【正文】 t tell how far its legs have vegetized because of its trousers. It is male, thirty five or thirty six years old, tall, with a bit of a stoop. I approached him and held out my envelope as always. Registered mail, special delivery, please. The manpillar, nodding silent。s better to make dogs into dogpillars. When their food runs out, they get vicious and even turn on people. But why did they have to turn cats into catpillars? Too many strays? To improve the food situation even a little? Or perhaps for the greening of the city ... Next to the big hospital on the corner where the roads cross are two mantrees, and range d alongside these trees is a manpillar. This manpillar wears a postman39。t even move their ears. Even if you can still make out a cat39。s head a little, I left the park. Standing Woman(2) I came out on the main street, there were a lot of cars on the road but few pedestrians. A cattree about thirty to forty centimeters high was planted next to the sidewalk. Sometimes I e across a catpillar that has just been planted and still hasn39。m afraid I39。t remember any writer named Hiyama. No doubt he wrote under a pen name. I had no intention of visiting his house. This is a world where even two or three writers getting together is considered illegal assembly. It39。re right. I changed the subject. Do you live near here? Do you know the beauty parlor on the main street? You turn in there. My name is Hiyama. He nodded at me. Come on over some time. There39。t endure being exposed to the eyes of the world, ridiculed. So I quit writing, A sorry tale. He smiled and shook his head. No no, let39。s e to this, I would have been better off if I39。t the courage. Giving up writing! Why, after all, that would be a gesture against society. The elderly man continued stroking the dogpillar. After a long while he spoke. It39。m the one who should feel ashamed. No, I told him, after looking quickly around us, I can39。s bee a hard world to write in. I lowered my eyes, ashamed of myself, who still continued to write in such a world. It certainly has... The man apologized in a bit of a flurry discerning my sudden depression. That was rude. I39。s head. I also used to write things. He managed to suppress a smile. How many years is it now since I stopped writing? It feels like a long time. I stared at the man39。s because there are no proper nouns for plants. Why, of course, I thought. He Looked at my envelope with MANUSCRIPT ENCLOSED written on it. Excuse me, he said. Are you a writer? I was a little embarrassed. Well. yes. Just trivial little things. So that39。s jaw. Not only the old names, but you can39。t they just extend the laws concerning people to dogs? That39。s head. This fellow here, I wonder what he was called before he became a dogpillar. No calling a dogpillar by its original name, I said. Isn39。 39。 39。 39。 39。 39。 39。You39。Hm?39。Doctor,39。t. He tried to remember what year it was. He couldn39。 They were brought at last to a stone cottage at a fork in the road. It was a collecting point for prisoners of war. Billy and Weary were taken inside, where it was warm and smoky. There vas a fire sizzling and popping in the fireplace. The fuel was furniture. There were about twenty other Americans in there, sitting on the floor w ith their bac ks to the wall, staring into the flamesthinking whatever there was to think, which was zero. Nobody talked. Nobody had any good war stories to tell. Billy and Weary found places for themselves, and Billy went to sleep w ith his head on the shoulder of an unprotesting captain . The captain was a chaplain. He was a rabbi. He had been shot through the hand. Billy traveled in time, opened his eyes, found himself staring into the glass eyes of a jade green mechanical owl. The owl wa s hanging upside down from a rod of stainless steel. The owl was Billy39。 Billy would say, or 39。s clogs clacking, with Billy bobbing upanddown, upanddown, crashing into Weary from time to time. 39。s clogs. So Weary and Billy were both without dece nt military footwear now39。s all yours, you lucky lad.39。 He handed the picture to the other old man. 39。 he said. Hmmmm? Hmmmm? Don39。s hip pocket. 39。s bulletproof Bible instead. A bulletproof Bible is a Bible small enough to be slipped into a soldier39。s overcoat and blouse. Brass buttons flew like popcorn. The corporal reached into Weary39。Isn39。s cruel trench knife, said in German that Weary would no doubt like to use the knife on him, to tear his face off with the spiked knuckles, to stick the blade into his belly or throat. He spoke no English, and Billy and Weary understood no German. 39。t have any. The most dangerous thing they found on his person was a twoinch pencil stub. Three inoffensive bangs came from far away. They came from Germa n rifles. The two scouts who had ditched Billy and Weary had just been shot. They had been lying in ambush for Germans. They had been discovered and shot from behind. Now they were dying in the snow, feeling nothing, turning the snow to the color of rasp berry sherbet. So it goes. So Roland Weary was the last of the Three Musketeers. And Weary, bugeyed with terror, was being disarmed. The corporal gave Weary39。 Billy Pilgrim had not heard this anecdote. But, lying on the blac k ice there, Billy stared into the patina of the corporal39。If you look in there deeply enough, you39。mopping up.39。 blue eyes were filled with bleary civilian curiosity as to why one American would try to murder another one so far from home, and why the victim should laugh. Three The Germans and the dog were engaged in a mili tary operation which had an amusingly selfexplanatory name, a human enterprise which is seldom described in detail, whose name alone, when reported as news or history, gives many war enthusiasts a sort of postcoital satisfactio