urine, dog dandruff, or the salivation of creatures housed more elegantly elsewhere in Tokyo. How improbable, C often reflected as he sheepishly came through the genkan that a French woman in black bombazine would be the most cherished veterinarian in Kanto. How extraordinarily Japanese that she would have, beyond her ministrations to animals, a human service at once hyper closeted and liberating, relieving, gushing pain and ultimate deliverance. How he panted for her savage, severe touch.
“Is the room ready?” C asked between rushed, short breaths.
“In a moment. We must be patient. There should be an excess of light, a painful brightness, should there not?”
“Of course. Hot white light,” C responded. “It’s the beginning of banishing decrepitude.”
“Such flowery English. Perhaps not appropriate. Perhaps irritating.”
“I apologize.”
“Not yet accepted,” she gently laughed. “Let’s have some tea and again remember Daisy. I wasn’t here when A, how do you say it, ‘put her down.’ That wasn’t thoughtful of him, was it? No, it wasn’t. ‘Put her down,’ maybe I should do that to you? Would you like it? Why couldn’t you have waited till I came in at normal office hours? Why did you hide it from me?”
“I didn’t! He wanted to spare you. We knew you had affection for her, because of your long treatment of her.”
“Liar! You know of course I had to fire the technician—a really gifted practitioner. How could I have tolerated such insubordination?”
“He said you would have approved. We didn’t want him to lose his job.”
“You didn’t seem to think about the consequences of your selfishness, and yet you’ve lived how very long in this country where every action is measured in consequence and in soft language. It’s an insipid defense. Remind me to punish you for it.” She pushed the plunger of her tea plastic canister and filled two small bowls. They sat in two blue print wing chairs flanking the dark walnut door that led, he knew, to the stairs up to the all-white room.
“You really want to go up, don’t you?” she pointed to the door.
“Of course! You know that better than I do.”
“I know so much more than you know, especially about yourself—your tiresome needs.”
“I don’t wish to be tiresome.”
“Nor would I let you, mon petite choux.”
“I know that. I do know that.”
“So, we understand each other and can talk sincerely about going up. Don’t tell me again, how anxious you are, how full of expectations, anticipations, deliverances that always recede as we approach them. That discussion is tiresome, more than tiresome, boring. Useless and boring.” She took a long sip of the tea and then closed her eyes and rocked slowly back against the blue print of the wing chair. “I’m thinking today we need to take extreme measures, ones outside, well outside, our usual parameters. Explorations at the edge, beyond the simply extreme, rather at the cusp of the transcendent, on pain’s periphery, so that insight cannot be separated from anguish. Does it interest you? Spiraling anguish. Can you feel it? Endure it? What would it reveal? More likely, what would it set free in you, in us? I’d like us to ask the key question: what could reside beyond our abominations? What would passing through them suddenly illuminate? Could we pass beyond the tatemae of our investigation to the actual honne? I think we could, and what would we find? Daisy waiting for us? Could we sacrifice a bull as if we were killing a man? Kill a lamb as if breaking a dog’s neck? Burn incense as if worshiping an idol? Could we do it all?”
“Yes! Of course we could.”
“And at the end of it what would our abominations reveal?”
“Quick and joyous passage through the moat. Lolloping deliverance through thick thighs of hurt.”
“Offensive language again. Extra strikes against you, severe ones.”
“And deserved.”
“Don’t be frivolous, don’t be trivializing. You will suffer greatly for it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry either. It’s insulting and at the same time boring. So readily offered from your entirely manufactured and bogus sentiments. I’m here to show how disassociated your pain is, how trivial that is, compared to the searing I’m willing to inflict. Have you not seen how much you are a human being-manque?”
“Not manqué! I’m not a bogus person.”
“Such a phony objection. Unworthy of you, and garnering greater suffering no doubt. Yes, you have only a shell reality, a puppet of normality, performing normal sentiments on the mica edge of self-perceived mockery. A sham of feeling wandering after affirmation, anxious for a spanking or full-on flagellation. And yet through agonized tears recognizing its very phoniness, lack of substance, lack of conviction about anything, even the pain it wallows in. Begging to be set on fire, consumed with actual conviction, but ever never finding any.” She paused, looked strangely pensive. “Maybe I really can’t get you over the moat, can I?”
“You can. You have. You often have.”
“But not every time, is it not so? Don’t lie to me.”
“Yes, not every time, but often enough.”
“Often enough. . .” she mused a moment, as if counting the times. “Could we sacrifice a bull as if slaying a person?”
“Of course!”
“Kill a lamb as if breaking a dog’s neck?”
“Yes!”
“Burn incense as if worshipping an idol?”
“In our white-hot room, why not?”
“Good. Let us go upstairs. And while I work, tell me, tell me slowly, how Lewis died.
II: A, B, C, Lewis Walling
The bullet from nowhere entered through his spleen and exited shoving segments of his stomach, intestine, pancreas and duodenum out into the rice field’s still, grey water. He thought, I’ve been gut shot, the worst of all prospects. Shot by an unseen unrecognized enemy as alone in this special place as I am. Perhaps I wasn’t the target at all. Maybe a rifle went off somewhere, having been tossed by someone ignorant of the effect, until the firing happened.
The force of the wound tossed his innards away from him, bobbing in the rice water like a cat avoiding embarrassment. His blood streamed out as if to lasso his fractured insides floating away. For a moment he imagined he could collect them still, but that attempted movement sent pain swelling through his shock and he collapsed into the water, finding only at the last minute the strength and coordination to turn his head up and aside for air. Water and gasping mixed in his bobbing search to survive.
She only opened the door about three inches. The chain lock was not visible, but he sensed she had wedged her foot against the door’s edge, keeping just three inches for them to exchange slow looks. Lewis thought, I must not let my
