Record of a Night Too Brief by Hiromi Kawakami

Author:Hiromi Kawakami [Hiromi Kawakami]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782272724
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Published: 2016-04-05T04:00:00+00:00

The marriage between my brother no. 1 and Hiroko was dissolved with a telephone call to Ten, and with that same telephone call Hiroko became engaged to my brother no. 2 since the engagement formalities had already taken place. Both my father and my mother seemed to have forgotten that my brother no. 1 had ever existed. And my brother no. 2 seemed to have forgotten as well. Before I was even aware of it, the hammock in which my brother no. 1 used to sleep was taken down, and we were spending our days as a family of four.

Time passed, and the festival season approached. My father and my mother were taken up with the festival preparations. Every night discussions took place in the conference room of the apartment complex about arrangements for the event: who should be allowed to set up stalls. What kind of pattern should adorn the jackets of the participants. Whether we should drape decorations on the stones. And also how we should combat the insects.

During the festival season we are visited by swarms of insects, and the residents of the apartment complex are always concerned about what steps to take against them. The insects are about as large as a person’s thumb. In colour and shape they resemble the rhinoceros beetle, though they’re somewhat smaller in size. They fly around making a loud droning sound and sting people. Once someone is stung, the skin swells up with bumps that are the size of a coin, and these bumps then become blisters, which take a long time to heal. The best thing would be if we could spend the whole of the festival indoors and so not risk any contact with the bugs. But we have to go outside: the festival always takes place in the grassy area in the middle of the complex. A festival held indoors wouldn’t be a festival.

This year my father and my brother no. 2 were going to act as “living pillars”, that is, humans who would lure the insects away from the crowd. The practice involves someone covering themselves all over with a lotion having a particular sweet smell that bugs find irresistible, so that they will fly straight towards the smell and thus be ensnared. So why not rub the lotion on an inanimate object? Because the insects are not lured simply by a sweet smell: it’s got to be a sweet smell smeared on a human being.

On the night of the festival, it was decided that Hiroko would be allowed to come and observe. Ordinarily it would be strictly taboo to go to the apartment block of the family of one’s husband-to-be before marriage, but since her husband-to-be was going to be one of the living pillars, she was given special dispensation.

When Hiroko came over, it was discovered that she had covered herself with a thick layer of insect-repellent ointment. “You didn’t need to go that far,” my mother admonished. “We will have the living pillars, after all.

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