A silent story

Yashiko Yamaguchi is sitting in her newly rented room surrounded by packing cases and mess, when she notices a jewellery box on top of a very tall mahogany wardrobe which dominates the room. Draping out of the jewellery box is a gold and diamond necklace.

She gets up and looks up at the jewellery box, wondering how she can reach it. A little mouse is looking through a hole in the wainscot at her.

She drags a table in front of the wardrobe and, then, a chair and puts that on the table, she then gets a step ladder and puts that on the seat of the chair and, on top of that, she puts a suitcase and, on top of that, a hatbox. She climbs up all of these and manages to stand on the hat box. She can almost reach the necklace, but it is still just out of reach. She leans towards it and, then, the things she is standing on start to topple and they fall to the floor, and so does she.

Yashiko picks herself up and puts on her hat and coat and sets off to the theatre. She goes in through the stage door at the back of the theatre and walks up the stairs to her dressing room. She looks into the mirror and does her face after putting on her performance costume .

She gets a knock on the door, and a head peers round the door at her – it’s time to go on stage. She goes up the stairs towards the stage. She waits, and then walks onto the stage, and receives the applause of the audience. She smiles graciously.

She then starts her act. She juggles juggling balls, two, three, four, five, six. She juggles clubs, two three, four, five, six. She juggles rings, two, three, four, five, six. Then, she takes some coffee pots off a table and starts juggling them, two, three, four, five, six. She then climbs on a six-foot unicycle and starts juggling coffee pots while on the unicycle. She then rides the unicycle, while still juggling, up a ramp and onto a giant ball. But wait, there is a slight suggestion through the skin of the moving ball that there is a small person in there keeping the ball steady. A small mouse is watching the action through a gap in the stage curtain. Oh no, Yashiko sees the mouse  and loses her concentration and falls to the floor of the stage, with coffee pots crashing to the floor around her.

Later that evening, Yashiko is knocking on a door that has the sign ‘Manager’ on it. The manager is furious when she walks in and, waving his arm at her, he gives her the sack telling her to leave and never to come back again.

Yashiko sits in her dressing room in tears. But then, she has an idea. She goes back and asks the manager if she can have her unicycle back. He agrees. Yashiko smiles and is to be seen, later, riding down the street in front of the theatre on her unicycle and riding it all the way home.

Yes, soon, she is on her uncicyle on top of the table in front of the wardrobe– she can reach the necklace! She grabs it and climbs down and sits in a chair to study it.

The next day, she is standing outside a pawnbrokers, with three balls hanging above the entrance to the shop, and she is hesitating. She plucks up her courage and goes in and shows the necklace to the pawnbroker. He looks at it and studies it through his little eyeglass. They talk. A bit later, Yashiko leaves the shop clutching her bag tightly to her chest.

A few days later, it’s a sunny day and Yashiko is staying in a villa on the riviera. A small mouse is lying on a lilo floating on the water of the swimming pool beside the terrace. Yashiko comes out with coffee pots, then a unicycle and, then, a large ball. She opens the ball – it has a small door in it – she checks that nobody is inside. It is empty. She then starts juggling the coffee pots while she climbs onto the uncicylce and, then, she rides the unicycle up onto a ramp and on top of the ball. She is smiling and the mouse is sitting up on its lilo and starts clapping and cheering.