In the Age of Love and Chocolate

quickly lost his breath. We stopped at a bench by a koi pond. “I do not like dying,” he said mildly after his breathing had regulated.

“You say that as if you’re speaking of a food you dislike. I do not like broccoli.”

“I don’t remember you being funny,” he said. “It is my upbringing. We are taught to keep much inside. But I don’t like dying. I would rather be alive to fight, to plan, to plot, to connive, to win, to betray, to eat chocolate, to drink sake, to tease, to make love, to laugh my head off, to leave my mark on this world…”

“I’m sorry, Yuji.”

“No. I don’t want your pity. I only want to tell you that I don’t like it. I don’t like the pain. I don’t like the affairs of my physical body being a matter of daily discussion. I don’t like looking like a zombie.”

“You’re still handsome,” I told him. He was.

“I’m a zombie.” He smiled at me crookedly. “We should be like the fish,” Yuji said. “Look at them. They swim, they eat, they die. They don’t make such a production of these little things.”

* * *

Yuji passed early the next morning. When Kazuo told me, I bowed my head, but I did not allow myself to cry. “Was it peaceful?” I asked.

Kazuo did not reply for a moment. “He was in pain.”

“Did he have any last words?”

“No.”

“Did he have any message for me?”

“Yes. He wrote you a note.”

Kazuo handed me a slate. Yuji’s stroke was very light. I squinted to make it out before realizing the message was in Japanese. I handed the slate back to Kazuo. “I can’t read this. Would you translate for me?”

Kazuo bowed deeply. “It does not make much sense to me. I am very sorry.”

“Try. If you don’t mind. Maybe it will mean something to me.”

“As you wish.” Kazuo cleared his throat. “To my wife. The fish does not die with regrets because the fish cannot love. I die with regrets, and yet I am glad I am not a fish.”

I nodded.

I bowed my head.

I had not loved him, but I would miss him terribly.

He had understood me.

He had believed in me.

Is this better than love?

And maybe fish do love. How could Yuji even know?

* * *

Perhaps it was a sign of denial but I had not brought black clothes to Japan. One of the maids lent me a mofuku, a black mourning kimono. I put it on, then looked at myself in the mirror. I seemed older than twenty, I thought. I was a widow and maybe this was how widows looked.

The funeral began like any funeral. I had, at this point, been to more than my share. This one was in Japanese, but it doesn’t particularly matter what language a funeral is in. The tiny room had light pine walls, like the interior of a poor man’s coffin, and was so packed with Yuji’s colleagues and relatives that I could not even see who was in the back. Incense was burning on the altar, and the air smelled sickly sweet, of synthetic frangipani and sandalwood. (No matter how old I get, I will never stop associating the scent of frangipani with death.) Orchids leaned in a blue vase, and a white lily floated in a shallow wooden bowl.

People say that the dead at funerals look peaceful. It’s a nice sentiment, if untrue. The dead look dead. Perhaps the body is peaceful—it does not cough or wheeze or argue or move—but it is a husk, nothing more. The body that had once been Yuji Ono was dressed in his wedding clothes. The hands were clasped over his favorite samurai sword and had been positioned so that his amputated finger was not in view. The mouth had been forced into a strange almost-smile, an expression Yuji had never worn in life. This was not Yuji to me, and this was not peace.

The priest signaled us to come and leave incense at the altar. After that, people went to view the body, though there was not much to see. He was a layer of wasted flesh over a pile of bones. Sophia’s poison had killed him leisurely and dreadfully.

Though it was customary to acknowledge the widow, a woman with a shroud of black hair and a wide- brimmed, charcoal-colored hat walked right past me on her way to the altar. She was taller than almost anyone at the funeral.

Even from behind, the woman appeared overcome. Her shoulders shook, and she was whispering. I thought she might be praying, though I could not make out the words or the language. She lifted her hand and moved it in a way that could have been the sign of the cross. The longer I regarded her, the more her hair seemed to take on the waxy quality of a wig. Something was off. I stood and walked the three steps to the altar. I meant to set my hand on the woman’s shoulder, but I caught her hair instead. The black wig slipped down to reveal brown hair.

Sophia Bitter turned around. Her large dark eyes were red and her eyelids were swollen like lips. “Anya,” she said, “did you imagine I wouldn’t come to the funeral of my best friend?”

“I did actually,” I said. “Seeing as you killed him, good manners would dictate that you should sit this one out.”

“I don’t have good manners,” she said. “Besides, I only killed him because I loved him.”

“That is not love.”

“And what would you know about love, liebchen? Did you marry Yuji for love?”

I pushed her against the casket. We were attracting the attention of other funeral-goers.

“He betrayed me,” Sophia insisted. “You know that he did.”

I felt my fingers begin to spread toward my machete. I thought of Yuji asking me to kill her, but for better or for worse, I was still not the murdering kind. Sophia Bitter had committed atrocious acts, but in my memory flashed a picture of the girl Yuji had described. Sophia had once been young and unpopular and embarrassed. She had thought herself ugly, though she couldn’t have ever been more than plain. She had murdered perhaps the only person in the world who had loved her. And for what? For power? For money? For chocolate? For jealousy? For love? I know she told herself it was for love, but it could not have been.

“Go,” I said. “You’ve paid your respects, for what they are worth, and now you should leave.”

“I will be seeing you, Anya. Good luck opening the rest of the clubs in Japan.”

“Is that a threat?” I imagined her making a disturbance at one of our openings.

“You’re a very suspicious young woman,” she said.

“Probably so. If we were in America, I’d have you arrested.”

“But we are not. And poisoning is the perfect crime. It takes patience, but it’s so very hard to prove.”

“By the way, what are your plans after the funeral?”

“Will we be having lunch?” she asked. “Girl talk and chocolate. Unfortunately, I leave tomorrow. You are not the only one with a business to run, though you act as if you are. This leaves no time for you and me to catch up. What a pity.”

“I feel so sorry for you,” I said. “He loved you, and you killed him, and now no one will ever love you again.”

Her eyes turned black with hate. I knew even as I was saying it that nothing except the belief that others found her pitiable could have had such an effect on that woman. She lunged toward me, but I wasn’t scared of her. She was weak and stupid. I called Kazuo over and asked him to show her the door.

XIX I VOW TO BE ALONE

THOUGH IT WAS THE MIDDLE of the day, I went back to Yuji’s house to my room to