The wife, whose name I've forgotten if indeed she ever had one, comes into our living room and catches me napping in our one easy chair. She glances at the book in my hand.
"Is that another Murakami?"
"It is."
"Haven't you read that one before?"
Startled, I stare down at its shiny cover.
"You know, I don't really remember."
"Well, no matter. Put that down and come have dinner. I've made those noodles you like."
*
We sit across from one another at the café table in our kitchen, slurping noodles. Between us on the table sits a huge daikon, fresh from the market where my wife shops every Tuesday and Saturday.
The daikon develops a mouth and begins to speak to me. For some reason this does not strike me as strange or alarming—you understand, I'm not normally given to having hallucinations, but somehow this vegetable's prim green mouth, speaking to me in perfectly ordinary Japanese, does not worry me in the slightest. At least, until I begin to understand what it's saying.
"She's sleeping with him, you know."
"Mm?" I mumble, around a mouthful of noodles.
"Watanabe."
"Noboru Watanabe?" I blurt, out loud.
The daikon's sarcastic "Yes, that one" is overwhelmed by my wife asking me, bemused, "Now why would you be asking me about Noboru out of the blue like that?"
The familiar way she says his name just confirms it for me, but I don't want to believe it—and I certainly don't want to tell her that I was talking to a vegetable!
"N-nothing, dear. I was just wondering how he was doing. We haven't had dinner with him for awhile."
"No, we haven't," she says, a faint smile playing across her face. "You should ring him up."
"Maybe I'll do that."
*
After dinner, I put a Bix Beiderbecke record on the turntable and sit down again in my easy chair while my wife does the washing up. I look at the Murakami on our side table, but I can't bring myself to open it again.
The wife comes into our living room. I stand up and hug her, more fiercely than I've done in longer than I can remember. Her breasts feel as firm and supple as the day we were married. Eventually she breaks our embrace and, without a word, goes into the bathroom. I sit down with Murakami again, and this time I pick him up to read the next story.
The daikon does not speak to me again, but I know it's in there, smirking.
—9/12/2018, in response to Haruki Murakami's The Elephant Vanishes,
and posted as a review on Goodreads shortly thereafter.
©2018 Alan P. Scott. All rights reserved.
Last updated September 22, 2018
Contact me:
ascott@pacifier.com