The Briefcase

by Hiromi Kawakami

  Our son liked lemon even less than I did. He put the honeyed lemon in his mouth and then stood up and walked into a thicket of trees. He liked to pick up autumn leaves from the ground. The boy had a refined sensibility. I followed him to pick up some leaves myself, but when I got closer, I saw that he was stealthily digging a hole in the ground. He hastily dug a shallow hollow, hurriedly spit out the lemon in his mouth, then swiftly filled in the hole with dirt. That’s how much he disliked lemon. He wasn’t the kind of child who wasted food either. My wife had raised him well.

  You must really hate it, I said to him. He was a bit startled, but then nodded silently. I’m not very fond of it either, I said, and he smiled with relief. Our son looked a lot like my wife when he smiled. He still looks a lot like her. Come to think of it, he will soon be fifty years old, the same age my wife was when she ran off.

  The two of us were crouched over, busying ourselves with collecting autumn leaves when my wife walked up. Even though she was wearing those huge hiking boots, she didn’t make a sound. Hey there, she said behind our backs, and we both flinched with surprise. Look what I found—a Big Laughing Gym mushroom, she whispered in our ears.

  THE FOUR OF us had quickly finished what had seemed like plenty of mushroom soup. The combined varieties of mushrooms had mingled together and the taste was ineffable. That had been Sensei’s description—“ineffable.” In the middle of his story, he had abruptly interrupted himself to say, “Satoru, the soup’s aroma is simply ineffable.”

  Satoru rolled his eyes, and Toru said, “Sensei, you sound just like a teacher!” They urged Sensei to continue the story. What happened with the Big Laughing Gym? Satoru asked, while Toru wondered, How did she know it was a Big Laughing Gym?

  Besides Suburban Pleasure Hiking, my wife had another favorite book, a little field guide to mushroom identification, like a mushroom encyclopedia—these two books were always tucked away in her rucksack whenever we went hiking. And, now, she had the guide open to the page on Big Laughing Gym mushrooms, and she kept repeating, This is it! This is definitely that kind of mushroom!

  “Fine, you know it’s a Big Laughing Gym, but what are you going to do with it?” I asked her.

  My wife replied, “Why, eat it, of course.”

  “But isn’t it poisonous?” I said.

  “Mom, stop it!” our son cried out.

  Right at that moment—paying no mind whatsoever to the dirt on its cap—my wife popped the mushroom into her mouth. “It’s a little tough to eat raw,” she said, shoving a honeyed lemon slice in her mouth along with it.To this day, neither my son nor I have ever eaten another honeyed lemon slice.

  What followed was quite a commotion. First our son burst into tears. “Mom is going to die!” he bawled.

  “Big Laughing Gyms don’t kill you,” my wife comforted him, maintaining perfect composure.

  In any case, we still needed to get off the mountain and go to a hospital, and I had to drag my reluctant wife back down the way we came.

  Soon after, just around the time when we reached the foot of the mountain, the symptoms began to appear. Later at the hospital, the doctor commented nonchalantly that ingesting even such a small amount could bring about symptoms but, to my mind, the symptoms that she exhibited were rather remarkable.

  My wife, who up until then had been so calm and collected, began to emit a sort of chortle, intermittent at first but soon growing in frequency before developing into the full-fledged so-called “laughter.” They call it laughter, but there was nothing happy or cheerful about it. It sounded as though she was trying to stifle a laugh as it welled up, but for the life of her she couldn’t hold back, and no matter how much she tried, her brain was unable to overcome the involuntary physical reaction—that’s what kind of laugh it was. An unspeakably sinister laugh, as if at some sick joke.

  Our son was terrified, I was in a panic, and my wife, her eyes filled with tears, just kept on laughing.

  “Cut it out, will you?” I said, as our son whimpered faintly.

  “I c-can’t stop. I-It’s like my throat and my f-face and my chest—n-none of them are under my c-control,” my wife replied with difficulty, through her laughter.

  I was irate. Why was it that she constantly needed to cause such trouble? We went hiking practically every weekend and, frankly, I didn’t enjoy it very much. Neither did our son. He would probably have been just as content to stay at home, painstakingly assembling his plastic models, or to go fishing in the creek by our house, or what have you. Instead, both he and I did as we were told and got up early to wander around the hills on the outskirts of town. But that just wasn’t good enough for my wife—she had to go and eat a Big Laughing Gym mushroom.

  My wife was treated in the hospital, but, as the ever-nonchalant doctor said, since the mushroom’s toxin was already in her bloodstream, there was really nothing they could do about it, and her condition remained more or less unchanged after he examined her. Ultimately, my wife went on laughing until that evening. We took a taxi home and I put our son, who had worn himself out crying and had fallen asleep, under the covers in his bed. I kept an eye on my still-laughing wife as she sat alone in the living room while I made us some strong green tea. My wife drank her tea, laughing, and I drank my tea, stewing in my anger.

  After her symptoms subsided at last and my wife was back to normal, I started in on my lecturing. Do you have any idea how much trouble you caused for all of us, in this single day today? Oh, I was in rare form. I lectured her like I was lecturing a student. My wife listened with downcast eyes, her head hung low. She nodded at each thing I said. I’m sorry, she said over and over. When I was done, she said earnestly, “Everyone causes trouble for someone at some point in their lives.”

  “I don’t cause anyone any trouble! You’re the one who is a nuisance! Please refrain from extrapolating your own personal issues onto the general public,” I harangued. My wife hung her head again. More than ten years later, when she ran off, I was left with a vivid recollection of her like that, eyes downcast and contrite. My wife was a difficult person, but I wasn’t so different. I used to think that we complemented each other—like the saying goes: Even a cracked pot has a lid that fits. But, as it turned out, I guess I didn’t fit my wife very well.

  “HERE, SENSEI, HAVE a drink,” Toru pulled the Sawanoi saké from his rucksack. It was a 720-milliliter bottle. We had polished off the mushroom soup, but like magic, Toru produced one item after another from his bag. Dried mushrooms. Rice crackers. Dried smoked squid. Whole tomatoes. Canned bonito.

  “It’s quite a feast,” Toru remarked. Both he and Satoru were swigging saké from paper cups and gnawing on tomatoes.

  “You don’t get as drunk if you eat a tomato first,” they claimed.

  “Sensei, do you think they’ll be all right to drive?” I asked under my breath.

  He replied, “One bottle between the four of us shouldn’t be a problem, I guess.” My stomach was already warm from the mushroom soup, and the saké warmed it even more. The tomatoes were delicious. We just bit right into them; they didn’t even need salt. Apparently, they were straight from Toru’s garden. He pulled out another bottle of saké from his rucksack, meaning we’d have to revise our calculations.

  I heard the ta-ra-ra-ra-ra again. Every so often, bugs crawled underneath the newspaper we were sitting on. I could feel them moving through the paper. Various flying insects—some of them quite large—buzzed and landed around us. They seemed particularly attracted to the smoked squid and the saké. Toru paid them virtually no attention as he continued to eat and drink.

  “I think you just ate a bug,” Sensei pointed out to Toru, who replied with a straight face, “Mmm, delicious!”

  The dried mushrooms weren’t completely dehydrated, like dried shiitake; rather they still had a bit of moisture in them. They looked more like beef jerky. What kind of mushrooms are these? I asked.

  Satoru, already red in the face, replied, “Fly agarics.”

  “Aren
’t those extremely poisonous?” Sensei asked.

  “Did you look that up in your mushroom encyclopedia?” Toru said with a smirk. Instead of responding, Sensei took the mushroom field guide out of his briefcase. It was an old, well-thumbed copy, and on its cover was a mushroom that appeared to be a fly agaric, with an impressive-looking red spotted cap.

  “Toru, do you know the story about these?”

  “What story?”

  “What they did with them in Siberia. Long ago, the chiefs of indigenous highland peoples of Siberia would ingest the fly agaric before going into battle. Fly agaric mushrooms contain constituents that induce a psychoactive trance. Once eaten, the mushroom causes an extremely agitated state characterized by ferocity and momentary bursts of tremendous strength that can persist for hours. First, the chief would eat the mushroom, and the next-highest-ranking man would drink the chief’s urine. Then the next-highest-ranking man would drink the second-highest-ranking man’s urine, and so on, until the mushroom’s constituents were coursing through the veins of all the members of the tribe.

  “Apparently, when the last man finished drinking the urine, they were prepared to do battle,” Sensei concluded.

  “That’s a handy little mush . . . mushroom encyclopedia,” Satoru said with a high-pitched laugh. He was nibbling on a shred of dried mushroom.

  “Come on, you two, try some,” Toru said, thrusting a dried mushroom into my hand and Sensei’s hand. Sensei took a long, hard look at the mushroom. I gave it a tentative sniff. Both Toru and Satoru dissolved into senseless guffaws. Toru started to say, “You know . . . ,” and Satoru roared with laughter. Once he had controlled himself, Satoru then began with, “It’s like . . . ,” only to have Toru cackle hysterically. The two of them tried to speak again at the same time and burst out laughing together.

  The temperature had risen a bit. Even though it would soon be winter, the surrounding trees and the undergrowth beneath us provided a damp yet toasty warmth. Sensei slowly sipped his saké, intermittently nibbling on the dried mushroom.

  “Do you think it’s okay to eat a poisonous mushroom?” I asked. Sensei laughed. “Well, now . . . ,” he replied with a charming smile.

  Toru, Satoru, are these really fly agarics?

  Of course not, they couldn’t be.

  You bet they are, the real deal.

  Toru and Satoru replied at the same time. I couldn’t tell which one of them had said which. Sensei was still smiling, leisurely nibbling on his mushroom.

  Sensei closed his eyes as he said the words, “Cracked pot.”

  What’s that? I asked him.

  He repeated the phrase, Even a cracked pot has a lid that fits.

  Tsukiko, eat the mushroom, he instructed me in his teacher’s voice. Tentatively, I tried licking it, but all I could taste was dirt. Toru and Satoru were still laughing. Sensei kept smiling, looking off in the distance. Giving in, I stuffed the whole mushroom in my mouth, chewing and chewing.

  We sat there drinking for another hour or so, and I noticed no real effects. We packed up our things and went back the way we came. As we walked, I felt alternately like laughing and crying. I must have been drunk. I wasn’t really sure where we were going. I was definitely drunk. Satoru and Toru walked in front, with exactly the same posture and exactly the same gait. Sensei and I walked in line behind them, smiling to ourselves. Sensei, do you still love your wife, even after she ran off? I murmured.

  He boomed with laughter. My wife is still an immeasurable presence in my life, he said somewhat seriously, before breaking into laughter again. I found myself surrounded by such a plethora of living things, all of them buzzing about. What on earth was I doing, wandering around a place like this?

  New Year’s

  I SCREWED UP.

  The fluorescent light in the kitchen had burnt out. It was one of those meter-long lightbulbs. I had dragged over a tall chair to stand on, in order to reach up and change the bulb. It had gone out before, and I thought I remembered how to change it, but it had been so many years that apparently I’ve forgotten.

  No matter how much I pushed and pulled, I couldn’t get the bulb out. Using a screwdriver, I then tried to remove the entire fixture, but there were these red and blue cords that attached it to the ceiling—it was constructed so that the fixture itself wouldn’t come off.

  That’s when I yanked with all my might and it broke. The fluorescent bulb shattered all over the floor in front of the sink. Unfortunately, I was barefoot at the time so when, in a fluster, I stepped down off of the chair, I cut the sole of my foot on a shard of glass. Bright red blood gushed out. It must have cut deeper than I thought.

  As I staggered into the next room to sit down, I felt a wave of dizziness. Was I anemic?

  Tsukiko, do you really think you can bring on an attack of anemia just by seeing a little blood? You really are a delicate flower. That’s what Sensei would have said as he laughed at me. But Sensei had never been to my house. I had only gone to his house a few times. My eyelids fluttered as I sat there. I realized that I hadn’t eaten anything since that morning. I had idled away my entire day off, spending most of it in bed. This always happened after I saw my family for the New Year’s holiday.

  Even though they were in the same neighborhood, I rarely visited—I just couldn’t bear going back home to the boisterous house where my mother lived with my older brother and his wife and kids. At this point it wasn’t about them telling me I ought to get married or quit my job. I had long ago gotten used to that particular kind of uneasiness. It was just dissatisfying in some way. It felt as if I had ordered a bunch of clothes that I had every reason to think would fit perfectly, but when I went to try them on, some were too short, while with others the hem dragged on the floor. Surprised, I would take the clothes off and hold them up against my body, only to find that they were all, in fact, the right length. Or something like that.

  On the third day of the new year, when my brother and his family had gone out for a round of well-wishing, my mother made me yudofu for lunch. Yudofu had always been one of my favorite dishes. It’s not the kind of thing children usually like but, since before I started elementary school, I always loved my mother’s yudofu. In a small cup she mixes saké with soy sauce, sprinkling it with freshly shaved bonito, and then warms the cup along with the tofu in an earthenware pot. When it’s hot enough, she opens the lid of the pot and a thick cloud of steam escapes. She heats the whole block of tofu without cutting it, so I can then ravage the firm cotton tofu with the tips of my chopsticks. It’s no good unless you use tofu from the corner tofu shop, and they always reopen on the third, my mother chatted away as she cheerfully prepared the yudofu for me.

  It’s delicious, I said.

  My mother replied with obvious pleasure, You’ve always loved yudofu, haven’t you?

  I can never seem to make it the same way.

  That’s because you use different tofu. They don’t sell this kind of tofu over where you live, Tsukiko, do they?

  After that, my mother fell silent. I was quiet too. Without speaking, I demolished the yudofu, dousing it with the saké soy sauce as I ate it. Neither of us said a word. Didn’t we have anything to talk about? There must have been something. But as I tried to think of what to say, my mind went blank. You’d think we’d be close, but it was precisely because we were close that we couldn’t reach each other. Forcing myself to make conversation felt like standing on a cliff, peering over the edge, about to tumble down headfirst.

  Tsukiko, the way you describe it sounds like how I might feel if, after all these years, I suddenly encountered my wife who ran away. But this is your family, who lives in the same neighborhood as you do. Surely you’re exaggerating a bit, aren’t you? That’s what Sensei might say.

  He might have pointed out that my mother and I seemed similar. Nevertheless, neither one of us was any good at chitchat. So we just avoided each other’s gaze until my brother and his family returned. The pale new year’s light shone on the veranda, reach
ing all the way to the foot of the kotatsu. Having finished eating, I carried the earthenware pot and small plates and chopsticks into the kitchen where my mother was at the sink. Shall I dry the dishes? I asked. My mother nodded, barely raising her head and smiling awkwardly. I smiled back just as uncomfortably. We stood next to each other silently and finished up the dishes.

  I WENT BACK to my apartment on the fourth of January, and for the next two days until I had to go back to work on the sixth, all I did was sleep. Unlike while I was at my mother’s house, this sleep was filled with dreams.

  After two days of work, I found myself off again. I wasn’t really tired anymore, so I just lazed in bed. I kept a teapot and teacup within arm’s reach, along with various books and magazines, and lay about while drinking tea and flipping through the pages. I ate a couple of mandarin oranges. Under the covers it was slightly warmer than my own body temperature, so I kept dozing off. Soon I’d awake again, and pick up another magazine. That was how I had forgotten to eat all day.

  Back atop my unmade bed, I held toilet paper to the bleeding wound on the sole of my foot as I waited for the dizzy spell to subside. My vision seemed like a TV screen on the fritz, flickering and flashing. I lay down on my back and placed one hand over my heart. There was a slight delay between the beat of my heart and the throbbing pulse of my wound.

  It had still been faintly light outside when the bulb had gone out. But now, because I was still dizzy, I couldn’t tell whether or not it was twilight or if it had grown dark already.