A Man

by Keiichirō Hirano

“I keep myself together by living other people’s pain,” he said eventually with an indescribably lonesome smile. “It’s like the expression ‘the man who goes mummy hunting ends up a mummy himself . . .’ Do you understand what it’s like to be honest through lies? I mean, of course, just for brief stints at places like this. Somehow I can’t seem to let go of myself entirely.

Novelists, whether consciously or unconsciously, are always on the lookout for people that can serve as models for their novels. That is, we eagerly await the serendipity of someone like Meursault or Holly Golightly appearing out of the blue one day. For a person to be appropriate to serve as such a model, he or she needs to be highly out of the ordinary while possessing something that might be seen as a kind of template for humanity or for the age and must be purified via fiction until they reach the dimension of the symbol.

Misfortune can visit itself upon anyone.

The dead cannot call out to us. All they can do is wait for us to call to them. Except for the dead whose names are unknown. Uncalled by anyone, they sink ever deeper into solitude.

Her single-minded focus on family had begun after she gave birth and become more pronounced since the earthquake. Now she demanded to know why it was so important to Kido that she do other things. On the contrary, why wasn’t going back and forth between work and home enough to fulfill him?