Nenbutsu, very busy
Hirata Toshiko
When you get the urge to kill your husband you should just go ahead and do it
rather than hold back. Repressing the urge to kill and the urge to pee are both
very harmful to the female body. Just go ahead, go through with it.
The means of murder are actually quite simple. Bring over the pot of salt from
the kitchen, and stuff your sleeping husband’s nostrils with salt. Then
go get the miso, and stuff it in your sleeping husband’s mouth. Then go
get the oil, and pour it into his right and left ears. To top it all off, pour
vinegar all over his entire body, and then, so he doesn’t come back to life,
smash in his head thoroughly with a cleaver. That’s it. Easy, right? He’ll
go into convulsions and then head off to paradise.
Now if you do this to a whale, people from other countries will give you hell
about how it’s cruel, you horrible person, etcetera etcetera, but when you
do this to your own husband no one will bother you about it, so no need to worry,
you may proceed in peace. But the dead husband you must dispose of. This is because
when the alarm rings in the morning, the husband will get up out of habit, and
go to work. People will have all sorts of fun ridiculing him, saying things like
“Dude what’s up with your head?” “Looks like your wife
gotcha, eh?” He will get no work done that day and everyone will hate him.
Now, back to the disposal issue. It is probably safest to avoid the mountains.
A recent increase in illegal husband dumping has resulted in piles of husbands
all over the place. The majority of these husbands are “non-combustible
husbands,” so there is no good way to handle them. If they still have some
use left they may be sent to get recycled, where they are free for the taking,
though not a single person tries to take one home, much less even come down to
take a look. All the while we have ever-increasing numbers of husbands, and the
exasperated clerks have started forcing random husbands upon any passing cars.
And this doesn’t get us anywhere.
On the other hand, there is more flexibility in the ocean. It is technically not
permitted to toss husbands into the ocean, but really it is so very large and
the security is loose, so it is a great aid to those in need. That said, however,
if you toss him over a cliff, a great buzzer will ring and the person in charge
will come rushing over. After they thoroughly wring your neck over it, they will
force a couple of other people’s husbands on you as punishment.
So what should you do?
What is the artful way to dispose of a husband?
If you drive along the coast for a while, you will come across a rustic mom-and-pop
candy shop with a very small lamp. There is a sign posted out front saying “WILL
TAKE HUSBANDS,” and when you peek inside, a little old lady will be watching
TV with her back to the entrance. If you speak to her, finding her to be kind-looking
from behind, you will have made a terrible mistake. The only thing kind about
this lady is her back. When you see her from the front you will find great avarice
on her face; she will demand outrageous sums of money from the wives who come
hoping to dump their husbands off. So be sure to drive right past this place,
and keep going a little further.
Then you will come across a fleet of squid-fishing boats about to set out. Among
the men who are bustling about, look for the woman everyone refers to as “Nenbutsu,”
and ask her to take care of your husband. This woman will, far offshore after
squid-fishing, submerge your husband skillfully, while chanting her own style
of prayer. Perhaps it is the strength of this prayer, but no man, not even the
very best swimmer, has ever made his way back.
With a large body and no hint of makeup, everyone thinks that Nenbutsu is a man.
But she is really a woman and has even once been married. The husband, of course,
is now at the ocean bottom. Her own unhappy marriage prompted her to come up with
this enterprise. Word of mouth spread amongst the women, and nearly every night
a wife arrives with her husband in the passenger seat. But this is not to say
that Nenbutsu takes on every single job. If a malicious wife has killed a well-intentioned
husband, no amount of bribery or sweet talk will make her budge.
Though not as steep as the fees charged by the candy-shop lady, the amount requested
by Nenbutsu is by no means cheap. But it is absolutely forbidden to try to talk
her down. If you show even the slightest inclination to try to do so, she will
turn her back to you and saunter off. She prides herself in running the kind of
business where one does not haggle. And there is no change of heart in a Nenbutsu
who has once turned her back to you. You may beg and plead and throw yourself
at her feet, offering to pay twice as much, but she will not concede. Nenbutsu
lives all by herself in a small rented house by the ocean. All of her clothes
are from her dead husband, and on her feet she always wears boots. Once a year
she goes to the hair salon to have them take care of the little bit of gray in
her hair. Of course she wears no jewelry of any kind, and she is certainly unlikely
to go on vacation. Her daily bread is a frugal affair. And not a single friend
to visit.
-
The neighborhood ladies always gossip about what she does with all that
money.
Supporting some young man?
Her dead husband left behind huge debts, and she has trouble paying it back.
Not only debts, but an illicit child, and she’s paying child support.
Well I hear she has aging parents in the countryside.
No one knows the truth.
Translated by Sawako Nakayasu
Hirata Toshiko - Hirata Toshiko (1955) is a prominent Japanese poet and novelist. During the 1980s, she, along with Ito Hiromi, emerged as one of the foremost voices so-called “women’s boom” of poetry. Her poetry is known for its directness and black humor. In the last decade, she has increasingly turned to writing novels, which often feature ordinary people in bizarre circumstances that lead them to question the traditional family system and the spots allotted to them in society.
