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

by Maki Kashimada

  I turned toward Yo¯ko. She was watching the TV so intently that she probably wouldn’t respond even if I asked her, I thought. I withdrew the hand that had begun to offer her a piece.

  For some reason, we were all watching TV together. I couldn’t stop thinking about my sisters and Mom. Whatever it was that the people on the other side of the screen were saying hardly even entered my mind.

  All of a sudden, a great sigh emanated from the TV. For some reason, that startled me, and I glanced at the screen. It looked like we had all been watching a health program.

  “This disease has a long incubation period. By the time it’s discovered, it’s already beyond curing. Death is the only outcome.”

  What kind of illness could it be? I wondered. Could it really be that horrible, this disease? Maybe I should have been paying more attention.

  Even Mom, usually so fastidious about health issues, was watching the program in idle silence.

  “We’ve asked our guests to make a note of their lifestyle habits, to see whether or not they have a chance of developing it.”

  Insufficient sleep, smoking, alcohol, an oil-rich diet. The things that they mentioned would apply to just about anyone.

  “To our viewers at home, if you’re living like this, this disease may soon affect you too. In fact, it wouldn’t be at all surprising if it’s already struck, so be sure to see your doctor for regular checkups.”

  “We might end up dying too,” Meiko said idly, her voice betraying her lack of concern.

  “Everyone dies one day,” Yo¯ko responded. She too seemed preoccupied.

  “There’s no escaping it,” Moeko murmured in agreement.

  My sisters’ words piled up in my heart like snow.

  The questions echoed in my mind: What exactly is haunting us sisters? Are we all afflicted by some incurable disease too? Hey, Mom, why did you give birth to us? Why did you only have daughters, and four at that? If you had had a proper mix of boys and girls, my sisters wouldn’t have ended up all getting charmed by the same man.

  It’s unnatural, this situation, all of us sapped and listless. It feels like a funeral. The only words that come to mind are melancholy and darkness, but it’s also somehow sacred. One day, we might all be featured in a human-interest piece in the local newspaper. Four sisters, bringing themselves to ruin. Yes, this ruin would include me too. It had probably begun even before S showed up. Five women, living together almost incestuously. How are we supposed to keep on going, how are we supposed to keep on living? It’s all over. Ahead of us, there’s only death. I could feel it instinctively. Children will offer white flowers to our pale bodies, like it’s some kind of celebration. But it’ll still be the end. The children will be so innocent that they won’t have realized that yet. They’ll just keep giving us more and more flowers. And they’ll probably say: Those women, they’re so pretty. Yes, I know. I know just how pretty we all are.

  * * *

  Yo¯ko broke down into tears. Only in front of me, though. It’s over, she said. It’s all over. Everything that we’ve ever had as sisters. I’m not saying this because I loved him, you know? I mean, he’s so dependent, so useless. And look what he’s done to us all. He’s ruined us. Please. Let me cry with you, let me cry on your lap. You understand, don’t you, Nanako? You can see what’s happened, can’t you? All I can do now is cry. There’s nothing else left.

  I startled at this, at brushing up so close to her beautiful soul. She was so different now from the person whom I had seen smoking and acting like a delinquent in front of S. Why, I wondered, why did my proud Yo¯ko have to end up falling in love with that guy? I could hardly believe it.

  None of it makes any sense. Men, women, the way they fall for each other, she said, as if she could read my thoughts. I mean, it’s not like I chose to fall in love with someone like him.

  Yo¯ko, you really are so pure. I feel like I’ve known it for the longest time. You’re tough, you’re artful, but in a different way to most other cunning women. That man should have realized it by now too. That this place is too elegant to really call a Shitamachi. It was always his intention just to play around with an easy Shitamachi girl, wasn’t it? But he must have realized his mistake by now. The real inhabitants of this neighborhood have been living here for generations. From my grandfather’s, my great-grandfather’s time. And we’re always dumbfounded by the strangers who come here. They expect to see the spirit of the Shitamachi in each of us as well. The idea of a loose, rundown Shitamachi, whatever that’s supposed to be. It’s all a lie. If they could see who we really are, they would know that we’re reserved, that we’re shy around strangers.

  So I know. I know just how much you’ve been overdoing it trying to meet his expectations. That you were simply playing the role of a Shitamachi woman. Meiko and Moeko may have just been watching him from a distance, that man, that stranger. But I know. I know that you, Yo¯ko, you gave your whole body to him. And, for you, that was your ruin. And for Mom, it no doubt means disgrace.

  But the thing is, we’re all dying to know. About this person who has come here to our neighborhood. I wonder whether he has found anything around here that really conjures up the image of a Shitamachi. People call this a town of literati, but I wonder whether there’s anything left of that old-fashioned spirit.

  He might be drinking at the Eau de Vie right around now. Or maybe, I wondered, he’ll be making his way up Sansakizaka in the middle of the night, almost all the way to the cemetery. Only an outsider would think to go there.

  Please, please sleep with me tonight, begged Yo¯ko, normally so resolute in her solitude. Dressed in a tanktop, I crept into her bed, like I used to so long ago. I was brimming with curiosity, and ended up showering her with questions about S. To the point that even I wondered whether I wasn’t being rude. Where do you go on your dates? How often do you have sex? That kind of thing.

  He still acts like a tourist, Yo¯ko answered. He’s so interested in this neighborhood that he just can’t help himself. He started going on about the Yasuda Kusuo Residence, right, and even suggested we go there on one of our days off. Why would you pay to go somewhere like that? No way! Then he started going on about the Shimazono Residence too. That there’s a concert coming up there, or something.

  Yo¯ko kept on talking.

  I guess we just gradually started having sex more and more. He only really treated me well the first time though. He must have thought that I’d pretty much just offer myself up to him. It’s like he doesn’t have a clue what people are like around here. He doesn’t even understand the difference between a Shitamachi and a loose, sleazy town. He practically sees us Shitamachi women as prostitutes. Guys from around these parts are so much better.

  A lot of people think of our town as the quintessential Shitamachi, but that image just leaves us feeling all flustered and confused. Because it couldn’t be any further from the truth. I mean, the vast grounds of Nezu Shrine lie in the middle of a quiet residential area. Like an empty, blank space. Foreigners and tourists from all over the country make their way there, maps in hand. But us, we went there for sketching practice when we were in elementary school. There was never anything particularly special about it for us. We didn’t understand the first thing about it. Now that I thought about it, Yo¯ko’s unhappiness must have started all the way back then.

  * * *

  After a while, Yo¯ko and S’s relationship became more or less official. Mom gave up on trying to get them to break up. S started to come to our house to pick Yo¯ko up whenever they went out on dates. He came across as a decent enough young man, his appearance always neat and tidy. Meiko and Moeko, though, had grown afraid of him. They thought of him now as some kind of delinquent, and did everything they could to avoid him. Whenever he came to pick Yo¯ko up, we would always hide in our rooms and pretend that we weren’t home.

  At such times, Meiko’s emotions would start getting the better of her, and she would come stumbling into my room. I’m scared, she would say. Y
o¯ko really is going out with him, isn’t she? Her voice would be so calm as she asked me this, as if she had completely forgotten that her own feelings for him had burned so strongly. And I would reach out to hug her. It’s okay, I would say, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Her delicate build is so feminine. I felt like I could read her future. She would probably get married to a childhood friend of hers living somewhere just around the corner.

  Meiko. So innocent. She’s thirty-two years old, and still she can’t do anything by herself. She can’t even cook or do her own laundry. Mom’s the one who washes her underwear. But she’s fine this way. That’s what I’ve always thought, ever since I was a kid. But as for how our neighbors see her, none of us has any real idea. Except when it comes to the old woman living next door, that is. That Meiko of yours is such a devoted daughter, I overheard her say once, completely missing the mark. She seemed to think that daughters should stay with their families, and that the fact that Meiko still lived with us all was a sign of her filial dedication. But that wasn’t the case at all.

  Even now that Yo¯ko was openly dating S, Meiko didn’t harbor any sense of envy toward her. It would only be natural to be jealous in her situation, but she had never envied anyone anything. It was as if she lacked the basic ability to feel those kinds of emotions. I’m worried about Yo¯ko, was all she said. I feel like she’s drifting away from us, Nanako. I feel like I’m all alone. And I’m scared, so scared. Like something really bad is going to happen, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

  Ever since she had found out about Yo¯ko and S’s relationship, Meiko had started having nightmares. She had even been prescribed a course of Halcion to help her deal with everything. And whenever she had one of those nightmares, she would come and wake me. Hey, Nanako, I had a bad dream. S was going to kill me. I’ve got a really bad feeling about everything. And I would say to her: I’ll get you some honey tea. It’s okay, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Yo¯ko won’t stay with him forever. Even she must know that.

  Really? Meiko would look up at me. She has an intuitive ability to see through people’s lies. So I stared straight into her eyes, to prove to her that what I was saying was true.

  Meiko wouldn’t be able to break out of these cycles of anxiety unless she thought that I was telling her the truth. But even though I had basically just made it all up, she didn’t accuse me of trying to trick her. She probably hadn’t even fully realized that she herself had seen through the lie. In her anxiety, she couldn’t fully bring herself to go along with what I had told her, but she had seen through it only vaguely, without fully understanding.

  As I watched her, I started wondering how everything would have played out if she had been the one whom S had chosen. I could practically see him, this S who knew nothing about the delicate woman in front of me, rolling up her skirt and snatching her panties. If he did that, Meiko would probably suffer a complete mental breakdown. I felt a strange thrill at the cruelty of my imaginings.

  Meiko is so pure that she comes across as simple-minded. She has always known the difference between truth and falsehood. She just hasn’t realized that. She doesn’t understand her own true nature. If someone in the family tells a lie, she gets scared. But she herself doesn’t understand why she ends up feeling that way.

  Her chastity was such a waste. It occurred to me that she might one day end up losing that chastity in a random act of capriciousness. And I started to feel better, imagining such things.

  In fact, Meiko might even be better suited to S. Her scrawny body was perfectly proportioned for stirring a man’s lust—an altogether different kind of lust than what S must have felt toward Yo¯ko.

  Sometimes, I find myself wanting to say cruel things to her. You’re the kind of person who ends up getting sold off to a foreign country, as a prostitute. That’s your fate. That’s the kind of thing that I want to say. Because she really is stupid, to the point where she might actually end up believing everything that I said to her.

  When would she finally realize what it means to be with a man? I wondered. I could imagine some faceless man, doing to her the kinds of things that S does to Yo¯ko.

  Like dyeing a white dove red with blood.

  * * *

  A little while after that, Meiko brought another taiyaki home. This time, though, it wasn’t a treat from S.

  Were those maps of the Shitamachi still there? I asked.

  They’re gone, Meiko answered. They must have been put out there then because it was a holiday, so I guess I just got lucky. It looks like they’re for tourists after all.

  Ah, I thought. So this town only shows its touristy face on holidays.

  I could see them both, in my mind. S eating a golden taiyaki with Yo¯ko. It must have been a holiday. That was why he was carrying a map of the Shitamachi. And for some reason, as I watched them, feelings of hate started welling up inside me.

  Hey, Nanako, I’ve been thinking that maybe I’ve been leaning on you too much, Meiko said to me. Whenever I end up like this, breaking down into tears, you’re always the one who hands me a box of tissues. Nanako, you’re such a dedicated, wonderful little sister. You’re wasted on me. When all this stuff with S started getting out of hand, I was really jealous at first, you know? But it was always you who comforted me. You made me that honey tea. Not just tissues, but honey tea too. Even in the middle of the night, you’d stay by my side. But I’ve given up feeling jealous about Yo¯ko. I’ve been thinking, if she marries him, I’ll give her my blessing. And as the eldest daughter, I’ll have to take the lead in preparing the wedding ceremony. She’s got such nice, pale skin, not to mention her good looks. With her chest, she’d look beautiful in a low-cut dress, don’t you think? I’ll have to decorate it with white roses. It sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?

  She might be the eldest of us sisters, but Meiko always acts as if she’s the youngest. She’s so delicate, so helpless, that she would probably be completely crushed if even the smallest misfortune were to befall her. What’s happened to you, Meiko? What’s going on in your heart? Just what kind of fancy has thrown itself on you?

  Meiko, please, heal Yo¯ko. Even a fragile person like yourself ought to be able to do that much. She’s still stuck dating that guy, that man who came here as no more than a tourist. Why don’t you tell her how you’re feeling, Meiko? I’m fed up with him, you could say. I can’t take it anymore. I can’t even bear to walk around town anymore, this place that’s been my home since I was a kid. You could let Yo¯ko break down into tears and cry on your lap. Please, Meiko, you could cry along with her. You could make your face look so wretched, so much more unsightly than hers.

  I was still the only one who could see through it all. I was still the only one who could see that Yo¯ko was fed up with that guy. But I hadn’t been able to bring myself to tell anyone. How even though she’s fed up with him, she trembles with fear at the very thought of breaking up with him. I had no idea, none whatsoever, how to put that contradiction into words.

  But Meiko just kept going on and on about how happy Yo¯ko would be once she married him. He’ll be a great film director one day, don’t you think? That was all she talked about. Mom says he’s taking advantage of her, but there’s no way that could be true. She’s just investing for the future. I mean, it’s unthinkable, right? This idea of Yo¯ko supporting some useless guy. That isn’t her. She’s always been able to see through people, always been able to size them up, even when she was just a kid.

  Meiko just doesn’t know the truth. About men and women. About sex and love. But she’s fine that way. I mean, I don’t really know much about them either. And I don’t want to. Meiko’s fine not knowing what Yo¯ko’s going through. Because love with some outsider—for Meiko, that’s out of the question. I alone would violate her, in my mind. I would make her mine. Because she’s a good woman, with a noble character that would be completely wasted on someone like S.

  * * *

  One day, Yo¯ko invited me to go with her to Hanake, just
the two of us. We ordered the jumbo gyo¯za, and even though it wasn’t the season for it, some shaved ice too. They do shaved ice at Hanake all year round. I’ve been keeping this place a secret from S, Yo¯ko told me. I don’t know why exactly, but I felt like I wanted to protect it, to at least keep this place safe, or something like that. We go to the Pomegranate whenever we come to Yanaka. After a while, I just couldn’t keep going past the Dandanzaka steps at the end of the street anymore, you know?

  Our jumbo gyo¯za arrived, a plate for each of us.

  They’re so huge, Yo¯ko exclaimed. Were they always this big? I mean, we’ve been coming here ever since we were kids, right? So if anything, they should feel smaller, don’t you think? But they just seem to keep getting bigger and bigger.

  There were five on each plate, but we ended up leaving two untouched on each of them. All of a sudden, Yo¯ko broke out into a laugh. It looks like we would have been fine ordering just one plate. We pretty much always end up with a full serving left, don’t we?

  We left the restaurant, and made our way down the Dandanzaka steps hand in hand. Yo¯ko’s soft palm enveloped mine. It was just like I remembered, just like when I was a kid. But I couldn’t help but feel as if something inside me had changed.

  As I wondered what exactly it could be, I felt a strange numbness in the corner of my eye. Before I knew it, that numbness had disappeared, and in its place a tear was running down my cheek.

  I hugged Yo¯ko close. Yo¯ko hugged me back. You’re afraid, aren’t you? she said to me. I myself didn’t know whether that was the case. But Yo¯ko is so perceptive. She could no doubt read my emotions better than I ever could.

  Yo¯ko’s voice, that warm, kind voice that had realized that I was afraid, gradually became tearful. I looked up at her. I felt a sudden urge to kiss her, to push my lips up against her own. To kiss her, the way that lovers kissed. I didn’t know why I wanted to do it. And I knew that I shouldn’t. But I didn’t understand why that was either. It should have been fine for these irrational thoughts that I had for my three sisters to come to the fore. I mean, I’ve felt this way for so long that they all ought to have realized it by now. One day, they’ll return my feelings. That’s what I should have been thinking. But as we stood there like that, as Yo¯ko held me and I held her, for some strange reason I found myself hesitating.