The Bridegroom Was a Dog (New Directions Pearls)

by Yoko Tawada

  “You mustn’t listen to Granny. She’s always been superstitious, but lately she’s joined one of those crazy new religions, and you never know what kind of nonsense she’s going to come out with.”

  For some reason, hearing this made the back of Ryoko’s earlobes turn cold as ice, and, grabbing Taro, she pulled him up and shook him. “You’re not going to turn weird on me now, are you?” she yelled at him.

  Perhaps shocked at the way she was behaving, Taro said nothing, which only made things worse, until all the irritation she’d been keeping in check exploded. “Why don’t you say something? Have you gone dumb?” she yelled again.

  From then on, Taro stopped talking altogether, which drove Ryoko to new heights of anger, but when she tried to break his silence by throwing dishes at him, he finally left home. He didn’t go far, however, as she still saw him in the park or at the station, each time looking more muscular, with a brighter gleam in his eyes, moving with such agility that, more often than not, he’d be gone before she had a chance to call out to him.

  Taro must have stopped going to work after that, and when Mr. Orita called to ask what had happened, she told him through her tears: “The fact is he’s disappeared, and I don’t know where he’s gone.” But it wasn’t sadness that made her cry, it was because she was afraid he might wonder why she hadn’t told anyone until now and start asking some nasty questions, so she’d chosen to play the role of a woman so heartbroken she didn’t know what she was doing, though her real feelings toward Taro no longer involved anger but jealousy, for compared to Taro, who looked fitter every time she saw him, her own body moved so slowly and awkwardly it seemed downright unattractive even to her, which was why she’d started “training.”

  In the end, Mitsuko left Ryoko’s apartment without really understanding either what Taro and Toshio did when they “played around,” or the nature of Ryoko’s “training,” but when she got home she looked at Taro and thought, so this guy used to be an ordinary wage slave, and felt the old excitement slipping away. After school started on September 1, however, the children came back, and Mitsuko was busy teaching from late afternoon on into the evening, while Taro started leaving during the day and not returning until after dark, which suited Mitsuko fine, since seeing him in broad daylight somehow disgusted her now; in the darkened house, in the middle of the night, she didn’t mind, but for the rest of the time she wanted to rub him out of her life.

  She developed a special fondness for Fukiko: before the vacation she’d merely wanted to protect her from all the bullying she got, but now she combed her hair and trimmed her nails, and told her to come an hour early so they could go over her schoolwork, and when Fukiko still did poorly Mitsuko got as angry as if it had been herself. Fukiko, on the other hand, seemed to find Mitsuko a little creepy, and refused to come early at first, making up stories about things she had to do, and hurrying home after class before Mitsuko had a chance to speak to her, as though she didn’t want all this attention; so when Mitsuko cornered her one day and asked, “What do you do about dinner?” she just said, “My father gives me money,” which didn’t satisfy Mitsuko, who asked again, “And what do you spend it on?” Mitsuko’s exasperated sigh when she heard the answer — “Yakitori, or cheeseburgers” — made the girl feel so embarrassed she burst into tears, so Mitsuko told her, “Starting tomorrow you’ll eat with me,” which didn’t particularly please her but left her with little choice, making her decide to start crying again, except now she couldn’t stop; and as Mitsuko wiped away her tears, her resistance seemed to crumble and she buried her face in Mitsuko’s bosom and cried her heart out, and since even her Father, who didn’t like people and warned her to stay away from them, never had a bad word to say about this woman, it didn’t seem like such a bad thing to do.

  So Fukiko forgot herself from time to time and began to depend on her. Every day after school, she would go over to Mitsuko’s place, eat the dinner Taro made, and after he’d gone out, except for Thursdays when she had a class there with the other third-graders, either go outdoors to play or shut herself in the back room, until about five minutes before Taro was due home when, almost instinctively, she would leave. She was soon accustomed to this routine, and if she never smiled when she saw Mitsuko, she no longer ran away from her, while Mitsuko tried to draw her out by buying her books, but Fukiko hated books, and didn’t really care for food, either, unless it was flavored with ketchup or mayonnaise, dawdling over the meals Taro cooked but feeling duty-bound to eat them, casting sly, sidelong glances at the cook himself, who seemed to fascinate her.

  Fukiko wasn’t a talkative child, but when asked a question, perhaps because she didn’t really understand what the other person wanted to know, she’d sometimes go on about unrelated topics, such as the time Mitsuko said: “Your father knows about a lot of things, doesn’t he? Once when he came here, he told me all about crocodiles. I bet he’s been to lots of different countries.”

  Fukiko thought for a moment before replying, looking rather pleased with herself: “Dad’s always saying he wants to go somewhere, but he just packs a suitcase and puts it by the bathroom door, and never goes anywhere. He says the last time he went on a trip was before he got the job he has now.”

  Mitsuko tried again: “He must be busy working,” but Fukiko just cocked her head, without so much as a nod, and it occurred to Mitsuko that she’d never heard Fukiko use the word “busy,” which was unusual for a child nowadays — she’d found that odd from the start.

  Another time, when Mitsuko asked, “What does your father say about Taro?” Fukiko just gave her a dubious look and said, “Has he met Taro?” and since she could tell by the look in the eyes gazing up at her that the girl wasn’t playing dumb, Mitsuko regretted having asked her in the first place.

  You couldn’t say Fukiko looked clever, gripping her chopsticks with her sticky fingers, pulling at her ears, or just sitting there, lost in thought as she slowly put her food in her mouth, and yet, watching her, Mitsuko often felt a love akin to irritation well up in her, so strong it hurt, and sometimes she even wished Taro would hurry up and leave so the two of them could be alone, not that they did anything special together; in fact, more often than not they’d end up quarreling, because Mitsuko would be determined to read to her, and Fukiko wanted no part of it, but when, for example, Mitsuko took Fukiko’s blouse off so she could sew on the buttons that were hanging by a thread, the girl would sit there beside her, naked to the waist, intently watching the movements of her fingers, and after a while her head would be leaning against Mitsuko’s shoulder, and when Mitsuko was sure she must have fallen asleep, she’d look over to find the child still gravely following the needle with her eyes, so Mitsuko would say:

  “You like sewing on buttons better than reading, don’t you?”

  “That’s because I’m not ‘smart’ like you.”

  This cheeky sort of remark only made Mitsuko angry again.

  After she took the girl under her wing, the other kids stopped bullying her openly, but there were more nasty rumors going the rounds than ever before, especially one about Fukiko’s father “swinging his hips” at the Game Center; this was an expression the junior high school boys used to refer to various things, but it had filtered down to the elementary school children, who were all using it now without knowing what it meant, and though it upset their mothers to overhear this sort of language, they didn’t understand it either, and had no one to ask. When Mitsuko first heard it from Mrs.
Orita, for some reason it cracked her up, not that she knew what it meant herself, it just sounded so funny, but Mrs. Orita frowned as though she thought she was laughing at her.

  “Don’t you think it needs looking into, though? After all, there’s AIDS to worry about, too, you know.”

  Unable to see what she was getting at, Mitsuko blurted out: “Look into? What’s there to look into?”

  Mrs. Orita was quite fed up by now with Mitsuko, who had never once said anything that made sense to her, and in total exasperation started to say: “But don’t you see? Your Taro — if . . . ,” then realized that since Taro didn’t belong to Miss Kitamura, “your” was hardly appropriate, and that she was under no obligation to investigate the company he kept, either.

  Beginning at last to catch on, Mitsuko said: “Oh, if that’s what it is, there’s nothing to worry about,” meaning that since she wasn’t sleeping with Taro any more, it made no difference to her what he did or with whom. But Mrs. Orita, who didn’t have that sort of thing in mind at all, inquired disapprovingly:

  “Hadn’t you better sit down, the two of you, and have a good talk about this? Of course the best thing would be for Iinuma to go back to Ryoko, but if neither of them wants to start over again, Iinuma could divorce Ryoko, and then he’d be free to marry you, which seems a logical thing to do. Either way, doesn’t it bother you to have him hanging around in gay bars? . . .”

  Mitsuko started at the words “marry” and “gay bar,” as it dawned on her that maybe the Game Centers the kids were always talking about were actually places gays went to, and she was the only one who didn’t know. Even if that were the case, though, Taro’s behavior no longer had much to do with her, so she replied:

  “But what’s wrong with that? There’s nothing I can do about it anyway. And why on earth should he have to marry me?”

  Mrs. Orita blinked. “Just what do you think he is — you and Ryoko both? Poor Iinuma! It isn’t fair!” There were tears in her eyes when she left for home.

  One weekend toward the end of September, the Oritas took their son to Mrs. Orita’s parents’ for a visit, and when they got off the train at Ueno Station on Sunday night, the boy squatted down on the platform, saying his gym shoelaces had got tangled up, which, as his mother soon saw, was indeed the case, with his left and right shoes actually tied together in a terrific knot, and while she was standing there waiting for him to sort out the mess and retie the laces properly, wondering how in the world things like this happened, she glanced over at the opposite platform, where she saw Taro Iinuma and Toshio Matsubara, each holding a suitcase, standing so close together their bodies touched, so she grabbed her husband by the arm, and though he stood there gawking around for a bit, he finally saw them too.

  “Iinuma!” he called out.

  Taro quickly spotted Mr. Orita and bowed politely, not the least bit flustered, and when Orita yelled, “Where’re you going?” he answered in a clear, carrying voice: “Thank you for all your help.”

  Orita’s “You idiot!” was drowned out by the express train coming in, hiding the two behind it. Leaving the luggage with his wife, Orita ran down the stairs and across to the other platform, but soon returned, out of breath, gasping:

  “They got away. Let’s call the police.”

  It was just as well his wife stopped him, for as even he soon realized, there was nothing criminal about their going on a trip together somewhere. What his wife said made much better sense.

  “We’ve got to let Miss Kitamura know.”

  But when they called Mitsuko from the platform, no one answered the phone, so there was nothing to do but go home, where they tried again, but still with no result, which seemed very strange considering it was already the middle of the night, so the Oritas, who couldn’t very well just sit there, got into the car and drove down the bumpy, ill-lit roads of the southern district to Mitsuko’s house, only to find it looking dark and deserted. No matter how many times they called “Miss Kitamura!” there was no reply but, oddly, the door was unlocked, and when they opened it and went inside, turning on the lights, they found everything neatly put away, with a strange chill in the air, and then Mr. Orita gasped in surprise, pointing at a poster tied to a pillar in a spot where anyone coming through the garden could see it immediately, for written on it in big letters with a pink magic marker were the words “The Kitamura School is now closed.”

  The next day, the Oritas got a telegram from Mitsuko, saying: HAVE ESCAPED WITH FUKIKO STOP TAKE CARE. The house where Mitsuko had lived was soon torn down to make room for some apartments, and by the time construction began, the children were all going to new cram schools, and hardly ever ventured into that part of town again.

  Yoko Tawada

  “Spectacular.” —Victor Pelevin

  “Only the most profound reverence could do justice to this writer and this work.” —Wim Wenders

  “A masterly balance between the tenuous but meaningful connections of dreams and the direct, earthy storytelling of folk tales.” —The New York Times

  Yoko Tawada was born in Tokyo in 1960. At the age of twelve, she wrote her first story, which she photocopied and handed out. She studied Russian literature at Waseda University and contemporary German literature at Hamburg University and the University of Zurich, where she received her doctorate. Her first published work was a collection of poetry and prose, A Void Only Where You Are. Tawada was awarded the presitigous Akutagawa Prize (Japan’s equivalent to the Pulitzer) for “The Bridegroom Was a Dog.” She has gone on to publish several more stories and novels in both German and Japanese garnering awards on both continents including the Tanizaki Prize (Japan, 2003) and the Goethe Medal (Germany, 2005). Tawada notably performs her texts aloud, often with the accompaniment of actors, visual artists, and musicians. New Directions publishes four of her books.

  Copyright © 1993 by Yoko Tawada

  Translation copyright © 1998 by Margaret Mitsutani

  Copyright © 2012 by New Directions

  All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

  This translation of The Bridegroom was a Dog (Inumukoiri) was originally published by Kodansha Ltd.

  First published as a Pearl (NDP1244) by New Directions in 2012

  Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books Canada Limited

  Design by Erik Rieselbach

  Set in Albertina

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Tawada, Yoko, 1960 –

  [Inu mukoiri. English]

  The bridegroom was a dog / Yoko Tawada ; translated by Margaret Mitsutani.

  p. cm.

  “A New Directions Pearl.”

  eISBN 978-0-8112-2060-6

  I. Mitsutani, Margaret. II. Title.

  PL862.A85I5813 2012

  895.6'35—dc23

  2012028729

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin

  by New Directions Publishing Corporation

  80 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10011

  The New Directions Pearls

  César Aira, The Literary Conference

  Roberto Bolaño, Antwerp

  Jorge Luis Borges, Everything and Nothing