Хироми Каваками - Record of a Night Too Brief

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.

LATELY, THINGSjust 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.