Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales by Yōko Ogawa (translated by Stephen Snyder).
Title: Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales.
Author: Yōko Ogawa (translated by Stephen Snyder).
Genre: Fiction, short stories, horror, crime, mystery.
Country: Japan.
Language: Japanese.
Publication Date: 19998.
Summary: A collection of 11 inter-connected short stories. In Afternoon at the Bakery, a woman waits to be served in a seemingly empty bakery, wishing to buy cake for her dead son's birthday. In Fruit Juice, a man recalls accompanying a girl from his highschool, whose mother is on her death-bed, to have dinner with and meet her illegitimate father for the first time. In Old Mrs. J, an elderly, strange landlady tends her vegetables and fruits and becomes famous for her hand-shaped carrots, but her garden turns out to have something more sinister than strange-shaped fruit concealed under the soil. In The Little Dustman, a man contemplates on the only mother he's ever known, even if only for two years in his adolescence, as he heads to her funeral decades after last seeing her. In Lab Coats, while doing inventory with her supervisor and listening to her love problems with a married doctor, a hospital secretary is suddenly let in on a horrible secret. In Sewing for the Heart, a bag maker is asked to make a remarkably unique bag for a woman's heart that is outside her body. In Welcome to the Museum of Torture, after an argument with her boyfriend, a young woman stumbles across a strange Museum of Torture, and as hours of her detailed private tour pass, dark thoughts comfort her. In The Man Who Sold Braces, the narrator recalls her life-long but sporadic relationship with her odd and ill-fated uncle, the man who in old age becomes the curator of the Museum of Torture, before his life takes even darker twists and turns. In The Last Hour of the Bengal Tiger, on the way to confront her husband's mistress, a woman accidentally comes upon a man's last moments with a magnificent pet and friend. In Tomatoes and the Full Moon, a journalist on an assignment at a hotel resort meets a strange and mysterious older lady, filled with paranoia and a sad backstory. In Poison Plants, an old artist becomes a young man's musical benefactress in exchange for a bi-weekly "arrangement", but her dependence on him leads to a sad outcome.
My rating: 7/10
My review:
♥ It was a beautiful Sunday. The sky was a cloudless dome of sunlight. Out on the square, leaves fluttered in a gentle breeze along the pavement. Everything seemed to glimmer with a faint luminescence: the roof of the ice-cream stand, the faucet of the drinking fountain, the eyes of a stray cat, even the base of the clock tower covered with pigeon droppings.
Families and tourists strolled through the square, enjoying the weekend. Squeaky sounds could be heard from a man off in the corner, who was twisting balloon animals. A circle of children watched him, entranced.
♥ "I'm buying them for my son. Today is his birthday."
"Really? Well, I hope it's a happy one. How old is he?"
"Six. He'll always be six. He's dead."
He died twelve years ago. Suffocated in an abandoned refrigerator left in a vacant lot. When I first saw him, I didn't think he was dead. I thought he was just ashamed to look me in the eye because he had stayed away from home for three days.
An old woman I had never seen before was standing nearby, looking dazed, and I realized that she must have been the one who had found him. Her hair was disheveled, her face pale, and her lips were trembling. She looked more dead than my son.
"I'm not angry, you know," I said to him. "Come here and let me give you a hug. I bought the shortcake for your birthday. Let's go back to the house."
But he didn't move. He had curled up in an ingenuous fashion to fit between the shelves and the egg box, with his legs carefully folded and his face tucked between his knees. The curve of his spine receded into a dark, cramped space behind him that I could not see. The skin on his neck caught the light from the open door. It was so smooth, covered in soft down-I knew it all too well.
"No, it couldn't be," I said to the old woman nearby. "He's just sleeping. He hasn't eaten anything, and he must be exhausted. Let's carry him home and try not to wake him. He should sleep, as much as he wants. He'll wake up later, I'm sure of it.
But the woman did not answer.
♥ I couldn't see the expression on her face, but her misery was clear from the clench of her jaw, the pallor of her neck, and the tense grip of her fingers on the telephone.
The reason she was crying didn't matter to me. Perhaps there was no reason at all. Her tears had that sort of purity.
~~Afternoon at the Bakery.
♥ But when someone did take notice of her, it seemed she was always apologizing for it-I suppose "apologetic" might be the best word to describe her. "I'm sorry, please ignore me..." You could almost hear her murmur the words, like an incantation, a way of conjuring a still place for herself.
♥ The kiwi was perfect, not a bruise or a blemish anywhere.
"Don't they look delicious?" she said, gazing at the mountain of fruit. "More than you could ever eat!" Then she bit into the one in her hand. I could hear her teeth sink into the flesh.
For a long time, she stood there eating kiwis, one after another. She consumed them like a starving child, dizzy with hunger. Her carefully ironed louse and her beautiful hands grew sticky. I could only watch and wait until she ate through her sadness.
♥ "I'm afraid I wasn't much use to you that day," I said.
"No, you can't imagine how it helped to have you there. I mean it. I'm truly grateful. At the time I... I..."
She started to cry on the other end of the line. Not because the man was dead. I realized she was finally letting flow the tears she could not cry at the post office, and that this sadness was coming to her peacefully from the distant past.
"I never thanked you properly back then," she said. "I'm sorry."
~~Fruit Juice.
♥ "Well then..." said the man, clearing his throat. The children stood up and formed two lines in the aisle, their legs apart and their hands behind their backs. The passengers sat watching them; the woman next to me closed her magazine and the college girls fell silent.
"'The Little Dustman' by Johannes Brahms," the man announced, holding up a pen for a conductor's baton.
The voices of the children reverberated above our heads, voices almost too beautiful to be human, rippling the surface of memory. I prayed for Mama as the snow continued to fall.
~~The Little Dustman.
♥ "But I was the one who was tired. Tired of waiting all that time, of running to the door at every little noise, watching the dinner I'd made get cold."
She runs her hand through her hair and looks down again. Her skin is so white. Her shoulders are really beautiful. The pen rolls across the desk.
"Do you know what he told me? He said he'd 'had a lot of time to think' on the train. That he felt like 'some invisible force' was holding him back. That it 'wasn't the right time,' and that was why it had snowed. He said he wanted me to be patent, to wait just a little longer. 'Just a little longer...' And then we screwed, just like we always do. That's all we have left."
I imagine her naked. The doctor's fingers running over her skin, her hair, the wet places. I picture her tongue licking the edge of the blue envelope. Who wouldn't want her?
"Gastrointestinal Med., two long. Ophthalmology, one short. Neurosurgery, one long. Pediatrics, four short." I pick up the pace, trying to distract her, but she's not paying attention anymore. The pen's still on the desk.
"How could he be so cruel? How could he tell me to wait? No, I couldn't wait any longer. Not one more day, not one more second."
I take the register and begin checking in the coats myself, trying to be as neat as she is.
"That's why I killed him," she says. Her voice is low and cold.
I feel a scream rising out of me, but somehow I stop it, hold it back, and instead I calmly imagine the scene: the knife in her pretty hand; the blade slicing into him again and again; skin rippling, blood spurting. But she's spotless. I pick up the next coat.
"Respiratory Medicine, one long."
It's his. I shake it and out falls a tongue. It's still soft. Maybe even warm.
~~Lab Coats.
♥ But compared with the world upstairs, my life with my bags below is quite rich. I never weary of them, of caressing and gazing at my wonderful creations. When I make a bag, I begin by picturing how it will look when it's finished. Then I sketch each imagined detail, from the shiny clasp to the finest stitches in the seams. Next, I transfer the design to pattern paper and cut out the pieces from the raw material, and then finally I sew them together. As the bag begins to take shape on my table, my heart beats uncontrollably and I feel as though my hands wield all the powers of the universe.
Now, you may be wondering why I get so excited. You may be thinking that a bag us just a thing in which to put other things. And you're right, of course. But that's what makes them so extraordinary. A bag has no intentions or desires of its own, it embraces every object that we ask it to hold. You trust the bag, and it, in return, trusts you. To me, a bag is patience; a bag is profound discretion.
♥ I can make any kind of bag a customer wants: bags for artificial limbs, bedpans, rifles, eggs, dentures-any size and shape you can imagine. But I have to admit I hesitated when she told me her request, one I had never heard before and I'm sure I'll never hear again.
"I would like you to make a bag to hold a heart."
..There was a moment of awkward silence. Something about her had set my nerves jangling, even before she had uttered her request. Perhaps it was the crocodile purse on her lap. It was a beautiful piece of work, but it was stretched out of shape and the leather had lost its luster-probably from improper cleaning. It seemed weary. Customers who come here to order new bags naturally bring their old ones with them, and they tell me a lot about the people carrying them.
"A number of places have turned me away," she said, taking me into her confidence. She brushed a wisp of hair away from her eyes and turned to look at the row of samples on the shelf.
It was then that I realized I had been bothered not by her purse but by the unnatural bulge on the left side of her chest. It was clearly not her breast; the swell of a abreast is different. This looked more like a tumor that had grown between her collarbone and her armpit, unbalancing her natural symmetry. But it wasn't a tumor.
"I've tried everything," she said. "Silk, cotton, nylon, vinyl, paper... nothing is right. It has to be kept warm-heat loss can be fatal-but then there are the secretions. If the material is too absorbent, it sucks up all the moisture. But then again, something like vinyl doesn't breathe."
She had explained that she was born with her heart outside her chest-as difficult as that might be to imagine. It worked normally enough, but its unique location made it extremely vulnerable. She had to avoid bumping it or exposing it to the air, yet still keep it supported next to her body. Strictly speaking, it wasn't a "bag" she wanted-at least not like any I'd made in the past-but she was a customer, and I was determined to do my best to satisfy her.
"I think seal skin would be ideal," I said, going to the shelf to get a sample. "It's soft and strong, and it repels moisture while providing superior insulation-just what a seal needs. And it's easy to care for."
"It sounds perfect," she said, taking the piece of leather. She stroked the surface, turned it over, crumpled it in her hand. "But I'm afraid the shape will be a bit complicated, like a bra for just one side. It has to be very sturdy but still not damage the membrane. Do you understand?"
"I believe so. Just tell me exactly what you want," I said, starting to sketch in my book. In fact, I had no idea what I was trying to draw, but I didn't want to disappoint her.
♥ She moved her arm across her chest to cradle her heart, as though consoling it, afraid it might burst. I wondered what would happen if I held her tight in my arms, in a lovers' embrace, melting into one another, bone on bone... her heart would be crushed. The membrane would split, the veins tear free, the heart itself explode into bits of flesh, and then my desire would contain hers-it was all so painful and yet so utterly beautiful to imagine.
~~Sewing for the Heart.
♥ Lots of people died today. In a city to the north, a tour bus tumbled off a cliff, killing twenty-seven and badly injuring six more. A family of three, weighed down with debt, committed suicide by turning on the gas-and when the house exploded, six more died next door. An eighty-six-year-old man was killed by a hit-and-run driver; a child drowned in an irrigation ditch; a fishing boat capsized; some mountain climbers were swept away by an avalanche. There was a flood in China, a plane crash in Nepal, and in Niger a religious cult committed mass suicide.
But it wasn't just humans. I saw a dead hamster in the garbage can at a fast-food place this morning.
..Why was everyone dying? They had all been so alive just yesterday.
♥ We sat down on the sofa and held each other, neither of us saying much. We both knew that silence was the best way to appreciate a moment we'd been waiting three weeks for.
I could tell someone was in the apartment upstairs and wondered if the police had come back. It was noisy outside as well, but not enough to disturb our peace. His arm was around my shoulder, and his other hand held mine where it rested in my lap. I laid my cheek against his chest, and I could hear his heart beating, feel his breath on my neck.
When I'm curled up in his arms like this, I can never tell how my body looks to him. I worry that I seem completely ridiculous, but I have the ability to squeeze into any little space he leaves for me. I fold my legs until they take up almost no room at all, and curl in my shoulders until they're practically dislocated. Like a mummy in a tomb. And when I get like this, I don't care if I never get out; or maybe that's exactly what I hope will happen.
Still, the moment came when I had to pull myself away and break the silence.
♥ "It's horrible to lose one's hair. When the Nazis brought prisoners to a concentration camp, the first thing they did was to shave their heads in order to strip them of their humanity. In reality, it does no physical harm, but we seem convinced that our very existence is somehow bound up in our hair."
"You're right," I said. "I'm a beautician. I should know."
"Then you'll understand the nature of the torture. It is conducted in a room lined with mirrors. Thus, no matter how hard the victim tries to avert his eyes, he is forced to watch himself becoming bald. The process is time-consuming, but it's important that the hairs be removed one at a time. If you rip out several at once, the effect is lost. The suffering comes from the slow but steady sense of loss-along with the tiny pain the victim experiences each time a hair is plucked. It's nothing at first, but as it's repeated a thousand times, ten thousand times, a hundred thousand times, it becomes the most exquisite agony imaginable."
The rich colors of the sunset were cast down on us through the skylight. The breeze had died and the leaves of the oak trees were still. The evening shadows collected under the old man's eyes, making his smile seem a bit spooky.
The next time my boyfriend comes over, I'll give him a haircut on the balcony. I'll cover him with a plastic cape and put a towel around his neck. And then I'll tie his arms and legs to the chair.
~~Welcome to the Museum of Torture.
♥ Everything my uncle touched seemed to fall apart in the end.
..If he had one admirable quality (and I'm not sure you could call it that), it was his ability to look dispassionately at the thing that lay broken in his hands, the thing he was about to lose or discard. He never seemed glum or sulky over his losses. He just watched calmly as his treasure, whatever it might have been, vanished from sight-and in many cases there was even the hint of a smile on his face as he watched it go.
~~The Man Who Sold Braces.
♥ At fifteen, I took an overdose of sleeping pills. I must have had a good reason for wanting to kill myself, but I've forgotten what it was.
~~The Last Hour of the Bengal Tiger.
♥ "Are you sure you wouldn't like another?" he said, holding up my empty glass. His hand was large and strong.
"Why not?" I said. I didn't really want more champagne, but I wanted him to come back to me.
The concert was organized by a local banker, a man who had bought a number of my paintings in the past. In the days that followed, I had him arrange a "scholarship" to help this boy with his studies. He had been wasting his time with odd jobs to make ends meet, so we came to an agreement. I would pay for the lessons he needed to prepare for the entrance exam to the conservatory, and he would come every other week on Saturday night to eat dinner with me and to report on his progress. I'm not sure he fully realized what I meant. Still, he did what I asked of him without complaint, and he even thanked me in that polite way of his.
I knew there was something arrogant about my little arrangement, but I also knew it wouldn't last for long. All too soon, the rest of his body would catch up with his hands-and just as soon I would be too old to lift a glass of champagne.
♥ "You have a daughter?"
"I did; she died when she was nineteen."
"I'm sorry..." he said, returning his cup to the saucer.
"You needn't be. Everyone I know has died. My past is full of ghosts."
♥ Then I found myself at the edge of an open field that sloped gently above me-a field covered with boxlike objects. I reached out to touch the nearest one: a refrigerator. Broken refrigerators-some upended, others half crushed, white ones, blue, yellow, big ones, tiny ones, some missing doors, some scrawled with graffiti-every refrigerator imaginable.
I wove my way through them, noting all the different ways in which they had been damaged, ruined beyond repair. The silence was oppressive.
My chest began to ache and cold sweat ran down my back. My foot caught on something and I stumbled again, managing to catch myself on a large, double-door stainless refrigerator, the kind from a restaurant kitchen. It was spattered here and there with bird droppings.
I opened the doors-and I found someone inside. Legs neatly folded, head buried between the knees, curled ingeniously to fit between the shelves and the egg box.
"Excuse me," I said, but my voice seemed to disappear into the dark.
It was my body. In this gloomy, cramped box, I had eaten poison plants and died, hidden away from prying eyes.
Crouching down at the door, I wept. For my dead self.
~~Poison Plants.