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.
Not only his stomach but his head was wracked with pain, and now the pains cycled more and more swiftly through him. Almost like the pangs of childbirth. There was pain in the birth of new life and the relinquishing of old life alike.
Even when the agony weakened a little, he now knew to anticipate the cycle, and was braced against its next onslaught. Then, just a little later than he’d anticipated, fresh pain would surge through him.
Today, it took twice as long to make his way down to drink water and return. He had all the time in the world, but how much longer would his strength hold? When all that was left was his bones, time would still flow gently along in the stream and forest.
His cheeks were sunken, his trousers were loose on his frame. The loss of flesh meant that the cold penetrated more fiercely. He sought out the sunlight as much as he could, and lay curled in it.
It was terrible not to sleep at night. The darkness and the silence doubled his suffering. The only tiny salvation was in the soft burr of the crickets. It sounded in his ears like music, like song. Then a cicada began, its rhythmic rasping call seeming to say “eat and sleep, eat and sleep,” or “life or death, life or death.”
For the insects, what lay here was a huge and marvellous lump of potential prey. They must be gathering round to check him out. After all, it would be their job to return him to the earth.
Rain fell. He settled his head so that his open mouth could catch the drops, and lay there for a while. This allowed him to forego the exhausting business of making his way down to the stream and back.
The rain brought a faint scent of herbs. Forest tea, he thought as he drank. He feverishly counted the drops that entered his mouth – a total of 5,411.
It must be poor circulation that made him feel so cold. But his body was frail now, and walking was a huge effort. His legs in particular felt terribly weak. Once he could no longer go for water, death would no doubt come quite swiftly.
He began to suffer fierce palpitations. His heart was racing uncontrollably, pumping blood around the body, desperately trying to keep his body temperature up. Kita was doing his best to die, but his heart was bravely trying to keep him alive. This pain that flowed into every corner of his body must be his organs and nerves rising up in protest at his death. But he was by now less than half alive.
His skin was parched, and flaking off in raised scales. Smelly pus oozed from the wound in his forehead.
Hey, worms, be glad and rejoice! You’ll soon be served a lovely big lump of meat jerky.
The pebbles he piled up one by one even on the days he didn’t go for a drink had now reached more than twenty. By now, his body no longer responded to orders. And yet he wanted water.