The Big Book of Classic Fantasy

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

  As it was the season for fogs, everyone thought this a mere coincidence, quite annoying no doubt, but a mere coincidence, yes, pure chance, in short…

  The learned men landed in fog so dense that getting them without mishap to a downtown hotel gave all the trouble in the world. Local people of consequence apologized profusely and suggested that the obviously disappointed visitors devote the whole day to hearing the best witnesses, while they waited for more favorable conditions—which could not be long coming—for the experiments proper. So it was done, but the next day all the windows in town opened early in the morning upon an impenetrable screen of white mist. This was all the harder to understand because milkmen and market-gardeners from the surrounding countryside reported that, when they had set out, the sky had been splendidly starry. During the morning, the suburban motormen declared that the sun was shining brightly everywhere over the outskirts, and at noon a reading of the weather forecast, listened to in silence, gave rise to the conviction that it was not a mere coincidence.

  People were beginning to live under the yellowish light of anguish.

  They felt the urge to shout that it was not true, that the couple had nothing to do with that fog stretching before their exhausted eyes, that it was necessary at all cost for this not to be true. People felt the crazy urge to rip it apart, to destroy it, to tear it away, find anything at all to drive it off, invent a storm, telephone the sun. Only in their imagination could they be rid of it and find their town once again familiar, transparent, easy to live in. And yet, as happens when people find themselves facing a succession of unforeseen events in which they do not manage to make up their minds to admit the existence of a causal relationship that seems at the same time demonstrated by the facts and contradicted by their unusual character, people still hesitated to establish this feature, this slender causal thread between the couple and the fog, people still hesitated to erect that narrow footbridge over the comfortable precipice of positive realities, people still hesitated to register the short and terrifying conclusion, even with the most explicit reservations, people still hesitated, for it appeared only too dearly, all in all, that official recognition of the marvelous would give the signal for the final collapse of all values currently prevailing.

  People still tried to be reasonable, to appeal to old good sense; old men would pretend to recall comparable situations and, in front of an open fire, shutters closed, under the lamplight, between two pipes of tobacco, people would once again find the little zone of bluish calm, as pleasant to the heart as an island to a shipwrecked man, but it was shrinking visibly and in the streets, if the fog had lifted, they would have been able to ascertain that the terror of living had inscribed its name everywhere on the walls.

  At the end of the third day, the authorities held an emergency meeting and decided the only measure to take, to check this monstrous enterprise of demoralization, was to proceed to arrest the couple. Everything was prepared in secret, down to the smallest detail, and the most thorough precautions were taken to assure the success of this operation that was set for the following morning. And so, how stupefied they all were when they perceived in the early morning that the fog had dissipated completely. They had become so accustomed to it that they had difficulty believing their eyes, while the sun, still very low over the horizon, seemed to shine with singular brightness.

  Already the authorities were beginning to ask themselves what on earth had managed to dictate those extreme measures that nothing, all of a sudden, seemed to justify any more, and they were beginning to hesitate, to tell themselves it was perhaps premature to act, that it would be wise to require additional information without which they ran the risk of leaving themselves open to derision from all sides. But the crowd was growing and its presence alone prescribed action, the long-repressed desire to violate an aggravating mystery and, above all, their preoccupation with not contradicting themselves in public, coupled with the petty vanity of playing an apparently courageous role, carried the day fairly easily.

  They set off, then, with a little incoercible band of anguish around their hearts, and, when they were in sight of the couple’s house, they saw it was already surrounded by a semicircle of interested spectators and heard at once that it was impossible to approach any closer, on account of the extraordinary heat given off by the house. This was all the more difficult to understand because no smoke, no flame, no sign at all permitted the eye to bow to the facts. The dwelling looked absolutely normal. However, the circle was widening more and more, pushed back by that invisible furnace and the light, the light that a while ago was already strangely bright, the light slowly became so dazzling, so terribly blinding that the street had to be evacuated and they had to shut themselves up hurriedly in the houses. From time to time, volunteers went out to reconnoiter, despite the entreaties of those around them, but not one returned.

  Then no one ventured out any more and, after endless hours, night slowly came down on a deserted town.

  Toward dawn windows were half-opened and, as nothing aroused suspicion, a few persons went down into the street and approached the house stealthily, hugging the walls.

  The heat had abated and, as it was still very dark, they thought at first they were the sport of an hallucination, but a little later they realized this was not at all the case and then began to shout at the top of their voices for everyone to come, that there was not the slightest danger any more, that everyone absolutely must come to see this extraordinary thing.

  The house was now nothing but an immense block of an incredibly transparent substance, softly luminous, something like crystal, but infinitely more pure than the one we know and, inside, beyond that admirable shell of which no breath could tarnish the brightness, the couple could be seen coming and going as in one of those dazzling dreams after which one retains, always, a painful hankering, they could be seen coming and going against a background of very old legend, much smaller than life size, splendid and shining as ever.

  Soon the couple made their way slowly toward the mystery of a bluish forest and, at the very moment when they were about to be lost from sight, those who, to see better, had leaned against the shell fell crashing into a horrible piece of waste ground where, among the nettles and rubbish, an exceedingly rare rose was opening, for it was of the sadly prophetic color of the last dusk we shall be permitted to see before we depart this life.

  Hagiwara Sakutarō (1886–1942) was a Japanese poet who began writing poetry at age fifteen, for literary magazines. He refused to become a doctor like his father and soon left college and traveled to Tokyo, where he studied the mandolin. Sadly, his lack of a steady occupation caused him to lose his first love, but she appeared in a number of his poems afterward, even after his marriage to another woman. His first book of poetry, Howling at the Moon (1917), transformed modern Japanese verse. That book along with Blue Cat (1923) firmly established Sakutarō’s reputation as a poet. Most of his poetry focused on mental uncertainty and questions of identity while conveying an interesting melancholy tone. “The Town of Cats” (1935) is Sakutarō’s only short story and an amazing narrative of ambiguity and the surreal fantastical. Although Haruki Murakami disavows the story as an influence on parts of his novel IQ84 (2009), perhaps they conjured up elements from the same collective subconscious.

  The Town of Cats

  Hagiwara Sakutarō

  Translated by Jeffrey Angles

  I

  THE QUALITY THAT INCITES the desire for travel has gradually disappeared from my fantasies. Before, however, symbols of travel were all that filled my thoughts. Just to picture a train, steamboat, or town in an unfamiliar foreign land was enough to make my heart dance. But experience has taught me that travel presents nothing more than identical objects moving in identical spaces: No matter where one goes, one finds the same sort of people living in similar villages and repeating the same humdrum lives. One finds merchants in every small country
town spending their days clicking abacuses and watching the dusty white road outside. In every municipal office, government officials smoke and think about what they will have for lunch. They live out insipid, monotonous lives in which each new day is identical to the last, gradually watching themselves grow old as the days go by. Now the thought of travel projects onto my weary heart an infinitely tedious landscape like that of a paulownia tree growing in a vacant lot, and I feel a dull loathing for human life in which this sameness repeats itself everywhere. Travel no longer holds any interest or romance for me.

  In the past, I often undertook wondrous voyages in my own personal way. Let me explain. I would reach that unique moment in which humankind sometimes finds itself able to soar—that special moment outside of time and space, outside the chain of cause and effect—and I would adroitly navigate the borderline between dreams and reality to play in an uninhibited world of my own making.—Having said this much, I doubt I need to explain my secret further. Let me simply add that, in undertaking these hallucinatory trips, I generally preferred to use the likes of morphine and cocaine, which can be ingested in a simple shot or dose, instead of opium, which is hard to obtain in Japan and requires troublesome tools and provisions.

  There is not enough room here to describe in detail the lands that I traveled in those dreams of narcotic ecstasy, but I will tell you that the trips frequently took me wandering through wetlands where little frogs gathered, through polar coasts where penguins live, and on and on. The landscapes in those dreams were filled with brilliant primary hues. The sea and sky were always as clear and blue as glass. Even after returning to normal, I would cling to those visions and relive them again and again in the world of reality.

  These drug-induced voyages took a terrible toll on my health. I grew increasingly drawn and pale by the day, and my skin deteriorated as if I had aged terribly. By and by, I began to pay more attention to my health. Following my doctor’s advice, I started taking walks through my neighborhood. Every day, I would cover the distance of forty or fifty chō, walking anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour. One day while I was out taking my exercise, I happened upon a new way to satisfy my eccentric wanderlust. I was walking through the usual area around my home. Normally, I do not deviate from my established path, but for some reason that day, I slipped into an unfamiliar alley, and going the wrong way, lost all sense of direction.

  All in all, I have no innate sense of direction. My ability to keep track of the points of the compass is terribly deficient. As a result, I am awful at remembering my way anywhere, and if I go someplace even slightly unfamiliar, in no time I end up completely lost. To make matters worse, I have a habit of getting absorbed in my thoughts as I walk. If an acquaintance happens to greet me along the way, I will pass by in total obliviousness. Because I am so bad at keeping track of directions, I can lose my way even in a place that I know perfectly well, such as my own neighborhood. I can be so close to my destination that people laugh at me when I ask how to get there. Once I walked tens of times around the hedge surrounding the very house in which I have lived for years. Though the gate was right before my eyes, my lack of a sense of direction made it impossible for me to find it. My family insisted a fox must have bewitched me.

  Psychologists would probably account for this bewitching as a disturbance of the inner ear. I say this because the experts claim that the function of sensing direction belongs to the semicircular canals located in the ear.

  In any case, I was completely lost and bewildered. I made a random guess and rushed down the street in search of my house. After going in circles several times in a neighborhood of suburban estates surrounded by trees, suddenly I came upon a bustling street. It was a lovely little neighborhood, but I had no idea where I was!

  The roads had been swept clean, and the flagstones were wet with dew. All of the shops were neat and tidy, all with different types of unusual merchandise lined up in polished show windows. A flowering tree flourished by the eaves of a coffee shop, bringing an artistic play of light and shadow to the borough. The red mailbox at the street crossing was also beautiful, and the young woman in the cigarette shop was as bright and sweet as a plum.

  I had never seen such an aesthetically charming place! Where in Tokyo could I possibly be? But I was unable to recall the layout of the city. I figured I could not have strayed far from home because so little time had elapsed. It was perfectly clear that I was within the territory where I ordinarily strolled, only a half hour or so from home, or at least not too far from it. But how could this place be so close without my having known it?

  I felt as if I was dreaming. I wondered if perhaps what I was seeing was not a real town but a reflection or silhouette of a town projected on a screen. Then, just as suddenly, my memory and common sense returned. Examining my surroundings again, I realized I was seeing an ordinary, familiar block in my neighborhood. The mailbox was at the intersection as always, and the young lady with the gastric disorder sat in the cigarette shop. The same out-dated, dusty merchandise yawned from the space that it occupied in the store windows. On the street, the eaves of the coffee shop were boorishly decorated with an arch of artificial flowers. This was nowhere new. It was my familiar, boring neighborhood.

  In the blink of an eye, my reaction to my surroundings had altered completely. The mysterious and magical transformation of this place into a beautiful town had occurred simply because I had mixed up my directions. The mailbox that always stood at the south end of the block seemed to be on the opposite, northern approach. The tradesmen’s houses on the left side of the street had shifted to the right. The changes sufficed to make the entire neighborhood look new and different. In that brief moment that I spent in the unknown, illusory town, I noticed a sign above a store. I swore to myself that I had seen a picture just like it on a signboard somewhere else.

  When my memory was back in working order, all of the directions reversed themselves. Until a moment before, the crowds on my left had been on the right, and I discovered that, though I had been walking north, I was now headed south. In that instant when my memory returned to normal, the needle of my compass spun around, and the cardinal directions switched positions. The whole universe changed, and the mood of the town that manifested itself before me became utterly different. The mysterious neighborhood that I had seen a moment before existed in some universe of opposite space where the compass was reversed.

  After this accidental discovery, I made it a point to lose my bearings in order to travel again to such mysterious places. The deficiency on my part that I described before was especially helpful in allowing me to undertake these travels, but even people with a normal, sound sense of direction may at times experience the same special places that I have. For instance, imagine yourself returning home on a train late at night. First, the train leaves the station, and then the tracks carry you straight east to west. Some time later, you wake from a dream-filled nap. You realize the train has changed directions at some point and is now moving west to east. You reason this cannot be right, and in the reality you perceive, the train is moving away from your destination. To double-check, you look out the window. The intermediary stations and landscapes to which you are accustomed are all entirely new. The world looks so different that you cannot recognize a single place. But you arrive in the end. When you step down on the familiar train platform, you awaken from the illusion and regain an accurate sense of direction. And once that sense is regained, strange landscapes and sights transform themselves into boring familiarities as unremarkable and ordinary as ever.

  In effect, you see the same landscape, first from the reverse and then from the front, as you are accustomed to seeing it. One can think of a thing as having two separate sides. Just by changing your perspective, the other side will appear. Indeed there is no metaphysical problem more mysterious than the notion that a given phenomenon can possess a “secret, hidden side.” When I was a boy a long time ago, and I u
sed to examine a framed picture that hung on the walls of the house, I wondered all the while what worlds lay hidden on the reverse side of the framed landscape. I removed the frame repeatedly to peep at the back side of the painting. Those childhood thoughts have now turned into a riddle that remains impossible for me to solve even as an adult.

  But the story that I am about to tell may contain a hint for solving the riddle. Should my strange tale lead you, my readers, to imagine a world of the fourth dimension hidden behind things and external manifestations—a universe existing on the reverse side of the landscape—then this tale will seem completely real to you. If, however, you are unable to imagine the existence of such a place, then what follows will seem like the decadent hallucinations of an absurd poet whose nerves have been shattered by a morphine addiction.

  In any event, I shall gather my courage and write. I am not a novelist, and therefore I do not know the intricacies of drama and plot that will excite readers. All that I can do is give a straightforward account of the realities I experienced.

  II

  I was staying in the Hokuetsu region at a hot spring resort in a town that I shall call K. September was nearly over, the equinox already past. Being in the mountains, we were well into autumn. All of the guests who had come from the city to escape the summer heat had returned home, leaving only a handful of visitors to quietly nurse their illnesses in the healing waters of the spa. The autumn shade had grown long, and the leaves of the trees were scattered across the lonely courtyard of our inn. I would don a flannel kimono and spend time pursuing my daily ritual of walking alone along the back mountain roads.