Book Girl and the Wayfarer's Lamentation

by Mizuki Nomura

  “What do you think it is that Campanella wished for?”

  When we were kids, the two of us had lain on the carpet in my room and read the picture book of Kenji Miyazawa’s Night of the Milky Way Railroad.

  Campanella is a little boy who appears in that story, the friend of the main character Giovanni. Giovanni looks up to Campanella, who has a role like that of the class leader. The two of them get aboard a train that runs among the stars and go on a journey.

  It was a digest version of the story aimed at kids, so probably some sentences had been pared down and simpler words were substituted.

  I’d never read the Night of the Milky Way Railroad that Miyazawa had actually written.

  Even so, Miu and I had been enchanted by the vibrant illustrations, the fantastical scenes that opened up like a kaleidoscope, and the bizarre people Campanella and Giovanni met on the train. We were so absorbed in reading that we didn’t even see the time passing.

  While we were reading, I felt like I’d become Giovanni. And I thought that the incredibly clever Campanella was like Miu.

  What had Campanella wished for?

  If I figured that out, would I understand why Miu had jumped?

  But what was it Campanella had wished for?

  My heart was abuzz, and I couldn’t hold still. I put the lid back on the lunch I’d barely touched and stood up.

  The books on the shelves were a conglomeration of old and new mixed together: Ogai Mori’s Dancing Girl was beside Stendhal’s The Red and Black, and next to that was a collection of Mother Goose rhymes. Plus, there were books packed in behind those and books behind those—three layers of them.

  I was sure a Miyazawa short story collection that included “Night of the Milky Way Railroad” would be here.

  Every time I shifted a book, clouds of dust rose into the air, and I felt sneezes tickling in my nose, and my skin got itchy.

  Just then, I heard an achoo! behind me.

  “What’re you doing, Konoha?”

  Tohko stood there rubbing at her nose, cradling a copy of Sei Shonagon’s Pillow Book in her arms.

  “Ugh, it’s so dusty in here.”

  She opened the window in annoyance.

  Instantly a cold wind blew into the room.

  “Eek!”

  Tohko turned her face away reflexively.

  Her braids were leaping about wildly; the ends hit me in the face, and I shouted, too.

  The stacks of books ruffled in the wind, and it almost seemed like the pages would rip out.

  Tohko hurriedly closed the window.

  “Whew, that was unexpected. It’s still winter out there, huh?”

  “It’s only spring inside your head, Tohko.”

  “Argh, you’re so eager to say stuff like that!”

  She pouted.

  But she stopped sniffling, as if the cold north wind had blown the dust clean out, and her mind had cleared.

  “I came here to eat lunch. What about you, Konoha?”

  “Me, too. I thought I might eat here for once.”

  “You’re done already? You’re fast.”

  Tohko looked at my closed lunch box.

  “Were you looking for something on the shelves?”

  I muttered furtively, “I just got this sudden urge…to read Kenji Miyazawa’s Night of the Milky Way Railroad.”

  Tohko’s eyes widened as if she thought that was weird.

  “Kenji Miyazawa?” she asked.

  “Yes…”

  “You?”

  “…Yeah.”

  I wondered what was wrong. Tohko inclined her head slightly and stared at me, as if pondering something. She had a powerful intuition about odd things, so perhaps she’d sensed something. That would be a problem. She would stick her nose in if so; that’s the way she was. There were only about ten days left before the National Center Test, so she had to buckle down for the last push.

  “I’m gonna head back to class.”

  I hastily bundled up my lunch box and was starting to leave when Tohko called out to me, “Wait.”

  When I turned around, she smiled like a violet, turned toward one of the many mounds of books, and toddled over to it.

  Then, pouting her lips, she fixed an intense gaze on a book in the very middle of the mound of stacked-up books and pulled it out with a “hngh!”

  The mound swayed, and panicked, she held it back with both arms and let out a sigh of relief.

  Then she showed me the book she’d pulled out and grinned again.

  “I found it.”

  It was a short story collection by Kenji Miyazawa.

  Did she know where every book was in these massive piles?! For real?!

  Tohko lovingly turned the pages as I stood agape, as if I’d just seen a magic trick, and she started to speak in a gentle voice.

  “Kenji Miyazawa was a poet and children’s author from Iwate Prefecture, born in 1896.

  “Besides that, he also had the title of farm director, and he developed fertilizers; walked around the farm village giving instructions on scientific farming methods and strategies; grew tulips, flowering cabbage, and tomatoes, which were unusual for Iwate Prefecture at the time; taught himself to play the organ and cello and gave performances on them; and worked for the advancement of the local culture.

  “His most famous works are ‘Night of the Milky Way Railroad,’ which is included in this story collection, plus The Restaurant of Many Orders; Matasaburo, the Wind; and Gauche the Cellist—and that’s about it. Of course, you can’t forget the poetry collection Spring and Asura, either. It’s a masterpiece that will fill you up on Miyazawa’s brilliant sensitivity to words.”

  I listened to Tohko, drawn along by her pleasant voice, like a bubbling brook in the spring.

  Tohko’s white fingers flipped through the pages, and she continued to tell her story, practically singing.

  “Miyazawa’s works are very rustic and have the aromas of earth and wind and light. They’re transparent and poignant, and they feel familiar. Like standing in a field with a refreshing breeze and scrubbing a tomato flecked with dirt on the hem of your clothes and then biting into it—the still very unripe, the sour, the bitter, the sweet taste spreads into your whole mouth, and it feels like it’s quenching your thirst.

  “And then there’s the cucumber cooled in a stream; the sweet, colorful pears you bite into with the skin still on; the clear lemon soda you drink on the night of a festival—it isn’t just the stories. The way he builds his sentences and his rhythm and the words themselves are unique and delicious!”

  She gazed rapturously at the yellowed pages and was about to tear off a corner; then she shook her head, trembling. Her face fell, and her expression filled with regret.

  Tohko had once told me that books that weren’t well preserved or that were too sick were bad for her digestion, and if she accidentally ate one, bad things would happen.

  Inside, she probably yearned to eat the book more than she could stand, but since it was before the National Center Test, she seemed to be imagining the taste in her mind and resisting the urge bravely.

  Instead of eating, she kept on talking.

  “‘Marie Veron and the Little Girl,’ which paints a picture of the brief interaction between a female singer and the girl who idolizes her against a beautiful, tranquil backdrop, tastes sweetly tart, like wild grapes, and it’s one of my favorites. The bunny Homoi rescues a lark and receives a treasure, but he gradually becomes convinced that he’s amazing and then founders in ‘The Shell Fire,’ which is crunchy like a red-and-white radish with a sharp bitterness and delicious. The ringing of the bellflowers is unique and lingers in your ears.

  “It goes ‘clang, clang, clangerang, clabang-clabang-ang.’ Putting the way things sound, their characteristics, and state into words like this is called representational speech—in French, it’s called onomatopoeia. Miyazawa’s works are overflowing with cute, mysterious, incredibly delicious onomatopoeia!

  “‘Quaking, shaki
ng, trilling’—that’s the part where the mousetrap is trembling in ‘Zie Mouse.’ Then there’s ‘bwo-boom, bowoom, bowoom, bwoom’—that’s the opening of Matasaburo, the Wind. It’s onomatopoeia that conjures the way the wind is gusting. And then there’s ‘kree-kree-kree-shh, kree-kree-shh’—that’s the part in ‘The Twin Stars,’ where Castor and Pollux grab hold of the tail of a comet and fly across the night sky—”

  As she flipped through the pages, Tohko put the amusing onomatopoeia on display.

  I wondered what was going on.

  For some reason, my chest felt suddenly tight, and it became harder to breathe.

  An attack? Impossible. But my chest felt like it was being wrung out like a wet dishrag.

  Air—it was getting harder and harder to breathe, and I felt a terror that my body was being crushed under a pitch-black shadow.

  Don’t listen.

  The thought flitted through my mind.

  I didn’t know why, but I was sure it would get worse if I found out any more about Kenji Miyazawa.

  Tohko’s lecture went on.

  “‘Yellow Tomatoes’—I like that one a lot, too. A brother and sister named Pempel and Nelly are very close, and they grow tomatoes on their farm. Some yellow tomatoes start growing, and when they see it, they think it’s gold. One day a traveling show comes flamboyantly into town. Pempel and Nelly take yellow tomatoes with them instead of money, but the troupe members throw the tomatoes at them, and the two go home crying. It’s a sad story, but it stays with you. ‘Pempel was really a good boy, but he did something woeful.’ ‘His little sister Nelly was really an adorable, good girl, but how woeful.’ ‘How woeful. Really very woeful.’ ”

  Tohko shouted, “Konoha!”

  When I came to my senses, I was clutching the front of my uniform in both hands, kneeling on the floor, my shoulders heaving.

  No—no! Don’t listen! Don’t do it!

  “Konoha, can you hear me?!”

  Tohko crouched down in front of me. Her cool, soft hands touched mine. She squeezed them in both of her own, enveloping them.

  “See? You’re fine.”

  Her cool, comforting hands. Her murmuring slipping into my ears.

  The moment the sound of it penetrated my ears, it was like refreshing drops of rain had fallen, smelling of violets.

  “It’s fine, Konoha. Everything’s fine.”

  My twitching fingers came to rest against Tohko’s palms, and the sweat that had covered me dried. Gradually my breathing grew even.

  “Try to breathe in, Konoha.”

  I sucked in a big gulp of air as directed.

  “Let it out.”

  I exhaled as directed.

  “You seem okay.”

  Tohko released her grip in apparent relief, and her shoulders relaxed. When I raised my face, I saw that big beads of sweat had collected on Tohko’s forehead, too.

  “I’m sorry. I couldn’t breathe all of a sudden.”

  “The same thing happened before, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah…”

  Her clear, black eyes gazed worriedly at my face.

  “When you were a first-year, you suddenly grabbed your chest and toppled onto the desk when I started talking about Kenji Miyazawa. Remember? That other time, you were drenched in sweat and breathing seemed really tough for you.”

  She was right.

  Right around the time I’d started my first year, I had an attack in front of Tohko, and she’d taken me to the nurse’s office.

  Back then, I often couldn’t breathe when I thought back to the time Miu had jumped, so I’d never thought of connecting it to Kenji Miyazawa. But it was true that I’d started getting bad that day when I was listening to Tohko talk about him, too.

  But why?

  Tons of thoughts tumbled through my mind—about Miu, about Akutagawa, about Kotobuki—and feeling on the verge of tears, I murmured, “But…I have to know about him. I have to work out what Campanella wished for.”

  “Why?” Tohko asked with an earnest expression. “What’s happened, Konoha?”

  When she gazed at me with such a worried face, I couldn’t stay silent any longer.

  Because I had no idea what was what myself and I was filled to the brim with that confusion and I wanted to ask Tohko about it more than anything really.

  I was always made aware of my own weakness when I was with Tohko. I’d meant to get a little bit stronger, but here I was stopped in my tracks, crouched on the ground again.

  The bell announcing the start of fifth period rang through my head.

  Tohko didn’t move.

  So I dragged my exhausted body to the fold-up chair and hung my head, and…drip-drip…I told the story of the first girl I’d ever loved.

  About how I fell for the girl who transferred into my class in the third grade.

  How we played together every day.

  How she was always writing stories and would only show them to me.

  How I loved these brightly colored stories more than anything.

  How she had wanted to be a writer.

  How in the winter of my second year in middle school, she told me of her dream to submit a story to a literary magazine’s new author prize and be the youngest ever winner of the grand prize.

  I also told her how I was the one who won the prize and how in the summer of my third year in middle school, the girl jumped off the roof right in front of me—

  With every word I spoke, I felt agony digging at my chest, rending my flesh.

  How I’d run into her again at the hospital.

  How Kotobuki and Akutagawa had known about her.

  How they both said that she was a liar.

  How she’d read my book until it was falling apart. How she’d kept it by her, treasuring it. How I couldn’t doubt her.

  How when I asked her why she’d jumped, she’d asked me, “What do you think it is that Campanella wished for?”

  I was in agony, and it felt like my heart was going to stop.

  If Tohko hadn’t been with me, I might have slammed my head against the floor and bawled.

  At the same time, that Tohko was hearing me out, clear-eyed, relaxed my emotions that were strained to the limit, and it was pushing me closer to tears.

  Had Tohko known that there was an author called Miu Inoue, who had debuted at the age of fourteen, put out one best seller, and then disappeared?

  Had she realized that it was me?

  While I was talking, Tohko didn’t interrupt once.

  She didn’t look surprised or give her opinion or act inconvenienced, either. She just looked at me silently, strongly, and a little sadly.

  When my endless confession was over, Tohko whispered softly, “That girl’s name…was it Miu?”

  I gulped.

  My eyes were demanding “How did you know that?” and Tohko reluctantly told me, “When you got sick last time…you were calling her name. You said ‘Miu…I’m sorry.’”

  My chest swelled and felt like it was going to burst. Tohko had remembered the quiet words that slipped out in my agony. And she hadn’t asked me anything about it until now.

  “You want to know what Campanella’s wish was for Miu’s sake, don’t you, Konoha?”

  I nodded.

  “I couldn’t understand how Miu felt two years ago, so I don’t want to ignore it and do nothing now.”

  “Do you have any guesses?”

  “None. When we were in elementary school, we would read Night of the Milky Way Railroad together at my house. Besides that, about the only thing I remember is that we made a map.”

  “A map?”

  “We modeled the neighborhood we lived in on the galaxy and would doodle on the paper in colored pencil and say this place was the departure station for the Milky Way Railroad or this was a rest station or this was a star where mysterious creatures lived…stuff like that.”

  Tohko rested her index finger lightly against her lips.

  That was a habit of hers when she was dee
p in thought. After she had been silent for a few moments, she gently lifted her long lashes and looked at me.

  “If Miu is Campanella, then the answer to her question must be inside Giovanni—you—right?”

  “Me…?”

  “Do you still have the maps you and Miu made?”

  “Yeah. I could probably find them if I looked.”

  When she heard that, Tohko smiled vibrantly, like a flower coming into bloom.

  “Then let’s follow the maps together.”

  Chapter 4—A Map Through the Stars

  That I had revealed everything to Tohko caused me violent regret.

  “Your test is right around the corner. You have no clue what it takes to prepare for your exams!”

  My sermonizing washed right over her, and Tohko forged on ahead of me with light steps.

  “Sure, sure, sure. Oh! Let’s try here next! It says it’s the planet of the secretive Inotarnians. Gosh, this is so thrilling!” she said exuberantly, pointing at the map drawn on the paper.

  It was Saturday, one of our days off. I was being dragged along by Tohko, visiting places filled with memories of being with Miu.

  Why had things turned out like this?

  No, it was my fault. Hadn’t I known full well that this would happen when I talked to Tohko? Even if her exam was looming only a week away, even if she’d gotten an F on her prep class practice test, Tohko was still Tohko.

  “Hey, what kind of creatures do you think the Inotarnians are?”

  “They’re just ordinary bears they keep in the park.”

  “What?! Really?”

  Tohko turned around wide-eyed, her long braids swaying.

  Even though it was the weekend, she was dressed in a navy duffle coat and her uniform, which had probably never even heard of the word sexy. The reason was, she said, “The rules are clear that when students are out in public, they have to wear their uniforms.” And when we ran into each other at the place we were supposed to meet and she saw that I was dressed in street clothes, she frowned and said, “Oh, Konoha, that’s wrong.” She was straitlaced about the weirdest stuff.