Death Sentences (27 page)

A heap of mail covered his desk.

At the bottom of the large heap was a copy of the new book, Languages of Surrealism.

He took everything and stuffed it into a large vinyl bag.

In any event-he was spending today at home. He needed some sleep.

He'd take care of all this tomorrow.

He left Wakabayashi Kyoko in charge and left the office.

He walked home at a leisurely pace, looking in the windows of bookstores in the neighborhood.

Some of them had copies of Undiscovered Materials on display, and some had none at all.

It was a limited run of books, and so it made sense that they were concentrated in certain locations.

Languages of Surrealism was not yet on display anywhere.

They had rushed advance copies of the book to Fukuoka to make it for the exhibition, but the distribution to bookstores that had asked to carry them would start this weekend.

And he was eager to see what impression it would make.

It couldn't be expected to sell anywhere near as much as the second and third volumes with their illustrations.

But the fourth volume was truly remarkable for the scope and depth of its materials.

He felt confident of that ... but then Sakakibara himself hadn't actually read through the entire volume.

It had gone to press without him reading about a third of it.

That third ... included ... Who May's "The Gold of Time."

Who May ... in the end no one knew exactly who he was.

Even his connection to Breton, Artaud, and Dali had its basis largely in speculation.

That was a matter for scholars to study and assess later.

But he felt a tinge of regret nevertheless.

(Okay!)

Sakakibara came to a decision.

As he walked, he made up his mind.

(Today is the day ... today is the day I read it.)

1

Konami Shichiro, a translator, received a phone call from Harado Zenji in Osaka.

Harado taught English literature at a university in Kyoto. In his early thirties, he was very active as a scholar.

Fond of science fiction and fantasy literature, he also contributed reviews and essays on these topics to scholarly journals.

SF was Konami Shichiro's principal line of work. In addition to translations, he wrote essays and occasionally published novels under a pen name.

For two years, he had been writing a column in a monthly journal in collaboration with Harado.

Each month they would make a selection of important new books, writing a dialogue in which each discussed what he liked.

That's why Harado had called.

He and Konami had entirely different interests. Konami gravitated toward classic SF, while Harado preferred more marginal SF, some of it quite bizarre.

"Konami, have you read Undiscovered Materials?" Harado asked.

"Undiscovered Materials? Well, no. I haven't heard of it."

"It was put out by a very small publisher, Kirin, and it's a series on surrealism, with Breton's trunk on the cover."

"Oh, yeah, you mean the one from the art exhibit at some department store?"

"Did you go to it?"

"No, I didn't get to it. Not really my sort of thing. I don't even dream when I'm sleeping. So all that stuff on the unconscious leaves me cold," Konami answered.

It sounded like Harado had latched on to something weird again. (Fine, okay-) He'd just leave all that kinky stuff to him.

"Well, the fourth volume of the series, the one on Languages of Surrealism that came out late last year, is quite interesting."

"Languages?"

"Actually the first character of language is usually written with the character for word, but they've used the character for phantom instead. You know, as a play on words."

"Is it mostly criticism?"

"No. It's an anthology of experimental work, with poems, short fiction ... and even some fairly long works, too."

"Experimental work, huh?"

`Just now I was reading something called `The Gold of Time,' by a writer called Who May, a kind of, well, prose poem, and it's quite good, with a true sense of the marvelous. And there's another work by Who May, "Another World," which is definitely SF."

"Who May? Never heard of him."

Konami's reply was indifferent.

When Harado used the term SF, it sounded somewhat condescending to Konami and always ended up rubbing him the wrong way.

"So, are you thinking of using this surrealist whatchamacallit for this month's review?" Konami asked.

"Yeah, that's the idea. But even more than that, I'd like to get you to read it, too. At least `Another World.' I think you'll like it."

"All right, all right. As soon as I have time, I'll take a look at it. It's Kirin Publishers, right?"

"Yeah. It's the fourth volume of Undiscovered Materials, Y18oo. You'll probably find it in the art books section-"

Konami listened but didn't bother to jot it down. He had almost no interest in reading it.

They then exchanged information about other new publications for awhile, and once they had settled on what each would do for the review, they hung up.

Near the end of every month Harado would send the manuscript of his review to Konami. Konami would use the remainder of their allotted pages for his half of it.

That was the pattern that they had gradually settled on.

Konami would collate their manuscripts and deliver them to the magazine publisher.

However-

That month the manuscript from Harado, who always kept strictly to deadlines, was already well past its due date. Konami called, but there was no answer.

Konami had no choice but to extend his portion of the review to complete the manuscript for the publisher.

This had never happened before.

Although he was worried, he still felt more anger than concern.

There was no excuse for Harado not even to have called-

The day after he turned in the manuscript, however, it was in the newspapers, and friends were calling him, and he learned what had happened to Harado.

He couldn't have contacted him. He had died.

His body was found on a bench in the park at Osaka Castle.

He was sitting there, slumped over as if dozing, dead.

The cause of death was said to be a heart attack.

His body had sat there on the bench for three days, and somehow no one had noticed.

Someone who passed by the park during their lunch break had noticed him sitting in the same position two days in a row and, thinking it odd, reported it to the police.

He was holding a book tightly with both hands on his knees.

Konami later learned from some friends of Harado that the book had been Undiscovered Materials.

That came as a shock.

That day, on his way home from work, Konami went into a bookstore in the train station.

Just as Harado had said, Undiscovered Materials was in the section of art books.

The fourth volume was thin compared to volumes two and three. Konami picked it up. He found the name Who May in the table of contents.

It read "Poet of the Fourth Dimension, Who May." Three of his works appeared.

Konami opened to those pages. He recalled the title "The Gold of Time."

He started into it:

"The shade of the shadow of light. The depth of the depths of light. Equinox of light. Around behind light, at the time it arrives here. Time is gold. Gold itself has the same aspect as time. Time is gold, and its shadow too is gold...."

He felt drawn into it despite himself.

At some point his soul started drifting away.

It was a strange ... eerie feeling. Pulled into the lines of words, he then passed through them, and the poem itself grew ever more distant ... (Am I simply exhausted?) ... (I'm starting to lose consciousness.) Such thoughts echoed from the corners of his mind.

Yet he continued to be carried away.

(Where am I going ... ?)

He didn't know. Harado's countenance appeared before his eyes. He was smiling. He was smiling so very happily.

Opening his mouth, he whispers something ... but the voice is not audible ... a vortex appears ... and disappears. It is a celestial body. The motion of the celestial body becomes visible as if a singular concept.

There is a wheel. There are spokes within the wheel. It is the vortex once again. Slowly ... and gradually faster ... he is going to be sucked into it.

As he gets closer, each and every one of the points forming the wheel turn out to be human faces. Next to him-immediately next to him, is Harado. He can sense it.

For an instant-he sees himself.

There he is, walking along the street. But he is not in present time. That part of the city also looks quite different. His head is covered in white hair.

(The future!)

He felt it clearly. He was seeing the future. But the scene immediately began to melt and fade away. And unfamiliar cities flitted past his eyes.

Once again it is the vortex ... the vortex spiraling, sucking him into somewhere else. He is watching it all from afar.

Suddenly, he sensed that Harado had vanished.

He had left. He had left for some distant place.

Konami was alone. And he was free.

An instant-! An instant-! An instant-!

Countless instants bounded by.

And then he saw it. Or, rather, he knew it. He thought he knew it. It was the vortex. The vortex was spiraling down into infinite depth. On the edge of the abyss was Konami.

On and on, entirely different consciousnesses flowed past him, affording glimpses of a series of scenes and places unfamiliar to him.

The sun rose, and the sun set. Again it rose, again it set. Again it rose and again set.

"Sir!"

A voice suddenly rang in his ears.

It all vanished in an instant. It was ripped away before his eyes.

He had dropped something without noticing.

It was the book. It had fallen open to the page bearing the title "The Gold of Time."

"The store is closing-"

Startled, he looked at his watch. It was past seven.

It had been barely five when he entered the bookstore.

But he had had no consciousness of time passing.

(What the ... ?)

Konami hastily bent over and picked up the book.

"Do you wish to buy that?"

The shop clerk sounded exasperated.

"No, no-"

He returned the book to its place on the shelf with trembling hands.

"I don't need it. Really, I don't need it."

And he ran out of the store.

2

It was a day full of frustration.

She had finished her final exams today. But she still felt as prickly as she had the day before.

For one, her period had started during exams, and she hated it. Still, it was better to have it than not.

Once she'd been two weeks late and had been a nervous wreck.

She hadn't seen Yoshio since.

That was how it had to be. It only took one slip to make a heap of trouble. She would spend spring break in bed, alone. She didn't feel at all like going out anyway.

Still, today was special. She didn't want to go right home.

Exams had been as hellish as she'd anticipated, especially Japanese history. She wondered if she'd managed twenty out of a hundred. She blamed Makiko for that. She refused to show her crib sheet to her.

She didn't want to go home right now and have her mother see how distraught she was.

Some classmates had invited her out. But she'd turned them down. She wasn't feeling much like tromping around with them.

And so she had come to Shinjuku by herself.

She changed out of her school uniform in the restroom of a department store and put on as much makeup as a drag queen.

And then, with her uniform stuffed in a shopping bag, she wandered aimlessly. She had no money. So she couldn't even see a movie. The wind was terribly cold. She had to keep walking.

If some old guy tried to pick her up, she figured she'd go with him. How much was a high school girl getting these days? Maybe twenty or thirty thousand yen. Anyway, if you did ten guys, you'd come out with about two to three hundred thousand yen. It was hard to believe. She knew a girl who paid for a trip to Hawaii that way.