Хироми Каваками - Record of a Night Too Brief

In comparison to Hiroko’s family, my family is rather unscripted when it comes to customs: we really only have two. On the third day of the third month, Girls’ Day, we gather sprays of subtly coloured flowers from the fields, bring them back to the apartment, arrange them on a tiered display, and contemplate them. And on one evening in the month of September we turn off all the lights in the apartment and gaze up at the moon.

Once Hiroko becomes one of us, we will have to persuade her to give up the formal practice of getting drunk on the smell of parsley and mugwort and to follow our rather unscripted ways.

But it’s only these last fifty years that every family has started to have its own particular customs. Before that, there seems to have been little that differed among families at all. When I ask my mother and father about it, they purse their lips and don’t say much. Well, maybe I should go and ask someone who’s old, someone like Ten, I say. And they reply: Don’t be stupid! Families are just families, that’s all there is to it! Since that’s the answer I get as soon as I start to ask, I’ve had no option but to let the matter go.

It was the day for Hiroko and her father and grandfather to make their return visit.

On a night without moon or stars, Hiroko, her father, and her grandfather arrived at our apartment. Standing in the entrance-way, their arms full of rustling, leafy branches of some pliant tree like the willow, they dinged the bell, and my family greeted them. The three visitors brought neither kelp nor dried cuttlefish, like my family had, only a chart showing Hiroko’s family line, which Hiroko’s grandfather presented to my father.

When Hiroko’s grandfather and my father were done making their introductory statements, everyone present took a breath, and we all shuffled over in a group to the room that holds the god shelf. Facing the eight million gods of heaven and earth who reside there, my father offered up an ancient Shinto prayer, and Hiroko and her father and grandfather joined in, albeit with some embarrassment. There was still no sign of my brother no. 1 even when all the observances were over. We knew this was probably what would happen, but it was extremely awkward nevertheless.

Hiroko’s father and my father then discussed one or two matters of finance. When this discussion ended, there didn’t seem to be many other topics to talk about, and the adults fell silent. Then my brother no. 2 plucked Hiroko by the sleeve, and invited her to retire to his room. Hiroko went along with his suggestion, making a sign with her eyes to the adults.

Slipping away furtively behind the god shelf, and pressing my ear to the bedroom wall, I found I could hear the sweet nothings they were exchanging. The words continued in an unbroken fashion, now loud, now soft. Peeking in through a crack in the door I saw my brother no. 2 and Hiroko, each sitting in a different corner, one in the west, the other in the east, taking turns uttering endearments to one another. Neither looked directly at the other when they spoke. Each just listened to the other’s voice. Hiroko became aware of me standing at the door and beckoned me in, so I went inside and lay down on the floor at her feet.

Once I lay down, I remembered that I used to lie like this next to someone else, long ago. In that memory I could recall someone stroking parts of my belly, my throat, and the palms of my hands.

The person doing this was my brother no. 1. Nekoma, nekoma , he would be murmuring, stroking me determinedly. When he did that, I would make a sound in my throat, a continuous, soft, purring sound, and I would slowly turn into something that resembled the creature he was calling. A nekoma is a little creature that is covered with a thick coat of fur on its legs, arms, and back. It has whiskers, and it lives amid the boulders and pillars that form the foundations of a house. At first you might take it to be part of the foundations, but then on closer inspection one day you notice a spot that is a slightly different colour from the rest, and once you are aware of that you see, slowly, a distinct outline that emerges gradually, very gradually, as a nekoma. Finally, it takes on its own form, quite separate from the boulders and pillars, and then it comes out from under the house and starts to walk around inside the house. It walks around soundlessly, and so very few people are aware of its existence, but my brother no. 1’s ears were sharp, and he would grasp on to the sound of its steps and call out, Nekoma! Nekoma! and the nekoma would immediately go up to him and curl up in a little ball in his lap, looking both half-awake and half-asleep at the same time.

I had never laid eyes on a nekoma, but my brother no. 1 used to tell me so much about them, I found myself involuntarily trying to take the form of a nekoma. I longed so much to curl up in a little ball in my brother no. 1’s lap, to be held like a nekoma in his arms. But my brother no. 1 had disappeared from my world, and so all I could do was to lie stretched out at the feet of Hiroko.

“I love you so much, I could die of my love,” I heard Hiroko say to my second elder brother, above me as I lay there.

“ I love you ,” my brother no. 2 would reply. “With a love that is as deep as a swamp, and as high as a heap of rubble.”

“A swamp, you say? What colour of swamp?”

“A dark, muddy, bluish-greenish swamp.”

“Well, my love is just as deep, just as deep as that swamp.”

“And the love that we both feel will merge together in the murky waters of the swamp, and sink down silently, ever so silently, to the bottom.”

“And what will we find, waiting there at the bottom?”

“Why, Hiroko: family, of course.”

The two of them repeated their sweet nothings any number of times. But I simply grew sadder and sadder. My brother no. 1 who used to stroke me like a pet had disappeared. I often had a distinct sense of his presence, but Hiroko and my brother no. 2 were now behaving as if he were no longer a part of our lives. And pretty soon that’s what he would be—gone from our lives for ever. Perhaps this was what my brother no. 1 meant when he told me he was sad. I try with all my might to become a nekoma, but since the person who used to do the things that made me become one has gone, I find it impossible. I have a physical form, I am still in the family, but I’m sad. And if I am this sad now, what is the point in being here? Perhaps it won’t be long before I disappear too.

The marriage between my brother no. 1 and Hiroko was dissolved with a telephone call to Ten, and with that same telephone call Hiroko became engaged to my brother no. 2 since the engagement formalities had already taken place. Both my father and my mother seemed to have forgotten that my brother no. 1 had ever existed. And my brother no. 2 seemed to have forgotten as well. Before I was even aware of it, the hammock in which my brother no. 1 used to sleep was taken down, and we were spending our days as a family of four.

Time passed, and the festival season approached. My father and my mother were taken up with the festival preparations. Every night discussions took place in the conference room of the apartment complex about arrangements for the event: who should be allowed to set up stalls. What kind of pattern should adorn the jackets of the participants. Whether we should drape decorations on the stones. And also how we should combat the insects.

During the festival season we are visited by swarms of insects, and the residents of the apartment complex are always concerned about what steps to take against them. The insects are about as large as a person’s thumb. In colour and shape they resemble the rhinoceros beetle, though they’re somewhat smaller in size. They fly around making a loud droning sound and sting people. Once someone is stung, the skin swells up with bumps that are the size of a coin, and these bumps then become blisters, which take a long time to heal. The best thing would be if we could spend the whole of the festival indoors and so not risk any contact with the bugs. But we have to go outside: the festival always takes place in the grassy area in the middle of the complex. A festival held indoors wouldn’t be a festival.