The Briefcase by Hiromi Kawakami Read Free Book Online Page B

lemon went together with mountain hiking, so I didn’t bother to argue. Even if I had, I doubt it would have bothered her, perhaps it would just have contributed to the subtle accumulation of anger—the way a succession of smaller waves accumulate into one big wave—that rippled throughout everyday life in unexpected places. That’s just the way married life is, I suppose.
    Our son liked lemon even less than I did. He put the honeyed lemon in his mouth and then stood up and walked into a thicket of trees. He liked to pick up autumn leaves from the ground. The boy had a refined sensibility. I followed him to pick up some leaves myself, but when I got closer, I saw that he was stealthily digging a hole in the ground. He hastily dug a shallow hollow, hurriedly spit out the lemon in his mouth, then swiftly filled in the hole with dirt. That’s how much he disliked lemon. He wasn’t the kind of child who wasted food either. My wife had raised him well.

    You must really hate it, I said to him. He was a bit startled, but then nodded silently. I’m not very fond of it either, I said, and he smiled with relief. Our son looked a lot like my wife when he smiled. He still looks a lot like her. Come to think of it, he will soon be fifty years old, the same age my wife was when she ran off.
    The two of us were crouched over, busying ourselves with collecting autumn leaves when my wife walked up. Even though she was wearing those huge hiking boots, she didn’t make a sound. Hey there, she said behind our backs, and we both flinched with surprise. Look what I found—a Big Laughing Gym mushroom, she whispered in our ears.
    THE FOUR OF us had quickly finished what had seemed like plenty of mushroom soup. The combined varieties of mushrooms had mingled together and the taste was ineffable. That had been Sensei’s description—“ineffable.” In the middle of his story, he had abruptly interrupted himself to say, “Satoru, the soup’s aroma is simply ineffable.”
    Satoru rolled his eyes, and Toru said, “Sensei, you sound just like a teacher!” They urged Sensei to continue the story. What happened with the Big Laughing Gym? Satoru asked, while Toru wondered, How did she know it was a Big Laughing Gym?
    Besides Suburban Pleasure Hiking , my wife had another favorite book, a little field guide to mushroom identification, like a mushroom encyclopedia—these two books were always tucked away in her rucksack whenever we went hiking. And, now, she had the guide open to the page on Big Laughing Gym mushrooms, and she kept repeating, This is it! This is definitely that kind of mushroom!
    “Fine, you know it’s a Big Laughing Gym, but what are you going to do with it?” I asked her.

    My wife replied, “Why, eat it, of course.”
    “But isn’t it poisonous?” I said.
    “Mom, stop it!” our son cried out.
    Right at that moment—paying no mind whatsoever to the dirt on its cap—my wife popped the mushroom into her mouth. “It’s a little tough to eat raw,” she said, shoving a honeyed lemon slice in her mouth along with it.To this day, neither my son nor I have ever eaten another honeyed lemon slice.
    What followed was quite a commotion. First our son burst into tears. “Mom is going to die!” he bawled.
    “Big Laughing Gyms don’t kill you,” my wife comforted him, maintaining perfect composure.
    In any case, we still needed to get off the mountain and go to a hospital, and I had to drag my reluctant wife back down the way we came.
    Soon after, just around the time when we reached the foot of the mountain, the symptoms began to appear. Later at the hospital, the doctor commented nonchalantly that ingesting even such a small amount could bring about symptoms but, to my mind, the symptoms that she exhibited were rather remarkable.
    My wife, who up until then had been so calm and collected, began to emit a sort of chortle, intermittent at first but soon growing in frequency before developing into the full-fledged