When he was fourteen, Kita had realized there was no fooling his mother. He’d fallen in with bad friends, and gotten into shoplifting. At the time, he’d felt his survival hinged on his loyalty to these friends. He was balanced precisely on the boundary between the bullies and the bullied, and every action was monitored and judged by the “gang.” Ultimately, what it amounted to was that Kita had managed to ensure his own safety by committing a series of deeds encouraged by the gang, but it had not been without pain. He had of course felt guilty when the gang first enticed him into shoplifting, but once he’d complied with their demands, he’d have been branded a traitor if he attempted to pull out again, so he could only do his best to stick with them and not make any blunders.
If I’m going to shoplift, Kita thought, I should go for something cheap at least. He’d also got it into his head that it was somehow less sinful to steal a book than food or clothing or stationery. He was probably simply balancing appetite for food against appetite for learning, judging that it was better to sate the latter. He was in this thing unwillingly, and he wanted at least to be able to make distinctions where he could. In contrast, his friends were only interested in shoplifting for its own sake, and saw greater value in stealing something difficult.
Still, it was amazing how his mother had picked up on his shoplifting. He didn’t think he’d been acting particularly guiltily around the sitting room.
He tried asking his mother about it now, as she poked at her dried fish. “How did you know I was shoplifting? Back when I was in second grade, remember?”
“Intuition. Your feelings always show on your face. If you’ve got anything to hide, you suddenly clam up and lose your appetite. You’ve been that way since you were little. If you didn’t like someone’s question, your nose would twitch. You get that honesty from your father. When you were doing that shoplifting you had no appetite at all, did you? You did eat up all the eel, it’s true, but you left the rice with the gravy on it. Then you went straight off to your room after dinner. Then there was this book that you wouldn’t have been able to buy on your pocket money.”
“Oh yeah, that book of Dali’s paintings. That was really hard to steal.”
“It was a real shock to me. But you gave it up right away, didn’t you? You started Zen meditation instead. You must have had a guilty conscience.”
“No, actually I was doing it as a kind of sport.”
“But that zazen gave you a bit more staying power, don’t you agree? You had that classmate who committed suicide. Miura, wasn’t it? If he’d done some zazen he’d still be alive today, instead of going off and killing himself on a passing impulse. Such a pity, when he could’ve had good things happen in his life. It was a great shame.”
Let’s change the subject, thought Kita uncomfortably. Still, come to think of it, why was she hauling out this long-gone incident right now?
“I don’t care whether it’s for sports or whatever, but you should keep up the zazen.”
“I gave it up long ago.”
“How come? You’ve only just begun.”
It was twenty years ago that he’d gone along to the temple in Azabu to do zazen. It was exactly twenty years ago that Miura had committed suicide. Had she remembered it through an association with shoplifting leading to the zazen?
Could it be possible that she suspected he was planning to kill himself this coming Friday, he wondered a trifle uneasily as he sipped his cold miso soup. The taste of the soup was just as it used to be. He could guarantee that it was made by his mother. Only his mother would be capable of making a soup like this. So it stood to reason it could only be his mother sitting in front of him now, he thought.
His mother seemed to be harbouring some doubts about whether this man was her son or not, as well. There’d been no particular strangeness there when he’d called in four months ago. Of course, there’d never been any hint of a need to reconfirm that they were indeed and undoubtedly mother and son. They just were, without saying so.
No, maybe what was disturbing her so much now was the kind of sharp intuition that came precisely from her being his mother. Did he really look so suspicious?
Whatever, he couldn’t stay long. His plan had been to just drop in, have a meal, and leave again. But his mother seemed to find something dubious in the way he was behaving. She drew a deep breath, and finally decided to speak.
“You’re very quiet. What are you hiding? You’ve been acting strange ever since you got here.”
Rather than go over the same conversation again, Kita said, “Do I look to you as though I want to die?”
There was no way to guess what his mother was thinking, but she looked like she’d seen through him somehow. Kita pulled a funny face, in an attempt to cover up his thoughts. But his mother barely glanced at him. Eyes down, she murmured, “No, I was just thinking how quickly people age. You must be tired, surely? You seem to have aged six years in three months. Is anything worrying you?”
“I feel like I look about normal for my age really. Surely you haven’t forgotten how old I am?”
His mother looked puzzled, and said nothing. She picked up the thermos and topped up the teapot with hot water in an apparent attempt to fill the silence. Then she turned over the two cups that were sitting face down on the tray and, pouring tea by turns into each, she murmured, “I thought you were your father when you first arrived.”
“Just walking in out of the next world to say, ‘Here I am,’ huh? I had a look in the cupboard in there just now and found that collection of our old clothes, Dad’s and mine. I even came across those old reference books you bought me when I was a kid.”
“Well I can’t get things organised properly. There’s mountains of stuff I’d like to throw away, but if I just did it without asking, you and Daddy would complain.”
“Dad couldn’t complain if he wanted to. OK, if you want to keep things Mum, go right ahead. This house is too big for you on your own, after all. Having some junk around won’t bother you, I imagine.”
“What are you saying!” exclaimed his mother, astonished. “Your father’s due back at any moment.”
“You’re living with a ghost, I see. Good thing ghosts don’t take up any room.”
His mother made no attempt to smile at the joke. She simply looked as if she couldn’t follow his thread. She didn’t even seem to recognize that it was a joke. Could it be that she wasn’t putting it on, that she really was going senile?
“Dad died four years ago, right?” The only thing for it at this stage, if she really did have the illusion that he was still alive, was to come straight out with it.
“Yes, I guess he did, didn’t he? Four years ago already?” His mother turned her empty gaze to left and right, like a puzzled child groping for the answer to a math problem.
“Hey come on, pull yourself together.”
“But it’s very strange. He came home as usual last night. And when he went out this morning he said he’d be able to come home by three today.”
“Where did he go?”
“He said he had something to do in Shibuya.”
Shibuya was precisely where Kita was headed next himself. Did she dream it? Or was she still playing out the dream now in her sitting room? Or had the clock inside her head broken, so that the past tense had changed into the present continuous? No wonder she couldn’t figure out what was going on, if her son of around twenty suddenly turns up looking thirty-five.
Had living alone done this to her? Was she watching television? Was she communicating with the neighbours? He’d telephoned from time to time, but their only conversation had been of the “How are you?” “Same as usual, thanks” variety. And now this “same as usual” life had somehow become one in which the son had come to announce his self-appointed execution, while the mother had grown senile.
“You haven’t been in hospital with some problem like a stroke or a brain tumour or something, have you?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to worry you.”
“You can’t live on your own if you go senile, you know.”
“If I go senile, you and Daddy will come back and look after me. We’ll be able to live here all together just like the old days, won’t we?”
“Why are you like this? Go and get some treatment, for heaven’s sake. You’ve got to get a grip on reality again. Dad’s dead, OK? And I can’t come back home. So I’m begging you… please.”
“Please what?”
“Please don’t go senile, I’m saying.”
Here he was begging his senile mother not to go senile, he thought. He felt like going down on his knees and praying, although he knew prayer wouldn’t get his mother’s brain back to the active brain it had been fifteen years ago.
“Is it wrong to go senile?”
“Yes, it is.”
“I just stay here in the house, you know, I don’t bother anyone. What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s because you stay in the house all the time that you’re going senile.”
“I go out shopping. If you’re worried about me, come back and live here. There you are just messing about, not getting married. I’ll bet you don’t think about anything much.”
“I’ll look after you in your old age, Mum.”
“I don’t need you to. I’ll freeze being looked after by such a cold fish of a son. No, I’m the one who’ll look after you. You can’t do anything on your own, Yoshio. Just when I think you’re improving yourself with some zazen, you go and give it up—”
“Stop talking about stuff that happened twenty years ago. The problem is how you’re going to cope with the present.” A fine thing for an intended suicide to say, he heard a little voice saying inside him. Still, he went on berating her.
“When you get up in the morning, check your face in the mirror. Put on a bit of make-up. And go out for walks. Take a good look at the world getting on with things all around. Talk to children whenever you get the chance. Children grow up fast, you know. And keep a constant check on where you are right now and what you’re doing. You can do that, can’t you?”
Tears began to flow from his mother’s misty eyes. She didn’t attempt to wipe them away. She sighed, with an expressionless face that registered no particular sadness or pleasure. Maybe her tear ducts just leaked a bit these days.
“What can it be, I wonder? My face looks weird when I look in the mirror, and this area’s all changed too – there are all sorts of faces around that I don’t know. It’s like I’m left behind all alone somehow. Though there’s nowhere else to go, mind you.”
If his Dad was still alive they could go off on a trip together, have a few quarrels, make up again, drink sake, make love. Maybe while they were in Atami someplace eating dried fish or noodles his father would suddenly declare, “It’s splendid weather, darling. Why don’t we commit suicide?” If his Dad showed up right now and made such a suggestion, his Mum would probably go off with him with pleasure.
“Right, I’d better be off.”
“Where to, dear? You’re not staying here the night?”
“There’s somewhere I have to go.”
“You don’t have to go there today, surely?”
“No, I can’t put it off.”
“You won’t be back for months again, I guess. My mind may well be in a worse way by then, you know.”
Was she trying emotional blackmail on him? Or was this perhaps her only means of resistance? Probably his presence would be her best form of rehabilitation. If there was someone else around to keep making clear to her that her husband was dead, she’d get the message and scramble back out of the past in panic. It didn’t seem like she was having problems with the housework, so things weren’t too bad yet, after all.
Maybe, on the other hand, it was better for her senility to grow worse. At least that way she’d have a happy old age. If you’re senile, your pleasures halve, but so do your sorrows. If the pleasures and sorrows to come in her life were weighed in the balance, the sorrows were probably greater. This son of hers who’d do her so much good if he stayed around was going to be dying this week, sure, but in his mother’s hazy mind he probably wouldn’t be dead. Her son would simply turn into a ghostly young man of around twenty who came and went in the house. He and his Dad together could settle back in to become a family for her again. That was a better outcome. If she underwent some kind of half-baked rehabilitation and got her mind back together again, the next thing that loomed in her life was double the sorrow over losing her son, after all. The only way to escape from this was senility.
“I’ll be back. Soon. Say hi to Dad for me.”
Kita hoisted on his survival backpack and slipped his feet back into the new zebra shoes. Next time he came, he’d be without form or shape, no more than a hint in the air. Nevertheless, thanks to her fine intuition, his mother would no doubt sense her son’s presence, and cook him up his favourite croquettes. Though all you would see would be plates of croquettes and chopsticks on the table, Yoshio and his Dad would be there in a corner of her brain, remembering things with an occasional laugh together, smoking, clipping their nails, flipping through the newspaper, and easing out an occasional silent fart.
How Much for Dying?
Kita wandered about for over an hour before he found the address printed on Yashiro’s name card. His father was hanging out there in Shibuya too, in fact. It wasn’t that he had any intention of conniving with his mother’s delusions, he just happened to cross paths with numerous elderly men loitering on street corners. They were the kind of guys who wouldn’t be given the time of day in this part of town normally, but for some reason today they all seemed full of a wordless self-confidence.
Close to six in the evening, Kita finally located the block of assorted shops and offices containing the one marked “Thanatos Movie Productions”. Across the way was a private hospital, while next door on one side was a grilled meat restaurant and on the other a florists. The first floor of the building held a sake shop. He took the elevator, which stank of raw rubbish, up to the fourth floor, where he emerged into a corridor stacked with piles of videos all the way up both walls, forming a passage just wide enough for a single person to pass. The scent of perfume hung mysteriously in the air. When he knocked on the door at the end, Zombie came out to greet him.
“Well, well, Kita. Long time no see. How’ve you been?”
Could it really be only twenty-six hours since they’d seen each other last? The sight of her made him oddly nostalgic even.
“You’re late, you know. We were getting sick of waiting for you.”
Seated on the sofa beyond, Yashiro waved him over. A man in his thirties in a businesslike dark blue suit interrupted what may have been chat or some business discussion to stand and greet Kita, as did a pink-suited woman of around the same age, who was providing smiles and the scent of perfume gratis to all around. Kita immediately sensed from their behaviour that there was business involved for them, and he returned the greeting without enthusiasm.
“Hey Kita, that get-up suits you. Sporty, speedy, cool. Got a whiff of Mexican coriander about it somehow,” said Zombie.
Kita sniffed his jacket sleeve. “I can’t smell anything,” he said.
“What’s that backpack for?” Yashiro asked with a serious face. “Something’s rattling around in there. Some kind of emergency bag?”
“I thought I’d carry it round with me so I could start sleeping on the streets any time I feel like it,” said Kita, saying the first thing that came to him. He lowered the backpack to the floor. The man and woman in their thirties were both nodding. Yashiro introduced him to them. It seemed he’d suddenly become the company’s head planning officer. The pair took turns to proffer their name cards to him.
“Organic Transport: Coordinator, Kazuya Koikawa”
“Pacific Insurance Mutual Company, Shibuya Office, Yoshiko Koikawa.”
“You’re husband and wife?” he asked, raising his eyes from the business cards bearing the same family name, and looking from one to the other.
“No,” Yoshiko replied. “Brother and sister.”
“We’ve learned from Mr. Yashiro that you wish to take out life insurance from us,” she went on. “Thank you very much.”
“I see. No, no, I’m the one to thank you.” Kita lowered his head in a slight bow, keeping an eye on Yashiro as he did so. They’d be making quite a loss if they had to pay out the insurance money to his mother a mere four days after he’d taken it out. He planned to apologize to them for it.
When Kita had sat down on the sofa, Yoshiko Koikawa spread out a brochure on the table before him and set about explaining the insurance. She proceeded to talk about how it would give him peace of mind to add a special clause covering the possibility of cancer or Aids, how the version that allowed you to convert the amount into a monthly pension once it had almost reached full term meant that you could plan for your old age, while there was a type that was popular with young people whereby you could take out the money for your own use if you knew you didn’t have long to live. Kita listened with only half an ear. There was something more important than all this that he needed to ask.
“What happens if I decide to commit suicide?”
Yoshiko’s smile froze into an expression of astonishment, but she quickly pulled herself together. “Don’t even think of it,” she said.
“Eh?” said Kita.
The explanatory tone returned. “You shouldn’t consider suicide. There’s no profit in it at all. We do occasionally get young people of this sort among our customers. Someone who asks whether there’s a payout if they commit suicide. Actually, accident and suicide are major causes of death in the twenties and thirties. Suicide’s the top cause in the forties, maybe because it’s a hard time in a lot of lives. My brother and I are about to enter our forties, actually, so we’re being very careful. I would guess you’re in your mid-thirties, Mr Kita, so that’s why the word springs so easily to your lips. I do understand how you feel.”
Death By Choice Page 9
