Orange rays of light spilled in through the window, landing on the metallic box sitting on top of the dining-room table. I’d found the box deep inside the wardrobe. It was a shabby old thing that had, at one time, contained cookies. It was my box of treasures from when I was a little kid. I stared at it for a while. It held things that were important to me at one time, and I’d completely forgotten about its existence. Whatever was in it, I probably wouldn’t consider it treasure at this point in my life.
People are fickle that way. Something they once valued becomes meaningless to them almost overnight. Even the most treasured presents, letters, and beautiful memories are forgotten about, becoming useless odds and ends. Long ago I had sealed my treasures in this box along with my memories. I hesitated over opening it. I couldn’t do it. I went out instead.
I left the apartment and headed to the funeral home. I decided to plan my own service. The funeral home was on the far edge of town and had an elegant ceremonial hall, showing just how lucrative this business was. I talked to the salesman and discussed their various packages. The salesman was warm and understanding when I explained my circumstances, and went through the fees for the various items. I would have to buy a portable Buddhist altar, a coffin, flowers, a portrait of myself to display by the coffin, an urn for my ashes, a Buddhist tablet, a hearse, and of course I’d have to pay for the cremation. It all came to 1,500,000 yen. This is how much it would cost for one small funeral, which I was obviously paying for myself. Everything cost something—the cotton stuffed in the corpse’s nose, the dry ice placed in the coffin, and so on. The blow-by-blow explanation seemed to go on and on.
The dry ice alone (put in the coffin so that the body won’t decay) would cost 8,400 yen per day. So stupid! Each of the items was ranked with a breakdown of the price given. Even after death there’s a scale you’re graded against! What awful creatures we humans are!
But it doesn’t stop there. You can also go for options like natural wood, or it can be carved, lined with suede, or even lacquered—cost per item anything from 50,000 to 1,000,000 yen!
The salesman led me into a dimly lit room where they displayed the coffins. I tried to imagine myself inside of one of those things. My funeral. But who would come? Let’s see… friends, former lovers, relatives, former teachers, colleagues… and how many of these people would really grieve for me? And when it came time for the eulogy, what would they say about me?
He was a nice and funny guy, or he was lazy, impatient, hot-headed, unpopular, a loser who couldn’t get a date.
What will they talk about? What memories will they share as they gather around my casket?
Thinking about this I started to wonder. What had I given to the people around me while I was alive? What would I be leaving behind? My whole life will be summed up in those moments that I won’t be around to see—the time after I’m dead. In all the thirty years I’d been alive this was the first time I’d ever thought about this. My whole existence had taken place within this little sliver of time that sat between two much larger chunks of time—during which I didn’t exist. It’s been within this narrow slice that I have made my mark… for whatever it’s worth.
I returned home to a space that, after the cleaning and organizing, seemed as if it had been hollowed out. Cabbage came up to me and meowed again and again, as if complaining about having been left alone there. The apartment was so empty now, there was something eerie about it. I placed the raw tuna I’d bought at the fish shop in the old shopping district on a plate. Cabbage signaled his pleasure with an odd-sounding meow as if to say, “Indeed, you have finally gathered my meaning!” Then he started gobbling down the tuna.
While Cabbage was busy eating I picked up the old cookie container on the table and stared at it for a while. Then finally I opened it. This is where I kept all my hopes and dreams as a boy. It was my stamp collection.
There were stamps of all colors and sizes from around the world. All at once the memories began flooding in. They were memories of my father. When I was a small boy my father bought me a collection of Olympic commemorative stamps. They were small and colorful, and too special to use for mailing letters. After that, my father often brought me presents of stamps. Small and large stamps, Japanese stamps and stamps from foreign countries. My father was so shy and reserved, he rarely spoke. So the stamps became a kind of way for us to communicate. It’s strange, but it’s almost as if I understood what he was thinking about depending on the kind of stamps he gave me.
When I was in elementary school my father traveled to Europe with a group of friends. He sent postcards from all of the places he visited. There were large, colorful stamps on the postcards. The one I remember most clearly had a picture of a cat yawning. It made me laugh. It looked just like Lettuce. It was one of the few jokes my father ever came up with. It made me happy, and I removed the stamp by soaking the postcard in water overnight. I added it to my collection. I couldn’t sleep that night imagining all the places my father had visited in Europe. I imagined him on a street corner in Paris, buying the cat stamp at a shop, speaking in stilted French, and then sitting in a cafe writing the postcard. I even imagined him dropping the card into a yellow mailbox, and then the postman collecting it, taking it to the airport where it was loaded with other mail heading for Japan. And then finally the postcard would be delivered to my own town and then to our house. The entire journey of the postcard after it had been posted fascinated me.
Finally I understood why I ended up being a postman. I would spend ages gazing at the stamps, all the different colors and the many countries they’d come from. There were all kinds of pictures and designs on the stamps. Pictures of people and places I could only imagine. They became really precious to me.
Then I thought about all the things I might have made disappear from the world if I’d gone on with the Devil’s deal. Maybe the world wouldn’t have changed that much without these things in it, but at the same time, it’s all these individual objects, along with all the other things that exist, that make up this world. That’s what occurred to me as I held these little squares cut out of paper. Somehow I began to feel like the whole process of placing a stamp on an envelope and mailing it, it arriving at its destination, had a deeper meaning. Just imagining it gave me a certain warm, happy feeling.
Then I realized what I needed to do in the time left to me. I needed to write you a letter. I needed to write about all the things I’d never told you these past years. The thousands of words that lay dormant within me, all the greetings I never sent your way, the emotions I never shared. I let all my feelings flow out of me onto the paper, and put a stamp on it. I imagine all the stamps scattering and falling like flower petals, decorating my final moments.
So many stamps with so many pictures: a festival, a horse, a gymnast, and a dove; a Japanese woodblock print, and an ocean. A piano, a car, people dancing, and flowers, great men remembered by their various nations. An airplane, a ladybug, a desert, and a yawning cat. At the moment of my death when I lie down and close my eyes. All of them swirl round and round above me. A phone rings, and on the screen an old silent movie plays—Limelight, then the hands of the clock begin to move, and all the letters fly through the air. Red, blue, yellow, and green, purple, white, and pink. The many-colored envelopes flutter away into the pale-blue sky. And quietly, I breathe my last. Before the myriad of stamps, and the letters expressing endless pain, but also unlimited happiness, in all my smallness, alone, I die with a faint smile on my face.