Kita glared at the pyjama-clad man, outraged. It made him mad that this guy was trying to label Mizuho as a patient with some serious disease.
“You don’t have anything wrong with you yourself?” asked the old man.
“I’m about to die,” Kita replied.
“Eh?” said the old man, but he ignored this and went on, “What problems do you both have?”
“I’ve got cancer. They took it out of the oesophagus, but now it’s gone into the lymph glands. I’m finished.”
The other man let the old man finish his announcement, then he said, “I’ve got diabetes and cirrhosis of the liver. How do you know you’re about to die?”
“I’ve decided on it.”
The two looked at each other, the unspoken question “Why?’ frozen on their faces. Just at this moment, the elevator door opened, and Mizuho Nishi appeared.
“Good luck,” Kita said to them, and set off after her. As she was stepping out of the hospital entrance, he spoke.
“Mizuho-san.”
Though her name had been called, she didn’t turn immediately. She walked on three paces, then slowly turned to face him. Even once her eyes behind their sunglasses had fixed on him, she didn’t react.
“You’re Mizuho Nishi, aren’t you?” Kita asked a little anxiously.
“Yes,” she answered, her voice pitched high.
“I’m Yoshio Kita.”
There was a moment’s pause, then Mizuho raised her voice in a little cry that could have been either a scream or a cry of delight. Then she stood still, lost for words. At least she hadn’t forgotten
him, apparently.
“Could we have a bit of time to talk? I won’t be a nuisance,” Kita began, but at this she seemed to return to her senses.
“Why are you here?” she asked accusingly.
“I’m sorry. I followed you by taxi from your house. I wanted to meet you one more time before I die.”
“I can’t do anything for you. Please go home.”
“I didn’t have any other way to meet you. I’ve only got a little time left.”
“Goodbye. I’m sorry.”
Mizuho hid her face with her left hand, and turned to escape in the direction of the parking lot. She walked with a somehow unnatural rhythm to her step. Kita ran quickly up behind her, slipped around in front of her, and continued his pleas.
“Wait. Please. Just hear me out for five minutes. I won’t ever come to you again, I promise. I don’t want to destroy the life you’ve made for yourself. Believe me. At least please take these flowers. Show me some pity, I won’t be here any more after this Friday. Just five minutes please.”
Kita blurted out his stream of imprecations, but Mizuho seemed not to hear a word. Kita couldn’t fathom why she was being so cold.
They arrived at the white Mercedes. Kita redoubled his pleas.
“Why are you so scared? I won’t do anything. I was wrong to just show up out of the blue like that. I can see why you were surprised. I just suddenly thought of doing this. I thought I have to see Mizuho. Just five minutes! Come and have tea with me. I beg you on my life.”
Mizuho put the key into the door, then turned to Kita. “I’m not afraid of anything,” she declared. “It’s just that the worst possible thing has already happened.”
Mizuho seemed so stern and cold it was as if she was keeping her distance from the very air around her, let alone Kita’s words and bouquet. She looked as if at the slightest touch she would murder him. Her face was like a demon’s mask. Kita put the flowers on the bonnet of the car, and stood back in silence, waiting for her to leave.
Mizuho ignored the flowers, and got into the car. “Good riddance, and I hope you have an accident,” Kita thought vindictively as he watched her through the window. But then the lock on the passenger door clicked open, and she was beckoning him to get in. Clueless about what was going on in her mind, Kita picked up the bouquet again, and gingerly climbed into the passenger seat.
There was nothing of the Mizuho he knew. He could only guess that some dreadful thing must have happened that had put her so on edge. But he still didn’t have the courage to ask what it was. Mizuho started the engine, and took Route 246 out in the direction of Aoyama.
It was she who finally broke the painful silence.
“Thanks for the flowers.”
A Poem in Mourning for a Lost Child
“Why did you decide to visit me? You were saying something rather odd just now.”
“Forget it.”
“You won’t be here after Friday, you say?”
“Certain circumstances mean I can’t be in this country any more. I’m leaving on Friday. Thank you so much for changing your mind. I’m so happy we can talk like this.”
“I’m sorry about how I was just now. I just couldn’t control my emotions. I’m impressed you recognised me. I’m a different person from six years ago, aren’t I? That person’s quite invisible now.”
“Are you ill?”
“I have nerve pain all over my face, and palpitations. I was having fainting fits earlier, but that’s subsided now. I’ve been forbidden to drive, in fact, but I don’t want to see anyone, so I need to use the car. I have to be able to control my emotions while I’m driving, so it’s actually quite a good form of rehabilitation.”
Mizuho wasn’t the sort to openly express emotions as far as Kita could recall. Her feelings were always well hidden under her skin. Kita knew. He’d been so thoroughly taken in by her straight face that he’d let the Finance Ministry man get under his guard, after all.
“Your marriage must be good I guess. You live in a house that would even stand up to an earthquake, and I’ll bet your kid is cute, too.”
“You don’t know anything, do you?” Mizuho moaned softly. She stopped the Mercedes on a side road that led to the Outer Gardens of Meiji Shrine, and turned off the engine. A wood shielded the area from the noise of the city beyond. There was nothing but a single restaurant and a wedding parlour on the quiet street. Mizuho rested her cheek on the steering wheel and closed her eyes, trying to control the emotion that rose in waves through her body. It was as if she was resisting a wave of nausea and swallowing down the urge to vomit. She gave a sigh, cast him a sidelong glance, and suddenly murmured, “He died. My child died.”
Kita was dumbfounded. He had simply had the image of a happy family life in a plush part of town. Now at last it was all clear to him – the urge not to see anyone, and the nervous problems.
“I’ve finally got to the point where I can talk about it. If you want to know, I’ll tell you. If you don’t, I’ll go back home now.”
“Tell me,” said Kita. He knew there was nothing he could do for her, but he hoped he could at least atone for the mistaken assumptions he’d made about her and the grudges he’d held against her all this time.
He was a child of four, named Shingo. One day he’d suddenly developed a fever of forty degrees, and lost consciousness. Antibiotics failed to work, and after ten days of battling the mystery virus, he had succumbed. He had been at his most delightful. He was learning to ride a bicycle. He’d named his bike “The Dinosaur Tank,” and was always riding off on it to play with his little friend Takuya nearby, a toy car in the basket. He was in the infants grade at kindergarten, and he went happily along there each day. He was good at playing up to adults, and he would constantly snuggle up on his teacher’s knee, and never do any harm to his friends.
He was a child who was gentle both with people and with things.
He had a pet goldfish, but when he came back from a trip to find it dead, he was inconsolable. They made a grave for it together, and when she said “Let’s pray that he can swim around happily in the next world,” he’d asked her innocently what “the next world” was. It’s another world where dead people go, she replied. What kind of people are there? he asked. Your granddad from Kagoshima, and fine people from the past, and Charlie Chaplin, she said. And then he’d said, “I’d like to go too, then.”
He loved Chaplin movies, and used to imitate the way he walked. There’s a scene in the film called Circus where Chaplin walks along a tightrope, and a lot of monkeys come along and get in his way. Shingo laughed uproariously at that. The monkeys swarm over Chaplin’s face and bite his nose, and Shingo imitated it in bed that night, trying to bite his mother’s nose.
He had slept with his mother since the first week after his birth. It was hot in summer, but in winter she held him close, his warm body like sleeping with a hot water bottle. How many times a day had she kissed those smooth cheeks? And now, suddenly she found herself lying there without him, unable to sleep. He smelt of saliva, and of urine. Sometimes he’d kick her in the stomach, or climb onto her face, but now that she couldn’t hear his sleeping breath she felt she never slept. It was more than a year since he’d died, but still her hands went out to find him in bed. Then she’d realize he wasn’t there, an empty sorrow would overcome her, and she’d weep into the pillow. Night and day she thought about him. It was just as if she’d lost her own arm or leg. Like reaching out as usual to turn off the alarm, and finding she didn’t have an arm. And though the arm was gone, it was still part of her consciousness. That’s how it felt. He was dead, but she felt as if he was simply hiding around some corner. Even now it felt as if she could turn around and find Shingo sitting there. When she was in the house and heard a sound, she’d find herself going to check. Maybe he’s playing alone in the playroom, she’d think, maybe he’s suddenly come back from the dead. She often heard things. Mummy, I’ve finished, she’d hear him say – he’d always announced this loudly when he’d finished on the potty. Mummy, I want some milk; Mummy, please read to me; Mummy, I want some potato; Where are you Mummy? His voice would suddenly come to her. Whenever the intercom sounded, she’d hear his footsteps running down the corridor. “Super hyper bomber kick!” or “Squeak squeak said the samurai rat,” he’d call.
Shingo was part of his mother’s body – he’d been inside it once, after all. Since the day he died, she’d been only half alive. Her life was paired with his as a single entity. They had slept and woken together, she’d eaten with him, laughed with him, cried with him. Shingo loved pork cutlets, and they often went to the Bodaiju Restaurant in Futako Tamagawa for a fillet set course. He’d devour an adult serving, then eat his mother’s ice cream as well. He refused to eat a balanced diet. Usually all he’d eat was white rice and fruit. The only fish he’d eat was raw tuna and sake-dried mackerel. He also like fermented soybeans, with lots of seaweed flakes sprinkled over it, so that his face became coated in bits of seaweed when he ate it. He’d looked forward to learning piano when he turned five, but this was never to be. His father had promised to take him to Okinawa on his fifth birthday.
She wanted to go back to the days when Shingo was alive. She felt she must have been too happy then, that’s why it had happened. Those five years since she’d parted from Kita were probably the happiest in her whole life. Her husband was kind. He didn’t try to hold her back, he let her come and go as she wanted, and he left the decorating of their new house and the designing of the garden up to her. She’d got catalogues from Italy and England, and chosen wallpaper and curtains and tiles to suit her own taste, and taken her time to create the home. His family put up all the money for it. Since Shingo was born, her husband’s mother had come every day and helped with the housework, so it had all been quite easy. There was no friction between them. Her husband was good about cooking and cleaning up, he loved his wife, he was always getting back from work past midnight but it didn’t bother her. If a man has to deal with children, his maternal instincts come out. Her husband was good at teaching Shingo words and numbers. He’d tug at his own ears and say playfully “I’m Mr Spock,” or put on glasses and wrap a yellow scarf around himself like a robe and say “I’m the Dalai Lama.” If you asked what time it was he’d look at the clock and think, then say things like “It’s seventy three minutes past three.”
What would Shingo have become when he grew up? she wondered.
He’d said he wanted to be a conductor. When some orchestral music began on the television or video, he’d stand on the sofa and conduct. There had been so many possible futures, if he’d just lived. He’d have started elementary school next April. She’d always have similar thoughts whenever a new phase in his life would have begun, she knew. If he was alive now, he’d have reached this or that stage in his piano training, she’d think; or, I wish I’d taken him to view autumn leaves while he was alive; or, he’d be coming back all caked in mud from a football match. But she also thought that perhaps unspeakable things would have happened in his future, so maybe it was better that he wasn’t alive. There was bullying when you reached adolescence, and maybe he would have got depressed and committed suicide. The world was less and less safe, and he couldn’t have hoped to live the luxurious life of an earlier era. He’d escaped all that unhappiness, so perhaps he’d gained something by dying so young. After all, everyone dies, don’t they? The only difference is whether it happens early or late.
Put that way it sounded harsh, she knew. But she couldn’t bear to say it any other way. Since Shingo’s death, problems had arisen between her and her husband. The two of them had been united as a couple because of their son. Her husband seemed to be seeing some other woman. She could tell. He was smart, so he was careful to get rid of all the evidence before he came home, but his constant brightness and carefree air was because he was having a relationship with someone healthy. She herself had developed this nervous disorder since Shingo’s death, and could no longer smile. He never made the slightest attempt to look at her. If she left home, he’d doubtless go right on working as usual, and calling in on this other woman. But she wasn’t going to divorce. Why should she do him that favour? This house belonged to Shingo and his mummy. And Shingo wouldn’t want daddy not to be there. He loved his daddy. As for his daddy, he was a typical bureaucrat. He’d dealt with the pain early on, and simply said now that all the grieving in the world wasn’t going to bring the boy back. You had to forget the painful things as soon as possible or it would affect your work, he said. Try your hardest to consider how best to distribute the nation’s tax. You can change your mood by doing money calculations. But she couldn’t do that. Her job had been to bring up Shingo. She’d lost both him and her job. No, it was truer to say that she was still carefully looking after him. Inside her that’s what she was doing. He continued to grow inside her mind. She often dreamed of him. The Shingo of her dreams spoke with a strangely adult voice. Don’t be too sad, mummy, he said, you’ll make me want to cry too. Just recently she’d dreamed he walked in the door as a young man, announcing he’d come home. Where’ve you been? she asked. I’ve been worrying about you. I’ve been travelling round the world, he announced. I’ve seen the Iguazú Falls, and Niagara, and I’ve walked in the Sahara. When she wept in her dream to see he was alive, he comforted her. I’m sorry, he said, I didn’t want to die either, but I had to go, God had some business with me. I’ll come back now and then, so please have a pork cutlet cooked waiting for me. These dreams were very painful for her. She felt he must feel most at home when he was in her dream. It was only his mother or father who could dream of him like this. And his father’s head was full of money and another woman, so it was her responsibility. If she didn’t welcome him back in her dreams, he’d have nowhere in this world to exist any more. That would be too sad for him, so she’d decided to keep on living despite the pain.
Mizuho paused at this point, took a handkerchief from her handbag, and wiped the tears that flowed from her eyes beneath the sunglasses. Then she handed Kita a snapshot in a plastic cover, of her son as he had once been. He was a long-lashed boy. He was eating an ice cream, a white creamy moustache around his mouth. He didn’t strike Kita as some unknown child. He was the child of Kita’s former lover, and when Kita told himself this boy was no longer in this world, he felt an urge to at least look after the boy in the next. He also wished he could do something
for this mother who had grieved so much this past year. Could he help in some way? he asked her. She shook her head silently.
“We won’t meet again, but please go on looking after Shingo. I’m sorry I made you tell such a painful story.”
He sought her hand to shake it, but she gripped his feebly in return. “Where are you going?” she asked.
“Somewhere far away,” was all he replied.
“You’re not going to kill yourself, surely?”
Her perspicacity startled him, but he dissembled with a smile. He planned to leave without giving vent to any desire for revenge over lost love.
“I wanted to die too, so I know, you see. You’ve lost all hope, haven’t you? Haven’t you, Kita?”
“Goodbye. I have to go.”
Kita opened the car door, and set off walking down the main road, without turning to look back. Mizuho’s voice followed him.
“You mustn’t do it! Don’t die!”
Her voice came to him as faintly as if it were a hallucination.
Fleeing Together
The boy had died, but he still managed to live on in his mother’s memory. He was even now travelling, eating pork cutlets, learning piano, and speaking in a grown-up voice, but if his mother’s attention was suddenly distracted by something else, he’d vanish. She’d have to reassemble him, all of him, from his face and voice to his limbs.
That child had once lived in this world, walked its streets, played with shining and moving things in woods, by rivers, in parks or in his playroom, and been affected by emotions at every moment. But the child his mother was looking after now was not that child. He was just like him, but he was a phantom, made of an entirely different substance. She cared for him in the full knowledge that he was a phantom. One can still feel pain in a limb that’s been severed, so it’s only natural to go on loving a child who’s died. It doesn’t matter if it’s a phantom, as long as you can maintain the illusion that the child is still alive.
Death By Choice Page 14
