Snakes and Earrings by Hitomi Kanehara (translated by David James Karashima).
Title: Snakes and Earrings.
Author: Hitomi Kanehara (translated by David James Karashima).
Genre: Fiction.
Country: Japan.
Language: Japanese.
Publication Date: 2003.
Summary: A novel about a young woman living in the violent world of Japan's underground youth culture. Enchanted by the snakelike forked tongue of a stranger called Ama, nineteen-year-old Lui takes a walk on another side of life. Following Ama home the night she meets him, Lui straightaway moves in with him and begins making plans to have her own tongue pierced. Determined to push her boundaries further, she asks Ama's strange friend Shiba to design an exquisite dragon tattoo for her back. But when Lui and Shiba begin an affair, Ama's jealousy is stirred and the situations becomes explosive.
My rating: 3/10
My review:
♥ Apparently, you begin by getting your tongue pierced. You then gradually enlarge the hole by inserting bigger and bigger tongue rings. Then, when the hole has been stretched to a certain size, you tie dental floss or fishing line in tight loops running from the hole down the middle of the tongue. Finally, you cut the remaining part of the tongue that's still connected using either a scalpel or a razor blade. In fact, some people don't even bother going through the whole pierce-and-tie process at all-they just slice their tongue in two with a scalpel.
♥ Ama squatted down beside me, stuck out his bloody fist, and opened it in front of me to show two red centimeter-long objects sitting in his palm. I instantly knew they were the guy's teeth. I felt as if an ice cube had been dropped down my back.
"They're for you. Little tokens of revenge," said Ama with a smile that was proud yet innocent, like that of a child.
"What the hell would I want with those!" I shouted, but he grabbed my arm and dropped them both into my palm, keeping his eyes on mine, saying, "Take them. They're a symbol of my love for you."
♥ I've always liked sex in the summer more than any other season. I think it's that sour, sweet smell of sweat and ammonia.
♥ I pecked him on the cheek and said, "Thank you." Words of gratitude that seemed totally at odds with where we sat. I imagined my "thank you" floating around forever with nowhere to go.
♥ "I think I might be a child of God," he said without changing his expression.
"Child of God? Isn't that the title of some crappy B-movie?"
"No. Think about it. God has to be a sadist to give people life."
"So I guess you're saying Mary was a masochist?"
"Yeah. Guess so," murmured Shiuba-san, and he turned to face the rack again.
♥ The shopping promenade on the way home from the station was full of too many families. In fact the sound of all those voices made me want to vomit. A small child bumped into me and the mother pretended not to notice. I kept my eye on the kid, though, until he looked up and saw me. When our eyes met, I swear he was just about to cry, so I just tutted at him and kept on walking. I really didn't want to live in this kind of world. I wanted to live recklessly and leave nothing behind but ashes in this dark, dull world.
♥ All I wanted was to be part of an underground world where the sun doesn't shine, there are no serenades, and the sound of children's laughter is never, ever heard.
♥ He wasn't bad-looking. I mean, all right, his eyes do have a kind of constant glare that can be uncomfortable, but in general I'd still say he falls into the good-looking category. Still, with the tattoo and a face full of piercings, I guess it was kind of difficult to really tell if he looked good or bad. In fact, if I didn't know him at all and I just saw him in the street, I'd probably think, What a waste of a pretty face. I do know how he feels, though. After all, I wanted people to judge me by my appearance too. I often like to think that if sunlight reached into everywhere on the entire planet, I'd find a way to turn myself into a shadow.
♥ Watching them brought a smile to my face. It was the first time I'd seen Shiba-san looking like he was having fun. He'd never shown me that side of himself when we were alone, but I guess even sadists smile from ear to ear sometimes.
♥ "I'll tattoo it beautifully," he said, with a strength in his voice that made me feel glad to have met him.
"It shouldn't be too difficult with your skills," I said.
"The hand of God," said Shiba-san, with a wry smile, opening up the hand he had placed on the table. "But what should I do if I find myself suddenly overcome with the desire to kill you?" His eyes turned cold as he stared at his hand.
"Then that would be that, I guess," I said, before taking in a mouthful of beer. As I did so, I glimpsed Ama coming back form the bathroom.
"Good. Because I've never felt such a strong desire to kill anyone," said Shiba-san, just a fraction of a second before Ama sat back down with a big, sloppy smile on his face.
..With Ama's words, the atmosphere quickly returned to normal. Well, at least as normal as it could be considering I was sitting between a guy who'd beat someone beyond recognition for me and another who wanted to kill me. I wondered if there'd ever come a day when one of them would kill me.
♥ "I don't care what happens to my body after I'm dead," I said with a shrug.
They do say dead men tell no tales after all. In that case, surely there's nothing more meaningless than not being able to give an opinion on anything. It makes me wonder why people fork out fortunes to pay for tombstones. I mean, for me, I've got absolutely no interest in my body if my mind no longer lives in it. I couldn't care less if it was eaten by dogs.
♥ With his head still down and without saying anything, he just strengthened his grip on my hand. Then when he came to a stop at a red light, he finally looked up at me.
"Am I pathetic?" he asked.
I felt something close to sympathy for him. It always broke my heart to see a guy give himself to someone so completely.
"A little," I answered.
♥ I told myself that everything was all right; that everything was going to be fine. I had my tongue stud, and I was looking forward to when my tattoo would be done and my forked tongue complete.
I wondered if changing myself like this could be considered an insult to God, or an act of pure ego. I thought of how my life had no real possessions, no emotional ties, no hatred. And it made me feel that my tattoo, my forked tongue, my future, were all empty of meaning as well.
♥ In time, the dragon and the Kirin both shed their scabs, completing their transformation to be a part of my body. Now, they were really my possessions-a word I liked to use when I thought of them-but one that could also become devalued after the initial excitement of a new thing wore off. I mean one day, you've got a wonderful new skirt, for example, that makes you feel great. But in just a short time, that skirt's become just another item in your wardrobe. I was kind of fickle like that, I guess, often relegating a thing to the back of the closet after only wearing it two, maybe three times. I guess I tend to see marriage in a similar way too. Just a situation where two people are trying to possess each other. Or even if you're not married, guys still tend to push the same kind of thing, becoming gradually more and more domineering the longer you stay with them. It's what's known as the "why feed a fish if it's already in your net" mentality, but when a fish runs out of food, it has one of two choices: to escape or die. Still the struggle to posses seems to be the unifying element in all relationships. Maybe it appeals to the masochist and sadist in every one of us. As for me, however, no matter what else, I knew I'd always possess a beautiful dragon and a Kirin right there on my back. They'd never betray me, and without eyes they'd never fly away. They'd always, always be there.
♥ That night I didn't sleep at all, and by the morning I had bags under my eyes. I didn't know what to do and I started to get angry at Ama for leaving me all alone. I wondered what he was thinking. What he was doing. And somewhere inside me I felt an awful feeling that something in my life was coming quietly to an end.
♥ At the crematorium they opened the lid of the coffin partway to show Ama's face, but I couldn't look in. I didn't want to say goodbye. I wanted to believe that the Ama I had seen at the morgue was still alive, and that the person inside the coffin was someone else. All I could do was escape form reality, but every time I tried to escape form the pain, that same pain told me that I had probably been falling in love with him.