Maki Kashimada: Touring the Land of the Dead: Two Novellas

“She’s an old bag, not a bitch. Anyway, I’m not going to kill her, if that’s what you mean. It’d be too much of a hassle to clean up. By the way, the gyōza here are pretty big, aren’t they?”

“I’ve been coming here with my family ever since I was a kid. All I’d have to do is go for a walk around Nippori, and as soon as I’d pass by this place, I’d just get incredibly hungry, you know? So I’d end up getting some gyōza and a bowl of shaved ice to snack on.”

“ Gyōza and shaved ice? What a combination.”

“Right? My sisters have it when they come here too. We’re all big eaters. By the way, if you’re having trouble dealing with that old bag, why not try asking that tsukudani store around here to help out? You can make tsukudani from just about anything, you know.”

Tamura let out a disgusted sigh. “How can you say that about someone’s mother? And you call yourself a woman?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I’ve been brought up like a boy ever since I was little. Whenever there was a festival, they wouldn’t let me ride on the float. They made me carry the mikoshi with all the boys. That’s what my family’s like.”

“The float, huh? I’ve always had a thing for the girls riding on top of that.”

This time, it was my turn to let out a disgusted sigh. “Everyone works so hard to pull it through the streets, but it’s always the girls sitting at the top who capture everyone’s hearts.” But then I realized that Tamura was probably just acting macho, so I let him be.

When I got home, my sisters were all gossiping about this guy called S whom we had seen at the Azalea Festival at Nezu Shrine. He had only just moved into the neighborhood, but my sisters had already fallen for him. I had happened to see him myself not too long ago too, over at the Mad Hat. Everyone else was drinking Jinro, but then there he was, the odd one out with that Bloody Caesar of his. The Mad Hat. A run-down drinking house in the middle of this Shitamachi, this laid-back low town nestled in the old-fashioned, earthy half of Tokyo far from the bustle and commotion of the Yamanote. And this smug, pretentious-looking outsider sipping at his cocktail. He clearly didn’t belong here. He could probably spend the rest of his life in this Shitamachi bar, and would still never find a way to fit in.

When I saw him at the Azalea Festival, he was empty-handed, as if he hadn’t expected all the food stands to be there. He must have come just to see the flowers, never mind that you have to pay to go in. My sisters and I had been completely oblivious to those flowers ever since we were kids, and were busy stuffing ourselves with takoyaki and cotton candy.

“Didn’t he say the azaleas were so pretty? He must be a flower person,” Meiko said.

“I don’t know about that. He might have just been putting on airs. But that kind of naivety is so cute, don’t you think?” Moeko replied.

The two of them couldn’t stop talking about him.

I looked at Yōko. She had always had a cunning streak, ever since she was small. I was probably the only one of us capable of loving her unconditionally. I could see her eyes burning with jealousy as she listened to Meiko and Moeko go on and on. Knowing that two of her sisters wanted him too, she was no doubt plotting to make a move of her own. She may have been pretending to ignore them, but I’ll bet that she was planning to give him a flower or something behind their backs. Because that’s the kind of person she is.

When we saw him that time at the Azalea Festival, we quickly learned that he was around the same age as Meiko. And when she realized that, Meiko’s face turned bright red for some reason. Did she think that she had a chance with him just because they were so close in years? It looked like Moeko had thought the same thing too. She made a face, as if she found it all kind of boring. Yōko just watched on coolly. After all, she knew that men preferred younger women. None of them had any way of knowing whether S was even interested in them, but love has a way of making people get big-headed like that.

“You were the only one who said anything to him, weren’t you? He looked a little flustered,” Moeko insisted.

“Not at all!” Meiko replied. “He sounded so happy, when we were talking together.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

I looked back and forth between my three sisters. Each of these three women, in their own way, seemed to have found themselves developing a vague interest in this man who had popped up here from some faraway town. It was probably only a matter of time before they started fighting over him. I love them, all three of my sisters, but for some reason, cruel thoughts kept pouring into my mind. They should fight more, I thought. Because women are born to fight. At least that’s the way that it has always seemed to me. I mean, I’m always paying attention to how my sisters smell. Everything from their perfumes and makeup when they go out, to the scent of menstrual blood that they leave in the bathroom when they’re on their periods. And those scents must get even richer after getting into a fight. Just thinking about it was enough to send a shiver coursing through my flesh. I wanted those scents to be stronger, I wanted to be able to breathe them in and savor them. With men, there’s simply no comparison. Men smell of nothing but sweat. They don’t give off different scents depending on the time or place, the way that women do.

If jealousy is a feminine characteristic, then women ought to be free to be as jealous as they want. And a loving attachment to a jealous woman—there’s no way that a man would be able to understand that.

Flowers bursting into bloom one after another, each their own distinct, burning color. It’s as if they’re all trying to cry out over the top of one another that they’re the most beautiful. And these people who live around Nezu Shrine, they probably go there, to the Azalea Festival, hoping that they’ll be able to meet someone or another, whether friends or members of the opposite sex. Everyone goes there to have fun, to socialize in the middle of that explosion of color, surrounded by flowers all vying for their attention. Hello! How are you doing? It’s already that time of year. Thank goodness the weather’s fine. They’ll start by exchanging pleasantries, but maybe what they really want to say is something more. What are you doing after this? Do you mind if I tag along? The thing is, I think I’ve fallen in love with you.

And then they part ways. Let’s catch up again sometime. Maybe that’s what they say. But what’s that supposed to mean? It isn’t like they’re never going to see each other again. They live in the same neighborhood, after all.

And the same thing went for my sisters. Let’s catch up again sometime , they said to S as we parted ways. Of course they were thinking about seeing him again. They were probably all thinking the exact same thing. That next time, maybe they would find him somewhere around the Mad Hat. But there’s one thing that they can’t have been thinking. That someone else would end up getting their hands on him, this guy, this mysterious S. That one of their own sisters might make him her own boyfriend first. No, that thought couldn’t have occurred to them at all.

One day, I happened to catch sight of S at the bus stop near our house. Well, technically it isn’t really a bus stop. The place had something to do with the Bluestocking Society, the feminist literary group that used to be active around here a century ago. He was staring intently at the sign that described their connection to the local area. And then, completely out of nowhere, he went and kissed it. I was so surprised that I spun around to see whether anyone else had noticed. But it was still early in the morning, and there was no one else around. I was probably the only one who had seen it. After that, he headed off toward Hakusan, while I kept going toward the convenience store in the opposite direction. I went straight to the magazine shelves, looking through the latest editions of all my favorites. One of them was doing a special issue on the Printemps Ginza department store. I had wanted to take a look at the new selection of summer clothes, but as I flipped through the pages, I just couldn’t relax. I couldn’t get that picture of S kissing the sign out of my head.