The Bridegroom Was a Dog (New Directions Pearls)
Language: English
Pages: 64
ISBN: 0811220370
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Internationally acclaimed author Yoko Tawada's most famous ― and bizarre ― tale in a stand-alone, New Directions Pearl edition.
The Bridegroom Was a Dog is perhaps the Japanese-German writer Yoko Tawada’s most famous story. Its initial publication in 1998 garnered admiration from The New Yorker, who praised it as, “fast-moving, mysteriously compelling tale that has the dream quality of Kafka.”
The Bridegroom Was a Dog begins with a schoolteacher telling a fable to her students. In the fable, a princess promises her hand in marriage to a dog that has licked her bottom clean. The story takes an even stranger twist when that very dog appears to the schoolteacher in real life as a dog-like man. They develop a very sexual, romantic courtship with many allegorical overtones ― much to the chagrin of her friends.
the back of Ryoko’s earlobes turn cold as ice, and, grabbing Taro, she pulled him up and shook him. “You’re not going to turn weird on me now, are you?” she yelled at him. Perhaps shocked at the way she was behaving, Taro said nothing, which only made things worse, until all the irritation she’d been keeping in check exploded. “Why don’t you say something? Have you gone dumb?” she yelled again. From then on, Taro stopped talking altogether, which drove Ryoko to new heights of anger, but when
mayonnaise, dawdling over the meals Taro cooked but feeling duty-bound to eat them, casting sly, sidelong glances at the cook himself, who seemed to fascinate her. Fukiko wasn’t a talkative child, but when asked a question, perhaps because she didn’t really understand what the other person wanted to know, she’d sometimes go on about unrelated topics, such as the time Mitsuko said: “Your father knows about a lot of things, doesn’t he? Once when he came here, he told me all about crocodiles. I
Mitsuko took Fukiko’s blouse off so she could sew on the buttons that were hanging by a thread, the girl would sit there beside her, naked to the waist, intently watching the movements of her fingers, and after a while her head would be leaning against Mitsuko’s shoulder, and when Mitsuko was sure she must have fallen asleep, she’d look over to find the child still gravely following the needle with her eyes, so Mitsuko would say: “You like sewing on buttons better than reading, don’t you?”
there it seemed pretty strange that such a stubborn old cuss as that farmer should give in so easily to a woman who came from god knows where, so for a while there was talk about her being a mistress he’d had stashed away; but when the locals actually saw her, she didn’t look the type at all, dressed in shabby farming trousers with stylish sunglasses, and after seeing her sitting under the cherry tree happily reading a novel in Polish, no one could tell what kind of family she came from, and
night at Ueno Station I ran into a old friend, and while we were talking I realized what a bastard he’d turned into since I’d seen him last, and I got so fed up and depressed that my shoulders are stiff today, and chicken shit’s the only thing that’ll loosen them up.” The girls came closer, squealing in horror at the first whiff of the stuff, but they soon got used to it, their interest now shifting to the peach-colored tank top, about which they said quite openly, “You’d better buy a new one,