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

by Maki Kashimada

  Once they finished eating, Natsuko hurried Taichi back to their room. They packed their bags in a hurry, before going down to the front desk to finish checking out. Seeing as they still had a little time before the shuttle bus left, they decided to take a look at the souvenir corner.

  Taichi walked around with his cane, sticking his nose into some sachets of herb potpourris like a bee collecting pollen. He floated around aimlessly, muttering his impressions of each of them in turn: “This one smells like sweets. This one’s like black tea. And this one, this one smells like you, Natchan, like a newborn. Yep, this one’s the best.” He bought around a dozen different varieties.

  “Who are you planning to give them to?”

  “You know, there’s Yoshimura, the orthopedic nurse, and Ito¯, the rehabilitation doctor.” He listed a half-dozen or so names, even some that Natsuko didn’t recognize. He spent most of his days at home, but it seemed that he had his own world too.

  They were the only passengers to board the shuttlebus. The hotel faded into the distance behind them.

  If the past had already been chewed to exhaustion, was there any point in continuing this journey? Natsuko let out a tired sigh.

  “This really does smell just like you, Natchan,” Taichi said, sniffing at the potpourri in the seat beside her.

  * * *

  They changed buses, and headed toward an art museum. Natsuko didn’t want the journey to end just yet. She wanted to find some kind of healing, at least. She wanted to see the things that others considered beautiful. Some vague part of her felt that if she could look at those things for herself, she too might be able to think of them in that way. Maybe then she would be able to find some degree of peace. Taichi didn’t question her sudden desire to visit the art gallery. He remained silent, as if he were happy simply to be there with her.

  Natsuko supported her stumbling husband as they entered the building and approached a woman at the information desk. Do you have a wheelchair? Taichi asked, and without even waiting for her to respond, added: Can I borrow one? My wife will push it.

  To Natsuko, his manner was as brazen as ever, but the woman didn’t seem to be bothered by it. Once the wheelchair was brought his way, Taichi settled himself comfortably in the seat, and Natsuko began to slowly push him toward the galleries.

  The first thing that she laid eyes on was an objet d’art, something that looked like a ball of yarn. It was round and seemed like it would be strangely warm to the touch. She tried to imagine whether people felt at peace when looking at such round warmth.

  The next item was a landscape painting. The scene looked like an ornamental garden. There were flowers in every color imaginable, and trees bathed in light, casting long shadows over the lawn. She looked at the artist’s name, the title of the painting, the year in which it had been produced, and tried to call to mind the ideas that the painter must have been trying express, and the thoughts and feelings that the picture must bring to those who looked at it.

  They followed the path through the gallery, looking first at one image, then the next. After a short while, they came to a small picture.

  It was a family portrait. There were two small children, a gaunt father, and a fat mother who was pouring milk into a cup. Natsuko confronted that scene—and as she did so, the past, which should already have been chewed to exhaustion, came rushing back. She thought about her own life, doubtful that the kind of scene depicted in the work, a family as peaceful as the one staring back at her, could ever truly exist. She doubted too whether anyone could ever eat so modestly.

  Let’s go to an expensive restaurant, the most expensive place you can imagine, she remembered a man saying to her once. This was after she had graduated from university, during her time as a temporary worker. She had been invited by a full-time employee at her company. Since Natsuko was a modest and docile woman, he must have thought that she wouldn’t say anything, that he could get away with his sexual harassment, that seeing as he was her superior, she wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. Eventually, his advances grew so persistent that she was forced to leave her job.

  It was her mother who first realized what had happened. She kept pestering Natsuko, demanding to know why she had quit. More than anything, she was afraid of the idea of her daughter not working. Whether this was because both she and her son were dependent on Natsuko’s income, or whether she wanted her daughter to have a successful career, Natsuko didn’t know. She tried to explain that everything was okay, because she was looking for a new job now, but nothing would soothe her mother’s temper. And having worked herself into a frenzy, her mother ended up striking her. So Natsuko had no choice but to tell her the truth. Not to stop the violence, but to calm her down, to cool her anger however she could. But her mother never considered the possibility that Natsuko had been targeted because of her average looks. She had convinced herself that her daughter was just too attractive, so like herself, and that was why she had been the victim of sexual harassment, until at last she wound up convincing herself that she was the victim, not her daughter.

  She grasped Natsuko’s hand tenderly. “I can’t believe that someone would do such a terrible thing to you . . . It’s unforgivable. We’ll have to sue.”

  A court battle would be too hard on her, Natsuko said, trying to steer her away from the idea. Her mother took this so poorly that she slammed her fist down on the table.

  “What’s wrong with you? Why won’t you do anything for me? All I want is some money. I’m so miserable. Can’t you see that? What did I do to deserve such an inconsiderate child? Why are you always like this? Don’t you love me? You’re my daughter!” The promise of money that flickered before her eyes for a moment, only to vanish in a puff of smoke. That was her mother’s greatest hate, the thought that got her most worked up.

  “Stop it!” Natsuko pleaded desperately, but her mother slapped her with the flat of her hand. She tried desperately to pull away, but her mother’s attack wouldn’t stop, and Natsuko, in terror, cried out: “Get away from me!” She threw a nearby cushion and tissue box at her, struggling to put some distance between them. But then her mother grabbed her, and the two of them began to grapple with one another.

  At that moment, her brother raised his voice in a frenzied cry, and started smashing first one windowpane, then the next. When he got like this, neither mother nor daughter could bring him under control. The feeling of indignation that had been churning inside Natsuko, that her mother ought to be aware on some level at least of her insatiable avarice, became cloudy and diluted.

  The world in which the court case went forward felt unreal to Natsuko. The man, the full-time employee, seemed to have finally realized what he had done, and immediately offered to settle out of court. But, he said, he still loved her, and he insisted that she would have to accept the money in person at his attorney’s law firm.

  She met with the attorney at his office in Aoyama.

  “I’m sorry to have to do things this way,” he said. “Please accept my client’s sincerest apologies. He wanted to ensure that you received it safely.”

  The attorney offered her an envelope. It passed before her eyes, to her mother, who put it in her handbag. Her brother glared at their mother, as if muttering to himself: “That isn’t yours.” He wasn’t even trying to hide it. Finally, they parted ways with the attorney, and her mother said drunkenly: “Let’s get a taxi.”

  The car passed through the streets of Aoyama before stopping in front of a familiar building. The driver followed her brother’s instructions. Natsuko said nothing. She had known from the very beginning that it would come to this.

  It was a famous Chinese restaurant. Her mother ordered one dish after the other—Peking duck, chili sauce prawns, okoge—seeming to relish each and every one of them. Her younger brother ordered a bottle of Shaoxing wine. The family sat in silence. Immersed in the food. Silence permeated only by the sound of eating. Neither of them had realized that they could only eat this way because she had been s
exually harassed—that they were, in effect, celebrating her suffering. That unending, uninterrupted sound stirred up feelings of disgust in her, resounding again and again in her mind, aggravating her hearing, her nerves, her soul. She just wanted to lose consciousness, to collapse then and there. Not only had the man sexually harassed her—now, her family was tormenting her even more.

  Natsuko didn’t know which it was that disgusted her more, the man or the sight of her younger brother sipping that Shaoxing wine. She herself didn’t understand what it was that was hurting her. The series of events surrounding the harassment all converged, and ever since then, she found herself often visited by unpleasant experiences that she couldn’t put into words. And she started to refer to that convergence of events as that life.

  And yet it was in the midst of that life that she met a man, Taichi, whom she decided to marry. She understood. That there could be no erasing the memories of those blasphemies, no pretending that they had never existed. That the only thing that she could do was to combine her life with that of someone else—it didn’t even matter if it wasn’t a man—and try to dilute the past.

  Maybe if she told Taichi about those blasphemies, he would understand. But what would happen, she wondered, if she tried to confide in him? About what had happened in that restaurant? About how heartily her mother and brother had been eating and drinking? About how unbearable that sound had been? Maybe he would understand, if she tried to tell him about it all, calmly, matter-of-factly. Yes, if she tried to speak to him about them now, he might just understand. You hear about it a lot, don’t you? About people who are able to go through their whole lives without ever complaining about anything. But you know, I don’t know why, but I just can’t hold it in anymore . . . But if she said that, Taichi might absorb all her suffering. He might accept it all, every last drop of it. He might finally understand. It might leave him weeping, his nose running like a child’s. So she said nothing. She didn’t want to see such a sight—such a pure, thankful sight. Someone like herself, who had passed through that life, didn’t deserve that kind of sympathy.

  All of a sudden, Taichi let out a loud burp. “What’s the matter?” Natsuko asked.

  “I must have eaten too much at the buffet,” he answered. She seemed to have been standing still, staring at that family portrait for quite some time. “Let’s keep going,” he urged her.

  The next painting was of a ripe pomegranate placed on a wooden table. The vivid redness of the fruit was too lively, too warm. It grated against her heart, leaving her feeling painful and cramped. The next one, however, was an abstract painting that looked like some kind of three-dimensional object. She felt at once peaceful, relieved to have found something that she could look at with ease, something with a sense of distance.

  In this way, as she stood in front of the pictures, she kept finding herself going through a cycle of fear and relief, over and over. When she felt at ease, and thought to herself that she wouldn’t mind just standing in front of a certain work for a while, Taichi would urge her to take him to the next one. And it would almost certainly be some terrible picture, something made of complex intersections of straight lines that made her think of young men, like her brother. She wanted to run away from such images as fast as she could, but no matter what the picture, Taichi would examine them all carefully, in the same deliberate way. And yet not once did he voice his impressions. “Let’s keep going,” was all he said.

  Next, they came to a self-portrait. “Oh!” exclaimed Taichi, leaning forward in the wheelchair. Natsuko didn’t know the first thing about self-portraits. Could it be that her husband had an eye for them? She knew that he was good at drawing. He cherished the manga that he had written as a child. And the sketches that he had done during his art classes were indeed quite splendid. She stood in silence behind her husband as they looked at the self-portrait. It was filled with color, temperature, and movement. Ah, she thought, this is a person.

  “Let’s keep going,” Taichi said again. She pushed the wheelchair toward the next picture. It was a still life depicting various flowers of different colors. She had seen women holding such flowers but had never bought any herself. She stared into the picture, thinking that it too was probably something that people considered beautiful. It didn’t look particularly beautiful to her, but surely it must have appeared that way to others. When she stopped to think about it, it seemed so obvious that one’s own feelings are of course different to those of others, but only now did she understand. It was unnatural to look for healing in what others, but not she herself, considered beautiful. But, she thought, if the people around her thought that it was beautiful, that didn’t have to bother her. Now wasn’t the time to go chasing after what she herself considered beautiful. Things that were beautiful, things that were just—she wanted to take a break from them all for a while. While she had always had some awareness of the unnaturalness of what she was doing, up until now she had never paused to reflect on it all. Or rather, she had always been stuck waiting for an opportunity to give voice to these feelings of contradiction and unreasonableness.

  Her heart was distressed one moment, calm the next, continuously being tossed around by the waves. The unrestful things that disturbed her and the things that brought her assurance could be found in equal measure in each and every picture. She witnessed them all, together with Taichi, flowing together as a single current. They didn’t move in front of the pictures—rather, the paintings seemed to float up in front of them. First one, then the next, one after the other, filling her heart with all kinds of impressions, before quickly sinking back into the stream. She no longer paid attention to the artists’ names, nor to the titles, nor to the years in which they had been produced. She simply watched as the paintings flowed by in turn. After a while, the vivid impressions reached out to her only for the briefest of moments—until at last no sooner might a picture awaken some deep-rooted feeling inside her than it would slip quietly into the past. She no longer felt afraid. There were paintings that were difficult to understand, that were creepy, or discomforting—but she was able to look at them, just look at them, directly, while at the same time still being oblivious to any deeper meaning that might lie within. And as she looked at these images that conveyed no meaning, she realized that she had broken out of that state of mind in which looking was unbearable. Now, she could face them all, even without understanding. She was simply looking at pictures.

  She didn’t associate them with anything anymore. There wasn’t anything left to be afraid of. Not her mother, nor her younger brother. She felt nothing.

  They came flowing back to her. Your grandfather, you know. The words with which her mother would always begin that heroic saga.

  Your grandfather, you know, he took us to all these hotels in a hired car driven by a chauffeur.

  On arriving at each hotel, Natsuko’s mother, her grandfather’s beloved daughter, would inspect the suite. If she didn’t like it, they would all get back into the hired car and go somewhere else. And the health retreat was the place that she liked the most. Wearing a dress, dancing in the salon with Natsuko’s grandfather and grandmother. French cuisine at an ocean-view restaurant. Chanson performances. Each of those things had made her young mother feel special.

  It was strange, Natsuko thought. Now, she could picture her mother’s stories, those stories that she had so detested, with indifference, as though they belonged to someone else. Her mother’s agitated way of talking, where you could almost see her tongue darting around, was indeed unpleasant, but now it was just an image, one picture among many. She could look at her pitiable mother, she could see her as part of a portrait of a wealthy family. And she could look at that scene without calling to mind the regret that her mother, completely unawares, must have felt when she contemplated that special time now past. If she did that, Natsuko realized, she could look at them as no more than memories of a vacation taken by a rather ordinary, well-to-do family.

  Eventually, her mother had been forced
to give up her property, to part with her apartment in order to pay off her son’s debts, and to move with him to the suburbs. There, after catching wind of the rumors that she had fled to the countryside in shame, she ended up trying to kill herself. She spent a week in hospital. Then, no sooner had she been discharged than she started running to the local psychiatrist, clinging to her doctors, shedding fake tears, pretending to have aphasia, all in a bid for sympathy, all in an attempt to convince someone, anyone, that she should receive a disability pension. It should have been much easier for her just to find a job, but her mother didn’t see things that way. And so instead, she tried to get her hands on money the only way that she knew how. But of course, even if she had succeeded, it would only have ended up feeding her son’s alcoholism.

  Her mother, however, had no such apprehensions, and kept on going as if nothing were amiss. She felt no sense of danger at the possibility of going broke, of finding herself completely penniless. She spent her days decorating her new suburban apartment with lace in all her favorite colors, pale pinks and whites. Her small, meagre castle. A castle in which even the darkness was bleached white. The room was fitted with a bed surrounded by a canopy of pure white lace. The pillows were like blue and pink heart-shaped marshmallows, as if even they were divided into male and female, like pairs of lovers. She passed the days sleeping in that huge bed, so soft that it was as if her body would sink into it and disappear. She resembled nothing so much as a pistil in the center of a rose.