I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like Read online

  At once he saw the horizon of his dreams. All sensation left him as the void appeared, the funnel revealed as the throat’s endless drop. He stared down at it until a new shape crowded his eyes. It was not the adult face he’d seen in her flat, nor the flayed face he’d entered, but an earlier impression of Nanako, perfectly fixed in space. It drew back slowly, all of its edges taking shape, until his eyes resolved its features. Staring into her eyes, a sharp sweetness filled his mind. In them he could see, like a distant point in a mirror, another tiny, immaculate face receding into the distance.

  Manami’s Hair

  Miyabi woke out of a dream and found herself scratching her leg. There was a faint pain, and she could feel something cracked and rough like a lizard’s skin. Pulling down her pajamas, she saw a scaly circle on her thigh, a little red eye staring back at her. On her other thigh, a scattered patch of red dots had formed. She touched it with the tips of her fingers and felt a faint itch.

  She sat up. Everything in her room was where she’d left it. From the window, the morning light made shadows at the edges of her bed, thin strips that ran from the table next to the dresser to her shoes, her records, the book she’d been reading. Leaning over, she picked the book up and placed it on the night stand next to her rings. It wasn’t common for her to leave things on the floor. Still—

  The red eye was because of carelessness, she thought: of course, carelessness. But she always took a shower, dried herself carefully, and changed the sheets each day, leaving them outside the door, stacked and folded for Momo to take. What had happened?

  She wasn’t sure what to do now. This had never happened before. She supposed there were creams, medicines, things of the sort — all she had to do was tell Momo. But she couldn’t imagine bringing it up. Perhaps she could call the pharmacy herself, ask about deliveries. Or maybe, if she ignored it, it would run its course and vanish.

  She got up, and as she walked to the window the lining of her pajamas chafed her thigh and she felt a rough itch edging into pain. She would have to move more slowly, she thought, give it some space.

  Pulling back the screen, she felt a fly land on her hand. She made to swat it, but when she moved, it was gone.

  She looked down at the traffic. A suited man was standing at an intersection, and as a blue car edged into the passing lane, he jumped out and crossed. To Miyabi it seemed that the blue car sped up as it saw him. But he didn’t bother to turn, only crossed left to the sidewalk, carrying a small potted plant. Straining to look, she saw that he was old. There was a vulgar twist to his face, but his steps were steady and measured. Even to Miyabi his posture seemed marvelous.

  She rested her elbows on the sill. It was a morning of fine weather, cloudless.

  How is it that I’ve been careless? she thought.

  •

  Miyabi stared at the picture of Taku on her desk. It was an old photo, and Taku had been caught off guard, surprised in a smile. His eyebrows stood out against the clean lines of his face.

  Momoko walked over from the dresser.

  —So I had to take over from them, she said.

  —Uh huh.

  Miyabi didn’t look up from the picture.

  —I’m so fucking sick of Yoshiko bringing her problems in with her. I told her I don’t need to hear her bringing her shit in with her, I’ve got problems too but you don’t see me bringing them in with me.

  As she spoke, Momoko examined Miyabi’s things: a book, a record, a certain camisole.

  —Don’t touch my stuff, Miyabi said.

  Momoko held the camisole up to her chest before placing it back on the dresser.

  —What did you do today?

  —Worked on my autobiography.

  —I don’t understand that, Momoko said. How you can be writing an autobiography? You haven’t done anything. You’re not doing anything. You haven’t been out of the house in six months.

  Miyabi noticed that the background of the photograph was brighter than the foreground. A faint red light suffused Taku’s shoulders. It must have been taken at dusk.

  —Enough things happen to you by the time you’re twenty that you can write a full autobiography, Miyabi said.

  —I swear Yasu and Chinami are going to report what happened last Friday. I heard them in the hall. I told them go ahead, I’m not going to change my mind. Miyabi what are you looking at?

  —Sorry, can you leave me alone for a little while, Miyabi said. Momoko gave her a look, but walked through the door and closed it behind her. This was a code phrase. She knew that if she didn’t leave, Miyabi would scream until the neighbors complained.

  Miyabi left the photograph on her desk and walked over to her bed. The covers were still pulled down from morning. She climbed under them and turned on her TV. Miyabi taped all the morning dramas and watched them again in the evening, after she’d had time to reflect. She was always certain she’d missed something.

  She heard Momoko’s footsteps in the hall for a moment before the theme music started. Then she was watching an intro she’d seen a hundred times. Miyabi preferred the intros to the actual drama. Everything was present in them already, faces and relations cut to the theme.

  Now she was watching the background behind the actors. She wondered where it had been filmed, wanted to see into the corners of the screen; but her television was too small, too old. She needed a new one... but it was impossible to explain to Momo.

  The situation, though, had improved after they’d moved in together. Before, their parents had dragged them to Himeji, Kyoto; made them read leaflets, stand for pictures. Miyabi remembered walking in the rain under her father’s umbrella, runners of water splashing the tips of her shoes. Old things like trees and temples and lakes made her uneasy — it was their transparent artifice. To find some meagre glow on the filthy surface of Lake Biwa required one to project; the beauty of television was strictly instinctive.

  Miyabi pressed pause, got out of bed, and listened at the door to make sure Momo had left. Then she walked outside, feeling the coolness of the floor as she stepped into the hall. Miyabi wasn’t afraid, but her body responded anyway. Sometimes on these trips, her stomach tightened. But it was getting better. She didn’t sweat anymore.

  She stepped inside, turned on the light and sat down. The bathroom light was brighter than the one in her room. She could see the pores on her hands.

  She’d fallen asleep on the toilet before, had Momoko’s knocking wake her at dawn. But she wasn’t sleepy now, just tired. It was an effort at times to get off the toilet, she thought, combing her pubic hair with her fingers and pulling out long black strands, twining them around her fingers before dropping them into the bowl. Her period hadn’t come yet. She imagined it forming inside her like a jellyfish.

  She got up and closed the door behind her, tried to keep an even pace as she walked back to her room. But as she passed the stairs, she stopped and looked behind her. She paused, then turned and opened the door. Only for a moment she took in the Miyabi smell as something strange, the smell of her clothes, the flesh smell of her space. Then she was inside.

  This was as far as Miyabi went.

  •

  There was a fly in the corner of the room. She couldn’t see it, but she’d heard it since waking.

  She was watching a drama set during the Russo-Japanese war. As the episode ended, the protagonist left to join the navy, just as his uncle’s widow began to cry, reaching for his hand. Neither of them saw the boy’s father watching from a distance.

  Miyabi sat up in bed as the theme music began, feeling a sense of sad beauty. An inappropriate relationship was a beautiful problem, and war was a beautiful problem too.

  Miyabi didn’t have enough beautiful problems — that was the trouble. All she had were Momo and Taku.

  She needed a chance meeting. Sometimes she looked down into the street, assessing. Sometimes she imagined a beautiful boy, troubled and sad. He would see her at the window and write her letters. Even an old man wouldn’t be too
much. An old man could still love, could come to life again. But Miyabi hadn’t seen anyone like that for a long time.

  She wondered if it was because everyone walked with their head down. In case anyone looked up, she left the blinds open and stopped by them sometimes, miming a mannequin. Maybe an artist would sketch her.

  She didn’t smile, though. There was no reason for a stranger to smile at another stranger.

  Miyabi looked at the window, saw dawn collecting at the edges of the blinds. She got up, tasting the plaque in her mouth. Brushing before she slept didn’t seem to make a difference. She scraped her front teeth with a fingernail, collecting a strip of white muck beneath its groove. She wanted to go to the bathroom, but it was still early. Momoko hadn’t left yet, and she didn’t want to wake her — but she went out anyway, worried about the plaque. Miyabi wanted perfect teeth, straight and white. Anyone that had perfect teeth was more likely to have beautiful problems.

  Outside, the coolness in her soles and the hollow weight in her stomach returned. It grew from solitude, she thought, this sense of eyes in the walls. It was not oppressive, did not glare, but only encompassed her from afar, safe in its remoteness. It was a property of the imaginary friends she’d had as a girl: she had found she was always too slow for them, that they appeared ahead of her, waiting. Miyabi had never seen a ghost, but she imagined how they would move: in anticipations. Mirrors had it too, and halls; they would notice her with tact, patience, conscious distance. A true actress must assume she is always watched.

  She turned on the bathroom light, saw a flicker of movement from her toothbrush. It began as a brown smudge, but as her vision shifted she caught glimpses of its little perfections, the sheer black shell and minute bristled limbs that made it seem like a clockwork ornament.

  The cockroach moved from the pink handle onto the bristled head. It raised one of its antennae above the other.

  Miyabi took off one of her slippers and took a step forward. The cockroach scuttled into the sink. She tried to hit it, but it ran up the wall. It was too high for her. It disappeared into the wall.

  She put the slipper down, stared at the wall and felt the brightness of the light fixture above her. In the mirror, her face stood out against the wall. She held up her hands, saw the tiny curves of her fingernails mirrored. She hadn’t bitten them in weeks. She could have long nails now, if she wanted.

  Miyabi picked up her toothbrush and looked at the bristled head. Then she squeezed on a drop of toothpaste and brushed her teeth, slowly.

  She turned off the light and stepped outside. There was a fly in the hall, somewhere. She scratched her thigh. Momo was up; she could hear her downstairs already.

  Another drama was playing in her room. Miyabi thought she’d turned the television off, but perhaps she’d only imagined it.

  Perhaps the cockroach had been in her room as well, had crawled on her face as she slept. She imagined it poised on her cheek, an explorer in the soft wilderness of her flesh. Its antennae brushed a strand of hair, it shuttled down her neck: lost on a plain of heat and tendons.

  She pitied it.

  •

  Momoko was upset about Yutaka.

  —I don’t know about him anymore, she said. She was sitting on the edge of Miyabi’s bed. That wasn’t like him. I feel like I’m just wasting my time now. I mean, it’s not that I don’t... I still have things I want to do, I want to travel and I want to maybe teach overseas. I’m still young, I...

  —Uh, Miyabi said.

  —I was talking to Chinami about it today and she thinks he’s really off-base but she thinks I should just forget about it. I mean I couldn’t believe it that he just said that. And Chinami was saying that when she first got her driver’s license she passed on a double line, and she got pulled over and he asked her why she did it and she didn’t know what to say. She didn’t even have to be anywhere. But it’s completely different from that.

  —Yeah, it is.

  Miyabi was thinking about peanut butter.

  —I think the problem is that people take advantage of me, Momoko said. Everyone always takes advantage of me. He told me that right after I told him that I was going in tomorrow. I told him I don’t get home until seven, I have to take care of my sister, I can’t just drop everything.

  She picked up the remote and changed the channel. The news came on.

  —He thinks I can just drop everything.

  —Uh huh.

  Momoko turned to her.

  —Do you think Chinami was right, though? she asked. I know I should just forget about it, but if I hadn’t said anything I know he’d think he could just do that any time. What do you think?

  Miyabi imagined God crafting Momoko. In God’s hands, Momoko was a model airplane. God’s fingers slotted the pieces into place, and then she was hung from a string, spinning in circles. The care was detached and obsessive. Miyabi felt that God loved Momo too much.

  —The thing about Yutaka is that he’s a very serious person, she said. I think you’re forgetting about that side of him.

  Momoko turned off the television.

  —Yutaka is a serious person. Are you even listening to me?

  Miyabi felt her sister’s thoughts sliding towards her like a snail. The room felt soft, as if in fog. She looked at Momo. Through the fog, Miyabi could feel the touch of her slow, soft horns.

  She made her facial expression grave, stopped blinking and slitted her mouth.

  —Yutaka is the kind of person who jokes around a lot so he can cover up all the things he doesn’t want to admit to himself, she said. Miyabi had taken this line from a drama.

  —Are you joking? I hate it when you do this! I can never tell when you’re joking.

  —No, I’m completely serious, Miyabi said. Now she looked disgusted and moral.

  —Did you think he could just apologize right out and look stupid in front of you? He can’t live without dignity.

  —I don’t know, Momoko said. I never thought of him like that. I don’t know. Maybe you’re right, I just... I don’t know.

  —I have to go to the bathroom, Miyabi said.

  —All right.

  —No, I mean... I might be a while.

  Momoko got up.

  —All right. Have you started looking for a job yet?

  —No.

  —I already told you I can’t support us. You have to find something.

  —Okay.

  She waited for Momo to leave, then walked to the bathroom and sat down on the tiles and played with the toilet paper, pulling it down and spinning the roll until it wound back into place.

  She wondered who Yutaka was.

  •

  Miyabi sat in bed with her back to the wall. She was watching a drama with the sound off, speaking the lines to herself from memory, not bothering to shift the pitch.

  She imagined herself first as lover, then beloved. Opening one’s self, she thought, was a great restriction, the only action of any interest. Even alone, in her room, she resented the weightlessness of her speech. To respond in kind to a confession of love was like being tied to a stake, she imagined, while beneath her, a fire was starting; and as she opened herself more, speaking, the flames rose to her feet, charred them. She felt she could fall in love with anyone at all as long as they would tie their hearts with words, feeding the fire, until both of them were dead.

  She scratched her thigh.

  Momoko hadn’t come back yet. She was out, somewhere. Miyabi had told her about the flies, that it was important she buy something to get rid of them. She told her to write it down. It was ten-thirty.

  Miyabi was looking at the spaces where the walls came together.

  She got out of bed. Momo had said she’d bring her something back, but it was ten-thirty and she was hungry. Miyabi tried not to eat, mostly, but she knew Momo had a jar of peanut butter somewhere. There was no need to eat anything else if you had peanut butter.

  She crossed past the bathroom, to the stairs and, placing her hand on t
he railing, she walked down, slippers tapping against each step. It was the first time she’d been downstairs in three weeks.

  The lights were off. Momo had moved the couch; the living room television seemed smaller. Papers were scattered on the table, and Momoko’s coat had been draped over the couch, still on the hanger. Miyabi didn’t know why, but she was certain there had been strangers here recently; there were no effects she could see, nothing out of place, but the living room had changed. Now she was a stranger herself.

  She went to the kitchen, heard the faint faucet-drip sound of the sink through the freezer’s static hum. She found the jar of peanut butter in one of the side-shelves. There wasn’t any bread that she could see, so she took a spoon from a drawer beside the sink and went upstairs. By the time she reached the top, several deep spoonfuls had almost emptied the jar. Miyabi licked the back of the lid, sucked the spoon clean. The peanut butter was delicious. Firm from the fridge, it stuck to her tongue.

  Crossing the hall, she saw that the door to Momo’s room was open. The luminous square of a monitor stood out in the darkness. After glancing down the stairs, she walked in. The room was a mess: clothes on the floor, bed unmade, bras slung everywhere. The mirror was smudged and dusty. She had to step over plates to make it to the computer.

  There was a message on the screen.

  Momoko—

  Haven’t been able to get in touch with Hiro so I don’t know when we can make the arrangement. I’ve sent him a message though. I still feel like everything is my fault. I’ve been thinking a lot about what we discussed on Friday and if that’s really how you feel then I’m sorry but I think I’ve given you the wrong impression. God knows I’ve never heard anyone put it quite like you did. At the risk of making myself sound even worse, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you all weekend.

  —Yasu

  Miyabi didn’t recognize the names, but thought: something is happening somewhere. Momo was outside with someone else. Something was happening.