The Pornographers Page 4

  “Down south they make this kind of saké called wakamé. You pay a hundred yen more, and they put in the bottle a hair plucked from a woman, root and all.”

  “A hundred yen! Listen, if it was a hair plucked from a virgin, you could easily get three hundred.”

  “Then, too, think of this: every day five or six must come loose naturally.”

  “So eighteen hundred by five by three hundred yen.”

  “Let’s see, that gives you two million, seven hundred thousand, I think.”

  “Stop it, I’m going crazy!”

  Highly agitated, Subuyan, perhaps in search of fallen hairs, ranged his eyes over the schoolyard, but to no avail, of course. And as he and Banteki stood there exclaiming again and again: “What a waste! What a waste!” a choir began practicing inside the school; the pure, still strains of the Ave Maria floated over them.

  “Say, Subuyan …” Later, at a sushi place in Omiya where they were drinking beer, Banteki brought up another matter. “I was thinking about something back there in front of that girls’ school. About you and Keiko—is everything going okay?”

  “How do you mean, going okay?”

  “No, all I meant was that I saw her around Senbayashi Station. She was talking with this guy like they were real friendly. She’s at that age, you know, where you got to worry.”

  Subuyan waved his hand, interrupting. “Look, he’s like this, isn’t he, a guy with these deep-set eyes? There’s no problem. That’s a policeman. I know all about him.”

  A policeman! Banteki gaped in astonishment and Subuyan elaborated. “Sure, I was pretty shook myself at first. But even though I’m in this kind of business, well, the father-daughter relationship is something else again. And, what the hell, it hasn’t come to a matter of getting married yet. So there’s no need to worry, you see. Me, I’ve got my eye out for the kid’s best interest.” Overflowing with paternal feeling, Subuyan—maybe the roadwork just ended had taken its toll—had become dead drunk on a few beers. He protested over and over that Keiko was going to be all right, that Keiko’s virginity meant more to him than even two hundred thousand yen, until he slid into incoherency.

  “Subuyan, listen! How about getting in touch with Cocky? The companies are starting to look for stuff to show about now.”

  Banteki shook Subuyan by the shoulder, but arousing him was out of the question. “Oh, what’s the use? I’ve got to do it, I suppose. And Cocky’s pretty hard to take.” Cocky handled the “stuff.” His business was renting movies from blue-film collectors in Osaka at two thousand yen a day per reel. Once he too had been a pornographer of some fame, but last year he had retired. Now he readily obliged Subuyan by filling his orders from the films he had previously made and sold to various customers. The police had been harassing the film makers working in Shikoku; and even though they moved their locations to Gifu and to Fukuoka, by this time most of their better directors had been arrested, and the quality of the work had fallen off sharply. As a result the customers tended to go for the old favorites even if they were somewhat dated.

  Cocky’s taste was what made him hard for Banteki to take. His house was beside a lotus pond in Kadoma on the edge of town, though it was not really a house but merely a shed, a single room about twelve feet square, toilet attached, which had been built for the watchman who had had the job of guarding the fields. His father had been a hereditary Shinto priest, and now Cocky’s younger brother carried on the line. Though Cocky himself, according to the rumor, had enjoyed some local fame as a child prodigy, he had, it seemed, somehow fallen out of favor with his father. Now he got by by sponging upon the down-at-the-heels younger brother.

  Matchboxes, empty packs of cigarettes, and candy boxes were scattered all over his tiny room; and empty fifths of cheap saké were lined up along the four walls as though as a decorative touch. As for artifacts of civilization, a single transistor radio was all that was in evidence. Such was the extent of the forty-eight-year-old Cocky’s worldly goods—except, that is, for his pets, the cockroaches, which he kept in the matchboxes. To hold a cockroach in his palm, admiring its wet, gleaming luster, in the other hand to grasp an up-tilted saké bottle, this—especially when topped off with a song by Hachiro Asuga on the transistor—was heaven itself to Cocky. And now Banteki had to go to see him.

  “Well, I’m going then,” said Banteki; and having left Subuyan to his slumbers, he made his crunching way across the frozen mud at the edge of the pond to Cocky’s shed. And there he found Cocky squatting over the toilet, the door that should have shielded him in these circumstances being in disrepair. But Cocky, not at all at a loss, urged him in with utmost politeness. “C’mon in! Welcome!” Perhaps the piercing cold had killed the cockroaches. Certainly they showed no sign of life.

  After a bit, Cocky came out of the toilet. “Say, Banteki, did you ever think of this: When your turds come out with a nice shape to them, all they’d need would be a mouth and eyes to look like a bunch of wiggling sea slugs, don’t you think? It’s a kinda disgusting thought, maybe, but do you suppose you’d feel a sort of mother love for them?”

  Pressed thus, Banteki overcame his revulsion just enough to ask with little show of enthusiasm: “Yeah, maybe. And what kind of noise would they make?”

  Cocky clapped his hands. “Say, there’s a thought for you! What kind of noise? That’s a good one. Think it over, will you?” As he went on talking, Cocky gathered up empty saké bottles and stuffed them into a straw shopping basket. “For twenty of these you get a full one. Well, I’ll be back.” And before Banteki could stop him, out he went.

  “What a place!” A naked bulb glared pitilessly. As Banteki took the poker and attempted to stir up a little heat from the morning charcoal, now reduced to ashes, he felt the cold biting into him. In such a situation, one might well come to be able to hear the cry of feces. What the hell kind of noise would they make? thought Banteki. Somehow or other, he had fallen into Cocky’s thought patterns.

  The deposit fee for three color films and one black-and-white from December 15 to the 19th was twelve thousand yen. The total running time was about an hour, and in a single night they could be shown at four different year-end parties, thus relieving Banteki and Subuyan of the tedium of skulking about outside banquet halls listening to others having a good time, shut out from even the shabbiest of the waiting rooms because of their profession. Now they had no worries other than heeding the admonition not to break the film or run it backward, and they would take in two hundred and forty thousand yen. Of this thirty thousand went for rental, and Cocky’s commission amounted to twenty thousand. This would leave forty thousand for Banteki and one hundred and forty thousand for Subuyan—not a bad business at all.

  The 20th of December dawned, the day appointed for bringing together the virgin and the chairman of the board. The madam had suggested the device of putting him off once, but Subuyan had decided that he already seemed to be hooked well enough; and then, too, with the end of the year fast approaching, it was good to have a bit of extra money on hand to settle accounts.

  At eleven in the morning Subuyan met the madam and the virgin at the Baishin teashop. To the casual eye, the latter seemed an ordinary young girl, maybe a virgin, maybe not. A shabby sweater, an old tweed skirt, knit socks in flat-heeled shoes, a necklace of carved wood, a raincoat of red nylon on her lap, her hair left just as is—judging from all this, Subuyan would have taken her for a girl working in a rug factory in Izumiozu.

  “Well, how should I go about it?” he asked.

  The madam cheerfully took from her purse a brown envelop containing a slip of paper, which turned out to be a certificate of virginity signed by a Dr. Sasaki and dated the previous day, complete with an official seal. “Make sure he hands over the right amount of money, see?” she instructed Subuyan. “Then afterward give our share to me, and that should do it.” The virgin, like an actor waiting in the wings, seemed already to have assumed heart and soul her appointed role; and so she merely nodded in agreement.
“Okay then. And her name is Yasuko.”

  The chairman of the board was waiting in a restaurant just on the opposite corner. First Subuyan approached him alone, whispered in his ear, and steered his gaze in the direction of Yasuko, who had taken a seat at a table some distance away.

  “How does it look to you, sir? Personally I think it’s okay, probably.”

  The chairman of the board, who—perhaps to rouse his courage—had been sipping highballs since well before noon, took a quick glance. “Okay, introduce me.”

  “Ah—this might be just to make it look good, but they gave me this.” Subuyan handed over the certificate of virginity.

  The chairman of the board was at a loss for a moment; but then finally he too recalled something. “Oh, by the way, here’s this. There’s eighty thousand in it,” he said, giving an envelope in exchange. “And, excuse me, but would you please make out the receipt for a hundred thousand? You can give it to me afterward.”

  How far can a man go! Subuyan had suspected that the chairman of the board would put even this on his expense account, but to pad it in the bargain! Oh well, it’s not my affair, he thought, and money is money, wherever it comes from.

  Subuyan introduced the two of them as informally as possible and then returned to the teashop, where he gave the agreed-upon amount to the madam.

  “I guess it will go all right.”

  “Of course it will. Is there any man who’s going to take a woman in his arms hoping to find out she’s not what she should be? He begged you to find him a virgin, didn’t he? So there’s no chance of his learning otherwise.”

  Subuyan had to admire the force of her reasoning.

  Meanwhile, back at the restaurant, the two were sitting just as Subuyan had left them, with the chairman of the board running out of small talk. He grew uncomfortable.

  “Well, should we leave?”

  “All right.”

  They got up and the chairman of the board walked close beside Yasuko, his eyes flashing like a judoist sure of victory.

  “What kind of movies do you like to see?”

  “I don’t have much free time.”

  “I see. Well, where is it you work?”

  “I quit. Now I help my mother with the housework. There’s a lot of children, and Mama has a job.”

  “I suppose you’re tired.”

  The conversation was now being carried on inside a taxi, and the questions were the sort dear to the heart of a television MC.

  The hotel where the chairman of the board had reserved one of the highest-priced rooms—three thousand yen for a few hours’ use—was an oppressively exotic one in Ginbashi. The room boasted a dressing table with a mirror and a neon-lit bath; and two chairs and a sofa were arranged near the bed. The chairman of the board and Yasuko now sat down, each in one of these chairs. She’s a virgin! the chairman of the board kept thinking. And the more he thought it, the more tense he became; and he could not even bring himself to do as much as reach for her hand.

  “How about a hot bath? Would you like that?”

  He had thought she would probably refuse, but she got up immediately and with no fuss at all went into the changing room off the bath.

  Ahah! I’ve got her now! I’ll pretend to bring in her bathrobe and get a look at her with nothing on, the chairman of the board thought. He deserved pity. Actually Yasuko had gone into the bath so readily in order to make the necessary adjustments for the bloodletting.

  As soon as he heard the sound of splashing water, he pulled off his clothes hastily. His discarded long underdrawers suddenly caught his eye. Surely, he thought, an unpleasing sight for a young woman of today. He carefully stuffed them deep inside a drawer; and, taking his own and Yasuko’s bathrobes, he opened the door of the changing room. He saw her clothes chastely piled in a corner, but though her skirt was spread across the top, the underclothing spilled out colorfully. Then, showing the aplomb of a middle-aged man, he discarded his shorts and with a “Pardon me” edged himself into the bathroom.

  Seemingly startled, Yasuko rose from the water and hid herself by turning her back; but, with a reckless rush, he embraced her from behind; and the two remained silent for a few moments.

  “Don’t be afraid, now. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  Yasuko, perceiving that the chairman of the board was becoming more excited by the moment, spoke in an oddly composed voice. “This is the second time that I’ve been in a bath with a man.”

  “Oh, my God, I’m too late!” The chairman of the board nearly burst into tears.

  “The very first time was with my dad when I was a kid. Daddy’s dead now.”

  This, too, of course, was dramatic technique. The chairman of the board was not only overcome with relief but there welled up in him a sense of tenderness; and this time without further hesitation he reached up and caressed her breasts, provoking the expected resistance. And so in the midst of the swirling steam of the bath the skirmishing went on until finally, with the defense in total disarray, the chairman of the board won the day.

  When they left the hotel, it was already dusk.

  “Let me take you to somewhere near your house.”

  But Yasuko refused, and with a brusque “Goodbye now” she walked briskly away, as the chairman of the board contemplated her retreating figure and smirked, putting this, too, down to the shame and sadness stemming from a first encounter with a man.

  “So at first she says, ‘No, no, I don’t want the money! Please, please, let me go!’ There was quite a struggle. She was half-afraid but then it seemed she wanted to get a look at this thing she was afraid of, you see? I was going to take off her underwear but she was so embarrassed that I let her do it herself. And then after a bit it seemed as if she made up her mind to go through with it.”

  Three days later the chairman of the board went to the trouble of getting in touch with Subuyan to relate in full detail his foray into virgin territory. Since Subuyan had been behind the scenes, the whole situation was wildly hilarious; but lending an ear to an account of great exploits was an aspect of good service. Besides, Subuyan was more than a little curious as to how things had gone off.

  “So she was the genuine article, eh? Well, I can relax now. You know, sir, after I got you and that kid together, I couldn’t help thinking that maybe I did something bad. But, then again, hell, I’m a man myself, even though not much of a one maybe, but anyway I started to feel a kind of itch myself. If I had the money, see—well, why not, I might go for a virgin myself.”

  Subuyan laughed heartily; and the chairman of the board, his mood total bliss, dropped all formality and urged him: “C’mon, have another beer.”

  “Is that the end, as far as the woman goes?”

  “Well, that depends. You could get together with her again, but don’t you think it might be risky? You were her first man, it seems, and even if you weren’t, she’s not likely to forget you. If she loses her head and doesn’t want to let you go …”

  Then, to clinch the matter, “Besides—well, I’ve sort of got a new way of thinking myself. Personally, I think I’d give the virgin bit another try.”

  The chairman of the board’s eyes glistened. “Look, cut me in on that, will you? It’s all experience, isn’t it? To get in here, there, everywhere, to become a veteran virgin breaker—isn’t that what down deep every man wants? The real man of affairs is the one who prongs them all, right?” Now there was no trace at all of the poor wretch whining about dying and not being at peace.

  Here’s a man really hot for it, thought Subuyan. Let’s see now, the old lady has twelve or thirteen virgins available, she says. Use only half of them and you pull in three hundred thousand as nice as you please. Not bad at all!

  “Well, as soon as I get some interesting news, sir, I’ll be sure to pass you the word,” said Subuyan, eyeing the chairman of the board with a look of deep significance.

  The chairman of the board, for his part, was now overflowing with the warrior spirit and bobbed hi
s head repeatedly in eager supplication as the curtain rang down on the farce and the two took leave of each other.

  Christmas was very near now; and though tonight, too, Subuyan and Banteki would show their films, this would be the last of it. Others in the same line kept at it right up to New Year’s Eve, but the police spread their nets with special care at this time, and Subuyan—safety first, last, and always—made it a practice to stop just short of the peak when climbing Fuji.

  Tonight’s performance was sponsored by an advertising agency for the entertainment of its clients. All of these would be men of great discernment when it came to films of this sort. Since the usual flourishes could not be expected to content them, Subuyan and Banteki, after thinking the matter over carefully, had decided to employ a benshi as a novel departure—a man, that is, whose task would be to deliver a peculiarly Japanese-style running commentary on the silent film. The idea had been Banteki’s to begin with, and Cocky was able to introduce them to a man who had been a professional years before and who now ran a card shop near Osaka Station.

  By this time they had exhausted every means they could think of to garnish these silent films in a pleasing manner. They had tried playing tapes with mood music. They had edited the billing and cooing caught on Banteki’s apartment tapes so as to fit particular scenes, but nothing had ever come off as it should.

  “Look, what have we got to lose?” Banteki had said one day. “Why don’t we dub in just like they do on TV, when they have those foreigners talking in Japanese? And ours won’t be that far out.”

  So the two of them decided to give it a try, Subuyan undertaking the man’s and Banteki the woman’s role. With high hopes they had set happily to work, but it turned out to be beyond the range of amateurs.

  They had set the microphone between them, and watching the contortions of the man and woman on screen, they had done their best to come up with appropriate dialogue, a process that seemed to go not too badly at the time but when played back turned out to be something else again. Subuyan’s totally lifeless “C’mon, there’s nothing wrong. Do like I say, will you?” was well matched with Banteki’s squeaky falsetto “No, no! Let me go!” And so it had gone: “What’s the matter? Don’t everybody do it?” “No, it’s wrong! It’s wrong! Mama, help!”—a give and take less likely to stir concupiscence than laughter. But since neither of them had had any experience relevant to the rape and similar exertions celebrated upon the screen and so had no choice but to fall back upon the trite dialogue of true-detective magazines, the untitillating result had been no more than could be expected.