Record of a Night too Brief

by Hiromi Kawakami

  “‘Hiroko’—what’s that?”

  “You know—Hiroko, the woman my brother no. 2 married.”

  “Never heard of her. Have you, Father?”

  “No, never.”

  The wax pieces that my brother no. 2 was carving were spilling out of the room. They had an extremely strong smell. Neither my mother nor my father took any notice of what I was saying, and they went to lie down in their hammocks. I left the house to see if I could catch any sign of Goshiki, and wandered around the park in the middle of the housing development, but no sound reached my ears. Soon it began to seem as if I were wandering around in a dream, and I became uncertain whether my brother no. 1 or Hiroko had even existed. When I returned to the apartment, my mother and my father were sleeping like logs, snoring loudly. My brother no. 2 had disappeared. Only his wax leavings remained.

  When I got up the next morning, the excess wax had been swept up, and the number of hammocks reduced to three.

  Once again the season has changed. The family has now taken up burning incense. I’m not certain how long this custom of incense appreciation has existed in my family. I have the feeling that before we did this we did something else, but I can’t recall what it was. Sitting squeezed between my mother and my father, I take deep sniffs of the warm, soothing aromas.

  I am now swollen, tight and fat like an enormous tube. I began to bulge in the last season, but this season there’s no hiding it—I’m huge. My mother and my father lavish me with care, keeping me well fed, if only to make me swell up even more. The apartment feels a lot roomier now than it once did, and maybe that’s why they’re trying to make me get bigger. Some days I can clearly recall my two missing brothers, but other days I wonder: was I just imagining them from the very start? The incense smells like sandalwood, and when I listen to its fragrance Goshiki’s voice floats into my ears. Goshiki’s voice—the one thing I can be certain is real. With Goshiki’s words ringing in my ears, kuna-nira, kuna-nira, kuna-nira, I put a call through to my husband-to-be. I have only met this person once, at our betrothal ceremony, and to me he looked identical to my brother no. 1, but since I don’t recall what that brother looks like, that doesn’t make much sense. Looking at old photos doesn’t help either. I seem to remember in real life my brother no. 1 had much more heft—in the photos he looks flat. But the voice of my husband-to-be on the telephone is sweet and low, and that’s probably the thing that matters.

  When I leave here and go to join the family of my husband-to-be, will I undergo a similar kind of transformation as Hiroko’s? Will I too just disappear, even now that my body is all big and swollen? My brother no. 2 claimed that if you sank to the bottom of the deep swamp of love, you’d find family waiting there. I have yet to get any visits from my brother no. 2. When my brother no. 1 makes his visits, he lets me know that he cares. With a huge effort, he pushes my big blob of a body over on its side and then kisses me all over, gently but passionately, like he did that time to Hiroko, and strokes and pats my hair. I long to curl up in a little nekoma ball with my head in his lap, like I used to, but I don’t think he could take it, I am so big and swollen. And anyway, he’s not here, he’s not physically around, so it’s impossible. My father intones sutras every day; my mother selects different incenses to burn, and I continue to swell, spending my time simply waiting for visits from my brother no. 1. Goshiki’s voice sounds continually, insistently, in my ears, and every day we gather before the wooden post and clap to summon its spirit and pray.

  A SNAKE STEPPED ON

  ON MY way to Midori Park through a thicket I stepped on a snake.

  Once you cut through Midori Park, if you go up and over the hill, then carry straight on through a maze of narrow alleys lined with little shops, you’ll come to my place of work: a Buddhist prayer-bead shop, the Kanakana-Dō. My previous job was as a science teacher at a girls’ school. I was not a good teacher—I wasn’t cut out for it—and after trying for four years to stick with it I quit. I survived for a while on unemployment insurance payments, and then I got this job at the Kanakana-Dō.

  At the Kanakana-Dō, I work as the “help”. Mr Kosuga, the owner, takes care of the stock, and the orders and deliveries of the prayer beads, and assists the Buddhist priests who come into the store, while Mrs Kosuga threads the beads into rosaries and bracelets. My job—if I can call it that—is simply to sit in the shop and “help” in small tasks.

  I realized the snake was there only after I’d stepped on it. It seemed languid, maybe because it was autumn. Surely a snake would know to hurry to get out of the way.

  Under my foot, the snake felt so soft. So porous and borderless and infinite.

  “You know, once you’ve stepped on me, it’s all over,” the snake said, after a few moments.

  Its body started slowly to disappear, and then it was gone. Something indefinable, like smoke, or a fine mist, hung for a few seconds in the space where it had been. I heard it repeat:

  “It’s all over.”

  I looked again, and saw a human being.

  “Well, you stepped on me,” the human being announced, “so now I don’t have a choice.”

  And with that, the snake-turned-human being walked briskly off, in what seemed to be the direction of my apartment. As far as I could tell, she was a woman in her early fifties.

  I arrived at the Kanakana-Dō just as Mr Kosuga was raising the shutter. Mrs Kosuga—or Nishiko, as she said I could call her—was in the back of the shop, grinding beans for coffee.

  “I’m driving to Kōfu today. Do you want to come along with me, Miss Sanada?” Mr Kosuga asked.

  I occasionally accompanied him in the van on his deliveries, but only to places nearby. Kōfu. That was going to be miles.

  In recent days Nishiko had been threading dozens and dozens of the prayer beads for the followers of the Pure Land sect. Yesterday we had put the two hundred rosaries and bracelets she had finally finished into boxes, and packaged them up. Today, it appeared, we’d be delivering them to Ganshinji Temple.

  “After we drop the beads off, we could take a detour and go on to Isawa hot springs,” said Mr Kosuga. He just came out with this. And then, immediately, this: “Why not come too, Nishiko? Take a little break from the shop…”

  Nishiko smiled, and didn’t reply.

  Although over sixty, Nishiko looked younger, her hair black with only a few strands of white—and in fact she looked considerably younger than her husband, despite being, I’d been told, eight years older than he was. A few weeks after they hired me, I learnt that she had once been the wife of the young master of a long-standing prayer-bead shop in Kyoto, and Mr Kosuga had been the live-in apprentice. Watching her toiling ceaselessly noon and night—threading prayer beads, keeping the shop running—while her husband hardly came in at all, preferring to fritter away his time on other pursuits, Mr Kosuga fell in love with her, and several years later, on finishing his apprenticeship, he persuaded her to run away with him.

  The story of their elopement was common knowledge to most of the customers—mainly Buddhist priests who had been clients for years—and the couple were still the target of teasing remarks because of it.

  “Such connubial bliss,” the priests would declare dryly.

  At this, Mr Kosuga would mutter namandabu namandabu under his breath, while Nishiko would say nothing and smile. Despite Nishiko’s reputation as one of the most skilled prayer-bead makers in the whole of the Kantō region, the Kanakana-Dō was only limping along. The couple had had to flee all the way up to Tokyo, far away from all previous ties, as a consequence of their past.

  “I stepped on a snake,” I said to Mr Kosuga, casually. We were in a diner in a motorway service area, on our way back from the temple, drinking iced coffees.

  “What?” Mr Kosuga yelped. Then, carefully, he asked, “And… what did the snake do?” He brought a filterless Peace cigarette to his mouth, and slowly started rubbing his forehead and temple, where the hair was receding, with the palm of his hand.

>   “It got up and walked off.”

  “Where to?”

  “I’m really not sure.”

  It was late afternoon and the light of the setting sun streamed into the diner. The muffled roar of the traffic outside could be heard intermittently.

  The chief priest of Ganshinji Temple, whom we’d delivered the prayer beads to, was a serious collector of antiques, and everywhere in his living quarters was decked with pieces of valuable pottery—Shigaraki, Shino—as well as other wares and antique display shelves. For three hours we were subjected to a long series of stories on the history behind every object. Even during a brief moment when the priest’s wife, who seemed in some vague way to look like her husband, brought in trays of soba for lunch, the priest continued to spout forth on how each of the pieces had fallen into his hands. Please, do eat, his wife urged gently, or your soba will go soft. But the stories were flowing so continuously it was difficult to judge the right moment to begin. Mr Kosuga managed, nodding attentively and murmuring “oh” and “ah”, to polish off what was on his tray, and I tried my best to do the same, but I couldn’t make a dent in mine. Finally, the priest applied himself to his food, a brief respite ensued, and I seized the small cup to dip a few noodles and bring them to my mouth—but the sight of the cup set the priest off again. “Ah, that cup now…” The chopsticks, the dipping cups, the teacups, the lacquer coasters, the low tables on which the coasters lay, even the cloth of the cushion on which I sat—everything had a story.

  After listening to a story about an Edo-period criminal who was executed by a beheading followed by a story about a son who built a storehouse for his parents out of filial loyalty followed by a tale about a big man about town who was elected mayor followed by a story of a wealthy patron of a sumo-wrestler stable who fell on hard times and couldn’t afford even to live in a hovel built on the ground followed by a tale about an ill-natured woman who scalded herself followed by a story about a dog who dug up some gold coins in a vegetable patch followed by a tale about a widow who made a fortune by inventing a special cup for people unable to get out of bed… finally, when the priest had seemingly told his fill, Mr Kosuga rose and proceeded serenely out to the van, unloaded the boxes containing the two hundred rosaries and bracelets of prayer beads, brought them in and laid them out in front of the priest, and, when he received the payment, tore off a receipt with care and handed it over. The figures on the receipt had been transcribed in the traditional Chinese numerals. Nishiko wrote out all the shop’s formal documents in her impressive calligraphic hand.

  “Incidentally,” the priest said to Mr Kosuga in a relaxed tone, folding up the receipt, “know any stories about snakes?”

  At that precise moment, the priest’s wife entered the room. It seemed the priest had to get ready to attend a memorial service.

  “Lots of snakes are turning up at the temple these days,” the priest drawled. “It’s all the land reclamation, even out here in the sticks. Seeking refuge, you know.”

  Right there in front of Mr Kosuga and me, he started to remove the strip of black brocade draped around his neck.

  “And snakes,” he continued, emphatically, “often pretend to be what they’re not.”

  The priest slipped an iridescent blue surplice over his head, put on a gold hat, and, pressing his lips together as if he’d eaten something tart, smirked.

  Mr Kosuga took his leave and I followed, bowing our thanks deeply, and the priest’s wife came out and bowed farewell as we drove away.

  This was what had inspired me to mention my snake story to Mr Kosuga.

  “Miss Sanada, do you mind telling me what the snake was like?”

  The distant honk of a truck sounded, like the foghorn of a ship. We could have been sitting in a beachfront cafe.

  “It was medium-sized. And soft…”

  A slightly hapless look crossed Mr Kosuga’s face, but he said nothing more and, giving his broad brow one more rub, got up to leave. In the van he switched on the radio. The stock-market report came to an end, and a lesson in Portuguese started, but by then I was feeling quite drowsy, and all thought of the snake left me. When we arrived back at the shop, we were in the middle of an English lesson.

  I returned to my apartment, cutting back through Midori Park in the dark, to find everything tidied and put away. An unfamiliar woman in her early fifties was sitting in the middle of the carpet in the room.

  It was the snake, I saw immediately, but I didn’t let on that I knew.

  “Welcome home,” the woman said to me, as if I wasn’t expected to register any surprise.

  “Thank you,” I replied.

  The woman got to her feet and went to the stove in the small galley kitchen. She lifted the lid off a saucepan and a delicious aroma wafted out.

  “Hiwako, dear, I’ve prepared a favourite of yours. Tsukune dumplings in broth,” she said. She bustled about the kitchen and wiped the table with a damp cloth.

  I watched as she, clearly clued up on which utensils I use and which are reserved for guests, set the table, placing chopsticks alongside rice bowls, not needing to ask which end of the table I prefer. She was acting like someone who’d lived here for years. In a matter of minutes, dinner was laid out: the dumplings, with green beans in the broth, and plates of okara and sashimi. She brought out two glasses, and opened a bottle of beer.

  “Let’s have a drink. Why not, once in a while?”

  She sat herself down in the chair next to me.

  At her prompting, I raised my glass, took a sip, and, finding myself suddenly very thirsty, drained it to the last drop. I waited to see if she’d fill it up again, but she didn’t. Did she know I don’t like it when people try to pour for me?

  “Aah, that tastes good!” the woman exclaimed as she finished her glass and proceeded to refill it. Seeing this, I refilled mine, and just like that, the bottle was empty.

  “There are another two bottles chilling,” she said, transferring some dumplings to her bowl with her chopsticks. She started tucking into them.

  With uneasiness, I did the same—since they did look rather delicious. The slightest squeeze of the chopsticks made the dumplings ooze with juice, so I popped a whole one straight into my mouth. The taste was just like one of my own. After polishing off another dumpling, I drank some beer, then ate some beans, and then had another gulp of the beer. But I couldn’t bring myself to touch the sashimi. The thought of raw fish prepared by a snake was simply too creepy to take.

  The woman quickly worked her way through the sashimi, swabbing each slice with wasabi and soy sauce.

  “You’re home late today,” she observed.

  “We drove to Kōfu.”

  I hadn’t meant to engage. My defences must have been down because of the drink. Then, immediately, “What are you?” I asked.

  “Ah. I’m your mother, Hiwako, dear,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  The woman had said she was my mother as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and now, going to the refrigerator, she took out a second bottle of beer. She tapped the cap, opened the bottle and filled her glass and mine to the same level, creating thick heads of foam.

  My mother was still alive, living in my home town of Shizuoka. Likewise my father. I had two younger brothers. One brother was enrolled in the local college; the other was still at high school. My mother had a typically Japanese face—she looked a bit like that actress, whose name escapes me, the one who often plays mothers in TV dramas. The woman sitting in front of me, however, had a much more angular, Western face. Her eyelashes were terribly long. She had high cheekbones, and the tiny wrinkles around her mouth and eyes accentuated her rather sharp features.

  Suddenly concerned about my mother in Shizuoka, I stood up and picked up the telephone to call home. I couldn’t remember the number, and twice dialled it incorrectly. It was like one of those dreams when you’re desperately making a phone call but you’re all thumbs.

  “Hello?” On the third try I got my mother
on the other end.

  “Hiwako, dear!” she exclaimed, when she realized who was calling.

  “Hi.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. I wondered… if you’re OK.”

  “Oh, we’re fine. And you?”

  “I’m OK.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  As I’m not particularly fond of the telephone anyway, I rarely call home, except on the occasional Sunday. My family knows I don’t like it, so our conversations last two minutes.

  “Dad and everyone doing OK?”

  “Not too bad. Same as always, you know. What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. I just…” I managed to mumble a few words more, then hung up.

  The woman had taken no notice as I talked, and carried on munching food and tossing down her drink.

  When I returned to the table, nearly all the food was gone. The woman was sitting, chin in hand, elbow propped on the table, and on the third bottle of beer.

  “Hiwako, dear, why did you give up being a teacher?” she asked, sipping her beer, without directing her chopsticks at any of the plates.

  With my mother’s voice still ringing in my ears, I was wide open to the question. The situation still struck me as weird, but I resigned myself to having to answer.

  “I couldn’t get into it.”

  “Into what?”

  “Teaching.”

  “Is that all?”

  I didn’t reply.

  “That’s not the real reason, is it?”

  “Maybe not.”

  “What was the real reason?”

  The woman drank some more beer, and again refilled her glass. Her arm had come out in goosebumps, and the flesh looked dry and white.

  “Maybe I was burnt out.”

  My students didn’t ask all that much of me in the class-room, but more often than not I would get the feeling that they must require something, and I would give them something that turned out not to be what they wanted at all. Then I would get into a muddle about whether I had needed to foist it on them. That’s what burnt me out. The whole thing was a charade.