Wigrum by Daniel Canty

Author:Daniel Canty [Canty, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780889227798
Publisher: Talonbooks
Published: 2014-02-03T05:00:00+00:00

1.The automaton nevertheless won the match against the troubled emperor. This anecdote appears in one of the manuscripts from Napoleon’s captivity on Corsica. Who knows if the defeated emperor invented the story or if the genius of the anonymous midget hired by Mälzel was based in a certain strategic intuition?

K

Kamiquill, 1941

Prague Collection

This pen, Japanese-made of compact design, was distributed to the kamikazes before their final flight, in recognition of the service they were about to provide for the nation. Designed to resist the worst weather conditions and most brutal shock waves, it prefigures the Space Pen patented by NASA, the astronaut’s pen that can write in zero gravity or under water. In Asia, this pen did not undergo the massive commercialization of the American model.

American officers got into the habit of calling this prized booty the kamiquill. Numerous specimens were found in the pockets of deceased pilots and the young suicidal warriors often used it to write a final letter to their mother, lover or friend.

This particular pen was lying near the smoking remains of a plane from the first wave that assaulted Pearl Harbor on Sunday, December 7, 1941, marking Japan’s entrance into World War II. A fisherman noticed it floating in the water on a folded paper, on which the verses of an unknown young poet were written. The poet appears to have had certain reservations as to the soundness of his mandate:

The emperor toad

clicks his tongue

and I die a fly1

On the back, a more polite version:

The emperor

clicks his tongue

and down I die2

The pilot and poet, pulverized on impact, is unknown. His poem could have just as well been written on water.

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