I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like (33 page)

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Yeah, so what?

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At some point I was already perceiving things when her mind didn’t exist.

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So what? Tomo said, sitting up again.

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After we die our mind is nowhere.

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Uh huh.

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But it’s also there before we’re born. Before we’re born and after we die we’re free from having dreams. Why do you think we spend all our time memorizing things? Adults are getting closer to death, which is the same as getting closer to never having been born. For their minds, I mean.

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What about an afterlife?

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No one really believes in that. They know they were nowhere before they were born and they’re afraid to go back. They know they can’t keep their dreams, so they make us memorize them.

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What kind of dreams are you talking about?

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Their names, the countries... all the gods. Measurements. Someone dreamed that the sun is ninety-three million miles from the earth. Now we’re not allowed to forget it.

Park shifted on his seat as two office ladies entered and sat across from them. He lowered his voice.

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They’re going to fail, though. I don’t know the names of my great-grandparents, and I’m sure you don’t either. If they had any dreams, I don’t know what they are. I envy the freedom they have now.

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Why?

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They have the freedom of a fictional character. It’s the same freedom you had before you were born. You can imagine their names and people can tell you about them, you can read about their lives, but there’s no awareness behind them. They have no views.

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I don’t know, Tomo said. I don’t want to die.

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Don’t get so attached. Don’t assume you’ll still be alive tomorrow.

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I have to assume that, otherwise I couldn’t get anything done.

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What are you talking about? What exactly are you getting done?

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I don’t mean like that, Tomo said. I mean I couldn’t focus on anything.

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Focus on what I just told you. Sixteen years ago at this moment you had complete freedom because you didn’t exist, and your father was probably paying an electric bill or looking at his watch. Fifteen years ago I was crawling around on the floor and Shiho had the freedom of the age of the universe.

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Is that why you like her?

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I don’t ‘like’ her.

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Why do you even care about her? It’s not like you have anything in common. Aren’t you still going out with Mutsumi?

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I didn’t know it had anything to do with you.

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What the hell, Tomo said. I don’t care. I just think it’s stupid. You don’t care about her, why are you going out with her?

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I didn’t say I didn’t care about her.

Park broke off as he realized the two women were listening to them.

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Anyway, I’m going to head out, he said. Have to get up early tomorrow.

Tomo followed him to the station.

•

He slept soon after arriving home and fell into a series of dreams. In the longest, Mutsumi was giving birth to monsters, human children with weeping frog’s faces. After each of them arrived, he removed the placenta, which resembled cellophane wrapping, then placed the child on a small altar and smashed its skull with a hammer. Casting the corpse aside, he repeated the process with the mechanical urgency of a sped-up film, hurrying from Mutsumi to the altar and back, always reaching her just as another child slid out in a welter of fluid. The consistency of the children’s skulls varied — sometimes the hammer cracked them like eggshells, other times it bounced off with a comical thud. He found himself having to perform complicated ritual movements to ensure that the skulls would soften just at the moment of impact. If he struck too early or too late, the skulls would harden and the hammer would rebound, disrupting the rhythm of the routine. He awoke exhausted, as if he’d been working all night.

When he came downstairs Sujung had already gone out, leaving him breakfast. He ate quickly and took his school bag from beside the door; he had to be at Junko’s by ten-thirty.

On the train he took out his Bible and paged through it. Lately he’d grown tired of reading the gospels in order. Since he’d already memorized the passages that interested him, he tried forming his own narrative, connecting the verses at random. But he soon lost interest, and after skimming through the highlighted sections he flipped forward and opened to one of the bookmarks.

He looked up from the page. Here was another disappointment — that a deity should allow itself to be penetrated in this fashion was a certain sign of weakness. It seemed to him that Christ should have been resurrected without orifices, mouthless and unsexed, as a surface of perfect smoothness. A real god would have neither entrances nor exits. Such a god, he thought, would exactly resemble the universe. Thinking like this made him remember Shiho and the curvature of her black socks as they tapered to the bend of her knees.

Flipping to another bookmark he came to Matthew 17, the Transfiguration — the whiteness of Christ’s robe. As he reread the passage, the peal of a distant bell resounded in his mind. He imagined a delicate, larval whiteness, almost transparent, the same color as the inside of a young girl’s forearm. Leaning back in his seat he watched the landscape rushing past outside the window. Even as he looked at the banks, the signs, the laundry on the line, a new hopelessness blossomed in his mind. His own existence struck him as little more than carelessness. And even a thousand dead gods could never redeem a single moment of consciousness. To be resurrected as a man was a disappointment beyond knowing. But to be reborn as a mote of dust caught between her eyelashes—

He put the Bible aside and waited for his stop. When it came he got off and caught the bus to Tomo’s house, following a route he’d taken countless times. Eventually he came to the apartment complex. When he reached the door he found it unlocked, meaning Junko was waiting for him. He pushed through, took off his shoes and walked into the living room. As he was about to sit down, he heard her voice from behind the screen.

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Just a moment, I’ll be out soon.

Instead of sitting he examined the room, moving to the bureau by the far wall and inspecting its framed photographs. He appeared in several of them, mostly at formal events: he and Tomo’s commencement ceremony; someone’s twentieth birthday; a wedding for one of Tomo’s cousins. Another shelf displayed Tomo’s childhood photos, faded scenes of him crawling on the floor or sleeping on the couch. The topmost shelf was a random assortment of portrait shots. In the center was a large photograph in a silver frame, propped against the wall. Park had looked at this picture before and always found himself drawn to it whenever he visited the house. It was a mid-range photo of a girl with long hair and a narrow nose, staring directly at the camera, her gaze proud and distant: Junko, some twenty years before.

He took it down and examined it. There was something formal and detached in her expression, in the way her lips came together. Perhaps she’d suffered some great disappointment before the picture had been taken. But then, he couldn’t say for sure. What did this girl from before he was born have in common with the Junko he knew, the mother of his best friend? He wondered why she kept this image in the open, why she’d chosen it over more recent pictures. Even if she wanted it as a reminder of what she’d lost, the severity of the girl’s expression discouraged identification. Looking at it, he felt a brief sadness. His own relationship to the girl was even more tenuous — even as she stared at him, he knew he could never meet her. He remembered the Spiritualists who tried to photograph ghosts, and then it seemed to him that all photographs were photographs of ghosts.

He heard the sliding screen behind him.

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Well, ready to go?

He placed the photograph back on the shelf and turned. Junko was standing by the door, wearing a plain white top and a grey skirt.

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We’ll have to be back by five. I have some other things to do today.

Park nodded.

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Me too.

He followed her out and they caught the bus to the station, then took the train to Ginza. As soon as they left the station he felt the sun on his shoulders, its clear light reflecting off the storefront windows. As he looked at the crowd he noticed how the clothing had changed, the drab colors of winter replaced with light reds and blues, the heavy coats abandoned. Before his eyes the crowd’s clothes seemed to blur into a solid spectrum. He could smell pollen in the air.

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It’s been warm lately, he said.

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Yes.

They found their way to Ito-ya and browsed for a while, eventually deciding on a notebook, some pencils, and several tubes of oil paints. As the clerk set to wrapping it all, Junko handed Park an open envelope.

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There’s a card with messages from everyone on it.

He borrowed a pen from the counter and wrote his name on the card, then returned it to the envelope. When it was done he followed her out and they walked back to the station. As always Junko walked quickly, her steps sharp and regular. Eventually she said:

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Have you thought about the party?

Park adjusted the wrapped package, shifting its position in the bag so he could carry it with his left hand.

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Actually I don’t really feel up to it.

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Oh?

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There’s no point. He’s not going to want anything big anyway. I think it’d be better if we just all had dinner together. I’ll make something and bring it over, I might get my mother to help me.

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Well, I’m sure Tomo will appreciate that.

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I hope so.

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He’s always talking about you, you know. Not that he tells me much of anything.

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Uh huh?

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Yes. You’re very mysterious, according to him.

Park smiled.

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I’m not, really. I’m pretty straight-forward, I think.

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Yes, well. I’m looking forward to seeing what you make.

As they entered the station, he took her hand, holding it at a slight distance, so that she slowed her pace gradually and they walked side by side. Even to himself his reserve seemed perfect.

•

He saw Shiho in homeroom every morning, when, after first lingering in the hall to talk with her friends, she would come in just as the bell was about to ring, then take her seat and type text messages with one hand, resting her phone on her knee.

She was an inattentive student, and often absent. When she failed to appear, Park would stare at her seat two rows in front of him and feel with his mind for the shape of her absence. Without her there, the entire room seemed to lose its center, and he would feel unfocused for the rest of the day, wondering where she was. But when she did appear, he said nothing. Her daily proximity fixed the world in perfect stasis, and it was only necessary to observe it.

After his initial curiosity faded, he lost interest in the details of her life. Since he was certain the reality could only disappoint, he gave himself over to daydreams, refashioning her character as his whims saw fit. He imagined her life as a kind of mindless idyll, a lacquered world of shops and cafes. If she had problems at all, they would be so trivial as to be solved within moments. Even if he imagined her in absurd situations (deathly ill, for example, vomiting in a gutter; or hunched on the toilet; or dressed in rags), a golden veil seemed to shimmer in front of her, protecting her from the rest of the universe. A glance at her was enough to defeat his imagination. All rationalizations and philosophies were immediately forgotten, all pride and detachment collapsing into an awe that verged on terror. One morning, as she shifted her legs beneath her skirt, he caught a glimpse of her bare thigh, its honey-colored surface shining in the light; and he thought of a great idol out of the Bible, fed on the flesh of young men. The image of this monstrous furnace vomiting ashed bone joined in his mind with the bare legs of the teenage girl in front of him. When he considered the connection, all that came to him was the thought that Shiho was a virgin. But as she shifted again, uncrossing her legs, the association vanished.

At lunch he scanned the refectory for her before taking a seat, looking first at the table by the nearest window on the left, where she usually sat with her friends. Finding it empty, he walked down the rows until he saw Tomo sitting by himself.

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You just caught me, I was just getting ready to leave, he said.

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So what have you been doing? Park asked.

Tomo told him about the photography circle. He hadn’t made any friends and usually remained silent during the meetings. Nothing of any interest had happened so far.

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You should still go, just so you have something to do, Park said.

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Yeah, we’ll see.

And Park told him how Sujung had spent the entire night searching for her silver hair clip. Tomo smiled and said:

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I’ll have to try the same thing.

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It’d never work, not with Junko.