Coin Locker Babies (41 page)

That night, Neva came home for the first time in four days and apologized to Hashi for walking out on him.

Hashi knew he would have to screw up his courage, have to stir up other parts of himself, if he was ever to go through with it. The voices he heard, the ringing in his ears, the pulse of blood through his veins, the Hashi who stared back from the mirror, the phantom Hashi who lurked in window panes—all of these would have to be called upon. And he would find them, he realized, in the little rubber and glass soundproof chamber he had built in order to search for that sound. The rubber portion of the walls of Hashi’s chamber had been fitted with speakers, and the thickness of the glass insured that not even the faintest unwanted noise could get in from outside. As he always did, Hashi entered the room, closed the door, and crouched in the cramped space listening for the sound; the only
difference now was that there was nothing coming from the speakers. He was listening for the roar inside his own head, the sounds that arose in the absence of sound. I have to kill Neva, he thought, and that’s a terrifying thing; give me the courage to overcome that fear and suffering. In the pitch darkness, he closed his eyes, sensing the blackness spread out around him, as if heavy velvet curtains had been drawn across his retina and he were receding into some inner distance, receding to the far limits of darkness beyond which gray dots began to appear. The spots collected in long, thin furrows and then slowly began to take on color, growing in number as they deepened in tone. Rather than cells dividing and dividing again, the new dots seemed like previously hidden lights suddenly switched on, the whole process being sustained by the color changes in existing spots, as if he were watching a film of fireworks played backward. Gradually, the spots grew denser until they resembled a field of glowing tomatoes, or tuberculosis germs teeming on a slide under a microscope, glittering brighter than the powder rubbed from a moth’s wings, undulating like the muscles in the chest of a dissected cat, multiplying like gold dust lying dormant in a riverbed until a volcano sends lava streaming down to boil the gold to the surface. Then, as always happened, just as the spots were gathering into a great mass for the final eruption, each one separately began to glow with rage, each one in the swarm was brandishing a torch. Soon the torches would go out one by one and the whole galaxy would be transformed into the sea at noon. But this time there was one difference: there was no other sound, only the high ringing in his ears like a steam whistle in the distance. A huge jet was streaking across the sea, its shadow passing in the space of a second from the glittering waves to the cliff from which, just at that moment, he
was falling. Hitting the water, he floated briefly and then started to sink. Beneath the surface, the sea had a sticky, slimy feel to it, and as he drifted down toward the bottom, the water around him grew redder and redder. His legs got tangled in a kind of seaweed with human fingers, binding him fast to a crag jutting from the ocean floor.

Suddenly, a powerful shudder went through him and he opened his eyes. He had heard the sound: the sound of blood pumping through his own body, through the veins in his arms; little waves, spaced out at even intervals. Straining to catch the sound, he muttered: “That’s the one. That’s the one that will help me kill her, the one that’ll give me the strength: the beating of my heart.” Hashi burst out of the chamber and went looking for Neva. Finding her discarded clothes in the dressing room, he realized she must be in the shower. A moment later, in the kitchen, as he wrapped his fingers around the handle of a large knife, his heartbeat began to play a frantic tune, and a wave of bliss swept through him as he started back toward the bathroom. He squeezed the handle, sniffing at a strange smell like burning flesh. Through the steamed-up glass door of the bathroom, he could see Neva’s silhouette, stomach bulging nicely, and he knelt before the door giving thanks to the beating of his heart. With the sound thundering inside him, radiating out to rattle the floor, the room, the whole building, he opened the door. There stood Neva, water beaded over her body, and as he raised the knife to strike, for one fleeting second he found himself wondering whose heartbeat it was that they had heard long ago at the hospital. Still, the thought didn’t keep him from finishing the stroke and, taking aim at the bulge of Neva’s belly, he plunged the knife in. At the moment he did so, the beating stopped,
and with it came a shock: Hashi’s bliss had, in a fraction of a second, been traded for terror. A moment too late he wished he could stop his arm, the very instant the tip of the blade came to rest in Neva’s side.

At last, thought Anemone, the Kingdom of the Crocodiles! They had been cruising for hours, and now suddenly the sun seemed to have grown enormous, fierce. A moment or two out on deck would turn one’s skin the color of nicely braised rabbit. A new piece of jewelry adorned the tanned ring finger of her left hand: a coral band Kiku had bought for her on Ogasawara. They had been married, with Nakakura officiating, in a small chapel left over from the American Occupation. Afterward the four of them had gone swimming in a quiet lagoon, their first dip in the ocean they’d been racing over. The break was also an opportunity for Nakakura to teach the rest of them some of the finer points of diving, picked up from his days on a salvage ship, and for Hayashi to show off his amazing speed in the water—the latter while they were poking around a mass of table coral jutting out from a rocky ledge. Suddenly, Hayashi darted away, chasing something at a furious pace, leaving the others to stare after him as they hovered at the bottom. The oval shape he was pursuing made for the surface and then plunged into the darkness of a deep spot. As it went by they could see the beautiful shell of a sea turtle. Making full use of his flippers, Hayashi gave chase and nearly managed to grab the thing, but each time he closed in, it would change course at the last moment and dodge away. After a few minutes of this, however, Hayashi was getting tired and launched what seemed to
be his final effort: allowing the turtle to get some distance ahead, he sank down ten meters or more below its level. Then, like a rocket, he kicked off the bottom, angling up behind it, and just as the turtle sensed his approach and started to escape, Hayashi’s hands clamped down firmly on either side of the shell. Holding it ahead of him, he spurted to the surface, the speed carrying him out of the water almost to his knees, and like a water polo player with a shot at goal, he tossed the thing far up on the beach.

“Let’s eat it,” Anemone said before they were even out of the water. “A friend once told me how you cook a turtle. First, we need to light a fire.” They used dried seaweed as kindling, adding broken lengths of driftwood until the embers were smoldering bright red. When the fire was ready, Anemone let the end of a branch burn until it glowed and then, turning the creature on its back, started rubbing it against its belly. As sweat dripped from the end of her nose into the sand, she stood above the turtle applying the hot stick up and down its underside. The turtle paddled its legs in slow motion, its neck craning far out of the shell, as if it meant to leave its burning body behind and run off on its own. A smell like burning wool filled the air as it began to hiss, its cry almost indistinguishable from the sound of the surf being sucked into sand at the water’s edge.

“Sort of cruel, this,” whispered Nakakura. Hayashi nodded, gulping audibly.

“What are you muttering about?” Anemone said loudly, looking up at them. “That’s the law of the jungle: you get caught, you get cooked and eaten.” She added an “assholes” to herself as she went on rubbing, by now having softened the turtle’s belly but not yet killed it. The hissing still came from its leathery mouth as it opened and shut, until finally Anemone flipped it over and told the others to peel the shell away.

“Kiku, come on—if you aren’t quick about it, it’ll cool down and it won’t come off,” she said.

“You do it,” said Kiku, shoving Nakakura forward. But Nakakura looked over at Hayashi.

“Shouldn’t the guy who caught it do it?”

“Sorry, but you can count me out,” said Hayashi. “I’ve never killed anything in my whole life, not even a bug… I mean… except for that old barber I offed during the robbery, but that was the first and last time… so don’t look at me.” Anemone stood glaring from one to the other, but when she turned back to the turtle, she let out a yelp. It was gone, flapping across the sand toward the water, its shell gleaming in the sun. They set out in pursuit, but just as Hayashi reached out to grab it, a wave washed over it. The hiss of sea-water on hot shell startled him, and he drew back his hand as the turtle, in cool relief from pain, paddled slowly out to sea. No one made a move to stop it.

“Look at that motherfucker,” Hayashi murmured. “Just goes to show, even when they’ve got you half roasted, you shouldn’t give up.” The others nodded solemnly.

Later, on the beach, Kiku and Anemone watched an enormous sun sink below the horizon. The coconut and mango trees crowding the shore were dyed deep green by the dazzling orange light, and slowly the incandescent foam on the waves burst, bubble by glowing bubble, as the silhouette of the two lying on the sand darkened. With this subtropical summer sunset, little ice-cold crystals seemed to form just beneath their scorched skin, spreading as the shadows deepened and making them acutely aware of their sunburn.

Anemone stuck her tongue in Kiku’s ear, tasting the salt and feeling the roughness of some sand. Better than wire mesh, she thought.

“I was right, wasn’t I?” she whispered, blowing in his ear. “The Kingdom of the Crocodiles is here, under my tongue: all hot and slippery, like melted ice cream. And the studio walls are
snow-white
again.”

“What are you talking about?” Kiku laughed, gently peeling a patch of skin from her thigh. The moist new layer underneath glistened in the moonlight and the glow from the phosphorescent tide.

At dawn, the boat left Ogasawara, engines roaring and bow bucking against the waves. Anemone stood on the deck pointing toward the horizon. The Kingdom! she thought. A black speck had appeared: Io Island. As they approached, a crag jutting out of the sea near the island came into view, with smoke trailing from it, and they recognized the vent of an undersea volcano. The rocks were lined with hundreds of cracks from which sulfurous gas leaked into the air, mixing with the morning haze that hung low over the water.

To navigate past the island, they had to slow down and pick their way through a maze of visible reefs. Kiku climbed out on the bow to give directions as they drifted in clouds of smoke belching from the rocks and the sea itself. Large bubbles formed on the still surface, swelling with murky gas into shallow domes which ruptured with a loud pop. Released into the air, the gas combined with water vapor to form layers of color that changed according to the angle of the light: direct light dyed the smoke yellow, shadows were red, and backlighting left it a milky white. The gas hung low, trapping the heat beneath it like an impermeable membrane.

They had slowed to a crawl in order not to run aground. In front of the others, Anemone had tried to ignore the overpowering
smell of rotten eggs, but finally she couldn’t stand it any longer and retreated into the cabin, holding her nose and clutching at her chest. The yellow smudge hid the sun, and Kiku was finding it almost impossible to keep his eyes open. He tried using a diving mask, but the sulfur still burned his throat, so he asked Hayashi to bring him a tank and regulator. After that he could breathe. Confined under the cloud, the heat seemed to become palpable and heavy, pressing against their skin like a mound of hot mud.

Suddenly, they heard a sharp knock against the hull and a shudder passed through the deck. Nakakura went pale and cut the engine dead.

“Kiku! What the hell are you doing out there?” he yelled. “If we get stuck here, we’ve had it.” Hayashi was already circling the rail with a boat hook.

“It wasn’t a reef,” said Kiku, mostly for his own benefit. “We were nowhere near a reef.” With the engine stopped, the boat rocked and drifted slowly backward. In the quiet, the sound of the sulfur escaping seemed almost ominous: gases burbling beneath the surface, bubbles popping, the spray falling back into the sea, and the clefts in the rocks hissing out evil-smelling fumes.

“Look!” said Hayashi, pointing off the starboard bow at a large silver fish floating on the surface. It was a barracuda that had probably drifted into the poisonous waters while asleep. The fish was still alive, and its tail fin twitched when they poked the pale, distended belly. A row of jagged teeth peeped out from its jaw.

“Start her up!” Kiku called to Nakakura. “Nothing to worry about; it was just a barracuda.” As the screw began to turn, the boat drifted slightly to the right and the fish was sucked into the propeller. From the deck they could hear the sharp blades grinding the flesh and bones, and they left a trail of bright red chum floating on the yellow surface.

Miruri Atoll, consisting of some forty tiny islands and about two kilometers of offshore territory, was privately owned by a man of Japanese descent who had retired as head of an airline he had founded in the islands of Southeast Asia. On what had been a deserted stretch of land, he installed a small desalination plant and an electric generator powered by the soil from the smallest of the islets—a refined sort of peat that resembled diatomite in color.

Having used more fuel than planned by stopping and starting the engine in the sulfur clouds, and not knowing what lay ahead at Garagi, Kiku decided they would have to make a stop at Miruri, and so, once again, they picked their way through a web of narrow channels between the innumerable keys. The islands, sandwiched as they were between South Io and Garagi, enjoyed a prevailing southerly breeze and heavy rainfall, and as a result were thickly matted with banana and mangrove trees and coconuts. There were no charts for these waters, the atoll being outside any ferry routes, so they were forced to feel their way along. It soon felt as if they were creeping through a tropical swamp, with the horizon obscured by islands of various and fantastic shapes and the surface of the sea covered with slimy algae.

Kiku remembered reading somewhere that the man who owned Miruri had upward of a dozen boats at his disposal, including a hydrofoil, a glass-bottomed job, and even a small submarine. With all that, he reckoned, there was bound to be some extra fuel lying around; the only question was whether they’d be allowed to buy any of it. Anemone, however, wasn’t thinking about fuel, absorbed instead in the sight of all these tree-choked islands that seemed to her the living image of the Kingdom come.

After they had cleared Io, a Self-Defense Force patrol plane had trailed them for quite a way, hailing them on the radio and
demanding to know their destination. When they answered that they were headed for Garagi, the plane asked what they planned to do there, and when they said they were just going to sightsee, they were told to turn back. Garagi, it seemed, had no accommodation for guests at present, and swimming was prohibited on almost all the beaches. It was obviously no place for tourists, and the pilot urged them in the strongest possible terms to choose another destination. Kiku, however, paid no attention, continuing to cruise at full throttle, and eventually the plane abandoned its pursuit. Watching it bank and head for home, Hayashi and Nakakura exchanged a worried look.

Somewhere deep in the maze of waterways that was Miruri Atoll, they spotted a jetty on the beach of a small lagoon. It was a fairly impressive structure made of reinforced concrete, and it was backed by a small wooden shed and a paved road leading into the jungle. As they brought the boat into shore, they could see a canoe that had split in half and been abandoned on the sand. Stuffing a gun into his belt, Nakakura jumped onto the jetty to catch the bowline that Hayashi threw over. Kiku was packing some rice and vitamin pills he hoped to trade for fuel, while Anemone sprayed herself all over with insect repellent, and together they went ashore.

There was no sign of life in the shed, just a lot of old equipment: water skis, tin drums, scuba tanks, tattered fishing nets, and rope. Everything was rusty or rotting, full of holes or coming to pieces. In one corner of the damp floor there was a nest of crabs. While Kiku stood looking at this mess, he realized that the whole place gave off a familiar odor: the smell of wood and metal half crumbling into dry, cracked earth, with just a hint of mildew growing on shaded concrete.

The asphalt sucked at the soles of their shoes as they set off
down the road. A hack or two at the undergrowth on either side revealed traces of old mango and pineapple groves. Reaching the top of a small hill, they could look out over the whole island, which proved to be an oval perhaps two or three kilometers around. They also discovered a clearing containing a heliport, a gray hangar, a small generator and fuel refinery, a house with a banana-thatch roof and a terrace, and a volleyball court, but no people. Both the generator and the refinery were silent, the only sounds being the screeching of birds in the jungle and the waves breaking on the shore beyond.

“Nobody’s home,” Anemone murmured, but just then Nakakura, who had been checking out the hangar, called them over.

“Come take a look!” he said, pointing through a broken window. Inside they saw two helicopters covered with dust. “No, up there,” said Nakakura, directing their attention to the ceiling where several thousand bats hung sleeping in the gloom. As they stood looking at them, a hinge creaked loudly behind them and they turned with a start, Nakakura slipping the pistol from his belt. The door of the house had swung open and slammed shut and open again in the wind. A black mountain goat appeared, went clattering across the wooden deck and, after bleating several times, jumped down into the garden to crop the grass.

“Scared the shit out of me,” said Nakakura, shoving the gun back in his belt, but just as he did this, Anemone let out a scream. She was staring at a window, and a face, pressed up against the glass, was staring back. And not just staring—the old man in the window was grinning and waving at them.

Before long, they were being served cups of strong coffee next to an enormous tank of Napoleon fish. The rest of the decor consisted of a few pieces of rattan furniture, a shelf lined with
seashells and sharks’ teeth, a stuffed blue marlin, two parrots, and an old phonograph.

“Hot?” the man asked. His guests glanced at one another and shook their heads. A breeze was blowing in from the terrace, and, having escaped the sun, they were in fact feeling cooler. Their host was wearing frayed cut-offs and a white linen shirt. The coffee was not only strong but incredibly sweet. Finally Kiku spoke up.