The Elephant Vanishes Read online

  She was thirty-two, no children, husband worked for a company that was generally considered the fifth-best-known in the country. When I informed her in my last letter that I would have to be leaving the job at the end of the month, she invited me to lunch. “I’ll fix you a perfectly normal hamburger steak,” she wrote. In spite of the Society’s rules, I decided to take her up on it. The curiosity of a young man of twenty-two was not to be denied.

  Her apartment faced the tracks of the Odakyu Line. The rooms had an orderliness befitting a childless couple. Neither the furniture nor the lighting fixtures nor the woman’s sweater was of an especially costly sort, but they were nice enough. We began with mutual surprise—mine at her youthful appearance, hers at my actual age. She had imagined me as older than herself. The Society did not reveal the ages of its Pen Masters.

  Once we had finished surprising each other, the usual tension of a first meeting was gone. We ate our hamburger steak and drank coffee, feeling much like two would-be passengers who had missed the same train. And speaking of trains, from the window of her third-floor apartment one could see the electric train line below. The weather was lovely that day, and over the railings of the building’s verandas hung a colorful assortment of sheets and futons drying in the sun. Every now and then came the slap of a bamboo whisk fluffing out a futon. I can bring the sound back even now. It was strangely devoid of any sense of distance.

  The hamburger steak was perfect—the flavor exactly right, the outer surface grilled to a crisp dark brown, the inside full of juice, the sauce ideal. Although I could not honestly claim that I had never eaten such a delicious hamburger in my life, it was certainly the best I had had in a very long time. I told her so, and she was pleased.

  After the coffee, we told each other our life stories while a Burt Bacharach record played. Since I didn’t really have a life story as yet, she did most of the talking. In college she had wanted to be a writer, she said. She talked about Françoise Sagan, one of her favorites. She especially liked Aimez-vous Brahms? I myself did not dislike Sagan. At least, I didn’t find her as cheap as everyone said. There’s no law requiring everybody to write novels like Henry Miller or Jean Genet.

  “I can’t write, though,” she said.

  “It’s never too late to start,” I said.

  “No, I know I can’t write. You were the one who informed me of that.” She smiled. “Writing letters to you, I finally realized it. I just don’t have the talent.”

  I turned bright red. It’s something I almost never do now, but when I was twenty-two I blushed all the time. “Really, though, your writing had something honest about it.”

  Instead of answering, she smiled—a tiny smile.

  “At least one letter made me go out for a hamburger steak.”

  “You must have been hungry at the time.”

  And indeed, maybe I had been.

  A train passed below the window with a dry clatter.

  WHEN THE CLOCK struck five, I said I would be leaving. “I’m sure you have to make dinner for your husband.”

  “He comes home very late,” she said, her cheek against her hand. “He won’t be back before midnight.”

  “He must be a very busy man.”

  “I suppose so,” she said, pausing momentarily. “I think I once wrote to you about my problem. There are certain things I can’t really talk with him about. My feelings don’t get through to him. A lot of the time, I feel we’re speaking two different languages.”

  I didn’t know what to say to her. I couldn’t understand how one could go on living with someone to whom it was impossible to convey one’s feelings.

  “But it’s all right,” she said softly, and she made it sound as if it really were all right. “Thanks for writing letters to me all these months. I enjoyed them. Truly. And writing back to you was my salvation.”

  “I enjoyed your letters, too,” I said, though in fact I could hardly remember anything she had written.

  For a while, without speaking, she looked at the clock on the wall. She seemed almost to be examining the flow of time.

  “What are you going to do after graduation?” she asked.

  I hadn’t decided, I told her. I had no idea what to do. When I said this, she smiled again. “Maybe you ought to do some kind of work that involves writing,” she said. “Your critiques were beautifully written. I used to look forward to them. I really did. No flattery intended. For all I know, you were just writing them to fulfill a quota, but they had real feeling. I’ve kept them all. I take them out every once in a while and reread them.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “And thanks for the hamburger.”

  TEN YEARS have gone by, but whenever I pass her neighborhood on the Odakyu Line I think of her and of her crisply grilled hamburger steak. I look out at the buildings ranged along the tracks and ask myself which window could be hers. I think about the view from that window and try to figure out where it could have been. But I can never remember.

  Perhaps she doesn’t live there anymore. But if she does, she is probably still listening to that same Burt Bacharach record on the other side of her window.

  Should I have slept with her?

  That’s the central question of this piece.

  The answer is beyond me. Even now, I have no idea. There are lots of things we never understand, no matter how many years we put on, no matter how much experience we accumulate. All I can do is look up from the train at the windows in the buildings that might be hers. Every one of them could be her window, it sometimes seems to me, and at other times I think that none of them could be hers. There are simply too many of them.

  —translated by Jay Rubin

  IT WAS SUNDAY evening when the TV People showed up.

  The season, spring. At least, I think it was spring. In any case, it wasn’t particularly hot as seasons go, not particularly chilly.

  To be honest, the season’s not so important. What matters is that it’s a Sunday evening.

  I don’t like Sunday evenings. Or, rather, I don’t like everything that goes with them—that Sunday-evening state of affairs. Without fail, come Sunday evening my head starts to ache. In varying intensity each time. Maybe a third to a half of an inch into my temples, the soft flesh throbs—as if invisible threads lead out and someone far off is yanking at the other ends. Not that it hurts so much. It ought to hurt, but strangely, it doesn’t—it’s like long needles probing anesthetized areas.

  And I hear things. Not sounds, but thick slabs of silence being dragged through the dark. KRZSHAAAL KKRZSHAAAAAL KKKKRMMMS. Those are the initial indications. First, the aching. Then, a slight distortion of my vision. Tides of confusion wash through, premonitions tugging at memories, memories tugging at premonitions. A finely honed razor moon floats white in the sky, roots of doubt burrow into the earth. People walk extra loud down the hall just to get me. KRRSPUMK DUWB KRRSPUMK DUWB KRRSPUMK DUWB.

  All the more reason for the TV People to single out Sunday evening as the time to come around. Like melancholy moods, or the secretive, quiet fall of rain, they steal into the gloom of that appointed time.

  LET ME EXPLAIN how the TV People look.

  The TV People are slightly smaller than you or me. Not obviously smaller—slightly smaller. About, say, 20 or 30%. Every part of their bodies is uniformly smaller. So rather than “small,” the more terminologically correct expression might be “reduced.”

  In fact, if you see TV People somewhere, you might not notice at first that they’re small. But even if you don’t, they’ll probably strike you as somehow strange. Unsettling, maybe. You’re sure to think something’s odd, and then you’ll take another look. There’s nothing unnatural about them at first glance, but that’s what’s so unnatural. Their smallness is completely different from that of children and dwarfs. When we see children, we feel they’re small, but this sense of recognition comes mostly from the misproportioned awkwardness of their bodies. They are small, granted, but not uniformly so. The hands are small, but the h
ead is big. Typically, that is. No, the smallness of TV People is something else entirely. TV People look as if they were reduced by photocopy, everything mechanically calibrated. Say their height has been reduced by a factor of 0.7, then their shoulder width is also in 0.7 reduction; ditto (0.7 reduction) for the feet, head, ears, and fingers. Like plastic models, only a little smaller than the real thing.

  Or like perspective demos. Figures that look far away even close up. Something out of a trompe-l’oeil painting where the surface warps and buckles. An illusion where the hand fails to touch objects close by, yet brushes what is out of reach.

  That’s TV People.

  That’s TV People.

  That’s TV People.

  THERE WERE THREE of them altogether.

  They don’t knock or ring the doorbell. Don’t say hello. They just sneak right in. I don’t even hear a footstep. One opens the door, the other two carry in a TV. Not a very big TV. Your ordinary Sony color TV. The door was locked, I think, but I can’t be certain. Maybe I forgot to lock it. It really wasn’t foremost in my thoughts at the time, so who knows? Still, I think the door was locked.

  When they come in, I’m lying on the sofa, gazing up at the ceiling. Nobody at home but me. That afternoon, the wife has gone out with the girls—some close friends from her high-school days—getting together to talk, then eating dinner out. “Can you grab your own supper?” the wife said before leaving. “There’s vegetables in the fridge and all sorts of frozen foods. That much you can handle for yourself, can’t you? And before the sun goes down, remember to take in the laundry, okay?”

  “Sure thing,” I said. Doesn’t faze me a bit. Rice, right? Laundry, right? Nothing to it. Take care of it, simple as SLUPPP KRRRTZ!

  “Did you say something, dear?” she asked.

  “No, nothing,” I said.

  All afternoon I take it easy and loll around on the sofa. I have nothing better to do. I read a bit—that new novel by García Márquez—and listen to some music. I have myself a beer. Still, I’m unable to give my mind to any of this. I consider going back to bed, but I can’t even pull myself together enough to do that. So I wind up lying on the sofa, staring at the ceiling.

  The way my Sunday afternoons go, I end up doing a little bit of various things, none very well. It’s a struggle to concentrate on any one thing. This particular day, everything seems to be going right. I think, Today I’ll read this book, listen to these records, answer these letters. Today, for sure, I’ll clean out my desk drawers, run errands, wash the car for once. But two o’clock rolls around, three o’clock rolls around, gradually dusk comes on, and all my plans are blown. I haven’t done a thing; I’ve been lying around on the sofa the whole day, same as always. The clock ticks in my ears. TRPP Q SCHAOUS TRPP Q SCHAOUS. The sound erodes everything around me, little by little, like dripping rain. TRPP Q SCHAOUS TRPP Q SCHAOUS. Little by little, Sunday afternoon wears down, shrinking in scale. Just like the TV People themselves.

  THE TV PEOPLE ignore me from the very outset. All three of them have this look that says the likes of me don’t exist. They open the door and carry in their TV. The two put the set on the sideboard, the other one plugs it in. There’s a mantel clock and a stack of magazines on the sideboard. The clock was a wedding gift, big and heavy—big and heavy as time itself—with a loud sound, too. TRPP Q SCHAOUS TRPP Q SCHAOUS. All through the house you can hear it. The TV People move it off the sideboard, down onto the floor. The wife’s going to raise hell, I think. She hates it when things get randomly shifted about. If everything isn’t in its proper place, she gets really sore. What’s worse, with the clock there on the floor, I’m bound to trip over it in the middle of the night. I’m forever getting up to go to the toilet at two in the morning, bleary-eyed and stumbling over something.

  Next, the TV People move the magazines to the table. All of them women’s magazines. (I hardly ever read magazines; I read books—personally, I wouldn’t mind if every last magazine in the world went out of business.) Elle and Marie Claire and Home Ideas, magazines of that ilk. Neatly stacked on the sideboard. The wife doesn’t like me touching her magazines—change the order of the stack, and I never hear the end of it—so I don’t go near them. Never once flipped through them. But the TV People couldn’t care less: They move them right out of the way, they show no concern, they sweep the whole lot off the sideboard, they mix up the order. Marie Claire is on top of Croissant; Home Ideas is underneath An-An. Unforgivable. And worse, they’re scattering the bookmarks onto the floor. They’ve lost her place, pages with important information. I have no idea what information or how important—might have been for work, might have been personal—but whatever, it was important to the wife, and she’ll let me know about it. “What’s the meaning of this? I go out for a nice time with friends, and when I come back, the house is a shambles!” I can just hear it, line for line. Oh, great, I think, shaking my head.

  EVERYTHING GETS REMOVED from the sideboard to make room for the television. The TV People plug it into a wall socket, then switch it on. Then there is a tinkling noise, and the screen lights up. A moment later, the picture floats into view. They change the channels by remote control. But all the channels are blank—probably, I think, because they haven’t connected the set to an antenna. There has to be an antenna outlet somewhere in the apartment. I seem to remember the superintendent telling us where it was when we moved into this condominium. All you had to do was connect it. But I can’t remember where it is. We don’t own a television, so I’ve completely forgotten.

  Yet somehow the TV People don’t seem bothered that they aren’t picking up any broadcast. They give no sign of looking for the antenna outlet. Blank screen, no image—makes no difference to them. Having pushed the button and had the power come on, they’ve completed what they came to do.

  The TV is brand-new. It’s not in its box, but one look tells you it’s new. The instruction manual and guarantee are in a plastic bag taped to the side; the power cable shines, sleek as a freshly caught fish.

  All three TV People look at the blank screen from here and there around the room. One of them comes over next to me and verifies that you can see the TV screen from where I’m sitting. The TV is facing straight toward me, at an optimum viewing distance. They seem satisfied. One operation down, says their air of accomplishment. One of the TV People (the one who’d come over next to me) places the remote control on the table.

  The TV People speak not a word. Their movements come off in perfect order, hence they don’t need to speak. Each of the three executes his prescribed function with maximum efficiency. A professional job. Neat and clean. Their work is done in no time. As an afterthought, one of the TV People picks the clock up from the floor and casts a quick glance around the room to see if there isn’t a more appropriate place to put it, but he doesn’t find any and sets it back down. TRPP Q SCHAOUS TRPP Q SCHAOUS. It goes on ticking weightily on the floor. Our apartment is rather small, and a lot of floor space tends to be taken up with my books and the wife’s reference materials. I am bound to trip on that clock. I heave a sigh. No mistake, stub my toes for sure. You can bet on it.

  All three TV People wear dark-blue jackets. Of who-knows-what fabric, but slick. Under them, they wear jeans and tennis shoes. Clothes and shoes all proportionately reduced in size. I watch their activities for the longest time, until I start to think maybe it’s my proportions that are off. Almost as if I were riding backward on a roller coaster, wearing strong prescription glasses. The view is dizzying, the scale all screwed up. I’m thrown off balance, my customary world is no longer absolute. That’s the way the TV People make you feel.

  Up to the very last, the TV People don’t say a word. The three of them check the screen one more time, confirm that there are no problems, then switch it off by remote control. The glow contracts to a point and flickers off with a tinkling noise. The screen returns to its expressionless, gray, natural state. The world outside is getting dark. I hear someone calling out to someone else. A
nonymous footsteps pass by down the hall, intentionally loud as ever. KRRSPUMK DUWB KRRSPUMK DUWB. A Sunday evening.

  The TV People give the room another whirlwind inspection, open the door, and leave. Once again, they pay no attention to me whatsoever. They act as if I don’t exist.

  FROM THE TIME the TV People come into the apartment to the moment they leave, I don’t budge. Don’t say a word. I remain motionless, stretched out on the sofa, surveying the whole operation. I know what you’re going to say: That’s unnatural. Total strangers—not one but three—walk unannounced right into your apartment, plunk down a TV set, and you just sit there staring at them, dumbfounded. Kind of odd, don’t you think?

  I know, I know. But for whatever reason, I don’t speak up, I simply observe the proceedings. Because they ignore me so totally. And if you were in my position, I imagine you’d do the same. Not to excuse myself, but you have people right in front of you denying your very presence like that, then see if you don’t doubt whether you actually exist. I look at my hands half expecting to see clear through them. I’m devastated, powerless, in a trance. My body, my mind are vanishing fast. I can’t bring myself to move. It’s all I can do to watch the three TV People deposit their television in my apartment and leave. I can’t open my mouth for fear of what my voice might sound like.

  The TV People exit and leave me alone. My sense of reality comes back to me. These hands are once again my hands. It’s only then I notice that the dusk has been swallowed by darkness. I turn on the light. Then I close my eyes. Yes, that’s a TV set sitting there. Meanwhile, the clock keeps ticking away the minutes. TRPP Q SCHAOUS TRPP Q SCHAOUS.

  CURIOUSLY, THE WIFE makes no mention of the appearance of the television set in the apartment. No reaction at all. Zero. It’s as if she doesn’t even see it. Creepy. Because, as I said before, she’s extremely fussy about the order and arrangement of furniture and other things. If someone dares to move anything in the apartment, even by a hair, she’ll jump on it in an instant. That’s her ascendancy. She knits her brows, then gets things back the way they were.