Green IslandShnade Gets Drunk with a Serial Killer and Candy Arrives in Bangkok
July 3rd 2010 06:01
Nobuyoshi Saiko was a superman, an Übermensch, showing the sheep-like masses the brilliance that a single individual could achieve. He was one of the few that could mold disparate experiences into one unified moment of perfection – an embodied vision that was pure, hard, translucent perfection. For a moment as he stood over his victim, soaked in the delicious odour of death, he would feel like he had elevated the spirit of mankind and that the symbolic value of his homicide had for that one diamond second brought unalloyed purity to a world otherwise sadly lacking in anything wholly without blemish. The thrill, the rush of his own genius was often too much for Nobu. It literally took his breath away. It was always the case that as the heady rush of creation subsided, he would need to sex the dead body. He didn’t know why but after the spirit had soared to the very heights, to the very limits, the animal rose to take its lowly deserts. The expense of spirit in a waste of shame is lust in action. It was as if the animal sought to emulate the achievements of the spirit, but could find only crude expression in the two-backed beast. After satiation his genius would work at disposing of his seamen stained work of art. This was a puzzle that Nobu enjoyed too. A lesser pleasure, but it further fueled his pride. His meticulous brain would solve the problem of how to erase the forensic evidence. His art was like a crystal snow flake that shone briefly and brilliantly in the pellucid moon light before melting into nothingness. How useless the Japanese police were. How full of deference the Japanese were. Money really did make you a god in Japan and Nobu had masses of the crude stuff called cash. Not only that but he also had the blood of an old family. Nobu had wealth and a name. He was untouchable.
Nobu took an inordinate amount of pride in being a serial killer. Every time he read about his exploits in the newspapers he glowed with pride. If he was in public then he had to simulate disinterest to avoid arousing the suspicion of any casual observers. ‘These fools,’ he thought ‘if only they knew who I was; then they would respect me.’ The only thing that irritated him was that the journalists writing for the papers and working for the TV channels kept on calling him a rapist. That was a low word. It was so much more than sex that he was doing. Couldn’t they see that he was creating a body of work, an artistic creation in a grand tradition?
Tsutomo Miyazaki
Most people wrongly assumed that serial killers were sick and deranged and very rare. How wrong they were. Every country has its Jack the Ripper. Any fool knew the names Charles Manson and Ted Bundy, but did they know about Václav Mrázek, Dagmar Johanne Amalie Overbye, Matti Haapoja, Henri Désiré Landru, or Marcel André Henri Félix Petiot? And what about Japan’s contributions to this list of murder artists? Miyuki Ishikawa, Hiroshi Maeue and Seisaku Nakamura were but three of many Japanese pioneers that Nobu had studied. His favourite was ‘The Otaku Killer’, Tsutomu Miyazaki who had rattled everyone’s cage by raping and murdering four young girls. He drank the blood and ate the hands of one victim. Miyazaki became the embodiment of evil for the Japanese. Nobu respected that but felt the cripple had given himself away too easily and after only three victims was caught taking a stupid risk. Such wasted talent. Nobu was very interested in his legacy. He wanted to kill over 10 people. It seemed important to him. To become a serial killer you needed 3 confirmed kills, but to enter the elite of the serial killers you really needed at least 10 victims. So far Nobu was on 4. So far all women and all involving rape. He made no excuses for the sex – when the blood is up and the game is on it is hard not to fully enjoy the rewards, to revel in physical supremacy.
Nobu, however, was no mere beast. He didn’t want to be remembered as just some lust driven animal. No. He was an aristocrat with manners and refined sensitivities. He was a man aware of the unities in life and art; a man seeking for serious expression.
In short, Nobu had been toying with the idea of making number 5 a male victim. And despite some minor dalliances with transsexuals in his college years, Nobu considered himself solidly heterosexual. There would be no sex with number 5. That would confuse the press and those pathetic police profilers. And Nobu had another inspiration: he wanted to change his MO further - he wanted to shed foreign blood. He was disgusted by the infiltration into his country of foreigners and foreign ideas. Part of his self-proclaimed mission was to purify Japan. Japanese youth had become spineless and superficial, lacking discipline and dignity, lured into mediocrity by the promise of foreign designer goods and by the false idol of democracy – another foreign notion that had corroded imperial power and allowed for rule by the least fit. As Nobu brooded more on his living creation, the palette of colours he chose became more key to the fulfillment of his potential. He wanted depth to his oeuvre.
These were the pleasant thoughts that passed through Nobu’s razor sharp mind as he stared out of the train window. He only dimly saw the vision beyond the window of concrete houses nestled between narrow side streets, of huge public buildings covered in yellow and pink tiles, of bent over little grannies waiting at level crossings. The train shot through the landscape with a smooth satisfyingly inhuman hiss. The masses, the untutored herds held at bay by the insulated air-con of first class on a bullet train, one of the most worshipped pieces of technology in Japan. If only those slavish masses knew that here and now on this very high speed train was one of Japan’s greatest sons heading to A city to visit his mother. Nobu tried not to think too much about his mother. The driveling, absent minded little sparrow of a thing couldn’t hurt him anymore. Once he recoiled from her tongue lashings and strangely exciting fondling, but now he held no more fear for her. All he felt was revulsion at her weakness and senility. She was barely of this world. He wasn’t sure whether his mother even recognized her genius off-spring. He came to gloat and to silently lay before her feet the achievements of a master.
Shnade was fired up with the genius of his scam. He had never done it before, but a buddy in a bar had explained it patiently to him more than once. And it had worked. He had got to A City on normal trains for a mere 150 yen. Awesome man. Well he was the man after all. One day someone would write a book about Shnade the guitar legend and this little con would make a great bit in the book to show how resourceful the Shnade-man was. He had fumbled his lines at the guard’s office, but when eventually he made the ticket collector in a dark blue uniform understand that he was trying to say that he had lost his ticket and that he had got on just two stops away at something city the ticket guy had no choice but to take the two silver coins that Shnade proffered pinched between two meaty digits and let him pass. As Shnade walked through the barriers and out into the high ceilinged entrance of the station he swung his duffel bag over his shoulders. He felt a jolt. He looked behind him. There was a short Japanese dude in a dark suit and shiny black shoes. The man had dark eyes and dark swept back hair. He was perfectly groomed and perfectly anonymous.
“Watch where you are going? You hit me with your bag you oaf.”
Shnade was momentarily stunned by the near perfect English from the little Japanese business man.
“Err. Sorry man. I mean err sumimasen err gomenazai.”
Who was this loutish, sweaty lump of American hamburger meat that he should dare to touch, to interfere with a genius? Foreigners have no manners. They seem so uncouth, so uncultured. How was it that the imperial might of the Emperor had been so humiliated as to submit to these childish people, the Americans. Nobu’s genius worked as swiftly and silently as the train that had bought him to A city. Here was a new canvas for his art. He had chloroform, he had time. He could see his mother tomorrow. She knew not what day it was anyhow. Yes, of course, here was the raw male gaijin material for number five. An artist must seize the moment.
“That’s quite all right. I say are you in a hurry? I know a bar near here where we could grab a beer. What do you say? My treat.” Nobu enjoyed the ease with which his Oxford drawl came back to him. The benefits of an immaculate education.
Shnade considered. He was meant to call Jay and hook up. Jay was his ticket to a new start. Still here was an offer of a free beer. This strange Japanese dude who spoke faggy British English must be minted. What the hell.
“Sure, why not? Let’s do a beer compadre.”
Nobu inwardly winced at the foreigner’s use of Latin. A debasement of culture in the mouth of a giant subling. It would be a pleasure taking the pitiful life of this walking virus. Nobu smiled his best false smile.
“Let’s go shoot the shit.”
_______________
It had taken a while for Candy to straighten her shit out. She took a series of plane journeys before she made it to Thailand. It had wiped out most of her money. During the flights she felt terrible. It was like a 24 hour hangover. It was the come-down from months of cocaine. She felt spots forming under her skin burrowing to the surface of her smooth young face. And to make it worse her period had started. Well that was something to be grateful for. At least the unprotected sex with Rapi hadn’t got her pregnant. Candy felt like crying as she sat staring out the window at the white sky. It wasn’t clouds and it wasn’t blue sky just a nebulous in between. Was it just her period? Was it the thought of another lost chance for love? Was it homesickness? She wanted to take a drug and slip into sleep: a long redeeming, detoxifying sleep. Instead she stared at the nothing through the small window and did her best to ignore the young Japanese man sitting next to her. He had a hairstyle like Rod Stewart and a long metal chain dangling from his drain pipe jeans. Candy could tell that the pretty boy liked her. She just wasn’t in the mood for more amorous adventure. She just wanted to get to Thailand and sort herself out. She wanted to escape parties, drugs, opportunists and irritating backpackers. She dreamed of a beach and a simple routine. Perhaps early mornings doing yoga and afternoons reading in a hammock. She just wanted to be left alone to revitalize and reflect.
When Candy stepped out the airport building with her backpack to enjoy a much needed cigarette the heat hit her like a heavy weight. After hours of conditioned air on planes and in airports her body burst into sweat. The air was thick with hot wetness. Before she could stub out her Marlboro it was no longer lit; it was sodden with her perspiration. And it wasn’t just the heat. The air smelt foul with pollution. She could almost taste the acrid tang of gasoline.
Candy dragged her thoughts away from the night air and forced herself to consider the practicalities of her situation. She didn’t have a guidebook and she had never been to anywhere in Asia before. She went back into the airport and looked for some place to change dollars. She immediately spied three foreign exchange places in a row next to the arrivals gate. She investigated. They all offered exactly the same rates so Candy chose the one with the shortest line.
Candy was pleasantly surprised to find that language was not much of a problem. The woman at the exchange place understood English and worked with a practiced efficiency. This was a pleasant surprise compared to South America where employees were apt to either get tangled up in procedure or just simply put you on hold while they had a chat with a friend or took a call. From the start Candy sensed that Thailand was all about business and in particular tourist business. And the more time she was to spend in the Land of Smiles the more that this truth was confirmed for her. Thais had studied the tourist in great detail and replicated what the foreign visitor wanted, what the farang would pay for. The farang wanted air-con, taxis, whores, Muay Thai, all night bars, tattoo parlors, massage parlors, fake merchandise, Buddhist temples, burgers and fries, drugs, bungalows on the beach, internet and fruit smoothies. And that’s what they got. Everywhere was following the same model, selling the same comforts, products and services.
Candy next found a woman at an information booth to give her what she needed. The woman was young with exquisite features and flawless skin. She told Candy about the airport bus to Khao San road where she could get a room for under $10. She even sold her a ticket for the bus and took her to where the bus arrived.
4am in Khao San Road
It had been over 24 hours since Candy had taken a shower, changed her underwear or slept in a bed. She didn’t appreciate Khao San road. She just didn’t want the crowds, the neon, the vendors and the pompous young backpackers vying for street cred. She followed an Israeli couple from the bus drop off point, figuring that they must know where to go. They led her onto the busiest street she had ever experienced. It was only a kilometer long, if that, and yet it was rammed pack to suffocation with backpacker commercialism. Candy only made it 100 meters down the road, dodging people, motorbikes and hawkers selling souvenirs when she stopped. She bought a cup of chilled and freshly squeezed orange juice for 10 Baht and turned around. Fuck this shit she thought. She retraced her steps to the start of the infamous street and saw the dark outlines of a curling temple roof beyond a wall on the other side of the t-junction. A police station was on the corner. Two huge policemen in bulging tight brown uniforms stood over two tiny motorbikes. They watched impassively as tourists pressed the button for the pedestrian crossing only to discover that it was broken and only timing and good karma would get you across the road safely past the speeding tuk-tuks and yellow taxis. Candy was feeling sick with culture shock. In South America the streets were normally empty at nights; only the homeless, the criminal and the fool hearted lingered on city streets after dark. Here everyone hung around outside. Candy crossed the road, lured by the Wat’s steeply sloping roof. The entrance was closed but she saw a side road disgorging people just 50 meters to her right. She headed towards the spew of people stepping carefully over bums dozing on the sidewalk.
The side road was just more of the same Khao San road onslaught of commercialism, just slightly thinned down and slightly quieter. She headed up the road following the quietness. She turned corners, keeping the temple compound to her left. With every corner it seemed a little less hectic and a little more bearable. Eventually she saw a tall building with a sign promising rooms for 240 baht. That would do.
Cheap room in Khao San Road
Within fifteen minutes of entering the Sawadee Inn, Candy had filled out the hotel registration forms and climbed four sets of creaky wooden steps and found her room in a maze of narrow corridors. It was a narrow room with still stifling air. There was no exterior window. She turned on the fan. It did nothing but push around the warm air in a slow swirl. The door didn’t fit the frame properly. The false ceiling was stained brown in patches. There was no furniture other than the narrow double bed, a bizarrely ornate mirror and a dresser with a small TV resting on top. Candy didn’t care. All she wanted was a shower, some food and a long, long sleep.
_______________
“What do you do, bro?” Shnade asked as he lit up another Marlboro to go with his third draft beer.
Nobu couldn’t help wincing at the shocking familiarity of the foreigner sitting at the darkened bar counter next to him. Nobu would have happily foregone the customary chloroform soaked handkerchief to the mouth and would have enthusiastically beaten to a tenderized pulp the face of the stinking oaf with a bar stool. He was no brother of mine. I would rather take my own life than admit any blood ties to this flabby ignoramus.
“I dabble in the stock market. Do a spot of consulting work. That sort of thing.”
Shnade had no idea what the fuck that meant. He had never liked the way the English took the American language and made it all gay and complicated. Still he was enjoying the free beers and the air-conditioning. He was just starting to get his drunk on and he was dying for a sneaky pipe of green.
Shnade smiled at the Japanese dude (the thought occurred to him that he didn’t know the man’s name) and asked, “Do you fancy comin’ to the John for a hit?” And with this Shnade put his right thumb in his mouth to simulate taking a drag from a pipe.
Nobu’s normal mental acuity was somewhat impaired by the three beers he had quickly drunk with the malodorous foreigner and when he heard and saw this latest question he was momentarily stunned. Was the gaijin offering oral gratification? Nobu was rarely at a loss for words. He prided himself in always being self-possessed and in control except for when he was in the ecstasy of murder. As he floundered in confusion, Shnade pushed away his bar stool and headed for the exit where the toilets were located. The bar tender was watching a TV with the sound turned down that hung high on the wall at the other end of the bar. Now was his chance. He would fuck the head of the gaijin, then drug him and with the help of the bar tender get him in a taxi. His mother’s empty house was just a few kilometers away and would make an admirable studio. At his mother’s place he would have space to think, time to create and inspiration to deliver his fifth gift to the world. Nobu summoned the bar tender and gave him a 10,000 yen note and told him to keep the change. He then ducked under the counter and quickly reached in his briefcase and took out his trusty bottle of chloroform and slipped it into blazer side pocket. He then headed for the toilets carrying his briefcase.
The door was open. Shnade was resting his fat bum on the tiled ledge holding two wash basins. He was sucking the end of a pipe. Nobu could hear the high pitched fizz of air being inhaled. Shnade then exhaled a cloud of acrid smelling smoke and coughed. When he stopped coughing he said with a big dopey smile on his face: “You gotta cough to get off.”
Nobu had never smoked marijuana before. He presumed it was marijuana that he was smelling. He wasn’t sure if the drug was a prelude to sex or if he had misunderstood the infantile English of the American. Before he had time to consider what to do, Shnade had repacked the pipe and proffered it to Nobu along with a lighter.
Nobu took the pipe and cautiously put it to his lips.
“You gotta put your finger over the hole dude.” With that instruction Shnade pointed to a tar blackened small aperture on the side of the pipe. Nobu hated being instructed by Shnade and this compelled him as much as anything else to try the drug. He wanted to show the gaijin that he was no fumbling understudy. He held the lighter’s flame over the pipe and slowly sucked. The smoke was hot and it tickled the back of his throat but Nobu’s pride forced him to continue drawing on the pipe until the glowing ember of drug had been consumed in fire. When it was done he held out the pipe to Shnade and doubled over coughing. Nobu misjudged the distance between his person and the wash bowls and smacked his head with a nasty momentum on the tiled edge next to where Shnade was leaning. And that was the last thing he remembered about the Shnade man.
Shnade was nicely stoned and beered. What the fuck. The Japanese dude had pinged off the counter and lay at his feet, out cold. Shnade popped open the dude’s briefcase and found some papers, a mask, some surgical tape and a Kindle reading device. Shnade wasn’t into reading but he loved new electronic devices. He deftly slipped it into the voluminous back pocket of his jeans and rushed back into the bar to retrieve his duffel bag. Back on the street he walked quickly down town and took out his cell to phone his bro Jay.
As the light seeped out of the city sky Shnade bounced with a proud spring in his step. What an awesome start to his A City adventure. The legend of Shnade the struggling guitar hero was writing itself. One day soon people would be reading it on their Kindles.
The legend hits the streets
The opening image is taken from www.thecia.com - A movie still from Dead Man's Shoes
Catch up on earlier installments of Candy and Shnade:
Candy and Shnade Move On (Part 5)
Candy Trips in the Jungle and Shnade Trips Up (Part 4)
Candy Comes in the Jungle and Shnade Becomes the Man (Part 3)
Candy in Bolivia and Shnade in Hawaii (Part 2)
Candy in Argentina (Part 1)
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