pessimism for mothers

from the emissary by yoko tawada

"in his youth, yoshiro had prided himself on always having an answer ready when someone asked who his favorite composer or designer was, or what kind of wine he preferred. confident in his good taste, he had poured time and money into surrounding himself with things that would show it off. now he no longer felt any need to use taste as the bricks and mortar for a structure called 'individuality.' though shoes were still important, he no longer chose them as a means of asserting his identity."

"one morning yoshiro agreed to meet an editor at a coffee shop, but by the time he'd finished making notes on the project they were to discuss he discovered it was way past the appointed time. when he reached the coffee shop and saw the editor sitting way at the back, shoulders drooping, head down, staring at the translucent skin that had formed on the surface of his milk tea, he wanted to apologize right away but couldn't get to the editor's table. for the whole coffee shop had turned into a parking lot for baby carriages. while babies slept soundly in their mobile beds, mothers talked with furrowed brows. fragments of conversation, phrases like 'recyclable resources,' or 'afraid my son might turn into a bird,' or 'putting profit before public health' floated through the air into his ears. while the women were lost in conversation their coffee grew cold in their cups, the cakes they forgot to order dried up inside glass cases, cracks forming in the icing on top. he caught sight of pessimism for mothers on the cover of a book one of the mothers held in one hand while she had the other thrust deep into her baby's carriage, making circling motions. sticking his neck out like a giraffe, yoshiro saw that the mother's hand was rubbing the head of her fidgety infant, round and round, making a tangled mess of the child's hair. was marika in another coffee shop like this one, reading and talking? having a hen party, or a bull session, was she shooting the breeze or just shooting -- what was she doing, anyway? yoshiro finished talking to his editor and left the coffee shop in a state of distraction. he then noticed that the street, too, was full of baby carriages. while yoshiro had been holed up in his study writing, the whole world had changed. all these children being born, flooding the city with baby carriages, filling the coffee shops with mothers. from beneath their cloth canopies, pacifiers protruding from their mouths like the beaks of birds, their tiny bodies making occasional ripples in their cloth swaddling, the new generation glared resentfully at yoshiro. so this was what a baby is. if he were to meet his daughter amana outside would she, too, look this strange? when the light turned green,, the white lines of the crosswalk disappeared beneath a torrent of baby carriages. there were baby carriages in front of every bookshelf in all the bookstores; in fact, yoshiro wasn't able to reach across the three baby carriages blocking his way to get the newly published paperback in praise of masturbation. still on tiptoe, he looked down into a baby's eyes, unclouded as a mirror, watching him.

not long after that, he heard the phrase 'baby carriage movement' from marika for the first time. this was a movement to encourage mothers to push their baby carriages around town every day as long as the sun was shining. . . pushing a baby carriage was the best way to tell how a town treated its pedestrians. mothers had to stop if there was no sidewalk, or too many steps. where the noise was nerve-racking, or there was too much carbon dioxide in the air, the baby would start howling. with lots of other baby carriages around a sort of domino effect kicked in until the collective howling was as loud as a siren, making passerby stop to think just how unpleasant or even dangerous this place was for human beings."

"'the whole human race is becoming feminized,' asserted some specialists, while others said, 'children who are born male turn into females, while those born female turn into males.'

in areas where culture dictated that female fetuses should be aborted, nature, enraged at humans disrupting her balance this way, had started playing various tricks. one trick was making sure that no one stayed the same sex all their lives. everyone's sex changed either once or twice, and people couldn't tell ahead of time how many times their sex would change."

"all through his childhood and youth, he'd kept his body moving, chasing after balls with his friends, yet he had almost no memory of touch, of his heart beating faster after coming into physical contact with another boy. not only other kids, even his own body had seemed to be moving on some two-dimensional plane like an anime character he could watch but never really touch. the closest thing to a sensual memory he had was of putting his hand into his catcher's mitt, that slight thrill he felt every time his skin touched leather, bringing the mitted hand up to his nose when the others weren't watching to breathe in the earthy aroma. once when a classmate called michiru had left her hand lying on top of her desk, he had touched it by mistake. he'd pulled away immediately, but the shock of feeling her warm, moist flesh stayed, carved into his memory. after that he was always aware of michiru, so much so that even when the classroom faded into black and white boredom, she alone appeared in living color. every time michiru said someone's name he was listening, he examined every letter on all her school papers, watched everything she did at recess. that single touch, apparently, had stolen the key to his heart."