Record of a Night too Brief

by Hiromi Kawakami

  The shadow now looked around the room. The guests, faceless, were still tossing down their wine. The shadow approached one of the guests, fastened its mouth onto his neck, and began siphoning up the wine in his belly. It did this to all the guests in turn; then it went up to the host and sucked up the wine in him, and finally, coming to me, it took my entire head in its mouth, and sucked up the wine in me.

  I thought I would faint from the pleasure.

  When it had just about guzzled up everything in me, the shadow started to take on a form. First a gold mane appeared, then a neck, then a body, fluffy shanks, and finally a tail, and alongside those, a beautifully contoured coat of sleek fur. It was a lion.

  The lion leapt up onto the table and sprang out into the garden. In the east the sky had begun to take on a faint colour. The lion ran to the sky in the east. It sprinted at full speed, devouring every creature it met in the night.

  When not a single creature was left, and the lion had disappeared beyond the eastern sky, the host occupied his throne, and the guests dispersed by twos and threes.

  Night was giving way to the first glimmers of dawn.

  18 APOPTOSIS

  The girl was already showing signs of no longer being a girl.

  In a short span of time, her skin had become like paper, her eyes transparent. The ends of her arms and legs had begun to divide into branches; her hair had fallen out.

  I gazed at the girl, who continued to change as she lay on the ground.

  She was changing into something I didn’t recognize at all. I had the feeling I was about to remember something I had forgotten. Because it was something I had forgotten, I had no idea what it might be, but it felt as if I was going to remember it any moment now.

  “Darling.” I spoke to the girl.

  “What?” answered the girl.

  “Were you always that kind of thing?”

  “Yes, I think I probably was.”

  The voice replying wasn’t the voice of the girl, of course: it was the voice of the thing I didn’t recognize. It was high and low at the same time, the kind of voice that might echo inside the hollow of a tree.

  I looked at the changing girl, and I started to feel sad, and I cried.

  “What’s the matter?” asked the thing that had once been a girl.

  “You’ve changed,” I replied.

  “That’s how I’m made. There’s nothing I can do about it,” the thing said, laughing.

  I started to feel even sadder.

  “Are you still crying?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is what happens to everyone who is born.”

  “But I had no idea.”

  “If you hadn’t noticed, it’s happening to you as well.”

  I looked at my arms and legs, and saw that they were now dividing into branches, just like the girl’s: they looked like something between trees and nets. The surface of my skin was rough and tattered, and the hair that had fallen from my head lay in clumps on the ground.

  I kicked at the clumps of fallen hair, but all that happened was that something down there that had divided into countless branches, like a bamboo broom, swept them together in a pile.

  “But why?” I asked, dispirited.

  The thing that had once been the girl answered, smiling:

  “We’ve got old.”

  The moon, which should have sunk long ago, rose steeply in the eastern sky, as it had done at the beginning of the night. As we watched, it travelled across the emptiness, and then sank to the west.

  We were still watching when again the moon rose in the eastern sky, but this time it was a little larger than it had been a moment ago. It proceeded to rise and sink again and rise and sink again, with incredible speed, becoming a full moon first, and after that gradually waning.

  “Do you think we’re like that moon?” I asked.

  “Not at all!”

  “So we’re different?”

  “The moon gets to renew itself. We don’t.”

  Several brownish butterflies came flying by. The girl stopped talking, and closed her eyes. The butterflies alighted on her, their wings opening and closing slowly, then flew off.

  I felt tired, so I lay down next to the girl. Lying there, I looked up and saw a lion roaring Kin! and flying through the sky, as the moon rose and sank over and over again. I listened to the roar of the lion, and I put my lips to the lips of the thing that had once been the girl, and kissed her. Then I grew old, very old, and rotted away.

  19 NEWT

  “Any minute now, it’s going to begin!” someone shouted excitedly—and immediately people gathered in a huge crowd. The lamplighter was making his rounds, extinguishing the lamps with his long pole, pushing against a stream of people going the other way.

  The forest had been cut down, and the rivers filled in. The hills had been scraped flat, and valleys levelled. When the land reclamation was completed, everyone in the crowd pulled out saws and mallets and chisels and hoes from the folds of their kimonos, and started to build a town, using the trees they had cut down, and the crushed stone they had quarried from the hills.

  People were digging holes and sinking pillars into them, others were securing timber trusses for towers, and others were tamping the crushed stone prior to building residences. The sound was deafening.

  In a short time, a town came into being. People whistled as they packed away their saws and mallets and chisels and hoes, and sat down and started to brag about the buildings.

  The braggadocio continued till the sun was high in the sky. Finally, when they had tired of that, the people unpacked their lunch boxes and gobbled their food down.

  One person lay down to take a nap, and soon everyone had flopped down to do the same. When everyone was asleep, the snoring loud, I poked my head above the surface of the water and sniffed the air.

  The air smelt metallic. Moving my front legs and hind legs in turn, twisting my body, I dragged myself over the ground. My front legs were really very short, so I could only move slowly. Behind me came numerous other newts, my companions.

  When we finally arrived at the centre of the town, we clambered over the faces of the sleeping people, clung to timbers of the towers, and foraged for bits of food left in the lunch boxes. While we occupied ourselves like this—for we could only move very slowly—the day turned into evening. Even when evening came, the people continued to slumber. After taking a nibble or two of their flesh, my companions and I made our way back to the water. The people slept like logs, unconscious of our nibbles.

  On my return to the pond, I relieved myself, and licked the water plants. Whenever the mood took me, I laid a few eggs. When silence lay at last over the muddy swamp, we newts fell asleep. We slept deeply, dreaming our dreams, which rose and burst like bubbles many, many times in the space of the night.

  MISSING

  LATELY, THINGS just keep going missing. Most recently, my eldest brother—that is, of my two elder brothers, brother no. 1. It’s been two weeks now since he disappeared.

  As for what he’s up to, it’s hard to say, but it would seem that he’s still at home with us. I just know from the telltale signs: the door to the next room will suddenly rattle, though there’s not a breath of wind; chopsticks and rice bowls will be used, inexplicably; shelves that were thick with dust the night before will be found spotlessly clean in the morning. I know it’s him.

  Since disappearances happen all the time in my family, we got used to it pretty quickly. The only awkward thing in the case of my brother was that arrangements for his marriage were just at the point of being concluded.

  The first person in our family to disappear, I’ve been told, was my great-grandmother. In her case, the word was that she’d been “spirited away”, and nothing was seen of her for more than a year. When she returned and explained what happened, her daughter—my grandmother—scribbled down what she said. The account went like this: It wasn’t that I wasn’t there I was there right by you You just didn’t hear me no matter how
loudly I spoke You looked around when I prodded you You reacted to my touch But you didn’t see me It was a mystery to me my being invisible to you

  So it would seem that she was in fact right there with her family the whole time. It was just that they couldn’t see her. She was able to see everything that was happening to her and to those around her perfectly well.

  That transcribed account is the only record the family has of what happened in the case of my great-grandmother’s disappearance. Most of the notes that others scribbled down detailing what she’d said got lost over time or used as scratch paper. Probably people were so relieved that she came back after a year that they chose not to enquire further.

  But I find it strange that they didn’t. True, it was a different age, and people’s expectations were different, but for someone to have not been there for a whole year—did they not think that a bit odd?

  Anyway, after that, family members started disappearing periodically, and perhaps it all started to feel like less of a worrisome event, but no one seems to have felt the need to look into the reasons. When my brother no. 1 disappeared, the family didn’t seem to show much surprise at all.

  Well, I suppose as a family we prefer a quiet life. We do have a habit of accepting change in the state of affairs without reading anything too complicated into it—and that goes for me as much as anyone. I did wonder, a lot, about my brother no. 1, in those moments before dawn when time seems to stretch out endlessly, or before falling asleep when dim images rise up before one’s eyes. But I could think of no means of getting him to come back.

  Brother no. 1’s betrothed was a woman named Hiroko, the eldest daughter of a family who lived on the uppermost floor of a block in the housing development next to our own. The Hikari Housing Development is a vast complex, with row upon row of multi-storey apartment blocks that are served by a number of different circular bus routes. When you alight from the bus and walk between the buildings, a strong, constant wind hits you full in the face, whisking the hat off your head and whatever you’re holding out of your hands. A notice in large letters at all departure points says: STOW ALL BELONGINGS IN YOUR RUCKSACK. DO NOT WEAR HATS, MUFFLERS, OR EARRINGS. KEEP YOUR CHILDREN NEAR YOUR SIDE AT ALL TIMES. THE RESIDENTS’ ASSOCIATION WILL ACCEPT NO FINANCIAL LIABILITY FOR ANY INCIDENTS THAT MAY OCCUR.

  It was one of these buses that my brother no. 1, my mother, and my father boarded when they went to apartment 2907 for their first face-to-face meeting with the family of the wife-to-be.

  The order of events for this meeting had been decided over the telephone through the long-time matchmaker for the family, Sasajima Ten. A very old woman, Ten has been plying her trade for generations, even before the time of my great-grandmother. Nowadays, since families tend to be smaller, Ten probably gets less chance to demonstrate her abilities, but she still seems to be surprisingly busy, with a huge clientele whom she tells us she has to rush around taking care of. No one in my family has ever seen Ten. She conducts, as I’ve said, all her business with us by the telephone. Presumably, in the time of my great-grandmother, Ten visited all the families involved at home and sat with them, knees touching, sipping a cup of tea, but on the telephone we never ask her any questions about how she does things, or the way she used to. So nobody really knows.

  As Ten had instructed, on a specific day that Ten had chosen, my family made the visit to Hiroko’s family, taking the betrothal gifts of dried kelp and cuttlefish, and a chart documenting our family lineage. They were met at the door by Hiroko’s grandfather, father, and two younger sisters, who stood in a row spanning the width of the hallway. Hiroko stood behind them, hidden, and it was only after the long exchange of delicate formalities was over that my family could get to see what she looked like. Such rules don’t seem to have existed during my grandmother’s time—on the contrary, it seems to have been pretty much anything goes, and the same for the time of my mother and father. In any case, on that day, whether at Ten’s urging, or because my family was somehow influenced by the way they did things in that neighbourhood, everything in the betrothal ceremony went exactly in accordance with the protocol Ten had laid out.

  With the greetings over, Hiroko came forward to receive the gifts, which was indication that she was welcoming my brother, mother, and father into her home. The kelp was immediately placed on the display shelf for precious objects in the alcove, the cuttlefish stowed in the refrigerator, and the family chart put into a frame and hung above the Buddhist family altar. Facing the altar, my brother and mother and father intoned the Buddhist Heart Sutra, while Hiroko’s family observed a five-minute silence, and with that the betrothal formalities were complete. The wedding date was scheduled for six months hence.

  When my brother no. 1 disappeared, we did not actually tell Hiroko. My brother no. 2 simply took his place. Hiroko and my brother no. 1 had always murmured their sweet nothings to each other over the telephone. The telephone was located in the central room of our apartment, which was not large, and we heard the things brother no. 1 used to say to Hiroko. My brother no. 2 said exactly the same things, in a voice that was indistinguishable from my brother no. 1’s, and Hiroko showed no sign of catching on that my brother no. 1 had left the picture. Not surprisingly, it didn’t occur to anyone in the family to let her know.

  When the telephone call came a few days later from Ten saying it was time for Hiroko and her family to visit our family, we were slightly perplexed. But still no one told Hiroko that my brother no. 1 had disappeared. We didn’t tell Ten, either, or ask for her advice. We simply arranged for Hiroko to make her visit, accompanied by her father and grandfather, in one week’s time.

  Before my brother no. 1 went missing, it was Goshiki.

  Goshiki, the name of which is properly written with the Chinese characters , meaning “five colours”, is a ceramic jar, a family heirloom that had been passed down through a venerable line that I imagine dates back to well before any living person can remember. It’s a great hulk of a jar, and it is claimed that the spirit of one of our forebears inhabits it. The person who started this claim was my grandfather, and at first no one believed him, but he kept saying it and after a while it became an accepted fact that Goshiki was inhabited by a spirit.

  Goshiki was so big, it took up nearly half the space of the parlour in our apartment. As children my brothers and I used to try to stand around it with our hands joined, but our arms could never encircle it. It was decorated, as its name implies, with glazes of many colours, and shaped like your typical jar from somewhere in Asia. When my mother put my brother no. 1 to bed, she would say that Goshiki spoke when everyone was fast asleep. My brother no. 1 then started claiming he heard Goshiki speak. Kuma-nori, kuma-nori were the words he heard Goshiki speak. Three years later, my brother no. 2 started claiming the same thing. My brother no. 2, however, claimed that Goshiki said not kuma-nori, but kuma-nara. Then, four years later, Goshiki started speaking to me, saying kuna-nira. At that point my mother explained that no one but the three of us had actually ever heard Goshiki say a word. Since Goshiki was now not only inhabited by a spirit but had also started to make utterances, we should perhaps have started referring to it with a little reverence, as Goshiki-sama, but we felt more comfortable with plain old “Goshiki” so we continued to refer to it in our old familiar way.

  It was the task of the male head of the family to clean and polish Goshiki. Before my father it had been my grandfather, and before him my great-grandfather. Every day Goshiki would be wiped clean, and once a month a special polishing fluid would be used to give it a sheen. In my greatgrandfather’s day the polishing methods were rather willynilly, and people seem to have been happy to leave Goshiki for several months just to gather dust, but as the decades passed the procedure got more formalized and codified.

  My brother no. 1 had been next in line to inherit the role of Goshiki-polisher.

  It was the day after a once-monthly polishing ritual that Goshiki vanished without a trace.

  We were awakene
d by a shriek from my brother no. 2, who was always the earliest of us all to rise. One after another we ran out of the bedroom where we slept in our hammocks.

  My brother no. 2 was in the parlour, his legs planted firmly on the floor, one arm straight up in the air, the other pointing at the empty space.

  “Goshiki’s gone! Goshiki’s gone!” he was shouting, repeatedly. My father and brother no. 1, with open hands, patted the space where Goshiki had been, but no sense of Goshiki’s presence was to be found. After half an hour of the family futilely hunting high and low we abandoned the search. Meanwhile, my brother no. 2 was still shouting, “Goshiki’s gone! Goshiki’s gone!”—sounding like some sort of automated alarm, and finally my mother had to shut him in a closet to muffle the sound.

  When my brother no. 1 disappeared, no one yelled out his name or made any concerted effort to look for him.

  After that, we saw neither hide nor hair of Goshiki again. But my brothers and I did sometimes hear its voice. In the dead of night when I got up to go and relieve myself, I would hear the refrain kuna-nira, kuna-nira waft down from above. When I walked to the end of the road lined with cypresses to go and draw water from the well, I would hear kuna-nira, kuna-nira float down from between the branches.

  On days when I heard Goshiki speak, something slightly out of the ordinary would always happen. A full moon. Rumblings of thunder. Masses of tiny ants on the walls.

  The family etched Goshiki’s name in simple katakana into a wooden post in the corner, and before long we started to gather there in the morning, clap our hands to summon Goshiki’s spirit, and pray.