Record of a Night too Brief

by Hiromi Kawakami

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Record of a Night Too Brief

  Missing

  A Snake Stepped On

  About the Publisher

  About the Author

  Copyright

  RECORD OF A NIGHT TOO BRIEF

  1 HORSE

  What was that itch on my back? I wondered. And then I realized that it was the night—the night was nibbling into me.

  It wasn’t that late, still only twilight, but the darkness seemed to have collected just above my shoulders. A black clump of it had fastened onto me, eating away at my back.

  I wriggled, trying to shake it off, but the night clung fast. When I tried to rip it off with my hands, it floated away, as vapour, and I couldn’t grasp it. I grabbed at a patch, where it was most intensely black, but immediately it dispersed, and another black patch swirled up somewhere else.

  The itchiness became unbearable. I scratched frantically. The more I scratched, the more the darkness ate into my back, and the more the darkness ate into my back, the more I itched.

  Unable to stand still, I broke into a run.

  Immediately, I was running as fast as a horse. I thought, as I ran: you get faster when the night starts eating into you. Roads, pedestrians, signs, all fly by, retreating into the distance, like scenes through a train window.

  After a minute or two I grew sick of running, so I stopped. My body was giving off steam like a horse. I was breathing loudly through my nose. Some of the darkness merged with the steam, producing swirling, hazy eddies.

  People, standing at a distance, stared.

  The darkness mixed with the breaths I was taking in, reappearing when I breathed out, floating in long trails. When I inhaled, the dark trails near my nostrils were sucked back in. When I exhaled again, they were longer than before. The darkness grew, stretching out like endless ribbons, issuing forth from my nostrils.

  “That’s a sight you don’t see every day,” an onlooker exclaimed, and then clapped, purposefully, as if summoning koi to the surface of a pond. The other onlookers clapped too, in just the same way.

  I grew irritated. “Get the fuck outta here!” I tried to shout.

  But no words emerged from my mouth. I couldn’t get the first consonant out. Straining, blowing through my nostrils, bearing down, I tried for that first sound: “G— G— G—” But all I could manage was to snort and blow out air.

  The onlookers were delighted, and clapped some more.

  This infuriated me. I leapt into the air, trying to yell at them, but all that came out was a whinny—like I was a horse. I kept leaping. Landing on a roof, I whinnied again—and then again. The onlookers below were all clapping. I wasn’t going to be outdone by them, and I kept whinnying. By now I had acquired a horse’s body, and was covered with a thick black coat of hair.

  “Night’s coming. The Night Horse has arrived,” an onlooker said—the first in the crowd to have clapped. At that moment the steam started to rise in clouds off my body. More darkness: spreading, covering everything.

  Elated now, I whinnied over and over again. With every whinny, the darkness became blacker and more intense.

  2 CHAOS

  While I was walking, the number of people increased. We were all going in the same direction. I walked, swept along in the flow.

  It was after dusk, an hour closer to night. I could see the outlines of people walking just ahead of me, but couldn’t tell the colour of their clothes. A lamplighter approached, holding a long pole, pushing his way against the stream of people. Raising the pole up to a lamp, he let it rest there a few seconds, and the lamp started to glow. Looking around, I realized that there were several lamplighters: everywhere about me, one street lamp after another started to give out a steady light.

  Now there were even more people walking, and it was difficult keeping up the pace.

  “Are you going too?”

  I glanced over my shoulder, and saw a slender girl with short hair walking behind me.

  “I was thinking about it…,” I answered, without quite committing myself.

  Hearing this, the girl, who didn’t stop walking, removed an envelope from her satchel, and opened it, all the while keeping pace with the stream of people.

  In the envelope were some green tickets.

  “I have an extra. You take it,” she said, as she quickly slipped the green ticket into my pocket. I was going to thank her—but she waved me off and pointed at the people behind us. Some kind of hitch had stopped the flow of people, and there was a pile-up. Knots of people were starting to form, and as more people kept coming from behind them, soon some of the knots were getting pushed up into the air, on top of the knots of people below them.

  Quickly I turned to face forward again, and started to walk. A long gap had opened up between us and the people in front of us. Thinking I ought to catch up with them, I broke into a run. But again the girl stopped me.

  “Don’t run, or we’ll have chaos. It’s too early. Too early.”

  I didn’t understand what she was referring to, but in any case I resumed walking.

  We seemed to be approaching a termination point. The stream of people was spreading out. Just ahead, something very tall was rising up to the sky.

  Several dozen ticket collectors stood in a row, and once we passed through, showing our tickets, the tall object came into better view.

  It was a singer, who stood as tall as a three-storey building. From where I was, I had a clear view of the beauty spot under her jaw, and the rise and fall of her breasts.

  “The beauty spot is artificial,” the girl informed me, gazing up at the singer, enraptured.

  The singer was producing notes at different pitches, as if she were warming up. When she sang high notes, flocks of birds took flight from the branches of the gingko trees. When she sang low notes, the earth heaved, and small furry creatures emerged from underground and crawled about.

  When the square was packed with people, suddenly, with no warning, the singer commenced singing. It was as if an immense musical instrument was filling the firmament with sound, or as if the melody of her song was swimming through the skies… In the next moment her voice had overwhelmed all else, and rather than listening, we seemed to be encompassed within it. No longer able to know the words, we were conscious only that her lilting voice was, slowly and powerfully, all around us.

  The crowd of people, filled with her music, started to break up and form lines, which began to flow from the square in every direction, like innumerable streams flowing from a lake.

  “The chaos has started,” the girl said to me, joining a stream of people going by her. I watched as she was borne away.

  I joined the same stream of people, and pretty soon caught up with her.

  “Where are we going?” I enquired. The girl nodded several times, her eyes closed, looking unworried.

  “Where?” I asked again.

  “The night,” she replied.

  With that, her head tilted downwards, and she fell into a deep sleep. She was carried along as she slept.

  Now a part of the chaos, alongside the girl, I entered the night.

  3 GENTLEMEN

  I ascended the stairs and found a door, which I opened to a banquet in full swing.

  An array of gentlemen, each of them dressed in white, was seated at a table, eating and drinking. On the table were platters of raw seafood—sea urchin, halibut, scallops, clams, sea bream, flounder, silver trevally, tuna, squid, octopus, smelt—as well as an assortment of meat and vegetable dishes—broiled, boiled, fried. The gentlemen were savouring each dish.

  I could hear them having little disagreements, in the soft-spoken manner befitting gentlemen.

>   “This part, just here. So succulent! Such flavour!”

  “Oh, but it shouldn’t be soft. When it’s utterly fresh, it’s springy and firm. That’s the whole point.”

  “So the divers have to gather it up from the seabed in the early hours.”

  “That’s what makes it such a luxury.”

  The food looked so mouth-wateringly delicious, I swallowed loudly, despite myself.

  The gentlemen, unaware of my presence, turned and trained their gaze on me.

  “Who do we have here? A traveller, perhaps, from a distant land?”

  “A visitor.”

  “We don’t often get visitors.”

  “We should mark the occasion!”

  They all rose from the table. The gentleman at the head placed his napkin on his chair and approached me, his arms open.

  “So good of you to come!” he said.

  And the others, who’d followed his lead placing their napkins on their chairs and greeting me, added their chorus of welcomes.

  I was shown to a seat midway along the table, a napkin was tucked in at my collar, and a gleaming knife and fork placed beside me.

  “Please, eat.”

  “Please feel free, have whatever you like.”

  The gentlemen took their seats at the table. The gentlemen on my right turned to the left, and the gentlemen on my left turned to the right. Two lines of faces, on both sides of the table, their eyes all fixed on the same point, receded into the distance on either side of me, like two lines of layered images.

  “Please try the flounder. It’s out of this world.”

  “And the cooked dishes—the stir-fried chicken with chilli peppers.”

  “Or the pig’s liver gayettes.”

  “If you’d prefer a dish with green curry, we’ll have it prepared specially.”

  With all this encouragement, I was unable to decide. My fork hovered over the dishes. The gentlemen fixed their gaze, their eyes wide, on the end of my fork. They seemed almost to be drooling.

  I stuck the fork into something that looked like meat, I wasn’t sure what kind, on a plate near me.

  A sigh rose up from the company.

  “Ahh!”

  “Would you expect less from a guest from a distant land?”

  “Such a discriminating palate!”

  I cut the meat, or whatever it was, and ate it, piece by tiny piece. But I couldn’t taste it.

  “What’ll she go for now, I wonder?”

  “Come now, no more comments. Leave her to enjoy it.”

  I continued to eat. With every bite, sighs and cries of joy and muffled surprise rose up, and I became even less able to taste what I was eating.

  I had now eaten my fill, so I laid down my knife and fork. But the gentlemen glared at me.

  “Our guest eats surprisingly little.”

  “She’s probably just having a rest.”

  “She couldn’t possibly want to stop eating yet.”

  Embarrassed, I resumed eating. My stomach was so full I thought it might burst, but still I ate. I ate till nearly everything on the table was gone. I sighed in relief, thinking I was done, when one of the gentlemen rang a bell, which made a little tinkling sound.

  A butler appeared, bringing out platters with dome-like silver dish covers.

  “Our guest is fortunate!”

  “Fortunate to be able to enjoy such a rare feast!”

  “She can eat her fill, whatever she likes, until dawn breaks!”

  I really felt that I could not force down another morsel. But the gentlemen were all staring at me sternly, even as they smiled.

  Outside a nightingale started to sing in a high voice.

  Please, I can’t eat anything more, I wanted to say, but I couldn’t.

  The nightingale sang again. The plates on the table gleamed, and the food, in all its ceaseless variety, breathed, glossy and bright.

  The night had only just begun.

  4 THE BIG CRUNCH

  I assumed that we’d been borne along for a while, but when I awoke, time was at a standstill. Since time had stopped, even if we had been moving for a while, no actual hours, or moments, would have passed.

  The hair of the girl who had been carried along with me had grown down to her hips. So even if time had stood still, her hair had grown.

  Good morning, I said, seeing she was awake. She laughed softly. It’s too early to say that, she said. It’s still evening. And she smiled.

  Really? It’s evening now?

  The girl entwined her arms with mine.

  Some of her long hair got entwined as well. It felt silky and warm.

  Your hair has grown, I said.

  Yours hasn’t though, she replied.

  It was true. My hair hadn’t grown an inch.

  The girl’s hair rose, like a living being, and stroked my neck and shoulders. When I brought my face near hers, the girl exhaled gently out of her slightly opened mouth. The scent of her breath was like the odour of lilies at full bloom, and the sound of her breath coming out of her mouth was like a butterfly faintly beating its wings.

  I kissed the girl on the lips, as if to suck her breath inside me. When I did this, the girl wilted, ever so slightly. In my arms, gradually she became lighter, and more transparent. The smell of lilies rose up, filling my breast, overwhelming me. The taste of the kiss was so sweet, I couldn’t stop—even though I knew she would go on wilting if I continued. The girl was wilting by the instant, and something thick and strong was filling my breast.

  Holding the girl in the palm of my hand, for by now she had shrunk so that it was possible to do so, I continued to kiss her. A numbness came over me, covering me from the top of my head to the tips of my toes: I felt as if I was now enfolded by something soft and huge. Revelling in the sensation of being wrapped in giant overlapping petals, I kept my lips placed on the lips of the girl, who was now getting quite crumpled and tiny.

  The girl finally grew incredibly small, about one centimetre wide. I no longer knew whether I was kissing her or simply enjoying the afterglow of the kiss, but now the girl’s breath was filled with the overpowering scent of lilies, and the sound of her breathing, like the beating of butterfly wings, grew loud, almost annoyingly loud.

  As I looked at the girl in the palm of my hand, she shone whitely in the night. When I stroked her gently, she seemed beautifully lustrous, and I was struck by how smooth she was, by how she was warm but cold at the same time, and then, looking more closely, I realized she had become a pearl. In the depths of the pearl, I could see the girl’s face staring back at me, and, if I peered into the depths of her eyes, I could see another, smaller girl.

  An endless number of girls, getting infinitely smaller and smaller, and all emitting the same scented breath, were quietly but persistently enticing me to go further. When I rolled the pearl over my palm, exploring its smooth surface, they all laughed gently, flutteringly, in response, drawing me in even more.

  I put the pearl in my mouth, let it rest on my tongue for a while, and swallowed it.

  The infinite number of girls descended my throat, passed down into my stomach, and were transmitted through my veins to all parts of my body. Waves of explosive pleasure rushed over me. Then I realized: my hair had started to grow. And time, previously at a standstill, had started to flow again.

  Time continued to flow, as the granules of girl reached every nook and cranny of me. The girl was broken down into something very tiny indeed, tinier even than the smallest particle, and still she coursed round and round. The girl became more and more mixed and homogeneous with me, until in the end I lost track of whether the girl was me, or I was the girl. It was only then that I started to love her, and to miss her. I loved and missed something I couldn’t define, some combination of us both.

  At this thought, time came to a standstill. A little while later, I was assailed by contractions of unbelievable force.

  5 JAPANESE MACAQUE

  No matter how much I poured into the cup, it neve
r filled. And then I realized that the liquid I assumed to be coffee had, unbeknownst to me, turned into night.

  Peering into the night as it poured into the cup, I could see tiny stars and gases whirling near the surface, and down at the bottom, something laughing. In dismay, I took the cup to a sink, and tipped it so that all the night it contained would spill out, but as long as I held it there, the night kept on flowing, interminably.

  I had been holding the cup there for a good hour, and still the night came. No matter how much was sucked away down the drain, there was always more. Resigning myself, I turned the cup upright and peered into it again: at this the laughter coming up from the bottom of the cup grew very loud. I hurled the cup against the wall. From the broken shards the soft clouds of night floated up, spreading outwards. And there, in among them, was the laughter’s source.

  It was a large Japanese macaque.

  It was laughing loudly, baring its teeth, exposing its gums. I was surprised that a monkey was laughing just like a human being: so I gave it a poke with the end of a mop to see what it would do.

  At this, the monkey abruptly stopped laughing.

  “Do you have to be so rude?” it demanded, in a terrifying voice.

  I tried to apologize but my tongue seemed to stick to my palate, and no sound came out.

  “Didn’t your parents teach you any manners at all?” the monkey shouted at me, even more loudly.

  I made several small bows, and shuffled back bit by bit. The monkey edged forward.

  “Apologize!” it bellowed. Its voice was ear-splittingly loud—the vibrations produced cracks in the room’s walls.

  I shuffled back some more, and the monkey again roared, “Apologize!” At this, the entire ceiling came crashing down.

  In the nick of time I opened the door and rushed into the corridor, and out into the night. Several neighbours had come out of their houses: they were pointing at the collapsed ceiling and talking among themselves. I ran off, pushing my way through them. When an angry monkey, howling at the top of his lungs, appeared from the rubble, the staring onlookers scattered in all directions, like baby spiders.