Tell me about it! he answered, his voice rising a little in excitement. I only scored these two chicks after hitting on dozens of them.
The central tower of Hikone Castle was truly magnificent. It was about to be abandoned and destroyed, but the famous Shigenobu Okuma, who had visited the site to inspect it just before its demolition, was so moved by its dignified appearance he personally appealed to Emperor Meiji to have the tower spared. But actually the castle tower was just a reconstruction, having been removed from Takatsugu Kyougoku’s Otsu Castle, and, come to think of it, the Tenbin turret found here was also formerly the turret that had graced Yukari Hideyoshi’s Nagahama Castle.
I was relating this story to Eriko while taking in the view of Lake Biwa that spread northwest, just below our eyes. Once we’d breathlessly climbed steep flights of stairs to reach the top floor of the three-tiered castle tower, Eriko finally said, So you’re saying they used to properly recycle in the old days as well.
Of course they did, I snapped back. Castle-building was an enormous undertaking after all, requiring vast expenses. Even though the castles were set on fire every time a battle started, they used to salvage any unburned materials and stone walls and reuse them. If they hadn’t it would’ve been a very costly affair in terms of both time and money.
Wow! I guess those warring feudal lords knew a thing or two about what made good economic sense.
Obviously! They led far sounder lives than we do today.
But they were always at war, weren’t they?
Which is why they knew death. A person can’t hope to lead a decent life without knowing what it really means to die, don’t you think?
And you know what it means to die?
Nope. I’m just someone who lives every day thinking he should never have been born.
There you go again with your weird nonsense. You’re so full of it.
Eriko takes my hand and gazes at the cloudless scenery with me. The lake was serene and devoid of rippling waves. After falling silent for a while she spoke again. You should never say such a thing. It’s bad luck, surely. There are many who can’t go on living even when they want to, after all.
Hearing her words I suddenly remembered my mother. I wondered if she too, at this moment, was praying for her life to go on, lying in a hospital bed.
Just how long is long enough for such people? I murmured. How long do they have to live to feel they’ve had enough of life?
I wasn’t really talking to Eriko, but she nonetheless asked, What do you mean by ‘such people?’
You know, people who want to go on living even when they can’t.
I grasped Eriko’s hand without taking my eyes off the glittering surface of the lake.
I believe I could happily give away my life, I said, to anyone who badly wanted to live; that is, as long as they didn’t mind having the life of someone like me. But even if I were to somehow find a way to hand over whatever’s left of my days to such a desperate someone, it’d only be a matter of, say, a few dozens of years before doomsday starts to feel imminent again, against his or her will, and the protesting would start again, ‘I want to live longer no matter what!’
But anyone who’s about to die is probably hoping for another year at least, don’t you think?
So you’re saying then that it’s okay to die a year later, that it’ll make a difference?
Yeah, emotionally speaking. I mean, by wishing for another year, what they’re really asking for is a little more time to get ready to accept their own passing.
I doubt it …
I ponder a little further. Is it possible to prepare for death? Speaking of preparation, isn’t life itself a preparation for death?
I don’t think it’ll be like that, I said. If you could extend your life by an extra year, you’re going to desperately try to do just that, certainly, and when the time to die does come, all that’s going to happen is that you’re going to find yourself more fully reconciled to your fate than you were a year earlier. That’s all.
But that’s the point, that’s what’s most crucial—the reconciliation! Eriko responded without hesitation.
But I didn’t agree. Reconciling—or in other words, giving up—can’t be all that important, and honestly, it isn’t a big achievement. To give up, after all, is being ready just for an instant. What’s more, if giving up is supposed to be so crucial then there’s nothing wrong with believing that I should never have been born. Why should it be bad luck to say such a thing?
The things Eriko says usually sound plausible if you don’t pay too much attention to them, but upon closer examination, you see that they’re groundless and inconsistent.
We had a late lunch at the Hikone Prince Hotel and then drove to Azuchi, where we visited the site of Azuchi Castle. In recent years, thanks to dedicated excavations and research, and the use of computer graphics, the complete architectural story of Azuchi Castle has come to light; while the magnificent scale of the castle and the gold-encrusted tower attract much attention to this day, as far as the actual ancient castle site is concerned, only the stone walls remain, appearing distant and abandoned on a slightly elevated hill. Nevertheless, just by following the path through the area of the ruins we were able to arrive at an understanding of the castle’s extraordinary scale.
While ascending a flight of stairs that rose endlessly toward the crest of the ruins of the main keep, Eriko grumbled, Why is each step so wide? It just makes it even more difficult to climb up. They should’ve put a little more thought into their construction, don’t you think?
They’re probably wide on purpose to let horses climb up too. What’s more, if an invading enemy approaches, a soldier with a spear’s got to be able to spread out his legs to effectively confront the invader—the stairs have to be wide enough for him to do just that.
Wow! Really? As usual Eriko was fascinated.
When we arrived at the site of the castle tower the sun was rapidly setting as a cold wind began to blow. Both
of us were sweating profusely, which didn’t help because the sweat made the bitter cold even worse. We went down the hill hastily and—upon Eriko’s suggestion—hurried back to Kyoto. Although we ended up having a late dinner, I was happy; she’d taken me to a restaurant by the Kamogawa River, where the food was delicious, and she’d also taken care of the bill.
For your information, she said as we entered, there’s no need to let your paranoid imagination run wild regarding this restaurant.
She was alluding to what was better left unsaid, so I responded, I feel really bad. I did behave offensively. I’m sorry. When I apologized Eriko bit her lip and looked a little sad.
After finishing our dinner, I in turn took Eriko to a zashiki bar in Gion. It was a tatami-floored watering hole where I’d drop in whenever I visited Kansai. The proprietress of the place was the former mistress of the father of a certain young writer I represent, and for some reason she was always friendly. Her physique, which was rotund like a fat cat’s, and her skin, which was fair and slick like a brand new bar of white soap, were reminiscent of the writer, so I suspected she was his mother.
That night the proprietress welcomed us both, and when I introduced Eriko to her she remarked repeatedly, What a ravishingly beautiful woman! Good for you, Mr. Matsubara, good for you!
When I began to drink in earnest, the proprietress called Eriko over to the corner of the counter and the two talked in hushed tones for quite some time.
On our way back to yesterday’s hotel—inside a taxi—Eriko said, Mama-san—that proprietress—was telling me that underneath your tough-looking exterior, your difficult-to-please looks, you’re actually lonely, that you couldn’t go through life alone, and that, surprisingly, someone like that has nowhere to go.
Upon hearing this I remembered that a while back, when I was alone in the bar there and getting helplessly drunk, she let me stay in her room on the second floor. The image of how pathetic I was at the time had probably been seared into her mind. Grante
d, I may have behaved disgracefully, bursting into tears and letting my face fall on her knees, hollering, I’m lonely, I’m lonely. But that’s the kind of thing one should try out now and then. In fact, I engage in such behavior at most bars at least once, in an experimental spirit. Admittedly, it’s a silly habit, just like a dog’s habit of pissing on whichever telephone pole it happens to come across.
At any rate, the mama-san was being meddlesome, talking to Eriko about me. What a disappointment she was! Still, Eriko seemed to be in a good mood, so I certainly kept a lid on my feelings.
2
AFTER RETURNING FROM KYOTO I decided it would be better to stop seeing Eriko for a while.
Having had a lot of sex, our chemistry was strangely heightened, and although our trip had only lasted a weekend, our experience of being together from morning to night, without any time apart at all, would undoubtedly have a significant impact on our future relationship. I had probably become a stronger, more solid presence in Eriko’s eyes and in turn Eriko’s presence had become all the more distinct to me.
To be sure, it wasn’t anything unpleasant at all. But as far as I was concerned, at that juncture in my life, I wanted to break off contact with Eriko for the time being. By doing so I wanted to make Eriko incomprehensible again. To maintain human relations, in general, I feel it’s vital to try to understand the other person at first, and after that, avoid arriving at a full understanding. Once you finish a book you don’t want to read it again, do you? If you do you get tired of it. Relationships with people are like that as well.
A long time ago, when I explained this to the girl I was going out with at the time, she said, "Human beings aren’t books, and anyway, there definitely are books that are interesting no matter how many times you read them. Besides, if you’re going to use the metaphor of a book to describe a human, then I’d say it’s a long, long, never-ending story.
To begin with, she continued, no matter how much you try to understand, the printed matter we call ‘a human being’ is riddled with illegible characters and ciphers, so your reading of a person will always remain incomplete, no matter how many times you try. If you ask me, I think it’s more apt to compare a human being to a piece of music, a sort of living repository containing an entangled mess of tens of thousands of different kinds of sounds, varying from person to person. And I’m sure this music is really complex, changing your impression of it every time you give it a listen, you know.
For several days I seriously tried to understand what she’d said.
But it was no use—I ended up concluding that there just wasn’t any book so fascinating that you could read it over and over again without ever losing interest, and I also thought that a never-ending book was a fanciful, fairy-tale notion. Worse still, to compare a person to a piece of music was going a bit too far, I felt, even if she were just being whimsical.
And then I had another thought.
If you wanted to read the same book again and again, the only way was to forget the details you’d read, from cover to cover.
I’d come to know Eriko’s body by then. I’d also come to know about the man in her past, and about other things as well.
It was time I started forgetting a little.
To that end, from the following day, I began killing my nights with booze.
On the first day I drank the night away with my colleagues in Shinjuku, and just went straight to work from there. But keeping company with a bunch of people you don’t particularly like or dislike is boring and a terribly troublesome affair, so from the second night onward I began to drop by several familiar watering holes by myself. Most of the time I’d drink until about 3 a.m. before returning to my apartment.
Meanwhile, my cell phone buzzed with many calls from Eriko, but I never answered.
The fifth morning, a violently painful toothache woke me up.
My lower-right tooth in the back, my wisdom tooth, whose treatment I’d abandoned about half a year ago, must have festered, thanks to my nightly drinking. The pain—a hammering sensation near my temple—was quite intolerable. I rushed into the dental clinic, realizing how ungrateful I’d been for the existence of this place all this time. As expected I was told that the tooth was in a terrible state, and in the end it was extracted.
Nevertheless, I went out drinking that night as well. The hemorrhaging had stopped one hour after the tooth was pulled, and since I’d downed, all in one go, an entire three days’ worth of the Voltaren they’d prescribed me, the pain had disappeared in no time. I skipped lunch, but went to Yanagibashi in the evening to eat with a certain essayist I’d asked to join me. I had about three bottles of sake but no particular harm was done; I was doing all right.
The essayist and I parted company at about nine, but an hour later I was opening the door to New Seoul near Morishita Station in the vicinity of my apartment.
There were no customers in sight, just Tomomi wiping a glass alone.
It was a small shop, approximately seven stools lined against the counter, a U-shaped brown sofa, and a square table at the back of its narrow interior.
I’d bought a stuffed figure of the children’s manga character Trotting Hamtaro, which was displayed under the eaves of a general store near the exit of the Ryogoku side of the subway station.
Since it had already been a month since my last visit, all Tomomi did when she saw me was give me a deadpan look and mumble, Oh.
I sat on the chair facing her, placed the stuffed toy on the counter, and asked, Is Takuya asleep?
Tomomi fixed me a glass of whiskey and water in silence and didn’t open her mouth until she placed the glass on the counter.
He’s a real handful these days, having turned into a night owl!
She then shouted in the direction of a gloomy, sharply rising staircase found at the right end of the counter, Takuya, that nice mister’s here!
Your hair, you’ve dyed it, I said, noticing for the first time her strangely red and disheveled hair.
Kind of odd, don’t you think?
Not really.
I heard footsteps running down the stairs. Tomomi finally looked at me straight in the face and smiled.
Takuya was in his pajamas and when I handed Hamtaro to him he was delighted. He was a frail kid, catching cold all the time, and even though he’d already be five when the next New Year holidays came around, he still ran a fever once a month without fail. His build was also far more fragile than that of most children his age, and he had a pale complexion. His large, bulging eyes, just like his mother’s, made him look even sicklier.
A customer entered, and Takuya shot a mean look at him for a second, since his arrival meant the boy had to return to the second floor. But when Tomomi jerked his chin up he embraced the stuffed toy and climbed up the stairs without any further fuss. The visitor was an elderly man in his fifties, wearing a tired-looking brown business suit, his forehead riddled with wrinkles. I’d seen him in this bar from time to time.
While Tomomi picked up this man’s bottle, which was on reserve for him, and began preparing a strong glass of whiskey and water, I leaned over the counter and said to her in a low voice, How about going to Disneyland this Sunday, the day after tomorrow?
After serving the man, Tomomi refilled my glass, which I’d already emptied.
I wonder, she said, who was the one wearing a long face all day long at the Ueno Zoo last time?"
Hey, it was awfully cold that day! Come on, let’s just go. I’ve got free press passes—we’re talking unlimited free rides here, and get this, the passes also come with food tickets! And you know what else? DisneySea’s opened next door, and there’s Ikspiari too, so we can also have fun shopping!
I was being insistent with her, as always. "Come to think of it we’ve never bothered to go there even once. Takuya’s a big boy now so he’ll be able to ride any kind of ride—it’ll be great, so come on! Takuya’s going to be super pleased for sure!
Yeah, I suppose so, Tomomi said, apparently taking my
offer into serious consideration.
I’ll come pick you up by car at ten the day after tomorrow.
Hey, I can’t just drop everything and leave on such short notice! I’ve got plans …
Sure you do. I’ll come pick you up anyway. If you can’t make it at that time, no problem. I won’t mind.
Then I drank quite a bit. The regular customer left after thirty minutes or so and was soon replaced by five or six other people, each of whom merrily sang two or three karaoke numbers before leaving.
The customer traffic stopped, and a few minutes later it happened again; my toothache. It was intense.
Seeing me in pain, Tomomi apparently thought that I was only joking. But when my groaning began to resound throughout the bar she did finally get seriously worried. When I related, in fits and starts, twisting and writhing in pain, the details of what had transpired that morning, she began to rebuke me, saying that I’d been reckless.
But by that time blood was spilling all over from out of my mouth, forming a few small pools on the black Decola counter. There was so much blood even I was horrified.
Tomomi went around behind me in a hurry, removed my jacket, loosened my tie, and wrapped a large towel around my neck. Then she swiftly went upstairs and came back down with something in her hand. It was a box of
Twining teabags. She took out two bags and, after removing their wrappers, tied them into a bundle with the attached strings and thrust them under my nose, telling me to bite into them.
Tea contains an ingredient that can stanch bleeding. Be sure to sink your teeth in, even if it hurts.
As I reluctantly pressed the edge of the towel to my lips, she moistened the teabags a little with water, and then forcibly shoved them into my mouth.
However, after desperately applying the teabags over the gap previously occupied by my wisdom tooth and clenching my teeth, the pain, which made me feel as if the flesh of my cheek was about to tear apart, only sharpened. I became confused, clinging to the counter, and my eyes blurred with tears.
The teabags had become blood-soaked, oozing out a rotten-smelling juice that spread throughout my mouth, making me nauseous.
The Part of Me That Isn't Broken Inside Page 2