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

by Maki Kashimada

  The test would be at the Shinjuku Ward Disability Welfare Center. It was a bit of a distance, the nurse explained, near the last stop on the streetcar line.

  Taichi, however, looked happy.

  The nurse pushed the wheelchair down the road. Judging by the conversation, Taichi seemed to have already met him several times before. And of course, he showed not the slightest hint of humility or embarrassment.

  The three of them boarded the streetcar. Taichi kept on asking all kinds of questions. From what he and the nurse were saying, it sounded like it would be a practical test. When Natsuko asked what would happen if her husband failed, the nurse responded only by saying that it shouldn’t be too difficult, that so long as Taichi didn’t bump the wheelchair into anyone, he would pass.

  Taichi and the nurse were still talking when they arrived at the Disability Welfare Center. The three of them sat through all the formal procedures, followed by an interview with a doctor, before finally moving on to the test. Natsuko watched over her husband from behind as the wheelchair began to move.

  The test was more difficult than she had expected. As he made his way up the hill and across the road at the pedestrian lights, Taichi seemed about to bump into the myriad passersby more times than Natsuko could count.

  They didn’t have to wait long for the results. Why don’t we practice a little more? the examiner said. In other words, Taichi had failed. However, he would still be able to use the electric wheelchair so long as he had someone accompanying him, and from the sound of it, they would still be able to buy one. Taichi didn’t seem particularly disappointed, but the nurse insisted on trying to comfort him, telling him over and over again that it wasn’t a disastrous outcome.

  One month later, the electric wheelchair finally arrived. They set it up in the bicycle lot next to their apartment building. Shall we leave it here? You’re a big guy, so we had to have it custom-made, the clerk from the nursing care equipment shop told Taichi. The seat was fitted with a large, soft cushion, an optional add-on that Taichi seemed to have ordered without consulting his wife. That was just like him. There was no mistaking, however, that it looked comfortable to sit in.

  “Have a go,” Natsuko urged him.

  Taichi lowered himself into the seat, before quickly taking off and driving in circles around her.

  “With this, I’ll be able to go and buy sweets in no time at all!” Taichi exclaimed, brimming with excitement.

  “You’ll just go and buy more of those dirty magazines, won’t you? You can’t fool me.”

  Taichi let out a joyous laugh. “But what about you, Natchan? Do you want anything?”

  “Anything that I want?” Natsuko fell silent. She had no idea what she wanted. She had never stopped to ask herself that question.

  “I can go shopping now, so let me know, and I’ll buy it for you,” Taichi said proudly. The words sounded to Natsuko as if he had come up with the most splendid plan. She could get whatever she wanted. She could do whatever she wanted.

  “I . . .” Natsuko began, “I want to watch TV with you.”

  “TV? Hmm . . .” Taichi paused for a moment, pondering. “That’s it! I’ll buy a TV guide! It’s almost March, so there’ll be a special edition with all the new shows! Speaking of which, Natchan, your mind’s always somewhere else, huh?”

  “That sounds good. Yes, please buy one.”

  It looked like he had seen through her.

  “I picked up a lot of these. Can you hold onto them?”

  He was holding out several packets of pocket tissues labelled with advertisements, the kind that were handed out in front of the station. She put them into the pocket of her apron.

  Natsuko still didn’t really know whether she could say what she wanted, or go out and buy it. That was why she had given him such a timid answer. But she could see now that that was the cause of everything. She tried to put into words, even if only in a whisper, the miserableness of her past. And those words seemed to bring a strange sense of healing. Her apron pocket had begun to swell, but there was still plenty of room for more tissues.

  “I’ll be back soon,” Taichi said. And with that, he took off out of the bicycle lot. He was supposed to be accompanied by someone, but he didn’t let that worry him.

  As she saw her husband off, her mobile began to ring with a call from her mother.

  “You haven’t called in so long. Did something happen? I was really lonely, you know.”

  “Oh. I came down a cold.”

  “I found some more new clothes. They looked so wonderful, so lovely. I sent them to you.”

  They’re so soft and fluffy, reaching all the way down to the hem, and fluttering around so mesmerizingly.

  Natsuko thanked her before hanging up. She had finally realized that she didn’t have to wear them, that she had that option too.

  When she looked up again, Taichi was making his way down the street, cutting a clean path through the stream of people, straighter and faster than anyone else.

  NINETY-NINE KISSES

  I opened my eyes with rapture. What a wonderful dream! Meiko, Moeko, Yo¯ko, and me. All four of us, joining hands in a circle. Our palms getting all hot and sweaty and clingy. Our bodies melting into a thick syrup, becoming one. We were one. Meiko’s pain was Moeko’s suffering. When some burning, fluorescent light pierced my sister’s hearts, my body too shuddered with pain. This was what I had always yearned for. I don’t know why I’ve always wanted to become one with them. It’s instinctive. It’s desire, that’s all, pure and simple. Flowery words can’t justify it. I’m just completely enamored with them.

  Meiko, Moeko, Yo¯ko, I thought, chanting their names like some kind of love spell. Words have power, even by themselves. That’s why I don’t say them very much. Words like love, or death. Whenever I recite the names of my three sisters, I find myself drifting off into a deep fog. Even at college the other day, during a lecture about Marcel Pagnol, I wasn’t really paying attention to whatever my French professor, Monsieur Kimura, was saying. I just sat in my seat, repeating the names of my beloved sisters to myself over and over, writing them down again and again in my notebook.

  “Sounds like a sister complex to me,” my classmate Tamura said when we went to Hanake to get a bite to eat.

  “A complex? That’s rich. You say that like it’s some kind of sickness, loving your sisters. And what with your mother complex.”

  “That’s completely different. All I do is put up with that old bag’s nagging. But you, you’ve pretty much gone and offered up your own guts to your sisters in sacrifice.”

  Tamura may well have been right about that. “That’s a good one, coming from you.” I smiled. “But I guess there might be times when I do want to offer up my heart to them, or my shit-stained guts, even if they don’t want them. Anyway, how long do you think those jumbo gyo¯za are going to take?”

  “You sure eat a lot, don’t you? At this rate, you really will be able to offer them some shit-stained guts. Your breath already reeks of garlic.”

  Tamura and I often go out to eat garlic dishes like this. He’s the kind of guy who always acts calm and indifferent, no matter what’s going on, who goes around wearing worn-out T-shirts, his hair covered in dandruff. Basically, he’s the kind of guy that girls call gross. On top of that, he’s always coming out with these macho comments, like that there’s no helping women who can’t play the piano. But Tamura himself knows that he’s like this, and the fact that he doesn’t really think of me as a woman actually puts me at ease. That’s why I had decided to hang out with him.

  “So? Haven’t you ever thought about shutting that bitch up?” I asked. “You could finish her off, you know?”

  “She’s an old bag, not a bitch. Anyway, I’m not going to kill her, if that’s what you mean. It’d be too much of a hassle to clean up. By the way, the gyo¯za here are pretty big, aren’t they?”

  “I’ve been coming here with my family ever since I was a kid. All I’d have to do is go for a walk a
round Nippori, and as soon as I’d pass by this place, I’d just get incredibly hungry, you know? So I’d end up getting some gyo¯za and a bowl of shaved ice to snack on.”

  “Gyo¯za and shaved ice? What a combination.”

  “Right? My sisters have it when they come here too. We’re all big eaters. By the way, if you’re having trouble dealing with that old bag, why not try asking that tsukudani store around here to help out? You can make tsukudani from just about anything, you know.”

  Tamura let out a disgusted sigh. “How can you say that about someone’s mother? And you call yourself a woman?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, I’ve been brought up like a boy ever since I was little. Whenever there was a festival, they wouldn’t let me ride on the float. They made me carry the mikoshi with all the boys. That’s what my family’s like.”

  “The float, huh? I’ve always had a thing for the girls riding on top of that.”

  This time, it was my turn to let out a disgusted sigh. “Everyone works so hard to pull it through the streets, but it’s always the girls sitting at the top who capture everyone’s hearts.” But then I realized that Tamura was probably just acting macho, so I let him be.

  * * *

  When I got home, my sisters were all gossiping about this guy called S whom we had seen at the Azalea Festival at Nezu Shrine. He had only just moved into the neighborhood, but my sisters had already fallen for him. I had happened to see him myself not too long ago too, over at the Mad Hat. Everyone else was drinking Jinro, but then there he was, the odd one out with that Bloody Caesar of his. The Mad Hat. A run-down drinking house in the middle of this Shitamachi, this laid-back low town nestled in the old-fashioned, earthy half of Tokyo far from the bustle and commotion of the Yamanote. And this smug, pretentious-looking outsider sipping at his cocktail. He clearly didn’t belong here. He could probably spend the rest of his life in this Shitamachi bar, and would still never find a way to fit in.

  When I saw him at the Azalea Festival, he was empty-handed, as if he hadn’t expected all the food stands to be there. He must have come just to see the flowers, never mind that you have to pay to go in. My sisters and I had been completely oblivious to those flowers ever since we were kids, and were busy stuffing ourselves with takoyaki and cotton candy.

  “Didn’t he say the azaleas were so pretty? He must be a flower person,” Meiko said.

  “I don’t know about that. He might have just been putting on airs. But that kind of naivety is so cute, don’t you think?” Moeko replied.

  The two of them couldn’t stop talking about him.

  I looked at Yo¯ko. She had always had a cunning streak, ever since she was small. I was probably the only one of us capable of loving her unconditionally. I could see her eyes burning with jealousy as she listened to Meiko and Moeko go on and on. Knowing that two of her sisters wanted him too, she was no doubt plotting to make a move of her own. She may have been pretending to ignore them, but I’ll bet that she was planning to give him a flower or something behind their backs. Because that’s the kind of person she is.

  When we saw him that time at the Azalea Festival, we quickly learned that he was around the same age as Meiko. And when she realized that, Meiko’s face turned bright red for some reason. Did she think that she had a chance with him just because they were so close in years? It looked like Moeko had thought the same thing too. She made a face, as if she found it all kind of boring. Yo¯ko just watched on coolly. After all, she knew that men preferred younger women. None of them had any way of knowing whether S was even interested in them, but love has a way of making people get big-headed like that.

  “You were the only one who said anything to him, weren’t you? He looked a little flustered,” Moeko insisted.

  “Not at all!” Meiko replied. “He sounded so happy, when we were talking together.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.”

  I looked back and forth between my three sisters. Each of these three women, in their own way, seemed to have found themselves developing a vague interest in this man who had popped up here from some faraway town. It was probably only a matter of time before they started fighting over him. I love them, all three of my sisters, but for some reason, cruel thoughts kept pouring into my mind. They should fight more, I thought. Because women are born to fight. At least that’s the way that it has always seemed to me. I mean, I’m always paying attention to how my sisters smell. Everything from their perfumes and makeup when they go out, to the scent of menstrual blood that they leave in the bathroom when they’re on their periods. And those scents must get even richer after getting into a fight. Just thinking about it was enough to send a shiver coursing through my flesh. I wanted those scents to be stronger, I wanted to be able to breathe them in and savor them. With men, there’s simply no comparison. Men smell of nothing but sweat. They don’t give off different scents depending on the time or place, the way that women do.

  If jealousy is a feminine characteristic, then women ought to be free to be as jealous as they want. And a loving attachment to a jealous woman—there’s no way that a man would be able to understand that.

  Flowers bursting into bloom one after another, each their own distinct, burning color. It’s as if they’re all trying to cry out over the top of one another that they’re the most beautiful. And these people who live around Nezu Shrine, they probably go there, to the Azalea Festival, hoping that they’ll be able to meet someone or another, whether friends or members of the opposite sex. Everyone goes there to have fun, to socialize in the middle of that explosion of color, surrounded by flowers all vying for their attention. Hello! How are you doing? It’s already that time of year. Thank goodness the weather’s fine. They’ll start by exchanging pleasantries, but maybe what they really want to say is something more. What are you doing after this? Do you mind if I tag along? The thing is, I think I’ve fallen in love with you.

  And then they part ways. Let’s catch up again sometime. Maybe that’s what they say. But what’s that supposed to mean? It isn’t like they’re never going to see each other again. They live in the same neighborhood, after all.

  And the same thing went for my sisters. Let’s catch up again sometime, they said to S as we parted ways. Of course they were thinking about seeing him again. They were probably all thinking the exact same thing. That next time, maybe they would find him somewhere around the Mad Hat. But there’s one thing that they can’t have been thinking. That someone else would end up getting their hands on him, this guy, this mysterious S. That one of their own sisters might make him her own boyfriend first. No, that thought couldn’t have occurred to them at all.

  * * *

  One day, I happened to catch sight of S at the bus stop near our house. Well, technically it isn’t really a bus stop. The place had something to do with the Bluestocking Society, the feminist literary group that used to be active around here a century ago. He was staring intently at the sign that described their connection to the local area. And then, completely out of nowhere, he went and kissed it. I was so surprised that I spun around to see whether anyone else had noticed. But it was still early in the morning, and there was no one else around. I was probably the only one who had seen it. After that, he headed off toward Hakusan, while I kept going toward the convenience store in the opposite direction. I went straight to the magazine shelves, looking through the latest editions of all my favorites. One of them was doing a special issue on the Printemps Ginza department store. I had wanted to take a look at the new selection of summer clothes, but as I flipped through the pages, I just couldn’t relax. I couldn’t get that picture of S kissing the sign out of my head.

  In the end, I went home with only a carton of milk.

  “You took your time,” Meiko remarked. “Does it really take that long to buy some milk?”

  “Uh, well . . .” I replied, flustered, probably just making myself look like I had done something wrong.

  “You’re a strange one,” Moeko laughed.


  She was probably right about that. And all the while, Yo¯ko kept staring at me. I couldn’t help but worry that she might somehow manage to see through my discomfort, so I ran upstairs to hide in my room. I couldn’t tell any of them about what I had seen, about S kissing that sign. They would probably just end up getting jealous, I thought. They would no doubt just end up arguing among themselves over why he had done it.

  My mind started wandering. Why had he kissed it? Did he feel some kind of reverence toward Hiratsuka Raicho¯? I could picture it so vividly. S, kissing my sisters against their will. My bookish sisters, who had so eagerly devoured the works of Uno Chiyo and Okamoto Kanoko back when they were kids. How would these sisters of mine feel if a pretentious guy, some outsider, came and pressed his lips up against their own? And what if he kissed me? I would slap him dead in the face. Don’t treat me like an idiot! Maybe it’s true, that kissing someone, even without checking to see how they feel about you, maybe that’s how things are done where the streets are ruled by the young. But this town isn’t like that. The young aren’t in charge here. So don’t you get it? When in Rome, you’re supposed to do as the Romans do. Yep. If it were me, that’s what I would say to him.

  My sisters. My poor sisters. They haven’t realized what exactly it is that draws them to him. If you ask me, it’s simply because he’s a stranger. They think that they’re all so mature and sophisticated. They think that they’ve picked up every bit of worldly wisdom that a woman needs to know from their books. I’m not going to marry a local, some childhood friend, Moeko once said. I’m not going to be like everyone else in this town. They’re all the same. They’re born here, they fall in love with a member of the opposite sex, someone they’ve known since elementary school, they get married, and then, eventually, they die. Then their childhood friends all come to the funeral, like it’s some kind of class reunion. No, I couldn’t bring myself to fall in love with someone like that. It’s practically incest. That’s the kind of thing that Moeko would always say. Which was why, as soon as a stranger popped up, she and the others all underwent a sudden awakening, almost as if it were their first time ever seeing a member of the opposite sex. There’s no limit to my love for them, but as I watched this strange mood fall over them all, I felt as if I had suddenly understood just what miserable creatures women really are. But at the same time, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking that they’re just so beautiful, these sisters of mine.