Life for Sale by Yukio Mishima (translated by Stephen Dodd).
Title: Life for Sale.
Author: Yukio Mishima (translated by Stephen Dodd).
Genre: Literature, fiction, satire, humour.
Country: Japan.
Language: Japanese.
Publication Date: 1968.
Summary: After botching a suicide attempt, salaryman Hanio Yamada decides to put his life up for sale in the classifieds section of a Tokyo newspaper. Soon interested parties come calling with increasingly bizarre requests, and what follows is a madcap comedy of errors involving a jealous husband, a drug-addled heiress, poisoned carrots-even a vampire. For someone who just wants to die, Hanio can't seem to catch a break, as he finds himself enmeshed in a continent-wide conspiracy that puts him in the crosshairs of both his own government and a powerful organized-crime syndicate.
My rating: 8/10
My review:
♥ But when he really thought about it, maybe there was a reason why the idea of suicide had come to him. He had been skimming through the evening paper with such little concentration that the inside page slithered right down under the table.
He watched it go, the way an indolent snake might observe its old skin, just shed. The next moment he felt the urge to pick up the page. He could have left it lying there. Perhaps it was social convention that compelled him to retrieve it, or maybe he was driven by a more serious determination to restore order in the world. He was not exactly sure. In any case, he stooped under the small, wobbly table and stretched out his hand.
Just then, his eyes encountered something hideous. On top of the fallen paper was a cockroach, absolutely still. At the very moment he stretched out his hand, the glossy mahogany-colored insect scurried away withe extraordinary vitality and lost itself among the printed words.
He picked up the paper nevertheless, placed the page he had been reading on the table and cast his eyes over it again. Suddenly, all the letters he was trying to make out turned into cockroaches. His eyes pursued the letters as they made their escape, their disgustingly shiny dark-red backs in full view.
"So the world boils down to nothing more than this."
It was a sudden revelation. And it was this insight that led to an overwhelming desire to die.
But upon further reflection, he found this explanation just a little too pat. Surely things were not so clear-cut. We just have to soldier on, even if every word in the newspaper is reduced to a string of cockroaches. It was in reaction to this thought that the idea of "death" finally lodged itself in his mind. From that moment, death hung over him, snugly, the way snow caps a red postbox after a particularly heavy snowfall.
♥ He went into a pachinko parlor and started playing at one of the slot machines. He won tons of balls. A human life was about to end, but the balls kept pouring forth in an endless stream. It felt as if someone was making fun of him.
♥ Now that Hanio had failed to commit suicide, a wonderfully free and empty world opened up before him.
From that day on, he made a complete break with the daily grind he had always believed would go on forever. He felt that the world was his for the taking. The days would no longer merge into one. Each day would expire, one after the other. He could see it all clearly before him: a row of dead frogs with their white bellies exposed.
♥ "Is there anything you'd like me to make arrangements for after your death?"
"No, not particularly. I don't want a funeral, and I don't need a grave. But there is one thing that maybe you could do for me. I've always wanted to keep a Siamese cat as a pet, but I've never got around to it. So after I'm dead, I'd be grateful if you could get one and take care of it on my behalf. In my mind, I envisage you letting it drink milk from a large ladle rather than a saucer. After it laps up the first couple of mouthfuls, you should give the ladle a slight flip so that the milk splashes up and the cat's face gets a good soaking. It would be good if you could do that once a day. This is really important, so I'd like you not to forget.
"What a weird thing to ask!"
"You only think that because you inhabit an exceptionally ordinary world. A request like this is way beyond your powers of imagination."
♥ "In which case, how can I trust you?"
"Those who believe, believe everything, while those who doubt don't believe a thing."
♥ Hanio remembered to turn over the card on the door on which he had written "Life for Sale." On the other side was the single word "Sold."
♥ From there, he commanded a view of the neighborhood bathed in winter sunshine. In the bright light it was all too clear that the area was distinctly the worse for wear, as if nibbled away by termites. Of course, the locals would not fail to keep up appearances, addressing each other with a "Good morning," or asking how work was going, or inquiring into the health of their wives and children. Or they might remark on the ratcheting up of the international situation. But none of them would notice the sheer banality of their work.
♥ "Truth be told, I'm very much a peace-loving guy-I wouldn't harm a fly. But she has a problem-she suffers from sexual frigidity. So I have to make up all sorts of scenarios in order to give her a kick and spice things up a bit. That way she's satisfied and she gets to brandish a toy gun under the illusion it's the real thing. I'm a complete pacifist at heart, you know. I think it's vital for people of every country to get along peacefully and help each other through foreign trade and commerce. It's not so much the harming of people's bodies I fond objectionable, but of their hearts. That, I believe, is the key to lesson humanism has to teach us."
♥ "Great picture," Hanio responded in genuine admiration as he returned the sketchbook.
"Not bad, eh? When people are happy they are always at their most beautiful, I think. They're completely at peace with themselves. I have no desire to get in the way of that. It's perfection itself. I'm glad I managed to get it down on paper."
♥ "You're still young," said the man. "You must forget everything that happened just now. You understand me, right? What went on today, right here, the people you met-you should forget it all. You get me? That way, you'll be left wit nothing but good memories. Think of these words as my parting gift, to take with you for the rest of your life. Make the most of it."
♥ "You're a weird one. You have as much heart as a vending machine."
"That's right. Stick a coin in me, and you get out what you paid for. It's all or nothing when it comes to machines.
"Can a human really behave so like a robot?"
"Quite a revelation, isn't it?"
♥ He was a man who had already died once.
There was no reason why he should feel any sense of responsibility or attachment to the world. To him, it was nothing more than a sheet of newspaper covered in the scribblings of cockroaches.
♥ A bystander might have seen this as a pathetic game played by a lonely person desperate to be rescued from his loneliness. But how sad it would be to see loneliness as an enemy! It was his unconditional ally. No doubt about it.
♥ "I don't have any next of kin."
"In which case, what should I do with the money?"
"Why don't you use it to buy some large animal-a crocodile, a gorilla, something like that-to lavish your attention on? Probably the best thing for you would be to give up on marriage completely and spend the rest of your life with whichever of those animals you choose. I don't believe any other partner would make you happier. But don't even think of making handbags out of it. All you have to do is feed the creature every day, exercise it, and put your heart and soul into raising it. And each time you look into its eyes you'll be reminded of me."
"You're a very odd person."
"No, you're the odd one."
♥ Once the world has been transformed into something meaningful, some feel they can die without regret. Others feel that they exist in a world without meaning, so what's the point of living? But where do these two sets of feelings converge? For Hanio, both paths led to the same thing: death.
♥ "Come to think of it, this is the first time I've ever got a good view of a dead person, said Hanio to himself. "I never saw even my mother and father's bodies up this close. A dead body reminds me a bit of a bottle of whisky. If you drop the bottle and it cracks, what's inside pours out. It's only natural."
The leaden sea moved restlessly on the other side of the windows.
♥ Alone, Hanio could only kill time by looking around the room. Why was he always in this situation, waiting for something to happen? This must be what "living" was all about. While he was working at Tokyo Ad, it had actually been more a kind of death: a daily grind in and over-lit, ridiculously modern office where everyone wore the latest suits and never got their hands dirty with proper work. Most likely, those colleagues would think it oddly contradictory now to discover Hanio, who had determined to die, sipping brandy and looking forward to the future, even though his own death featured prominently in it.
♥ Once outside, he felt much better. Invigorated by the air, he inhaled every breath so deeply that it made his body sway. The thought that this was the last time he would ever view an evening landscape made it all the more precious.
"Was there ever a time when I really loved life?" he wondered.
The fact that he even had to ask such a question indicated his total lack of self-confidence. Right now, he could feel a love of life growing within himself, but that might be put down to his lightheadedness and poor physical condition.
The beauty of the evening sky pierced him. He felt his heart thumping erratically, and his temples throbbed. Soon, a cluster of giant elm trees loomed into view, their wintry branches, like beautiful lace, stretching over the roofs of this residential district.
"You see that? Those are the elms I was referring to earlier," the woman said. "The park is famous for them."
So he was finally to die tonight. Hanio was looking forward to it. What particularly pleased him was that it was not going to happen by his own hand. Suicide was actually harder than people think-too dramatic for his taste. And if you were going to get yourself killed, it would have to be for some reason. No one had ever detested him or resented him that much, and anyway, the thought that he might be of sufficient interest to others that they would want him dead horrified him. Selling your life was such a splendid way out: it took away all need for responsibility.
The tops of those beautiful elms captured the pale shades of the evening sky in such an exquisite way. A net spread across the heavens: that's what it looked like. But what did it all mean? Why was nature so beautiful for no reason at all? And why did people worry themselves about such trifling matters?
But that was the past now. The thought that his own life was about to cease cleansed his heart, the way peppermint cleanses the mouth.
♥ Two men rushed in.
"Who are you?" Hanio spoke calmly.
To describe him as "calm" implies something of the heroic. But in fact he was perfectly at ease wit the possibility that these men might dispense with him at the drop of a hat. In his heart he still harbored a wistful desire to follow in the traces of that beautiful vampire: a desire that threw into question his earlier frivolous yet pragmatic attitude toward death. But what did any of this matter? Who cares about the motives of someone about to die?
♥ As the first man started to speak, Hanio noticed the creases around his eyes, testament to both hardship and a heart of gold.
♥ The blood brought back memories of the vampire woman, and his heart tightened. Probably never again would he be able to savor that sense of deep immersion in a languid, sweet bath of death. Quite possibly, it was in order to bestow that very favor upon him that she had purchased his life.
♥ It was a while since Hanio had been into town. Signs of death were nowhere to be seen. People were soused in everyday life right up to their necks. You might say they walked around like human pickles.
"When I'm in that world, I'm a sour pickle," Hanio thought. But even as a pickle, he had never amounted to more than an appetizer served with a drink. The dull route of three solid meals a day was not his bag. "That's fate for you. What can you do?"
♥ The color of carrots comes from carotenoids, which can be converted by the body into vitamin A. The deeper the carotenoid pigmentation, the more abundant the potential amount of vitamin A. The one constituent in carrots that works to destructive effect is the enzyme ascorbinase, which breaks down vitamin C. On the other hand, carrots contain no starch whatsoever. Consequently, the saliva-based enzyme ptyalin, which changes starch into maltose, has no effect on carrots.
♥ "And now a few words for you, Mr. Ambassador. Stop overcomplicating the way you think about things. Life and politics are generally simple, much more simple-shallow, even-than you imagine. Of course, I'm aware that my attitude might be different if I weren't prepared to meet death at any moment. It's only the desire to live as long as possible that makes everything seem complicated and mysterious."
♥ "I'm afraid I can't return the half-year's rent in advance you gave me," said the super.
"Keep it," said Hanio.
"For a young guy, you're pretty loaded, aren't you?" The words rolled jealously inside the super's mouth. He seemed to be re-tasting bits of food still caught in there somewhere, like a ruminating crow.
♥ The truth was, he had no destination in mind. He had two checks in his pocket, one for two million yen and one for two hundred thousand. Gazing out at the spring streets, hazy with pollen, he calculated for the first time how much he had brought in so far since beginning his business: one hundred thousand from the old man at the start; five hundred thousand from the incident that had ended in the woman committing suicide; two hundred and thirty thousand from the vampire woman's son; two million, two hundred thousand from this last escapade.
He had earned a total of three million, thirty thousand yen in no time at all. It worked out to about one million a month. Really not a bad business. His income was ten times what he had earned as a copywriter. He had wasted some money on his apartment, but even what he had left guaranteed him a life of luxury for quite some time.
Of course he would have earned much more as a singer of popular songs or a movie star, but that kind of person had a lot more expenses. No way would their life have been as easygoing as his was. He got lots of attention from people with minimal effort on his part, and he had even had the pleasure of having his blood sucked out of him by a vampire.
It occurred to him that now might be a good time to take a break from this "Life for Sale" business. Why not try leading a carefree and luxurious existence for a while in this part of town? If it turned out that he enjoyed a life that just drifted along with no purpose, he could carry on as he was. And if he decided he would prefer to die after all, he had the option of restarting the business.
There could be no freer state of mind.
He simply could not fathom why people got married and ended up trapped for life, or became company employees working at the beck and call of others. Better to spend all this money. If he found himself penniless, suicide was always there as an option.
Suicide...
When his thoughts arrived at this point, he found himself overtaken by a kind of psychological malaise. No matter how you looked at it, he reflected, to kill yourself just because you've suffered some setback required too much effort. If you've finally managed to carve some time out for yourself and flop out, you're hardly in the mood to get up and fetch a cigarette that lies just beyond your reach. Sure, you're dying for a smoke, but it remains just outside your grasp. In fact, it requires a huge effort to heave yourself up and fetch that cigarette: just like when you're asked to push a car that has broken down. That, in a nutshell, is suicide.
♥ The wind had picked up, and the truck was parked under a cherry tree that was flailing about on the other side of a fence. The driver had got out and was once more idly taking in the blossoms. A hazy yellow pall tarnished the blue sky. A cat was walking along the top of the fence. It jumped across to the black branches of the tree, scrambled down the trunk, and slunk off, its body pummelled by the wind like a jellyfish tossed by the waves.
It was a strange, bright afternoon. An afternoon in which something gigantic had been misplaced, a spring afternoon that felt empty and full of light.
♥ The world seemed so full of multiple twists and turns. No way could the earth be described as a perfectly neat globe, he thought. One moment, the land is pitted with sinkholes, the next moment a plateau suddenly rears up into a perpendicular cliff.
To say that human life had no meaning was the easy part. But Hanio was struck all over again by the huge amount of energy required to live a life filled with so much meaninglessness.
♥ "Why are you so tired?"
"I just am, that's all."
"How can anyone be tired of life, or of the very idea of being alive? It's not normal."
"Well, there's nothing else that makes you tired."
Reiko gave a snort. "I know what your problem is. You're tired of trying to die."
♥ "Here, look." The book was a large, beatifically illustrated edition of One Thousand and One Nights. The picture Reiko was showing him was from a tale about an incestuous relationship. The story concerned two siblings, a brother and sister, born of separate mothers, who were infatuated with each other. They hid themselves from the eyes of the world in a magnificent sealed tomb deep on the ground where they could spend time making love to each other, day and night. Eventually they encountered the wrath of God, and were consumed by heavenly flames. When the father located their hideaway and entered the tomb, all he found were their charred bodies embracing each other on the bed covered in richly embroidered silk.
A picture showed their naked bodies, now reduced to black coal, but still recognizably human and locked in a sexual embrace, on a splendid, pristine bed without a single scorch mark. It suggested the abomination and ugliness of death, but also the fires of pleasure that had set the couple's beautiful bodies alight while they were alive. The two looked as if they had been consumed not by the fire of heaven's wrath, but by the flames of carnal pleasure that had lit up their lives.
"Burnt to a crisp, but still kissing," Reiko remarked. "What a way to go! They must have died at the peak of happiness."
♥ Led into their peaceful living room, Hanio instantly felt himself relax. Al demons of the modern age had been swept away from that place. All except their daughter Reiko!
♥ Hanio nodded gently. There he had been, putting all his effort into hurrying toward death. But here were a husband and wife in no hurry to die. A scattering of cherry-blossom petals, blown on the wind, lay in the garden. In the pleasant midday cool of a shaded room, the old man's white hand turned the pages of his Tang poetry book. These people were taking all the time in the world to weave together their own deaths, calmly, as if quietly knitting sweaters in preparation for the coming winter. Where did such tranquility come from?
♥ He knew all about these hippy types-he'd had dealings with them during his time as a copywriter. They were seekers after "meaninglessness," all right, but he could not imagine them having the guts to confront the real thing when it inevitably came calling. They'd ended up in their sorry state for quite trivial reasons-a completely groundless phobia about syphilis, for example, or an aversion to school and studying, Reiko was a case in point.
Hanio felt nothing but utter contempt for these people and all the "reasons" they put forward to justify themselves. Meaninglessness never intruded into people's lives the ways hippies imagined it would. It always arrived in a form far closer to those lines of newspaper print that had turned into cockroaches.
This was how he saw it. You think you're on a road, walking happily along, but then you realize you're actually balancing on a railing on the roof of a thirty-five-story building.
Or, you're playing with a cat, when suddenly deep in its wide meowing maw, reeking of fish, you see jet-black ruined streets stretching out before you, like the burnt-out remains of a city after a major air raid.
Or, you put a ladle of milk right at the tip of a Siamese cat's nose and, just as it's about to drink, you flip the ladle up to drench its face with the milk. Come to think of it, he'd once been very keen on keeping a Siamese as a pet. But somehow he'd ended up having supper in the company of a toy mouse.
It seemed to him that those very same rituals, so central to his fantasies, were equally influential in every aspect of the Japanese political and economic system. The same impulses drove the way the government's cabinet meetings were conducted: questions of national security were resolved according to the same rituals. It's only when a haughty cat is humiliated out of the blue that we gain insight into the full implications of keeping a cat.
In short, Hanio believed that his ideas were all rooted in meaninglessness and they blossomed into life at the very moment when meaning was created. For that reason, he never once initiated any action on the grounds that it was meaningful. People who ascribed meaning to their actions ended up staring meaninglessness in the face, in a state of frustration and hopelessness. Such people were nothing more than sentimentalists-the sort that couldn't let go of life.
When you opened the cupboard, it seemed to Hanio, meaninglessness was already enshrined there along with the heap of dirty laundry. If you already understood that, what was the point of searching for a life of meaninglessness somewhere else?
Hanio had the feeling he would be offering his life for sale again some time in the future...
♥ When Reiko took off her clothes, Hanio was startled by the beautifully translucent quality of her body. There was no sign of the ravages by drugs that he had anticipated. In the subdued lamplight, the skin enveloping that troubled and lonely spirit looked soft and unblemished. Her breasts appeared full, swelling into gentle mounds in a way that lent a feel of something archaic to her nakedness. Her waist was a little thicker than expected: her white stomach rising out of the gloom, overflowing with amiability and richness. Every point touched by Hanio's fingers sent rippling shudders through her body. This Reiko lying so quietly by his side made him think of a sorrowful, abandoned child.
♥ "I had made a personal resolution that I must never love anyone," she continued. "If I did fall in love, I'd only end up passing on my illness-which would be terrible. And even if I met someone, and he loved me so much that he didn't mind catching my disease, there would still be the prospect of me becoming a mental patient before long. How sad would that be? So even when someone tried it on with me, I never surrendered my body. I took Hyminal and LSD, and when I got wasted I came home. I much preferred being in the arms of my mother, who looked after me so sweetly.
"Besides, if a guy only has a few coins in his pocket, I won't look twice at him-no matter how edgy I may seem. But then again, the ones with any money are all dirty old men.
"I've wanted for so long to give my virginity to a man who was young and single, and who was willing to pay for my body, to pay for my life, to pay for the beautiful tomb I would make. I had a few other conditions, too. It would have to be someone who wouldn't regret catching my illness, someone with no thoughts for the future, someone who was willing to die with me at a moment's notice. The guy had to be willing to buy the whole package. That's why your photo struck such a chord the moment I saw it, and why I wanted to meet you."
.."The first thing to say is, you're not ill. That's a delusion, a self-indulgent fantasy. Secondly, you are not going to go insane. It's infantile to even consider such a crazy thing, but infantile thinking does not equal madness. Thirdly, it makes absolutely no sense for you to die merely from fear of going insane. Fourthly, no one is going to buy your life. I don't know how you can dare to ask me, a professional, to do such a thing. It's me and no one else who does the selling here. Buy your life? You must be joking. I wouldn't sink to that level.
"Listen, Reiko. People who buy other people's lives and then try to use them for their own ends are the sickos of the world. They are the lowest form of human existence. I feel nothing but pity for all my clients. But because that's the type of people they are, I've been happy to let them pay for me. But you are simply a thirty-year-old child who just lost her virginity, a woman who despairs of life because of some misguided fantasy, and who has not fathomed what it really means to be human. Nothing more than that. You don't qualify."
♥ Listening to Reiko go into the finer details of her rose-tinted fantasy, Hanio was surprised by its mediocrity.
Reiko would become a happy, loving wife. They would have one child together. The pregnancy would have a few complications, and a Cesarean birth would be required, but in the end they would produce a perfect baby boy. Of course, well before she conceived, Reiko would ave stopped popping Hyminal and LSD tablets.
..The comfortable tomb would be replaced by a new family home, and the tea room refurbished. The thick bushes around the house would be cut back, and the south-facing entrance cleared of most of the vegetation to allow in plenty of sunshine. One Thousand and One Nights would be swapped for a manual on childcare. Hanio would commute to a normal job in a company, like he used to, and a Pomeranian dog would guard the house while they were out. The traditional rock arrangement in the luxuriant garden would be replaced with a swing on a lawn. Reiko would carefully tend the flower borders around the lawn. As summer approached, she would buy an ant house for her child at the department store. These ant houses were all the rage now in the shops, and she felt she wold have to buy one for the child that would never be granted to her in reality.
..Hanio listened with a growing sense of horror to these vignettes of an imagined life that Reiko was sketching. This was nothing other than a cockroach existence! It was the embodiment of all those bugs scurrying around on a sheet of newspaper. Hadn't he opted for suicide precisely to avoid ending up like this?
Of course, Reiko's conviction that she was fatally sick was a complete illusion. But this meant she would have plenty of time to turn the life she was dreaming about into reality. So how could Hanio escape it? Little by little, and absurd as it might sound, he began to try to convince himself that Reiko really was sick: the very delusions she harbored, he reasoned, were actually symptoms of that sickness.
♥ Hanio was lost for words. There was something bigger going on here, he felt. Even a comfortable little tomb like this in the small hours of the night was not totally insulated from the ways of the world. Out there, restless nocturnal life continued to pulse. At the bend of the road on the nearby hill, car horns sounded sharply in the spring night, as if leaping, like the flashing fins of flying fish, from a dark viscous ocean. Useless. Useless. Useless. Is there nothing to charm us? When ten million people come together, they voice not pleasantries but profound frustration with this great city. Youngsters of the night wriggle in their multitudes like swathes of plankton. The insignificance of human life. Passion extinguished. The flavor of pleasure and anticipation lost, like gum when you chew it to death. What else can you do in the end but spit it onto the roadside?...Some people think that money solves everything, and they make off with public funds. Japan today is awash with such cash, and with all else that glitters. Everyone can lay their hands on money, but they're never allowed to use it for themselves. And it's the same with everything else. Succumb to temptation and make a grab at something, and you suddenly find yourself a criminal, ostracized from society. Welcome to the big city: all temptation, no satisfaction. Such was the hell that bared its fangs and whirled around Hanio and Reiko's comfortable little tomb.
♥ But just as he was about to take a sip, Hanio noticed a slight trembling in Reiko's fingers. He quickly knocked the glass out of her hand. The liqueur in her glass spilled onto the silver tray, covering it in dark red.
Hanio took a sniff of his own drink, ten emptied its contents likewise onto the tray, now suddenly awash with red liquid.
"How could you do such a thing!" Hanio shook Reiko's shoulders angrily.
"But surely you understand. I just thought that now would be the best moment. To die together." Reiko sank to the floor, weeping.
"This is not what I wanted," said Hanio.
Hanio felt his heart beating even faster than when he faced death on previous occasions. He confronted her, arms folded.
"Coward!" she said. "Your life was supposed to be for sale. Why have you changed your mind?"
"You're getting things confused here. I don't recall ever selling my life to you. But the main point is, I was paying you!"
"You just don't want to die with me, do you?"
"That's enough of your sob story. Pathetic! If you're that keen to give up your life, at least show a bit more backbone. But whatever you decide, my life is my own affair. I'm quite prepared to sell my life as long as it's my decision. But when some selfish so-and-so messes me about, and then even tries to poison me while I'm not looking, I'm not prepared to take it. You've misjudged me. I'm not that kind of guy."
"Well, what kind of guy are you, then?"
Hanio was stumped. The truth is, he was not sure war kind of guy he was. The angry puffed-up words he'd just come out with hung in the air like balloons. Until that moment, he simply could not have imagined such thoughts issuing from his own mouth. There had to be some rationale to the way he had spoken, but he couldn't quite make sense of it. Maybe it did all boil down to the fact that, actually, he didn't want to die.
But did that mean he was betraying everything he had come to believe in? Death is death, isn't it, whether you put your life up for sale, or someone else does the job for you? He might make a big fuss about acting according to his "own will," but surely the reason he'd set up his "Life for Sale" business in the first place was that, having failed to take his own life, he was hoping for the chance to die by the hand of another. He had certainly not started the business from a desire to earn money. And yet here he was being showered with money by all hid clients... In which case, perhaps the most desirable way for him to lose his life was as a sudden event, exactly like Reiko had attempted. Maybe the death that Reiko had been plotting simply proved that she was indeed an eminently suitable, kind, and gentle woman, with the purest of intentions!
His thoughts continued to race, and his heart to pound. Was that fear he was feeling? From now on, Hanio could not afford to let down his defenses.
♥ On the other side of this ceiling was a starry sky enveloped in smog. As Hanio lay with arm on pillow and looking up at the rain-blotched ceiling, he sensed the design of the Almighty. The same vast starry sky that hung over the ceiling of a great convention hall, replete with glittering chandeliers, also hung over the ceiling of this dismal, gray hotel. Beneath the sky, wretched loneliness was no jot better or worse than good fortune and success. To put it another way, wherever you stood, the same starry sky was peering down. He knew that to be true. And that was precisely the reason why the meaninglessness of his own life connected directly with the starry sky. Hidden away on this flophouse, Hanio had become, you might say, a "prince of stars."
♥ The fact that such a matter even bothered Hanio surely proved that life was dear to him. Why should anything worry him if he had no concern for his life? But was refusing to put his own death in the hands of another really the same as being attached to life?
..Hanio burst out laughing. Here he was, worrying himself to the bone: what a compete neurotic he had become! And yet he had not felt the slightest concern when the blood was being sucked out of him every day by the vampire woman!
Come to think of it, he remembered something he had learned long ago, but had subsequently forgotten-that living and worrying were one and the same thing. Perhaps this was evidence that he had got his "life" back, and he just hadn't realized it until now.
♥ But his unprepossessing appearance was no proof that he was unconnected to any organization. Everyone affiliated to an organization conspires to kill those who exist in complete isolation.
♥ But he couldn't get out of his head the thought that the man might be loitering in the corridor outside his room. How fearless, utterly fearless he had felt when he first put his life up for sale! But now, a warm furry fear clung to his chest, digging its claws right in. Like lying in bed wit a cat in his arms.
♥ Nothing is safer than not even knowing your destination yourself.
♥ The menswear fashions, shirts, the fridges, rattan blinds, fans, and air conditioners all suggested that, even before the June rainy season had begun, spring had had its day and it was already almost summer. The huge number of products spoke of compact little families, in their compact little houses, where these goods would ultimately end up. The thought almost suffocated him. Why are people so desperate to live? Isn't it unnatural that people who have not even been exposed to the danger of death should feel a desire to live? It was only people like himself who should have the right to cherish such a desire.
♥ ..there they stood, hanging on to their straps, stealing looks at him. They might have been checking portraits of criminals on "Wanted" posters you find pasted up in front of a police station.
"That's him there. I'll pretend not to notice now, but I'll inform the station staff later when I get off at the next stop."
They seemed to have detected in Hanio's face the hint of an enmity toward society.
♥ The warm air of May mingled with the odor of people's bodies in the carriage, bringing home to him for the first time in ages the unbearable smell of communal living. He wanted to live, that was now certain. But could someone who had once managed to escape society's clutches find the courage to commit himself again to that pungent stench? Society operates smoothly precisely because people remain unaware of their own smell. The student's stinking socks tat haven't been washed in a week, the sweet underarm odor of a schoolgirl, and her distinctively world-weary "virginal scent," the middle-aged man who reeks like a chimney covered in soot. People never hold back when it comes to giving off their own scents. Hanio liked to think he produced no smell or odor, but he could not be certain.
♥ The moment he'd put out that "Life for Sale" ad, he had already sealed his own fate: a violent death. No getting away from it. This unadulterated, raw realization cut through him like searing heartburn. And yet, to his surprise, the fear he'd felt while on the run had suddenly receded.
What exactly was the fear of death? All the time Hanio had felt pursued by death, his eyes were etched with nothing but fear, no matter how many times he'd tried to look away. Fear had been like a strange black chimney rising high up on the horizon. But now, that chimney had disappeared from sight.
♥ "But you played dumb and made no contact at all with the police. We began to wonder what you were up to that time you had dinner with the stuffed mouse. But we checked it out later, and failed to find any tramsmitter inside it."
♥ "You have this paranoid superstition that everyone is a member of some organization. But all your talk about Hongbang is ridiculous: you really ought to get over it. In this world, people also exist who are unattached to any organization, who can live freely and die freely."
♥ "Don't 'Hanio my boy' me. I don't want to join your stinking gang. As for myself, I lack any sense of morality, so I have no moral objections about what you do. It's all the same to me whether you kill people, or smuggle money or drugs or weapons. My only concern is to smash that misguided belief you seem to have that everyone you meet belongs to some organization. Plenty of people are not like that. Can't you see? And you've got to realize that there are also some who not only lack any affiliation, they also have absolutely no attachment to life. They may be few and far apart. But they certainly exist.
"I don't consider life valuable. My life is up for sale. I have no complaint about what happens to me. But I do take offense at being killed against my will, and that's why I'm quite prepared now to commit suicide. Even if that means taking the whole lot of you with me. Five minutes left."
♥ "So everyone without a fixed abode is suspect?"
"Yes, of course." Perhaps afraid that he might have gone too far, the detective softened his tone a little. "Respectable people all have homes. They devote themselves to providing for their wives and children. Surely I don't have to tell you that for someone your age to come here, single and homeless, makes you a dodgy member of society."
"Are you saying that every person must have an address, a home, a wife and kids, and a job?"
"It's not me that says it. It's society."
"So anyone slightly different is human trash?"
"You said it."
♥ He was all alone. It was a glorious starry night. In a dark alley opposite the station he could see two or three red paper lanterns, probably signaling the local police watering hole. Night clung to Hanio's heart. It smothered his face, as if about to suffocate him.
Hanio could not manage even the few stone steps at the station entrance, so he sat himself down where he was. He took a bent cigarette from his trouser pocket and lit it. He was on the verge of tears, and a kind of twitching troubled the back of his throat. He looked up into the heavens. The stars blurred, and a myriad of lights blended into one.