The Emissary by Yoko Tawada

Author:Yoko Tawada
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811227636
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2018-04-24T00:00:00+00:00

Under the cool silk bedding pulled up to her nose, Marika sometimes giggled, remembering when she and Yoshiro used to have sex. That had been more than eighty years ago. The images that came to her were more like dinosaurs at play than of erotic ecstasy between the sheets.

Marika’s skin and general bearing were still youthful, though inside, her body had changed completely. Long ago she had felt as if her nipples were being pulled outward, while now her breasts were spreading out, expanding inward, protecting the front from enemy attack. When she was young, perhaps because her nerve endings hadn’t reached that far back yet, her bottom was always the coldest part of her — in fact, when someone gave her butt a pat she was surprised at how far her own body bulged out in the rear — yet now her whole backside was always hot and haughty, issuing orders: “Get off me and open a window, NOW!” or “You’d better set yourself down on me and check those receipts again.” They used to say that henpecked husbands were “under the wife’s bottom,” and now Marika felt definitely under her own.

“The whole human race is becoming feminized,” asserted some specialists, while others said, “Children who are born male turn into females, while those born female turn into males.”

In areas where culture dictated that female fetuses should be aborted, Nature, enraged at humans disrupting her balance this way, had started playing various tricks. One trick was making sure that no one stayed the same sex all their lives. Everyone’s sex changed either once or twice, and people couldn’t tell ahead of time how many times their sex would change.

Yoshiro set the New Year’s photo Marika had sent on top of the chest of drawers. A child with half-closed eyes rested a heavy looking head on his wife’s left shoulder. From the expression, the child might have been either in pain or simply daydreaming. Long, thick eyelashes, lips like cherries, a very slender neck with an oddly well-developed Adam’s apple protruding from it. In comparison, Mumei’s neck looked positively sturdy, set firmly on his shoulders. The child with both hands on Marika’s other shoulder had its chin thrust out, sticking its tongue out at the camera. Another was asleep with its head on her knees, while still another knelt properly on the tatami, acting the model student. The sharp-eyed kid in the background might have been feverish, its face was so red. Several others didn’t even seem aware that they were being photographed. Though they all looked like girls, some were probably boys.

When Marika’s longing to see Yoshiro and Mumei rose like the tide, she forced it into the small rectangular space of a picture postcard, waiting for it to ebb. On a recent card she’d written, “How are you two getting along? I’ll bring a big sea bream made of sugar for your 108th birthday.”

Yoshiro didn’t really feel like making concrete plans for his 108th birthday party. But he

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