“This teacher of yours wouldn’t be your old man, by any chance?”
Still holding his gaze, the doctor raised his lip in a lopsided wry smile. “You’re pretty smart. I am the son of this eccentric eater, you’re right.”
“And are you one too?”
“I’m no match for my father when it comes to appetite. I hated even eating while he was alive. I despised people who were addicted to food. I virtually lived on thin air. I didn’t eat red meat or fish. I’d occasionally snack on a leaf of lettuce or cabbage, or eat a piece of unbuttered toast. When it came to meals, it was a bowl of white rice and some miso soup. I ate what you might call the absolute minimum to survive.”
“Your own form of rebellion against your father, eh?”
“I imagine so, yes. I was twenty-seven when he died. After that, my physical constitution changed radically. My repressed appetite was liberated, and I started eating meat and fish. On the anniversary of his death I went off to one of those offal specialty restaurants and had beef brain, and when I went to France I made a point of visiting Provence to have cassoulet. But I must admit my stomach isn’t as strong as his was.”
“You inherited his appetite, but not his stomach?”
“That’s right. But I did inherit his despair. He expressed his destructive impulses through perverse eating, but I—”
“Murder people?”
“No, I haven’t murdered anyone yet. I try to, but I end up saving them. I’m still caught between killing and rescuing. I chose to become a doctor in order to render my murderous impulses harmless. I hoped the urge to destroy could be satisfied by cutting people open and messing about with their organs. But I was wrong. Pa’s eating problems worsened with age, and it seems my destructive impulses are doing the same thing.”
Why had the doctor chosen him to confess to? Kita wondered. Was it because he thought Kita would understand the despair of this gluttonous father and his murderous son? The doctor had analysed himself, but now what?
“You’re sick. Go and see a doctor.” Kita was trying to throw him off with a casually dismissive remark.
“I’m asking you to stand in for a doctor here,” the doctor replied.
Kita smiled wryly. “This is turning out to be some last supper,” he muttered.
“Kita, why do you want to die?”
Everyone he met asked him the same question, and he didn’t have an answer. He simply made up some witty response on the spur of the moment to get the other person off his back.
Now he said the first thing that came to him. “A kind of self-sacrifice, I guess.”
“So you think your death is going to help the world?”
“Not really, no.”
“OK, why die then?”
“My instincts are telling me to. Just like your instincts tell you to kill people and then to save them.”
“I get the feeling we’ve got something in common, you and me. We can’t explain our impulses.”
“Why don’t you want to kill yourself? You can save someone else by dying yourself, you know.”
“No, being alive allows me to save you. But in any case, the world doesn’t give a damn whether I live or die, it doesn’t suffer either way. Even if nothing much happens in the world on any given day, a lot of people still die. And we’re both going to join the anonymous dead sooner or later. The world at large doesn’t have anything to do with each and every person who dies, now, does it? We’re part of the world, but once we go the gap’s soon filled. My, what a cold hard world it is, how easily it forgets! How many of the dead do we each personally remember, hey? Family, close friends, important people we’ve respected, famous artists – probably no more than ten or so, right? But just think of the millions who die during our lifetime.”
“What’re you trying to say?”
“The world will abandon you.”
“So?”
“So haven’t you felt that before you die you’d like to do something that would lodge you in people’s memory somehow?”
“Not really, no. I don’t give a damn whether I’m forgotten or not.”
“Do you believe in the next world?”
“There’s no such thing. What was it Shinobu said? The next world is just the worst place, or something.”
“Even so you want to die?”
“Yes, I do.”
“You have no regrets? Nothing to tie you to life?”
“Nothing.”
“You have some grudge against the world perhaps?”
“When I die, my world will disappear. I can’t destroy the world. No matter how many people you kill, the world will still keep going. Mao Tse-tung, Stalin, Hitler – they all massacred vast numbers, but the world kept going. So you see, you should give up murder and kill yourself instead. That way you can at least get rid of the world you personally live in.”
“You say this, Kita, but surely you’ve struggled with the world? You’re actually a hero in disguise. The fight begins now.”
“You have a strong will to live. That’s why you kill others instead of yourself. You must be motivated deep down by hatred and malice, even if you can’t really comprehend yourself, I think. This will of yours to live’ll get the better of you one day, and you’ll die. Just like your father died from over-eating.”
Kita yawned and stood up.
“Where are you going?” cried the doctor, leaping hastily to his feet.
Kita smiled at him. “My father died a bland, kindly man. He was used by others all his life, he had no friends, he was abandoned by the world, and he died quietly alone. No one remembers him now. My mother’s lost her marbles, his son’s about to die. All that will be left is his grave. But most people in the world live like him, and die like him. Mao Tse-tung and Stalin and Hitler killed anonymous millions just like him. They killed some famous folk too, of course, but they were in the minority. So at least where dying’s concerned, I’m one up on my Dad. I managed to get a bit of my own back on the world, and I met the woman of my dreams.”
Kita put on his coat, shouldered his backpack, and disappeared into the crowded streets of Susukino. The doctor in turn picked up his heavy bag and set off after him, maintaining a steady distance.
All that remained by now in Kita’s wallet was two thousand five hundred ninety yen. Whatever he did now, his range of choices would be pretty limited – a nap in some sauna, for instance, or a couple of cheap drinks in a bar. Perhaps he should set himself up to sleep the night in a park or doss down between a couple of high-rises. No doubt he could dip into the doctor’s pocket for expenses, of course, but it felt somehow right to spend his last night on earth sleeping out in the open. It was time to gaze up into the sky in this northern city, ask the doctor to keep his mouth shut, and make some final decisions about how to carry out his imminent execution.
He walked slowly north from Susukino along Minami Shijo, heading for Odori Koen. The benches around the fountain were all occupied by couples, but along the street under the trees was emptier. He chose a spot between two trees, and the two of them spread out some newspaper salvaged from a garbage bin, and settled down for the night. Kita closed his eyes and concentrated on the question of how to kill himself, dimly aware of the distant cacophony from passersby in the park and its surrounding streets. Then it suddenly struck him that he wanted to try ski jumping just once before he died. Well how about throwing himself off the Okurayama ski jump where Sasatani had performed his feats back in the Sapporo Olympics? With luck, he’d smash himself up badly enough to die. As luck would have it, though, he might manage a successful jump. Either way, it was worth a try. How about tossing back the remaining bottle of vodka from the Russian sailors and then speeding down the ski slope on a bicycle? Even his internal organs would squirm with excitement, for sure.