Grotesque Read online

  It’s probably true that the man had relations with both Yuriko and Kazue. Didn’t he say he bought their services for an incredibly cheap sum? Just two or three thousand yen, I think he said, less than twenty-five dollars. If that’s the case, he must have had something they wanted. I mean, there had to have been some reason for Yuriko and Kazue to do what they did. That’s why I imagine they enjoyed their relationship with him. Why else would they have agreed to sell themselves for such a low price? Wasn’t this the means they had for waging war on the world? This is what I meant earlier in reference to Kazue. But theirs was a method beyond my abilities.

  During the three years I spent with Kazue Sat in high school and the four we had in university, my family was undergoing tremendous changes. A big factor was my mother’s suicide in Switzerland just before the summer vacation of my first year in high school. (I believe I showed you my mother’s last letter, didn’t I? I’ll speak to you more about her in due course as well.)

  Kazue encountered a similar experience. Her father died suddenly while she was in university. By that time she and I weren’t seeing a lot of each other, so I’m not certain of the exact circumstances, but it seems he had a cerebral hemorrhage and collapsed in the bathroom. For this reason, Kazue’s family circumstances and standing at school were not unlike my own.

  I referred to our standing at school just now, and I think it safe to say that she and I were the only ones at our school who had undergone experiences significantly unlike those of anyone else. So it would seem perfectly natural for the two of us to be drawn to each other.

  Kazue and I both passed the entrance exam and entered the Q school system in high school. As I am sure you are aware, Q High School for Young Women is extremely competitive and accepts only those with the highest scores on the board exams. Kazue undoubtedly studied hard for the exams while she was in a municipal junior high school and got in. I don’t know whether it was by fortune or fate, but I made it too. Of course, my motivation for giving everything I had to pass the entrance exam was driven by my desire to get away from Yuriko. It wasn’t that I was particularly fixated on Q High School for Young Women itself. But Kazue was different. Ever since she was in elementary school she had set her sights on Q High School, and as she would tell me later she devoted herself to her studies precisely so she might achieve her goal. Here lies the difference between Kazue and me, and it is a big difference.

  The Q school organization extends from elementary school through university, meaning that those who succeed in entering at the ground level as elementary students can, for all intents and purposes, glide all the way up to university level without the hellish pressure of additional entrance exams. This particular kind of school structure is therefore referred to as an “escalator” institution. The elementary school enrolled both boys and girls and only admitted around 80 children. In middle school, the number of students doubled. In high school, students were divided by sex, and once again the class size doubled. Therefore, among the 160 students attending the young women’s division in any given year, half would be those who had only just entered the program at the high school level, while the other half would have been there longer, either from elementary school or junior high.

  The university, on the other hand, admits students from across Japan, and the number of famous people who claim Q University as their alma mater is impossible to count. Q University is so famous that my grandfather’s elderly friends would all gasp in admiration at the mere mention of the name. That’s because the university doesn’t admit just anybody. And that is why students enrolled in the Q system—who would be able eventually to glide into the prestigious Q University—felt entitled. The sooner students had entered the system, the more profound their sense of elitism.

  It is precisely because of this escalator system that parents with money try so hard to get their children into the school at the elementary level. I’ve heard from others that the intensity with which they approach these initial exams is near hysteria. Of course, I have no child of my own and have no connection to any of this, so I cannot profess to be an authority.

  When I create my imaginary children, do I sometimes have them entering Q Elementary School? Is that your question? Absolutely not. Never. My children merely swim in an imaginary sea. The water is a perfect blue, just as those hypothetical illustrations based on Cambrian fossils. There on the sand of the ocean floor, amid rocky crags, everything engages in a survival of the fittest and all living creatures exist just to procreate. It’s a very simple world.

  When I first started living with my grandfather, I would dream about what my life would be like as a student at the coveted Q High School for Young Women. My imagination ran rampant, one scene unfolding after another. It gave me a great deal of pleasure, as I have already said, to indulge in these fantasies. I would join clubs, make friends, and live an ordinary life like any other ordinary person. But reality tore these dreams to shreds. Basically, cliques were my undoing. You couldn’t make friends with just anyone, you see. Even the club activities were ranked and ordered into hierarchies of their own, very clearly delineated between the coveted and the peripheral. The basis for all the ranking was of course this sense of elitism.

  Reflecting back on those days from my present age and perspective, it’s obvious to me now. Sometimes at night while I’m lying awake in bed, I’ll be reminded of Kazue for some reason and I’ll suddenly be struck with a eureka-like insight, while remembering the things she once did. It may seem a bit of a distraction, but I feel I should tell you more about my experiences in high school.

  Let’s start with the matriculation ceremonies. I can still remember the mute amazement I felt at seeing all the new students standing petrified in the lecture hall where the ceremony was to be held. The high school freshmen were divided into two distinct groups: those who were continuing on from within the Q school system and those who had entered that year. At a glance it was easy to discern which group was which. The length of our school uniform skirts set us apart.

  Those of us who were entering for the first time—each and every one of us—having successfully passed the entrance exams, had skirts that fell just to the center of our knees, in exact accordance with official school regulations. However, the half who had been in the system since elementary or middle school had skirts that rode up high on their thighs. Now, I’m not talking about the kind of skirts that the girls wear today, skirts that are so skimpy they’re hardly there at all. No, these skirts were just the right length to provide a perfect balance with the girls’ high-quality navy-blue knee socks. Their legs were long and slender, their hair the color of chestnuts. Delicate gold pierced earrings glistened in their ears. Their hair accessories, and their bags and scarves, were very tasteful, and they all had expensive brand-name items that I’d never before actually seen up close. Their elegant sophistication overwhelmed the newly arrived students.

  The difference was not something that would softly fade away with the passage of time. There is no other way to explain it but to say that we new girls lacked what the others girls possessed seemingly by birth: beauty and affluence. We new girls were betrayed by our long skirts and our cropped, lusterless, jet-black hair. Many of us wore thick, unflattering glasses. In a word, the incoming students were uncool.

  No matter how a girl might excel in her studies or sports, there was nothing she could do to redeem herself once she was labeled uncool. For a student like myself, the question of being cool or uncool was irrelevant from the beginning. But there were others for whom the term provoked considerable anxiety. I’d say over half the students who entered the program as high school students found themselves teetering dangerously close to the border of being uncool. And so each and every one of them worked as hard as she could to avoid the label and tried to blend in with the continuing students.

  The matriculation ceremony began. We outsiders paid serious attention to all that was said. But in comparison, the students who had come up from the elementary leve