I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like (21 page)

She shivered from the air-conditioning, then braced herself in a sudden movement. Ahead of her were rows of steaks, chops, bacon and sausages. There was something faintly repulsive about them, but she supposed it was as much their unfamiliarity as anything else. On the few occasions when she had given the meat aisle any thought, she had reflected only on the origin of the products: of cows herded into pens and knocked unconscious; of skinned pigs strung up in slaughterhouses, their blood draining through the floor vents; of butchers working, sectioning flesh, dividing carcasses and hacking them into joints. Ayano had never seen any of these things for herself, but she knew they were occurring somewhere, and the thought had always distressed her. It all seemed hopeless to change, and now she felt the same hopelessness as she stared at the meat in front of her. She knew it had once been part of living beings — but the woman didn’t care, and neither, it seemed, did anyone else.

She moved closer and picked up a steak. The surface of the meat was a dull red, trimmed with white ribbons of fat, glazed with a slick residue of blood. She thought of the cow standing on the slaughterhouse floor, its mind a kind of fog. But then a strange thing happened. As she thought of the obliviousness of the cow, she felt calmer than before. The cow had been slaughtered, but it had died quickly, and if it had felt any dread, it was not the same as human dread — nothing as terrible as conscious dread. In the death of the cow there was something purifying, she decided: it did not deserve to die, but its own death was not anything it could understand, and so it died without any calculation, any human hypocrisy.

She looked at the steak a while longer, then dropped it into her basket and hurried towards the checkout line.

When she arrived home her parents were out. She went up to Ayako’s room and found her in bed, sipping a fruit smoothie.

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Feeling better?

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Yeah.

Ayako placed the glass on the table beside the bed and blinked twice, rapidly. She looked sleepy.

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My throat hurts, she said. It’s like there’s broken glass in my throat when I swallow. But I think it’s getting better.

She sat up and Ayano saw the pink and grey outline of her pajamas.

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That sounds bad.

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Mm. I’m getting used to it.

She pulled the cover aside and handed Ayano a piece of paper divided by a marker into a grid of nine panels.

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I started drawing manga. But then I got tired and gave up. Do you want to finish it?

Ayano looked down at the paper, at the panels filled with stick figures and empty dialogue balloons. One of the sisters’ ambitions was to produce a serious fantasy-themed manga, but apart from a few preliminary scenes and sketches, the project had never gotten beyond the conceptual stage.

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I might later. I’m going to cook first.

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Oh, what are you making?

Ayano smiled.

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It’s a secret. I’ll let you have some later.

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It’s not pancakes, is it? Ayako asked.

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No.

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Oh. I feel like pancakes.

She pulled the cover back up.

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Anyway, I’m going to sleep for a bit.

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All right, I’ll wake you up when I’m done.

Downstairs, she took a pan from the shelves and poured in a small amount of vegetable oil, shaking the handle gently until a golden film spread across its surface. She placed the pan on the range and turned on the gas, then got the steak from the table and peeled off the protective plastic wrapping. The feel of the raw meat in her hands was unpleasant; it reminded her of other soft, wet things she hated: slugs, perhaps, or rain-drenched socks. But there was a toughness to it she hadn’t felt before. She realized what she was feeling was a muscle — the same kind of flesh as her arms and legs. At some point its tiny fibres had flexed, tense and hot with life... she pushed the thought away and laid the steak down on the frying pan. A soft frizzing sound rose up slowly. She took a combination salt and pepper shaker from the cupboard and sprinkled it over the steak, then stood back and waited. After a few minutes she turned it over with a fork, careful not to splash the oil. On the other side, the surface of the meat had darkened — ‘browned’, she supposed, was the term — and taken on an added toughness when she prodded it with the fork. She waited another few minutes and turned off the flame. Once she’d gotten a plate from the shelf, she took the steak from the pan and cut it into even strips. She was surprised to find it still pink in the center, a pink the color of the skin under a scab, fading to grey at the edges. The ribbons of white fat had turned a brownish yellow. After pouring herself a glass of water, she sat down at the table and lifted a piece of the meat to her mouth.

At first she hated it — the steak’s texture was unfamiliar, tough on the outside and soft in the center; but more than that the taste was overpowering. She’d expected an earthy flavor, like black beans or fried mushrooms, but the flavor of the steak was richer, sharper: a pungent, savory alien taste. She must have used too much salt, she decided — or not enough, she couldn’t tell which. For all she knew she’d cooked it wrong; her method, after all, had been improvised from memories of housewives preparing meals in television dramas. But however the steak had been cooked, the underlying taste was unmistakable. It was the taste of blood, of cooked animal flesh.

After a few bites she pushed the plate aside. The smell of the steak filled the tiny kitchen. She was afraid she would vomit, but the feeling soon lessened, leaving only a weight in her throat. She swallowed several times and drained her glass of water, then looked at the steak again and considered throwing it away. But something held her back. If she threw it in the garbage her parents would find it, or else it would rot horribly, drawing flies. She had cooked it herself, she decided, and now she would have to eat it. And as she alternated each bite with the water, she found herself adjusting to the taste. If the woman in the supermarket could stomach it then so could she; it was only a matter of overcoming the initial disgust.

She took a final sip of water and carried the half-finished steak upstairs. Ayako was still in bed, resting on her side, and as she heard the sound of the door she sat up.

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I couldn’t sleep. After you said you were going to cook I started getting hungry.

She looked over at the plate.

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You cooked soy steak? It looks weird...

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No, Ayano said. It’s a real steak.

Ayako started to smile, then stopped as she noticed her sister’s solemn expression. She threw off the covers and peered down at the plate.

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Seriously?

Ayano nodded, and then Ayako was out of bed and sitting on the floor next to her, all the sleepiness gone from her eyes.

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Where’d you get it? she asked.

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Seiyu.

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Okay... why?

Ayano did her best to explain what had gone through her mind in the supermarket as she stood in front of the meat aisle. She couldn’t define the vague impulse that had led her to buying the steak, and she left out the part about Masuda, but other than that the story came out clearly enough. Ayako sat listening, staring at her sister with muted alarm; and when Ayano had finished she sat for a while, looking at her in silence.

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I don’t know... she said at last. I don’t think it would taste good. Meat is kind of... gross. I don’t know how it tastes, but...

Ayano was a little surprised that her sister had not presented a more complex argument. But then, the two of them rarely discussed their diet. Being vegetarian was something they took for granted, but it had never been an issue of any personal passion — at least, not to the extent of their parents. As for herself, she retained a vague sense of having done something wrong, but it was not as strong as she had expected. Instead she felt as if she had been let in on a secret — a secret known to most everyone around her, perhaps, but still a secret from her sister.

But then Ayako added:

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Maybe the cow does feel worse. It has to be afraid in there, even if it doesn’t understand what’s going on. Maybe it’s actually worse because it doesn’t really know what’s going to happen — maybe it’s more afraid, I mean. And I heard sometimes it takes a really long time to knock them out — even if they stun them, it doesn’t always work the first time.

Ayano considered this. For all she knew, it was true — but she couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that there was something noble and uncomplicated about the cow’s slaughter. The mechanical death of an animal seemed more dignified than any kind of human death. But she couldn’t say exactly why it was so.

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I think you should at least try it, she said, knowing already that Ayako would comply, since her loyalty to her sister was stronger than her loyalty to their parents. She pushed the plate forward, and after a pause Ayako took the fork and raised it to her mouth. She chewed slowly for a while, then frowned, closing her eyes in an expression of distaste.

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Nnn, no, I don’t like it, she said, then leaned over the plate and spat out the half-chewed steak.

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Try some more. I didn’t like it at first either. It gets better, though.

But Ayako shook her head and pushed the plate away. Ayano tried cajoling her for a while, but eventually Ayako retreated to the bed and she gave up. The steak had gone cold, so she went downstairs and finished it herself, washing it down with water and a glass of orange juice. She washed the plate carefully to remove any trace of grease, then returned to the table and sat for a while, thinking over the day’s events.

The next day, as she sat waiting for her History class to start, Ayano ignored the whispered conversations going on around her. Usually she listened in earnest, hoping for some word about Masuda, but now she couldn’t think about him the way she once had. Now if she called up his face, a tinier face would appear next to it like a conjoined twin: Akiko Mitsui. And since this was unacceptable, she had no choice but to occupy her thoughts with something else during the long hours of classes. Before long she found herself thinking about the previous night, and a new idea came to her. As the day went on it gradually refined itself, taking full possession of her thoughts, so that she smiled to herself as she waited for Ayako outside the gate. There was no use trying to hide it from her sister; Ayako knew her too well. Any attempt at secrecy would be called out immediately. So as they walked towards the station, she stopped in front of the main thoroughfare and said:

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I want to go to McDonald’s.

She expected Ayako to protest, but instead her sister’s lips formed into a faint smile of complicity. Ayako still didn’t understand this sudden interest, but on some level the strange turn in her sister’s behavior excited her. Already she was beginning to relish the feeling of sharing in an illicit mystery, and although she had no intention of eating anything herself, she was more than willing to watch.

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What are you going to get? she asked Ayano. The two of them had taken a table near the door and were staring up at the menu as the line moved forward in front of them.

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I don’t know, Ayano said. She listened to the people in front of her and, as her turn came, tried to mimic the casualness with which they placed their orders. After glancing at the menu again, she ordered a Teriyaki Burger, Chicken McNuggets, and a Double Cheeseburger. She had no intention of finishing everything; this was merely an experiment. Here, if she didn’t like something, she could throw it away with impunity.

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It smells strange in here, Ayako said as they returned to their table, tray in tow.

Ayano unwrapped the Teriyaki Burger first, noticing that the wrapper seemed lubricated with grease. The burger was horribly sweet, the meat lathered in a lurid brown sauce. She put it aside after one bite.

Next was the Double Cheeseburger. She took a bite; the ketchup that dribbled from the edge of the bun was the same color as the crayon-red smile on the statue of Ronald McDonald standing outside the door. Everything about the food seemed similarly clownish, similarly unnatural: the bun rubbery and rounded, the cheese melted plastic, the meat soft greyish cardboard. All of it violently salted, with a cloying undertaste similar to the Teriyaki Burger. Ayano ate slowly, mentally noting the strange mixture of flavors.

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How is it? Ayako asked.

Ayano swallowed.

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I can’t explain it.

She tried a chicken nugget next and found it more palatable. The meat, in its crisp shell of batter, had a similar consistency to fried tofu, although the taste was another alien taste, this one less insistent than that of the burgers. She finished it quickly and had another. Then she extended the carton to Ayako.

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Here, try this. You can dip it in honey.

She opened the little sachet and squeezed it onto the tray. Ayako gave her a doubtful look, then took one of the nuggets.

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I’ll spit it out if I don’t like it, she said. But she chewed and swallowed without complaint. Then she looked down at the carton, as if marvelling that she could be eating from it.

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I’m going to get even fatter, eating this. I’ll look like a big balloon.

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So what? Ayano said. You shouldn’t worry so much.

Ayako looked at the menu again.