The torment went on, in a blur of day and night. He managed to piss a tiny trickle of urine once a day, but each time with more pain.
He thought perhaps an escape into the world of dreams would lessen the suffering a little, but the dreams were never pleasant. He was tired of dreaming. He wanted to become a figure in someone else’s dream for a change. That way he’d feel neither pain nor cold, even if he were beaten, abused, even killed.
This was horrible. All he was doing was not eating, so why should he be suffering such pain and cold?
Christ underwent a fast of forty days in the wilderness in his thirtieth year. Buddha attained enlightenment after a forty-day fast, and Moses was given the Ten Commandments after fasting forty days. So all the great religious founders had undergone this horrible suffering. They must have had exceptional powers of endurance. More than likely, though, these saints were either extreme masochists, or people with an exceptional physical make-up.
He hadn’t had the slightest intention of getting pally with the saints, or of understanding how they’d felt. He’d only wanted to die a light-hearted death. If he’d realized what a cruel ordeal those men had been through, he’d have bowed in heartfelt reverence before both God and the Buddha.
The saintly hermits of old would have tasted the extremes of loneliness, hallucination, and suffering as they underwent their experiences of life and death, light and dark, good and evil, freedom and restraint. Those fierce oppositions would have registered along their nerves as aching head, aching stomach, cold, nausea, paralysis, dream, hallucination, and fear. Half dead, their thoughts came with the half-life left to them. They saw no one, ate nothing, made no attempt to escape or hide; they relinquished the self, and existed simply in this in-between state. The unbearable pain of fasting would have driven them again and again to almost yield to the temptation to flee to either life or death. Life up till now wasn’t all that bad, they’d have thought. Now that I’ve withstood all this suffering, the old life will feel wonderfully easy after this. They may have felt that it was better after all to resign yourself to the constraints of normal life rather than endure this brutal freedom. Or maybe they felt more inclined to give up trying to think with the life that remained to them, and instead simply hasten their death.
Yet they resisted. They stood firm in this limbo state, learned the art of enduring the cruel extremes of freedom, and in the end walked back among the people again. No doubt what awaited them there were misunderstandings and oppression by the authorities. No one would be able to think like them, or have the strength to endure as they had. They had nothing more to fear. It was the people and the authorities that now feared them.
And he had mistakenly entered that same limbo, where misunderstanding, persuasion, discrimination, and persecution meant nothing.
Having understood so late in the day, Kita felt the urge to pray to something. He had defiled holy ground, and he feared that still crueller torments awaited him. And now, for the first time since chasing himself into this forest, he felt that it would be better to escape.
This was the worst day so far. Pain stabbed at him constantly, and he was assailed by a nausea so strong it threatened to turn his guts inside out. Twisting his now useless body about he struggled to endure, lost consciousness when the pain became too great, regained it again to continue his suffering.
He had forfeited all chance of escape now. In a few more days he’d surely be dead.
Rain fell, and for the first time in three days water touched his mouth. The clouds were bringing water for the dying.
If he had a phone handy, he’d like to get onto the god of death and say Quick, kill me! I’m waiting!
He wasn’t fasting. No, it’s just that there wasn’t any food, nor any appetite. The thought made him want to laugh. Food has escaped me. And there’s no way I can escape.
He no longer knew whether he felt pain, or cold, or indeed anything.
He’d grown very thin and light. Shrivelled as a slice of dried squid. Put him over a flame and he’d curl.
Water, he wanted water. Once the messenger of death came for him, he’d be taken to the River Styx. Then he could drink his fill.
Rain. He’d thought he’d be dead by morning, but there was still some life in him after all. Lots of rain today. He’d drunk a bit too much. Pissing was painful. Once he’d managed to piss, his body was attacked by sharp pains like being packed in needles of ice. Maybe he’d die of cold before he died of starvation.
If only the forest would burst into flames, he prayed. It would release him from this cold, and give him a cremation.
A beautiful day. Same pain, but less excruciating if he stopped focusing on it. Come what may, he’d try going for water today he decided. His legs had completely given in by now, but he could roll down the slope, and crawling was still possible. But he wouldn’t be able to get back to the cave, would he? He didn’t have the strength to make himself a new bed sheltered from the rain and wind. Well, he was nine tenths dead by now, so what did it matter? He could choose to stay in this coffin till he shrivelled to a mummy, or return to earth somewhere out there among the dwarf bamboo, or set off to meet the River Styx halfway – at any rate, he’d die faster by moving.
So out he crawled. OK, he thought, let’s see if I can walk. He tried standing with the support of the rock face. His legs no longer had anything to do with him. His will set off to walk, but his legs refused to do as they were told. He staggered three steps, his body carried unwillingly along above the tottering legs, then collapsed.
He tried again and again, crawling along on all fours in short bursts, but he’d only gone barely thirty yards from the cave when his strength gave out.
He rolled over and looked at the sky. The clouds were laughing. Ah, he thought with a sigh, how stupid I’ve been to struggle, and he made his way back to the cave with the same repetition of crawl and stagger. He’d finally given in now. It was just that it was such a beautiful day he couldn’t bear to stay still.
He’d now become part of this nameless forest.
His cells were cannibalizing each other, it seemed to him. The law of strong eats weak was being displayed right here in his own body. And cannibalism hurt.
Still being dismembered? Not over yet?
He really should have drowned. Compared to starvation, all those other deaths – drowning, hanging, electrocution, falling off a cliff, poisoning, shock – were just a roller-coaster ride.
Still not dead? Oh come on, stop joking.
I’ll be there soon. Just have to cut the thread.
Even after all this, still dreaming. Still a bit left in the battery, eh? The doctor was serving in a convenience store, and he complained when Kita turned up to buy a packet of instant curry.
“I’m supposed to get your organs when you die, you know.” Good God, he was still on about that. Forget the organs, just remove the pain in here, will you?
He really should be dead by now, but the pain was still there.
What’s that? A helicopter? Has a war begun, maybe?
Hey, looks like someone’s out there. Come to fetch me across the river at last, is that it?
Nausea. Come on, spew me out onto the far shore for God’s sake.
Where am I? Still in limbo, it seems…
WHAT IS “DEATH BY CHOICE”?
How are you?
I’m so-so, myself. Bored, as usual. One life cycle completed and into extra time, pottering about in my tiny patch of garden like an Englishman intent on finding his pleasures among the mediocrities of existence, tending cucumbers and scallions, and cutting lengths of bamboo from the local grove to make little bamboo trinkets. Younger friends remark that age seems to be catching up with me these days, and I guess it’s true, I’ve reached that time of life. And now, in my dotage, I’ve come up with this kind of desperate novel, in which I’ve given myself free rein to portray a decadence in keeping with this fin de siècle moment, and preparations for what’s to come. Those who read this book will be a step ahead of everyone else by getting a sneak preview of life and opinions at the beginning of the twenty-first century.