Читать книгу Soldier for Christ - John Zeugner - Страница 11

That afternoon Mariko phoned. “I figured out the link between baseball and sumo,” she said without even a mocking “moshi, moshi” opener. “It’s a short timing thing. Compression. Squeezing everything into the shortest possible time, in baseball only a tenth of second—in sumo maybe longer, but maybe it could be argued (that’s a good collection phrase—one giving you time to do some internal translations, isn’t it?), yes, it could be argued that the key balance thrust is only a tenth of a second in sumo too. That’s why we Japanese thrill to both sumo and baseball. Do you agree?”

“At such conferences,” Owen said, “the key question is always—‘would you comment on that?’ You never ask for agreement in Japan.”

“You’ve been reading your guide books again, “Mariko said, after a pause.

“There’s a similarity in body shapes,” Owen said.

“In the guide books?”

“No. Between sumo wrestlers and baseball long ball hitters. Why are you thinking about it?”

“It came up at the American center during the conference. A professor asked why the Japanese liked baseball and sumo, since they were so different. And I’ve been thinking about it ever.”

“I think the expression is ‘ever since’.”

“Ever since? How does that make sense?”

“Since. Not sense. Since,” Owen corrected.

Again a pause. He wondered if she’d hang up, but finally she said, “No jokes. I’ve told you that. Jokes don’t translate.”

“That’s a shame. I wonder why we get along.”

“Do we?”

“I like your company,” Owen answered. “And we share the church.”

“Yes,” she replied hanging back a bit.

“Although I know you’re not a Christian.”

“So desu ne.”

“But you have an interest,” Owen paused, “maybe even beyond learning English, is that it?”

“No interest,” she answered. “I’m not for the three in one, you know. And the guilt bores me.”

“I know that.”

“I wish it bored you.”

“You can teach me how.”

“Now—there’s a good idea. Why don’t we meet for dinner at Gaylords. You like Indian.”

“Done,” Owen answered. “In one hour.”

“I expect you to be free of guilt by the time you get to Sannomiya.”

“Not possible. Too much sin in the world.”

“Ever since,” she answered and hung up.

Over onion bajis and cheese pakoras and before the palak paneer she always ordered, moving the chunks of paneer to the edge of her metal serving dish, and the lamb vindaloo, his standard, she said to him. “Here’s how to think about natural functions.”

“Natural functions?”

“About what we’ll be doing. Here’s what a student told me just a few days ago—he’s very earnest about learning his English, so he could talk to his Canadian lover—a fellow who works in the consulate. ‘I like him so I give him my front, but I don’t love him so I don’t give him my back.’”

“And what did you answer?” Owen asked.

“I couldn’t think of anything to say.”

“And you want my advice?”

“No, I wanted you to know how he thought about such things. I wanted you to see how he looked at sex, the naturalness of it.”

“Front not back. Of course, the naturalness of that. It’s positively ‘off hand’”.

“Off hand?”

“A joke, sorry. Casual. Without emotional investment. Unthinkingness.”

“Yes, all of those things and none of those things too. Just something natural.”

“Yes, natural. In front, natural.”

The raita and nan came late. She used pieces of nan to mop up the remaining spinach.

Owen alternated bites of vindaloo with spoons of the cooling raita. The closing chai tea came with complimentary cognac delivered somewhat unctuously by the owner himself, Ray Bannerejee; Mariko addressed him in Japanese and they seemed to be discussing whether he should move the restaurant out of this mammoth office building—it seemed being the first floor under 34 other floors made the operation vulnerable, or compressible. Besides there was no view, the owner said, smiling. As always, Mariko charged the bill to her business account. “So long as we talk in English, I can get funds for these meals. Or I can be recruiting you to teach in my language lab.”

“Ah yes, the native speaker. The idiot who makes perfect American sounds.”

“Bannerjee-san used to make tapes for me, before he opened this restaurant. And I hear he goes to South Korea to make more tapes, every time he has to leave to get his visa renewed.”

“So the English market has moved to South Korea?”

“Everything’s more prosperous over there.”

“Will the Koreans here be moving back?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” she said, smiling. “Time to go south.”

He smiled acknowledgment, “For my lesson in naturalness?”

“Yes, of course,” she answered.

Going south meant leaving and walking away from the water toward the dismal Etta district full of ramshackle apartment complexes and floppy single houses holding the poorest residents of the city, descendants of meat cutters and tanners, as well as never-assimilated Koreans impressed decades ago into forced labor and left in limbo after the war. On the edge of the district were the Love Hotels they always used, although lately Mariko had favored a mock American deep south mansion called, appropriately enough, “Tara”. Their first venture had been in a placed called “Cinderella’s Pumpkin” painted a lurid orange and with constant strobe lights playing on the front porch littered with giant green carriage wheels.

“Tara” seemed understated beside it. Huge columns ala Louisiana mansion and clapboard lines drawn in the white stucco walls, as if wood had somehow cohered into something more durable. The clerk always wore a Rhett Butler-length suitcoat and sported a charcoal drawn mustache—altogether a slenderer, smaller, would-be Clark Gable. As always Mariko booked the Scarlet O’Hara suite for two hours.

As always the first hour was given over to water libations. There was a mammoth marble round deep tub with the interesting touch of outside wall spigots and plastic stools so that bathers could lather up properly in Japanese fashion before entering the piping hot waters. She undressed Owen, slowly, thoughtfully, carefully folding his clothes in the wire baskets provided above the spigots. As always she encouraged him to create heavy suds over her narrow breasts, even as she lathered his genitals and slowly worked soap into foam around his stiffening penis; just as he seemed unstoppably cresting toward ejaculation, she poured a bucket of severely scorching water over his back.

“Slows down everything,” he said. They squirmed off their stools, slithered on the marble floor toward the deep mammoth , sunken deep tub. For a moment he thought they should mount there on the slick marble, but she was too quick for him and slithered into the piping hot water. She pulled at his shoulder, yanking him into the tub. The enveloping heat indeed wilted desire immediately.

“You must have thrown the switch,” he said, fighting the urge to flee from the searing water.

“You must always turn the lever before you start washing,” she answered, fitting a folded towel on her forehead.

“I think it’s burning my skin,” he sighed.

“It’s not,” she answered smiling. “We need to rest a while, to gather our strength and increase our pleasure.”

“Is that natural?”

“Ever since,” she answered.

“Ever so, is better,” he said.

“Ever so, ever since,” she said slowly turning the phrases over.

“Ever again,” he said.

“Ever green”

“Ever a tease,” he said, putting his own folded towel on his forehead.

“Oh, you have no idea,” she said.

They treaded water facing each other in the deep tub; it seemed to water got hotter still and after ten minutes she admitted as much and reached to throw the lever that turned off the heating element. He felt near sleep, his muscles melting into near jelly. Then she glided over to him and pushed gently on his shoulders, shoving him back toward the edge of the tub. When he got there she shoved harder, directing him to hoist himself up out of the water. “Leave your legs in, and lie back,” she said quietly. He obeyed, but the marble had cooled and was momentarily shudder-inducing.

The effect was dizzying and stiffening. And soon enough she was licking him and slowly enveloping him in her mouth. He rose and swoll toward her patient plying. He half sat and could not resist pushing his hands on the top of her head, guiding her. He pushed down hard as the tide of heat rose further, sending him ascending the escalator of paroxzm; she began gagging, but he could not stop himself from pushing harder on her head. She flailed her arms out from the water, attacking his arms now clamped like iron bars on the top of her head. But he was irresistible until sudden explosive deliverance that turned her gagging into vomiting. In panting relief he eyed the streaming black, white-flecked bile pouring out of her mouth and momentarily thought of Mogen’s reaction to plague gushes out of the little girl’s festering body, but realized with some relief that Mariko’s deposit was only deeply darkened palak paneer spinach. Mariko continued heaving.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, “I couldn’t stop myself.” But she extended her hot palm across his mouth.

“Say nothing,” she said softly. “Say nothing. We’ve only started.”