Grotesque Read online

  “Hey, isn’t that your sister?” Johnson asked.

  “Yep. Doesn’t it just overwhelm you with nostalgia?” I answered, biting back my laughter.

  “Well, she’s the one who brought us together—our own little Cupid,” Johnson fired back, in flawless Japanese, letting go with a laugh. We sprawled across the bed in gales of laughter, putting a quick end to our sex.

  “Cupid, huh? I doubt she’d think of it that way.” My ugly older sister with her warped personality! In order to put me back in the mood, Johnson reached over and nuzzled my neck. I tilted my head to the side, accepting his kisses, and gazed at the brown freckles sprinkled across his broad shoulders. His body has grown thick and heavy, and his beautiful hair is now mostly gone. Johnson is already fifty-one.

  When we first met, I was still just a little girl, but even so I knew immediately that this man wanted me. Johnson couldn’t speak much Japanese at the time, and I didn’t know any English. But we still managed to understand implicitly what it was the other wanted to say.

  Hurry and grow up! That’s what he was thinking.

  I will; wait for me.

  Each time my older sister tormented me I fled to the Johnsons’ cabin. Regardless of whether or not Johnson was in the middle of an important business call or entertaining guests, the minute he saw me his face would light up with pleasure. Despite herself, therefore, my sister deserves a good deal of thanks for sending me into Johnson’s arms with her bullying. The biggest obstacle I had to confront was Masami’s kindnesses. She was Johnson’s wife and a former Air France flight attendant. Johnson was five years younger than Masami and was her absolute obsession. She was captivated by his financial stability and his social standing and scared to death of being dumped by him. So if Johnson was sweet on me, Masami had to do her best to act the same. She was constantly plying me with candy and stuffed animals. What I really wanted was the Revlon nail polish she had lining her dressing table. But at least while she was around I had to act like a little girl. I understood that this was for the best.

  I was ecstatic, therefore, when my father said I could stay at the Johnsons’ the day after my sister and I had our big fight. Johnson and I got a bit carried away and did something extremely risky. We slipped sleeping medicine into Masami’s drink. Once she started snoring, we spent the rest of the night cuddling in the bed right there beside her. At other times, when Masami was in the kitchen grilling meat or something with her back turned to us, I would sit in the living room watching TV while Johnson fondled me. I’d have my jeans on the whole time, but he’d rub his hands over me down there. And he’d put my hands around his thing, once it was hard. That was the first time I’d ever touched a man there. I was convinced that Johnson would be my first lover.

  From the very start I believed that I would never have a Japanese boy for a lover. In the first place, they never came anywhere near me, acting like they were terrified of me because I was half and somehow beyond their reach. But as a result, groups of them would gang up on me and play all kinds of nasty pranks. Encountering a bunch of high school boys on the train was always the worst. They’d paw at me so violently that they’d come close to yanking my hair, and I had no choice but to put up with it. One time a group of boys surrounded me and tore off my skirt. My lessons came at a very early age. I learned that in order to survive there was only one way I could fight a man.

  “Well, I’d better be on my way, or I’m going to be late for class.”

  Johnson made a bitter face and pulled himself up, folding his enormous body into two. He was so large that whenever he lay on my narrow bed half his body jutted over the side as if it were about to slide off. Johnson was an English teacher. He taught in a classroom in front of a station on the daky Line. It took just over an hour from here on the express train. He said about twelve women squeezed into the classroom, all local housewives.

  “A fifty-one-year-old English conversation teacher is not very popular, you know. They all want some cute young fella. Why is it that the only ones in Japan who want to study English are young women? If I want to teach I’ve gotta go all the way to a little country town like that. Otherwise I won’t have any students.”

  When Masami filed for divorce, Johnson lost his dignity, his good name, his money, and everything else. He was dismissed from his job as a foreign securities trader. The divorce settlement he had to pay was so exorbitant he might as well have had his skin ripped right off. His relatives, members of some illustrious family from the northeastern part of the United States, turned their back on him and absolutely forbade him ever to see me again. Masami, of course, had aired all our dirty laundry in court, telling the world about Johnson’s relationship with me. “Even worse than a traitor, my husband’s a criminal. He took advantage of the fifteen-year-old girl who had been placed in his care. Those two sneaked around behind my back and did their business in my very own house. You ask how it is I didn’t realize what was happening, since it took place over such a long period of time? I cared for that child! I was so fond of her. I would never in a million years have imagined she could do something like that. I was betrayed not only by my husband but by that girl as well. Can you possibly understand how I feel now?”

  Afterward Masami went to great lengths describing exactly how she had discovered what we were up to. She spared no detail in divulging all our little secrets. Masami was so thorough that before long even the judge and the lawyers were blushing in embarrassment.

  I was still thinking about the past when Johnson, who had finished dressing, gave me a kiss on the cheek. “See you later, my darling,” he said, as he always did. “Bye, honey.” Our parting words—ever the same—were half in jest.

  I was still going in to work at the time. While I stood in the shower, washing away Johnson’s sweat and other bodily fluids, I thought back on the strange fate that had befallen the two of us. No matter how I had wished otherwise, Johnson had not been my first man. The blood that courses through my veins is far more given to lasciviousness than what someone might consider normal. My first man was my father’s younger brother, Karl.

  • 2 •

  It is quite clear to me now. When I was a girl I was abundantly endowed with that certain something that attracts older men. I had the power to arouse a man’s so-called Lolita complex. As fate would have it, though, the older I’ve become the harder it is to retain this charm. It didn’t abandon me all at once. I was still able to turn it on to a certain degree while in my twenties. And because I was born with a beauty far surpassing that of the ordinary woman, I’m still attractive now that I’m thirty-six. But now I work as a hostess at cheap clubs and occasionally I’ll work as a prostitute. I suppose, in the true sense of the word, I’ve grown ugly.

  My lascivious blood leaves me no choice but to lust for men. No matter how common I become, how ugly, how old, as long as there is life in my body I will go on wanting men. That’s just my fate. Even if men are no longer amazed when they see me, even if they no longer desire me, even if they belittle me, I have to sleep with them. No, I want to sleep with them. It’s the retribution for a divinity that no one can sustain forever. I suppose you could say my “power” was little more than sin.

  My uncle Karl came to meet us at the Bern airport with his son, Henri. It was early March, and the air was still crisp with frost. Karl wore a black coat and Henri a yellow down jacket. Wispy-soft whiskers had begun to grow around his lips. Karl looked nothing like my skinny golden-haired father. He was dark and solid. If anything, with his upturned almond-shaped eyes and his black hair, he had an Asian look about him. Karl wrapped Father in a hug, happy to see him again, and then he shook my mother’s hand.

  “Welcome! Welcome home. My wife wants you to come over to our house right away.”

  Mother nodded slightly, withdrawing her hand from Karl’s grasp as soon as she could. Unable to disguise his embarrassment, Karl turned his gaze on me and then backed away. In that instant I knew. Karl was just like Johnson.

  W