The taxi was stopped at a red light, and the driver was eyeing his two passengers in the rear view mirror. He met the doctor’s eye, hastily averted his gaze, and turned up the radio.
“We’re practicing our parts for a play,” the doctor informed him drolly.
“Truth is, I’ve got no money.” Kita opened his wallet and showed the doctor. He had less than three thousand yen there. There was money enough in the bank, of course, but no way of getting it out.
“OK then, we’ll have to steal some. You borrowed two hundred thousand from me, Kita. I still haven’t been paid the outstanding two hundred fifty thousand from Yashiro either, so something has to be done about that as well.”
“I’ll pay you with my organs. Organ extraction’s your specialty, after all.”
“I guess that’s all we can do then. I’ll need to accompany you to your execution ground. Will you permit me?” The doctor spoke as if he was reading from a score he already knew.
Kita pulled at his hair in despair. “Why the hell should it cost me all this money to die!” he cried.
“That’s capitalism for you,” murmured the doctor.
“Oh shut up,” said Kita crossly.
It seemed the doctor really was upset that Kita had eaten that curry. He was still harping on about it even once they were settled at the table for Kita’s last supper.
“Do you have something against curry, is that it?” asked Kita. “So what could I have eaten that would make you happy, eh?”
But the doctor only came back with the same thing, over and again. “Curry’s just the pits.”
“So I should confine myself to sashimi and crab, or something?”
“Well that’s better than curry, at any rate,” muttered the doctor. He stripped the shell from the horse crab that had just been delivered to their table, flipped it over, and set in on the ovaries and crab butter. Both suddenly grew taciturn as they settled down to commune with their crab. But neither had much of an appetite in fact. The doctor tipped some warm sake into his crab shell, mixed in some orange crab butter, and sat there sipping. Kita imitated him. This was called “crab shell sake,” he learned. “I’ve never come across it before,” he remarked. At this, the doctor launched into an enthusiastic lecture. Had he ever tried charfish bone sake? Or blowfish roe sake? You could also mix sake with salted sea-cucumber entrails… on he went.
“You’re some sort of gourmand, I see,” remarked Kita, sounding bored.
“You can’t have eaten any decent food in your whole life,” the doctor retorted firmly.
“I always had strong likes and dislikes as a kid.”
“Me too. Up until I was about twenty-seven.”
“So you turned around and became a gourmet at twenty-seven?”
“That’s right. My physical make-up changed with the death of someone I knew. He was a doctor, my teacher actually. The immediate cause of death was rupture of the heart, but his body was in such a bad way he could easily have died of any damn thing. Diabetes, cirrhosis of the liver, hypertension, bowel cancer, he had the lot. And how did he get that way? Overeating, nothing more nothing less. In the hospital he’d be handing out warnings on diet to the patients, but he exempted himself from his own rules.”
“You’re pretty weird yourself, but so was your teacher, eh?”
“Let me just finish. Patients generally come to hospital wanting to regain their health, right? But there’s no need for the doctors to be healthy. He was out to commit slow suicide, that’s my view. People who eat things they’re not supposed to eat, they’re shortening their life through a crime of conscience. That’s right, you can die by eating, you know.”
All along the doctor had acted like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, but suddenly all that changed and he now spoke in deadly earnest.
“He had an eating disorder, that’s what it comes down to. He recognized it himself, and he once told me it was related to his experience as an infant during the war. That fear of starvation never left him even in adulthood. He felt anxious and restless unless there was food nearby. As a result, there was always food in the refrigerator and cupboard. But once or twice a year, it would happen that stocks ran out. When he discovered this, he’d immediately go out and fill his belly somewhere or buy stuff in, no matter if it was past midnight, or in the middle of a typhoon. These days, of course, you’ve got twenty-four-hour convenience stores to take care of the anxiety of such people, but back then there were no convenient local food outlets. He’d have to get a taxi into the city centre to find one of those late-night shops.
“He used to play the gourmet and pretend it was an epicurean affectation that made him walk the streets in search of food. He defended a huge territory, and he was au fait with all manner of international foods and cuisine. When he travelled to conferences he’d make a point of hunting out the specialties and delicacies of the region, and astonish everyone with his appetite. He’d eat at least two dozen raw crabs, then demolish enough bouillabaisse for three. He could consume a two-pound T-bone steak, rare. He’d spend a long time at a sushi counter, ordering two rounds of everything they had on the menu.
“But all this is no more than you’d expect of your average glutton. He passed himself off as a suave, big-eating gastronome in company, but in fact he was the worst type of food eccentric. There’s nothing esoteric about being a food eccentric, no arcane knowledge or anything like that. He’d eat whatever he could get his hands on. Weird eating was his greatest pleasure in life. And one aspect of this discipline of his was food perversion.
“My teacher adored pigs’ ears. Now pigs’ ears are a staple item in Okinawa and Taiwan, where they eat them vinegared or jellied. Their gelatinous marrow and skin gives the dish a fabulous texture to the bite. You can turn a woman on by licking her ears, of course, but it’s not on to actually eat them. So you ease your frustration by eating pigs’ ears. My teacher never ate a single woman’s ear till the day he died, but he chewed up and digested the ears of no less than three hundred pigs to make up for it.
“He also had a passion for internal organs, brain and liver and kidneys, and so on, and he was a constant customer at the street stalls that specialized in offal dishes.
“Now freshness is everything when it comes to offal. He’d go to these places in Shinjuku in search of the organs of cattle killed that same day, and order up dishes of raw liver, heart, brains, and what have you. Raw brains have a richer taste than cod’s roe but they’re not as strong, and you can get quite addicted to the particular crisp texture of pink brainstem. Cattle have small brains relative to their overall bulk, so raw beef brain is quite costly. But that didn’t stop him. He’d order up three plates of it, until I found myself wishing I had four stomachs like a cow to hold it all. But this was just the hors d’oeuvres. The main course was beef offal stew. This went well with a heavy Bordeaux red, so he’d take a case along when he went. Offal may be a stamina food, the guy behind the counter would warn him, but it’s packed full of cholesterol remember. I’m a doctor, he’d say with a shrug, I know what I’m doing, and he’d order a second helping of stew.
“He was also a sucker for animal fat. Take thick noodles in a soup of back fat of pork, for instance. Or Chinese dumplings with a creamy stuffing made with heapings of that lard you use for heavy fry-ups. We’re still in the realm of fat that might be enjoyed by many people on a regular basis here, of course. But my teacher had what you might call a literal weakness for the stuff.
“Now we Japanese as a rule don’t go for fat, with the result that we have excellent longevity. You don’t die young just from eating the kind of fat you get in noodle soup or Chinese dumplings, for one thing. Let me just mention here that lard is a healthier kind of fat than butter or beef fat. Okinawans are long-lived, and Okinawa’s a lard paradise. Mind you, their impressive average life span is actually thanks to other causes. They have a balanced diet, and the climate and air are conducive to a long life. They’re not addicted to fat like some races.