Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman Page 0,93

her unremarkable face and her worn-out patent leather shoes. With that, her quiet sobbing rekindled in his memory. He did not want to remember such things, but they came back to life before he knew it was happening. Long after he had forgotten all kinds of things, including the woman’s name, her image remained strangely unforgettable.

Two years after his wife died, Tony Takitani’s father died of liver cancer. Shozaburo Takitani suffered little for someone with cancer, and his time in the hospital was short. He died almost as if falling asleep. In that sense he lived a charmed life to the end. Aside from a little cash and some stock certificates, Shozaburo Takitani left nothing that could be called property. There was only his instrument, and a gigantic collection of old jazz records. Tony Takitani left the records in the cartons supplied by the moving company, and stacked them up on the floor of the empty room. Because the records smelled of mold, Tony Takitani had to open the windows in the room at regular intervals to change the air. Otherwise, he never set foot in the place.

A year went by this way, but having the mountain of records in the house began to bother him more and more. Often the mere thought of them sitting in there made it difficult for him to breathe. Sometimes, too, he would wake in the middle of the night and be unable to get back to sleep. His memories had grown indistinct, but they were still there, where they had always been, with all the weight that memories can have.

He called a used-record dealer and had him make an offer for the collection. Because it contained many valuable discs that had long been out of print, he received a remarkably high payment—enough to buy a small car. To him, however, the money meant nothing.

Once the mountain of records had disappeared from his house, Tony Takitani was really alone.

—TRANSLATED BY JAY RUBIN

THE RISE AND FALL OF SHARPIE CAKES

Half awake, I was reading the morning paper when an ad down in one corner caught my eye: “Celebrated Sharpie Cakes, Manufacturer Seeking New Products. Major Informational Seminar.” I had never heard of Sharpie Cakes before; they were obviously some kind of cake. I am especially demanding where confections are concerned, and I had plenty of time on my hands. I decided to go see what this “major informational seminar” was all about.

It took place in a hotel ballroom, and tea and cakes were served. The cakes, of course, were Sharpies. I tried one, but I couldn’t say I liked it very much. It had a sticky-sweet texture, and the crust was too dry. I couldn’t believe that hip young people would enjoy a sweet like this.

Still, everyone attending the informational meeting was either my age or younger. I was given ticket number 952, and at least a hundred people came after me, which meant there were upward of a thousand people at this meeting. Pretty impressive.

Sitting next to me was a girl around twenty wearing thick glasses. She was no beauty, but she seemed to have a nice personality.

“Say, have you ever eaten these Sharpie things before?” I asked her.

“Of course,” she said. “They’re famous.”

“Yeah, but they’re not very—” I started to say, when she gave me a kick in the foot. The people around us were throwing angry glances my way. The mood turned nasty, but I got through it with my most innocent Winnie-the-Pooh look.

“Are you crazy?” the girl whispered to me afterward. “Coming to a place like this and bad-mouthing Sharpies? The Sharpie Crows could get you. You’d never make it home alive.”

“The Sharpie Crows?” I exclaimed. “What the—”

“Shhhh!” the girl stopped me. The meeting was about to start.

The president of the Sharpie Cake Company opened the proceedings with a brief history of Sharpies. It was one of those dubious “factual” accounts about how somebody-or-other way back in the eighth century whipped together some ingredients to make the very first Sharpie. He claimed there was a poem about Sharpies in the Kokinshu imperial anthology of 905. I was ready to laugh out loud at that one, but everybody was listening so intently, I stopped myself. Besides, I was worried about the Sharpie Crows.

The president’s speech went on for an hour. It was incredibly boring. All he wanted to say was that Sharpies are a confection with a long tradition behind it, which he could have just said in so many words.

The managing director