“Stop him. Somebody stop him before he beats him to death,” Mitsuko screamed in a voice that was sharp as a shriek. Overwhelmed by pain and anger, she sounded like she was being beaten herself.
The young poet got up and seized J from behind. When his hands touched J’s right arm, with its clenched fist, and his left shoulder, all the strength went out of J instantly and he became soft as a baby. For a moment, the young poet thought J might collapse. But that didn’t happen. He was gasping and his face was crimson, but he remained motionless in the young poet’s grasp and offered no resistence. In a cheerless voice, as if he were the one who’d been beaten, he said, “Let me go. Haven’t I had enough?”
When the young poet dropped his arms, and stopped holding J, J went back to his chair. He turned his face from the poet, who remained standing by Mitsuko’s chair like a guard, glaring at J. J buried his face in his hands and didn’t move. It appeared that he too was about to burst into tears, but he didn’t accept his defeat so easily. He raised his feverish red monkey’s face and glared back at the young poet.
“I know that you’ve slept with my wife,” he said, “and I know that you want her sometimes now. But you come to my place, hiding it all behind that well-mannered silence and smiling face of yours. Now that you’re eyeing me like a prosecutor, doesn’t that bother you deep down?”
A gloomy silence filled with fierce hostility locked J, Mitsuko, the sculptor, the young poet, and the cameraman each in their private prison cells. They cowered, motionless, inwardly stained with the ink of resentment, distrust, and lost friendship. They grasped in vain for edges of the coil of imaginary friendships which had bound them so intimately the night before, wondering if those edges themselves wouldn’t soon melt and vanish like frost. They all felt miserable, alone and forsaken. The jazz singer’s sobbing was like a voice that had been wrecked by their combined malice . . .
The twenty-year-old actor, the only one who was free from the hysteria and the chains of malice, still felt he had failed. He was nothing but a dull-witted tough guy, a boy with no imagination and fragile powers of judgment, but nevertheless he still sensed something waiting beneath his physical discomfort and displeasure. And it was something that disturbed him deeply. It got on his nerves, so he wanted somehow to replace the emergence of that strange danger with something completely trivial and conquer that. He looked around restlessly. Then suddenly an idea came to him. He spoke abruptly, breaking the silence.
“I want to take a shower. I want to get in that bath and have a shower. I feel bad. I always have a bath and a shower in the morning after I’ve been with a woman! My own semen, the leavings from the woman’s Bartholin’s gland—it all seems like it’s plastered to my penis. It’s really a nasty feeling.”
The young actor knew as well as the others that they’d run out of propane and couldn’t use the bathroom. They were all caught by the unpleasant and itching realization that their skin was filthy. The chain of malice was now double-wrapped and colored with physical self-loathing. There was nothing left for the actor but to play the buffoon.
“I feel so nasty, my whole body stinks! It feels like I’ve got a penis and a vagina both, and both of them smell like shit!”
Of course the other six didn’t laugh. The young actor’s mood turned even worse, and he felt terribly sad. He felt like a fretful tot. He stood up so violently that he turned over his chair, and walked over to the glass door. He walked like a thief or an adulterer in an extremely stylized classical play, taking care not to cut the soles of his feet on the shards of glass. Suddenly he returned to his everyday voice and called the others over. It was the voice of a crybaby.
“Look! It’s them! They’re here! Look!”
They all looked round at the garden, where dawn was breaking on the other side of the glass door. The fog had completely cleared, and it was a beautiful summer morning. The slope of overgrown lawn was a single sheet of green outside the door. Sky and sea were invisible, and there were no trees in sight. Here and there in the roughly tended, very thickly-grown lawn, some wild grasses tougher than the lawn made high-backed green humps of a still deeper green. And then there were the two statues. The statue in the foreground was Apollo. His left arm, missing its hand, was extended forward and to the left. The head of the noble youth gazed in the same direction. The relaxed bundle of muscle of his left leg, lifted slightly at the heel, was wet with dew and solemnly cast a faint shadow in the calm light of dawn, before the direct rays of the sun appeared. Only the places where the grape leaf met the insides of his thighs were hidden in thick black shadow. The statue in the background was clearly Zeus. The old man’s face was wreathed in a beard and hair in the same style. His eyes opened like two vacant holes that were the only remnants of night left in the green garden, which was now evenly lighted by the faint glow of dawn.
Between the two statues, the fisher folk suddenly appeared to those who were waiting, sitting or standing, in the depths of the main room. They all shivered at the discovery. It was the same group of villagers that had occupied the narrow stone road the night before. Middle-aged women, old people, and children—their faces in the light of dawn seemed plainer, more animal-like, and more shrunken than in the headlights. Had they spent a sleepless night on that road? Had that silent gathering, intended to intimidate and shame the adulterous woman who was stealthily preparing her lonely meal, lasted till daybreak? If, with the exception of those who went out fishing, all the remaining villagers, still indignant, had stayed on the road all night long, did that mean the village of Miminashi Bay was a village of people so nasty that they would disrupt their daily lives for the sake of malice? The seven in the room were again connected in a circle of common fear. Just as the night before a vague affinity had made them take a collective responsibility for the wild party, they were now forced together again in a party of fear and violence that was about to begin. Something like forty fisher folk were silently approaching. They came as close as the front of the balcony. The seven in the room saw a middle-aged woman with thick hair and dark skin like an Indian and a boy with a bloody cheek emerge from the group as though pushed forward. They all felt like they had entered the final stage. It was already clear that the fisher folk who stood there peeping into the room had the same cruel look in their eyes, the same brutal passion hidden in their souls, as they had shown in front of the house of that miserably oppressed woman. The twenty-year-old actor was overwhelmed and retreated between the chairs of his friends. Would the people outside scream and burst in, crossing the threshold of violence? Would the seven in the room burst into tears and pass out trembling before it came to that? But the seven frightened people in the room didn’t do anything. They simply waited while the people from Miminashi Bay, their ankles hidden in the deep grass and their calves wet with dew, positioned themselves to attack . . .
J’s sister got up from her chair and stepped forward. The fragments of broken glass crunched under her slippers. She carefully slipped through the dangerous hole in the shattered glass door and went out alone onto the balcony to confront the villagers. The six watching from inside could see that the people of Miminashi Bay were deeply shaken.
“We were worried the boy might have fallen from the cliff and died. He’d been hiding here all night and he crashed through the glass when he ran away. But it looks like he’s not hurt too badly,” J’s sister said. She was haughty to the point of shamelessness as she made this desperate counter-attack. Would her political trap catch these people? Or would the fisher folk of Miminashi Bay sniff out her fragile lie and make of the tiny opening offered by that lie a handhold with which to instantly destroy her. The six in the back were seized by anguished doubt.
There was silence and a feeling of urgency in the uncertain outcome of the decision. Wouldn’t the boy scream out and crush J’s sister’s deception? A moment passed. J’s sister had won. With her left hand, the Indian-like woman seized the head of the boy, who, with down-turned eyes, was clinging to the left side of h
er high, fat hip. Then she raised her right hand and hit him above his ear with all her might. It made a sharp sound. A shiver of nausea coursed through the woman on the balcony and the six in the room. The boy fell face down in the grass. The village woman gave him a kick in the buttocks with her sturdy leg. The boy escaped, crawling across the grass like a young animal; then he hurriedly got up and ran away screaming. He cried out his indignation in a teary voice. “I saw! I saw!”
“That little fool, he says he’s seen devils, seen killer devils, he says! That little lying fool. What a disgrace!” the woman said. An embarrassed, mean little smile rose to her cheeks. The faces around the woman all relaxed and turned apparently good-natured and impersonal. They’d all become captive to an ambiguous sense of shame and were smiling in confusion . . .
“You don’t need to worry about the glass. But could you bring us some fish, as usual? We’re here to shoot a movie. There are seven of us, so we’ll want a lot, okay?”
“A movie!” There was a commotion of words for a few moments. The people of Miminashi Bay were already completely under the sway of J’s sister’s trickery.
“That’s what we were doing last night, and it’s why everybody is up and around so early this morning. We’re not here for a holiday!” she said with reproach. She was finishing off her hunted-down enemy, and now seemed full of confidence and even proud of her victory.
The women and old people apologetically defended themselves. The boats that put out fishing from the village on Miminashi Bay were all having a terrible time with bad catches, so those who stayed behind were trying their best to locate and drive out of the bay the evil spirits that must be causing the poor catches. Until the adulteress confessed all her sins and begged for forgiveness in front of them all, they’d keep watching her. When she’d submitted, one evil spirit would be expelled. But there were so many they had to find . . .
The people of Miminashi Bay silently formed a single group again, passed between the statues, and walked down the hill. J’s sister came back into the room, slipping as carefully as before through the hole in the broken glass. With the garden behind her, her face was completely black. Only her silhouette, with its downy hair, shone in the green light. She had been majestic and awe-inspiring in front of the fisher folk, but now that she’d come back to the room, she was an unsteady, worn-out, weary, dazed old woman. She turned to the other six and spoke in a thin, hoarse voice.
“I’m going to sleep for a little while. There’s nothing you really need me for now, is there?” she said with self-contempt, but also with bad humor that sounded like a challenge. Then she passed between the chairs, crossed the room, opened the door, and disappeared. A few moments later they heard the sound of a door being opened upstairs. It was a different room from the one where J had slept. Nobody spoke or moved, so they could hear J’s sister closing the door and then the heavy sound of her falling into bed, probably with her clothes still on. Then the second floor was silent.
“Let’s put the camera together,” the cameraman said. “If we don’t get ready for the shoot, the sun’ll be up already.” As could be expected, he sounded ill-tempered, but he very clearly wanted to recover what had been destroyed by the talk they’d had earlier. He stood up alone, bent down near the Arriflex case, and started to work. He was silent and rough, as if he were angry, but at the same time there was something sluggish about his manner.
As always, the cameraman’s suggestion was a relief to the others. Mitsuko soothed the jazz singer, who was still pale and teary in the aftermath of her attack of hysteria, and tried to convince her that she should get to work. To heighten the photographic effect, the young poet drew a bucket of water and walked across the lawn to wash the skin of the Apollo statue. Usually J was lazy and refused to participate in any job that involved physical labor, but today he washed the statue of Zeus. The young actor cheerfully stripped to the waist and examined the lawn where the little boy had fallen after being hit to check whether there was any blood on the grass. The temperature was already climbing the way it would on a midsummer’s day, and the garden was no longer cold. After much persuading by Mitsuko, the jazz singer finally came down to the lawn, completely nude, and stumbled toward the statues. The eighteen-year-old-girl’s tear-stained childish little face was pale and dark and very ugly, but her slender naked body was quite erotic and mysterious. It would evoke perfectly the surrealist image of a naked woman in the film. Mitsuko was studying the script as she stood by the cameraman, who was adjusting the film equipment. She was pale and ugly. The sea far below was already giving off the scorching reflection of the sun. The garden was right at the center of a brilliant summer morning.
“Look, that child lost a tooth here!” the young actor shouted, sounding concerned. He was holding a small lump in his right hand. His naked torso turned a rosy color in the light of the sun, and he was smiling. “He must be hurting pretty badly! But maybe the pain in his mouth will make him forget about the pain in his heart!”
J, his wife, the jazz singer, the cameraman, and the young poet stopped what they were doing. Without moving or speaking, they all looked at the young actor. Their eyes were flaming with criticism.
“Well, he’ll soon forget about seeing devils while he’s bleeding and trying to cope with the pain, won’t he?” the young actor shouted.
They stood there in silence, with no idea what to do. Uncertain and irritated, the young actor went on screaming.
“Well, what’s the matter with you all? You look like a bunch of mummies. What is it? Did somebody stop the clock or something?”
Nobody answered. They stood frozen, looking at him. With the child’s tooth still clenched in his right hand, the young actor suddenly sank to his knees in the blood-stained grass, bowed his head, chafed his body, and began to cry. “Damn,” the twenty-year-old muttered through his tears. “I hate this. Here in this place, naked like this, doing this job—this is no fun at all! Ah, I can’t stand this anymore. There must be some fun job for me to do, but, damn, other kids have got them already . . .”
PART TWO
It had been one minute since the crowded subway train had pulled out of the Diet Station. J and the old man both noticed the young man at the same time. He was about eighteen, well-built, and wore an English trench coat—the kind meant for young people, with clusters of buttons and buckles. Peering out from the collar of his coat, his sweat-drenched face and neck had a white glow. They saw one of the young man’s legs as he took a determined step into the densely packed thicket of human bodies. For an instant they saw his bare calf and knee. He was wearing deerskin boots. He seemed thin, but his fleshy neck and head suggested that his weight was well above average. And if he looked thin, it was probably because, apart from the trench coat and boots, he was completely naked.
The subway train was racing along at top speed, shaking like a newspaper boy late for his rounds on a winter morning. The youth took another step forward. Beads of sweat surfaced on his forehead like fish eggs. His body was now fitted snugly against the back and buttocks of a young girl. She had a monstrous growth on her forehead and a smug, upturned nose, but he had approached her from behind. With steely self-control, he sighed quietly, soundlessly, and glanced cautiously around. He had the eyes of a dog too sick even to chase a sewer rat. The fever had erased whatever glimmer of cunning vitality those eyes might still have contained. His small nose, Mongolian in shape, widened heroically as he sniffed for any suspicious scent. About fifteen feet above the passengers’ heads lay the bleak evening city in early winter. Ten million people lived there and the young man seemed to know there was not one who would help him in his very personal mission.
He seemed at ease, although dripping with sweat. In his arrogance, he felt completely removed from the world around him. He was deliriously excited, almost fatally aroused, as he let his hard male weapon emerge from a small slit in a hidden pocket of his coat. He began to rub it lovingly, anxiously, determinedly, against the girl’s buttocks through
her orange coat; an innocuous, saintly smile began to curl his lips, then spread gradually across his entire face . . .
J and his elderly but well-built friend stood shoulder to shoulder as they watched this scene. The tension was so unbearable that both felt an urge to close their eyes. The old man was afraid he’d have a heart attack. The train pulled into the next station and stopped, disgorged some people, sucked in others, and started again. Hoping the youth had disappeared, J and the old man looked toward the place where he’d been standing. The jungle of passengers was less dense than before, but they discovered the young man still in action. To make matters worse, he was about to have an orgasm, inevitable as death itself. Suddenly, not only J and his friend, but everyone on the train, seemed to open their eyes wide and focus on the young man with a terrible, united force. Under this glare of strangers’ eyes, he climaxed. At that moment, a powerfully-built middle-aged man, who’d been standing next to J and the old man, reached out and grabbed the collar of the young man’s trench coat as if he were about to rip it off his back. J and the old man swallowed hard and sighed.
“He went too far,” J whispered in the old man’s bulbous ears.
The two realized sadly that a squid-like ink of shame and fear must already be clouding the pool of pleasure in the youth’s loins. Despair imposed its faint moan and shiver onto the final gasp of orgasm. Their hearts raced. They were sure that the boy’s entrails would twist like so much rope when he realized that he was cornered, with no chance of escape. They knew he was imagining himself, his trench coat torn off, dragged naked to the police like a masturbating chimpanzee, with his eyes no bigger than wrinkles and his sodden penis dripping. The jelly of his semen, the color of tears, had already congealed, stiffening his crotch, as he stood before those countless hostile eyes.