Mild Vertigo

MilD Vertigo Copyright © 2002 by Mieko Kanai Translation copyright © 2023 by Polly Barton Afterword copyright © 2023 by Kate Zambreno 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. First Japanese edition published as Karui Memai in 1997 by Kodansha Ltd., Tokyo. Publication rights for this English edition arranged through Kodansha Ltd. New Directions gratefully acknowledges the support of . Manufactured in the United States of America First published as a New Directions Paperbook (NDP1562) in 2023 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kanai, Mieko, 1947- author. | Barton, Polly, translator. | Zambreno, Kate, writer of afterword. Title: Mild vertigo / Mieko Kanai ; translated by Polly Barton ; afterword by Kate Zambreno. Other titles: Karui Memai. English Description: New York : New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2023. Identifiers: LCCN 2023001717 | ISBN 9780811232289 (paperback ; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780811232296 (ebook) Subjects: LCGFT: Novels. Classification: LCC PL855.A52 K3713 2023 | DDC 895.63/5--dc23/eng/20230208 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023001717 New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin by New Directions Publishing Corporation 80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011 Chapter One – Tap Water The reason they’d settled on that apartment with its large, open-plan kitchen and windows with sizable balconies to both the south and east sides wasn’t any particular passion for cooking on Natsumi’s part, let alone any special pride she took in her culinary abilities, but because it looked like the interiors she often saw and admired in the glossy pages of women’s magazines, and it had a kitchen island with a breakfast bar, as was now all the rage, or in vogue, or whatever you wanted to call it, which seemed like a pretty convenient feature, and above anything else, the front door of the two-bedroom apartment they’d been living in until that point, which hadn’t been a new build or anything, opened directly into the kitchen, so when you walked in you were immediately confronted by the sight of the sink and the gas stove and the fridge, and her mother, who’d never lived in either public housing or any other kind of apartment complex, would always comment that you shouldn’t open up the front door of the apartment and be right inside the kitchen, it makes the whole place feel impoverished, and honestly, if you don’t keep the sink spick and span then it’ll look even more impoverished, this became a catchphrase of hers every time she came over, and then she’d go on to say, I don’t care how cheap the mortgage payments are here, I just think an apartment with a separate kitchen would make things much easier, because as a housewife, you’re in there every day, she’d point out, darting glances at the sink and the stove, which of course weren’t kept in as pristine a state as Natsumi would ideally have liked, whereas in this new apartment with its breakfast bar, the front door didn’t open directly onto the kitchen, there was instead a proper vestibule, even if it was slightly cramped, which led to a hall, and a door with glass panels framed in white wood separating the hall from the main living space, which meant you could avoid having visitors unexpectedly catching a glimpse of your chaotically messy kitchen in its entirety, which she preferred, and in terms of the size of the apartment — the open-plan room was about twelve tatami mats large, and then there was a six-mat room with tatami flooring, a three-mat utility room off the kitchen, and two rooms, eight mats and seven mats in size, with Western-style flooring — she couldn’t help but feel it was somewhat luxuriously spacious for a family like hers, composed of herself and her husband and two children of kindergarten and elementary school age, and the kids were very excited about the children’s pool in the courtyard of the new apartment block, and even though it was really only big enough to splash around in and not to actually swim laps, they declared it soooo cool, we’ll be like rich people, they said, and although it was blindingly obvious to Natsumi that they’d get sick of the pool in no time and it would become an object of ridicule, for the moment they were over the moon, and though the eight-mat room was currently being used by her husband as his “study,” she figured that when the kids moved up to middle school they’d probably grow dissatisfied with the current arrangement, which had them sleeping in bunk beds in the seven-mat room, and they’d want their “own rooms,” and if that happened, then they could free up the “study” and move one of the kids in there, and her husband could use the utility room — which currently accommodated a washing machine, tumble dryer, and laundry basket, and then, on the opposite wall, a lightweight wall-storage unit they’d ordered online made of white-polyester-resin-coated plywood, which fit the dimensions of the room as snugly as if it’d been made to measure — as his “study” instead, at least that was what they’d discussed, but if that situation actually materialized, she had no idea where on earth they’d put the washing machine, or the tumble dryer, or the storage unit — which was used for the vacuum and the washing and cleaning products, as well as canned goods and other food supplies she’d bought in reserve, and various odds and ends in assorted shapes and sizes — and, to add to their problems, the “study” currently contained five bookshelves made of steel and plywood, a desk, a computer, and a video camera, which her husband had been using as part of a project to “create a record of the family” — a project that, whether