from Lion Cross Point by Masatsugu Ono, translated by Angus Turvill Takeru looked at the tree again. Bunji wasn't there anymore. But he could see him plodding along the narrow concrete road between the fields that led north to the seawall. He was bent forward, as though carrying something heavy on his back. Against his small thin body Bunji's hands looked strangely large, dangling weakly by his thighs. Beyond him were hills. A hill to the west, one of the two that formed the bay, was beginning to cast a purple shadow over the village, a sign that night was not far off. A half-transparent moon hung in the sky. From time to time there was the noise of a vehicle on the bay road, which had been straightened during the coastal protection program. The cicadas were as loud as ever. The cries of black hawks fell from the sky like quoits, hoops of sound thrown down toward trees and telephone poles. The hawks themselves, descending more swiftly than their cries, settled here and there on the poles, folded their scruffy wings, and stared fixedly toward something more distant than tomorrow. Takeru thought of Bunji's eyes and wondered if they could see this scenery. Tottering along the road Bunji looked spurned by the world outside himself, by this land. But from what Mitsuko had said, Bunji had died without ever leaving, without ever going beyond the boundaries of the green hills and dark blue sea. So, how could it be that there was no place for him here, where he'd been born and lived his whole life? His eyes looked as though they couldn't see what was in front of him, as if--though no one else was there to see it either--the scene hid itself from him, refused to let him see it. So his vision couldn't expand outward, and had no alternative but to go inward. But what was there inside? Any memories that might rise up from the dark depths inside him would be memories of this land between the green hills and dark blue sea, this land that was now sinking into the depths of night. There was nothing else inside him but the very scenery that so stubbornly refused to accept him. Even if he'd tried to remember any other landscape he wouldn't have been able to--there was nowhere else he knew. And he couldn't have created fake memories for himself. Mitsuko said he hadn't been bright, hadn't gone to school. If you've got nowhere to go in reality, then at least you'd want your mind to take you somewhere. But if you don't understand what people say, if you can't read or write, how could you imagine another world? Rejected both from within and without, where was Bunji trying to go? Was he unable to go anywhere, and thus had no choice but to remain here? The expression of Bunji's eye was stuck fast in the surface of its lens. Clear but at the same time blurred. It was just the same as...whom? Takeru must have known from the start. But he would only realize later that every time a word for that person, or an image of them, came into his mind, he tried to get rid of it immediately, as though crumpling up a yellowing scrap of paper on which it had appeared. Takeru seemed to have been given the task of seeing Bunji, even when everyone else's sight rejected him. Who or what had imposed this duty on him? This place, of course. There was no other possibility. In which case, the place was not necessarily ignoring Bunji, not necessarily rejecting him entirely. Didn't that make sense? If Takeru could see Bunji so clearly, that meant that the landscape--everything alive and dead from which the landscape was formed--was, to at least a very small degree, yielding to Bunji, yielded something of the outline and density of existence, and so was preventing, if only just, his complete disappearance. Doesn't that make sense? Yes. It's a reasonable idea. Bunji faded into the dusk, and then Takeru saw his brother in the darkness instead, asleep on his stomach, his face flat against the tatami mat. The top half of his body was naked, and an ant was crawling up his thin arm. Before any other ants could appear, Takeru opened his eyes. It was only then that he realized they'd been closed. Excerpted from Lion Cross Point by Masatsugu Ono All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
