Life Ceremony, page 7
“If that’s the case, I wish they’d stop judging people! It’s like their position has been the right one for the last hundred million years or something. If it’s always changing, it means it’s not certain, right? And even though it’s uncertain, everyone believes in it like a religion. It’s so weird.”
He shrugged. “Well, anyway, the world is but a brilliant mirage, a temporary illusion. I mean, it’s an illusion you can only see now, so how about enjoying it to the full while you can?” He picked up his chopsticks again and started putting some pork kimchi and chorizo on his plate.
“Have some veggies too,” I commented. “It’s not good for you to eat only meat.”
“No way. Omnivorous animals aren’t supposed to taste very good, are they? When I ate human flesh as a kid, I thought it tasted great, but that’s because Grandpa was a vegetarian. So I’ve decided to be a meat-arian in order to be tasty when it’s my turn.”
“Oh, c’mon!”
“Anyway. Eat delicious food, enjoy life, and taste good when I die so that those who eat me can summon the energy to give birth to new life. I don’t think that’s such a bad life. Oh, thanks.”
He took the freshly heated flask of sake with a smile, poured himself some, and began drinking.
Feeling irritable, I was about to light a cigarette when Yamamoto chuckled and glanced around the lively izakaya.
“You know what? I don’t think this world is all that bad. And I don’t think the world that you remember from thirty years ago was bad either. It’s always changed over time. The world here and now is just a momentary tint.”
“Huh?”
“I really like Disneyland, you know.”
“Ugh.” I screwed up my face. “I hate it.”
“I thought so.” He chuckled. As always when he laughed, his small round eyes went all black and his long eyelashes fluttered. “Nobody ever mentions the person inside the cartoon-character costume, do they? Everyone’s lying a bit. That’s what makes it a dream country. Our world isn’t any different, is it? Everyone keeps telling little lies, and that’s how the mirage is created. That’s why it’s beautiful—because it’s a momentary make-believe world.”
“What about the real world? Where the hell is that, then?”
“It’s the mirage that’s real. All our little lies are gathered together and become a reality that you can see only now.”
“I don’t understand. I don’t want to understand!”
Yamamoto laughed, and some sake spilled out of his cup. “Life must be tough for you, Iketani! Why not just enjoy yourself in this momentary world of lies?”
I blew out smoke. Maybe he was right. Maybe the world hadn’t just started transforming recently and we had been continually changing long before thirty years ago.
Even though I could understand the logic of what Yamamoto was saying, I was probably hoping for some kind of concrete certainty. That felt terribly childish. I felt a chill around my shoulders and rubbed them to warm up, then drank down my shochu topped up with hot water.
Yamamoto patted me on the back. “Don’t overthink things!” he teased. “When you go to an amusement park, you don’t wonder how the roller coaster is put together or how a merry-go-round is powered, do you? Just relax and live your life!”
I felt warmed by the comforting feeling of his hand rhythmically patting my spine and the taste of the strong alcohol flowing down my throat.
Yamamoto had something of a teddy bear about him. When I told him this, he said sadly, “Yes, there is. And that’s why women never fancy me.”
I burst out laughing. All of a sudden the chill had left me, and Yamamoto removed his large, warm hand from my back and took out a cigarette. The white smoke rising from where he was sitting on my right clouded my vision. Through the fog, Yamamoto’s long eyelashes fluttered as he laughed.
That weekend, I heard that Yamamoto was dead.
I was in my apartment doing the laundry. It was the first time in ages we’d had nice weather on the weekend, and I had just put some pillowcases and cushion covers into the washing machine when the phone rang. It was a colleague, a younger woman.
Yamamoto had apparently been on his way home on Friday night, after being out drinking with a friend from college days, when he was hit by a car. He didn’t have much in the way of visible injuries, but he’d hit his head badly.
“His life ceremony is tonight. You’ll go, won’t you, Iketani? You got along well with him, after all . . .” I could hear her sniveling as she spoke.
I don’t remember how I answered, or even when I hung up. The next thing I knew, I was kneeling on the floor, gripping my cell phone. I badly wanted to call Yamamoto and ask him if it was true that he had died.
I don’t know how long I remained sitting there in a daze. I heard the washing machine beep for the end of the cycle, and I stood up reflexively. Moving mechanically, I mutely hung the pillowcases and cushion covers up to dry. I knew it wasn’t the time to be doing this, but I didn’t know what else to do.
My parents were still going strong, and my grandparents had died before I was born, so it was my first experience of someone close to me dying. The movement of my hands and the sensation of the wet cushion cover felt distant. As I came back inside from the balcony, I staggered and caught hold of the mosquito screen.
Just then my phone rang again.
“Hello. Is this Maho Iketani?”
“Um, yes?”
“I’m Keisuke Yamamoto’s mother.” I held my breath, and the voice continued. “I’m sorry to call you suddenly like this. It’s just that your name comes up a lot in my son’s phone call history . . .”
“Oh . . . I mean, I knew him from work. He was very kind to me. He, um . . . please accept my deepest sympathies for your loss,” I stuttered.
“Oh, I am sorry! So you were his work colleague . . . I thought you might be a close friend.”
It appeared that she’d mistaken me for her son’s girlfriend or something. Come to think of it, Yamamoto had complained that although his mother wasn’t opposed to life ceremonies, she was against the breakdown of the family system and was always going on at him to start a proper family rather than having a child brought up in a center. To stop her from worrying, he’d even told her that he had a steady girlfriend and didn’t really bother with life ceremony inseminations. In reality, however, there was no such person in his life, and since mine was the female name that occurred most often in his call history, she had assumed it must be me.
“Um, Yamamoto was in a different department, but he was a good friend, and we often used to go out drinking together. I would like to come to today’s life ceremony too, if I may.”
“Thank you. My son would be delighted.”
“What time will it start?”
I must have heard this from the earlier call, but I had no recollection of it at all and felt again how very shaken up I was. I needed to hold on to something, and realized I was already gripping my skirt with my free hand.
“Well, we’re planning to start around six p.m., but it might have to be a bit later . . .”
“Oh, really?”
“My daughter and I are busy with the preparations, but we’re not making very good progress, so I think it’ll probably be a bit later.”
“Are you arranging it just between the two of you?” I was surprised. It was a huge amount of work to prepare for a life ceremony, so people usually got the professionals in, unless there were very good reasons not to. They couldn’t possibly do the whole thing by themselves, I thought. “Er, would you like me to come and help?”
“What?”
“Yamamoto was a friend, so . . . please do let me help,” I insisted, given her hesitation.
After I got her to agree, I immediately started getting ready to leave. I changed into some old jeans and trainers that I didn’t mind getting dirty and immediately went over to Yamamoto’s place.
It was imperative to serve human meat fresh, so unless there was any sign of foul play, the body was usually taken to the professionals right away. The accident had happened the night before last, so Yamamoto’s meat must be ready for cooking by now.
Yamamoto’s condo was in central Tokyo. When I arrived, his mother opened the auto-lock to let me in the building and hastily came out to greet me.
“I’m so sorry about this,” she said.
“No, really, it’s fine. I’m not sure how much use I’ll be, but . . .”
The polystyrene boxes containing Yamamoto had just been delivered and were still sitting in the hall.
“We don’t have many relatives, so the two of us are basically his only immediate family . . . I should have asked the professionals to do the cooking for us too, but it was a bit difficult for various reasons, and we decided to do it ourselves . . .”
“What do you mean, difficult?”
Yamamoto’s mother smiled uncomfortably. “He left detailed recipes. If you get the professionals to do it, all you’ll get is miso hotpot. My son apparently didn’t like that, and wants us to make him into meatballs in a grated daikon hotpot.”
“Grated daikon hotpot . . .?”
I was taken aback. Human meat was known for having a gamy taste, so it was standard to use strong flavorings with it. Would it be okay to use it in a hotpot that was known for its delicate flavor? My unease must have shown, as his mother nodded.
“It’s not going to be easy, but . . . I mean, that boy was such a foodie. He always was fussy about food, and it’s no different with the meal we are to make with his flesh. It isn’t just hotpot, you know. Stir-fry with cashew nuts, braised meat . . .”
“What? Not just hotpot?”
“That’s right. I want to respect his will as much as possible, but really, it’s a tall order!”
“Can I see the recipes?”
I looked at the file she held out for me. It contained numerous recipes on loose-leaf paper, organized according to ingredients. It was just like Yamamoto, a keen cook who loved food, to do something like this, I thought. There were numerous headings, such as pork, chicken, salmon, cabbage, daikon, and so forth, and at the very end was a final category: “My flesh.”
I leafed through that section to see that it was just as his mother had said, with detailed recipes for “Cashew Nut and Me Stir-Fry,” “Meatballs of Me in Grated Daikon Hotpot,” and so forth.
“It looks like he just jotted them down when they occurred to him,” his mother said, “and didn’t necessarily mean it as a will to follow. But still, he did write them down, and somehow it makes me want to respect his dying wishes . . .”
“I understand.”
It was true. Yamamoto had always gone on about wanting everyone to have a wonderful time at his own life ceremony.
He had jotted down instructions in tiny letters in the corners of the recipes, things like “Decorate the room cheerfully, like at Christmas”; “I really want everyone to savor this one”; “Make it a splendid ceremony so that there will be lots of insemination!”
Yamamoto had always had this girly side to him. The words in the recipes began to blur, and I hastily closed the file and rolled up my sleeves.
“Anyway, let’s get on with it. Where’s the arm
flesh?”
“In a box out there.”
I was just getting on with things in the kitchen when I heard the door open, and Yamamoto’s younger sister came in.
“I’m back! I bought some mizuna and daikon and—oh! Hello!” she said, apparently surprised to see me.
“I—er—I’ve come over to help,” I said, bowing my head in greeting.
“She’s from Keisuke’s workplace,” the mother explained simply.
The daughter frowned. “You see? I told you he didn’t have a girlfriend. He was too vain . . . I’m sorry that you got roped in like this.”
“No, not at all. Yamamoto was really kind to me.”
I couldn’t very well say that he was a smoking partner, so I simply took the supermarket shopping bags from his sister. They were stuffed full of items from Yamamoto’s recipes, like mizuna and cashew nuts.
“Okay, well, in that case, please do help. We’d better start with the more complex recipes or we’ll never be ready in time.” Glancing at the clock, she hurriedly tied her hair back.
I nodded. “Sure. I’ll start making the meatballs.”
I went out into the hall and looked at the Styrofoam boxes piled up there. There were seven or eight of them, filled with dry ice, so they felt cool to the touch.
All the difficult jobs, like draining his blood, skinning him, removing his innards, and processing waste and the part around his anus and so forth had been done by the professionals, and what was in the boxes was Yamamoto turned into meat on the bone. Normally the flesh was removed from the bone and sliced thinly, ready to put into the hotpot; this was the first time I’d ever seen human flesh prepared in various shapes and forms.
Yamamoto had been a bit worried about developing metabolic syndrome, but now, with him turned into meat, I could see that he wasn’t as fatty as I’d expected. Seeing the fresh red mixed with white, I thought how pretty he was.
I found the box with arm meat written on it, lifted it up, and took it into the kitchen. I took out Yamamoto’s arms, skinned and drained of blood, and began the task of cutting the flesh away from the bone. Meanwhile, his sister rushed in with another Styrofoam box and took out Yamamoto’s thighs.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll get on with preparing the meat for braising. Mom, can you boil some water to be ready for parboiling?”
With his sister briskly issuing instructions, we quickly got on with making Yamamoto into the recipes he’d prepared.
The professionals had done a good amount of the work for us, but you could still make out the form of Yamamoto in the meat. He and I had often gone out drinking together, and now, as I stripped the flesh from the bone, I remembered his strong, hairy arms lifting his beer glass.
These very arms had patted me on the back when I was down, and had dragged me out of the road when I was unsteady on my feet after drinking too much. Once, in the smoking room, I’d dropped ash on his arm, and he’d blown on the red patch and said reproachfully, “Ouch, that’s hot.”
And just last Monday this hand had given me an encouraging pat on the back. His big, gentle arms were now meat on the bone, lying quietly on the chopping board.
“It’s the first time I’ve ever cooked human meat,” I said. “It’s chunky, isn’t it? The only time I’ve seen raw human meat at a life ceremony, it had already been cut into thin slices.”
“Oh, really? Yes, it is chunky. Not like chicken or something. You can use milk to get rid of the smell, you know. It might be a good idea to soak it awhile before braising it.”
Stripping the meat off Yamamoto’s arm bone was hard work, a bit like dealing with a giant chicken wing. When I was done, I put Yamamoto, now just bone, back into the Styrofoam box, then started grinding batches of his meat in the food processor. It was slow going, and we’d never make it in time with that alone, so his mother was also mincing some with a kitchen knife.
Together we put Yamamoto into bowls, added some starch, onions, sake, and so forth, and then kneaded him before making him into a heap of meatballs. Meanwhile, his sister grated several large daikon radishes.
His mother had put two large pots of water on to boil. After seasoning the water with grated ginger, soup stock, and sake, we checked the flavor, then started putting in the meatballs.
Lastly we added enoki mushrooms, grated daikon, and mizuna, followed by sliced green onions and Chinese cabbage.
There wasn’t quite enough grated daikon, so I was grating some more when a pleasant aroma rose from the frying pan. Yamamoto’s sister was making the cashew-nut stir-fry.
“You’re a good cook, aren’t you,” I said.
“It’s my hobby,” she said shyly. “I go to cookery classes. Though it never occurred to me that they might come in handy for something like this, though.”
Now that the meatballs were cooking, we started on the braised meat. The recipe indicated braising the meat in salt, which tended to bring out a strong flavor. I took out the chunks that his sister had marinated in milk. The meat from Yamamoto’s thigh was bigger and heavier than I’d expected, and I thought that he probably had been suffering from metabolic syndrome after all.
I diced the meat and put it into a large pot, added green onions, garlic, and ginger, and brought it to a boil. Thanks to the milk, it didn’t smell too strong, but it wasn’t yet cooked enough for a bamboo skewer to pass through.
“Looks like it’s going to take some time,” I said.
“While it’s cooking, shall we decorate the room?”
We covered the meat with aluminum foil and left it to simmer while we started tidying up Yamamoto’s apartment. For seating, we placed his kotatsu in the center of the living room and alongside it two folding tables his mother had brought. It was quite a large apartment for someone living alone, but with three tables, there wasn’t much space for people to sit.
“It’ll be a bit cramped, but it can’t be helped.”
“People will be coming and going. It’ll be fine.”
Yamamoto’s sister began decorating the room with flowers and wreaths, as indicated in the scribbles on his recipes.
Meanwhile, the braising meat was tender enough to add some broth, sake, salt, and black pepper and put it back on to simmer on a low heat for a bit longer. When it was more or less done, we seasoned it with watercress, yuzu-flavored pepper paste, Japanese pepper, and mustard. We’d just served it up on a large dish when the doorbell rang.
