4



Buying New Shoes

*

The Thing That Came Back Home



I walked from the Akasaka subway station down a lively street lined with restaurants and
bars to the place where the office building stood, a short way up a gentle slope. It was an
unremarkable building, neither new nor old, big nor small, elegant nor dilapidated. A travel
agency occupied part of the ground floor, its large window displaying posters of Mykonos
and a San Francisco cable car. Both posters looked faded from long duty in the window.
Three members of the firm were hard at work on the other side of the glass, talking on the
telephone or typing at a computer keyboard. Pretending to be looking at the posters, I killed
time watching the office scene while waiting for the hour to strike four exactly. For some
reason, both Mykonos and San Francisco seemed light-years from where I stood. The more I
looked at this building, the more I realized how ordinary it was, as if it had been built to
match the pencil sketch a small child might do if told to "draw a building," or as if it had been
consciously designed to be inconspicuous in its surroundings. As carefully as I had been
checking the addresses in my search for the place, I came close to passing it by, it was so
plain. The building's unobtrusive main entrance stood near the door to the travel agency.
Skimming the nameplates, I got the impression that most of the offices were occupied by
small-scale businesses-law offices, architects, importers, dentists. Several of the name-plates
were shiny enough for me to be able to see my face in them, but the one for Room 602 had
changed with age to an indistinct color. The woman had obviously had her office here for
some time. "Akasaka Fashion Design," read the inscription. The sheer age of the nameplate
helped to temper my misgivings.
A locked glass door stood between the entryway and the elevator. I rang the bell for 602
and looked around for the closed-circuit TV camera I assumed must be sending my image to a
monitor inside. There was a small, camera-like device in a corner of the entryway ceiling.


Soon the buzzer sounded, unlocking the door, and I went inside.
I took the absolutely unadorned elevator to the sixth floor and, after a few uncertain
moments in the absolutely unadorned corridor, found the door of 602. First checking to be
certain that the sign on the door said "Akasaka Fashion Design," I gave the bell exactly one
short ring.
The door was opened by a slim young man with short hair and extremely regular features.
He was possibly the handsomest man I had ever seen in my life. But even more than his
features, what caught my eye was his clothing. He wore a shirt of almost painful whiteness
and a deep-green necktie with a fine pattern. Not only was the necktie itself stylish, but it had
been tied in a perfect knot, every twist and dip exactly as one might see in a men's fashion
magazine. I could never have tied a tie so well, and I found myself wondering how he did it.
Was it an inborn talent or the fruits of disciplined practice? His pants were dark gray, and he
wore brown tasseled loafers. Everything looked brand-new, as if he had just put it on for the
first time a few minutes before.
He was somewhat shorter than I. The hint of a smile played about his lips, as if he had just
heard a joke and was smiling now in the most natural way. Nor had the joke been a vulgar
one: it was the kind of elegant pleasantry that the minister of foreign affairs might have told
the crown prince at a garden party a generation ago, causing the surrounding listeners to titter
with delight. I began to introduce myself, but he gave his head a slight shake to signal that it
was unnecessary for me to say anything. Holding the door open inward, he ushered me in, and
after a quick glance up and down the hall, he closed the door, saying nothing all the while. He
looked at me with eyes narrowed as if to apologize for being unable to speak because of the
nervous black panther sleeping by his side. Which is not to say that there was a black panther
sleeping by his side: he just looked as if there were.
I was standing now in a reception room with a comfortable-looking leather sofa and chair,
an old-fashioned wooden coatrack, and a floor lamp. There was a single door in the far wall,
which looked as if it must lead to the next room. Beside the door, facing away from the wall,
was a simple oak desk that supported a large computer. The table standing in front of the sofa
might have been just large enough to hold a telephone book. A pleasant pale-green carpet
covered the floor. From hidden speakers, at low volume, flowed the strains of a Haydn
quartet. The walls bore several lovely prints of flowers and birds. One glance told you this
was an immaculate room, with no hint of disorder. Shelves affixed to one wall held fabric
samples and fashion magazines. The office's furnishings were neither lavish nor new, but had
the comforting warmth of the old and familiar.
The young man showed me to the sofa, then went around to the other side of the desk and
sat down facing me. Holding his palms out toward me, he signaled for me to wait awhile.
Instead of saying "Sorry to keep you waiting," he produced a slight smile, and instead of
saying "It will not take long," he held up one finger. He seemed to be able to express himself
without words. I nodded once to signal that I understood. For one to have spoken in his
presence would have seemed inappropriate and vulgar.
As if holding a broken object, he picked up a book lying next to the computer and opened
it to where he had left off. It was a thick black book without a dust jacket, so I could not make
out the title. From the moment he opened it, you could see that the young man's concentration
on his book was total. He seemed to have forgotten that I was there. I would have liked to
read something too, to pass the time, but nothing had been provided for that. I crossed my
legs, settled into the sofa, and listened to Haydn (though if pressed, I could not have sworn it
was Haydn). It was fairly nice music, but the kind that seems to melt into air the moment it
emerges from its source. On the young man's desk, aside from the computer, was an ordinary
black telephone, a pencil tray, and a calendar,
I was wearing virtually the same outfit I had had on the day before- baseball jacket,
hooded sweatshirt, blue jeans, and tennis shoes. I had just grabbed whatever came to hand


before leaving the house. In this immaculate, orderly room, in the presence of this
immaculate, handsome youth, my tennis shoes looked especially dirty and worn out. No, they
were dirty and worn out, the heels practically gone, the color an indeterminate gray, the
uppers full of holes. These shoes had been through a lot, soaking up everything in their path
with fatal certainty. I had worn them every day for the past year, climbing over the back wall
countless times, stepping in dog shit now and then on trips down the alley, climbing down to
the bottom of the well. No wonder they were dirty and worn out. Not since quitting my job
had it occurred to me to think about what shoes I had on. Studying them so closely this way, I
felt with new intensity just how alone I was, just how far the world had left me behind. It was
time for me to buy a new pair of shoes, I told myself. These were just too awful.
Before long, the Haydn came to an end-an abrupt and messy end. After a short pause,
some kind of Bach harpsichord piece started (though I couldn't have sworn this was Bach,
either). I crossed and recrossed my legs. The telephone rang. The young man marked the
place he was reading with a slip of paper, pushed his book aside, and picked up the receiver.
He held it to his ear and gave a slight nod. Focusing on his desktop calendar, he marked it
with a pencil. Then he held the receiver near the surface of the desk and rapped his knuckles
twice against the wood as if knocking on a door. After this, he hung up. The call had lasted
some twenty seconds, during which the young man had spoken not a word. In fact, he had not
made a sound with his voice since letting me into the room. Was he unable to talk? Certainly
he could hear, judging from the way he had answered the phone and listened to what was
being said at the other end.
He sat looking at his phone for a while as if in thought. Then he rose without a sound,
walked around his desk, making straight for where I was sitting, and sat down next to me. He
then placed his hands on his knees in perfect alignment. They were slim, refined hands, as one
might have imagined from his face. His knuckles and finger joints did have a few wrinkles;
there was no such thing as fingers without wrinkles: they needed a few, at least, to move and
bend. But his fingers did not have many wrinkles-no more than the minimum necessary. I
looked at his hands as unobtrusively as I could. This young man must be the woman's son, I
thought. His fingers were shaped like hers. Once that thought entered my mind, I started to
notice other points of resemblance: the small, rather sharp nose, the crystalline clarity of the
eyes. The pleasant smile had begun to play about his lips again, appearing and disappearing
with all the naturalness of a seaside cave at the mercy of the waves. Soon he rose to his feet,
in the same swift manner with which he had sat down beside me, and his lips silently formed
the words "This way, please." Despite the absence of sound, it was clear to me what he
wanted to say. I stood and followed him. He opened the inner door and guided me through it.
Beyond the door was a. small kitchen and washbasin, and beyond that was yet another
room, one much like the reception room in which I had been sitting, but a size smaller. It had
the same kind of well-aged leather sofa and a window of the same shape. The carpet on the
floor was the same color as the other one as well. In the middle of the room was a large
workbench, with scissors, toolboxes, pencils, and design books laid out in an orderly fashion.
There were two tailors' dummies. The window had not merely a blind but two sets of
curtains, cloth and lace, both shut tight. With the ceiling light off, the room was gloomy, as on
the evening of a cloudy day. One bulb of the floor lamp near the sofa had been turned off. A
glass vase holding gladiolus blossoms stood on the coffee table in front of the sofa. The
flowers were fresh, as if cut only moments before, the water in the vase clear. The music was
not audible in this room, nor were there any pictures or clocks on the walls.
The young man gestured silently again, this time for me to sit on the sofa. Once I had
seated myself (on a similarly comfortable couch) in accordance with his instructions, he took
something like a pair of swim goggles from his pants pocket and stretched them out before
my eyes. They were swim goggles, just ordinary goggles made of rubber and plastic, much
the same as the ones I used when swimming in the ward pool. Why he had brought them out


here I had no idea. I couldn't even imagine.
<Don't be afraid,> the young man said to me. Properly speaking, he "said" nothing. He
simply moved his lips that way and moved his fingers ever so slightly. Still, I had an accurate
understanding of what he was saying to me. I nodded.
<Please put these on. Don't take them off yourself. I will take them off. You mustn't
move them, either. Do you understand?>
I nodded again.
<I will not harm you in any way. You will be fine. Don't worry.>
I nodded.
The young man walked behind the sofa and put the goggles over my eyes. He stretched
the rubber strap around to the back of my head and adjusted the eye cups so that the foam
pads properly surrounded my eyes. The one way these goggles were different from the ones I
always used was that I couldn't see anything through them. A thick layer of something had
been painted over the transparent plastic. A complete- and artificial-darkness surrounded me.
I couldn't see a thing. I had no idea where the light of the floor lamp was shining. I had the
illusion that I myself had been painted over with a thick layer of something.
The young man rested his hands lightly on my shoulders as if to encourage me. He had
slim, delicate fingers, but they were in no way fragile. They had the strangely assertive
presence of the fingers of a pianist resting on the keyboard, and coming through them I could
sense a kind of goodwill-or, if not precisely goodwill, something very close to it. <You'll be
fine. Don't worry,> they conveyed to me. I nodded. Then he left the room. In the darkness, I
could hear his footsteps drawing into the distance, and then the sound of a door opening and
closing.



I went on sitting in the same position for some time after the young man left the room.
The darkness in which I sat had something strange about it. In my being unable to see
anything, it was the same as the darkness I had experienced in the well, but otherwise it had a
certain quality that made it entirely different. It had no direction or depth, no weight or tan-
gibility. It was less like darkness and more like nothingness. I had merely been rendered
temporarily blind by artificial means. I felt my muscles stiffening, my mouth and throat going
dry. What was going to happen to me? But then I recalled the touch of the young man's
fingers. Don't worry, they had told me. For no clear reason, I felt that those "words" of his
were something I could believe in.
The room was so utterly still that when I held my breath I was overtaken by a sense that
the world had stopped in its tracks and everything would eventually be swallowed up by
water, sinking to eternal depths. But no, the world was apparently still moving. Before long, a
woman opened the door and stepped quietly into the room.
I knew it was a woman from the delicate fragrance of her perfume. This was not a scent a
man would wear. It was probably expensive perfume. I tried to recall the scent, but I could not
do so with confidence. Suddenly robbed of my sight, I found my sense of smell had also been
thrown off balance. The one thing I could be sure of was that the perfume I was smelling now
was different from that of the well-dressed woman who had directed me to this place. I could
hear the slight sound of the woman's clothes rustling as she crossed the room and gently
lowered herself onto the sofa, to my right. So lightly did she settle into the cushions of the
sofa that it was clear she was a small woman.
Sitting there, the woman stared straight at me. I could feel her eyes focused on my face.
You really can feel someone looking at you, even if you can't see, I realized. The woman,
never moving, went on staring at me for a long time. I sensed her slow, gentle breathing but
could not hear a sound. I remained in the same position, facing straight ahead. The mark on


my cheek felt slightly feverish to me. The color was probably more vivid than usual.
Eventually, the woman reached out and placed her fingertips on my mark, very carefully, as if
inspecting some valuable, fragile thing. Then she began to caress it.
I didn't know how to react to this, or how I was expected to react. I had only the most
distant sense of reality. I felt strangely detached, as if trying to leap from one moving vehicle
to another that was moving at a different speed. I existed in the empty space between the two,
a vacant house. I was now a vacant house, just as the Miyawaki house had once been. This
woman had come into the vacant house and, for some unknown reason, was running her
hands all over the walls and pillars. Whatever her reason might be, vacant house that I was
(and I was that and nothing more), I could do nothing (I needed to do nothing) about it. Once
that thought crossed my mind, I was able to relax somewhat.
The woman said nothing. Aside from the sound of rustling clothes, the room was
enveloped in a deep silence. The woman traced her fingertips over my skin as if trying to read
some minute secret script that had been engraved there ages ago.
Finally, she stopped caressing my mark. She then stood up, came around behind me, and,
instead of her fingertips, used her tongue. Just as May Kasahara had done in the garden last
summer, she licked my mark. The way she did it, however, was far more mature than the way
May Kasahara had done it. Her tongue moved and clung to my flesh with far greater skill.
With varying pressure, changing angles, and different movements, it tasted and sucked and
stimulated my mark. I felt a hot, moist throbbing below the waist. I didn't want to have an
erection. To do so would have been all too meaningless. But I couldn't stop myself.
I struggled to superimpose my own image upon that of a vacant house. I thought of myself
as a pillar, a wall, a ceiling, a floor, a roof, a window, a door, a stone. It seemed the most
reasonable thing to do.
I close my eyes and separate from this flesh of mine, with its filthy tennis shoes, its weird
goggles, its clumsy erection. Separating from the flesh is not so difficult. It can put me far
more at ease, allow me to cast off the discomfort I feel. I am a weed-choked garden, a
flightless stone bird, a dry well. I know that a woman is inside this vacant house that is
myself. I cannot see her, but it doesn't bother me anymore. If she is looking for something
inside here, I might as well give it to her.
The passage of time becomes increasingly unclear. Of all the kinds of time available to me
here, I lose track of which kind I am using. My consciousness goes gradually back into my
flesh, and in turn the woman seems to be leaving. She leaves the room as quietly as she came
in. The rustle of clothing. The shimmering smell of perfume. The sound of a door opening,
then closing. Part of my consciousness is still there as an empty house. At the same time, I am
still here, on this sofa, as me. I think, What should I do now? I can't decide which one is
reality. Little by little, the word "here" seems to split in two inside me. I am here, but I am
also here. Both seem equally real to me. Sitting on the sofa, I steep myself in this strange
separation.



Soon the door opened and someone came into the room. I could tell from the footsteps
that it was the young man. He came around behind me and took off the goggles. The room
was dark, the only light the single bulb of the floor lamp. I rubbed my eyes with my palms,
making them accustomed to the world of reality. The young man was now wearing a suit coat.
Its deep gray, with hints of green, was a perfect match for the color of his tie. With a soft
smile, he took my arm, helped me to stand, and guided me to the back door of the room. He
opened the door to reveal a bathroom on the other side. It had a toilet and, beyond the toilet, a
small shower stall. The toilet lid was down, and he had me sit on top of it while he turned the
shower on. He waited for the hot water to begin flowing, then he gestured for me to take a


shower. He unwrapped a fresh bar of soap and handed the cake to me. Then he went out of the
bathroom and closed the door. Why did I have to take a shower here? I didn't get it.
I finally got it as I was undressing. I had come in my underpants. I stepped into the hot
shower and washed myself with the new green soap. I rinsed away the semen sticking to my
pubic hair. I stepped out of the shower and dried myself with a large towel. Beside the towel I
found a pair of Calvin Klein boxer shorts and a T-shirt, both still in their vinyl wrappers and
both my size. Maybe they had planned for me to come in my pants. I stared at myself in the
mirror for a while, but my head was not working right. I threw my soiled underwear into a
wastebasket and put on the clean, white new underpants, the clean, white new T-shirt. Then I
put on my jeans and slipped my sweatshirt over my head. I put on my socks and my dirty
tennis shoes and finally my baseball jacket. Then I stepped out of the bathroom.
The young man was waiting for me outside and guided me to the original waiting room.
The room looked as it had earlier. On the desk lay the same opened book, next to which
stood the computer. Anonymous classical music flowed from the speakers. The young man
had me sit on the sofa and brought me a glass of chilled mineral water. I drank half the glass.
"I seem to be tired," I said. The voice didn't sound like mine. Nor had I been intending to
say any such thing. The words had come out of nowhere, without reference to my will. The
voice was definitely mine, though.
The young man nodded. He took a white envelope from the inner pocket of his suit coat
and slipped it into the inner pocket of my baseball jacket. Then he nodded once again. I
looked outside. The sky was dark, and the street was aglow with neon signs, the light from
office building windows, streetlamps, and headlights. The thought of staying in this room any
longer became increasingly intolerable. Without a word, I stood up, crossed the room, opened
the door, and went out. The young man watched me from the place where he stood by his
desk, but he remained as silent as ever and made no attempt to stop me from leaving.



The return commute had Akasaka Mitsuke Station churning. In no mood for the bad air of
the subway, I decided to go as far as I could on foot. I walked past the palace for foreign
dignitaries as far as Yotsuya Station. Then I walked along Shinjuku Boulevard and went into
a small place without too many people, to have a glass of draft beer. My first swallow made
me notice how hungry I was, so I ordered a snack. I looked at my watch and realized it was
almost seven o'clock. Come to think of it, though, the time of day was of no concern to me.
At one point, I noticed there was something in the inner pocket of my jacket. I had
forgotten all about the envelope the young man had given me on my way out. It was just an
ordinary white envelope, but holding it, I realized it was much heavier than it looked. More
than just heavy, though, its weight had something strange about it, as though there were
something inside holding its breath. After an indecisive moment, I tore it open-which was
something I would have to do sooner or later. Inside was a neat bundle of ten-thousand-yen
notes. Brand-new ten-thousand-yen notes, without a crease or wrinkle. They didn't look real,
they were so new, though I could find no reason for them not to be new. There were twenty
bills in all. I counted them again to be sure. Yes, no doubt about it: twenty bills. Two hundred
thousand yen.
I returned the money to the envelope and the envelope to my pocket.
Then I picked up the fork from the table and stared at it for no reason. The first thing that
popped into my head was that I would use the money to buy myself a new pair of shoes. That
was the one thing I needed most. I paid my bill and went back out to Shinjuku Boulevard,
where there was a large shoe store. I chose some very ordinary blue sneakers and told the
salesman my size without checking the price. I would wear them home if they fit, I said. The
salesman (who might have been the owner) threaded white laces through the eyelets of both


sneakers and asked, "What shall I do with your old shoes?" I said he could throw them away,
but then I reconsidered and said I would take them home.
He flashed me a nice smile. "An old pair of good shoes can come in handy, even if they're
a little messy," he said, as if to imply that he was used to seeing such dirty shoes all the time.
Then he put the old ones in the box the new ones had come in and put the box in a shopping
bag. Lying in their new box, the old tennis shoes looked like tiny animal corpses. I paid the
bill with one of the crisp new ten-thousand-yen notes from the envelope, and for change
received a few not-so-new thousand-yen notes. Taking the bag with the old shoes along, I got
on the Odakyu train and went home. I hung on to the strap, mingling with homebound
commuters, and thought about the new items I was wearing-my new underpants and T-shirt
and shoes.



Home again, I sat at the kitchen table as usual, drinking a beer and listening to music on
the radio. It then occurred to me that I wanted to talk to someone-about the weather, about
political stupidity; it didn't matter what. I just wanted to talk to somebody, but I couldn't
think of anyone, not one person I could talk to. I didn't even have the cat.



Shaving the next morning, I inspected the mark on my face, as usual. I couldn't see any
change in it. I sat on the veranda and, for the first time in a long time, spent the day just
looking at the garden out back. It was a nice morning, a nice afternoon. The leaves of the trees
fluttered in the early-spring breeze.
I took the envelope containing the nineteen ten-thousand-yen notes out of my jacket
pocket and put it in my desk drawer. It still felt strangely heavy in my hand. Some kind of
meaning seemed to permeate the heaviness, but I could not understand what it was. It
reminded me of something, I suddenly realized. What I had done reminded me of something.
Staring hard at the envelope in the drawer, I tried to remember what it was, but I couldn't do
it.
I closed the drawer, went to the kitchen, made myself some tea, and was standing by the
sink, drinking the tea, when I remembered what it was. What I had done yesterday was
amazingly similar to the work Creta Kano had done as a call girl. You go to a designated
place, sleep with someone you don't know, and get paid. I had not actually slept with the
woman (just come in my pants), but aside from that, it was the same thing. In need of a
certain amount of money, I had offered my flesh to someone to get it. I thought about this as I
drank my tea. A dog barked in the distance. Shortly afterward, I heard a small propeller plane.
But my thoughts would not come together. I went out to the veranda again and looked at the
garden, wrapped in afternoon sunlight. When I tired of doing that, I looked at the palms of my
hands. To think that I should have become a prostitute! Who could have imagined that I
would have sold my body for money? Or that I would have first bought new sneakers with the
money?
I wanted to breathe the outside air, so I decided to go shopping nearby. I walked down the
street, wearing my new sneakers. I felt as if these new shoes had transformed me into a new
being, entirely different from what I had been before. The street scene and the faces of the
people I passed looked somewhat different too. In the neighborhood supermarket, I picked up
vegetables and eggs and milk and fish and coffee beans, paying for them with the bills I had
received as change at the shoe store the night before. I wanted to tell the round-faced, middle-
aged woman at the register that I had made this money the previous day by selling my body. I
had earned two hundred thousand yen. Two hundred thousand yen! I could slave away at the


law office where I used to work, doing overtime every day for a month, and I might come
home with a little over one hundred fifty thousand yen. That's what I wanted to say to her.
But of course I said nothing. I handed over the money and received a paper bag filled with
groceries in return.
One thing was sure: things had started to move. I told myself this as I walked home
clutching my bag of groceries. Now all I had to do was hold on tight to keep from being
knocked off. If I could do that, I would probably end up somewhere-somewhere different
from where I was now, at least.



My premonition was not mistaken. When I got home, the cat came out to greet me. Just as
I opened the front door, he let out a loud meow as if he had been waiting all day and came up
to me, bent-tip tail held high. It was Noboru Wataya, missing now for almost a year. I set the
bag of groceries down and scooped him up in my arms.