“I didn’t mean to say that,” I pleaded. “I had no intention at all of saying that. Oh God! I feel so ashamed!” I slumped down on the kitchen table, held my head in my hands and cried uncontrollably.
“Darling! Darling!” My wife rushed up and held me from behind, weeping aloud herself.
The moustache man, who’d continued to weep and wail like a baby, now stopped abruptly and fixed his bloodshot eyes on me. “Please, cooperate with me. I’m trying my very hardest for you. No – for everyone in this block. The others are being most cooperative. Some of them are being much more frugal. For example, your neighbours the Hamaguchis. They haven’t bought a new TV, they haven’t bought a new washing machine. They’ve just persevered and persevered, and now they’ve saved fifteen million yen – nearly enough to buy a brand new home!”
“What? Fifteen million yen?!” My wife’s eyes were gleaming.
“That’s right, madam. With just a little more effort, they’ll reach their target saving. What’s more, they’re both only forty-eight. What a truly wonderful couple. And it’s all because they cooperated with me. They were as frugal as frugal could be, and saved up the money. So. You should try your hardest too!” The moustache man slapped us both on the shoulder with each of his hands.
“Yes,” we both answered meekly, nodding like schoolchildren.
“When things are getting hard, when you’re feeling low, I’ll come and share your tears with you,” he said. Then he pulled out a pure white handkerchief and wiped his cheeks.
“Thank you,” we said in unison. “We’ll be even thriftier than before. We’ll try hard to save.”
From that day on, the moustache man visited us with increasing frequency. Sometimes, I might feel like eating something special, and I’d come home with some sea-bream
“Hello, hello, hello! Here I am, here I am, here I am! Tanaka, Tanaka, Tanaka’s the name!”
Sometimes he’d enter the kitchen from the next room, which has no other means of access. If we were in our bedroom, he’d emerge from the built-in wardrobe. I thought he must be getting in through the ceiling. All the apartments in our block share a communal loft space – he must have been using that. So I nailed up the ceiling panels above the wardrobe. Then he appeared in the toilet.
On the train in to work one morning, I met my neighbour Mr Hamaguchi. I just had to ask him when he was planning to buy his brand new home.
“Well, however hard we save, house prices just keep going up faster,” he replied in a tone that suggested he was on the brink. “It might be all right if my salary kept going up too. But Mr Tanaka keeps telling us to be frugal, so I can’t buy drinks for my staff any more, even though I’m the Chief Clerk. It’s affecting my work. My superiors don’t like me because I never give seasonal gifts. So I’m not likely to get promoted. I don’t know what we’re saving for any more.”
Actually, I’d been starting to feel the same way myself. If house prices were going up faster than we could save, what on earth were we saving for?!
One night, my wife looked at me reproachfully in bed. “You don’t do anything for me these days,” she said.
“Sorry. I’m really sorry,” I said – and meant it. “I don’t eat well enough. I’m always too tired.”
“No. That’s not it. You’ve changed.” She started sobbing again. “When we were students, when we lived together, you used to love me then.” Ours was a student romance. “We didn’t have any money in those days. All we ate was junk food. But you still made love to me nearly every night. You don’t love me any more. It’s because I’m old and ugly, isn’t it. That’s why you don’t make love to me any more.”
“No, it’s not that, really it isn’t,” I protested, and went to hold her. “You’re still attractive. You’re still beautiful.”
She clung to me tightly. “Say it again! Say it again!”
“You’re still attractive. You’re still beautiful.”
“Oh darling. Darling!”
“Hello, hello, hello! Here I am, here I am, here I am! Tanaka, Tanaka, Tanaka’s the name!”
The moustache man came down through the ceiling panels just as we were starting to make love. I groaned on top of my wife. My wife heaved a sigh of desperation under me.
“Oh dear, oh dear. What’s all this then, what’s all this? Oh dear, oh dear. Look how close you are together.” He squatted beside our bed and peered under my belly. “You mustn’t, madam. Absolutely not. Your husband’s tired. You should let him go to sleep. It’s all right for a lady, but for a man, intercourse is very hard work. It’s equivalent to a two-mile run, madam. What’s more, one to six cubic centimetres of semen in a single ejaculation contains a huge amount of nutrition, namely protein, calcium, and glucose. Don’t you care if your husband uses that much energy when he’s had hardly anything to eat all day? Madam! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Look how he’s sweating. What a waste. What a waste. This will really interfere with his work tomorrow. Don’t forget, he has to put up with the packed rush-hour train as well. Madam, are you not aware how much strength he needs to endure that? Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. You’re still clinging so tightly to each other. Sir. Please remove yourself from your wife’s body as soon as possible, sir. Sex is like a poison for the lower classes. You should both abstain from such wasteful pleasures. Oh dear. You’re still so close. Come on. Quickly, now, quickly. Disengage, please. Disengage.”
My wife began to wail uncontrollably.
Until now, I’d remained still with my head bowed as I lay there on top of my wife. But now I could take it no longer. I got up and started yelling at the moustache man. “WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, YOU SLIMY LITTLE PERVERT?!” I screamed.
But the next words wouldn’t come out. My brain wasn’t working properly, due to fatigue and malnutrition – though being so angry didn’t help. I felt so abjectly worthless that large tears started to fall from my eyes. “Or, or do you mean to rob us paupers of our last remaining pleasure?” I added pathetically.
The moustache man had jumped back at first, startled by the ferocity of my tone. But now he knelt on the floor, stared at me through eyes that were red with tears, and said in a perfectly restrained voice: “Please cooperate with me.”
“Cooperate? With you?! A vile peeping pervert like you?! Who asked you to come and spy on us in bed? I’ll bloody kill you!” And I tried to grab hold of him.
“Just a minute. T-Tanaka, Tanaka, Tanaka’s the name!” he said, resisting me passively with hands behind his back.
As he repeated his mantra, his voice had a hypnotic effect on me. Strength instantly drained from my limbs, and I flopped down onto the floor where I stood.
“If it means we have to feel this miserable,” I said, “I’d rather not save money at all. I’d rather just spend every penny of it. After all, however much we save we’ll never keep up with the rise in house prices.”
At that, the moustache man jumped back to his feet with a cry. “You mustn’t say that, sir!” he said. “I knew you’d say it sooner or later. That’s what makes prices go up – half-desperate people who give up, thinking they’ll never buy a house! They squander their meagre incomes hunting for the latest fashionable goods – and it’s their consumer lifestyles that push prices up and cause big corporations to pollute! The root of all evil is the indiscriminate luxury, the desperate lust for merchandise, the beggar-like vanity of all these salaried workers! Do you want to demean yourself to their level?”
“Well, it’s late now,” the moustache man said at length, having berated me continuously for a full half hour. “Just go to sleep now, ready for work tomorrow. You mustn’t think about anything else. All right, sir?”
My wife, who’d been sitting in bed listening to the moustache man’s lecture, had already fallen asleep and was snoring away without a care.
The moustache man went back up through the ceiling panels. I imagined him crawling around the communal loft space, peering down into other apartments and spying on other couples as they were having sex.
As if she’d learnt her lesson, my wife never again tried to arouse me at night. From that day on, she just went to sleep tamely on her own. Perhaps she wasn’t actually suppressing her desires but had found some other
