The Briefcase (Hiromi Kawakami) читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги

Mushroom Hunting, Part 2

I WAS SITTING on a large tree stump and looking up at the sky.

Sensei and Satoru and Toru had all ventured much further into the forest. The ta-ra-ra-ra-ra was now off in the distance and in its place I could hear a high-pitched ru-ru-ru-ru-ru.

The area where I sat was slick with dampness. It wasn’t just that the ground was moist—all around me, it felt like it was bursting—with the leaves on the trees, the undergrowth, the countless microorganisms under the ground, the flat bugs crawling over the surface, the winged insects flitting through the air, the birds perched on branches, even the breath of the larger animals that inhabited the deeper forest.

I could only see a small patch of sky, the part that was left open between the treetops of the forest around me. The branches seemed like a network that in some places almost obscured the sky. Once my eyes had adjusted to the faint light, I realized that the undergrowth was alive with all manner of things. Tiny orange mushrooms. Moss. Something that looked like coarse white veins on the underside of a leaf. What must be some kind of fungus. Dead beetles. Various kinds of ants. Centipedes. Moths on the backs of leaves.

It seemed strange to be surrounded by so many living things. When I was in Tokyo, I couldn’t help but feel like I was always alone, or occasionally in the company of Sensei. It seemed like the only living things in Tokyo were big like us. But of course, if I really paid attention, there were plenty of other living things surrounding me in the city as well. It was never just the two of us, Sensei and me. Even when we were at the bar, I tended to only take notice of Sensei. But Satoru was always there, along with the usual crowd of familiar faces. And I never really acknowledged that any of them were alive in any way. I never gave any thought to the fact that they were leading the same kind of complicated life as I was.

Toru came back to where I was sitting.

“Tsukiko, everything okay?” he asked as he showed me the handfuls of mushrooms he had collected.

“Totally fine. Really,” I replied.

“Well, I wish you would have come along with us,”Toru said.

“Tsukiko can be a tad bit sentimental.” The instant I realized this was Sensei’s voice, he suddenly and unexpectedly emerged from the shade of the trees just behind me. Whether it was because his suit acted as protective coloring or he was particularly surefooted in the forest, until that moment I had been completely unaware of his presence.

“You were sitting there all alone, lost in your thoughts, weren’t you?” Sensei went on. There were fallen leaves stuck here and there on his tweed jacket.

“Do you mean to say she’s a girlish romantic?” Toru asked as he roared with laughter.

“Girlish, indeed!” I replied, deadpan.

“Well, then, would the young Miss Tsukiko like to help me prepare the soup?” Toru said, reaching into Satoru’s rucksack and taking out an aluminum pot and a portable cooking stove.

“Could you fetch some water?” he asked, and I hurriedly stood up. He told me there was a stream just ahead, so I walked there to find water springing forth among large rocks. Catching some water in my palms, I brought it to my lips. The water was icy cold, yet smooth and mellow. I caught more of it with my palms, bringing it to my lips over and over again.

“HAVE A TASTE,” Satoru said to Sensei, who was sitting up straight, Japanese-style, his feet tucked under his legs on a newspaper that had been spread over the ground. Sensei sipped the mushroom soup.

Satoru and Toru had skillfully prepared the mushrooms they had collected. Toru had cleaned the mushrooms of any dirt or mud, and Satoru had torn the large ones into pieces, leaving the smaller ones as they were, before briefly sautéing them in a small frying pan they had also brought along. Then he put the sautéed mushrooms into the pot of already boiling water, stirred in some miso, and let it all simmer for a little while.

“I studied up a bit last night for our trip,” Sensei said, as he blew on the soup, cupping in both hands the alumite bowl that reminded me of old-fashioned cafeteria ware.

“You studied up? Isn’t that just like a teacher!” Toru responded, heartily slurping his soup.

“There are many more kinds of poisonous mushrooms than I realized,” Sensei said, snaring a piece of mushroom with his chopsticks and popping it in his mouth.

“Hmmm, well…,” Satoru murmured. Having already drained his first bowl, he was just that moment ladling out a second serving.

“The really poisonous ones, you shouldn’t even think about putting them near your mouth.”

“Sensei, please stop! At least while we’re eating,” I pleaded, but he paid no attention to me. As usual.

“But the trouble is, it seems the kaki-shimeji mushroom looks exactly like the matsutake, and the tsukiyotake mushroom is indistinguishable from the shiitake, and so on.”

Sensei’s gravely serious tone caused Satoru and Toru to burst in laughter.

“Sensei, we’ve been collecting mushrooms for more than ten years now, and we’ve never once seen such strange mushrooms as that.”

I now returned my chopsticks, which had been suspended in the air, to my alumite soup bowl. Unsure of whether or not Satoru and Toru had taken notice of my hesitation, I cast a furtive upward glance in their direction, but neither of them seemed to be paying any attention to me.

Satoru and Toru were both mesmerized by Sensei, who had just uttered the statement, “Actually, the woman who used to be my wife once ate a Big Laughing Gym mushroom.”

“What do you mean, ‘the woman who used to be my wife’?”

“I mean my wife who ran off about fifteen years ago,” he said, his voice as serious as ever.

Huh? I gave out a little cry. I had assumed that Sensei’s wife had died. I expected Satoru and Toru to be just as surprised, but they both seemed unfazed. As he sipped the rest of his mushroom soup, Sensei told us the following story:

My wife and I often went hiking. We usually hiked smaller mountains, places that were about an hour’s train ride away. Early Sunday mornings, we’d take along a lunch my wife had packed for us and board the train, still empty at that hour. My wife had a book she loved called Suburban Pleasure Hiking . On its cover, there was a photo of a woman climbing a mountain with a walking stick, wearing leather hiking boots, knickerbockers, and a hat with a feather tucked into it. My wife had re-created this exact outfit—down to the walking stick—and she would wear it on our hiking trips. This is just ordinary hiking, I would say to her, You don’t need to be so formal about it. But she would reply, impervious to me, It’s important to dress the part. She wouldn’t break character, even on a trail where people were walking around in flip-flops. She was a very hardheaded person.

This must have been when our son was in elementary school. The three of us were on one of our usual hiking trips. It was exactly the same time of year as now. It had been raining, and the mountain’s fall foliage was beautiful, although many of the brilliantly colored leaves had been scattered by the rain. I was wearing sneakers and had fallen down a couple of times when they got stuck in the mud. My wife had no trouble walking in her hiking boots. But whenever I fell, she refrained from making any sort of sarcastic remark. She may have been stubborn, but she did not go in for cattiness.

After walking for a while, we took a break and each had two honeyed lemon slices. I’m not particularly fond of sour sweets, but my wife insisted that honeyed lemon went together with mountain hiking, so I didn’t bother to argue. Even if I had, I doubt it would have bothered her, perhaps it would just have contributed to the subtle accumulation of anger—the way a succession of smaller waves accumulate into one big wave—that rippled throughout everyday life in unexpected places. That’s just the way married life is, I suppose.

Our son liked lemon even less than I did. He put the honeyed lemon in his mouth and then stood up and walked into a thicket of trees. He liked to pick up autumn leaves from the ground. The boy had a refined sensibility. I followed him to pick up some leaves myself, but when I got closer, I saw that he was stealthily digging a hole in the ground. He hastily dug a shallow hollow, hurriedly spit out the lemon in his mouth, then swiftly filled in the hole with dirt. That’s how much he disliked lemon. He wasn’t the kind of child who wasted food either. My wife had raised him well.

You must really hate it, I said to him. He was a bit startled, but then nodded silently. I’m not very fond of it either, I said, and he smiled with relief. Our son looked a lot like my wife when he smiled. He still looks a lot like her. Come to think of it, he will soon be fifty years old, the same age my wife was when she ran off.

The two of us were crouched over, busying ourselves with collecting autumn leaves when my wife walked up. Even though she was wearing those huge hiking boots, she didn’t make a sound. Hey there, she said behind our backs, and we both flinched with surprise. Look what I found—a Big Laughing Gym mushroom, she whispered in our ears.

THE FOUR OF us had quickly finished what had seemed like plenty of mushroom soup. The combined varieties of mushrooms had mingled together and the taste was ineffable. That had been Sensei’s description—“ineffable.” In the middle of his story, he had abruptly interrupted himself to say, “Satoru, the soup’s aroma is simply ineffable.”

Satoru rolled his eyes, and Toru said, “Sensei, you sound just like a teacher!” They urged Sensei to continue the story. What happened with the Big Laughing Gym? Satoru asked, while Toru wondered, How did she know it was a Big Laughing Gym?

Besides Suburban Pleasure Hiking, my wife had another favorite book, a little field guide to mushroom identification, like a mushroom encyclopedia—these two books were always tucked away in her rucksack whenever we went hiking. And, now, she had the guide open to the page on Big Laughing Gym mushrooms, and she kept repeating, This is it! This is definitely that kind of mushroom!

“Fine, you know it’s a Big Laughing Gym, but what are you going to do with it?” I asked her.

My wife replied, “Why, eat it, of course.”

“But isn’t it poisonous?” I said.

“Mom, stop it!” our son cried out.

Right at that moment—paying no mind whatsoever to the dirt on its cap—my wife popped the mushroom into her mouth. “It’s a little tough to eat raw,” she said, shoving a honeyed lemon slice in her mouth along with it.To this day, neither my son nor I have ever eaten another honeyed lemon slice.

What followed was quite a commotion. First our son burst into tears. “Mom is going to die!” he bawled.

“Big Laughing Gyms don’t kill you,” my wife comforted him, maintaining perfect composure.

In any case, we still needed to get off the mountain and go to a hospital, and I had to drag my reluctant wife back down the way we came.

Soon after, just around the time when we reached the foot of the mountain, the symptoms began to appear. Later at the hospital, the doctor commented nonchalantly that ingesting even such a small amount could bring about symptoms but, to my mind, the symptoms that she exhibited were rather remarkable.

My wife, who up until then had been so calm and collected, began to emit a sort of chortle, intermittent at first but soon growing in frequency before developing into the full-fledged so-called “laughter.” They call it laughter, but there was nothing happy or cheerful about it. It sounded as though she was trying to stifle a laugh as it welled up, but for the life of her she couldn’t hold back, and no matter how much she tried, her brain was unable to overcome the involuntary physical reaction—that’s what kind of laugh it was. An unspeakably sinister laugh, as if at some sick joke.

Our son was terrified, I was in a panic, and my wife, her eyes filled with tears, just kept on laughing.

“Cut it out, will you?” I said, as our son whimpered faintly.

“I c-can’t stop. I-It’s like my throat and my f-face and my chest—n-none of them are under my c-control,” my wife replied with difficulty, through her laughter.

I was irate. Why was it that she constantly needed to cause such trouble? We went hiking practically every weekend and, frankly, I didn’t enjoy it very much. Neither did our son. He would probably have been just as content to stay at home, painstakingly assembling his plastic models, or to go fishing in the creek by our house, or what have you. Instead, both he and I did as we were told and got up early to wander around the hills on the outskirts of town. But that just wasn’t good enough for my wife—she had to go and eat a Big Laughing Gym mushroom.

My wife was treated in the hospital, but, as the ever-nonchalant doctor said, since the mushroom’s toxin was already in her bloodstream, there was really nothing they could do about it, and her condition remained more or less unchanged after he examined her. Ultimately, my wife went on laughing until that evening. We took a taxi home and I put our son, who had worn himself out crying and had fallen asleep, under the covers in his bed. I kept an eye on my still-laughing wife as she sat alone in the living room while I made us some strong green tea. My wife drank her tea, laughing, and I drank my tea, stewing in my anger.

After her symptoms subsided at last and my wife was back to normal, I started in on my lecturing. Do you have any idea how much trouble you caused for all of us, in this single day today? Oh, I was in rare form. I lectured her like I was lecturing a student. My wife listened with downcast eyes, her head hung low. She nodded at each thing I said. I’m sorry, she said over and over. When I was done, she said earnestly, “Everyone causes trouble for someone at some point in their lives.”

“I don’t cause anyone any trouble! You’re the one who is a nuisance! Please refrain from extrapolating your own personal issues onto the general public,” I harangued. My wife hung her head again. More than ten years later, when she ran off, I was left with a vivid recollection of her like that, eyes downcast and contrite. My wife was a difficult person, but I wasn’t so different. I used to think that we complemented each other—like the saying goes: Even a cracked pot has a lid that fits. But, as it turned out, I guess I didn’t fit my wife very well.

“HERE, SENSEI, HAVE a drink,” Toru pulled the Sawanoi saké from his rucksack. It was a 720-milliliter bottle. We had polished off the mushroom soup, but like magic, Toru produced one item after another from his bag. Dried mushrooms. Rice crackers. Dried smoked squid. Whole tomatoes. Canned bonito.

“It’s quite a feast,” Toru remarked. Both he and Satoru were swigging saké from paper cups and gnawing on tomatoes.

“You don’t get as drunk if you eat a tomato first,” they claimed.

“Sensei, do you think they’ll be all right to drive?” I asked under my breath.

He replied, “One bottle between the four of us shouldn’t be a problem, I guess.” My stomach was already warm from the mushroom soup, and the saké warmed it even more. The tomatoes were delicious. We just bit right into them; they didn’t even need salt. Apparently, they were straight from Toru’s garden. He pulled out another bottle of saké from his rucksack, meaning we’d have to revise our calculations.

I heard the ta-ra-ra-ra-ra again. Every so often, bugs crawled underneath the newspaper we were sitting on. I could feel them moving through the paper. Various flying insects—some of them quite large—buzzed and landed around us. They seemed particularly attracted to the smoked squid and the saké. Toru paid them virtually no attention as he continued to eat and drink.

“I think you just ate a bug,” Sensei pointed out to Toru, who replied with a straight face, “Mmm, delicious!”

The dried mushrooms weren’t completely dehydrated, like dried shiitake; rather they still had a bit of moisture in them. They looked more like beef jerky. What kind of mushrooms are these? I asked.

Satoru, already red in the face, replied, “Fly agarics.”

“Aren’t those extremely poisonous?” Sensei asked.

“Did you look that up in your mushroom encyclopedia?” Toru said with a smirk. Instead of responding, Sensei took the mushroom field guide out of his briefcase. It was an old, well-thumbed copy, and on its cover was a mushroom that appeared to be a fly agaric, with an impressive-looking red spotted cap.

“Toru, do you know the story about these?”

“What story?”

“What they did with them in Siberia. Long ago, the chiefs of indigenous highland peoples of Siberia would ingest the fly agaric before going into battle. Fly agaric mushrooms contain constituents that induce a psychoactive trance. Once eaten, the mushroom causes an extremely agitated state characterized by ferocity and momentary bursts of tremendous strength that can persist for hours. First, the chief would eat the mushroom, and the next-highest-ranking man would drink the chief’s urine. Then the next-highest-ranking man would drink the second-highest-ranking man’s urine, and so on, until the mushroom’s constituents were coursing through the veins of all the members of the tribe.

“Apparently, when the last man finished drinking the urine, they were prepared to do battle,” Sensei concluded.

“That’s a handy little mush… mushroom encyclopedia,” Satoru said with a high-pitched laugh. He was nibbling on a shred of dried mushroom.

“Come on, you two, try some,” Toru said, thrusting a dried mushroom into my hand and Sensei’s hand. Sensei took a long, hard look at the mushroom. I gave it a tentative sniff. Both Toru and Satoru dissolved into senseless guffaws. Toru started to say, “You know…,” and Satoru roared with laughter. Once he had controlled himself, Satoru then began with, “It’s like…,” only to have Toru cackle hysterically. The two of them tried to speak again at the same time and burst out laughing together.

The temperature had risen a bit. Even though it would soon be winter, the surrounding trees and the undergrowth beneath us provided a damp yet toasty warmth. Sensei slowly sipped his saké, intermittently nibbling on the dried mushroom.

“Do you think it’s okay to eat a poisonous mushroom?” I asked. Sensei laughed. “Well, now…,” he replied with a charming smile.

Toru, Satoru, are these really fly agarics?

Of course not, they couldn’t be.

You bet they are, the real deal.

Toru and Satoru replied at the same time. I couldn’t tell which one of them had said which. Sensei was still smiling, leisurely nibbling on his mushroom.

Sensei closed his eyes as he said the words, “Cracked pot.”

What’s that? I asked him.

He repeated the phrase, Even a cracked pot has a lid that fits.

Tsukiko, eat the mushroom, he instructed me in his teacher’s voice. Tentatively, I tried licking it, but all I could taste was dirt. Toru and Satoru were still laughing. Sensei kept smiling, looking off in the distance. Giving in, I stuffed the whole mushroom in my mouth, chewing and chewing.

We sat there drinking for another hour or so, and I noticed no real effects. We packed up our things and went back the way we came. As we walked, I felt alternately like laughing and crying. I must have been drunk. I wasn’t really sure where we were going. I was definitely drunk. Satoru and Toru walked in front, with exactly the same posture and exactly the same gait. Sensei and I walked in line behind them, smiling to ourselves. Sensei, do you still love your wife, even after she ran off? I murmured.

He boomed with laughter. My wife is still an immeasurable presence in my life, he said somewhat seriously, before breaking into laughter again. I found myself surrounded by such a plethora of living things, all of them buzzing about. What on earth was I doing, wandering around a place like this?