“I want to know more about this infection,” Mogamigawa said to Yohachi. “Let me examine you.”
Yohachi grasped his overworked member, which now hung down limply. “Yeah, sure. Go ahead.”
“No, no. That’s not enough. I’m asking you to masturbate, strum your banjo, grease your pole, whatever. I need a specimen, man.”
“I don’t really feel like doing it now,” Yohachi grumbled, but still managed to squeeze out a quantity of semen onto Mogamigawa’s glass slide. Mogamigawa immediately started to observe it under his electron microscope.
“And anyway, what happened then?” I asked, drawing closer to Yohachi. “Tell me more.”
“It was around midday, I think. All of them, even the old people and children who hadn’t appeared much till then, and all the young men and women as well, they all went haring off together. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked the woman I was having sex with at the time. She said it was a ballet performance. So I followed them all to the open-air arena.” Yohachi’s eyes suddenly started to glisten. “I have never seen such a fantastic sight in all my life. There was no scenery, no lighting, just dozens of naked men and women dancing together on the stage. And they were actually having sex as they danced and jigged around. When they brought the lower parts of their bodies together, the man’s erect penis would actually go inside the woman. The join between the two of them would turn into a kind of support, so they could both hold hands while the woman, with her face upwards and leaning back, would twirl around and around. Ah. I could never find the words to explain how wonderful it was.” Yohachi slapped one knee one after the other in frustration. “Then the men would line up in a circle. The women would line up in another circle around them. The men would start by dancing with the woman facing them, then with the next one.”
“Aha. Like changing partners.”
“The man would lift the woman high into the air from behind. The woman would stretch out her arms and legs in mid-air and arch her body backwards. The man’s penis would go inside the woman again. Then he would change to the next woman and lift her up in the same way. And he would go inside her as well. And so he would pass all the women in the outer circle round to the next man. And the music, I even started to appreciate that music, which I hadn’t really noticed until then. It really moved me. Ah. How it moved me. And I started wondering why we can’t do that kind of thing on earth. Why doesn’t anybody think of such a wonderful ballet on earth, or even try to? I felt so happy. No one was looking at me like I was a dirty old man, no one called me obscene or perverted. Far from it, they showed me such a wonderful kind of art. When I thought about it, it seemed like the ultimate kind of love, a kind of art that couldn’t ever be bettered, and I was so moved by it that I actually cried,” Yohachi said with tears in his eyes. “What we call sexual intercourse on earth, it’s something sordid, something you have to do hidden from prying eyes. It’s seen as obscene, dirty, sometimes even as a crime, and you get taken away by the police and frowned on by society even if you just describe it in words or pictures, let alone do it in front of people. But here it’s done in broad daylight and out of doors, openly, the most beautiful natural thing a person could do, and it’s performed as a kind of art. That moved me to tears. Come to think of it, it’s only natural that this kind of art exists. Don’t you think it’s strange for a society not to have such beautiful art? Well anyway, what went through my mind as I watched the ballet was that anyone who doesn’t understand the beauty of this can’t be called human any more. If someone from earth watched that ballet and said it was obscene or something, that would be someone who can’t understand love or art or anything. But, in fact, most people on earth would be like that person. Realizing that made me cry even more. It all got muddled up together – my feeling of bitterness at being looked down upon till now, the sadness of those earth people, and my happiness and emotion at being able to watch that ballet. In the end, I was bawling my head off.” Tears were streaming down his face.
That Yohachi could speak with such eloquence, such enthusiasm, when he was usually so taciturn and poor at expressing himself, proved how deeply he’d been moved. The realization of this helped me to share some of his emotion.
My gaze was still fixed on Yohachi’s face when Mogamigawa called over to me, his eye still on the microscope.
“Sona. Come and look at this.”
When I looked into the eyepiece, I saw, swimming there in a sea of semen, some flagellar bacilli that were clearly distinct from the spermatozoa.
“What are these, then?” I asked.
“A type of salmonella,” answered Mogamigawa. “On earth, this bacillus is well known to cause typhous diseases in humans, as well as food poisoning and gastroenteritis through infection from the excreta of birds and mammals. But that’s not all. There’s a type of salmonella bacillus that has no effect on humans but causes miscarriage in horses, i.e. equine mycotic abortion. This one seems to be parasitic on penisparrows and infectious to humans, causing what we might call ‘human mycotic abortion’. That’s what it must be.”
“In other words, the Newdopians have been controlling their population with the aid of salmonella and the penisparrow. Hmm. I had wondered why there isn’t a population surplus with all this sexual activity going on,” I said as I continued to watch the movement of the salmonella bacilli. “Yohachi has always wanted to sleep with Dr Shimazaki. Now he’ll have to, to infect her with salmonella. Lucky bastard!”
Mogamigawa groaned morosely. “Why should a fool like that be given such an enviable task? No, there’s a quicker way. Dr Shimazaki could masturbate using the penisparrow as a dildo,” he said, then blushed when he sensed my burning glare on his face. “Er, of course, I’m not saying that out of jealousy, no no no. It’s because I doubt Dr Shimazaki would wish to be violated by such a man.”
“I’m not so sure. I reckon she’d prefer that to some unnatural method like masturbating with a penisparrow. Especially if she saw him as he is now…”
Mogamigawa glanced back towards Yohachi, then brought his mouth to my ear. “Don’t you think the look on his face has changed?” he whispered conspiratorially.
“Yes. That’s the face of someone who’s been awakened to art. The gleam in his eye is completely different,” I answered. I started to collect up my things, which lay scattered about on the river bank. “Well, anyway, why don’t we leave the decision to Dr Shimazaki?”
“Yes, I suppose we could,” Mogamigawa said with little conviction as he idly packed away his electron microscope. “Damn that Yohachi! How could he have better looks than me?!”
A whole day would soon have passed since our meeting at the Research Centre. In that case, Dr Shimazaki would soon be entering the sixth month of her pregnancy, in earth terms. Whatever was gestating inside her captivating midriff had to be aborted as soon as possible, and for that it was imperative that we return quickly. It was hard on the elderly Dr Mogamigawa, as we’d only slept a total of four hours in about a day and half. But as soon as we’d gathered up our baggage, we immediately set off for the Research Base.
As we neared the jungle, night fell once more.
“I refuse!” exclaimed Mogamigawa, who’d been trailing behind with little enthusiasm until then. He parked his backside on the ground and started to fret like a spoilt child. “Of course I’m tired anyway, but going through that jungle at night would be my vision of hell. Who knows what hideous monstrosities will appear? I’m not going in there, and that’s the end of it. Why don’t we just sleep here for two hours until it grows light again? Eh, Sona? Won’t you?” In the end he was almost begging.
“All right, let’s do that,” I said. “To be sure, I don’t think the jungle will be any less terrifying than it was before.”