Twinkle Twinkle by Kaori Ekuni

Author:Kaori Ekuni [Ekuni, Kaori]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kodansha USA
Published: 2023-10-24T00:00:00+00:00

Silver Lions

• •

When I got back from the hospital, Shoko was in the living room watching TV. Pretty intently, by the look of things. “Hi, I’m home,” I said, but her eyes were glued to the 25-inch screen.

She mumbled, “Welcome back.”

We’d bought the TV on an installment plan. Right now, I could see vast dusty plains rolling across the screen.

“What are you watching?”

“Television,” was Shoko’s instant reply. Apparently she wasn’t being deliberately obnoxious, so I just shrugged my shoulders and decided to take her answer at face value. I changed out of my work clothes and cleaned my shoes, then went into the bathroom to freshen up. By the time I got back to the living room, the program was over.

“What would you like for dinner?” I called out, rummaging through the refrigerator. Anything, she answered distractedly, as if her mind was still lost somewhere inside the TV set. There was still some meat left over from the hamburgers we’d had the day before, so I decided to use it to make some meatballs. Egg and meatball soup.

“So what was the program about?” I asked, choosing my words more carefully this time.

“It was a documentary. On wildlife,” Shoko explained. “There was this gazelle that had some disease and it kept going round in circles until it dropped dead. And then they showed this baby elephant that tripped over its own trunk and fell down. Zebras mating, a pack of hyenas eating a gnu.” I could hear the excitement in her voice as she went on. “Apparently a gnu can smell rain from 50 kilometers away. But they’re weak. And they have so many enemies. Lions and hyenas and cheetahs. Lots of animals kill gnus every day.”

Shoko told me all about the gnus while I got dinner ready. She wasn’t skimping on any details now. I was treated to a particularly graphic description of how the gnus had been killed and eaten. How quickly the hyenas tore apart their prey, how greedy the vultures were. They even picked out the meat from between the ribs, she reported.

“Even the baby lions!” she said. “Their little noses were all covered in blood. They stick their whole head in and just gobble it up.”

I looked from the neat line of freshly prepared meatballs to Shoko’s face, and said nothing.

During dinner, Shoko still seemed distracted. (In the end, the meal was a simple one of egg soup and sauteed mushrooms.) The images had obviously had a big impact on her.

“You want to go out somewhere tomorrow?” I said, in an attempt to haul her back to reality. “How about a movie? It’s been so long since we did anything like that.”

Shoko said she’d promised to go see Mizuho. It was already a week since that day at the amusement park, and she still owed Mizuho an explanation.

“Do you want me to come with you?”

Shoko shook her head. “I won’t be long. Besides, it’s Sunday. Your big clean-up day.”

Clean-up! Ah, how appealing that concept was. All that dust piled up behind the shoe closet, the mold in between the tiles in the bathroom….

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.