Audition by Ryu Murakami Read Free Book Online Page B

Aoyama’s turned out to be a painter who’d died young, and Yoshikawa’s was a flying squirrel. A number of the women insisted on dancing for them, and one began shedding clothes as she did so. Aoyama wanted to stop her, but Yoshikawa overruled. She ended up completely nude, right there in the drab meeting room, and left saying she felt like a new woman. A girl still in her teens spoke at great length about her tumultuous sexual history. There were several women in their thirties. One had taken an aeroplane all the way from Hokkaido just for this audition, and proudly told them that she was known as the Queen of the Discos in Sapporo. ‘Men have made a fuss over me ever since I was a little girl,’ she said, ‘so it seems only natural to have them flocking around me at discos, but I make a point of never giving my heart – or my body – to anyone. When people ask why that is, I tell them it’s because I’m an actress. Not that I’ve ever done any actual acting per se , but I know in my heart that I was born to be a star.’ One explained that she was eager to start an acting career because her husband had caught her cheating and was threatening divorce. Another, who’d shrugged off her trench coat to sit before them in a string bikini and high heels, said she’d appeared nude in a number of magazines but never got a true sense of fulfilment from that and realised when she heard about the audition that destiny was calling. A few brought portable karaoke sets and sang for them. They saw a nurse, a poet and a vocalist in a band, a woman with a seventy-year-old sugar daddy, a nursery-school teacher, a very tall African-Japanese, a baton-twirler and a rhythmic gymnast.
        And then, at exactly three-fifty p.m., she made her appearance.

4
    ‘Next, please,’ came the voice of the hottest girl in Section Two, and Yamasaki Asami materialised in the doorway.
        Silhouetted against the off-white walls, she walked to the chair, bowed with modest grace and sat down. That was all, but Aoyama had a very distinct sensation that something extraordinary was happening all around him. It was like being the millionth visitor to an amusement park, suddenly bathed in spotlights and a rain of balloons and surrounded with microphones and flashing cameras. As if Luck, normally dispersed in billions of tiny, free-floating, gemlike particles, had suddenly coalesced in a single beatific vision – a vision that changed everything, for ever. He was aware of an indescribable, fizzy sort of feeling in the pit of his stomach, and of the voice of Reason in his own head chanting the refrain: This can’t be right, it doesn’t make sense, things like this aren’t supposed to happen . But the voice grew weaker as the fizziness seeped into his bloodstream and spread through his system.
        She was even more beautiful than her snapshot had led him to believe. And when she smiled as if to herself and shyly looked down at the floor, all his worries seemed to dissolve and leave him afloat in a warm bubble of bliss. He felt like a deaf man whose ears had been healed with exquisite music, and it almost struck him as odd that music didn’t begin playing: in a movie, this was where the poignant love theme would have swelled. He glanced at the hottest young lady in Section Two and wondered how she was managing to maintain her composure. Faced with such beauty, she should have swooned with shame and slumped to the floor.
        Yoshikawa began the questioning.
        ‘You’re, let’s see, Yamasaki Asami-san?’
        ‘Yes. Yamasaki Asami.’
        What a voice, thought Aoyama, and Yoshikawa must have had a similar reaction, judging by the glance he shot him. It was a voice that poured into your ears and oozed down the nerves to the nape of your neck – neither high-pitched nor deep or husky, but round and smooth and crystalline.
        ‘You heard about the audition on the radio?’
        Even Yoshikawa seemed a bit nervous as he