Her husband noticed her watching him and waved. Tomoko waved back enthusiastically. Over here! No doubt he was smiling from ear to ear. Her husband didn’t have eyes, or a nose, or a mouth, but sunlight cast minute shadows that rippled across his face, putting the observer in mind of different expressions. After sending a round of applause to a youth who was practicing juggling nearby, with a lightness of bearing that made it seem that he was about to be airborne, he started running toward the patch of grass where Tomoko was waiting.
On the drive back from the park, her husband said he wanted a latte.
“You want a warm one? Right now?” Tomoko had been looking forward to getting home and showering, but she said, “Sure, let’s get one to go.”
Her husband’s beautiful fingers, rolled and tied as finely as any artisanal object, made contact with the car’s turn indicator lever. As they turned left at the intersection where they would normally make a right, Tomoko let the car seat take the weight of her sweat-damp back.
“Are you getting hungry?”
“Not yet,” Tomoko said. The strange voice her husband emitted from the gaps between his stalks of straw could be difficult to make out unless you listened closely. In the beginning, this had given Tomoko pause too, but now she understood him without too much difficulty. Her husband found a spot free in the metered parking lot, and cut the engine. At that exact moment, it dawned on Tomoko that a work problem on which she’d reached an impasse could be solved another way, and she reached for her phone to make a note of the solution before she forgot. She heard the driver-side door open, and unbuckled her seat belt to get out and follow her husband.
Just then, the car rang out with a sudden sharp clunk, as if a hard object had hit something. Still on her phone, Tomoko paid it no mind, but then her husband said, “What was that, that sound?” and she quickly brought her focus back to him.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Did something hit the car?”
“Nope. It was your seat-belt buckle.” Her husband had opened the door on his side, and was paused awkwardly halfway through the process of getting out of the car. He looked down at the phone in Tomoko’s hand. “Why do you have to be so rough with it?”
“I’m sorry,” Tomoko said quickly. She had no awareness of having unbuckled her seat belt roughly, but then again, only last week she had opened the passenger-side door and accidentally bumped it against a guard rail. Her husband’s car was a brand-new BMW that he’d bought less than a month ago.
Tomoko opened her car door. “That was the seat belt? That sound?”
“That’s right. It hit the door just there,” her husband said, leaning over into the passenger seat to inspect the spot. “See, look—here! Can you see the scratch?”
Tomoko couldn’t, but she apologized again anyway. There’s no way the seat belt could have reached all the way up there, she thought. Her husband was pointing out an area near the top of the window frame, insisting that it was damaged. That line’s probably just part of the car’s design. But she decided to wait until he noticed it himself. Once he had calmed down a little, she could casually say, Why don’t you check what it looks like on the driver’s side?
Her husband was still facing intently toward the window frame. “Come have a look,” he said eventually. “See? It’s dented.”
It was as he said. There was a distinct two-inch-long groove along the top edge of the window frame. Tomoko traced it with her finger. “You’re right,” she said. “It does look like there’s a little dent.”
Tomoko slipped her phone into a coat pocket. “I’m sorry,” she said, dropping her head slightly. “I wasn’t paying attention.”
Her husband was sitting very still, gripping the car’s steering wheel. Tomoko couldn’t read an expression in the dense layers of fine straw that made up his face, but she sensed he was grappling with silent rage.
Fearfully, Tomoko asked, “Did you want to go get your latte?”
“You let me down,” her husband said with a sigh, and dropped his head to his chest.
Tomoko wasn’t sure how to respond. Her husband raised his head again. After a while, he repeated himself. “You let me down.” He sighed and once more dropped his head, leaning his body toward the steering wheel. “You let me down.”
“I’m sorry. Really.” Tomoko thought he might keep doing this movement endlessly unless she did something. “I didn’t think a seat belt would reach that far.”
She wasn’t rewarded with a response. The uncomfortable silence, punctuated by the rustling sound of bundled straw repeatedly hitting the wheel, went on for several minutes.
Finally, as though snapping himself out of it, her husband announced that he was going to get his latte, and opened his door. Tomoko started to get up, but then thought that might make her seem uncontrite, and decided to stay in the car. Her husband, apparently, had had no intention of waiting for her. He crossed the road swiftly without even glancing back.
Once she was alone, Tomoko let out a deep breath. She gazed unseeingly at the number plate of the car parked in front of them, then got out her phone and quickly tapped in the rest of her note. She noticed a single stalk of straw that had fallen at the foot of the driver’s seat, and was picking it up when her husband came back with his drink and started the car without a word. They made a U-turn and went back the way they’d come.
“I’m truly sorry. I promise to try harder in the future,” she said, picking her words carefully. She wondered whether she ought to say more, but she thought it might be disrespectful to say things she didn’t mean.
As soon as she looked out the window, though, she changed her mind, and put her hand on top of her husband’s where it lay on his knee. Since getting married, she’d learned the hard way that it only made things worse when they didn’t talk to each other. Her husband didn’t react to her gesture, but Tomoko kept her hand there for a while.
Deep inside her husband’s hand, almost imperceptibly, she felt something squirm.
Tomoko stared at his hand. What was that? To hide her alarm, she pointed to the latte sitting in the cup holder. “Can I have some?”
“Help yourself,” her husband said, like an unfriendly receptionist. Sipping the warm latte, Tomoko thought about what had just happened. There’d definitely been something lurking within that straw. She felt something start to itch uncomfortably inside her brain. Maybe what she thought she’d noticed was just a vibration from the car.
In their living room, her husband said, “Let me down,” and sat heavily on the sofa. Wondering whether it meant anything that he had dropped the “you,” Tomoko sat as well, straight on the carpet.
Her husband was still slumped over, his upper body bent forward and his face in his hands as though he was struggling against despair. “Why do you have to be so careless?” he said. “I don’t get it. It’s not even a month old.”
“It was an accident. It was the same last week. I didn’t mean to. I just wasn’t aware I had to be that careful when I unbuckle my seat belt.”
Her husband seemed to be making an effort to understand. Still holding his face in his hands, he nodded repeatedly. But then, in a strained voice, he cried, “I don’t understand,” and started rocking his body back and forth, as though he believed it would make things more bearable. Subtly at first, and then harder and harder. As Tomoko looked on helplessly, he made a movement as if he were tearing off parts of his head, and got up and strode off toward the front door. Tomoko followed, and found him silently sweeping the floor of the entrance hall, which had just been swept two days ago.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“I don’t know.”
“Please. Stop.” Tomoko took the broom from his hand, and led him by the arm back to the sofa. “I promise. I promise I’ll be careful from now on.”
“Sure.” His voice was hollow. He started rocking again, and Tomoko watched until she started to feel like a boat drifting out to sea, too far to get back to sho
re.
“I don’t do it on purpose,” she said as patiently as she could. “Please. Just believe me about that.”
“Maybe,” he said quietly.
Once again, something moved swiftly inside his straw. There was no doubt this time. A fine tremor was running through her husband’s body, traversing it from end to end. Tomoko almost cried out in horror, but her husband didn’t seem to be aware of anything.
“Are you accusing me of being destructive deliberately?” She felt a duty to act as though she hadn’t noticed what was happening.
“No, I’m not saying that.”
It was as she’d feared. Around the area where a mouth would be, her husband’s straw was quaking. Something was pushing on it from inside. Tomoko’s eyes were glued to his face.
“I’m not saying that, but it’s obvious that you think it’s no big deal if the car gets damaged.”
Every time he spoke, she felt she was about to catch sight of something from between the straw. Her husband’s insides were teeming. What was in there?
“You already promised just last week that you’d be more careful.”
“What I promised was about the door,” Tomoko said, forcing the words out, desperate to keep the conversation going. “You know I’ve been really careful opening the door since then. But I just never thought I had to make sure not to let the seat belt bounce up and hit the door.”
“Do you really need me to spell out every last thing?”
Just as he said “every last thing,” something fell out of his mouth. Whatever it was, it seemed to have been swallowed by the deep pile of the carpet or, at any rate, was nowhere to be seen.
“I’ll pay attention, I promise. I’ll do better from now on.”
“Can you give me a more specific strategy?” he asked accusingly, noticing Tomoko’s less-than-heartfelt tone.
“A strategy? For being more careful?” Tomoko couldn’t look away from her husband’s face. Something had started welling up from between the straw—tiny musical instruments. An assortment of different musical instruments, barely large enough to pick up with the tips of her fingers, was flowing out of her husband. Trumpets. Trombones. Snare drums. Clarinets. Harpsichords. “A strategy for taking my seat belt off more gently?” she said quietly, distracted by the instruments.
“I mean, you don’t actually feel it’s a serious problem. When you open the door carefully, you only do it to avoid me getting angry about it.”
Her husband was starting to sound enraged. Was that somehow related to the instruments falling out of his body? Tomoko said, “I feel like I’ve been doing it thinking I should treat the car well, but does it not seem that way to you?”
“I don’t believe for a moment you think that.” The flow of instruments sped up even more. They were piling up at his feet into a mound that almost hid his slippers. At the same time, her husband’s body was shrinking.
“Why do you get to decide what I think?” On reflex, Tomoko thrust her hands out under his face, trying to stem the cascade of instruments, which showed no sign of stopping. “I think you want to call me a bad person. Then why don’t you just say so? Why do you have to be so passive-aggressive about it?” Her hands filled up almost immediately, and hundreds of drums and flutes spilled over the edges of her fingers. “I’m impressed you could even marry someone you felt this way about!”
Her husband kept talking, causing an outpouring of hundreds of pairs of cymbals. “If you really—crash—felt bad about doing it—crash crash crash—you wouldn’t even think about making excuses.”
How? How could he not know he was spewing instruments?
The flow of instruments let up. Tomoko looked up quickly, and saw that the form of her husband where he sat on the sofa was utterly transformed. Bereft of his insides, he was now reduced to a pitiful amount of unstuffed straw. The string that had tied him together was loose in places, and he looked as though he might fall apart at any moment. Which was him? Tomoko wondered. The musical instruments that had fallen out of him, or the husk of straw that remained—which was her husband?
“Please, can we just stop fighting now?” she cried.
At this, her husband seemed to pause, and finally closed his mouth instead of saying whatever he had been about to say. In a cold, distant voice, he said, “You’re right. Fighting’s only a waste of time.”
Tomoko looked into the black void that was now visible from between his straw. He’s out of instruments. There were small piles of them on the carpet that added up to almost exactly the size of him—alto horns, euphoniums, marimbas. She gingerly tried to reach for her husband’s hand. But her husband, apparently no longer able to support the weight of his soccer jersey, collapsed before their hands could touch, like a plant blown down by the wind. Tomoko grasped his limp hand where it lay. “It’s okay. Don’t worry. It’s all my fault. I won’t ride in your car anymore.”
“Sounds good,” he said weakly.
Tomoko realized that his scent, which had been as familiar and cherished as towels dried in the sun, had changed into the smell of animal feed. She stood up, and looked down at her empty husband as he lay still, with his back to her.
Inside her head, another Tomoko said, Why did I get married to a thing like this? Why was I so happy to be married to a bunch of straw? Her husband was utterly unmoving. Maybe he was already dead. If I hit this body with something, she wondered, would it feel like there was nothing inside? As she looked down at him, the picture of a fire burning brightly burst vividly into her mind. The image of something going up in violent flames on the stark white sofa, in the morning sunlight filling this room in this house. Tomoko didn’t yet know what happened when you set fire to straw. How would it burn? Her heart beat faster just imagining it. Just a little flame would probably ignite it all in the blink of an eye . . .
Tomoko came to her senses. Unable to bear to see him like this any longer, she started to put the fallen instruments back inside the straw. She couldn’t tell whether they were broken, but as she gathered them gently in both hands and poured them into the gaps, his body expanded like a sponge sucking up water. Tomoko repeated the movement over and over. From carpet to straw. From carpet to straw.
Just once during the process, Tomoko stopped and picked up a fallen stalk, and carefully touched it to the flame of an incense lighter. The flame reared up like a live thing. Tomoko sighed at its beauty, and thought about how she’d like to set a whole bundle alight like this sometime. She finished pouring the last of the instruments back into the gaps in her husband.
Eventually, her husband got up from the sofa. Seeming to have recovered his strength, he looked up at Tomoko and, casting subtle shadows on his face through its delicate ridges, gently said, “I’m the one who should be apologizing. It’s just a car. I’m sorry I got so upset over it. Shall we go for another run?”
With her hand clasped in her husband’s, Tomoko forgot that she had just been imagining a hunk of straw getting swallowed in flames. She accepted the invitation cheerfully. “Good idea. Let’s go.”
As they ran through the park, which was slightly more crowded than it had been earlier, Tomoko shifted her gaze up to the turning leaves, and murmured, “It’s beautiful.” The sunlight spilling through the trees. The fountains. Grass. Flower beds. She could hear a constant stream of instruments falling and breaking underfoot. Miniature French horns and timpani. As her husband taught her to run, Tomoko breathed in the cold air. The afternoon was lovely. The leaves overhead were as beautiful as burning fire.
YUKIKO MOTOYA was born in Ishikawa Prefecture in Japan in 1979. After moving to Tokyo to study drama, she started the Motoya Yukiko Theater Company, whose plays she wrote and directed. Her first story, “Eriko to zettai,” appeared in the literary magazine Gunzo in 2002. Motoya won the Noma Prize for New Writers for Warm Poison in 2011; the Kenzaburo Oe Prize for Picnic in the Storm in 2013; the Mishima Yukio Prize for How She Learned to Love Herself in 2014; and Japan’s most pre
stigious literary prize, the Akutagawa Prize, for “An Exotic Marriage” in 2016. Her books have been published or are forthcoming in French, Norwegian, Spanish, Korean, and Chinese, and her stories have been published in English in Granta, Words Without Borders, Tender, and Catapult.
ASA YONEDA was born in Osaka and studied language, literature, and translation at the University of Oxford and SOAS University of London. She now lives in Bristol, U.K. In addition to Yukiko Motoya, she has translated works by Banana Yoshimoto, Aoko Matsuda, and Natsuko Kuroda.
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