“Thank you for everything. May I go now?” said Kita.
Yashiro gave him a parting wave. “Be seeing you,” he smirked, with the apparent implication that he planned to meet Kita again soon.
He was the sort of guy that Kita suspected had had to do with prospective suicides before. He seemed to know how to deal with them, to have some special knowhow. The funeral money, the gift…did he mean for Kita to use this camera to record his final week? He’d taken the funeral money, so maybe he had to return the favour somehow. But why should someone who’s planning to die have to distract himself with this sort of thing? This Heita Yashiro fellow was no ordinary guy. Kita realized he’d been putty in the man’s hands ever since the moment the guy had tried to steal a taxi on him. Everything Yashiro said and did had a peculiar persuasive power to it – he couldn’t resist him, even though he was aware there was something odd going on. He was insolent, but at the same time oddly polite. He came on strong with the moralizing sermons and proverbs, but on the other hand he made no attempt to talk Kita out of suicide. Maybe he’d just been part of the evening’s entertainment for Yashiro, a tasty morsel to snack on over a beer? He’d believed Tokyo was full of nothing but simple folks, but no sooner did he make the decision to kill himself than up had popped this bizarre fellow. Anyway, Kita told himself as he set off down the hill, let’s do something positive and get him out of my mind.
Kita counted up how many meals he had left before next Friday. Even allowing for the full three meals a day, he made it only twenty-two. He suddenly felt somehow bereft and sorrowful. At any rate, he decided, he’d set off to find himself a place where he could warm his heart and his belly. He was reasonably hungry, but he felt what he needed was the kind of food that satisfied the heart as much as the stomach, and that would relieve him of this empty sadness that had overtaken him. Up until now, Kita had only ever been interested in filling his belly, and had been content to eat just about any rubbish. He was on a different wavelength from the types who worried themselves about chemical food additives, and took special pains over which brand of sake or miso to use, or the precise thickness of dough in a piece of pasta or a meat dumpling. Although all food probably did have an appropriate season and a particular taste, as well as different effects on the body. The reason why labourers liked to eat offal roasted in salt after a day’s work, after all, was because their body needed energy and salt. Yoga practitioners didn’t eat onion or chives because these dulled the lower half of the body. Well then, what kind of food was good for getting rid of the blues?
Ice cream? Potato chips? Oolong tea and rice balls? These were all things he often ate. Kita realized suddenly that he was a guy who’d lived his life on convenience shop meals and fast food. People who don’t worry over food have strong stomachs. Still, it certainly wouldn’t do to die with heartburn. If there was one time in your life when you should cleanse your body, it was surely before death. There was no need to be stingy about food, of course. The reason why he hadn’t eaten any of the dishes at the drinking place just now was because he was planning on cleansing his body with something a bit tastier, but here he was thirty minutes later, still puzzling over what to eat. There were all sorts of things he’d like to have, but then he only had twenty-two more meals. He mustn’t eat just any stupid thing, he decided. He wouldn’t go for the usual packed meal from a convenience store, for instance, or a hamburger.
He’d wandered into the Maruyamacho love hotel area, and as he went up and down the hilly roads he passed seven couples walking along in search of the best place to have sex. He momentarily met the eyes of several lovers who were strolling along discussing the pros and cons of various establishments – this one didn’t have karaoke, that one offered a free bag of toiletries like they do in airplanes, another allowed extended stays for the same price. One couple he locked eyes with was a pair of high school girls, another was a bald cameraman sporting a moustache and round sunglasses with a tall girl on his arm. It was dinnertime, but quite a few of the hotels had red lamps indicating the rooms were full. In these parts, people had sex the way they had a cup of tea or a meal.
Sure they might come back to a hotel later, but what Kita was interested in right now was someone to eat with. On his own, his feet naturally set off in the direction of a convenience store or a curry house or noodle stand. He intended to give this habit up, so he stepped into a telephone booth with the idea of starting by getting in touch with the porn star that Yashiro had told him about. He dialled the number on the piece of paper, and after two rings her voice came on the phone. “Er, I’ve just—” Kita began, when she cut him off.
“You’re quick,” she said in a high-pitched voice. “It’s only fifteen minutes since I heard from Yashiro.”
Kita asked her to show him somewhere to eat, with the offer to treat her to anything she wanted there. Mitsuyo giggled flirtatiously into the receiver. “Hey, let’s party!”
There was a jazz coffee shop in a street leading from Maruyamacho into Hyakkendana, she said. She’d meet him there. He sat down obediently on one of its wooden benches to sip a tequila and wait. He didn’t recognise the piece they were playing, but it was a combination of a rush of wild sax, accompanied by trumpet and piano. A man was sitting alone in a dim corner, jiggling his hand and feet in time to the music, like someone on the verge of having some kind of fit. He looked like it would cheer him up to have someone there with him, beating out the rhythm together, but he was used to this lonesome feeling of not quite knowing what to do with his own body. Normally, Kita would have dismissed him as one of those gloomy, slightly weird types, but tonight he felt as if they were in the same boat.
Come to think of it, there’d been someone just like this guy back when he was in college. He hailed from somewhere like Oita down in Kyushu, a shabby fellow who talked in a low, monotonous voice. But he had amazing powers of concentration, and he could get right inside a piece of music. What his name now? Nikaido was the family name, maybe, and his other name was something like those rough spirits they drink down in Kyushu, Shochu or something of the sort. He was a fan of classical music. He used to listen to Dvorak and Tchaikovsky on his Walkman, conducting with his hand, although he’d get a bit embarrassed at being caught doing it. Next door to the jazz coffee shop where Kita was sitting there was one called Lion that played the classics. He imagined Nikaido sitting there with a bowl of green tea, eagerly awaiting the Bruckner’s fifth symphony he’d put in a request for. As soon as Knappersbusch’s performance began, he’d be deep inside wartime Vienna.
Where was he and what was he up to now? Kita wondered.
He hadn’t known Nikaido that well, but now he tried imagining a likely scenario for him in the present. He’d have joined some respectable company, and be striving earnestly to increase the pieces he could conduct. If he did hang out in Lion, maybe Kita would run into him on the third day. Even if he realized Kita was there, he wouldn’t greet him – he’d just sit there with his eyes closed and go on conducting. In amongst his repertoire he must have a few funeral marches and requiems. Maybe he conducted them for the dead occasionally. When he passed on, Kita thought, he’d rather like to have Nikaido conduct something for him too.
Through the pauses in the music, a bittersweet scent of perfume sidled into his nostrils. Before his eyes stood a woman, wearing an expression that suggested she was about to burst into laughter. “Miss Kusakari?” he asked, and she sat down beside him with a simpering little laugh.