Record of a Night too Brief

by Hiromi Kawakami

  Blind with rage, the monkey swatted away several people who had been slow on the uptake, sending them flying into the distance. Turning back, I caught sight of them disappearing into the night, tracing parabolic curves, whooping and laughing as they went. For a moment, fascinated, I was about to stop, but then I realized that the monkey was just behind me, breathing roughly, and so I started running again.

  “Apologize!” the monkey said, panting for breath.

  I wanted to apologize but the momentum was taking my legs forward. They wouldn’t stop.

  “Apologize!” Soon the monkey’s panting turned to wheezing, and inside the wheezing, another sound could be heard, something rather like thunder.

  “Apologize!” the monkey said, close to the back of my neck. And immediately twenty or more rumbles of thunder boomed about us. The rumbles gradually got louder and louder, and flashes of lightning lit up the sky. The intervals between them shortened, and soon the crashes of thunder and flashes of lightning were occurring simultaneously. Several times a bolt of lightning struck something, and the surrounding darkness was lit up dazzlingly, then went black again. The speed with which my feet hit the ground got faster with each crash.

  I appeared to be running faster than the speed of sound because suddenly there was no longer any thunder to be heard. I could only see flashes of lightning, which continued unceasingly, and inside them the silhouette of the monkey as it charged along after me. I couldn’t hear its commands to “Apologize!” any more. I continued to run, with all my might, through the soundless void.

  Soon, exhaustion overcame me, my legs began to feel heavy, and the monkey caught up. It didn’t slow down. In an instant it had passed me, and no sooner had it gone by than it disappeared.

  Little by little, my pace slowed and I began to hear sounds again—the heavy breathing of the monkey, peals of thunder—muted at first, like sounds heard underwater, but gradually getting clearer. The next instant, they all joined together in a great cacophony, which pressed in on me and burst.

  Within the sudden inundation of sound, at the very bottom of it, was a sound much louder than anything else. I listened to it and realized it was laughter.

  It was that same monkey’s laughter, noticeably more powerful and more resonant than any of the other many noises that were echoing in the night.

  6 DECIMATION

  My mass had been missing for a while. You tend to assume that without any mass you wouldn’t exist. But I was definitely there. Hard to believe, but it was true.

  Not only was I there, the girl was there with me, right by my side. She didn’t have any mass either. I knew she was there because I could hear her moving about in places where nothing could be seen.

  I was just about to call out to her when our surroundings were suddenly illuminated by a blaze of light.

  The light was shining out of a corner of the night sky. In just that part, a bit of the sky seemed to have been cut out and the night peeled back into a square, so that the light streamed through the square hole, straight down to the ground, in a single shaft. To a bystander, it would probably have looked as if a square-shaped pillar of light was rising straight up out of the ground towards the heavens.

  Bathed in that light, we found we did have mass after all. The light was a special, miraculous kind. But as we had only a tiny amount of mass, we were both extremely small—smaller, even, than mice.

  Small as I was, I turned to the girl, and told her: “I love you.” With the light pouring down, I repeated the words several times. And each time I said them, a curious creature emerged out of the earth.

  The first creature to emerge seemed to be a failed version of the girl. She was about twice the size of the small girl by my side, and made of metal. Creaking, she made her way out of the shaft of light.

  The second creature was another failed version of the girl. This one was silver. I thought at first she looked silver because of the silvery light, but even when she walked out of it she still shone with a silvery lustre. Her face, her hands, and her legs—every part of her glittered, menacingly. The silver girl followed in the footsteps of the metal girl. The glow of her silvery image lingered in my eye.

  The third creature was yet another failed version of the girl. This one was almost identical to her in every way; the only thing different was that she had a tail. After wagging her tail wildly for a while, she hurried off after the first two versions.

  I was about to say “I love you” a fourth time when the girl put out her hand and stopped my mouth, gently. Her hand as she touched my lips smelt of the night. I didn’t want it there, and grasping her wrist gently, I moved it away.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “You know why. Because it’s a lie,” she replied.

  I hugged her gently, and she hugged me back, equally gently.

  “It’s not something you say so easily,” she said as she hugged me.

  She’s right, I thought, as we hugged each other, but before very long I wanted to tell her I loved her again.

  Well, why don’t we stop, then, if it’s a lie! I blurted out.

  As soon as I spoke, the ground started to roar and rumble, and in the next second it split open. Two more beings emerged—myself and the girl, this time perfectly accurately massed. To us, these two beings seemed gigantic: smiling benignly, using their gigantic eyes, they had no difficulty in locating the first girl, the imperfect metal one; and the second girl, the imperfect silver one; and the third girl, the one that had a tail, in the darkness. They shut them away in a briefcase. Then, turning towards us, they plucked up my companion, and locked her in there too.

  Are they going to lock me up now? I wondered. And before I knew it, they had.

  That was it: I was locked up, for ever.

  7 LOACHES

  There were a number of fish in the tank. They looked like loaches. Someone was scooping them up, one by one, with his hands and throwing them down hard on the floor.

  It was a child.

  Once thrown down, the loach lay in a half-dead state for a few seconds, then revived and shimmied its way over to one of the many puddles nearby, leaving arteries of water on the floor behind it.

  “If you throw them down so hard, the loaches will die,” I said, reprovingly.

  The child frowned. “They won’t die,” he replied in a low voice, and continued throwing them down—thwack! thwack!—on the floor.

  He had been scooping up the loaches and throwing them down for quite some time, but it didn’t seem to make a difference to the number of fish in the tank. A small fluorescent light had been attached to it, illuminating it against the darkness. The child was standing slightly out of reach of the glow, so I couldn’t make out the features of his face.

  He continued throwing the loaches down, one after another. But far from decreasing, the number of loaches in the tank seemed to be increasing.

  “Do you like Yanagawa hotpot?” the child asked.

  “What?” I said.

  “Yanagawa loach hotpot,” the child repeated, throwing down another loach with force. Thwack.

  “I don’t mind it.”

  “In that case, I’ll give you this fish tank.” His voice had got lower.

  Why hadn’t I walked past him and paid no attention to the loaches?

  The child pulled at my sleeve with a wet hand, slipping a loach into my hand. “Try one!” he said, throwing down another loach.

  At the bottom of the darkness, near my feet, I could see loaches making their way, shimmying, towards the puddles. As they slipped below the surface, the water seemed to vanish, then slowly to reappear.

  “No. I can do without loaches,” I replied.

  The child’s head drooped. “Are you sure?” he asked, and then he started to whimper.

  I got a strong sense of foreboding at this, and I decided I’d better get away from him. Furtively putting the loach he’d deposited in my hand down on the floor, I began to walk away with an unconcerned look on my face. But the second I had put
the loach down, a big puddle had formed in that very spot, spreading to my feet. The puddle looked like an oil spill, very thick and sticky: when the loaches found their way into it, it swallowed them up, without a ripple.

  “Are you sure?” the child asked again.

  “Quite sure!” I replied.

  At that, the child shoved me, and I fell into a puddle. I found myself being sucked into it. When I was completely submerged, I looked around me. Everything was dark. Was it dark because it was night, or because the puddle was filled with black creatures? I wasn’t sure, but as my eyes got used to the darkness, I could see.

  Down below, at the bottom of the puddle, where I was now sinking, I could see countless loaches. No way… No way! I thought, and looking at my hands I saw that they were turning into fins—and my legs merging into a tail. I concentrated on my repugnance for loaches, and my fins started turning back into hands, but when my concentration waned, they immediately started turning back into fins.

  “Are you so sure you don’t want the fish tank?”

  The low voice of the child reached my ears from above.

  The words stuck in my throat, but I knew I had no choice.

  “I love Yanagawa hotpot!” I shouted up at him.

  Suddenly I found myself scooped up in the child’s hands, and thrown down hard against the floor. I wriggled my way towards the child’s feet, and then shimmied up one of his legs. I kept going up to his hips, and from his hips to his belly, and finally I reached an arm. I then wriggled down this arm to his fingers, at which point he grabbed hold of me, and threw me down to the floor.

  Seven times we repeated the process, until eventually I turned back into a human.

  “You really love Yanagawa hotpot, don’t you,” the child said, laying it on thick.

  “Oh yes, I love Yanagawa hotpot!” I replied, again.

  After pressing the tank into my hands, the child flopped-flipped-flopped in a puddle, then disappeared. The puddle was still, and then it too disappeared.

  The loaches in the tank were multiplying rapidly. The tank teemed with loaches.

  I hurried home, careful not to let any water spill into the night, and began preparations for a loach hotpot. I sliced up burdock root, added water, and brought it all to a boil, using all the stewing pots I had. Then I threw the loaches live into the pots, and covered them. A delicious aroma rose into the air.

  “You really can’t get enough of Yanagawa hotpot, can you?” I heard a child’s voice say from somewhere, one more time. As if in response, all the creatures that live and breathe in the night made their way into my apartment through the crack in my door. And they all had a Yanagawa hotpot feast.

  8 SCHRÖDINGER’S CAT

  Without my noticing, the girl and I had become separated. I looked for her everywhere, but could not find her.

  The moon had risen to the highest place in the sky, and on the ground the shadows of the plants were dimly lit in the faint moonlight.

  “Where are you? Where are you?” I called out, but there was no answer from the girl. I called out many times, but she did not answer.

  As I walked, following one shimmering shape in the moonlight to the next, I found several of the girl’s soft outer skins that she must have discarded. Each time I saw one, I would gather it up in my hands, thinking it was the real girl, but every discarded skin was simply a discarded skin.

  I didn’t know why I was searching so hard for the girl: I felt she was someone I had known all my life, and yet at the same time I hardly knew her. But I kept on looking. If someone had asked me if I liked her, I would probably have answered, yes, I did, but if someone had asked me whether I really cared about her, I might have answered, no, I didn’t, actually. Maybe the only reason I kept searching for her was that I had begun searching for her.

  The discarded skin I now picked up was the largest yet, and it was still a bit warm. She was probably hiding somewhere nearby. I walked on, calling out, “Where are you? Where are you?”

  At a spot where the shadows outlined by the moon abruptly stopped, there was a big box. I reached out to touch it, and felt it tremble.

  The girl must be inside the box, I felt sure. In front of the box was a discarded skin even larger than the one I had found a moment ago. It was lying on the ground, looking just like the living girl with her knees slightly bent. I stroked it gently. But being only a skin, it didn’t have the slightest response.

  I searched for a latch, some way to open the box, but it was just a smooth white box, nothing more. I sat there, wondering what to do, when the box trembled some more.

  Open me up! it seemed to be saying. Or maybe it was saying: Don’t open me! Again, it shook. I clasped the box in my arms, and rubbed my cheek against it.

  Simply doing this, of course, was going to get me nowhere. Somehow I had to force the box open. But the surface was completely smooth, sealed. I tried poking at the box with a pocket knife, but the blade simply bounced off the surface.

  I walked back and forth, thinking.

  Again the box trembled. I wondered: should I get an axe and chop it open? But that might end up splitting the girl in half. Well, maybe I should take the box home with me, just as it was, to stroke and treat it with affection for all eternity. But that would be no different from being without the girl altogether.

  I thought on and on.

  How would one describe the girl now, as she was inside the box? It was like she was there, only she wasn’t; or like she wasn’t, except that she was. Or maybe she occupied an indeterminate state of being, both there and not there, in exactly equal amounts.

  I thought and thought, nudging the outer skin on the ground with the tip of my foot.

  I thought until, unable to stand it any more, I rushed home, grabbed a sledgehammer, retraced my steps, and smashed the box open.

  There, in the shattered box, lay the girl. As I had feared, she was in pieces, completely destroyed. Heartbroken, I started to sob. Why did I smash the box? I thought bitterly. But how could I have stopped myself?

  How could anyone endure such a state, of having someone there and not there—not there and there—at the same time?

  Deeply indignant at this quandary of quantum physics, I cried and cried.

  9 MOLE

  As I collided with the man, several moles fell out of the front of his jacket.

  “Oh, bother! Bother!” the man said, desperately trying to rake them together with his hands.

  I walked on by, pretending I hadn’t noticed. Nothing good ever comes of getting caught up with people you meet in the night.

  “Hey, wait! Wait!” the man yelled.

  He appeared to be chasing the moles, going round in circles, but I didn’t look back and walked off as quickly as I could.

  I walked just until he was out of earshot, and then I stopped. He did not appear to be following me. I waited a while, but there was not a single sign of him. I waited a few more minutes. Not the slightest sound. I could see the moon, high up in the sky, and I could feel the breeze gently caressing my skin, but nothing of what I was expecting might happen was happening.

  Disappointed, I retraced my steps.

  But, as the saying goes, seek too keenly, and ye shall never find. Sure enough, as far back along the path as I went, I could find no trace of him. Occasionally, though, I would catch sight of the odd mole dawdling about, so I continued back along the path, using these sightings as beacons.

  I must have walked on a bit too single-mindedly, for the next thing I knew, I was on a path that seemed unfamiliar. There came a slow, lilting melody. I listened to its strains, and felt drowsy. I won’t listen, I won’t listen, I told myself, but the music seemed to pour into my ears of its own accord, producing a feeling now of utter physical and spiritual tranquillity.

  In that state, I stretched myself out on the path. I could detect a faint warmth in the earth, left over from the day. Ah, I’m falling asleep, I thought. But the next moment, I was being rudely roused by the man.

&n
bsp; “You transverse piece of lowlife!” he yelled.

  I leapt to my feet.

  “You think you can get away with such lopsided logic?”

  Astounded, I stared at him.

  The insults continued.

  “Don’t you have any triangular consciousness at all?”

  “You’re a pest! A quadri-transmogrifying pest!”

  “I’ve a good mind to break you, fold you, then turn you upside-down and shake you. Then drop you in a pot!”

  I was so blown back by the force of his words I couldn’t reply, but then he stopped abruptly. Looking closely at him, I saw his face resembled a mole’s. Actually, “resembled” was not the word: he was a mole. Struggling to conceal the moles packed down his jacket, Moley-Man resumed his invective.

  “Two days ago, it would have been the Great Depression for you, oh yes, that’s for sure!”

  “And a ding-dong, sing-song, plinkety-plunk: You better watch out! Hey Hey Hey… Pop!”

  This was all getting difficult to make sense of. Oh well, he was a mole—what could I expect? I decided to keep silent and wait for him to finish. Evidently thinking me intimidated, he gradually got calmer. Finally, he just stood there, breathing short quick breaths.

  He came up to me, now panting heavily.

  I looked up in fright, and saw he was just about to put his hands on my shoulders. He brought his snout close to my face, sniffing and snuffling, with little whiny sounds. He sniffed again, carefully. When he had sniffed his fill, his expression suddenly softened:

  “Well, hello!” Then: “That was a little rude of me. Heh, heh! Do excuse me. Got a little on edge for a moment there…”

  He seemed to have made a complete U-turn.

  “Come now. Let’s be friends,” he said.

  He put out a paw. The back of it was as black as coal, and he had long, strong claws. I shook it, and stole a glance, and saw he was blinking repeatedly, nervously.

  I told myself firmly: Do not let down your guard.