The Pornographers Page 8

  “The Department of Education is not doing its job,” Hack grumbled, giving vent to a heartfelt sense of having been wronged.

  Finally Banteki came in with a table and the Mah Jongg tiles.

  “Well, should we try a round?” he asked.

  “As you can plainly see, even if I lose, I couldn’t pay,” said Hack. But Subuyan was quick to reassure him.

  “Don’t worry about that. The fact is I have something I want to ask you about,” he said. Hack had already won him over completely.

  During the shuffling of the tiles and the wall-building, Banteki and Subuyan explained to him what they wanted; and, as might be expected, Hack eagerly accepted their offer without the least hesitation. Once the drawing had gotten underway in earnest, however, he suddenly stopped in the act of discarding a tile to put a question to them.

  “When you make these films, just what part of the whole thing gives you the biggest thrill?”

  “The biggest thrill? I don’t know. Banteki, that’s more your line. What do you think?” The question had caught Subuyan unawares.

  “The biggest thrill? That’s when I edit. Putting the film together, see? Deciding that this particular facial expression is the best. Or looking around to find some other one that I threw out before. That’s the time when I’m happiest.”

  “And once a film is all finished, when you gentlemen watch it, does it get you excited?”

  When they replied that this was not the case, Hack observed: “Well, I guess I’m different that way. Ah, Pung! That gives me three green dragons.”

  “Different? How do you mean different? Chow! Three north winds.”

  “Say I write up a scene that’s really torrid, huh? I can’t hold myself back. I let the pen drop, see, and I masturbate.”

  “Here’s four of a kind,” said Cocky.

  “No kidding? You really do?”

  “Yeah, I do. I get into a frenzy like and forget everything else. Even though I’m the one that wrote it, when I start to read it over, I get all shook, and as I read I start rubbing it up. And for me that’s the biggest thrill of writing.”

  “You mean then—say you finish a book—if it’s really good stuff, every time you read it again, you masturbate?”

  “Yeah, that’s about the size of it. Pung! Three eight circles.”

  “You don’t say,” said Banteki, plunged deep in thought. “You know, maybe that’s the outlook we ought to strive for in our movie making. Ah! A white dragon.”

  Subuyan then made a characteristic contribution.

  “Talking about masturbation, I remember when I was a kid in grade school. There was this paulownia tree in the schoolyard, and I shinnied up it. Then the bell rang, and I knew I had to get right back to the schoolroom or it would be too bad. But then, all at once, I got this real nice feeling in the crotch, and I just held on to that tree for all I was worth. After that it got to be sort of a reflex. I’d hear the bell and I’d wrap myself around a tree or the parallel bars or something. A woman teacher gave me a funny look one day. She probably knew what was up. I thought I was really bad. Here’s four of a kind.”

  “Excuse me. I think this is mine. A pair and a sequence—Mah Jongg.” Hack had taken the round.

  “I suppose I was kind of late getting started. It was when I was in second-year junior high,” said Cocky, carrying the subject forward. “They built an apartment there now, but before the war, the office of the shrine used to be there, and I’d take an afternoon nap in one of the rooms. I was lying on my stomach, and when I woke up, just like Subuyan, I felt this real strange feeling down there. I went on for a while, then it went away almost. So I pushed myself hard against the mat, but that didn’t quite do it. So then I started moving myself across the floor, putting all my weight on my groin. Finally I spread my legs and pushed again as hard as I could against the mat, and the room started going around and around. I think I was at it for about a half hour. If I stopped for a minute, the feeling would go away. So anyway, to put it as nice as possible, that’s what I did. Later I noticed that my stomach and knees were all red.”

  “For me it was on the beach,” said Banteki. For the moment, they had forgotten the game as each in turn related his first adventure in auto-eroticism.

  “We had a summer place at Suma, and I was lying there on the beach one afternoon. So the sand was nice and warm and I began to get this kind of vague feeling. I didn’t squirm around like Cocky but just kept lying there. I felt like I just didn’t want to get up no matter what, and so I stayed like that on my stomach for the whole afternoon. When I took a bath later, my back and my rear end were all sunburned. It really hurt.”

  “I did something once that wasn’t nice at all,” said Hack. “Like I said before, Mom was really sick and couldn’t walk. I wanted to build up her nutrition and there wasn’t much food around at that time. So I thought at least I could see that she got some eggs, and I bought this chicken.” The hen could be depended upon to lay an egg every other day, and Hack had made his mother eat it, shell and all, for the sake of her calcium requirement. “So anyway, at that time if you left anything like a chicken out in the yard, somebody was sure to make off with it. So one day I picked it up to bring it inside, and as I was carrying it in, its soft feathers kind of fascinated me, so what I did was kind of grab hold. And then I could feel the chicken struggling to get loose and suddenly I was getting all shook up. My mind went blank, and I’m not sure what happened next.” At any rate, the unfortunate chicken had broken loose with a fearful squawk and shot straight up, smashing its head against the door beam. Even before it hit the floor, it was quite dead. “I came just with one stroke. But poor Mom! Because of that she didn’t get any more eggs. Should we play another round?”

  “Sure, but say, that was a pretty novel method. By the way, who’s East Wind this time?”

  “And about that chicken? What did you do with it?” asked Cocky.

  “We ate it, and it really tasted good. Mom died not too long afterward. I suppose meat would have done her more good than eggs. You’re South Wind, Cocky?”

  “Yeah. When I was in Manchuria, there was this guy killed trying to do it with a horse.”

  “A horse? Pung! Three six bamboos.”

  “It was in Chichiharu and bitter cold. They had shipped up these horses and a lot of fuel drums. You could see your breath in front of you. And these horses, the females that is, you could see the steam coming out—puff, puff!—from the old spot behind.”

  At this point Subuyan expressed strong disbelief, but Cocky persisted doggedly. It had been in the extreme north of Manchuria, at the train depot in Chichiharu. There had been a large shipment of fuel drums lined up and beside them a herd of about fifty horses. And on this particular morning before dawn, one could see the steam pouring out from behind the mares. One soldier, much taken with this discovery, had given a whoop of delight and plunged his right arm in, probing for the source of this wonder. “The horse shook its head two or three times and gave this loud snort. She could really feel it, I suppose. Then the soldier started hunching himself up her rear and held on for all he was worth. The horse was terrified, and she gave this kick with both feet and caught the poor bastard right in the balls, and that was the end of that.”

  “Well, that soldier really had confidence in his own tool, didn’t he? Trying to do it to a horse!” said Subuyan, still dubious about the whole thing.

  “Confidence had nothing to do with it. He had that real never-say-die Japanese soul, is what he had. Here’s four of a kind.”

  “Do the young guys today go in much for masturbating?” Hack wanted to know.

  “Sure they do. Why, what they do now is look upon it as a natural phenomenon.”

  “And the whores have really got a complaint coming,” offered Banteki.

  “What, are we out of tiles already?”

  “You see, the doctors are saying that no matter how much you masturbate, it doesn’t do you any harm. They highly recommend it, in fact. And f
rom the whore’s viewpoint, this is kind of an unfair business practice. If you can get by on your own, why bother going to a whore? Anyway, it’s something that should be thought about.”

  “Ah, I couldn’t hit it,” grumbled Hack; but even so he was the big winner of the afternoon. Subuyan was obliged finally to pay out eight thousand yen, but it mattered little since this was the amount of the advance he had intended to give Hack anyway.

  The site selected for the next film was a fashionable inn at Ashiya, a place which was very popular in the summer with swimmers and also with high-school baseball teams competing in the tournaments held at nearby Koshien Stadium. Now it was the off season, and so conditions were well suited to the needs of Subuyan’s entourage. However, before Hack could pass unnoticed at a place of this sort, he had to improve his wardrobe considerably.

  “Here, take this,” said Subuyan, and Hack did not miss the implication.

  “I’ll go to the pawnshop right away and get my stuff out,” he replied, obviously a man of ready understanding.

  By the time Subuyan arrived at the hospital after leaving Hack’s apartment, the lights were already out in the hallways and at the receptionist’s desk. He walked down the somber corridors, with nothing more to reassure him than the sound of his own footsteps, and with a certain feeling of dread he came at last to Oharu’s room. The nurse was just putting away a syringe.

  “She’s started to vomit blood,” she told him.

  “Vomit blood? How come?” asked Subuyan, stunned by the news.

  She led him into the corridor, and there the house doctor explained that the malignancy in Oharu’s chest had gotten worse.

  “While your wife was pregnant, the pressure from beneath compressed the diseased area, but now, after the operation, it’s become larger again. Right now she’s asleep. So I think it’s best you don’t disturb her.”

  With nothing else to do, Subuyan was turning to go when Oharu called out weakly.

  “Subuyan, would you take that stuff home to Keiko?” she said, indicating a bundle in the corner.

  “This here?”

  “Yes, please. It’s my dirty things. Have Keiko wash them.”

  “Okay. And don’t worry now. This is nothing. You’ll be as good as new in no time.”

  Since the doctor had said to let her sleep, Subuyan merely went to the side of her bed and, on a sudden impulse, bent over and kissed her lightly upon the lips. As he had feared, there was a faint odor of blood.

  When he returned home, there was no sign of Keiko. The house had lacked a woman’s touch for no more than a week, but already it had a neglected, run-down look about it.

  “What a sight,” said Subuyan. He turned on the lights and plugged in the TV set. Then he absently took the bundle he had brought home and opened it. The whole pile of Oharu’s nightgowns and underwear, grim testimony to the operation and to her vomiting, was smeared with blood throughout.

  Below the mirror was a sink used for washing customers’ hair, and Subuyan filled this with water and plunged the clothes into it. Then he halfheartedly began to wash them with one hand, but there was no getting rid of the all-permeating red stain.

  With this it’s no wonder she got thin, he thought. It probably wouldn’t take much more to kill her, I suppose.

  If Oharu were to die, what about Keiko? One did not often hear of a man marrying his dead wife’s daughter. Still, he and Oharu had never made it official. And it certainly wasn’t unusual for a boarder to pair off with the landlady’s daughter.

  Thirty-six and seventeen. Somewhat far apart right now, but … when I’m sixty, Keiko—let’s see now—she’ll be forty-one. Nobody could see anything funny there, could they?

  Then he caught himself, unnerved by the bizarre line in which his thoughts had run. Well, anyway, he thought, maybe this would be a good time to get hold of Keiko’s school uniform. Shooting began in just two days.

  As Subuyan was searching Keiko’s dresser for a middy blouse, his eyes fell upon a pair of her panties thrown in a drawer just as is, with traces of menstrual blood still on them.

  Why, she doesn’t even wash her own stuff! thought Subuyan, contracting his features in distaste. But Subuyan being Subuyan, his gaze riveted itself upon the panties, and finally he bent over and sniffed. These women! Bloody all their lives! He had the unsettling feeling of having blundered into a dark and alien sphere of existence, Keiko’s heartland. She didn’t come home that night.

  Banteki came over the next day with a ludicrously meticulous shooting script. When Subuyan looked it over and saw notations such as “Now a close-up of the swelling breast,” he had the untoward reaction of weary disgust and could in no way share Banteki’s zest and enthusiasm. He felt, in fact, the urge to make a few disparaging remarks, but suppressed it.

  Keiko had not been appearing at the hospital, either, and Oharu became embarrassed. “I’m sorry, dear, that it’s you who has to do everything for me,” she apologized.

  “No, it’s all right. Keiko’s just busy after school right now with something her club is doing,” said Subuyan, trying to put her at ease. What he was really thinking was, “The little bitch has probably let herself be taken in by some hustler”—a thought that was a source of considerable discomfort to him. But the film could be delayed no longer.

  The inn at Ashiya was close to the water, and the long lines of freighters moored offshore in Osaka Bay could be seen from the window. But Banteki, exclaiming, “No, no, this is no good,” slammed the shutters closed. If one were careless enough to let an identifiable bit of scenery show up in a film, there was always the worry that the police would be able to locate the place and eventually haul in the artists themselves. Subuyan had noticed inked on a roof beam of their room the slogan “Give it the old fight!”—witness to the fervor of one of the tournament baseball teams—and he had enthusiastically suggested that this be incorporated in the film at the right point. But unfortunately this suggestion had to be rejected for the same reason.

  The man and woman, who had come with Cocky, said not a word in the course of the shooting preparations. The girl certainly lived up to her advance notices. She was remarkably attractive, and furthermore, despite her profession, seemed entirely unsullied.

  “Maybe she’s an idiot, but she’s got what it takes,” said Subuyan in admiration.

  “Their speciality was putting on this exotic number in some club on the south side,” explained Cocky. “One good thing is that they’re new faces—up from the semipro ranks, you might say.” They had received fifteen thousand yen a performance at the club, and this was their first venture into cinema.

  “Okay now. What I want is for you to sit here at the desk, see? Like this, all right? Now you hold this book. Like this, see?”

  Banteki gave preliminary directions, but not a glimmer of comprehension showed in the girl’s expression. Banteki then took her bodily and sat her down at the desk, but still she obviously was not getting the gist of things. The man, in the meantime, seemed as though he were about to say something but then did nothing but look on, following Banteki’s nervously energetic movements with eyes filled with concern.

  “Hack, shift that light there a bit, will you? Okay, that’s it. Now, you …” Once more Banteki turned to the girl. “What’s your name?”

  “It’s Rie,” said the man at once.

  “Rie, huh? That’s a really pretty name. Now, Rie honey, you’re studying here, you see? And this bad man comes, huh? And so you get real scared, see? Sort of do it like this, huh?” Banteki covered his open mouth with the back of his hand and stared, his eyes bulging in an evocation of mindless terror. “So let’s give it a try, honey. Look real scared. Put your hand over your mouth. This bad man comes in. He scares you, see?”

  But all Banteki’s effort went to waste. As long as the girl sat still, there was at least a melancholy expression in her eyes; but once she moved, they glazed over, her head rolled oddly from side to side, and finally saliva began to dribble from the corner
of her mouth. She was nothing but an idiot, pure and simple.

  “Look, buddy! Can you do anything with her? If you say something, will she understand it?”

  At Banteki’s words the man went at once to the girl’s side, as though snatching her from some peril. First he straightened her skirt. Then he wiped from her forehead the sweat caused by the heat of the lights and dropped a piece of candy into her mouth. Without so much as a smile, the girl crunched it between her teeth with force enough to crush a stone.

  “It’s nothing much, I know,” the man said in a low voice to the despairing Banteki, “but the only thing she knows how to do is fuck.”

  “It’s too hot in here. How about opening the window?” Subuyan pleaded.

  Hack gave a grunt of assent and flung open the shutters. The noise caught the girl’s attention. She turned her head and got unsteadily to her feet. Then for the first time she spoke and showed a trace of emotion in her features: “Oh! The water! The water!”

  “She likes the water. She was brought up by the ocean,” the man explained.

  “My God! After going to all this trouble, we’re getting nowhere.” Banteki was clearly at his wit’s end.

  “Look, how about this? You two do just about what you always do, and we’ll put that on film. We won’t pay you as much, of course,” said Subuyan benignly, his spirits rising somewhat at the prospect of the total miscarriage of Banteki’s plans.

  “That’ll be fine,” said the man, nodding his head.

  True, this would not be exactly what the doctor in Fusé had in mind, but nothing turns out exactly as one could wish in this imperfect world, and one has to make the best of things. The girl was, after all, pretty, and no one was likely to guess that she was not all there. For in terms of what was needed at the moment, whether she was a college graduate or a slobbering idiot, it came to the same thing, thought Subuyan, suddenly aflame with creative zeal.