Piercing by Ryu Murakami Read Free Book Online Page A

vacuum cleaner or the handle of a kitchen knife, or strangled them or poured boiling water on them, they couldn’t escape her; they couldn’t even truly despise her. Children would struggle desperately to feel love for their parents. Rather than hate a parent, in fact, they’d choose to hate themselves. Love and violence became so intertwined for them that when they grew up and got into relationships, only hysteria could set their hearts at ease. Kindness, gentleness - anything along those lines just caused tension, since there was no telling when it would turn to overt hostility. Better to cut right to the chase by constantly eliciting disgust and anger. The asshole with the bow-tie had referred to victims of that sort of upbringing as perverts and wrote them off as pathological.
    Focusing alternately on his own reflection in the bedewed window and the nightscape of Tokyo at his feet, Kawashima began to think of himself as a representative. A representative of all the children who’d become insignificant dots in that dark diorama; a martyr armed with only an ice pick, facing down the enemy hordes. Flushed with a sense of omnipotence, he summoned up the faces of the children in the Home one by one and told them: Just wait and see . His lips grazed the window-pane, and several drops of water ran down the glass like little bugs scattering. I’ll kill them all for you , Kawashima muttered again and again.

6
    ‘YOU REMIND ME OF somebody,’ the masseuse said. ‘I can’t remember the name, but some actor. Do you know who I mean?’
    She was a big-boned woman who talked a lot. She looked so little like the woman he’d stabbed ten years ago that Kawashima couldn’t suppress a wry smile when he first saw her. She wore slacks of a thin, glittery material, a gaudy sweater, and a silver fox half-coat. Kawashima had, as a matter of fact, been told that he looked like certain actors or singers before. But he was sure his resemblance to any celebrity was too tenuous to be fatal, especially if he changed his hairstyle and wore glasses. He offered the woman something to drink. She asked for a glass of beer, and he got one for her and another for himself. Sipping at his beer, Kawashima asked her if it wasn’t dangerous, going to the hotel rooms of men she’d never met.
    ‘Usually you can tell if a guy’s OK just by looking in his eyes, so I haven’t had any real problems personally, but some of the girls have had bad experiences. I don’t mean anything really scary, but, like, letting guys stick their dirty fingers in there to make a little extra money and ending up with an infection or whatever. That’s the sort of thing you hear about, anyway.’
    Kawashima stripped, dimmed the lights, and lay face-down on top of the bedspread. The woman sat on the side of the bed and lightly ran her fingernails over his back and buttocks and hamstrings, tracing leisurely circles on the surface of his skin. He felt like a patient being pampered by a nurse. As she helped ease him over on to his back, the woman was telling him about the man she lived with, explaining that he was the one who’d bought her the fur half-coat. She placed a box of tissues next to her on the bed and rubbed oil into her left palm, then began stroking his already erect penis. He lifted his head from the pillow and asked if she wasn’t going to undress as well. Without pausing the motion of her hand, she told him it would cost an extra ten thousand. ‘I’ll pay it,’ he said, and she wiped her hand with a tissue, reminded him that he mustn’t touch her, and wriggled out of her clothing.
    Wanting to get a better look at her soft belly and the marks left by the elastic of her pantyhose, he switched on the bedside lamp. The woman made no attempt to conceal her body. It was a body that stirred nostalgic feelings in him: skin your fingers could sink into; breasts with visible veins and dark, downcast nipples; arms and waist and thighs that jiggled with the slightest