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“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust”.
Those are the words Osamu hears from Chuuya on the sunny day of February. It’s quite chilly outside. His words hit with frostiness, too.
”So you think it’s all cycled?”
Man’s brown eyes become hazy for a second, then soften. Osamu tries to peek inside his ins and outs, but still can’t understand few things.
“I think it is.”
He can’t understand Chuuya, nor he can understand the reason people believe in things as such.
“Born in Hell, and in the Hell you return?”
Osamu snorts, his eyes sparkle playfully. Chuuya tilts his head, looking away. Zero response.
“Mackerels’ Hell should be worse than men’s. Because otherwise there’d no explanation for why the likes of you exist.”
“We come on fishing boats. Following your logic, men’s Hell should be filled with dwarfs, then?”
Chuuya sneers and snorts in response and walks away. Polished heels against rock tiles and grass right to the exit from the cemetery. Passing by old friends, old memories and the past. Past your past self. The Satan himself follows behind him.
Earth to earth.
Close ones to the gravestones.
Chuuya to Osamu, Osamu to black. Black to black. Endless cycle.
“Say, Chuuya. I was always wondering, are you really all that faithful?”
Heels’ tapping becomes doubled. Cold wind blows — herald of the early spring.
“Why care, even?”
“You see, I can’t really understand the reasons some people believe in something allegedly from above.”
Chuuya is silent for some time. He looks down on the short steel fence around them, looks back on the strangers’ names on gravestones behind them.
And then he says:
“For dead’s repose. For decent remembrance after they… leave this world.” He makes a short pause. “I don’t believe in something that’d cover my back in case of emergency. I believe that this something would grant them peace, not some shit for me.”
Wide mass grave, five tombstones standing in a row. Memory of ashes.
Cold gravestone basking in the coolness of tree shade, slightly bitter smell of gunpowder and evening whiskey-tasting chitchats. Memory of dust.
“But you thought about it being just a tale for one’s peace of mind, right? Just a consolation for a sentiment that no one is really gone?”
“Maybe that is so. It’s just that there are things you believe without any proof. That’s what faith is about.”
“And what if people get what they want? If you don’t believe in anything, all you’ll get will be nothing. Believe in something else, and you’ll get this something post mortem.”
Small grin touches Dazai’s lips.
“After all, you’re not asking for their peace. You do it for yourself.”
Peace for the heart that beams with sorrow, guilt and will of retaliation.
He doesn’t say that aloud. They both understand it’s true.
His words almost make Chuuya snarl back, but in the end he just shakes his head, frowning.
“It’s no use. You won’t get it anyway. People like you never do.”
He shrugs, uncaring.
“Maybe you are right.”
The remaining part of their path they walk in silence.
***
Black to black. Osamu to Chuuya.
When squishing sound hits his ears, the first thing that comes to the mind is that far memory of the day he visited cemetery with Nakahara. His voice rings in his head, and Osamu thinks—
“Maybe you were right back then.”
Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The black bathes the white, the red washes the black away. The purification of one’s body and soul. The forgiveness of sin.
To a stray dog a dog’s death.
Hellish honor to Satan.
Purging doesn’t last long. Leaving the abundance of the red, Osamu Dazai, akin to a snake, gets rid of the first skin, washing away the dark colors with his own blood.
But in the end, the only thing that embraces him is endless emptiness.