Life Ceremony, page 8
“Do come in!” his sister said into the interphone, opening the auto-lock door. It was time for the life ceremony to begin. Hurriedly, I added some yuzu peel to the reheated large hotpot for the finishing touch.
Yamamoto’s condo was full of people who had come for his life ceremony.
“I’m sorry . . . we should have rented a larger venue,” his mother said, opening some red wine and bringing it to the table.
“Miss Iketani, the hotpot should be ready now,” his sister said to me as she attended to the frying pan, so I nodded at her and took the Yamamoto grated daikon hotpot into the living room.
“Oh! Daikon hotpot!”
“Wow!”
A chorus of exclamations went up, and everyone peered into the pot.
“There’s ponzu sauce and yuzu, so please help yourself. And here’s some more grated daikon too, so be sure to add it as you eat.”
“Iketani, did you come to help out?” asked some of my colleagues who had come along.
“Yes, that’s how it ended up. Please eat as much as you like!”
“Thank you!”
Just then, Yamamoto’s sister came in with the cashew-nut stir-fry and the stew. “Sorry to have kept you waiting,” she said.
“Oh my, so it’s not just hotpot?”
“Amazing! That must have been so much work.”
Seeing everyone’s beaming faces, I felt somehow proud. Yamamoto was the sort of guy who liked to see everyone looking happy. It was perfectly fitting to his character to wish for such a warm atmosphere at his own life ceremony.
Just as he had hoped, everyone was smiling. I thought he must be the only person in the whole world to have been made into such a sumptuous feast.
After each of the various meat dishes had been met with applause as they were lined up on the table, Yamamoto’s sister said, “Well then, let’s begin.”
Everyone put their hands together, said “Itadakimasu,” then started eating.
“Come on, you too, Iketani!”
I sat down at the end of the table and helped myself to a plateful of Yamamoto meatballs.
“I thought you didn’t like human meat, Iketani,” a younger colleague said in surprise.
“Oh no, it’s not that I don’t like it. It’s just that it usually gives me an upset stomach,” I replied. “But today it’s daikon hotpot, so I’ll stuff myself!”
I picked up my chopsticks, placed an entire Yamamoto meatball steeped in broth in my mouth, and gently chewed.
The meat juices spread through my mouth, filling it with different flavors: the acidity of the yuzu juice, the fresh-mouth feel of the grated daikon, and the mellow yet full flavor of the meat, stronger than beef or pork but not as gamy as wild boar.
“Oof, it’s hot!” I huffed with my mouth open, relishing the taste. It was not at all strong-tasting, as we had prepared it so thoroughly, nor was it gristly, despite being ground meat.
The umami of the meat blended with the tang of the broth and slowly melted on my tongue. The slightly spicy grated daikon covering the meatballs added an extra accent, enhancing the flavor.
Next I served myself some of the Yamamoto braised meat. It was packed with flavor. The yuzu pepper paste really suited the rich flavor of human meat. The condiments had elegantly settled the slight tang of wild animal, and it would have gone well with some white rice. The more I chewed on it, the mix of firm and chewy chunks of meat with the plump, fatty bits yielded an even deeper flavor. I added a little mustard, which drew out yet more umami, and the meat and its juices spread through my mouth.
“I always thought red wine was best suited for human meat, but this would go well with white too, wouldn’t it?”
“There’s some white too, if you like,” Yamamoto’s mother said as she went around happily filling people’s glasses.
The life ceremony that day was a grand celebration. A lot of people came and went, and many couples paired off for insemination and left hand in hand.
The hotpot was emptied any number of times, and we kept bringing in more vegetables and meatballs from the kitchen to replenish it.
People who had loved Yamamoto were eating him, using his life force to create new life.
For the first time, it occurred to me that the life ceremony was actually a wonderful ritual. I was completely absorbed in eating Yamamoto, and also running around bringing in more of him to replenish the dishes.
The dreamlike event came to an end, the meatballs and braised meat were finished, and the life ceremony was declared over.
As we were clearing up afterward, Yamamoto’s sister came over to me with two Tupperware boxes.
“Miss Iketani, thank you so much for all your help today. Please take this home with you.”
Inside was some of the Yamamoto cashew stir-fry and some rice balls.
“Oh, are you sure?”
“I put some aside for you before it was all eaten up. I didn’t have any special ingredients for the rice balls, so I just filled them with some of the braised meat. You were so busy that you didn’t really get to eat much. Please have it as a late-night snack, or something. It’s not much, but a small token of our gratitude.”
“That’s lovely. Thank you so much,” I said, taking the Tupperware boxes of food. It had gone cold, but the delicious aroma still rose from it.
I left Yamamoto’s condo and suddenly decided to go and have a picnic. I had some rice balls and a dish to go with them. Apart from anything, I was too worked up to sleep even if I did go straight home.
I saw traces of semen here and there in the area around Yamamoto’s condo. Hopefully it was all from people who had paired off for insemination at the ceremony. I had the feeling that Yamamoto’s life, like the fluff from a dandelion, had flown out into the world.
The late train I’d taken finally came out by the seaside in Kamakura.
Yamamoto had loved the sea. When we’d gone on the company trip to Misaki Port, he’d rolled up his jeans to go paddling in the water, ignoring everyone who tried to stop him, and his clothes had gotten soaked.
The seaside is great. Humans have lived by the ocean since ancient times, so our DNA responds to it fondly. That’s what he’d said at the time.
This was the world that Yamamoto had treasured. We humans were here for only a moment, the time it takes to blink in the flow of time experienced by the big lump we call Earth. In that enormously long moment, we continued to evolve and transform. I was here in a momentary scene of the never-ending kaleidoscope.
I slowly opened the Tupperware boxes. Three rice balls filled with Yamamoto braised meat were neatly packed inside one, and in the other was some of the Yamamoto cashew stir-fry, with lots of red peppers and other vegetables.
“Um, what are you doing?” a voice suddenly asked.
I turned around in surprise. A man I didn’t know was standing there with a flashlight.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“No, not at all . . . I live in the neighborhood and happened to see you walking unsteadily toward the sea at night, and I was a little worried about you.”
He must have thought I was about to commit suicide. I held up the boxes of food for him to see.
“I’m just having a picnic. I’m sorry to have surprised you.”
“No, no, it’s fine . . . but it’s a weird time of night to be having a picnic, isn’t it?”
“This is a friend of mine called Yamamoto. I’ve been at his life ceremony all day, and I was given these leftovers, so brought them here to eat.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Um, would you like to share him with me?” I asked, thinking it’d be quite nice to have someone to talk to, but the man tilted his head to one side, uncertain of how to respond.
“I’d like to, but since you’re talking about a life ceremony . . . I mean, I’m gay.”
I held out a rice ball for him. “It’s okay. I didn’t mean it like that. The food is made from recipes my friend himself devised.”
The man peered curiously into the boxes and sat down next to me.
“That is unusual, isn’t it? I’ve only ever eaten human meat in a miso hotpot.”
“That’s the usual way. But it’s also delicious stir-fried like this.”
“Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind.”
We started eating the food, watching the nighttime sea.
“This is delicious. Actually, I hadn’t had dinner yet and was feeling hungry.”
“I’m so glad. Please eat as much as you like.”
Fragments of Yamamoto were being scattered out into the world, turning into energy in people’s stomachs. That delighted me enormously.
“Having eaten this, it’s a pity I can’t carry out the insemination, isn’t it? If it wasn’t so late, I’m sure there would have been a lovely man for you to do it with around here.”
“No worries. It’s not like I absolutely have to do it.” I smiled and then burst out laughing. “Put like that, it kind of makes us sound like plants sending out pollen, doesn’t it? When a life ends, it flies far away and fertilizes new life.”
“True. Yeah, that’s the way it is. Pretty mysterious when you think about it.”
“But then, if I’m a pistil, it would be odd for me to fly.”
“Why? So what if a pistil flies?” The man picked up some of the cashew stir-fry with his disposable chopsticks and carried it to his mouth.
“Yamamoto’s cashew-nut stir-fry really is super delicious,” he added, narrowing his eyes in pleasure.
“Right? He goes well with cashew nuts, doesn’t he? I never realized it when he was still alive.”
I listened to the sound of the ocean, then suddenly thought of something.
“Um, can you remember what it was like thirty years ago?”
“What?”
I bit into a rice ball, feeling somehow like I was floating in the sound of the waves. Maybe I was still a little drunk from the wine.
“Back then we didn’t have the custom of eating human meat,” I murmured. “Do you remember that time?”
“Oh . . . but I wasn’t born yet. I’ve only just turned twenty-four. When I was little, it was already kind of normal to eat it.”
“Oh, I see . . .”
The man tilted his head inquiringly as if to ask, What about it?
“What if people back then could see us eating Yamamoto in a cashew-nut stir-fry now?” I blurted out. “They’d think we were out of our minds, wouldn’t they?”
He thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, I think they would.”
“Do you think that’s strange? The world is changing so fast I no longer know what’s right or wrong, and now we are here following the current custom eating Yamamoto like this. Do you think we’re weird?”
He shook his head. “No, I don’t. I mean, normal is a type of madness, isn’t it? I think it’s just that the only madness society allows is called normal.”
“Eh?”
“So I think it’s fine. As things are now, Yamamoto is delicious and we are normal to think so, even if people in a hundred years’ time think we’re mad.”
I listened to the sound of the waves. The sound Yamamoto had loved.
The man finished eating his rice ball and stood up. “Thank you so much for sharing that. I’d better be going now.”
“Okay.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to accompany you back into town?”
“No, that’s fine. I want to walk a little more; then I’ll find somewhere to stay for the night.”
“Okay, then.”
We said goodbye, and I walked along the beach.
There was a couple engaged in insemination on the beach. What would that have looked like back when it was still called sex? Was it treated as a sacred action the way insemination is now? Or was it considered dirty? It must have been considered dirty, given that it was done out of sight.
I was vaguely wondering about such things when I felt a tap on my back.
Surprised, I turned to see the man again.
“Sorry to make you jump. Um . . . this is for you.”
“What?”
He held out a small bottle. “I put it in there just now, so please do accept it.”
I peered at the bottle and saw a white liquid inside it.
“I went to the toilets to do it. They say it dies when it comes into contact with the air, so I don’t know whether it’ll work. But I wanted to do what I could for Yamamoto’s life ceremony.”
“Thank you!”
I took the still-warm bottle from him. “I’m so happy. I’m sure it’s still alive. I heard somewhere that sperm is protected by the outer layer of semen, so even when it comes into contact with the air, it can live for three days in the right conditions. Thank you so much! I’ll use it very carefully.”
He was sweating slightly from his recent effort. “You’re welcome. Yamamoto really was delicious. I hardly ever go to life ceremonies, but having eaten him, I wanted to participate even if only in some small way,” he said with a smile.
“I’m so pleased. Yamamoto would be happy too.” I looked at the bottle in my hand.
“The bottle originally had star sand in it. It was in my bag, and the only suitable container I had at hand.”
“Are you sure, really? It’s so pretty,” I murmured. The white liquid teeming with life was so pretty that I wanted to think it was the star sand itself.
“Wow, what’s going on?” the man muttered suddenly, as if surprised.
“What?”
“Incredible! Did you bring them with you?”
I turned and saw that all of a sudden there were a lot of people on the beach. I strained my eyes for a closer look and realized that they were all engaged in insemination.
“Whenever there’s a life ceremony, the beaches around here are always full of people doing this. I didn’t hear of anything happening today, though.” He tilted his head, puzzled. “Well, there wasn’t any need for me to bring that bottle after all, was there?” He sounded quite embarrassed.
“Oh no, not at all. I’ll use it! Definitely, I’ll inseminate myself with it.”
He laughed bashfully. “Okay, I’ll be off now, then,” he said, and left.
Now that I was on my own, I rolled my jeans up to the knees and walked into the sea.
The beach was full of people engaged in insemination, their white arms dimly flickering as they writhed on the sand.
It was like a scene from antiquity, ancient life-forms coming out of the sea onto the land. I hadn’t witnessed such a thing, but what was happening that night felt like a nostalgic, important memory, and I watched the white shapes and black waves unblinkingly. I could understand Yamamoto’s fondness for the ocean.
I made my way between the copulating couples, the waves lapping at my legs as I moved deeper into the water.
The entangled bodies resembled plants in the moonlight. I carried on through the numerous white trees, a whole forest immersed in water.
I carried on until I was up to my knees in the water, then pulled my jeans down. I poured the white liquid from the bottle into my hand and slowly inserted it into my body.
Semen spilled from my fingertips.
Yamamoto’s life, dispersed from the warm meal in his condo into the ocean and into the world.
Maybe a miracle would occur, and I would conceive. Even if I didn’t, the world in which we exchanged sperm like this somehow struck me as beautiful.
As I stood there enveloped in the sound of the waves, semen trickled down my legs. Water teeming with life caressed my thighs.
Right now, in the absolute normality that existed only in this brief moment in the long flow of time on this planet, semen was being sucked up into my body.
For the first time in my life I dissolved into this normality. Dyed by the colors of the ever-changing world, I became part of the tint of this unique moment.
The night deepened, and the sky and sea turned pitch-black. Yamamoto’s life was slowly absorbed into my flesh. As I blended with him into one life, I closed my eyes, my legs still immersed in our beloved water. The sound of the waves caressed the eardrums of all of us there engaged in insemination.
Body Magic
“How come you and Shiho Hashimoto are friends, Ruri?”
I was sitting chatting with Aki and Miho when they suddenly came out with this. “It’s so weird. I mean, you’re in the same club at school, but you’re totally different types.”
We were in our second year of junior high school, and some of the girls in our class were rounding out and beginning to look like adult women, while others still had boyish bodies, their contours hardly changed since elementary school.
I was often mistaken for being in senior high school, or even for a college student sometimes, maybe because of my almost waist-length straight black hair or the fact that I’d grown so tall. Or because, as everyone kept saying, I had big breasts. My friends were always saying I acted so grown up, too. Shiho, on the other hand, still looked young enough to slip on her elementary school backpack at any moment, and when we were together, we must have really stood out as incongruous.
Shiho hadn’t grown at all since starting junior high. Her school uniform was still too big for her, and when she held her arms up, you could see the white skin under her armpits through the cuffs of her summer shirt. She was quiet, and always sat in a corner of the classroom chatting with the equally well-behaved Igarashi and Sasaki, or otherwise absorbed in a book alone at her desk.
Along with Aki and Miho, I was one of the more “clued-in” girls. I was often told by classmates that I was clued in, and Aki and Miho apparently didn’t doubt that they were too, but what did that even mean? Clued in to what? Did it mean looking more grown up than other classmates, or knowing a lot about fashion and makeup and going out with a senior high school boy the way Aki did, or going out for drives until late with a university student home tutor like Miho did? I couldn’t help thinking it was a bit of a childish word.
