Death and the Flower

by Kōji Suzuki

  After the forest of tall cedars came to an end, we caught sight of several old wooden houses on either side of the road. As we realized we’d finally arrived at Ura, my wife and I both sighed in relief.

  I figured the log cabin the kids from the kindergarten would stay in had to stand out. Be it on the outskirts of a settlement, the grounds had belonged to an elementary school. It couldn’t be hard to find since schools were landmarks of sorts. Still, I slowed down to the lowest possible speed and looked every which way so I wouldn’t miss it. I had a preconceived notion that an abandoned school must bear some vestiges of the original buildings. I stopped driving here and there and peered deep into the surrounding settlement. As there were only a few houses dotted along the road, the area wasn’t large. From what I could see from the road, however, there didn’t seem to be any log cabins that could have been a school.

  Before we knew it, the houses had grown sparse, and soon there were none. I thought perhaps the settlement had just ended, but since the directions indicated the cabin was “just outside the settlement,” I thought it might show up further beyond. I had no idea how far I was from the center of the settlement, or even where the center was, but there wasn’t much distance to travel back. I decided to keep going.

  The further we went, the narrower the road got. The gaps between the cedars on each side of the road shrank, creating a tunnel of darkness. Every time the thick, dense shrubs brushed against the sides of the car, they seemed to touch me bodily, making me feel uneasy.

  Suddenly the car sank with a thunk, and a troubling vibration welled up from the undercarriage. The paved road had ended, and we were now on a path that was little more than an overgrown animal trail. Feeling as though we’d crossed over into another world, I shivered.

  “Hey, let’s go back,” whined my wife.

  Something was strange. There couldn’t possibly be an abandoned school beyond here. I wondered if we’d missed it.

  “All right. Let’s go back,” I replied, but there was no space for a U-turn. Some parts along the road were wider, but none sufficiently so. Still, going in reverse back along the road would be a great hassle. Deciding that it would be wiser to look for enough space along the path to make a U-turn, we went on. The center was banked up, and as we drove it felt like the grass sprouting in the middle of the lane was licking the bottom of the car. We couldn’t go back even if we wanted to. We were wandering into a dead-end.

  Sensing the odd shift in mood, my elder daughter woke up. “Where are we? Are we there? Is Yoko coming, too?” she asked, questioning us as soon as she was awake. When I didn’t answer, she nagged, “Hey, hey,” redirecting her questions to my wife.

  “Just be quiet,” my wife refused to answer, staring nervously at the path ahead.

  Hearing her sister’s voice, my younger daughter awoke, and the car was suddenly filled with cacophony.

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Can I have a snack?”

  “I’m thirsty.”

  “Where are we?”

  “When are we going to get there?”

  “Hey, where are we?”

  The two vented their frustrations, repeating the same questions. Anxiety rendered their voices more hysterical than usual.

  As soon as we turned a broad curve, our field of vision opened up. The cedar forest on the right slope of the valley vanished, turning into a steep rock cliff. It was abruptly bright, as if we’d exited a tunnel. The valley was so steep that the mountain stream flowing along the bottom was nowhere to be seen.

  Once they noticed how dizzyingly high we were, both girls cried out at once, “Whoa!” It was unclear whether they’d yelled out of fear or amazement.

  The curves became sharper, and as I kept turning the steering wheel to the same direction, the front mask of a minivan appeared just beyond a blind spot. I slammed on the brakes, and our car skidded to a halt, barely avoiding a collision. A license plate marked Matsumoto was right in front of my eyes. The vehicle wasn’t coming towards us—it was parked there with the engine still running. I’d never expected to see a van in such a place.

  It was parked against the slope of the mountain. Two men stood in the narrow space between the van and the edge as if they meant to peer down the cliff. Both wore khaki work clothes and were face to face, apparently hauling something very heavy along the side of the van. The one closer to us, shocked at the appearance of another car, turned around and let go of the object. Rather than simply drop, it slid from his hips to his knees then from his knees to his feet. What he’d been carrying was the stark naked body of a dead person.

  The corpse’s bluish black face lolled backwards by the man’s feet. At first it looked like a middle-aged woman, but as the man turned around, past his back I could see a penis dangling from the corpse’s groin. The other man in work clothes was holding the legs, and the corpse, that of a middle-aged man with a protruding belly, looked as though it was halfway up into a handstand, the back of the head on the ground. From the vacant, half-open eyes to the darkly mottled face and skin, it was clear that he was no longer alive. The situation was self-explanatory. Deep in the mountains, far from civilization, a path that appeared to be a dead-end, a sheer cliff more than several hundred yards high—if one were to toss off a body from there, the chances of anyone finding it were close to zero. If you wanted to dispose of a murder victim, this was much easier than trying to sink the body into the ocean.

  A man in a tracksuit appeared from the back of the van. This third man shouted something like an order at the other two, then turned towards us. For a brief moment, our eyes met. He had thinning hair, a rounded face, and a mustache. If I met him on the streets, I’d say he had an affable face. It now wore an expression of total disbelief.

  “What on earth …” I was the one who couldn’t believe it. What terrible timing. Instead of arriving right after or before, I’d managed to catch them in the middle of the act. Since ancient times, mountains had been regarded as a place where spirits returned after death, and especially lovely peaks were honored as deeply sacred spots. It was not somewhere to dump a corpse, but rather a holy locale for the spirit to sojourn.

  Before they could make a move, I shifted into reverse and sped away from the van. The men in work clothes kicked the corpse over the cliff’s edge as if they were abandoning unfinished business and scrambled back into the van.

  It had all happened in a matter of seconds. My daughters had observed the scene in silence, dumbfounded, but once our car started moving they couldn’t stop talking.

  “What was that?”

  “Daddy, what were those men doing?”

  “Daddy, what are you gonna do?”

  My daughters demanded a clarification for what they’d just seen, but there was no way to explain it. I didn’t know who the men were, why they’d killed that man, or if they were even the ones who’d killed him. I knew nothing.

  Those men were throwing a dead body off the cliff.

  That was all there was to say. The kids already knew as much. Their young eyes must have discerned that we’d happened upon a terrifying, offensive situation. They were merely unable to understand how that reality related to themselves.

  The girls stood up on the backseat and started screaming. Their heads got in the way and I couldn’t see the back. If I made one mistake with the handle, we would slide off the edge.

  “Shut up!” I shouted to try and get them to sit back down, but they wouldn’t listen. All I could do was yell to my wife, “Do something about the kids!”

  My wife grabbed them with both arms and fell flat on the seat, curling up and cowering.

  “Daddy, Daddy,” came thin voices.

  The front grill of the van was fast approaching the front of our car. Outrunning them was a lost cause since they were going forward while we were in reverse. They slammed the van repeatedly into the hood of our car, no doubt hoping to toss us witnesses off the cliff too. Irrational violence—terrified, I felt all the blood in my body swiftl
y drain away. The common term “gut-wrenching” was literally true; past my parched throat the walls of my stomach rapidly contracted, and it was a new type of pain unlike nausea or anything else I had ever experienced.

  Through the rearview window, I noticed the road curving to the right. The van thrust its nose into the right shoulder and shoved the side of our car. As I feared, they were trying to push us off. A front wheel came off first, crushed by the fender, and our car skidded forward at an angle, dragging to a stop across the road and blocking the van’s progress. Propped up by cedar trees, we’d been saved from hurtling off the precipice.

  The two vehicles were at a perpendicular, wedged between the rock face and the cedars, unable to move. Suddenly a loud banging echoed from outside the passenger’s side door. One of the men in the van was trying to get out, but with the two cars stuck together, he was having to resort to brute force.

  My terrified wife and daughters curled up even tighter.

  “Daddy, Daddy,” came tearful voices.

  I had to banish what was frightening my wife and daughters, no matter the sacrifice. If this was my fate, I couldn’t just sit and watch. Brace yourself before you shrivel up in fear. I let the excess tension out of my muscles and imagined losing what I held dear. I couldn’t let go of attachments. Even if it meant dirtying my hands, I had to overcome.

  I was ready to let avidya—ignorance—take over my heart.

  I unfastened my seatbelt, lowered the window, and climbed out of the car. I hugged a cedar tree and slid down along the cliff face. Yield to neither fear nor hatred, lend your body to your natural will to live.

  As I gripped the roots of a shrub and lifted my torso onto the roadside, I noticed that I had a view of the same waterfall I’d spotted earlier. When this was over, how I’d love to be pounded by water to my heart’s content. My mind focused on a serene fantasy, what left my lips was a roar—

  “Bastards, I’ll kill you all!”

  Afterword

  I tried collecting six works with a common theme—a theme represented by the words “diapers and a race replica.” The softness and warmth of diapers, the speed and power of a racer’s motorbike—I wished to express a balance of the maternal and the paternal by placing symbols of femininity and masculinity side by side.

  In raising children, the maternal and the paternal are both important. If things tip too far one way or the other, they don’t go well. I suspect it’s a worldwide trend, but in Japan especially, when it comes to childrearing all you hear about is the maternal.

  “Only a peaceful and safe world is worth living in”—far too many people seem to think so.

  Even when wrongs proliferate, or death approaches, the world is worth it, and I hope to always live by that. I’m not saying you should suck on your thumb and let the world’s evils be. If you don’t first accept whole the phenomenon that is humanity, which bears evil within itself, you can’t take the next step …

  While I washed my daughters’ cloth diapers, I often entertained such notions. An aspiring novelist married to a schoolteacher, I had no choice but to take on most of our household and childrearing duties. Coming into contact with a newborn’s skin, I’d ponder the effect “the paternal” would have on the kids’ future. Absent that childrearing experience, this collection would not have been born.

  I owe a debt of gratitude to Miruko Yamaguchi at Gentosha. The speed with which she deals with matters never ceases to amaze me. Without the sensible advice, my work would have been nowhere near as tight. You are much appreciated.

  Koji Suzuki

  September 23, 1995

  About the Author

  Born in 1957 in Hamamatsu, southwest of Tokyo, Koji Suzuki attended Keio University, where he majored in French. After graduating he held numerous odd jobs including a stint as a tutor. The father of two daughters whom he reared as a struggling writer while his wife worked, he has authored books on childrearing in addition to his blockbuster Ring trilogy and other fiction.

  Death and the Flower is Suzuki’s ninth work to appear in English. He is based in Tokyo but loves to travel, often in the United States.