Three Streets

Yoko Tawada

Contents (5)

THREE STREETS

STORYBOOK ND

CURATED BY GINI ALHADEFF

César Aira, The Famous Magician

Osamu Dazai, Early Light

Helen DeWitt, The English Understand Wool

László Krasznahorkai, Spadework for a Palace

Clarice Lispector, The Woman Who Killed the Fish

Yoko Tawada, Three Streets

FORTHCOMING

Natalia Ginzburg, The Road to the City

Rachel Ingalls, In the Act

Three Streets, by Yoko Tawada. Translated from the Japanese by Margaret Mitsutani. Storybook ND

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

Publisher’s Note: These three stories, “Kollwitzstrasse,” “Majakowskiring,” and “Puschkinallee,” were selected from a volume originally published in Japanese as Hyakunen-no-sanpo (“A Century of Walks,”) by Shincho-sha in 2017. Published by arrangement with the author

Manufactured in the United States of America

First published clothbound by New Directions in 2022

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Tawada, Yōko, 1960– author. | Mitsutani, Margaret, translator.

Title: Three streets / by Yoko Tawada ; translated from the Japanese by Margaret Mitsutani.

Description: First edition. | New York : A Storybook ND, 2020.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020012674 | ISBN 9780811229302 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780811229319 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Tawada, Yōko, 1960– —Translations into English.

Classification: LCC PL862.A85 A2 2020 | DDC 895.63/5--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020012674

New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin

by New Directions Publishing Corporation

80 Eighth Avenue, NY 10011

THREE STREETS

KOLLWITZSTRASSE

A child, still too little for school, is walking in an odd way, as if it’s making its way across the surface of the moon. That puffy down jacket full of feathers is a space suit; in place of a helmet, a white knitted cap is pulled all the way down over its ears. One foot goes up and the whole body seems about to slide off diagonally into the air. But when the heel hits the ground, the child’s whole weight comes down with a thud, threatening to throw it off balance—it stumbles, grabs the hem of its mother’s coat, and gawks around, wide-eyed. The mother looks calmly down on her child. I stop to watch them, pretending to search for something in my pocket.

Invisible sensors extend from the child’s forehead. The sensors move constantly, darting this way and that, trying to absorb all the stimuli from the outside world. Like those bicycles parked by the side of the road: they’re an important source of information. Some have handlebars shaped like sheep horns, others like a bull’s horns. Wondering if bicycles have zodiac signs, I look again and see one that resembles a goat, another a lion, and still another a scorpion.