Salmonella men on Planet Porno: stories - By Yasutaka Tsutsui Page 0,70
in his body by bullets and kitchen knives.
When an earthquake set off fires in a densely populated part of Tokyo, a rumour was put about that they’d been deliberately started by smokers. So checkpoints were set up on the roads, and those trying to escape were stopped. If they were wheezing for breath, they were assumed to be smokers and executed on the spot. A sense of guilt, on a subconscious level, seemed to have given the discriminators their own paranoia.
When the national tobacco company went up in smoke and was forced to fold, it was the start of truly dark times for smokers. At night, gangs calling themselves the National Anti-smoking Front (NAF), their faces partly hidden behind triangular white masks, would roam the streets brandishing torches and setting fire to the few remaining tobacco shops.
I, on the other hand – milking the privilege accorded to a fashionable author – would instruct my editors to buy cigarettes for me, and continued to smoke as freely as before. “Pay me in cigarettes,” I would say. “No smoke, no manuscript.”
The poor wretches would scour the length and breadth of the land to find cigarettes that were still being sold, secretly, in remote country villages, or black-market contraband being trafficked in underworld “smoke-easy” joints. These they would present to me by way of tribute.
Nor did it seem that I was alone. Incorrigible journalists would occasionally produce features on celebrities who were still smoking. In their articles, they would list about a hundred people who, like me, declared themselves to be smokers and openly indulged in the habit.
“Which of these headstrong fools will be the last smoker?” ran one of their titles.
As a result, I was soon in constant danger, even at home. Stones were thrown at my windows, and suspicious fires would burn here and there around my walls and hedges. The walls became covered with multi-coloured graffiti, which was always renewed no matter how often I painted over it.
“SMOKER LIVES HERE”
“DIE OF NICOTINE POISONING, DIE!”
“HOUSE OF A TRAITOR”
The frequency of abusive calls and letters merely increased, most of them now consisting of unveiled threats. Eventually, my wife could bear it no longer. So she went off to her mother’s, taking our son with her.
Articles headed “WHO WILL BE THE LAST SMOKER?” appeared in the newspapers on a daily basis. Some commentators even made predictions, and the list of names gradually shortened. But the pressure grew in inverse proportion to the declining number of targets.
One day, I telephoned the Human Rights Commission. A man answered in a brusque, dispassionate tone.
“We can’t help you here. Our job is to protect non-smokers.”
“Yes, but smokers are in the minority now.”
“That’s been so for a long time. We’re here to protect the interests of the majority.”
“Yes? Do you always side with the majority, then?”
“But of course. The very idea.”
So I had no option but to protect myself. Smoking wasn’t actually illegal yet. Instead, the lynchings became more violent (presumably out of frustration). I surrounded my house with barbed wire – electrified at night – and armed myself with a modified handgun and a samurai sword.
One day around this time, I received a call from a painter, Kusakabe, who lived not far away. Originally a pipe smoker, he’d switched to ordinary cigarettes when he could no longer obtain his favourite “Half and Half”. Of course, he was one of the remaining twenty or so “smoking artists” who were always being targeted by the newspapers.
“That things should have come to this!” Kusakabe bemoaned. “I’ve heard that we will soon be attacked. The press and TV companies are inciting the NAF to torch our homes, so they can show pictures of our houses burning on the news.”
“The infidels,” I said. “If they come here first, can I escape to your place?”
“We’re in the same boat, aren’t we? If I’m hit first, I’ll drive over to yours. Then we’ll go up to Tokyo together. I know a safe house there. We have comrades there, too. If we’re all to suffer the same fate, better to die glorious deaths together!”
“Agreed. Let us die magnificent deaths. Let them write in future school textbooks, ‘They died with cigarettes in their mouths’.”
We did laugh.
But it was no laughing matter. One evening just two months later, Kusakabe drove to my house covered in burns.
“They got me,” he said as he parked his car in my garage, which was converted from a utility room in the main house. “They’ll be here next. Let’s get away.”