Home » Japan » Yōko Ogawa » 猫を抱いて象と泳 [Swim with an Elephant Holding a Cat]
Yōko Ogawa: 猫を抱いて象と泳 [Swim with an Elephant Holding a Cat]
As you can see from the translated titles below there is a certain amount of confusion with the title. The Japanese translates literally as Swim with an Elephant Holding a Cat, The Italian and Spanish get closest to this title, the German fairly close while the French goes rogue. The French title, as we shall see, is relevant but far less poetic than the others. Sadly the book has not been translated into English.
Our hero is unnamed but will later receive the nickname Little Alekhine after the Russian grand chess master . When he was born, his lips were sealed together and the doctors had great difficulty separating them. As a result he had down on his upper lip from a young age. His mother later gave birth to another boy. Their parents then divorced and, soon afterwards, the mother died of a cerebral haemorrhage, The two boys are brought up by their maternal grandparents. The grandfather is a cabinet-maker and makes our hero an enclosed bed. He loves it, cut off from the world and next to a very narrow wall as the house is very small. The brother tries the bed and hates it so sleeps in his grandparents’ room. Our hero has an imaginary friend, Miira, who lives in the wall and they talk at night.
The brothers love going to the shopping mall with their grandmother. She and the brother go and look at the shops while our hero goes to the top floor where there are games for children. However what interests him is the elephant. She was called Indira. When the shop first opened she was brought from the zoo and came up in the lift . There she stayed while still a child till, when she was older, it was time for her to return to the zoo. However when they tried to get her in the lift she would not fit. They tried to persuade her to go down the stairs but she was having none of it. So she stayed for thirty-seven years, entertaining the children till she died. By the time our hero came she had gone but he is fascinated by her collar and her story – there is a plaque. about her – and sits,, away from the other children , thinking of her till his brother and grandmother return.
Eventually it is time to go to school but he does not fit in. One day a group of boys seize him and forcibly shave the down on his upper lip. To avoid them, he starts coming to school early. One day he looks at the school swimming pool and sees what looks like a body floating in it. He thinks it might be a mannequin but it is the naked body of a man. He tells the janitor and he police and ambulance come. It turns out that the man was a bus driver. There is a depot nearby and some of the staff live there, including the deceased.
Our hero later decides to check out where the man lived and meets a large man who lives in a converted bus. The man had been a driver but because of his large belly could no longer turn the wheel and is now the odd job man. He welcomes our hero to his bus and feeds him cakes. Our hero notices two things. There is a table which is also a chess board and there is a cat called Pawn. Soon the man is teaching him. chess, both how to play but also what it all means. Naturally it takes time to learn but once he has been outsmarted by a particular manoeuvre, he is rarely caught again.
Our hero has a strange way of playing. He has his grandfather make him a chess board on the inside top of his bed so he can look at it while lying in bed. He will frequently go under the table while playing and come out only to make his move. The Master, as our hero calls him, teaches him not just the moves and tactics but the philosophy of the game. He eventually beats the Master but not often. He tries to teach his brother and grandparents but they are not interested.
There is a local chess club to which admittance is simple – you have to beat a current member, The Master sets this up for our hero and his opponent is someone more or less the same age. It does not go well not least because of his under the table tactic and because the Master brings Pawn who escapes from her basket and joins him under the table.
The Master continues to stuff himself with cakes and the inevitable happens. They cannot get his body out of the bus and have to break up the bus. At death he weighs250 kg (nearly 40 stone/550 pounds). Our hero is devastated, but of course, retrieves the chess table and chess set.
However he soon gets a job. In the same building as the previous club there is another club – the Under the Sea Club. A generous benefactor gives them a sort of basic automaton and they decide to use it to play chess. Since the death of the Master our hero has not grown so he can fit in the automaton and play chess, which he does. He is given a young female assistant whose father, a magician, had died in a tragic accident. When our hero first sees her he exclaims Miira! She is not Miira but he calls her Miira and we never learn her real name. Inevitably there are problems and adventures but he does this for five years before he feels it is time to move on.
His next stop is in an old people’s home. With the help of his grandfather he is able to get the automaton in two cases though it is a struggle for someone the size of an eleven year old to carry them. Many of the people in the home are keen chess players and he soon fits in despite the age difference. Many of the old people cannot sleep at night so the chess club is very active at that time.
Thre are no fireworks and no great mysteries, except, of course, for the automaton which we know about from the beginning. The book works because, frankly it is charming, not in a mawkish way but because we cannot help but being charmed by the little chess player who is, in many ways childlike – imaginary friends, size and often reliant on adults but, at the same time makes his way, despite problems – losing his Master, his grandmother and others. Like his Master he is devoted to the game and its philosophy and even if you know relatively little about chess you can appreciate what he is thinking and looking for. He does not want to rule the world or get the girl. he just wants to play chess his way.
Publishing history
First published in 2009 by Bungeishunju
No English translation
First French translation in 2009 as Le Petit Joueur d’échecs by Actes Sud
Translated by Martin Vergne
First German translation in 2013 as Schwimmen mit Elefanten. by Liebeskind Verlag
Translated by Sabine Mangold
First IItalian translation in 2013 as Nuotare con un elefante tenendo in braccio un gatto by Il Saggiatore
Translated by Laura Testaverde
First Spanish translation in 2013 as Bailando con elefante y gato) by Editorial Funambulist
Translated by Juan Francisco González Sánchez