"Standing Woman by Tsutsui Yasutaka" - читать интересную книгу автора (Yasutaka Tsutsui)

The elderly man stroked the dogpillar's head.
"This fellow here, I wonder what he was called before he became a dogpillar."
"No calling a dogpillar by its original name," I said. "Isn't that a strange law?"
The man looked at me sharply, then replied casually, "Didn't they just extend the laws concerning people to dogs? That's why they lose their names when they become dogpillars." He nodded while scratching the dogpillar's jaw. "Not only the old names, but you can't give them new names, either. That's because there are no proper nouns for plants."
Why, of course, I thought.
He looked at my envelope with MANUSCRIPT ENCLOSED written on it.
"Excuse me," he said. "Are you a writer?"
I was a little embarrassed.
"Well, yes. Just trivial little things."
After looking at me closely, the man returned to stroking the dogpillar's head. "I also used to write things."
He managed to suppress a smile.
"How many years is it now since I stopped writing? It feels like a long time."
I stared at the man's profile. Now that he said so, it was a face I seemed to have seen somewhere before. I started to ask his name, hesitated, and fell silent.
The elderly man said abruptly, "It's become a hard world to write in."
I lowered my eyes, ashamed of myself, who still continued to write in such a world.
The man apologized flurriedly at my sudden depression.

"That was rude. I'm not criticizing-you. I'm the one who should feel ashamed."
"No," I told him, after looking quickly around us, "I can't give up writing, because I haven't the courage. Giving up writing! Why, after all, that would be a gesture against society."
The elderly man continued stroking the dogpillar. After a long while he spoke.
"It's painful, suddenly giving up writing. Now that it's come to this, I would have been better off if I'd gone on boldly writing social criticism and had been arrested. There are even times when I think that. But I was just a dilettante, never knowing poverty, craving peaceful dreams. I wanted to live a comfortable life. As a person strong in self-respect. I couldn't endure being exposed to the eyes of the world, ridiculed. So I quit writing. A sorry tale."
He smiled and shook his head. "No, no, let's not talk about it. You never know who might be listening, even here on the street."
I changed the subject. "Do you live near here?"
"Do you know the beauty parlor on the main street? You turn in there. My name is Hiyama." He nodded at me. "Come over sometime. I'm married but . . ."
"Thank you very much."
I gave him my own name.
I didn't remember any writer named Hiyama. No doubt he wrote under a pen name. I had no intention of visiting his house. This is a world
where even two or three writers getting together is considered illegal assembly.

"It's time for the mail truck to come."

Taking pains to look at my watch, I stood.

"I'm afraid I'd better go," I said.

He turned a sadly smiling face toward me and bowed slightly. After stroking the dogpillar's head a little, I left the park.

I came out on the main street, but there was only a ridiculous number of passing cars: pedestrians were few. A cat tree, about thirty to forty centimeters high, was planted next to the sidewalk.

Sometimes I come across a catpillar that has just been planted and still hasn't become a cat tree. New catpillars look at my face and meow or cry, but the ones where all four limbs planted in the ground have vegetized, with their greenish faces stiffly set and eyes shut tight, only move their ears now and then. Then there are catpillars that grow branches from their bodies and put out handfuls of leaves. The mental condition of these seems to be completely vegetized, they don't even move their ears. Even if a cat's face can still be made out, it may be better to call these cattrees.

Maybe, I thought, it's better to make dogs into dogpillars. When their food runs out, they get vicious and even turn on people. But why did they have to turn cats into catpillars? Too many strays? To improve the food situation by even a little? Or perhaps for the greening of the city ....

Next to the big hospital on the corner where

the highways intersect are two mantrees, and ranged alongside these trees is a manpillar. This manpillar wears a postman's uniform, and you can't tell how far its legs have vegetized because of its trousers. It is male, thirty-five or thirty-six years old, tall, with a bit of a stoop.

I approached him and held out my envelope as always.

"Registered mail, special delivery, please."