I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like (13 page)

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Did you know that the population of China is 1.3 billion? I wonder if that’s just mainland or whether it’s the whole world.

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Mm what’s that?

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I don’t know, I guess it isn’t important.

Mieko was out of the apartment before I was. I tried to finish my breakfast, but before long I was scanning the article again. It didn’t specify whether the population figure was mainland or world-wide.

As I rode the train to work, pressed in tight against one of the rails, I examined those around me. Three businessmen stood next to me, looking at nothing in particular. On the other side of them a middle-aged woman was reading a paperback novel, and further along a group of high school girls laughed amongst themselves. Without giving myself away, I scrutinized their faces. In this way, my thoughts returned to the number. At first there was no connection; it seemed suspended in my mind, touching nothing. Then, as I looked at the students sharing a private joke, I wondered if they knew any more about China than I did.

I decided that I knew almost nothing. No, perhaps that’s not right — I knew as much as those around me, I supposed, which is to say very little. I don’t mean that I hadn’t, for example, at some point in my education memorized meaningless trivia about geography or the succession of dynasties or the Cultural Revolution. Nor did I imagine myself unaware of daily Chinese life. What I mean is that I had never been given, or developed for myself, an appropriate context within which to arrange this knowledge. Without this, without a pivot, I realized that everything that came to mind when I considered the word China was only a set of secondhand impressions — descriptive, perhaps, but baseless.

One of the girls laughed loudly, a sudden squawk that startled me out of my reverie. I felt as if I had missed something important, some product of my thoughts which had now vanished. I looked at the businessmen and they looked back at me.

Outside, through the window of the bakery that bordered my pizzeria, I took in the weary features of one of the part-time employees. It was seven a.m. now, and I knew that he had been there for several hours already. None of my employees arrive until 7:30.

I’ve heard that managing a pizzeria is not a serious aspiration for a chef, but this is elitism. I am good at my job — a banana cream dessert pizza I prepared was awarded second prize in an international contest held in New York. My pizzeria attracts a young clientele that is pleased I am making use of aoli, asparagus, prawns, soy, and other neglected ingredients.

But I am not talented enough to interest Mieko in anything beyond pepperoni or the classic Neapolitan.

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I have an idea for your next pizza, she’ll say, peanut butter and escargot with fresh basil, or something to that effect.

I’m not sure who decided letting her educate children was a good idea.

Yukino arrived precisely at 7:30. It is her way. Yukino is not much of a waitress, but it’s not for lack of trying. I met her at her high school, where I used to act as a substitute teacher for cooking classes.

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Looking forward to the weekend? I asked her.

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Yeah, she said, smiling a genuine smile.

I was glad Yukino had arrived first. Conversations with her, however trivial, never feel mechanical. When I first started employing young people I was still a young man myself, and in my desperation not to resemble any of the bosses I had worked under, I took great pains to ask my charges about their studies, their aspirations, beliefs, love lives, hourly moods. This stopped when I discovered most of them had no interest in talking, or the subtleties of pizza, or anything else. But Yukino is always happy to talk and listen.

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So what’s on the agenda?

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Well I’m probably going into Shibuya on Saturday with Yuko and Izumi, then I’ve gotta proofread one of Hee Ying’s assignments, and I think Shintaro’s supposed to come over some time.

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Who’s Hee Ying? I asked, turning on one of the ovens.

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Oh she’s this exchange student from Guangzhou that’s staying with us. She’s a second year at Josai.

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So she’s Chinese, I said.

To Yukino’s credit, instead of giving me the look this question deserved, she only nodded as if I had asked her whether there were many customers outside.

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I just read this article this morning and I was thinking about...

I couldn’t think of what to tell her.

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Oh that’s cool, she said, picking up on my silence as a cue to speak. I read this article yesterday about these scientists who were saying that everyone on Earth is descended from the same woman in Africa millions of years ago and there used to be these other people that weren’t really human but we killed them all, so it’s like everyone on Earth is kind of a big family... don’t you think that’s really weird?

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That’s... yeah.

I was becoming distant. I struggled for a while to reassert myself, but in truth I was pleased when, after the others had arrived and business commenced for the day, I could bury myself in work. I let my hands perform the familiar motions for me, kneading the dough and dusting it down with flour. Friday is our busiest night, and the steady flow of customers meant there was little time for me to waste in reflection.

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Mr. Yoshimori’s here, I heard halfway through the day from Shinya, one of my waiters.

Looking up, I saw a thick-necked man in a tasteless yellow shirt — my old friend Yoshimori, the owner of a restaurant a block up from mine.

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Still keeping all the attractive waitresses to yourself, I see, he said, shaking his head as Yukino entered the kitchen to drop off an order.

Yukino laughed.

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Nice shirt, I said.

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It’s camouflage. I can’t be seen in here by anyone important, you understand.

In truth I am a better chef than Yoshimori and more versatile as well; I have chosen to specialize in pizza out of personal preference. But it is an old joke between us that he must condescend to visit his friend, must take a grudging step down the culinary ladder.

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Anyone who isn’t color-blind, you mean.

I looked down and resumed trimming a dough ball. For some reason I didn’t feel up to a visit from my friend today.

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How’s business? Yoshimori asked.

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Business is business.

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No more of those unfortunate machine-gun robberies?

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Not for a few weeks.

Yoshimori’s restaurant is called Driftwood. I never understood why he chose to call it that, since there was no nautical theme, but it seemed inadvisable to ask and display my ignorance. I knew that if I did, Yoshimori would immediately deadpan a response.

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It seemed more modest than The Premiere Gourmet Experience, he’d say, or:

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It was designated that by the Gastronomic Illuminati.

Or: simply an incredulous silence that something so obvious could have escaped me.

For his part, he’d assumed I’d called my restaurant ‘Kenji’s Pizza’ out of some kind of irony.

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That’s really funny, Furusawa, he always said in a leaden tone when we walked past it.

In fact, I was always on guard around Yoshimori. Since our student days we’d cultivated a deep, private vein of humor that consisted of just such statements, delivered as expressionlessly as possible. Any kind of open laughter was an admission of defeat. The upshot of this was that when we talked, it was frequently impossible for either of us to be certain that what the other said wasn’t sarcasm, an exaggeration, or an outright lie. This made most of our conversations more competition than communication, particularly when we were around a third party, where we felt compelled to utter, in as straightforward and innocuous a manner as we could contrive, all sorts of outrageous boasts and implausible stories. Admittedly, Yoshimori was better at it than I was. I could remember all too many times when, out with a girl or a new acquaintance, I would suddenly burst into laughter as he blandly related one of our imagined exploits.

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Have dinner at Driftwood tomorrow, will you? he said. I’ve got some new entrees I need to debut. Bring Mieko along too.

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You mean you have to get rid of your leftovers somehow.

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You’ve seen right through me, Furusawa. That’s why I need you to bring your wife along.

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Last time you had us over she loved the roast duck... as far as the taste went, I mean. But the presentation was just average. If I’m getting Mieko involved in this, you have to remember her sensibilities.

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Naturally. Keisuke forgot to put out napkins, is all. He’s been dealt with.

Around this point I realized I was sweating. I was close to the ovens, but I hadn’t noticed the heat before. The room seemed to recede before me as I watched.

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You’ll have to excuse me, I said, wiping my brow. I can’t really talk now. Business to attend to...

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I’m sure. Remember: tomorrow night at seven.

Yoshimori turned to leave.

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Wait, I said as he passed out of the kitchen. I don’t know if, uh...

He stopped.

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... I don’t know if Mieko can make it, to be honest. She’s got a meeting with some parents tomorrow night. It might not take that long, but I’m not sure.

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You might as well not even come then, said Yoshimori, hesitating only for a moment. I only really wanted to see her, you see...

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But I might bring some other people.

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You will?

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Yeah. Just one or two people I know.

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So it’s a surprise.

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Something like that.

Yoshimori finally left. I wiped my sleeve across my brow, took a deep breath and checked my watch. The hours remaining before I could leave weighed over me.

When I spoke to Yoshimori of bringing others, I barely knew what I meant myself. A possibility that I could only dimly perceive had presented itself, and I reached for it without thinking. It was only later, as I closed up the restaurant and said goodbye to the staff, that I realized how to proceed.

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Have a good weekend, Mr. Furusawa, Yukino said as she stepped out into the street.

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Just a moment...

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Yeah?

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Hey, I know you said you had plans for this weekend, but Mr. Yoshimori is having something on at his restaurant tomorrow, and he told me to invite some of my staff.

This was the crux. Best not to over-emphasize it.

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Something about a new menu, I added. It’s hard to tell with him sometimes. Anyway, I talked to the others earlier and they can’t make it. Would you be up for it?

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What time? Yukino asked.

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Seven.

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A.M. or P.M.?

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P.M., I said, looking at her. It’s dinner.

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Oh, said Yukino, blinking. I think I should be free then.

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That’s fine. Why don’t we meet back here at a quarter to seven, then?

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Okay.

As we moved to part again, I stopped her.

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I just thought of something, I said, the feigned edge of spontaneity slipping into place from years of practice with Yoshimori. Didn’t you say something about a Chinese exchange student?

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Hee Ying?

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That’s right, Hee Ying. Why don’t you invite her too? It’d be good to show her around a bit.

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Sure, I’ll see if she wants to come.

Throughout this exchange I was so preoccupied with the thing lodged in my thoughts that I didn’t notice that my shirt was drenched in sweat. As I turned away from Yukino and headed off into the night, my fists clenched of their own accord. Everyone I passed was a stranger — there was no one to distract me now.

First I considered the number... no, that’s not right — the number considered me, reckoned me against its billion. A meaningless number, and thus impossible to fix — infinite lightness, infinite weight. In considering subject and object in this fashion, a chasm appeared between me and the number and was soon bridged by a realization: I was not doing anything about this large number of Chinese.

As I looked up at a neon sign in the distance and someone brushed past me (a woman’s hand, lightly crossing my arm?), an apparition took hold of my mind. A globe hung in space, in perfect darkness, until, from its center, there radiated a bright band of light, a luminous equator circumscribing its width. Within this golden circle, I understood, was everything Chinese. Before, tiny lights such as myself had flitted across the black globe in even distribution, but now we were pushed back and dispersed. The Chinese circle was the center, and everyone else, myself included, was crowded to the margins of existence.

Once this impression took hold it didn’t leave. Color bled back to my vision, but the circle remained burnt in, superimposed, as if I had looked at the sun. A door had opened in the sky, and through the opening the circle looked down at me. From street to sky we regarded each other. Now I was greeted with the absurd sight of myself disporting under the light of the circle. All of my actions assumed a comical cast; it seemed to me that there was nothing in my life to merit Chinese scrutiny. Even worse was the spectre of my ignorance... how could I call myself a human being when the commonality of most of humanity remained alien to me? As I passed through the streets of Tokyo to return to my wife I realized with terrible certainty my exclusion from a vast Chinese confraternity extending over the mainland, Taiwan, America, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, the entire surface of the Earth.