The Elephant Vanishes (19 page)

Oh, no, I thought to myself. Can it read people’s minds? I hate to have anyone know what I’m thinking—especially when that someone is a horrid and inscrutable little creature like this. I broke out in a cold sweat from head to foot. What was this thing going to do to me? Eat me? Take me down into the earth? Oh, well, at least it wasn’t so ugly that I couldn’t stand looking at it. That was good. It had slender, pink little arms and legs jutting out from its green-scaled body and long claws at the ends of its hands and feet. They were almost darling, the more I looked at them. And I could see, too, that the creature meant me no harm.

Of course not, it said to me, cocking its head. Its scales clicked against one another when it moved—like crammed-together coffee cups rattling on a table when you nudge it. What a terrible thought, madam: Of course I wouldn’t eat you. No no no. I mean you no harm, no harm, no harm. So I was right: It knew exactly what I was thinking.

Madam madam madam, don’t you see? Don’t you see? I’ve come here to propose to you. From deep deep deep down deep down deep. I had to crawl all the way up here up here up. Awful, it was awful, I had to dig and dig and dig. Look at how it ruined my claws! I could never have done this if I meant you any harm, any harm, any harm. I love you. I love you so much I couldn’t stand it anymore down deep down deep. I crawled my way up to you, I had to, I had to. They all tried to stop me, but
I couldn’t stand it anymore. And think of the courage that it took, please, took. What if you thought it was rude and presumptuous, rude and presumptuous, for a creature like me to propose to you?

But it
is
rude and presumptuous, I said in my mind. What a rude little creature you are to come seeking my love!

A look of sadness came over the monster’s face as soon as I thought this, and its scales took on a purple tinge, as if to express what it was feeling. Its entire body seemed to shrink a little, too. I folded my arms to watch these changes occurring. Maybe something like this would happen whenever its feelings altered. And maybe its awful-looking exterior masked a heart that was as soft and vulnerable as a brand-new marshmallow. If so, I knew I could win. I decided to give it a try. You
are
an ugly little monster, you know, I shouted in my mind’s loudest voice—so loud it made my heart reverberate. You
are
an ugly little monster! The purple of the scales grew deeper, and the thing’s eyes began to bulge as if they were sucking in all the hatred I was sending them. They protruded from the creature’s face like ripe green figs, and tears like red juice ran down from them, splattering on the floor.

I wasn’t afraid of the monster anymore. I painted pictures in my mind of all the cruel things I wanted to do to it. I tied it down to a heavy chair with thick wires, and with a needle-nose pliers I began ripping out its scales at the roots, one by one. I heated the point of a sharp knife, and with it I cut deep grooves in the soft pink flesh of its calves. Over and over, I stabbed a hot soldering iron into the bulging figs of its eyes. With each new torture I imagined for it, the monster would lurch and writhe and wail in agony as if those things were actually happening to it. It wept its colored tears and oozed thick gobs of liquid onto the floor, emitting a gray vapor from its ears that had the fragrance of roses. Its eyes sent an unnerving glare of reproach at me. Please, madam, oh please, I beg of you, don’t think such terrible thoughts! it cried. I have no evil thoughts for you. I would never harm you. All I feel for you is love, is love. But I
refused to listen. In my mind, I said, Don’t be ridiculous! You crawled out of my garden. You unlocked my door without permission. You came inside my house. I never asked you here. I have the right to think anything I want to. And I continued to do exactly that—thinking at the creature increasingly terrible thoughts. I cut and tormented its flesh with every machine and tool I could think of, overlooking no method that might exist to torture a living being and make it writhe in pain. See, then, you little monster, you have no idea what a woman is. There’s no end to the number of things I can think of to do to you. But soon the monster’s outlines began to fade, and even its strong green nose shriveled up until it was no bigger than a worm. Writhing on the floor, the monster tried to move its mouth and speak to me, struggling to open its lips as if it wanted to leave me some final message, to convey some ancient wisdom, some crucial bit of knowledge that it had forgotten to impart to me. Before that could happen, the mouth attained a painful stillness, and soon it went out of focus and disappeared. The monster now looked like nothing more than a pale evening shadow. All that remained, suspended in the air, were its mournful, bloated eyes. That won’t do any good, I thought to it. You can look all you want, but you can’t say a thing. You can’t do a thing. Your existence is over, finished, done. Soon the eyes dissolved into emptiness, and the room filled with the darkness of night.

—translated by Jay Rubin

I
T PROBABLY HAPPENS
all the time, but I disliked my kid sister’s fiancé right from the start. And the less I liked him, the more doubts I had about her. I was disappointed in her for the choice she had made.

Maybe I’m just narrow-minded.

My sister certainly seemed to think so. We didn’t talk about my feelings, but she knew I didn’t like her fiancé, and she let her annoyance show.

“You’ve got such a narrow view of things,” she said.

At the time, we were talking about spaghetti. She was telling me that I had a narrow view of spaghetti.

This was not all she had in mind, of course. Her fiancé was lurking somewhere just beyond the spaghetti, and she was really talking about him. We were fighting over him by proxy.

It all started one Sunday afternoon when she suggested we go out for Italian food. “Fine,” I said, since I just happened to be
in the mood for that. We went to a cute little spaghetti house that had recently opened up across from the station. I ordered spaghetti with eggplant and garlic, and she asked for pesto sauce. While we waited, I had a beer. So far, so good. It was May, a Sunday, and the weather was beautiful.

The problem started with the spaghetti itself, which was a disaster. The surface of the pasta had an unpleasant, floury texture. The center was still hard and uncooked. Even a dog would have turned its nose up at the butter they had used. I couldn’t eat more than half of what was on my plate, and I asked the waitress to take the rest away.

My sister glanced at me once or twice but didn’t say anything at first. Instead, she took her time, eating everything they had served her, down to the last thread. I sat there, looking out the window and drinking another beer.

“You didn’t have to make such a show of leaving your food,” she said when the waitress had taken her plate.

“Yuck.”

“It wasn’t that bad. You could have forced yourself.”

“Why should I? It’s
my
stomach, not yours.”

“It’s a brand-new restaurant. The cook’s probably not used to the kitchen. It wouldn’t have killed you to give him the benefit of the doubt,” she said, and took a sip of the thin, tasteless-looking coffee they had brought her.

“You may be right,” I said, “but it only makes sense for a discriminating individual to leave food he doesn’t like.”

“Well, excuse
me
, Mr. Know-it-all.”

“What’s
your
problem? That time of the month again?”

“Oh, shut up. I deserve better than that from you.”

“Take it easy,” I said. “You’re talking to a guy who knows exactly when your periods started. You were so late, Mom took you to see a doctor.”

“You’re going to get my pocketbook right between the eyes …”

She was turning serious, so I shut up.

“The trouble with you is, you’re so narrow-minded about everything,” she said as she added cream to her coffee (meaning it
was
tasteless, after all). “You only see the negative things. You don’t even
try
to look at the good points. If something doesn’t measure up to your standards, you won’t touch it. It’s so annoying.”

“Maybe so. But it’s my life, not yours.”

“And you don’t care how much you hurt people. You just let them clean up your mess. Even when you masturbate.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I remember when you were in high school you used to do it in your sheets. The women of the family had to clean up after you. The least you could do is masturbate without getting it all over your sheets.”

“I’ll be more careful from now on,” I said. “Now, forgive me for repeating myself, but it just so happens that I have my own life. I know what I like and I know what I don’t like. It’s as simple as that.”

“Okay, but you don’t have to hurt people. Why don’t you try a little harder? Why don’t you look at the good side? Why don’t you at least show some restraint? Why don’t you grow up?”

Now she had touched a sore spot. “I am grown up. I can show restraint. And I can look at the good side, too. I’m just not looking at the same things you are.”

“That’s what I mean. You’re so arrogant. That’s why you haven’t got a steady girlfriend. I mean, you’re twenty-seven years old.”

“Of course I have a girlfriend.”

“You mean a body to sleep with. You know I’m right. Do you enjoy changing partners every year? How about love and understanding and compassion? Without those, what’s the point? You might as well be masturbating.”

“I don’t change partners
every
year, do I?”

“Pretty much. You ought to think about your life more seriously, act more like a grownup.”

That marked the end of our conversation. She just tuned out.

Why had her attitude toward me changed so much over the past year? Until then, she had seemed to enjoy being partners with me in my resolutely aimless life-style, and—if I’m not mistaken—she even looked up to me to some extent. She had become gradually more critical of me in the months since she had begun seeing her fiancé.

This, to me, seemed tremendously unfair. She had been seeing him for a few months, but she and I had been “seeing” each other for twenty-three years. We had always gotten along well, practically never had a fight. I didn’t know a brother and sister who could talk so honestly and openly with each other, and not only about masturbation and periods: She knew when I first bought condoms (I was seventeen), and I knew when she first bought lace underwear (she was nineteen).

I had dated her friends (but not slept with them, of course), and she had dated mine (but not slept with them, of course—I think). That’s just how we were brought up. This excellent relationship of ours turned sour in less than a year. The more I thought about it, the angrier it made me.

She had to buy a pair of shoes at the department store near the station, she said. I left her outside the restaurant and went back to our apartment alone. I gave my girlfriend a call, but she wasn’t in. Which wasn’t surprising. Two o’clock on a Sunday afternoon was not the best time to ask a girl for a date. I flipped the pages of my address book and tried another girl—a student I had met at some disco. She answered the phone.

“Like to go out for a drink?”

“You’re kidding. It’s two o’clock in the afternoon.”

“So what? We’ll drink till the sun goes down. I know the perfect bar for watching the sunset. You can’t get good seats if you’re not there by three.”

“Are you some kind of connoisseur of sunsets?”

But still she accepted, probably out of kindness. I picked her up, and we drove out along the shore just beyond Yokohama to
a bar with a view of the ocean. I drank four glasses of I.W. Harper on the rocks, and she had two banana daiquiris (can you believe it?). And we watched the sun go down.

“Are you going to be okay driving with that much to drink?” she asked.

“No problem. Where alcohol is concerned, I’m under par.”

“‘Under par’?”

“Four drinks are just enough to bring me up to normal. You haven’t got a thing to worry about. Not a thing.”

“If you say so …”

We drove back to Yokohama, ate, and enjoyed a few kisses in the car. I suggested we go to a hotel, but she didn’t want to.

“I’m wearing a tampon.”

“So take it out.”

“Yeah, right. It’s my second day.”

And what a day it was. At this rate, I should have just had a date with my girlfriend. But no, this was going to be the day I spent a nice, leisurely Sunday with my sister, something we hadn’t done for a long time. So much for
that
plan.

“Sorry,” said the girl. “I’m telling you the truth.”

“Never mind. It’s not your fault. I’m to blame.”

“You’re to blame for my period?” she asked with an odd look.

“No, it’s just the way things worked out.” What a stupid question.

I drove her to her house in Setagaya. On the way, the clutch started making funny rattling noises. I’d probably have to bring it into the garage soon, I thought with a sigh. It was one of those classic days, when one thing goes wrong and then everything goes with it.

“Can I invite you out again soon?” I asked.