by Yoko Tawada
Grilled on skewers, sausages as long as ring fingers tasted like the meat of several unknown species mashed together. They were wrapped in rice paper with raw bean sprouts and greens, and then dipped in a peanut sauce. The translucent rice paper film, shaped like a leaf, transformed the curly tops of the sprouts into mere shadows, giving the whole roll an almost abstract appearance. “Aren’t you going to eat it?” “How can I when I don’t know what it is?” “Are you trying to tell me you always know exactly what’s in your food? Haven’t you ever eaten a hamburger at a fast food restaurant?” “I’m not American, so I never eat that stuff.” Kazuko sprinkled enough chili pepper on hers to numb her tongue. As it scorched her mouth, the red-hot spice burned away the cloud of mist in her mind. Though they were supposed to be laughing, celebrating their health, James didn’t even chuckle. “That meat might be your fish god. Still want to eat it?” “Sure. I’d consider myself blessed. You eat bread and say it’s the body of Christ, don’t you?” An embarrassed smile twitched around James’s lips. Then, his eyes shining with a silver light, he said, “Let’s go back to the hotel. Right now,” and swallowed hard. This worried Kazuko a little.
Still standing, they embraced, but when James slipped his fingers inside her underwear and boldly started playing the piano on her bottom, Kazuko felt she had to say something. “I have a friend in Hué. I promised her I’d visit.” His lips and hands swelled way out of proportion, and he licked her body like a monstrous octopus. The ten digits that found such pleasure in the firm flesh of her hips now discovered openings in the rear, first one then another, and eagerly sought entrance. Twisting and turning, Kazuko wondered in horror why her body was so full of holes. Five, six, seven, ecstasy flowed through all her tubes. Eight, nine, ten. Finally the single word “Why?” seeped out of her. She no longer knew where her body ended; it had transformed into wrinkles of air that seemed to fan out forever. If this quivering continued she would lose any semblance of form and everything would spill out, she thought, then desperately widening her eyes, she pushed James away. The fish god slept on.
Arrival in Da Nang brought her one step closer to Hué. Not that she was in a hurry to get there. But knowing that if she let her travel fever carry her off in a thousand different directions she would never reach her destination, Kazuko forced herself to focus on the road to Hué, which was also the road to Hanoi, leading ultimately to the Chinese border. “This must be a war remnant they haven’t gotten around to filling in yet.” The pit in front of the station was big enough for a person to squat down in. People turned away from this open wound as they passed by. James glared at Kazuko, his eyes full of hate. Pained to the heart by this man who spat pus at her with no explanation, Kazuko responded by repeating the question, “How come you speak Japanese?” What she had intended to ask was why, though he could speak her language, he had nothing meaningful to say to her, but in her confusion this was all she could manage. “Because I’m Japanese. As I told you before. Time and again.” “What about your parents, then— what nationality were they?” A thorn appeared between his eyes. “I don’t have any. They supported the Vietnam War, so I cut them off.” James walked on in silence. Once they were inside their hotel room, he abruptly grabbed Kazuko by the elbow and shook her, screaming, “You don’t suffer at all! You don’t even think!” Sobbing, she answered, “That’s only natural… I’m a tourist… it’s my duty not to think.” Scientific analysis reveals that tears of anguish have the same chemical composition as those shed while chopping an onion. Kazuko ran out of the hotel and slowed to a walk, hoping to find a crowd to lose herself in. It was getting dark. She was searching for something here in Da Nang, but not knowing exactly what, she decided to look for the Cao Dai Temple. She glanced to the left and right and saw herself strolling along on each side, wearing her face as if this were perfectly normal. Behind her she saw another one. “Hey there! Where re you headed?” “To the Cao Dai Temple.” “Really? Imagine that…” She neared the soccer stadium. The wall around the stadium stretched so far she began to lose her sense of purpose. Where was she headed when she left the hotel? Perhaps the heat was causing a dullness in her chest, making her anxious to reach some destination, no matter where. The tiny lights on the plastic Christmas trees grew brighter. Surrounded by more and more faces and backs, she was having trouble keeping track of the different Kazukos around her. She’d be better off without these equivocal copies, but she was terribly worried that if all of her selves were to become hopelessly lost she would have no idea who would remain. Mountains of Chinese herbal medicine, toilet paper, and soap towered in the shops. Tea bags and leather belts and flyswatters hung from ceilings. Countless faces, buying and selling. Bits of trash between the rusty railroad tracks, trash that turned into vegetables and seashells as she walked with her head down. Women had spread their wares on straw mats by the side of the road, and when Kazuko slipped around the mats to avoid stepping on all their vegetables and seashells, a girl with a pole slung over her shoulder loomed before her while a bicycle screeched to a halt from behind. Baskets of raw eggs and fish were thrust in her face. Wondrous patterns on quail eggs and saggy white blocks of tofu whispered in her ear, “Buy me, buy me.” To reach her destination she needed to get through the market. But where was she going exactly? There was no place she wanted to go. Nor could she turn back. If only she could collapse right here and go to sleep with a blanket over her head to block out all the sights.
As she finally accepted that there was no place to sit in the market, Kazuko saw a sign for a state-run hotel. “State-run” meant one needn’t buy anything, so in effect it was a rest house. A sleepy-looking youth in a suit stood at the reception desk; to her query, “Restaurant?” he glumly replied, “Second floor.” The deserted lobby furnished with red vinyl sofas reminded her of a Russian hotel during the Soviet era. Here she could relax. No one would coax her to buy eggs or ride in a cyclo. The twenty or so tables in the restaurant looked like a holiday parade. Teacups and chopsticks were placed neatly around each table, and one lonely looking waitress stood in a corner. A state-run hotel can be compared to a temple perched on a mountaintop, its back turned on the secular world. As if she were wounded, Kazuko fell into a chair. The menus were printed in both Chinese and Russian. She took out her notebook. “I want to tear this tablecloth into bandages to wrap around my face.” She finished writing and looked up to discover not the waitress but James standing over her. His eyes were red and swollen, his voice husky. Hearing him whine, “I can’t stay in Vietnam alone,” Kazuko hung her head. “I died here in the war, more than twenty years ago.” “Stop talking and sit down.” When Kazuko ordered two coffees the waitress gave her rather than James a strange look. They sat perfectly still until their coffees arrived. Vietnamese coffee is the color of ink, and when the condensed milk that collects in the bottom is stirred with a tiny aluminum spoon, its sticky sweetness swirls up like a fluffy summer cloud. Kazuko pinched the back of James’s hand twice. “We’re tourists, so we mustn’t cry. Tourists don’t have emotions.”
On the way back to their room it started to rain, so they bought a pair of pink plastic raincoats for a dollar, the vinyl so thin their clothes showed through underneath. Nevertheless, they looked like fraternal twins, two bodies side by side wrapped in the same pale membrane. Raindrops dripped loudly from their coats onto the floor as they stood in their hotel room groping each other without being able to touch flesh. Feeling James’s impatience in the rustling of the plastic, Kazuko’s lower abdomen grew hot. The moment she touched the plastic over his crotch, someone next door must have turned a radio on, for the rhythm of a popular song filled the room. “The man I used to be took a part of me with him when he died. Now I’m only a locust’s shell. But my soul can enter the body of a woman,” said James, and feeling something the size of a fist start to pulsate in her vagina, Kazuko let out a cry. “You won’t believe me, but it’s true.” Pressing down hard with both hands on the quivering mass within her belly, Kazuko finally manag
ed to blurt out, “You mustn’t give your soul to another person.” But James’s soul gushed out, soaked in thick bodily fluid. “Let’s go to Hué tomorrow by bus.” “I can go back inside you whenever I please.” “We’ll be crossing Hai Van Pass, you know.” Kazuko tore off her raincoat and clothing and jumped into the shower. The cold water clawed at her skin, instantly drawing the nerves to the surface. The nerve endings then trembled and turned into drops that rolled off her body.
There was something terribly nostalgic about the name Hai Van Pass. Lulled by exhaust fumes and the lethargic swaying of the bus, Kazuko thought that perhaps she had been born in a house near the pass, which would explain why the name sounded so familiar. Maybe she had only been there that one time and then it vanished from her memory. People can forget their own name if they live long enough without using it. Under the tires of the bus was a mountain road, below which spread a valley, its wide-open mouth filled with mist. “So now I’ve finally come home,” Kazuko announced in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear. The woman in front of her turned around and scolded, “You’re Japanese and you know it. So just keep quiet.” Kazuko was about to fire back, “And what are you, then?” when she gasped in shock, for she was looking into her own face. “We’re crossing Hai Van dorsal fin / Rain flowers fall around us,” sang a voice from the seat behind. Kazuko looked back to see a brand-new acoustic guitar, shiny with a yellow varnish the same shade as the Cao Dai Temple. “That’s my guitar you’re playing,” Kazuko said, and was nearly on her feet when the bus lurched violently forward, throwing her back down. The teenage girl strumming chords was also Kazuko. “That’s precisely what I was talking about,” said a husky voice. It was the Kazuko in front, talking to yet another Kazuko ahead of her. “The real tourists are the ones who think they’re the only ones who aren’t tourists.” Peering into the mirror at the faces of his female passengers, the driver said, “If you’d like we can make an eight-minute stop here. Would anyone like to take a picture of Hai Van Pass?” Mist shrouded the entire view; a photograph would be pointless. Kazuko wanted to leave her camera in her lap and go to sleep. She wasn’t in the mood for snapping photos. But if she said she didn’t care to stop, the driver, obviously proud of Hai Van Pass, would be terribly disappointed. Kazuko started complaining again. “Believing you can understand how someone else feels is sheer arrogance. You’re assuming that other people see the world within the limits of your own imagination. That’s why you…” Kazuko interrupted her, blurting out, “I can’t see anything, so you needn’t stop for me.” It was a courageous statement. Rather than making polite excuses like, “I’m sure everyone’s in a hurry,” or, “It’s a shame the weather’s so bad,” she honestly admitted that she couldn’t see Hai Van Pass. Her voice, reverberating deep within her, was strong enough to open cracks in her skin. Her right shoulder was being smooshed and warmed by the heat of James’s head, while the rest of her seemed about to shatter and fly into the air. James was sound asleep. His body was still wrapped in a layer of pink plastic as was Kazuko’s. The flimsy material was already torn in two places under the arms. James murmured something in a language Kazuko couldn’t understand. “When we get to Hué,” the driver exclaimed cheerfully, “I’ll stop the bus in front of Trang Tien Bridge.” James mumbled something again. “When we get to Hué,” said Kazuko. “I told you so,” Kazuko replied. “You’ve got it all wrong,” retorted Kazuko.
SAINT GEORGE AND THE TRANSLATOR
… in, approximately, ninety percent, of the victims, almost all, always, on the ground, lying, shown as, desperately raising, heads, on display, are, attack weapons, or, the points of, in their throats, stuck, or …
Gripping my fountain pen as if it were a knife I looked out the window. Dark cacti protruded sporadically from the sandy slope stretching out before me for a distance that might have been far or near I couldn’t tell which before being swallowed up by ominous waves of banana trees with the sea beyond although there was no visible boundary to show where water turned into sky. The sea doesn’t ascend and gradually become sky nor are sea and sky like two countries that meet at the border; in fact they exist entirely independently of each other so it’s odd to regard them as two colors side by side as if looking at a landscape painting. It seems wherever you go the scenery appears exactly like a picture and I hate that. Furthermore as I didn’t come to the Canary Islands for sightseeing it was embarrassing to look out the window and find myself gazing at the ocean like a tourist.
On the sea’s purple surface I could see stripes that I assumed were waves though they seemed to be stuck or frozen. So perhaps they weren’t waves at all and something entirely different caused this striped pattern to appear on the water. Besides the sea could be farther away than I thought. Seen from a distance moving objects do sometimes seem to be standing still. The moon for instance is in constant motion but you wouldn’t know just by glancing up. Upon further consideration there was actually nothing surprising about stationary waves. I couldn’t hear them either for that matter nor could I smell the rank odor of seaweed or dead fish so the sea must have been far away after all. My friend wasn’t lying when she described this place as “a house with an ocean view”; it was just that the “view” was from a distance. But this didn’t bother me in the least. I hate to swim anyway so it didn’t matter if the sea was near or far and in fact the further away it was the less I had to worry about it which suited me perfectly.
Though the ocean was static I could see the heavy leaves on the banana trees in front of it stir in unison every time the wind picked up even though the banana grove was also quite a distance away. I was there only yesterday which made the grove seem close but when I remembered how far I walked I could hardly call it near.
The moment I thought of the banana grove my right arm started to itch. Especially around the wrist and elbow it stung like vinegar so I stuck my arm out the window into the light but as usual all I saw were skin pores. Bright sunlight sometimes makes me itchy. Usually I hardly notice but when I remembered those banana trees the itchiness got so bad I could barely stand it. Or at least I thought it was getting worse. Wondering if I was imagining things I put my arm into the light again and while I was examining the pores the itchiness intensified. So it seemed I wasn’t hallucinating after all. But these days allergies of this kind are far from uncommon and in fact I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman who’s never had problems with her skin. I decided there was nothing to worry about. Fishing an old towel that smelled slightly of cement from the cupboard I wet it at the sink and wrapped it around my right arm. Everything you needed was here in the house but I didn’t know who had last used the towels or why. My friend’s brother was an internist who had bought this place as a “summer villa” a decade or more ago though he hardly had any time to come here himself and has generously let friends and relatives use it. When he said he preferred to stay at home and imagine other people staying here I thought at first it was sour grapes but he took me out to dinner several times and after we talked I began to believe he might be telling the truth. Twice he suggested that I come too but I refused both times. Whenever I don’t want to do something I never hesitate to say so and often end up feeling guilty later. My main reason for rejecting his offer was that I found the thought of being on the island and the doctor imagining me here the whole time somehow embarrassing. There were lots of other reasons I couldn’t explain myself. Yet the third time he asked I suddenly felt I absolutely had to go. “It’s best to go with someone,” he said but I came by myself. “Not even a man should go alone but a woman definitely needs a traveling companion,” the doctor told me over the phone. “I’ll be fine. After all I’m not a tourist,” I answered and here I was all by myself.
The towel was cold and heavy at first but the warmth of my arm soon penetrated the chill turning the towel lukewarm before quickly drying it out. When I tried to slowly bend my arm the towel was as hard as a cast and wouldn’t bend. Using my left hand I placed the fountain pen into my right and
pretended to be wounded.
… in open mouths, in throats, stuck, stabbed, tongue at the bottom, run through …
Tomorrow morning Wednesday the day foreign planes and ships arrive George might come to the island looking for me. If he were to come at all it would be tomorrow. Just thinking about it made me nervous. If I didn’t finish today there’d be no working with him here and I wouldn’t make the deadline. Ever since I landed on this island I’ve thought of nothing else but translating this “story” and now with only one day left I still didn’t know how to do it. I wasn’t even sure whether these clusters of roman letters covering a mere two pages could even be called a “story.” Fiction should feel like a borrowed coat softened by many wearings but these groups of letters were like grains of sun-baked sand that won’t stick to your skin so you couldn’t start reading them as if you were slipping your arms through the sleeves of a coat. Reading this “story” was like walking around wearing sand rather than a coat.
