Grotesque Read online

  The scent of the tangerine suddenly disappeared and was replaced by a horrible odor. The door to the toilet had opened. Everyone immediately turned their heads away and trained their eyes downward. This was because a yakuza type had emerged from the toilet. Most of the people on the train were dressed in soiled Mao suits. But this fellow was wearing a smart-looking gray suit jacket, a red turtleneck sweater, and baggy black trousers. He had a white scarf tied around his neck. His clothes were good quality. But his eyes glinted shiftlessly just like Gen-de’s had. He was clearly a tough customer. When the toilet door opened I could see two other men inside, both dressed just like him, smoking cigarettes.

  “Those bastards have laid claim to the toilet and now no one else can use it,” the man standing alongside me muttered bitterly. He was a head shorter than I.

  “Well, then what are we supposed to use?”

  “The floor.”

  I was shocked. But when I looked down at my feet I saw that the floor was already damp. I thought I’d smelled something foul when we got on the train. Now I knew what it was: human piss.

  “What if you need to take a shit?”

  “Well….” The man laughed, revealing that he only had one tooth in the front of his mouth. “I have a plastic bag with me, so I’m going to use that.”

  But once the bag was full I had no doubt that he’d drop it on the floor of the train. He might just as well take a crap on the floor to start with. “Why don’t you just do it in your hands?” the pimple-faced teenager behind me cut in.

  The people around us laughed, but half of them looked pretty desperate. It was pathetic. No matter how poor my family was, even though we lived in a cave, we never would have considered soiling our home with our own excrement. Human beings just don’t live that way.

  “Are all the cars like this?”

  “They’re all the same. The first thing a person does when he gets on is try to secure the toilet. A seat comes second; he heads right for the toilet. See, if the train gets packed like this, even if the toilet is empty you can’t get to it. Far better to try to occupy the toilet. Sure, it may stink. But if you bring a board with you and place it over the hole, at least you can sit down in there; you can even stretch your legs out and sleep. And you can lock the door, see, and ensure that no one gets in but you and your friends.”

  I craned my neck to look around me in the car. People were packed together, standing in the aisles and even in between the seats, and small children and young women were stretched out in the luggage racks above the seats. The seats accommodated four people, face-to-face, but all I could see of those seated was the black hair on the top of their heads. They were crammed so tightly into their seats that they couldn’t move and had no choice but to do their business right there in front of everyone.

  “It’s not so bad for men, I suppose, but it must be hard on the women.”

  “Well, they can pay those fellows to let them use the toilet.”

  “They have to pay?”

  “Yep, that’s the business they’re in: charging money for the toilet.”

  I looked stealthily at the yakuza. He must have gotten bored inside the toilet and come out to look around. He stared at the group of girls, seeming to size them up. Then he watched the mother nurse her baby. When the group of girls turned away bashfully, the man next set eyes on my sister. I was alarmed and tried to hide her from his line of vision. I began to feel worried by her beauty. The man glared at me. I looked down.

  The man shouted in a loud voice, “The toilet costs twenty yuan to use. Any takers?”

  Twenty yuan would amount to about three hundred yen in Japan. A paltry sum, perhaps. But I made only one yuan a day when I worked at the factory.

  “That’s expensive,” said the girl who had been eating the tangerine, throwing out a challenge.

  “Well, then, I guess you won’t be using the toilet.”

  “If we don’t we’ll die.”

  “Suit yourself. Go ahead and die.”

  The man spit this out and slammed the door shut. Three men were in that tiny toilet. What were they doing? I had no idea. All I knew was that there was far more room in the toilet than standing in the aisle.

  “I wish I were a baby,” my sister said, as she gazed enviously at the infant in its mother’s arms. “I could wear diapers, drink breast milk, and not worry about a thing!” My sister’s face was pale and streaked with dirt. Dark circles had formed under her eyes. That was to be expected. Before we waited hours to board the train we had stood on a cramped and jostling bus for two days. We were totally exhausted. I told my sister to lean on me and try to get some sleep.

  I’m not sure how much time had passed, but over the tops of people’s heads I caught a glimpse of the sun setting outside the window. Everyone in the train was quiet, squished together. We swayed to the rhythm of the train, everyone moving as one. My sister awoke and looked up at me. “How much farther to Chongqing, do you think?”

  I didn’t have a watch, so I had no idea what time it was. The man with no front teeth overheard her question. “We get to Chongqing in about two more hours. And there’ll be people there who’ll want to get on. It’ll be interesting.”

  “At Chongqing will we be able to buy food and water?” I asked.

  When he heard my question the toothless man snickered. “What kind of wishful thinking is that? Do you suppose you can get back on the train if you get off? That’s why everyone brought water and food with them.”

  “Is there anyone who’ll share with us?”

  “I will.” I swung around when I heard someone answer. A man in a tattered and patched Mao suit was waving a grimy-looking bottle filled with water. “One drink for ten yuan.”

  “That’s too much.”

  “Then go without. This is all I’ve got; I’m not giving it away.”

  “Let us each have a drink for ten yuan.” I looked at my sister’s face in surprise. She wore a determined look.

  “You drive a hard bargain. All right then.”

  When he struck the deal a young woman at the other end of the aisle held up a tangerine and shouted, “You want this for ten yuan?”

  My sister’s response was curt. “I’ll let you know after I’ve had a drink of water.” When she had drunk her fill she handed the bottle to me and mumbled, “If you’re smart, you’ll drink as much as you can. We’re paying ten yuan for it, after all.”

  “True.”

  My sister’s expression startled me. I brought the bottle to my lips and drank. The water was warm and tasted rusty. But it was all the water I’d had in over half a day. Once I started drinking, I couldn’t stop. “That’s enough!” the man shouted angrily, but I played the fool. “I’m just taking my drink,” I said. The people around us laughed scornfully.

  “Pay up now!” the man said.

  I pulled the money out of my pocket. I had all the bills rolled up together and bound with a rubber band. The murmur that shot through the crowd around me when they saw the wad of bills was nearly deafening. Of course, I had not wanted to show all my money to strangers, but I had no other way of getting ten yuan out of my pocket.

  My hand trembled so badly I could hardly count the bills. Not just because everyone’s eyes were riveted on me, but because I’d never paid ten yuan for anything back home. I heard my sister swallow. I suppose she too was anxious.

  How absurd to have to lay out so much money just for a drink of water. I was appalled by such meanness. And yet I had to pay. The callousness of those around me was shocking. And yet it was a valuable experience. We were heading for the city, where we were sure to see and hear things we had never before imagined. This was a good introduction. I can still remember how shocked I was when I came to Japan and saw the way people spent money like water, without a care. It made me so angry I wanted to curse them all.

  At any rate, I finally counted out ten one-yuan bills and handed them to someone who gave them to the man who’d sold us the water. When I did, the man grew eve