Хироми Каваками: Record of a Night Too Brief

At this thought, time came to a standstill. A little while later, I was assailed by contractions of unbelievable force.

No matter how much I poured into the cup, it never filled. And then I realized that the liquid I assumed to be coffee had, unbeknownst to me, turned into night.

Peering into the night as it poured into the cup, I could see tiny stars and gases whirling near the surface, and down at the bottom, something laughing. In dismay, I took the cup to a sink, and tipped it so that all the night it contained would spill out, but as long as I held it there, the night kept on flowing, interminably.

I had been holding the cup there for a good hour, and still the night came. No matter how much was sucked away down the drain, there was always more. Resigning myself, I turned the cup upright and peered into it again: at this the laughter coming up from the bottom of the cup grew very loud. I hurled the cup against the wall. From the broken shards the soft clouds of night floated up, spreading outwards. And there, in among them, was the laughter’s source.

It was a large Japanese macaque.

It was laughing loudly, baring its teeth, exposing its gums. I was surprised that a monkey was laughing just like a human being: so I gave it a poke with the end of a mop to see what it would do.

At this, the monkey abruptly stopped laughing.

“Do you have to be so rude?” it demanded, in a terrifying voice.

I tried to apologize but my tongue seemed to stick to my palate, and no sound came out.

“Didn’t your parents teach you any manners at all ?” the monkey shouted at me, even more loudly.

I made several small bows, and shuffled back bit by bit. The monkey edged forward.

“Apologize!” it bellowed. Its voice was ear-splittingly loud—the vibrations produced cracks in the room’s walls.

I shuffled back some more, and the monkey again roared, “Apologize!” At this, the entire ceiling came crashing down.

In the nick of time I opened the door and rushed into the corridor, and out into the night. Several neighbours had come out of their houses: they were pointing at the collapsed ceiling and talking among themselves. I ran off, pushing my way through them. When an angry monkey, howling at the top of his lungs, appeared from the rubble, the staring onlookers scattered in all directions, like baby spiders.

Blind with rage, the monkey swatted away several people who had been slow on the uptake, sending them flying into the distance. Turning back, I caught sight of them disappearing into the night, tracing parabolic curves, whooping and laughing as they went. For a moment, fascinated, I was about to stop, but then I realized that the monkey was just behind me, breathing roughly, and so I started running again.

“Apologize!” the monkey said, panting for breath.

I wanted to apologize but the momentum was taking my legs forward. They wouldn’t stop.

“Apologize!” Soon the monkey’s panting turned to wheezing, and inside the wheezing, another sound could be heard, something rather like thunder.

“Apologize!” the monkey said, close to the back of my neck. And immediately twenty or more rumbles of thunder boomed about us. The rumbles gradually got louder and louder, and flashes of lightning lit up the sky. The intervals between them shortened, and soon the crashes of thunder and flashes of lightning were occurring simultaneously. Several times a bolt of lightning struck something, and the surrounding darkness was lit up dazzlingly, then went black again. The speed with which my feet hit the ground got faster with each crash.

I appeared to be running faster than the speed of sound because suddenly there was no longer any thunder to be heard. I could only see flashes of lightning, which continued unceasingly, and inside them the silhouette of the monkey as it charged along after me. I couldn’t hear its commands to “Apologize!” any more. I continued to run, with all my might, through the soundless void.

Soon, exhaustion overcame me, my legs began to feel heavy, and the monkey caught up. It didn’t slow down. In an instant it had passed me, and no sooner had it gone by than it disappeared.

Little by little, my pace slowed and I began to hear sounds again—the heavy breathing of the monkey, peals of thunder—muted at first, like sounds heard underwater, but gradually getting clearer. The next instant, they all joined together in a great cacophony, which pressed in on me and burst.

Within the sudden inundation of sound, at the very bottom of it, was a sound much louder than anything else. I listened to it and realized it was laughter.

It was that same monkey’s laughter, noticeably more powerful and more resonant than any of the other many noises that were echoing in the night.

My mass had been missing for a while. You tend to assume that without any mass you wouldn’t exist. But I was definitely there. Hard to believe, but it was true.

Not only was I there, the girl was there with me, right by my side. She didn’t have any mass either. I knew she was there because I could hear her moving about in places where nothing could be seen.

I was just about to call out to her when our surroundings were suddenly illuminated by a blaze of light.

The light was shining out of a corner of the night sky. In just that part, a bit of the sky seemed to have been cut out and the night peeled back into a square, so that the light streamed through the square hole, straight down to the ground, in a single shaft. To a bystander, it would probably have looked as if a square-shaped pillar of light was rising straight up out of the ground towards the heavens.

Bathed in that light, we found we did have mass after all. The light was a special, miraculous kind. But as we had only a tiny amount of mass, we were both extremely small—smaller, even, than mice.

Small as I was, I turned to the girl, and told her: “I love you.” With the light pouring down, I repeated the words several times. And each time I said them, a curious creature emerged out of the earth.

The first creature to emerge seemed to be a failed version of the girl. She was about twice the size of the small girl by my side, and made of metal. Creaking, she made her way out of the shaft of light.

The second creature was another failed version of the girl. This one was silver. I thought at first she looked silver because of the silvery light, but even when she walked out of it she still shone with a silvery lustre. Her face, her hands, and her legs—every part of her glittered, menacingly. The silver girl followed in the footsteps of the metal girl. The glow of her silvery image lingered in my eye.

The third creature was yet another failed version of the girl. This one was almost identical to her in every way; the only thing different was that she had a tail. After wagging her tail wildly for a while, she hurried off after the first two versions.

I was about to say “I love you” a fourth time when the girl put out her hand and stopped my mouth, gently. Her hand as she touched my lips smelt of the night. I didn’t want it there, and grasping her wrist gently, I moved it away.

“Why?” I asked.

“You know why. Because it’s a lie,” she replied.

I hugged her gently, and she hugged me back, equally gently.

“It’s not something you say so easily,” she said as she hugged me.

She’s right, I thought, as we hugged each other, but before very long I wanted to tell her I loved her again.

Well, why don’t we stop, then, if it’s a lie! I blurted out.

As soon as I spoke, the ground started to roar and rumble, and in the next second it split open. Two more beings emerged—myself and the girl, this time perfectly accurately massed. To us, these two beings seemed gigantic: smiling benignly, using their gigantic eyes, they had no difficulty in locating the first girl, the imperfect metal one; and the second girl, the imperfect silver one; and the third girl, the one that had a tail, in the darkness. They shut them away in a briefcase. Then, turning towards us, they plucked up my companion, and locked her in there too.