Free Last Winter We Parted by Fuminori Nakamura

sister because he saw a movie about incest. And because the woman who starred in it was very beautiful and sexy. What’s more, he told me, the guy he saw the movie with had joked about how nice it would be to have a gorgeous sister like that. So even though it got started that way—or no, precisely because it started that way—from then on, little by little, his desire was heightened, until he was pathologically obsessed. It’s his attempt to turn his own desire, which is an imitation of someone else’s desire, into the real thing.”
    The doll creator looks down for a moment, then back at me.
    “Then, he killed two women. I bear some of the responsibility for that … Because of a conversation we had.”
    “… A conversation?”
    “A conversation about another doll maker I admire. Today, I will tell you everything I know.”
    The rain is falling outside.
    “Are you familiar with the conflict known as the Onin War, which occurred during the last years of the Muromachi shogunate? It was a terrible period, a time when the shogunate lost its ability to function, causing samurai throughout the various regions to form their own armies, and the entire country devolved into an internecine war. No one knew who they were battling against or even for what purpose, different conflicts broke out simultaneously—it was an era of unprecedented madness in Japan’s history. Afterward we entered into what’s known as the Warring States Period, but what I want to talk about now is a gifted creator of wind-up dolls who lived during the era of that Onin War. That is to say … This is a story about how, in a time of great confusion, one man transcended death.”
    He smiles.
    “This doll maker was known—even more than for his art—for the skill with which he used the color red. Every wind-up doll that he had made up to that point had worn a magnificent vermilion kimono. The doll maker’s wife was inpoor health. She was bedridden practically all the time, and the doll maker had always taken care of her. He loved his wife very much. But his love for her was intense. And in his passion for her, well, their sex practically destroyed his frail wife. The doll maker had an idea. Could he make a doll of his wife? But if he made a doll of a living person, that person would die. That’s what he believed. However, one day, his wife asked him to make a doll of herself. I’m going to die soon, she said. I will only become frailer. I want you to make a doll of me while I’m still pretty. Hearing her words, the doll maker started to produce a wife doll.”
    It is still raining outside. I am listening closely to his story, to his soft voice.
    “That alone makes this a sad and touching story. Most people can only tolerate it up to this point … You probably already know what happens. Before long, as the doll maker immersed himself in the production of his wife doll, he started to lose his mind. The doll’s beauty began to exceed that of his wife. As the doll neared completion, his wife’s physical condition deteriorated. It was like the doll was extracting her life force. What’s more, his chisel had slipped several times during the frequent earthquakes, or the edge of the plane had happened to shave marks into the wood, but these mistakes had, on the contrary, brought out the doll’s unexpected beauty. Rather, through a seriesof unintended coincidences, the doll had exceeded the doll creator’s abilities, as if it were using a divine power—no, the power of the earth, the earth that was soaked with the blood of so many killed in the war—and had become something that transcended human understanding … The wife was jealous. That is, the wife was jealous of herself—she experienced jealousy of her own more beautiful self. The doll maker devoted himself to the production of the doll and stopped paying attention to his wife. Early in the morning, all day long, and into the night, the sound of his chisel carving away at the