Free Almost Transparent Blue by Ryu Murakami Page A

around things.
    Lilly took off her shoes. She threw the muddy shoes against the barbed-wire enclosure. The light soon swept through the woods alongside it. Sleeping birds were startled into flight.
    It's going to be soon, Ryū, I'm scared, it's going to be soon.
    The barbed wire flared gold, and the light seen up close was like a red-hot iron bar. The circle of light stopped nearby. Steam rose from the earth. The earth and grass and runway turned the white of molten glass.
    First Lilly entered the whiteness. Then I did. For a moment we couldn't hear anything. In a few seconds unbearable pain struck our ears. It was as if they had been pierced with hot needles. Lilly clutched hers and fell backward. My chest was filled with the odor of burning.
    The rain stabbed us, the way skinned meat hung in a freezer is speared with iron rods.
    Lilly was searching for something on the ground. Like a nearsighted soldier who'd lost his glasses on the battlefield, she felt around frantically.
    What was she looking for?

    The thick drooping clouds, the ceaseless rain, the grass where the insects slept, the whole ash-gray Base, the wet runway reflecting the Base, and the air moving like waves—all were controlled by the jet spouting its enormous flames.
    It started down the runway slowly. The earth shook. The huge silvery metal gradually picked up speed. Its high-pitched whine seared the air. Close in front of us, four enormous tube-shaped engines spouted blue flame. The stench of heavy oil and the violent blast of air blew me off my feet.
    My face distorted, I hit the ground. My clouded eyes tried desperately to see. As I was thinking the white belly of the plane had just floated off the ground, before I knew it, it was sucked toward the clouds.
    Lilly was looking at me. There was white froth between her teeth, and a trickle of blood as if she'd bitten the inside of her mouth.
    Hey, Ryū, what about the city?
    The plane came to rest in the middle of the sky.
    It seemed to have stopped, a toy hanging by a wire from the ceiling of a department store. I thought we were the ones moving away with tremendous force. I thought the earth spreading away from our feet and the grass and the runway had all plunged downward.
    Hey, Ryū, what about the city? Lilly asked, lying sprawled on her back on the runway.
    She took lipstick from her pocket, tore off her clothes and smeared it on her body, laughingly drawing red lines on her belly, chest, neck.
    I realized that my head was full of nothing but the stench of heavy oil. There was nothing like a city anywhere.
    Lilly drew a design on her face with lipstick, becoming one of the African women who dance crazily at festivals.
    Hey, Ryū, kill me. Something's weird, Ryū, I want you to kill me, Lilly called, tears in her eyes. I threw myself off the runway. My body was clawed by the wire. The barbs bit into the flesh of my shoulder. I thought I wanted a hole opened in me. I wanted to be free of the oil stench, that was all I thought.
    Concentrating on that I forgot where I was. Groveling on the ground, Lilly called to me. Her legs flung out, naked, bound redly to the ground, she kept saying, Kill me! I went close to her. Her body shaking violently, she sobbed aloud.
    Kill me quick, kill me quick! I touched her red-striped neck.
    Then one side of the sky lit up.
    For an instant the blue-white flash made everything transparent. Lilly's body and my arms and the Base and the mountains and the cloudy sky were transparent.
    And then I discovered a single curved line running through the transparency there. It had a shape I'd never seen before, a white curving, a white curving that made splendid arcs.
    Ryū, you know you're a baby? You're just a baby after all.
    I took my hand from Lilly's neck, and scooped the white froth from her mouth with my tongue. She took off my clothes and embraced me.
    Oil flowing from somewhere separated around our bodies; it was colored like a rainbow.

    Early in the morning the rain let up.