The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Kakuro pays a visit to Renée and asks her to have dinner with him and discuss their shared interests. Renée searches her mind for an excuse not to attend.

Kakuro’s invitation makes Renée feel exposed, a similar feeling as when she was a child and found herself entranced by her teacher’s snow globe. She feels something inside of her move beyond time.

Manuela advises Renée to buy a new dress for her dinner with Kakuro.

Renée worries over having to shop for a dress since she usually only orders clothing. Manuela brings Renée a dress her seamstress friend gave to her. The dress belongs to a woman who died recently, so no one else will likely claim the dress. Renée is reluctant to wear a dead woman’s dress, but Manuela thinks she’s being silly about it.

The diarist writes about her school’s choir recital. She admires how, despite every individual’s strife and joys in life, everything falls away when a chorus sings in harmony. She wonders if songs are movements of the world because in a song she feels the sublime.

Renée goes to a hairdresser. She is surprised to see how much she likes her haircut. She gets dressed for her dinner with Kakuro.

Manuela visits Renée to check her out before the dinner. She tells her about officially quitting one of her other employers for Kakuro, which makes Renée worry that eventually Manuela will move back to Portugal.

The diarist worries that her plan to kill herself in a fire might endanger Kakuro. Kakuro invites her and her best friend Marguerite to tea. She loves Marguerite because she’s not superficial or wild like the other teens at their school, and Marguerite is witty and interesting. They discuss love and fate. At tea with Kakuro, Marguerite and the diarist meet Kakuro’s five year old great-niece Yoko. The diarist loves that she can’t predict Yoko’s future. This makes her wonder if she is prematurely planning suicide when she doesn’t truly know what the future holds in store for her.

Renée nervously makes her way to Kakuro’s apartment for dinner.

In Kakuro’s apartment, Renée is struck by a beautiful still-life painting hanging on the wall. She loves still life paintings and has studied them. This one is by one of her favorite Dutch artists. Kakuro tells her it is a not an original, and she mulls over several responses that would obscure her knowledge and intelligence, but she simply tells him it is lovely.

Renée contemplates the effect of art on the human mind and heart. Despite the different periods and cultures that create art, there is something in good art that is universal. She wonders if this because artists can make the ordinary seem sublime.

Her contemplations about art send Renée on a tangent about human desire. Good art inspires people to crave something, but what? Renée acknowledges human desire while decrying the human need to constantly want more. She calls art “emotion without desire” (200).

The diarist’s mother takes the diarist to see her psychologist, whose name is Dr. Theid. Her mother is concerned by her habit of hiding, which the diarist doesn’t see a problem with—she simply wants solitude to write in her journal. When her father had asked her why she hides, she joked that she hears voices in her head, which set her parents into a frenzy. Her mother joins her for the session. The diarist finds it hard to take Dr. Theid seriously and makes jokes that go over his head. Eventually, Dr. Theid grows annoyed with her, which makes her pleased at first, but sad later because she realizes that she exposed the doctor’s ugly side, and she doesn’t want to see the ugly parts of life.

Renée admires the décor of Kakuro’s apartment. He ushers her into the kitchen, where he is cooking. Renée is unfamiliar with Japanese cuisine. She wonders if Kakuro has invited her only because he isn’t familiar with Western customs of hierarchy.

Renée is embarrassed that she has to use the bathroom. She summons her courage and finds a way to ask for the bathroom. Kakuro doesn’t seem at all embarrassed and directs her to the bathroom. Renée wonders if everything couldn’t always be this simple.

The diarist goes shopping with her mother. Her mother gets in an argument with another shopper who claims the underwear her mother wants. The argument is embarrassing, and it makes the diarist wonder about how people can degrade themselves to such pettiness and forget themselves completely in a moment.

Renée admires the simplicity and consonance of Kakuro’s bathroom. As she flushes the toilet, a cacophony erupts, and she worries that she’s done something wrong. However, after a moment, she realizes that the new noise is the sound of a piece of classical music, the Confutatis of Mozart’s Requiem. Kakuro sees her alarm and explains that it’s common in Japan to set up a piece of music that plays with the flushing of a toilet. Without stopping to consider that it will undue all her work to convince Kakuro of her stupidity, she mentions that the Requiem is a surprising selection to play when a toilet flushes. They both erupt in laughter at the oddness of the situation.

Renée insists that her life is banal, but Kakuro claims that a concierge who listens to Mozart and reads Leo Tolstoy lives a different life. They debate Dutch and Italian art while he teaches her how to eat Japanese food, and she notes that she is very comfortable sharing these conversations with Kakuro. She apologizes for her clumsiness and calls herself a savage, to which Kakuro says she must be a “very civilized noble savage” (218). Kakuro notes their similarities: They both have cats named after Leo Tolstoy and his literature, they both love Dutch painting, and they both live in the same place. Renée admits that she doesn’t want people knowing these more intellectual parts of her because she understands that “[n]o one wants a concierge who gives herself airs” (219). She finds it incredible that the son of a diplomat and the daughter of impoverished peasants could be enjoying dinner and conversation together. They discuss Yasujiro Ozu, the film director to which Renée had previously wondered if Kakuro was related—he is, distantly. Renée brings up a film about Kyoto, which Kakuro hasn’t seen in a while. They agree to watch it together later in the week. They talk well into the night, but Renée must get some sleep because she works in the morning. When she goes home, she realizes she has made a friend.

Renée notes the summer rain.

Summer rain brings up a plethora of sensory memory for Renée. For Renée, summer rain is evidence of the sublime. It takes her out of her body and astounds her.

Renée spends two hours struggling to sleep, then falls into a peaceful sleep.

Colombe tells the diarist what she’s learned about bees after a trip to Italy. She tries to shock the diarist with explanations about how bees copulate, but the diarist can see through Colombe’s story—Columbe is trying to seem liberated by talking about sex so freely, but it only reveals that she doesn’t truly understand the significance of nature and the fact that humans are included as animals. The diarist decides that the only thing to do is find purpose and accomplish that purpose before death.