The Pornographers Read online

  “Excuse me, but there’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”

  Subuyan got up and went to the neighboring room with her, where the other two stood completely at ease. “The thing is,” explained the first, “we sure wouldn’t want to get pregnant. So we’d like to go to the doctor and get sort of rinsed out, you know. But since we don’t work, we don’t have any money, so we were wondering if you’d be willing to lend us a little and take this watch as security.”

  “I understand perfectly,” said Subuyan, pushing the watch back and pulling out three ten-thousand-yen bills. “Here, take this.”

  “Oh no, no! We couldn’t do that. That’s way too much,” protested the girls, exchanging looks.

  “Well, if there’s anything left over, buy yourselves some books,” he said, pressing the money upon them: and the six of them left the inn together. Nothing seemed further from the girls’ minds than the events of the night before, as they laughed cheerfully, pushed each other playfully, and—the ultimate touch—walked arm in arm with their escorts.

  “Well, we gotta go this way now. See you!” They waved their hands and were gone.

  “Well, that’s what I call an evening to remember. Six times in one night! I never did that before,” said Kanezaka, weary but complacent. “Maybe I overdid it a bit.” But he did not seem much disturbed.

  “It just wasn’t your night, huh, boss?” said Kabo when the two were alone. Since Kabo had taken in the whole panorama, there was no point in trying to hide anything.

  “I don’t know. I’ve just got to find Keiko. I can’t go on this way,” he answered. However, at the moment, the whole affair of the junior-college girls was weighing upon his mind rather than his own impotency.

  Even after they had agreed to stay the night, their behavior had still seemed that of ordinary girls from middle-class or even rather wealthy families. And then to go wild like that! thought Subuyan. To wait their turns to get it from one man! To bellow like whales! They might not be prostitutes, but they certainly had no sense of shame last night. Maybe the only virgins left are the kind like Yasuko.

  Yasuko’s story and this experience with the junior-college girls had opened Subuyan’s eyes anew to reality.

  His idea to groom women capable of fulfilling every man’s dream—was that hopelessly old-fashioned? Did it not seem that people nowadays were quickly bored with conventional, one-to-one sexuality? If I was able to produce the ideal woman—but wait a minute! he thought. To hell with the whole business of some guy thinking up an ideal image for himself! Isn’t the real man the one that grabs for the women right in front of him and rams it to them—as hard as he can, as much as he can? To make yourself up some kind of dream—“This I’d like in, this I’d like out”—what’s that but the same as masturbation? Kabo and Hack, for example. What would it take to turn poor bastards like that into men again, to stoke up their virility? What else if not an orgy? What was it at the very beginning with men and women but one big orgy? So to hell with all the theories and speculations. If there’s a woman in front of you, that’s reason enough to reach out and grab. And to stir up the right reflexes for this, we’ve got to have orgies. Out with all the sex rules! No worries either about who she is, what she is, is she pretty, is she ugly—no room for preferences. Male and female, give and take, snatch and grab—nothing else! No matter how women differ, they’re all alike in one thing, and all a man has to do is face up to that nice warm little hole there, plunge into it, and drive home his semen. And the woman yells out for sheer joy as she catches it solid and takes it deep into her. And is there anything else that matters? And only in an orgy is this possible. To drive people wild! No, no, to make them sane! That’s what it is, nothing more than that.

  • • •

  After the first sixteen-millimeter production, The Nuptial Torch, Banteki completed a second film, Peeping Through the Pines, on location at Mount Rokko. Thanks to Kanezaka, Banteki was able to obtain the services of a former actor and actress, now working in an advertising agency, to do the dubbing. And the results were so spectacular that orders poured in from various companies, but these films were not for sale. They were to be shown solely on the basis of club membership. Some thirty corporations immediately agreed to pay the thirty-thousand-yen monthly fee in order to take part, and the money obtained for just this first month was enough to cover the cost of production. Then when the number of films available grew to five, this fee was raised to fifty thousand a month, which the firms paid readily enough since they counted it as part of their operating expenses and it was a mere drop in the bucket. The pornographers at last were prospering.

  But Subuyan himself had lost all interest in films. Instead he drove Paul and Kabo relentlessly on to greater achievement in their pickup forays. And as in the experiment with Kanezaka and the junior-college girls, he worked hard and patiently at breaking in his women, employing the services of such men as the rush-hour masher executive and the advertising chief of the Shima Peninsula experiment. Of course, this too brought in money—thirty thousand yen per woman.

  Sometimes a woman would run off barefooted, and once one came back with a policeman. Then another time Subuyan was thrown into an agony of worry—“My God, she’s dead!”—after he had given a woman too many pills and she slept for two days. But as a rule, the type of woman who would enter an inn, no matter how transparent the pretext offered by Subuyan, in due course let herself be had, though she might resist a bit on occasion. Then she took the money offered her the next morning and left in good spirits. Usually this sort came from a fairly large family and was the second or third daughter. Most of them were middle-class girls. If they worked in offices, usually they had done so for less than three years. And as far as their education went, the majority of them had graduated from girls’ high schools.

  The day was October 10, 1964, a day marked by being not only Subuyan’s thirty-eighth birthday but also the opening of the Tokyo Olympics, a sunburst of colorful pageantry.

  “Think of those hundreds of beautiful bodies, men and women, gathered from all over the world! I’d like to take them all and—yaaaaaaah!—mix them all in one grand orgy! It would be the event of the century. There would be a folk festival for you!” Subuyan was enthusiastic. “Well, let me tell you this: Osaka’s not going to lose out to Tokyo. That’s why I deliberately picked today.” That evening in a villa by a small pond, not too far from Nigawa on the Takarazuka branch line of the Osaka-Kobé Railroad, would be held the first of a projected series of orgies.

  This villa had been owned by a German, and so its construction was an odd mixture of Japanese and Western elements. Its rental for a week was fifty thousand yen; and since they were to use it for so short a time, there was no need to pay a further deposit. Cocky came a couple of days ahead of time and stayed over to clean and decorate the place. The main room had a Western-style floor about fifteen feet square, which was covered with a carpet stretching right from the entranceway. Beyond it was a kitchen, on the right a small Japanese-style room and a Western bathroom, and on the left a study. The villa’s luxury did not extend to chandeliers, but Cocky took pains to place candles set in wine bottles on the shelves and to spread flower petals on the carpeted floor. Then he wound up the old-fashioned clock, which the German had probably left, and put some champagne in the ice-filled sink to chill.

  Then when evening came, since it would never do to buy food from stores in the neighborhood, Kabo came in a car with sandwiches enough for thirty people bought in Osaka. Subuyan arrived soon after with four of the male guests, and they went into the small tatami room.

  Each of the men represented a different profession. There were a scenario writer, a steel broker, a securities executive, a tax official, a professor from a university in Kyoto, the fine-woods dealer from Amagazaki, the president of a record company, and a real-estate man from Mikage. All of them were strangers to one another. Subuyan had arranged to meet them at staggered intervals at Nishinomiya Station and drive th
em to the villa three or four at a time so as to avoid anything in the least conspicuous.

  The women, all brought in by the industry of Paul and Kabo, consisted of three high-school girls, two officeworkers, three girls who worked in a light-bulb factory, two apprentice beauticians, and a dancer. There were three more women than men. This would enable the men who finished more quickly an opportunity to go at a fresh one right away, and it also provided a slightly wider range of initial choice. Paul brought the women in a microbus after a bumpy ride over the Osaka-Kobé Highway. They had been told that tonight’s affair was a masked ball sponsored by the very cream of Japanese high society, and each of them was gaudily dressed. Their expectations for the evening differed from those of the male guests.

  At dusk the shutters were closed, and the picturesque candles were lit. Then Subuyan distributed the masks, which covered only the eyes, black ones for the men and silver for the women. Everyone milled about in the carpeted room, deliberately cleared of tables and other furniture, while Kabo and Paul circulated constantly at their job of keeping glasses filled. Subuyan had cautioned them to make sure that the women’s champagne was liberally laced with gin.

  Then Subuyan, clad in the double-breasted black suit that he had worn at his wife’s wake and at Moriguchi Police Headquarters, pulled himself erect and signaled for attention. “From now on we have to do everything in pantomime. Until I give the signal, please, no one say so much as one word. If you do talk, then I’m afraid we’ll have to ask you to go home,” he told them sternly. He went on in a normal tone: “But shall we take a look at an intriguing little movie right now? There’ll be something in it for everybody to enjoy, I think.”

  Kabo deftly unrolled the screen, and Banteki started the projector. For a few seconds there was nothing but flickering whiteness, and then all at once a red mark flashed on screen—the signal to start the tape recorder—and seductive music began to play. The first scene of the movie was a view from Tenguiwa in Mount Rokko Park, showing Kobé and Osaka Bay below. The camera panned leisurely to the right, and, as it did, two faint spots of color, red and white, appeared amid the mass of green foliage which covered the slopes. Then all at once, a rapid zoom up; and there flashed on screen—thanks to the peculiar genius of Banteki—an unlucky but oblivious young couple, who had nothing at all to do with Subuyan’s enterprises.

  When the two-reel, twenty-minute Peeping Through the Pines had run its course, the room seemed to be stirring with heated expectancy. The women sighed heavily. As the mood music continued, Subuyan got to his feet. “There’s plenty to drink, ladies and gentlemen, so please don’t be bashful. In a little while we’re going to have a drawing, and there’ll be all sorts of excellent prizes. So, please! Relax, have fun, drink, enjoy some dancing. Except for the kitchen, feel free to go wherever you like. Come on, girls, please help out these bashful gentlemen. Take them by the hand. Only remember: it has to be all in pantomime. No smooth words and whispers now! We can’t allow that. You’ve got to do it all by gestures. So let’s see how much you can say just with your bodies.” The part about the excellent prizes was merely a device to help ensure, in however small a way, that none of the women left early.

  The pantomime ruse was an effective measure. As experience had shown, tense, aroused men were not much for making small talk. Even though these were men capable of the most outrageous feats of lust once they were sure they were dealing with women they had bought, as long as the fumble and probe stage lasted they kept up their clumsy posturing. And with the women, too, the situation was delicate. Unless just the right mood was maintained, they were apt to stand haughtily upon their dignity and leave. Experiments had shown, therefore, that one of the devices that most facilitated the smooth, gradual degeneration of the atmosphere to the proper state of wild, frenzied abandon was to eliminate all preliminary conversation. And so Subuyan had made silence one of the ground rules. Drinks and music, then, and more than anything else, an atmosphere laden with sultry promise.

  The guests began to form couples and dance; and as was inevitable, three women were left standing. These tried to disguise their forlorn expressions, but the sense of being left out had obviously affected them strongly. Seeing their discontent and realizing that they might be on the verge of being disenchanted with the whole affair, he hurried to get them partners.

  Since one could not even ask one’s companion’s name, the usual party chatter was ruled out, and the dancers had no other way of communicating with each other than by bodily movements. Gradually a sort of competition arose among the women as they took their turns dancing or waited by the wall; and soon every couple had become locked in a tight embrace and did little more than sway back and forth.

  The drinks were distributed under Subuyan’s watchful supervision. If one person got drunk ahead of the others and started to carry on recklessly, this would sober up the women. Prudently administered, however, alcohol was an essential means of bolstering the courage of the men. And as the atmosphere itself grew more charged, it intoxicated the women as much as the alcohol had; and their inhibitions fell away.

  “Okay, we’re getting close to the payoff now,” Subuyan informed his staff. “Don’t let anybody run. If just one woman does it, it’s liable to shake the others up and make them realize the situation. And not only that, you can be sure the one that gets away will spill the whole business. Actually, she’ll be sorry afterward that she got scared and missed everything, so she’ll justify it to herself by going to the police. So if you see one trying to make a break for it, don’t hesitate to slap her down if you have to.” The villa was isolated by mountains behind and the pond in front, so a few screams more or less would be no great problem.

  After an hour the rule of silence no longer seemed to be causing any great inconvenience. The candles had burned more than halfway down, and shadows filled the room. And under cover of them couples had thrown away their masks and were kissing. One man was holding two women, snuggling up impartially, now to one, now to the other. The single couch suddenly gave way beneath the massive weight with which it had been taxed. One woman tried to extricate herself from the tangle on top of it, but a man reached out and clung fast to her hips. The tax official went arm in arm into the bathroom with one of the high-school girls. The steel broker lay tightly entwined with an apprentice beautician in the thick darkness of the tatami room. The scenario writer, paired with the dancer, who was much taller, had her pinned wiggling to the wall. Here and there gasps and cries arose. The professor sat clutching both a factory girl and a high-school student on his lap. Still harder panting, still deeper moaning—the pace grew ever more feverish.

  When Subuyan walked into the kitchen, Cocky was licking the thumb he had inadvertently stabbed with an ice pick.

  “Say, Subuyan, is it okay to help yourself?”

  “You want to join in, too?”

  “No, no, that’s not what I mean. The thing is there’s all kinds of beer left here.”

  “Oh,” said Subuyan. “Well, let’s all have some then. I feel thirsty myself.” Subuyan called Paul and Kabo, and the four men relaxed over some cold beers.

  “How about the doors and windows? Are they okay?”

  “Yeah. But, you know,” said Paul, “now I know what they mean by saying a cook doesn’t go much for the food he fixes himself.”

  Then, for the first time, a woman’s voice suddenly echoed loudly: “Ooh! Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!” There followed the crash of broken glass.

  “What should we do about those candles? There’d be hell to pay if one fell over and started a fire.”

  The worry was not a vain one. The candles had been placed up on the shelves, well out of reach; but the room could be turned into an inferno before any of the guests in their present condition would notice it. And then if there were a fire, the resulting tumult and confusion would guarantee the whole affair’s becoming public entertainment in the next morning’s papers.

  “Okay, put them all out and try putting on t
he fluorescent lights—I don’t think anybody will mind. No, wait a minute. First turn on the lights, and if there’re no complaints, then put the candles out.”

  With some trepidation, Paul flicked the light switch. On the floor of the main room were three men and four women, and on the sofa one of each. In the tatami room was another pair. On the floor of the study were two men and four women. The remaining pair was finally accounted for in the bathroom, where they were locked in a soapy embrace. The brilliant glare of the fluorescent lights did not inhibit the action in the least. However, the stage had not quite been reached where the snapping turtle burrows his head in the grass.

  “Dammit! I see now we should have brought some blankets.” exclaimed Subuyan worriedly. “It’s kind of hard to do it right out there in the open.”

  “Well, we’ve got all their coats here,” said Cocky, pointing to a huge neatly folded pile in the corner of the kitchen. “Suppose we use them?”

  “Good idea!” answered Subuyan. “It doesn’t matter who gets what. Just put them over them, that’s all. And easy does it, whatever you do!”

  Paul and Kabo took the coats and picked their way gingerly through a forest of bare limbs—“Excuse me.” “Pardon me, sir.” “Oops! Sorry.”

  “My God, we’re certainly going to have a job cleaning up here afterward. Get hold of the glasses now, will you, Kabo, and stack them in a safe place. Broken glass would be dangerous.”

  After Kabo had attended to the glasses, Subuyan began to worry about the possibility of other wounds. Since all the women had been broken in beforehand, they were not likely to provoke any overt violence. But still, if a girl lived with her family, even a small bite or bruise would entail risk. He had warned the men to be careful; but on looking around he was afraid that his admonition had not made much of an impression.

  “Well, we’ll just have to let matters take their course. Let’s open some more beer, huh?”