Kyoko Yoshida

yoshida@hc.keio.ac.jp

Mr. Volker

First appeared in The Cream City Review, 28.2, 2004. 153-55.

It was when we visited a city in America whose name sounded similar to milk. Or more similar to milkyway. Instead people drank beer there. No, people drank milk, but they preferred squeaky dairy products to the liquid, and beer best of all. Two men ice-fishing almost drowned themselves in the lake the day before, the icebreak day approaching. Everyone we met asked us why did you come here? Why milkyway? There’s nothing here during the winter. We always replied: well, we didn’t mean to. Then people would look hurt a little. People had fairly solid work ethics, but sometimes their minds seemed to drift off, especially during the winter when the gray lake and the leaden sky seem to blend into one, while the factories in the south poured more fume to mingle the two. On such days, people seemed to stay in bed all day and enjoy their gray nightmares, or go out and shoot some other people, or go out to a hardware store, buy a hatchet and chop some more people, or go out to a hardware store, buy a shovel and shovel some snow instead.

So what are you? A man at a bar stared at us and asked, since we neither stay in bed, shoot people, chop people, nor shovel snow.

We translate letters, we told him. We translate letters from one language to another, or sometimes from one language to several others. We cannot do any lengthier translations than letters, because we have to work standing at podiums. You see, we pointed at our hip, it’s difficult to sit and write for us. Then we were telling him of the letter we translated the week before we came to milkyway—a North Korean cabaret owner in Osaka reported a case of three Filipino dancers missing. Letter writing requires subtle techniques of hiding and revealing, letter translating even more so. We had paid most attention making it sure that the letter reader would never figure out whether the three Filipino dancers were legal workers or not, and whether these employees (legal or illegal) disappeared voluntarily or were kidnapped. What we did was we would each start a sentence for the other to finish. That’s how we worked.

Then the man said, okay, it’s my turn to tell you two young ladies a story. I was shoveling the snow instead yesterday and my twin sister came home from a hardware store with a new hatchet and a shovel. You know, our hardware store is located at a solitary corner. Sometimes people get to use their new hatchet even before they reach their home or their friends’ home, but anyway, my sister told me that she saw a huge hare with antlers on her way home. It wore a summer coat, grayish brown, at least twice as large as an adult hare, extremely muscular like a bobcat. It dashed out of the shrub in front of the hardware store, shook off some snow, and their eyes met for a second, my twin sister and the hare—its eyes had this wild look, she told me, or the look of the once conscientious being gone wild. Big eyes and strong jaws. It wore a pair of fully developed antlers, with branches, though one of them was missing a third of it. They stared at each other for a second and the hare went back into the shrub.

That’s Mr. Volker the great jackalope king of hares, we said.

Yes, exactly, that’s what I told my twin sister: Sis’, that’s Mr. Volker the great jackalope king of hares.

Why didn’t she use her new hatchet? we asked.

See? That’s what I asked her, too! Why didn’t you use your hatchet? That’s what it is for!

But again, we don’t know, we said to the man, because you started the story and your twin sister finished it. How do we know whether your sister really encountered Mr. Volker the great jackalope king of hares?

But, well, you have to believe us! I stopped shoveling, went down to the basement, picked up my old hatchet, and my sister and I went back to the hardware store at the solitary corner, we each had a hatchet and a shovel in both hands. The hardware store is sort of located on the hill, commanding the lake, under the freeways, so it’s dark during the day. That day, even darker, since it had snowed.

Which shrub did it come from, I mean Mr. Volker the great jackalope king of hares? I asked my twin sister.

There. She pointed to the tallest one by the shop door.

Then the doors swung open and a tall woman with broad shoulders and short blond hair walked into the bar. She had a soiled shovel in her thick hand.

You talking about Mr. Volker the great jackalope king of hares? she said to the man.

Yes, sister, I’m telling these young ladies the story of Mr. Volker the great jackalope king of hares.

So what are you? The twin sister stared at our hip and asked.

We are letter translators, we said, adjusting our standing posture against the bar, stepping forward and backward like a dancing couple while skillfully avoiding entangling our four legs.

But anyway, the man resumed the story: we poked the bush in front of the hardware store, and

And the hare came out, the twin sister took over his sentence: so we held it down with our shovels on the back of its neck. The hare was so strong that it was two men’s job just to hold it down. Then we struck its antlers with our hatchets, one for each. The hare’s eyes became bloodshot; its white bobtail quivered. After so many strokes, the antlers dropped off—they just shed off like dead leaves. The hare still had that wild look—did you tell these ladies about its peculiar wild look, brother?—but it was mixed with something new, a sort of relief, a mixture of grief, agony, and relief.

We lifted our shovels. And the hare dashed off, this time out to the parking lot under the highway. Its coat soon vanished into the gray slush of the parking lot. The antlers remained. So there’s no Mr. Volker the great jackalope king of hares any more in milkyway. Not any more. Except in souvenir cards from milkyway. Thus, the sister finished the story.

We were standing at the bar because we couldn’t sit, you see, because of our hip. We stared at the sister, her pale eyes, her strong jaws, and her shovel soiled with gray snow. We thought of the sense of relief Mr. Volker the great jackalope king of hares had when it found it was no more the great jackalope king of hares. We looked at each other. From her coat pocket, the sister drew out an antler. It was shaped like an aged bonsai pine tree. It had apparently grown in torment over years. The top one-third was missing, the cut still edgy and uneven. It fit in our small hand, and at its root, a turf of heather brown hair remained. We looked at the twins. They looked at us and said, one starting and the other finishing the sentence, why did you come here? Why milkyway? We looked down at the small antler in our hand, touched its pointy branches with the tips of our fingers, and said, well, we didn’t mean to.

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