliged to get into the green police bus and ride down to the prosecutor’s office. There for eight hours he suffered through sitting on a hard bench in one of the interrogation rooms, but despite the punishment his rear absorbed in the process, the statement he gave each time advanced matters not at all; and the detectives who had to accompany him were daily growing more exasperated.

  “Look, it wasn’t any professional who did this film, was it? It’s too weird and sick. Where did you get hold of it? Some guy made it just for his amusement, didn’t he? But that was selfish of him, wasn’t it? So you managed to get hold of it and decided it might be worth a little money, huh? So where did you get it? Or maybe you did make it yourself, Kiso, eh?”

  Since it was different from the usual pornographic film, maybe he could get by with the story that he had made it himself and sold it. The manager who had bought it was influential. So it was not likely that too great an issue would be made of it. Still, suppose the police said they wanted to see where he had filmed it. What could he tell them? On the other hand, if he were to say he had bought it, they would want to know from whom. Since it was not the sort of merchandise to have a brand name attached, perhaps this method offered the best means of deception. At any rate, Subuyan had to size things up and seize the first good opening to offer itself.

  Among his cellmates Subuyan had become a celebrity from the first. As soon as the bars had slammed behind him, he executed the formalities of introduction with great poise: “The name is Subuyan. My line is obscenity.” The black suit too achieved the desired effect; and Subuyan’s status among the assembled muggers, pickpockets, and vagrants was assured.

  And in the usual give and take within the cell—bragging about past and present misdeeds and length of time served—Subuyan quickly took center stage, as could only be expected of one who numbered being a professional raconteur among his many accomplishments. Thanks to him there was no lack of entertainment, even outside the normal recreation periods. He went at it heartily with a wealth of hand gestures and body movements, able to break all the rules of cell decorum with impunity because the guard himself had quickly become one of his fans and even ventured to ask his advice: “You know, my daughter’s in high school now. I guess I’d better keep a sharp eye on her, huh?”

  “Yessir,” answered Subuyan sagaciously, “you’d better. You know what girls are all saying nowadays, don’t you? They think that being a virgin’s just a pain in the neck.”

  For the present, Banteki could be depended upon to manage the business prudently in accordance with the letter Subuyan had left behind, and every day he saw that sushi was sent in. But there was still the matter of Keiko weighing upon Subuyan’s mind. If he happened to recall the touch of that smooth skin beneath his fingertips, he burned with desire in an instant. “Hold on, hold on!” he muttered between clenched teeth, trying with all his might to bank the fires within.

  When Subuyan had been arrested, the necks of all his colleagues had quivered instinctively in anticipation of the ax’s fall; but actually there had b
een little chance of the misfortune touching them. For it was a basic principle of their enterprise that Subuyan alone be exposed to the peril of public scrutiny and so in compensation should be entitled to a far greater share of the profits. The blow, if fall it must, would fall upon him and him alone.

  Cocky had rushed over to Subuyan’s house at once and given Keiko the news of her father’s arrest, together with a covering story that skimped on the more colorful details. The girl was far from prostrate at the news. Then Cocky offered his own services and those of the others, saying that they could take turns sleeping at the house lest Keiko be exposed to the dangers that lay in wait for lone women.

  “Thanks anyway,” she declined, “but I don’t think anybody is going to run off with me.”

  Then she went upstairs and came down with Subuyan’s bed clothing and dirty underwear, which she plunged into the sink. “Dad’s going to be cold in jail without these,” she said, the very image of the conscientious housekeeper.

  Paul’s job was to handle the call-girl end of the business while Subuyan was incapacitated. He followed as well as he could the pattern Subuyan had given him and so put calls in to the desk at the Dojima Building every day at nine, twelve, three, and five. Then he contacted any customers who had left their numbers and did what he could do about filling their orders. The smooth functioning of his pimp’s role, however, was sometimes awkward because Paul’s personal contact with Subuyan’s call girls was limited to two or three. However, despite these difficulties, it was business as usual; and, with Banteki managing the films and Paul the girls, money came in.

  Subuyan was not allowed visitors, however, and so Paul was in constant fear that something beyond his powers to cope with might arise. He had been born in Kobé, and after dropping out of a college in Tokyo in his second year, he had gone to work as a salesman for a securities firm. In the course of his selling, he had met the Rokko doctor. This man had persuaded him to come to work for him, dangling the lure of the managership of the hospital’s office. It had been the desire for this rise in status, therefore, that had led to Paul’s undoing. The difficult clerical work that the red tape of socialized medicine made necessary had been distasteful enough, but he had also found that it lay within his responsibility to dissuade seduced and abused nurses from going to the police. And on one occasion he had been accosted and threatened by the pimp of a nurse who had slipped out of the doctor’s clutches. If all this had not been bad enough, every week when he had presented the financial report to the incredibly miserly doctor, he had been assailed contemptuously for his stupidity in not having cheated more on taxes and having let some patients get by with bills still unpaid.