Almost Transparent Blue (11 page)

"I'll get together some bread, right, I'll work, I'll get together some bread, and you can have another cat. Remember that gray Persian in the store, you said you want it? I'll buy it for you. And we'll find a new apartment, with its own john, and we'll get a new start.

' 'Yeah, we could even come here to Fussa like Ryū, get a house and have Reiko and Okinawa or somebody live in it with us, right? There're lots of rooms and lots of old GI houses around here, and we can get grass and have parties and stuff every day. A cheap used car even, Ryū has some foreigner friend who wants to sell one, we'll buy it and I'll get a driver's license. I can get one quick, and then we can go to the beach and stuff, right? And we'll have fun, Kei, we'll have fun.

"When my mom died, you know, I wasn't trying to put you down, try and understand, it didn't mean she was more important than you, and anyway she's gone now, and you're all I've got left, right? Let's go home and start over.

"You see what I mean, Kei, you see what I mean?"

Yoshiyama lifted his hand to touch Kei's cheek. She brushed it away coldly, lowered her head, and laughed.

"So ya can really talk like that with a straight face, aren't ya ashamed?

Everybody's listening, and what's that about your mom? That doesn't have anything to do with the way it is now, Ah don't know a thing about her, that time doesn't have a thing to do with it, Ah jes' don't like myself when Ah'm with ya, ya get me? Ah can't take it, Ah feel so small and lousy, when Ah'm with ya, Ah can't stand being so small and lousy."

Kazuo had been trying hard not to laugh out loud. As he listened to Yoshiyama, he'd clamped his hand over his own mouth, then when he heard Kei complaining again, his eyes met mine, and he couldn't hold it back any longer.

"A Persian cat, how about that, that's rich!"

"Yoshiyama, ya hear me? If ya got something ya want to say, ya say it after ya get my necklace back from that pawnshop, O.K.? Say it after ya get back the gold necklace my papa gave me. Say it then.

"Ya're the one who pawned it, because ya said ya wanted to buy some Hyminal, ya got drunk and did it."

Kei started to cry. Her face fell apart. Kazuo finally stopped laughing.

"Hey, what're you talking about, Kei? You said I could pawn it, didn't you? You said you wanted to try Hyminal, you said it first, you said let's pawn it."

Kei wiped her tears. "Oh, stop it, ya're just that kind of guy, so it's no use. Ah guess ya didn't know, how Ah cried afterwards, ya didn't know how Ah cried on the way home. Ya were jes' singing, right?"

"What are you talking about? Don't cry, Kei, I'll get it out, I can get it out in no time. I'll work on the docks so I can get it out soon, it's not gone yet, don't cry, Kei."

As she blew her nose and wiped her eyes, Kei stopped responding to anything Yoshiyama said. Let's go out for a while, she said to Kazuo. Kazuo pointed to his leg and said, No, I'm tired, but she pulled him to his feet and when he saw the tears still in her eyes, he grudgingly agreed.

"Ryū, we'll be on the roof, so ya come up later and play the flute."

As the door closed, Yoshiyama called Kei's name loudly, but there was no answer.

Okinawa poured and brought in three cups of coffee. He was pale and shaky, and a little slopped on the rug.

"Hey, Yoshiyama, have some coffee, you're kind of hard to look at. Isn't it O.K.?

No matter what, it doesn't mean a thing. Here . . . coffee."

Yoshiyama refused, Okinawa muttered So go to hell. Yoshiyama slouched over, stared at the wall, sighed from time to time, started to say something and then changed his mind. I could see Reiko lying on the kitchen floor. Her chest heaved slowly and her legs were thrown out wide like a dead dog's. Her body jerked now and then.

Yoshiyama ran his eyes over us, stood up, and started outside. He glanced down at Reiko, drank some water from the faucet, and opened the door.

Hey, Yoshiyama, don't go, stay here, I said. The only answer was the sound of the door closing.

Okinawa laughed bitterly and clicked his tongue. "Nobody can do a thing about them, it's too late, but Yoshi-yama's too dumb to know it. Ryū, you want to shoot up? This is awfully pure stuff, there's some left."

"No, that's O.K., I'm kind of dragged out today."

"Is that so? You're practicing your flute?"

"No."

"But you want to go on in music, right?"

"I haven't decided about that, you know, anyway I just don't want to do anything these days, don't feel like it."

Okinawa listened to The Doors' record he'd brought.

"So you're feeling let down?"

"Yeah, well, but it's different, kind of different from being let down."

"I met Kurokawa awhile back, he said he was really disgusted. He said he'd go to Algeria, be a guerrilla. Well, if he talked like that to somebody like me I guess he won't really go, but you're not thinking anything like that guy, huh?"

"Kurokawa? Yeah, it's different with me, I'm just, you know, my head's just all empty now, empty.

"A lot of things happened awhile back, right, but now I'm empty, can't do anything, you know? And because I'm empty I want to look around some more, I want to see lots of things."

The coffee was too strong to drink. I started boiling same more water to make it weaker.

"Well, so maybe you'll go to India."

"Huh? What about India?"

"You'd see a lot in India, I guess."

"Why would I have to go to India? That's not what I mean, there's plenty here.

I'll look around here, I don't need to go somewhere like India."

"Well, you mean with Acid? You'll experiment with stuff like that? I don't'get what you want to do."

"Yeah, I don't get it myself, I don't really know what I should do. But I'm not going to India or anything like that, nowhere I want to go, really. These days, you know, I look out the window, all by myself. Yeah, I look out a lot, the rain and the birds, you know, and the people just walking on the street. If you look a long time it's really interesting, that's what I mean by looking around. I don't know why, but these days things really look new to me."

"Don't talk like an old man, Ryū, saying things look new is a sign of old age, you know."

"No, it's different, that's not what I mean."

"It's not different, you just don't know it because you're so much younger than me. Hey, you should play the flute, playing the flute's what you're supposed to do, try and do it right without running around with shit like Yoshiyama, hey, remember how you played on my birthday?

"It was over at Reiko's place, I really felt great then. That was when somehow my chest felt all crawly, like, I can't really say how I felt, but it was really good. I don't know how to say it but I felt, you know, like trying to make up with this guy I'd been fighting with. That's when I thought what a lucky guy you are, you know, I envied you, you could make people feel that way. I mean, I don't know, but because I can't do anything myself, I've never felt that way again—you can't know unless you really do it yourself. I'm nothing but a junkie, yeah, and when I run out of smack, there're times when I just can't stand it, wanting to shoot up, just wanting to shoot up, times when I'd kill someone if I could get it that way, but there's something I've thought about then. I've felt there was something, yeah, should be something between me and the smack. I mean, I'm shaking, rattling, I want to shoot up so bad I could go crazy, but I've felt just me and the White Lady aren't enough, somehow. When I finally do get to shoot up, I don't think about anything, but—it's not Reiko or my mom or anything, it's the flute you played that time. I thought I'd talk with you about it sometime. I don't know how you felt when you were playing, Ryū, but you know I felt really great? I'm always thinking I want something like you had then, I think about it when I'm sucking the smack up into the shooter. I'm finished, you know, because my body's already rotten. And look, my face, gone all flabby like this, I'm sure I'm going to kick off pretty soon now. I don't give a shit when I die, it doesn't matter, I'm not going to feel sorry about a thing.

"It's just, well, I'd like to know more about that feeling I had that time I heard your flute. That's all I feel, I want to know what that was. Maybe if I knew, I'd go off smack, well, maybe not. I'm not saying that's why you should, just you go play the flute, I'll sell some smack and buy you a good flute with the money."

Okinawa's eyes were bloodshot. He'd stained his pants with coffee as he talked.

"Hey, please, a Muramatsu would be great."

"Huh?

"A Muramatsu, you know, it's a kind of flute. I'd want a Muramatsu."

"A Muramatsu, huh? O.K. I'll get it for your birthday, and then you'll play for me again."

Hey, Ryū, you go and make him cut it out, I've had enough of both of them, I mean, my leg really hurts.

Breathing hard, Kazuo had opened the door and told us Yoshiyama was beating up Kei.

Okinawa lay flat on the bed.

From the direction of the roof we could clearly hear a scream. It sounded like Kei's. It wasn't the kind of voice you use to call someone, it was a real scream, the kind you can't hold back when you're being hit.

Kazuo sipped the cold coffee Yoshiyama had left, lit a cigarette, and started to change the bandage on his ankle. If you don't go quick, maybe Yoshiyama'll really kill her, he's really gone crazy, he muttered.

Okinawa sat up. "O.K., O.K., so let him, let them do what they want, I'm sick of them, absolutely. Hey, Kazuo, what happened to your leg?"

"Aw, I got bashed with a bat."

"Who did it?"

"A guard at Hibiya, you know, it's too much trouble to talk about, I shouldn't have gone."

"But it's a bruise, right? You don't need a bandage for a bruise, or did you break something?"

"Yeah, well, but this bat he had, nails sticking out of it, so I've got to keep it disinfected, right? Nail wounds, worst kind."

Beyond the washing fluttering in the wind, Yoshiyama was gripping Kei's hair and kicking her in the stomach. As his knee sank in, groans came from her swollen face.

She spat out blood and lay flat ; I pulled Yoshiyama away from her. He was dripping cold sweat and the shoulder I touched had gone completely stiff.

On the bed Kei was groaning painfully, her teeth chattering, gripping the sheet and pressing the places where she'd been kicked. Reiko staggered from the kitchen and slapped the sobbing Yoshiyama on the cheek as hard as she could.

Making a face, Kazuo smeared a strong-smelling disinfectant on his own cuts.

Okinawa melted a Nibrole pill in hot water and made Kei drink it.

That's real shit, kicking somebody in the belly! Yoshiyama, if Kei dies, you're a murderer, Okinawa said. Then I'll die, too, Yoshiyama sobbed. Kazuo sniggered.

Reiko put a cold towel on Kei's forehead and wiped the blood from her face.

She checked Kei's stomach, saw the greenish bruises, and insisted she had to get to a hospital. Yoshiyama came over and peered into Kei's face, his tears dripping onto her stomach. Thick blood vessels beat in her temples, she kept spitting out yellow fluid. The lid, the white, even the iris of her right eye were completely red. Reiko opened Kei's cut lips and pressed in some gauze, trying to stop the blood flowing from a broken tooth.

Forgive me, forgive me, Kei, Yoshiyama said softly, his voice hoarse. Kazuo finished changing his own bandage and said, Forgive you, huh? So you've finally said it, that's too much. Go wash your face!"

Reiko gave Yoshiyama a shove and pointed toward the kitchen. "I can't stand looking at you like that anymore, so go on, wash your face."

Kei took her hand from her stomach and shook her head when Okinawa asked

"Want me to shoot you up?" Moaning, she said, "Ah'm sorry, everybody, when ya were all feeling so good. But this is really the end of it, Ah'm really going to break it off now, that's why Ah put up with this."

"We weren't really feeling all that good, so don't worry about it, huh?" Okinawa grinned at her.

Yoshiyama started sobbing again.

"Kei, don't say you're going to break it off, Kei, don't leave me, please, forgive me, I'll do anything!"

Okinawa shoved him toward the kitchen.

"Look, we get the idea, so go wash your face."

Yoshiyama nodded and headed toward the kitchen, wiping his face on his sleeve. We could hear the sound of water.

When he came back into the room, Kazuo let out a yell. "This guy's had it," said Okinawa, shaking his head. Yoshiyama's left wrist was slashed open, his blood spattered on the rug. Reiko shrieked and closed her eyes. Kazuo jumped up and cried, 'Ryū, call an ambulance!"

Holding the shaking arm above the wound with his other hand, Yoshiyama said through his nose, "Kei, you see what I mean?

I started out to call an ambulance but Kei seized my arm and stopped me. She got up, supported by Reiko, and looked steadily into Yoshiyama's eyes. She went close to him and gently touched the wound. He'd stopped crying. She raised his split-open wrist and held it up before her eyes. She spoke with difficulty, twisting her swollen mouth.

"Yoshiyama, we're going out to eat now, nobody's had lunch yet so we're going out to eat. If ya want to die, ya go and die alone, right? So ya don't lay any hassle on Ryū, go outside and die alone."

A nurse carrying a bouquet passed along the wax-polished corridor. She had on only one sock ; the other ankle was wrapped up in a yellow-splotched bandage.

In front of me, a woman swinging her leg back and forth in boredom glanced at that big bouquet wrapped in glittering cellophane, tapped the shoulder of the woman next to her, who seemed to be her mother, and said in a whisper, "That must be expensive."

Hugging a number of weekly magazines with his left arm, a man with a crutch cut through the line of people waiting for medicine. From the thigh down his leg was stretched out stiffly, and white powder from the cast sprinkled out on his toes. Sticking out of that bent foot-shaped lump, the two smallest toes looked like no more than warts.

Next to me was an old man with layers of stiff bandage wrapped around his neck. The woman next to him was knitting.