After the bath, the two sipped beer, and drew on their biblical joints.
Next thing they knew, their eyes were drooping. A warmth invaded them, and their face muscles relaxed. The rays of the sun shining in through the window crept slowly towards them. Kita breathed in, and suddenly the room flashed bright. He felt he was in a noonday pool of sunlight. The doctor’s eyes were unfocussed. The corners of his eyelids were deeply creased.
Whenever Kita tried to move, his nerves twanged. His limbs felt like spaghetti cooked al dente. His torso felt fine, but his legs and arms flopped carelessly about. He stretched out his hand, but it seemed to move in a slowed down skip-frame motion. His brain felt as soft and wobbly as tofu in his skull. Any sudden change in the position of his face caused his grey matter to hit the side of his skull with a shudder. His mouth was dry, and the membrane clung to his tongue and upper jaw like cling film. Even a swill of beer didn’t unstick it.
It seemed to Kita as though his whole body had been plugged with sensors that responded vividly to the slightest stimulus of sound, colour and light. Each tick of the clock beat against his temples. His arms and feet responded to this steady rhythm, so that even though he was sitting cross-legged on the bedding, he felt as if he was dancing. Each time he poured a glass of beer, he was astonished at the huge sound it made. He began to hallucinate a waterfall close by.
The doctor turned on the radio, and the room filled with the sound of a Bach unaccompanied cello suite. The deep notes reverberated in every corner of Kita’s gut. He could even hear the slight friction of the bow as it came down to bite the string before a note. Soon the melody began to insinuate itself about the little room like a cat. Then before he was aware, Kita was chasing the cat, dancing a kind of Kita-style gavotte or saraband as the air tossed him gaily about.
The doctor had smoked the same amount of Yufutsu Plain dope, but he didn’t start dancing. Instead he sat jiggling his leg in time to the dance music, watching Kita’s antics with a big grin.
“Boy, this Yufutsu Gold sure does work,” he remarked to the daughter, whose white face peered in at them from the living room.
“It doesn’t for me,” she muttered grumpily.
The doctor roared with laughter. “You smoke a lot of this stuff?” he asked.
“We’re not allowed it at school, but it grows round the house, so I can have it any time I want.”
Kita too erupted into laughter at this. “I’d love to tell the kids back in Tokyo,” he exclaimed.
“So how is it? Does it make you happy?” The doctor’s grin was frozen on his face.
“This is great medicine, doctor. You look pretty happy too. I’m happy, the dog’s happy, Mum’s happy.” Kita burst into fresh laughter at his own words.
“I’m not,” said the daughter.
“You’re pissed off with things, eh?’
“Not especially.”
“Got a boyfriend?”
“No way. This is the country.”
“What sort of things do you like?”
“Taking photos.”
“What do you photograph?”
“Scenery and people and dogs and cows and stuff.”
“Would you take one of us, for the record?”
No sooner had Kita spoken than the daughter disappeared into her room and came back with an old Nikon single-lens reflex camera. The doctor tightened up his already grinning face, and Kita beamed blissfully. Click! went the camera. This would be the last photo of him, Kita told himself.
“What’s your name?”
“Aki.”
“What do you want to do in life?”
“I want to be a stewardess.”
At this, both men burst into fresh gales of laughter. Aki tutted in annoyance. “I don’t care what really, just so long as I get out of here,” she said.
“You want to travel?”
“Sure I do.”
“Would you like to be a star?”
“I couldn’t even make a hit singing folk songs, the way I look.”
For some reason, these blunt answers of hers were absolutely hilarious.
“You ever heard of Shinobu Yoimachi?”
“Yep. She’s the one who got kidnapped, isn’t she.”
“Did they get the guy?”
“Not yet. Like, she won’t say who it was, will she. I bet she fell for him.”
“Kita.” The doctor leaned over to him. “I’ll give her a ring right now. Would you like to talk to her?”
“No thanks. That kidnapping’s long in the past now. Hey Aki, it was me who kidnapped her, you know. That’s pretty cool, eh?”
“No way,” Aki said uncertainly, checking the doctor’s expression.
The doctor couldn’t keep the grin from his face. “It’s true,” he said.
Aki still couldn’t quite believe it, but a look of amazement came over her face, and she looked at Kita with evident awe. “Why did you donate the money to the Red Cross?”
Lying there holding a pillow, Kita replied, “A guy who’s about to die isn’t going to be able to use all that money,” and he burst into fresh laughter. “How would you use thirty million yen, Aki?”
Aki lowered her eyes and thought for a moment. “I’d give half to my parents, and go to Europe with the other half,” she replied.
“Why Europe? You should go somewhere warm. How about Tokyo?”
“I’ve never been outside Hokkaido. But a friend who went to Tokyo said that Sapporo’s got more going for it. And anyway, I don’t want to go south.”
The doctor mumbled that there were a lot of suicides in Europe. She glared at him with an expression that said, so what?
“Mr Kita, are you really going to die soon?”
“I sure am. Some way that feels good.”
“Why do you look so happy?”
“There’s no point being sad about death. What I’m saying is, there can be happy deaths.”
“Have you ever tried to kill yourself before?”
“No, this is my first time. It’s so exciting.”
“How are you going do it?”
“I’m going crash the white coffin I’m driving.”
“I think you should give up the idea.”
Kita rolled about, beside himself with laughter. Aki found herself grinning too.
“Yep, you should give up the idea,” the doctor, said, nodding vigorously. “The best way is to put an electric shock through the heart. Why not use an electric socket right here and do the job? You’re feeling really good right now, after all.”
Mrs Kikui had been listening in from the kitchen. Now she put her head round the door, kitchen knife in hand, and cried fervently, “Oh please don’t do that! Don’t commit suicide in this house, I beg you!”
She looked so desperate that both men were astonished for a moment, but they were quickly overcome with laughter again.
Knife still gripped in her hand, Mrs Kikui began to lecture Kita.
“You’ve no right to go throwing away the precious life your parents gave you, young man. I don’t know what’s happened to make you like this, all I know is suicide is stupid. Look at me, stuck here in this backwoods place, long years of poverty, tired out. I shouldn’t say it in front of my daughter, but there are times I’d like to die. But then I look at the sea, and I forget about it again. You should go look at the sea, you know. Go and throw all your pains and sorrows into the sea. If you stay alive, you’ll have all sorts of joys in your life. You’ll be able to eat all sorts of wonderful food. Pain and sorrow doesn’t last. Tell me now, what’s your favourite food?”
“Curry,” Kita murmured.
“Curry, eh? Right, I’ll make you some right now. A special curry with potatoes and venison. You’ll feel great again if you eat this. Don’t you give in. Crawl back out of that big black hole, and make your life a success. I won’t go telling the police or anyone else. Just make it through today, see in tomorrow, make it through tomorrow, and stay alive for the day after. I guarantee that day
something good will come your way. Just do as I tell you, make it through the days. If you start wanting to die again, eat a big meal, look at yourself in the mirror, and give yourself a great big smile. If you want any more of those leaves there’s lots growing out in the garden here, I’ll send it down to you. You want some more beer? Or maybe you’d rather have sake? How are your shoulders, a bit tight? Aki, go give him a massage.”
Aki barely blinked. She did as told, and started massaging Kita’s shoulders with her thumbs. The ticklish sensation made Kita guffaw with laughter, at which Mrs Kikui, worked up by her own sermon, brandished the knife and yelled, “This is no laughing matter! You’ll pay for it if you kill yourself, you mark my words!”
This made the doctor choke with laughter. “You planning to kill a guy who’s just killed himself? You’ll fillet him with that knife of yours if you’re not careful. Watch out. I’m having this fellow’s organs, you know.”
“Don’t be so ridiculous!” she grumbled, as she retreated to the kitchen.
“Right, let’s get a bit of shut-eye.” Both Kita and the doctor had laughed themselves into a state of exhaustion. They couldn’t fight their drooping eyelids a moment longer.
Kita awoke to the smell of curry. For a moment, he wondered where he was. In the living room, Mrs Kikui was watching television, still in her apron. Kita spent a while in the toilet seeing to his needs, then combed his hair in front of the mirror. The doctor was still sound asleep. Mrs Kikui was about to speak, but Kita signalled for her to be silent, and sat down at the dining table. Hearing his stomach rumbling, she disappeared into the kitchen without a word.
She emerged with a curry containing whole potatoes and a slab of venison as big as a steak. Kita wolfed it all down. The marijuana seemed to have stimulated his appetite. The taste brought back happy curry memories for him. Ever since he was a boy, whenever he was feeling really low he’d always tucked into a bowl of curry, he remembered. The instant curry his Mum used to make always tasted exactly the same, and over the years, the taste had come to embody his own youthful disappointment with life. After he left home at eighteen, he’d gone on eating curries – curries piled high on plastic plates in student and later company cafeterias, in front of railway stations, in underground shopping malls. Everywhere and at all times, he’d swallowed down his own explosive emotions with a bowl of curry, and gone on obediently doing what the world wanted. Now at last, he didn’t need curry any more.
Kita changed out of the casual jersey he’d borrowed, back into his own personal clothing style again, whispered his thanks to Mrs Kikui for the great food and the useful consultation, and attempted to tiptoe out leaving the sleeping doctor behind.
“You’ve changed your mind, haven’t you now?” urged Mrs. Kikui, seeing him off to the doorway. Kita had slept off the marijuana high and returned to normal. He smiled at her, and replied that he was off to the sea to get rid of everything.
“You’re sure you shouldn’t take the doctor along? He’s your personal physician, isn’t he? After all, he came along with you to save you, didn’t he?”
“We’re parting ways. I’ll be fine on my own now. Where’s Aki?”
“She’s around somewhere. You take good care, now. Oh, wait a moment.” She disappeared into the kitchen and quickly re-emerged with something wrapped in cling film, which she handed to Kita. “Please take it. This came from the garden.”
It was a ball of freshly picked marijuana leaves. Boy, thought Kita, this was his lucky day. What kindness he’d received from this house he’d dropped in on out of the blue. His luck would surely hold this afternoon.
When he got back to the white Camaro, there was Aki in the passenger seat, holding her camera.
The doctor wiped his sweat, breathing heavily. He’d only just managed to escape from a dream in which the white Camaro came racing straight at his bed. Seeing no sign of Kita, he got up and went outside to search. Where was he? he asked Mrs Kikui, who was busy at her make-up. What? He’d headed off towards the sea?
Kita had gotten the better of him. Still in his borrowed jersey, the doctor hurried out, clutching his fifteen-pound bag. There was no sign of the white Camaro. How had Kita managed to turn on the engine? Hastily, the doctor arranged to borrow the family’s pick-up truck. Even if he couldn’t prevent Kita’s suicide, he must somehow manage to extend someone else’s life by transplanting those organs. A grim determination seized him.
Kita reluctantly agreed to take Aki as far as the town. But when they got there she remained stubbornly glued to her seat.
“Your Mum will be worried,” he told her, but she shrugged this off. “I’ll get pretty excited when I’m about to die, you know. You could get raped,” he tried, but she responded to this threat with a bluff, “That doesn’t scare me.” Was she prepared to lay her body on the line to prevent him from killing himself? Why were all these messengers cropping up to stand in his way? His problems all began with Heita Yashiro, then there was the ex-porn star, the four times failed suicide, the driver with the nihilist fixation, the old couple off on their journey to die on the wayside, and the Koikawa brother and sister who sold life insurance and body parts. When he’d gone to see his Mum he’d found her senile, and his old sweetheart Mizuho Nishi had lost her darling son and was in mental anguish. True, Shinobu’s Mass had soothed his heart, but then he’d somehow gone and abducted her, and thereby inflicted that doctor-turned-killer on himself. Then he’d had a lecture from the lady of the house he happened to drop in on, and now here was the daughter, firmly stuck to him.
Shinobu would say, “These are all messengers from God, you know. God has decreed that this man mustn’t be killed. These messengers are all using whatever means they can to massage your heart back to normal, and draw you away from the temptation of death.”
Right, thought Kita, I’ll send her a farewell message. He got out of the car and headed for a phone booth, with Aki shadowing him, clicking away with her camera. Maybe she was planning to record the last thoughts of someone condemned to Death by Choice.
No sooner had he dialled than Shinobu came on the line, as if she’d been sitting there waiting.
“Kita? Is that you? Where are you? Are you far away? Come back as soon as you can.” She sounded dispirited. He guessed that as soon as he’d gone those vultures had gathered around again to peck and harass her. “What’s the matter? Say something!”
“You OK?”
“No, I’m feeling absolutely lousy. Come back and abduct me again, Kita.”
“Sorry, honey, that’s not on. I have to tell you goodbye.”
“Don’t! I want to see you again! What reason have you got to die? What have you ever done that could justify this?”
“It’s recompense for my sins.”
“What sins? Abduction? No one’s blaming you for anything, Kita.”
“I stole a car.”
“So? Just give it back.”
“I ordered that Yashiro be killed.”
“The guy who killed him’s to blame for that. Not you.”
“I’ve done stuff you don’t know about. No one does, except me.”
“God will forgive you.”
“God may, but I don’t forgive myself.”
“What did you do? Tell me.”
“I killed a child.”
“When? Where?”
“When I was five.”
“Who did you kill?”
“I drowned my kid brother.”
“It must’ve been an accident.”
“No. My parents thought it was too, but it was me that killed him. No one blamed me. That’s why I believed that it really was an accident. I haven’t once told myself in all these thirty years that I killed my own brother. I’d forgotten my own sin. But then one day I saw two little brothers quarrelling on a riverbank and it all came back to me. It was no accident. At the time, I definitely wanted my little brother to drown. When I understood this, I just couldn’t stop crying. Thirty years later is too late to remember s
omething like that. No one’s going to punish me now. A little boy’s life was ended at the age of three by his big brother. And his big brother lived on for thirty years and never paid the price. I was crushed at the thought. I went down to Kyushu in order to at least confess at my father’s grave. That’s where I made the decision to condemn myself to death. I decided to go and tell my mother, but when I got there I found she’d gone senile in the four months since I’d last seen her. So neither of my parents will ever know what I did. You once said the next world is a horrible place, didn’t you? But if such a place exists, that’s where I have to go. I want to find my kid brother and beg his forgiveness, and look after him. He was only in this world for three short years. He never got to taste the pleasures of this life. I want to tell him all about this world of ours. That’s why I gave myself a week’s grace, so I could taste some of its pleasures myself.”
“Your little brother has forgiven you, I’m sure of it. He’ll be wanting his big brother to go on living.”
“He died without knowing why. That really wrenches my heart. My own death is a different matter – it’s willed, and it’s justified. Neither Yashiro nor the doctor know the reason. They both think you can commit suicide without needing to have a reason. But I wanted to tell you. You refuse to accept that I could die for no reason, see.”
“Couldn’t you go on living, for my sake? Why did you turn your back on me when I suggested we should die together?”
Death By Choice Page 25
