Coin Locker Babies (30 page)

“That’s not exactly it either. When you’re doing a concert, it’s you, the singer, who has to control the crowd; you’ve got to grab every one of however many thousands of people you’ve got out there in front of you and shake them up; you’ve got to wrap them in your arms and then shove them away—you’ve got to make each one of them feel it, feel that you’re the boss. It’s a kind of power, like the pull of a huge magnet, almost a kind of magic. But if a guy doesn’t even have the power to control his own backup band, you can bet he’s not going to be able to control an audience.”

“Neva, I’m scared,” said Hashi.

“What of?”

“I feel as though I’ve been dragged to the top of this high mountain and I’m standing there all alone looking down. I’ve actually had a dream like that the past few nights.”

“What is it you’re doing at the top of this mountain?”

“I’m flapping my arms trying to fly.”

“And can you?”

“At first I can, but pretty soon I get tired and I always fall in the end. And when I fall, everybody laughs.”

“You know if you lose your nerve now, it’s all over,” said Neva.

“I know. But sometimes I wonder if it isn’t already over and nobody bothered to tell me. Neva, I’m scared to death.”

“I still don’t see what of—of becoming famous overnight?”

“No, not that exactly. But it does bother me that I became famous almost by accident, as if I’d fooled everybody. It seems every other famous person got that way by scratching their way up for years and years; it doesn’t matter if they’re boxers or pop stars, they had to work for it. But not me; I didn’t crawl or scrape or climb anything. I just sat around until a helicopter came along and gave me a ride to the top. This didn’t happen because of
anything I can do; I’m famous because I was born in a coin locker. It’s not my singing that made me famous, it’s Kiku shooting that woman on national TV. I feel like a fraud, and I find myself wondering how long I can keep up the act. All those people who had to work their way up, they developed a kind of strength along the way, a kind of strength I just haven’t got.”

“Are you telling me you’re worried about what’s going to happen years from now? Hashi, sometimes you’re really dumb. You keep on thinking like that and you’ll end up like a crazy who sits around paralyzed by the idea of his own death.”

Hashi climbed out of his bed and crawled in with Neva. Having put his fears into words, he felt a little calmer. She reached up and gently closed his eyelids with her fingers as she started telling him a story.

“Long ago there was this king of the Slavs named Fruksaz. But Fruksaz didn’t start out as king; he was originally a cattle herder, who was so brave and wise that he was able to defeat every foe he faced until finally he was made king. Now the minute he became king, Fruksaz started doing things: he built an irrigation system and developed new methods for raising cattle and conquered the surrounding lands—all those kingly kind of things—and he was so good at it that everyone around him came to see him as a kind of superman. Well, one day this Fruksaz was having a chat with the queen of one of the countries he’d conquered, and she said it looked like he’d done just about everything there was to do and she was wondering what kind of goals or aspirations a man like him could still have. So what do you think Fruksaz said?… He said that his only goal was to get through the rest of that day. That’s all.”

At some point in Neva’s parable, Hashi had stopped listening and started to stroke her side. Her flesh was slack and soft, as if
her bones had been coated with gelatin and then covered with a fine layer of skin. He remembered something Toru had said a few days earlier about how men were reptiles but women were fruit, and when you took a little bite of some fruit, you could taste the roots, the deep, rich soil, the air and sunlight where it had ripened. A young woman was like firm, ripe fruit; it hadn’t been so long since it was still hanging on the branch, and when you poked it with your finger it might dent a little, turn a bit red, but it bounced right back, as though it were somehow still connected to that faraway tree. Not so with older women; their flesh had lost that connection, as if the peach had been made into a peach cake, sticky with a little too much sugar and gelatin. Toru had finished by turning to him and saying: “I’m amazed how well you seem to be doing with that lady of yours. Don’t think I could forget about the sticky peaches and keep my mind on the job.”

Neva had shifted around in the bed, and as her tongue went to work between Hashi’s legs, her sugary buns shook lightly before his eyes. Suddenly, for no reason, he thought of the young woman who had shouted in the courtroom on the day of Kiku’s sentencing. He remembered how firmly her breasts had stood out under the skintight white suit, and he wondered what it would be like to run his hands over her body. He imagined the brilliant red traces his fingernails would leave, and as he leisurely conjured up her body in his mind, his cock began to stiffen. Neva sighed with satisfaction, the gap between her fleshy thighs looking like a slice cut out of a peach cake. Perhaps, he thought, his victory over Kiku wasn’t as complete as he’d imagined.

“That’s it for me! Sorry, but you can count me out.”

The rehearsals had barely entered their second week when suddenly one day the guitarist, Matsuyama, stopped in the middle
of a number and threw his pick on the floor. Kitami tried to calm him down and start again from the top, but Matsuyama turned off the mike on his guitar.

“You’re a big disappointment,” he said, pointing at Hashi, and stalked out of the studio. No one tried to stop him. All of them, including Hashi, had seen something like this coming. After Neva’s warnings, for several days Hashi had tried tinkering with the arrangements, even altering his vocal style, but with each change the sound grew even colder, more transparent, more fixed and faint.

“What now?” said Toru.

“For now, let’s just take a break,” Hashi muttered, staring at the floor.

“You know, Hashi,” he said, wiping off his strings, “you’re a nice guy, got real class, and you’ve been good to us. We feel you’re pretty much one of us, and we think we have a pretty good idea of what you’re trying to do here, what kind of sound you’re looking for. More than that, we think we’ve been giving it to you; if we had wanted to do our own thing, we’d never have signed on for this gig. Way I understand it, you want to start with a real bright, soothing mood to put the audience at ease and then gradually build up these little shocks and jarring rhythms, like you’re scattering around tiny seeds of pain, right? Eventually the audience wakes up from its nice deep sleep to find they’re staring into a warm, damp, gaping hole swarming with some sort of bug they’ve never seen before. Then they slowly realize all the exits have disappeared, that there’s no way out, and only when they’ve got over their fright do they see that the bugs have turned into these beautiful, brilliant points of light. They follow these lights through an underwater cave to come out on a cliff looking down on the shining sea… Yeah? Anyway, it was something like that,
you said, and I think we got the message; I think we dug where you were coming from. The sound’s
there
, man; it’s in that hole, waiting. We can all see that you’re going crazy trying to figure out what to do, but we don’t have any more of a clue than you seem to.”

“Bullshit! Say it straight out, man. Problem’s the vocal; it’s just weak.” Matsuyama had come back in during Toru’s speech and loudly interrupted. In his left hand he was clutching a frog. Shimoda pulled a face. Shoving the frog up against the mike, Matsuyama pinched hard around its neck to make it croak. “An improvement, if you ask me,” he laughed. “This dude’s got a
voice
! He’s gonna kill them,” he said, squeezing harder and sending a green liquid dribbling from its mouth. Shimoda looked away until Matsuyama stopped. “Hashi, I’m not saying you can’t sing; fact is, you’re so good it’s scary sometimes. I’ve never heard anybody who could create a mood with his voice the way you do. But it’s not just that; it’s more like your voice creates this vacuum inside people’s heads, and the visions they see are made from little bits of their own memories that get sucked in. If that’s the kind of song you’re talking about, you’re in a league by yourself; who else you ever heard could crawl inside people’s heads and stroke their brains? You’re like some kind of drug. But a drug’s just not enough when it comes to getting an audience worked up. You need a bomb for that—a bomb that’ll blow away all the daydreams your drug produces in a few seconds. And it’s got to be your bomb; no matter how loud Shimoda bangs on those drums of his, no matter if Kitami blows his guts out and bites his reed in half, no matter if I blow out all the speakers, it still won’t work. It’s your vocal that’s weak, like a baby crying.” As he finished, he opened the window and threw the frog out.

“Let’s face it, man,” he continued, “when it comes to whipping
up a crowd, you’re a lightweight, you’re froth. But don’t take it too hard—we’re pretty much the same ourselves. That’s probably why I got so worked up… I once heard this woman who could really wail, I mean
wail
. Seems she could remember once during the war crossing a river at night on her mother’s back. Halfway across, her brother, who was crossing with them, lost his footing and was sucked under. There must have been some kind of river grass on the bottom because once he went under all she ever saw of him again was his hand sticking above the surface drifting slowly downriver. She’d tried to make her mother understand what was happening but the mother was dead tired and just went on walking in a daze. So she screamed, watching her brother’s hand float off down the river while her mother trudged away; and she could remember that scream, she could call it back. It was always somewhere deep in her body. And it was listening to her I realized that there was nothing like that in me, never would be. But I thought maybe, you being born in a coin locker and all, you might have it in you, Hashi. Did you scream when you were in that locker? I thought maybe… but maybe I was wrong.”

Hashi suddenly longed to be able to hear the strange sound that he and Kiku had once heard together. If he could only hear it one more time, just as it had been in that padded room…

“That’s nothing to do with it,” broke in Tokumaru at this point. “You’re making the whole thing too complicated. The problem comes down to this: Hashi’s voice is too pretty.” Shimoda nodded.

“And what if I could rough it up a bit, make it less pretty?” said Hashi, looking around at each member of the band.

“Won’t work,” said Shimoda. “There was this German singer who tried doing something like that. She wanted to make her voice deeper and smokier so she had this operation where they fiddled with her vocal chords. Well, it worked at first, she sounded
sort of whiskey-voiced, but after a couple of years she hadn’t any voice left at all, none. All you could hear was this little wheeze.”

“OK. I get the point,” said Hashi. “And you’ve given me an idea. You all go home. Give me a week. If you still think my voice is a bust, then we’ll break up the band and I’ll go back to hustling for a living.” Without waiting for an answer, Hashi turned and left the studio. He went back to his room and locked the door. When he heard Neva knocking on it, all he said to her was “Sorry but tonight I’ve got to be alone.” The next day he sent everyone away and even gave the cook and the rest of the staff a vacation, until at last there was nobody else in The Spaceship.

He had a little experiment in mind. He had read somewhere that Mick Jagger’s voice had changed drastically after an accident he’d had, that it was actually only after this accident that he’d developed his peculiar, supersensual voice. Hashi decided to arrange the same sort of accident for himself. First he assembled his tools: a can of camping fuel, wads of gauze, clippings from an aloe plant, a glass, a bottle of vodka, and a large pair of scissors. Filling the glass with vodka, he dipped the tip of his tongue in it and left it to soak. While it was soaking, he lit the little burner and sterilized the scissors in the flame. As he watched his tongue swirling around in the vodka, he started to laugh. Why the hell, he wondered, am I doing this? It wasn’t for the band, he knew that much. And it wasn’t for Neva either. Mr. D? D could go fuck himself. Then why? He thought about the tour, but he knew it didn’t matter; nor was it the music itself—he simply didn’t care any more. If he screwed up his voice, who would give a shit? Certainly not he—Hashi—he was sick of the whole business. Then why? It was simply that he didn’t like the thought of running away, nothing more. He’d skipped gym class to avoid the ordeal of the high bar; he’d even tried to conjure up a storm
so the class would be rained out—all to avoid being laughed at. But it hadn’t worked. The more you ran away, the more you played right into the hands of the enemy. Enemy? But who was this enemy? It was everybody who had ever tried to shut him in, lied to him, made him live a lie… But he would show them: he was done running, and he was done leaving things behind, losing what he’d fought to gain. He’d never give up anything again, not Träumerei, not Neva. He would show them he could handle a band, and an audience!

Suddenly he wondered what Kiku was thinking about at that moment. If he’s thinking that I’m off somewhere living it up, stuffing myself with rice omelettes and sleeping like a baby, then he’s dead wrong. I’m going through hell, but I’m not running away; I’m not curling up in a ball to die. I’m going to make it, and no one will ever make me feel small again. You’ll see! You won’t believe it, but you’ll see! As soon as I’ve got my voice, a real concert voice, I’ll come for that woman of yours, Kiku. I’ll leave some pretty red claw marks on her pretty back.

He tried biting his tongue lightly, but it still wasn’t numb. The bite sent a faint throb of pain through his head. His jaw was getting tired so he slowly drew his tongue out of the glass. Sticking it out as far as he could, he tried to pinch the tip with his left hand, but it was too slippery for a good grip. He finally managed to get a firm hold by driving his fingernails into the spongy flesh as he fumbled for the scissors with his other hand. They were covered with soot from the flame of the camping fuel, but the metal underneath had been heated to a red glow. The minute he touched it to the tip of his tongue, a spasm shot through his body and he fell to the floor writhing and clutching at his mouth, yet he made no sound at all. He had knocked over the desk, breaking the glass that was on it. For a moment, the pain was so bad he
couldn’t see. He started to sweat. Without getting up, he managed to retrieve the scissors from where they had scorched a hole in the carpet, and he sprinkled them with a little vodka from the bottle. He could smell the alcohol evaporating as it sizzled on the hot metal. He couldn’t stop crying. It occurred to him to wonder why he hadn’t screamed from the pain. Perhaps screams were involuntary calls for help that just seemed futile to your subconscious, which knew you were alone.