Ryu Murakami - Piercing

Things had not been going well lately. She stroked the silvery ring with her index finger and thought: This is all I can really believe in right now. Even when she caressed it herself, it felt like someone else’s touch. It was a fourteen-gauge surgical stainless steel ball-closure ring with an inner diameter of twelve point seven millimetres. ‘What’re you, nuts?’ her customers often asked her. ‘Why would you do that to yourself? ’ Piercings scared them, like tattoos on yakuza thugs, and inwardly Chiaki would sneer at these men: Because I enjoy watching worms like you squirm .

She was thinking she’d have to pierce the other nipple sometime soon, when the blood finally began coursing through her Halcion-frozen body. A piercing took courage, though. First she’d need to reclaim her sex drive. Not that being horny made you brave, but the total absence of lust frightened her because it had always been the first stage of that awful cycle, the one she’d never been able to tell anyone about. The cycle of terror that took hold with the sudden realisation that she alone was to blame for all the bad things happening around her. Once the Nightmare began, she wouldn’t be choosing her own pain any longer — it would be choosing her — and courage would be the last thing she’d be capable of.

She climbed out of bed and stood there on the carpet for a moment, checking herself for dizziness or nausea. She found both, naturally, along with a chill that vibrated in her bones. What she needed was some vitamin C and stomach medicine. She took a step towards the refrigerator, measuring her stride so that she’d arrive in precisely five steps. She could pour some Vittel mineral water into the 8,935-yen Baccarat tumbler she’d bought a hundred and eighteen days ago, then drop in some cherry aspirin and two Alka-Seltzers. Just watching the millions of tiny bubbles might calm her down some, she was thinking, when she reached the refrigerator and noticed her shiny red Swiss Army knife in a wicker bowl on the dining table. Knife, scissors, can opener, bottle opener, corkscrew, file — it had everything. I have to remember to take that with me, she thought. She’d been forgetting about what the customer she’d had a hundred and seventy-one days ago had shown her. With surgical precision, he’d used a pair of scissors to extract the elastic band from a plastic shower cap. He positioned the elastic band between her legs and passed a rope through the loops, front and back, then tied the rope around her waist, making a sort of open-crotch thong. He arranged it so that only her clitoris was protruding between the strands of elastic. That was exciting. Maybe if she did it again, her libido would have no choice but to come rushing back. Before opening the refrigerator, Chiaki slipped the knife into her handbag.

KAWASHIMA LOOKED AT HIS wristwatch for about the twentieth time, checking it against the digital clock embedded in the side-table, but it was still only two minutes past six. No reason to expect a woman in that line of business to be punctual, of course. She was coming by taxi, and an unexpected traffic jam could easily eat up half an hour. Even the masseuse he’d called the other night had been almost forty minutes late, after all. He kept telling himself things like this, but it wasn’t doing much good.

He had turned off the heat a while ago, and the room was cooler now, but his hands were still perspiring. The brand new black leather gloves looked slightly ridiculous with sweat soaking through the palms. He decided to review his notes, to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything vital.

So far everything had gone like clockwork. He’d taken a hotel bus from the west exit of Shinjuku Station and arrived at the entrance to the Keio Plaza right on schedule, at two-fifty-five. It was Friday afternoon and an auspicious day according to the lunar calendar, which made for a lot of weddings. The lobby swarmed with reception guests, and since the hotel was also hosting a gathering of Shinjuku-ward accountants and a conference for computer manufacturers, the counters at the front desk were swamped. Kawashima scarcely drew a glance from the beleaguered and somewhat grumpy desk clerk, and none of the bellboys got anywhere near him. He scoured the crowd in the lobby but saw no one he knew.

The room, on the twenty-ninth floor, looked out on the Tocho — the soaring new Municipal Government Office complex. The ice pick and knife and change of clothes were in paper sacks inside the overnight bag he’d bought at a shop in Haneda Airport — a dark brown synthetic leather bag like you might find anywhere. He’d changed into the cheap new suit and donned the glasses inside a stall in the airport restroom, and had managed to find a discarded sports daily from the Kansai district. Because of the crush in the lobby, he’d exchanged only a few words with the clerk when checking in, and though he’d used a Kansai accent, it was unlikely the clerk would even remember that. Whether to proceed with the misdirection scheme by leaving the sports daily in the room was something he could decide later on, after it was all over.

Reviewing the notes helped calm him somewhat. He looked out at the Tocho, with its hundreds of lighted windows. On the street below was a tour bus from which family groups had spilled out to take photos and videos with the futuristic building as backdrop. From beyond the glass came a sound like a brewing storm. The winter solstice was near, and it was shockingly cold out there, but these tourists from the hinterlands didn’t seem to mind. He could see their scattered camera flashes, like the last bursts of life from the firework sparklers of his childhood. Since getting together with Yoko the sensation hadn’t been quite as pronounced, but even now, whenever he saw families together, a cold little wave seemed to ripple through him. This wave was now lapping against his memory banks, uncovering an image from the past. Mother smiling as she poses the beloved little one for photos in front of the house. It’s a sunny day, but she’s using a flash. The beloved one waving me over to pose with him. I shake my head, and now Mother’s smile vanishes. Holding the camera in both hands, she turns to stare at me with empty eyes. Get angry , I’m thinking. Hurry up and hit me . She just stands there with that stony expression. Come on , do it . Staring right through me, as if I were a piece of furniture or a rock or bug rather than a human being.

To sweep this image from his mind, Kawashima tried to conjure up the firm white abdomen of the young woman who was presumably making her way to his room. On the phone, the man at the S&M club had said she was petite and fair-skinned and a bit shy. This man’s voice and way of speaking had been very much like that of the man at the massage service. As if he were sitting at someone’s deathbed. If a voice like that were to tell you there was nothing to worry about, Kawashima thought, you’d almost certainly begin to panic. He looked at his watch. More than twenty minutes past six. He thought of Yoko but knew he couldn’t phone her, because the hotel computer would record all his calls. Best to forget about Yoko anyway, until the ritual was over. The person staying in this room wasn’t Kawashima Masayuki, but Yokoyama Toru. As he repeated this made-up name beneath his breath, he almost began to believe that that was who he really was — a different person, with a different history.

He’d just begun to consider phoning the S&M club when the door chime sounded. On his way to the door, Kawashima stopped at the thermostat to turn on the heat. The room needed to be warm enough for her to be comfortable taking off all her clothes. He removed and pocketed his gloves and took out a handkerchief to palm in his right hand.