Bosozuke Chintaro fails, in a manner too senile for his age, to process the crowd ahead of him. And so he bumps into one, shoves away another, and crumbles onto the floor amidst a great crash of china. A few sun-tanned heads look him over. He looks back, like a bird. Almost, by some natural impulse, he caws. But a familiar tongue slithers back between his teeth at unnatural speed, and somewhat disingenuously, Chintaro sez, “What’re you looking at, friend-o?”
Some of the rubbernecks exit his field of vision, but the remaining wrinkly figures placate his momentary exhilaration. He feels oddly at peace, thinking that if there is a country for old men, it is on this patch of ground that he has made his five-second hammock. Let’s not have it be ten seconds, he thinks, and rises to his feet.
Instantly, a jabbering intrudes into Chintaro’s ears. He blinks and looks up. From the eaves of the decrepit building hang those swaying bamboo cages, pregnant with empty wind. Naturally, he has wandered back to Yanagiba’s. The sun looks at him bastardly, its eyes laughing. The throng, mustier than the valley of his behind, clobbers him with the rattling beads of yet another queasy premonition.
[]
Master Yanagiba Kuchibiru, renowned folklorist of some degree, claims to have a PhD in proto-spiritual psychotherapy and a splitting headache. Following which, he is unwilling to further discuss the matter of the disappearing village for today. But he is, naturally, met with virulent dissent and a rain of fresh nightsoil.
Yanagiba, expertly dodging clumps of shit, gives Chintaro a look. Chintaro averts his eyes, turns his neck, even tries to take to his heels. But alas, he ends up looking back at Yanagiba anyway. Yanagiba grins. Chintaro sighs, for the situation demands his participation once again. He shoulders through the chorus and sez nonchalantly:
“Hurry up please it’s time, goonight Mori, goonight Junichiro, goonight Yukio, goonight, ta ta, good night, rascals, good night, you annoying pieces of –” to which a ball of nightsoil grazes his left ear, to which he flinches, to which Yanagiba turns to him amusedly, to which five shrivelled excuses for human bodies, each adorned in the most illogical attire ever to grace Chintaro’s eyes, proceed to grace them further with haughty lips which, Chintaro thinks, are on the verge of sphinctering into an accent so insufferable that it compels him to withdraw from this infuriatingly garrulous sentence.
Which he does.
But only for a moment, before the five mysterious fuckers usurp every last smattering of breathing room and drench the scene in their deliberately ornamental accent, asking questions about a certain village, of which they, as scholars serving under some governor of so-and-so northern province, have every right to scrutinise the living hell out of for the sake of expanding their archives, even if there is currently, the tallest one sheepishly adds before being shut up by the rest, no room at all for more material, just as, the portly one sez, working off some spatio-linguistic theory which he curtly cites, there is hardly any conversational legroom in this B-grade local air compared to the rich atmosphere of the mainland and that they are sacrificing their respiratory pleasure to be here under the mandate of heaven, which is also known locally as, Chintaro thinks, a stinking wad of quack from the shitlands they were sharted out of.
Yet there is no way to get them to quit their jabbering besides mentally compressing and diluting them into the everyday haze of rumbling wheels, merchant chatter and the occasional infantile screech of children. Migraine imminent, screams Chintaro internally.
Yanagiba, placid as always and thus looking very much like an esteemed intellectual (and not looking very much like has any headache) winks at Chintaro, as if to say, “you know what to do next, don’t you,” to which Chintaro, with his eyebrows, exasperatedly replies, “no, I have no fucking clue,” to which Yanagiba grins, to which Chintaro almost sez, "Do I look like I'm on a fucking dragon-drawn chariot to you?”
But he does not. Chintaro, acknowledging his idiocy, simultaneously acknowledges its limits. And so Yanagiba claps his hands together, eyebrowing “leave it to me,” to which Chintaro shrugs and awaits whatever this cunning folklorist has up his sleeve. From which, Yanagiba pulls out a manuscript and tells the five still-jabbering foreigners that he will show them the way into the village which vanishes the moment one sets eyes upon it.
[]
Moonlight, ay? thinks Chintaro, who, having forgotten most of what Yanagiba explained, is now obliged, as one indebted to him from past events, to follow them into the forest. The evening descends with a certain sobriety as they, six shadows of shapes unnatural, advance past the first rows of hills. Chintaro steals a glance at the scholars, fancying the chance that at least one - no let’s bet on two - got mud on their absurdly long sleeves. But no, nothing, at least not yet, to which Chintaro puckers his lips and picks up the pace, only to be startled by a great crunch beneath his sole. He looks. Goo, and a smattering of shards burning in the evening light. Restraining the reflex of his lips puckering into a ‘ph’, he thinks, well, these shoes have needed cleaning anyway.
But for now those shoes must endure! The ground steepens, but in the opposite direction. Amidst the remains of an autumn rain that never departed, they take care not to trip. But past the thickening leaves, spectrally translucent, the evening light begins to refract, diffuse, liquify. It crawls between the nooks of branches, leaps from invisible puddles. The peristalsis of a thousand odours in an air too unmoving. Despite the continuity of light and darkness, every glance seems to disconnect itself from the next. Each glows too hard, too painfully, like a heap of broken images. A revolt against the smoothening that a once comforting radiance promised.
Chintaro, indubitably, is mesmerised. But then he is slapped awake by a recollection. A few weeks ago, two drunk samurai were having a haiku battle in the street. Nothing too unusual, nowadays. The shogunate definitely preferred that to drunk samurai killing each other to sleep with kabuki actors. Also, merchants made a lot of money by betting on the winner of those haiku battles, though the winner, rather than being the one who crafted the more tasteful haiku, was the one that did not fall dead drunk first. Some argued that these haiku battles are a terrible source of noise pollution, but the gambling business has been statistically proven by recent scholars to be supporting the local economy, so… anyway, Chintaro recalls the following.
Drunk Samurai A:
Chi! Chi! Chi! Chi! Chi!
The birdies that cry as such
They yearn for my rod!
Drunk Samurai B:
And if they do yearn
Then let them be slapped with my
Fuckin’ huge (uh) rod!
To which the merchants then laughed their snot out, and the whole street was covered in so much nasal fluid that everyone had to be quarantined for a week. Naturally, this was just an instance of mindless stupidity that is not worth remembering. Yet, the memory, clear as day, sends a chill down Chintaro’s nether regions. And then, as if on cue, from the forest leaves, it rings in Chintaro’s ears:
“Chi! Chi! Chi!”
He looks up, distracted by some wayward curve of light slipping past its supposed threshold, blooming his peripheral vision, only to be sucked straight back into the photographic visage of mundane lucidity. Now, is that just his mind playing tricks on him? He hurries beside the scholars to find out.
“So, ay, um,” with a hollow wriggle of the eyebrows, “you all heard that?”
A scholar puts his finger to his lips, “Ssssshhhhh!” Chintaro, by the most natural impulse in the universe, flips the bird at him, but he has already turned away, joining the rest of the scholars in seeking out traces of the mysterious village. Of which, no trace has yet to be found.
One of the scholars pouts and picks up a dead bird from the ground. Chintaro looks quickly to Yanagiba, signalling with his eyebrows, shit! Is this it? Huh huh huhuhuhuh?! Tell me you, fucker! This is it, isn’t it?
But Yanagiba averts his eyes, turns his neck, takes to his heels… he has wandered over to some inconspicuous berry brush, presumably – no, obviously! – pretending to inspect it for no good reason. The bastard! Fine, even if you don’t say it, I know it has to be! Look, he’s poking the bird right now. It’s going to make that noise!
It does not. The scholar puts the bird to his ear, shakes it around a little, even smells it. But no, total silence. And so the scholar picks up even more dead birds. Chintaro looks over at Yanagiba again, who is now pissing into the berry bush. The sound of the trickling gold reduces him into abjection. Resignedly, his eyes swing back over to the scholars.
The scholar who picked up the birds seems to be fixated on a particularly sizeable specimen. He stares intently at it. The bird stares back, sticking its tongue out at him. For some reason, this tickles Chintaro into a considerably better mood. And so he laughs, to which another scholar comes up from behind, hissing, “Ssssshhhh!”
But that only makes Chintaro laugh even harder. The whole forest trembles. Dew is shaken from the leaves. Invisible rodents evacuate. The scholar holding the bird gives Chintaro a look and sez, in a pitiful attempt at the local dialect, “You’re laughing. Someone could be making a career out of this, and you’re laughing.”
Or at least that is what Chintaro thinks he said. His guess is as good as anyone’s. And so he simply replies with a funny bird-like sound. The scholar looks at him, and then at the bird, and then back at him.
And thus he too breaks into a slight laugh. The other four, with raised eyebrows and flushed cheeks, are compelled to make funny bird-like sounds as well. Their laughter usurps the forest’s silence. Somewhere out there they hear hidden creatures laughing maniacally, echoes bouncing off one another, each shrill ejaculation swallowing the one before it.
And then they stop.
Yanagiba, back from his toilet break, gestures down the trail and says to them, “Shall we?”
[]
Perhaps he ought to be paying more attention to what the scholars are trying to say, but Chintaro is too fixated on their quirks. Frequently, their voice breaks into a pitch so high that it paralyses the cognitive function of any person in a ten-metre radius. From there, the pitch can only descend, with each string of words lasting at least thirty seconds.
What would happen in their jabbering stopped? Would they become estranged from whence they came? No more jabbering, just funny bird-like sounds. Surely, in such a state, one can await an eternity of haiku battles in a language much more worldly.
The scholars are now hammering stakes into the ground. Did they store those in their sleeves or something? Chintaro watches the tallest scholar pull out a fancy-looking brush from his sleeve. He holds it up ceremoniously and begins to chant something in the presumably ancient language of northern lands. A poem? The scholar adorns the stake with the glistening wetness of several golden sigils, each sealed in its own suspended vertical position. Chintaro is able to read some sigils which have elbowed their way into the local script, though the ones currently on display are too ornamental, adorned with twists and turns of the brush that he never thought possible. He thinks he sees, in the final sigil, the figure of a bird’s head with four incisors dripping from its beak. From the receding trail left by the final brush stroke he presumes the bird’s head severed at the neck, though that final trail, emerging not from the base of the sigil but from the converging tips of those peculiar incisors, seems to burst out, like an inappropriate utterance, in the slash of a tongue, saliva, or blood, leaping from its extremity. Poetry is a funny thing, he thinks.
And despite all this aesthetic indulgence, they still have yet to find any sign of the village. But the scholars betray no sign of impatience. They look upon the nail with stupid grins and half-shuttered eyes. The dew has washed the splendour of their clownish attire into the ground, the leaves, and the dimming light. Their jabbering has been smoothened, having lost its characteristically forceful twang. Something about their shapes now appear more defined, as if cleanly cut from some long-discarded tapestry.
Yanagiba does not hurry them. Like some kind of passing rodent, he stands behind them smiling with neither condescension nor affection. His eyes glint with neither scorn nor respect over their seemingly profound and necessary charade.
[]
“Woof woof!” to which Chintaro almost screams until he realises that it is simply one of the scholars being uncharacteristically churlish.
“Wang wang!” sez another to the one before, as if in argument.
The former shakes his head and repeats with emphasis, “Woof. Woof!” to which the latter, more violently, says, “Wang! Wang!!” And thus they snarl and claw at each other.
Chintaro rubs at his temples. He gives Yanagiba a look, which is once again ignored. He will just have to wait this one out, since, apparently, it is not time yet. Or, he considers, he could just have fun while he’s at it, as long as he doesn’t get too crazy. But really, is there such a thing as too crazy? With a look of pure analysing and a slight sardonic smile, Chintaro sez:
“Wan wan.”
Applause. The scholars procure bouquets of flowers and baskets of fruit, celebrating Chintaro’s magnificent performance. They shower him in praise and proclaim him to be the innovator of two-syllable haiku. Now every haiku battle in the world will be put to shame! Thank you, thank you, sez Chintaro to his rabid audience, bowing, waving off to the distance, giving the occasional finger to Basho and Issa. Singlehandedly, his literary genius will boost the local economy and usher in a flourishing culture of two-syllable haiku, with the common folk incorporating them into their everyday speech, thus boosting the literacy of the entire population. What ought he to call this golden age? The age of Chintaro! Hah! And thus he beats at his chest like a frenzied gorilla, letting loose a primal howl of frenzied jubilance.
To which something else howls.
Chintaro looks at the scholars. The scholars look at him. He makes a funny bird-like sound. They do not.
[]
Evening’s gold grows faint and the silver drops of night douse the forest in a dream belonging to no sleeper. Yet against stillness, the silver contorts into mirages of blue fire and emerald breath whispered from cavities shuttered past our vision. Carried forth from intermittent puffs are melodies, no, just one melody, rising and converging but drained of a brilliance that it never once radiated. A micronational anthem sphinctered through the crusty lips of time, moist with sour resin that never hardens, never crystallises, only washing the remnants away. And so this anthem is sung without a tongue; it is merely brittle air choked through uprooted teeth.
Chintaro wakes up. He feels the curling of the leaves about him and almost imagines himself to be curled up in the palm of something terrible, but the unwavering clarity of the moonlight illuminating his present surroundings dispels any fancy beyond the fatigue of a mind departed from sleep. How long? The sky, or the canopy, he remembers, is black. Yet it glimmers like the underside of some great hull held together by quivering glass girders, tracing the lost trajectories of aspiring avians and aviators.
Skating about the rim of his memory, he finally notices that neither the scholars nor Yanagiba are anywhere in sight. What he does see is an arrow of moonlight hooked across the trees behind him, looping under their branches and into some swollen hole of darkness. It then abruptly begins to swell into a piercing golden ray, entangling and collapsing upon itself, wiggling into the form of the Eternal Golden Monk.
The who? But then, Chintaro thinks, of course! He is reminded yet again that with Yanagiba, this kind of fuckery is always bound to happen. Shit has hit the fan. In other words, the time has come, though not for Chintaro, but for Yanagiba, who has finally dipped his fingers into the soup. And yes, he will be having a good finger-lickin’ time, salivating over this soup from which all soups have descended—the primordial Yanagibian stew…
Chintaro, as well, is an ingredient in this soup, and so there is no way that he is going to escape Yanagiba’s belly. He does know, however, that as a mere indigestible garnish to the actual food, he will be excreted eventually, but that is only if he makes it through the intestines alive. Which basically means letting this so-called Eternal Golden Monk kiss him on the forehead, to which he thinks, yes, just get on with it. This is no different from the time he saw the blue-eyed ghost in the bathhouse, or the time he lost his penis and had to get a new one from the (cough) penis collector. Hell, he had almost lost his life when he stupidly refused to accede to said collector’s absurd requests. Unwilling to remember the details, the collector’s sultry laugh nonetheless inhabits an inconvenient junction of his brain.
“Kih kih kih, you lost your penis, but will you now lose your life? Kih kih kih!”
Chintaro shudders, but the Eternal Golden Monk’s graceful movements somehow calm him. He watches the glowing creature recite some obscure text he will never get to verify the existence of, even if it does ultimately exist. Once the Eternal Golden Monk finally shuts his trap, he leads Chintaro down a trail. And then they go off the trail, as if to deliberately deviate from something. That something, Chintaro thinks, rolling his eyes, is everything. Bruh. He was foolish to expect a trail. A sultry howl shivers across the fabric of the dark, and in order to calm himself, Chintaro is compelled give the Eternal Golden Monk a smack on the butt. That butt, a bit too conveniently exposed, burns brilliantly against the writhing perimeter of his vision.
It takes Chintaro a while to realise that he has been gazing erotically at a bioluminescent peach for the last fifteen minutes. Sheepishly, he looks around and realises that he is in… the village! Everyone here is croaking. Chintaro knows, somehow, that they do not have tongues. And yet they croak persistently, as if they do not want their croaking to ever croak, hah! But no, that's not right, Chintaro thinks. Instead of croaking, they should be cawing! Or howling! Or going “chi chi chi”! Um, whoops, wrong village, anyone know where the exit is? To which the peach seems to look up at him invitingly.
But before he can even consider the possibility of relieving himself on a mere fruit, he feels a hand on his own ass. He looks over his shoulder. A withered old hag gazes up at him with toadish eyes. He flinches, but quickly regains his composure and replies, in an attempt to dilute his titillation, with a funny bird-like sound. The hag throws up her arms and manages something approximating a cackle. Chintaro feels like he is being made fun of, so he shakes his fist at her. And yet, still she continues to wheeze, as if speaking a language more universal than any other. Chintaro worries that she might just stop salivating the moment and proceed to devour him, so he does not stick around to find out. After a short distance away he looks back to see her take a peculiarly unremarkable bite out of the peach.
As the cold sinks into his bones, Chintaro feels himself losing his grip on the slippery mud, as well as his mind. Suddenly, something sez to him, “Hey, watch it.” He looks down and sees an angry squirrel that begins to go off on a tirade about how it used to be a human that relayed a weird story called ‘Måsstaden’ back in the city, only to be pelted by the customary nightsoil of an irritated plebian audience because they were too plebian to understand the vital significance of the story. It told them to look it up at the library, but apparently, the library went up in flames when someone decided to smoke opium in one of the bathroom stalls. Fed up with the ignorance of the populace, the squirrel rejected humanity and has spent the remainder of its life in the forest as a squirrel.
“So,” Chintaro mumbles, “how exactly did you turn from a human into a squirrel?”
The squirrel gives him a look. “Figure it out, smartass,” and it vanishes into the trees. Chintaro shrugs and continues onward despite feeling like the encounter was a somewhat squandered opportunity.
Eventually Chintaro arrives at a mountain face with a huge hole that appears artificially cut into it. From inside, he hears a familiar jabbering, ringing with an intensity beyond the tip of any quivering tongue. But hah! Chintaro catches that intensity in mid-air with toadish instinct and thus illuminates the path into the gaping hole. And they would all be sitting there in their comfy cushions, cloaked in opium, feasting on roasted goose, greeting him with opening arms and telling him he did it? Right? Right??
Well, it would be the case, if only he were the main course. Confetti is strewn over five cushions, each still ominously warm. The roasted goose, however, is cold. Chintaro, feeling stupid for having felt anything more than feeling stupid, decides to take a nap.
[]
Chintaro wakes up. He feels the curling of the leaves about him and almost imagines himself to be curled up in the palm of something terrible, but there is nothing approaching such description in the warm morning light. He blinks and looks up. The sun looks at him bastardly, its eyes laughing. As usual. He is not at Yanagiba’s, as he would have liked to presume. And yet, swaying bamboo cages hang from the corners of his vision. Yanagiba’s sun-tanned head comes into view. Chintaro averts his eyes sheepishly and happens to catch sight of five dead birds splayed against a tangle of wasted roots. Yanagiba picks one up and gently places it into one of the bamboo cages. And then he looks at Chintaro.
Chintaro looks back, like a bird. Almost, by some natural impulse, he caws. But a familiar tongue slithers back between his teeth at unnatural speed, and somewhat disingenuously, Chintaro sez, “What’re you looking at, friend-o?” to which Yanagiba, magus-like, turns to the leaves and sez, “Thanks for seeing us off!” to which comes a howl, and a “Chi! Chi! Chi!” that Chintaro oddly feels addressed by. For the sake of politeness, he replies with a funny bird-like sound. And thus the folklorist Yanagiba Kuchibiru and his comrade Bosozuke Chintaro share a naked laugh in the sultry morning glow.
Tan Wei Lin is always on the lookout for hidden gems in the Japanese cultural landscape that have not yet surfaced to the rest of the world, hoping to translate them into English eventually. In his free time, he reads postmodern American literature, produces noisy electronic music, doodles manga characters and struggles to break free from his addiction to riichi mahjong.
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