“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.
Kita changed out of the casual jersey he’d borrowed, back into his own personal clothing style again, whispered his thanks to Mrs Kikui for the great food and the useful consultation, and attempted to tiptoe out leaving the sleeping doctor behind.
“You’ve changed your mind, haven’t you now?” urged Mrs. Kikui, seeing him off to the doorway. Kita had slept off the marijuana high and returned to normal. He smiled at her, and replied that he was off to the sea to get rid of everything.
“You’re sure you shouldn’t take the doctor along? He’s your personal physician, isn’t he? After all, he came along with you to save you, didn’t he?”
“We’re parting ways. I’ll be fine on my own now. Where’s Aki?”
“She’s around somewhere. You take good care, now. Oh, wait a moment.” She disappeared into the kitchen and quickly re-emerged with something wrapped in cling film, which she handed to Kita. “Please take it. This came from the garden.”
It was a ball of freshly picked marijuana leaves. Boy, thought Kita, this was his lucky day. What kindness he’d received from this house he’d dropped in on out of the blue. His luck would surely hold this afternoon.
When he got back to the white Camaro, there was Aki in the passenger seat, holding her camera.
The doctor wiped his sweat, breathing heavily. He’d only just managed to escape from a dream in which the white Camaro came racing straight at his bed. Seeing no sign of Kita, he got up and went outside to search. Where was he? he asked Mrs Kikui, who was busy at her make-up. What? He’d headed off towards the sea?
Kita had gotten the better of him. Still in his borrowed jersey, the doctor hurried out, clutching his fifteen-pound bag. There was no sign of the white Camaro. How had Kita managed to turn on the engine? Hastily, the doctor arranged to borrow the family’s pick-up truck. Even if he couldn’t prevent Kita’s suicide, he must somehow manage to extend someone else’s life by transplanting those organs. A grim determination seized him.
Kita reluctantly agreed to take Aki as far as the town. But when they got there she remained stubbornly glued to her seat.
“Your Mum will be worried,” he told her, but she shrugged this off. “I’ll get pretty excited when I’m about to die, you know. You could get raped,” he tried, but she responded to this threat with a bluff, “That doesn’t scare me.” Was she prepared to lay her body on the line to prevent him from killing himself? Why were all these messengers cropping up to stand in his way? His problems all began with Heita Yashiro, then there was the ex-porn star, the four times failed suicide, the driver with the nihilist fixation, the old couple off on their journey to die on the wayside, and the Koikawa brother and sister who sold life insurance and body parts. When he’d gone to see his Mum he’d found her senile, and his old sweetheart Mizuho Nishi had lost her darling son and was in mental anguish. True, Shinobu’s Mass had soothed his heart, but then he’d somehow gone and abducted her, and thereby inflicted that doctor-turned-killer on himself. Then he’d had a lecture from the lady of the house he happened to drop in on, and now here was the daughter, firmly stuck to him.
Shinobu would say, “These are all messengers from God, you know. God has decreed that this man mustn’t be killed. These messengers are all using whatever means they can to massage your heart back to normal, and draw you away from the temptation of death.”
Right, thought Kita, I’ll send her a farewell message. He got out of the car and headed for a phone booth, with Aki shadowing him, clicking away with her camera. Maybe she was planning to record the last thoughts of someone condemned to Death by Choice.
No sooner had he dialled than Shinobu came on the line, as if she’d been sitting there waiting.
“Kita? Is that you? Where are you? Are you far away? Come back as soon as you can.” She sounded dispirited. He guessed that as soon as he’d gone those vultures had gathered around again to peck and harass her. “What’s the matter? Say something!”
“You OK?”
“No, I’m feeling absolutely lousy. Come back and abduct me again, Kita.”
“Sorry, honey, that’s not on. I have to tell you goodbye.”
“Don’t! I want to see you again! What reason have you got to die? What have you ever done that could justify this?”
“It’s recompense for my sins.”
“What sins? Abduction? No one’s blaming you for anything, Kita.”