“You sure no one’s eavesdropping?” the doctor murmured nervously.
“No, we’re fine in here. This is Daddy’s flat. I can’t go back to my own, it’s too dangerous. But they’ll be turning their attention to this place, too, before long.”
She wouldn’t be sleeping properly, he guessed. There was no way she could call a halt to this show-in-a-million she’d set in motion. She’d have to keep up the lies till the day she died. If they ever learned the truth about that abduction, they’d arrest her as an accessory to fraud. If she ever did get the urge to confess, the safest way would be to use a public broadcast. She’d be arrested, true, but at least she’d be free of the harassments of the production manager and the gangsters and politicians. They were bound to smell something fishy about this whole abduction story. And if they started following up their hunch, all they had to do was ask at the inn at that hot springs resort where the two had stayed, and the answer would be clear. Then it would be only a matter of time before they figured out that it was Shinobu herself who was behind all their problems. They’d wipe her career, for sure. Mind you, God knows what kind of career she had to look forward to anyway.
The cops weren’t completely satisfied that she was a victim, yet there was no way they could really set her up as an accomplice either. How could they find a motive that would stick? The only theory that would hold water was that she had been driven by her ambition to get back into the public eye. The mass media were playing up the claim that this former idol was using her misfortune to her own advantage. Meanwhile, the public was on the side of Shinobu and her unknown abductor. Many were saying that even if the whole story proved a farce, they should be let off lightly because, after all, they had helped sick children. Some sympathizers were even saying that thirty million yen was cheap at the price, while fans claimed Shinobu had grown up thanks to her abduction, and cynics spoke of “the starlet whose comeback cost a bomb.”
The names of the production manager, the gangsters, and the politicians who’d put up the ransom money had been publicized. They’d been made to squirm by being asked to explain themselves and clarify whether they intended to recover their money. In response, they had been forced to unanimously declare that Shinobu Yoimachi had their unwavering support and that they were delighted that she had come back safe and sound. This being the case, they were happy to have been able to help those unfortunate children with their donation.
They’d been forced to act charitably, and it made them hopping mad.
“Do you plan on keeping up the lie, then?” the doctor asked, just to remind her.
“Sure, no problem,” she replied. “Just so long as I can keep the money flowing. Those guys are just dogs that will follow along wherever the money runs. If they rubbed me out now, it would be their loss.”
“But sooner or later everyone’ll forget this thing, you know.”
“Sure. And I have lots to do before that happens. The battle’s just begun.” Her eyes held neither uncertainty nor loneliness.
Kita had looked just this way on Friday, the doctor thought. Though he made bad jokes, though he got giggly and stoned on marijuana, the determination in his eyes never wavered. Like her, he had had the will to fight.
Meeting Kita had changed Shinobu. What was it that had brought them together? That’s right, he’d been a fan of hers. He’d paid a hundred thousand yen to meet her, thus fulfilling one of his last wishes before he died. Shinobu must have sensed something at that meeting. She must have understood that within this man dwelled a proud and noble will.
When Kita had decided to end his life on Friday, his feelings must have been those of a soldier headed for the front – a tangle of tension, elation, and an exalted sense of purity. Shinobu’s keen senses would have picked up on this. And it was Kita, yes Kita, who had coaxed her from her cocoon and encouraged her to spread her wings. And Kita who had sent the doctor his dizzy spell.
“Just what is it you plan to battle, Shinobu?”
Neither she nor Kita would really have a clear enemy they needed to fight, after all. Surely there was an element of random willfulness in all this. The doctor couldn’t imagine a battle without an enemy in any terms other than as sheer hard work. But Shinobu had her reply ready.
“It’s simple. Kita and I fight freedom.”
“Freedom? You mean you’re a slave and you’re fighting to be free?”
“No, no. It’s just that I can’t any longer believe in sham freedom. Everyone keeps using the word, but all it amounts to is some limited freedom they’re grateful for being given by someone. Everyone’s ‘free’ on someone else’s terms. Freedom of expression, freedom of occupation, freedom of religion, freedom of living, freedom of movement – it’s all just about the rules of society really, not something I personally have won for myself, see? Look at it this way. No one’s going to give you the freedom to kill others, or to steal, or to commit arson, or to dispose of a corpse, or dig a grave wherever you want, or live on the street. So you may as well stop wanting to do any of those things. No one can actually be ‘free’ without being given the nod to do it. No one can even understand what freedom is. I get the feeling I’ve been deceived into thinking I was free all this time. So from now on, I intend to fight the lie of freedom.”
The doctor listened entranced. He could never have imagined that such an argument could have come from the mouth of this pouty-lipped star with fabulous breasts.
Maybe this realization of hers was due to the experience of having abducted herself along with the kidnapper, and given her own ransom money to sick kids instead of using it in some way connected with herself. It was the old Shinobu, the one who hadn’t yet met Kita, who’d sulked about how she was just a means for other people to make money. But having been abducted from her former self, she had learned the value and use of treating herself as property.
And so – eureka! Shinobu had discovered that she could change in all sorts of ways depending on who used her for what. And that she could change herself, any way she wanted.
She’d arrived at pretty much the same place that Kita had after his week-long travels – hadn’t she? Kita had thrown everything to the winds, and she’d taken on his colors and changed too. Or so it seemed.
“I guess you’re not afraid of dying now, eh?”
Shinobu snorted at this. “By the way, what’s become of my friend? If no one’s found his corpse, that would mean he’s still alive somewhere, surely?”
How was he to answer this? Kita appeared to have killed himself. The doctor had personally witnessed the wreckage. He hadn’t managed to prevent it, so he couldn’t claim payment from her. Miraculously, however, the suicide attempt might have failed. Perhaps Kita hadn’t died. The rest was groundless speculation, but he guessed Kita may have stubbornly tried to kill himself again, by some other means. Or perhaps he’d forgiven himself, given up on the suicide, and was back to his everyday life again?
“If he were alive now, what do you think he’d be doing?”
Shinobu thought for a while. Then she lowered her eyes to the floor, for all the world like a rejected child, and murmured, “I don’t think there’d be anything he could do.”
The doctor agreed. After all, there was nothing he could do himself, and he was beset by dizziness.
“I’d guess he’d be much more miserable to be in the world than he was before he tried to kill himself,” Shinobu continued.
“True enough. After all, if he’s still alive he’ll be wanted for abduction, theft, attempted murder, drug offences, and fraud. He’d be an overnight sensation, like you. I’m an accomplice, after all, so I know what I’m talking about…”
“No,” she broke in, “that’s not what I’m saying.” Then she went on, twisting her fingers as if to weave together into a coherent whole the words that floated insubstantially in her mind. “What I mean is… Kita, well he rejected all the lies about freedom. All he did was plan to kill himself without anyone ordering him about or meddling. But then al
l these people gathered like flies and tried to use him. Even suicide isn’t a free act. But I think that Kita ended up confronting society without ever intending to; he just let things take their course. It’s just that when he encountered an enemy bent on obstructing his freedom, he could only turn and fight. It’s backbreaking work, maintaining real freedom. If his suicide attempt really did fail, he’d be left living a life that was a hundred times as cruel as his old one. And he’d really and truly be alone this time. No one who’s had a near-death experience can ever return to a world and a life of lies, see.”
It was as if someone from some other existence were borrowing Shinobu’s voice to speak.
“Freedom is lonely. Jesus Christ has taught me that. If you want to be truly free, you have to resist all the temptations of money and fame and nation and society. As long as all you want is your own happiness and the pleasure of the moment, you’ll remain a slave, whoever you are. Christ cut himself off from the world for the sake of those who’d come after him. I want to follow him. If Kita really is alive, I want to be a comfort for his loneliness. I believe that if people who’ve discovered what real freedom is can join hands and work to create the future, the evils of the world will slowly improve. If I didn’t believe that, I could never survive this cruel present.”
This meant that Yoshio Kita had in effect given Shinobu the courage to live in true freedom, didn’t it? He’d shown her that even when there’s nothing more you can do, you have to bear it. The doctor wasn’t inclined to hear any more of her religious confession. She could choose to become her own version of a saint or Joan of Arc if she wished. He guessed she wanted to save her soul from the depressing reality she lived in. But as for the doctor, he’d never had any truck with Freedom, or The Future, or The Soul. He’d lived his life simply in terms of biological life and death. He’d been too busy cutting up others’ bodies, putting them back together again, and sewing them up, to spare a moment’s thought for such deep questions. From Shinobu’s point of view, he’d be classed among the people who go about madly conning and deceiving others.
“I doubt we’ll meet again,” he said, and put out his hand.
She took it in a weak grip. “What will you do?” she asked.
What indeed? He wasn’t cut out either for doctoring or for killing, but he’d realized this a bit late. Yet he too had been given a kind of cruel freedom, and he had to bear the painful reality of it. “I think I might try working in a convenience store.” For some reason, it seemed to him that this would be what he was most suited for. A bright, white space that somewhat resembled a hospital ward, providing “convenience” to a series of transient, anonymous clients. A quick word of thanks directed at their departing backs. A presence neither hated nor loved, merely considered convenient… could it be that he’d spent all these years unconsciously wishing to fulfil just such a role? If only his path had crossed with Kita’s and Yashiro’s and Shinobu’s simply through the fleeting exchange of employee and customers, he’d have been spared all the hassle and misdeeds of this past week. At this thought, the doctor suddenly found himself imagining the expressionless convenience store employee as a kind of priest of infinite wisdom, quietly living his life in accordance with the laws of nature.
“If you really do plan on working in a convenience store, we may meet again in fact.”
The doctor nodded. Then he bowed, and left the room almost certainly never to come back. Why not head straight for a convenience store? he thought. But three steps on, he had a sudden thought. Just possibly, if Kita hadn’t died, he’d suddenly turn up there wanting a packet of instant curry.
The Cruelty of Freedom
The sky was a pale pink. He’d never seen such a sky. There ought to be sea below it, but everything was dyed such a pink that there was no distinguishing one from the other.
His skin was so goose-pimpled with cold that you could have grated cheese on it. The cold was fierce, but there was no point in worrying over it. His body didn’t register the cold.
He wished someone would explain to him what he was doing here. Why was he lying here sodden, on this rocky beach? Why was he so horribly thirsty? Why was blood running from his hairline? Was there any reason why he wasn’t wearing shoes?
When he drew in a breath, his chest wheezed like an ocarina, and he coughed and spluttered. No one was there, yet he felt as if someone was gently patting his back. Trying to tell him to stop? Someone was beside him, but he couldn’t see anyone. Or was it a rock? A rock that bore a strong resemblance to his mother. When had his mother become a rock? But when he looked more carefully, it looked rather like the grumpy face of that killer, who shared his mother’s Alzheimerish puzzled look about where and who he was. Kita had forgotten whether the killer had died or was still alive. And what had happened to his mother after she lost her memory?
It was cold. He wanted to go somewhere a bit warmer. If he prayed for it, no doubt he’d find he was lying on a paradisiacal summer beach. Here goes – one, two, three.
There must be some mistake here. He couldn’t remember how things were supposed to be. Before he’d got here… yes, he could remember swimming. Underwater, in his clothes, through the swaying seaweed, deep down in the salty water with bubbles racing upward. While someone was making him tingle.
Had he been dreaming? And if so, did that mean that this gooseflesh and his sodden trousers and socks were part of the same dream? Was blood red in dreams just like in real life? Maybe the sky and sea were this pink colour because it was a dream. There was a certain special way to behave in dreams. He didn’t need to do anything. The dream would do it all for him. But whose dream was this? The stone’s dream? The sea’s?
How he longed to get into a good hot bath. OK, let’s try a bath dream. And he’d love to eat some noodles or curry. Right, let’s have a curry dream while he was at it.
The sky had turned a dark brown. The sea was dark red. Time was constantly slipping forward somewhere at the edges of his consciousness. The blood on his forehead had apparently dried now, and his clothes were barely damp. Well at any rate, he thought, let’s chase time.
He set off to walk along the water’s edge, picking up a driftwood stick to use as a crutch. He must have walked for close to an hour, his easy tempo following the rhythm of the waves, yet still time seemed to be racing ahead of him. His toe had been cut up on shell fragments, and he could walk no further. But when he sat down, he found himself looking at a shoe like a weather-beaten old fisherman’s face, washed up on the shore. He put his wounded foot into this and walked on some way further, and then he came across a sneaker that looked like some fat kid just woken from sleep. With two shoes, he could now walk at a pace that kept up with the passage of time – but now the wind had changed direction and was blowing in from the sea, catching him like wind in a sail and pushing him up towards the mountains.
He listened attentively. Sometimes the wind sounded like the cry of a bird, sometimes like the moan of a discontented woman, and then again like an electronic hum, or like clothing being ripped. It paused for a second, and then he found himself enclosed by trees with brown, scaly trunks, far from the sound of the sea. Softly, a muddy darkness began to descend over the wood. His nostrils drew in the scent of pine resin and night dampness.
He curled up in a hollow made by the roots of a great pine, snuggled down like a bagworm under a layer of leafy branches and grass he’d gathered, and closed his eyes.
His eyes were prized open by a shaft of light shining down through the branches. “Wake up!” someone seemed to be saying. He looked about him. A skylark was singing madly, and to his ears it seemed to be shouting hysterically “Die! Die!” But another skylark that shot across the tree above him from a different direction was wailing “Free!”
He’d spent the night in his curled position, and now pain like a needle shot through his back. And with the pain, his consciousness of himself returned.
What the hell am I doing here? Kita shivered. A combination of cold and
fear raced along his dulled and frazzled nerves into every corner of his body.
Sure enough, the thing he most feared had become reality. His plan to reach the other world had somehow misfired, and he’d been denied entry. Had he chosen the wrong method? Was death itself turning its back on him? Or was it that the other world was actually much more distant than he’d imagined, and he had to cross endless mountains, rivers, valleys and seas to reach it?
He’d assumed humans died more easily than this, but this had obviously been a fatal error. Here he was, it turned out, unable to become a corpse, dragging around this useless garbage of a body. Did he have to recycle himself, was that it? If only he’d managed to transform himself neatly into a drowned corpse, this self and its shame, memories, words, and despair would all long since have evaporated, and he’d be floating gracefully upon the waves, with everything given over to nature’s hands. But no, it seemed becoming a corpse wasn’t anything like so easy. That’s what someone was trying to tell him.
Think of all the men and women who’d tried to stand in the way of his suicide. There was no question they’d all been sent as messengers from beyond that mysterious curtain. They’d appeared because, from the moment Kita had decided to commit Death by Choice and kill himself the following Friday, he’d been minutely observed from beyond this inhuman curtain of death. He’d had the death part of his sentence excised and been left simply with the choice, the freedom. In other words, he’d been ordered to be free even from death.
But what on earth could he do? How was he supposed to use this freedom? It was precisely because there was nothing else he could do that he’d given his stupid laugh and decided to die. But his play had been parried. And now here he was, unable to act again. He was back to where he’d started eight days ago.
Still, that Friday eight days ago he’d still had things to do – the visit to his Dad’s grave, the feasting, abducting an idol, donating to the Red Cross, seeing his old lover again. He’d had a certain amount of money, not to mention physical strength, and the urge to act. A short life and a merry death, that’s how it should have gone. But look at him now. The two thousand yen in notes he’d had in his pocket had apparently gone as an offering to the sea, and all that remained in his pocket was forty yen. His physical and mental strength were both at an all-time low, and he was left gaping at this apparently endless nightmare unfolding around him.
Death By Choice Page 27
