Hell

by Yasutaka Tsutsui

  Takeshi hung his coat on the rack before climbing the stairs. Was this reality or a dream?

  “Oh, Takeshi. This is a dream, isn’t it? You’ve been dead for over twenty years. You died in a traffic accident. Or maybe it was murder? Well, they called it an accident. This is a dream, isn’t it? You’ve been dead for over twenty years now…”

  “This isn’t a dream, Sachiko.”

  Takeshi was already naked, already inside her. If it wasn’t a dream, what was it? Reality? Despite her confusion, Sachiko soon succumbed to Takeshi’s sensual skills and began to moan.

  “Oh… My husband. My husband. He’s… He’s on a business trip overseas. At an auction in Paris. No, that’s not right. He died on his way back home. But how is that possible? It could only feel this good if he was alive. Yes, he is alive. He’s just come home. He just walked in the front door. He’s coming up the stairs.”

  “I know.”

  “He’s coming up the stairs.”

  “I know.”

  “But how? How do you know?”

  “This has happened before. So many times.”

  Of course. It might be a dream, but it wasn’t the first time she had dreamt this. Didn’t she have this dream night after night? Takeshi would not let Sachiko go. Her husband stood outside the partially opened bedroom door, and still he would not let her go. Now her husband was inside the bedroom, watching them.

  “Yes. I’ve been through this so many times,” said Izumi as he sat on the edge of the bed. “But I wasn’t dreaming.”

  “Hello, Izumi.”

  “Hello, sir.”

  The two of them spoke as if they had seen each other only moments before. But they were both dead. They had been dead for so very long.

  “You mean you two…” Sachiko pulled the sheets up to cover her body. “You two became friends… over there? In the other world?”

  “Friends?” repeated Takeshi.

  The two men exchanged faint smiles.

  “Then this must be a dream, right? I’m in my bedroom dreaming that I’m in my bedroom. Right?”

  “Sachiko. This isn’t a dream.”

  “Then is it reality?”

  “No. It’s not reality,” said Izumi brusquely.

  If it wasn’t a dream and it wasn’t reality, what was it?

  Sachiko raised her voice. “Then this must be Hell. It’s not a dream. It’s not reality. But I’m not dead. I’m alive but I can’t go out of this bedroom. I can’t go anywhere. I can’t see anyone but you. That’s Hell for me. This is my Hell.”

  Sachiko woke up. The doorbell was ringing. She went out onto the landing. She must have been dreaming before. The front door opened silently and Takeshi walked inside. As he took off his coat, he spoke matter-of-factly to Sachiko.

  “It’s been a long time since we met that day at the hotel, hasn’t it? We slipped away from your husband and went into the garden. I still think it’s amazing how well we understood one another, considering we’d never met before.”

  Takeshi hung his coat on the rack before climbing the stairs.

  Sachiko began to question him. “This isn’t a dream and it isn’t reality. Then am I dead? If I was alive I should be an old woman.”

  “No, you’re not dead,” said Takeshi as he embraced Sachiko in her bed. “You’ll live to be an old woman. You won’t die for many years, and we will meet each other every night. And even after you die, you will be able to see me, your husband, and many other interesting people besides.”

  Time in Hell is not a constant. Three days in Hell might equal ten years in the real world. One can go back in time as well as see into the future. It was at some point in this indistinct flow of time that two old women happened upon one another in a town shrouded in mist. Or perhaps it was the smoke of an incinerator – the air was so hazy they couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of them. One of the women was Sachiko, Izumi’s wife. The other was Motoko, the wife of Daisaburo Shimada. As they passed one another on the pavement, they stopped and cocked their heads quizzically to one side. It seemed that their pasts were connected in some way. Were they distant relations? Or had one of them had an affair with the other’s husband? The two women stared at each other for some time, and then they both realized the truth at the same instant. They had each had an affair with the same man. A look of mild surprise came across their faces, and then they walked away from each other with nothing more than a smile and a nod.

  Sasaki was in his makeshift tent of plastic sheeting, trying to sleep in the bitter cold. No, no one could sleep in cold like this. The most he could manage was a light doze. He was talking with his wife Jitsuko, venting his anger at being fired over the kickback.

  “Damn that Shinoda, damn that Shinoda…” he kept muttering.

  His wife did her best to placate him. “I told you to stop thinking about it. Hate doesn’t solve anything.”

  “And I had to drag you with me.”

  “Who else would have an ugly woman like me? Where can an old woman like me go?”

  “It’s cold.”

  “Yes.”

  “I feel terrible. My body’s like ice. Do you think this is what it’s like in the ‘eight freezing hells’? We’re going to die tonight. I just know it.”

  “Don’t be silly. Soon the sun will come out and warm us up, just like it always does. This spot gets the most sun in the entire park.”

  After a while, his wife seemed to fall asleep beside him. From outside the tent came a man’s voice.

  “Mr Sasaki! Mr Sasaki!”

  “Who is it? Who’s there?”

  “It’s me, Izumi.”

  “What do you want? I heard you were dead.” Was Sasaki dreaming? Could Izumi really be there? Sasaki sat up and looked through the plastic sheeting. He could see nothing more than a black silhouette. It could have been anyone. But there was no question that the voice was Izumi’s.

  “I came to apologize for what I did. For my part in putting you in your current circumstances.”

  Damn right, it was his fault. Sasaki didn’t care if Izumi was a ghost. He’d teach him a thing or two. But all he could manage were a few lame insults: “So you decided to come back and apologize now that you’re dead, eh? That sounds like something out of a kabuki play. I don’t remember you talking like that while you were alive!”

  “When you die, you lose all feelings of anger and hatred. That’s why I came to apologize to you while you were still alive.” The utter lack of emotion in Izumi’s voice made it difficult for Sasaki to believe what he was saying. “Please, rail against me while you still can.”

  “You’re talking like I’m going to die any minute now.”

  “I’m afraid that’s true. I could meet you after your death, but then neither of us would be satisfied. Please hurry. You will soon fall into a sleep from which you will never awaken.”

  Sasaki was walking in a park in broad daylight when he finally ran into Izumi again. It was not the park in which he and his wife had died; this park was in Hell. As the two men stood staring dumbly at one another, Sasaki finally understood what his dream had meant. Izumi really had visited him from Hell that night. And just as Izumi had said, now that Sasaki was dead, he was incapable of experiencing feelings of anger or hatred. And for that he was grateful.

  Daté followed the big black dog down towards the river. The dog was running among the reeds when it seemed to stand up, and suddenly it was Yuzo, standing with his back to the setting sun.

  Was that big black dog you, Yuzo? I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I slept with my arms around you. Thanks for being in my dreams so many times. Yuzo… They killed you, didn’t they? You’re dead, right? So what about me? If I’m seeing you, then this must be a dream. Is that it? Or am I dead too?

  “You idiot, this is no dream.”

  The voice was clear, not muffled, not an echo. It was the voice of the real Yuzo – the voice Daté remembered. And unlike in his previous dream, Yuzo was now smiling kindly at him. “And you’re not
dead either,” the voice of Yuzo said. “You saw me getting killed and then you ran. Don’t you remember? No, you’re not dead. And neither is Hattori. In fact, we can go see him if you want.”

  The burly mama-san in her kimono was still torturing Hattori. Asahina and his men were lying on the sofa exhausted, watching the madness unfolding in front of them. She had taken back the knife that she had loaned Asahina and was waving it at Hattori as she spat curses at him in the dim reddish light of the bar. Her hair had come undone and hung down before her face. As she taunted Hattori, her eyes would roll up under their lids, revealing only the whites. Her mouth, smeared with lipstick, looked like the gaping cuff of a kimono sleeve.

  “You men! You’re all the same! You and your striped socks! It took me five years of slaving away to save three million five hundred thousand yen, but you thought nothing of stealing my bankbook and gambling it all away on horses and mah-jong! You just left me to keep on slaving here in this stinking sewer. And you said you worked for Mitsubishi! Ha! I can still see that smug look on your face, you lousy bastard!” she screamed, slapping Hattori’s back with the flat of the knife.

  The pain caused Hattori, still tied to the chair, to flinch away and howl. In his agony, he once again began to babble: “It hurts. It hurts. The poor burnt muscles on my back, my back! Is the fat back there white? Is it white? Does it look like sushi? Give me water! I need some water! What kind of sushi restaurant doesn’t have water? Is the train about to leave? Is it going to my village? I hear the mosquitoes buzzing buzzing buzzing waiting for me to die…”

  “You’re all the same! You say you’re the founder of a new religion, but you prey on people’s insecurities so they hand over their savings! ‘You’ve sinned a great deal,’ you say. ‘You must buy this urn to cleanse yourself,’ you say. ‘One million yen is a cheap price for eternal salvation.’ And I had to go and sell my grandmother’s house. I gave you the deed and then you went to the bathroom and you never came back!”

  “It hurts. It hurts. I can’t stand it any more, Miki! Come here, Miki! Come here come here come here! Why do you keep your sweet treasure all locked up like that? I won’t give you any more presents until you let me die die die. Someone still wants to eat that shrimp so just let the dragonfly fly fly fly in the sky sky sky…”

  “You had the nerve to call me an old bag! You with your stinking oily hair! You fucked the girls I worked so hard to find, my sweet pretty girls, my hostesses, you fucked every one of them! Shit shit shit! You got them pregnant, and still you showed up, night after night! Even after I changed bars, you followed me! That’s all your kind cares about: fucking! You even tried to seduce me, you pig! I hope you die in the gutter!”

  “It hurts. It hurts. I’m gonna die die die! I’m gonna die! Everything’s red, but I see something black coming. Is it a person? A human being? A black man? Who is it? Who is it? I need water. Red water. Black water. My throat is burning. It’s splitting open. They’re eating me. The demons are eating my arms and my legs and they’re laughing. Laughing. It’s so cold cold cold in this hole hole hole…”

  “You college boys think you can do anything just because you’re young and smart. You ask me up to your dirty filthy little apartment and like a fool I walk right in. And then you call me an old bitch, and before I know it I’m down on that dirty tatami mat. You and your five filthy friends think just because I’m old and ugly you can do anything you want to me. I can still smell your stinking breath as you took turns sticking your disgusting filthy pricks in me over and over…”

  “It hurts. It hurts. It stings. Stings. Sings? We used to sing. We’d go to karaoke at that dingy little place in Yokohama with the stained yellow walls, but I guess I’ll never go there again. It’s all so pointless. Everything I did was meaningless. It’s all over. All over.”

  “I was nineteen – or was it eighteen? You took an innocent country girl and made her think you loved her. You showed me your luxurious living room and then we went out onto the grass and I was so overwhelmed. I believed everything you said. We did it right there on the ground by the stone lanterns. And when we were done you said how rich your father was and how you could never marry someone poor and ugly like me! All the time you had a rich fancée with a grand piano. Do you know how much I cried? How I thought about killing myself? How I, I…”

  This time the flat of the knife hit one of Hattori’s open wounds, plunging into his flesh. His body went stiff. The whites of his eyes turned up and his tongue flopped out of his mouth. The mama-san and the three gangsters jumped. Had she finally killed him? Was he dead? Hattori’s body was slumped forwards, limp and lifeless.

  But he quickly came to, sitting up, babbling even faster than before: “It hurts. It hurts. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. There’s no time, Mr Tortoise, we’ll be late for the goldfish’s funeral. Miki-chan, are we still together? We were going to go to the beach at Atami, but not any more. The air in my lungs feels like needles, needles… Needless to say we’re in Hell…”

  Ten minutes after the plane left Barcelona, a shot was heard from behind the curtain by the cockpit. A second shot. Then a third. The plane shook violently. From where Izumi was sitting, there was no way to know whether the hijackers had shot the pilot, or if the pilot and the hijacker were fighting it out. Surely they hadn’t shot both the pilot and co-pilot!

  The two hijackers in the cabin took off towards the cockpit. A stewardess dashed from the cockpit, her face pale. The plane continued to shake, dropping noticeably. The cabin was in chaos. Izumi was desperate to know what was happening, wanting to prepare himself for what was coming.

  Another stewardess ran towards the cockpit. As there were no hijackers in sight, passengers stood and began to shout questions at her.

  “What happened?”

  “Is the pilot all right?”

  “Why are we shaking like this?”

  “Are we going to crash? Are we going to crash?”

  “Please stay in your seats with your seat belts fastened.” It seemed to be the only thing the stewardess was capable of saying.

  As soon as the stewardess disappeared behind the curtain, everyone started talking. They talked to people they were travelling with, they talked to people left behind by their companions, they talked to people they’d never met before. Over the PA system someone spoke in a language Izumi couldn’t recognize. It was apparently one of the hijackers. Then came a female voice shouting what must have been the name of another stewardess. Then came the screams of another woman.

  A passenger who understood English jumped up and shouted, “They’re saying they can’t fly the plane!” The cabin filled with panic, people screaming and wailing.

  “We’re going to crash!”

  “We’re going down!”

  “No!”

  “This can’t be happening! We’re going to die!”

  “You’ve got to be kidding!”

  The middle-aged man sitting next to Izumi suddenly clasped his hands together and began to mumble a stream of words: “Kuchichuchipa, kuchuchipa, kuchuchikuchikuchichuchipa, kuchukuchuchipakuchikuchikuchikuchi…” Izumi supposed that the man was speaking in tongues. How had he ended up sitting next to someone like this? How could he come to terms with his own death with that going on next to him?

  A stewardess, her hair dishevelled, ran towards the rear of the plane crying, “Mother! Mother!” This, more than anything else, made the hopelessness of the situation clear. People became hysterical. The plane jerked left then right, headed up then down, first like a pendulum, then like a yo-yo.

  “Now I understand!” bellowed the man seated in front of Izumi. “Murakami, Maeda. You bastards. You sent me to France so you could take control of the board of directors!”

  “Goro! Vera! Who’s going to take care of you when I’m gone?” a man cried, holding a photo before him. “Who’s going to take care of you?”

  “They’re just dogs!” said the man next to him.

  “I don’t care what
happens to human beings! You can die, for all I care!”

  “But there’s still so much I wanted to do! I wanted to fuck as many French women as I could! I can’t believe it’s going to end like this!”

  “I was just starting to build my thirteenth miniature! I bought a new cabinet for it, and extra miniature buildings, but now it’ll never be finished!”

  “Kuchichuchipa, kuchuchipa, kuchikuchikuchichuchipa, kuchukuchuchipa-kuchikuchikuchikuchikuchi…”

  “Shit! Why did I listen to the health department? We could’ve just kept selling ‘spicy’! We could’ve made millions! But we had to settle for ‘medium’! They couldn’t have done anything to us! Then I never would’ve had to go to France! Shit!”

  The lights in the cabin faded to a dark red. Screams filled the air. As his surroundings grew more and more hellish, Izumi felt his fear overcoming him and he stood up, letting out a bellow. Until that point, Izumi had been quietly enduring the chaos, and his sudden change made the man speaking in tongues stop and look up at him. But he soon resumed his chanting, determined not to be outdone by his neighbour.

  “Haramafundaramahanda, fundafundahandarama handafunda, handa, handarakefundarake, funfunhandarafundarahandarama, fundarumafundaruma…”

  “They all treated me like Yumiko’s lover, even though we only made love three times. But that was enough for me. It was enough. The pink lips of her pussy were so perfect. Those little pink petals. It was paradise. So wet. So wet. If only I could bury my face between her breasts one more time!”

  A company president, realizing this was his last chance to reveal his true feelings, turned to his vice-president and embraced him. “I love you. I want you!”

  “Sir! I’m sorry! I just can’t!” cried the vice-president. “Please just let me die with dignity!”

  “Am I that repulsive?” yelled the president, starting to choke the other man.

  A stewardess, naked from the waist down, stumbled down the aisle in a frenzy of lust. She clung to the chest of a muscular man and pleaded sultrily, “Let’s do it! Please, fuck me!”

  “You idiot! You think I can get it up at a time like this?” said the man, pushing the stewardess away.