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

by Maki Kashimada

  Europa Editions

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2015 by Maki Kashimada

  All rights reserved.

  Original Japanese edition published by

  KAWADE SHOBO SHINSHA Ltd. Publishers.

  This English edition is published by arrangement with

  KAWADE SHOBO SHINSHA Ltd. Publishers, Tokyo

  c/o Tuttle-Mori Agency, Inc., Tokyo

  First publication 2021 by Europa Editions

  Maki Kashimada has asserted her right to be identified as Author of this Work

  Translation by Haydn Trowell

  Original Title: Meido Meguri; 99 no seppun

  Translation copyright © 2021 by Europa Editions

  The translation of this work was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Cover Art by Emanuele Ragnisco

  www.mekkanografici.com

  Cover illustration by Ginevra Rapisardi

  ISBN 9781609456528

  Maki Kashimada

  TOURING THE LAND

  OF THE DEAD

  &

  NINENTY-NINE KISSES

  Translated from the Japanese

  by Haydn Trowell

  TOURING THE LAND

  OF THE DEAD

  TOURING THE LAND

  OF THE DEAD

  The 10:00 A.M. Kodama service, Natsuko reminded herself.

  There would be any number of shuttle buses once they got there, and there was still ample time before check-in. But even so, she wanted everything to go according to plan. She couldn’t help but feel that if they were delayed for even just a few minutes, the whole trip would end up having been for nothing.

  Taichi, however, was unaware of her thoughts. Having boarded the bullet train, his four bad limbs bumped against the seats here and there, until finally he came to the one designated on his ticket and sat down with a plump. If he were anyone else, his failure to show reserve with respect to his disability might, far from engendering sympathy, have invited nothing short of annoyed frowns. But he was oblivious to that kind of unreasonableness. He merely beckoned to her from his seat, as if his having found it by himself were some kind of great achievement.

  Natsuko showed no wifely concern for her husband’s difficulties. She had hovered all over him throughout his repeated hospitalizations, and the constant need to take care of him had left her emotionally exhausted. Now, as she walked behind him, taking the seat by his side, she looked at him coldly, perhaps even cruelly, as if she saw not her husband but a raw manifestation of unreasonableness itself. And yet Taichi, almost pitifully blind to the malice of others, and yet as innocently dependent on his wife as ever, turned his back to her, asking without words for her to remove his coat. Shortly after the train left the station, a cabin attendant began to move down the aisle with an in-car sales trolley. Before he could have a chance to pester her for one, Natsuko bought him an ice-cream. Taichi, in good spirits, immediately set to devouring it.

  At long last, she was able to break free from her restraints, to tear off the pink cardigan that her mother had sent her.

  It was to be a short trip, only two days. To anyone else, to anyone who hadn’t gone through experiences like hers, that would be all it was.

  It felt like the train had only just left the station, and yet it had already reached Shinagawa. After their marriage, Taichi had been struck by illness. Three years of repeated hospitalizations had passed since then, and five again since they had learned the name of the disease. Yet to Natsuko, as exacting as those eight years had been, they were still better than what had come before. She didn’t want to call to mind the time before she had met her husband, and referred to her past only as that life. That life—truly, the only words with which she could describe those unspeakable experiences. Not poverty, not loneliness, not sickness, but that life.

  But then, at the end of January, she had come across a notice on the bulletin board on the way to the supermarket.

  Local Health Retreat. Special Accommodation Discount. 5,000 Yen Per Night. Weekdays Only Through February.

  Reading it, she found herself being carried away, torn by a contradiction of callous pleasure and unbearable pain. It was the luxury resort hotel where she had gone with her parents and brother as a child.

  Past Taichi’s head, outside the window, each mountain that pierced the peaceful late winter scenery was, to Natsuko, a very real embodiment of the cacophony that disturbed the stillness of her heart. As though trying to run far away from it all, she slumped deep into the realm of recollection.

  There was no doubt about it, that hotel—no, that health retreat—would have to be quite old by now.

  “Ah, I’m finally home. My second home!” Natsuko remembered her mother crying out at check-in time, leaning forward on the leather sofa as if having an attack. She seemed to be appealing to someone—well, certainly to no one in particular—that the fact that no one quite believed her was so terribly unfair. The eight-year-old Natsuko drank her “welcome drink,” an iced tea, in silence. Even her four-year-old brother, holding an inflatable rubber ring as he waited to go for a swim in the heated pool, must have realized that their mother was acting out of the ordinary, as he wore an expression of mute astonishment. And what about her father? Maybe he was going through the check-in procedures? In any event, her memories of him were weak. Her mother and the two children always tended to act as if he didn’t exist. That everyone was indifferent to her father, always ignoring him, had seemed to her to be a matter of course. So it didn’t really matter what he was doing.

  Her mother kept going on and on about how wonderful the hotel was. She had been repeating the same story since before they had left home. Natsuko, fed up, wasn’t paying her much attention. The crimson carpet was so vibrant that she found it stifling. The hotel had been there since her mother was a child, and even then, it must have been a long-standing establishment. Natsuko had been shown it countless times on the old monochrome 8 mm film and so felt as if she already knew more than she cared to about it. Her grandfather dressed in a tuxedo, like some silver-screen star. Her grandmother wearing a décolleté, extraordinary for the time. They were dancing in the salon, their movements looking so peculiar in the halting projection of the 8 mm film. She knew just how much her mother cherished that film. Everyone wanted to stay at that hotel at least once in their lifetime. That was what her grandfather would say. And her mother would often repeat those words to the young Natsuko, quite as if she herself had thought of them.

  There had to be some reason why the once haughty seaside hotel had been reduced to a cheap health retreat. Natsuko had been a student when it was first opened to the general public, and every now and then would think about going there on a whim. It should have been so easy. Yet such thoughts had seemed to her to be divorced from reality, and in the end, she never did go back.

  She had learned several things from the experiences that had visited her in that life. She felt as if she had seen the unseeable, but her memories were vague and cloudy, and she couldn’t quite put them into words. Once, when she had been a child, there had been a news scandal about a debt-ridden household that went on a trip to Disneyland the day before their family suicide. Though still young at the time, Natsuko felt a strange att
raction to the incident. When, without her mother knowing, she took the magazine to her room, she discovered that the young girl had been the same age as her. She imagined again and again how the girl must have felt. Whether it would be fun to go to Disneyland the day before she died.

  But Natsuko, having now passed through that life, knew. It would be.

  She decided to go to the hotel at the end of February, when tourists would be fewest in number. Until then, she imposed on herself a lifestyle of abstinence and cleanliness. It wasn’t as if she wanted for anything, but in her spirit of thrift, she polished the tableware until it sparkled, like a bird that maintains a tidy nest before taking off in flight. She was at peace, yet she felt as if her heart were overflowing with an unquenchable need to cry, consumed with a single thought—that she had nothing left to regret.

  And so she told Taichi that they would be going on their first trip in eight years.

  His response was just as she had expected. He glanced in her direction, and merely nodded, before returning his gaze to the TV. But so long as he didn’t oppose her, she didn’t really care how he reacted. He would never understand the significance of the trip. In any event, since the health retreat was being offered at a discount, they could go at an unprecedented price, so they wouldn’t have to worry about the money, she told him. But who was she trying to convince? All he did, as if he hadn’t been listening to her at all, was ask: “What’s for dinner?” The question wasn’t to mean that he regarded her as little more than a kitchen maid, and it wasn’t as if they had reached a period of ennui in their marriage. It was simply that he had no idea how to please a woman, or a wife.

  She withdrew a hundred thousand yen for the trip. She went to the ward office by herself, booked their stay at the health retreat by herself, and bought the tickets for the bullet train by herself. All the preparations she did by herself.

  When finally she returned home, everything as ready as it could be, she found Taichi watching TV, as usual. It was some kind of show about an unbelievably wealthy man. But she too was carrying in her wallet ten notes of ten thousand yen apiece. She held back her obscure sense of excitement and looked to the screen. The man owned a hotel in Monaco and so could go there whenever he felt like it, and for free at that. But then there she was too—she who had made the daring decision to withdraw a hundred thousand yen. Immersed in that curious feeling of elation, her mobile began to ring. She looked at the number. It was her mother. She left it alone for a moment, merely staring at the display. She was caught by a vague premonition that if she were to answer, the whole trip might evaporate before her very eyes. “Aren’t you going to pick it up?” Taichi asked. Unable to explain her reluctance, she finally pressed the answer button.

  Hey, what are you doing? I’m laid up in bed, as usual. Has anything interesting happened? her mother began fawningly. Put simply, she had nothing to do. Surely she could have found something to occupy her time? Housework, a hobby, anything? But her mother’s inability to find anything to do was like a chronic illness, and quite beyond helping. By the way, did you get my cardigan? It’s mohair, my favorite, pink, fluffy, with ribbons, and pearls on the knots of the ribbons. I was really taken by it.

  I’m watching TV, Natsuko said, trying to hang up. What are you watching? Her mother wasn’t about to let her go. For her, finding some way to distract herself from her endless boredom was surely a matter of great importance, a matter, even, of life and death. It’s a show about rich people from all over the world, Natsuko answered. They’re talking about a man who can go to Monaco for free, whenever he wants.

  What? her mother spat out, before falling silent. From her tone of voice, Natsuko could tell that she was going to use her as an outlet for her anger. I want to go to Monaco! Why is he allowed to go whenever he wants? And for free!

  I’m sorry, Natsuko apologized reflexively. She shouldn’t have mentioned it. All she could do was apologize. I don’t know how, how much money he has, how he’s able to do it . . . I don’t know.

  Oh? I see.

  Her mother went on and on about how her free time was driving her crazy, before finally hanging up. She surely saw herself as the victim. She, who couldn’t go to Monaco for free whenever she wanted, was the victim. Natsuko knew that much.

  As she retraced her memories, she heard Taichi call out—“No more ice-cream!”—and was pulled back to the present.

  Glancing across at him, she saw that he had carefully taken off his protective cap, probably because the train carriage was so warm inside. His hair was sticking out in every possible direction.

  “I was finally able to give it a good wash yesterday.”

  “Thank goodness it’s healed.”

  Taichi narrowed his eyes, as if ruminating over some pleasant feeling. It was a pitiful expression, the expression of a man who believed that there was no such thing as maliciousness in the world, that even if it did exist out there somewhere, it could be consigned to the past and quickly forgotten. Natsuko could only offer a bitter smile at that way of thinking.

  “There was so much dandruff, I had to wash it three whole times.”

  Taichi didn’t understand much about himself. He probably didn’t even properly understand just what his wife thought about him. And no doubt he had no interest at all in whether or not he was loved by others, respected, or made a fuss over.

  Around ten days ago, unable to control his movements, he had fallen over and struck his head. The injury had required four stitches, so he hadn’t been able to wash it. Natsuko had been planning to take him to a hot spring. To her, that was her sole way of atoning. So she had felt a rush of fear at the thought that she wouldn’t be able to do that for him. One’s torment is greater when they can’t atone for their sins, she thought. But he made it in time. At the doctor’s surgery, watching first one thread being cut from her husband’s head, then the next, she felt a thrill that she hadn’t experienced even in the throes of sex. When the stitches were all removed, Taichi looked around restlessly, scratching his dandruff-coated head.

  Though he was but thirty-six-years old, his hair had already turned white from the repeated attacks. They came without any warning. One morning, a cry like that of a beast erupted from somewhere deep inside him, his body going rigid, his eyes rolling back in his head, foam building up around his mouth as he lost consciousness. For a few seconds, they were visited by a profoundly sacred silence, and Natsuko could hear only the sound of birds chirping. It felt as if another person had usurped her husband’s body, and was saying to her: “No matter what kind of man you’re with, you’ll never be happy. You understand that now, don’t you?” But it was just a cerebral attack.

  Natsuko had felt a sense of déjà vu when the first attack struck eight years ago, as if she had already witnessed that very scene somewhere once before. But the attack that seemed to lurk at the corners of her memory was more abstract, more ideal. And she had been repeatedly tormented by the experience ever since.

  When the seizures came, as they inevitably did, whatever it was that repeatedly took over Taichi’s body would say to her: “You will never be happy.” And then, without waiting for a response, it would disappear back where it had come. But she managed to get used to it. She wasn’t worthy of finding happiness. That was what she felt, day after day, while she listlessly carried out her household chores, or played with the children at her part-time job at the children’s center. Like a wound healing—naturally, slowly.

  She felt a strange dryness on her lips. Right, she remembered, she had put on some makeup before leaving home this morning. She hardly ever wore makeup. She must have looked just like her mother, back when they had all gone to the hotel together as a family. Her mother—she had been wearing a new eye shadow from Yves Saint Laurent that had been all the rage at the time. A former airline stewardess, she took pride in her skill at applying makeup. “You’re going to be a stewardess too, right?” Ever since Natsuko was little, her mother would always ask her that question, as if there could
be no room for doubt. But Natsuko’s reaction never satisfied her. Lots of women long to become stewardesses, but only a chosen few are able to do it. You have to be beautiful, and tall, and mustn’t wear glasses. It’s all very exciting, travelling through the sky, going to foreign countries. And you might even get the chance to marry a pilot. When Natsuko responded that she didn’t see what was so exciting about all that, her mother would stare at her with pity in her eyes, and fall silent. But she would soon bring the subject up again. After all, being a stewardess was every girl’s dream. She acted as if she believed, since she had given birth to a healthy daughter, that that daughter too should yearn to become a stewardess. But Natsuko was interested in simpler, manual labor, even if it didn’t end up being exciting, even if it meant that she wasn’t one of the chosen few. Between her mother and herself, she still didn’t know who was the more run-of-the-mill. She had no idea at all.

  And yet, even now, her mother would still try to associate her daughter, a part-time working housewife, with her idea of an airline stewardess. That old woman next door told me she saw a real beauty passing by down the street. Excited by this trivial incident, her mother had rushed to call her. It must have been you, don’t you think? Because you’re my daughter.

  Her mother’s endless stupidity never failed to exhaust her. Her neighbor had simply happened to see a beautiful passerby. But armed with no more information than that, Natsuko’s mother believed that it must have been her own daughter. She believed that a beautiful passerby ought to have been her own daughter. What she really wanted was to be told was that she, a former stewardess, was beautiful. But unable to understand even that much for herself, she had called to say that it was Natsuko who was being praised. She didn’t even understand what she herself was thinking.

  Just before they had left, while Natsuko was doing her makeup, Taichi had been absorbed in a gravure magazine. He had bought an unfathomable number of adult DVDs and gravure magazines at a bargain price, and left them all strewn about the room. Like a collection of chocolates, or stamps, or stickers. Natsuko couldn’t help but feel somewhat amused by her husband. He had the body of a man, and was interested in those of women—and that alone allowed him to hold onto his sense of masculinity. When she looked at it that way, she felt a smile forming on her lips. It would be a lie to say that she didn’t harbor some degree of contempt toward him, but there was no denying that there was nonetheless something charming about it all.