Grape Drops, by Haruki Murakami
my translation of the twenty-sixth story (of 99) of 夢で会いましょう [Meet Me in a Dream] by Haruki Murakami and Shigesato Itoi, not guaranteed to be accurate. see the intro post to read more!
In 1806, when my Grape Drop father died, I was only ten. I became an orphan.
You’d think I’d have gotten sympathy, but no. This was a time many orphans, Grape Drops or not. Anywhere I went, with any person, one question hovered in the air: does tis world have any place for a Grape Drop orphan?
Even at the local orphanage I was bullied. There, Orange Drops and Lemon Drops held sway.
So we’ve got us a Grape Drop, huh? those types would say. Not heard of that one.
Soon enough, I ran away to the circus. I became a cowpuncher for them. The docile cattle there treated me nicely. The oldest fed me leftovers and heard out my Grape Drop woe.
I’m sure to have a mother somewhere, I told him. I’m certain she’s the best Grape Drop there is.
Ah, so you’d like some milk? said Papa Cattle. He was old for a cow, so his hearing had worn down.
Unfortunately, life wouldn’t stay easy so long. Papa Cattle was slaughtered soon and partitioned into cutlets. These cutlets were fed to the terrible lion. Perhaps you’d rather call him the great persnickety lion, as to all but beef he’d turn his head and growl. Anyhow, I was shattered and so I fled the circus. I joined the army, became a calvary dog. In 1889, versus Apache in battle, I tore three adult Indians to death with my teeth only, thus was given the sobriquet “White Fang”. The President invited me to the White House, but I politely declined. I had decided I had to find my mother.
The first I even heard of another Grape Drop was 1936, in the Spanish Civil War. I was in Madrid with Ernest Hemingway, drinking sherry.
Hey Ernest, I asked him. Can we talk?
He was dead drunk, head on table, face turned down. Therefore I smacked his head with my revolver, splashed ice water where the bruise would form.
Grapefruit! he attempted.
Wrong! I called. I smacked him one more time.
It would be three days before he sobered.
Grape Drops, he said. So you’re the Grape Drop child, huh.
Tell me, I demanded. Who’s the Grape Drop mom?
You shouldn’t ask. You don’t wanna know.
I pulled my revolver out again and clocked him.
Fine, he said. Oh fine. Your mother last summer, some revolutionary guys. They kidnapped her and used her for her body. It wasn’t nice. She fled and hid away as a tire repairman.
So I spent the next three years all the country, begging clues from every mechanic’s shop I found. I turned up nothing.
Dear Ernest, I wrote to Ernest Hemingway. Please, just tell me anything you can.
He didn’t know a thing. He said I’d have to ask John Steinbeck. So there I was, crashing the Nobel banquet in Stockholm. Afterwards, I waylaid him outside.
John, please tell me anything about Grape Drops.
Grape Drops, huh, he sighed. You know, I met one two years back, in a hamlet in Texas. I think she’d worn a hernia belt.
In order to cut back smoking, I recently tried sucking on grape drops. I wrote this story in their honor.
translator note: this ones an odd one. to try and recreate the zany tone, i went with a more orginal english voice, but i didn't change any details. give or take a thing, the story's this
pinky! (2025-01 weekly post)
i would like to be making these posts much longer now, or at least more detailed, as in retrospectives or narratives rather than posts. i imagined it as a “resolution” of sorts. but this week S has had a fever, and im mostly caring for her
writing: i’ve been sporadic and i’ve been slow. this is required. the week between christmas and new years is the actual holiday week: time to rest and look at snow and in exaggerated distress ponder if next year it will come. i worked on Scott and Bianca and translations
(im writing this in a put upon rigid voice)
(i am watching a movie as well right now)
Books from 2025!
two excuses before we start:
- as a child i wasn’t allowed to watch television and had things from which to run away, so i read a lot
- in my 20s in went to grad school and had to read at least three books a week
this is all to say that
Stats
i read 158 books this year and, again, i wont apologize. this is two less books than last year, so I quess you might say i’m slowing down. i still confuse my gs and qs always tho
i also gave up on 26 books, often early, in case you confuse my obsessiveness for a sort of masochism
Favs (no order)
Paul Celan - 70 Poems
Astounding
Walter M Miller - A Canticle for Leibowitz
My second time reading. Dude knew that deathly serious stuff is never serious without a few little jokes; or, god no surprise this guy did a suicide
Lucy Ellman - Ducks, Newberryport
I just sank inside this book. I wish it were longer.
J. G. Ballard - High-Rise
Post-facto: i read an intro to a collection of his short stories calling ole JG a “surprisingly normal man”. Sorry, I’ve read this shit. He was not normal
Stephen King - Duma Key
Stephen King tries Murakami. And it’s in Florida!
Garielle Lutz - Complete Stories
If I ever get around to adding reviews to my site bookshelf you’d see how up and down I really am with these, but overall they’re fantastic in a ( me at least) new way
Stephen King - 11-22-63
Only king could write a book about killing lee harvey oswald that’s almost half a self-consciously nostalgic look at the 50s. Like all great king books, he stumbles headfirst into something unpleasant and profound.
Other Notable Books
Gordon Burn - Happy Like Murderers
Realistically, a fave, but i just finished it in the last few days, and its very gruesome. However I’ve already started imitating its voice.
The Animorphs series (finished it this year)
I am 30 or 40 years old and I need to make record of this.
In conclusion
- This was a year primarily of sci-fi, which I didn’t realize till now. I am trying to write an encyclopedic sci-fi novel, perhaps that’s why.
- I love to look back at books like this. Because I read voraciously I read these at home, in the park, on the train, on vacation, and so many other places. It’s an accidental collection of small memories
stay awhile partner (2025-52 weekly post)
last week of the year, officially. we’re dropping the next few days into the first week of next year, as our disorderly calendar demands
i am home agian, in real vacation: the post travel time from christmas to the first. this is the real holiday: lay with cats and watch house (md)
wrote: Scott and Bianca stuff, mostly. its their time to shine. i’ve some time back finished the first three “episodes” of the revolution, so i have to enter the complex morass of the third. that means writing randomization scripts also
else: been reading the devestating Happy Like Murderers. such a strange and frightening cycling writing voice. lots of music. how ya do