Territory of Light (Penguin Classics) by Yuko Tsushima

Author:Yuko Tsushima [Tsushima, Yuko]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241312568
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2018-04-04T16:00:00+00:00

The Dunes

The installation was over in a couple of hours – so quickly I was taken aback. I saw the two young workmen out, bowing agreeably even as I wondered why I should be the one to feel apologetic. Then I turned: every window was covered, stiflingly, in brand-new blue mesh.

‘Our house has gone blue. I can’t see outside.’ My daughter ran around the dining-kitchen as she’d done the first time we came to the apartment.

‘It can’t be helped. It could have been worse – at least they haven’t blocked the view completely,’ I answered as I gazed out of a window through whose blue mesh everything appeared in a thick fog.

About ten days ago, the old man from the neighbouring sweet shop had appeared at my door in a rage. I was just giving my daughter her dinner of spaghetti with meat sauce out of a tin. Since she was still not great at feeding herself, if we ate together her meal would take up all my attention and I’d get nowhere with my own, so I usually fed her, then sat down to my dinner. That was the moment of my day I looked forward to the most. I took a simple delight in satisfying my hunger, which since around five o’clock had gradually been turning into an ache. But the meal was always over in no time, and the delight with it.

I had answered the door with some irritation, wondering who it could be at that hour, and then smiled, reassured, on finding our elderly neighbour standing there. I had a feeling he would be bringing good news. He was a gruff and rather grumpy old man, but he didn’t strike me as narrow-minded, and I made a point of greeting him politely whenever I saw him. The day I moved in, he had explained about the rubbish collection, and when he once asked about our household and learned I was on my own with my daughter, he’d said, ‘That must be hard. Anything you need to know, don’t hesitate to ask.’ I had greeted him all the more politely from then on, and I felt he was one person I could count on to have a passably good impression of me.

But the moment he saw me that night he launched into a tirade, his cheeks quivering and voice shrill. Not following at first, I regarded his pale face, nonplussed. Still more incensed, he waved his fist and yelled, ‘Don’t play dumb with me! You take me for an old dodderer, don’t you? Well, you’re not fooling me with that innocent look. Wrecking people’s houses – you know exactly what I’m talking about!’

At last I remembered that since the summer my daughter had been amusing herself by dropping things on to the old man’s roof. I had scolded her whenever I caught her at it and had done my best not to let her near the windows by herself, but with no one else to keep an eye on her she’d had plenty of chances.

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