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the sweater was finished.
    Curiously, the dog sometimes stood in place, shaking all over, and it seemed in those moments that it was in some kind of a convulsion. Maybe it was because the dog had remained still for too long, or maybe it was its own way of moving around. Once in such a state, it shook continuously for about half an hour, and nothing could be done about it. The old woman—she was a horrid old woman—would at last glance at the dog as if to make sure that it was her dog and no one else’s. The dog was mesmerized by whatever it was that was making it shake, I was mesmerized in watching the dog that was mesmerized by something, and the old woman was mesmerized in her knitting, and it seemed in those moments that we were all mesmerized, afflicted by something that mesmerized us while afflicting us.
    The dog, however, wasn’t actually a dog accompanying the old woman with whom I spent afternoons in a park in France. The dog belonged to another woman, middle-aged, who came to the park at a certain hour. The reason why I said that the dog that belonged to the middle-aged woman was the old woman’s—it was the middle-aged woman who made the dog stay still, and it was she who was horrid—was because by putting a leash in the old woman’s hand, I could picture a scene in which the woman and the dog walked across the park side by side on their way home, looking lonely, and funny at the same time. In any case, the fact that I’m talking about an old woman knitting in a park in France, and telling an anecdote about a dog that was mesmerized by something, whatever it was, may suggest that this story will be about certain thoughts that mesmerize and afflict me.
    When put this way, what I’m saying may sound like the truth, but this story, at least the part about the dog, isn’t true. I actually saw the dog recently in the garden of a café near my place. The dog came into the story somewhat arbitrarily because I put it in a past story in my memory. Anyway, the dog does go into convulsions from time to time, and usually seems stricken with fear. When someone approaches the doghouse, the dog, which is always in the doghouse, begins to bark loudly at once, at first out of gladness because it’s always alone, but while barking out of gladness it changes its mind instantly, realizing that it’s afraid of something, and begins to bark in a fearful voice, no longer glad, but no one can tell what it is that makes the dog tremble in fear.
    Actually, the story about the old woman itself isn’t true. I’m making up new stories by mixing up my memories and thoughts, and linking together things that have nothing to do with each other. There actually were old women who came to the park and sat on benches for a long time, but there wasn’t one who spent all day there. (What I’m saying is that I’ll be telling a story in which gazes fixed on certain things, and memories and thoughts, are jumbled together.)When I take my eyes off the people who come to the little old park, I see myself sitting blankly on a bench, afflicted by a number of thoughts. I was able to leave the city, where I spent my time for some obscure reason, after going to the riverside one winter day and coming across a large, dolphin-shaped tube floating down the river—many things floated down the river in my memory, because ever since I was little, I always liked to idly watch the river—and while slowly walking by the riverside with the tube alongside me—I pictured in my mind a clumsy-looking band slowly marching along the riverside while playing a slow tune—saw it finally disappear from my view.
    I spent the summer and autumn that year lying among the shrubs on the sandy plain along the river, looking at the river and feeling that my life had expired or I had entered a thoroughly wrong path. No, I thought I had yet to go down many more wrong paths in order to enter a thoroughly