Touring the Land of the Dead (and Ninety-Nine Kisses)

by Maki Kashimada

  The couple sat down, and a beautiful woman with long, slender legs, her complexion unusually dark for a Japanese, brought them some pineapple juice. It was a welcome drink, she said. In the past, they would also have been offered tea or coffee, hot or iced, whatever they wanted—but no longer. No sooner had Taichi taken the cup than he had gulped it all the way down.

  Natsuko stared at the carpet. Only that carpet was unchanged. That red feeling of oppression was just as she remembered it.

  Okay, choose whatever drink you like, she remembered her mother saying when she was eight years old. Quite as if she herself were offering it to Natsuko. At this hotel, you can have whatever you want, for free, as much as you like. Of course, no one would want to drink that much tea or juice, but her mother was probably just happy that it was being offered to her.

  For free, as much as you like. That was what that wealthy man, the one who could go to Monaco whenever he wanted, had said. For her mother, back then, being treated that way must have felt like a matter of course. For free, as much as you like. Tall waiters dressed in white shirts and black bowties, carrying more glasses than anyone could possibly drink on their silver trays. Her mother’s high heels sinking into the crimson carpet. We should go for a swim in the heated pool before evening. Oh, but it might be even nicer after dinner. At night, they light up the pool, you know. A group of men wearing well-starched shirts, each holding a cigar idly in one hand, stood chatting in a group. They seemed to be acquainted with the hotel manager. No doubt they were the kind of exclusive members who squandered their money at the hotel, staying in its most luxurious rooms whenever they visited. They kept on chatting, their welcome drinks standing untouched on the table. Her mother must have felt as if she too had become a member. She was quite capable of deceiving herself. Because she was completely incapable of looking at herself from the outside.

  Back when I was little, when I came here with your grandfather, we had a whole suite to ourselves. He was a member, you see. It was wonderful, more wonderful than you could ever imagine. That day, her mother had been at her most talkative.

  Her grandfather had undoubtedly relished his summer vacations. He had loved hot summers. So long as it’s warm, I don’t care where I die, he had said. He wouldn’t have even minded being killed on the battlefield, so long as it was somewhere in the South Seas. But he had been struck by malaria during the war and so returned home alive, ultimately founding a small business through which he built his fortune. Her mother must truly have been proud of such a dependable father. In his later years, he came down with emphysema and died sooner than anyone could have foreseen. By then, he had become so invisible that not even flies bothered to take note of him. And so he had disappeared, fading away into nothingness, without leaving her mother anything in the way of an inheritance.

  The staff were describing the hotel’s various dining options. They handed her a pamphlet. Looking at it, Natsuko saw that there was a salon on the fifteenth floor. It was that salon. The 8 mm film started playing in her head. Her mother as a child, the hem of her skirt flowing wide as she spun around and around playfully.

  Their room was on the seventh floor. There were two old but clean and tidy beds. There was no comparison to the beds in the suite room where her mother had jumped about so friskily in the 8 mm film. Taichi managed to lay himself down. I love these Western-style beds, he laughed. They don’t make my back hurt. Natsuko went to take a look at the bathroom. As expected, the toilet was quite old, but there was no smell, and it was clean enough. The bath was narrow, but the hotel had a large public one that they could use, so that didn’t matter.

  In any event, the place had been reduced to a cheap, five-thousand-yen-per-night health retreat.

  It was quiet. She thought that she saw something move in the corner of her vision. She turned around to see Taichi flopped forward on the bed, still wearing his coat, unable to get up. He mustn’t have been used to keeping his balance while sitting on a bed. He didn’t like wearing a belt, so his trousers and underwear had drooped down, and she could see the gap between his buttocks. She lifted him up and took off his coat.

  As she approached the window, the cold sea spread out before her eyes. It was quiet, and she had no difficulty making out the sound of the waves breaking against the shore. There were some pigeon droppings stuck to the window, but she didn’t care. It was only a five-thousand-yen room.

  “I want to go to the salon,” she said, and Taichi nodded to her in silence.

  She sat him in the wheelchair, and they took the elevator to the fifteenth floor.

  The salon was empty. There was absolutely nothing in the center of the hall. At the back was a stage, with a percussion setup and a keyboard. The floor was still waxed and polished, but it didn’t look like it had been used in quite some time. How many high heels had once trodden on this floor? How many steps had been taken on it? Her grandmother wearing a dress, curtsying, and her tuxedo-clad grandfather taking her hand. Her mother’s family, with their exclusive membership, had brought along a minder to look after the children—he was the one who had shot the 8 mm film, her mother had told her. Her young mother was wearing a wide-hemmed dress, with a ribbon tied around her chest, her face glowing with pride as she watched the dance. Then there was her mother’s older brother dressed in short trousers, and her younger sister in an outfit that resembled a sailor-style school uniform. Her mother’s brother, watching the dance from a leather sofa, was brazenly holding a champagne glass. And her mother herself, wanting to take a sip, was trying to snatch it away. There was something impenetrably startling about their actions, but in the middle of that monochrome world they flowed silently, matter-of-factly. It’s a special day today! It’s finally summer! Her grandfather had had that kind of personality and so had probably let the children drink whatever they wanted. And her mother had surely thought of that as an honor. Her young mother, thinking that she was special. Thinking that she was one of the chosen few. Natsuko was overcome with vertigo, her heart filled with disgust. Just as it was all beginning to become too unbearable, a round rubber ring cut across her vision.

  The wheels reflected clearly on the floor. Truly inorganic wheels. Not high heels, but Taichi’s—her husband’s—wheelchair.

  “There’s nothing here,” he said, looking up at her.

  Right. There wasn’t anything in the salon. Nothing at all. If there was anything there, it was only loss. The loss of her mother’s childhood joy.

  Let’s take a dip in the hot spring, Taichi said innocently once Natsuko began to push the wheelchair. I’ve been looking forward to the hot spring—the hot spring, and dinner too. Maybe he had never experienced this kind of loss, the kind that never fully healed.

  The wheels left long tracks on that cold floor, gleaming like the surface of a lake.

  She pushed the wheelchair as far as the public bath on the first floor. I don’t feel like going in. I’ll wait for you here, she said, taking Taichi to the entrance of the men’s bath. The hotel staff will help me, so don’t try to peek into the men’s area, Natchan, he said. Taichi had no questions, no concerns whatsoever about her, about her reluctance to go in. He was always like that.

  The hotel staff supporting him, he proceeded into the men’s area. Natsuko slumped down onto the sofa outside, her body going completely limp. Maybe it was because she had looked directly into someone else’s past—into her mother’s past. But the moment she was left alone, she was assailed by a sense of gratification quite at odds with her fatigue.

  Taichi’s awkward footsteps faded into the distance. She sat motionless, listening to them grow fainter and fainter. Finally, the sound disappeared altogether, and all she could hear was the crashing of waves. The crashing of the waves, which should have been like the steady flowing of a basso continuo, grew louder as Taichi moved away, the quietude stealing up on her. It moved at walking pace, but surely, confidently. She could even make out something else, the sound of wan strips fluttering out of sight. And then she fin
ally realized what it was—the sound of countless dresses hanging in the darkness.

  She stood up and approached the partitioning screen. There was a tremendous number of dresses behind it. According to the sign, guests could borrow them to dance in the salon. But there was no one there. No woman standing in front of the screen for a photograph, nothing reflected in the mirror. Just the dresses, dusty, giving off some unpleasant odor. Could the dress that her grandmother had worn in the 8 mm film have been borrowed from here? Only the dresses of the women in the monochrome film were filled with color. They began to waft with perfume, and the crystals attached to them began, one by one, firmly, coolly, to take back their radiance. The past, again, crept up on the present.

  The memories washed over her. That florid scene of out-of-fashion dresses called to mind a cheap hostess bar. Her brother, freshly employed, was ecstatic at having gotten his hands on his first credit card. He had always loved hostess bars. Let’s have some fun in town, he said, deciding just like that to take her out to a club.

  The attack began late at night, after their mother had gone to sleep. “I’m so thirsty, I feel like I’m going to die,” her brother said. “Why don’t you buy a beer or something?” Natsuko asked. “I can’t. I don’t have any money. I’d have to use the card.” There was no stopping him, once he got like this. He would climb into a taxi and set forth downtown. There was only one path open to her.

  No matter how much you drink, it won’t be enough. Maybe she should have said something like that.

  Whenever they went out on the town at night, her brother would become obsessed with making her look pretty. Natsuko’s dresser was filled with clothes that he had bought for her on his credit card. He would grab her by the hand and take her out to a department store, make her try on all kinds of clothes that he would pick out, and then buy them for her. After she got changed, he would sit her in front of a mirror, comb out her hair, and spray a luxury-brand perfume on her neck. Then he would say to her: Natsuko, you are a woman, you know. If you would just make yourself look nice, everyone would pamper you. You might even find someone to take care of you and treat you special. But you don’t even do that. All you have to do is brush your hair neatly, like this, just once a day, he said as if trying to console her.

  The two of them went into a dense alleyway lined with drinking houses, and were soon accosted by five or six hustlers. Natsuko felt ill at ease from the countless neon lights, her head spinning. After negotiating the price, one of the hustlers took them to the third or fourth floor of a mixed-residence building. It was the kind of place that one sometimes hears about where, if a fire were to break out and the emergency exits were blocked, countless hostesses and their clients would end up dying.

  The two of them entered the club. Inside, there were women dressed in clothes of all different colors. Red, pink, purple, gold. The colors of the flames of women’s fighting spirits. Dresses that showed off the secret intentions of men and women alike. When the two took a seat, the women came to sit next to them. But as soon as they began to be treated like customers, her brother’s attitude toward her underwent a sudden change. He snatched away her bag, pulled out the envelope that contained her salary for the last month from her part-time job, and stuffed the notes into his own Italian-made wallet. All at once, he became suddenly loquacious. Waiter! he yelled, about to come out with some complaint or another. He always did that, no matter the situation. It’s too noisy in here, he cried out in anger. Then, for some reason that she couldn’t understand, he began to rail abuse at her in front of the hostesses.

  “This woman, right, she’s just so stupid. Like, really stupid. I’m not even kidding.”

  The two hostesses laughed. Professionals in dealing with even the worst of clients, they smiled calmly without any sign of surprise. They had no doubt come across a great many men who would start to behave strangely after a couple of drinks.

  “And this woman, right, she’s into other women. I’ll bet you she’s done it with one. You think she’d be willing to show her face here if she hadn’t? Huh? That’s what you’re all thinking, right?”

  Natsuko said nothing to contradict him. She merely drank her water in silence. She was so used to this kind of treatment that she felt neither anger nor agitation, only languor and drowsiness.

  She suppressed a yawn.

  “Don’t! Don’t you dare fall asleep! The night’s only just started!” Her brother slapped her. She let him do as he pleased.

  The hostesses feigned composure.

  Well, I guess women don’t normally come here, one of them said to her brother with perfect timing.

  “Right? That’s right, right? Why don’t you tell her what kind of place women normally go to?”

  That would be a host club, of course. That psychic on the TV, she makes a fortune. She’s always going to host clubs, the hostess said, pointing to one of the overhead screens.

  “Oh? That show there? So that’s what she does with all that dough, huh?”

  With the conversation shifting to TV personalities, her brother’s interest finally turned to the hostesses. If not for that, there would have been no way of getting him to leave her alone.

  When she got home, she fell asleep without even changing out of her clothes.

  After two years, her brother eventually racked up an impossible debt on his credit card, and then went crying to their mother. “They won’t leave me alone! I’m losing my mind!” Faced with no other options, their mother had to let go of her apartment to settle his accounts.

  With his debts taken care of, her brother began to refer to that time as his “age of madness.” He could give it some grand name, something like his “golden age”—he could call it whatever he liked, Natsuko thought, she didn’t care. She was just so tired. He would talk like a French poet looking back on his days of abusing absinthe. But he was just a small-town alcoholic, and an unemployed one at that, someone who could afford nothing but the cheapest liquor.

  Natsuko, unable to stay there even a moment longer, turned her back on the dresses hanging in the darkness. As if to flee from those reeking costumes, already completely faded.

  For that matter, back then her mother had been incessantly going on about the film. “I want it colored. But the 8 mm makes the movements look weird, don’t you think? I don’t like it at all. Why can’t it look more like it’s happening right before my eyes? I’d watch it with my brother and his wife, and with my sister and her husband—we’d all watch it together. We’d have a screening at the hotel and reminisce on it all over a full course meal.” Or she would start recounting its contents to her yet again. “I want to get the 8 mm film colored, that one from when we all stayed with your grandfather in the suite, the most expensive set of rooms in the hotel. Your grandmother was holding the camera. She introduced the huge living room first, then that huge bathtub, like something from overseas, and the toilet. Then there was a counter with a bunch of glasses all in a line, every single one of them completely spotless, and a mountain of fruit. And then it was us children, rushing up to that huge bed in the deepest room in the suite, right? We’d watch that film, watch ourselves jumping up and down on that huge bed, with my brother and sister, we’d all watch it, talking all about it.” Had she been reminiscing about those past events in the hope that she could experience them all once more?

  Natsuko watched as the sea drew ever nearer. There was a notice on the window: Do not open. There was no doubt about it: in the early afternoon light of summer, the sea would be an incredibly deep and beautiful shade of blue. But now, the sky was cold, and nothing but black waves and white foam stood out in the late winter evening. That was it: the white foam looked just like the foam that dripped from her husband’s mouth whenever he had his attacks.

  To Natsuko, Taichi’s attacks were something that she could happily call convulsions in the fabric of life itself. The first one came quite as if it was aiming for that very moment. After all, even if he did work, her family would deprive him o
f everything that he earned, so it would be better for him not to work at all, she had thought.

  The operation was a major one and involved embedding an electrode into his skull. At the time, he couldn’t control the tremors in his limbs and tongue at all. The doctor told them that they could be treated by passing an electric current through his brain.

  First, he explained the operation to them. It involved going under general anesthesia, so there were some patients who decided not to go through with it. No matter how good their luck, if she lost Taichi, she would be left with neither principle nor interest. She steeled herself against the worst.

  They were shown a video. The patient’s tremors weren’t so strong as Taichi’s, and he wasn’t under general anesthesia. Still, it was a daring surgery. The patient’s head was cut open, with his brain lying there exposed. Finally, the patient, with the electrode embedded in his brain, wrote the word “nerves.” The trembling of the hand that until now had been uncontrollable was brought to heel, and the characters stood out vividly.

  The surgery seemed to be quite dangerous, and so Natsuko would have liked to have had more time to think about it. But the doctor told them that someone else who had been scheduled to undergo the operation early the following week had suddenly cancelled, so they should decide as soon as possible if they wanted to secure the place. There was a long waiting list for the surgery, so if they put it off, they might have to wait over five years.

  And so Taichi, his tongue trembling, said slowly: I’ll have the surgery. I’ll have the surgery.

  Hey, they would be putting you under general anesthesia, and putting an electrode in your brain. Let’s think about it a little more, Natsuko suggested. But Taichi said again: I’ll have . . . the surgery. His body might have been weak, but his resolve was strong.

  She could hear the sound of the waves breaking. It seemed to grow louder each time the water crashed against the shore. First, her wealthy grandfather passed away. Then, her father died from some mysterious brain disease. It had all started around that time, the weariness that struck at them all, until at last they found themselves living in poverty, and in the end, the heart of this creature that was her family began to whither. Little by little. Like the speed at which the waves were beating against the shore. If she could look at that life directly, surely she would be able to shed at least one tear? That way, maybe even she, who had completely given up on both family and future, would be able to cry. Even if she was the only one who actually believed it, didn’t she want to think that she herself was worth crying over? Finally, those emotions grew louder even than cymbals, and at the moment she turned her ears away from it all, she heard a voice calling out her name. Out of the mist tottered her husband like a steamed bun. Regaining her footing in the present, she went to help him.