Dying over and over, his heart flayed and soul skinned, amidst the pitiful, wrenching stares of friends and lovers, of his wife and children, his father and mother, Y pulled under, Y pushed up, now Y saw another face, a face he struggled to recall, her eyes not pleading, her eyes downcast, but which now caught his own, and now Y remembered a night he thought forgotten, wished forgotten, in a dim and dirty Nanking room, a brass crucifix upon a wall, a bottle spilt upon the floor, an upturned chair, the coins across the bed, between her forced, reluctant thighs, his weeping, puss-filled cock, infecting her, condemning her, her eyes upon the cross, her name upon his lips, her name he had not known he knew, her name, her name Y cries, ‘Xin!’
The air thin, the wind biting and his footing precarious again, Y opened his eyes; the River of Sins, bloody and boiling, filled with his friends and former lovers, his wife and children, his father and mother, dying over and over, was gone, were gone, all gone, leaving Y alone again on the Mountain of Skulls, standing on the flowing heaping of tumbled fragments, rolling and turning under his feet, empty shells bursting beneath him, tears streaming down his face, knowing, knowing he had failed –
‘Yes,’ said the old man, again beside him now, dressed in his coat of shining white feathers, his head clean and shaved, his skin translucent and newborn. ‘You failed. But you had already failed, and you would have only failed again if you had not spoken.’
‘But I could have chosen not to speak,’ said Y. ‘The choice was mine. For I know I had a choice.’
‘Yes,’ smiled the old man. ‘There is always a choice.’
Y nodded, staring at the naked steeps of endless heapings of skulls and fragments of skulls, and Y said, ‘And I have chosen the Mountain of Skulls.’
‘Yes,’ said the old man, bending down to the eternal tide of skulls and bones, picking up one skull, now holding up the skull. ‘But you were already here, you have always been here. For this skull and each of these skulls is your own skull; each skull is you! And only you. The nest of your dreams, all your delusions and desires. Always you, already you, you and only you …’
‘I know,’ said Y, ‘I know.’
And Y closed his eyes, but now, now, now Y felt the sun strangely warm upon his face, its piercing rays dancing on his lids, the sound of boats upon the river, the scent of fukujusō on the breeze, and slowly, slowly, slowly Y opened his eyes again. The sky above him was a brilliant bright December blue, with not one single cloud or wisp of smoke from a factory yet, a dull crick again, in his back and in his neck, and now Y sat up and looked around him: he had been resting his head upon a pillow again, again the pillow a large furoshiki, the cloth a pattern of red and white waves, enfolding a giant bundle, held together in its knot. But this time Y did not undo the knot, Y did not open up the cloth. This time Y got to his feet, and Y began to walk away, to walk away, away from the bundle, away from the city –
Some men go mad, some men go missing, some men do both.
*
The morning after our evening together, and the long night I had spent reading Tock’s manuscript, most concerned and keen to discuss Tock’s state of mind, I set out to call upon his friend Mag, the philosopher.
Mag was a very hospitable Kappa who loved nothing more than to open up his home to guests and, that grey day, there was already quite a congregation: Judge Pep, Dr Chack and Gael, the president of a glass corporation. They were all smoking heavily, a thick haze of tobacco smoke hanging in the room under the dim light of a glass lantern of seven colours.
Already, they seemed very much engaged in a conversation about rising crime rates and the penal code, and so, as I took my seat and lit a cigarette, and putting to one side for now my worries about Tock, I joined in, asking, ‘Do the Kappa have capital punishment?’
‘Yes,’ replied Judge Pep. ‘However, we prefer not to hang people as you humans do. I do admit, though, electric devices are occasionally used, but only in the very rarest of cases. Usually, we simply just announce the name of the criminal and the crime that has been committed.’
‘And that is enough to kill a Kappa?’
‘Of course,’ said Mag. ‘We Kappa have much more delicate and more sensitive nerves than you humans.’
‘But’, interjected Gael, ‘this is also how some murders are committed. Why, only the other day a bloody socialist called me a thief! I almost had a heart attack. I thought I was going to die!’
Mag nodded and said, ‘It seems to me such types of murder are becoming increasingly common. I know a lawyer who was killed that very way.’
‘Really,’ I asked. ‘But how?’
Mag smiled and said, ‘One day he was called a frog. And, as you know, there is no greater insult to a Kappa than to call him a frog. Who can possibly bear to be branded such a cold-blooded brute!’
‘And he dropped dead on the spot?’
‘Not instantly, no,’ said Judge Pep. ‘But day by day, he kept asking and arguing with himself, Am I really a frog? I can’t be a frog! I must be a frog, and so on. And so eventually he pined away and died.’
‘Is that not suicide,’ I asked.
‘No! Not at all,’ said Mag. ‘The evil fiend who called the poor lawyer a frog did so knowing damn well it would kill him. It was intentional, premeditated murder!’
‘Still sounds like suicide to me,’ I insisted. ‘And talking of which, I am most concerned for the well-being of our friend Tock …’
‘Me, too,’
