The Pornographers Read online

  “Just like an orgy, huh?” said Paul.

  “An orgy? Yeah, maybe that would be about it,” answered Subuyan. Come to think of it, perhaps an orgy would be no more than the logical culmination of their clients’ progress. Mix together a batch of those of opposite sexes, a roughly equal number of men and women, shake violently so that distinctions such as age, background, beauty, and ugliness vanish and only that of sex remains, setting off a chain reaction of couplings and uncouplings. That was an orgy, eh? “Okay,” said Subuyan decisively, “we’ll do it sometime. We’ll definitely sponsor an orgy.” Vague as the feeling had been, Subuyan had always had a premonition that it would come to this someday.

  Paul and Kabo were now ranging as far as Kyoto and Nara and their combination had proven itself an excellent one, blending as it did the self-assurance of Paul, which grew more pronounced day by day, and the appealing naïveté of Kabo, who was still terrified after a full month’s activity: “No, Paul, we’d better leave them alone, don’t you think? Look at the mean faces they’re making.” This mixed bait had already accounted for a catch of twenty-six, thus filling Subuyan’s tank with eight office girls, five college students, three high-school girls, three waitresses, two apprentice beauticians, two factory girls, two housewives, and one fashion model.

  “It’s just not easy giving them a taste of luxury like you said,” Paul complained. “You’re doing well if you can get them into a sushi place to have a meal and a few drinks. And if you manage that, they’re practically ready to burst with joy. Then you say, ‘I’ll rent a car and we’ll take a ride up around Mount Rokko,’ and they’re shocked: ‘No, no! That’d cost too much. Let’s go up on the cable car instead.’ It kills them to see money spent.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Subuyan delightedly. “Well-brought-up girls like that are a treasure nowadays.” He had already set aside a day in early June for an experiment along these lines, an excursion to the Shima Peninsula.

  “I understand. I understand perfectly, but I’m worried about what might happen later. For one thing, they’re younger than my own daughter—sixteen, you say? No, I don’t like the looks of it at all.” The advertising chief of Matsuzaki Cosmetics puffed his cigarette recklessly, scattering fine ashes everywhere, after being asked how he felt about taking a little trip the following Sunday with three high-school girls. Subuyan well realized, however, that no matter how much he protested vocally, he was, in fact, quivering with anticipation.

  “Now perhaps, sir, you might be able to look at the thing in this light. You know how the emperors of China in ancient times after they got old used to sleep with a young girl on either side of them, and they’d breathe in that youth and get young again themselves. Well, this is a lot like that. You spend the whole day right with them having a good time. And then, too, you’ll be getting an opportunity to observe firsthand the ways of thinking and acting of today’s teenagers, a bit of invaluable research for your business. And that’s all there is to it. There is not the least possibility of any unpleasantness later. These are just ordinary young girls. It’s just that—well—they like having their fun now and then.”

  In order to ensnare the cowardly middle-aged, Subuyan always had to be forearmed with a battery of plausible reasons.

  “Well, now, maybe it might be worthwhile to meet them just to hear what they have to say. We should actually be on the lookout for chances of this kind. In the cosmetic business you can’t afford to neglect research for a minute.” At length the advertising chief was persuaded.

  Though the girls were only sixteen-year-old high-school students, once they were out of their uniforms and got a bit of practice in using make-up to accent their maturity, they easily passed for adults. The plan was for Kabo to pick them up at Ueroku and drive them to Shima, where Subuyan and the advertising chief would be waiting for them on the island of Kashikoshima. The area was a fishing district, but much of its income came from pearl cultivation. Subuyan had rented an old cottage, and the story he had given the girls was that the advertising chief had come to Shima to buy some pearls cheaply from relatives there.

  Finally about noon Kabo and his charges arrived, and the advertising chief’s poise was nearly shattered. “From ancient times man recognized the pearl as a great treasure,” he said, addressing the girls like a teacher—or perhaps he had decided to assume the role of the president of a pearl company. “Every other stone has to be processed to some extent. But the pearl can be put on just as it’s found in the state of nature.”

  “Hey, girls, what do you say to a motorboat ride?” Subuyan offered.

  They squealed joyfully in response, hardly able to contain themselves.

  “We thought we might be able to do that. So we brought our swimsuits.” The adversary was cooperating!

  “Isn’t it a little cold yet?” said the advertising chief, every inch the dutiful parent.

  “They’re young, they’re young. They could jump in in midwinter.” said Subuyan, smiling in reassurance, as the girls ran into the bedroom to change their clothes. “Kabo, go rent a motorboat.”

  “Would it, uh, be all right if I went along, too?” asked the advertising chief in a slightly agitated tone.

  “Well, suppose we just take it easy for a bit, sir. There’s a full day ahead of us.”

  After Kabo and the girls had shot off across the water with an explosive burst, Subuyan gestured invitingly in the direction of the bedroom. “Should we check and see what our little friends have with them?”

  “Are you crazy, Kiso? If they catch us—” The advertising chief was again voluble with protests.

  “Not the least chance of it,” Subuyan insisted.

  “Well—okay, I guess,” he said at last, and right on the spot all his affectation melted into sultry, bubbling lust.

  The girls had piled their discarded underclothing in neat, ladylike fashion; and Subuyan and the advertising chief began their inspection with the utmost caution, one piece at a time, with care taken not to throw things into disarray.

  “I wonder what this is?”

  “It’s—aah—a garter belt. My daughter wears one, too, I think.”

  “Hey, take a look at this. Would you expect to find schoolgirls wearing colored panties?”

  “Very charming,” said the advertising chief, still attempting to cut a dignified figure.

  “Ummmm! Would you care to take a little sniff?” asked Subuyan, prodding him on. “She just took them off and they’ve got this nice, warm scent to them.”

  At first the poor lecher did nothing more than bring his nose a bit closer; but then, breathing hard and no longer able to hold himself in check, he snatched the panties away from Subuyan and pulled them down over his face.

  “How is it? Do you feel yourself getting young again? That’s it! Breathe it in deep, that female essence. And here—here’s something else.”

  With cool detachment Subuyan watched the advertising chief scurrying about, snatching and grabbing with frenzied abandon. And as he watched, he carefully replaced each ravished item just the way it had been.

  Well, isn’t this a nice little spectacle? thought Subuyan. Sober and businesslike as can be, but underneath there’s just one thing he’s interested in.

  When the girls returned, hard on the heels of the weary Kabo, Subuyan whispered to them, “The director there says that he’ll take a ride with you himself this time. Now if you kids are smart and play along just a little bit, who knows? He might even come across with one or two big pearls apiece for you.” He deliberately made his voice heavy with insinuation.

  The girls, all agog at the prospect before them, frolicked happily off with the advertising chief. Now they were not likely to make an issue of an out-of-bounds pat here and there.

  “How did you mean, ‘play along,’ boss?” asked Kabo, somewhat concerned.

  “Oh, nothing special, Kabo. You know, really show him a good time, that’s all.”

  “Oh, a good time! I get it. That’s nice.”<
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  Later Subuyan and Kabo sat watching the motorboat as, sputtering and roaring, it lurched in and out like a truck through the thickly massed rafts used for pearl farming.

  “It didn’t do anything to you, huh, Kabo? To sit there with those young girls in swimsuits all around you.”

  “No, not a bit. Young girls, huh? I don’t know. To me they’ve got this smell like fireflies, and I don’t go for it.”

  “Like fireflies? What kind of smell is that?”

  When the attentions of Kabo’s stepmother had finally driven him from his home and he had had no place to go, he had spent one night on the bank of the Kako River. Fireflies had been swarming everywhere, and Kabo had reached without thinking, caught one in his hand, and crushed it to a pulp. An unpleasant smell had at once struck his nose. “Sure, fireflies are very cute. But their smell is no good. It’s so raw. And those girls, they smelled the same way.”

  “Maybe your nose is too tender. Anyway, you’ve got to admit you’re a bit unusual.”

  “Well, as far as that goes, you’re not like most people either, boss.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, Paul was talking just a while ago. He said that the boss goes to all kinds of trouble furnishing women for other people, but how about himself? I wonder what goes on inside his mind, he said.”

  “So that’s what he was wondering, huh? Well, I got into the business to begin with because of the money. But lately—well, it’s not just that.”

  “We sort of realize that, but it’s your sex life we were wondering about. That we don’t understand at all.”

  “Well, it’s something like I’ve gotten so I don’t get that worked up about women any more.”

  “Ah! You’re impotent, is that it? Say, my father was impotent, too, and that’s probably why his second wife got so much on edge and went after me all the time. But anyway, there was this medicine Dad used to take. Let’s see now, what was the name of it again?” Kabo raced on enthusiastically, and Subuyan lost his temper.

  “Shut up, will you? Just don’t worry about me. When the proper time comes, I’ll deliver the goods all right.” The proper time: that is, when he found Keiko again, when he would be able to hold Keiko in his arms again.

  “Well, according to Paul, boss, you’ve got so you can’t do it yourself any more, so you get your satisfaction from watching others do it—or so he says anyway.”

  “That’s not right. The reason I’m in this business is because of the sadness of the human condition—especially men.”

  “The sadness of the human condition, huh? What’s that?”

  “If you’re a pornographer for any length of time, you’ll eventually see just what I mean. There’s no man that can escape it. It gets every last one of them.”

  That evening operations were switched to the bar of a nearby hotel. There, probably due to the efficacy of the pearls as bait, the three girls took turns dancing cheek to cheek with the advertising chief; and thus the carefree excursion came to a successful conclusion. The advertising chief took care of the round-trip tickets, the cottage rental, and the six cheap pearls for the girls, and finally he paid Subuyan a fee of twenty thousand yen, requesting by all means another such opportunity.

  They’re all alike, thought Subuyan, all hot and bothered until you swear to them that you’re going to fix them up again. These poor, fumbling bastards are so ridiculous—but if I didn’t take care of them, who would? Well, that’s humanism for you.

  The excursion did not bring in much money, but the important thing was that these schoolgirls now had had the experience of spending a whole day with a man they had never seen before and had discovered that playing with fire could be great fun. They had taken the first step toward the brink; and had they followed it with a second and third, by now they would have been irrevocably over it and into the deep. A drive in a car, pearls, dancing, brandy cocktails, an executive, a cottage, and so on—shimmering threads were entangling them.

  “Look, if the plan is not to sell films from now on but just to show them, then there’s all the more reason for using those sixteen-millimeter cameras,” said Banteki, after coming to Subuyan’s house to deplore the fact that the Bell and Howell cameras stolen from the Rokko doctor had been standing idle all this time, especially since men were available to run them. “The grain is so much finer and the picture is really clear. And then afterward it’s much easier to put the sound in. Our eight-millimeter films always have that dark, cloudy look, but with the sixteen-millimeter our stuff will come out brilliant and have all kinds of power.”

  “But won’t carrying all that equipment into a place look pretty funny?”

  “Nothing to worry about there. You said that we’re not going to use cheap hotels any more, didn’t you? Nothing but the best in Nakanoshima. So I looked into the situation there. We can get a big room for one day for about eight thousand yen. And as for the equipment, we’ll pack it into trunks, tie some airline tags on, and march right in with them fluttering in the breeze. Nobody will think it’s funny at all. And as for the actors and the rest of the crew, they can come later just like friends we invited up. Besides, the place is quiet, and it has air conditioning. So even though the price is a little high, its advantages outweigh everything else.”

  “Okay, let’s do it, then,” said Subuyan, agreeing at last.

  Because of all the equipment used this time, many hands were needed, and so Paul and Kabo were mobilized. The shooting was to take place at the Golden Kansai, one of Osaka’s finest hotels.

  The room was so arranged that it could be divided in two by adjustable partitions. A double bed stood at the rear of the room, and the area closer to the door was a parlor furnished with two chairs and a couch. Thanks to the flexibility afforded by the partitions, the cameras could be moved about as freely as desired. The first thing Banteki did was to roll one of the cameras all over the room in a test run. “Okay, great! Everything’s fine.”

  Meanwhile, Subuyan, ears pricked up, had been checking the noise level from out in the corridor. “The camera noise is okay,” he reported. “But Banteki, when you get excited like that, your voice carries.”

  This time the male romantic lead was to be played by an acquaintance of Kabo from his days in talent school, a tall young man who now worked as a bartender on the south side. The woman was the fashion model recruited by Paul—the truth of the matter was that she had never got beyond the fringes of the modeling profession and her specialty was foundation garments. She had jumped at the chance to make some money.

  In this film the two of them were not going to be called upon to go all the way. Banteki had developed strong feelings on this point. “In all your blue films, they can’t think of a damn thing else but to concentrate just on that for all they’re worth, but the fact is that no matter how you film it, you can’t avoid a certain smuttiness. So, in my opinion, the idea should be rather to make use of suggestion—you know: to concentrate upon the most minute variations in bodily movement and facial expression.” Then, too, this approach naturaly imposed far less of a strain on the stars and they were able to put in a better day’s work. Finally, if by some chance the completed film should seem to fall a bit short on the score of explicitness, it would be, of course, no great problem to supply that element later.

  Banteki and his assistants had already invaded a fashionable wedding hall and filmed an ecstatically happy couple in wedding gown and morning coat—he had been careful to select two resembling his principals—and then they had followed the wedding party all the way to Osaka Station, where they filmed the crowd of relatives and friends standing on the platform with upraised arms, shouting “Banzai! Banzai!” as the newlyweds’ train pulled away. “They won’t suspect a thing,” Banteki had predicted. “They’ll just think we’re making some kind of TV special.” And so it had turned out.

  The shooting began with a scene in which the bridegroom sat bare-chested in the parlor while his bride put on her wedding gown in the bedroom.
He wanted to see her once more all in white so he could drink in the sight to his heart’s content, and so had made this demand of her, to which, embarrassed though she was, she had consented.

  “But would they lug a thing like that along on their honeymoon?” Paul demanded, his head tilted skeptically.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you? Didn’t you ever hear of poetic license?” retorted Banteki irritably.

  Kabo had charge of the measuring tape, Hack took notes for use during the editing process, and Cocky was frantically washing his hair in the bathroom. The goal of his exertions was an abundance of suds. For the next scene called for the husband to embrace tenderly the sudsy body of his wife. Cocky had tried various other methods with no great success and finally had said in frustration: “The best way I know of is to wash your hair. Then they come out tough and long-lasting.” And so he had set himself to it with a will.

  Finally the model made her appearance, with a virginal lily at her breast—a slightly extravagant touch, maybe. Perhaps it was the effect of the gown, but at any rate she trembled as if this had been the real thing. The shirtless bartender looked at her, doing his best to simulate rapture, then snatched her up in a furious burst of energy and threw her down on the bed, at which point came the first cut. Next in order was a close-up of the bartender’s face. After that the cameras focused on the model as though through the man’s eyes, panning up from the floor.

  “Okay,” said Banteki, once that was finished. “Now mark the spot where she’s standing with chalk.”

  In a few moments the model stepped back into position and assumed the same pose, only this time she wore only brassiere and panties. The cameras turned for a mere ten seconds, and then paused again as she made further adjustments. For the final shot of the sequence, she had dispensed with everything but a strategically placed hand.