Salmonella men on Planet Porno: stories - By Yasutaka Tsutsui Page 0,75

together. Understand?” I said, breathing hard through my nose.

She looked at me aghast. “Do you want to turn our child into a barbarian?!” she said, performing her customary leap of logic.

“What’s that supposed to mean?!”

“You don’t stop to think of your family, do you. He’s just started at private nursery school, hasn’t he?! Do you know how hard I worked to get him in there?!”

“That was just for your vanity!”

“All right. So you think it’s better for your son to have no friends, and to turn into an imbecile like some fisherman’s boy, on some God-forsaken shit-hole of an island in the middle of nowhere, do you?! Just when he’s started learning to read?” She burst into tears and ran over to hug the boy. “I’m sorry, poppet! It’s only because your father is such a rotten good-for-nothing!”

“What’s more important, then? His nursery school or my work?!” I bawled at her. “The only reason you don’t want to go is because you won’t be able to buy flashy clothes and go parading in front of everybody!”

“Oh, you hate that, don’t you,” she said, staring at me. “That’s why you’re going to drag me there with you. You just want to give me a hard time!” She stamped her foot on the floor. “No. I am not going with you! I’d go stark raving mad, stuck there on a lonely island with no one to talk to, with only an invalid like you for company! I’m definitely not going, all right? You can bugger off on your own. Go and have your bloody spasms. Serves you right. You can stew in your own juice for all I care!”

“Wha… wha… wha…” I wanted to shout back, but was suddenly unable to breathe. My eyes bulged as I gasped for air.

A sharp pain pierced my heart. I screwed up my face and crouched on the floor clutching my chest. My heart was clearly palpitating. I moaned helplessly and felt a cold sweat coming over me.

“Oh look, he’s having another one.” She stood over me with a twisted smile on her mouth. “Funny how it always happens when he’s losing an argument. What a very convenient heart problem.”

Still wheezing for breath, I stretched out my hand towards her. “M-my pills, w-would you get m-my pills.”

“Get them yourself,” she said, and started clearing away the dinner things.

I rolled sideways along the carpeted floor. “In my, in my j-jacket pocket. W-would you get them for me.”

Our son got up and looked down at me. “Daddy not well!”

“Oh, leave him. He only wants attention.” She stomped off loudly into the kitchen.

Terrified by the sharp pain and the fear of death, I crawled along the floor and managed to reach the coat pegs as wheezing sounds still issued from my throat.

“All right, all right. Well done.” Sighing, my wife came back out of the kitchen, took the bottle of pills from my jacket, and threw it down in front of my nose. “Good performance. I nearly believed you.”

“And so, you see, I need eight months’ medication,” I told Dr Kawashita the next day, having taken the morning off to go to his clinic.

“Well, yes.” Dr Kawashita pulled a wry face. “I could give them to you, but…”

“You’ve got to!” I pleaded. “They’ll be my only hope on a remote island without a doctor!”

“But you’ll take them all at once, won’t you.” He scratched his head vigorously. “The problem is that you make no effort to remove the cause, but just keep taking the medicine. That’s no good at all.”

“No, it’s not true. I am making an effort. I’ve stopped smoking and drinking coffee, as you advised. I avoid strenuous exercise and work of a highly urgent and responsible nature as far as possible,” I said with a bow of the head. “And of course, I’ve stopped having sexual relations with my wife.”

“What?” He lifted his face and stared at me. “Altogether?!”

“Yes, altogether. Well, that comes under strenuous exercise, doesn’t it?”

“As I’ve said many times before, no visible symptoms can be observed in your case,” the doctor said with a long sigh. “It’s not good to dwell on your condition too much. The worst thing for you is marital discord. If you’ve stopped having intercourse with your wife altogether, that could be another cause of marital discord.”

“Surely you’re not going to say I’m imagining it too?!”

“I’m not saying that. You are definitely sick. But anxiety will only make your condition worse. And then you’ll merely grow more anxious. It’s