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He rolled out all sorts of other information, but none of it really clicked for me. I’d never even run into a gang in Japan before. The fact that there was a camorrista or a mafioso—either way, a guy who lived on the dark side of society—right here in front of me just didn’t feel real.
“That’s only natural. Even among the people of New York, I’d say less than 1 percent have ever encountered the Mafia. The same holds true for people who’ve been directly harmed by them, of course. I’m a rather forward person, and I sometimes introduce myself to people like you. That said, I’m sure the number of people I’ve spoken to is only a small fraction of that 1 percent.”
…Seriously. It was enough to make me feel like crying over my own luck.
At the time, though, I’d already been drawn in by the guy’s conversational skills. I’m not sure how to put it. I’d started feeling as if I was talking to somebody I’d known for years. …This even though, at that point, neither of us knew the other’s name.
“Well… There are probably more, actually, but those who’ve felt the presence of the Mafia almost never speak of it, you see.”
I’d heard of that in movies and things. It was something like omertà, “the code of silence,” where people pretended they hadn’t seen crimes for fear of retaliation.
But in that case… What was this guy doing talking about his organization to someone he’d just met?
“Ha-ha. It simply means that, other organizations aside, ours isn’t that strict. We aren’t involved in anything that outrageous, either. …In any case, members of the Sicilian Mafia won’t even speak of the fact that they belong to the Mafia, but the Camorra—and the American Mafia, actually, years back—tend to introduce themselves as such. The bosses sometimes respond to interviews for magazines and things personally.”
Meaning you’re show-offs? When I asked, there was a moment’s silence, and then he burst out laughing.
After he’d laughed for a while, the man gazed at me as if I really interested him, and he began speaking again.
“…You’ve got guts. To think you’d say something like that directly to a camorrista… Aren’t you afraid?”
No.
“Is it possible you think I’m not really a gangster?”
No. Even if you were lying, I don’t see why you’d need to go out of your way to pretend to be Camorra.
“You’re an odd one. When I heard about you from Paul, I assumed you were a stereotypical Japanese pigeon.”
Mind your own business. And besides, if you’re that fluent in Japanese, you should talk about people who are older than you properly; use -san. “Paul-san,” like that. Even if America doesn’t have much of a seniority system, they do address their elders with at least bare-bones courtesy. …Or that’s what the guidebook said, anyway.
At that moment, I had no idea that casual comment would be the switch that sent the gears of my life off course.
After a silence longer than the one before it, the man chuckled and murmured something.
“Coincidences are truly…fascinating. Aren’t they?”
What was he talking about? As I sat there, bewildered, the man gave a smile that seemed almost boyish. It was a smile that gave him the appearance of having found a new toy, or maybe as if he was about to pull some kind of prank, and he had it turned on me.
Then, after looking as though he wasn’t sure whether or not to say anything, he lowered his voice and informed me:
“Paul is younger than I am.”
Oh. ……Huh? Wait a second, what did you just say? No matter how you looked at that police officer, I’m pretty sure he was past middle age. …Did his face just come across as old or something?
“Well, about that… Returning to what we were speaking of earlier: It’s probably been about a hundred people over the past sixty years or so. People I’ve introduced myself to as Camorra, I mean. That doesn’t include people who knew already or police officers, but… In any event, unless things like this happen, I have no opportunities to get acquainted with upstanding tourists. Ha-ha.”
I thought I’d heard wrong. Sixty years. The young guy in front of me was… I’m bad at telling white people’s ages based on their appearances, but he didn’t look as if he was even halfway to sixty.
As I watched him steadily, puzzled, the man adjusted his glasses and said, sounding a bit embarrassed:
“The thing is, you see, I suppose you’d call me immortal. I don’t die.”
Ah-ha. So this is one of those American jokes.
“Oh, you don’t believe me. No, it’s true: You can cut me or burn me, but I won’t die.”
I hear American jokes are notorious for going on for a while.
I gave him some sort of perfunctory response, and, still smiling, the guy—
—drew a knife from an inner pocket and stabbed his own hand.
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For a second, I didn’t know what had happened. Red blood began dribbling from the hand with the knife stuck in it. I was dumbfounded, but the man just laughed.
“It’s fine. …Look.”
Slowly, he extracted the knife. I expected blood to come spurting out, but the bleeding had stopped completely.
Not only that, but I saw something unbelievable.
The blood that had dripped onto the table…started to squirm, as if having a life of its own…and seeped back into the man’s open wound, as though returning to its host. When all the blood had vanished, the wound itself disappeared. There wasn’t a single stain left on the table.
If I’d been watching this on some kind of screen, I’d have been able to call it a cheesy special effect and laugh it off. However, unfortunately, it had happened right in front of me.
Both the way the liquid moved, defying gravity, and the way the wound closed in the blink of an eye had been so corny I thought CGI might actually look better. That only made it creepier.
I thought I might have been the only one in the place—no, in the world—who’d witnessed this abnormality. Here, in this restaurant with its slightly upscale atmosphere, a guy had just scrambled the laws of physics.
…And yet not one of the customers or employees was even looking our way.
After giving it a little thought, I spoke to…whatever it was…in front of me.
Are you going to kill me? I asked.
At that, the man looked a bit surprised. Then he smiled again.
“That’s a reaction I haven’t seen before. Up until now, when I showed this to people, some of them brandished crucifixes at me, and some whipped out guns and started firing… The police hauled away the latter, of course. Poor devils; I’m afraid that was mean of me. Come to think of it, there were some who ran the second they saw the knife.”
Well, duh.
“Why did you think I’d kill you?”
Because I thought you were a monster, I answered honestly. Then I apologized for treating him like a monster, and at the same time, I told him that, whether it was real or a trick, he should stop scaring people like that.
“…You really are a rare breed. No one’s ever stayed this calm before.”
Unfeeling would probably have been a more accurate assessment than calm. I hear this from people all the time, but apparently the shock of almost getting eaten by a brown bear once in Hokkaido had numbed my sense of fear. I’ve been told I should become a war photographer, but I don’t have the know-how to get across a battlefield, so I’d die for sure. I didn’t want to die, so I’d stayed a wildlife photographer.
When I told him this, the man looked me in the eye, steadily. He seemed entertained.
“You’re quite a fascinating person. …Listen, since you’re here, would you be interested in hearing me talk about old times? The story of how I acquired this power of immortality, and the curious tales surrounding it… It would be a good way to pass the time.”
That did sound like an intriguing story…but was it all right for me to hear it? After all, we’d just met.
“It doesn’t matter. Even if you told others about it, I doubt they’d believe you.”
I told him, firmly, that it had better not be anything religious. There was somebody immortal right in front of me, and I’m not sure why I was so calm. Looking back, I think I was a complete moron.
“Ah, don’t worry. It’s nothing to do with anything like that. It really is just a simple way to kill time. …Although I suppose a demon does make an appearance in this story.”
The man who’d called himself a Camorra contaiuolo, a man who was apparently immortal, ordered our food from the waitress, and then slowly began to relate his “legend.”
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“All right. Then I’ll begin… It’s the tale of a man who drank the demon’s liquor and gained immortality. That miserable man’s lonely, lonely yarn. The stage is Prohibition-era New York. It’s a story of the peculiar destiny surrounding the sudden appearance of the ‘liquor of immortality,’ and of the spiral of people who found themselves drawn into it…”