Kutze, Stepp'n on Wheat

Shinji Ishii, David Karashima

Description

A unique and surreal coming-of-age tale from award-winning writer Shinji Ishii.

Alone on a midsummer night, Cat wakes to find a stranger dressed in yellow ‘rat-a-tap, tapping’ his feet. Captivated by the music of Kutze’s steps, Cat resolves to travel abroad and tread wheat alongside this stranger when he becomes an adult. But first, Cat must grow up in the small port town where he lives with his timpanist grandfather and a father irrevocably obsessed with an unsolved mathematical proof, and which, as part of the series of increasingly surreal events that characterize his life, Cat rescues from a plague of rats by his imitating the yowls of his namesake, the cat. The ‘rat-a-tap, tap’ of Kutze’s steps echoes through Cat’s life as he matures, moves away from the town to become a musician in the big city and, eventually, journeys abroad.

A truly unique coming-of-age tale, ‘Stepp’n on Wheat’ traces the unsettling events and characters encountered by Cat as he grows up, from the mysterious travelling salesman who cheats his town and ruins his father to a colourblind girl named Green.

Sujets

• Literature
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 30 juin 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783081400
• Langue: English

Extrait

KUTZE, STEPP’N ON WHEAT
Kutze, Stepp’n on Wheat
THAMES RIVER PRESS An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company Limited (WPC) Another imprint of WPC is Anthem Press ( www.anthempress.com ) First published in the United Kingdom in 2014 by THAMES RIVER PRESS 75–76 Blackfriars Road London SE1 8HA
www.thamesriverpress.com
Original title: Mugifumi Kuutsue Copyright © Shinji Ishii 2002 Originally published in Japan by Shinchosha English translation copyright © David Karashima 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher.
The moral rights of the author have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All the characters and events described in this novel are imaginary and any similarity with real people or events is purely coincidental.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-78308-128-8
This title is also available as an ebook.
This book has been selected by the Japanese Literature Publishing Project (JLPP), an initiative of the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan.
KUTZE, STEPP’N ON WHEAT
S HINJI I SHII
Translated by David Karashima
Chapter 1

On the Surgeon’s Table
I knew nothing about stepping on wheat.
I grew up in a seaport town, very much at home with factory smoke, the smell of beer, and haze rising from cobblestone streets, but unaccustomed to the earthy smells of the ground beneath my feet. From time to time, the strong ocean winds would bring unexpected things to our shores—a piece of sailor’s underwear, a last will and testament, or a flag from a foreign land. And at night, we’d hear the moans and groans of the monsters that roamed the deep.
In back alleys, sailors would get into fights, with the winners emerging quickly, no such thing as a draw. Mostly it would take only a single punch for the weaker man to fall to the ground unconscious, the victor strutting back to the bar with his chest puffed up. Us kids would seize the moment to prop up the fallen sailor and drag him to another bar, where we’d pour a glass of water over his head. On regaining his senses, the sailor would give us two or three blood-stained coins for our trouble.
I’d just started elementary school when I met Kutze for the first time. I remember it was a hot midsummer night, and I’d woken in the darkness feeling terrible. I rubbed my eyes and looked to the bed on my right, then glanced over to the bed on my left. Dad wasn’t there, and neither was Grandpa. Getting up, I circled the room three times, my footsteps the only sound in the house. I peered into the storage room next to the bedroom–not a soul there. I went down the wooden stairs to the kitchen, its stone floor much older than any of our neighbors’. Nobody there. I went into the living room, hoping to find Grandpa in his usual spot on the old couch. Not there. The front door was still firmly shut, the rusty lock in place.
I ran back upstairs and jumped into bed, burying my head under the covers.
Am I alone? I clutched the sheets over my head . All alone, locked in the house, on this horrible night? Was I being punished? What if it wasn’t only tonight? What if this is the way it was going to be from now on? Or was this the way it always has been? Maybe I never have noticed, but maybe I’d been left by myself every night, all alone in this stone house, in deathly silence, in total darkness. The thought made me shiver. This had to be a dream, I told myself. I lay down, clasping my arms tightly across my chest. I told myself that Dad and Grandpa were, in fact, sleeping on either side of me. I imagined how I’d get up in the morning and go downstairs and Dad would be making me an omelet like he did every day, and then Grandpa and I would go for a walk along the canal like we always did. By morning, this moment would be forgotten, Dad’s and Grandpa’s absence nothing but a bad dream.
It was at that moment that I heard it.
Ton , Ta-tan , Ton
I strained my ears at once.
Ton , Ta-tan , Ton
There it was. That same rhythm. Then again. And again. It seemed to be coming from outside the house – a sound like something soft being hit. I’d never heard anything like it before. But strangely enough, it wasn’t scary. I poked my head out from under the sheets, only to find the room bathed in light—it was morning already!
For a moment, I watched as the golden sunlight poured in through the windows, reflecting off my white bed sheets, the watercolor on the wall and my toy yacht, too. Then I stepped onto the cold floor with my bare feet.
Ton , Ta-tan , Ton
This time, the sound was coming from the window. I walked over to look out. I gasped at what I saw.
Normally, from the window, you could see the canal, sometimes with barges of cargo floating down to port. Those same barges might go past when Grandpa and I were on our morning walks, and sometimes the men on them would throw me candy, toys, balls, and other goodies. If I managed to catch them, the men would whistle and Grandpa would bang his stick on the ground in response.
But when I looked out the window this time, there was no canal. I couldn’t believe it. Not only was the canal gone, the whole town was gone. There was nothing but a vast stretch of yellow ground all the way to the horizon. I stared, afraid to blink, and I thought maybe this is how people feel when they see the ocean for the first time.
Ton , Ta-tan , Ton
When the sound came again, I glanced down to find someone standing right in front of our house, wearing an odd outfit. He had on a straw hat with a large brim and a shirt and baggy pants that matched the color of the land. Only his shoes were a different color, with the uppers as black as the soles. The shoes seemed far too big, but that didn’t stop the stranger from kicking the dirt in front of our house.
I opened the window carefully, not making a sound, and leaned out to get a better look. The man’s eyes were fixed on the ground as he kept kicking up a cloud of yellow dust with his big, clumpy shoes.
Ton , Ta-tan , Ton
“Excuse me, but what are you doing?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me.
“Stepp’n on wheat,” the stranger replied, without lifting his eyes in my direction. His voice was so gentle voice it could have belonged to a man or a woman.
“What’s your name?”
“Kutze,” the stranger said, continuing to kick the dirt.
“Kutze,” I repeated. “Kutze. Is that your family name? Or is it your nickname?”
“Don’t know,” came the answer, accompanied by that same tap-tapping .
I watched, transfixed, as Kutze did his wheat stepp’n. The sweet summer air drifted across the golden land as the sun shone, down on Kutze and me, as I found myself tapping on the window sill in sync with the rhythm of Kutze’s stepp’n.
Ton , Ta-tan , Ton
The scene seemed so wonderful that I wanted to set foot on the golden land and step on the wheat myself, and right there I decided that when I got older, I wanted to go with Kutze and wheat-step our way to the horizon.
I’ll be joining you, Kutze . Just as soon as I get myself a pair of big, black wheat-stepp’n shoes!
Ton , Ta-tan , Ton
Ton —
“Wake up!”
Someone was shaking me.
“Grandpa’s gone off for a walk by himself this morning,” said Dad, pulling the covers from my head and looking down at me reproachfully, “because you wouldn’t get out of bed. Now go and brush your teeth. I’m going out to buy some eggs.”
I got out of bed, slowly washed my face, and stuck a toothbrush in my mouth—all the while thinking how the morning sun in the real world wasn’t nearly as beautiful as it was in my dream. Then listening to the gurgle of the canal through the open door, I watched children running along the canal as a barge floated by. Finally I gargled, noticing a rusty aftertaste, then licked my lips, bitterness on my tongue.
That was when I thought I heard something above. It wasn’t very distinct, but I was sure I wasn’t imagining it. The sound seemed to be coming from the attic, above the bed. I dragged a chair over, and using it to climb on top of the closet, I removed a ceiling tile and poked my head into the attic. I was met, right in front of my eyes, by Kutze. He was diminutive, the size of a wine bottle, and he was making slow side-steps that went Ton , Ta-tan , Ton , just like in my dream.
For many years after that, whenever I was alone in the house, I would climb onto the closet to visit Kutze in the attic.
“Are you the only one living in that yellow land?” I asked him once.
“It’s not a question of whether anyone else is around,” he mumbled, without missing a wheat-stepp’n beat, “or whether anyone is around at all. It’s a matter of distance.”
Ton , Ta-tan , Ton
This was a typical answer from him—mysterious. There were times when I heard his tapping steps outside—when I was waiting for Grandpa at the bar, or when I was walking home from school. Those steps would always be followed by Kutze’s flat voice, almost a whisper. Each time I heard it, I would stop in my tracks. But Kutze’s voice never betrayed his emotions. Even later, when he predicted the catastrophe that hit the town, the school careta