The Tear-Seller (from Wanderers on the Edge of Daybreak)
Yōko Ogawa
Until the age of eighteen, I had made a living by selling my tears. I had some regular customers: a professor of violins at a music college, a clarinet player in a circus band, a guitarist who played in a flamenco café.
These wonderful fellows were all very pleased with my tears. “Oh, you’re a lifesaver. I don’t know what I would do without them!” they would say, when I heeded their calls. They used them for important concerts, of course, but also during breaks in practice. Anytime, really.
I, or rather my body, would drop everything and come running, even in the dead of night. To the studio, concert halls, street corner plazas, musical instrument stores, their homes, their villas, a lover’s house…anywhere, basically, that they specified. For three hundred and sixty-five days I did not have a day off, because they did not know when their instruments would go out of tune. Instruments are affected by the weather, as well as the addition or subtraction of lights in the concert hall or the enthusiasm of the audience, but nothing can abruptly change an instrument’s sound more than the state of its player. Those were the situations in which I was called for.
In one of those situations, there was a customer who sought something more than just tears. He thought of me, essentially, as a good luck charm. For him (a great cellist) it was not so much the tears that were important, but just the fact that I would be there.
“I am here.”
Backstage I say those words and place my palm on the cellist’s back. This immediately releases him from his tension, brings a calm smile to his face. He walks out into the spotlight.
Even when he would not purchase my tears, he would pay me more than what my tears were worth just to stand backstage for him. But his cello was so sublime, I could never hold back my tears of emotion anyway.
However, I did not just contract with professional musicians. I don’t mean that I treated them like a common commodity. When I met, for example, an elementary schooler fighting a losing battle against his recorder in the corner of a schoolyard, or discovered an abandoned pump organ in a trash heap, I would approach softly and shed a couple tears. If I thought that I could be of help, I would not be stingy with my tears, even if no money changed hands.
When exactly it was I cannot say, but at some point I realized that my tears could be of some use for instruments. When my tears entered the mix, they could immediately make any instrument sound better. A xylophone with peeling paint, a triangle caked with rust. They could make a noise coming from within a deep cave begin to sing. All I had to do was weep a few tears onto a tired old music box and the coils would spring back to life.
I don’t know the reason. Once some scientist wanted me to come to a lab so he could conduct an analysis of the composition of my tears, but I had to refuse. What help would that be to anyone? My tears are mine and mine alone, and nobody has the right to instruct me in how I should use them. I shudder at the thought of my tears being farmed while strangers scrutinize me in a laboratory filled with questionable chemicals and apparatuses.
At first, I just sold my tears in bulk to an old man who lived nearby. He ran an instrument store. But as rumors spread from person to person, and customers who desired a direct and continuous supply of tears began to emerge, my business model shifted towards customers interacting with me directly, and I cut out the store.
Though I didn’t know it, it seemed that the old man was running a pretty shady outfit. He got pretty angry at me when I told him that I was ending our arrangement. He ended up harassing me: dropping rotten chicken innards into my mailbox, hanging a half-dead crow from my doorknob, throwing sea cucumbers at my window, that sort of thing. Maybe he wanted to make me cry and take my tears for himself. Finally, the odor at my house became so ripe that there was a complaint to the neighborhood association, and it got to be more trouble than it was worth to keep living there.
Emboldened, I decided to go on a trip, with no particular destination in mind. There was no other way to get away from the abusive old instrument seller, who would always find out where I had moved and shower me with presents of rancid things. As all I needed were my tear glands and tear sacs, I could move freely with nothing more than the skin on my back. It wouldn’t be much trouble. And just like that, I became a wandering tear-seller. I have heard of some famous kind of violin painted with human blood. It stands to reason that in any age, there might exist those who unwittingly form attachments with instruments. It’s similar to those who, from birth, can effortlessly understand what animals are thinking, or hear the voices of the trees. But the blood once painted onto those violins has not evaporated; instead, it has soaked deeper and deeper into the wood grain. But tears are different. Unfortunately, they do not have persist long on the instrument. They are gobbled up, along with sound quality, by the smallest crevices in an instrument.
Therefore, I will have to shed tears for the rest of my life, as long as instruments are in want of them.
I have all the treasures from those days of selling tears still stored carefully in a candy tin tied up with a pink ribbon. Postcards from the road, cassettes with personal recordings of performances, sheet music I received for my birthday, broken strings, concert programs, photos, handkerchiefs and the like. On the postcards are vistas of faraway towns someone like me could never have the chance to visit. Poems confessing love have been jotted in the corners of the sheet music, and my initials have been sewn onto the handkerchiefs.
However, to this day I have not untied the ribbon. The memories of those who sought so after my tears are long past. I fear that inside the tin, worms may have eaten away at the programs, the tape may have gotten stretched out, and the once delightful melodies may be nothing more than dissonant noise.
Even that cellist who made me his special good luck charm passed on long ago. They say he breathed his last breath alone in a practice room, still clutching his cello. He looked like he was giving his beloved cello a goodbye kiss. I can only pray that some small remnant of my tears will continue to remain with the cello.
I put that life behind me for an embarrassingly simple reason. A reason so simple that I don’t know if that’s even the right word. Let’s just say I fell in love. I met a man one day when I was coming up on my nineteenth birthday. I was on my way back from delivering tears to a frequent customer, a clarinetist in a circus band. When I was on the road to the train station going from the open area where the circus tent had been erected, I heard strange music coming from somewhere. It could only be called strange. It was a kind of music that never in my life had I heard before.
I considered myself fairly well-versed in musical instruments, and, intrigued by exactly what sort of thing was being played, I was drawn in a daze in the direction of that sound. Shortly thereafter I discovered a band of about five men and women encamped beneath a poplar tree. But at first, I doubted that these were the people who had been playing. I believed that perhaps it was coming from the radio and they were merely dancing to it. After all, they were all half-naked and not one of them were holding an instrument. A bunch of people making music with their flesh, not a single instrument in the mix. A band of bodies. The one standing in the middle was whistling. Everybody was following his lead. To his right a woman in a thong was spanking her butt, and to his left a man was blocking and unblocking his ear canal with the palm of his hand. Another person was strumming their waist-length hair.
And then there he was, on the edge of the circle, making an even stranger motion than the rest of his band. With the other members, no matter how bizarre their movements, you had a rough idea of what they were doing to make their sound. But on that essential point, no matter how closely I listened, he remained a mystery. All he was doing was wiggling the joints in his body.
There were only a few onlookers. They looked as though they had been caught on their way to the circus. The musicians’ volume, compared to actual instruments, was incredibly tinny, and the novelty of the act, to be honest, left something to be desired. Even those who stopped to look only did so from a distance, with puzzled expressions on their faces. There was nobody whom you could say was listening to the music.
The music, which could have been anything from a film score to a lullaby in another language, came to an end. There was something that passed for applause, but it was a kind of scattered ovation that only served to make more obvious the band’s forlornness. The cap—one of the five must have taken it off—with several coins visible in it made no bones about the fact that these were not professionals. There were no signs of new additions to the change in the cap. Without a sign or a word of explanation, they launched into the next song.
With the sound of the wind in my ears it took a while until I could figure out what it was. It was a jazz standard. It was the first time in my life I had heard jazz so humble. Unable to get the question of what sound the dancing man was producing, what part he was playing, out of my head, I focused all my attention on him. I was frustrated that my ears, well-versed in instruments, could not grasp this.
Hair disheveled, beads of sweat flying off of him, the man was totally immersed in his présentation. He continued to move all of his joints—from his ankles to his knees, hips, hands, neck—in a complex fashion. The shadows of poplar leaves were flickering across the shirtless top half of his body. It was as though they were what was moving him, twisting him around in a loving embrace.
Eventually my ears finally caught the sound he was making, flowing quietly beneath the melody. It was him cracking his joints to the rhythm. Castanets of human joints.
Then, abruptly, a man thrust himself rudely into the circle of musicians. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing? You can’t just show up and do this wherever you like! Get the hell out of here, right now!” The man looked like he was part of the circus. Maybe he thought they were getting in the way of their own performance.
He was excoriating them with harsh language, and on top of that he had taken Joint Castanets by surprise: he fell backwards, making no attempt to resist. At once I rushed forwards to help him up and object to the circus performer. Having seen this instrument being mistreated I could not stay silent.
“Take your hands off of him! What have they done to you? They haven’t done anything wrong. They’ve just been playing music! And they’ve been doing it as quietly as possible!”
The band were frozen in place. They looked more surprised by my intrusion than by the circus performer’s manhandling.
“I’m fine. Thanks. Just ignore us…” The timbre of Joint Castanets’ voice was just as solemn as his castanets. This was his and my first encounter. In time I would join the human band and work with him. Of course, I was no use playing some part of my body, so I didn’t go on stage. I was behind the curtain, tuning their instruments with my tears.
I had already stopped selling my tears to performing musicians. Even I couldn’t go on making tears forever. There was a limit and so it had to stop. I no longer had surplus tears stored for my regular customers; all I had I gave unto the human band (or, to be honest, Joint Castanets). Once I had considered procuring rotten entrails to start my tears; now they flowed only for Joint Castanets. We would travel all over, looking for places to play. It wasn’t such a big change in lifestyle; the wandering tear-seller had just become attached to the human band.
“I had no idea tears were so hot,” Joint Castanets said.
“Yeah. Tears just coming out are hotter than body temperature. Since they’re coming from inside the body.”
“Huh, that’s really hot!” He absentmindedly closed his eyes.
I was draped over his prone form, letting my tears fall on his joints, diligently rubbing them in. No matter how many times I blinked tears always welled up in my eyes. They were tears of happiness, the happiness of having him all to myself.
“The tears I’ve sold up to now have all gone cold. Nobody but you has gotten fresh tears. You get it?”
There was no reply. Lost in the sensation of my tears, he couldn’t hear my voice. He was of surprisingly slender build for someone so active as him. Maybe extra muscles would only hinder the reverberation of his joints. As soon as I would touch my hands to his skin I would feel bone. There was a rawness to it, as if I was touching his bones directly, with no skin or veins or fat to get in the way.
And what rich expression his joints had! His movements were so complex and so elastic that at first it appeared that each had a mind of its own. I got the feeling that if he was performing in front of me, you could see through his skin how the small rises and depressions in the bone joints fit together and gave birth to sequential movements. From all the joints in his body he could produce different sounds. From the large femur, an echoing bass note. From a pinky knuckle, a baby bird’s cheep. He would tirelessly produce these sounds in any combination he so desired.
“Doesn’t it hurt?” I asked once, worried.
“It’s fine! It’s fine!” Joint Castanets replied, unconcerned. “My joints aren’t rubbing against each other any harder than anybody else’s. It’s just that the cracking gets turned into lymph fluid vibrations.”
I’ve been reminded of the way the lymph fluid vibrates inside his body. That is more elegant and more captivating than the sound of any instrument since I have met him.
Could there be another instrument as reserved as Joint Castanets? Even when compared to the marvelous sounds produced by a violin or piano, the skillful technique involved in plucking the strings or hitting the keys, Joint Castanets only makes ripples in small amounts of lymph fluid, where my tears have gathered. In those tiny quantities, their source hidden within his body. Nothing can be seen but his figure. Oh, my tears are perfect for an instrument so wonderful as this.
His joints gulp down tears like sand. I know their course: they slip through his small crevices, slide right through his bones, and make his lymph fluid just that much more transparent. I forget my place and suddenly I need to kiss him. It hurts to restrain that feeling. If the crumbs on my lips from lunch got on him, or dandruff, or worse, saliva, all my tears would be for nothing. So I must endure. When he’s tuned, he’ll play a joint, just for me. He won’t say anything. It’s the one I love most of all, his left ankle. I take his left foot and brink his ankle to my ear. The sound reaches my eardrum: the sound of a single tear dripping into a spring deep within a cave. This is my reward for having such good self-control.
The human band is limited in the places where they can perform, and seldom do they appear at a proper venue. The best they can manage is a community center or the rooftop of a department store. Most often they play like when I first met them, under the clear blue sky.
We get ready under shade of trees in parks or public areas. They remove their clothes, do some stretches, and double-check the setlist. I have already tuned Joint Castanets, so then the remaining four—Whistler Girl, Ear Flute, Hair Strings, and Butt Drum—tune their instruments. Then they lather each other up with my tears, already cold, kept in a glass bottle.
My interference is limited to supplying the bottles. I just find a bench some distance away and listen for them. I say that this is because I have little experience with human instruments, but the truth is that, with the exception of Joint Castanets, I don’t care to come into contact with them. And yet the kindhearted Joint Castanets will do anything for them. He’ll open up Ear Flute’s ear canals, hold up a mirror for Butt Drum, or tease out the straggling hair at the nape of Hair Strings’ neck. But there is one thing I absolutely will not allow him to do, which is to lather up Whistler Girl’s lips with my tears. Why must he do it so tenderly? They’re lips. Surely they’re well within her own reach? She’s so full of herself, just because she’s doing the melody. And what’s more is that the tears on her lips are my tears. When I remember that the tears in the creases of her lips are the same ones that seep into Joint Castanets’ lymph fluid, I feel like I can’t breathe. I hide, away from them, behind a bush. To cry. I am at my most calm when I shed my tears.
I take out the bottle I keep my tears in from my pocket. It’s a special vial I had commissioned from a glassmaker I know, in the shape of a U. Both ends have a rubber stopper, and the distance between the two mouths was made to be the same as the distance between my eyes. So all I have to do is position it right below my eyes and I won’t waste a single drop.
However, I, who constantly demands only the highest quality tears, strive not to do so standing up. I cannot abide impure tears mixed with material from contact with my lashes or the corners of my eyes. So I get on all fours. I keep my head perpendicular and catch the tears in my bottle straight on.
I can hear the human band’s tuning from all the way over here. Recalling how Joint Castanets and Whistler Girl play together, how they harmonize the sounds emitted by their own bodies, and the way the blend them together is enough to make me weep. Drop by drop, my tears collect in the bottom of my U-shaped bottle. They must think I’m sick, about to vomit.
“Are you alright?” a stranger calls out in concern.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I say through my tears. “Please, just leave me alone. You should check out the human band played over there.”
I’m not being a braggadocio when I say that since I joined the group the quality of the human band’s music has risen exceptionally. The fullness of the sound has increased, there’s modulation in the rhythm, and the emotion has grown richer. The expressions on the band members’ faces are naturally livelier, there’s a brighter atmosphere, and the number of spectators collected—as well as the amount of change—has kept going up. Whistler Girl moves her head up and down as she trills confidently, as if these changes were all her doing. Butt Drum sparkles in the sunlight, Hair Strings boasts of a vibrato so alluring that it attracts honeybees, and Ear Flute’s earlobes are tinged rose. Of course, this is no mystery to me. It is thanks to Joint Castanets that the band has been made spectacular. Thanks to the tears massaged gently into him.
And yet I still am not satisfied. For though they are the same tears, the quality varies by type. Indeed, there are many types of tears: happy tears, sad tears, tears of regret… When I first started out selling tears, I just collected them all together, regardless, in a glass bottle. But gradually, I became aware that depending on the circumstances in which they were shed, my tears’ colors, thickness, and feel were different. And naturally a difference became apparent in their effects on instruments.
The most crude of these were tears shed while cutting onions. In my inexperienced early days of tear-selling, dogged by deadlines, I often resorted to this method. It was my job to cry so many tears, but it’s not like you can have everything perfectly laid out when you get an order for 15 cc’s worth for a concert late in the day. So I always had several onions dangling from my hip.
But as a professional, I must say that onion tears are decidedly below acceptability. These tears do not come from deep within, from one’s heart; they well up in the corners of one’s eyes out of nothing more than reflex. And besides, they sort of taste like onions.
So then, what makes tears high quality? Tears born of pain. A pain that pierces the body, that leaves it writhing, a pain against which medicine is useless. A pain that, once experienced, you never want to do so again. There is nothing so pure as tears shed at that moment. Tears of sorrow or regret will inevitable betray the impurities of one’s own heart. But tears of pain are a product of the flesh itself. Tears that are the result of the flesh being threatened. There is no calculation, no jealousy, no dependence. The instrument’s degree of joy is just as high as the price that the body pays.
Unfortunately, I have only shed tears of pain some few times, and only on the level of toothaches or migraines. Nevertheless, the occasions those tears were used were astounding. Indeed, that great cellist gave the solo performance of a lifetime before the queen herself, and he was awarded a medal by her. The tears he tuned with on that occasion were tears of pain.
I desired to collect tears of pain for Joint Castanets. The other members, including Whistler Girl, they’ll make do with regular tears. Because they’re satisfied with regular tears. Even tears of onions are fine.
But Joint Castanets is special. With how reserved the sounds that he plays are, if I had not lent my assistance, nobody might have ever realized that within his body was a wellspring of clear lymph fluid. Whistler Girl is just some woman getting her lips coated with low-grade tears and pursing them in ecstasy. Isn’t she?
I was determined to pay any price to produce tears of the highest caliber. I, who walked the world armed only with my tear glands and tear sacs, was willing to pay any price, and pay I did.
At first, I resolved to cut off the pinky toe on my left foot. I wouldn’t have a left toe, but I would be able to supply Joint Castanets with an ample amount of tears. With Joint Castanets lying nearby, awaiting his tuning, I raised my kitchen knife and brought it down on my pinky toe. I clamped both hands over my mouth so my groaning would not alert him. Fortunately, as I stifled my voice plentiful tears gushed out. Taking care not to sully him with my blood, I let my tears fall onto his joints.
Next was my right pinky toe, then my left fourth toe, and then I proceed onwards in sequence. Tears of pain, as you might expect, possess such magnificence as to be enchanting. I am in such pain that my hair stands on end, I cannot breathe, and I am sick to my stomach. But still, my eyes, spotted with tears, are smiling. At the end of tuning comes, as always, my reward: the sound of his ankle. Each time I hear it is lovelier than the last. Every day is it harder to resist the urge to kiss him.
Once I have finished off my toes, I choose my lips next. Without my lips, the urge to kiss subsides. No longer am I jealous of Whistler Girl’s lips. Calves, earlobes, nipples, tongue. I will sacrifice whatever I can. This thought is happiness. Ovaries, vocal cords, cheeks, urinary tract. Nothing remained. I bore willingly the spontaneous tears of joy which pour forth. I continued to cry for Joint Castanets only tears of pain.
At some point everything is used up, leaving just my tear glands and tear sacs. There’s no need for anything else. For I am a wandering tear-seller.