Well, that didn’t end up quite how I imagined it.
I kept thinking the young girl was going to end up in the empty seat. When the young theatre staff member arrives and beckons her in, I was sure that was happening. I was very puzzled why she was spending all that time in the shops in the foyer instead of rushing in to her seat…
There are some interesting echoes in this chapter.
One of them is the imagined magic seat in the theatre. Among those the young girl imagines in it, she refers to the founder of the theatre.. This is a possible reference to Kikuta Kazuo (the ghost child from the previous chapter).
There are lots of references to darkness. On p99, the girl closes her eyes, - the darkness behind her eyelids is the same as the darkness that spreads around the theatregoers. This connects to the darkness that the old woman refers to (and the darkness at the start of the previous story). Later in the story , there is darkness at the back of the old woman’s throat when she suddenly bursts into song.
(That is a particularly surreal moment. Our narrator here seems to think that the old woman hadn’t wanted to launch out onto the train tracks, but instead was imagining herself going on to stage. Do you think that she was just disorientated and thought that the train platform was the wings of the theatre, and was imagining the edge of the platform as the edge of the stage??)
There is a beautiful poetic passage on the next page describing the young 資料室補助員 reaction to his first theatre experience. At first, completely perplexed by the artistic choices (the mismatched costumes, the mysterious silent child on the stage [who we later learn is the embodiment of Mozart’s genius], he then becomes swept up in the emotional and musical spectacle.
On p110 there is a blink and you’d miss it reference. Against the flow of theatre goers coming down the stairs is a figure - small in stature like a young boy, on whose features the 資料室補助員 sees superimposed the face of the generous benefactor who gave him the ticket. (I presume this is the ghost child again?)
What do you think is going to happen to these characters?
Will the research library assistant take his boss to the theatre?
Will the young woman (who now seems to have transferred her affections to the young theatre manager) come back to the theatre looking for him
And what do you think will happen to the pharmacist?
She refers to the “page of the future”, that her ticket offered her. The idea being (I think) that theatre tickets offer not merely a theatrical experience, the possibility of a new future. (Obviously, she had experienced that already when she discovered the Prince). Does the future hold something new for her?
