“Really?” the woman asked, smiling. “You think it’s that simple?” And she set about strangling me again.
I became conscious of a loud zapping sound. The energy that had been generated was filling the room with an electric charge, producing flashes of intensely blue and white light; soon, droplets of water started to fall from the ceiling. The droplets became drops that fell faster and faster, and the room started to fill with water. The water rose from our heels to our knees, from our knees to our hips, and the woman and I continued to thrash around in it. Soon the room became totally submerged in water, and we were still fighting. The entire apartment building became engulfed, and started to drift away, joining the muddy stream that cut though Midori Park heading towards the Kanakana-Dō. But still neither of us would concede.
“Just come over. You’ll see that I’m right. You don’t know what you’re refusing!”
“I’m telling you—it doesn’t exist.”
“But Hiwako, dear, you should listen to me. I am your mother!”
“You are not!”
“Well, let me explain!”
“No.”
“How will you understand, if you don’t listen?”
“I don’t want to understand!”
“See what I mean? Putting on your little act!”
As we yelled, the room and everything in it was being swept away. It was early morning, and the Kanakana-Dō’s shutter had been raised. Mr Kosuga was sweeping the pavement in front of the shop. I could see Nishiko sitting at her desk, quietly threading strands of prayer beads. In front of the shop a festival float crammed with flowers and girls in traditional dancing costumes was being pulled merrily along on its way, and from the float came a song, the song of the credit association, playing loudly over the speakers:
The words rose up around the Kanakana-Dō in an endlessly coiling loop of sound, while inside the shop I could see Mr Kosuga and Nishiko, unperturbed, busy with their tasks. Miss Sanada, it’s important to practise, to keep on your guard, Mr Kosuga told me, watching me as I floated by, giving me a wink. This isn’t “practice”, I retorted—and even on your guard, things can still catch you when you’re unawares! But Mr Kosuga merely rubbed his head, a filterless cigarette in his mouth, his usual impassive self.
“Hiwako, dear, stop being so stubborn, open your eyes!” the woman was saying.
“You should open your eyes!”
“Oh, that’s so hypocritical.”
The woman was squeezing her fingers tighter and tighter. She still had that expression on her face, an indeterminate mixture of pleasure and pain. Well, if she is strangling me, I thought, placing my fingers around her neck…
In the flashes of intense blue and white light, everything around became dazzlingly, searingly bright, and surrounded by that brightness, pitting our equal strengths, the woman and I struggled, locked in a battle to throttle each other, as the apartment hurtled away at an unbelievable speed.
About the Publisher
Pushkin Press was founded in 1997, and publishes novels, essays, memoirs, children’s books—everything from timeless classics to the urgent and contemporary.
Our books represent exciting, high-quality writing from around the world: we publish some of the twentieth century’s most widely acclaimed, brilliant authors such as Stefan Zweig, Marcel Aymé, Antal Szerb, Paul Morand and Yasushi Inoue, as well as compelling and award-winning contemporary writers, including Andrés Neuman, Edith Pearlman and Ryu Murakami.
Pushkin Press publishes the world’s best stories, to be read and read again. Here are just some of the titles from our long and varied list. For more amazing stories, visit www.pushkinpress.com.
‘A mesmerising work of literature’ Antony Beevor
‘A genius of the short story’ Mark Lawson, Guardian
‘A beautiful, accomplished noveclass="underline" as ambitious as it is generous, as moving as it is smart’ Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Guardian
‘Zweig’s fictional masterpiece’ Guardian
‘The World of Yesterday is one of the greatest memoirs of the twentieth century, as perfect in its evocation of the world Zweig loved, as it is in its portrayal of how that world was destroyed’ David Hare
‘Just divine… makes you imagine the author has had private access to your own soul’ Nicholas Lezard, Guardian
‘One wild ride: a swirling helix of a family saga… a new writer as toe-curling as early Roth, as roomy as Franzen and as caustic as Houellebecq’ Sunday Telegraph
‘A five-star satire on literary vanity… a wonderful, surprising novel’ Metro
‘Terrific… a truly clever, rather wonderful book that both plays with and defies genre’ Eileen Battersby, Irish Times
‘Beautifully evocative… a must-read novel’ Daily Mail
‘Wonderfully knotty… a very grown-up fantasy masquerading as quirky fable. Unexpected, thrilling and absurd’ Sunday Telegraph
‘Beautiful and supremely touching… an unbearably poignant description of a world that no longer exists’ Sunday Telegraph
‘Small and perfectly formed… reaching its end leaves the reader desirous to start all over again’ Independent
‘If Haruki is The Beatles of Japanese literature, Ryu is its Rolling Stones’ David Pilling