by Неизвестный
—In that case, I should haul in the memories from before and after the event. The memory of taking one cookie from the box, tearing the paper wrapping, and placing the cookie on my palm. After that, the memory of unconsciously rubbing my fingers together to dislodge the crumbs that clung to my skin. Right—the troublesome part is that these memories are fragments. . . . Are the memories from before and after reliable? Hasn’t the second cookie in fact imitated the first and begun to extend my memory backward and forward, endlessly? . . .
With a slurp, I drained the remaining ring of coffee in the cup, then rose from the chair and walked toward the west window.
In the final analysis, it’s impossible to demonstrate that the first cookie existed. . . . (I looked back at the table.) Even that coffee cup might be different from the coffee cup I remember. How can we say that it’s the same? Even I . . .
I had a sudden attack of anxiety as I began to think along these lines, and feeling under some duress, I hurriedly switched conclusions.
And yet it’s still clear to me. The fact that it wasn’t the second cookie that existed but the first. Something clings to my memory of the first cookie—a sense of substantivity, the feeling of actuality at the moment my hand touched the cookie. This is, after all, something that my memory of the second cookie couldn’t imitate. . . . A feeling of actuality? In the final analysis, that’s about all there is to vouch for a memory.
I despaired at the fragility of my conclusion. And yet this was the conclusion I’d desired from the first.
Yes, and ironically, this conclusion serves to confirm my memory. For that memory is better endowed with a feeling of actuality than any other is.
I felt a slight chill in the air as I approached the window. Although I hesitated to look directly outside, I resolutely opened the curtains. Sure enough, the sun was scattering more fiercely than ever. As my memory grew more certain, I could perceive the scattering with greater clarity. Do I propose to doubt my own memory? In fact, hasn’t the sun continued to scatter, ever since that day?
I put on the wrinkled trousers I’d taken off yesterday, threw a coat over a well-chosen sweater, and went outside.
My breath was white. A cold wind like a stray cat blew across my feet and ostentatiously lifted the bottom of my coat. I thought it strange that the continually scattering light didn’t dance in the wind. At the same time, I thought myself strange for finding a hackneyed strangeness in such trivia, even now.
As I walked south on Shimogamo Avenue, the figure of a woman came into view, sweeping leaves under a Chinese maple that had nervously stretched its branches. She was the sort of woman you see everywhere, dressed in blue work-clothes and cotton gloves, her frizzled hair tied up at the back of her head. All at once I felt uneasy. And when I drew closer, sure enough, before my very eyes she became a tiny sound and vanished.
Then clear water dripped.
Not missing a beat, a man and a woman came walking toward me, holding a guidebook. Right at my side, they, too, became two sounds and vanished.—
How can I describe the sound? A sound like that of something splitting. And it was a dull, unpleasant sound, like that of some resilient substance—human skin, for example, not paper or wood—being stretched to its limit and, unable to go any further, bursting.
Did they vanish, or did I? This was unclear. Perhaps we all vanished.
Wondering when this sort of thing began, I suddenly came up against thoughts of my own death, its whereabouts unknown.
I feared death as much as the next person does. This is because I believed that death would naturally come calling sooner or later. It’s laughable, but when I’d stumble at the end of a moving walkway in a railroad station or at an airport, I’d indulge in the idle thought that I might greet death in this ungainly way when, someday, it made its inevitable call. And when I came across a traffic accident, I’d reflect, like everyone else, that death might strike at any moment.
But one day I realized that my own death had long since been lost in time. Death was nowhere to be found, whether I looked to the future or reflected on the past. This is not to say that I believed in my own immortality. Death still exists somewhere. This the clear water teaches me. The spot where the drip lands is none other than death. —But how to reach that point?
I didn’t attempt any of the methods of suicide known to the world. I couldn’t conceive that doing so would deliver death to me, and first and foremost, I still feared death.
I just wanted to know. Thinking it over, I tentatively concluded that my own death must resemble an easily liquified metal, like mercury. Now it’s still in liquid form, in a small, swollen mass. Each time the clear water drips, I’m bathed in splashes of death. Perhaps that’s why I can’t touch these people.
A boy rode toward me, the stainless-steel mudguards on his bicycle flashing white. He vanished, leaving nothing behind but his vivid, smiling face. The sunlight showed no sign that it might stop scattering.
. . . Even so, how curious it is that death doesn’t do us the favor of congealing at a certain moment. If time tilts just a little bit, death will come flowing to me from nowhere, as though suddenly sliding down a slope. —Would this really happen, though? Might not death pass me by at that moment, and flow away to somewhere out of reach? Or could it be that death, in a liquid state, has already permeated time and moistened the ground at my feet?—
Another drip.
When I arrived at Kitaōji Street and turned west, a man coming out of a pachinko parlor vanished just as he was about to bump into me. Noise from inside, released for a moment by the automatic door. After that, nothing remained but an unpleasant echo of the usual sound. Walking a little farther, I met a tour group of about fifteen white people. Two blond boys, twelve or thirteen years of age, walked in front of a flag-bearing guide. Gazing at their faces, I reflected that they must still be elementary-school pupils, though they looked rather grown-up; and then they, too, suddenly disappeared. After that, a middle-aged man with black sunglasses and a red face vanished; the tour guide vanished; a dignified elderly couple listening to the guide vanished, . . . a boy clinging to his father’s legs; a freckled girl; a young man with the look of a college student peering sourly at a guidebook; an obese man wearing a baseball cap; and, bringing up the rear, a pair of honeymooners trying to load film into their camera— all of them turned into the usual sounds and vanished. I stopped walking and, standing in the middle of the silent street, watched the light continue to scatter. I thought again of my own lost death.
Is death the only thing lost?
The question flitted through my mind. Hadn’t my lifetime ceased long ago to be a straight line? Didn’t my existence lie scattered all over time and space, like a boxful of toys overturned by a child?
As I passed a bus stop, I heard three sounds in succession and realized, after they’d vanished, that people had been standing there.
Through the window of a coffeehouse across the street, I saw a man and a woman quarreling. An office worker at the next table, a newspaper spread before him, stole curious glances in their direction. A pregnant woman, shopping bag in hand, walked past the shop. Cars ran calmly in the street.
I found it incomprehensible. And I was terrified. I felt as though the word incomprehensible, which I used without thinking, had abruptly drawn me close to something indefinable. I felt as though I’d unleashed something irrevocable. And because of that, I felt as though I’d comprehended something for the first time.
Crossing at the signal, I reached Kitaōji Bridge, turned right, and walked for a time along Nakaragi Street.
The needles had withered on a row of pines; before them stood a line of naked weeping cherry trees with slender trunks.
Stopping at one of them, I saw a lump of deformed flesh, covered sparsely with feathers. Blood had flowed, then darkened and congealed.
It was a dead pigeon. The feathers, standing violently on end as though the bird had been plucked, fluttered in a breeze so faint I coul
d hardly feel it. Perhaps the feathers had loosened in the decomposing flesh. Each one twisted in a different direction. The barbs spread apart toward the feather tips, and the slightly blurred, bluish gray white looked like the petals of a fringed orchid. Two or three feathers lay scattered about, like fallen blossoms.
I wondered how feathers that’d been so trim and smooth while the bird lived could get this way when it died. The violated delicacy ironically emphasized the weight of the flesh. I felt an inexpressible tightness in my chest. Uncharacteristically irritable and impatient, I descended to the riverbank, as if running away from something. There the vivid green of the corpse’s head flickered obstinately in my mind, even though it hadn’t bothered me when it lay before my eyes.
And another drip.
I sat at the edge of the water, on rocks embedded in concrete.
I was alone by the river, perhaps because of the cold. There were no signs of the people one usually sees—housewives walking their dogs, young joggers. The foliage season was over. A ceaseless stream of cars came and went on Kitaōji Bridge, Kitayama Bridge, and the Kamo Highway. Connecting with the cherry-lined street, they formed a broad trapezoid that seemed completely cut off from the outside world.
It was eerie how the light scattered on the surface of the Kamo River. The water glittered so brightly I couldn’t look directly at it, no matter which direction I faced.
Did reflections of the light that filled the air blend into one mass, or did the light float on the water, merge in successive waves, and gradually spread?
The sun, fragmented, catching its breath again on the surface. The sun, offering itself to the human-reinforced riverbed and moving away with the flow.—
I was crazed by the falling petals of sun, which scattered with ever greater intensity. This continuous scattering produced an indescribable oppression. The sight held something like music. And yet it was an absolutely monotonous music. In its interminable monotony, it was music that deranged the listener’s senses, music wrapped in an ever-changing dream. I felt my sense of hearing contract fiercely then endlessly expand in response to these sounds that should not have been audible. I felt my ear drums tense up as though they would split. The sounds of the flowing river were thrust violently aside. There was no longer any noise from the cars. And yet as the silence closed in, my ears grew more fretful. My sense of hearing couldn’t grasp the fact that just as there’s no silence on the other side of sound, there’s no sound on the other side of silence. My hearing suffered from the illusion that sound might be audible even from silence, just as a faint sound is audible if you listen intently. My sense of hearing had nowhere to go. It wandered aimlessly.
And my vision grew strangely clear.
I watched stubbornly for the moment when they touched the surface of the river. Some swayed back and forth like a pendulum as they fell, then settled flat on the surface, revolved two or three times, and drifted slowly away. Some struck the water at an angle, got wet at the edges, were caught by the current, toppled over and drifted away. The moment when each petal touched the face of the water. The moment when each melted in the light and disappeared. Yet all of them were phantoms in the dazzling light. They were lines without line, shapes without shape. My vision came up against nothing. Just as my hearing sought a sound in the silence, my vision found its way only as far as the expanding light.
Each sense was possessed by a blind impulse to break down. Going mad, each trespassed on the others’ territory. I was astonished at their perceptivity, for they knew, long before I did, which way they should turn.
The many steps built at distant intervals in the riverbed sent waves lapping at the sashes of light that lay between them, light that drank up the shadows and spread serenely across the water as if it were the surface of a lake. These delicate waves, infinitely diffused, growing farther apart over a complexion that was neither dark blue nor deep green, vanished, flickering, into the brightest light. A water bird—a faint, black shadow—frolicked there. To watch it descend to the surface of the water, turn into a shadow, then resume its original form as it flew up again, was like gazing at a picture scroll depicting the death and rebirth of a phoenix.
I closed my eyes once, forcefully, with the result that my vision was tinged in red, as though it were clouded with blood. The light withdrew for a moment, and the flow of the river was clearly visible. In the hues and curves that floated into view, I pictured a woman’s long hair and her skin. Then with each blink, all grew misty and finally vanished in the light that spread again across the river’s surface.
—What had I seen? Or wanted to see?
I looked at the heavens. I felt as though I saw, in the dry winter sky, the sun of my memory. The phantom of that gigantic sun, scattering light everywhere as it receded into the distance. Light scattered. More and more it scattered. Even though they say that even snow against the sky looks like dust. The beauty of this light, and the sadness.
. . . As I placed my hands on the ground, preparing to stand up, a collarless dog came tumbling down the opposite embankment. It ran along the river’s edge, slid down the bank, plunged into the water as if it’d gone berserk, and writhed about, soaking its hair, which was a bit longer and more ungainly than the fur of a pure-blooded Shiba.
Light gradually smeared his body, which was soiled with leftover food.
“Ah, you, too . . .”
And another drip.
. . . This, too, was a memory. And it was a memory that amounted to nothing. Looking back, I tried to relive it, as I’d done with all my memories. I headed north, following the river, and walked through the streets. I was trying to believe somehow that this was a memory of today, a memory of something that had just occurred. I was trying to believe that among the multifarious memories that overflowed within me, this memory was closest in time to me as I am at this moment. Of course it was a fruitless effort. Now I understood. Even if I could believe this, what would be the point? Nothing, nothing at all. Whether it’s a memory of today, of yesterday, of one hundred, one thousand years ago, of whatever ancient time, even the memory of that sun. They’re all memories. Moreover, they’re solitary memories drifting idly in time. Yes, this moment, too, in all likelihood.
Emerging on Kitayama Avenue, I turned west, then, just before Horikawa, south into a residential neighborhood, then east, then north, then west . . . repeating this meander again and again, I came out somewhere on Shichiku Street, and then, again, . . .
Little by little, my foolish ramble was drawing me closer to something. Not, of course, to a concrete place. On the contrary, it was precisely this wandering that revealed the existence of that something. People vanished from sight, leaving only a tiny sound in my ears. Cleansed of all color by the light, the world returned to its immaculate form, like that of a midsummer cicada freshly escaped from its shell.
Existence—yes, there was no longer any doubt—my existence was being flung into the past. My existence at this moment, as soon as I’ve spoken, is already a perilous memory. Before the thought has run its course, it becomes a memory and is receding from me. It’s too late to name it, even to be conscious of it. My existence can’t even be grasped. I’m merely something that’s followed around by a swarm of dispersed memories. I’m something that scatters into the past, like unstrung beads. I’m something that—yes, that’s it—vainly gathers the fragments of my own existence, which I’ve called memories, and tries to link them together. How many I must have overlooked! How many I must have picked up by mistake!
The clear water drips, again and again, and the intervals grow shorter. A drip, another drip.
Walking along a row of gingko trees that had dropped their leaves, I returned to Kitayama Bridge. From there I headed south on Nakaragi Street as if drawn by something. Then I encountered the final mystery. Under a single, slender tree, one of that silent row of winter weeping cherries along the Kamo River, lay a small, square heap of unseasonal cherry petals.
I was certain that I saw them. B
ut they weren’t petals. Drawing near, I could see the pale, peach-color handkerchief of an unknown woman. A gust of air, kicked up by my feet as I hurried forward, raised the hem slightly, offering a glimpse of the feathers of the dead pigeon I’d seen before. With a gentle flutter, the handkerchief covered them again. . . .
The sun is still scattering.
I stood there forever, gazing at the handkerchief as it wavered now and then. Thinking of the dead pigeon that still lay beneath it . . . that must still have been lying beneath it.
Even now the clear water drips unceasingly behind me.
HOSHI SHIN’ICHI
Hoshi Shin’ichi (1926–1997) was a prolific master of the short-short story form. Many of his works fall into the category that the Japanese call SF (science fiction), whereas others are better described as imaginative mysteries. Hoshi’s stories often have a satirical twist combined with a touch of social commentary. This story, “He-y, Come on Ou-t!” (O-i, dete ko-i, 1978), is a prime example of both.
HE-Y, COME ON OU-T! (O-I, DETE KO-I)
Translated by Stanleigh Jones
The discovery of a deep hole has extraordinary impact on life in a small town.
The typhoon had passed and the sky was a gorgeous blue. Even a certain village not far from the city had suffered damage. A little distance from the village and near the mountains, a small shrine had been swept away by a landslide.
“I wonder how long that shrine’s been here.”
“Well, in any case, it must have been here since an awfully long time ago.”
“We’ve got to rebuild it right away.”
While the villagers exchanged views, several more of their number came over.
“It sure was wrecked.”
“I think it used to be right here.”
