Rabbits by Kanai Mieko

So long as writing, including the act of not writing, is writing, then perhaps inevitably, writing is my fate.

On the day I wrote this in my diary, I prepared to go out, half out of a sense of duty, to take a stroll close-by to my new home. Since I was recommended to walk by my doctor for my health, even though I didn't like it, it couldn't be helped. The unpleasant grey sky threatened rain and on such a day, thinking about my health seemed impossible but rather than confronting my diary and manuscript paper in a dreary, yet-unfurnished room, exercising my body seemed preferable.

It was a truly horrible feeling. Even while I was awake, I was dragged into a sensation as if I were having a nightmare, and as it comes abruptly without any warning, I was forced to stay on edge for the whole year. Something like an ill-defined illusion, what you might call a kind of smell perhaps, was following me around. A smell like an invisible bird that suddenly brushes past the tip of your nose. In that smell, I could tell that some kind of unclear shadow existed and moreover, I firmly believed that I must have got a good view of that shadow before, but like a smell which dissolves into the murky wind, that shadow disappeared in a flash. Leaving only a vast, desolate irritation like a gush of wind completely obliterating letters in the sand just before you are finally able to read them, into a broad, empty, grey sandy beach.

I had no idea what it was, but the smell was a kind of nausea. It wasn't that the nausea emerged from the smell, nor was it that I caught the smell due to the nausea but rather the smell emerged from the depths of my body.

In the middle of my stroll, I got lost in the garden of an empty house surrounded by a grove. Tired, I sat down on a rock and while I was resting, I saw a large white rabbit running before my eyes. When I say large, I don’t mean it in the normal sense, but that it was almost the same size as myself. But as proof that it was a rabbit, it had large, long ears which, no matter where you look, could only be seen on a rabbit. I jumped up from the rock and chased after the rabbit, but when I ran after it, I must have lost consciousness and I suddenly fell into a hole. When I came to, the rabbit from before was peering at me, then sat down beside me.

“Who are you?”

“I was walking but I got lost and ended up coming here. Are you a rabbit? Sorry, are you Miss Rabbit?”

“I look just like one, don’t I?” said the rabbit, chuckling with delight. “But I'm actually human. Perhaps. Lately I've been feeling like either is fine.”

“You really do look like a rabbit,” I said in admiration.

She was covered in white, fluffy fur and looking carefully head on, even her eyes were a translucent peach colour. Of course, when I looked even closer, I immediately understood that the peach coloured eyes were glass lenses that had been skilfully attached to a rabbit shaped hood which covered her head, and I could also tell that the white fur which covered her whole body was made up from a construction like rompers worm by children. But I couldn't understand why this girl was wearing such a meticulous rabbit costume. The girl quickly sensed my question and said,

“Do you want to know why I look like this? I’ll tell you. Since my father died, this is the first time I've spoken to someone other than myself. Moreover, if I don’t speak to someone, I can’t relax. Please come inside my home.” Having said this, she invited me into her run-down house. She explained that her name was Sayuri (Lily), and although she didn't think it was an especially bad name, she would have been more satisfied with a name like Oniyuri (Tiger Lily; lit: Demon Lily) or Himeyuri (Star Lily).

“But of course, no-one knows my name now and there won’t be anyone who remembers it either. So I would prefer it if you remembered me as Himeyuri.”

The inside of the house, to be frank, was just like a rabbit’s den. Rabbit fur was spread all over the floor and freshly skinned rabbit pelt was nailed to the wall in the shape of an X, and there was a foul smell like that of a wild beast. I sat on the rabbit fur and was nauseated by the foul smell that I could not get used to but the girl appeared indifferent to my state and repeatedly shifted her ears and scratched behind them with her hind legs. Of course this was not because she had an itch behind her ear, but most certainly it was a reflex of a rabbit-like action to which she had grown accustomed over a long period.

“As to how I ended up like this, even I've thought there must be some proper reason. I think the first incident that led to this perhaps began that morning.” She began to speak slowly as if retracing her memories.

“In the morning, I woke up and walked around the house, but nobody was there. I checked the kitchen and the dining room and the living room, and in my family’s bedrooms, in the closet, in the bathroom and in the lavatory, and I even opened up the wardrobe just in case, but no-one was there. In the kitchen, the milk was still boiling on the hob and white cream overflowed from the milk pan like meringue; at the sink, the soap in the cup that my brother used for shaving was still foamed up; in the dining room, the cold orange juice which had just been taken out of the fridge had been poured into a glass, the surface of which was clouded with small drops of condensation; even the newspaper was placed on the table as if someone had begun to read it and had then stood up from their seat. Despite all this, no-one was in the house.

“I turned off the hob on which the milk pan was boiling, drank the orange juice on the table and read the newspaper (I say that, but I just glanced over the pages, and didn't even read major incidents written in big letters. The news was probably something about a foreign war, or the assassination of a foreign prime minister or a foreign revolution, at any rate, it had nothing to do with me) whilst thinking that these people will probably never come home. Even if they didn't return, I wouldn't be even slightly bothered, and I didn't even think to consider why they had disappeared. Actually, my family didn't return after that, but even if they had, I would have faced my family and responded that I didn't know them.

“The attitude I took towards the sudden disappearance of my family may have been a little strange. That’s because I wasn't even slightly surprised. Every morning my family would drink their orange juice and talk about the weather, or exchange opinions on the concentration of orange juice, or listen to father explaining newspaper articles whilst eating a breakfast of tomato, bacon and eggs and black tea, and apart from when father asked me questions about school, I would not speak. Father would always ask “what are you studying at school?” and I would reply, “Lots of things. Physics, chemistry and maths.” The conversation would end there and father would wipe the egg yolk from his plate with strips of bread and smack his lips and then he would mutter meaningless phrases such as “whatever you say, if you study it will be useful in the end,” “no matter how old people get they shouldn't lose the urge to study,” and “there is no royal road to learning” and slurp tea from a big cup. Without noticing that egg yolk and drops of tea were getting stuck on the ends of his curly moustache, and whilst munching on his second plate of toast, bacon and eggs, he would always say the same thing in a loud voice (my father always spoke with a loud voice. Even when he intended to mutter, it always seemed to others as if he were yelling)

“”When we eat and are full to bursting, anyone would feel pleasantly drowsy. It is certainly the best in the case of healthy people. It’s undoubtedly a natural, healthy physiology. To think that you have to work! After breakfast, I really want to dozes off for an hour or two. You really want to sleep after each and every meal.” Nobody replied and everyone accepted father’s statement with mild scorn. My family thought of father as a red faced pig who liked gluttony and sleeping. However, I was different. Father, who pants after the sweet pleasure of gluttony and sleep and wobbles his belly, I loved him the best.

"At dinner, I would sometimes hang out with my father and we would eat food that other members of the family would never even put into their mouths, to the point where we were so stuffed that even keeping our eyes open took a huge effort. We would unreservedly burp to each other and when we were so full we couldn't eat any more, unlike the uncivilised manner by which the Roman aristocracy stuck their fingers down their throats, we would take laxatives made from special herbal drugs and clear ourselves out, and begin to eat once more.

“Father kept rabbits to eat, and twice a month on the 1^st and 15^th, he would kill one and make a meal out of it. On the 1^st and 15^th, he would get up early before breakfast and pick out a nice and plump rabbit from the hutch and kill it. This gentle, unknowing rabbit would have its ears gripped by father’s fat, hairy fingers, and would stay still with its legs drawn back. This animal covered in fluffy, soft, white fur would curl up its body as if in cowardice and easily allow itself to be strangled by father’s large hands. Many times, I saw its corpse with loosely dangling legs and broken neck placed on the ground in front of the hutch. Then, in the garden shed, father would put a knife in the rabbit’s neck and cut the arteries, hang it upside down, and take a longer than usual leisurely breakfast until the blood had completely drained from its body. When breakfast had finished, this time he would cut open the rabbit’s belly and take out its organs and place them in a wooden bucket to which blood had stuck and turned a brown colour, and then father would go about the task of skinning it. When father’s fat fingers drenched in blood moved, rose coloured meat wrapped in blood and fat gradually emerged from under the pure white fur. Once its fur had been skinned, the dead body was nailed to the shed wall and the pelt was cleaned of blood, spread out and nailed to the shed wall in the shape of an X.

“In the evening, having returned from the office he would make the rabbit meal in the shed: he would stuff the rabbit’s stomach with liver and kidney and raw sausage meat and also put in onions, mushrooms and tomato and various spices, and boil it. There were times when he made it into stew, but father and I both much preferred the spiced, stuffed cuisine. To some extent, other members of the family accepted rabbits as cute pets, but they were scornful of using them for fur or as edible flesh, not to mention killing the pet, and beyond that they thought it unbearable to cook and eat them. They hated the strangling and killing of a small, defenceless creature, and the act of handling them and skinning them was a shameful thing, not to mention eating them, which was something so disgusting that it would make one sick just to watch. Having no other choice, mother would just about tolerate this (maybe she thought it was better than being cheated on or him messing up the family), but she was completely against doing this cooking in the kitchen.

““Are you telling me to endure the stench of rabbits filling up the kitchen and the house? Bringing in the stink of animal blood is not something that happens in a proper house.”

“So, on the 1^st and 15^th, father and I would have dinner on a small table in the shed. The rabbit, with legs shining amber with grease, would be served up on a large oval plate with a blue rose pattern, and the tomatoes, onions and mushrooms that had melted into it were piled up all around. The shed was filled with the entrancing scent of steam, spices and rabbit blood, and it was an extravagant dinner like that of medieval knights. Otherwise, we would make pigeon wrapped in grape leaves, sprinkled with kirsch and fried; various types of clams eaten raw with lemon juice; cold, chilled fruit compote of a number of varieties; red and white wine; and ice cream with fresh cream and almonds. To finish off our dessert, we would display gluttony without hunger and drink plenty of cocoa with Jamaican rum. We didn’t talk about anything in particular during this time-consuming cooking and eating, we were just completely absorbed in the food. Sometimes we did talk as well. What father wanted to ask me was generally about human relations, and he would ask timidly in a loud voice,

““So, do you have a boyfriend? Did you get a boyfriend at school?”

““At school?” I would answer with a laugh. “You’re so forgetful, dad. There are only girls at my school. There’s no way I could get one.”

““Ah, that’s right. How thoughtless of me. But do you really not have a boyfriend?”

““I don’t. I'm not interested. I hate young boys and if one approached me, I’d bite him and him up.”

““But you could have one anyhow. Then you’ll throw me away and run off somewhere. Definitely.”

“This kind of conversation would be repeated, and when we’d drunk the last of the cocoa with rum, the two of us would be completely stuffed and become drowsy, father would smoke a cigar, and whilst leisurely savouring the taste of cocoa with rum which soaked into my mouth with my tongue, I would feel satisfied and think of sleeping. We would return to the house from the shed, cutting across the garden, the nippy outside air which I felt until my first floor bedroom felt nice and sleep became more and more pleasant. The rabbits were sleeping soundly in their hutch and I could hear the low muffled sound of the pigeons singing from their throats in their cage. The scent of flowers softly sweetened the air.

““Goodnight,” father would say in a sleepy voice in front of his bedroom. “Ah, will I die slowly?” He always told the same joke.

“I recalled that this day was the 15^th – to be precise, the date on the newspaper caught my eye – and I thought that father must be doing his work in the shed as always, but I don’t know what happened to the rest of my family, my brother and sister. I didn't even consider that they would have gone to the shed especially to see the bloody work they despised, nor did I think they had gone elsewhere. So surely, I thought, those people had been spirited away or something and they would never again show themselves, which was very good. We had most definitely been waiting for this for years, and we had always thought of it over and over since a very long time ago.

“After drinking the orange juice, I remembered there was no-one to prepare breakfast and so thought that I must make it for dad and myself. I made ham, eggs, milky tea, tomatoes and, as befits a special breakfast, I made things similar to red rice. I thought that the analogy of red rice should perhaps be based on colour. I needed red food. There were radishes and strawberries in the fridge, so I decorated the table with these and felt so happy thinking that dad would soon realise the meaning of the radishes and strawberries.

“Dad came in through the backdoor, wearing a large apron covered with blood from preparing the rabbits, and laughed in good humour saying,

““Let’s have breakfast. Today we’ll feast from morning onwards and you can skip school. A girl whose family has suddenly gone missing will have far too many worries and shouldn't go to school.” I became more and more happy and said,

““So they've really disappeared?”

“Since father came in, the warm smell of animal blood began to hang in the air and whilst breathing it in, I thought that from then on, this smell would always be in the house."

“And then, we were so happy. Every single day we would make different food, eat until we were stuffed, then sleep. What dad had spoken of at every meal – the naturalness and sweetness of having a sleep after eating – we could savour this to our hearts’ content without anyone getting in the way. I ended up never going to school and dad just left his office to someone else, and since all he did was eat and sleep, he grew fatter and fatter and would sometimes get heart spasms. Despite this, I never called a doctor, and when I tried to phone one he would get so furiously angry that I could only keep quiet and do as dad said. He was already so fat that the dining room chairs and such would make a groaning sound, seemingly about to break whenever he sat down. Even when he just moved a little, he would be seriously out of breath and would be gasping severely, sounding like an engine starting up. So at some point, the role of killing and cooking the rabbits fell to me. Immediately, I became skilled at this and carried it out with enjoyment. At first it was really unpleasant, but I soon came to understand that killing is one form of pleasure. When I put my hands into the still-warm belly of a rabbit and pulled out its organs, I was happy. It was like sticking my hands into a rose of flesh, and I would lose myself completely in this. When I felt the tiny heart, still twitching, beat at the tip of my fingers, my heart too would beat violently.

“Of course, when I held and strangled the rabbit, it had a different kind of pleasure to thrusting my hands inside it. I tried various methods to intensify the pleasure of strangling their necks. A rabbit is so docile with its ears pinched, and although I thought that killing that soft, snow white, round creature with one’s own hands was a terribly cruel thing, I knew clearly why this had gradually changed to a sweet, intoxicating pleasure. When I strengthened the force of my hands little by little, the rabbit would kick its legs in pain, hitting my stomach, and this was very exciting. Then, at the same time, I would know that the rabbit’s neck in my fingers was completely broken and I would feel on my stomach the violent convulsion running through the rabbit’s body. In the beginning I would place the rabbit on my lap and strangle it, but I also tried other methods of killing such as putting its chest under my arm and pushing my arm down to my side with all my might. This too had quite a good feeling about it, but if I was a little negligent the rabbit could slip out from under my armpit, so it wasn't a very good method. In the end, the method with which I was most satisfied with was holding the rabbit between my thighs and strangling its neck. I quite liked this and I continued to do it for a while, but then I imagined that feeling the rabbit’s fur directly with my naked legs would be even better. So whenever I killed, I always took off my jeans and put on a skirt, rolled it up and put the rabbit between my legs.

“Then, it didn't take long for a rabbit blood ritual to take place with me completely naked. Since dad was pretty much only ever lying down in the bedroom, even on the days when I didn't cook rabbit, I would kill the rabbits just for fun. A pleasure which involves cruelty is a greedy thing. And, this greed is never satisfied drinking down the blood of sacrificed rabbits one by one. What I next thought of was to shower in the blood of the rabbits hung up to drain of blood. One rabbit was not enough to shower my whole body: I needed 3, 4 or 5 animals’ blood. I would rub the blood over my body with both hands inexhaustibly; I especially loved to neatly arrange my pubic hairs wet with blood, and I also loved to twist their necks and lick up the blood from their shoulders, chests and legs with my tongue. Then I would sew up the rabbit fur and I came to live wearing a rabbit costume that snugly fit my body and a hood with long ears and a mask on my head.

“The hood turned out really well: the insides of the ears are crafted with wire and thread inside a pink satin. I hooked durable thread from the ears through the neck and arms onto rings on my left and right-hand fingers. The same trick was used in the tail, and string leading from the tail too was hooked onto my fingers. Since I wear rabbit fur mittens on my hands, you can’t see the rings with string hooked onto my fingers from the outside. When I move my fingers inside my mittens, the ears freely move by pinging upright or bending back behind my head. My tail too moved freely in this same way.

“Of course, it took a fair amount of time for this rabbit costume to be completely finished. Un-tanned pelts have a slippery red, brown and purple gluey substance clinging to the surface and it is very stiff. But, if I tanned the fur, I think it would lose its real rabbit feel. I would first shower in rabbit blood, and then still naked and wet, I would snuggle into the rabbit fur and walk around, jumping like a rabbit. Already by this point, when I was crazed with rabbits to that extent, there were many times when father would take his bluish-black swollen face and hands from under the sheets and remain motionless. But he was in a good mood when he woke up and played with me. Every day I would look after father, but I no longer felt like having him looked at by a doctor and besides, both father and I were absolutely against others coming into the house. Since I didn’t know when he would get a spasm, I had to stay by dad’s side as much as possible.

“Since by that time the house was already filled with rabbits and every room was in chaos with rabbit droppings and grass for them to eat, I had no need to go especially to the shed for my own fun. When I say a spasm, all I could do was given him water and wait patiently for it to lessen. Both father and I knew that when the spasms had really subsided, it would mean he was dead.

“Eventually, the time came when his spasms did subside. Dad looked in so much pain whenever he had a spasm I thought I could die just looking at him. Since I had finished the rabbit fur costume I’d been laboriously making, I planned to wear it and show it to dad. I wanted to please him and I was sure he would be happy. I held a placard saying, ‘please stuff and eat me’ and I tied a large rose coloured ribbon around my neck like the Easter Bunny. That day was dad’s birthday and I was utterly excited at the idea of giving myself as a present.

“When I went into the room dressed in rabbit fur (I had had plenty of practice jumping and moving like a rabbit) dad shouted out in surprise. In my plans, his surprise would soon turn to laughter and we would carry out the ritual of strangling the rabbit using the rabbit that was me. Of course I would primarily have to be obedient and offer no resistance but when dad would pretend to strangle my neck, I would pretend to struggle a little and in the end, I would make my whole body violently convulse, and finally I would stiffen up and grow limp, pretending to be dead. Then, at last, it would be the skinning ritual. I had drenched my whole body in blood so that when I took off my fur I would really look like a skinned rabbit. My heart throbbed at the thought of the time when my insides would be fumbled for by dad’s hands. However, dad did not recognise me.

““Monster!” dad shouted out. “Monster, disappear!”

“I was stupefied and called out, “father!”

“Dad’s fear grew worse and worse, he gasped for breath, continuously shouting out, “monster, monster!” and picked up a cup and jug left near his bed, and threw them at me. The large enamel jug hit my face and smashed the pink glass stuck on the eyes of my fur mask. Shock went through my entire body and when the broken glass stabbed into my left eye I passed out from the intense pain that felt like it had pierced through my face to the back of my head. A deep crimson darkness spread through my eye as though a blazing fire dragon had jumped inside, a white flame was burning my head and I fell into a pitch-black darkness. I don’t know for how long I was unconscious, but when I came to I was collapsed on the floor by dad’s bed. My face and head, covered by my fur mask and hood, were wet with thick blood and an intense pain burned through my face. I got up slowly but I was reeling terribly and felt nauseous. Finally, I remember walking to the dresser on the wall to examine the wound. The pink glass was slanted above my eyelid and deeply pierced my eyeball; my left eye had become completely useless. I took off the hood and mask from my face and with all my might I pulled out the glass fragment piercing my eye. Blood gushed out and I wondered whether my eyeball too would fall out with the blood. I was really like a rabbit being drained of its blood. I took a towel out of the dresser drawer, put it to my left eye, tied it firmly at the back of head, but immediately fainted again and collapsed in front of the dresser. When I recovered consciousness the second time, I realised that dad was dead. Dad’s face, in short, was stiff with fear and distorted unattractively.

“Since then, I am well aware that the rabbit ghost has taken hold of me and I have behaved as a one-eyed giant rabbit. After all, I fully recognise that I can never again return to the human world. If I think about it, it was until the 14^th several years ago that I lived as a normal human being. Until then, I was quite an ordinary girl and I covered up my father’s unusual tastes – that is, killing rabbits and cooking them – from my classmates, and I can’t say that I didn't feel somewhat guilty about eating rabbits. If they had known that I coolly ate the rabbits I had looked after, the girls of my class would definitely have given me the nickname of Oniyuri (Demon Lily). Those people are like the blind – yes I say that even though I now have one useless eye – but just by hearing the word ‘kill’ the colour of those stupid girls’ dumb, blank faces would change. How people think of me isn't something that bothers me, but hearing gossip isn't a nice feeling for a young girl. Of course it has nothing to do with me now and it doesn't matter either way.

“Right now, I'm all-rabbit. And recently I've noticed that the vision in my right eye is weakening. Once your vision weakens, things you couldn't see become visible. The power to make visible things invisible and invisible things visible comes about naturally. For me, I can always see that dead face of my dad. I can see that bluish-black swollen face open its eyes, flare its nostrils and shout out. Especially when I'm strangling rabbits, that face suddenly appears, the energy drains away from my hands and I can’t kill it. It was a frightening face and a frightening experience. Even when I saw the pink glass stabbing my eye in the mirror, it was frightening, but it was also beautiful. At that time I was so pretty it makes me shudder. My hair matted with blood clung to my head and the sharp edge of the pink glass fragment which deeply pierced my left eye sparkled with the light. What beautiful make-up it was. Whenever I thought of that, I lost that pleasure in killing rabbits I’d had before. You've probably already noticed, but the reason why these rabbits have no eyes is that I gouged them all out. When I gouge out these rabbits’ eyes like red, translucent glass I can see myself back then, so pretty it makes me shudder.

The second time I met this girl was a long time afterwards. Just when I came to think that this strange experience was all a dream (the reason being that no matter how much I looked for that desolate house surrounded by a grove, I couldn't find it and no-one knew of a house filled with rabbits), one day whilst out on my walk I suddenly remembered the way. Like an animal’s homing instinct, I was signalled by some kind of invisible smell and I walked on. I found that desolate house and when I entered the bedroom where I had talked with her, the girl was collapsed on the middle of spread-out white fur, and when I came closer, I saw that sharp, pink glass pierced her right eye and that blood was collecting in a puddle on the white fur below her head, and that a thin film had formed on the surface of the blood. The thin film glittered with the colours of the rainbow just like a gasoline film spilled into a puddle on the pavement after the rain.

This was the first time I’d seen her without make-up, but I couldn't tell whether she was beautiful or not. There’s no way to say it other than that her left eye was a caved in black hole, and the eyeball dangling from its vein, together with a profuse amount of blood, poured out from the right eye which had been stabbed with pink glass, and fell down like a pink pearl earring below her pale, well-shaped, almost transparent ears. Her lips, contrary to my vulgar expectations (were they rabbit lips?) were a beautiful arch-shaped curve and the colour of lightly oozing blood. Then, I peeled off the white rabbit fur that completely covered her body, took off what I was wearing and got inside it. Then, I put on the hood and mask that were placed by her side and held my breath for a long time inside the beastly stench and squatted motionlessly. A group of rabbits gathered around us, and the rabbits, the girl and I all stayed still without trying to move.