Scene 17

Punctually at 4 a.m. he found himself on the Roppongi Dori at «Sushizanmai»*. As instructed in the note, he ordered a portion of «Horse Mackerel Live Sashimi». As a rule, Maille did not eat breakfast – by chance in this case he did not have to eat, he had simply to order. He was acquainted with this eating-place and had a good idea about what lay behind the term «Live Sashimi».

He had visited the place on his very first evening in Tokyo and found himself a place at the bar. Seated beside him had been an old man with a face, in which wrinkles and stains of age were in daily competition about who would completely take over the face. With slightly trembling hands the gent had lifted the little bowl of sake again and again to his lips, greedy and reverential at the same time. Then the sushi master had placed before him a small plate with the cadaver of a tiny fish delicately poised on strips of radish. The head and tail flippers were joined together daintily by an ultra-thin wooden rod in such a manner that the body looked like an elegant curve. The flesh of the tiny creature lay exposed next to its bare spinal-cord, ready for consumption. Before the old man tucked into his sashimi he had bowed to the little fish and spoken to him – with an expression that held a mixture of reverence and derision. Only then had Maille noticed that, although its flesh had been pared from its bones, the fish was still fighting for breath and its tail was fluttering in the throes of death. The old man had seemed to enjoy this flutter of death and Maille had detected a glimpse of triumph in his gaze: «Yes, my young friend, you've been well and truly trapped», his eyes had seemed to say: «I'm ancient myself, but unlike you I'm going to make yet another round».

«Live Sashimi» means that a fish is removed from the aquarium and filleted, draped and served within such a short span of time (usually seconds) that it is still alive, technically at least, when it arrives at the dining table. Such a fish is the opposite, as it were, of the regular sashimi or sushi. In the western world these Japanese fish-snacks have met with enormous success because they fulfils our longing for something straight from nature – all by by making at the same time allowances for our apprehensions about such stuff. Sushi is a case in point: it is raw and, as such, original and wild. It awakens the beast in us – because it is, after all, mostly only animals that eat their meat raw. At the same time, stuff such as sushi and sashimi are prepared in such a sophisticated manner that we are light years away from the animal (as source of the meat) and the all but nice manipulations humans were doing on it – far more distant than we are when we eat a leg of chicken, for example. Studies have shown that some of our contemporaries, who otherwise eat no fish, are able to consume and even relish sushi – as a neutral-smelling and bloodless form of nature.

With «Live Fish» it is quite another matter. Here, one sees how the creature takes its dying breath as one is eating it. As it gasps for air while it lies on one's plate, one believes that one can recognise something in the creature's eyes. And it struggles for life for quite long, especially with its tail. Oysters are also eaten alive – but the aliveness in an oyster is more abstract, perhaps because it has no eyes. Naturally then, a «Live Fish» on our plate arouses a sense of protectiveness in us – but then, it must be pointed out, most fresh fish is filleted live. The only difference is that what remains besides the fillets of a normal fish takes its last breaths inside a garbage can – while a «Live Fish» exhales for the last time on the dining table, looking like a miniature piece of sculpture, as it were.

It is perhaps typical of Japan that it turns death, the process of dying, and indeed the torture element, into an aesthetic production. And one is prepared to see in that peculiarity the remnants of the great rituals of the Samurai period – in a perverse from maybe.

Hektor Maille did not, however, feel in the least like a Samurai on this morning in «Sushizanmai». Even as he placed the order he could feel his heart beginning to palpitate and he was unable to rid himself of the feeling that he was embroiled in something outrageous and forbidden. As the fish on his plate gasped to death, the best agent of the Santa Lemusa Secret Service knew that, in this case, he had to break his rule of not eating breakfast – perhaps also because a bizarre poem from Mizuhara Shion was again ringing in his ears:

Uo hameba
uo no haka naru
hito no mi ka
tamukuru gotoku
kuchzukenikeri

Will the human body
feeding on a fish
become the tomb of the fish?
I kissed, as I made
a sacrificial offering

Poem and German translation from: «Gäbe es keine Kirschblüten…». Stuttgart: Reclam Verlag, 2009. S. 205. Listen to how the poem sounds in Japanese.

* Zanmai or «Samadhi» is a term used in yoga to signify an art of deep absorption, a state of consciousness beyond thinking, waking, sleeping or dreaming, a full blossoming of the object of meditation.

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