Хироми Каваками - Record of a Night Too Brief

“Do you often have family members who shrink?” my father asked, when it was all nearly over.

“We do—often,” Hiroko’s grandfather replied, in a confidential tone.

My father and my mother exchanged glances.

“Members of our family disappear ,” my father declared.

Hiroko’s grandfather nodded gravely. “Every family has something about it, doesn’t it?” he said.

Suddenly my brother no. 1 made an appearance. He was intoning a prayer in the centre of the room. My brother no. 2 was as weak and lifeless as he had been since Hiroko started to shrink. He was still chiselling his pieces of wax.

“Do I hear something?” said Hiroko’s grandfather, seeming to sense the presence of my brother no. 1. Goshiki’s voice started resounding loudly in my ears. Kuna-nira, kuna-nira … Overlaying the tones of the tuneless mumblings coming from my brother no. 1, it drowned out, inexorably, every other sound.

Hiroko’s family were just on the point of closing the front door as they left when my mother asked, as if the thought had suddenly struck her:

“Do pipe foxes really have a marvellous smell?”

Hiroko’s family looked at my mother in wonder. “Pipe foxes?” Hiroko’s grandfather repeated.

“Yes, pipe foxes,” my mother replied.

“What on earth are they? ”

My mother and my father twitched slightly, but recovered in a second.

Once little Hiroko and her family had taken their leave, my brother no. 1 disappeared and Goshiki’s mutterings ceased. I asked my mother and father to tell me about pipe foxes. They both looked baffled. “What are you talking about?” my mother replied. My father shook his head adamantly.

“Well, then, can you tell me about my brother no. 1?” I immediately asked.

At this, my mother and my father looked even more mystified.

“You’re talking nonsense, girl. Goodness, what a tiring day. I’m all worn out,” my mother said, pounding her shoulders. And my father echoed her words.

“I wonder if Hiroko will ever go back to her previous size.”

“‘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.

ON MYway 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.