Хироми Каваками - Record of a Night Too Brief

I suspected I had been hoodwinked. This irritated me even more, so I decided to go back. But suddenly, from the forests beyond the intertwining lines of elephants, dozens of elephant handlers came scurrying out and accosted me.

“You do know those are mandalas.”

“The Diamond Realm and the Womb Realm mandalas, no less. You don’t come across them often.”

“Please, don’t hurry off. Stay.”

Each elephant handler was dressed in gold brocade. But their robes were a bit shabby, and here and there the gold threads were frayed.

“If you don’t like them, there’s always the option of becoming an elephant handler.”

“What a great idea.”

“You’d enjoy being an elephant handler.”

And with that, they quickly started dressing me in gold brocade. I didn’t like this at all, so without a word I ran off.

I ran all the way back to the square with the arrow-shaped sign, and as I was catching my breath, someone I seemed to recognize appeared. She immediately jumped to conclusions.

“So you’re running away!”

“But the mandalas were so boring!” I replied.

“Well, I want to see them. Come on. Turn around,” she ordered me, imperiously.

I was suspicious, wondering why I had to do what she said, but I obeyed her, despite myself.

“Come on! Quickly! We must get a good look at the Womb Realm Mandala,” she commanded, even more imperiously.

So I went back to where the elephants were. I found it completely uninteresting, but I gazed thoughtfully, as I’d been told to, at the Womb Realm Mandala, which was on the right. As I gazed, I started to feel drowsy. I’ll just have forty winks, I thought, drifting off. I suddenly remembered I should issue an order to someone, quickly. But by then I was fast asleep.

Whenever we were separated, I would long for her. Even when I thought I had forgotten her, she would suddenly pop back into my mind. In fact, whenever there was any reason at all to remember her, I would remember her. So I decided to go back to her.

I made my way back along an endless windswept path, and there the girl was. She was seated on a single chair, which she had placed on a totally bare stretch of land. To my surprise, she was smoking a cigarette.

“Why are you smoking, for goodness’ sake?” I asked.

“My body’s changed,” was her reply.

As an experiment, I tried stroking the girl’s hair: several dry strands came away. With each stroke, more strands came away, fluttering down to the ground. It was a pretty sight, so I stroked her hair some more.

“Please stop,” she said eventually.

By that time, her hair had got a lot thinner.

The smoke from her cigarette spread in every direction, blown by the wind. The smoke assumed the forms of all sorts of things, which was fascinating to watch. Cats, rats, weasels… They ran off into the darkness once they had been given form. Sometimes a rat would be caught by a cat, and I would hear it squeak, which was spectacular.

“Aren’t you dancing?” I asked. The girl got up from her chair, and came and pressed her body against mine. As we held each other and danced, I glanced down, and there, peeping out from the strands of hair at the nape of her neck were what looked like mushrooms. Tiny, red mushrooms with flattened caps.

Horrified, I pushed the girl away from me.

The girl looked at the ground. She didn’t say a word. I felt guilty, and pulled her back to me. I put my hands round her shoulders, and we started dancing again.

“They’re going to multiply,” the girl said, drooping dejectedly. “They scatter their spores once every few hours. They multiply rapidly.”

I had blanched visibly, and I knew it; but I didn’t stop dancing. I just nodded.

When the yowling of the cats and rats and weasels, which had got quite noisy, finally died down, and our feet grew heavy and tired, I looked again at the nape of the girl’s neck, and saw twice as many mushrooms there.

“They have multiplied,” I said. The girl looked up. Her eyes, which were dark, almost black, like the eyes of a herbivorous animal, were fringed with long eyelashes. Her lips were plump and slightly pink, and the line from her temples down to her chin, with its fine downy hairs, curved in a gentle sweep.

“You have some on your neck, too,” she said, in a voice like a whisper.

I put my fingers to the back of my neck, and felt a number of small growths. I scratched one off, and bringing it to my eyes, I saw the beginnings of a tiny mushroom.

“Your body’s changed, just like mine,” the girl said, sighing.

A feeling of disgust rose in me. I felt nauseated. I wanted to give the girl a good shaking. But I controlled myself.

“It can’t be helped,” I said, and I quickened our steps.

As we whirled round, dancing, I knew the mushrooms would get bigger. Their mycelial filaments would increase, the small round bumps would get caps, and eventually those caps would pop open and release spores, countless spores, which would flutter down to the ground. Wherever those spores landed, these mushrooms would grow and proliferate.

I could feel my body getting covered by the tiny red mushrooms. Though I’d hated them before, the repugnance gradually gave way to a nostalgic, almost sleepy feeling, and I became quite accustomed to them.

I carried on dancing, twirling faster and faster.

Hearing a small shrill voice at my feet, I looked down and realized that the speaker was a kiwi.

“OK, here’s your first question.” It was that high raspy voice so characteristic of the birds.

“What food is the most efficient at producing longevity in canaries?”

The kiwi was brown in colour, with what looked like black seeds scattered amid its plumage. Crouching down and peering at it closely, I saw they weren’t seeds but patches of darker coloration.

“Come on, haven’t you worked it out yet? There are three possible answers: the egg of the reticulated python, the call of the stork at night, or soluble glass at molecular weight 126.”

Somewhat astonished at this, I remained crouched and totally still.

“Come on, haven’t you worked it out yet?” it shrieked. “The correct answer is soluble glass, molecular weight 126! Soluble glass, molecular weight 126!”

I was still getting over my surprise at this line of questioning when another kiwi appeared.

“In the past year, what is the number of victims of non-fatal lightning strikes?” this second kiwi asked. Its voice was somewhat lower than the voice of the first.

“Come on! Haven’t you worked it out yet? The correct answer is…,” the bird screeched. “…Two billion and fifty million! Two billion and fifty million!” The kiwi repeated the answer over and over again, running around in circles.

The number of kiwis was increasing by the minute. When I looked about me, there were dozens of them, all identical, and each one fired off a question to me in turn.

“What colour was Henri Michaux’s favourite bread-making machine?”

“Which one exists most essentially: a bolt on a door, or a hen on a bar?”

“Which corner of a room gets darkest first on a rainy day?”

“On a cloudy day, which will spread farther, the smell of cornflour or the smell of fresh cream?”

“How many layers above the Cambrian layer are the round green stones discarded in the baths of ancient Rome?”

I gave my answers in equally rapid succession.

“Reddish-brown!”

“A hen on a bar!”

“The east-south-east corner!”

“Cornflour!”

“Thirteen!”

At each answer, the kiwis squawked excitedly, the dozens of them running around in little circles together: