Death Sentences (24 page)

To cap the event, the Kirin staff hoisted Sakakibara high into the air.

Among the staff were three new employees whom Sakakibara had hired after Kasadera's death: Kuwamura Yasuichiro; a recent graduate, Hojo Masashi; and Wakabayashi Kyoko.

The following day, Sakakibara and Keiko were to embark on a nine-day honeymoon in Paris. Their departure was early the next morning, and so they would stay at a hotel overnight.

They did their best to leave the party early, but everyone teased them, saying, "We know it's not the first night for you two!" They went to an after-party and an after-after-party.

Sakakibara had asked Kuwamura to take care of things in his absence. Because the nine-day vacation included two weekends, Sakakibara would only miss one week of work. And at this point there shouldn't be any problems.

Kuwamura and Sakakibara had graduated from the same French department in the same university, but Kuwamura had been two years behind him. Kuwamura had worked in an import-export firm for about three years and then resigned to pursue a career as a freelance translator.

He'd been on good terms with Sakakibara since college.

"By the way, Sakakibara, about the Languages of Surrealism volume-"

The fourth volume in the Undiscovered Materials series, Languages of Surrealism, would center on poetry.

"Who should I ask to do the translation of the three texts?"

He was referring to Who May's three texts, "Another World," "Mirror," and "The Gold of Time."

After his encounter with the ghost of Kasadera that night, Sakakibara had honestly vowed never to touch those manuscripts again.

He had, in fact, buried them deep in the office file cabinets and had never taken another glance at them.

He couldn't work up any enthusiasm for it.

Yet again ... if, yet again, Kasadera's ghost were to appear from the lines of the poems, he would lose all confidence in his sanity.

Nonetheless, those three works were far too important for him to abandon them for personal reasons.

Regardless of who had actually signed the name Who May, and regardless of who had actually written the three manuscripts, the Who May manuscripts provided a hypothetical connection between Artaud, Breton, and Dali.

It might even be that ... Who May was not an actual person but a character used by some group or secret association as a collective name. If that were the case, it was even more interesting. It had deeper implications.

He couldn't let them be buried away.

Even if they couldn't determine their identity right now, the mere suggestion of an enigma would have a powerful impact.

And so-

Sakakibara had nonetheless included the three works with the name Who May on the list of materials for the proposed volume on Languages of Surrealism, with an asterisk beside each title.

The asterisk indicated that these were very important works.

In any event, the time had come to find a translator for them right away. And once they are translated into Japanese, he might be able to look at them with a fresh mind.

In that case-there would be no question of Kasadera's ghost making an appearance. It just wouldn't be possible.

There would be no longer any connection between Kasadera and Who May. Kasadera's ghost had dwelled in the copy of the manuscript clutched in his hand at the time of his death. That was one way of making sense of it.

Even then ... nonetheless Sakakibara had wavered.

Until today he had found reasons to put off the decision on an appropriate translator.

On the one hand, he rather wanted to hand them over to someone he didn't know, and yet, on the other hand, he felt exceedingly uneasy about handing them over to a stranger.

This was a perfect opportunity.

"It is already May, and these are fairly long works, you know-"

Sakakibara poured some whiskey for Kuwamura, who was looking concerned.

"As a matter of fact, I had forgotten about it. I hate to drop it on you, but could you find someone while I am gone?"

"It's really no trouble, but who do you think would be good for this? If necessary, I can try to do it myself."

"Absolutely not!" Sakakibara said loudly and then fell silent in confusion. But even in his confusion, he resolutely shook his head side to side. "I'd like to send this one outside. There was the incident with Kasadera and ..."

His voice trailed off.

"You think that it's a bad omen? That's not like you."

Kuwamura laughed. But he didn't look particularly pleased. He probably thought that Sakakibara doubted his abilities.

"No, that's not it at all ... if you get wrapped up in it, you won't be able to attend to other matters. That's what worries

Sakakibara gave the obvious excuse.

"It will chew up a lot of time, you know. I wonder how much it will take, for all three manuscripts-?"

"Let's see-" Kuwamura thought for a while and then replied. "One manuscript is about ten thousand words, or about thirty pages. For all three, we're talking about a hundred

"We'll need someone who can translate quickly. Let's ask for a draft, and you can check over the work that way."

"That should work ..."

In a happier tone, Kuwamura mentioned the names of several young translators.

"I'll leave it to you."

"How about Fujisawa?"

"You mean Fujisawa Satoru?"

Sakakibara knew the name well. He had even met him a few times. He had a reputation for a quick turnaround on translations. His translations were literal and rather stilted but highly accurate.

Still-something bothered Sakakibara. He knew that Kasadera had been fairly good friends with Fujisawa.

Ironically, Kuwamura had probably thought of Fujisawa for the same reason. And sure enough-he went on to add, "Fujisawa would be thrilled to do it. If we let him know that this is work left behind by Kasadera, he'll jump at the chance."

There was nothing but for him to agree.

He couldn't shake the disquieting thought that Fujisawa, as a friend of Kasadera, might conjure up his ghost once again. But then it occurred to him that Fujisawa would surely console and ease the dead spirit, precisely because he had been his friend.

"What do you think? Shall we go with him-"

Noticing the expression of deep concern with which Kuwamura was looking at him, Sakakibara drained his whiskey and water in a single gulp. He then answered, "Okay. Let's go with him."

Sakakibara and Keiko left for Paris the next day.

The nine days flew by.

It was Monday night in Japan when they returned. By the time they cleared customs and boarded the limousine bus from Narita airport into town it was past ten.

From the bus terminal they took a taxi, and when they reached the new apartment they were renting in Nishi-Waseda, it was nearly eleven.

After more than twenty hours on the plane, the two of them were dead tired.

Still, Sakakibara was worried about things at the office.

Kuwamura picked up when he called. Kojima was also there working late.

"Just go to bed before me. I'm going to take a quick look."

With these words to Keiko, he stuffed some souvenirs in his bag and left the apartment.

In the corner of the garage, under a sheet, his beloved CBX 650 stood waiting for him.

He removed the sheet and started the engine.

Their new apartment was closer to the Takada-no-baba offices than his old one. It took less than five minutes to get there on the bike.

Thrilling to the familiar roar of the bike after his absence, he arrived at Kirin Publishers. He looked up and saw that only the lights of the third floor offices were on. The fifth floor was dark.

Now that they had finished sorting through the materials, there was no need to work as intensely as before.

He took the elevator to the third floor.

Kuwamura and Kojima were waiting for him, ready to joke and give him a hard time.

He bought some peace by pulling out some souvenirs from France for them and then went to his desk.

A pile of messages lay there.

"Anything new?"

"Well, starting today, Undiscovered Materials is on the shelves in the stores," Kuwamura replied.

"Oh, and there's this-"

Kuwamura handed Sakakibara a stack of papers.

"These came in from Fujisawa today. I just glanced through them, but they look really interesting."

He felt shocked for an instant.

They were standard manuscript pages. In bold letters on the title page was "Another World." Beneath it were the characters sakkafumei or "author unknown." Which could also be read, "Author: Hu Mei"-probably his idea of a joke.

"Fujisawa also translated the title as `Another World,' didn't he?"

With this rhetorical question, Sakakibara leafed through the pages. There were seventy-three pages in all. In published form that would be about thirty-seven pages. It would be the length of a short story.

But that was it for now. Fujisawa must have begun with this work.

Sakakibara felt somehow relieved.

If the title "The Gold of Time" had appeared first, it would have rekindled his nightmares.

"That's right. We gave him all of Kasadera's notes-he probably used them," Kuwamura answered.

"The other two-?"

"He's working on them now. I called him, and he said he'd have the next one done in about a week."

Nodding, Sakakibara turned to the first page.

"A fish. Dobaded. Its eyeball sliced down the middle. Sections quivering. Images reflected on the split lens are stained with blood. Dobaded. The city of people mirrored there is dyed madder red. Reversal of pressure, dobaded, and there you go! It's taking you there...."

(Dobaded, huh ... ?)

`Anyway, we'll have to dispense with `author unknown.' I will write an account of Who May."

Even as he said this, he knew that the account would be based largely on supposition and imagination.

Nevertheless-this would have to do for Who May.

He looked around the room and spoke again.

"All right. If you can bear to drop things for a moment, let's go out for a drink. I'll treat you to something Japanese called sake."

4

Exactly one week later as Fujisawa had promised, the translation of another manuscript arrived by post.

It was "Mirror."

"The Gold of Time" would turn up last, after all.

Sakakibara felt genuinely relieved.

The memories of that night had nearly faded away. But even though they had already begun to fade, he did not feel like reading "The Gold of Time" again, not yet.

Sakakibara would proofread the translation of "Mirror."

When "The Gold of Time" did come in, he would entrust the proofreading to Kuwamura.

He placed a copy of the original text alongside the translation and began to read Fujisawa's translation, comparing it line by line with the original.

The first half showed a constant refrain.

Variations on "gaze upon yourself" appeared again and again.

The refrain then gradually and subtly changed, undergoing various permutations and combinations until it reached a state of verbal chaos and then ended.

It was that sort of work.

He found it quite fascinating ... but, quite frankly, incomprehensible.

He couldn't grasp its logic.

It seemed to entail a sort of automatism.

He tried to work through it in those terms.

Automatism was one of the surrealists' favorite experimental techniques, in which they wrote down words as rapidly as they popped into the head or flowed from the mouth.

In this way, writing so rapidly, they strove to shake off the rational constraints associated with common sense, grammar, and rhetoric, recording the very movement of thought in the domain of the unconscious, and Breton championed this technique as one "proposing a key capable of opening indefinitely that box of many bottoms called man."

As early as igig, in collaboration with Philippe Soupault, Breton himself published a work based on automatism titled "The Magnetic Fields."

It was possible that this "Mirror" also entailed a sort of automatism.

In other words, he may have used the "mirror" as a means to liberate the unconscious mind by talking to himself in the mirror, which gradually allowed him to break with rational language, and the result had been this sort of work-

It was one possible explanation for it anyway.

It could be explained but-something inexplicable still remained.

Something else ... something ... just seemed to be there.

If he only had some kind of clue, he was sure to get itit would appear clearly before him. Even though he couldn't escape this feeling, there was not a clue to be found.

It was exasperating.

Was it a problem with the translation? No, it wasn't as simple as that. The translation was on the mark. Besides, Sakakibara had been reading the translation alongside the original text.

Was it his reading ability? Maybe for the native speaker of French there was a very obvious clue.

In any event, "Mirror" was entirely different in effect from "Another World."