Масахико Симада - Death by Choice

The doctor had smoked the same amount of Yufutsu Plain dope, but he didn’t start dancing. Instead he sat jiggling his leg in time to the dance music, watching Kita’s antics with a big grin.

“Boy, this Yufutsu Gold sure does work,” he remarked to the daughter, whose white face peered in at them from the living room.

“It doesn’t for me,” she muttered grumpily.

The doctor roared with laughter. “You smoke a lot of this stuff?” he asked.

“We’re not allowed it at school, but it grows round the house, so I can have it any time I want.”

Kita too erupted into laughter at this. “I’d love to tell the kids back in Tokyo,” he exclaimed.

“So how is it? Does it make you happy?” The doctor’s grin was frozen on his face.

“This is great medicine, doctor. You look pretty happy too. I’m happy, the dog’s happy, Mum’s happy.” Kita burst into fresh laughter at his own words.

“I’m not,” said the daughter.

“You’re pissed off with things, eh?’

“Not especially.”

“Got a boyfriend?”

“No way. This is the country.”

“What sort of things do you like?”

“Taking photos.”

“What do you photograph?”

“Scenery and people and dogs and cows and stuff.”

“Would you take one of us, for the record?”

No sooner had Kita spoken than the daughter disappeared into her room and came back with an old Nikon single-lens reflex camera. The doctor tightened up his already grinning face, and Kita beamed blissfully. Click! went the camera. This would be the last photo of him, Kita told himself.

“What’s your name?”

“Aki.”

“What do you want to do in life?”

“I want to be a stewardess.”

At this, both men burst into fresh gales of laughter. Aki tutted in annoyance. “I don’t care what really, just so long as I get out of here,” she said.

“You want to travel?”

“Sure I do.”

“Would you like to be a star?”

“I couldn’t even make a hit singing folk songs, the way I look.”

For some reason, these blunt answers of hers were absolutely hilarious.

“You ever heard of Shinobu Yoimachi?”

“Yep. She’s the one who got kidnapped, isn’t she.”

“Did they get the guy?”

“Not yet. Like, she won’t say who it was, will she. I bet she fell for him.”

“Kita.” The doctor leaned over to him. “I’ll give her a ring right now. Would you like to talk to her?”

“No thanks. That kidnapping’s long in the past now. Hey Aki, it was me who kidnapped her, you know. That’s pretty cool, eh?”

“No way,” Aki said uncertainly, checking the doctor’s expression.

The doctor couldn’t keep the grin from his face. “It’s true,” he said.

Aki still couldn’t quite believe it, but a look of amazement came over her face, and she looked at Kita with evident awe. “Why did you donate the money to the Red Cross?”

Lying there holding a pillow, Kita replied, “A guy who’s about to die isn’t going to be able to use all that money,” and he burst into fresh laughter. “How would you use thirty million yen, Aki?”

Aki lowered her eyes and thought for a moment. “I’d give half to my parents, and go to Europe with the other half,” she replied.

“Why Europe? You should go somewhere warm. How about Tokyo?”

“I’ve never been outside Hokkaido. But a friend who went to Tokyo said that Sapporo’s got more going for it. And anyway, I don’t want to go south.”

The doctor mumbled that there were a lot of suicides in Europe. She glared at him with an expression that said, so what?

“Mr Kita, are you really going to die soon?”

“I sure am. Some way that feels good.”

“Why do you look so happy?”

“There’s no point being sad about death. What I’m saying is, there can be happy deaths.”

“Have you ever tried to kill yourself before?”

“No, this is my first time. It’s so exciting.”

“How are you going do it?”

“I’m going crash the white coffin I’m driving.”

“I think you should give up the idea.”

Kita rolled about, beside himself with laughter. Aki found herself grinning too.

“Yep, you should give up the idea,” the doctor, said, nodding vigorously. “The best way is to put an electric shock through the heart. Why not use an electric socket right here and do the job? You’re feeling really good right now, after all.”

Mrs Kikui had been listening in from the kitchen. Now she put her head round the door, kitchen knife in hand, and cried fervently, “Oh please don’t do that! Don’t commit suicide in this house, I beg you!”

She looked so desperate that both men were astonished for a moment, but they were quickly overcome with laughter again.

Knife still gripped in her hand, Mrs Kikui began to lecture Kita.

“You’ve no right to go throwing away the precious life your parents gave you, young man. I don’t know what’s happened to make you like this, all I know is suicide is stupid. Look at me, stuck here in this backwoods place, long years of poverty, tired out. I shouldn’t say it in front of my daughter, but there are times I’d like to die. But then I look at the sea, and I forget about it again. You should go look at the sea, you know. Go and throw all your pains and sorrows into the sea. If you stay alive, you’ll have all sorts of joys in your life. You’ll be able to eat all sorts of wonderful food. Pain and sorrow doesn’t last. Tell me now, what’s your favourite food?”

“Curry,” Kita murmured.

“Curry, eh? Right, I’ll make you some right now. A special curry with potatoes and venison. You’ll feel great again if you eat this. Don’t you give in. Crawl back out of that big black hole, and make your life a success. I won’t go telling the police or anyone else. Just make it through today, see in tomorrow, make it through tomorrow, and stay alive for the day after. I guarantee that day something good will come your way. Just do as I tell you, make it through the days. If you start wanting to die again, eat a big meal, look at yourself in the mirror, and give yourself a great big smile. If you want any more of those leaves there’s lots growing out in the garden here, I’ll send it down to you. You want some more beer? Or maybe you’d rather have sake? How are your shoulders, a bit tight? Aki, go give him a massage.”

Aki barely blinked. She did as told, and started massaging Kita’s shoulders with her thumbs. The ticklish sensation made Kita guffaw with laughter, at which Mrs Kikui, worked up by her own sermon, brandished the knife and yelled, “This is no laughing matter! You’ll pay for it if you kill yourself, you mark my words!”

This made the doctor choke with laughter. “You planning to kill a guy who’s just killed himself? You’ll fillet him with that knife of yours if you’re not careful. Watch out. I’m having this fellow’s organs, you know.”

“Don’t be so ridiculous!” she grumbled, as she retreated to the kitchen.

“Right, let’s get a bit of shut-eye.” Both Kita and the doctor had laughed themselves into a state of exhaustion. They couldn’t fight their drooping eyelids a moment longer.

Kita awoke to the smell of curry. For a moment, he wondered where he was. In the living room, Mrs Kikui was watching television, still in her apron. Kita spent a while in the toilet seeing to his needs, then combed his hair in front of the mirror. The doctor was still sound asleep. Mrs Kikui was about to speak, but Kita signalled for her to be silent, and sat down at the dining table. Hearing his stomach rumbling, she disappeared into the kitchen without a word.

She emerged with a curry containing whole potatoes and a slab of venison as big as a steak. Kita wolfed it all down. The marijuana seemed to have stimulated his appetite. The taste brought back happy curry memories for him. Ever since he was a boy, whenever he was feeling really low he’d always tucked into a bowl of curry, he remembered. The instant curry his Mum used to make always tasted exactly the same, and over the years, the taste had come to embody his own youthful disappointment with life. After he left home at eighteen, he’d gone on eating curries – curries piled high on plastic plates in student and later company cafeterias, in front of railway stations, in underground shopping malls. Everywhere and at all times, he’d swallowed down his own explosive emotions with a bowl of curry, and gone on obediently doing what the world wanted. Now at last, he didn’t need curry any more.