The Big Book of Classic Fantasy

by The Big Book of Classic Fantasy (retail) (epub)

  “Ten or so sightseers with a most uncomfortable look on their faces were huddled together whispering anxiously and looking at Tokyo Bay in the direction of Shinagawa. There, alone and apart from them, stood my brother. He was looking intently through the binoculars at the temple grounds down below. Seen from behind, his black velvet suit stood out all the more distinctly against the sea of clouds in the whitish, overcast sky. Moreover, at this height there was no danger of him being confused with the teeming masses down below. I knew it was my brother standing across the way. He looked so heavenly sublime—like the subject in a Western oil painting. I hesitated to say anything to him.

  “But I was on a mission for my mother. I knew I couldn’t wait any longer. I approached him from the rear.

  “ ‘What are you looking at?’

  “He spun around in a state of shock. There was an embarrassed look on his face, but he said nothing.

  “ ‘Mother and Father are terribly worried about you. They don’t understand where you disappear to every day. So this is it? And can you tell me why? Just tell me the reason. We’ve always been pals.’

  “Fortunately, nobody was close by. I pressed my case.

  “He was silent for the longest while. But, when I pressed him again and again, he finally gave in and told me the secret he had kept hidden for the past month.

  “As for the source of the anguish in his heart—well, that too is another equally strange story.

  “About a month before, while he was looking at the temple grounds with his binoculars from the top of the tower, he said he caught sight of a girl’s face in the crowd below. She was unbelievably beautiful—a real ‘out-of-this-world’ beauty—and he felt strangely moved by the brief glimpse he had of her in the binoculars. As a general rule, he had been indifferent to the opposite sex, but this girl was the exception. So overcome was he at the sight of her that a great chill passed through him.

  “He had caught only a single glimpse of her that day. In fact, he was so taken by surprise at the sight of her that he inadvertently pulled the glasses away from his face. But, when he went to take a second look—and he went nearly crazy trying to find her—the lenses never chanced on her face again. You see, objects are really far away even if binoculars make them look very close. Moreover, given the size of the crowd down below, there was little likelihood of his finding her again. Although you find something once, there’s no guarantee it can be found a second time.

  “He said he could not forget her. Being a terribly introverted type, he began to suffer from a case of old-fashioned love sickness. Modern people may laugh, but people back then were more sensitive and genteel. It was an era in which men frequently fell head over heels in love after only one look at a woman they’d seen on the street. It goes without saying that the business of finding the girl became his sole occupation. He stopped eating, and every day he dragged his weak and undernourished frame to the temple grounds, climbed the stairs of the twelve-story tower, and spent his time peering through the binoculars in the vain hope of seeing the girl again. Love is a strange and wondrous thing, isn’t it?

  “No sooner did he tell me his story than he began looking feverishly through the binoculars. I found myself in complete sympathy with him. Although he had less than even one chance in a thousand, and his efforts were a waste of time, I did not have the heart to tell him to give up. I was moved to tears by his sad state of affairs. And then.

  “Aahh, even to this day I can’t forget how seductively beautiful the spectacle was! If I close my eyes, it comes back to me, even though it happened thirty-five years ago. The image is so vivid. It’s like a dream, and all of the colors rush into my head.

  “As I said before, all I could see was the sky as I stood behind him. His thin, suited frame set against the hazy layers of clouds seemed to rise to the fore like a figure in a painting, and as masses of clouds swept over the tower, his body seemed to float in space. Suddenly, as if fireworks had been set off, innumerable spheres of red, blue, and purple rose into the white sky. They were soft and round, like bubbles, each competing to fly higher into the air. Words don’t do it justice, but it really was like a painting—if not some kind of omen or foreshadowing. In any event, I was filled with a strange and indescribable sense of wonder. I quickly looked down to see what had happened. I discovered a vendor had carelessly allowed his rubber balloons to escape into the air all at once. Back then, rubber balloons were relatively rare. It seemed odd to see so many of them all at once even though I now understood the reason why.

  “My brother became very agitated. It was most peculiar, and I don’t think it was on account of the balloons. His pale face flushed bright red, and his breathing grew more rapid. He stepped toward me and grabbed my hand.

  “ ‘Come on, let’s go! We’ll be too late if we don’t hurry!’

  “I asked him the reason why as he pulled me pell-mell down the stairs of the tower. He said he had found the girl. She was sitting in a room—the sort of large room where one received or entertained guests—and there were new tatami mats on the floor. She was right where he expected her to be.

  “The place was a large house to the rear of the temple. A large pine tree marked the spot. When we arrived, the tree was there all right, but no building was in sight. It was as if a mischievous fox spirit had been at work, and it had bewitched us into coming. I felt sure my brother had let himself be deluded by his hopes. Still, he seemed so pitiful, looking wilted and full of despair, that we went around and made inquiries at the neighboring teahouses in order to make him feel better. The girl was nowhere to be found.

  “We became separated while we were searching the area. After making the rounds of all the teahouses, I went back to the pine tree where I had seen different vending stalls. Among them was one that offered a stereoscopic picture show, and the proprietor was cracking a whip in the air to drum up business. Who did I see crouched over the viewing glasses used to peep into the stall but my brother?!? He was totally absorbed in watching the scenes of the story as they appeared one after the other in front of the stereoscopic lenses. When I tapped him on the shoulder and asked what he was doing, he whirled around with a look of total surprise written across his face. I’ll never forget how shocked he looked. How shall I put it? It was as though he were lost in a dream. The muscles in his face had gone slack, and his eyes were set on a faraway place. Even his voice sounded strangely vacuous.

  “ ‘She’s in there,’ he said, pointing to the inside of the peep show mechanism.

  “I immediately paid the fee and looked through the viewing glasses. Inside were a series of panels that illustrated the story of the infamous O-shichi. She was the greengrocer’s daughter who, smitten with a handsome young man, lit her parents’ house on fire so that the family had to evacuate to nearby Kisshōji temple, where the acolyte named Kichisa resided. I came in on the episode in which O-shichi was now ensconced at the temple. The panel appeared, and it depicted her leaning coquettishly toward Kichisa in the temple lecture hall. I shall never forget it. At precisely that moment, the proprietor and his wife raised their husky voices in unison, and cracking the whip in time to the narration, they sang the line in the story that goes ‘now knee to knee, she spoke to him with her eyes.’ It seems this peculiar line of narrative had special appeal for my brother. He appeared to repeat it over and over to himself in his head.

  “The figures mounted on the panel were done in brocade relief, and they were surely the work of a master. The vitality evident in O-shichi’s face was amazing. I too thought she was alive. For the first time I completely understood why my brother had been so taken with the girl. It made perfect sense.

  “With a far-off look in his eyes, he said, ‘I can’t give her up even though I know she’s the work of an artist and made only of brocade. It’s sad, but I can’t let her go. Even if it’s only once, I want to step into the picture and talk to her like her companion Kichi
sa.’ He stood rooted to the spot and made no attempt to move. Come to think of it, the top of the picture show stall was open to the sky to allow light to flow inside and illuminate the panels. My brother must have been looking down from the top of the tower at just the right angle when he saw the picture of the girl that was inside the peep show mechanism.

  “The sun was going down, and fewer people were about. Two or three children in pageboy haircuts were loitering about the stall as if they had a lingering desire to take a peek inside. Around noon the sky had turned gray and overcast. By now low clouds hung over the horizon. It looked as though it might rain at any minute. It was the sort of unpleasant weather that makes one feel pinned down by the weight of the sky—yes, just the sort of weather calculated to drive one crazy. Deep inside my head, I heard a low, rumbling noise. It was like someone beating a big taiko drum very slowly. Meanwhile, my brother stood there simply gazing into the distance. He looked as though he could stay that way forever. We must have stood on the spot for over an hour.

  “When the sun set and the gas lamps on the stage for the acrobats began to flicker bright and beautiful farther down the arcade, my brother suddenly seized me by the chest. The expression on his face was that of a man who has awakened from a deep sleep. He said something most peculiar.

  “ ‘I’ve figured it out! And it means I have a favor to ask. Take the binoculars, turn them around, and put the larger end of the lenses to your eyes. Now look at me.’

  “I asked him why.

  “ ‘Don’t fuss about it. Just do it, all right?’

  “The truth be told, I never cared much for lenses, glasses, and the like. Whether it’s a pair of binoculars or a microscope—to bring distant objects right up to your face or to make tiny bugs look as big as beasts does not appeal to me. There’s something spooky about the whole business. I hadn’t looked through my brother’s prized pair of binoculars very often, but on the rare occasion when I toyed with them, I always felt there was something weirdly magical about the way they worked. Here we were, standing in the middle of a deserted spot behind the temple, and my brother was asking me to reverse the binoculars and look at him!?! The whole thing struck me as slightly demented, if not as tempting fate. But he desperately wanted me to do it. I had no choice. I looked at him through the large end of the binoculars. Although he was no more than eight or nine feet away, he appeared about two feet tall. The smaller he became, the more distinctly his shape floated in the gloom. There was no way to include anything else in the frame of the lens but him. All I could see was my brother in his natty black suit in miniature form. He grew progressively smaller because he was backing away from me step by step. Finally, he was about the size of a cute-looking doll that was a foot tall. He seemed to float in space until—before I knew it—he had melted into the darkness and disappeared.

  “I was so scared. (You think I’m too old to say such a thing, but at the time I felt my hair stand on end.) I jerked the binoculars away from my face, and running in the direction from which my brother had disappeared, I called after him. ‘Nii-san.’ ‘Nii-san.’ I could not find him no matter what. I looked high and low. He could not have gone far. There hadn’t been enough time. Yet he was nowhere in sight.

  “And that, my friend, is the story of how my brother disappeared from the face of the earth. Since that time I have grown more and more wary of touching these magical binoculars. I have no idea who the ship captain was who originally owned them, but there is something about them and the fact that they once belonged to a foreigner that gives me a special dislike for them. I don’t know about other binoculars, but as for this pair—never, ever turn them around and look through the larger end. I firmly believe terrible misfortune will be the inevitable result. Now you’ll understand why I was so brusque with you when you started to hold them the wrong way.

  “But, getting back to my brother, I returned exhausted to the picture show stall after searching for him for quite a long time. That was when it dawned on me. He had put the magical powers of the binoculars to work on account of his passion for the girl in the panel. He had reduced himself to her size and quietly slipped into the world of the raised brocade figures. At least that is my theory. I asked the proprietor, who had yet to close shop for the evening, to show me the scene of O-shichi and Kichisa in the lecture hall at Kisshōji temple. Exactly as I had predicted, my brother was in the panel, mounted on it in raised brocade. Using the light cast by a kandelaar hand lamp that I held over the panel, I could see he had taken the place of the handsome young acolyte Kichisa. My brother was smiling contentedly to himself as he held O-shichi in his arms.

  “But I was not sad. In fact, I was so happy that I wept tears of joy for my brother, who had finally attained his heart’s desire. I had the proprietor make me a hard and fast promise that he would never sell the panel to anyone but me—I would buy it regardless of the cost. (Strangely enough, he never noticed that my brother, dressed in a natty Western suit, had taken Kichisa’s place.) I ran home as fast as I could, but when I explained what happened in detail to my mother, she scoffed at me. Both she and my father wondered if I had lost my mind. They would not believe me no matter how hard I pleaded with them. ‘Now isn’t he being funny?’ they said, and then they laughed at me. ‘Ha ha ha ha ha ha.’ ”

  The man on the train began to laugh as if he had told a joke. Oddly enough, I found myself sympathizing with him. We both had a hearty laugh together.

  “They had it in their heads that a human being could never be transformed into—of all things!—a piece of raised brocade. But doesn’t the fact that my brother was not again seen on the face of the earth prove he had become part of the painting? They came to the grossly mistaken conclusion that he had run away from home even though it made no sense at all. In the end, I wheedled money out of my mother, and in spite of protests from the family, I obtained the painting and set out on a trip. I traveled to Hakone, and from there I went to Kamakura. You see—I wanted to give my brother a honeymoon. When I ride a train like I’m doing now, I can’t help but think of those earlier days. I prop the picture in the window, just as I did this evening, to show my brother and his lover the scenery outside. I can imagine how happy he must feel. And what about her? How could she reject such a true expression of love? They blush in embarrassment like real newlyweds. They press closer and closer to each other and engage in endless pillow talk.

  “Father closed his shop in Tokyo after my brother disappeared and retired to his hometown near Toyama, where I have lived all this while. It’s been over thirty years since the day we were last at Asakusa Park, so I wanted to take this trip with my brother to show him how much Tokyo has changed.

  “What’s saddest of all, my friend, is that because the girl was the work of human hands, she will never grow old no matter how long she lives, but my brother is doomed to age like you and me, his transformation notwithstanding. It was too extreme a change, and only so many years are allotted to the human lifespan. See for yourself. My brother, who was once a pretty young lad of twenty-five, now has a shock of white hair on his head and a face covered in unsightly wrinkles. He must be bitterly unhappy. The girl beside him will always remain young and beautiful, where he continues to age so foully. It’s frightening. The expression on his face is terribly sad. He has been looking unhappy for the past several years.

  “I am overcome with pity whenever I think of him.”

  Already growing old himself, the old man on the train tearfully looked at the old man in the picture. But then, as if suddenly awakening from a reverie, he added—

  “Ah, I see I’ve talked far too long. Yet you understand me, don’t you? You won’t be like other people and say I’m crazy. If I’ve convinced you, then it was worthwhile talking with you. By now my brother and the young girl are probably very tired. I dare say I’ve embarrassed them by making them sit in front of you while I told their story. Well, I shall let them take a rest.”
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br />   With that, he quietly wrapped the frame in the large black cloth. Perhaps it was a figment of my imagination, but in that instant, it seemed as though the faces in the painting softened however slightly. The corners of the lips moved ever so subtly, and the two of them gave me a shy parting smile.

  The old man sank into silence. I too fell silent. The train continued to chug toward Tokyo in the darkness.

  After about ten minutes, the wheels began to turn more slowly, and two or three lanterns came into view outside as the train pulled into a small station in the middle of the mountains. Who knew where we were? There was only one station attendant, and he was standing on the platform by himself.

  “Well, I will be spending the night here with a relative,” the old man traveling with the brocade portrait announced.

  He stood up abruptly with the picture under one arm and got off the train. As I looked out the window, I saw his tall, thin frame (was it not identical to that of the old man in the painting?) move toward the exit and hand his ticket to the station attendant at what passed for a wicket at the small station. With that, he disappeared, melting into the darkness.

  Vladimir (Vladimirovich) Nabokov (1899–1977) was an iconic and influential Russian American novelist and critic who wrote in both Russian and English. The son of wealthy parents who tried to establish democracy in Russia, Nabokov began writing poetry at the age of thirteen, and after graduating from Cambridge in 1922, he returned to Russia—only to leave again when his politically prominent father was assassinated. His travels took him from Berlin to Paris to the United States, each time just a step ahead of the Nazis. His list of notable works includes the controversial Lolita (1955), Invitation to a Beheading (1938), Despair (1934), and Pale Fire. Nabokov also translated his Russian-era work into English once he was established in the United States. “A Visit to the Museum,” both humorous and creepy, is an eerie tale about a Russian émigré.