Death by Choice

^{Chapter 3} SUNDAY

Kita lay there with a hangover until close to midday. Meanwhile, the two hot springs geishas set off early for a game of tennis. When he finally surfaced, Kita took a bath, then grabbed a taxi with the idea of filling his empty stomach with noodles or something. The driver took him to a noodle restaurant in a made-over old farmhouse. As he sat there, blankly making his way through omelette and grated yam, an old couple arrived and sat down at the same table. They said hello with friendly smiles, which made Kita nervous that he was about to get himself mixed up again with more well-intentioned meddling.

The wife then pointed to the garden of the farmhouse beyond the little lane, and murmured to her husband in a languid undertone, “Look at that lovely house, buried in flowers. So many! Hydrangea, orange blossom, pinks, rose of Sharon, petunias…It reminds me of that poem:

“Ah yes, that’s in the Kokinshu, isn’t it. Not ‘endless summer flowers,’ ‘endless summer blooms,’ it is.”

“What about some sake, darling?”

“Well, why not. It’s splendid weather, after all. Let’s be daring and have a cup, eh?”

“Soon it will be time for the gardenias and cotton roses to bloom, won’t it?”

“Those summer scents are so enchanting.”

“I remember Kenji used to love cotton roses.”

“Ah yes, how many years is it now since he died? I still feel as if he’s alive and could pop in for a visit any time, you know.”

“He made enough noise while he was alive, didn’t he, but how quiet he is in death.”

“Yes, it’s a sad truth, that old saying ‘silent as the grave.’”

Could they always have such elegant conversations with each other, wondered Kita, casting a furtive glance at this couple who seemed to inhabit a different universe from himself. True, they were speaking Japanese, and sitting at the same table as him, but their words struck him as some imagined poetic ephemera.

They sat there sipping their sake and picking at the side dish of wild vegetables they’d ordered, gazing at the flower-filled garden across the way. Taking them in, Kita’s eyes caught the husband’s.

“Would you like a cup?” The old man delicately wiped a finger over the rim of his sake cup, and held it out for Kita.

“Thank you so much, but I have a hangover and all I can face is water,” Kita replied politely, whereupon the wife remarked in the kind of elegant tone with which she might recite some poem, “Kenji tried to cure both hangovers and cancer with sake, I recall.”

“Kenji was doing his best to disinfect his body with alcohol.”

The wife smiled soundlessly with her teeth.

“Are you on holiday?” asked Kita.

“Yes. Death’s messengers will be coming for us soon enough, so we’re spending our remaining time on earth in perpetual travel. We’re still in the middle of the journey.”

“Really? So you do the pilgrimage to Ise Shrine, and so on?”

“What do you think, darling? Shall we?”

Her husband inclined his head thoughtfully. “Well it’s a bit late to hope for salvation at this stage,” he said, and he too gave a soundless laugh.

I get it, thought Kita. The post-retirement couple indulging themselves in refined travel. Just then their order of cold noodles arrived, so Kita returned to his own private world of hangover woes. Still, the couple continued to prey on his mind, and his eyes moved between the two as they ate their noodles, and the flowery garden opposite.

The old couple ate as though they’d forgotten what appetite was. This restaurant did a pretty filling tempura noodle dish that seemed to be a particular favourite with the clientele, and the customers who ordered it were gritty, no-nonsense types. But these two had not a trace of grit on them. The way they sat there politely sucking in their noodles, they could have been performing Zen meditation. It took quite some time for a single noodle to pass through their pursed lips. Watching from the sidelines, Kita was beginning to get annoyed. They sucked gently away at their food, sipped the side cup of noodle water as if sunk in meditation, then carefully replaced the throw-away chopsticks in their paper covers, remarked to each other how delicious it had been, and turned once more to look at the flowering garden.

“You must be lonely, all alone like this.” The husband was casting a lure in his direction again.

“No, the only problem’s the hangover,” Kita replied with straightforward frankness.

But the old man wouldn’t accept this. “I imagine there’s more to it,” he said, and soundlessly produced a complicit smile.

“Where will you go after Atami?” Kita asked, resorting to the usual question.

“I’d have loved to climb Mt. Fuji if only the old body would do as it’s told a bit more. Maybe we’ll head off to Kyoto.”

“I’d like to see Okinawa before Death’s messengers come for me,” his wife cut in.

These messengers kept cropping up in the conversation, so Kita made an attempt to say something in keeping with the tone.

“So the final destination of the trip is Hades, eh?”

It was intended as a joke, but the husband gazed at him levelly and said, “Actually, it’s a Fall By The Wayside tour.”

The original idea of falling dead by the wayside involved a great deal of poverty and misery, thought Kita, while these two retained an astonishing luxury of time, money, and sense of enjoyment.

“You no longer have a home to go back to, then?”

“We don’t.”

“Well then, you’re the same as me.”

“You have nowhere to go back to either?”

“I’m just into the third day of the journey. What about you? How long since you both set out?”

“It’s only been a week.”

“Really? And how long do you plan on continuing?”

“What do you think, darling?”

“Well,” replied the husband, “it’s hard to calculate that.” He fell into silent thought for a moment, then announced that he’d composed a little verse.

The wife added the explanation that they’d sold their house and were using the money to travel, so they could keep on going for a year or even two if they felt so inclined.

“But my husband’s determined to fall by the wayside, you see.”

“‘Fall by the wayside’ doesn’t have quite the right nuance, perhaps. The fact is, we’ve decided to simply quietly disappear, without causing anyone any inconvenience.”

“I see…” Kita couldn’t think what more to say.

“But it must be hard for you, having nowhere to live. We could be of assistance, if you’d like.”

“Thank you very much. But I’ve left a few things undone in Tokyo that I have to go back and attend to.”

“What a shame. So you go East and we go West, it seems. We meet only to part once more. But it was very nice to meet you.”

“Take care,” said Kita, putting out his hand. The old man held it in a feeble grasp. “You too,” he said, and watched him leave. Take care and die, was what it amounted to for both sides.

On his way back to the hotel, Kita reflected that he’d made the right decision when he decided on next Friday for his execution date. If he went on not managing to die, day after day, he’d get to be like this old couple and no longer capable of really getting the best out of his last days before the execution date. Their appetite for food and sex had faded, there was no youthfulness, no yearning, not even the strength to really throw around the money they’d made on the sale of their house – all that was left was to pursue their pointless journeying. Maybe by the time you reached that age you were inclined to be attracted by those old wandering poets of yore like Basho or Saigyo, but somehow Kita couldn’t imagine himself there.

Still, that pair were intent on achieving their last great undertaking, to disappear and die quietly by the wayside. Once you got beyond a certain level of debility, it was just too much trouble to die. You could no longer die by your own hand, you had to rely on a doctor or a virus to get you there.

While you were young, on the other hand, you could do it under your own power. If something nasty happened, well you could probably finish yourself off that very day. Cancer loves vital young cells. Be it by accident, or illness, or suicide, young people could die all too easily. If an old death was decay, then a young death was more like an explosion.

When he got back to the hotel, geishas one and two, fresh from the bath, took him by both arms and marched him off to the beauty spa, where he was given something called “a roamer therapy,” and had his hair cut and his nails done. Looking at his freshly peeled and glowing face in the mirror, Kita thought he didn’t look too bad really.

Once out of the three-hour confinement and over his hangover, he went back to their room, looking forward to his next feast. “Here I am,” he called, but there was no answer. On the bed, he found a note:

Kita emptied out the backpack. Somehow, she’d managed to assemble a knife, a rope, an enamel cup, an aluminum pan, and some chocolate. Seemed like she was trying to tell him to go hiking.

Now that the two girls were gone, it was so quiet his own breathing began to get on his nerves. It was quite hot, but the room felt chilly. Was this that empty feeling that comes after a good feast? At such times maybe the only thing to do is skulk about in bed. If only someone was there to stand by his pillow and watch over him, hold his hand. He should have employed a partner he could lean on when he needed to.

He was just dozing off when the phone rang. It was Heita Yashiro. The first thing he said was, “Still alive, eh?”

“That Mitsuyo tells me she’s gone and left you alone and gone back to Tokyo,” he went on. “I really told her off. You all by yourself there?”

“All alone.”

“That’s bad, that’s bad. If someone’s not there beside you all the time, you’re likely to follow through on your plan and pop right off to the other world.”

“You’re worried?”

“Sure I’m worried. You’re not insured yet, and we never finished discussing that business deal. I’m askin’ you.”

“Asking what? I’m not interested in the deal, and I’m sure I refused to take out life insurance.”

“You oughta get it. Who’d turn down the chance to get money if it’s owing you?”

“I wouldn’t be getting any money. Nor would you.”

“I’m not interested in getting it. But if your mother or your brothers and sisters are still around, surely you should send twenty or thirty million their way? After all, you’ve done your old Mum quite a bit of wrong to date, haven’t you?”

“Too late now, surely. I’m a homeless man these days, after all. Those insurance guys are no fools.”

“Something could be managed. You could say you were a live-in employee in my company.”

If he left some money to his mother, would that really erase his debts to her? Kita was letting himself be convinced by Yashiro again, and accepting help he’d rather do without. Still, it was hard to take Yashiro’s goodwill at face value. Kita was inclined to suspect him of ulterior motives.

“This wouldn’t cause my mother any problems, would it?”

“Don’t be crazy. You’re trying to say it’s unfilial to name your mother as the recipient for your life insurance? Now let me tell you just one thing, don’t you go letting on to anyone that you’ll be committing suicide next week. And if by any chance you’ve told someone already, make it clear to them it was a joke, right? Hell, it’s not the sort of thing most people really mean when they say it, after all.”

“I haven’t said a word to anyone personally.”

“Ah yes, those girls. There’s no saying they won’t find themselves hard up for something to talk about and use your story as fodder.”

“You did the same yourself, if I may say so.”

“No, I’m different. Me, I think you should leave some proof of the few decades you’ve spent on this earth. I just want to help you leave a really vivid memory for all those people who’re planning to hang around and grow a bit older in this life. Surely you’d like to be someone that people recall with fondness – ‘Oh yeah, that guy called Yoshio Kita. He was a bit odd, wasn’t he?’ That sort of thing.”

“Not particularly.”

“You wouldn’t like to do one really important thing in this life, to make people remember you fondly as the guy who passed away kind of intentionally?”

“It’s not that kind of romantic thing at all.”

“Don’t knock romance. We men have lofty convictions women know nothing of.”

“That so? Well I don’t. You’re too late.”

“Come on, you could put your death off a bit longer.”

“No I couldn’t. I’ve made my decision.”

“I don’t imagine you’ve promised anyone though, have you?”

“I’ve promised myself.”

“You sure are stubborn for a youngster. OK. You’re coming back tomorrow afternoon, right? You get to meet Shinobu Yoimachi at nine tomorrow evening, so drop in at my office before that. I’ll take you to the meeting place. I’ll have all the insurance papers here ready. Let’s have a meal together, eh?”

He wasn’t quite sure what was going on, but it seemed like he was going to have to meet Yashiro again. But why was the guy so eager? Was he just having fun, or was this some complex plot to make money? Never mind, why worry? He could break the appointment tomorrow if he chose, after all, Kita told himself. He was about to put the receiver down when he heard Yashiro’s voice continuing, “By the way, what are you doing this evening?” He hung up without replying. Immediately, the phone rang again. Kita left the room.

At the hotel’s sushi bar he mutely picked away at what was probably his fifth last evening meal. Raw lobster, raw octopus, conger eel, bluefin tuna, bonito, abalone, salmon roe, wrapped up with a miso soup with sea bream. He chuckled when he realized that somehow everything he’d chosen had felicitous associations.

The bar lady looked at his face and remarked on how shiny his skin looked. When he explained he’d just had it scrubbed in the spa she took him for an actor, and asked him to sign a square of poem paper for her. He couldn’t be bothered turning her down, so he wrote his name down in careful script. He stared at the remaining blank space for a while, then imitated the old gentleman he’d met at the noodle house by writing a little poem: