（外文电子版资料）Yasutaka Tsutsui - Standing Woman.docVIP

Standing Woman(1) by Yasutaka Tsutsui Translated by David Lewis I stayed up all night and finally finished a fortyshort story.It was a trivial entertainment piece, capable of neither harm nor good.These days you cant write stories that might do harm or good; it cant be helped. Thats what I told myself while I fastened the manuscript with a paper clip and put it into an envelope.As to whether I have it in me to write stories that might do harm or good, I do my best not to think about that.If I were to go around thinking about it, I might want to try.The morning sunlight hurt my eyes as I slipped on my wooden clogs and left the house with the envelope.Since there was still time before the first mail truck, I turned toward the park. In the morning no children come to this park, a mere sixty-six square meters in the middle of a cramped residential district.Its quiet here. So I always include the park in my morning walk.Nowadays even the scanty green provided by the ten or so trees is priceless in this small town.I should have brought some bread, I thought. My favorite dogpillar stands next to the park bench. Its an affable dogpillar, large for a mongrel, with buff-colored fur.Theres another dogpillar next to the small tobacco shop on the way to the park. Its a white mongrel, part Spitz. Its not long since it was planted, and it still yaps whenever an even slightly suspicious looking person passes by. Since I wear wooden geta, I was always getting barked at up until no more than a week ago. It got so that for a while I changed the shop where Id always go to buy cigarettes. But now this dogpillar doesnt bark when he sees my face. This morning when I passed he whined through his nose, poised as if ready even now to pull out his four legs planted in the earth. Just once I give him some bread, and he acts like this. Completely unprincipled.The liquid-fertilizer truck had just left when I reached the park; the ground was damp and there was a faint smell of chlo