Масахико Симада - Death by Choice

He listened attentively. Sometimes the wind sounded like the cry of a bird, sometimes like the moan of a discontented woman, and then again like an electronic hum, or like clothing being ripped. It paused for a second, and then he found himself enclosed by trees with brown, scaly trunks, far from the sound of the sea. Softly, a muddy darkness began to descend over the wood. His nostrils drew in the scent of pine resin and night dampness.

He curled up in a hollow made by the roots of a great pine, snuggled down like a bagworm under a layer of leafy branches and grass he’d gathered, and closed his eyes.

His eyes were prized open by a shaft of light shining down through the branches. “Wake up!” someone seemed to be saying. He looked about him. A skylark was singing madly, and to his ears it seemed to be shouting hysterically “Die! Die!” But another skylark that shot across the tree above him from a different direction was wailing “Free!”

He’d spent the night in his curled position, and now pain like a needle shot through his back. And with the pain, his consciousness of himself returned.

What the hell am I doing here? Kita shivered. A combination of cold and fear raced along his dulled and frazzled nerves into every corner of his body.

Sure enough, the thing he most feared had become reality. His plan to reach the other world had somehow misfired, and he’d been denied entry. Had he chosen the wrong method? Was death itself turning its back on him? Or was it that the other world was actually much more distant than he’d imagined, and he had to cross endless mountains, rivers, valleys and seas to reach it?

He’d assumed humans died more easily than this, but this had obviously been a fatal error. Here he was, it turned out, unable to become a corpse, dragging around this useless garbage of a body. Did he have to recycle himself, was that it? If only he’d managed to transform himself neatly into a drowned corpse, this self and its shame, memories, words, and despair would all long since have evaporated, and he’d be floating gracefully upon the waves, with everything given over to nature’s hands. But no, it seemed becoming a corpse wasn’t anything like so easy. That’s what someone was trying to tell him.

Think of all the men and women who’d tried to stand in the way of his suicide. There was no question they’d all been sent as messengers from beyond that mysterious curtain. They’d appeared because, from the moment Kita had decided to commit Death by Choice and kill himself the following Friday, he’d been minutely observed from beyond this inhuman curtain of death. He’d had the death part of his sentence excised and been left simply with the choice, the freedom. In other words, he’d been ordered to be free even from death.

But what on earth could he do? How was he supposed to use this freedom? It was precisely because there was nothing else he could do that he’d given his stupid laugh and decided to die. But his play had been parried. And now here he was, unable to act again. He was back to where he’d started eight days ago.

Still, that Friday eight days ago he’d still had things to do – the visit to his Dad’s grave, the feasting, abducting an idol, donating to the Red Cross, seeing his old lover again. He’d had a certain amount of money, not to mention physical strength, and the urge to act. A short life and a merry death, that’s how it should have gone. But look at him now. The two thousand yen in notes he’d had in his pocket had apparently gone as an offering to the sea, and all that remained in his pocket was forty yen. His physical and mental strength were both at an all-time low, and he was left gaping at this apparently endless nightmare unfolding around him.

What would happen if he simply waited and did nothing now? Kita summoned what little imaginative powers remained to him, and tried to think.

He’d spent too much effort in fruitless resistance of one sort or another, that was the trouble. That’s why he’d been left hanging onto life like this. Enough. No more resisting. He was as good as through the door into the other world, after all, so why not simply accept whatever may happen now? Everything except meddling from other people, that was. Luckily, there was no sign of a soul around here. Still, you never knew when some curious hiker might come striding along, or someone out after wild herbs, so he’d be better off hiding deeper in the forest. He should look for some sheltered spot out of the rain, make himself enough space to lie down, and gather some wild coltsfoot leaves for a roof. This would be his grave. If he stuck it out for two weeks or so, surely he’d manage to turn into a mummy as he lay there.

It took him half a day to climb the narrow mountain track, cross a stream, push his way through thickets of dwarf bamboo, and walk around till he found a suitable gravesite, a cave between two great rocks. He set about stamping down the dwarf bamboo on the floor, then he laid down the coltsfoot leaves he’d picked along the way, and plugged the gaps in the walls with wet clay. By the time he’d made himself the kind of den where a bear would happily settle in to hibernate, the woods were growing dark. He’d worked hard.

It was quite a pleasant coffin to lie in. The coltsfoot and bamboo blanket kept up a constant rustle, but they held the warmth. Strangely free of hunger, he slept deeply. The silence of the forest at night was so complete that his ears rang and his heart beat loudly, but the soft rustle of the bamboo leaves helped calm his fears.

He dreamed of eating curry. With each mouthful he found more curry on the plate, till it had grown to a small mountain before his eyes, which spilled over and engulfed him.

When he woke, he was seized with a fierce thirst and a desire to vomit. He struggled out of his coffin and made his way through the dwarf bamboo in search of the stream. It seemed he’d be making this thirty-minute trip there and back every day from now on. The nausea subsided once he’d drunk, but it was now replaced by fierce stomach cramps. At last, around noon, he managed to shit.

The nausea and headache were a little better while the sun was shining, but as soon as night came on the darkness clamped painfully around his stomach and his head. There seemed to be a kind of tidal rhythm to the pain.

As he lay there in the darkness, he felt the boundary between life and death grow blurred. His body would eventually return to the soil, but he felt that his consciousness too was shifting, and growing more intimate with the earth. The only problem was, the suffering got in the way.

You’re still alive. The pain is the proof of it.

He decided to pick up a small stone every time he went for water, and make a pile in front of his grave.

He was growing more sensitive to pain and fear. The enemy was obviously urging him to become increasingly aware of approaching death. Well then, he’d make himself insensitive, he decided. But though he managed to do this to some extent, time stretched out and drove him mad. It was easiest to sleep, but he was terrified of being seized by insomnia when night came, so he lay there with his eyes open while it was light, looking at the trees and shrubs and clouds, and listening to the sounds of the forest. There was a shrub nearby that, like a trompe l’oeil, became now a plump woman’s face, now a malicious-looking rabbit face, now the backside of a squatting sumo wrestler. And then there were the endless, meaningful whisperings of the forest.

Groaning, he rolled about in his rock shelter, sweating profusely, his stomach stabbed by fierce pains like a sword piercing his guts. It was literally a battle with death. Even if he admitted defeat and surrendered, though, his merciless ordeal would continue. Why such pains in his stomach, when he’d eaten nothing? He’d had no idea until this moment just what suffering was involved in not eating. It seemed he had chosen the very opposite of an easy death.