Toshiki Okada - The End of the Moment We Had

I throw my phone at the cockroach, even though there’s no way I’ll ever hit it. The cover slides off and the battery pops out, still held by the battery ribbon.

The cockroach is unhurt, of course. It scuttles up the face of the fridge, past the lower compartment and almost to the middle of the upper compartment, when it stops. I bet it was the roach that knocked over the beer cans.

I get up from the futon, wanting to kill the cockroach. I grab the help-wanted weekly off the floor and roll it up tightly, back into the tube it once was. The roach darts from the fridge to the wall, scurrying along near the ceiling into the room where I was lying. The grey suit is in a cabinet in the room, the hardest one to reach by far which is fine because all we have in there are things we never take out, old letters, my husband’s old game consoles and cartridges, my work from art school, my grey suit which I didn’t bother to hang on a hanger but is at least in the plastic bag it came in, I think. I’m pretty sure the suit is stuffed in there. By now it’s probably covered in mould. The cockroach slips into the drawer.

TOSHIKI OKADAis a hugely admired playwright, director and novelist. Born in Yokohama in 1973, he formed the chelfitsch theatre company in 1997. Since then he has written and directed all of the company’s productions, and has come to be known for his hyper-colloquial dialogue and staccato choreography. His play Five Days in March, on which the first story in The End of the Moment We Had is based, won the prestigious Kishida Kunio Drama Award. His works have been translated into many languages around the world.

SAM MALISSAhas translated Japanese fiction and non-fiction, including work by Hideo Furukawa, Masatsugu Ono and Shun Medoruma. He has a master’s degree in Japanese literature from Yale University.

RECORD OF A NIGHT TOO BRIEF

Hiromi Kawakami

Translated by Lucy North

SPRING GARDEN

Tomoka Shibasaki

Translated by Polly Barton

SLOW BOAT

Hideo Furukawa

Translated by David Boyd

Ms ICE SANDWICH

Mieko Kawakami

Translated by Louise Heal Kawai

THE BEAR AND THE PAVING STONE

Toshiyuki Horie

Translated by Geraint Howells

THE END OF THE MOMENT WE HAD

Toshiki Okada

Translated by Sam Malissa

Series editors: David Karashima and Michael Emmerich

Translation editor: Elmer Luke

Pushkin Press

71–75 Shelton Street

London WC2H 9JQ

The End of the Moment We Had was first published as Watashitachi ni yurusareta tokubetsu na jikan no owari in Japan, 2007

First published by Pushkin Press in 2018

English translation © Sam Malissa 2018

© Toshiki Okada 2007

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the British Centre for Literary Translation and the Nippon Foundation

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ISBN 13: 978 1 78227 417 9

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