Масахико Симада - Death by Choice

“We won’t meet again, but please go on looking after Shingo. I’m sorry I made you tell such a painful story.”

He sought her hand to shake it, but she gripped his feebly in return. “Where are you going?” she asked.

“Somewhere far away,” was all he replied.

“You’re not going to kill yourself, surely?”

Her perspicacity startled him, but he dissembled with a smile. He planned to leave without giving vent to any desire for revenge over lost love.

“I wanted to die too, so I know, you see. You’ve lost all hope, haven’t you? Haven’t you, Kita?”

“Goodbye. I have to go.”

Kita opened the car door, and set off walking down the main road, without turning to look back. Mizuho’s voice followed him.

“You mustn’t do it! Don’t die!”

Her voice came to him as faintly as if it were a hallucination.

The boy had died, but he still managed to live on in his mother’s memory. He was even now travelling, eating pork cutlets, learning piano, and speaking in a grown-up voice, but if his mother’s attention was suddenly distracted by something else, he’d vanish. She’d have to reassemble him, all of him, from his face and voice to his limbs.

That child had once lived in this world, walked its streets, played with shining and moving things in woods, by rivers, in parks or in his playroom, and been affected by emotions at every moment. But the child his mother was looking after now was not that child. He was just like him, but he was a phantom, made of an entirely different substance. She cared for him in the full knowledge that he was a phantom. One can still feel pain in a limb that’s been severed, so it’s only natural to go on loving a child who’s died. It doesn’t matter if it’s a phantom, as long as you can maintain the illusion that the child is still alive.

After he’d achieved his wish to meet his old lover, and had learned of her loss, Kita Yoshio sat alone in his hotel room weeping. It wasn’t his own child, and he’d never met the boy. The child who had been born between the woman who’d slighted him and the Finance Ministry bureaucrat was no more to Kita than a tree in the wood. What did it matter whether the tree lived or died? Still, his tears continued to flow.

Given that he was due to die on Friday, Kita thought to himself, would he continue to live like that boy in someone’s memory? Was there anyone who’d look after him in his phantom form?

That boy had no past to speak of, it was true. He’d only lived for four years. Those four years were a golden time for his mother. She had to hang onto the memory of his short time on earth in order to retrieve for herself those four lost golden years.

Kita, on the other hand, had a past of more than thirty years, but they were only there to be forgotten. As death approached, his consciousness should naturally slip into remembering mode, and he should begin to lament all that he would miss. But there was no sign of this happening. Death was weightless, of course, but his own death seemed as light as a sigh.

This thought didn’t make him particularly sad. In fact, it felt more like a little joke if anything. It was funny that a man who was about to die should be crying for a boy who’d died, and pitying his ex-lover who lived with the boy’s phantom.

It was already past four on Tuesday afternoon.

Alone like this in the hushed room, another self appeared, one who was exactly like him but made of a completely different substance. This was the fellow who’d decided to die on Friday. Before he knew it, Kita had started doing what this fellow told him to. The fellow had a very persuasive way about him – that was what had led to this.

To everyone there comes a moment when your life blazes at its finest.

Well, thought Kita, he hadn’t had any such moment, and it didn’t look as if he was ever going to have one. At this point in his thoughts, his Other broke in.

In that case, you should die. In the last moment before death, your life will attain its great climax. Needless to say, of course, you’ll need strength for this. And money. You’ll leave it too late if you wait till you’re over sixty and drawing your pension. Everyone dies sooner or later, they don’t need any help to do it, but where’s your blazing moment if you leave things to fate? Right now, you have the strength for it. You have the money. Now’s your chance. The desire for death is simply part of the territory for humans, like the desire for food or sex. It’s OK, you’re not crazy. You’re a totally normal guy. If you see a fine woman you want to sleep with her, if you’re mocked you get mad. When you hear the sad tale of that poor little boy and his Mum, you weep. You have feelings that respond from moment to moment, just like they should. You’re all you should be – and that’s precisely why you want to die.

Ever since Kita had decided to die next Friday, his feelings had been torn this way and that. If things went on like this, he was worried he might suddenly panic when the moment to die actually arrived. He had to admit it, he was scared of death. He still had three days to go, but at this stage time felt like it was passing awfully quickly. When it came to the crunch, his urge to die might just desert him. This was Death by Choice, after all. Choice included the freedom to choose not to do it. If he chose against it, though, what was his Saturday going to feel like? The very thought made him shudder. He felt an overwhelming sense of futility, a deep melancholy and regret… and at this point, his Other spoke again.

I’ll be with you. I’ll make good and sure you die, don’t worry. Even if you waver, the desire for death has seized your subconscious and it won’t let go. It’ll take a lot more than a bit of dithering to shake it off.

But he hadn’t even decided how to do it yet.

Try a process of elimination. How about drowning, for instance?

He’d once come close to drowning at a beach where he shouldn’t have been swimming. A wave had dumped him, and he’d been left foundering underwater. He struggled to rise to the surface, but he’d lost all sense of direction and ended up swimming sideways instead. He was sure he’d drown, but when he relaxed his face rose naturally to the surface. How delicious the air had been! He had this habit of trying to get out of dying, so it might take a bit more to achieve than he’d hoped.

How about hanging? All you need is a bit of rope.

But I haven’t been condemned to be hanged. My eyeballs would pop out, I’d shit myself – no way!

OK, how about jumping in front of a train? You could time it well.

I don’t want to mix my Mum up in all the compensation problems that would involve.

An electric shock to the heart? It’s easy.

I’m not an electric guitar, you know.

Take potassium cyanide? That’s how spies die.

I’ve always hated swallowing medicine.

Well then, how about you charter a helicopter or a Cessna, and jump out without a parachute? You’d feel great.

The problem is, where would I land? If I land in the sea, I drown. If I land in some town, I’ll involve other people. If I land in a forest I’ll be skewered on a tree.

OK then, don’t make up your mind. You’ve still got three days. It’s more important to get yourself into a state of mind where you know you have to die, than to worry about how. People can die even when they have no reason to, after all, so it’s even easier if you’ve got one. Sad or happy, these last three days are going to be the best in your life, see. Don’t just sit there shut away in your hotel room, get moving!

And so, urged on by his Other, and without any real purpose, Kita prepared to sally forth into the night streets of the capital. It wasn’t a good idea to be alone. And besides, he wanted to shut that Other up.