Death By Choice

by Masahiko Shimada

  “In that case, you can’t claim to have killed him, so I’m not obliged to pay you.”

  “Ah, I see. That’s what you’re driving at. Never mind. I got a decent sum from selling his kidney on the black market.”

  The taxi was stopped at a red light, and the driver was eyeing his two passengers in the rear view mirror. He met the doctor’s eye, hastily averted his gaze, and turned up the radio.

  “We’re practicing our parts for a play,” the doctor informed him drolly.

  “Truth is, I’ve got no money.” Kita opened his wallet and showed the doctor. He had less than three thousand yen there. There was money enough in the bank, of course, but no way of getting it out.

  “OK then, we’ll have to steal some. You borrowed two hundred thousand from me, Kita. I still haven’t been paid the outstanding two hundred fifty thousand from Yashiro either, so something has to be done about that as well.”

  “I’ll pay you with my organs. Organ extraction’s your specialty, after all.”

  “I guess that’s all we can do then. I’ll need to accompany you to your execution ground. Will you permit me?” The doctor spoke as if he was reading from a score he already knew.

  Kita pulled at his hair in despair. “Why the hell should it cost me all this money to die!” he cried.

  “That’s capitalism for you,” murmured the doctor.

  “Oh shut up,” said Kita crossly.

  The Connoisseur Food Eccentric

  It seemed the doctor really was upset that Kita had eaten that curry. He was still harping on about it even once they were settled at the table for Kita’s last supper.

  “Do you have something against curry, is that it?” asked Kita. “So what could I have eaten that would make you happy, eh?”

  But the doctor only came back with the same thing, over and again. “Curry’s just the pits.”

  “So I should confine myself to sashimi and crab, or something?”

  “Well that’s better than curry, at any rate,” muttered the doctor. He stripped the shell from the horse crab that had just been delivered to their table, flipped it over, and set in on the ovaries and crab butter. Both suddenly grew taciturn as they settled down to commune with their crab. But neither had much of an appetite in fact. The doctor tipped some warm sake into his crab shell, mixed in some orange crab butter, and sat there sipping. Kita imitated him. This was called “crab shell sake,” he learned. “I’ve never come across it before,” he remarked. At this, the doctor launched into an enthusiastic lecture. Had he ever tried charfish bone sake? Or blowfish roe sake? You could also mix sake with salted sea-cucumber entrails… on he went.

  “You’re some sort of gourmand, I see,” remarked Kita, sounding bored.

  “You can’t have eaten any decent food in your whole life,” the doctor retorted firmly.

  “I always had strong likes and dislikes as a kid.”

  “Me too. Up until I was about twenty-seven.”

  “So you turned around and became a gourmet at twenty-seven?”

  “That’s right. My physical make-up changed with the death of someone I knew. He was a doctor, my teacher actually. The immediate cause of death was rupture of the heart, but his body was in such a bad way he could easily have died of any damn thing. Diabetes, cirrhosis of the liver, hypertension, bowel cancer, he had the lot. And how did he get that way? Overeating, nothing more nothing less. In the hospital he’d be handing out warnings on diet to the patients, but he exempted himself from his own rules.”

  “You’re pretty weird yourself, but so was your teacher, eh?”

  “Let me just finish. Patients generally come to hospital wanting to regain their health, right? But there’s no need for the doctors to be healthy. He was out to commit slow suicide, that’s my view. People who eat things they’re not supposed to eat, they’re shortening their life through a crime of conscience. That’s right, you can die by eating, you know.”

  All along the doctor had acted like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, but suddenly all that changed and he now spoke in deadly earnest.

  “He had an eating disorder, that’s what it comes down to. He recognized it himself, and he once told me it was related to his experience as an infant during the war. That fear of starvation never left him even in adulthood. He felt anxious and restless unless there was food nearby. As a result, there was always food in the refrigerator and cupboard. But once or twice a year, it would happen that stocks ran out. When he discovered this, he’d immediately go out and fill his belly somewhere or buy stuff in, no matter if it was past midnight, or in the middle of a typhoon. These days, of course, you’ve got twenty-four-hour convenience stores to take care of the anxiety of such people, but back then there were no convenient local food outlets. He’d have to get a taxi into the city centre to find one of those late-night shops.

  “He used to play the gourmet and pretend it was an epicurean affectation that made him walk the streets in search of food. He defended a huge territory, and he was au fait with all manner of international foods and cuisine. When he travelled to conferences he’d make a point of hunting out the specialties and delicacies of the region, and astonish everyone with his appetite. He’d eat at least two dozen raw crabs, then demolish enough bouillabaisse for three. He could consume a two-pound T-bone steak, rare. He’d spend a long time at a sushi counter, ordering two rounds of everything they had on the menu.

  “But all this is no more than you’d expect of your average glutton. He passed himself off as a suave, big-eating gastronome in company, but in fact he was the worst type of food eccentric. There’s nothing esoteric about being a food eccentric, no arcane knowledge or anything like that. He’d eat whatever he could get his hands on. Weird eating was his greatest pleasure in life. And one aspect of this discipline of his was food perversion.

  “My teacher adored pigs’ ears. Now pigs’ ears are a staple item in Okinawa and Taiwan, where they eat them vinegared or jellied. Their gelatinous marrow and skin gives the dish a fabulous texture to the bite. You can turn a woman on by licking her ears, of course, but it’s not on to actually eat them. So you ease your frustration by eating pigs’ ears. My teacher never ate a single woman’s ear till the day he died, but he chewed up and digested the ears of no less than three hundred pigs to make up for it.

  “He also had a passion for internal organs, brain and liver and kidneys, and so on, and he was a constant customer at the street stalls that specialized in offal dishes.

  “Now freshness is everything when it comes to offal. He’d go to these places in Shinjuku in search of the organs of cattle killed that same day, and order up dishes of raw liver, heart, brains, and what have you. Raw brains have a richer taste than cod’s roe but they’re not as strong, and you can get quite addicted to the particular crisp texture of pink brainstem. Cattle have small brains relative to their overall bulk, so raw beef brain is quite costly. But that didn’t stop him. He’d order up three plates of it, until I found myself wishing I had four stomachs like a cow to hold it all. But this was just the hors d’oeuvres. The main course was beef offal stew. This went well with a heavy Bordeaux red, so he’d take a case along when he went. Offal may be a stamina food, the guy behind the counter would warn him, but it’s packed full of cholesterol remember. I’m a doctor, he’d say with a shrug, I know what I’m doing, and he’d order a second helping of stew.

  “He was also a sucker for animal fat. Take thick noodles in a soup of back fat of pork, for instance. Or Chinese dumplings with a creamy stuffing made with heapings of that lard you use for heavy fry-ups. We’re still in the realm of fat that might be enjoyed by many people on a regular basis here, of course. But my teacher had what you might call a literal weakness for the stuff.

  “Now we Japanese as a rule don’t go for fat, with the result that we have excellent longevity. You don’t die young just from eating the kind of fat you get in noodle soup or Chinese dumplings, for one thing. Let me just mention here that lard is a healthier kind of
fat than butter or beef fat. Okinawans are long-lived, and Okinawa’s a lard paradise. Mind you, their impressive average life span is actually thanks to other causes. They have a balanced diet, and the climate and air are conducive to a long life. They’re not addicted to fat like some races.

  “But as for my teacher, well he was on familiar terms with butter, beef fat, lard, you name it. Seal fat, duck fat, sheep’s fat, camel fat… The Provence region of France prides itself on a dish called cassoulet. You cook fatty duck in an earthenware casserole dish with white beans and sausage, so the beans absorb the duck fat, and the soup’s heavy with it. Apparently even the French have heartburn the day after they eat this dish. My teacher ate it three days running. He didn’t just eat it, he soaked up every last bit of fat at the bottom of the casserole dish with bread. I’d guess he shortened his life by about a week at each meal.

  “Whenever he ate fat, he knew one thing for sure. Whether it was salted pork sirloin or chunks of beef fat in sukiyaki or stewed camel’s hump, or goose fat foie gras, he knew it was going to put pressure on his circulatory system, increase the adipose tissue around his liver, add wear and tear to his heart, diminish his vigour, and as a result take him one step closer to death.

  “He would go into raptures over spicy and salty things. Now fat, of course, disguises much of the taste of hot or salty food. If you put salt on your tongue, you register the salty taste, and if you bite a chilli your tongue burns, but fat not only lessens the heat and the saltiness, it tames it right down. So of course his fat-soaked tongue craved food that was hotter and hotter, saltier and saltier.

  “He kept the refrigerator permanently stocked with a number of salted and fermented foods. Sweet miso with fermentation starter, high-grade stuff with lime added, fermented cuttlefish blackened with its ink, he had the lot. He’d put salted fish innards and roe or salted sea-cucumber entrails in sake and drink it, he’d soak octopus or blowfish stomach or salt pickled sea squirt in green tea, or put salt-pickled baby rabbitfish on tofu, and he’d eat anchovies neat. He was a great fan of salt itself in all its guises. He’d of course use rock salt on meat dishes, and natural sea salt with fish, but he’d also blend different regional salts to create compounds for his personal delectation. This became a passion in his final years, the reason being that his body couldn’t cope with anything more than salt and water by this stage.

  “Well if you’re a connoisseur of salt, you’ll also be a connoisseur of miso, soy sauce, and fish sauce. This man would serve himself dollops of finest Hatcho and Nishikyo miso washed down with sake, and slake the resultant thirst with drafts of Calpis. His pursuit of saltiness led him to start gulping down pure mineral spring water. His daily consumption of salts and sugars leapt, while his taste buds dulled. He craved ever stronger taste sensations. He took to having chilli, Tabasco sauce, or Chinese chilli paste with everything, which of course ate its way through not only his tongue and stomach but also his intestines.”

  “You and your teacher make a fine perverted pair, I must say.” Just listening to him was giving Kita heartburn and a dreadful thirst. He ordered water.

  “I’m just saying this is one more way of committing suicide. It takes a while, mind. Obviously, I’m not suggesting you try it yourself. I mean, you’re a man who’ll eat curry for almost his last meal, after all.”

  “Just drop it, OK? You’re saying I should’ve eaten noodles? I don’t want to eat another thing.”

  “Curry! Noodles! You’re a man with a sorry stomach, you are.”

  “Don’t judge a man by his stomach.”

  “Oh but I do. I hate Americans, for instance. This world isn’t such a simple place that you can conquer it with goddamn hamburgers.”

  “Just what’re you trying to tell me?”

  “I’m speaking of the sorrows of the flesh. That explosive appetite of this teacher of mine did its work and sure enough his organs fell apart. Food eccentricity is a kind of terrorism, when it comes down to it. But it was also the only way my teacher could slake his desires.

  “We’re all starved of love, and tormented by the fear of losing love. From time to time we have to ease our fears and cravings by a bout of overeating. We search out food to replace the love we can’t chew and swallow – or in some cases we do the opposite, despair of finding love and thus cease to desire food. At any rate, love and food are fatally interconnected.

  “I cannot live without love. Yet love evades me. This is our dilemma, and we’ve constructed two ways to ease the pain. One is fervent eating. The other is refusing to eat anything at all. Being starved of love both stimulates the appetite and removes it. Both these responses are destructive impulses that derive from a sense of love’s absence. The one leads to overeating, the other to anorexia. Either way, too much or too little, we die. We humans survive by maintaining a balance between the two, but overeating and anorexia don’t hurt others, so no one interferes. Of course your lover or your family might try to save you, but this involves love of some sort, and the result may well be that your destructive impulses subside. Anyone threatened with death through over- or undereating is actually in a crisis of love. Yet this is where someone who has no dealings with love steps in – the doctor. Where destructive impulses are directed at others the police and the legal profession step in, but they’re not in a position to interfere with self-harm. All that can be done is for a doctor to treat the problem as best he can. You may find a good one, and with luck you’ll survive.

  “My teacher was lucky in that he himself was a doctor, but in some ways it was his downfall as well. At any rate, just before his sixtieth birthday he collapsed and died from overeating. It was a hideous death, but not a tragic one. His close family no doubt felt sorry for him, but those around him had no sympathy. In their astonishment they laughed rather than grieved, and at length the ironic smiles gave way to real reverence.

  “What a lucky guy to die from overeating, one of his colleagues said. Meanwhile his students gossiped that he must have been aiming to get his name in the Guinness Book of Records with the readings on his cholesterol, gamma GTP, blood sugars and so on, all measures of his various ailments.

  “The poor man could barely eat anything in his last years. He’d sit there lost in thought before a dish of plain broiled fatty eel and foie gras sauté, finally manage to carry a morsel to his mouth, then reach a trembling hand to a glass of water to wash it down. His flesh sagged and spilled out between his shirt and the top of his trousers. He’d developed a thick layer of fat everywhere beneath the skin, and a marbling of adipose tissue covered his muscles and organs. His breath stank and sweat constantly poured from him in all temperatures.

  “At this point, he made up his mind and prepared for his last supper. The table was laid with an array of dishes devised over long years of eccentric eating. A beef brain and pork saddle fat salad, a jellied broth of pigs’ ears and fig, foie gras and Chinese chilli sauce ice cream, ravioli of fermented bonito intestine and washed cheese, green chilli stuffed with caviar, tuna eyeballs in champagne. He assembled a row of his favourite wines – Romanée-Conti, Château Latour, Tokay and so forth. It took him five hours to polish it all off, sieving off the fatty juices and injecting them into his system. He collapsed on the spot, was rushed to hospital in an ambulance, and died of a heart attack en route.”

  “Why on earth would he go to that extreme? He must’ve been pretty desperate,” muttered Kita.

  The doctor drew a deep breath through his nose, and gazed steadily at him. “That’s exactly how my teacher would breathe sometimes, flaring his nostrils. Like he found the world despicable.”

  “This teacher of yours wouldn’t be your old man, by any chance?”

  Still holding his gaze, the doctor raised his lip in a lopsided wry smile. “You’re pretty smart. I am the son of this eccentric eater, you’re right.”

  “And are you one too?”

  “I’m no match for my father when it comes to appetite. I hated even eating while he was alive. I despi
sed people who were addicted to food. I virtually lived on thin air. I didn’t eat red meat or fish. I’d occasionally snack on a leaf of lettuce or cabbage, or eat a piece of unbuttered toast. When it came to meals, it was a bowl of white rice and some miso soup. I ate what you might call the absolute minimum to survive.”

  “Your own form of rebellion against your father, eh?”

  “I imagine so, yes. I was twenty-seven when he died. After that, my physical constitution changed radically. My repressed appetite was liberated, and I started eating meat and fish. On the anniversary of his death I went off to one of those offal specialty restaurants and had beef brain, and when I went to France I made a point of visiting Provence to have cassoulet. But I must admit my stomach isn’t as strong as his was.”

  “You inherited his appetite, but not his stomach?”

  “That’s right. But I did inherit his despair. He expressed his destructive impulses through perverse eating, but I—”

  “Murder people?”

  “No, I haven’t murdered anyone yet. I try to, but I end up saving them. I’m still caught between killing and rescuing. I chose to become a doctor in order to render my murderous impulses harmless. I hoped the urge to destroy could be satisfied by cutting people open and messing about with their organs. But I was wrong. Pa’s eating problems worsened with age, and it seems my destructive impulses are doing the same thing.”

  Why had the doctor chosen him to confess to? Kita wondered. Was it because he thought Kita would understand the despair of this gluttonous father and his murderous son? The doctor had analysed himself, but now what?

  “You’re sick. Go and see a doctor.” Kita was trying to throw him off with a casually dismissive remark.

  “I’m asking you to stand in for a doctor here,” the doctor replied.

  Kita smiled wryly. “This is turning out to be some last supper,” he muttered.

  “Kita, why do you want to die?”

  Everyone he met asked him the same question, and he didn’t have an answer. He simply made up some witty response on the spur of the moment to get the other person off his back.