69 by Ryu Murakami Read Free Book Online Page B

one weekend the previous summer when he and I had taken a train to Hakata to see some films. We’d heard they were having an all-night Polish film festival.
    “Remember the jazz place we went to? ”
    “Yeah.”
    “What was the name of it again? ”
    “Riverside Café, wasn’t it? It was right beside a river.”
    “I’m thinking about getting a job there during summer vacation.”
    “At the Riverside? Oh, yeah? ”
    “Yeah. The owner was a nice guy, remember? I sent him a letter.”
    “Is that right? ”
    We’d set out for Hakata after lunch on a Saturday, skipping afternoon homeroom. First we went to Kyushu University to look at the wreckage of a Phantom jet that had crashed into one of the buildings there, then, after a bowl of noodles, we headed for the movie theater district. Right across the street from the little place showing art films was a marquee in bright primary colors. Adorning the marquee was a huge pair of pink boobs, and written on it were three titles: The Angel's Entrails , The Fetus Poachers , and Inflatable Wives in the Wilderness. I stopped and peered at it. Iwase saw what was coming and tried to drag me toward Pasazerka , Mother Joan of the Angels , and Kanal. “Wait wait wait wait, Iwase, that’s a film by a great director, man—look, Polish flicks are fine but they’re not even showing Ashes and Diamonds , we don’t have enough money for a hotel, we’re going to have to stay in the theater all night, and how are we gonna sleep with Polish partisans and nuns writhing in agony all over the screen?” Iwase, ever serious-minded, insisted we flip a coin, and I lost. I lost, but I told him I wasn’t going to watch a bunch of fucking Nazis anyway and headed for the pink boobs. The next day, in the afternoon, we went to the Riverside Café to listen to some jazz. Iwase asked them to play a slow, moody piece by Coltrane, and I chose a bossa nova by Stan Getz. In between Coltrane and Getz they played something by Carla Bley, requested by a group of girls in their early twenties who worked in the ladies’ clothing section of a local department store. Salesgirls listening to Carla Bley—that was the late sixties for you. One of them was just Iwase’s type. She was like the epitome of all junior-college-graduate department store salesgirls: plain and simple, with long hair, dark skin, and narrow eyes...
    I knew she and Iwase had been writing to each other. The reason he wanted the job, I figured, was so that he could see her. He’d shown me one of her letters once: Dear Hide-bo. How are you? (Iwase’s given name was Hideo.) I’m listening to a session by Booker Little and Eric Dolphy as I write this. You’re probably right about me being a weak person. I know I shouldn’t care what people think , I should trust my own feelings. But when I think about all the people around me I just lose my nerve... When I asked what she was talking about, Iwase played dumb and said he didn’t know, but it was pretty clear to me that she was involved in some sort of forbidden love : a sales manager, married with kids; a yakuza; her stepfather; her pet dog—something along those lines, probably. If there was one area in which Iwase was more grown-up than I was, it was his connection with this chick. Whenever I mentioned her, he’d smile knowingly and mutter, “She’s a real woman.” I was jealous. For all I knew he might cross the line before I did. I remembered her sitting there in her thin dress. It was true, she did have a “real woman” sort of air about her; not like the whores with their cheap perfume who hung out in bars full of foreigners, but something that ordinary young women working in the real world had. Why should Iwase bring up the Riverside Café now, though, as we were walking to the hideout in the rain? “You’re going there so you can see your salesgirl, right?” I said. “How’d you guess?” he said, nodding and giggling—-if you could call that creepy sound a giggle. With