⚫︎『セザンヌの犬』に収録されている「ライオンは寝ている」の冒頭部分をChatGPTさんに英訳してもらいました。タイトル以外は、修正なし、そのままです(タイトルはトーケンズの曲からとっているので、曲の原題にしてあります)。
The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Interconnected short story collection :Topology and Concrete Objects.5)
Toshihiro Furuya
Dogs align their bodies along the geomagnetic field in a north-south direction when they defecate. One of my oldest memories is of me beside a dog. In an album, there is a photo of me as a child, laughing heartily next to the dog. Next to us is a doghouse, so it must be the yard of my house. However, in my first memory, it's unclear where exactly I am beside the dog. The dog, wearing a collar, is on a leash, but I am not the one holding it. I am squatting and touching the dog's fur. The memory is visual, without any accompanying sensations of the texture of the fur, the warmth of the dog, or the trembling of its body from breathing. I recall it as if it were someone else's experience.
Whenever I wake up in the middle of the night in bed, I always hear the sound of a door opening somewhere. It's not that the sound wakes me up, but rather, when I wake up, I hear the sound. My sister and that man are secretly searching for something in the house together, without turning on any lights, even in the dark. My sister calls that man her brother. I cannot see the man whom my sister calls brother. The invisible man takes my sister's hand and guides her through the darkness. I hold my breath and try to sense their presence. I feel like I can hear their intimate conversation, but I can't quite make out what they're saying, and I'm not sure if it's not just my imagination. I just hear doors opening and closing one after another, and footsteps moving around.
The footsteps fade away. They must be starting to climb the stairs. The man isn't bothered by the darkness, but he takes care to step cautiously and slowly, as if to ensure my sister's safety, causing their footsteps to pause. During this time, their conversation continues. No, it might just be the intimacy that reaches me like a murmur. The old wooden stairs have been worn down by many feet, with a slight depression in the center due to a gentle curve, making them slippery. Even if the footsteps fade, the creaking of the wood echoes. The sound of the creaking wood and the thud of the footsteps transmit differently. The creaking resonates through the house itself.
I imagine it's snowing heavily outside, with snow piled up enough to cover everything. Today is July 11th. I know that's impossible, but I choose to think that way to block out the sounds from outside. The absence of sound when enveloped in snow is less zero and more negative, where the act of listening is drawn out from the ears by the pressure difference, spreading out around the body. The whole house becomes the inside of my ear. My sister is barefoot, but the invisible man must be wearing socks. That's my conclusion based on the earlier footsteps.
Brother! My sister says that man looks just like our brother. She talks about the man as if she were speaking of a lover. But she also says he's still just a child. When I say that such a man doesn't exist anywhere, my sister looks sad. She casts her gaze gently toward her right arm, around the elbow, where no one is. If he is her brother, then he should also be my brother. But my sister says, "It's none of your business because he is my brother." Then she positions her right arm as if embracing a shoulder and gestures as if stroking the air, as if stroking a head.
My bed is inside the closet. It's on the upper level of a two-tiered closet. I'm in bed wearing a reindeer fur jacket. The jacket is made by threading reindeer tendon through a sewing needle carved from reindeer bone, stitching together pieces of reindeer hide. In Siberia, people have been making fur this way for 40,000 years. The scent of animal and blood, which never completely disappears, warms with my body heat and envelops me. In the pitch-darkness of the closed closet, I feel it as if it were my own body odor. The tips of the fur tickle my cheeks. I almost remember when I was once a reindeer. At the same time, memories of eating reindeer meat are surfacing. I can see a herd of reindeer running across a snow-covered plain. But that's just the scene I saw on TV last night. I know the herd is not wild because there's something like a cowbell attached to the reindeer's necks. The herd is being led by a man on a sled. The reindeer and sled slide over the snow at a reckless speed. The smooth surface of the snow is disrupted by footprints and sled tracks. The man is also wearing reindeer fur, and he even has impressive reindeer antlers growing from his head. Let's assume that's the figure of my brother.
At the end of the day, my brother picks out a reindeer from the herd. This is because today's hunt was unsuccessful, and there's nothing else to eat. He moves to the front of the reindeer, grabs its antlers with both arms, and firmly presses down, forcing its head to lower. The resistance ceases. Quickly, he thrusts a sharp metal rod, like an awl, into a specific point at the back of its neck. The reindeer collapses with a single blow, convulses a few times, then lies still almost immediately. A red stain forms on the white snow, but due to the precise stabbing location, the bleeding is surprisingly minimal (the bloodletting is done later). My brother starts the butchering process by inserting the knife blade into its abdomen and neatly cutting away the hide from the meat. The children gather around, wearing complex expressions, intently watching every move my brother makes so as not to miss a single step. The knife deftly separates the skin from the meat. The scent of animal blood and fat lingers. The children are afraid of the day when they will have to do the same but are somehow also looking forward to it. Though their faces are solemn, their cheeks are flushed as if drunk. Marina Nikolaeva, the group's leader, watches over my brother and the children from a short distance away. Marina Nikolaeva? Who is she? This was also a scene I saw on TV last night.
Among the circle of children, I can also see my brother when he was still a child. It's easy to spot him among others of the same age because small antlers are already beginning to grow. His stance is distinctive due to the slight heaviness of the antlers. The child version of my brother gazes intensely at the adult brother.
I imagine my brother, borrowed from the television, shrunken down to a size that fits snugly inside my sister's bent right arm, as if she were embracing someone's shoulder. I try to imagine that man in the same way, to feel his presence. However, I imagine that the man has no horns.
(Continued)
