Cult X

  She smiled and grabbed both of Narazaki’s arms. She pressed her chest against him. Narazaki felt the softness of her body. He tried not to move his hands, but it was hard to resist. She was soft and warm. The scent of her perfume sank into his body.

  “. . . Music. Music.”

  “Music?”

  “Yes, music.”

  Words bubbled up in his mind and spread like molten lead. The woman wrapped her arms around Narazaki’s neck. He hugged her.

  “Music—it would block their voices. Angry voices.” The words flowed from his mouth. “My parents—always yelling . . . Anger is scary for a little kid, isn’t it? It’s—it’s not a big deal. I don’t have any special tragedy worth talking about . . . It’s just . . . I was so weak.”

  The woman ran her lips along his ear.

  “When I could hear them fighting in the living room, I put on music. Japanese music. Foreign music. Any kind of music . . . Music blocks fighting voices. It replaced them with happy sounds. Sometimes I’d also think about passages I like from books. I like books. Then I’d be okay.”

  Why was he saying this? His body grew weak.

  She nodded, as if trying to encourage him.

  “I was weak. I couldn’t really accept my parents’ fighting. I was so weak, I needed music and novels to save me. Children are all weak. And when you’re weak, you’re forced to recognize your weakness. Those angry voices make you uneasy inside. When you’re exposed to that every day, even little things scare you. It becomes a conditioned reflex. When you hear yelling, you can’t help but grow uneasy. I was relieved when my parents got divorced. I didn’t have to hear them shouting. I knew that my existence was a burden for them. My first memory is of trying to walk. I reached out to my mother but she didn’t take my hand. Our eyes met. I could see in her eyes that I was a bother. When I heard them yelling, I’d picture those eyes, and I kept thinking they were telling me to disappear. I didn’t care about my parents’ love. If only their shouting voices would go away. At some point, I grew obsessed with rationality. I used logic to protect myself, like a suit of armor. It was like seeing the world through a semitransparent film. I reasoned that there was nothing I could do. Because we’re all just human, there was no point in having high hopes for those around me. I just kept trying to not make anyone mad. I wasn’t ambitious. I went to college out in the boonies and then got a job. It was the middle of the hiring freeze. There were no good companies taking on new employees. I did stupid work with absolutely stupid people. Even that I did because it seemed like the logical choice. I thought there was no helping it. Humans made our society, so there was no way society could be good. My boss kept yelling at me. I tried not to get him mad, but it didn’t work. When my boss yelled, I played music in my mind—Bill Evans’s “Waltz for Debby.” And I also thought about Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. That beautiful last scene with Prince Myshkin. I was okay as long as I did that. I did so much overtime. Lots of my coworkers developed neuroses and stopped coming to work. Everyone around me was useless, and since they were useless they wound up at a company like that one. And since my boss was just a useless idiot who took his own frustrations out on his subordinates, there was no reason to be bothered by his yelling. I played music in my head. But one day the music stopped. I thought it was strange. Prince Myshkin vanished. I wondered what had happened, and suddenly my boss’s lips—his lips suddenly looked disgusting to me. Yes, even now I remember it clearly. It’s his lips, I thought. His teeth. They were disgusting. He’s talking, he’s talking, I thought. He’s so disgusting, he should just die. He’s so disgusting, he should just die. And I—I shoved his face as hard as I could with the palm of my hand. And he fell over, and hit his desk hard. There was this loud noise. Do you think I felt better? If I’d felt better, maybe things would have been different. But when I came back to my senses, after I had shoved his face, I worried about what I’d done. No, actually, right when I shoved him, I had already come to my senses. I thought what I’d done was mean. How awful. What should I do, I thought. I was right back in my everyday life. Shouldn’t I have stopped myself? Why had I done it? No, why had my brain done it? And why did my brain come back to its senses right then? It would be so much simpler if I had just gone crazy.”

  The woman cradled Narazaki’s head against her chest. Narazaki was short of breath, and realized he was about to fall asleep. But he wouldn’t sleep. He had no sense of reason, and there was no music.

  “Why did you come here?”

  “What?”

  “Why did you come here?”

  “I came for Tachibana.”

  No. That’s not it. Narazaki caressed the woman’s breasts with his fingers. The bath towel had fallen, and her breasts were right before his eyes. Narazaki buried his face in her chest. He put her nipple in his mouth and sucked. He sucked loudly. He heard himself lick that nipple. She allowed it.

  “I hate myself. I don’t matter. I hate myself and my life.”

  “Yes,” she answered. She was panting, exhaling heavily, but she spoke in a whisper.

  Narazaki couldn’t take it anymore. “I came here to reject my life—by joining a group everyone thinks is weird. I came here to reject my life, and everyone who talks so high and mighty about everything . . .”

  The woman gestured for Narazaki to come to the bed. She kissed him. Their tongues touched. Narazaki took her tongue into his mouth greedily. He took off his clothes. He felt her suppleness and warmth with his whole body. She was already quite wet.

  “Ah . . . Ah!” She closed her eyes and moved her hips. She took Narazaki’s finger into her body and shivered. He could feel the insides of her body reacting violently. “Your finger . . . How embarrassing! With just your finger.” She moved her hips as if she were convulsing, stroking Narazaki’s penis and trying to draw him into her body.

  “Condom . . .”

  “Don’t worry, no one here has any sexually transmitted diseases . . . You remember those tests you just did? You passed.”

  Narazaki’s penis entered her. It was enveloped in softness. It was as if it were being sucked into her. Narazaki thrust violently. She had become wet again.

  “I’m on the pill—you can come in me as much as you want. Ah, ah! Use me as much as you want.”

  She wrapped her long legs around Narazaki’s hips. He couldn’t separate his body from hers. He had no desire to. His chest and belly were covered in sweat. She looked at Narazaki with shy eyes, and exhaled into his ear. She clung to every part of his body. They couldn’t even change positions. She kissed him, leaving his lips wet.

  “I remember,” Narazaki said, breathing heavily. “You look like the first girl I loved . . . You’re not her, but you look kind of the same . . . That first moment I wanted someone . . .”

  Was she still smiling? Narazaki couldn’t make himself look.

  10

  Narazaki woke up bathed in dim red light. He was in the same room.

  He sensed someone else in the room, and saw the back of a woman in the darkness. He didn’t remember falling asleep. Had he fallen asleep while they were having sex? Had they just kept going until they’d wound up like this?

  Narazaki felt uneasy without her right beside him. I didn’t do anything rude to her yesterday, did I? Did I behave properly? These things started to bother him. This was a constant habit of his. “Hey,” Narazaki called out. The woman turned around, and he let out a surprised, “What?”

  “The woman you were with yesterday has already left. Today I’ll be here for you.”

  She smiled. She was wearing nothing but a bath towel. Today I’ll be here? What does she mean? What is this place?

  “I thought I’d make breakfast,” she said. She’s beautiful. I wanted that girl so badly yesterday. But I’m already thinking how beautiful this new girl is. Narazaki wanted to laugh out of hopelessness. I’m the worst. But this is me. The woman opened the front of her
towel. Narazaki was breathless.

  “Look. You’re already so hard.”

  The woman caressed Narazaki’s penis. Narazaki kissed her. He buried his face in her chest. He sucked on her nipples. Just like he had yesterday.

  “Mm . . . You’re like a baby.”

  Narazaki began to move his tongue. He touched the nipple he wasn’t sucking with his fingertips.

  “Mm . . . Babies don’t do that.”

  Narazaki ran his tongue over the woman’s sweaty body. She giggled invitingly. I’m becoming a pervert, he thought. But—is that wrong? What’s wrong with what I’m doing?

  Narazaki had just woken up when the door opened and a man with long hair entered. Where had that last woman gone? Even though a man had just walked in, Narazaki didn’t feel embarrassed. Was it because his lower half was covered with a blanket? No, that wasn’t it. It was because the man was smiling. And his smile showed he had no desire to punish Narazaki. No. More than anything, his smile showed that they were the same.

  “You are going to meet the leader,” the long-haired man said quietly.

  The leader. I wonder if that’s Sawatari? The man who scammed Shotaro Matsuo.

  “Please get dressed. Your clothes have been cleaned. I’ll wait outside.”

  He had been wearing this black tracksuit for a long time. He should have been used to seeing his own clothes, but for some reason they looked like someone else’s abandoned shell. How long have I been here? Women didn’t come every day. They came for about four days in a row, then no one came for two, and then they’d start coming again for another four days. Was that about right? It was slightly off from a weekly cycle. I’ve really lost track of myself, Narazaki thought. But could I be satisfied just losing myself in women? After one night’s sleep, part of me already wants a woman again. It’s like an addiction, a bad habit.

  Have I already been brainwashed? Narazaki wasn’t sure. But he couldn’t imagine that all the sex was just some sort of free service. Is this normal here? Maybe this is just the way things are here?

  Narazaki got dressed and opened the door. The long-haired man was waiting outside. Narazaki followed him down the hallway. It was quiet. It was like the building was alive, but the people inside it simply sat silently.

  The long-haired man opened a door. There were stairs on the other side. It seemed they wouldn’t take the elevator. His shoes made a hard clicking noise.

  The man turned around. “I can’t go past this point. But you will meet the leader.”

  It was too dim for Narazaki to see the expression on the man’s face. Narazaki walked past him and opened the door in front of him. A man sat in the dark. So this is the leader. Narazaki couldn’t make out his face, but he was certain. This man was different from other people. He was older, but his facial features were sharp. How old is he? This is Sawatari. There’s no mistaking it.

  “To reject life,” the man whispered suddenly.

  Narazaki stared at him. “What?”

  “Isn’t that what you said? When you first got here?”

  Should I nod? I’m not sure.

  “You are great. That’s all we need.”

  Narazaki thought the man was smiling. Why? His eyes wouldn’t quite adjust to the dim light. His heart was racing.

  “Why me?” Narazaki finally managed to ask. His voice was hoarse.

  “Why? What do you mean?”

  “I’m not good at anything.”

  The room was too quiet.

  “Good? You think there are good and bad humans? You’re still worried about things like that?”

  The man leaned forward low in his chair, turning his face to look up at Narazaki. He was expressionless. What is this man? Narazaki’s throat went dry.

  “What is this place?”

  “Does it bother you?” The man leaned back again deep into his chair. “That’s strange. Most people live without knowing what the world they live in is, or what their fate has in store for them.”

  “That’s true.” Why am I agreeing? I don’t mean to say I’m satisfied not knowing anything about this place. Or maybe I do? Is there any reason for me to learn more?

  “Will you choose to go on suffocating in this country of asphalt and exhaust fumes, worrying about what other people think? Or will you join us?”

  Narazaki couldn’t take his eyes off the man.

  “It’s not up to you to choose. You are my disciple. I need you.”

  He’s trying to act like a father. In that room I was just in, they sent those women to try to act like mothers. They are infiltrating the empty spaces in people’s lives. That’s how they do it, Narazaki thought. But he felt there was something deeper to this than what one could find in a manual on brainwashing. The world is mysterious. And this cult is no different. Narazaki realized he was kneeling. When did I do that?

  “People pray,” the man said. “In the West they lock their fingers, and in the East they put together the flat palms of their hands. This difference represents the difference in their feelings toward god. To lock your fingers represents the strength of your plea to a god who controls your fate. In the East we are more reserved. It’s as if we’re saying, ‘If it’s possible, I’d like you to consider me as well.’ Now your hands are on your lap. That’s good. Go back to Matsuo.”

  “What?”

  “Infiltrate Matsuo’s group. I will send you orders later.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” Narazaki thought he sensed some emotion in the man’s empty face, but he wasn’t sure what it was. “That’s how life is. No one can know why they are doing what they do. But there is one difference between me and the rest of the world. I need you.”

  There’s no way I can agree to this. But Narazaki got up. He was already convincing himself to do as he was told.

  “We will call you back from time to time,” the man said. Like a father teaching his son a warm life lesson. The women rose up in the back of Narazaki’s mind. “A little decadence is good for you.”

  11

  Narazaki looked again at the screen of his cell phone, which had been confiscated and then returned to him. More than a month had passed. He’d thought it had been about three weeks. His sense of time was off.

  He left the cult in that same station wagon, its windows sealed off with sheets. That way he couldn’t tell where they were.

  The world inside the cult had seemed like fiction. Narazaki had focused too hard there, and his enervation seemed to warp space. Maybe life in most cults felt like that. Narazaki recalled the crazy terror attack from when he was in high school, when they’d released sarin gas in several subway cars at the same time. The terrorists had been cult members. That day everyone’s lives had felt like fiction—everyday reality was powerless in the face of that sort of dramatic plot twist. But everyday reality is vast and subdued. Eventually, it dismantles the drama, sentences to death those who enacted it, and returns everything to normal. The dead are forgotten, and the living begin to prepare again for the next work of fiction to appear.

  Narazaki entered through the open gate. Was it because Sawatari had told him to? Even he wasn’t sure. Narazaki could think of nothing except meeting Matsuo. The truth was he wanted to return to that dim compound—to stay in that tight space, inside those women. He heard a voice say: pitiful. It might have been his loneliness speaking to him.

  He could see Mineno from across the large garden. She noticed him, too. She was wearing a long beige coat. It’s good that I ran into her first, Narazaki thought. But he could see the unease on her face.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. “You’ve lost a lot of weight.”

  Narazaki had a hard time speaking. Looking at Mineno, he thought how beautiful she was. As she approached him, he imagined having sex with her. He didn’t have the strength to smile. He was useless.

  “I had the flu.”

&nbs
p; “For a whole month?”

  “No, but it took forever to get my strength back. I’m finally feeling better,” Narazaki said. Mineno did not seem to feel sorry for him. Maybe they knew already. Or maybe they’d thought from the beginning that he was from the cult.

  “Matsuo-san is here. When we told him about you, he said he wanted to meet you. Come this way.”

  He could sense reluctance in her movement. Maybe she could smell all those disgusting women on his body.

  He walked down the hallway of the mansion and stopped in front of the sliding fusuma doors. He didn’t see Yoshida. Mineno opened the door.

  “Matsuo-san, this is Narazaki-san.”

  There was an old man sitting on a cushion. He looked smaller than he did on the DVDs. He was very skinny. His left arm hung limp. From the videos, Narazaki had thought Matsuo was in his seventies, but now he realized he was much older. He was wearing a black sweater and green pants, sitting with his legs crossed. His eyes and ears were huge. He looked at Narazaki.

  “What did you think of my DVDs?”

  Do his eyes look big because he’s so skinny? Narazaki wondered. His pure white hair wasn’t long, but it was so thick it seemed to be overflowing. His chin was narrow, his nose finely shaped. Though it was covered in wrinkles, his face was well put together. He was clean-shaven.

  “Oh, they were wonderful,” Narazaki managed to say.

  “What did you watch? Did you see ‘The Last Cholesterol’?” The old man’s voice was thin, but it carried.

  “No, not yet.”

  “Ah, that’s too bad.”

  Matsuo’s face went blank, like he had suddenly lost all interest. He grabbed a wood-patterned backscratcher with his right hand and scratched around his feet. His back wasn’t particularly hunched.

  “Mine-chan,” he called out suddenly. “Let me touch your boobs.”

  Narazaki looked at the old man, shocked. What was he saying?

  “No,” Mineno said calmly.

  “In exchange, I’ll let you touch my dick.”