They call us “Generation Mirage.”
That’s because right before we turned old enough to receive our pensions, they pushed the pension age back. And kept pushing it back. At first they said we’d get our pensions at 65. Then it was 70, which became 75, then 80, and 85, and by the time our 90th birthdays rolled around, they’d stopped sending us extension notices altogether.
Protesting was off the table, since the government offices weren’t running anymore. No one picked up the phone, and all the post offices had been abandoned. At that point, we didn’t even have the willpower left to complain. For decades we’d been let down, over and over, until we just got used to feeling disappointed.
These days, my husband and I spend most of our time gardening. Tomatoes, eggplants, radishes, potatoes. They’re small, and a bit lumpy, but it’s not like we’ve got anything else to do. And besides, the vegetables stave off hunger. We used to get a lot of crows invading the garden, but now that all the animals have been eaten, we don’t have to worry about that anymore. It’s been years now since we’ve seen a crow, pigeon, dog, or cat.
Our one small pleasure is our early afternoon picnic. On sunny days, we climb to the top of the hill near our house and look out at Tokyo Tower—and beyond it, Mount Fuji. The mountain looks so close it’s almost off-putting. It used to be you could only see it around New Year’s, but the air has gotten much cleaner since the oil supply was cut off about ten years ago. Sometimes we bring our binoculars to try and spot the streets we used to walk. That dense, luxuriant green forest spread out at the foot of Tokyo Tower is where Ginza used to be. If you look closely, you can see ivy climbing up the sides of the tower.
Every day we huff and puff up the hill, get up at dawn (since we don’t have electricity anymore), and go to sleep when it gets dark. All we eat are vegetables and grains, so we’re getting steadily healthier by the day. Back when he used to work at a trading company, my husband was overweight and diabetic, but now he’s firmed up to the point of being almost unrecognizable, and has a nice healthy tan, too. Compared to when we were in our eighties, our legs and backs are much stronger. We never get sick. Sometimes we joke with each other about how we’re never going to die if we keep being this healthy. Since we don’t have children or grandchildren, whoever outlives the other will be fated to die alone. There are no doctors, so I guess we’ll just have to suffer as we wait for death.
For dinner tonight we had baked eggplant, boiled okra, dried tomatoes, and a little buckwheat. Before I went to bed, I went to the storage closet to check if the thing I’d stored away in the back of the cabinet was still there. There’s only a centimeter or so of the white stuff left at the bottom of the vial, but it’s plenty for one person. This is my nightly routine which allows me to go to sleep reassured.
One day, the government suddenly announced it was going to pay out our pensions. We were shocked. Why now? What really surprised us was that there was still a government at all. We had no idea who was running the country anymore, nor did we really care. For a long time now, the TV had been reduced to a mere box, and newspapers had died out even earlier. We only found out about our pensions through a piece of paper stuck to the bulletin board of our local neighborhood association.
A few days later, we heard a thunk. A small box had been dropped off at our doorstep. It was crude, made of cardboard, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, with the word JAPAN stamped in faint red ink on the top. Inside was a piece of something that looked like a shriveled-up sponge. It was dark orange. My husband and I looked at each other. What the hell is this? How condescending can they be? You make us wait all this time, and you send us some trash like this? I threw the box against the wall and went to bed.
The next morning I woke to the sound of my husband’s voice. Hey, come over here! I went into the kitchen, and let out a shriek. Some light orange, jiggly thing was covering the entire kitchen table. It was glossy and had a scaly, rippling texture. My husband told me that after I’d gone to bed the night before, he’d picked up the box and seen a note on the inside instructing us to place a single drop of water on the object. We’ve always been like this: me, quick to anger, and my husband, quietly dealing with whatever it is I’ve overlooked.
As I watched it, I was suddenly assailed with hunger. From the look on his face, I knew my husband was feeling the same thing. If this was supposed to be our pension, then the least it could do was feed us. We tore off a piece. We decided to grill it first, since we felt a little apprehensive about eating it raw. Cautiously we brought it to our mouths. (……?) (……!) This flavor—what was it? It took us a long time to remember. It was meat. The taste and texture of beef. How many decades had it been? We brought out the soy sauce we’d stored away, and devoured it together. For the first time in I don’t know how many years, we ate to our hearts’ content.
And that’s how our pension life began. Strangely, no matter how much of the pension we ate, it never got smaller. Quite the opposite—every morning we woke to find it larger than the night before. What was even stranger was, depending on how you prepared it, it could take on the flavor of almost anything. If you cut it up very fine and boiled it, it would become noodles. If you tore off rough chunks it would become raw vegetables. Chicken, pork, mackerel, Pacific saury, tuna. Every day we ate to our satisfaction, hearts and bodies content. We rarely went out to the garden anymore.
Once again, my husband was the first to realize that we could do much more than eat our “pension.” One time we left a bowl with a chipped edge out overnight on the table next to the pension, and when we woke up the next morning it had completely repaired itself. The part that used to be chipped was a slightly different color, and when I tapped it with my finger it made a hard sound: ding! We both got very excited and left out various items for the “pension” to repair overnight. A pair of glasses with one bent temple. A fountain pen with a missing tip. Torn underwear. An umbrella. A rice paddle. A cup. A brush. A wristwatch. A shovel. A windowpane.
I turned and thanked the “pension,” which by now had spread itself out over the entire floor and was beginning to crawl up the walls. It seemed to shiver ever so slightly and seemed to sparkle a little more.
At last, the “pension” learned how to transform itself into whatever we desired. Soap. Shoes. Toothbrush. Batteries. Whiskey. Banana. Coffee beans. Ukulele. When I smelled coffee for the first time in who knows how many decades, I cried. A long time ago, I used to look forward to having a cup of coffee after lunch along with a slice of cake I’d buy in the neighborhood. While listening to music. And reading a book. Back then, I never had to worry about what I would eat tomorrow, or about the future in general.
One morning I woke up and felt like something was off. Still lying in bed, I reached under my pajama top and felt around. I wasn’t imagining it. I dashed to the bathroom, lifted up my top, looked into the cracked mirror. My right breast was back. The one they’d removed during surgery when I was fifty and had breast cancer. My husband came to see what was going on. Look at this, I said, cackling. My left breast was a wrinkled, withered, sagging old breast. But my right breast had grown back and now looked exactly the same as it had before the surgery. I found it hilarious that the left and right breast were so different, but even as I laughed I understood. The “pension” recreated things as we remembered them. Every time I looked at the scar where my right breast used to be, I’d remember how it looked before my surgery, and feel sad. Somehow the “pension” had picked up on this sense of loss, and compensated for it.
That’s why, when the “pension” stretched itself out in a corner of the kitchen, and, over several days, transformed itself into the shape of a person, it was like we already knew, somewhere in our hearts, that this was bound to happen. No—we’d wished for this to happen.
These days, we rush into the kitchen first thing when we wake up. This morning, at last, the eyes and nose are beginning to take shape, and the face looks exactly as we remember it. Our only daughter, who died in a ski bus accident when she was in college. When we call her name, her eyelashes flutter and the corners of her mouth turn up. Soon, we will hear her voice. Because it is her voice, more than anything else, which we remember most clearly.
We’ve reclaimed the garden which we’d let fall into disarray, planting flowers there. Soon, when our daughter learns to walk, we’ll look at the flowers together. We’ll climb the hill, show her Mount Fuji and Tokyo Tower. Maybe we’ll go on a trip, take her to see the ocean. Who knows how many days it will take us to walk there, but at least we know it will still be there.
Lately I’ve lost track of what month or day it is, or even how old I am. Every day I feel like I’m floating along on clouds. Even if what the “pension” has shown us is just a hallucination, I don’t mind one bit. I want to live in it forever.
Last night, I took the vial of pesticide from the back of the cupboard and threw it away.
Translated by Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda
Translator’s Note: The word “nenkin” in the title of the story, which means “pension,” is homophonous with the word for “slime mold.”