Piercing

Piercing Read Free Page B

Book: Piercing Read Free
Author: Ryu Murakami
Tags: Fiction, General
Ads: Link
his system, but by the time the ice pick reappeared later in the film he was thoroughly enjoying the story.
    In the next building past the video shop was a bookstore. Something moved in the gap between the two buildings, and he stopped to see what it was. The gap, just wide enough for a grown man to walk through, dead-ended at another building. It was very dark in there, but he was sure he’d seen two or three small figures moving. Small enough that they had to be children, no more than nine or ten years old. They weren’t moving now, probably because Kawashima had stopped and was looking their way, but he wasn’t about to call out to them or step over and peer into the gap. He knew that even a ten-year-old child could be dangerous. Just before walking on, he spotted a little red point of light. It might have been a burning cigarette, except for the fact that he neither saw nor smelled smoke. The eye of a small animal, maybe, reflecting the streetlight. Between the two buildings, he remembered, were garbage cans and waste water puddled around a drain. The kids were probably killing rats for kicks in that narrow darkness.
    Back in the Home for at-risk children, Kawashima had had a friend his age named Taku-chan. At some point the Home acquired a pair of pet rabbits, and one of their offspring was placed in Taku-chan’s care. Taku-chan loved his little pet more than anything, and even insisted on sleeping with it in his arms. But one day, right before Kawashima’s eyes and for no apparent reason, he grabbed the animal by its still-undeveloped ears, stood up, and slammed it down against the concrete floor. It made a sound like delicate porcelain breaking, but the bunny wasn’t dead and tried to crawl away with spastic movements, like a wind-up toy winding down. Taku-chan, wearing the same dull expression he’d often worn when stroking his pet’s soft fur, stomped several times on its head with the heel of his shoe. Then, ignoring its crushed, lifeless body, he went off to get another one to take its place.
    Kawashima and Taku-chan sometimes drew pictures together, and Taku-chan’s were always the same. He’d smear the whole sheet of paper with black or dark blue or purple, and in the middle he’d paint a naked little boy whose body was pierced from head to foot with arrows - dozens of them protruding in every direction, like quills. ‘Who’s that?’ a counsellor once asked him, and Taku-chan said, ‘Me.’ The counsellor said, ‘Well, if it wasn’t you, Taku-chan, who would it be?’ ‘If it’s not me,’ said Taku-chan, ‘I don’t care who it is.’
    Kawashima decided he might as well head for the all-night convenience store down the street. He was walking slowly to calm himself, but his heartbeat still wasn’t back to normal. The cold seeped up through the soles of his shoes, and each exhalation was a small white cloud, a visible reminder of how fast and irregular his breathing was. Across the street was an apartment building of reinforced concrete, and at the window of a corner room on the third floor a woman with short hair was smoking a cigarette. She used her sleeve to wipe a circular clear spot on the misty glass and looked down at the street. That building, Kawashima recalled, consisted entirely of studio apartments for single women. The light was behind her and he couldn’t see her face, but judging by her hair-style and the way she smoked the cigarette he could tell she was no longer young. Late thirties, maybe.
    The image of a hand with dry skin and wrinkles and prominent veins formed in his mind. A woman in her late thirties, holding a thin black menthol cigarette in a hand like an autumn leaf.
    He’d met her when he was seventeen and lived with her for nearly two years. She was nineteen years older, and they were often mistaken for mother and son. Whenever this happened, the woman would force a smile and maintain a veneer of cool indifference; but afterwards, when she and Kawashima were alone,

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