My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me (74 page)

BOOK: My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me

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One day I get word from the child.

He says to me, for some reason I’ve also been thinking of you often, I’m certain that’s the name of a place and I’m certain I know the way there, I think it would be wonderful if I were able to take you to Tennoji, but I’m sick, you’re sick, I’m no less sick than you, you’re no less sick than I, it is strange, did we call to each other because we’re both sick? ages ago you forgot me, I forgot you, and we both went to live among other people, but still I heard you, how many years has it been since we have talked? the last time we met, you were still a small, small, small child, yes and I was also a small, small, small child, didn’t we often hide from adults, show each other our naked bodies and urinate together? didn’t we also take fruits from the trees and eat them? didn’t we pickle the fruits and bugs we caught in our own urine? I’m certain I know the way to Tennoji, but I’m sick, I no longer have the energy to walk all the way there.

He says, when I remember you, those memories come flooding back, in those days I was also a young child, almost a baby, never since have I ever thought about things so much as I did then, I used to think, I used to think about everything I could see, about the grass, the trees, the wind, and the clouds, and you were always also there, one day I took a cookie in one hand and I suddenly became aware of the concept of nothingness, I tried to tell mother about this, but she didn’t understand so I told you about it instead, you were a small, small, small child back then, you used to wear red clothes, you used to always be at my side, you used to wear red clothes, I told you about it, about the concept of nothingness I’d grasped, one child little more than an infant told another child little more than an infant about nothingness in the words of a child little more than an infant, I think you understood, but now there is nothing I can do for you, I don’t have the strength to walk.

He says, you weren’t able to pronounce more than a few sounds in those days, the words you said sounded like mush in your mouth, back in those days and back when you were a small, small, small child, did you have a voice as lovely as yours is now? your voice now is so lovely, I hear the child say these things, now his voice sounds like that of an old, old, old man and I hear it across the distance, while I’m looking lost, not knowing what to do next, a
yamanba
, one of those old trickster witches from the mountains, comes up to me, she says, this is my dying wish, please carry me on your back to that place, that place in the mountains, the
yamanba
says, this is my dying wish, I want to have intercourse, I say to her, what is this? before today you’ve grabbed so many people and gobbled them up, what, now you have a request? come on! when I confront her like this, the
yamanba
laughs scornfully at me and says, what? when I’ve eaten you, haven’t you always come back to life without any problem? I wanted to bring you back to life, that’s why I’m always eating, as long as I leave your navel or your clitoris, you’ll come back to life, even if I grind you to dust in my teeth, even if I burn you black, even if I mash you to bits, or even if I pound you to smithereens.

She says this is her dying wish, but this isn’t a trifling thing she asks, my heart feels heavy as I ask, if I carry you on my back into the mountains, you’ll probably start gnawing at me from where you sit on my back, you’ll grind me to dust in your teeth, you’ll burn me black, you’ll mash me to bits, you’ll pound me up and swallow me, and after that you’ll no doubt turn me into shit and squeeze me out, then if I come back to life, you’ll once again pretend to be a praiseworthy person and come trick me again.

The
yamanba
laughs and says, and then you’ll come back to life, it is precisely because I squeeze you from the hole in my backside that you come back to life.

The
yamanba
says, but I want to have intercourse, I want to have intercourse, I really want to, when you get to be my age you’ll understand, at that time, who is going to carry you on their back into the mountains?

So with that, I carry her on my back into the mountains.

It was a hardship, she doesn’t just allow herself to be carried quietly along, she undoes my hair, she pulls out my hair, she rubs her feces and urine into my back, she gouges out my moles with her fingernails and eats them, the
yamanba
does every bad thing she can possibly do while I’m carrying her, when I stop and give her a fierce look like I’m going to let her go and take off, I see the woman on my back is just a tiny, tiny, tiny, regular old woman, she says to me, please, please, please take pity on me, and she begins crying, she says in a heart-wrenching voice, because here are the breasts that once nursed you, the breasts she shows me are very, very, very shriveled.

I walk into the mountains, once there, the
yamanba
rediscovers a huge, huge, huge phallus she’d located in the past, and she has intercourse with it.

The
yamanba
says, just watch me! listen to what kind of voices I make! watch what kind of expressions I make! Anjuhimeko, your job is to bear witness! so I say I’ll watch her, the
yamanba
shouts out in a loud voice, this is how you came out, too! as she speaks, she makes sure I can see her and gives her hips a strong shake, and with this, she gives birth to something I can’t make heads or tails of, she says, Anjuhimeko! this is quite a godsend! I give it to you, here, take it, I listen to her and take it but I can’t make heads or tails of it so I don’t know what to name it, I ask, what should I call it? the
yamanba
answers, you should call it Hiruko, “the Leech-Child.”

I put the leech-child on my back, and as I do so, I hear a voice telling me the way to Tennoji.

Without thinking I look at the
yamanba
, but she is so wrapped up in having intercourse that she doesn’t even cast a single glance back at me, I watch her from a little ways away, and I see her give birth to slippery slimy things one after another, I can’t make heads or tails of them but I know they are also leech-children, they are less well formed than the leech-child on my back, but the
yamanba
doesn’t tell me to take them, she is just completely wrapped up in having intercourse.

Again I hear the voice tell me the way to Tennoji.

I say, oh, Leech-Child! Leech-Child! will you please tell me once more? in response to my question, the leech-child points in the direction of Tennoji, it points with something hardly worth calling a finger but that reminded me of a finger anyway.

The leech-child asks me why I’m going to Tennoji, what do I want to do there? do you even need to ask? I repeat, I am Anjuhimeko, the girl who was sexually molested by her father, I am Anjuhimeko, the girl who was sexually molested over and over by her father, Anjuhimeko, the girl who was sexually molested over and over by her father, is I, I’m that wretched, wretched, wretched girl Anjuhimeko, but each time I say these words, they seem to slide right off the slippery surface of the understanding between the leech-child and me, either that or they are absorbed right into its surface, but in any case, I suddenly realize the leech-child has no language.

A leech-child which has no language shouldn’t be able to tell me the way to Tennoji, but there is no doubt it was the leech-child that told me the way to go, the leech-child was also the one who asked me what I’m going to do there, yes, it is the leech-child I’m carrying on my back, then the leech-child asks me all sorts of questions, I respond with all sorts of answers, but the leech-child has no language so the meanings of all the words I say just slide over the slippery surface of the intention of what I am trying to convey, or perhaps they are absorbed directly into the intention, I don’t know what to say, but the leech-child’s desire to know conveys itself to me, and I respond with language, I don’t know if this is good or not, but all I have is language, the only way I have to respond is language, all I have is language, I respond with language, I respond, and as I respond, I sense the desire of the leech-child I carry on my back slowly being satisfied.

—Translated from the Japanese by Jeffrey Angles

In medieval Japan, there emerged a kind of popular entertainment known as
sekkyō-bushi
—stories that itinerant storytellers would recite and sing to musical accompaniment. The most famous
sekkyō-bushi
is the tale of “Sanshō the Steward” (
Sanshō dayū
), which Western audiences might know through a modern retelling by the novelist Ōgai Mori or the 1954 film adaptation by the celebrated director Kenji Mizoguchi. The earliest known written versions of the story, recorded in the early seventeenth century, describe the tale of a brother and sister separated from their parents then sold into slavery by unscrupulous slave traders. With the divine aid of the deity bodhisattva Jizō, the son eventually escapes and travels across the country to find his mother, who has gone blind and has been reduced to poverty. Happily, his tears restore her sight. Meanwhile, however, things do not end so happily for the daughter who remains in slavery. She sacrifices herself by refusing to tell where her brother has gone, and as punishment, her owner tortures her in grisly ways until she is dead.
In the process of exploring the world of
sekkyō-bushi
and Japanese folklore, Hiromi Itō, the author of the version included in this anthology, came across an alternative version of this story recorded in northeastern Japan. In August 1931, the anthropologist Nagao Takeuchi recorded an account of spirit possession from a medium named Sue Sakuraba. She had learned the text from her predecessors, yet when she performed it, the text appeared to be the spontaneously generated speech of a spirit possessing her. Interestingly, this alternative version recorded from the shamanesses focuses exclusively on the daughter, who does not die but instead escapes and struggles toward freedom. In fact, it is she who is the centerpiece of this version.
In Itō’s retelling of this seemingly more “feminist” version, she adds a subplot that describes the sexual subjugation that a young girl separated from her parents might likely have undergone. (The original versions of the story do not involve any explicit reference to sexual subjugation.) Moreover, Itō adds the sections about the character Anjuhimeko’s attempt to locate Tennōji, a temple in Osaka that was known for being a refuge for the poor and sick.
Perhaps the most important original addition, however, comes in the ending scene with the
yamanba
mountain witch. Throughout much folklore, the
yamanba
has represented a nonconformist who rejects home, work, and family to live in the wilds and follow her own will. In Itō’s poem, the
yamanba
represents the voice of a powerful, liberated sexual desire ordinarily constrained by patriarchal society. In the scenes when she copulates with the stone pillar, Itō is refashioning the creation myth told in the eighth-century semimythological history of Japan called the
Kojiki
(Record of Ancient Matters). According to the
Kojiki,
the male deity Izanagi and his female partner Izanami descend to earth from the heavens and erect a great pillar. After walking around it, the two have conjugal intercourse for the first time, but this intercourse fails because the female deity Izanami speaks before her male counterpart, thus failing to cede to the “proper” order of things. The result of their union is a malformed “Leech-Child” that they set adrift on the sea. In Itō’s reworking, the
yamanba
takes her own sexual desire firmly in hand and copulates wildly with the stone pillar. Rather than subjugating her desire to the “proper order of things,” she celebrates it in a way that brings her ecstatic, orgiastic pleasure.
—JA