Масахико Симада - Death by Choice

The Shinobu Yoimachi that Kita knew was someone without feelings, personality, or past – a flower in a florist’s. It was true, of course, that Kita had never smelled the tulip scent of her. He could now smell the herbal scent of her hair, and the French perfume sprayed on her flesh, but still, the real thing just didn’t connect with the impression he’d had of her.

When she’d come over to the table where he sat idly waiting, led by one of her guards, and shook hands with him, Kita had found himself asking, “Are you really Shinobu Yoimachi?”

“Actually, I’m a look-alike,” she’d replied with mock innocence. They talked a while about her recent performances, and after a while she appeared to revert to some previous bad mood, and began to complain about how she was being “sold off piecemeal.”

“My face, my legs, my breasts, my hair – they’ve all been taken over by others. I think that must be why I don’t feel any pain when I get hurt any more. But if you stick a pin in my calf, or give my cheeks a good hard pinch, that hurts. That really makes me sad. I mean, I’m the only one feeling the pain, right? Those guys just make money, they don’t feel the pain. And I’ve got nothing but pain, and not much money.”

“Shall we have a drink?”

Kita called the waiter over, and ordered wine and cheese for himself. Shinobu went on talking, without glancing at the menu.

“The fact is, I’m one of those dolls you can dress up. I always have been, ever since I was a child. My Mum used to put me in kimonos, or dress me up like a countess or like a boy, to suit her whim. She sent off applications to little girl contests without telling me, gave me a bit of pocket money and put me up on stage there. By chance I passed an audition for some TV drama, and they coaxed me into singing and I made a hit recording, and my bust was growing bigger and bigger so they started taking heaps of photos of me in swimsuits. I wanted to run and hide whenever I saw a photo of me in a magazine or a poster in the station, smiling in a bikini. Still do. I wonder why all this happened to me? There’s no going back, but I’d just love to spend my life in some quiet little corner of the world instead of this. Is that asking too much?”

“You’re only twenty-four. Things are only just beginning for you.”

“I feel incredibly old already. I feel like my life’s growing shorter and shorter, always exposed to these masses of unknown eyes. I was just a kid when I made my debut, but now I’m an old lady. I want to believe I’ve just gone along unthinkingly, doing what’s natural, but actually if I do anything a bit different, the media beats me up, and all these young stars are coming up now and starting to lower my stocks for me, and those guys are getting to think it’s about time to play the last trump card.”

“What’s the last trump card?”

“Nude. They’re after a one strike come-from-behind home run on this. Gangsters all think the same way. God, I want to be free! I’d love to wash my hands of all this, maybe do some study. I never studied when I was in high school, I can’t even read properly. I’ve got no clue what’s happening out there in the world, but if I take off my clothes, I can make a living. But seems to me something’s wrong here. Things shouldn’t be this way. Seems to me like God shouldn’t allow this sort of thing.”

Kita nodded silently, and filled her wineglass. She bobbed her head like a pigeon in thanks, then gulped it noisily down. Maybe she’d mistaken it for juice.

“What God do you believe in?” He’d been amazed to hear the word come from her lips.

“I read the Bible in between jobs. Here, see?” She drew from her bright red handbag a suede-covered pocket-book Bible, and showed it to him. “I go everywhere with it,” she said.

Remembering how he’d thrown up on the Bible in the drawer two days earlier, Kita muttered, “A washable Bible would be a good idea.”

“The Bible can wash the heart clean,” Shinobu said with a nod, then went on, her eyes on Kita’s face to see his reaction, “My singing teacher gave it to me. ‘Everything’s in the Bible,’ he told me, ‘so just read a little every day.’”

“Is it interesting?”

“I’d say there’s no one quite like Jesus. I wish I’d lived two thousand years ago. I might’ve got to be one of his disciples, who knows?”

“Do you go to church?”

“No, what’s the point? Jesus isn’t there in church. But he’s in the Bible. When I read it, I get the feeling he’s going be reborn in our world. Or at any rate, that’s what I want to believe. I can’t believe in myself, or my Mum. And if I believed in those guys there, who knows what’d become of me. But I feel like if I just believe in Jesus, I’ll be saved. He’s a superstar, he gives me hope, he’s my idol.”

Kita felt he hadn’t come across such innocence in a long time, and he found himself placing his hand over Shinobu’s where it lay on the Bible. She came to herself with a start, and gazed at him with serious eyes, making him feel so awkward that he withdrew his hand again.

“I’m so sorry. What have I been saying? I’ve just rambled on about myself without thinking. You wouldn’t care about any of this, would you Kita?”

“There’s no salvation for me I’m afraid.”

“That’s not true. Actually, when I looked in your eyes I just suddenly wanted to blurt out everything that was in my heart – all my troubles. I don’t know why.”

“What sort of eyes do I have, I wonder?”

“I can’t really express it, but they’re completely different from those guys’. Gentle eyes, quiet eyes…”

She might think so, thought Kita, but in fact he was quite unqualified to play the role of counsellor. To hide his embarrassment, he smiled and crossed his gentle right eye and his quiet left one at her. A short silence followed, which he filled by pouring more wine. It suddenly struck him that he’d never seriously prayed to God or Buddha. This was followed by a sudden urge to bludgeon her with something cruel.

“So what exactly has Jesus ever done for you?”

Her right hand on the Bible and her left on the wine glass, Shinobu was stumped for an answer. Her lips opened and closed like a goldfish. Kita followed through with, “Was it Jesus who led you into the performance world, for instance?”

“No way,” Shinobu responded in a low, indistinct voice. Then her voice suddenly grew high, and she spoke normally again. “But he may have been testing me, I guess.

“Jesus will do anything for us. Anything to do with the soul. I’m convinced he’s protected my soul from being dirtied by money and fame and hatred. I have to throw off my old self as soon as I can, and take on a new self, one that’s like Jesus – that’s what I believe.”

“You’ll shed your skin?”

“I must learn to become naked body and soul, atone for my sins, and love my fellow man. My aim is to free myself through the teachings of Jesus.”

Why was she confessing her faith to him like this? And why was he moved by it, condemned to self-appointed execution though he was? He’d been planning on spending a much more frivolous, not to say vulgar time with Shinobu than this was turning out to be. Things had gone seriously awry here.

Shinobu had begun to look as though possessed while she was making her confession of faith. The girl who’d sat down beside him in the dimly lit bar thirty minutes earlier had quite disappeared. Perhaps this possession of hers had something to do with it, but the bar seemed somehow brighter. And that girl who’d seemed like an exquisite doll had now become a real live person no different from himself, with flesh and substance and body heat that he could actually feel.