Coin Locker Babies by Ryu Murakami Read Free Book Online Page A

the red-haired woman turned to hush him, Hashi, trembling all over, looked up at the cloudy sky and let out a wail that sent shivers down the spine of everyone within earshot. Startled, the woman clapped her hands three times near Hashi’s head. At this, Hashi opened his eyes, rose from the chair, and began to stagger around the stage. Forcing his way through the front row of spectators, Kiku jumped up and cradled Hashi in his arms as the redhead, the silver suit, and everyone else watched blankly. For some reason, their uncaring eyes made Kiku furious, and in an instant he had left Hashi, decked the emcee with one punch, and was kicking the woman in the stomach. The audience continued to scream until he was subdued by the doddery band. Having watched all this with a mournful expression, Hashi leapt down from the stage and ran through the crowd, which parted before him; only Kazuyo made any move to stop him, but, caught in the crush and unable to make herself heard, she could only watch helplessly as Hashi disappeared down the stairs. Meanwhile, the band held Kiku pinned face down on the stage, arguing about whether they should call the cops. And, above everything, the seal barked cheerfully.

    Hashi had stopped going to school and even refused to speak to anyone, much as he had at the orphanage when he’d retreated into his miniature kingdom. After he fled the department store, he had been missing overnight, and was discovered the next day unconscious and naked from the waist down in a public toilet in the park along the river.
    This time, instead of building toy kingdoms, he took towatching TV. From the time he got up in the morning until the last station signed off at night, he never left the television. If Kuwayama or Kazuyo so much as mentioned turning the set off, he flew into a rage. Kiku was the only one he spoke to, and then only when they were alone.
    “Do you know how nasty I really am?” was the kind of thing he said most often.
    Kuwayama made plans to send Hashi away for help, but Kazuyo blamed herself and spent a lot of time praying at the local shrine. Hashi refused to speak to either of them, making Kiku his only confidant.
    “I’m not really crazy; I’m just trying to figure something out. Do you remember when we used to go to that hospital and they showed us those movies? Waves and gliders and tropical fish and stuff? Well, when I was hypnotized I realized that all that time we were supposed to be watching movies we were actually listening to some sound; I even heard it again while she had me under, real clear. It was beautiful! So beautiful I felt like I wanted to die just listening. And that’s why I’m watching all this TV; I’m trying to find that sound, and TV’s the best chance I’ve got here on this island. Cooking shows are really good: dishes and glasses clinking, eggs hitting a hot frying pan, sounds like that. Then there’s the sound of guns shooting or bombs exploding, airplanes, the wind, accordions, cellos—I know all the instruments by now. The sound a woman’s skirt makes, kisses, high heels on a metal staircase; I sit in front of the TV, shut my eyes, and listen… By the end of it I’ll know all the sounds in the world. But I won’t go back to school until I figure out what it was we heard at the hospital.”
    Kiku listened quietly, but this time he wondered if Hashi wasn’t, in fact, a bit crazy. His face had the same blank expression as when they’d first met at the orphanage—you felt invisible again whenyou talked to him. But as it occurred to Kiku that Hashi would probably end up in a hospital, he remembered the time with the play kingdom and how the awful spinning thing had appeared almost as soon as Hashi left him. And now, again, his head began to ache, as if his eyeballs were drying out, and the space right in front of his nose which he could only see when cross-eyed turned a deep, rich green. The colored patch slowly began to expand until it covered both eyes,