GOLDSEA | ASIAN BOOKVIEW | FICTION
NPby Banana Yoshimoto
Grove Press, New York, 1994, 194 pp, $22
A young Japanese woman explores the suicide of her boyfriend and of the others who had set out to translate the work of a dead author.
EXCERPT
hat did I know about Sarao Takase? I knew that he was an unhappy
Japanese writer who had lived in the States, who had written some fiction
when he wasn't in a blue funk. I knew that he had taken his own life at the
age of forty-eight; that he and his estranged wife had had two children; and
that his short stories had been published in a single volume and enjoyed
several months of popularity in America.
The book contains ninety-seven stories and was called N.P. All of them are
rather brief and discursive, like sketches. Takase did not have the
perseverance to sustain an extended narrative. I found out about him from
my old boyfriend Shoji. He had discovered a ninety-eighth story by Takase,
and was translating it.
You know how they say that if you're sitting around a bonfire on a hot
summer night, telling one ghost story after another, something mysterious is
bound to hapopen once you've reached the one-hundredth. Well, last
summer, that happened to me. I lived through one of those one-hundredth
stories, and it was precisely during the time of year when the air is intense
and hot, and the blue summer sky promises to suck you up. Let me tell you
the story that happened to me last summer.
I met Sarao Takase's children more than five years ago, when I was still in
high school. One day, Shoji took me to a party hosted by a publisher. It was
held in a large reception hall complete with miniature chandeliers decorated
with orchids and huge tables laden with silver platters of fancy food. The
room buzzed with people chatting and sampling the hors d'oeuvres. I looked
around for other people my age, but I didn't see any at first. Then, I caught
sight of Takase's kids, and I felt more at ease.
At one point, when Shoji was talking to someone else, I took the opportunity to move to a spot where I could see them better. It was really weird. I was overwhelmed by the sensation that I had actually met them before in my dreams, but then, in the next moment, I came back to my senses, aware that anyone who saw these two would feel the same way. They were, in some sense, a couple who evoked nostalgia, a longing for home.
Shoji caught me staring at them, and said, "Those two are the last living traces of Sarao Takase."
"They're both his children?" I asked.
"Yes, fraternal twins."
"I'd like to meet them."
"I'll introduce you."
"Just remember that I'm supposed to be twenty and a newcomer, okay?" I smiled.
"That sounds respectable enough. I'll take you over." He smiled too.
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