IN THE MAGAZINE

Illustration by Tara sinn

GROWING CHINESE GREENS - PART 1

By Yoko Ogawa

TRANSLATED FROM THE JAPANESE BY STEPHEN SNYDER

“Growing Chinese Greens” grew out of an actual experience: I discovered a note with those words written on my calendar, but I couldn’t remember what they meant or how they came to be there. I simply wanted to describe the way the uncanny can slip into our lives without warning, and this story is the result.


Sunday morning, when I turned the page on the calendar in the bedroom, there was a circle drawn in marker around the twelfth. A big, black circle, slanting a bit to the left.

“What’s happening on the twelfth?” I asked my husband, who was reading the newspaper in bed.

“The twelfth?” he said, without looking up from the sports pages.

“It’s not a birthday or our anniversary. Did we have a date with somebody? To go swimming? A dinner invitation?”

“You’ve got me.”

“But there’s a big, dark circle. Don’t you think that’s odd?” I pointed to the calendar but he still didn’t look up. “You made it, didn’t you?”

“Not me,” he said, turning the page. “I don’t know anything about it.”

“What do you mean? I don’t remember making it.”

“Then it’s not worth worrying about, if we forgot what it was.”

“But can’t you remember? I’ve never seen it before.”

“You were probably doodling while you were on the phone,” he said, taking a cracker from the bag on the nightstand. As he bit into it, crumbs fell on the pillowcase.

“This isn’t a doodle. It’s too neat and even. See how the ends of the circle meet?”

“Yes, but if we can’t remember what it’s for, there’s nothing we can do about it,” he mumbled. The cracker made him a bit hard to understand.

The sun shining through the curtains cast a lacy shadow on the floor. Out in the garden, a small brown bird perched in the dogwood, bending a branch for a moment before it flew off again. A jet stream cut across the pale blue sky. The day promised to be warm.

“But try to remember,” I urged, nudging the side of the bed with my slipper. “Was it something to do with work, or the day tickets go on sale for a concert? Books due at the library? It could be anything.”

“I don’t write stuff like that on the calendar. I put everything in my date book. I don’t even think I realized we had a calendar there until you mentioned it.”

I had to admit that the calendar was hardly worth noticing. It was just something they were giving away at the mall at the end of the year. Uninteresting design and the usual pictures of lakes and meadows and beaches. The kind of thing you stick up somewhere just to get it out of the way.

“Don’t get so worked up about it,” he said, looking up from the paper at last. A few hairs had fallen on his shoulder. “It’s just a circle around the twelfth.” He took a sip of coffee to wash down the cracker.

“But how can you say that? There’s nobody here but the two of us, and if we don’t remember doing it, who do you think put that circle there? When people come over, they don’t ever come back here to the bedroom. That means somebody had to sneak in when we weren’t around, turn the page, take out a marker, and make this circle.”

“And why would anybody do that?”

“I don’t know, but if they were sneaking around here to do it, that proves it’s a bad sign. It’s some sort of warning. Or a spell or a curse or something.”

My husband snorted skeptically and popped another cracker in his mouth. “Just forget about it and get ready,” he said. “Didn’t you say you wanted to check out the sales at the department stores? The parking lots fill up by noon.” I sighed and took one last look at the calendar. “I’m telling you, it’s not an omen or anything else,” he added.

“I suppose not.”

“There’s nothing to worry about,” he said, hopping out of bed. “It’s just a circle. Let’s go.”

I nodded and brushed the cracker crumbs off the pillow. He was probably right, it was just a calendar, nothing to get worked up about. Why not forget about it and go out and enjoy the day? I could buy that suit I’d been wanting, have a nice lunch.

“Could you stop eating in bed?” I said. “We’ll have fleas.”


TO BE CONTINUED
GROWING CHINESE GREENS | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |

See all articles by this contributor

Comments