Stupid old pillows. You have the same realization about them each time jealousy sends you on a throwing jag. You even get as far as thinking that tomorrow, you really must go out and buy some more solid pillows that can be weaponized, but as soon as your jealousy abates, you forget all about it.
Still disappointed by the pillows’ lack of clout, you kick up each of your legs in turn, firing the slippers from your feet like two missiles, aimed right at your husband. As slipper toes go, these are on the more pointed end of the spectrum, so their landing isn’t without effect. “Ow!” your husband says as one of the missiles strikes his shin. I’ll give you “ow,” you bastard! You are crazed, ablaze with jealousy, and your husband’s little exclamation only stokes your fire further. You reach for the paperback on the bedside table and toss that in his direction. It’s a flimsy little book, miserly in its lack of substance, and its impact is practically negligible—except it succeeds in informing your husband that you are still very much a resident of the green-eyed kingdom. You would be well advised to prepare for your next attack by keeping a hardcover tome by your bed at all times. Preferably some kind of encyclopedia. Two of them, even. Then you could pick up one in each hand and hurl them one after the other.
You swing back your arm and, with all the strength you possess, swipe at the row of photograph frames lining the top of the chest. Your wedding photo, the shot of the pair of you holding koalas on your honeymoon, along with all the other silver-framed special moments, skid along the wood, cascading off the side. A hard parquet floor would have produced a more audible crash, sure, but at least the plastic backs break and skitter dramatically across the carpet in fragments. Just look at the fear in your husband’s eyes as he takes in those tiny shards.
With formidable determination, you cast an eye around the room in search of your next weapon of attack, but the bedroom really doesn’t offer itself up as a plentiful arsenal. When lucid you’re the tidy sort, and there’s little that irks you more than a messy room. Plus, you read in a magazine article titled “How to Put Your Husband in the Mood” that getting rid of extraneous clutter helps men maintain focus in the bedroom, and since then you’ve been even more militant about keeping the room spick and span.
With no other options available to you, you make a lunge for your made-to-order curtains, howling like a wild beast—GYAAAAAH! You yank them down with all your might, ripping them from their rails. The light-resistant lining happens also to be flame-resistant, so there’s no risk that your blazing jealousy will set them on fire. No sooner has curtain number one fallen with a muffled flop to the floor than you set upon the other. Your motions are exactly the same for curtain number two.
When it’s all over, you stand there like Moses, a lone figure parting a sea of curtain. Your husband, who is cowering in the corner of the room, looks at you in astonishment. When you turn to meet his gaze, he looks away. The force of your jealousy hasn’t dimmed in the slightest—and quite honestly, you’d like to keep going—but there’s nothing here left for you to do; so from your curtain sea you let out a great wail. Resentful words spill out of you, and you sob and sob. When there are no suitable objects available, you have to make do by venting your emotions instead. The bedroom is not a prime location to be stricken by jealousy.
Unequivocally, the kitchen is the best place for jealousy to strike. When you are fortunate enough to be consumed there, you assume a look of positive radiance.
You start with the crockery you bought at the hundred-yen shop: the little white dishes with badly painted fish in royal blue, those ramen bowls everyone has seen at least once in their lives with the dragons encircling their circumference, the large plates decorated with eggplants and tomatoes. A mug whose sole distinguishing feature is its bright yellow hue. A voluptuous sake flask with a rough-textured glaze. Each time you go to the hundred-yen shop, you stock up on ceramics. They’re all destined to end up in pieces anyway, so you don’t even look at them, just sling them into your basket. Well-stocked is well-armed, after all.
You throw and you pitch and you chuck. You smash things to bits. Tiny particles of porcelain dance around you like a dust cloud. Sometimes they cut your arms and your legs, but what does that matter? You don’t pay heed to such things, choosing to focus single-mindedly on your destructive activities. For you, such scars are the honorable wounds of a warrior. If anything, the scarlet blood adds a streak of color to your destruction, heightens the sense of drama.
When you’ve hurled the last of the hundred-yen crockery, it’s time to take your bombardment to the next level. You dive into your medium-range selection: the dusky powder-blue stuff from IKEA, the items from MUJI’s functional white series. Plates, tiny bowls, big bowls, teacups—you fling them all without distinction. You send them smashing down to the floor, regardless of whether or not they break. The lacquered wooden bowl bounces off the linoleum and rolls down the corridor, spinning around and around like a top.
Only your set of rapturously exquisite Noritake teacups will you not throw, not for anything. Those cost the earth, those cups. The ornate Arabian china is out of bounds, too. You collected those beauties one by one. They are your treasures, secreted away in the depths of your kitchen shelves. However potent the jealousy that overcomes you, you always retain at least that much presence of mind. In this world, there are things that are okay to throw and those that are not. On this point, your judgment is infallible. Your husband has curled himself into a ball under the table, shielding his head.
When you run out of things to throw, you tear off your polka-dotted apron and trample it. You plunge your fists down into the sink full of dishes with all your might, so the water goes splashing about you like great splatters of blood. You take some ice from the freezer, toss it into your mouth, and crunch down on it.
The kitchen’s resources can always keep pace with the blazing fire of your jealousy.
You take up a large daikon and whirl it around you like a baseball bat. When you bring it crashing down on the table, the daikon—which must have been softer than you thought—breaks into pieces, like a slow-motion video. Doubtless you will use some of these in tonight’s dinner—they’re the perfect size for simmering. As you squeeze out every last drop of ink from a raw squid, you even have time to think that you’ll combine the two, make ika-daikon.
Next, your eyes land on the cardboard box of apples that your parents sent over from their garden. You take them out and wrench them apart with your bare hands. Later you can make them into jam, or bake them in a pie, or mix them into macaroni salad—apples are surprisingly varied in their uses. You focus on channeling all your power into your fingers as they tear through the glossy skins.
Having destroyed the kitchen to the best of your ability, you begin to tidy up the mess strewn across the floor. When you tread on the miscellaneous shards, you can hear them screaming out in agony beneath your feet. You can empathize. The feelings of those little fragments are far easier to understand than those of your husband. Just because you’re clearing up doesn’t mean that it’s over, mind. Your jealousy is still blazing wild and free, like the huge pyramid pyres at fire festivals.
You tidy like an incensed person, not missing a single piece. You clear up every last particle, however small. When you pick up your apron, you smooth out every crease. You refill the ice-cube tray so that the water in each hole is at exactly the right level, then put it back in the special compartment in the freezer. You compress the trash bag full of all the mess you created, then look again around the newly cleaned kitchen and breathe a sigh of relief. By this time, the lump of jealousy inside you has finally dissolved. The day you thought would never end has drawn to a close. You glance at your husband, still cowering under the kitchen table, and say with incredulity, “What on earth are you doing down there?” Then you start to hum a little tune.