I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like Read online

  The next day, as she sat waiting for her History class to start, Ayano ignored the whispered conversations going on around her. Usually she listened in earnest, hoping for some word about Masuda, but now she couldn’t think about him the way she once had. Now if she called up his face, a tinier face would appear next to it like a conjoined twin: Akiko Mitsui. And since this was unacceptable, she had no choice but to occupy her thoughts with something else during the long hours of classes. Before long she found herself thinking about the previous night, and a new idea came to her. As the day went on it gradually refined itself, taking full possession of her thoughts, so that she smiled to herself as she waited for Ayako outside the gate. There was no use trying to hide it from her sister; Ayako knew her too well. Any attempt at secrecy would be called out immediately. So as they walked towards the station, she stopped in front of the main thoroughfare and said:

  —I want to go to McDonald’s.

  She expected Ayako to protest, but instead her sister’s lips formed into a faint smile of complicity. Ayako still didn’t understand this sudden interest, but on some level the strange turn in her sister’s behavior excited her. Already she was beginning to relish the feeling of sharing in an illicit mystery, and although she had no intention of eating anything herself, she was more than willing to watch.

  —What are you going to get? she asked Ayano. The two of them had taken a table near the door and were staring up at the menu as the line moved forward in front of them.

  —I don’t know, Ayano said. She listened to the people in front of her and, as her turn came, tried to mimic the casualness with which they placed their orders. After glancing at the menu again, she ordered a Teriyaki Burger, Chicken McNuggets, and a Double Cheeseburger. She had no intention of finishing everything; this was merely an experiment. Here, if she didn’t like something, she could throw it away with impunity.

  —It smells strange in here, Ayako said as they returned to their table, tray in tow.

  Ayano unwrapped the Teriyaki Burger first, noticing that the wrapper seemed lubricated with grease. The burger was horribly sweet, the meat lathered in a lurid brown sauce. She put it aside after one bite.

  Next was the Double Cheeseburger. She took a bite; the ketchup that dribbled from the edge of the bun was the same color as the crayon-red smile on the statue of Ronald McDonald standing outside the door. Everything about the food seemed similarly clownish, similarly unnatural: the bun rubbery and rounded, the cheese melted plastic, the meat soft greyish cardboard. All of it violently salted, with a cloying undertaste similar to the Teriyaki Burger. Ayano ate slowly, mentally noting the strange mixture of flavors.

  —How is it? Ayako asked.

  Ayano swallowed.

  —I can’t explain it.

  She tried a chicken nugget next and found it more palatable. The meat, in its crisp shell of batter, had a similar consistency to fried tofu, although the taste was another alien taste, this one less insistent than that of the burgers. She finished it quickly and had another. Then she extended the carton to Ayako.

  —Here, try this. You can dip it in honey.

  She opened the little sachet and squeezed it onto the tray. Ayako gave her a doubtful look, then took one of the nuggets.

  —I’ll spit it out if I don’t like it, she said. But she chewed and swallowed without complaint. Then she looked down at the carton, as if marvelling that she could be eating from it.

  —I’m going to get even fatter, eating this. I’ll look like a big balloon.

  —So what? Ayano said. You shouldn’t worry so much.

  Ayako looked at the menu again.

  —Look, they have ice cream! I’m going to get a strawberry sundae.

  Ayano waited for her, looking down at her half-finished food. She’d eaten too quickly, and now felt a stomach ache coming on. But the faint feeling of sickness made her proud of herself. It was the feeling of her body adjusting, straining to adapt to what it hadn’t known before. It was no different from sore muscles after a new period of exercise.

  She threw away her leftovers, and the two of them made for the exit.

  —There are other places we have to try, she said. Like Yoshinoya.

  —And Mos Burger, Ayako added. Kimiko is always going there with her boyfriend.

  There was a brief pause. Neither of the sisters had ever had a boyfriend, but this was not something that needed to be said out loud.

  —Yeah, Mos Burger should be good.

  —But I still don’t like beef, Ayako said. I’ll try chicken, but I’m not eating steak or anything again.

  Ayano told her that this was perfectly all right.

  —What are we going to tell Mom and Dad? Ayako asked.

  —I don’t know. I don’t think we have to tell them anything.

  On Friday, at an izakaya, she felt something close to pleasure for the first time. She and Ayako had ordered a plate of basashi. Ayano ate slowly, savoring the taste of the raw horse meat seasoned with fresh ginger. There was a sharp muskiness to the meat that remained in her mouth long after she’d swallowed, complemented by the clear spiced scent of the ginger. The combined flavor seemed as distinctive as a musical chord; having experienced it once, she knew she could never forget it.

  She thought back over her life. As long as she could remember, all the different kinds of meat had been unknown to her. But now there was nothing to stop her from eating as she pleased. All kinds of possibilities spread before her, new textures, flavors; a ravenous desire for flesh filled her.

  She started a notebook in which she recorded every different kind of meat and its taste. Beginning with the steak, she moved onto the burgers and the horse meat, then progressed to whatever she could find at the supermarket. She learned how to distinguish between the different kinds of steaks, how to take apart a roast chicken, how to fry bacon until it turned crisp. By the end of the next week she was eating meat several times each day.

  Online, she read of exotic specialties: sheeps’ brains, fried kidneys, tripe sandwiches, pork blood soup. Most of them seemed inedible, but she reminded herself that even the most common cut of steak had once disgusted her. If a type of meat wasn’t initially appealing, that only made it seem more like a delicacy, and she imagined she would come to it in time, with a palate refined by countless lesser meats, alert to its special qualities, the subtlest variations in flavor.

  Ayako was less adventurous. On the whole she stuck to chicken, and pork dumplings, her second favorite. But Ayano enjoyed cooking for her sister; part of the joy of discovering a new meat was finding out whether Ayako would like it as well. The sisters installed a small refrigerator in their room and kept in it whatever meat they’d bought for the day, and whenever their parents left, Ayano would set to cooking while Ayako waited at the table, alert to whatever smells came from the kitchen.

  Lying on her bed at night, before she fell asleep, Ayano had vague dreams of all the different kinds of meats she had yet to try. First she thought of a meat’s name, forming the characters in her head; then she imagined its look and feel, the texture giving way to taste. Over time, background scenery emerged: in a vast dining room somewhere in Europe, beautiful women in ornate costumes sat at tables set with crystal glasses, awaiting silver covered dishes. As each lid was removed a different kind of meat was revealed, and the women set to carving it with long and precisely sharpened knives. In these dreams Ayano herself was a presence, if not strictly present: while she couldn’t see herself sitting at the tables, she could inspect them as closely as she liked, taking in the rows of dishes, the rich sauces, the arrangements of meat on the plates. As the parade of dreams washed over her, she felt a numbness settling over her limbs, and it became difficult to tell where the anticipation of taste ended and other sensations started. But like her earlier fixation on Masuda, these impressions were difficult to define, and instead of assigning them any precise image, she found herself drifting into a half-sleep, her mouth filled with a clear saliva. This kind of spit diff
ered from the normal kind, both in its greater volume and its taste — it was sharper somehow, tinged with the faintest taste of copper. She remembered from her Biology class that there were two kinds of sweat, one clear and one oily — and perhaps there were different kinds of spit as well: the normal, base kind, reserved for dissolving food; and then this clearer, more concentrated variety, brought on only by thought; an imaginative spit.

  The sisters began taking their meals at odd hours, often eating out. Since she was spending more time in restaurants, Ayano started to study in them as well, and came to prefer them to her room. She would set herself up with her books in McDonald’s or Sukiya or Subway, at a spot close to the window, and read while eating. When she needed a break, she turned and watched the rest of the customers, noticing the bland expressions they wore as they chewed through their burgers or finished a bowl of curry rice. But sometimes she kept the books closed and leaned forward, staring out the window.

  She was thinking about raw meat. Of late it had come to dominate her thoughts — a point of contention with her sister, as Ayako preferred everything well-done. One night they’d gone to a Korean yakiniku restaurant, and their chopsticks had clashed as they’d moved their meats around on the grill. Ayako insisted on separating everything she cooked on her own side of the table, leaving the meat on until it blackened, and she gave a little cry as the juices from Ayano’s beef ran down onto her pork and chicken.

  —Try to keep them apart, okay? You need to leave it on more, it’s still raw.

  Ayano responded by eating a pink piece of beef from the grill. The taste confirmed what she’d suspected: that the longer a meat was cooked, the more of its flavor was lost. There was an ideal period of contact with the flame, and after that it needed to be withdrawn quickly. So it followed that a meat that had not been cooked at all would retain all its flavor, a thought supported by her memory of eating horse. Since the night in the izakaya she’d tried raw beef and whale, and both had suggested that something important was lost in the cooking process. There had to be some way of preserving the original flavor.

  She looked up. Two American businessmen were ahead of her in the Subway queue, and she listened as they placed their orders in broken Japanese. They took a seat and she followed, sitting at the table next to them and pretending to send a text message, secretly watching as they unwrapped their sandwiches. The one next to her was thin, bearded and dark-skinned, while his companion was fat and red-faced, his hair a sickly blonde. Beneath the table the folds of his stomach formed two great lobes hanging over an invisible belt. In contrast with his figure he ate daintily, keeping the foot-long sandwich firmly within its wrapper, taking small bites and wiping the corner of his mouth with a napkin. As his jaw muscles moved, Ayano watched the distribution of fat in his face mirror that of his stomach, the tight line of his mouth separating his soft distended cheeks. She imagined taking a carving knife and slicing off sections of his stomach, then shaving the fat from his face, trimming his cheeks and paring his jowls. When she had finished he would be half his present weight. She imagined him taking his first unburdened steps, then lifting off into the air and flying away as a little bird, his feathers the same pale piss color as the thinning hair that thatched his scalp.

  She turned to his companion and examined his face. From close range, its surface was a mass of tiny distortions, the skin growing rougher around his lips and chin. She looked away. Some men had coarse skin, their cheeks lined with bristles; others had smooth faces like girls or young boys. She remembered reading in a magazine that there were different skin types: “oily,” “dry,” “sensitive,” “combination.” Was it possible that each of them had a different flavor? Of course, every person had their own distinctive scent and texture: her sister’s skin, for example, was different from her father’s. And a boy’s sweat was different from a girl’s. But she had no way of knowing whether one person would taste different from another. On the one hand, she knew that while two cows might look different from the outside, beef was always beef. But on a subtler level, taste depended on an animal’s age and physical development. So in the same way that force-fed veal was more succulent than a cow left on its own, the taste of human flesh would depend on diet and individual life conditions.

  She started paying closer attention to the features of the people around her, folding her received impressions into a new associative series. Before long the process operated by itself, and she had only to look at someone for a few moments before new connections suggested themselves: a fat man’s sausage-like fingers brought her the smell of frying sausages, a woman’s creamy skin became the taste of cream in her mouth. But none of these impressions gave her any real knowledge of the subject, and she was left unsatisfied.

  Online again, she came across firsthand accounts:

  It was like good, fully developed veal, not young, but not yet beef. It was very definitely like that, and it was not like any other meat I had ever tasted. It was so nearly like good, fully developed veal that I think no person with a palate of ordinary, normal sensitiveness could distinguish it from veal. It was mild, good meat with no other sharply defined or highly characteristic taste such as for instance, goat, high game, and pork have. The steak was slightly tougher than prime veal, a little stringy, but not too tough or stringy to be agreeably edible. The roast, from which I cut and ate a central slice, was tender, and in color, texture, smell as well as taste, strengthened my certainty that of all the meats we habitually know, veal is the one meat to which this meat is accurately comparable.

  Other reports compared it to chicken, pork; a chameleon meat, its taste seemed to depend on the taster.

  One day, on impulse, she took a knife from the kitchen and made a shallow cut on her forearm, pressing her mouth to the wound. It bled less than she’d expected, and the taste was disappointing. Chewing her lips and tongue and sucking on her fingers was no better; she received no especial impression, no distinctive taste. She washed the knife and put it away. There was nothing to be done alone; if she were to investigate seriously, she would need a partner.

  Searching the internet forums for anyone suitable, she came across a number of prospects, a number of test subjects advertising themselves. But most of them lived out of range or were already occupied with something else. She wasted hours following up on false leads, and by the end of the month she had almost given up. Her disappointment was compounded by a growing loss of interest in food; by now the limited array of meats on sale at the supermarket bored her. None of them seemed as interesting as the delicacies she read about, much less the ones she imagined. But then one of her leads responded, and she began to correspond with him in depth, answering his e-mails after coming home from school. At first he was guarded, asking more questions than he answered. So she made her offer known to him subtly, first discerning his interests, then suggesting a meeting. When he agreed, she was certain she had found who she needed.

  His name was Yamada. He was her father’s age, and he worked in an insurance company. And more importantly, he was only an hour away by train. They arranged to meet late on a Friday after he’d finished work. Ayano invited her sister, but Ayako wasn’t interested.

  —I don’t like old men, she explained.

  Ayano nodded and set off for the station alone. They were meeting outside Hachiko in Shibuya at 10:30, and as she stepped through the gates and approached the square she saw that it was as busy as it always was on a Friday night. In front of her, couples were greeting each other, smiling as they took each other’s hands. Scores of smokers sat or stood by the dog statue. A crowd gathered close to the street, waiting for the light to change. Ayano walked around the square’s perimeter, browsing the crowd for Yamada. After a while she recognized him from the picture he’d sent. He was a thin man with greyish skin and a thick head of hair, his narrow shoulders stooping slightly. He carried a heavy-looking briefcase. They were about the same height.

  She called out to him as she approached. He turned, met her gaze, fr
owned.

  —How do you know my name?

  She told him. He looked at her with something close to anger, closer to disappointment.

  —You lied. You said you were a man.

  She said nothing.

  —You’re how old? Sixteen?

  —Twenty, Ayano lied.

  —God, you’re just a kid...

  He was shaking his head now.

  —I’m leaving...

  She placed her hand on his, encircling his wrist with her fingers.

  —Don’t go yet. You promised you’d meet me.

  His expression didn’t change, but she saw his eyes moving rapidly, appraising her. She stepped forward, still holding his hand.

  —I did lie. But I wanted to meet you.

  —I can’t believe this...

  He pulled away from her. But there was something insincere in his tone now; she felt as if he had already decided to go with her and was only dramatizing the moment to himself. She went along with it.

  —All right. I can go, if you really want...

  He gave a self-conscious sigh.

  —No, you don’t have to... look, we’ll talk about this, okay?

  She followed him past the statue and they joined the crowd at the edge of the street. Before long the light changed and they crossed into Shibuya, the illuminated monitors above them flashing out music, faces, computer-generated landscapes. Yamada walked quickly, seemingly unburdened by the weight of the briefcase. There were so many people out that they often became separated, and he had to turn and wait as Ayano pushed through to him. Eventually they turned into a side-street and took an elevator up to the second floor of a building. When the doors opened Ayano saw that it was an izakaya.

  Inside, they were shown to a table at the back. Ayano said she wasn’t hungry, but Yamada ordered food anyway, several yakitori skewers and a daikon salad. The plates sat untouched on the table. Eventually he pressed the button next to the menus and, when the server appeared, ordered a pitcher of warm sake. When it arrived he poured out two cups and offered one to Ayano. She refused, so he drank it himself. Then he leaned forward and stared at her.