CRABS
They ran across the little restaurant entirely by accident. It was the evening of their first night in Singapore and they were walking near a beach when, on a whim, they ducked into a side street and happened to pass by the place. The restaurant was a one-story building surrounded by a waist-high brick wall, with a garden with low palm trees and five wooden tables. The stucco main building was painted a bright pink. Each table had its own faded umbrella opened over it. It was still early and the place was nearly deserted. Just two old men with short hair, Chinese apparently, sat across from each other, drinking beer and silently eating a variety of snacks. They didn’t say a word to each other. On the ground at their feet a large black dog lay there wearily, its eyes half-closed. A ghostly trail of steam streamed out of the kitchen window, and the tempting smell of something cooking. The happy voices of the cooks filtered out as well, along with the clatter of pots and pans. The palm fronds on the trees, trembling in the slight breeze, stood out in the sinking sun.
The woman came to a halt, taking in the scene.
“How about having dinner here?” she asked.
The young man read the name of the restaurant at the entrance and looked around for a menu. But there wasn’t a menu posted outside. He gave it some thought. “Hmm. I don’t know. You know, eating at some place we’re not sure of in a foreign country.”
“But I’ve got a sixth sense about restaurants. I can always sniff out the really good ones. And this one’s definitely great. I guarantee it. Why don’t we try it?”
The man closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He had no idea what kind of food they made here, but he had to admit it did smell pretty tempting. And the restaurant itself had a certain charm to it. “But do you think it’s clean?”
She tugged at his arm. “You’re too sensitive. Don’t worry. We’ve flown all this way here, so we should be a little more adventurous. I don’t want to eat in the restaurant in the hotel every day. That’s boring. Come on, let’s give it a try.”
Once inside they realized that the place specialized in crab dishes. The menu was written in English and Chinese. Most of the customers were locals, and the prices were quite reasonable. According to the menu Singapore boasts dozens of varieties of crabs, with over a hundred types of crab dishes. The man and the woman ordered Singapore beer, and after looking over what was available, selected several crab dishes and shared them. The portions were generous, the ingredients all fresh, the seasoning just right.
“This really is good,” the man said, impressed.
“See? What’d I tell you? I told you I have the power to find the best. Now do you believe me?”
“Yep. Have to say I do,” the young man admitted.
“This kind of power really comes in handy,” the woman said. “You know, eating’s much more important than most people think. There comes a time in your life when you’ve just got to have something super-delicious. And when you’re standing at that crossroads your whole life can change, depending on which one you go into—the good restaurant or the awful one. It’s like—do you fall on this side of the fence, or the other side.”
“Interesting,” he said. “Life can be pretty scary, can’t it?”
“Exactly,” she said, and held up a mischievous finger. “Life is a scary thing. More than you can ever imagine.”
The young man nodded. “And we happened to fall on the inside of the fence, didn’t we.”
“Exactly.”
“That’s good,” the young man said dispassionately. “Do you like crab?”
“Mm, I’ve always loved it. How about you?”
“I love it. I wouldn’t mind eating crab every day.”
“A new point we have in common,” she beamed.
The man smiled, and the two of them raised their glasses in another toast.
“We’ve got to come back tomorrow,” she said. “There can’t be many places like this in the world. I mean, it’s so delicious—and look at the prices.”
For the next three days they ate at the little restaurant. In the mornings they’d go to the beach to swim, and sunbathe, then stroll around the town and pick up souvenirs at local handicraft shops. Around the same time each evening they’d go to the little back-street restaurant, try different crab dishes, then return to their hotel room for some leisurely lovemaking, then fall into a dreamless sleep. Every day felt like paradise. The woman was twenty-six, and taught English in a private girls’ junior high. The man was twenty-eight and worked as an auditor at a large bank. It was almost a miracle that they were able to take a vacation at the same time, and they wanted to find a place where no one would bother them, where they could simply enjoy themselves. They tried their best to avoid any topic that would spoil the mood and their precious time together.
On the fourth day—the last day of their vacation—they ate crab as always in the evening. As they scooped out meat from the crab legs with metal utensils they talked about how being here, swimming every day at the beach, eating their fill of crab at night, made life back in Tokyo begin to look unreal, and far far away. Mostly they talked about the present. Silence fell on their meal from time to time, each of them lost in their own thoughts. But it wasn’t an unpleasant silence. Cold beer and hot crab filled in the gaps nicely.
They left the restaurant and walked back to their hotel, and, as always, ended their day by making love. Quiet, but fulfilling lovemaking. They both took showers and soon fell asleep.
But after a short while the young man woke up, feeling awful. He had a sensation like he’d swallowed a hard cloud. He rushed to the bathroom, and draped over the toilet bowl he spewed out the contents of his stomach. His stomach had been full of white crabmeat. He hadn’t had time to switch on the light, but in the light of the moon, which lay floating over the sea, he could make out what was in the toilet. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and let time pass. His head was a blank, and he couldn’t form a single thought. All he could do was wait. Another wave of nausea hit him and again he hurled up whatever was left in his stomach.
When he opened his eyes he saw a white lump of what he’d vomited floating in the water in the toilet. A huge amount. What a hell of a lot of crab I ate! he thought, half-impressed. Eating this much crab day after day—no wonder I got sick. No matter how you cut it, this was way too much crab. Two or three years’ worth of crab in four days.
As he stared he noticed that the lump floating in the toilet looked like it was moving slightly. At first he thought he must be imagining things. The faint moonlight must be producing the illusion. An occasional passing cloud would cover the moon, making everything, for a moment, darker than before. The young man closed his eyes, took a slow deep breath, and opened his eyes again. It was no illusion. The lump of meat was definitely moving. Like wrinkles twisting around, the surface of the meat was wiggling. The young man stood up and flicked on the bathroom light. He leaned closer to the lump of meat and saw that what was trembling on the surface were countless worms. Tiny worms the same color as the crabmeat, millions of them, clinging to the surface of the meat.
Once more he vomited everything in his stomach. But there wasn’t anything left, and his stomach clenched into a fist-size lump. Bitter green bile came out, wrung out of his guts. Not content with this, he gulped down mouthwash and spewed it back up. He flushed down the contents of the toilet, flushing over and over to make sure it was all gone. Then he washed his face at the sink, using the fresh white towel to scrub hard around his mouth, and he thoroughly brushed his teeth. He rested his hands against the sink and stared at his reflection in the mirror. His face looked gaunt, wrinkled, his skin the color of dirt. He couldn’t believe this was really his face. He looked like some exhausted old man.
He left the bathroom, leaned back against the door, and surveyed the bedroom. His girlfriend was in bed, fast asleep. Face sunk deep in her pillow, she was snoring peacefully, oblivious to what had transpired. Like a delicate fan, her long hair covered her cheeks, her shoulders. Just below her shoulder blades were two small moles, lined up like a pair of twins. Her back revealed a clear swimsuit line. Light from the whitish moon tranquilly filtered in through the blinds, along with the monotonous sound of waves against the shore. On the bedside the green numbers of the alarm clock glowed. Nothing had changed. Except that now, the crab was inside her—that evening they’d shared the same dishes. Only she wasn’t aware of it.
The young man sank down in the rattan chair next to the window, closed his eyes, and breathed, slowly and regularly. Breathing fresh air into his lungs, exhaling the old, the stale. Trying to breathe as much air as he could into his body. He wanted all the pores in his body to open wide. Like an antique alarm clock in an empty room, his heart pounded out a hard, dry beat.
Gazing at his sleeping girlfriend, he pictured the countless tiny worms in her stomach. Should he wake her up and tell her about it? Shouldn’t they do something? Unsure what to do, he thought for a while, and decided against it. It wouldn’t do any good. She hadn’t noticed anything. And that was the main problem.
The world felt out of kilter. He could hear as it creaked through this new orbit. Something had happened, he thought, and the world had changed. Everything was out of order, and would never get back to the way it was. Everything had changed, and all it could do was continue in this new direction. Tomorrow I’m going back to Tokyo, he thought. Back to the life I left there. On the surface nothing’s changed, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get along with her again. I’ll never feel the way I felt about her until yesterday, the young man knew. But that’s not all. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get along with myself. It’s like we fell off a high fence, on the outside. Painlessly, without a sound. And she never even noticed.
The young man sat in the rattan chair until dawn, quietly breathing. From time to time a squall came up in the night, the raindrops pounding against the window like some kind of punishment. The rain clouds would pass and the moon showed its face. Again and again. But the woman never woke up. Or even rolled over in bed. Her shoulder shook a little a few times, but that was all. More than anything, he wanted to sleep, to sleep soundly and wake up to find that everything had been solved, that everything was as it had been, operating smoothly as always. The young man wanted nothing more than to fall into a deep sleep. But no matter how much he might stretch his hand out for it, sleep lay out of reach.
The young man remembered that first night, when they passed by that little side-street restaurant. The two old Chinese men silently eating their food, the black dog, eyes closed, at their feet, the faded umbrellas at the tables. How she’d tugged at his arm. It all seemed like years ago. But it was barely three days. Three days in which, through some strange force, he’d changed into one of those ominous, ashen old men. All in the quiet, beautiful seaside city of Singapore.
He brought his hands in front of him and gazed at them intently. He looked at the back of his hands, then the palms. Nothing could hide the fact that his hands were trembling, ever so slightly.
“Mm, I’ve always loved crab,” he could hear her say. “How about you?”
I don’t know, he thought.
His heart felt enclosed by something formless, surrounded by a deep, soft mystery. He no longer had the faintest clue where his life was headed, and what might be waiting for him there. But as the eastern sky finally began to lighten he had a sudden thought: One thing I am sure of, he thought. No matter where I go, I’m never going to eat crab again.
—TRANSLATED BY PHILIP GABRIEL