After he’d achieved his wish to meet his old lover, and had learned of her loss, Kita Yoshio sat alone in his hotel room weeping. It wasn’t his own child, and he’d never met the boy. The child who had been born between the woman who’d slighted him and the Finance Ministry bureaucrat was no more to Kita than a tree in the wood. What did it matter whether the tree lived or died? Still, his tears continued to flow.
Given that he was due to die on Friday, Kita thought to himself, would he continue to live like that boy in someone’s memory? Was there anyone who’d look after him in his phantom form?
That boy had no past to speak of, it was true. He’d only lived for four years. Those four years were a golden time for his mother. She had to hang onto the memory of his short time on earth in order to retrieve for herself those four lost golden years.
Kita, on the other hand, had a past of more than thirty years, but they were only there to be forgotten. As death approached, his consciousness should naturally slip into remembering mode, and he should begin to lament all that he would miss. But there was no sign of this happening. Death was weightless, of course, but his own death seemed as light as a sigh.
This thought didn’t make him particularly sad. In fact, it felt more like a little joke if anything. It was funny that a man who was about to die should be crying for a boy who’d died, and pitying his ex-lover who lived with the boy’s phantom.
It was already past four on Tuesday afternoon.
Alone like this in the hushed room, another self appeared, one who was exactly like him but made of a completely different substance. This was the fellow who’d decided to die on Friday. Before he knew it, Kita had started doing what this fellow told him to. The fellow had a very persuasive way about him – that was what had led to this.
To everyone there comes a moment when your life blazes at its finest.
Well, thought Kita, he hadn’t had any such moment, and it didn’t look as if he was ever going to have one. At this point in his thoughts, his Other broke in.
In that case, you should die. In the last moment before death, your life will attain its great climax. Needless to say, of course, you’ll need strength for this. And money. You’ll leave it too late if you wait till you’re over sixty and drawing your pension. Everyone dies sooner or later, they don’t need any help to do it, but where’s your blazing moment if you leave things to fate? Right now, you have the strength for it. You have the money. Now’s your chance. The desire for death is simply part of the territory for humans, like the desire for food or sex. It’s OK, you’re not crazy. You’re a totally normal guy. If you see a fine woman you want to sleep with her, if you’re mocked you get mad. When you hear the sad tale of that poor little boy and his Mum, you weep. You have feelings that respond from moment to moment, just like they should. You’re all you should be – and that’s precisely why you want to die.
Ever since Kita had decided to die next Friday, his feelings had been torn this way and that. If things went on like this, he was worried he might suddenly panic when the moment to die actually arrived. He had to admit it, he was scared of death. He still had three days to go, but at this stage time felt like it was passing awfully quickly. When it came to the crunch, his urge to die might just desert him. This was Death by Choice, after all. Choice included the freedom to choose not to do it. If he chose against it, though, what was his Saturday going to feel like? The very thought made him shudder. He felt an overwhelming sense of futility, a deep melancholy and regret… and at this point, his Other spoke again.
I’ll be with you. I’ll make good and sure you die, don’t worry. Even if you waver, the desire for death has seized your subconscious and it won’t let go. It’ll take a lot more than a bit of dithering to shake it off.
But he hadn’t even decided how to do it yet.
Try a process of elimination. How about drowning, for instance?
He’d once come close to drowning at a beach where he shouldn’t have been swimming. A wave had dumped him, and he’d been left foundering underwater. He struggled to rise to the surface, but he’d lost all sense of direction and ended up swimming sideways instead. He was sure he’d drown, but when he relaxed his face rose naturally to the surface. How delicious the air had been! He had this habit of trying to get out of dying, so it might take a bit more to achieve than he’d hoped.
How about hanging? All you need is a bit of rope.
But I haven’t been condemned to be hanged. My eyeballs would pop out, I’d shit myself – no way!
OK, how about jumping in front of a train? You could time it well.
I don’t want to mix my Mum up in all the compensation problems that would involve.
An electric shock to the heart? It’s easy.
I’m not an electric guitar, you know.
Take potassium cyanide? That’s how spies die.
I’ve always hated swallowing medicine.
Well then, how about you charter a helicopter or a Cessna, and jump out without a parachute? You’d feel great.
The problem is, where would I land? If I land in the sea, I drown. If I land in some town, I’ll involve other people. If I land in a forest I’ll be skewered on a tree.
OK then, don’t make up your mind. You’ve still got three days. It’s more important to get yourself into a state of mind where you know you have to die, than to worry about how. People can die even when they have no reason to, after all, so it’s even easier if you’ve got one. Sad or happy, these last three days are going to be the best in your life, see. Don’t just sit there shut away in your hotel room, get moving!
And so, urged on by his Other, and without any real purpose, Kita prepared to sally forth into the night streets of the capital. It wasn’t a good idea to be alone. And besides, he wanted to shut that Other up.
The telephone rang – the hotel telephone, not the cell phone. The blinking light told him he had a message. He picked up the receiver, and there was Shinobu’s voice.
“Kita? Where’ve you been? I’ve telephoned again and again. I couldn’t get you on your cell phone – I thought you might be dead.”
“No, it’s still only Tuesday.”
“You OK? What are you planning on doing now?”
“I haven’t decided. I thought maybe I’d have a meal.”
“Buy me one please. OK? I’m in the studio right now doing a shoot. I’ll come round there at five.”
Kita had a premonition that she was up to something.
“Yashiro and those yakuza guys aren’t involved, are they?”
“No way. This isn’t to do with business.”
“Why do you want to spend time with me? It’s weird.”
“Don’t you want to see me?”
“Of course I do.”
“Well then, don’t argue, just meet me.”
He was only too happy to do as she told him. He was inclined to do all he could for Shinobu – after all, she’d promised him rebirth, even if it was only a joke.
Shinobu turned up in the hotel lobby unaccompanied. She was dressed casually, in jeans with ripped knees and a red yachting parka, with a bandana around her head and no make-up, giving her a completely different look from the night before. “I’d love to go somewhere far away,” she said in a wheedling tone.
There was a limit to how much he was inclined to indulge her, but he asked anyway just to see what she’d say.
“A mountain hot spring resort.”
Hot spring resorts again! Why did women love going to these places? At Kita’s bitter smile, Shinobu’s expression became pleading.
“I’ve just felt so empty and forlorn since last night. It’s your fault, Kita. I wanted to pack everything in, work included, and run away somewhere. Let’s run away together.”
“You mean it?”
“I mean it.”
But her eyes were laughing as she spoke. Kita stalled by inviting her to eat with him at the hotel, but she held her ground. “We’re going to the mountains,” she insisted. Kit
a couldn’t guess what her plan was, but he allowed himself be sent back to his room to pack, and then checked out of the hotel. “Look at you,” Shinobu said when she saw him with the backpack on his back. “You’re all set for the mountains with that on.”
They hopped in a taxi and set off for Tokyo Station. The only plan was to head for the mountains, they didn’t have any particular destination in mind. “Let’s just get on the bullet train and get out of Tokyo,” Shinobu insisted. “Once we’re out of the city there’ll be hot springs all over the place.”
They took seats in the first class carriage of the six thirty-five northbound bullet train, heading for Niigata. Before boarding Shinobu went crazy at the station kiosk, buying chocolate-coated cracker sticks, silverberry juice, cheese paste, banana cake, vinegared squid, persimmon peas, strawberry rice-cakes and so forth, and then settled down to pig out on them. She was just trying to cheer herself up from the miseries and rage of normal life, she explained. Her hands and mouth never paused for an instant; she ate with the vigour of someone literally eating the house down. Kita noticed that she had her own particular style of getting through the food. First off she consumed five cracker sticks. Next was a mouthful of cheese paste. Then came one vinegared squid tentacle, after which she demolished a rice cake. Then she spent a while picking out the persimmon peas from the packet, after which she’d suddenly remember and take a deep swig of the silverberry juice. When the food wagon came around in the carriage, she bought beer and Oolong tea, and after slaking her thirst with these she set in on the banana cake. Finally, she returned to the crackers.
Sitting beside Shinobu with her blatantly terrible eating style, Kita contented himself with picking at the contents of a local specialty bento. He couldn’t summon much of an appetite.
Once the train was past Takasaki, Shinobu’s blood sugar levels seemed to have returned to normal. She heaved a sigh and said, “Let’s get off at the next stop.” They’d bought tickets as far as Echigo Yuzawa, but they hopped off one stop short, at Jomo Kogen.
The carriage had been nearly empty since Takasaki. Only five others besides themselves got off at Jomo Kogen. Both the station and the street in front were silent and deserted. Mountains rose in the distance, lit by the moon. Apparently this was the closest mountain hot spring resort area to Tokyo.
They made inquiries at the station about whether there was some secluded hot spring hotel in a nearby village. “A secluded hot spring hotel?” repeated the young station attendant, and thought for a while, his eyes following Shinobu as she danced around in the empty station, humming and looking at the posters on the wall.
“Hoshi Hot Springs is the best. But it’s too late to get there now. The last bus has gone. You’ll have to get a taxi.”
“No problem,” Kita said. He got the telephone number, and made the call from the public phone booth. The man from the hot springs sounded rather reluctant, but he agreed to let them stay without an evening meal.
The taxi ride into the mountains took about an hour. A little before nine, they arrived at the lone hotel building in the woods, an area reputed to provide frequent sightings of monkeys. They were shown to a room with two sets of bedding already laid out for them on the floor; the table held little dishes of boiled vegetables, grilled fish, pickles and rice balls that seemed intended as side dishes for sake. The waitress informed them that they could take a bath any time of day or night, and there were drinks in their refrigerator.
A stream flowed beneath the window, spanned by a corridor leading to a wing on the far bank. Apparently this wooden hot spring hotel was over a hundred years old, built in the early years of the Meiji era, and was closed during the winter months.
“OK if we sleep in the same room?” Kita asked.
Shinobu looked much more cheerful than she had when they were in Tokyo. “Shall I read you some more from the Bible?” she said.
“No, that’s enough Bible. But is it really OK for you to be in this remote place? You must have work tomorrow, surely?”
“It’s fine. I’ve sent those spooks packing. I want to give them a hard time, you see.”
“You ran away?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t think you were serious.”
“I’m serious. I’m taking my revenge on the world.”
“It’s like I’ve kidnapped you or something.”
“I’m the one who’s kidnapped you.”
“No one’s going to see it that way. What do you get out of kidnapping me, after all? But if someone abducted you, everyone’d go crazy. And there’d be money in it.”
“No one would pay the ransom.”
“I bet they would. The production guys would.”
“No way, not that stingy company boss.”
“Well the politicians you’ve been with would then. You’re in a position to cause the downfall of two members of parliament
plus a top bureaucrat from the Treasury. You’re a walking bomb for them.”
Shinobu was sitting up on one of the beds like a little god of happiness. “Kita, would you abduct me please?” she said, gazing flirtatiously up at him as he stood by the window. In the hotel the night before, Kita had dreamed of running away with Shinobu. Needless to say, it had only been a fantasy. And yet here she was, begging him to abduct her. Maybe a whole new life had begun for him suddenly.
“I’ve got two things I absolutely must do before I die. One of them’s a ski jump.”
Professional ski jumpers looked as though they just went bouncing gaily along, but apparently they were white with fear when they first started. The beginning was like a prison sentence or death dash to escape. The criminal hurls himself from the prison down the perilous cliff face in the swirling snow, not knowing if he’ll live or die, and if by pure luck he lands safely, he grasps both life and freedom. No one can believe they’ll survive, that first time. Sure they’d die, and the prison guards wouldn’t bother pursuing them. That “freedom or death” leap had become a competitive sport that judged participants on their form and the length of their jump.
“If I tried a ski jump it’s quite possible I’d die, it seems to me.”
“Kind of like committing suicide by jumping to your death, eh?”
“So the order should be to do the other thing before I try the jump, in fact.”
“And what’s the other thing?”
“To abduct someone.”
“Kita, you’ve been wanting to abduct me all along! This is great!”
“The success rate for abductions is pretty low, you know.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll help.”
“OK, let’s try it.”
“Sure. But first, let’s have a bath.”
They changed into bathrobes and headed off along the squeaky wooden corridor for the bathhouse, their slippers flapping on the floor. Steam filled the dimly lit bathhouse, a room as cavernous as a temple hall. The big bath was reminiscent of a holding tank for fish. It was divided in four, with a log across the middle of each. A group of old couples, three middle-aged ladies who made no attempt to hide their breasts from sight, and an awkward-looking young man were all soaking themselves blankly. Kita and Shinobu disrobed behind the screen, then stepped together into a vacant bath. The bottom was lined with fist-sized stones.
“This feels great.” Shinobu’s naked body swayed palely in the soft, translucent water. Blissfully she scooped water in the palm of her hand and poured it down her back. Kita was blissful for different reasons – he was tasting the delight of seeing with his very own eyes this image of his adored idol’s naked body before the photographs had hit the stands. She was no phantom, but it nevertheless seemed to him she’d disappear if he reached out to touch her. Perhaps it was the hot spring steam that made him feel this way. At any rate, that’s how he chose to feel.
“She’s been abducted by me. I’m in charge of that body of hers until Friday,” he told himself. In order to convince himself, he’d go through the mot
ions of the abductor, one by one. First off, he should let the production chief or the manager know he’d abducted her. An abductor always made some demand. They’d suspect him if he didn’t. OK, he’d demand ransom money. What would be a suitable sum? He shouldn’t go too high or too low. Maybe thirty million would be about right. He ought to make all sorts of unreasonable demands as well. Acting wilful was her responsibility.
Once out of the bath, he bought some milk in the vending machine, and as he sipped it Kita stood at the phone booth by the corridor and dialled the chief’s home number.
A woman who was evidently the wife answered. “This is the Fujioka residence,” she said, in a voice like a slowed-down recording. Taking his cue from her polite way of speaking, Kita began, “I’m sorry to bother you at this hour. Would your husband be in?”
“My husband is out just now. To whom am I speaking?”
“My name is Yukichi Fukuzawa,” Kita said, borrowing the name of the famous early Meiji scholar whose face was on the ten thousand yen note. “Could you pass on a message for me please?”
“Mr. Fukuzawa, is it? I’ll take your message.”
“I have Shinobu Yoimachi. Don’t inform the police. Just prepare thirty million yen. That’s the message. Thanks.”
“Er, could you explain?”
“This is an abduction. I’m serious. I’ll phone again. Goodbye.”
Shinobu stood beside him listening as she drank down a can of Pocari Sweat. “That was cool, Kita,” she said admiringly. Kita grinned shyly. “Let’s go back to the room and take a rest,” he said. “I’d like to hear some more of that Bible.”
They settled down on the bed and sipped beer while Shinobu read from the twelfth chapter of the Gospel according to Luke, where Jesus preaches to the Pharisees and lawmakers. Lightheaded from the bath, Kita felt the words of Jesus swim like water into his brain.
Think of the ravens: they have no storehouse or barn; yet God feeds them. You are worth far more than the birds!
Can anxious thought add a day to your life? If, then, you cannot do even a very little thing, why worry about the rest?
Death By Choice Page 15
