customary leap of logic.
“What’s that supposed to mean?!”
“You don’t stop to think of your family, do you. He’s just started at private nursery school, hasn’t he?! Do you know how hard I worked to get him in there?!”
“That was just for your vanity!”
“All right. So you think it’s better for your son to have no friends, and to turn into an imbecile like some fisherman’s boy, on some God-forsaken shit-hole of an island in the middle of nowhere, do you?! Just when he’s started learning to read?” She burst into tears and ran over to hug the boy. “I’m sorry, poppet! It’s only because your father is such a rotten good-for-nothing!”
“What’s more important, then? His nursery school or my work?!” I bawled at her. “The only reason you don’t want to go is because you won’t be able to buy flashy clothes and go parading in front of everybody!”
“Oh, you hate that, don’t you,” she said, staring at me. “That’s why you’re going to drag me there with you. You just want to give me a hard time!” She stamped her foot on the floor. “No. I am not going with you! I’d go stark raving mad, stuck there on a lonely island with no one to talk to, with only an invalid like you for company! I’m definitely not going, all right? You can bugger off on your own. Go and have your bloody spasms. Serves you right. You can stew in your own juice for all I care!”
“Wha… wha… wha…” I wanted to shout back, but was suddenly unable to breathe. My eyes bulged as I gasped for air.
A sharp pain pierced my heart. I screwed up my face and crouched on the floor clutching my chest. My heart was clearly palpitating. I moaned helplessly and felt a cold sweat coming over me.
“Oh look, he’s having another one.” She stood over me with a twisted smile on her mouth. “Funny how it always happens when he’s losing an argument. What a very convenient heart problem.”
Still wheezing for breath, I stretched out my hand towards her. “M-my pills, w-would you get m-my pills.”
“Get them yourself,” she said, and started clearing away the dinner things.
I rolled sideways along the carpeted floor. “In my, in my j-jacket pocket. W-would you get them for me.”
Our son got up and looked down at me. “Daddy not well!”
“Oh, leave him. He only wants attention.” She stomped off loudly into the kitchen.
Terrified by the sharp pain and the fear of death, I crawled along the floor and managed to reach the coat pegs as wheezing sounds still issued from my throat.
“All right, all right. Well done.” Sighing, my wife came back out of the kitchen, took the bottle of pills from my jacket, and threw it down in front of my nose. “Good performance. I nearly believed you.”
“And so, you see, I need eight months’ medication,” I told Dr Kawashita the next day, having taken the morning off to go to his clinic.
“Well, yes.” Dr Kawashita pulled a wry face. “I could give them to you, but…”
“You’ve got to!” I pleaded. “They’ll be my only hope on a remote island without a doctor!”
“But you’ll take them all at once, won’t you.” He scratched his head vigorously. “The problem is that you make no effort to remove the cause, but just keep taking the medicine. That’s no good at all.”
“No, it’s not true. I am making an effort. I’ve stopped smoking and drinking coffee, as you advised. I avoid strenuous exercise and work of a highly urgent and responsible nature as far as possible,” I said with a bow of the head. “And of course, I’ve stopped having sexual relations with my wife.”
“What?” He lifted his face and stared at me. “Altogether?!”
“Yes, altogether. Well, that comes under strenuous exercise, doesn’t it?”
“As I’ve said many times before, no visible symptoms can be observed in your case,” the doctor said with a long sigh. “It’s not good to dwell on your condition too much. The worst thing for you is marital discord. If you’ve stopped having intercourse with your wife altogether, that could be another cause of marital discord.”
“Surely you’re not going to say I’m imagining it too?!”
“I’m not saying that. You are definitely sick. But anxiety will only make your condition worse. And then you’ll merely grow more anxious. It’s a vicious circle. I don’t want to frighten you, but if that happens, even a regime of complete rest and a change of air won’t work. You need to relax, and try not to get angry. That’s the best cure.”
“But my wife makes me angry. I can’t help it.”
“Will your wife accompany you to the island?”
“Of course.”
“You see, this is your perfect chance for a complete convalescence.” He screwed up his face. “Is there no way you could go alone?”
“You’re joking! I couldn’t leave a skittish woman like that on her own. Who knows what she’d get up to.”
“Distrust between partners, suspicions of infidelity, these are things that can directly aggravate your condition, you see.”
That hit a raw nerve. “Are you saying I’m jealous?” I said loudly. “How can I help it? She’s a wanton woman, I’m telling you!”
“All right, all right. Calm down.” The doctor hurriedly tried to pacify me. “That’s exactly what I mean. You mustn’t allow yourself to become so agitated!”
“Can I have the medicine?”
“Well, if you promise not to waste it, I’ll let you have eight months’ supply. But don’t come to me saying you’ve used it up and could I give you some more. This is all you’re getting. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“Serpentina alkaloid,” he said to the nurse before turning back to me. “Whatever you do, don’t take too many. Your blood pressure isn’t very high, so if you exceed the dose it could be life-threatening.”
“Yes, I understand.”
The rule in my company, Marine Chemical Resources Development, is that, once a decision has been made to send an employee to an island or coastal observation point, the work has to start within a week. But this only applies to single employees. I was given special dispensation of two weeks in which to prepare, as I’m a family man. And on the final afternoon of those two weeks, I boarded a small steam ferry to Pomegranate Island from Cape Ichizen with my wife and child. The ferry crossed to the island and back once a day.
“What? WHAT?! What sort of island is that?!” my wife shouted at the top of her voice as we approached Pomegranate Island. We could now see the whole of the island before us. “What kind of shape do you call that?!”
In the middle of the island was a mountain shaped like an upturned helmet. The top of the mountain was split wide open like a pomegranate exposing its obscene red insides.
“You’ve got to be joking! I can’t live on an island that looks like that!!” my wife shrieked at me in a state of shock. “Why of all places do we have to live on an island that’s got its top split open?”
“How could I have known?!” I shouted back. “I’ve only seen it on the map. Nobody told me Pomegranate Island was an island with its top split open!”
“Aha, ahaha, ahahahaha!” Our son pointed at the island and laughed merrily.
“It’s a volcano, that’s what it is! What are we going to do if it explodes? The whole island will be wiped out!”
“Are volcanoes shaped like that?!”
“It’s a bloody volcano, I tell you! Of course it is!” She started to sob. “What am I going to do? I wish I’d never married you. I had another proposal after we were engaged, I’ll have you know. Now he’s been posted to Europe with his family. What a mistake it was to choose you!!”
“It’s because you say things like that and make me angry that my condition gets worse,” I said slowly, deliberately, breathing deeply to control my rage. “Dr Kawashita has said it many times. Marital discord, and particularly quarrelling, is very bad for my heart. Some of his patients have even died of heart failure during rows with their wives.”
“Well, if you’re so scared of dying, hurry up and divorce me, then! All you ever say is Dr Kawashita this, Dr Kawashita that. He’s nothing but a ruddy quack!”
“He is not a quack!” I screamed. “Do you want me to get angry and die?”
