As I can't quite convey why I like Yoko Ogawa's writing so much, I have instead tried to translate a part of her short story "The truck with the little chicks" (ひよこトラック). I hope you'll enjoy reading it.
[context:
The little girl is about six and has not spoken since her parents died. She is sitting on a tree stump, drawing in the dust of a farm road with a branch.
The man is in his sixties. He is oiling the chain of his bicyle, a little distance away. The grandmother of the child has just explained to the man why she doesn't talk.
]
There was not a scrap of cloud in the clear afternoon sky. The plum grove was engulfed in a dazzling light.
At that moment, a kei truck appeared along the dirt road. It drove up with a laborious rattling sound, its wheels bumping on the uneven surface. Through a whirl of dust and sunlight, it came closer, bit by bit revealing its tightly packed, colourful, fluffy and soft-looking load.
The man and the little girl got up simultaneously. Entirely incongruous on that worn-out truck, the load bed looked like it was painted in a pattern of bright pretty marbles in colours of pink, pale green, bright blue and red. Only, the pattern didn't remain still, not even for a moment, but squirmed incessantly. Gradually, drowning out the engine noise, a deafening chirping filled the air.
The truck ran past the man and the little girl.
"Little chicks ...," the man muttered. "Probably to be sold at some temple festival."
Even after the truck had passed into the distance, the chirping could be heard floating over the wind. The little girl stood on tiptoe on the tree stump, staring straight at the end of the road. Until the marble pattern became a speck too small to see, she kept craning forward and straining her ears.
Eventually the quiet returned and the dust cleared up. Just as the little girl was getting off the tree stump, their eyes met involuntarily. Once again, for no apparent reason, the man was flustered. To hide his confusion he wrung the oily rag he was holding. As always, the little girl stared at him in silence, her eyes never leaving his.
"Were those little chicks? They were, weren't they. That's right. Those were definitely little chicks."
In that instant, between the two of them, there was not a gesture, not a single word, only a rainbow called "little chicks".
With a satisfied air, the little girl wiped out her drawing with her sneaker, dusted off her skirt and set off across the garden. Watching her retreating figure, the man sounded the bell of his bicycle, so quietly that only he could hear it.
