Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino Read Free Book Online

face. And then he drew the characters for fanatic. I drank my tea and watched wordlessly. After a long time my grandfather noticed me sitting at the kitchen table.
    “Is there any left for your grandpa?”
    “There is, but it’s cold now.” I pointed to the toast. Grandfather set on the cold dry toast with great delight and gnawed at it with his false teeth, sending crumbs flying. As soon as I saw this, I knew the stories my mother told about his being a detective were lies. I don’t know quite how to explain it, but even to my sixteen-year-old eyes it was clear what kind of person Grandfather was. He was the kind who thought only of himself.
    There’s no way he ever could have chased down another man and charged him with a crime.
    Grandfather’s dentures were ill-fitting, and it seemed difficult for him to chew, so he dunked his toast into his tea until it was soft and soggy.
    Some of the bread melted away into the tea, but my grandfather gulped it down anyway.
    I summoned up my courage and asked, “Grandfather, do you think Yuriko is inspired?”
    Grandfather looked out over the veranda at the large black pine and answered in no uncertain terms.
    “Not whatsoever. Yuriko-chan is just too pretty a girl for that. She might be a garden plant. A pretty flower. But she’s no bonsai.”
    “So, a flower, no matter how pretty, is not inspired?”
    “That’s right. Inspiration is the bonsai’s trump card. But it’s a person who makes it that way, you know. Look over there, at the black pine. Now that’s inspiration. See there? An old tree gives us a lesson in life. Strange, isn’t it? The tree may look withered, but it’s living just the same. A tree can withstand the passage of time. Humans are the only ones who are at their most beautiful when they’re young. But a tree, no matter how many years go by, you train it and train it, and though the tree itself would naturally resist, gradually it bends to your will. And when it does?
    Why then it’s as if life has sprung forth anew, isn’t it? Inspiration resides at that point when you begin to feel the miraculous. That’s the word for it in English, right? Miracle?”
    “I suppose so.”
    “What about in German?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Here we go again, I thought to myself, and I only pretended to look 2 9
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    back at the veranda where he was standing. I could hardly understand a thing my grandfather talked about, and listening to him grew tiresome.
    All my grandfather really cared about was the dried-up old pine tree that he’d plopped down smack in the middle of the veranda. The roots were gnarled and hideous and the branches were crisscrossed with wires.
    With the needles bunching up like helmets, the tree was in the way of everything. It had the shape of one of those old twisted pines that you see in any run-of-the-mill samurai movie. Yet it was inspired, and the gorgeous Yuriko wasn’t! What could have been more perfect? I adored my grandfather for saying what he’d said. And I prayed I’d be able to go on living with him like this forever.
    My grandfather, being who he was, also gained by having me around.
    I was soon to discover why. There were days when he’d run around in a panic putting all the bonsai in the closet. On the third Sunday of every month at eleven o’clock in the morning, a neighborhood man came to call on my grandfather. It was like clockwork. Grandfather had marked the third Sunday of the month on his calendar with a bright red circle so he would not forget. On those Sundays, as soon as he’d finished conversing with his bonsai, he would start rearranging things in his closet and moving his junk here and there. Regardless of whether it was cloudy or threatening rain at any minute, he’d have me drag my futon out and hang it on the drying pole on the veranda—so as to make more room in the closet. And then he’d start scrambling to carry the bonsai into the space he’d made. There were hordes of the