AH-SO
Toshiba Harikari of Kyoto almost gagged as she listened to the insipid outpouring of affection on her 85th birthday. One hour of hypocrisy was all she could take so she feigned exhaustion to get rid of thirty-two gawking descendants and grinned as she slid the door closed behind them. "Wrinkled old relic. Time to croak," she said to the calendar on the wall as if it were in on her secret.
Her mind was still sharper than a Samurai's blade but the spark that had kept Toshiba's batteries charged far too long was beginning to lose its zap. Day after day, she shuffled around the neighborhood passing time that lay heavy on her memories, griping and complaining to herself.
"Old age stinks," was her assessment of the golden years.
For six months, Toshiba had been mentally preparing for the end while auditing Violence 101, a course on American TV. Yesterday she had watched two movies, sitting fifteen inches from the screen so she could focus on Humphrey Bogart's trigger finger. Then, squinting hard because she refused to wear her glasses unless there was a threat of falling into a manhole, she had been fascinated by Arnold Schwarzenegger's abdominal muscles.
"Today Toshiba Harikari trade in shriveled up carcass for wings of butterfly. Caterpillar OK. Not picky."
Having plotted her demise meticulously in the hours of her sleeplessness, Toshiba hobbled to a nearby department store. With the last of her yen she bought two expensive silk scarves; her sayonara would be remembered for years to come. Such dignity, her friends would say, such exquisite taste!
Upon returning to her one room home, she slipped out of her wood platform sandals and changed into the bustled gown she had worn as one of the most desired Geishas in Kyoto all those years ago. Removing her dentures so as not to bite her tongue when she dangled, she glanced at her reflection in the mirror and nearly shook her tiny body to death with laughter. For years, whenever she had wanted to forget her children’s marital woes, she had made toothless faces at herself until her mouth hurt, an exercise that never failed to put their custody battles in perspective.
The last millisecond of her life—the precise moment at which her spirit would be suspended in perpetuity—was close at hand. According to Toshiba's cosmic interpretation, she had the power to control her own, eternal, hereafter.
“Die happy, spirit happy ever after. Die miserable old hag, never escape misery.”
So as to start her journey in a state of euphoria, she prepared an elaborate tea ceremony. Then she sipped sake-spiked Oolong and reminisced on long ago amours until she felt deliciously warm inside. She slipped her tiny feet out of her tiny slippers, and pinned her hair befitting a stone-cold dead Geisha. She adjusted the silk lampshade so that the golden glow fell on the center of the room and, in a manner consistent with her perennial martyrdom, she arranged the cushions in a semi-circle and set a fresh tea service on the low table. The scent of jasmine streamed from the thirty-two sticks of incense she wanted to use up before she croaked. The funeral parlor was now prepared by the considerate corpse herself to save her children the trouble in their hour of grief.
"One hour of grief right!" she reflected. “Then three years squabble over Elvis portrait on velvet.”
After she fluffed the cushions and exacted the position of the teacups, Toshiba was ready to make her ascension. Stretching to test the height of the ceiling proved to be an exhausting endeavor, but she was so intent on her objective she refused to give in to the stroke that a normal eighty-five year old woman would have welcomed.
“No stroke today! Toshiba's last wish is last wish, and last wish is drop dead as Toshiba wish. Ah so!”
Confident that she could execute a simple hanging without a hitch, she drew a prayer stool into the circular glow. She tied one end of a poppy-patterned scarf to a bamboo beam chuckling, "No graveyard lilies for Toshiba Harikari.” Stubborn Toshiba would exercise her last rights, the rules be damned.
As she tied the second scarf to the first, anxiously anticipating the glorious chorale, the stool began to wobble, threatening to muck up her final fancy. "Eek!” she cried, as she spread her tiny feet and held her breath. After her vertigo unwound itself, she rose to her tiptoes again and, with a certain finesse, proceeded to tie the silk noose around the part of her anatomy for which it was intended. Straightening to her full forty-six inches, she was able to wrap the knot nice and tight. "Scrawny little neck,” she observed, when the ends met neatly under her chin. "Feel like plucked chicken."
Now it was time to bestow the customary last rites, dispensing with the preliminary prayer because no one was listening anyway. Just at the part where she was supposed to put in a bid for her choice of reincarnated cast-off soul, the stool slid from under her altogether. Realizing there was no time for a special audience with the Thing Beyond, she zipped her request breathlessly, non-stop: "Listen-thing-I'll-take-my-chances-just-as-long-as-you-don't-assign-my-soul-to-a-cockroach-goodbye-world-whew!"
Next thing she knew, rather than feeling the end-it-all tug that she had expected, her tiny gray head was bobbing to the floor, still firmly attached. The scarves, end to end, slipknot and all, measured 6 inches longer than tiny Toshiba. The slippery knots were unwinding, lazily falling one out of the other as if to cushion her delicate skull against the clunk.
"Damn nuisance!" Toshiba grumbled, as she crawled to the futon on the floor and folded her body in the shape of a sloppy N, bottom up, involuntarily expelling gas as she kicked her tiny toes into the pad.
"Spastic dumbbell. Bungled own suicide. Next time make good job of it."
Ashamed of herself for having botched up her first attempt at separating her soul from earthly torments, Toshiba indulged in her temper tantrum until she ran out of self-effacing curses. She sulked in silence for the rest of the day.
“Embarrassing if grandchildren run in and find old grandmother tangled up in silk poppies. Should be properly dangling, blue in face with tongue hanging out, as self-respecting, dead hunk of Japanese woman should end life. Ah-so.”
Her ever-meandering mind was at it again...
"Risky business, living to ripe old age. One false step and break hip. Hospital. Ugly nurses. Ugly bedsores. Lie in own caca. Good time to get rid of old lady so off to Serenity Nursing Home. Should be called Dead End Depository.” The same fantasy had haunted her for the last ten years. "Pull plug, you say. Oh no, no, sons and daughters. Can't play God to vegetable. Must pay green fees on Wednesday," doctor say.
Oops, all wrong. Toshiba caught herself going too far. Japanese doctors don't play golf on Wednesday; she had been watching too many episodes of General Hospital. Still, she imagined each of her children taking turns spoon-feeding her mashed bananas as she lay curled up in a seven-year coma. "Mama-san fed us Gerber-san, this is the least we can do," they would say, as if in return for two billion hours of their dear mother's nurturing. They would leave the banana puke on the sheet for the nurse's aide to mop up if she ever got around to it, and off they would go to watch Kabuki Theater. Toshiba concluded this scenario with, "Be yellow prune with spine poking through before Thing Beyond does favor of rubbing me out...bah, Rambo!"
As it happened, Toshiba's reverie was intertwined with a rerun of Miami Vice, her "Bah, Rambo!" dueting with a two-bit supporting actor yelling, "Screw the cops" as he raced a state trooper down the Florida Turnpike.
"Screw cops...new one on me." Toshiba's imagination never quit. "Screw...hmm. Strange thing to do...ah-so!"
Finally she caught on.
"Screw nurses. Screw bedsores. Screw Bananas."
She turned off the television but she couldn't turn off her brain.
"Screw Miami Vice. Screw rising sun, too."
One more sip of spiked tea.
"Screw Confucius. While at it, screw ah-so!"
When she was all screwed out, she felt better and went to bed.
The next day Toshiba put on her silk brocade jacket, fastened the frogs all the way up to her tiny neck, and visited the pharmacy—two pharmacies, in fact, so no one would become suspicious of her motives.
In the first shop the Japanese Nytol package appealed to her. An overdose reminded her of Marilyn Monroe. In another drug store she bought an extra strength painkiller—two bottles, just in case she developed a migraine before she dozed off for an indefinite period of time.
"This whole business getting tutti-frutti,” she muttered on the way home. "How many rehearsals I need to kill old lady, anyway?"
This time Toshiba lit two tapered candles for atmosphere. She didn't bother to tie back her hair, Geisha style. Flash bang! On went her happy funeral attire. Down went one swift swallow of the hot tea, just to make the ceremony official. She had arranged the pills in a daisy pattern on a bamboo tray--one blue, one yellow, one blue, one yellow--or so she thought. She could barely see in the dimly lit room. Wishing to fondle the means by which she would find everlasting salvation, she reached over to pick up a handful of blues and yellows. During these last few minutes of unbearable boredom she would tumble the pills between her tiny hands as if they were pearls from a far off sea.
Sitting in the lotus position, the stretch across the low table proved too long for her tiny arms. Her sleeve brushed against one of the candles and started a mini-blaze. Had she known, she wouldn't have bothered to continue to reach for the teapot; she would have fallen over, closed her eyes and let the conflagration save the bother of cremation. But just her lousy luck, she didn't see the tablecloth smoldering. As she fumbled in the flickering light of the other candle she knocked over the teapot. The liquid doused the flame, at the same time saturating her salvation—the blues and yellows.
Somewhere in all the confusion, it occurred to poor Toshiba that she was having another hellish day. "Imbecile! Can't even kick bucket and get it straight. Must be sure fire way."
Back to the most violent late night shows on the Tokyo satellite. Toshiba whooped it up as she watched Jack Palance roping cowboys, but her attempt at hanging herself had not been a howling success. She switched channels. When she saw Sylvester Stallone punching with his fists, annihilating bad guys by the dozen as if he were swatting pesky mosquitoes, she was impressed.
Eliminating the tea ceremony altogether, she went straight to the mirror and started swinging at her chin. Although she paced her punches with Stallone's, her head kept bouncing back at the same rate of speed that her fist hit her jaw--an immutable law of physics, no doubt. She was making no progress. Not even a black eye. By midnight, worn out with battering herself but still unbruised, she was in a tizzy.
“Suspense killing me.”
Before she went nuts playing suicide roulette, she would seek expert advice at the monastery—first set out the tea so as not to waste a minute should she rush back home with the ultimate, guaranteed cure for living. On went her jacket. Stringy hair slung back with a tortoise shell comb.
"Should wear glasses at night, but can't find glasses in dark without glasses."
Practically blind, she could stumble and break her hip on the way to the temple where the wisest men in Japan lived in harmony, but she was too antsy to be bothered with intrusive details.
"Monks meditate day and night so what difference the hour?" went her inner dialogue as she locked the door and slipped the key into her pocket.
So as to avoid tripping up and down over curbs, her wood platforms clippity-clopped along the broad street rather than on the sidewalk where a half-blind old lady should not be clippity-clopping after dark. When a taxi driver blew his horn, she paid no attention to whatever he was shouting.
"Rude, crude, ignorant peasant. Fat pig!" she shouted back.
He slowed down and waved her to the side of the street. Toshiba ignored him, held her tiny head as high as she could, and increased her speed as fast as she could clippety-clop.
"Crazy old woman," the driver yelled, as he sped off.
Her hobble turned into an energetic shuffle of tiny paces, and her heart set the rhythm as it fluttered in anticipation of, at last, getting expert advice as how to, "Stop silly breathing! In, out. In, out. Thumpity Thump. Eighty-five long years too much."
Without her glasses Toshiba couldn’t see the bright yellow stanchions that had been placed across the road to warn of construction hazards. Of course, in her state of mental disarray, neither did she see the open manhole, nor the dozen flags that signaled the danger. Missed the open manhole by three inches. (Ah-so!)
When the essence of sandalwood wafted on the night air, she followed the scent, suffering a scrape on her shinbone as she bashed into a fire hydrant.
"Stupid idiot,” she called the post, as she limped toward the monastery steps.
When she lifted her bowed head in an attempt to ascertain her bearings...
Whack!
"What?" she asked herself. "Brick wall in front of temple?"
As she grappled with the conundrum as to which end of her tiny body was up, her brain felt as if she had collided with Mt. Fuji. The word "butterfly" shot out of her mouth like a dart from a bushman's blowgun, just in case this was "it"!
"Toshiba?" she heard, as she was about to surrender to The Thing Beyond.
"Iko?"
In the dark of night, neither Toshiba nor Iko could see the other, curled over as they were from eight decades of calcium deprivation.
"Is you for sure Toshiba, yes?"
"Is your voice I hear, Iko?"
"Yes, yes is me. Oh, so sorry. You hurt?" Iko was rubbing Toshiba's tiny head.
"No no, Iko. You hurt?"
She lied, but the pain was sweet for having bumped heads with the lover who had gone off to fight for the Rising Sun, or had he been railroaded off to Siberia? Toshiba couldn't remember, it was so long ago. In fact, Iko had married a girl from Yokohama—the usual domestic insanity, the prostate problems, the guilt for having been relieved when his wife predeceased him, then back to Kyoto to live out his years. There was no need for Toshiba and Iko to rehash the mundane because the river of life flows in the same direction for all creatures, a rip-tide now and then to confuse the inevitable. One rip tide now in progress.
"What you doing at monastery in wee hours of night?" Iko asked, pitter-pattering inside with memories of the beautiful Geisha girl he had left behind.
"What you doing at...?”
Iko interrupted with nervous laughter because his heart was still thumping from the bumping, so Toshiba didn't finish the question. She merely giggled.
“Seems like yesterday," Iko said, after his pulse rate had slowed down enough for him to regain control of his tongue. They didn't go into old times. With age, comes the wisdom not to waste precious time.
Impulsively, Iko put his arm around Toshiba's tiny waist. Slowly, she clippityed and he cloppityed up the long flight of stone steps, chatting about the coincidence of their meeting, each avoiding an answer as to why they were where they were. By the time they stood in front of the massive doors, neither of them was inclined to pull the cord to the gong that would have shaken seventy devout Buddhists from their midnight trances. Toshiba was aware of her heartbeat, but now it was more like the thundering surf of Hawaii 5-0 than the insufferable tick tock of life's infernal, imprecise timepiece.
“Well," Iko said, since an awkward silence had overcome them as they stared at the gong. "Must confess, Toshiba. Need advice."
Toshiba didn't require Tarot cards. Fate is fate and that's all there is to it. It was unnecessary to say, "Strange Iko, need advice, too." So she took him by the hand and turned to face the stairs. As he would have done seventy years before, had the river's run not been sandbagged, he followed right beside her, his gums gleaming with delight.
"Tea?" she asked demurely, although her motives were far from demure.
"Good," Iko said, and squeezed her hand.
As the ex-lovers shuffled along, Toshiba's inner glow sizzled enough to warm up the entire cast of “Teahouse of the August Moon.” She was glad she had left the kettle on.
To avoid tripping over the curbs (ah so!) Toshiba guided Iko to the middle of the boulevard, giggling so hard she had to shuffle with her legs nearly crossed. Guileless Iko thought she was simply hysterical with joy, so he grinned even more broadly, and held her hand tighter. What he didn't know was that Toshiba Harikari was tempting destiny itself as she whispered into the fog that was swirling around their tiny, bowed heads, "Screw suicide!"
Ah so
