Хироми Каваками: Record of a Night Too Brief

A bird, squawking, flew to the top of the mound, loudly flapping its wings, and proceeded to peck at the creature. The creature still did not change his pose, keeping his one knee up and palms turned upwards. Blood flowed in trickles from where the bird had pecked most deeply. Another bird, and then another, flew to the top of the mound and pecked at him—and suddenly all the birds flew to the top of the mound, squawking, screeching, flapping their wings violently, and pecking at the creature, producing yet more trickles of blood, which turned into streams of blood that flowed down the body of the creature onto the velvet cloth, leaving blackish-red streaks.

In a great mob, the birds pecked at his arms, ankles, chin, temples, neck, stomach.

The creature started very slowly to keel over, but even so he maintained his original pose, one knee up, palms turned upwards. The surface of his skin was riddled with the holes gouged out by the birds. Deep and black, the holes threatened to take his body over completely.

One bird started attacking his eyes.

Out came the left eye. The creature stared even more determinedly at the heavens with his right eye. Teetering unsteadily in the breeze created by the flapping of the birds’ wings, he glared at the sky.

Another bird attacked his right eye, and still the creature glared up at the heavens. By now most of his body was a gaping hole, and it was no longer even possible to tell whether his knee was up, or his palms turned upwards. The vestiges of whatever had been there before remained on the velvet cloth, staring up at the heavens.

Waak, waak.

One last peck, and the body was gone completely. Bereft of the body’s weight, the velvet cloth was tossed aside with the beating of the birds’ wings. The mound was now the birds’ mound: and at the very top, where the odour of fermentation was rising from, dozens of eggs that had been covered by the velvet cloth were exposed. The birds sent up a chorus of joyful squawks and screeches.

Meanwhile, the night moved on, the shadows deepened, and midnight approached, the birds oblivious.

The presence of that creature-that-was-no-longer spread everywhere, filling the space between earth and sky. And the night, enveloped by that presence, reached its deepest and darkest state of being, the darkness a kind of truth in itself.

I awoke to the sound of something bursting. The girl who was supposed to be sleeping close to me was nowhere to be seen. I lifted myself up, drowsily, and looked around: the girl was sitting in the crotch of a tree, staring into the distance.

“What can you see?” I asked.

The girl beckoned to me, and pointed. “Look.”

I looked in the direction she was pointing and saw a huge firework going up into the sky.

The flaming ball shot up, higher and higher, and then exploded, sending a burst of tiny points of red and orange and green light outwards, like rain. Another firework rose, and then another, then another one, and every time, the girl’s face lit up in the darkness, tinged red and orange and green.

“Come on,” she said.

Climbing down from the tree, she headed towards where the fireworks were bursting, and I followed. Then she started rising rapidly into the air, as if she were ascending a staircase. She quickly rose high into the sky.

“Come on!” she said, stretching her hand out towards me.

I grasped it, and with her hand pulling me up, I took a step, gingerly, and felt steps under my feet. I followed the steps up, and found my whole body rising.

We rose rapidly, until finally we were on a level with the fireworks.

Up close, the fireworks were very hot. The sparks shot out and fell on us, fizzled, and vanished. We were heedless.

“Let’s go closer,” the girl said, gripping my hand tightly.

I was suddenly afraid. “Let’s not,” I tried saying.

But the girl wouldn’t give up. “We’ll be able to get through.” She gripped my hand even more tightly.

With her pulling me forcibly, we charged right in.

“Deeper, deeper,” she said. So I went in deeper. I couldn’t stand to—I hated to. But nevertheless I went in deeper. One place after another on my body caught fire, and I became engulfed in flames. It was hot, searingly hot.

I got burnt. The girl got burnt too. The fire consumed us so completely that not even our bones were left.

“Why do you do such things?” I asked, angrily.

The girl was silent.

“You can’t be happy unless you have everything your own way, can you?” I said, my voice growing shrill.

But the girl said nothing.

“I’ve had enough,” I said. And I left her.

I had no idea where I was going, but I stormed off. I was determined not to think about her any more. I tried not to think about anything. While I was walking, not thinking about anything, I forgot how to speak.

This wasn’t surprising: I had no body. And I had no brain.

I kept walking, on and on and on. Finally I found myself at a place that was darker even than night.

I was immediately sucked inside it, and I couldn’t get out. I did have the thought, briefly, that if I’d stayed with the girl, without leaving her, I wouldn’t be stuck in this God-awful place. But other than that, I didn’t think anything.

After a while, I forgot about the girl. I forgot about everything. Every now and then, I thought I saw a face that resembled mine staring back at me in the darkness, but by now nothing about me remained: no face, no body, nothing. So I couldn’t ask myself who it was. I couldn’t think about it, and I didn’t care.

Having heard that in the west there was something called the Elephant of Eternity, I ended up going on a quest for it. I wasn’t so keen on the quest myself, but as it had been decided that I should go on it, I had no choice. Going alone made me a little nervous, so I asked a few acquaintances if they would come along.

“Well, what would the point of that be?” they asked, and then, while I was struggling for a reply, they all found some excuse or other for why they couldn’t accompany me. Cash-flow difficulties ruled it out, or their common-law wife had got pregnant so the timing was bad, or they’d consulted a specialist in divination and been given a verdict of “Disaster Imminent”, et cetera, et cetera.

I had no choice but to set out alone.

Heading up a path with watermelon vines overgrowing it, I came out onto a square.

THIS WAY FOR THE ELEPHANT OF ETERNITY was written on an arrow-shaped sign.

I had imagined that the way would be beset with difficulty. This was almost disappointingly easy.

Heading in the direction indicated, I walked for an hour, and then there the elephants were.

They were quite small, and they had roundish ears. There was a whole line of them. Every one of them white. Even seeing them now, at night, they were white.

Which one of them was the Elephant of Eternity, though? I had no idea. So as an experiment, I addressed the one closest to me:

“Are you the Elephant of Eternity?”

He nodded emphatically, and emitted a roar. That special trumpeting roar peculiar to elephants.

This was not necessarily to be believed, and so I asked the same thing of another elephant.

That one nodded, just like the one before, and made exactly the same trumpeting sound. I asked about ten of the elephants, and got exactly the same response.

Irritated, I made my way up to the front of the line. As I moved forward, the number of elephants increased, and they were more and more intertwined.

Soon, I realized that the sight of the intertwining elephants reminded me of something. It dawned on me that it was a mandala. The elephants intertwined on the left side of the road were arranged like the Diamond Realm Mandala, and the elephants intertwined on the right side of the road were arranged like the Womb Realm Mandala.