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

by Maki Kashimada

  * * *

  No sooner had Natsuko rushed her husband back to their room than the phone rang. It was dinnertime. They could choose among a Japanese-style meal, a Western-style meal, and a buffet. Taichi, without the slightest hesitation, chose the buffet.

  When they entered the warmly lit dining hall, a waiter offered to push Taichi’s wheelchair. It seemed that only the dining hall had been redecorated since Natsuko had come as a child. She felt, for some vague reason, a sense of relief. There was a ramp between the entrance and the main area, so the wheelchair posed no problem.

  Holding on tightly to his cane, Taichi wandered over to the serving area without relying on anyone’s help. Just as he always did. He liked to do everything for himself, and he would no doubt keep on doing so. There was a poster in the hall. The health retreat was holding a Hokkaido Fair. Perhaps Taichi, a Hokkaido native, wanted to try out food from his hometown at this tourist site. He certainly looked to be enjoying himself, shuffling back and forth with servings of Ishikari nabe, salmon carpaccio, and bowls of salmon roe over rice. He was, in a certain sense of the word, indifferent toward food.

  The poster depicted a beautiful field of purple lavender spreading out all the way to the horizon. What kind of place was Hokkaido? Natsuko wondered. She had never been there. Her mother, who for no good reason regarded Taichi’s rural family with contempt, had arranged both the traditional exchange of gifts and the wedding reception all by herself, and so Natsuko had never had an opportunity to have a proper conversation with Taichi’s parents. And after he was struck by his disease, Hokkaido began to seem more and more distant. Terrifyingly distant. What was there to see or do? Some part of her wanted to find out.

  “What’s the matter? Aren’t you hungry?” Taichi asked her worriedly.

  She had taken some mozzarella from the counter, but hadn’t so much as touched it. She could hear the sound of the waves. Her tears, the waves of her emotions, had taken the form of a deep, soughing basso continuo. There was a sea in her heart, always undulating. She looked at Taichi. There was a cut on his chin. He must have nicked it while shaving.

  She sat lost in thought, staring at the immaculate tablecloth. That pure whiteness, unmarred by even a single drop of blood, spread out before her. The word clean seemed to fit. But it was unnatural, unhealthy even, that there wasn’t so much as a single drop of blood to be seen. Not anywhere in that restaurant, nor the famous hotel, nor its top floor, not in that French restaurant, and not on the tablecloth either.

  Even after she married Taichi, her brother would frequently call their apartment. Something’s come up. I need to see you. Now. That was the kind of thing he would say. She had lost count how many times. She could never resist him. I’ve booked us a table at that French restaurant, on the top floor of that hotel. There’s something important I need to tell you. But this was just an excuse. All he really wanted was to go somewhere fancy to eat. He no doubt meant to put it on his credit card, or else had stolen some money from the drawer where their mother kept a ready supply of cash. There’s a dress code, so go and get changed first. He sounded like he had only just learned the words. Natsuko dressed formally, as always, putting on red lipstick.

  They met in the lobby, quite as if they were a couple coming for a date. Her brother strode around as if he owned the place. He would no doubt force her to drink something expensive with him.

  He gulped down his glass of champagne. Ah, this is the stuff, he said. There’s nothing quite like expensive food. It really makes you feel like you’re alive. So he thought that this was living, did he? And then he would always start talking about the same thing. Hey, so when are you going to divorce him? You don’t get it, do you? You’re only with him because you’re lonely, you know? You don’t really love him. Do you? He won’t work, he won’t do anything at home. How could anyone love that kind of guy? But someone who couldn’t do anything was still better off than a dead man, Natsuko thought. Her brother was simply jealous of Taichi’s life. How on earth could you love someone who won’t do anything for us?

  And then, as if he had just invented the method himself, he said: Look, this is how you eat it. In front of him, on top of that white tablecloth, was a plate of tonguesole meunière. He handled the dish with a surprising level of dexterity. He was being awfully sociable. He called the waiter over. There’s some venison coming after this, right? he asked. The venison this time of year is the best.

  This is just basic etiquette, got it? he pointed out to her. You don’t have much common sense, so pay attention.

  The wine was beginning to kick in. He moved on to a topic that made her want to vomit in disgust.

  I’m going to France, he said. To study. At the Sorbonne.

  Before that, it had been Harvard. Whenever he started talking about studying abroad, Natsuko could only lower her head. Such conversations were, to her, a form of torture. First, he was going to study philosophy, then economics, then art. A cacophony of incoherent delusions. She stared at the knife on the tablecloth. She wanted to use that knife, to make a little cut somewhere that would make her blood come pouring out. How angry it would make her brother if she were to stain this white, unhealthy tablecloth with her blood. He would no doubt think that it was his immaculate pride that had been wounded. But she doubted that she would ever be able to go through with it. She wanted to go home, she wanted to go home and watch that TV show with that rock singer from Hokkaido that Taichi liked so much. She wanted to watch it with her husband and, more than that, to watch him, to return to the life that, though it never failed to exasperate her, still left her feeling somehow satisfied.

  You poor thing, her mother would say. You poor, poor thing. Working so hard in place of your husband at that drab job of yours. I feel so sorry for you. Even though what was really deserving of pity were those hours spent in that restaurant looking at that tonguesole meunière, that evening spent together with someone who couldn’t understand her at all, in that gorgeous world in which she didn’t belong. It was all coming back to her again. Even her colleagues at the ward office acted that way. It must be so hard for you, one of them had said to her. If it were me, I would get so exhausted, you know? But you keep on going, in silence, without complaining to anyone. Don’t you ever get tired of it? Isn’t it painful? It sounds like torture. But her colleagues certainly had no idea what real torture was. What was painful, truly painful, was having to spend time with ghosts who wouldn’t rest in peace, people who had yet to realize that they had long since given up on both hope and future.

  That was why, for as long as she could remember, Natsuko’s senses of hope and desire had already faded. She had never dreamed of becoming an idol, as normal girls did. Nor had she dreamed of becoming an airline stewardess, like her mother. Even when her mother brought it up, she had never seen herself heading toward some spectacular future. She had already given up on everything. And she never thought too deeply about why such unreasonableness, such unfairness, such unhappiness always befell her. She lived her life trying to think about it all as little as possible. Because it wasn’t the kind of thing that you could easily look at, not directly. And if, by chance, she were to glance on it, she knew that it would leave an unhealthy, fatal wound, the kind from which not even blood would flow. Only her mother and brother immersed themselves in memories of a happy past, dreaming, and talking endlessly about their dreams. All Natsuko could do was block her ears. She was never able to tell them to be quiet. If she did, if she told them the truth, the little world in which they immersed themselves would no doubt collapse. And then her brother would say to her: Give me a break, would you? They’re the ones who’re all messed up in the head. It’s them. All they ever do is deny every single one of our possibilities. And based on what? And so she couldn’t even bring herself to feel angry. If she were to get angry at them, she would just end up tiring herself out. Hers was simply a weary body, trying to preserve itself. She couldn’t understand why it tried so hard to keep on going, why it had to keep o
n living. If it were to die, that life would end forever. The noise would come to a stop.

  That was how she had felt when she first met Taichi. She couldn’t pin down exactly why, but she found herself wanting to marry him. She could only imagine her mother’s resentment were she to wed a man so far removed from her mother’s ideals. Some evil influence practically tempted her to do it.

  Before she introduced Taichi to her, her mother had said: We’ll have to go to Monaco for your honeymoon. I’d love to visit Monte Carlo. She took it for granted that she would go with them. And her brother too, of course. They both loved to gamble. It was a way of making a fortune out of nothing, without spending any effort at all. They believed in that kind of magic. So Natsuko and Taichi ended up simply not having a honeymoon.

  But the one who always met with good fortune was Taichi. Like when he was able to have the brain surgery so soon due to a sudden cancellation. The same people who wouldn’t spare Natsuko a second glance would, for some reason, shower Taichi with all manner of kindness. It happened all the time. Even at the hospital. “I’m sorry about my husband. He can be so stubborn,” she would say. But the doctor would merely laugh: “He sure is, isn’t he?” And he would pat Taichi on the head. The doctors were only kind to Taichi. When they spoke to her, they did so coolly. “After all, a doctor is a patient’s ally,” her mother once said, flaring her nostrils with resentment as she all but spat out the words.

  The hospital to which Taichi had been admitted was the same one that Natsuko’s father had gone to. That was no coincidence. It had a specialist neurosurgery ward, and so other institutions would send their patients there once they had given up on helping them.

  It must be some kind of horrible disease, her mother said. He’d already started getting dementia. Yes, I’m sure of it. No matter how many years passed, you were always nine to your father. And you know, he would always find a way to sneak out, to withdraw some cash using a card on the verge of expiring, and then he’d use the money to go drinking. And I was the one who always caught the blame for it. Why did they have to do that?

  When her mother spoke like this, her face showed no sign of sadness. Only annoyance. As if, while facing her daughter, she wanted to say: They should have blamed your father. They should have blamed him, not me. Why didn’t they punish him?

  Without exception, her mother’s stories always ended up descending into a litany of complaints. Even now, Natsuko could hear her rambling on: Once, the doctor said to me that I wasn’t coming to visit him enough. The hospital was so far away, but he didn’t care. He told me that I should come more often. And then he asked me—me!—whether I had a lover somewhere, whether that was why I wasn’t coming as often as he thought I should. I ran off to the bathroom, sobbing so hard! It’s true! I couldn’t stop sobbing.

  Her mother would go on telling this story for years after Natsuko’s father passed away. Quite as if she were recounting it to her for the first time all over again. And it always ended the same way, with that word, sobbing. It never failed to get on Natsuko’s nerves every time she heard it. She couldn’t accept that word, sobbing, on a purely physical level. It drove her crazy. She always thought that the most miserable part of the story wasn’t her father’s idiotic behavior, nor the horrible way that the doctor had treated her mother, but rather that hopelessly stupid word, sobbing. That was how she felt. Her mother couldn’t forgive her father, nor the doctor either. She wanted to convey how unfairly she had been treated, how miserable and unhappy it had all made her. But the only word that she had to express that tragedy, the only word that ever came to mind, was always that one—sobbing.

  Whenever she heard it, Natsuko thought that no matter what kind of unhappiness were to befall her mother, she wouldn’t change, that even if an altogether different kind of unhappiness were to befall her, she would still insist on using that word, sobbing. She had no other way of expressing herself. It was pitiful, really. She would finish off that episode the same way, sobbing, forever, without ever having learned anything from it. And what was even more miserable about it was that she herself wouldn’t realize that fact at all. Even if it were pointed out to her, she wouldn’t accept it, or else she would suffer a mental breakdown. She no doubt still thought that she could be treated like a princess. She believed that the age of her own father, that time when she had been given everything, for free, as much as she wanted, would no doubt return. And if that certainty were ever to be thrown into doubt, she would end up sobbing all over again.

  And so, Natsuko thought, she would never be able to leave her mother. She would be stuck with her forever. She had no common sense, none at all, and was simply too incompetent to live by herself. Whenever something that she didn’t like happened, she would end up sobbing, like a little girl, always waiting for someone else to come and fix it for her. And that someone would inevitably be Natsuko.

  Her brother too thought of himself as unhappy. However, for him, it was that very sense of unhappiness that had convinced him that he was one of the chosen few, that he was destined to accomplish great deeds far beyond those of the average man.

  For him, unhappiness was belonging to a family that had no money.

  “If only we had more money,” he would say. “If only Mom had the money to support me studying overseas, I’d be able to reach for greatness. All I need is the chance, and I’d be able to do practically anything.” He always spoke like that when he got worked up. Though he couldn’t see it, his real unhappiness stemmed from his insatiable yearning for a wonderful version of himself, for a wonderful world just out of reach. He thought it so unfair that these things didn’t exist for him, and had convinced himself that he was the victim of some great injustice.

  He didn’t understand. That those things that he ruminated over vaguely—a wonderful version of himself, a wonderful world—existed only in his imagination. Certainly, there was probably an element of truth to the saying that life is made up of waves. If you are beset on by unhappiness, it isn’t unreasonable to expect happiness to have its turn in the future. However, those waves would not come in any way that would satisfy him. The happiness of the high tide wouldn’t bring the wonderful little world that he was waiting for.

  For him, who yearned for things that didn’t exist, he was in the right, and it was nothing short of injustice that he couldn’t have them.

  Sometimes, when he drank himself into a stupor, he would start to cry. “I just wanted to work for people. All I ever wanted was to be useful to someone.” He really believed that. He really did want to do something for someone else—so much so that he would be happy even to be their slave.

  “Ah, I’m stuffed. I wonder if I can fit any more in . . .”

  Natsuko glanced up at the sound of Taichi’s voice, only to see that he had surrounded himself with a long row Yu¯bari melon jellies. These jellies are really famous, you know—everyone in Hokkaido eats them. That incredibly warm, ripe orange color had been a good friend to him ever since his childhood.

  When they went back to their room on the seventh floor, Taichi, as usual, switched on the TV. He never missed this program, and so while they might not have been in their usual surroundings, it felt almost as if they were still at home.

  “Say,” Natsuko began, her eyes directed at the screen. “This hotel . . . I’ve been here before.”

  “Oh?”

  “And my grandfather too. He brought my mother here when she was little.”

  “Huh? It’s that old, is it?”

  The comedian on the TV was playing the fool. A wave of laughter gushed forth. Taichi laughed as well.

  “It was pretty fancy, back then. There’s no way they would have let us stay here for five thousand yen. It was a members-only kind of place.”

  “Oh?”

  “My mom always likes to think of herself as being specially chosen. My brother too, probably.”

  Natsuko glanced toward her husband. He kept his gaze fixed on the TV, not realizing that she was looking at him.r />
  “They’re a little strange, those two, aren’t they?” he said.

  “Do you think so? When I was little, I thought it would still be possible to return to the good old days that my mom and all the others always talked about. But then after I came to this rundown hotel as a girl, I realized that the past isn’t somewhere you can go back to. So I wasn’t able to bring myself to come here again until now.”

  Taichi turned toward her. “Then what made you change your mind?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It is pretty relaxing here, though,” he said, before stuffing his little finger in his ear, and turning back to the TV. He let out a truly pleasure-filled laugh, quite as if he had completely forgotten their present conversation.

  The sound of the TV enveloped her as she closed her eyes, leaving her feeling as if she were drifting off to sleep in their familiar apartment.

  * * *

  The next morning, Natsuko woke up before Taichi. As she softly pulled back the curtain, a hard, cement-like ocean spread out before her. If she were to follow that sea northward, and keep going, she might end up at the coastal town where Taichi had been born. But in front of her, there was only the sea, stretching out to the horizon. A dark, leaden color, a lead mixed with the color of ash, a lead bordering on white. A color that couldn’t be expressed in a single word. She felt confused. Wasn’t her own past, like that sea, something that couldn’t be put into words? Wasn’t it precisely that violent force that had attacked her all of a sudden? Afraid, she squeezed her eyes shut, when she heard a voice carry across from behind her. “We’d better go get breakfast.” She slowly opened her eyes.