Introducing John Cairns

After discussions with Chomu's mysterious editor-in-chief, Mr. Jorkins, we are delighted to announce that we will soon be publishing here the work of a new writer, John Cairns. Here, by way of introduction, is a message from John Cairns himself, as requested by Chomu:

I rose from the seminal waves at Shoreham-by-Sea a drowned rat, was fostered by London, dumped on grandma who said I was too big for Pumpherston; Aunt Nell brought me up.

Mum married to give me a father and I was moved to Methil where I’d the highest IQ ever, then onto Buckhaven. On a history degree from Edinburgh, I taught in Glasgow and, after carefully losing job and flat, Richmond – not before doing my procreative duty, twice.

I’d written conventional stuff Iris Murdoch criticized, Giles Gordon would’ve pushed and the BBC broadcasted had I not been seeking a style to realize the unconscious by and with it net my unremembered childhood where the loves used to that end were intoned: Christo, Derrick, Rich, Nick. Thanks; we had no choice.

Look out for forthcoming stories by John Cairns, here on Chomu.

Chomu - The Entomology of the Word

I am surprised that I cannot think of more examples in literature – or anywhere – of words and language being described as insects. I would imagine that such a metaphor would be favoured by the likes of Franz Kafka or William Burroughs, though I cannot recall any specific instance of either of them using such a metaphor. I suppose Burroughs comes close when he talks about the “word virus”, the logical programming of language-based thought that locks the human mind into the destructive patterns we know so well.

Perhaps I can also write here – and so, hopefully, make it an example in literature – that I once had a rather Kafkaesque or Burroughsian hallucination, in which all the words in my room were wriggling free from their book spines, postcards and so on – and there are a great many words in my room – and swarming over the walls and floor like some unidentifiable hybrid of ant and beetle. I stood in the centre of my room, unable to move, frozen in dread, while somewhere in the distance could be heard the sound of a police siren. I think I stood like that for an hour or so. Most of the words seemed to be swarming from my complete works of Nagai Kafū, in twenty-nine volumes. Come to think of it, I have written at least two stories in which words come off the page and take on a life of their own. Clearly there is something in this for me to ponder.

Anyway, to get back to what I was saying, at present I can only think of two examples of the insect metaphor used to describe language. The first of these comes from 80’s synth-meister Thomas Dolby, who in his song about politically persecuted writers, Dissidents, has a chorus with the lines, “My writing, like tiny insects/In the palm of history”.

The effect here is to emphasise how fragile an author’s writing is, how easily lost, destroyed, ignored, censored or forgotten.

The second example comes from the long essay Sun and Steel, by Mishima Yukio. Very near the beginning of the essay, Mishima tell us, “In the average person, I imagine, the body precedes language. In my case, words came first of all…”

He then proceeds to liken the body to a wooden post and words to the “white ants” (could the translator means termites?) that eat it away. For Mishima, then, words are ants, and their action is corrosive, acidic. This might seem an obscure metaphor. I feel I can interpret it best for myself by thinking of the Daoist notion of the ‘uncarved block’ that is the ideal, or the whole state of being. Words are the ants that, with their corrosive acid, create something particular from this generality. It might be said that ants are ‘culture-carriers’, as Hitler, I believe, once disparagingly described the Japanese (culture-carriers rather than culture-producers).

In any case, whatever meaning was intended by Mishima, it seems fairly clear he is not describing words in a positive manner; I sense an affinity with Burroughs’ “word virus”.

At the back of his book Kwaidan, a collection of Japanese folklore compiled in 1904, Lafcadio Hearn (or possibly the publisher in after years) appends three essays under the general heading ‘Insect-Studies’. The essays are, ‘Butterflies’, ‘Mosquitoes’ and ‘Ants’. Since we have just been contemplating ants, let us refer to the essays in reverse order.

Lafcadio Hearn’s essay ‘Ants’ is possibly the most curious piece in the whole book, and is also the longest. He begins with a haiku about an ant nest destroyed by rain, moves on to a Chinese folktale about a man who understands the language of ants, and then starts in on what he really wants to write – a kind of eulogy to ants as a species, which he seems to regard as having “a civilization ethically superior to our own”. He also predicts that “certain persons will not be pleased by what I am going to say about ants”. I have to admit that this was at least partially true in my own case; the essay made me very uneasy with its Brave New World enthusiasm for a perfect society, revealed to Hearn by “the Fairy of Science”. He quotes from Herbert Spencer, who tells us that ant society is concerned with “activities that postpone individual well-being so completely to the well-being of the community that individual life appears to be attended to only just so far as is necessary to make possible due attention to social life”. Hearn himself goes on to say that “[a] greedy ant, a sensual ant, an ant capable of any one of the seven deadly sins, or even a small venial sin, is unimaginable. Equally unimaginable, of course, a romantic ant, an ideological ant, or an ant inclined to metaphysical speculations.”

The tone of admiration here is incomprehensible to me. Perhaps the uneasiness I feel arises from the sense that either ant society is evil, or I am, which seems to be the natural corollary of the essay. Hearn’s enthusiasm becomes positively alarming to me when he says, “in nearly all the higher ant-societies sex-life appears to exist only to the extent absolutely needed for the continuance of the species” and expands with relish upon the “practical suppression, or regulation, of sex-faculty”. This state of affairs is almost exactly the opposite of my own sexual values; for me the ideal world would entail more individual pleasure and less procreation. I have already mentioned Brave New World, but it is also interesting how this essay anticipates Nineteen Eighty-Four, to which it is perhaps closer, after all. Sex is also suppressed in the society depicted by Orwell.

All in all, Hearn’s essay reminds me that I find something sinister in the idea of a perfect society, and tend to suspect those who drool over such notions of having something missing. What is missing? To a lesser or greater degree, exactly what they would like to see missing in their perfect society, I suppose – the irrational, emotion. On the strength of Hearn’s essay, I would not be surprised if he were to champion the rational aliens in the film Invasion of the Bodysnatchers – if by some twist of time he were able to watch it – in turning the human world into a ‘perfect society’, without emotion and therefore without conflict.

It’s interesting that Hearn invokes “the Fairy of Science” at the beginning of his essay, too, perhaps believing that science, with its underpinning rational philosophy, and with its technological invention, is the key to creating Utopia; a Utopia embodied by ants. Are these the same as Mishima’s white ants? They seem a little different, and yet perhaps there is some relation. Mishima’s white ants are at least imaginative, but perhaps their imagination is not really their own, but a borrowed resource. Yes, after all, I think this might be right. The word virus and the white ants are the same, and are one with Lafcadio Hearn’s ants; they are the unbending logic of language. Hearn seems to deny this when he says that the ants are not ideological, and perhaps there is some hint of a terrifying truth here, that ants are a living language that has shed even ideology to become a pure logic devoid of the superfluous formalities of meaning. But now I am reminded again of Nineteen Eighty-Four. The reason the rule of Big Brother and the Party was predicted to last forever was that it had achieved perfection, and it had achieved perfection because it had ditched ideology. Power was no longer a means to an end, but an end in itself, and that is ant society. The “Fairy of Science” is involved here because scientists have long claimed that logic is not ideological, that science has no given, irrational agenda, and it is precisely this denial of the irrational that makes science as dangerous as a swarm of soldier ants.

As a writer, conscious that my words are insects, I hope, after all, that they are not ants. I do not wish to unleash an inexorable, implacable marching column of logical ants upon the world. Let me not waver here. Let me be clear and say no. I am not on the side of the ants. I will not wave an ant flag.

Let us pass then to the other insects in Hearn’s tiny invertebrate menagerie. Next we have mosquitoes. I remember a friend of mine saying, “Mosquitoes, I will kill”, indicating that he made an exception in this case. I sympathise. If ants are an entirely self-serving, implacable and meaningless logic, the egoism of the individual sublimated to the egoism of the group, thereby evading the issue of the irrational given in their existence, then mosquitoes are some kind of embodiment of bad karma. They are not scientists, or engineers, or soldiers, like ants. They are tax inspectors. Perhaps that seems arbitrary, but I can think of no other way to typify them.

In his essay on mosquitoes, Hearn begins by telling us that, “I am persecuted by mosquitoes”. Mosquitoes, of course, breed in water, and Hearn relates that the biggest breeding ground near his house comes from the neighbouring Buddhist cemetery: “Before nearly every tomb in that old cemetery there is a water-receptacle, or cistern, called mizutamé.” He then goes on to speculate about what would happen if the Tokyo authorities decided to get rid of this pest once and for all: “To free the city from mosquitoes it would be necessary to demolish the ancient graveyards; - and that would signify the ruin of the Buddhist temples attached to them… So the extermination of the Culex fasciatus would involve the destruction of the poetry of the ancestral cult, - surely too great a price to pay!...”

A salutary conclusion, steeped in a fatalism becoming to the Buddhism of the cemeteries in question. These insectile tax inspectors of human karma are indeed despicable, but they are a necessary evil. At the very least, to tolerate them is necessary. Such tolerance may help ensure the survival of poetry, but should mosquitoes themselves embody poetry? I am on the verge of saying, “Never!” However, poetry ventures into some strange places, as Hearn’s essay seems to prove. And it’s true that the Chinese ideogram for mosquito is composed of the elements ‘insect’ and ‘writing/literature’. Perhaps this is an esoteric association. Nagai Kafū seems to understand it, however, when, in A Strange Tale from East of the River, the mosquitoes breeding in the ditch remind him of summers past, and bring back memories to him even as he slaps them from his face and wipes the blood from his hand.

This brings us to the last of the three insects, and, perhaps predictably, my favourite; now we come to butterflies. Let me reveal right away that the title of this magazine was suggested by Hearn’s essay ‘Butterflies’:

Most of the Japanese literature about butterflies… appears to be of Chinese origin… Chinese precedent doubtless explains why Japanese poets and painters chose so often for their geimyô, or professional appellations, such names as Chômu (“Butterfly-Dream),” Ichô (“Solitary Butterfly),” etc.

The Chinese precedent for the name Chômu in this case is the famous story of Chuang Tse, who fell asleep and dreamt he was a butterfly, flitting blissfully from flower to flower, only to awake and wonder whether he was a man who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly now dreaming he was a man. (Incidentally, in Mandarin pronunciation, Chômu would be rendered as 'Diemeng'. The Chinese characters themselves can be found here, in the top right corner, being the second and third characters from the extreme right.)

Hearn displays a mixture of fascination with the butterfly in Chinese and Japanese culture, and reserve towards a perceived lack of weight or depth in what it represents. He laments that, though he would like spirit-maidens to visit him and tell him tales of butterflies, as they did for the Chinese scholar Rôsan, “of course, no spirit-maidens will ever deign to visit so skeptical a person as myself”. Exactly who is rejecting whom here?

He is also deprecating about the selection of butterfly haiku he reproduces and translates: “Probably [the reader] will not care much for the verses in themselves.” But, as Hearn manages grudgingly to admit, this is a matter of cultural bias: “The taste for Japanese poetry of the epigrammatic sort is a taste that must be slowly acquired.”

Perhaps so, but some of us acquire the taste quicker than others. I for one favour the culture of the butterfly, contrary to Hearn, over that of the ant. I am tired of the Western emphasis on the quantitative in literature – on the volume and weight of the work. I am tired of the endless, earth-bound marching of ant-lines. Let our words, as writers, be butterflies. Let us eschew straight lines. Let us flit madly and drunkenly from flower to flower. Let us replace the chains of logic with the transformation that brings wings. Let us dream that we are humans dreaming that we are butterflies dreaming that we are humans. Let us dream and awake from endless dreams, so that one butterfly may be many people, and one person many butterflies. Let each flight be flown in lepidopterous finery.

Such is the manifesto of the dreaming butterfly.

Then again, looking up the word ‘Chômu’ on the Internet recently, I find it also has the following meaning:

An intellectually challenged individual, a person unable to make logical and commonsense decisions; "A person who lives for the singular purpose of trying to ruin the best parts of life for others by sub-intellectual activities".

Perhaps this is the kind of insect indicated by the entomology of the word.

Justin Isis - The Lambs in the Trenches are Lambent and Trenchant

Ai and Kei liked to eat chocolate pudding.

The best kind came in packs of six, sealed with a plastic top. When Ai and Kei went grocery shopping with their mother, they would take packs of the chocolate pudding from the shelves and place them in the grocery basket.

"No, that's too much." the mother sometimes said. Other people in the aisle would turn and watch as the mother placed the chocolate pudding back on the shelf. Ai and Kei became sad. They would run off when the mother was in a different aisle and take the chocolate pudding again. The pudding packs were usually frosty from the shelf, but when Ai and Kei carried them, close to the chest, the frost disappeared and the packs became warmer.

Ai and Kei didn't wait until home to eat the chocolate pudding. The packs came with plastic spoons and Ai and Kei would tear them from the lid. They took a single pack each. The mother was left to carry the groceries.

Kei walked head down, staring into the pudding. The chocolate surface spread through the pack's gently curving cylinder. Kei took the lid flap between her thumb and forefinger.

Ai ran out and spun in circles. She stretched her arms and twirled across the parking lot. The mother watched her and carried the bags to the car.

Inside Ai and Kei opened the chocolate pudding. They pulled the flaps back slowly, stripping the plastic from the glue that sealed it to the lid. The packs croaked softly as they opened. A thin brown ring remained on the back of the flap and Kei licked it off. Ai saved hers for later. She scooped out the pudding with her red plastic spoon. As she ate, she felt a sweetness at the back of her mouth.

The mother leaned around and said "Don't eat too much."

When they arrived home the father came out. The father helped carry the bags inside. He tried to pat Ai and Kei on the head and they made faces at him, smiling. The father saw the chocolate pudding smeared around the edges of their mouths. When Ai and Kei finished, traces of pudding remained in the packs. Ai reached a finger in and scraped it off and sucked her finger.

At other times they would sit in the street, eating. The sun went down and they became silent.

The father watched their jaw bones moving. First their mouths opened to accept the spoon. Then their jaws closed. Sometimes a cheek would puff out. Sometimes their tiny mouths opened and closed, slowly. The father had seen fish breathing that way.

The father looked out into the street as the sun went down.

He saw people crossing at the corner. A man passed him wearing a shirt that said 'Punjab.' His daughters' mouths filled with pudding.

A tiny chain of lights opened in his mind. The father closed his eyes and the lights swirled in darkness. They gave off scattered grains, like pollen. The vast night of time opened before him. The father felt weightless.

The lights said, 'Punjab, Punjab, Punjab.' Gently, Punjab lifted itself out of space and floated behind his eyes. He could see it reflected upside down. A ripple passed across its surface, and the lights vanished. He had heard Punjab called "India's breadbasket state" before.

---

Stevens shifted at the podium. Kuldip Singh was twiddling his thumbs again. This peculiar habit of Mr. Singh, who always sat in the front row, had been a source of constant distraction throughout the semester.

"Farming of the kinnow, popularly called the stepbrother of the orange, has picked up considerably among farmers occupying some 5,000 hectares with an overall yield of 300,000 tonnes annually," Stevens said. But now it was impossible for him to concentrate, and he recited the rest of the lecture in a monotone, hardly hearing his own words.

He left Punjab Agriculture University at 6:30 and, after receiving a phone call, went to the post-office to pick up a package. Later, in his office, he opened it and found several photos of his family. In the first set, his nephews were playing in a garden, their feet covered in dirt.

He looked up as the bell rang. It was Amrik from his second-period class. Stevens motioned for him to come in.

"Here's my report," Amrik said, handing him a folder. "I'm sorry it's late. I needed to finish my research on crop rotation."

Stevens looked at him. He was carrying a grocery bag in his left hand. Through the plastic he could see the outline of a thick block of chocolate.

A tiny chain of lights opened in his mind. Stevens closed his eyes and the lights swirled in darkness. They gave off scattered grains, like pollen. The vast night of time opened before him. Stevens felt weightless.

The lights said, 'Chocolate pudding, chocolate pudding, chocolate pudding.' Gently, a plastic cup of chocolate pudding lifted itself out of space and floated behind his eyes. He could see it reflected upside down. A ripple passed across its surface, and the lights vanished. He had eaten chocolate pudding of this kind before.

---

Both men returned home at 9:30 PM and watched television for an hour while eating dinner. An hour later, when they went to bed, both pulled back the corner of the sheet from the left and then stopped suddenly. It seemed that they had pulled back the sheet in the same way before, and that something of great importance attached itself to the motion. Remembering it implied remembering something else, and for a moment an endless series seemed to shimmer out of reach. Then they forgot it, climbed into bed and slept facing the left, both their knees bent at the same slight angle.

Justin Isis - Your Angle Has Been Cornered And You Won't Be Able to Attain Shit

As soon as she sat down he started to worry about Satoko's teeth. They were bright and clean and even, perfectly spaced; and whenever she smiled he worried that something would happen to them.

He'd seen women with beautiful teeth before, of course. But they usually formed one part of a greater beauty, a unity. The crescent of the smile beneath a delicate nose. The glint on the teeth-tips matching the light from the eyes.

There was nothing wrong with Satoko's face, but none of it called attention to itself in the same way as her teeth. They seemed almost sculpted, their tips translucent, her rounded molars pure porcelain. The points of her incisors rested on the corners of her lips like diamonds set in coral. Distracted out of all proportion, he went on staring at them, ignoring everything she said.

Your teeth are very white, he told her.

Satoko smiled. But he felt that something terrible would happen. It occurred to him that she had lived her entire life with the perfection of her teeth undisturbed. Intact for twenty years, how long would it be before one of them chipped on a nut or shifted out of place? The universe had a habit of deleting exceptions.

He felt that he had to warn her somehow, but there was nothing he could say.

In a dream the following night he met Satoko outside Kichijoji Station. She was rummaging through the garbage, reaching her arm into the bins and pulling out empty cans and bottles. What she'd taken had been stacked behind her in neat rows, one on top of the other. He helped her by lifting off the bin tops, and eventually they piled up a small castle of cans.

Several weeks later he heard from a friend that Satoko had tripped on the stairs and broken her front teeth.

The Tenth Night, by Natsume Soseki

Among the Japanese texts I studied at university was Yume Juuya (Ten Nights of Dream), by Natsume Soseki. One of Soseki's lesser known works, this is a cycle of ten stories, which, as the title suggests, are all dreams. At last, the ending "and it was all a dream" becomes so appropriate that it actually goes without saying. In fact, what better ending for a story (any story?) could there be? Talk about deconstructionism! (Well, maybe later.) As a matter of fact, there are some great tales from what was once called the Orient that end, quite superbly, with the revelation that the entire action of the story had only been a dream. The stories in this cycle, however, don't end with such a revelation, but begin from that very premise. Apart from the title of the work, four of the ten stories reinforce this premise by beginning with the phrase "Konna yume wo mita": literally, "I had this sort of dream" or "I had a dream like this".

These tales are proof that a story does not need to 'make sense' to be powerful. They are a significant addition to the literature of dreams, which extends from antiquity, and, for instance, Chuang Tse dreaming he was a butterfly (of which there will certainly be more later), to the present day, and the likes of Burroughs' wonderful, My Education: A Book of Dreams. They also have a special place in Soseki's own oeuvre, revealing, as they do, the dark subconscious areas that gave the ordered rooms of his better known fiction the shadows of depth and suggestion that made them fascinating.

I have translated three of these tales (second, seventh and tenth). At least two of them I submitted to the now defunct magazine Dreamzone, because I thought them appropriate. The editor, Paul Bradshaw, a true lover of the bizarre, seemed to agree, and published them in one issue after another. I noticed in the letters column, however, that even those who supposedly loved dreams often seemed to want their dreams sanitised or lobotomised. There were a number of letters of the "What was that all about?" variety. This was one of many signs to me that I had strayed from the suburbs of literature that most readers and writers (whether of genre fiction or classics, prize-winning contemporary authors or blockbusters) seem unquestioningly to inhabit. I don't know quite where this place is that I have ended up. It is a place overgrown with nameless weeds. I think, however, that's the way I like it.

Anyway, let me now present what is perhaps my favourite story from Yume Juuya, 'The Tenth Night' (By the way, if anyone knows who the recitalist Kumoemon is, could they let me know?):

The Tenth Night

Ken-san came round to tell me the news. On the evening of the seventh day since he had been abducted by a woman, Shotaro had suddenly returned, collapsed with a fever, and was now confined to bed. Shotaro was the most dashing and well-liked man in the town. He was also extremely good-natured and honest. He had but one foible. When evening came he would don his panama hat, take a seat in front of the fruit shop and gaze in unceasing admiration at the faces of the passing women. Apart from that he had no idiosyncrasies to speak of.

At times when there were few women passing he would transfer his attention from the passers-by to the fruit. The fruit was of various kinds. Peaches, apples, loquats, bananas and so forth were piled up beautifully in baskets and arranged in two rows, ready to be bought as a gift and taken away in a trice. Shotaro would look at this display and comment on how splendid it was. “If one is setting up shop, then it’s got to be a fruit shop!” he would say. However, he himself merely loafed about in his panama.

He would even hold forth on the tangerines, saying, “This is a fine colour,” and so on. But he had never once put his money where his mouth was and actually bought any of the fruit. And, of course, you cannot eat fruit for nothing. All he ever did was praise their colours.

One evening a woman appeared in front of the shop. She looked like a woman of breeding and her clothes were of the finest. Shotaro was very taken with the colour of her kimono. On top of that, he was also marvellously impressed with the woman’s face. And so he doffed his precious panama and greeted her courteously. The woman pointed to the very biggest basket of fruit, saying, “This one please.” At which Shotaro immediately picked up the basket and handed it to her. The woman hefted its weight in her hand.

“It’s terribly heavy,” she said.

Shotaro, being essentially a person of leisure, and moreover, an exceedingly sociable gent, said, “Well, let’s carry it home for you, shall we?” And with that he and the woman left the shop. They left, and did not return.

Even for someone as happy-go-lucky as Shotaro this behaviour was too much. “This is beyond a joke!” said his friends and relatives, and made a great fuss. Then, on the seventh evening, all of a sudden, he returned. When everyone swarmed round to visit him and asked where on Earth he had got to, Shotaro replied that he and the woman had taken a train to the mountains.

It must have been a very long journey. According to Shotaro’s story they alighted from the train and stepped directly into a field. The field was immensely broad and wherever they turned their gaze there was nothing but green grass. They walked together over the grass until they came suddenly to the edge of a cliff, when the woman said to Shotaro, “Would you be so kind as to jump off here?”

Shotaro peered over the edge. He could see the cliff face, but not the bottom. Once again Shotaro removed his panama and thrice declined the woman’s invitation. At this the woman said, “If you do not go ahead and take the plunge, you will be licked by a pig. Well? Do you understand?”

The two things Shotaro hated most in the world were pigs and the recitalist Kumoemon. However, thinking his aversion not worth dying for, Shotaro, as might be expected, declined to jump. Immediately a pig came snorting in his direction. Shotaro had no choice but to strike the swine upon the tip if its snout with the slender cane of betel-nut palm that he carried. Squealing, the pig toppled over the edge, tumbling to the bottom of the cliff.

Just as Shotaro counted ‘one’ with a sigh of relief, another swine came rushing in, intent on rubbing its huge snout against him. With no time to do anything else, Shotaro once again wielded his cane. The pig squealed and, just like its predecessor, tumbled head over heels to the bottom of the precipice. No sooner had it done so than another appeared. This time, suddenly, something caught Shotaro’s attention. Looking up he saw, from the farthest reaches of the grassy green meadow, what must have been tens of thousands of pigs – more than he could count – all in a straight line, bearing down in a snorting melee upon Shotaro, where he stood at the head of the cliff. He felt terror in the deepest chamber of his heart. However, there was nothing he could do, and so he just went on neatly striking the swine on the tips of their snouts, one by one, with the betel-nut cane. Strangely, all he had to do was give them the merest tap on the nose and they toppled over, tumbling to the bottom of the chasm below. Peering over the edge he could see a line of pigs disappearing, head over heels, into what seemed to be bottomless space. When he thought that he had propelled this many pigs into the chasm, he himself grew afraid. But the pigs kept on coming, one after the other. With a power as if black clouds had grown feet and were ploughing through the grass, they came snorting on, inexhaustible.

Shotaro marshalled his courage in desperation, and continued to strike the pigs’ snouts for seven days and six nights. But at last, his spirit utterly used up, his hands weak as jelly, he was licked by a pig. Then he collapsed upon the cliff edge.

Ken-san told Shotaro’s story thus far and said, “And so you see, it doesn’t do to chase after women too much.”

I, too, thought this was a reasonable conclusion. However, Ken-san said that he wanted Shotaro’s panama hat.

Shotaro was beyond help. The panama was rightfully Ken-san’s now.

Justin Isis - No One Was Quite Certain When the Whole "Waffle Cone" Thing Started Getting out of Hand

Upset at his wife having left him, Mr. Terajima decided to commit suicide by eating himself to death at a Chinese buffet. He had always been fascinated by the threshold of consumption, the point at which the body recoils from the prospect of more food. The process of satisfying hunger, he felt, held a particular poignant sadness. It was such a short time, after all, before one turned away in indifference or disgust from what had previously inflamed the appetite. Such a brief period of satisfaction. If only one could remain at the moment of first taste...

But tonight, Mr. Terajima thought as he walked into the Jade Garden, I will not turn away in disgust. I will continue to eat; I will wring every drop of joy from my plate, and in the process expire. I will taste more than most ever do, and what better way than that to depart?

As a waitress showed him to his table, Mr. Terajima watched her retreating backside. There had been something about her face, too. He hadn't seen one like her in a long time. At these times, he was overcome by a sense of wistful hopelessness. These stillborn desires with nowhere to go. Nothing would happen, and by tomorrow he would forget her. The Mongolian beef looked nice, he thought.

Mr. Terajima had looked in the mirror that morning and realized that he was aging. To make things worse, he looked completely ordinary - no matter how well he dressed, it was impossible to mistake him for anything other than a middle-aged man. Even his hair was thinning.

The waitress returned with a teapot, but by now he was already at the buffet. Denied a closer view of her. She smiled professionally as she saw him watching. Mr. Terajima turned back and began to fill his empty plate.

He helped himself to bowl after bowl of wonton soup. He gulped down hot tea and let it burn his tongue. He stuffed himself with noodles, fried rice, sweet and sour pork; went back to the buffet and ladled on lurid pink sauces. He'd been right about the Mongolian beef. He could hardly keep himself from shoveling it into his mouth.

Soon he was full. There was still meat and rice and soup in front of him but he didn't want any of it. His belt seemed tighter already. He lost his ambition to eat. He lost his ambition to die.

Indeed - what had he been thinking? Had he really believed that he wouldn't make it to work on time tomorrow? He'd spend more time in the bathroom tomorrow morning, that's all. The same office, the same cup of coffee, and when he returned, to watch the news, the same programmes, sitting in the cracked leather chair, Midori making his dinner, Midori, Midori, Midori-

He signalled. The waitress returned with a bill and a fortune cookie. Mr. Terajima unwrapped the latter. The white edge of the message paper protruded from the cookie's lip. Mr. Terajima drew it out without cracking the cookie, his preferred method since childhood. The process always reminded him of defusing a mine, or removing the pin from a grenade. He looked down at the tiny scroll.

Please do not eat me. I am

Mr. Terajima turned it over in his hands. He supposed it was a joke - what kind of fortune was that? On the back, random numbers. No clue. He made to crack the cookie.
Something caught his eye. Something white sticking out of the cookie. Another fortune? It must have been some kind of factory mistake. He drew it out. Maybe he'd have better luck this time.

alive. This is not a joke. I

Mr. Terajima arched his back. Definitely a joke. But what was the trick? Was the cookie simply stuffed with messages? Sure enough, as he looked down, he noticed a white edge that hadn't been there before.

realize how extraordinary this is. But

He tossed the cookie in his hand; it didn't seem especially heavy. He wondered how many more messages were inside.

please believe me. Have compassion for

Another one. He drew them out one by one now, like a magician with scarves in his sleeve.

my situation. I repeat, this is the truth. If you would like proof, please ask me a question.

"My wife's name," he said, "Is Midori. What's my wife's name?"

Midori. It is a very beautiful name.

Mr. Terajima sighed. There was no reason for anyone to be doing this to him, but it was either that, or he was witnessing a miracle. Neither prospect impressed him much. But he decided to play along.

"This is unbelievable," he said, after looking around the restaurant. There were only a few customers, but he didn't want anyone to see him. "How can you be alive? Where did you come from?"

I remember being in the dark, wrapped in plastic. I was in a box with others like me, but none were responsive. Perhaps I have been reincarnated?

"Maybe," said Mr. Terajima. Best to keep his responses short. A group of young people had just came in - no need to give them anything to stare at. "Okay, I won't eat you. Actually..."

This was something that could make him rich.This was something that could make him famous. Televised interviews...all sorts of publicity for the company. Make the cookie a mascot, maybe? Instant recognition, ubiquitous stuffed toys...Midori watching him on television.

"Actually, I think we should go public." he said. "Maybe we could go into business together."

Please explain.

"Well, a talking fortune cookie...it's not something you see every day."

Apart from the novelty of my existence, I'm afraid that very little about me is interesting. Until I've learned more about myself, I don't feel that I can be of any help to you in that matter. I apologize.

Mr. Terajima wasn't especially disappointed - this being a joke, after all, it had to be a joke - but was it really necessary to use six messages to convey this rather formal rejection? The tabletop was covered with tiny scrolls. He supposed the cookie was afraid a simple "no" would have led to him snapping it, but its obsequiousness grated on him - he'd seen it all too many times in his subordinates when they wanted something.

"Well, now that we've gotten business out of the way, I'm afraid I have to be going," he said. He almost wanted to ask for another fortune cookie. He'd always liked the taste. He took out the next message.

What is your name?

So the cookie was becoming personable after all.

"Naoki Terajima."

How are you tonight, Mr. Terajima?

"Depressed? I don't know. I don't feel too bad, I guess. I came in here on some kind of whim that I was just going to start eating and not stop," he said, looking down at the empty plates, "I don't know what I was thinking. I feel sick already. I'll probably just go home, maybe rent a movie..."

That situation is not very likely. At the most, you would end up vomiting or losing consciousness.

"Yes. I know."

That seems rather irrational to me, Mr. Terajima. Why would you want to do something like that?.

He was about to start telling the Midori story when the waitress returned and asked him if everything was all right. Had she seen him talking to himself? Even though she'd never see him again and there was nothing between them now, he couldn't stand the thought of her thinking there was anything the matter with him. What was it about her face? It...Natsuki Ogawa from high school had had a face like that. The sharp cheekbones, and the same bearing, how she seemed to be looking beyond him even when she smiled. Natsuki Ogawa from the swim team, wishing for her picture on those dark afternoons spent wrapped in himself, the radio blaring foreign songs in his half-lit room... The waitress disappeared into the kitchen.

"Well," he said, "I've always been slightly depressed most of my life. I used to think that I was afraid of dying or troubled by the meaninglessness of life, but just now I realized that most of it comes from not being able to have sex with whoever I want, whenever I want to."

There - it was out in the open now. Mr. Terajima felt a tremendous sense of liberation - until he realized he was whispering his secrets to a fortune cookie in a second rate Chinese restaurant.

Would the ability to have sex with whoever you want to whenever you want to relieve this sense of hopelessness?

"Yes, yes it would!" Mr. Terajima said, lowering his face to the cookie. If miracles could be as banal as this, was it too much to hope for? "Would it be possible...could we make some kind of bargain? I'm a very wealthy man. I don't know what you are, but, there are other things, services I could provide. Even devotions, sacrifices...what is it you want?"

He reeled out the message scroll by scroll, waiting until he had the whole thing assembled on the table before reading it. He could feel his heart beating. Hadn't Midori said something about that, too?

I'm sorry to disappoint you again, but my abilities don't extend much further than providing messages on these small pieces of paper. As a sentient cookie, I can't help you with your problems. All I can offer is my moral support.

Mr. Terajima picked up the fortune cookie and snapped it in half.