“Crabs,” “A ‘Poor Aunt’ Story,” “Hunting Knife,” and “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman” have all been greatly revised prior to their translation, so the versions here differ significantly from the first versions published in Japan. With some of the other older stories, too, I found spots I wasn’t pleased with and made some minor changes.
I should also mention that many times I’ve rewritten short stories and incorporated them into novels, and the present collection contains several of these prototypes. “The Wind-up Bird and Tuesday’s Women” (included in The Elephant Vanishes) became the model for the opening section of the novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and likewise both “Firefly” and “Man-Eating Cats,” with some changes, were incorporated as parts of, respectively, the novels Norwegian Wood and Sputnik Sweetheart. There was a period when narratives I’d written as short stories, after I’d published them, kept expanding in my mind, developing into novels. A short story I’d written long ago would barge into my house in the middle of the night, shake me awake, and shout, “Hey, this is no time to be sleeping! You can’t forget about me, there’s still more to write!” Impelled by that voice, I’d find myself writing a novel. In this sense, too, my short stories and novels connect up inside me in a very natural, organic way.
Many people have encouraged me and led me to write short stories. Every time I see Amanda Urban, my agent at ICM, she repeats this mantra-like exhortation: “Haruki, write more short stories!” Gary Fisketjon at Knopf, editor of The Elephant Vanishes, also edited the present collection and was pivotal in seeing Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman into print. Both Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel, my hardworking, skilled translators, have their own unique touch, and it’s been a real pleasure to read my stories again in their superb translations. I’ve also been greatly inspired by Deborah Treisman, and her predecessor, Linda Asher, literary editors at The New Yorker, which has published many of my stories. Thanks to all of them, this new collection of short stories is now published and—as a short story writer—I couldn’t be more pleased with what we’ve accomplished.
—H.M.
BLIND WILLOW, SLEEPING WOMAN
When I closed my eyes, the scent of the wind wafted up toward me. A May wind, swelling up like a piece of fruit, with a rough outer skin, slimy flesh, dozens of seeds. The flesh split open in midair, spraying seeds like gentle buckshot into the bare skin of my arms, leaving behind a faint trace of pain.
“What time is it?” my cousin asked me. About eight inches shorter than me, he had to look up when he talked.
I glanced at my watch. “Ten twenty.”
“Does that watch tell good time?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
My cousin grabbed my wrist to look at the watch. His slim, smooth fingers were surprisingly strong. “Did it cost a lot?”
“No, it’s pretty cheap,” I said, glancing again at the timetable.
No response.
My cousin looked confused. The white teeth between his parted lips looked like bones that had atrophied.
“It’s pretty cheap,” I said, looking right at him, carefully repeating the words. “It’s pretty cheap, but it keeps good time.”
My cousin nodded silently.
My cousin can’t hear well out of his right ear. Soon after he went into elementary school he was hit by a baseball and it screwed up his hearing. That doesn’t keep him from functioning normally most of the time. He attends a regular school, leads an entirely normal life. In his classroom, he always sits in the front row, on the right, so he can keep his left ear toward the teacher. And his grades aren’t so bad. The thing is, though, he goes through periods when he can hear sounds pretty well, and periods when he can’t. It’s cyclical, like the tides. And sometimes, maybe twice a year, he can barely hear anything out of either ear. It’s like the silence in his right ear deepens to the point where it crushes out any sound on the left side. When that happens, ordinary life goes out the window and he has to take some time off from school. The doctors are basically stumped. They’ve never seen a case like it, so there’s nothing they can do.
“Just because a watch is expensive doesn’t mean it’s accurate,” my cousin said, as if trying to convince himself. “I used to have a pretty expensive watch, but it was always off. I got it when I started junior high, but I lost it a year later. Since then I’ve gone without a watch. They won’t buy me a new one.”
“Must be tough to get along without one,” I said.
“What?” he asked.
“Isn’t it hard to get along without a watch?” I repeated, looking right at him.
“No, it isn’t,” he replied, shaking his head. “It’s not like I’m living off in the mountains or something. If I want to know the time I just ask somebody.”
“True enough,” I said.
We were silent again for a while.
I knew I should say something more, try to be kind to him, try to make him relax a little until we arrived at the hospital. But it had been five years since I saw him last. In the meanwhile he’d grown from nine to fourteen, and I’d gone from twenty to twenty-five. And that span of time had created a translucent barrier between us that was hard to traverse. Even when I had to say something, the right words just wouldn’t come out. And every time I hesitated, every time I swallowed back something I was about to say, my cousin looked at me with a slightly confused look on his face. His left ear tilted ever so slightly toward me.
“What time is it now?” he asked me.
“Ten twenty-nine,” I replied.
It was ten thirty-two when the bus finally rolled into view.
The bus that came was a new type, not like the one I used to take to high school. The windshield in front of the driver was much bigger, the whole vehicle like some huge bomber minus the wings. And the bus was more crowded than I’d imagined. Nobody was standing in the aisle, but we couldn’t sit together. We weren’t going very far, so we stood next to the rear door in back. Why the bus should be so crowded at this time of day was a mystery. The bus route started from a private railway station, continued up into a residential area in the hills, then circled back to the station, and there weren’t any tourist spots along the way. A few schools along the route made the buses crowded when kids were going to school, but at this time of day the bus should have been empty.
My cousin and I held on to the straps and poles. The bus was brand-new, straight from the factory, the metal surfaces so shiny you could see your face reflected in them. The nap of the seats was all fluffy, and even the tiniest of screws had that proud, expectant feeling that only brand-new machinery possesses.
The new bus, and the way it was unexpectedly crowded, threw me off. Maybe the bus route had changed since I last rode it. I looked carefully around the bus and glanced outside. But it was the same old view of a quiet residential district I remembered well.
“This is the right bus, isn’t it?” my cousin asked worriedly. Ever since we got aboard I must have had a perplexed look on my face.
“Not to worry,” I said, trying to reassure myself as much as him. “There’s only one bus route that goes by here, so this has got to be it.”