Excerpt from Suggested in the Stars by Yoko Tawada, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Washing the dishes calmed me down, made me feel better. When we were done, I stared out the window. It was almost dark. Soon I wouldn't be able to see anything. Then, a black shadow was coming near. A young man. It was awful late to be coming to the hospital. Looked like he was carrying his umbrella on his shoulder, off to the side. His hair was shiny and black, maybe because it was wet. Or was it the night, riding on his head? He hardly lifted his feet off the ground when he walked.

After a while the elevator doors opened and the man was here, in our half basement. Why did he come to our place? It's for washing dishes. Not for making sick people better. Maybe he pushed the wrong button. Patients always go to the floors above. Down here there's only this room where we wash dishes, and another one full of papers.

But Vita says there's one more room in the basement, where they keep dead bodies.

There's a row of long metal drawers, and when you pull one out there's a dead face looking up at you. She says there are skulls on the floor in the corridor, too. She must have been dreaming. Or maybe she got mixed up, caught between inside and outside of a movie.

The man looked at me, and something about his face started to seem friendly. I thought he called my name. Only it didn't sound like Munun. It was a different name. Maybe he mistook me for someone else.

"The doctors are all upstairs. Way, way up," I said, "above here," but he didn't seem to understand. Maybe he's a foreigner, and doesn't understand Normal Language. There was nothing to do but push the UP button for him.

"Ask at the front desk. They'll tell you what floor your doctor's on."

The green light was stuck on the top floor, so the elevator didn't come down.

"What's your name?" I asked in Normal Language, but he just stood there, staring into space, so I hit my chest with the palm of my hand and said, "Munun." Then he pointed to his nose and said, "Susanoo." Maybe that's his name. But why did he point to his nose?

After a long time, the elevator came, but Susanoo wasn't sure if he should get in, so I gave his back a little push. His knees creaked like a robot as he got on the elevator. Just as the door was closing, Vita came back from the toilet.

"He came-tame."

"Your brother-other?"

"No. Somebody called Susanoo."

Vita burst out in cooey-gooey laughter: Is the name Susanoo really that strange?

She started singing it in rhythm, "Susa, susa, NO, NO, NO!" I sang along.

"Susa, susa, NO, NO, NO!"

My head was a metronome. Vita's hips were swaying. I swung mine, too, as I got closer to her. Then, we were facing each other, swinging and dancing.

How long did we keep it up? When Vita finally stopped she was breathing hard as she headed for our living room. I followed her. She sat herself down on the sofa so I flopped down next to her and put my arm around her. She brushed it off. Then, with her cheeks puffed out like she was mad, she went to turn on the TV. There was a closeup of a guy grinning like a kid about to play a trick on someone. He looked smart, but childish too. Vita stood there, staring at the TV. Who is that guy? I know he's not a little boy, but he sat there smiling like one, talking in a high, squeaky voice like a swing going back and forth. He stopped talking, and then it was the moderator's turn.

"Can you tell us something about the social background of the time when you were making that movie?" The moderator was like a machine gun, spitting out words I can't understand. Then his face was gone, and instead a dark, wet, spooky sort of place came on: an alley between stone walls appeared, with broken paving stones and the sort of water between them that never dries up.

"Did you see Europe as this kind of desolate, lonely place at the time?" the moderator asked, back in the studio. The guy started talking, but my brain didn't take in anything he said.

Excerpted from Suggested in the Stars by Yoko Tawanda. Copyright © 2024 by Yoko Tawanda. Excerpted by permission of New Directions Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.