I landed on the rim of the flammable pink recycling bin, between high rises from the seventies, an open car park and a decrepit corner store. The kanjis of the combini were written in neon paint. A happy frog creature with pink cheeks leapt from the side of the store in a colorful poster, advertising an incomprehensible product in a yellow box. For a second the man named Kanbu Matsuka hesitated, broom above his head. But he didn’t dare shoo me away. The broom lowered as I stared him down with my beady sulfur eyes. He picked at the mask covering his mouth for a second, scratching his head as if a colleague had been there and needed the code to know how very unsettled he was. He crouched slowly in the industrial, clouded street and, pretending to gather the rubbish, he threw uneasy glances at me.
The crows landed one by one by the bins. One quickly found a piece of squid to pick at, before a bigger crow pecked it away. Kanbu Matsuka had a heavy belly under his faded baseball t-shirt. He was in his forties and he lived alone with his clogged arteries in a small room above his sister’s flat; thin paper wall discreetly sliding to separate the one which had done well from the child who had failed. She had two children and every Tuesday invited her brother for diner so he would eat more than just curry rice. Kanbu had been in love once, with a girl from his high school. Her high socks still remained his most fetished memory. But she’d chosen the boy who grew up to become an architect. She had moved with him to Osaka and Kanbu had met other women and remained alone. I could see it all flicker as motion pictures evaporating from his stomach. Most people didn’t know the soul liked to coil itself in the stomach, pulling at all the blankets of emotions settling in there.
I could hear Kanbu’s troubled breathing, blocked alveolus in his lungs, slow blood in his veins. Curry had never been his friend, but the spicy cubes were easy to prepare and it was better than eating white rice. His arms felt numb and the discomfort was starting to turn into pain. Kanbu Matsuka didn’t know he was dying, that I was slowly pulling on his soul to dislodge it. Only when he felt the pain in his chest and his legs refused to carry him did he understand. But he didn’t even have time to throw me one last glance. He toppled over as he was turning his head and two lawyers in the old building saw him. They had been talking quietly in the corridor, one had just gotten the job, she was nervous, her name was Hana Neiko. The other already had her head by the window and was calling out to Kanbu, except she didn’t know his name. But they were too late to influence his life. I soared up storing the soul far down my throat as I escalated into the sky. My job was to make sure those souls all arrived safely to the netherworld. And I still had a long day, something big was calling at me north east of Nagoya, towards the small town of Owarisahi.
The crows of Nagoya left one by one as they felt the borders of their territory grow near. Other ones joined me and left in a soundless dance as I passed over their city. In Owarisahi there was a white crow, like an omen. It brushed against me and dove in the distance not joining the flock. At the border of the town there was a fountain where young women gathered, their feet and calves offered to tiny fish that ate dead cells and left soft skin. They were loud, barely muffling their laughs behind their hands as they talked about men. There were two fountains here, one for entertainment and one for water. The second communicated with the whole place’s water main and fed into every house. The water then ran into other villages in a complicated system of pumps and filtering. One of the girls had the image of it clearly imprinted in her mind. She was not laughing with others, she didn’t even have her feet in the water, she knew the time was counted for them all, she knew the fountain was poisoned and that hundreds would die. Her name was Yuki Dorimu and she had wanted to be a violinist. And that’s all I saw. Suddenly she was not giving off any images of what her life was, suddenly I could only see her long almost blue hair and her soft skin. Her hair draped over her simple light chrysanthemum tunic. She was out of fashion and others barely noticed when she excused herself away. I didn’t even hesitate to follow. I didn’t even think about what I was meant to accomplish here, I simply trailed after her.
The inside of her house was as traditional as the exterior, wooden and minimalist. I lost sight of her as she walked past windowless walls. She reappeared for a few steps before vanishing up a staircase. I soared up, but the first room wasn’t hers, it was dusty and the walls covered with boy-band posters. The window of the next room opened and there she was, settling at a small desk between a single shelf and a rolled up futon. I perched myself on her open window sill.
I hadn’t been in love for so long that at first I didn’t understand my fascination. I watched her delicate fingers pull a small journal out of a fabric bag. Her violin case rested neatly on a shelf, between vases of dried flowers, her year books from 2005 to 2008 and a photo of her and what could only be her sister in the country. It looked like a set created by someone who’d read too many romance novels, all so sickeningly perfect I could have nestled in my feathers and stared for eternity. As she took out a pink plastic pen, for the first time I felt her full gaze on me. There were specs of blue in her dark eyes; she was so very young, barely twenty. Yet, there was something simmering under the surface, something very familiar, but I couldn’t place it. She smiled at me, a very sad smile, one of recognition, and I felt my heart beat in my chest. I hadn’t felt my heart for such a long time I let out a small cry.
She had poisoned the whole city so as to find me, so that I would come to her. My conviction was so great I almost turned into a man. But I didn’t dare. I didn’t know what she thought, I was no good at talking. I hadn’t a grand gift for her. I was only me. So I tip-tapped closer, almost through the window, and watched her open her journal. Partitions were glued on pages, between long passages of frenzied writing. She tapped the pen against her lips, which were a soft pink too. She poised her pen on a page and started to write, very slowly. The urge to know was too great. I flew in and landed on the edge of her futon. She folded the page before turning towards me.
“Is there anything I can get you?” Yuki Dorimu asked.
Her voice was soft and her Japanese so respectful my eyes fogged. Yet, she was rolling the paper slowly between her fingers into a tight cylinder, all the while looking at me. I crowed a lament of a cry, torn by my inadequacies. She was so lovely and what had I to offer? She had a small ribbon in her pocket and she used it to tie up her message.
“I’ll do my best,” She said.
She dropped the message on the window sill before moving to the door. I heard her going down the stairs and into a further room, and then the clutter of plates. I didn’t even think about all the people that were meant to be dying right now, the hundreds here, the tens of thousands in the rest of the world. I clambered from shelf to shelf pecking at miniature books talking about me, a hidden collection of good luck charms and letters held in tight colorful ribbons. The ribbon frizzled after I snapped at them. All the letters came from her sister, Kasumi Dorimu. She had chosen to live in a remote collective. She was telling Yuki not to worry, she was happy away from the world. I wasn’t interested in the sister. I pecked forth, planting my beak deep into stacks of partitions. Notes flew and I recognized the language of Mozart and Bach and Händel. She was too pure for the rawness of Beethoven. I finally skipped back to the window sill and unrolled the carefully prepared message.
On the paper was a single kanji. It was a long forgotten one only inscribed on dilapidated Shinto shrines. I thought it had been lost but for old priests who knew that gods and demons did die too. It was a name that had been given to me at some time and in some place of the world. It was believed to be a protective ward to keep me away. I smiled, an awkward gesture pulling the skin around my beak. She had placed a ward by every window and door of the house. She was intending to keep me away from the world.
Yuki Dorimu’s steps were careful on the wooden floor, gracious, controlled, not letting a single creak out of the old boards. She held a platter with cold tea, a b
owl of rice, a peach, a tall bottle of sake, and a burning incent stick in a holder. She kneeled and bowed before pushing the tray towards me. I didn’t deserve so much servitude. I was a glorified slave at the mercy of every person whose moment it was to cross into the other world. Her posture reminded me of the times when people were scarified in my name, of those eras when I arrogantly fed off the flesh and the souls of the damned. It reminded me of my infant phase when I didn’t know about freedom and I thought all existed for my benefit so that I could squish it through my chubby baby fingers and watch the lifeless sludge pour out. It reminded me of the moment I realized I would never know what happened behind the door I lead everything too, that terribly ironic moment I realized I was but a tool and that I was the only one barred from the ultimate truth about what occurred after Death.
I hopped onto the rim of the rice bowl. That was such a sweet gesture; feeding me like a spirit. It was such a shame I didn’t eat. Yuki smelled of new books and apple blossoms. She had tied her hair with a blue ribbon. I hadn’t known that femininity was still valued in the current society. I’d mourned its slow passing a few years ago as I’d seen the rise of global vulgarity. But she was so lovely, still on her knees, watching me watching her.
“I’m so sorry.” she finally said.
I wanted to tell her she shouldn’t be, that everything felt pleasant. But I was a crow and I’d forgotten how to interact with people. All I wanted was to stay with her, and her ribbons. As I flew above her head, her scent became intoxicating, and so very familiar. I knew that smell, or perhaps I’d always loved it. I landed next to the violin and carefully tapped it with my sharp beak. The case indented a little. I wasn’t made to be delicate, just to break things, no matter how hard I tried not to.
In her hands the violin sang. Shubert’s Der Tod und das Mädchen breathed into my ears, so appropriate and tragic. This was a piece composed for me, every musical word praising and fearing and cursing me. The sound rolled and rose into the room and out. Her long fingers danced. Hypnotic cords lulled me into a lethargic state letting the sky turn from day to night. Cocooned in my feathers, I watched my prisoner play for me. She was too young to realize a guard shares the jail of the captured, and that if I chose to be trapped so was she.
The front door had opened and closed a few times but Yuki hadn’t moved and had continued playing. I felt her mother’s presence, still resounding of the crowd she’d mingled with so as to bring back tonight’s food. She was salivating in front of a square fruit. This was one of the first watermelons of the season; it had come all the way from Zentsuji, where they caged the fruits so that they would grow into the famed convenient shape. Her father came much later, thinking about the insufficient solar panels on the new electric car his team was designing. They had celebrated the birthday of the branch last week and his boss had congratulated them heartedly and he was ashamed. The project wasn’t doing well enough. He would be going back tonight to work on it until he fell asleep in front of his computer, just as he had yesterday, and the day before, and the day before…
Yuki’s mother slowly came up the stairs. From her mind’s eye I could see the plate of watermelon slices she brought up. Yuki didn’t hear her drop the plate and a heart-covered napkin by her door. Her mother was used to her staying in her room when she played. She looked at the door with longing before she sighed. She was afraid that Yuki would go join a sect like her sister, Kasumi. She was scared she might never see her older daughter again. Last time she had visited the commune, Kasumi had refused to come down to see her. Yuki’s mother hadn’t told that to anyone. She had felt ashamed and lost. She wondered what she had done wrong. Yuki’s mother had woken up at 5:30 every morning of her life to prepare fresh bento lunches for her family. Each morning, she had shaped rice balls into birds and pigs and cats. She had opened the door to her daughters every night when they came back from school. She had cried secretly when her husband spent Hanami, and Christmas, and their birthdays at work instead of at home with his family. But she had planted a cherry tree in the garden when her daughters had been seven and nine so that he’d be with them when the first cherry blossoms appeared. She walked back down the stairs quickly when she heard her husband slide his shoes on.
It was three in the morning before Yuki stopped playing. Her mother had long gone to bed, discreetly walking by the door. Yuki hadn’t eaten, her left hand was red, her arms were sore but she had played all day for me, keeping me from collecting the dead. Exhaustion was inscribed on her oval face and shining in her dark eyes. Sweat beaded along her hairline and trickled from the base of her neck as if she had a fever. Only then did I recognize her, as she weakly unrolled her futon. My wings had brushed past her once. She had been much smaller then, but to me it seemed like an instant ago. It had been that same year her mother had planted the cherry tree. Yuki had had meningitis and everyone thought she would die. But as I’d looked in her soul I had seen this wasn’t it, not yet, there were things waiting to be accomplished first. So I’d continued my stroll and taken those whose time was over.
Yuki sat on a corner of her futon looking at her violin and painfully stretching her hand; perhaps she was an instrument too, made to amuse with violin and give company to a lonely Death.
“I am sorry,” she said again.
I didn’t want her to apologize. I was angry at myself. She had exerted herself for me and I hadn’t even seen it, too busy wallowing in my thoughts. How could I be this selfish in my love? So I tweaked at her soul just enough for her to topple into a deep sleep. After all, sleep is but a little death. I watched her cheeks grow rosy and her chest rise and fall in rhythm to a dream only she could witness. I’d always wondered if it was love which blocked their thoughts to my vision or if it was their mystery which created my love. I sat perched on her little chair by her desk watching her beauty bloom in the tranquility. I wanted to be man so as to hold her against me and be lured into thinking I wasn’t alone.
It was five in the morning when the front door opened again. The hand was hesitant, the steps were weak, the mind was lost. It was Kasumi, the sister, returning home. Her breath smelled acrid and her stomach screamed. She thought she would vomit again. The poison burned her insides. She had drunk two liters of it to no avail. When that hadn’t worked she had been sent with others to pour more poison down the fountain. They had dutifully followed their sensei’s orders so all would reach a better world. But they came back still standing and after attempting to breathe carbon monoxide and only getting headaches, they had resorted to more drastic measures. Kasumi had opened the veins of her wrists and fainted. They all had. When she’d woken up, she’d opened the veins on her ankles. Then she had cried. She wanted to go home and they let her. They all wanted to go home.
She was here now, stumbling up steps, leaving trails of blood on the dark wooden floor and the paper walls. She slid her door open, looking for comfort but not daring to go to her sister. She fell on her bed, convulsing and moaning, arms outstretched, face towards the pillow. She hadn’t been home for a long time, but her room had stayed intact, her mother not daring to touch a thing. Kasumi cried as she remembered her last talk with her sister. She had told her water was sacred and would cleanse them all, her sensei would make sure it did. Yuki had been scared then. Yuki had spent the next month waiting from dawn to dusk next to the fountain with piles of books. They’d had to come at night, when she was too tired to stand guard. But Yuki hadn’t been waiting for them, she had been waiting for me.
I looked at Yuki’s small silhouette, reading in her clasped jaw her determination not just to stop the event but all future ones too, perhaps save all people from dying. It’s only then I really felt all the souls calling on me, the ones starved or aged, or diseased, or suffocated, or shot, or burnt, or bleeding, or hit, all screaming in pain for release. But Yuki didn’t want people to die. She’d tried to capture me so people wouldn’t die, to keep me away. And this could be my gift to her
, so that perhaps, just perhaps I would be worth her love. I jumped to the floor, tip-tapping forward so as to nestle close to her, feathers almost touching her hand.
In another room, Kasumi was thumping the side of her bed, unable to get any respite from the suffering. Her mother woke up soon after she’d arrived, but she was frightened of ghosts. She would never have admitted it, but she was afraid every morning, as she put her first foot down on the floor before stepping into obscurity. The banging sounded to her like a spirit and she stayed coiled in bed, eyes open, skin clammy, with visions of demons flickering through her head even though she tried to keep them away. At first she’d really thought it was all in her imagination, but as the minutes on the alarm clock flashed on and left, she realized this was reality. Heart beating, she snuggled her feet into tiny slippers before sliding her door open. Glancing carefully into the corridor, she took two large gulps of air before walking out. That’s when she realized the noise came from her elder daughter’s room. She was torn. Either her daughter was back or this was indeed a very bad sign. She tried to laugh it off: stupid old woman, she thought, scared of things that don’t exist. But she didn’t believe what she told herself; she was just trying to gather her courage. After long minutes of hesitation she slid the door slowly, inches at a time, holding her breath.
“Kasumi,” she whispered, a sob in her voice.
She walked into her daughter’s room, tears already streaming down her face. She was so happy her daughter had decided to come back, life could start over again. Things were never too late, Kasumi was only twenty-four. Today young ladies married late, sometimes even waiting to be in their thirties. Things would get better from now on. She hadn’t seen the blood. Kasumi lifted her white, almost blue, bloodless face from the pillow. Her hair hung limp and her mouth was caked with grime. Her mother yelled, ancestral fear welling inside her and spurring out like carbonated water shaken and uncorked. Abruptly it stopped when she fainted.
Danse Macabre: Close Encounters with the Reaper Page 19