The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

1 The Wind-Up Bird in Winter

Between the end of that strange summer and the approach of winter, my life went on without change. Each day would dawn without incident and end as it had begun. It rained a lot in September. October had several warm, sweaty days. Aside from the weather, there was hardly anything to distinguish one day from the next. I worked at concentrating my attention on the real and useful. I would go to the pool almost every day for a long swim, take walks, make myself three meals.

But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drank, the very air I breathed, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four o'clock in the morning.

And yet there were a few people who wouldn't leave me alone-people from Kumiko's family, who wrote me letters. Kumiko could not go on being married to me, they said, and so I should immediately agree to a divorce. That would supposedly solve all the problems. The first few letters tried to exert pressure on me in a businesslike manner. When I failed to answer, they resorted to threats and, in the end, turned to pleading. All were looking for the same thing.

Eventually, Kumiko's father called.

I am not saying that I am absolutely opposed to a divorce, I said. But first I want to see Kumiko and talk to her, alone. If she can convince me its what she wants, then I will give her a divorce. That is the only way I will agree to it.

I turned toward the kitchen window and looked at the dark, rain-filled sky stretching away into the distance. It had been raining for four straight days, into a wet, black world.

Kumiko and I talked everything over before we decided to get married, and if we are going to end that marriage, I want to do it the same way.

Kumiko's father and I went on making parallel statements, arriving nowhere- or nowhere fruitful, at least.

Several questions remained unanswered. Did Kumiko really want to divorce me? And had she asked her parents to try to convince me to go along with that?

Kumiko says she doesn't want to see you, her father had told me, exactly as her brother, Noboru Wataya, had said. This was probably not an out-and-out lie. Kumiko's parents were not above interpreting things in a manner convenient to themselves, but as far as I knew, they were not the sort to manufacture facts out of nothing. They were, for better or worse, realistic people. If what her father had said was true, then, was Kumiko now being sheltered by them?

But that I found impossible to believe. Love was simply not an emotion that Kumiko had felt for her parents and brother from the time she was a little girl. She had struggled for years to keep herself independent of them. It could well be that Kumiko had chosen to leave me because she had taken a lover. Even if I could not fully accept the explanation she had given me in her letter, I knew that it was not entirely out of the question. But what I could not accept was that Kumiko could have gone straight from me to them-or to some place they had prepared for her-and that she could be communicating with me through them.

The more I thought about it, the less I understood. One possibility was that Kumiko had experienced an emotional breakdown and could no longer sustain herself. Another was that she was being held against her will. I spent several days arranging and rearranging a variety of facts and words and memories, until I had to give up thinking. Speculation was getting me nowhere.

Autumn was drawing to a close, and a touch of winter hung in the air. As I always did in that season, I raked the dead leaves in the garden and , stuffed them into vinyl bags. I set a ladder against the roof and cleaned I the leaves out of the gutters. The little garden of the house I lived in had no trees, but the wind carried leaves in abundance from the broad-spreading deciduous trees in the gardens on both sides. I didn't mind the work. The time would pass as I watched the withered leaves floating down in the afternoon sunshine. One big tree in the neighbors to the right put out bright-red berries. Flocks of birds would perch there and chirp as if in competition with each other. These were brightly colored birds, with short, sharp cries that stabbed the air.

I wondered about how best to store Kumiko's summer clothing. I could do as she had said in her letter and get rid of them. But I remembered the care that she had given each piece. And it was not as if I had no place to keep them. I decided to leave them for the time being where they were. Still, whenever I opened the closet, I was confronted by Kumiko's absence. The dresses hanging there were the husks of something that had once existed. I knew how she looked in these clothes, and to some of them were attached specific memories. Sometimes I would find myself sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the rows of dresses or blouses or skirts. I would have no idea how long I had been sitting there. It could have been ten minutes or an hour.

Sometimes, as I sat staring at a dress, I would imagine a man I didn't know helping Kumiko out of it. His hands would slip the dress off, then go on to remove the underwear beneath. They would caress her breasts and press her thighs apart. I could see those breasts and thighs in all their white softness, and the other mans hands touching them. I didn't want to think about such things, but I had no choice. They had probably happened in reality. I had to get myself used to such images. I couldn't just shove reality aside.

Now and then, I would recall the night I slept with Creta Kano, but the memory of it was mysteriously vague. I held her in my arms that night and joined my body with hers any number of times: that was an undeniable fact. But as the weeks passed by, the feeling of certainty began to disappear. I couldn't bring back concrete images of her body or of the ways in which it had joined with mine. If anything, the memories of what I had done with her earlier, in my mind-in unreality-were far more vivid than the memories of the reality of that night. The image of her mounted on me, wearing Kumiko's blue dress, in that strange hotel room, came back to me over and over again with amazing clarity.

Early October saw the death of the uncle of Noboru Wataya who had served as Niigata's representative to the Lower House. He suffered a heart attack shortly after midnight in his hospital bed in Niigata, and by dawn, despite the doctors best efforts, he was nothing but a corpse. The death had long been anticipated, of course, and a general election was expected shortly, so the uncles supporters lost no time in formalizing their earlier plan to have Noboru Wataya inherit the constituency. The late representatives vote-gathering machinery was solidly based and solidly conservative. Barring some major unforeseen event, Noboru Wataya's election was all but assured.

The first thing that crossed my mind when I read the article in a library newspaper was how busy the Wataya family was going to be from now on. The farthest thing from anybody's mind would be Kumiko's divorce.

The black-and-blue mark on my face neither grew nor shrank. It produced neither fever nor pain. I gradually forgot I even had it. I stopped trying to hide the mark by wearing sunglasses or a hat with the brim pulled down low. I would be reminded of it now and then when I went out shopping and people would stare at me or look away, but even these reactions stopped bothering me after a while. I wasn't harming them by having a mark on my face. I would examine it each morning when I washed and shaved, but I could see no change. Its size, color, and shape remained the same.

The number of individual human beings who voiced concern about the sudden appearance of a mark on my cheek was exactly four: the owner of the cleaning shop by the station, my barber, the young man from the Omura liquor store, and the woman at the counter of the neighborhood library. In each case, when asked about it, I made a show of annoyance and said something vague, like, I had a little accident. They would mumble, My, my or That's too bad, as if apologizing for having mentioned it.

I seemed to be growing more distant from myself with each day that went by. If I stared at my hand for a while, I would begin to feel that I was looking through it. I spoke with almost no one. No one wrote to me or called. All I found in my mailbox were utility bills and junk mail, and most of the junk mail consisted of designer-brand catalogs addressed to Kumiko, full of colorful photos of spring dresses and blouses and skirts. The winter was a cold one, but I sometimes forgot to turn on the heat, unsure whether the cold was real or just something inside me. I would throw the switch only after a look at the thermometer had convinced me that it really was cold, but even so, the cold I felt did not diminish.

I wrote to Lieutenant Mamiya with a general description of what had been happening to me. He might be more embarrassed than pleased to receive the letter, but I couldn't think of anyone else I could write to. I opened with that exact apology. Then I told him that Kumiko left me on the very day he had visited my house, that she had been sleeping with another man for some months, that I had spent close to three days in the bottom of a well, thinking, that I was now living here all alone, and that the keepsake from Mr. Honda had been nothing but an empty whiskey box.

Lieutenant Mamiya sent me an answer a week later.

To tell you the truth, you have been in my thoughts to an almost strange degree since we last met. I left your home feeling that we really ought to go on talking, to spill our guts to each other, so to speak, and the fact that we did not has been no small source of regret to me. Unfortunately, however, some urgent business had come up, which required me to return to Hiroshima that night. Thus, in a certain sense, I was very glad to have had the opportunity to receive a letter from you. I wonder if it was not Mr. Honda's intention all along to bring the two of us together. Perhaps he believed that it would be good for me to meet you and for you to meet me. The division of keepsakes may well have been an excuse to have me visit you. This may explain the empty box. My visit to you itself would have been his keepsake.

I was utterly amazed to hear that you had spent time down in a well, for I, too, continue to feel myself strongly attracted to wells. Considering my own close call, one would think that I would never have wanted to see another well, but quite the contrary, even to this day, whenever I see a well, I cant help looking in. And if it turns out to be a dry well, I feel the urge to climb down inside. I probably continue to hope that I will encounter something down there, that if I go down inside and simply wait, it will be possible for me to encounter a certain something. Not that I expect it to restore my life to me. No, I am far too old to hope for such things. What I hope to find is the meaning of the life that I have lost. By what was it taken away from me, and why? I want to know the answers to these questions with absolute certainty. And I would go so far as to say that if I could have those answers, I would not mind being even more profoundly lost than I am already. Indeed, I would gladly accept such a burden for whatever years of life may be left to me.

I was truly sorry to hear that your wife had left you, but that is a matter on which I am unable to offer you any advice. I have lived far too long a time without the benefit of love or family and am thus unqualified to speak on such matters. I do believe, however, that if you feel the slightest willingness to wait a while longer for her to come back, then you probably should continue to wait there as you are now. That is my opinion, for what it is worth. I realize full well how hard it must be to go on living alone in a place from which someone has left you, but there is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for.

If possible, I would like to come to Tokyo sometime in the near future and see you again, but unfortunately I am having a little problem with one leg, and the treatment for it will take some time. Please take care and be well.

Sometimes I climbed the garden wall and went down the winding alley to where the vacant Miyawaki house had stood. Dressed in a three-quarter-length coat, a scarf wrapped under my chin, I trod the alleys dead winter grass. Short puffs of frozen winter wind whistled through the electric lines overhead. The house had been completely demolished, the yard now surrounded by a high plank fence. I could look in through the gaps in the fence, but there was nothing in there to see- no house, no paving stones, no well, no trees, no TV antenna, no bird sculpture: just a flat, black stretch of cold-looking earth, compacted by the treads of a bulldozer, and a few scattered clumps of weeds. I could hardly believe there had once been a deep well in the yard and that I had climbed down into it.

I leaned against the fence, looking up at May Kasahara's house, to where her room was, on the second floor. But she was no longer there. She wouldn't be coming out anymore to say, Hi, Mr. Wind-Up Bird.

On a bitter-cold afternoon in mid-February, I dropped in at the real estate office by the station that my uncle had told me about, Setagaya Dai-ichi Realtors. When I walked in, the first person I saw was a middle-aged female receptionist. Several desks were lined up near the entrance, but their chairs were empty, as if all the brokers were out on appointments. A large gas heater glowed bright red in the middle of the room. On a sofa in a small reception area toward the back sat a slightly built old man, engrossed in a newspaper. I asked the receptionist if a Mr. Ichikawa might be there. That's me, said the old man, turning in my direction. Can I help you?

I introduced myself as my uncles nephew and mentioned that I lived in one of the houses that my uncle owned.

Oh, I see, said the old man, laying his paper down. So you're Mr. Tsuruta's nephew! He folded his reading glasses and gave me a head-to-toe inspection. I couldn't tell what kind of impression I was making on him. Come in, come in. Can I offer you a cup of tea?

I told him not to bother, but either he didn't hear me or he ignored my refusal. He had the receptionist make tea. It didn't take her long to bring it to us, but by the time he and I were sitting opposite each other, drinking tea, the stove had gone out and the room was getting chilly. A detailed map showing all the houses in the area hung on the wall, marked here and there in pencil or felt-tip pen. Next to it hung a calendar with van Gogh's famous bridge painting: a bank calendar.

I haven't seen your uncle in quite a while. How is he doing? the old man asked after a sip of tea.

I think he's fine, busy as ever. I don't see him much myself, I said.

I'm glad to hear he's doing well. How many years has it been since I last saw him? I wonder. At least it seems like years. He took a cigarette from his jacket pocket, and after apparently taking careful aim, he struck a match with a vigorous swipe. I was the one who found that house for him, and I managed it for him for a long time too. Anyhow, its good to hear he's keeping busy.

Old Mr. Ichikawa himself seemed anything but busy. I imagined he must be half retired, showing up at the office now and then to take care of longtime clients.

So how do you like the house? No problems? No, none at all, I said. The old man nodded. That's good. Its a nice place. Maybe on the small side, but a nice place to live. Things have always gone well for the people who lived there. For you too? Not bad, I said to him. At least I'm alive, I said to myself. I had something I wanted to ask you about, though. My uncle says you know more than anybody about this area. The old man chuckled. This area is one thing I do know, he said. I've been dealing in real estate here for close to forty years. The thing I want to ask you about is the Miyawaki place behind ours. They've bulldozed it, you know.

Yes, I know, said the old man, pursing his lips as though rummaging through the drawers in his mind. It sold last August. They finally got all the mortgage and title and legal problems straightened out and put it on the market. A speculator bought it, to tear down the house and sell the land. Leave a house vacant that long, I don't care how good it is, its not going to sell. Of course, the people who bought it are not local. Nobody local would touch the place. Have you heard some of the stories?

Yes, I have, from my uncle.

Then you know what I'm talking about. I suppose we could have bought it and sold it to somebody who didn't know any better, but we don't do business that way. It just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

I nodded in agreement. So who did buy it, then?

The old man knit his brow and shook his head, then told me the name of a well-known real estate corporation. They probably didn't do any research, just snapped it up when they saw the location and the price, figured they'd turn a quick profit. But its not going to be so easy.

They haven't been able to sell it? They came close a few times, the old man said, folding his arms. Its not cheap, buying a piece of land. Its a lifetime investment. People are careful. When they start looking into things, any stories come out, and in this case, not one of them is good. You hear stories like that, and the ordinary person is not going to buy. Most of the people who live around here know the stories about that place.

What are they asking?

Asking? The price of the land where the Miyawaki house was. Old Mr. Ichikawa looked at me as if to say I had aroused his curiosity. Well, lets see. The lot is a little over thirty-five hundred square feet. Not quite a hundred tsubo. The market price would be one and a half million yen per tsubo. I mean, thats a first-rate lot-wonderful setting, southern exposure. A million and a half, no problem, even with the market as slow as it is. You might have to wait a little while, but you'd get your price at that location. Ordinarily. But theres nothing ordinary about the Miyawaki place. That's not going to move, no matter how long you wait. So the price has to go down. Its already down to a million ten per tsubo, so with a little more bargaining you could probably get the whole place for an even hundred million.

Do you think the price will continue to fall? The old man gave a sharp nod. Of course its going to fall. To nine hundred thousand per tsubo easy. That's what they bought it for. They're really getting worried now. They'd be thrilled if they could break even. I don't know if they'd go any lower. They might take a loss if they're hurting for cash. Otherwise, they could afford to wait. I just don't know whats going on inside the company. What I do know is that they're sorry they bought the place. Getting mixed up with that piece of land is not going to do anybody any good. He tapped his ashes into the ashtray.

The yard has a well, doesn't it? I asked. Do you know anything about the well?

Hmm, it does have a well, doesn't it, said Mr. Ichikawa. A deep well. But I think they filled it in. It was dry, after all. Useless.

Do you have any idea when it dried up?

The old man glared at the ceiling for a while, with his arms folded. That was a long time ago. I cant remember, really, but I'm sure I heard it had water sometime before the war. It must have dried up after the war. I don't know when, exactly. But I know it was dry when the actress moved in. There was a lot of talk then about whether or not to fill in the well. But nobody ever did anything about it. I guess it was too much bother.

The well in the Kasahara place across the alley still has plenty of water- good water, I'm told.

Maybe so, maybe so. The wells in that area always produced good-tasting water. Its got something to do with the soil. You know, water veins are delicate things. Its not unusual to get water in one place and nothing at all right close by. Is there something about that well that interests you?

To tell you the truth, Id like to buy that piece of land.

The old man raised his eyes and focused them on mine. Then he lifted his teacup and took a silent sip. You want to buy that piece of land?

My only reply was a nod.

The old man took another cigarette from his pack and tapped it against the tabletop. But then, instead of lighting it, he held it between his fingers. His tongue flicked across his lips.

Let me say one more time that thats a place with a lot of problems. No one-and I mean no one- has ever done well there. You do realize that? I don't care how cheap it gets, that place can never be a good buy. But you want it just the same?

Yes, I still want it, knowing what I know. But let me point out one thing: I don't have enough money on hand to buy the place, no matter how far the price falls below market value.

But I intend to raise the money, even if it takes me a while. So I would like to be kept informed of any new developments. Can I count on you to let me know if the price changes or if a buyer shows up?

For a time, the old man just stared at his unlit cigarette, lost in thought. Then, clearing his throat with a little cough, he said, Don't worry, you've got time; that place is not going to sell for a while, I guarantee you. Its not going to move until they're practically giving it away, and that wont happen for a while. So take all the time you need to raise the money. If you really want it.

I told him my phone number. The old man wrote it down in a little sweat-stained black notebook. After returning the notebook to his jacket pocket, he looked me in the eye for a while and then looked at the mark on my cheek.

February came to an end, and March was half gone when the freezing cold began to relent somewhat. Warm winds blew up from the south. Buds appeared on the trees, and new birds showed up in the garden. On warm days I began to spend time sitting on the veranda, looking at the garden. One evening I got a call from Mr. Ichikawa. The Miyawaki land was still unsold, he said, and the price had dropped somewhat.

I told you it wouldn't move for a while, he added, with a touch of pride. Don't worry, from now on its just going to creep down. Meanwhile, how are you doing? Funds coming together?

I was washing my face at eight o'clock that night when I noticed that my mark was beginning to run a slight fever. When I laid my finger against it, I could feel a touch of warmth that had not been there before. The color, too, seemed more intense than usual, almost purplish. Barely breathing, I stared into the mirror for a long time-long enough for me to begin to see my own face as something other than mine. The mark was trying to tell me something: it wanted something from me. I went on staring at my self beyond the mirror, and that self went on staring back at me from beyond the mirror without a word.

I have to have that well. Whatever happens, I have to have that well.

This was the conclusion I had reached.

2 Waking from Hibernation One More Name Card The Namelessness of Money

Just wanting the land was not going to make it mine, of course. The amount of money I could realistically raise was close to zero. I still had a little of what my mother had left me, but that would evaporate soon in the course of living. I had no job, nothing I could offer as collateral. And there was no bank in the world that would lend money to someone like me out of sheer kindness. I would have to use magic to produce the money from thin air. And soon.

One morning I walked to the station and bought ten fifty-million-yen lottery tickets, with continuous numbers. Using tacks, I covered a section of the kitchen wall with them and looked at them every day. Sometimes I would spend a whole hour in a chair staring hard at them, as if waiting for a secret code to rise out of them that only I could see. After several days of this, the thought struck me from nowhere: I'm never going to win the lottery.

Before long, I knew this without a doubt. Things were absolutely not going to be solved so easily-by just buying a few lottery tickets and waiting for the results. I would have to get the money through my own efforts. I tore up the lottery tickets and threw them away. Then I stood in front of the washbasin mirror and peered into its depths. There has to be a way, I said to myself in the mirror, but of course there was no reply.

Tired of always being shut up in the house with my thoughts, I began to walk around the neighborhood. I continued these aimless walks for three or four days, and when I tired of the neighborhood, I took the train to Shinjuku. The impulse to go downtown came to me when I happened by the station. Sometimes, I thought, it helps to think about things in a different setting. It occurred to me, too, that I hadn't been on a train for a very long time. Indeed while putting my money in the ticket machine, I experienced the nervousness one feels when doing something unfamiliar. When had I last been to the streets of the city? Probably not since I fol- lowed the man with the guitar case from the Shinjuku west entrance- more than six months earlier.

The sight of the crowds in Shinjuku Station I found overwhelming. The flow of people took my breath away and even made my heart pound to some extent-and this wasn't even rush hour! I had trouble making my way through the crush of bodies at first. This was not so much a crowd as a raging torrent-the kind of flood that tears whole houses apart and sweeps them away. I had been walking only a few minutes when I felt the need to calm my nerves. I entered a cafe that faced the avenue and took a seat by one of its large glass windows. Late in the morning, the cafe was not crowded. I ordered a cup of cocoa and half-consciously watched the people walking by outside.

I was all but unaware of the passage of time. Perhaps fifteen minutes had gone by, perhaps twenty, when I realized that my eyes had been following each polished Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, and Porsche that crept along the jam-packed avenue. In the fresh morning sunlight after a night of rain, these cars sparkled with almost painful intensity, like some kind of symbols. They were absolutely spotless. Those guys have money. Such a thought had never crossed my mind before. I looked at my reflection in the glass and shook my head. This was the first time in my life I had a desperate need for money.

When the lunchtime crowd began to fill the cafe, I decided to take a walk. I had no particular goal other than to walk through the city I had not seen for so long. I walked from one street to another, my only thought being to avoid bumping into the people coming toward me. I turned right or left or went straight ahead, depending on the changing of the traffic signals or the whim of the moment. Hands in pockets, I concentrated on the physical act of walking-from the avenues with their rows of department stores and display windows, to the back alleys with their garishly decorated porno shops, to the lively streets with movie theaters, through the hushed precincts of a Shinto shrine, and back to the avenues. It was a warm afternoon, and close to half the crowd had left their coats indoors. The occasional breeze felt pleasant for a change. Before I realized it, I found myself standing in familiar surroundings. I looked at the tiles beneath my feet, at the little sculpture that stood there, and at the tall glass building that towered over me. I was standing in the middle of the small plaza outside the high-rise, the very one where I had gone last summer to watch the people passing by, as my uncle had advised me to do. I had kept it up for eleven days then, at the end of which I had followed the weird man with the guitar case into the strange apartment house lobby, where he attacked me with the bat. Aimless walking around Shinjuku had brought me to the same exact place.

As before, I bought myself coffee and a doughnut at Dunkin Donuts and took them with me to the plaza bench. I sat and watched the faces of the people passing by, which put me in an increasingly calm and peaceful mood. It felt good for some reason I could not fathom, as though I had found a comfortable niche in a wall where people would not notice me watching them. It had been a very long time since I had had such a good look at peoples faces. And not only peoples faces, I realized. I had hardly looked-really looked-at anything at all over these past six months. I sat up straight on the bench and poised myself to look at things. I looked at the people, I looked at the buildings soaring overhead, I looked at the spring sky where the clouds had parted, I looked at the colorful billboards, I picked up a newspaper lying close by and looked at it. Color seemed gradually to be returning to things as evening approached.

The next morning I took the train to Shinjuku again. I sat on the same bench and looked at the faces of the people passing by. Again for lunch I had a doughnut and coffee. I took the train home before the evening rush hour started. I made myself dinner, drank a beer, and listened to music on the radio. The next day I did exactly the same thing. Nothing happened that day, either. I made no discoveries, solved no riddles, answered no questions. But I did have the vague sense that I was, little by little, moving closer to something. I could see this movement, this gradually increasing closeness, whenever I looked at myself in the mirror above the sink. The color of my mark was more vivid than before, warmer than before. My mark is alive, I told myself. Just as I am alive, my mark is alive.

I repeated the routine every day, as I had done the previous summer, boarding the train for the city just after ten, sitting on the bench in the plaza by the high-rise, and looking at the people passing back and forth all day, without a thought in my head. Now and then, the real sounds around me would grow distant and fade away. The only thing I heard at those times was the deep, quiet sound of water flowing. I thought of Malta Kano. She had talked about listening to the sound of water. Water was her main motif. But I could not recall what Malta Kano had said about the sound of water. Nor could I recall her face. All that I could bring back was the red color of her vinyl hat. Why had she always worn that red vinyl hat?

But then sounds gradually returned to me, and once again I returned my gaze to the faces of the people.

On the afternoon of the eighth day of my going into town, a woman spoke to me. At that moment, I happened to be looking in another direction, with an empty coffee cup in my hand.

Excuse me, she said. I turned and raised my eyes to the face of the woman standing in front of me. It was the same middle-aged woman I had encountered here last summer-the only person who had spoken to me during the time I spent in the plaza. It had never occurred to me that we would meet again, but when in fact she spoke to me, it seemed like the natural conclusion of a great flow.

As before, the woman was extremely well dressed, in terms of both the quality of the individual items of clothing she wore and the style with which she had combined them. She wore dark tortoiseshell sunglasses, a smoky blue jacket with padded shoulders, and a red flannel skirt. Her blouse was of silk, and on the collar of her jacket shone a finely sculpted gold brooch. Her red high heels were simple in design, but I could have lived several months on what they must have cost her. My own outfit was a mess, as usual: the baseball jacket I bought the year I entered college, a gray sweatshirt with a stretched-out neck, frayed blue jeans, and formerly white tennis shoes that were now of an indeterminate color.

Despite the contrast, she sat down next to me, crossed her legs, and, without a word, took a box of Virginia Slims from her handbag. She offered me a cigarette as she had last summer, and again I declined. She put one between her lips and lit it, using a long, slender gold lighter the size of an eraser. Then she took off her sunglasses, put them in her jacket pocket, and stared into my eyes as if searching for a coin she had dropped into a shallow pond. I studied her eyes in return. They were strange eyes, of great depth but expressionless.

She narrowed her eyes slightly and said, So. You're back. I nodded. I watched the smoke rise from the tip of her narrow cigarette and drift away on the wind.

She turned to survey the scene around us, as if to ascertain with her own eyes exactly what it was I had been looking at from the bench. What she saw didn't seem to interest her, though. She turned her eyes to me again. She stared at my mark for a long time, then at my eyes, my nose, my mouth, and then my mark again. I had the feeling that what she really wanted to do was inspect me like a dog in a show: pry my lips open to check my teeth, look into my ears, and whatever else they do.

I guess I need some money now, I said. She paused a moment. How much? Eighty million yen should do it. She took her eyes from mine and peered up at the sky as if calculating the amount: lets see, if I take that from there, and move this from here ... I studied her makeup all the while-the eye shadow faint, like the shadow of a thought, the curl of the eyelashes subtle, like some kind of symbol.

That's not a small amount of money, she said, with a slight diagonal twist of the lips. Id say its enormous. Her cigarette was only one-third smoked when she dropped it to the ground and carefully crushed it beneath the sole of her high-heel shoe. Then she took a leather calling card case from her slim handbag and thrust a card into my hand.

Come to this address at exactly four o'clock tomorrow afternoon, she said.

The address-an office building in the wealthy Akasaka district was the only thing on the card. There was no name. I turned it over to check the back, but it was blank. I brought the card to my nose, but it had no fragrance. It was just a normal white paper card.

No name? I said.

She smiled for the first time and gently shook her head from side to side. I believe that what you need is money. Does money have a name?

I shook my head as she was doing. Money had no name, of course. And if it did have a name, it would no longer be money. What gave money its true meaning was its dark-night namelessness, its breathtaking inter-changeability.

She stood up from the bench. You can come at four o'clock, then?

If I do, you'll put money in my hand?

I wonder, she said, a smile at the corners of her eyes like wind patterns in the sand. She surveyed the surrounding scene one more time, then smoothed her skirt with a perfunctory sweep of the hand.

Taking quick steps, she disappeared into the flow of people. I went on looking at the cigarette she had crushed out, at the lipstick coloring its filter end. The bright red reminded me of Malta Kano's vinyl hat.

If I had anything in my favor, it was that I had nothing to lose. Probably.

3 What Happened in the Night

The boy heard the hard-edged sound in the middle of the night. He came awake, reached out for the floor lamp, and, once it was on, sat up and looked around the room. The time on the wall clock was just before two. The boy could not imagine what might be happening in the world at a time like this.

Then the sound came again-from outside the window, he was sure. It sounded like someone winding a huge spring. Who could be winding a spring in the middle of the night?

No, wait: it was like someone winding a spring, but it was not really a spring. It was the cry of a bird. The boy carried a chair over to the window and climbed up onto it. He pulled the curtains back and opened the window a crack. In the middle of the sky hung a large white moon, the full moon of late autumn, filling the yard below with its light. The trees out there looked very different to the boy at night than they did in the daylight. They had none of their usual friendliness. The evergreen oak looked almost annoyed as it trembled in the occasional puff of wind with an unpleasant creaking sound. The stones in the garden looked whiter and smoother than they ordinarily did, staring up at the sky impassively like the faces of dead people.

The cry of the bird seemed to be coming from the pine tree. The boy leaned out the window and looked up, but from this low angle, the large, heavy branches of the pine hid the bird. He wanted to see what it looked like. He wanted to memorize its color and shape so that tomorrow he could find it in his illustrated encyclopedia. His intense desire to know had brought him fully awake now. Finding birds and fish and other animals in his encyclopedia was his greatest joy. Its big, thick volumes lined one shelf of his room. He had yet to enter elementary school, but he already knew how to read.

The bird fell silent after winding the spring several times in a row. The boy wondered whether anyone else had heard the cry. Had his father and mother heard it? His grandmother?

If not, he could tell them all about it in the morning: a bird that sounded just like the winding of a spring was sitting in the pine tree last night at two o'clock. If only he could catch a glimpse of it! Then he could tell everybody its name.

But the bird never raised its cry again. It fell silent as a stone, up there in the branches of the pine bathed in moonlight. Soon a chill wind blew into the room, as if giving him some kind of warning. The boy shuddered and closed the window. This was a different kind of bird, he knew, not some sparrow or pigeon, which showed itself to people without hesitation. He had read in his encyclopedia that most nocturnal birds were cunning and cautious. The bird probably knew that he was on the lookout for it. It would never come out as long as he waited for it to appear. The boy wondered if he should go to the bathroom. That would mean walking down the long, dark corridor. No, he would just go back to bed. It was not so bad that he couldn't wait until morning.

The boy turned the light out and closed his eyes, but thoughts of the bird in the pine tree kept him awake. The bright moonlight spilled in from beneath the curtains as if in invitation. When the wind-up bird cried one more time, the boy leaped out of bed. This time he did not turn on the light, but slipping a cardigan over his pajamas, he climbed onto the chair by the window. Parting the curtains just the tiniest bit, he peered up into the pine tree. This way, the bird would not notice that he was there.

What the boy saw this time, though, was the outline of two men. He caught his breath. The men knelt like two black shadows at the base of the pine tree. Both wore dark clothing. One had no hat on, the other wore what looked like a felt hat with a brim. Why are these strange men here in our garden in the middle of the night? the boy wondered. Why wasn't the dog barking at them? Maybe he ought to tell his parents right away.

But his curiosity held him at the window. He wanted to see what the men were doing.

Then, without warning, the wind-up bird cried out again. More than once, it sent its long, creaking sound out into the night. But the men did not seem to notice. They never budged, never looked up. They remained kneeling at the base of the tree, face-to-face. They seemed to be discussing something in low tones, but with the branches blocking the moonlight, the boy could not make out their faces. Before long, the two men stood up at the same moment. There was a good eight-inch difference in their heights. Both men were thin, and the tall one (the one with the hat) wore a long coat. The short one had on more form-fitting clothes.

The shorter man approached the pine tree and stood there, looking up into the branches. After a while, he began patting and grabbing the trunk with both hands as if inspecting it, until, all at once, he jumped up onto it. Then, with no effort whatever (or so it seemed to the boy), he came zipping up the tree like a circus performer. The boy knew this tree like an old friend. He knew that climbing it was no easy feat. Its trunk was smooth and slippery, and there was nothing to hold on to until you got up fairly high. But why was the man climbing the tree in the middle of the night? Was he trying to catch the wind-up bird?

The tall man stood at the base of the tree, looking up. Soon after, the small man disappeared from view. The branches rustled now and then, which meant that he must still be climbing up the tall pine. The wind-up bird would be sure to hear him coming and fly away. The man might be good at climbing trees, but the wind-up bird would not be that easy to capture. If he was lucky, though, the boy was hoping he might be able to catch a glimpse of the wind-up bird as it took off. He held his breath, waiting for the sound of wings. But the sound of wings never came, nor was there any cry.

There was no sound or movement for a very long time. Everything was bathed in the white, unreal light of the moon, the yard like the wet bottom of a sea from which the water has just been suddenly removed. Entranced, motionless, the boy went on staring at the pine tree and the tall man left behind. He could not have torn his eyes away if he had tried. His breath clouded the glass. Outdoors, it must be cold. The tall man stood looking up, hands on hips, never moving, as if he had frozen in place. The boy imagined that he was worried about his shorter companion, waiting for him to accomplish some mission and come climbing down out of the pine tree. Nor would it have been strange for the man to be worried: the boy knew that the tall tree was harder to climb down than up. But then, all of a sudden, the tall man stalked off into the night, as if abandoning the whole project.

The boy felt that now he was the only one left behind. The small man had disappeared into the pine tree, and the tall one had gone off somewhere. The wind-up bird maintained its silence. The boy wondered if he should wake his father. But he knew he could not get him to believe this. I'm sure you just had another dream, his father would say. It was true, the boy did often dream, and he often mistook his dreams for reality, but he didn't care what anybody said: this was real- the wind-up bird and the two men in black. They had just disappeared all of a sudden, that was all. His father would believe him if he did a good job of explaining what had happened.

It was then that the boy realized: the small man looked a lot like his father. Of course, he was too short to be his father, but aside from that, he was exactly the same: the build, the movements. But no, his father could never climb a tree that way. He wasn't that agile or strong. The more he thought about it, the more confused the boy became.

The tall man came back to the base of the tree. Now he had something in his hands-a shovel and a large cloth bag. He set the bag down on.the ground and started digging near the roots of the tree. The shovel cut into the earth with a sharp, clean sound. Now everybody was bound to wake up, the boy thought. It was such a big, clear sound!

But no one woke up. The man went on digging without a break, seemingly unconcerned that anyone might hear him. Though tall and thin, he was far more powerful than he looked, judging from the way he used that shovel. He worked steadily, without wasted motion. Once he had the size hole he wanted, the man leaned the shovel against the tree and stood there looking down. He never once looked up, as though he had forgotten all about the man who had climbed the tree. The only thing on his mind now was the hole, it seemed. The boy did not like this. He would have been worried about the man in the tree.

The boy could tell from the mound of earth the man had dug out that the hole itself was not very deep-maybe just up over his own knees. The man seemed satisfied with the shape and size of the hole. He turned to the bag and gently lifted a blackish, cloth-wrapped object from inside it. The way the man held it, it seemed soft and limp. Maybe the man was about to bury some kind of corpse in the hole. The thought made the boys heart race. But the thing in the cloth was no bigger than a cat. If human, it could only be an infant. But why did he have to bury something like that in my yard? thought the boy. He swallowed the saliva that he had unconsciously allowed to collect in his mouth. The loud gulp he made frightened the boy himself. It might have been loud enough for the man to hear outside.

Just then, as if aroused by the boys gulp, the wind-up bird cried out, winding an even bigger spring than before: Creeeak. Creeeak.

When he heard this cry, the boy felt intuitively that something very important was about to happen. He bit his lip and unconsciously scratched the skin of his arms. He should never have seen any of this, he felt. But now it was too late. Now it was impossible for him to tear his eyes away from the scene before him. He parted his lips and pressed his nose against the cold windowpane, transfixed by the strange drama that was now unfolding in his yard. He was no longer hoping for other members of the family to get out of bed. No one would wake up anyway, no matter how big a sound they made out there. I'm the only person alive who can hear these sounds. It was that way from the start.

The tall man bent over and, handling it with the utmost care, laid the thing in the black cloth in the bottom of the hole. Then he rose to his full height and stared down at it lying there. The boy could not make out the look on the mans face beneath the brim of his hat, but he seemed somehow to be wearing a grim, even a solemn, expression. Yes, it had to be some kind of corpse, thought the boy. Before long, the man reached a point of decision, lifted the shovel, and began filling in the hole. When he was through shoveling, he lightly tamped the earth beneath his feet and smoothed it over. Then he set the shovel against the trunk of the tree and, with the cloth bag in his hand, moved away with slow steps. He never looked back.

He never looked up into the tree. And the wind-up bird never cried again.

The boy turned to look at the clock on his wall. Squinting in the darkness, he could just barely make out the time as two-thirty. He kept watch on the pine tree for another ten minutes through the opening in the curtains, in case something should move out there, but an intense sleepiness overtook him all at once, as if a heavy iron lid were closing over his head. He wanted to know what would happen with the short man up in the tree and the wind-up bird, but he couldn't keep his eyes open any longer. Struggling to slip off the cardigan before he lost consciousness, he burrowed under the covers and sank into sleep.

4 Buying New Shoes The Thing That Came Back Home

I walked from the Akasaka subway station down a lively street lined with restaurants and bars to the place where the office building stood, a short way up a gentle slope. It was an unremarkable building, neither new nor old, big nor small, elegant nor dilapidated. A travel agency occupied part of the ground floor, its large window displaying posters of Mykonos and a San Francisco cable car. Both posters looked faded from long duty in the window.

Three members of the firm were hard at work on the other side of the glass, talking on the telephone or typing at a computer keyboard. Pretending to be looking at the posters, I killed time watching the office scene while waiting for the hour to strike four exactly. For some reason, both Mykonos and San Francisco seemed light-years from where I stood. The more I looked at this building, the more I realized how ordinary it was, as if it had been built to match the pencil sketch a small child might do if told to draw a building, or as if it had been consciously designed to be inconspicuous in its surroundings. As carefully as I had been checking the addresses in my search for the place, I came close to passing it by, it was so plain. The buildings unobtrusive main entrance stood near the door to the travel agency.

Skimming the nameplates, I got the impression that most of the offices were occupied by small-scale businesses-law offices, architects, importers, dentists. Several of the name-plates were shiny enough for me to be able to see my face in them, but the one for Room 602 had changed with age to an indistinct color. The woman had obviously had her office here for some time. Akasaka Fashion Design, read the inscription. The sheer age of the nameplate helped to temper my misgivings.

A locked glass door stood between the entryway and the elevator. I rang the bell for 602 and looked around for the closed-circuit TV camera I assumed must be sending my image to a monitor inside. There was a small, camera-like device in a corner of the entryway ceiling.

Soon the buzzer sounded, unlocking the door, and I went inside. I took the absolutely unadorned elevator to the sixth floor and, after a few uncertain moments in the absolutely unadorned corridor, found the door of 602. First checking to be certain that the sign on the door said Akasaka Fashion Design, I gave the bell exactly one short ring.

The door was opened by a slim young man with short hair and extremely regular features. He was possibly the handsomest man I had ever seen in my life. But even more than his features, what caught my eye was his clothing. He wore a shirt of almost painful whiteness and a deep-green necktie with a fine pattern. Not only was the necktie itself stylish, but it had been tied in a perfect knot, every twist and dip exactly as one might see in a mens fashion magazine. I could never have tied a tie so well, and I found myself wondering how he did it. Was it an inborn talent or the fruits of disciplined practice? His pants were dark gray, and he wore brown tasseled loafers. Everything looked brand-new, as if he had just put it on for the first time a few minutes before.

He was somewhat shorter than I. The hint of a smile played about his lips, as if he had just heard a joke and was smiling now in the most natural way. Nor had the joke been a vulgar one: it was the kind of elegant pleasantry that the minister of foreign affairs might have told the crown prince at a garden party a generation ago, causing the surrounding listeners to titter with delight. I began to introduce myself, but he gave his head a slight shake to signal that it was unnecessary for me to say anything. Holding the door open inward, he ushered me in, and after a quick glance up and down the hall, he closed the door, saying nothing all the while. He looked at me with eyes narrowed as if to apologize for being unable to speak because of the nervous black panther sleeping by his side. Which is not to say that there was a black panther sleeping by his side: he just looked as if there were.

I was standing now in a reception room with a comfortable-looking leather sofa and chair, an old-fashioned wooden coat rack, and a floor lamp. There was a single door in the far wall, which looked as if it must lead to the next room. Beside the door, facing away from the wall, was a simple oak desk that supported a large computer. The table standing in front of the sofa might have been just large enough to hold a telephone book. A pleasant pale-green carpet covered the floor. From hidden speakers, at low volume, flowed the strains of a Haydn quartet. The walls bore several lovely prints of flowers and birds. One glance told you this was an immaculate room, with no hint of disorder. Shelves affixed to one wall held fabric samples and fashion magazines. The offices furnishings were neither lavish nor new, but had the comforting warmth of the old and familiar.

The young man showed me to the sofa, then went around to the other side of the desk and sat down facing me. Holding his palms out toward me, he signaled for me to wait awhile. Instead of saying Sorry to keep you waiting, he produced a slight smile, and instead of saying It will not take long, he held up one finger. He seemed to be able to express himself without words. I nodded once to signal that I understood. For one to have spoken in his presence would have seemed inappropriate and vulgar.

As if holding a broken object, he picked up a book lying next to the computer and opened it to where he had left off. It was a thick black book without a dust jacket, so I could not make out the title. From the moment he opened it, you could see that the young mans concentration on his book was total. He seemed to have forgotten that I was there. I would have liked to read something too, to pass the time, but nothing had been provided for that. I crossed my legs, settled into the sofa, and listened to Haydn (though if pressed, I could not have sworn it was Haydn). It was fairly nice music, but the kind that seems to melt into air the moment it emerges from its source. On the young mans desk, aside from the computer, was an ordinary black telephone, a pencil tray, and a calendar, I was wearing virtually the same outfit I had had on the day before- baseball jacket, hooded sweatshirt, blue jeans, and tennis shoes. I had just grabbed whatever came to hand before leaving the house. In this immaculate, orderly room, in the presence of this immaculate, handsome youth, my tennis shoes looked especially dirty and worn out. No, they were dirty and worn out, the heels practically gone, the color an indeterminate gray, the uppers full of holes. These shoes had been through a lot, soaking up everything in their path with fatal certainty. I had worn them every day for the past year, climbing over the back wall countless times, stepping in dog shit now and then on trips down the alley, climbing down to the bottom of the well. No wonder they were dirty and worn out. Not since quitting my job had it occurred to me to think about what shoes I had on. Studying them so closely this way, I felt with new intensity just how alone I was, just how far the world had left me behind. It was time for me to buy a new pair of shoes, I told myself. These were just too awful.

Before long, the Haydn came to an end-an abrupt and messy end. After a short pause, some kind of Bach harpsichord piece started (though I couldn't have sworn this was Bach, either). I crossed and recrossed my legs. The telephone rang. The young man marked the place he was reading with a slip of paper, pushed his book aside, and picked up the receiver. He held it to his ear and gave a slight nod. Focusing on his desktop calendar, he marked it with a pencil. Then he held the receiver near the surface of the desk and rapped his knuckles twice against the wood as if knocking on a door. After this, he hung up. The call had lasted some twenty seconds, during which the young man had spoken not a word. In fact, he had not made a sound with his voice since letting me into the room. Was he unable to talk? Certainly he could hear, judging from the way he had answered the phone and listened to what was being said at the other end.

He sat looking at his phone for a while as if in thought. Then he rose without a sound, walked around his desk, making straight for where I was sitting, and sat down next to me. He then placed his hands on his knees in perfect alignment. They were slim, refined hands, as one might have imagined from his face. His knuckles and finger joints did have a few wrinkles; there was no such thing as fingers without wrinkles: they needed a few, at least, to move and bend. But his fingers did not have many wrinkles-no more than the minimum necessary. I looked at his hands as unobtrusively as I could. This young man must be the womans son, I thought. His fingers were shaped like hers. Once that thought entered my mind, I started to notice other points of resemblance: the small, rather sharp nose, the crystalline clarity of the eyes. The pleasant smile had begun to play about his lips again, appearing and disappearing with all the naturalness of a seaside cave at the mercy of the waves. Soon he rose to his feet, in the same swift manner with which he had sat down beside me, and his lips silently formed the words This way, please. Despite the absence of sound, it was clear to me what he wanted to say. I stood and followed him. He opened the inner door and guided me through it.

Beyond the door was a. small kitchen and washbasin, and beyond that was yet another room, one much like the reception room in which I had been sitting, but a size smaller. It had the same kind of well-aged leather sofa and a window of the same shape. The carpet on the floor was the same color as the other one as well. In the middle of the room was a large workbench, with scissors, toolboxes, pencils, and design books laid out in an orderly fashion. There were two tailors dummies. The window had not merely a blind but two sets of curtains, cloth and lace, both shut tight. With the ceiling light off, the room was gloomy, as on the evening of a cloudy day. One bulb of the floor lamp near the sofa had been turned off. A glass vase holding gladiolus blossoms stood on the coffee table in front of the sofa. The flowers were fresh, as if cut only moments before, the water in the vase clear. The music was not audible in this room, nor were there any pictures or clocks on the walls.

The young man gestured silently again, this time for me to sit on the sofa. Once I had seated myself (on a similarly comfortable couch) in accordance with his instructions, he took something like a pair of swim goggles from his pants pocket and stretched them out before my eyes. They were swim goggles, just ordinary goggles made of rubber and plastic, much the same as the ones I used when swimming in the ward pool. Why he had brought them out here I had no idea. I couldn't even imagine. the young man said to me. Properly speaking, he said nothing. He simply moved his lips that way and moved his fingers ever so slightly. Still, I had an accurate understanding of what he was saying to me. I nodded.

I nodded again. I nodded. The young man walked behind the sofa and put the goggles over my eyes. He stretched the rubber strap around to the back of my head and adjusted the eye cups so that the foam pads properly surrounded my eyes. The one way these goggles were different from the ones I always used was that I couldn't see anything through them. A thick layer of something had been painted over the transparent plastic. A complete- and artificial-darkness surrounded me. I couldn't see a thing. I had no idea where the light of the floor lamp was shining. I had the illusion that I myself had been painted over with a thick layer of something.

The young man rested his hands lightly on my shoulders as if to encourage me. He had slim, delicate fingers, but they were in no way fragile. They had the strangely assertive presence of the fingers of a pianist resting on the keyboard, and coming through them I could sense a kind of goodwill-or, if not precisely goodwill, something very close to it. they conveyed to me. I nodded. Then he left the room. In the darkness, I could hear his footsteps drawing into the distance, and then the sound of a door opening and closing.

I went on sitting in the same position for some time after the young man left the room. The darkness in which I sat had something strange about it. In my being unable to see anything, it was the same as the darkness I had experienced in the well, but otherwise it had a certain quality that made it entirely different. It had no direction or depth, no weight or tangibility. It was less like darkness and more like nothingness. I had merely been rendered temporarily blind by artificial means. I felt my muscles stiffening, my mouth and throat going dry. What was going to happen to me? But then I recalled the touch of the young mans fingers. Don't worry, they had told me. For no clear reason, I felt that those words of his were something I could believe in.

The room was so utterly still that when I held my breath I was overtaken by a sense that the world had stopped in its tracks and everything would eventually be swallowed up by water, sinking to eternal depths. But no, the world was apparently still moving. Before long, a woman opened the door and stepped quietly into the room.

I knew it was a woman from the delicate fragrance of her perfume. This was not a scent a man would wear. It was probably expensive perfume. I tried to recall the scent, but I could not do so with confidence. Suddenly robbed of my sight, I found my sense of smell had also been thrown off balance. The one thing I could be sure of was that the perfume I was smelling now was different from that of the well-dressed woman who had directed me to this place. I could hear the slight sound of the womans clothes rustling as she crossed the room and gently lowered herself onto the sofa, to my right. So lightly did she settle into the cushions of the sofa that it was clear she was a small woman.

Sitting there, the woman stared straight at me. I could feel her eyes focused on my face. You really can feel someone looking at you, even if you cant see, I realized. The woman, never moving, went on staring at me for a long time. I sensed her slow, gentle breathing but could not hear a sound. I remained in the same position, facing straight ahead. The mark on my cheek felt slightly feverish to me. The color was probably more vivid than usual. Eventually, the woman reached out and placed her fingertips on my mark, very carefully, as if inspecting some valuable, fragile thing. Then she began to caress it.

I didn't know how to react to this, or how I was expected to react. I had only the most distant sense of reality. I felt strangely detached, as if trying to leap from one moving vehicle to another that was moving at a different speed. I existed in the empty space between the two, a vacant house. I was now a vacant house, just as the Miyawaki house had once been. This woman had come into the vacant house and, for some unknown reason, was running her hands all over the walls and pillars. Whatever her reason might be, vacant house that I was (and I was that and nothing more), I could do nothing (I needed to do nothing) about it. Once that thought crossed my mind, I was able to relax somewhat.

The woman said nothing. Aside from the sound of rustling clothes, the room was enveloped in a deep silence. The woman traced her fingertips over my skin as if trying to read some minute secret script that had been engraved there ages ago.

Finally, she stopped caressing my mark. She then stood up, came around behind me, and, instead of her fingertips, used her tongue. Just as May Kasahara had done in the garden last summer, she licked my mark. The way she did it, however, was far more mature than the way May Kasahara had done it. Her tongue moved and clung to my flesh with far greater skill. With varying pressure, changing angles, and different movements, it tasted and sucked and stimulated my mark. I felt a hot, moist throbbing below the waist. I didn't want to have an erection. To do so would have been all too meaningless. But I couldn't stop myself.

I struggled to superimpose my own image upon that of a vacant house. I thought of myself as a pillar, a wall, a ceiling, a floor, a roof, a window, a door, a stone. It seemed the most reasonable thing to do.

I close my eyes and separate from this flesh of mine, with its filthy tennis shoes, its weird goggles, its clumsy erection. Separating from the flesh is not so difficult. It can put me far more at ease, allow me to cast off the discomfort I feel. I am a weed-choked garden, a flightless stone bird, a dry well. I know that a woman is inside this vacant house that is myself. I cannot see her, but it doesn't bother me anymore. If she is looking for something inside here, I might as well give it to her.

The passage of time becomes increasingly unclear. Of all the kinds of time available to me here, I lose track of which kind I am using. My consciousness goes gradually back into my flesh, and in turn the woman seems to be leaving. She leaves the room as quietly as she came in. The rustle of clothing. The shimmering smell of perfume. The sound of a door opening, then closing. Part of my consciousness is still there as an empty house. At the same time, I am still here, on this sofa, as me. I think, What should I do now? I cant decide which one is reality. Little by little, the word here seems to split in two inside me. I am here, but I am also here. Both seem equally real to me. Sitting on the sofa, I steep myself in this strange separation.

Soon the door opened and someone came into the room. I could tell from the footsteps that it was the young man. He came around behind me and took off the goggles. The room was dark, the only light the single bulb of the floor lamp. I rubbed my eyes with my palms, making them accustomed to the world of reality. The young man was now wearing a suit coat. Its deep gray, with hints of green, was a perfect match for the color of his tie. With a soft smile, he took my arm, helped me to stand, and guided me to the back door of the room. He opened the door to reveal a bathroom on the other side. It had a toilet and, beyond the toilet, a small shower stall. The toilet lid was down, and he had me sit on top of it while he turned the shower on. He waited for the hot water to begin flowing, then he gestured for me to take a shower. He unwrapped a fresh bar of soap and handed the cake to me. Then he went out of the bathroom and closed the door. Why did I have to take a shower here? I didn't get it.

I finally got it as I was undressing. I had come in my underpants. I stepped into the hot shower and washed myself with the new green soap. I rinsed away the semen sticking to my pubic hair. I stepped out of the shower and dried myself with a large towel. Beside the towel I found a pair of Calvin Klein boxer shorts and a T-shirt, both still in their vinyl wrappers and both my size. Maybe they had planned for me to come in my pants. I stared at myself in the mirror for a while, but my head was not working right. I threw my soiled underwear into a wastebasket and put on the clean, white new underpants, the clean, white new T-shirt. Then I put on my jeans and slipped my sweatshirt over my head. I put on my socks and my dirty tennis shoes and finally my baseball jacket. Then I stepped out of the bathroom.

The young man was waiting for me outside and guided me to the original waiting room.

The room looked as it had earlier. On the desk lay the same opened book, next to which stood the computer. Anonymous classical music flowed from the speakers. The young man had me sit on the sofa and brought me a glass of chilled mineral water. I drank half the glass.

I seem to be tired, I said. The voice didn't sound like mine. Nor had I been intending to say any such thing. The words had come out of nowhere, without reference to my will. The voice was definitely mine, though.

The young man nodded. He took a white envelope from the inner pocket of his suit coat and slipped it into the inner pocket of my baseball jacket. Then he nodded once again. I looked outside. The sky was dark, and the street was aglow with neon signs, the light from office building windows, street lamps, and headlights. The thought of staying in this room any longer became increasingly intolerable. Without a word, I stood up, crossed the room, opened the door, and went out. The young man watched me from the place where he stood by his desk, but he remained as silent as ever and made no attempt to stop me from leaving.

The return commute had Akasaka Mitsuke Station churning. In no mood for the bad air of the subway, I decided to go as far as I could on foot. I walked past the palace for foreign dignitaries as far as Yotsuya Station. Then I walked along Shinjuku Boulevard and went into a small place without too many people, to have a glass of draft beer. My first swallow made me notice how hungry I was, so I ordered a snack. I looked at my watch and realized it was almost seven o'clock. Come to think of it, though, the time of day was of no concern to me.

At one point, I noticed there was something in the inner pocket of my jacket. I had forgotten all about the envelope the young man had given me on my way out. It was just an ordinary white envelope, but holding it, I realized it was much heavier than it looked. More than just heavy, though, its weight had something strange about it, as though there were something inside holding its breath. After an indecisive moment, I tore it open-which was something I would have to do sooner or later. Inside was a neat bundle of ten-thousand-yen notes. Brand-new ten-thousand-yen notes, without a crease or wrinkle. They didn't look real, they were so new, though I could find no reason for them not to be new. There were twenty bills in all. I counted them again to be sure. Yes, no doubt about it: twenty bills. Two hundred thousand yen.

I returned the money to the envelope and the envelope to my pocket.

Then I picked up the fork from the table and stared at it for no reason. The first thing that popped into my head was that I would use the money to buy myself a new pair of shoes. That was the one thing I needed most. I paid my bill and went back out to Shinjuku Boulevard, where there was a large shoe store. I chose some very ordinary blue sneakers and told the salesman my size without checking the price. I would wear them home if they fit, I said. The salesman (who might have been the owner) threaded white laces through the eyelets of both sneakers and asked, What shall I do with your old shoes? I said he could throw them away, but then I reconsidered and said I would take them home.

He flashed me a nice smile. An old pair of good shoes can come in handy, even if they're a little messy, he said, as if to imply that he was used to seeing such dirty shoes all the time. Then he put the old ones in the box the new ones had come in and put the box in a shopping bag. Lying in their new box, the old tennis shoes looked like tiny animal corpses. I paid the bill with one of the crisp new ten-thousand-yen notes from the envelope, and for change received a few not-so-new thousand-yen notes. Taking the bag with the old shoes along, I got on the Odakyu train and went home. I hung on to the strap, mingling with homebound commuters, and thought about the new items I was wearing-my new underpants and T-shirt and shoes.

Home again, I sat at the kitchen table as usual, drinking a beer and listening to music on the radio. It then occurred to me that I wanted to talk to someone-about the weather, about political stupidity; it didn't matter what. I just wanted to talk to somebody, but I couldn't think of anyone, not one person I could talk to. I didn't even have the cat.

Shaving the next morning, I inspected the mark on my face, as usual. I couldn't see any change in it. I sat on the veranda and, for the first time in a long time, spent the day just looking at the garden out back. It was a nice morning, a nice afternoon. The leaves of the trees fluttered in the early-spring breeze.

I took the envelope containing the nineteen ten-thousand-yen notes out of my jacket pocket and put it in my desk drawer. It still felt strangely heavy in my hand. Some kind of meaning seemed to permeate the heaviness, but I could not understand what it was. It reminded me of something, I suddenly realized. What I had done reminded me of something. Staring hard at the envelope in the drawer, I tried to remember what it was, but I couldn't do it.

I closed the drawer, went to the kitchen, made myself some tea, and was standing by the sink, drinking the tea, when I remembered what it was. What I had done yesterday was amazingly similar to the work Creta Kano had done as a call girl. You go to a designated place, sleep with someone you don't know, and get paid. I had not actually slept with the woman (just come in my pants), but aside from that, it was the same thing. In need of a certain amount of money, I had offered my flesh to someone to get it. I thought about this as I drank my tea. A dog barked in the distance. Shortly afterward, I heard a small propeller plane. But my thoughts would not come together. I went out to the veranda again and looked at the garden, wrapped in afternoon sunlight. When I tired of doing that, I looked at the palms of my hands. To think that I should have become a prostitute! Who could have imagined that I would have sold my body for money? Or that I would have first bought new sneakers with the money?

I wanted to breathe the outside air, so I decided to go shopping nearby. I walked down the street, wearing my new sneakers. I felt as if these new shoes had transformed me into a new being, entirely different from what I had been before. The street scene and the faces of the people I passed looked somewhat different too. In the neighborhood supermarket, I picked up vegetables and eggs and milk and fish and coffee beans, paying for them with the bills I had received as change at the shoe store the night before. I wanted to tell the round-faced, middle- aged woman at the register that I had made this money the previous day by selling my body. I had earned two hundred thousand yen. Two hundred thousand yen! I could slave away at the law office where I used to work, doing overtime every day for a month, and I might come home with a little over one hundred fifty thousand yen. That's what I wanted to say to her.

But of course I said nothing. I handed over the money and received a paper bag filled with groceries in return.

One thing was sure: things had started to move. I told myself this as I walked home clutching my bag of groceries. Now all I had to do was hold on tight to keep from being knocked off. If I could do that, I would probably end up somewhere-somewhere different from where I was now, at least.

My premonition was not mistaken. When I got home, the cat came out to greet me. Just as I opened the front door, he let out a loud meow as if he had been waiting all day and came up to me, bent-tip tail held high. It was Noboru Wataya, missing now for almost a year. I set the bag of groceries down and scooped him up in my arms.

5 A Place You Can Figure Out If You Think About It Really, Really Hard (May Kasahara's Point of View: 1)

Hi, Mr. Wind-Up Bird.

I'll bet you think I'm in a classroom somewhere, studying with a textbook open in front of me, like any ordinary high school kid. Sure, last time we met I told you myself that I was going to go to another school, so it would be natural for you to think so. And in fact, I did go to another school, a private boarding school for girls, far, far away, a fancy one, with big, clean rooms like hotel rooms, and a cafeteria where you could choose whatever you wanted to eat, and big, shiny new tennis courts and a swimming pool, so naturally it was pretty expensive, a place for rich girls. Problem rich girls. You can imagine what it was like-an honest-to-goodness refined-country-school kind of thing in the mountains. It was surrounded by a high wall topped with barbed wire, and it had this huge iron gate that Godzilla himself couldn't have kicked in and round-the-clock guards clunking around like robots-not so much to keep people on the outside from getting in as to keep people on the inside from getting out.

So now you're going to ask me, Why go to such an awful place if you know its so awful? You're right, but I had no choice. The main thing I wanted was to get out of the house, but after all the problems I had caused, that was the only school charitable enough to accept me as a transfer student. So I made up my mind to stick it out. But it really was awful! People use the word nightmarish, but it was worse than that. I really did have nightmares in that place- all the time- and Id wake up soaked in sweat, but even then Id wish I could have kept dreaming, because my nightmares were way better than reality in that place. I wonder if you know what thats like, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. I wonder if you've ever been in the pits like that.

So finally, I stayed in this high-class hotel/jail/country school for only one semester. When I got home for spring vacation, I announced to my parents that if I had to go back there, I was going to kill myself. Id stuff three tampons down my throat and drink tons of water; Id slash my wrists; Id dive headfirst off the school roof. And I meant what I said. I wasn't kidding. Both my parents put together have the imagination of a tree frog, but they knew- from experience- that when I got going like that, it wasn't an empty threat.

So anyhow, I never went back to the place. From March into April, I shut myself up in the house, reading, watching TV, and just plain vegging out. And a hundred times a day, Id think, I want to see Mr. Wind-Up Bird. I wanted to slip down the alley, jump the fence, and have a nice long talk with you. But it wasn't that easy. It would've been a replay of the summer. So I just watched the alley from my room and wondered to myself, Whats Mr. Wind- Up Bird up to now? Spring is slowly, quietly taking over the whole world, and Mr. Wind-Up Bird is in it too, but whats happening in his life? Has Kumiko come home to him? Whats going on with those strange women Malta Kano and Creta Kano? Has Noboru Wataya the cat come back? Has the mark disappeared from Mr. Wind-Up Birds cheek ... ?

After a month of living like that, I couldn't take it anymore. I don't know how or when it happened, but for me that neighborhood is nothing now but Mr. Wind-Up Birds world, and when I'm in it, I'm nothing but the me contained in Mr. Wind-Up Birds world. And its not just a sort-of-kind-of thing. Its not your fault, of course, but still... So I had to find my own place.

I thought about it and thought and thought, and finally it hit me where I had to go.

(Hint) Its a place you can figure out if you think about it really, really hard. You'll be able to imagine where I am if you make the effort. Its not a school, its not a hotel, its not a hospital, its not a jail, its not a house. Its a kind of special place way far away. Its... a secret. For now, at least.

I'm in the mountains again, in another place surrounded by a wall (but not such a huge wall), and theres a gate and a nice old man who guards the gate, but you can go in and out anytime you like. Its a huge piece of land, with its own little woods and a pond, and if you go for a walk when the sun comes up you see lots of animals: lions and zebras and-no, I'm kidding, but you can see cute little animals like badgers and pheasants. Theres a dormitory, and thats where I live.

I'm writing this letter in a tiny room at a tiny desk near a tiny bed next to a tiny bookcase beside a tiny closet, none of which have the slightest decorative touch, and all of which are designed to meet the minimum functional requirements. On the desk is a fluorescent lamp, a teacup, the stationery for writing this letter, and a dictionary. To be honest, I almost never use the dictionary. I just don't like dictionaries. I don't like the way they look, and I don't like what they say inside. Whenever I use a dictionary, I make a face and think, Who needs to know that? People like me don't get along well with dictionaries. Say I look up transition and it says: passage from one state to another. I think, So what? Its got nothing to do with me. So when I see a dictionary on my desk I feel like I'm looking at some strange dog leaving a twisty piece of poop on our lawn out back. But anyway, I bought a dictionary because I figured I might have to look something up while I was writing to you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird.

Also I've got a dozen pencils, all sharpened and laid out in a row. They're brand-new. I just bought them at the stationery store-especially for writing to you (not that I'm trying to make you feel grateful or anything: just-sharpened, brand-new pencils are really nice, don't you think?). Also I've got an ashtray and cigarettes and matches. I don't smoke as much as I used to, just once in a while for a mood change (like right now, for instance). So thats everything on my desk. The desk faces a window, and the window has curtains. The curtains have a sweet little flower design-not that I picked them out or anything: they came with the window. That flower design is the only thing here that doesn't look absolutely plain and simple. This is a perfect room for a teenage girl-or maybe not. No, its more like a model jail cell designed with good intentions for first offenders. My boom box is on the shelf (the big one-remember, Mr. Wind-Up Bird?), and I've got Bruce Springsteen on now. Its Sunday afternoon and everybody's out having fun, so theres nobody to complain if I turn it up loud.

The only thing I do for fun these days is go to the nearby town on weekends and buy the cassette tapes I want at a record store. (I almost never buy books. If theres something I want to read, I can get it at our little library.) I'm pretty friendly with the girl next door. She bought a used car, so when I want to go to town, I go with her. And guess what? I've been learning to drive it. Theres so much open space here, I can practice all I want. I don't have a license yet, but I'm a pretty good driver.

To tell you the truth, though, aside from buying music tapes, going to town is not all that much fun. Everybody says they have to get out once a week or they'll go nuts, but I get my relief by staying here when everybody's gone and listening to my favorite music like this. I once went on a kind of double date with my friend with the car. Just to give it a try. Shes from around here, so she knows a lot of people. My date was a nice enough guy, a college student, but I don't know, I still cant really get a clear sense of all kinds of things. Its as if they're out there, far away, lined up like dolls in a shooting gallery, and all these transparent curtains are hanging down between me and the dolls.

To tell you the truth, when I was seeing you that summer, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, like, when we were sitting at the kitchen table talking and drinking beer and things, I would think, What would I do if Mr. Wind-Up Bird all of a sudden pushed me down and tried to rape me? I didn't know what I would do. Of course, I would have resisted and said, No, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, you shouldn't do this! But I also would have been thinking I had to explain why it was wrong and why you shouldn't be doing it, and the more I thought, the more mixed up I would get, and by that time you probably would have finished raping me. My heart would pound like crazy when I thought about this, and I would think the whole thing was kind of unfair. I'll bet you never had any idea I had thoughts like this going on in my head. Do you think this is stupid? You probably do. I mean, it is stupid. But at the time, I was absolutely, tremendously serious about these things. Which, I think, is why I pulled the rope ladder out of the well and put the cover on with you down inside there that time, kind of like sealing you off. That way, there would be no more Mr. Wind-Up Bird around, and I wouldn't have to be bothered by those thoughts for a while.

I'm sorry, though. I know I should never have done that to you (or to anybody). But I cant help myself sometimes. I know exactly what I'm doing, but I just cant stop. That's my greatest weakness.

I don't believe that you would ever rape me, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. I know that now, somehow. Its not that you would never, ever do it (I mean, nobody knows for sure whats going to happen), but maybe that you would at least not do it to confuse me. I don't know how to put it exactly, but I just sort of feel that way.

All right, enough of this rape stuff.

Anyhow, even though I might go out on a date with a boy, emotionally I just wouldn't be able to concentrate. Id be smiling and chatting away, and my mind would be floating around somewhere else, like a balloon with a broken string. Id be thinking about one unrelated thing after another. I don't know, I guess finally I want to be alone a little while longer. And I want to let my thoughts wander freely. In that sense, I guess, I'm probably still on the road to recovery.

I'll write again soon. Next time, I'll probably be able to go a little further into all kinds of things.

P.S. Before the next letter comes, try to guess where I am and what I'm doing.

6 Nutmeg and Cinnamon

The cat was covered from nose to tailtip with clumps of dried mud his fur stuck together in little balls, as if he had been rolling around on a filthy patch of ground for a long time. He purred with excitement as I picked him up and examined him all over. He might have been somewhat emaciated, but aside from that, he looked little different from when I had last seen him: face, body, fur. His eyes were clear, and he had no wounds He certainly didn't seem like a cat that had been missing for a year. It was more as if he had come home after a single night of carousing.

I fed him on the veranda: a plateful of sliced mackerel that I had bought at the supermarket. He was obviously starved. He polished off the fish slices so quickly he would gag now and then and spit pieces back into the plate. I found the cats water dish under the sink and filled it to the brim. He came close to emptying it. Having accomplished this much, he started licking his mud-caked fur, but then, as if suddenly recalling that I was there, he climbed into my lap, curled up, and went to sleep The cat slept with his forelegs tucked under his body, his face buried in his tail. He purred loudly at first, but that grew quieter, until he entered a state of complete and silent sleep, all defenses down. I sat in a sunny spot on the veranda, petting him gently so as not to wake him.

I had not thought about the cats special soft, warm touch for a very long time. So much had been happening to me that I had all but forgotten that the cat had disappeared. Holding this soft, small living creature in my lap this way, though, and seeing how it slept with complete trust in me, I felt a warm rush in my chest. I put my hand on the cats chest and felt his heart beating. The pulse was faint and fast, but his heart, like mine, was ticking off the time allotted to his small body with all the restless earnestness of my own.

Where had this cat been for a year? What had he been doing? Why had he chosen to come back now, all of a sudden? And where were the traces of the time he had lost? I wished I could ask him these questions. If only he could have answered me!

I brought an old cushion out to the veranda and set the cat down on top of it. He was as limp as a load of wash. When I picked him up, the slits of his eyes opened, and he opened his mouth, but he made no sound. He settled himself onto the cushion, gave a yawn, and fell back asleep. Once I was satisfied he was resting, 1 went to the kitchen to put away the groceries I had brought home. I placed the tofu and vegetables and fish in their compartments in the refrigerator, then glanced out to the veranda again. The cat was sleeping in the same position.

We had always called him Noboru Wataya because the look in his eyes resembled that of Kumiko's brother, but that had just been our little joke, not the cats real name. In fact, we had let six years go by without giving him a name.

Even as a joke, though, Noboru Wataya was no name for a cat of ours. The real Noboru Wataya had simply become too great a presence in the course of those six years-especially now that he had been elected to the House of Representatives. Saddling the cat with that name forever was out of the question. As long as he remained in this house, it would be necessary to give him a new name, a name of his own-and the sooner the better. It should be a simple, tangible, realistic name, something you could see with your eyes and feel with your hands, something that could erase the sound and memory and meaning of the name Noboru Wataya.

I brought in the plate that had held the fish. It looked as clean as if it had just been washed and wiped. The cat must have enjoyed his meal. I was glad I had happened to buy some mackerel just at the time the cat had chosen to come home. It seemed like a good omen, fortunate for both me and the cat. Yes, that was it: I would call him Mackerel. Rubbing him behind the ears, I informed him of the change: You're not Noboru Wataya anymore, I said. From now on, your name is Mackerel. I wanted to shout it to the world.

I sat on the veranda next to Mackerel the cat, reading a book until the sun began to set. The cat slept as soundly as if he had been knocked unconscious, his quiet breathing like a distant bellows, his body rising and falling with the sound. I would reach out now and then to feel his warmth and make sure the cat was really there. It was wonderful to be able to do that: to reach out and touch something, to feel something warm. I had been missing that kind of experience.

Mackerel was still there the next morning. He had not disappeared. When I woke up, I found him sleeping next to me, on his side, legs stretched straight out. He must have wakened during the night and licked himself clean. The mud and hair balls were gone. He looked almost like his old self. He had always had a handsome coat of fur. I held him for a while, then fed him his breakfast and changed his water. Then I moved away from him and tried calling him by name: Mackerel. Finally, on the third try, he turned toward me and gave a little meow.

Now it was time for me to begin my new day. The cat had come back to me, and I had to begin to move forward to some extent. I took a shower and ironed a freshly laundered shirt. I put on a pair of cotton pants and my new sneakers. A hazy overcast filled the sky, but the weather was not especially cold. I decided to wear a thickish sweater without a coat. I took the train to Shinjuku, as usual, went through the underground passageway to the west exit plaza, and took a seat on my usual bench.

The woman showed up a little after three o'clock. She didn't seem astonished to see me, and I reacted to her approach without surprise. Our encounter was entirely natural. We exchanged no greetings, as if this had all been prearranged. I raised my face slightly, and she looked at me with a flicker of the lips.

She wore a springlike orange cotton top, a tight skirt the color of topaz, and small gold earrings. She sat down next to me and, as always, took a pack of Virginia Slims from her purse. She put a cigarette in her mouth and lit up with a slim gold lighter. This time she knew better than to offer me a smoke. And after taking two or three leisurely puffs herself, with an air of deep thought, she dropped her cigarette to the ground as if testing gravity conditions for the day. She then patted me on the knee and said, Come with me, after which she stood to leave. I crushed her cigarette out and did as she said. She raised her hand to stop a passing taxi and climbed in. I climbed in beside her. She then announced very clearly an address in Aoyama, after which she said nothing at all until the cab had threaded its way through thick traffic to Aoyama Boulevard. I watched the sights of Tokyo passing by the window. There were several new buildings that I had never seen before. The woman took a notebook from her bag and wrote something in it with a small gold pen. She looked at her watch now and then, as if checking on something. The watch was set in a gold bracelet. All the little accessories she carried with her seemed to be made of gold. Or was it that they turned to gold the moment she touched them?

She took me into a boutique on Omote Sando that featured designer brands. There she picked out two suits for me, both of thin material, one blue gray, the other dark gray. These were not suits I could have worn to the law firm: they even felt expensive. She did not offer any explanations, and I did not ask for them. I simply did as I was told. This reminded me of several so-called art films I had seen in college. Movies like that never explained what was going on. Explanations were rejected as some kind of evil that could only destroy the films reality. That was one way of thought, one way to look at things, no doubt, but it felt strange for me, as a real, live human being, to enter such a world.

I am of average build, so neither suit had to be altered other than to adjust the sleeves and pant legs. The woman picked out three dress shirts and three ties to match each shirt, then two belts and a half-dozen pairs of socks. She paid with a credit card and ordered them to deliver everything to my place. She seemed to have some kind of clear image in her mind of how I should look. It took her no time to pick out what she bought me. I would have spent more time at a stationers, picking out a new eraser. But I had to admit that her good taste in clothes was nothing short of astounding. The color and style of every shirt and tie she chose seemingly at random were perfectly coordinated, as if she had selected them after long, careful consideration. Nor were the combinations she came up with the least bit ordinary.

Next, she took me to a shoe store and bought me two pairs of shoes to go with the suits. This took no time, either. Again she paid with a credit card and asked for the items to be delivered to my house. Delivery seemed hardly necessary in the case of a couple of pairs of shoes, but this was apparently her way of doing things: pick things out fast, pay with a credit card, and have the stuff delivered.

Next, we went to a watchmakers and repeated the process. She bought me a stylish, elegant watch with an alligator band to go with the suits, and again she took almost no time picking it out. The price was somewhere up around fifty to sixty thousand yen. I had a cheap plastic watch, but this was apparently not good enough for her. The watch, at least, she did not have delivered. Instead, she had them wrap it and handed it to me without a word.

Next, she took me to a unisex hair salon. The place was like a dance studio, with shiny wooden floors, and mirrors covering the walls. There were fifteen chairs, and everywhere technicians were coming and going with shears and hairbrushes and whatnot in their hands. Potted plants stood at various points on the floor, and from two black Bose speakers on the ceiling came the faint sounds of one of those wandering Keith Jarrett piano solos. I was shown to a chair immediately. The woman must have set up an appointment for me from one of the stores we had visited. She gave detailed instructions to the thin man who would be cutting my hair. They obviously knew each other. As he responded to each of her instructions, he kept his eyes on my face in the mirror with an expression he might have worn studying a bowlful of celery fibers he was expected to eat. He had a face like the young Solzhenitsyn. The woman said to him, I'll be back when you're through, and left the salon with quick steps.

The man said very little as he cut my hair-This way, please, when it was time for my shampoo, Excuse me, when he brushed off clippings. At times when he moved away, I would reach out from under the barber cloth and touch the mark on my right cheek. This was the first time I had ever seen it in mirrors other than my own at home. The wall-sized mirrors reflected the images of many people, my image among them. And on my face shone this bright blue mark. It didn't seem ugly or unclean to me. It was simply part of me, something I would have to accept. I could feel people looking at it now and then-looking at its reflection in the mirror. But there were too many images in the mirror for me to be able to tell who. I just felt their eyes trained on the mark. My haircut ended in half an hour. My hair, which had been growing longer and longer since I left my job, was short once again. I moved to one of the chairs along the wall and sat there listening to music and reading a magazine in which I had no interest until the woman came back. She seemed pleased with my new hairstyle. She took a ten-thousand-yen note from her purse, paid the bill, and led me outside. There she came to a stop and studied me from head to toe, exactly the same way I always examined the cat, as if to see whether there was something she had forgotten to do. Apparently, there was not. Then she glanced at her gold watch and released a kind of sigh. It was nearly seven o'clock.

Lets have dinner, she said. Can you eat? I had had one slice of toast for breakfast and one doughnut for lunch. Probably, I said. She took me to a nearby Italian restaurant. They seemed to know her there. Without a word, we were shown to a quiet table in the back. As soon as I sat down across from her, she ordered me to put the entire contents of my pants pockets on the table. I did as I was told, saying nothing. My reality seemed to have left me and was now wandering around nearby. I hope it can find me, I thought. There was nothing special in my pockets: keys, handkerchief, wallet. She observed them with no show of interest, then picked up the wallet and looked inside. It contained about fifty-five hundred yen in cash, a telephone card, an ATM card, and my ward pool ID, nothing else. Nothing unusual. Nothing to prompt anyone to smell it or measure it or shake it or dip it in water or hold it up to the light. She handed it back to me with no change of expression.

I want you to go out tomorrow and buy a dozen handkerchiefs, a new wallet and key holder, she said. That much you can pick out yourself, I'm sure. And when was the last time you bought yourself new underwear?

I thought about it for a moment but couldn't remember. I cant remember, I said. Its been a while, I think, but I'm a little clean-crazy, and for a man living alone, I'm good about doing my laund- Never mind. I want you to buy a dozen tops and bottoms. I nodded without speaking. Just bring me a receipt. I'll pay for them. And make sure you buy the best they have. I'll pay your cleaning bills too. Don't wear a shirt more than once without sending it to the cleaners. All right?

I nodded again. The cleaner by the station would be happy to hear this. But, I thought to myself, proceeding to extend this one, concise conjunction, clinging to the window by surface tension, into a proper, full-length sentence: But why are you doing all this-buying me a whole new wardrobe, paying for my haircuts and cleaning?

She did not answer me. Instead, she took a Virginia Slim from her pocketbook and put it in her mouth. A tall waiter with regular features appeared from nowhere and, with practiced movements, lit her cigarette with a match. He struck the match with a clean, dry sound-the kind of sound that could stimulate a persons appetite. When he was through, he presented us with menus. She did not bother to look, however, and she told the waiter not to bother with the days specials. Bring me a salad and a dinner roll, and some kind of fish with white meat. Just a few drops of dressing on the salad, and a dash of pepper. And a glass of sparkling water, no ice.

I didn't want to bother looking at the menu. I'll have the same, I said. The waiter bowed and withdrew. My reality was still having trouble locating me, it seemed.

I'm asking purely out of curiosity, I said, trying once more to elicit an explanation from her. I'm not turning critical after you've bought me all these things, but is it really worth all the time and trouble and money?

Still she would not answer. I'm just curious, I said again.

Again no answer. She was too busy looking at the oil painting on the wall to answer my question. It was a picture of what I assumed was an Italian landscape, with a well-pruned pine tree, and several reddish farmhouses lining the hills. The houses were all somewhat small but pleasant. I wondered what kind of people might live in such houses: probably normal people living normal lives. None of them had inscrutable women coming out of nowhere to buy them suits and shoes and watches. None of them had to calculate the huge funds they would need to get possession of some dried-up well. I felt a stab of envy for people living in such a normal world. Envy is not an emotion I feel very often, but the scene in the painting aroused that sense in me to an almost amazing degree. If only I could have entered the picture right then and there! If only I could have walked into one of those farmhouses, enjoyed a glass of wine, then crawled under the covers and gone to sleep without a thought in my head!

The waiter came before long and placed glasses of sparkling water in front of the woman and me. She crushed out her cigarette in an ashtray.

Why don't you ask me something else? she said. While I was thinking about something else to ask, she took a sip of her sparkling water. Was that young man in the office in Akasaka your son? I asked. Of course, she answered without hesitation. Is he unable to speak? The woman nodded. He never spoke much to begin with, but all of a sudden, at the age of six, he stopped speaking entirely. He stopped using his voice in any way. Was there some kind of reason for that? She ignored this question. I tried to think of another. If he doesn't talk, how does he manage to take care of business? She wrinkled her brow just the slightest bit. She had not ignored my question, but she obviously had no intention of answering it. I'll bet you picked out everything he was wearing, from head to foot. The way you did with me. I do not like it when people wear the wrong thing. That is all. It is something I simply cannot- cannot- abide. I at least want the people around me to dress as well as possible. I want everything about them to look right, whether or not it can actually be seen.

I guess you don't like my appendix, then, I said, trying to make a joke.

Do you have some problem with the shape of your appendix? she asked, looking straight at me with an utterly serious expression. I regretted the joke.

Nothing at the moment, I said. I didn't really mean anything by it. It was just a kind of for instance.

She kept her questioning stare fixed on me a while longer-she was probably thinking about my appendix.

So anyhow, I want the people around me to look right, even if I have to pay for it myself. That is all there is to it. So don't let it worry you. I am doing this entirely for myself. I feel a personal, almost physical, revulsion for messy clothing.

The way a musician cant stand hearing music played off key? Something like that. So do you buy clothing this way for all the people around you? I guess I do. Not that I have so many people around me, to begin with. I mean, I may not like what they wear, but I cant exactly buy clothing for all the people in the world now, can I?

Everything has its limits, I said. Exactly.

Soon our salads came to the table, and we ate them. As the woman had specified, each salad had no more than a few drops of dressing-so few you could have counted them on one hand.

Do you have anything else you want to ask me? she asked.

Id like to know your name, I said. I mean, it would be helpful if you had a name or something I could use.

She said nothing for a few moments, as she crunched on a radish. Then she formed a deep wrinkle between her eyebrows, as if she had just found something bitter in her mouth by mistake. Why would you have to use my name? You wont be writing me any letters, I'm sure. Names are, if anything, irrelevant.

But what if I have to call you from behind, for example? Id need your name for that.

She laid her fork in her plate and dabbed at her mouth with her napkin. I see what you mean, she said. That never crossed my mind. You're right, though. You might very well need my name in a situation like that.

She sat there thinking for a long time. While she was thinking, I ate my salad.

Lets see, now: you need a suitable name you can use for things like calling me from behind, correct?

That's pretty much it. So it doesn't have to be my real name, correct? I nodded. A name, a name ... what kind of name would be best? Something simple, something easy to call out, I would think. If possible, something concrete, something real, some thing you can really touch and see. That way, it would be easy to remember.

For example? For example, I call my cat Mackerel. In fact, I just named him yesterday. Mackerel, she said aloud, as if to confirm the sound of the word. Then she stared at the salt and pepper shakers on the table for a while, raised her face to me, and said, Nutmeg. Nutmeg?

It just popped into my head. You can call me that, if you don't mind. No, I don't mind at all. So what should I call your son? Cinnamon. Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme, I said, with a hint of melody. Nutmeg Akasaka and Cinnamon Akasaka. Not bad, don't you think? Nutmeg Akasaka and Cinnamon Akasaka: Wouldn't May Kasahara have been shocked if she knew that I had made the acquaintance of such people! For heavens sake, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, why cant you ever get involved with people who are a little more normal? Indeed, why not, May Kasahara? It was a question I could never have answered.

Come to think of it, I said, last year I met two women named Malta Kano and Creta Kano. As a result of which, all kinds of things happened to me. Neither of them is around anymore, though.

Nutmeg gave a little nod but offered no opinion in response.

They just disappeared somewhere, I added feebly. Like the dew on a summer morning. Or like a star at daybreak.

She brought a forkful of something that looked like chicory to her mouth. Then, as if suddenly recalling a promise made long before, she shot her hand out and took a drink of water.

Don't you want to know about that money? The money you got the day before yesterday? Am I wrong?

No, you are not wrong. I would very much like to know about that. I don't mind telling you, but it could be a very long story.

One that would end by dessert?

Probably not, said Nutmeg Akasaka.

7 The Mystery of the Hanging House

SETAGAYA, TOKYO: THE MYSTERY OF THE HANGING HOUSE Who Bought Jinxed Land After Family Suicide?

Whats Going On in Posh Neighborhood?

[From The ---- Weekly, October 7] Locals call this plot in----2-chome, Setagaya, the hanging house. Located in a quiet residential neighborhood, this 3,500-square-foot piece of prime real estate with fine southern exposure is a virtually ideal location for a home, but those in the know agree on one thing: they wouldn't take it if you gave it to them. And the reason for this is simple: every known owner of this property, without exception, has met with a terrible fate. Our investigations have revealed that, since the start of the Showa Period, in 1926, no fewer than seven owner occupants of this property have ended their lives in suicide, the majority by hanging or asphyxiation.

[Details on suicides omitted here] Bogus Firm Buys Jinxed Land The most recent in what can hardly be considered a coincidental string of tragedies is the murder-suicide of the family of Kojiro Miyawaki [photo], owner of the long-established Rooftop Grill restaurant chain, headquartered in the Ginza. Miyawaki sold all his restaurants and declared bankruptcy two years ago in the face of massive debt, but thereafter he was pursued by several nonbank lenders with ties to organized crime. Finally, in January of this year, Miyawaki used his belt to strangle his fourteen-year-old daughter, Yukie, in her sleep at an inn in Takamatsu City, after which he and his wife, Natsuko, hanged themselves with ropes they had brought with them for that purpose. The Miyawaki's eldest daughter, a college student at the time, is still missing.

When he bought the property in April 1972, Miyawaki knew of the ominous rumors surrounding the place, but he laughed them off, declaring, Those were just coincidences.

After purchasing the land, he had the long-vacant house demolished and the lot graded. To be on the safe side, he called in a Shinto priest to exorcise any evil spirits that might still be lurking there, and only then did he have his new, two-story home built. Things went well after that. The family led a tranquil life. Neighbors agree that the Miyawaki home appeared to be harmonious, the daughters bright and happy. But after ten years, the family fortunes took that sudden, disastrous turn.

Miyawaki lost the house, which he had put up as collateral, in the fall of 1983, but squabbling among his creditors with regard to the order of reimbursement kept final disposal of it in abeyance until a court-mediated settlement last summer, which opened the way for sale of the land. It was purchased initially by a major Tokyo real - estate firm, --Land and Buildings, -at a price far below current market value. The company proceeded to demolish the Miyawaki's house and tried to sell it as an empty lot. A prime piece of Setagaya property, it attracted much interest, but every deal fell through when buyers heard about the jinx attached to the land. According to Mr. M, head of -- Land and Buildings sales division: Yes, of course we had heard some of the bad stories connected with the property, but finally its a great location, and everybody's so desperate for prime real estate these days, we figured if we set the price low enough somebody was bound to buy it. We were being optimistic. It hasn't budged since we put it on the market. People don't care about the price- they back out as soon as they hear the stories. And talk about bad timing! The poor Miyawaki's committed suicide in January, and all the news reports mentioned the land. Quite frankly, we didn't know what to do with it.

The lot finally sold in April of this year. Please don't ask me the buyer or the price, says Mr. M, so details are hard to come by, but according to the real estate grapevine, --- Land and Buildings had to let it go for something far below the asking price. Better to take a fair-sized loss than continue paying the bank interest on a property that would never sell. The purchasers knew exactly what they were getting into, of course, says Mr. M. We are not in the habit of deceiving our customers. We explained everything beforehand. They bought it knowing the entire history of the place.

Which leads us to the question of who would choose to buy such a jinxed piece of land. Our investigation has been far more difficult than we had imagined. According to the ward office registry, the purchaser is a company with offices in Minato Ward known as Akasaka Research, which claims to be involved in economic research and consulting, their purpose in buying the land being listed as construction of corporate residence. The corporate residence was, in fact, built this spring, but the firm itself is a typical paper company. We visited the Akasaka 2-chome address listed in the documents but found only a small plaque, Akasaka Research, on the door of one apartment in a small condominium building, and no one answered when we rang the bell.

Tight Security and Secrecy The present former Miyawaki residence is surrounded by a wall far higher than any other in the neighborhood. It has a huge, solid, black iron fence built to discourage peeping (see photo) and a video camera atop the gate pillar. We tried ringing the bell, but there was no response. Neighbors have seen the electric gate open and a black Mercedes 500SEL with tinted windows go in and out several times a day, but there has been no other sign of entry or egress, and no sounds are ever heard from the place.

Construction began in May, but always behind high fences, so neighbors have no idea what the house looks like. It was built with incredible speed: two and a half months from start to finish. A local caterer who delivered lunches to the construction site told us: The building itself was always hidden behind a canvas screen, so I really cant say, but it sure wasn't a big house-just one story, kind of like a concrete box, real plain. I remember thinking they were building a kind of air-raid shelter. It didn't look like an ordinary house that ordinary people live in-too small and not enough windows. But it wasn't an office building, either. The landscapers came in and planted some really impressive trees all over the place. The yard probably cost a bundle.

We tried calling every major landscaping firm in Tokyo, until we came up with the one who had worked on the former Miyawaki residence, but the owner could tell us nothing about the party who had ordered the job. The construction company had supplied them with a map of the garden and written orders calling for a good assemblage of mature, well-shaped trees. Our bid was high, but they accepted it and never tried to bargain.

The landscaper also told us that while they were at work on the garden, a well-digging company was called in and dug a deep well.

They built a scaffolding in one corner of the garden to bring up the dirt. I got a good look at the job because I was planting a persimmon tree right close by. They were digging out an old well that had been filled in. It still had the original concrete tube. They seemed to have an easy time of it, because it had just been filled in not long before. The weird thing is, they didn't strike water. I mean, it was a dry well to begin with, and they were just restoring it to its original condition, so there was no way they were going to find water. I don't know, it was weird, like they had some special reason for doing it.

Unfortunately, we have been unable to locate the company that dug the well, but we have been able to determine that the Mercedes 500SEL is the property of a major leasing company with headquarters in Chiyoda Ward and that the vehicle was leased for a year beginning in July by a company in Minato Ward. The identity of their customer could not be revealed to us by the leasing company, but judging from the confluence of events, it is almost certainly Akasaka Research. We might point out that the estimated annual leasing fee for a Mercedes 500SEL is ---- yen. The company offers a chauffeur with every car, but we have been unable to determine whether this particular 500SEL came with a driver or not.

People in the neighborhood were not anxious to speak with us about the hanging house.

This is not an area known for its neighborhood socializing, and most people probably do not want to become involved. Local resident Mr. A said to us: I used to keep my eyes open and tried to figure them out when they first came in here, but I'm sure these aren't mobsters or a political organization. Too few people go in and out of the place for that. I don't really get it. Its true they take some pretty impressive security measures, but I have no reason to complain, and I don't think any of the other neighbors are concerned. This is a whole lot better than having that vacant house with all the weird rumors.

Still, we'd like to know who the new owner is and what this Mr. X is using the place for. The mystery only deepens.

8 Down in the Well

I climb down the steel ladder anchored in the side of the well, and in the darkness at the bottom, I feel for the bat I always leave propped against the wall-the bat I brought home with me all but unconsciously from the house where I had followed the man with the guitar case.

The touch of the scarred old bat in the darkness at the bottom of the well fills me with a strange sense of peace. It helps me, too, to concentrate.

When I find the bat, I form a tight grip on the handle, like a baseball player entering the batters box, assuring myself that this is my bat. I go on from there to check that nothing has changed down here in the darkness, where there is nothing to see. I listen hard for anything new; I take a lungful of air; I scrape the ground with the sole of my shoe; I check the hardness of the wall with a few taps of the bat tip. These are just rituals designed to calm me down. The well bottom is like the bottom of the sea. Things down here stay very still, keeping their original forms, as if under tremendous pressure, unchanged from day to day.

A round slice of light floats high above me: the evening sky. Looking up at it, I think about the October evening world, where people must be going about their lives. Beneath that pale autumn light, they must be walking down streets, going to the store for things, preparing dinner, boarding trains for home. And they think-if they think at all-that these things are too obvious to think about, just as I used to do (or not do). They are the vaguely defined people, and I used to be a nameless one among them. Accepting and accepted, they live with one another beneath that light, and whether it lasts forever or for a moment, there must be a kind of closeness while they are enveloped in the light. I am no longer one of them, however. They are up there, on the face of the earth; I am down here, in the bottom of a well. They possess the light, while I am in the process of losing it. Sometimes I feel that I may never find my way back to that world, that I may never again be able to feel the peace of being enveloped in the light, that I may never again be able to hold the cats soft body in my arms. And then I feel a dull ache in the chest, as if something inside there is being squeezed to death.

But as I dig at the soft earth in the bottom of the well with the rubber sole of my tennis shoe, scenes from the surface of the earth grow ever more distant. The sense of reality subsides bit by bit, and the closeness of the well comes to envelop me in its place. Down here, the well is warm and silent, and the softness of the inner earth caresses my skin. The pain inside me fades like ripples on water. The place accepts me, and I accept the place. I tighten my grip on the bat. I close my eyes, then open them again to cast my gaze upward.

I pull on the rope to close the well lid, using a pulley arrangement fashioned for me by the clever young Cinnamon. The darkness is now complete. The well mouth is closed, and all light gone. Not even the occasional sound of the wind can be heard any longer. The break between people and me is now total. I don't even have a flashlight with me. This is like a confession of faith. I mean to show them that I am trying to accept the darkness in its entirety.

I lower my bottom to the earth, lean my back against the concrete wall, grip the bat between my knees, and close my eyes, listening to the sound of my heart. There is no need for me to close my eyes, of course, down here in the darkness, but I do it anyway. Closing the eyes has its own significance, in darkness or otherwise. I take several deep breaths, letting my body grow accustomed to this deep, dark, cylindrical space. The smell here is the same as always, the feel of the air against my skin is the same. The well was completely filled in for a time, but the air here is strangely unchanged from before. With its moldy smell and its trace of dampness, the air smells exactly as it did when I first climbed down inside. Down here there are no seasons. Not even time exists.

I always wear my old tennis shoes and my plastic watch, the one I had on the first time I came down into the well. Like the bat, they calm me. I check to see in the darkness that these objects are in firm contact with my body. I check to see that I am not separated from myself. I open my eyes and, after a time, close them again. This is to help bring the pressure of the darkness inside me more in line with the pressure of the darkness around me. Time passes by. Soon, as always, I lose the ability to distinguish between the two kinds of darkness. I can no longer tell if my eyes are open or closed. The mark on my cheek begins to run a slight fever. I know that it is taking on a more vivid purple.

In the two increasingly intermingled darknesses, I concentrate on my mark and think about the room. I try to separate from myself, just as I do whenever I am with the women. I try to get out of this clumsy flesh of mine, which is crouching down here in the dark. Now I am nothing but a vacant house, an abandoned well. I try to go outside, to change vehicles, to leap from one reality to another, which moves at a different speed, and I keep a firm grip on the bat all the while.

Now a single wall is the only thing separating me from the strange room. I ought to be able to pass through that wall. I should be able to do it with my own strength and with the power of the deep darkness in here.

If I hold my breath and concentrate, I can see what is in the room. I myself am not in there, but I am looking at what is. This is the hotel suite: Room 208. Thick curtains cover the windows. The room is dark. A vase holds a massive bouquet of flowers, and the air is heavy with their suggestive fragrance. A large floor lamp stands beside the entrance, but its bulb is white and dead as the morning moon. Still, if I stare hard enough, after a time I can just make out the shapes of things in the hint of light that manages to find its way into the room, the way the eyes become used to the darkness in a movie theater. On the small table in the middle of the room stands a bottle of Cutty Sark, its contents only slightly depleted. The ice bucket contains newly cracked chunks of ice (judging from their clear, hard edges), and someone has made a scotch on the rocks in the glass that is standing there. A stainless-steel tray forms a still, cold pool on the tabletop. There is no way to tell the time. It could be morning or evening or the middle of the night. Or perhaps this place simply has no time. In the bed at the back of the suite lies a woman. I hear her moving in the sheets. The ice makes a pleasant clinking in her glass. Minuscule grains of pollen suspended in the air shudder with the sound, like living organisms. Each tiny ripple of sound passing through the air brings more of them to sudden life. The pale darkness opens itself to the pollen, and the pollen, taken in, increases the density of the darkness. The woman brings the whiskey glass to her lips, allows a few drops of the liquid to trickle down her throat, and then she tries to speak to me. The bedroom is dark. I can see nothing but the faint movement of shadows. But she has something to say to me. I wait for her to speak. I wait to hear her words.

They are there.

Like a make-believe bird hanging in a make-believe sky, I see the rooms from above. I enlarge the view, pull back, and survey the whole, then zoom in to enlarge the details. Each detail carries much significance, of course. I check each in turn, examining it for shape and color and texture. From one detail to the next, there is no connection, no warmth. All I am doing at that point is a mechanical inventory of details. But its worth a try. Just as the rubbing together of stones or sticks will eventually produce heat and flame, a connected reality takes shape little by little. It works the way the piling up of random sounds goes on to produce a single syllable from the monotonous repetition of what at first glance appears to be meaningless.

I can feel the growth of this faint connection in the farthest depths of the darkness. Yes, thats it, that will do fine. Its very quiet here, and they still haven't noticed my presence. I sense the wall that separates me from that place melting, turning into jelly. I hold my breath. Now!

But the moment I step toward the wall, a sharp knock resounds, as if they know what I am trying to do. Someone is pounding on the door. Its the same knocking I heard before, a hard, decisive hammering, as if someone is trying to drive a nail straight through the wall. It comes in the same pattern: two knocks, a pause, two knocks. The woman gasps. The floating pollen shudders, and the darkness gives a great lurch. The invasive sound slams shut the passageway that was finally beginning to take shape for me.

It happens this way every time.

Once again I am myself inside my own body, sitting in the bottom of the well, my back against the wall, my hands gripping the baseball bat. The touch of the world on this side returns to my hands slowly, the way an image comes into focus. I feel the slight dampness of sweat against my palms. My heart is pounding in my throat. My ears retain the living sound of that harsh, world-stabbing knock, and I can still hear the slow turning of the doorknob in the darkness. Someone (or some thing) outside is opening the door, preparing silently to enter, but at that very instant, all images evaporate. The wall is as hard as ever, and I am flung back to this side.

In the darkness, I tap the wall in front of me with the end of the bat- the same hard, cold concrete wall. I am enclosed by a cylinder of cement. Almost made it that time, I tell myself.

I'm getting closer. I'm sure of it. At some point, I'm going to break through the barrier and get inside. I will slip into the room and be standing there, ready, when the knock comes.

But how long is it going to take for this to happen? And how much time is there left to me?

At the same time, I am afraid that it really is going to happen. Because then I will have to confront whatever it is that must be there.

I remain curled up in the darkness for a time. I have to let my heart quiet down. I have to peel my hands from the bat. Until I can rise to my feet on the earthen floor of the well, then climb the steel ladder to the surface, I will need more time, and more strength.

9 The Zoo Attack (or, A Clumsy Massacre)

Nutmeg Akasaka told the story of the tigers, the leopards, the wolves, and the bears that were shot by soldiers on a miserably hot afternoon in August 1945. She narrated with the order and clarity of a documentary film projected on a stark white screen. She left nothing vague. Yet she herself had not actually witnessed the spectacle. While it was happening, she was standing on the deck of a transport ship carrying refugee settlers home to Japan from Manchuria. What she had actually witnessed was the surfacing of an American submarine.

Like everyone else, she and the other children had come up from the unbearable steam bath of the ships hold to lean against the deck rail and enjoy the gentle breezes that moved across the calm, unbroken sea, when, all at once, the submarine came floating to the surface as if it were part of a dream. First the antenna and the radar beacon and periscope broke the surface. Then the conning tower came up, raising a wake as it cut through the water. And finally, the entire dripping mass of steel exposed its graceful nakedness to the summer sun.

Although in form and shape the thing before her could have been nothing but a submarine, it looked instead like some kind of symbolic sign-or an incomprehensible metaphor.

The submarine ran parallel to the ship for a while, as if stalking its prey. Soon a hatch opened, and one crew member, then another and another, climbed onto the deck, moving slowly, almost sluggishly. From the conning tower deck, the officers examined every detail of the transport ship through enormous binoculars, the lenses of which would flash every now and then in the sunlight. The transport ship was full of civilians heading back to Japan, their destination the port of Sasebo. The majority were women and children, the families of Japanese officials in the puppet Manchukuo government and of high-ranking personnel of the Japanese-owned South Manchuria Railway, fleeing to the homeland from the chaos that would follow the impending defeat of Japan in the war. Rather than face the inevitable horror, they were willing to accept the risk of attack by an American submarine on the open sea-until now, at least.

The submarine officers were checking to see if the transport ship was unarmed and without a naval escort. They had nothing to fear. The Americans now had full command of the air as well. Okinawa had fallen, and few if any fighter planes remained on Japanese soil. No need to panic: time was on their side. A petty officer barked orders, and three sailors spun the cranks that turned the deck gun until it was aimed at the transport ship. Two other crewmen opened the rear-deck hatch and hauled up heavy shells to feed the gun. Yet another squad of crewmen, with practiced movements, were loading a machine gun they had set on a raised part of the deck near the conning tower. All the crewmen preparing for the attack wore combat helmets, although a few of the men were naked from the waist up and nearly half were wearing short pants. If she stared hard at them, Nutmeg could see brilliant tattoos inscribed on their arms. If she stared hard, she could see lots of things.

One deck gun and one machine gun constituted the submarines total firepower, but this was more than enough to sink the rotting old freighter that had been refitted as a transport ship. The submarine carried only a limited number of torpedoes, and these had to be reserved for encounters with armed convoys-assuming there were armed convoys left in Japan. This was the ironclad rule.

Nutmeg clung to the ships handrail and watched as the deck guns black barrel pivoted in her direction. Dripping wet only moments earlier, it had been baked dry in the summer sun. She had never seen such an enormous gun before. Back in Hsinching, she had often seen some kind of regimental gun belonging to the Japanese Army, but there was no comparison between it and the submarines enormous deck gun. The submarine flashed a signal lamp at the freighter: Heave to. Attack to commence. Immediately evacuate all passengers to lifeboats. (Nutmeg could not read the signal lamp, of course, but in retrospect she understood it perfectly.) Aboard the transport ship, which had undergone minimal conversion from an old freighter on army orders in the chaos of war, there were not enough lifeboats. In fact, there were only two small boats for more than five hundred passengers and crew. There were hardly any life vests or life buoys aboard.

Gripping the rail, holding her breath, Nutmeg stared transfixed at the streamlined submarine. It shone as if brand-new, without a speck of rust. She saw the white-painted numerals on the conning tower. She saw the radar antenna rotating above it. She saw the sandy-haired officer with dark glasses. This submarine has come up from the bottom of the ocean to kill us all, she thought, but theres nothing strange about that, it could happen anytime. It has nothing to do with the war; it could happen to anyone anywhere. Everybody thinks its happening because of the war. But thats not true. The war is just one of the things that could happen.

Face-to-face with the submarine and its huge gun, Nutmeg felt no trace of fear. Her mother was shouting at her, but the words made no sense. Then she felt something grab her wrists and pull on them. But her hands stayed locked on the rail. The roar of voices all around her began to move far away, as if someone were turning down the volume on a radio. I'm so sleepy, she thought. So sleepy. Why am I so sleepy? She closed her eyes, and her consciousness rushed away, leaving the deck far behind.

Nutmeg was seeing Japanese soldiers as they moved through the extensive zoo shooting any animal that could attack human beings. The officer gave his order, and the bullets from the Model 38 rifles ripped through the smooth hide of a tiger, tearing at the animals guts. The summer sky was blue, and from the surrounding trees the screams of cicadas rained down like a sudden shower.

The soldiers never spoke. The blood was gone from their sunburned faces, which made them look like pictures painted on ancient urns. A few days from now-at most, a week from now-the main force of the Soviet Far East Command would arrive in Hsinching. There was no way to stop the advance. Ever since the war began, the crack troops and once abundant equipment of the Kwantung Army had been drained away to support the widening southern front, and now the greater part of both had sunk to the bottom of the sea or was rotting in the depths of the jungle. The tanks were gone. The anti-tank guns were gone. All but a handful of the troop transport trucks had broken down, and there were no spare parts. A general mobilization could still bring together large numbers of troops, but there were not even enough old-model rifles left to arm every man, or bullets enough to load every rifle. And so the great Kwantung Army, Bulwark of the North, had been reduced to a paper tiger. The proud Soviet mechanized units that had crushed the German Army were completing their transfer by rail to the Far Eastern front, with plenty of equipment and with spirits high. The collapse of Manchukuo was imminent.

Everyone knew this to be the truth, the Kwantung Army Command most of all. And so they evacuated their main force to the rear, in effect abandoning both the small border garrisons and the Japanese civilian homesteaders. These unarmed farmers were slaughtered by the Soviet Army, which was advancing too rapidly to take prisoners. Many women chose- or were forced to choose-mass suicide over rape. The border garrisons locked themselves into the concrete bunker dubbed Fortress for the Ages and put up a fierce resistance, but without support from the rear, they were annihilated by the Soviets overwhelming firepower. Members of the general staff and other high-ranking officers arranged to have themselves transferred to new headquarters in Tonghua, near the Korean border, and the puppet emperor Henry Pu-yi and his family threw their possessions together and escaped from the capital by private train. Most of the Chinese soldiers in the Manchukuo Army assigned to defend the capital deserted as soon as they heard the Soviets were invading, or else they staged revolts and shot their Japanese commanding officers. They had no intention of laying down their lives for Japan in a struggle against superior Soviet troops.

As a result of these interrelated developments, the capital city of Manchukuo, the Special New Capital City, Hsinching, which the modern Japanese state had staked its reputation on to construct in the wilderness, was left floating in a strange political vacuum. In order to avoid needless chaos and bloodshed, the high-ranking Chinese bureaucrats of Manchukuo argued that Hsinching should be declared an open city and surrendered without armed resistance, but the Kwantung Army rejected this.

The soldiers dispatched to the zoo had resigned themselves to their fate. In a mere few days, they assumed, they would die fighting the Soviet Army (though in fact, after disarmament, they would be sent to work-and, in the case of three of the men, to die-in Siberian coal mines). All they could do was pray that their deaths would not be too painful. None of them wanted to be crushed under the treads of a slow-moving tank or roasted in a trench by flamethrowers or die by degrees with a bullet in the stomach. Better to be shot in the head or the heart. But first they had to kill these zoo animals.

If possible, they were to kill the animals with poison in order to conserve what few bullets they had left. The young lieutenant in charge of the operation had been so instructed by his superior officer and told that the zoo had been given enough poison to do the job. The lieutenant led eight fully armed men to the zoo, a twenty-minute walk from headquarters. The zoo gates had been closed since the Soviet invasion, and two soldiers were standing guard at the entrance, with bayonets on their rifles. The lieutenant showed them his orders and led his men inside.

The zoos director confirmed that he had indeed been ordered to liquidate the fiercer animals in case of an emergency and to use poison, but the shipment of poison, he said, had never arrived. When the lieutenant heard this, he became confused. He was an accountant, assigned to the paymasters office, and until he was dragged away from his desk at head- quarters for this emergency detail, he had never once been put in charge of a detachment of men. He had had to rummage through his drawer to find his pistol, on which he had done no maintenance for years now, and he was not even sure it would fire.

Bureaucratic work is always like this, Lieutenant, said the zoo director, a man several years his senior, who looked at him with a touch of pity. The things you need are never there.

To inquire further into the matter, the director called in the zoos chief veterinarian, who told the lieutenant that the zoo had only a very small amount of poison, probably not enough to kill a horse. The veterinarian was a tall, handsome man in his late thirties, with a blue-black mark on his right cheek, the size and shape of a baby's palm. The lieutenant imagined it had been there since birth.

From the zoo directors office, the lieutenant telephoned headquarters, seeking further instructions, but Kwantung Army Headquarters had been in a state of extreme confusion ever since the Soviet Army crossed the border several days earlier, and most of the high-ranking officers had disappeared. The few remaining officers had their hands full, burning stacks of important documents in the courtyard or leading troops to the edge of town to dig antitank trenches. The major who had given the lieutenant his orders was nowhere to be found. So now the lieutenant had no idea where they were to obtain the poison they needed. Who in the Kwantung Army would have been in charge of poisons? His call was transferred from one office to another, until a medical corps colonel got on the line, only to scream at the lieutenant, You stupid son of a bitch! The whole goddamn country's going down the drain, and you're asking me about a goddamn fucking zoo?! Who gives a shit?

Who indeed, thought the lieutenant. Certainly not the lieutenant himself. With a dejected look, he cut the connection and decided to give up on laying in a stock of poison. Now he was faced with two options. He could forget about killing any animals and lead his men out of there, or they could use bullets to do the job. Either way would be a violation of the orders he had been given, but in the end he decided to do the shooting. That way, he might later be chewed out for having wasted valuable ammunition, but at least the goal of liquidating the more dangerous animals would have been met. If, on the other hand, he chose not to kill the animals, he might be court-martialed for having failed to carry out orders. There was some doubt whether there would even be any courts-martial at this late stage of the war, but finally, orders were orders. So long as the army continued to exist, its orders had to be carried out.

If possible, Id rather not kill any animals, the lieutenant told himself, in all honesty. But the zoo was running out of things to feed them, and most of the animals (especially the big ones) were already suffering from chronic starvation. Things could only get worse-or at least they were not going to get any better. Shooting might even be easier for the animals themselves-a quick, clean death. And if starving animals were to escape to the city streets during intense fighting or air strikes, a disaster would be unavoidable.

The director handed the lieutenant a list of animals for emergency liquidation that he had been instructed to compile, along with a map of the zoo. The veterinarian with the mark on his cheek and two Chinese workers were assigned to accompany the firing squad. The lieutenant glanced at the list and was relieved to find it shorter than he had imagined. Among the animals slated for liquidation, though, were two Indian elephants. Elephants? the lieutenant thought with a frown. How in the hell are we supposed to kill elephants?

Given the layout of the zoo, the first animals to be liquidated were the tigers. The elephants would be left for last, in any case. The plaque on the tiger cage explained that the pair had been captured in Manchuria in the Greater Khingan Mountains. The lieutenant assigned four men to each tiger and told them to aim for the heart-the whereabouts of which was just another mystery to him. Oh, well, at least one bullet was bound to hit home. When eight men together pulled back on the levers of their Model 38s and loaded a cartridge into each chamber, the ominous dry clicking transformed the whole atmosphere of the place. The tigers stood up at the sound. Glaring at the soldiers through the iron bars, they let out huge roars. As an extra precaution, the lieutenant drew his automatic pistol and released the safety. To calm himself, he cleared his throat. This is nothing, he tried to tell himself. Everybody does stuff like this all the time.

The soldiers knelt down, took careful aim, and, at the lieutenants command, pulled their triggers. The recoil shook their shoulders, and for a moment their minds went empty, as if flicked away. The roar of the simultaneous shots reverberated through the deserted zoo, echoing from building to building, wall to wall, slicing through wooded areas, crossing water surfaces, a stab to the hearts of all who heard it, like distant thunder. The animals held their breath. Even the cicadas stopped crying. Long after the echo of gunfire faded into the distance, there was not a sound to be heard. As if they had been whacked with a huge club by an invisible giant, the tigers shot up into the air for a moment, then landed on the floor of the cage with a great thud, writhing in agony, vomiting blood. The soldiers had failed to finish the tigers off with a single volley. Snapping out of their trance, the soldiers pulled back on their rifle levers, ejecting spent shells, and took aim again.

The lieutenant sent one of his men into the cage to be certain that both tigers were dead. They certainly looked dead-eyes closed, teeth bared, all movement gone. But it was important to make sure. The veterinarian unlocked the cage, and the young soldier (he had just turned twenty) stepped inside fearfully, thrusting his bayonet ahead of him. It was an odd performance, but no one laughed. He gave a slight kick to one tigers hindquarters with the heel of his boot. The tiger remained motionless. He kicked the same spot again, this time a little harder. The tiger was dead without a doubt. The other tiger (the female) lay equally still. The young soldier had never visited a zoo in his life, nor had he ever seen a real tiger before. Which was partly why he couldn't quite believe that they had just succeeded in killing a real, live tiger. He felt only that he had been dragged into a place that had nothing to do with him and had there been forced to perform an act that had nothing to do with him. Standing in an ocean of black blood, he stared down at the tigers corpses, entranced. They looked much bigger dead than they had when alive. Why should that be? he asked himself, mystified.

The cages concrete floor was suffused with the piercing smell of the big cats urine, and mixed with it was the warm odor of blood. Blood was still gushing from the holes torn in the tigers bodies, forming a sticky black pond around his feet. All of a sudden, the rifle in his hands felt heavy and cold. He wanted to fling it away, bend down, and vomit the entire contents of his stomach onto the floor. What a relief it would have been! But vomiting was out of the question-the squad leader would beat his face out of shape. (Of course, this soldier had no idea that he would die seventeen months later when a Soviet guard in a mine near Irkutsk would split his skull open with a shovel.) He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his wrist. His helmet was weighing down upon him. One cicada, then another, began to cry again, as if finally revived. Soon their cries were joined by those of a bird- strangely distinctive cries, like the winding of a spring: Creeeak. Creeeak. The young soldier had moved from a mountain village in Hokkaido across the sea to China with his parents at the age of twelve, and together they had tilled the soil of a frontier village in Beian until a year ago, when he had been drafted into the army. Thus he knew all the birds of Manchuria, but strangely, he had never heard a bird with that particular cry. Perhaps it was a bird imported from a distant land, crying in its cage in another part of the zoo. Yet the sound seemed to come from the upper branches of a nearby tree. He turned and squinted in the direction of the sound, but he could see nothing. A huge elm tree with dense leaves cast its cool, sharp shadow on the ground below.

He looked toward the lieutenant, as if requesting instructions. The lieutenant nodded, ordered him out of the cage, and spread open the zoo map again. So much for the tigers. Next well do the leopards. Then maybe the wolves. We've got bears to deal with too. Well think about the elephants when the others are finished off, he thought. And then he realized how hot it was. Take a breather, he said to his men. Have some water. They drank from their canteens. Then they shouldered their rifles, took their places in formation, and headed for the leopard cage. Up in a tree, the unknown bird with the insistent call went on winding its spring. The chests and backs of the mens short-sleeved military shirts were stained black with sweat. As this formation of fully armed soldiers strode along, the clanking of all kinds of metallic objects sent hollow echoes throughout the deserted zoo. The monkeys clinging to the bars of their cages rent the air with ominous screams, sending frantic warnings to all the other animals in the zoo, who in turn joined the chorus in their own distinctive ways. The wolves sent long howls skyward, the birds contributed a wild flapping of wings, some large animal somewhere was slamming itself against its cage, as if to send out a threat. A chunk of cloud shaped like a fist appeared out of nowhere and hid the sun for a time. On that August afternoon, people, animals-everyone was thinking about death. Today the men would be killing animals; tomorrow Soviet troops would be killing the men. Probably.

We always sat across from each other at the same table in the same restaurant, talking. She was a regular there, and of course she always picked up the tab. The back part of the restaurant was divided into private compartments, so that the conversation at any one table could not be heard at another. There was only one seating per evening, which meant that we could talk at our leisure, right up to closing time, without interference from anyone-including the waiters, who approached the table only to bring or clear a dish. She would always order a bottle of Burgundy of one particular vintage and always leave half the bottle unconsumed.

A bird that winds a spring? I asked, looking up from my food.

A bird that winds a spring? said Nutmeg, repeating the words exactly as I had said them, then curling her lips just a little. I don't understand what you're saying. What are you talking about?

Didn't you just say something about a bird that winds a spring?

She shook her head slowly. Hmm. Now I cant remember. I don't think I said anything about a bird.

I could see it was hopeless. She always told her stories like this. I didn't ask her about the mark, either.

So you were born in Manchuria, then? I asked.

She shook her head again. I was born in Yokohama. My parents took me to Manchuria when I was three. My father was teaching at a school of veterinary medicine, but when the Hsinching city administrators wanted someone sent over from Japan as chief veterinarian for the new zoo they were going to build, he volunteered for the job. My mother didn't want to abandon the settled life they had in Japan and go off to the ends of the earth, but my father insisted. Maybe he wanted to test himself in someplace bigger and more open than Japan. I was so young, it didn't matter where I was, but I really enjoyed living at the zoo. It was a wonderful life. My father always smelled like the animals. All the different animal smells would mix together into one, and it would be a little different each day, like changing the blend of ingredients in a perfume. Id climb up onto his lap when he came home and make him sit still while I smelled him.

But then the war took a bad turn, and we were in danger, so my father decided to send my mother and me back to Japan before it was too late. We went with a lot of other people, taking the train from Hsinching to Korea, where a special boat was waiting for us. My father stayed behind in Hsinching. The last I ever saw him, he was standing in the station, waving to us. I stuck my head out the window and watched him growing smaller and smaller until he disappeared into the crowd on the platform. No one knows what happened to him after that. I think he must have been taken prisoner by the Soviets and sent to Siberia to do forced labor and, like so many others, died over there. Hes probably buried in some cold, lonely patch of earth without anything to mark his grave.

I still remember everything about the Hsinching zoo in perfect detail. I can bring it all back inside my head-every pathway, every animal. We lived in the chief veterinarians official residence, inside the grounds. All the zoo workers knew me, and they let me go anywhere I wanted- even on holidays, when the zoo was closed.

Nutmeg closed her eyes to bring back the scene inside her mind. I waited, without speaking, for her to continue her story.

Still, though, I cant be sure if the zoo as I recall it was really like that. How can I put it? I sometimes feel that its too vivid, if you know what I mean. And when I start having thoughts like this, the more I think about it, the less I can tell how much of the vividness is real and how much of it my imagination has invented. I feel as if I've wandered into a labyrinth. Has that ever happened to you?

It had not. Do you know if the zoo is still there in Hsinching? I asked.

I wonder, said Nutmeg, touching the end of her earring. I heard that the place was closed up after the war, but I have no idea if its still closed.

For a very long time, Nutmeg Akasaka was the only person in the world that I could talk to. We would meet once or twice a week and talk to each other across the table at the restaurant. After we had met several times like that, I discovered that she was an extremely accomplished listener. She was quick on the uptake, and she knew how to direct the flow of the story by means of skillfully inserted questions and responses.

So as to avoid upsetting her in any way, I always took great care whenever we met to see that my outfit was neat and clean and well chosen. I would put on a shirt fresh from the cleaners and choose the tie that best matched it in color. My shoes were always shined and spotless. The first thing she would do when she saw me was examine me top to bottom, with the eyes of a chef choosing vegetables. If anything displeased her, she would take me straight to a boutique and buy me the proper article of clothing. If possible, she would have me change into it then and there. When it came to clothing, she would accept nothing less than perfection.

As a result, my closet began to fill up almost before I knew it. Slowly but steadily, new suits, new jackets, and new shirts were invading the territory that had once been occupied by Kumiko's skirts and dresses. Before long, the closet was becoming cramped, and so I folded Kumiko's things, packed them in cartons with mothballs, and put them in a storage area. If she ever came back, I knew, she would have to wonder what in the world had happened in her absence.

I took a long time to explain about Kumiko to Nutmeg, little by little- that I had to save her and bring her back here. She put her elbow on the table, propping her chin in her hand, and looked at me for a while.

So where is it that you're going to save Kumiko from? Does the place have a name or something?

I searched for the words in space. But they were not there in space. Neither were they underground. Someplace far away, I said.

Nutmeg smiled. Its kind of like The Magic Flute. You know: Mozart. Using a magic flute and magic bells, they have to save a princess who's being held captive in a faraway castle. I love that opera. I don't know how many times I've seen it. I know the lines by heart: I'm the birdcatcher, Papageno, known throughout the land. Ever seen it?

I shook my head. I had never seen it.

In the opera, the prince and the birdcatcher are led to the castle by three children riding on a cloud. But whats really happening is a battle between the land of day and the land of night. The land of night is trying to recapture the princess from the land of day. Midway through the opera, the heroes cant tell any longer which side is right- who is being held captive and who is not. Of course, at the end, the prince gets the princess, Papageno gets Papagena, and the villains fall into hell. Nutmeg ran her finger along the rim of her glass. Anyhow, at this point you don't have a birdcatcher or a magic flute or bells.

But I do have a well, I said.

Whenever I grew tired from talking or I was unable to go on telling my story because I lost track of the words I needed, Nutmeg would give me a rest by talking about her own early life, and her stories turned out to be far more lengthy and convoluted than mine. And also, unlike me, she would impose no order on her stories but would leap from topic to topic as her feelings dictated. Without explanation, she would reverse chronological order or suddenly introduce as a major character someone she had never mentioned to me before. In order to know to which period of her life the fragment belonged that she was presently narrating, it was necessary to make careful deductions, though no amount of deduction could work in some cases. She would narrate events she had witnessed with her own eyes, as well as events that she had never witnessed.

They killed the leopards. They killed the wolves. They killed the bears. Shooting the bears took the most time. Even after the two gigantic animals had taken dozens of rifle slugs, they continued to crash against the bars of their cage, roaring at the men and slobbering, fangs bared. Unlike the cats, who were more willing to accept their fate (or who at least appeared to accept it), the bears seemed unable to comprehend the fact that they were being killed. Possibly for that reason, it took them far longer than was necessary to reach a final parting with that temporary condition known as life. When the soldiers finally succeeded in extinguishing all signs of life in the bears, they were so exhausted they were ready to collapse on the spot. The lieutenant reset his pistols safety catch and used his hat to wipe the sweat dripping down his brow. In the deep silence that followed the killing, several of the soldiers seemed to be trying to mask their sense of shame by spitting loudly on the ground. Spent shells were scattered about their feet like so many cigarette butts. Their ears still rang with the crackling of their rifles. The young soldier who would be beaten to death by a Soviet soldier seventeen months later in a coal mine near Irkutsk took several deep breaths in succession, averting his gaze from the bears corpses. He was engaged in a fierce struggle to force back the nausea that had worked its way up to his throat.

In the end, they did not kill the elephants. Once they actually confronted them, it became obvious that the beasts were simply too large, that the soldiers rifles looked like silly toys in their presence. The lieutenant thought it over for a while and decided to leave the elephants alone. Hearing this, the men breathed a sigh of relief. Strange as it may seem-or perhaps it does not seem so strange-they all had the same thought: it was so much easier to kill humans on the battlefield than animals in cages, even if, on the battlefield, one might end up being killed oneself. Those animals that were now nothing but corpses were dragged from their cages by the Chinese workers, loaded onto carts, and hauled to an empty warehouse. There, the animals, which came in so many shapes and sizes, were laid out on the floor. Once he had seen the operation through to its end, the lieutenant returned to the zoo directors office and had the man sign the necessary documents. Then the soldiers lined up and marched away in formation, with the same metallic clanking they had made when they came. The Chinese workers used hoses to wash off the black stains of blood on the floors of the cages, and with brushes they scrubbed away the occasional chunk of animal flesh that clung to the walls. When this job was finished, the workers asked the veterinarian with the blue-black mark on his cheek how he intended to dispose of the corpses. The doctor was at a loss for an answer. Ordinarily, when an animal died at the zoo, he would call a professional to do the job. But with the capital now bracing for a bloody battle, with people now struggling to be the first to leave this doomed city, you couldn't just make a phone call and get someone to run over to dispose of an animal corpse for you. Summer was at its height, though, and the corpses would begin to decompose quickly. Even now, black swarms of flies were massing. The best thing would be to bury them-an enormous job even if the zoo had access to heavy equipment, but with the limited help available to them now, it would obviously be impossible to dig holes large enough to take all the corpses.

The Chinese workers said to the veterinarian: Doctor, if you will let us take the corpses whole, we will dispose of them for you. We have plenty of friends to help us, and we know exactly where to do the job. We will haul them outside the city and get rid of every last speck. We will not cause you any problems. But in exchange, we want the hides and meat. Especially the bear meat: everybody will want that. Parts of bear and tiger are good for medicine-they will command a high price. And though its too late now to say this, we wish you had aimed only at their heads. Then the hides would have been worth a good deal more. The soldiers were such amateurs! If only you had let us take care of it from the beginning, we wouldn't have done such a clumsy job. The veterinarian agreed to the bargain. He had no choice. After all, it was their country.

Before long, ten Chinese appeared, pulling several empty carts behind them. They dragged the animals corpses out of the warehouse, piled them onto the carts, tied them down, and covered them with straw mats. They hardly said a word to each other the whole time. Their faces were expressionless. When they had finished loading the carts, they dragged them off somewhere. The old carts creaked with the strain of supporting the animals weight. And so ended the massacre- what the Chinese workers called a clumsy massacre- of zoo animals on a hot August afternoon. All that was left were several clean-and empty-cages. Still in an agitated state, the monkeys kept calling out to one another in their incomprehensible language. The badgers rushed back and forth in their narrow cage. The birds flapped their wings in desperation, scattering feathers all around. And the cicadas kept up their grating cry.

After the soldiers had finished their killing and returned to headquarters, and after the last two Chinese workers had disappeared somewhere, dragging their cart loaded with animal corpses, the zoo took on the hollow quality of a house emptied of furniture. The veterinarian sat on the rim of a waterless fountain, looked up at the sky, and watched the group of hard- edged clouds that were floating there. Then he listened to the cicadas crying. The wind-up bird was no longer calling, but the veterinarian did not notice that. He had never heard the wind-up bird to begin with. The only one who had heard it was the poor young soldier who would be beaten to death in a Siberian coal mine.

The veterinarian took a sweat-dampened pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket, put a cigarette in his mouth, and struck a match. As he lit up, he realized that his hand was trembling-so much that it took him three matches to light the cigarette. Not that he had experienced an emotional trauma. A large number of animals had been liquidated in a mo- ment before his eyes, and yet, for some inexplicable reason, he felt no particular shock or sadness or anger. In fact, he felt almost nothing. He was just terribly puzzled.

He sat there for a while, watching the smoke curl upward from his cigarette and trying to sort out his feelings. He stared at his hands resting on his lap, then looked once again at the clouds in the sky. The world he saw before him looked as it always had. He could find in it no signs of change. And yet it ought to have been a world distinctly different from the one he had known until then. After all, the world that held him now was a world in which bears and tigers and leopards and wolves had been liquidated. Those animals had existed this morning, but now, at four o'clock in the afternoon, they had ceased to exist. They had been massacred by soldiers, and even their dead bodies were gone.

There should have been a decisive gap separating those two different worlds. There had to be a gap. But he could not find it. The world looked the same to him as it always had. What most puzzled the veterinarian was the unfamiliar lack of feeling inside himself.

Suddenly he realized that he was exhausted. Come to think of it, he had hardly slept at all the night before. How wonderful it would be, he thought, if I could find the cool shade of a tree somewhere, to stretch out and sleep, if only for a little while-to stop thinking, to sink into the silent darkness of unconsciousness. He glanced at his watch. He had to secure food for the surviving animals. He had to treat the baboon that was running a high fever. There were a thousand things he had to do. But now, more than anything, he had to sleep. What came afterward he could think about afterward.

The veterinarian walked into the neighboring wooded area and stretched out on the grass where no one would notice him. The shaded grass felt cool and good. The smell was something he remembered fondly from childhood. Several large Manchurian grasshoppers bounded over his face with a nice strong hum. He lit another cigarette as he lay there, and he was pleased to see that his hands were no longer trembling so badly. Inhaling the smoke deep into his lungs, he pictured the Chinese men stripping the hides off all those freshly killed animals somewhere and cutting up the meat. He had often seen Chinese doing work like that, and he knew they were anything but clumsy. In a matter of moments, an animal would be reduced to hide, meat, organs, and bones, as if those elements had originally been quite separate and had just happened to come together for a little while. By the time I wake from my nap, I'm sure, those pieces of meat will be out there in the marketplace. That's reality for you: quick and efficient. He tore off a handful of grass and toyed with its softness awhile. Then he crushed his cigarette and, with a deep sigh, expelled all the smoke left in his lungs. When he closed his eyes, the grasshoppers wings sounded much louder in the darkness. The veterinarian was overtaken by the illusion that huge grasshoppers the size of bullfrogs were leaping all around him.

Maybe the world was like a revolving door, it occurred to him as his consciousness was fading away. And which section you ended up in was just a matter of where your foot happened to fall. There were tigers in one section, but no tigers in another. Maybe it was as simple as that. And there was no logical continuity from one section to another. And it was precisely because of this lack of logical continuity that choices really didn't mean very much. Wasn't that why he couldn't feel the gap between one world and another? But that was as far as his thoughts would go. He wasn't able to think more deeply than that. The fatigue in his body was as heavy and suffocating as a sodden blanket. No more thoughts came to him, and he just lay there, inhaling the aroma of the grass, listening to the grasshoppers wings, and feeling through his skin the dense membrane of shadow that covered him.

And in the end his mind was sucked into the deep sleep of afternoon.

The transport ship cut its engines as ordered, and soon it had come to a standstill on the surface of the ocean. There was less than one chance in ten thousand that it could have outrun such a swift, modern submarine. The submarines deck gun and machine gun were still trained on the transport ship, its crew in a state of readiness to attack. Yet a strange sense of tranquillity hovered between the two ships. The submarines crew stood in full view on deck, lined up and watching the transport ship with an air of having time to kill. Many of them had not even bothered to strap on battle helmets. There was hardly any wind that summer after- noon, and now, with both engines cut, the only sound was the languid slap of waves against the two ships hulls. The transport ship signaled to the submarine: We are a transport ship carrying unarmed civilians. We have neither munitions nor military personnel on board. We have few lifeboats. To this the submarine responded brusquely: That is not our problem. Evacuation or no, we commence firing in precisely ten minutes. This ended the exchange of signal messages between the two ships. The captain of the transport ship decided not to convey the communication to his passengers. What good would it do? A few of them might be lucky enough to survive, but most would be dragged to the bottom of the sea with this miserable old washtub. The captain longed for one last drink, but the whiskey bottle- some fine old scotch he had been saving-was in a desk drawer in his cabin, and there was no time to get it now. He took off his hat and looked up at the sky, hoping that, through some miracle, a squadron of Japanese fighter planes might suddenly appear there. But this was not to be a day for miracles. The captain had done all he could. He thought about his whiskey again.

As the ten-minute grace period was running out, strange movement began on the deck of the submarine. There were hurried exchanges among the officers lined up on the conning- tower deck, and one of the officers scrambled down to the main deck and ran among the crew, shouting some kind of order. Wherever he went, ripples of movement spread among the men at their battle stations. One sailor shook his head from side to side and punched the barrel of the deck gun with a clenched fist. Another took his helmet off and stared up at the sky. The mens actions might have been expressing anger or joy or disappointment or excitement. The passengers on the transport ship found it impossible to tell what was happening or what this was leading up to. Like an audience watching a pantomime for which there was no program (but which contained a very important message), they held their breaths and kept their eyes locked on the sailors every movement, hoping to find some small hint of meaning. Eventually, the waves of confusion that had spread among the sailors began to subside, and in response to an order from the bridge, the shells were removed from the deck gun with great dispatch. The men turned cranks and swung the barrel away from the transport ship until the gun was pointing straight ahead again, then they plugged the horrid black hole of the muzzle. The gun shells were returned below decks, and the crew ran for the hatches. In contrast to their earlier movements, they did everything now with speed and efficiency. There was no chatting or wasted motion.

The submarines engines started with a definite growl, and at almost the same moment the siren screeched to signal All hands belowdecks! The submarine began to move forward, and a moment later it was plunging downward, churning up a great white patch of foam, as if it had hardly been able to wait for the men to get below and fasten the hatches. A membrane of seawater swallowed the long, narrow deck from front to rear, the gun sank below the surface, the conning tower slipped downward, cutting through the dark-blue water, and finally the antenna and the periscope plunged out of sight, as if to rip the air clean of any evidence they had ever been there. Ripples disturbed the surface of the ocean for a short while, but soon they also subsided, leaving only the weirdly calm afternoon sea.

Even after the submarine had plunged beneath the surface, with the same amazing suddenness that had marked its appearance, the passengers stood frozen on the deck, staring at the watery expanse. Not a throat was cleared among them. The captain recovered his presence of mind and gave his order to the navigator, who passed it on to the engine room, and eventually, after a long fit of grinding, the antique engine started up like a sleeping dog kicked by its master.

The crew of the transport ship held their breaths, waiting for a torpedo attack. The Americans might have simply changed their plans, deciding that sinking the ship with a torpedo would be faster and easier than a time-consuming volley from the gun. The ship ran in short zigzags, the captain and navigator scanning the oceans surface with their binoculars, searching for the deadly white wake of a torpedo. But there was no torpedo. Twenty minutes after the submarine had disappeared beneath the waves, people at last began to break free of the death curse that had hung over them. They could only half believe it at first, but little by little they came to feel that it was true: they had come back alive from the verge of death. Not even the captain knew why the Americans had suddenly abandoned their attack. What could have changed their minds? (Only later did it become clear that instructions had arrived from headquarters just moments before the attack was to have begun, advising them to suspend all hostilities unless attacked by the enemy. The Japanese government had telegraphed the Allied powers that they were prepared to accept the Potsdam Declaration and surrender unconditionally.) Released now from the unbearable tension, several passengers plopped down on the deck where they stood and began to wail, but most of them could neither cry nor laugh. For several hours-and, in the case of some, for several days-they remained in a state of total abstraction, the spike of a long and twisted nightmare thrust unmercifully into their lungs, their hearts, their spines, their brains, their wombs.

Little Nutmeg Akasaka remained sound asleep in her mothers arms all the while this was happening. She slept for a solid twenty hours, as if she had been knocked unconscious. Her mother shouted and slapped her cheeks to no avail. She might as well have sunk to the bottom of the sea. The intervals between her breaths grew longer and longer, and her pulse slowed.

Her breathing was all but inaudible. But when the ship arrived in Sasebo, she woke without warning, as if some great power had dragged her back into this world. And so Nutmeg did not herself witness the events surrounding the aborted attack and disappearance of the American submarine. She heard everything much later, from her mother.

The freighter finally limped into the port of Sasebo a little past ten in the morning on August 16, the day after the nonattack. The port was weirdly silent, and no one came out to greet the ship. Not even at the antiaircraft emplacement by the harbor mouth were there signs of humanity. The summer sunlight baked the ground with dumb intensity. The whole world seemed caught in a deep paralysis, and some on board felt as if they had stumbled by accident into the land of the dead. After years spent abroad, they could only stare in silence at the country of their ancestors. At noon on August 15, the radio had broadcast the Emperors announcement of the wars end. Six days before that, the nearby city of Nagasaki had been incinerated by a single atomic bomb. The phantom empire of Manchukuo was disappearing into history. And caught unawares in the wrong section of the revolving door, the veterinarian with the mark on his cheek would share the fate of Manchukuo.

10 So, Then, the Next Problem (May Kasahara's Point of View: 2)

Hi, again, Mr. Wind-Up Bird.

Have you thought about where I am and what I'm doing, the way I told you to at the end of my last letter? Were you able to imagine anything at all?

Oh, well, I guess I'll just go on under the assumption that you couldn't figure out a thing- which I'm sure is true.

So let me just get it over with and tell you right from the start.

I'm working in- lets say-a certain factory. A big factory. Its in a certain provincial city- or, should I say, in the mountains on the outskirts of a certain provincial city that faces the Sea of Japan. Don't let the word factory fool you, though. Its not what you'd imagine: one of those macho places full of big, high-tech machines grinding away and conveyor belts running and smoke pouring out of smokestacks. Its big, all right, but the grounds are spread out over a wide area and its bright and quiet. It doesn't produce any smoke at all. I never imagined the world had such widely spread-out factories. The only other factory I've ever seen was the Tokyo caramel factory our class visited on afield trip in elementary school, and all I remember is how noisy and cramped it was and how people were just slaving away with gloomy expressions on their faces. So to me, a factory was always like some illustration you'd see in a textbook under Industrial Revolution.

The people working here are almost all girls. Theres a separate building nearby, a laboratory, where men in white coats work on product development, wearing very serious looks on their faces, but they make up a very small proportion of the whole. All the rest are girls in their late teens or early twenties, and maybe seventy percent of those live in the dorms inside the company compound, like me. Commuting to this place from the town every day by bus or car is a real pain, and the dorms are nice. The buildings are new, the rooms are all singles, the food is good and they let you choose what you want, the facilities are complete, and room and board is cheap for all that. Theres a heated pool and a library, and you can do things like tea ceremony and flower arranging if you want (but I don't want), and they even have an active program of sports teams, so a lot of girls who start out commuting end up moving into a dorm. All of them return home on weekends to eat with their families or go to the movies or go on dates with their boyfriends and stuff, so on Saturday the place turns into an empty ruin. There aren't too many people like me, without a family to go home to on weekends. But like I said before, I like the big, hollow, empty feeling of the place on weekends. I can spend the day reading, or listening to music with the volume turned up, or walking in the hills, or, like now, sitting at my desk and writing to you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird.

The girls who work here are all locals-which means farmers daughters. Well, maybe not every single one, but they're mostly happy, healthy, optimistic, hardworking girls. There aren't many big industries in this district, so before, girls would go to the city to find jobs when they graduated from high school. That meant the guys left in town couldn't find anybody to marry, which only added to the depopulation problem. So then the town got together and offered businesses this big tract of land to set up a factory, and the girls didn't have to leave. I think it was a great idea. I mean, look, they got somebody like me to come all the way out here. So now, when they graduate from high school (or drop out, like me), the girls all go to work at the factory and save their pay and get married when they're old enough and quit their jobs and have a couple of kids and turn into fat walruses that all look alike. Of course, there are a few who go on working here after they get married, but most of them quit.

This should give you a pretty good idea of what this place is like. OK? So now the next question for you is this: What do they make in this factory? Hint: You and I once went out on a job connected with it. Remember? We went to the Ginza and did a survey.

Oh, come on. Even you must have figured it out by now, Mr. Wind-Up Bird! That's it! I'm working in a wig factory! Surprised?

I told you before how I got out of that high-class hotel/jail/country school after six months and just hung around at home, like a dog with a broken leg. Then, all of a sudden, the thought of the wig company's factory popped into my head. I remembered something my boss at the company had once said to me, more as a joke than anything, about how they never had enough girls for the factory and they'd hire me anytime I wanted to go work there. He even showed me a pamphlet from the place, and I remember sort of thinking it looked like a really cool factory and I wouldn't mind working there. My boss said the girls all did hand labor, implanting hairs into the toupees. A hairpiece is a very delicately made product, not like some aluminum pot you can stamp out one two three. You have to plant little bunches of real hair very very very carefully, one bunch at a time, to make a quality hairpiece. Doesn't it make you faint, just thinking about it? I mean, how many hairs do you think there are on a human head? You have to count them in the hundreds of thousands! And to make a wig you have to plant them all by hand, the way they plant seedlings in a rice field. None of the girls here complain about the work, though. They don't mind because this region is in the snow country, where it has always been the custom for the farm women to do detailed handiwork to make money during the long winters. That's supposedly why the company chose this area for its factory.

To tell you the truth, I've never minded doing this kind of hand labor. I know I don't look it, but I'm actually pretty good at sewing. I always impressed my teachers. You still don't believe me? Its true, though! That's why it ever occurred to me that I might enjoy spending part of my life in a factory in the mountains, keeping my hands busy from morning to night and never thinking about anything upsetting. I was sick of school, but I hated the thought of just hanging around and letting my parents take care of me (and I'm sure they hated the thought of that too), but I didn't have any one thing that I was dying to do, so the more I thought of it, the more it seemed that the only thing I could do was go to work in this factory.

I got my parents to act as my sponsors and my boss to give me a recommendation (they liked my survey work), I passed my interview at company headquarters, and the very next week I was all packed (not that I took anything more than my clothes and my boom box). I got on the bullet train by myself, transferred to a cute little train that goes up into the hills, and made it all the way to this nothing little town. But it was like I came to the other side of the earth. I was sooo bummed out when I got off the train! I figured I had made a terrible mistake. But finally, no: I've been here six months now without any special problems, and I feel settled in.

I don't know what it is, but I've always been interested in wigs. Or maybe I should say I've always been attracted to them, the way some guys are attracted to motorcycles. You know, I hadn't really been aware of it before, but when I went out to do that market research and I had a chance to see all those bald men (or what the company calls men with a thinning problem), it really struck me what a lot of guys like that there are in the world! Not that I have personal feelings one way or another toward men who are bald (or have a thinning problem). I don't especially like them or dislike them. Take you, for example, Mr. Wind- Up Bird. Even if your hair were thinner than it is now (and it will be before too long), my feelings toward you would absolutely not change in any way. The only strong feeling I have when I see a man with a thinning problem is that sense I think I mentioned to you before of life being worn away. Now, that is something I'm really interested in!

I once heard that people reach the peak of their growth at a certain age (I forget whether it was nineteen or twenty or what), after which the body starts to wear out. If thats the case, then its just one part of the wearing away of the body for the hair to fall out and grow thinner. Theres nothing strange about it at all. Maybe its normal and natural. If theres any problem in all this, its the fact that some guys go bald young and others never go bald, even when they're old. I know if I were bald, Id think it was unfair. I mean, its a part of the body that really sticks out! Even I understand how they feel, and the problem of thinning hair has nothing to do with me.

In most cases, the person losing his hair is in no way responsible for whether the volume of hair he loses is greater or less than anybody else's. When I was working part time, my boss told me that the genes determine ninety percent of whether a person is going to go bald or not. A man who has inherited a gene for thinning hair from his grandfather and father is going to lose his hair sooner or later, no matter what he does to prevent it. Where theres a will theres a way just doesn't apply to baldness. When the time comes for the gene to stand up and say, All right, now, lets get this show on the road (that is, if genes can stand up and say Lets get this show on the road), the hair has no choice but to start falling out. It is unfair, don't you think? I know I think it is.

So now you know I'm out here in this factory, far away from where you are, working hard every day. And you know about my deep personal interest in the toupee and its manufacture.

Next I'm going to go into somewhat greater detail on my life and work here.

Nah, forget it. Bye-bye.

11 Is This Shovel a Real Shovel? (What Happened in the Night: 2)

After he fell into his deep sleep, the boy had a vivid dream. He knew it was a dream, though, which came as some comfort to him. I know this is a dream, so what happened before was not a dream. It really, really happened. I can tell the difference between the two.

In his dream, the boy had gone out to the garden. It was still the middle of the night, and he was alone. He picked up the shovel and started digging out the hole that the tall man had filled in. The man had left the shovel leaning against the trunk of the tree. Freshly filled in, the hole was not that hard to dig, but just picking up the heavy shovel was enough to take the boys breath away. And he had no shoes on. The soles of his feet were freezing cold. Even so, he went on panting and digging until he had uncovered the cloth bundle that the man had buried.

The wind-up bird no longer cried. The man who had climbed the tree never came down.

The night was so silent it almost hurt the boys ears. The man had just disappeared, it seemed.

But finally, this is a dream, the boy thought. It was not a dream that the wind-up bird had cried and the man who looked like his father had climbed the tree. Those things had really happened. So there must not be any connection between this and that. Strange, though: here he was, in a dream, digging out the real hole. So how was he to distinguish between what was a dream and what was not a dream? Was this shovel a real shovel? Or was it a dream shovel?

The more he thought, the less he understood. And so the boy stopped thinking and put all his energy into digging the hole. Finally, the shovel came up against the cloth bundle.

The boy took great care after that to remove the surrounding dirt so as not to damage the cloth bundle. Then he went down on his knees and lifted the bundle from the hole. There was not a cloud in the sky, and there was no one there to block the moist light of the full moon that poured down on the ground. In the dream, he was strangely free of fear. Curiosity was the feeling that dominated him with its power. He opened the bundle, to find a human heart inside. He recognized its shape and color from the picture he had seen in his encyclopedia. The heart was still fresh and alive and moving, like a newly abandoned infant. True, it was sending no blood out through its severed artery, but it continued to beat with a strong pulse. The boy heard a loud throbbing in his ears, but it was the sound of his own heart. The buried heart and the boys own heart went on pounding in perfect unison, as if communicating with each other.

The boy steadied his breathing and told himself firmly, You are not afraid of this. This is just a human heart, thats all. Just like in the encyclopedia. Everybody has one of these. I have one. With steady hands, the boy wrapped the beating heart in the cloth again, returned it to the bottom of the hole, and covered it over with earth. He smoothed the earth with his bare foot so that no one could tell a hole had been dug there, and he stood the shovel against the tree as he had found it. The ground at night was like ice. Climbing over the sill of his window, the boy returned to his own warm, friendly room. He brushed the mud from his feet into his wastebasket so as not to dirty his sheets, and he started to crawl into bed. But then he realized that someone was already lying there. Someone was sleeping in his bed, under the covers, in his place.

Angry now, the boy stripped the covers back. Hey, you, get out of there! This is my bed! he wanted to shout at the person. But his voice would not come out, because the one he found in the bed was himself. He was already in his bed, asleep, breathing peacefully. The boy stood frozen in place, at a loss for words. If I am already sleeping here, then where should this me sleep? Now, for the first time, the boy felt afraid, with a. fear that seemed as if it would chill him to the core. The boy wanted to shout. He wanted to scream as loud as he could to wake up his sleeping self and everyone else in the house. But his voice would not come. He strained with all his might, but he could produce no sound.

Nothing at all. So he put his hand on the shoulder of his sleeping self and shook it as hard as he could. But the sleeping boy would not wake up.

There was nothing more he could do. The boy stripped off his cardigan and flung it on the floor. Then he pushed his other, sleeping self as hard as he could from the center of the bed and crammed himself into the small space that was left for him at the edge. He had to secure a spot for himself here. Otherwise, he might be pushed out of this world where he belonged. Cramped and without a pillow, the boy nevertheless felt incredibly sleepy as soon as he lay down. He could not think anymore. In the next moment, he was sound asleep.

When he woke up in the morning, the boy was in the middle of the bed, alone. His pillow was under his head, as always. He raised himself slowly and looked around the room. At first glance, the room seemed unchanged. It had the same desk, the same bureau, the same closet, the same floor lamp. The hands of the wall clock pointed to six-twenty. But the boy knew something was strange. It might all look the same, but this was not the same place where he had gone to sleep the previous night. The air, the light, the sounds, the smells, were all just a little bit different from before. Other people might not notice, but the boy knew. He stripped off the covers and looked at himself. He held his hands up and moved each of his fingers in turn. They moved as they should. And his legs moved. He felt no pain or itching. He slipped out of bed and went to the toilet. When he was through peeing, he stood at the sink and looked at his face in the mirror. He pulled off his pajama top, stood on a chair, and looked at the reflection of his fair-skinned little body. He found nothing unusual.

Yet something was different. He felt as if his self had been put into a new container. He knew that he was still not fully accustomed to this new body of his. There was something about this one, he felt, that just didn't match his original self. A sudden feeling of helplessness overtook him, and he tried to call for his mother, but the word would not emerge from his throat. His vocal cords were unable to stir the air, as if the very word mother had disappeared from the world. Before long, the boy realized that the word was not what had disappeared.

12 Ms Secret Cure

SHOW BUSINESS WORLD TAINTED BY OCCULT [From The ---- Monthly, November] ... These occult cures, which have become a kind of craze among members of the entertainment world, are spread primarily by word of mouth, but in some cases they bear the mark of certain secret organizations.

Take, for example, M: 33, debuted ten years ago as supporting actress in a television dramatic series, well received, leading roles ever since in TV and films, six years ago married boy wonder real estate developer, no problems in first two years of marriage. His business did well, and she recorded some fine performances on film. But then the sideline dinner club and boutique he opened in her name ran into trouble and he started bouncing checks, for which she became liable. Never eager to go into business to begin with, M had more or less had her arm twisted by her husband, who wanted to expand. One view has it that the husband was taken in by a kind of scam. In addition, there had always been a serious rift between M and her in-laws.

Soon the gossip spread about the trouble M was having with her husband, and before long the two were living separately. They concluded formal divorce proceedings two years ago after an arbitrator helped them settle their debts, but after that M started showing signs of depression, and the need for therapy put her into virtual retirement. According to one source at the studio she worked for, M was regularly plagued by serious delusions after the divorce.

She ruined her health with antidepressants, and it got to the point where people were saying, Shes had it as an actress. Our source observed, She had lost the powers of concentration you need to act, and it was shocking what happened to her looks. It didn't help, either, that she was basically a serious person who would dwell on things to the point where it would affect her mentally. At least her financial settlement had left her in pretty good shape, so she could make it for a while without working.

One distant relative of Ms was the wife of a famous politician and former cabinet minister. M was practically a daughter to this person, who introduced her to a woman who practiced a form of spiritual healing for a very limited, upper-class clientele. M went to her for a year on a regular basis for treatment of her depression, but exactly what this treatment consisted of, no one knows. M herself kept it absolutely secret. Whatever it was, it seems to have worked. It wasn't long before M was able to stop taking anti-depressants, as a result of which she lost the strange puffiness the medicine had caused, her hair regained its fullness, and her beauty returned. She recovered mentally, as well, and gradually began acting again.

At that point, she stopped the treatments.

In October of this year, however, just as the memory of her nightmare was beginning to fade, M had one episode during which, for no apparent reason, her symptoms flared up again.

The timing couldn't have been worse: she had a major acting job just a few days ahead of her, something she could not have carried off in her present state. M contacted the woman and re- quested the usual treatment, but the woman told her that she was no longer in practice. I'm sorry, she said, but I cant do anything for you. I'm not qualified anymore. I've lost my powers. There is someone I can introduce you to, but you'll have to swear absolute secrecy. If you say one word about it to anyone, you'll be sorry. Is that clear?

M was supposedly instructed to go to a certain place, where she was brought into the presence of a man with a bluish mark on his face. The man,,around thirty, never spoke while she was there, but his treatment was incredibly effective. M refused to divulge what she paid for the session, but we can imagine that the consultation fee was quite substantial.

This is what we know about the mysterious treatment, as told by M to a trusted very close friend. She first had to go to a certain downtown hotel, where she met a young man whose job it was to guide her to the healer. They left from a special underground VIP parking lot in a big black car and went to the place where the treatment was performed. As far as the treatment itself is concerned, however, we have been able to learn nothing. M is said to have told her friend, Those people have awesome powers. Something terrible could happen to me if I broke my promise.

M paid only one visit to the place, and she has not since suffered any seizures. We tried approaching M directly for more information on the treatment and the mysterious woman, but as expected, she refused to see us. According to one well-informed source, this organization generally avoids contacts with the entertainment world and concentrates on the more secretive worlds of politics and finance. Our contacts in the performing arts have, so far, yielded no more information....

13 The Waiting Man What Couldn't Be Shaken Off No Man Is an Island

Eight o'clock went by and everything was dark when I opened the back gate and stepped out into the alley. I had to squeeze through sideways. Less than three feet high, the gate had been cleverly camouflaged in the corner of the fence so as to be undetectable from the outside. The alley emerged from the night, illuminated as always by the cold white light of the mercury lamp in the garden of May Kasahara's house.

I clicked the gate shut and slipped down the alley. Through one fence after another, I caught glimpses of people in their dining rooms and living rooms, eating and watching TV dramas. Food smells drifted into the alley through kitchen windows and exhaust fans. One teenage boy was practicing a fast passage on his electric guitar, with the volume turned down.

In a second-floor window, a tiny girl was studying at her desk, an earnest expression on her face. A married couple in a heated argument sent their voices out to the alley. A baby was screaming. A telephone rang. Reality spilled out into the alley like water from an overfilled bowl-as sound, as smell, as image, as plea, as response.

I wore my usual tennis shoes to keep my steps silent. My pace could be neither too fast nor too slow. The important thing was not to attract peoples attention, not to let that reality pick up on my passing presence. I knew all the corners, all the obstructions. Even in the dark I could slip down the alley without bumping into anything. When I finally reached the back of my house, I stopped, looked around, and climbed over the low wall.

The house crouched silently in the darkness like the shell of a giant animal. I unlocked the kitchen door, turned on the light, and changed the cats water. I took a can of cat food from the cabinet and opened it. Mackerel heard the sound and appeared from nowhere. He rubbed his head against my leg a few times, then started to tear into his food. While he was eating, I took a cold beer from the refrigerator. I always had supper in the residence-something that Cinnamon had prepared for me-and so the most I ever had here was a salad or a slice of cheese. Drinking my beer, I took the cat on my knees and confirmed his warmth and softness with my hands. Having spent the day in separate places, we both confirmed the fact that we were home.

Tonight, however, when I slipped my shoes off and reached out to turn the kitchen light on, I felt a presence. I stopped my hand in the darkness and listened, inhaling quietly. I heard nothing, but I caught the faint scent of tobacco. There was someone in the house, someone waiting for me to come home, someone who, a few moments earlier, had probably given up the struggle and lit a cigarette, taking no more than a few puffs and opening a window to let the smoke out, but still the smell remained. This could not be a person I knew. The house was still locked up, and I didn't know anyone who smoked, aside from Nutmeg Akasaka, who would hardly be waiting in the dark if she wanted to see me.

Instinctively, my hand reached out in the darkness, feeling for the bat. But it was no longer there. It was at the bottom of the well now. The sound my heart had started making was almost unreal, as if the heart itself had escaped from my chest and was beating beside my ear. I tried to keep my breathing regular. I probably didn't need the bat. If someone was here to hurt me, he wouldn't be sitting around inside. Still, my palms were itching with anticipation. My hands were seeking the touch of the bat. Mackerel came from somewhere in the darkness and, as usual, started meowing and rubbing his head against my leg. But he was not as hungry as always. I could tell from the sounds he made. I reached out and turned on the kitchen light.

Sorry, but I went ahead and gave the cat his supper, said the man on the living room sofa, with an easy lilt to his voice. I've been waiting a very long time for you, Mr. Okada, and the cat was all over my feet and meowing, so-hope you don't mind-I found a can of cat food in the cabinet and gave it to him. Tell you the truth, I'm not very good with cats.

He showed no sign of standing up. I watched him sitting there and said nothing.

I'm sure this was quite a shock to you-finding somebody in your house, waiting for you in the dark. I'm sorry. Really. But if I had turned the light on, you might not have come in. I'm not here to do you any harm, believe me, so you don't have to look at me that way. I just need to have a little talk with you.

He was a short man, dressed in a suit. It was hard to guess his height with him seated, but he couldn't have been five feet tall. Somewhere between forty-five and fifty years old, he looked like a chubby little frog with a bald head-a definite A in May Kasahara's classification system. He did have a few clumps of hair clinging to his scalp over his ears, but their oddly shaped black presence made the bare area stand out all the more. He had a large nose, which may have been somewhat blocked, judging from the way it expanded and contracted like a bellows with each noisy breath he took. Atop that nose sat a pair of thick-looking wire-rim glasses. He had a way of pronouncing certain words so that his upper lip would curl, revealing a mouthful of crooked, tobacco-stained teeth. He was, without question, one of the ugliest human beings I had ever encountered. And not just physically ugly: there was a certain clammy weirdness about him that I could not put into words-the sort of feeling you get when your hand brushes against some big, strange bug in the darkness. He looked less like an actual human being than like something from a long-forgotten nightmare.

Do you mind if I have a smoke? he asked. I was trying not to before, but sitting and waiting without a cigarette is like torture. Its a very bad habit.

Finding it difficult to speak, I simply nodded. The strange-looking man took an unfiltered Peace from his jacket pocket, put it between his lips, and made a loud, dry scratching sound as he lit it with a match. Then he picked up the empty cat food can at his feet and dropped the match into it. So he had been using the can as an ashtray. He sucked the smoke into his lungs with obvious pleasure, drawing his thick eyebrows into one shaggy line and letting out little moans. Each long puff made the end of the cigarette glow bright red like burning coal. I opened the patio door and let the outside air in. A light rain was falling. I couldn't see it or hear it, but I knew it was raining from the smell.

The man had on a brown suit, white shirt, and red tie, all of the same degree of cheapness, and all worn out to the same degree. The color of the suit was reminiscent of an amateur paint job on an old jalopy. The deep wrinkles in the pants and jacket looked as permanent as valleys in an aerial photograph. The white shirt had taken on a yellow tinge, and one button on the chest was ready to fall off. It also looked one or two sizes too small, with its top button open and the collar crooked. The tie, with its strange pattern of ill-formed ectoplasm, looked as if it had been left in place since the days of the Osmond Brothers. Anyone looking at him would have seen immediately that this was a man who paid absolutely no attention to the phenomenon of clothing. He wore what he wore strictly because he had no choice but to put something on when dealing with other people, as if he were hostile to the idea of wearing clothes at all. He might have been planning to wear these things the same way every day until they fell apart-like a highland farmer driving his donkey from morning to night until he kills it.

Once he had sucked all the nicotine he needed into his lungs, he gave a sigh of relief and produced a strange look on his face that hovered somewhere midway between a smile and a smirk. Then he opened his mouth.

Well, now, let me not forget to introduce myself. I am not usually so rude. The name is Ushikawa. That's ushi for bull and kawa for river. Easy enough to remember, don't you think? Everybody calls me Ushi. Funny: the more I hear that, the more I feel like a real bull. I even feel a kind of closeness whenever I happen to see a bull out in a field somewhere. Names are funny things, don't you think, Mr. Okada? Take Okada, for example. Now, theres a nice, clean name: hill-field. I sometimes wish I had a normal name like that, but unfortunately, a surname is not something you're free to pick. Once you're born into this world as Ushikawa, you're Ushikawa for life, like it or not. They've been calling me Ushi since the day I started kindergarten. Theres no way around it. You get a guy named Ushikawa, and people are bound to call him Ushi, right? They say a name expresses the thing it stands for, but I wonder if it isn't the other way around-the thing gets more and more like its name. Anyhow, just think of me as Ushikawa, and if you feel like it, call me Ushi. I don't mind.

I went to the kitchen and brought back a can of beer from the refrigerator. I did not offer any to Ushikawa. I hadn't invited him here, after all. I said nothing and drank my beer, and Ushikawa said nothing and drew deeply on his cigarette. I did not sit in the chair across from him but rather stood leaning against a pillar, looking down at him. Finally, he crushed his butt out in the empty cat food can and looked up at me.

I'm sure you're wondering how I got in here, Mr. Okada. True? You're sure you locked the door. And in fact, it was locked. But I have a key. A real key. Look, here it is.

He thrust his hand into his jacket pocket, pulled out a key ring with one key attached, and held it up for me to see. It certainly did look like the key to this house. But what attracted my attention was the key holder. It was just like Kumiko's-a simple-styled green leather key holder with a ring that opened in an unusual way.

Its the real thing, said Ushikawa. As you can see. And the holder belongs to your wife. Let me say this to avoid any misunderstanding: This was given to me by your wife, Kumiko. I did not steal it or take it by force.

Where is Kumiko? I asked, my voice sounding somewhat mangled.

Ushikawa took his glasses off, seemed to check on the cloudiness of the lenses, then put them back on. I know exactly where she is, he said. In fact, I am taking care of her.

Taking care of her?

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't mean it that way. Don't worry, Ushikawa said, with a smile. When he smiled, his face broke up asymmetrically from side to side, and his glasses went up at an angle. Please don't glare at me like that. I'm just sort of helping her as part of my work-running errands, doing odd jobs. I'm a gofer, thats all. You know how she cant go outside.

Cant go outside? I parroted his words again.

He hesitated a moment, his tongue flicking across his lips. Well, maybe you don't know. That's all right. I cant really say whether she cant go out or doesn't want to go out. I'm sure you would like to know, Mr. Okada, but please don't ask me. Not even I know all the details. But theres nothing for you to worry about. She is not being held against her will. I mean, this is not a movie or a novel. We cant really do that sort of thing.

I set my beer can down carefully at my feet. So anyway, tell me, what did you come here for?

After patting his knees several times with outstretched palms, Ushikawa gave one deep, sharp nod. Ah, yes. I forgot to mention that, didn't I? I go to all the trouble of introducing myself, and then I forget to tell you what I'm here for! That has been one of my most consistent flaws over the years: to go on and on about foolish things and leave out the main point. No wonder I'm always doing the wrong thing! Well, then, belated though it may be, here it is: I work for your wife Kumiko's elder brother. Ushikawa's the name-but I already told you that, about the Ushi and everything. I work for Dr. Noboru Wataya as a kind of private sery-though not the usual private sery that a member of the Diet might have. Only a certain kind of person, a superior kind of person, can be a real private sery. The term covers a wide range of types. I mean, there are private series, and then there are private series, and I'm as close to the second kind as you can get. I'm down there-I mean, way, way down there. If there are spirits lurking everywhere, I'm one of the dirty little ones down in the corner of a bathroom or a closet. But I cant complain. If somebody this messy came right out in the open, think of what it could do to Dr. Wataya's clean-cut image! No, the ones who face the cameras have to be slick, intelligent-looking types, not bald midgets. How-dee-doo, folks, its me, Dr. Wataya's private sec-ruh-teh-ree. What a laugh! Right, Mr. Okada? I kept silent as he prattled on.

So what I do for the Doctor are the unseen jobs, the shadow jobs, so to speak, the ones that aren't out in the open. I'm the fiddler under the porch. Jobs like that are my specialty. Like this business with Ms. Kumiko. Now, don't get me wrong, though: don't think that taking care of her is just some busywork for a lowly hack. If what I've said has given you that impression, it couldn't be further from the truth. I mean, Ms. Kumiko is the Doctors one and only dear little sister, after all. I consider it a consummate honor to have been allowed to take on such an important task, believe me!

Oh, by the way, this may seem very rude, but I wonder if I could ask you for a beer. All this talking has made me very thirsty. If you don't mind, I'll just grab one myself. I know where it is. While I was waiting, I took the liberty of peeking into the refrigerator.

I nodded to him. Ushikawa went to the kitchen and took a bottle of beer from the refrigerator. Then he sat down on the sofa again, drinking straight from the bottle with obvious relish, his huge Adams apple twitching above the knot of his tie like some kind of animal.

I tell you, Mr. Okada, a cold beer at the end of the day is the best thing life has to offer. Some choosy people say that a too cold beer doesn't taste good, but I couldn't disagree more. The first beer should be so cold you cant even taste it. The second one should be a little less chilled, but I want that first one to be like ice. I want it to be so cold my temples throb with pain. This is my own personal preference, of course.

Still leaning against the pillar, I took another sip of my own beer. Lips tightly closed in a straight line, Ushikawa surveyed the room for some moments.

I must say, Mr. Okada, for a man without a wife, you do keep the house clean. I'm very impressed. I myself am absolutely hopeless, I'm embarrassed to say. My place is a mess, a garbage heap, a pigsty. I haven't washed the bathtub for a year or more. Perhaps I neglected to tell you that I was also deserted by my wife. Five years ago. So I can feel a certain sympathy for you, Mr. Okada, or to avoid the risk of misinterpretation, let me just say that I can understand how you feel. Of course, my situation was different from yours. It was only natural for my wife to leave me. I was the worst husband in the world. Far from complaining, I have to admire her for having put up with me as long as she did. I used to beat her. No one else: she was the only one I could beat up on. You can tell what a weakling I am. Got the heart of a flea. I would do nothing but kiss ass outside the house; people would call me Ushi and order me around, and I would just suck up to them all the more. So when I got home I would take it out on my wife. Heh heh heh-pretty bad, eh? And I knew just how bad I was, but I couldn't stop. It was like a sickness. Id beat her face out of shape until you couldn't recognize her. And not just beat her: Id slam her against the wall and kick her, pour hot tea on her, throw things at her, you name it. The kids would try to stop me, and Id end up hitting them. Little kids: seven, eight years old. And not just push them around: Id wallop them with everything I had. I was an absolute devil. Id try to stop myself, but I couldn't. I couldn't control myself. After a certain point, I would tell myself that I had done enough damage, that I had to stop, but I didn't know how to stop. Do you see what a horror I was? So then, five years ago, when my daughter was five, I broke her arm-just snapped it. That's when my wife finally got fed up with me and left with both kids. I haven't seen any of them since. Haven't even heard from them. But what can I do? Its my own fault.

I said nothing to him. The cat came over to me and gave a short meow, as if looking for attention.

Anyway, I'm sorry, I wasn't planning to exhaust you with all these boring details. You must be wondering if I have any business that has brought me here this evening. Well, I have. I didn't come here for small talk, Mr. Okada. The Doctor- which is to say, Dr. Wataya- ordered me to come to see you. I will now tell you exactly what he told me, so please listen.

First of all, Dr. Wataya is not opposed to the idea of reconsidering a relationship between you and Ms. Kumiko. In other words, he would not object if both of you decided that you wanted to go back to your previous relationship. At the moment, Ms. Kumiko herself has no such intention, so nothing would happen right away, but if you were to reject any possibility of divorce and insist that you wanted to wait as long as it took, he could accept that. He will no longer insist upon a divorce, as he has in the past, and so he would not mind if you wanted to use me as a conduit if there was something you wanted to communicate to Ms. Kumiko. In other words, no more locking horns on every little thing: a renewal of diplomatic relations, as it were. This is the first item of business. How does it strike you, Mr. Okada?

I lowered myself to the floor and stroked the cats head, but I said nothing. Ushikawa watched me and the cat for a time, then continued to speak. Well, of course, Mr. Okada, you cant say a word until you've heard everything I have to say. All right, then, I will continue through to the end. Here is the second item of business. This gets a little complicated, I'm afraid. It has to do with an article called The Hanging House, which appeared in one of the weekly magazines. I don't know if you have read it or not, Mr. Okada, but it is a very interesting piece. Well written. Jinxed land in posh Setagaya residential neighborhood. Many people met untimely deaths there over the years. What mystery man has recently bought the place? What is going on behind that high fence? One riddle after another Anyhow, Dr. Wataya read the piece and realized that the hanging house is very close to the house you live in, Mr. Okada. The idea began to gnaw at him that there might be some connection between it and you. So he investigated ... or, should I say the lowly Ushikawa, on his short little legs, took the liberty of investigating the matter, and-bingo!- there you were, Mr. Okada, just as he had predicted, going back and forth down that back passageway every day to the other house, obviously very much involved with whatever it is that is going on inside there. I myself was truly amazed to see such a powerful display of Dr. Wataya's penetrating intelligence.

Theres only been one article so far, with no follow-up, but who knows? Dying embers can always rekindle. I mean, thats a pretty fascinating story. So Dr. Wataya is more than a little nervous. What if his brother-in-laws name were to come out in some unpleasant connection? Think of the scandal that could erupt! Dr. Wataya is the man of the moment, after all. The media would have a field day. And then theres this difficult business with you and Ms. Kumiko. They would blow it up out of all proportion. I mean, everybody has something he would rather not have aired in public, right? Especially when it comes to personal affairs. This is a delicate moment in the Doctors political career, after all. He has to proceed with the utmost caution until he's ready to take off. So what he has in mind for you is a little deal of sorts he's cooked up. If you will cut all connection with this hanging house, Mr. Okada, he will give some serious thought to bringing you and Ms. Kumiko back together again. That's all there is to it. How does that strike you, Mr. Okada? Have I set it out clearly enough?

Probably, I said. So what do you think? What is your reaction to all this? Stroking the cats neck, I thought about it for a while. Then I said, I don't get it. What made Noboru Wataya think that I had anything to do with that house? How did he make the connection?

Ushikawa's face broke up again into one of his big smiles, but his eyes remained as cold as glass. He took a crushed pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit up with a match. Ah, Mr. Okada, you ask such difficult questions. Remember, I am just a lowly messenger. A stupid carrier pigeon. I carry slips of paper back and forth. I think you understand. I can say this, however: the Doctor is no fool. He knows how to use his brain, and he has a kind of sixth sense, something that ordinary people do not possess. And also let me tell you this, Mr. Okada: he has a very real kind of power that he can exercise in this world, a power that grows stronger every day. You had better not ignore it. You may have your reasons for not liking him-and that is perfectly fine as far as I am concerned, its none of my business-but things have gone beyond the level of simple likes and dislikes. I want you to understand that.

If Noboru Wataya is so powerful, why doesn't he just stop the magazine from publishing any more articles? That would be a whole lot simpler.

Ushikawa smiled. Then he inhaled deeply on his cigarette.

Dear, dear Mr. Okada, you mustn't say such reckless things. You and I live in Japan, after all, one of the worlds most truly democratic states. Correct? This is no dictatorship where all you see around you are banana plantations and soccer fields. No matter how much power a politician may have in this country, quashing an article in a magazine is not a simple thing. It would be far too dangerous. You might succeed in getting the company brass in your pocket, but someone is going to be left dissatisfied. And that could end up attracting all the more attention. It just doesn't pay to try pushing people around when such a hot story is in- volved. Its true.

And just between you and me, there may be some vicious players involved in this affair, types you don't know anything about, Mr. Okada. If thats the case, this is eventually going to include more than our dear Doctor. Once that happens, we could be talking about a whole new ball game. Lets compare this to a visit to the dentist. So far, were at the stage of poking a spot where the novocaine's still working. Which is why no ones complaining. But soon the drill is going to hit a nerve, and then somebody's going to jump out of the chair. Somebody could get seriously angry. Do you see what I'm saying? I'm not trying to threaten you, but it seems to me- to old Ushikawa here-that you are slowly being dragged into dangerous territory without even realizing it. Ushikawa seemed finally to have made his point. You mean I should pull out before I get hurt? I asked. Ushikawa nodded. This is like playing catch in the middle of the expressway, Mr. Okada. Its a very dangerous game.

In addition to which, its going to cause Noboru Wataya a lot of trouble. So if I just fold up my cards, hell put me in touch with Kumiko.

Ushikawa nodded again. That about sums it up. I took a swallow of beer. Then I said, First of all, let me tell you this. I'm going to get Kumiko back, but I'm going to do it myself, not with help from Noboru Wataya. I don't want his help. And you're certainly right about one thing: I don't like Noboru Wataya. As you say, though, this is not just a question of likes and dislikes. Its something more basic than that. I don't simply dislike him: I cannot accept the fact of his very existence. And so I refuse to make any deals with him. Please be so kind as to convey that to him for me. And don't you ever come into this house again without my permission. It is my house, not some hotel lobby or train station.

Ushikawa narrowed his eyes and stared at me awhile from behind his glasses. His eyes never moved. As before, they were devoid of emotion. Not that they were expressionless. But all he had there was something fabricated temporarily for the occasion. At that point, he held his disproportionately large right palm aloft, as if testing for rain.

I understand completely, he said. I never thought this would be easy, so I'm not particularly surprised by your answer. Besides, I don't surprise very easily. I understand how you feel, and I'm glad everything is out in the open like this, no hemming and hawing, just a simple yes or no. Makes it easier for everybody. All I need as a carrier pigeon is another convoluted answer where you cant tell black from white! The world has too many of those as it is! Not that I'm complaining, but all I seem to get every day are sphinxes giving me riddles. This job is bad for my health, let me tell you. Living like this, before you know it, you become devious by nature. Do you see what I mean, Mr. Okada? You become suspicious, always looking for ulterior motives, never able to put your faith in anything thats clear and simple. Its a terrible thing, Mr. Okada, it really is.

So, fine, Mr. Okada, I will let the Doctor know that you have given him a very clear-cut answer. But don't expect things to end there, you may want to finish this business, but its not that simple. I will probably have to come to see you again. I'm sorry to put you through this, having to deal with such an ugly, messy little fellow, but please try to accustom yourself to my existence, at least. I don't harbor any feelings toward you as an individual, Mr. Okada. Really. But for the time being, whether you like it or not, I'm going to be one of those things that you cant just sweep away. I know its an odd way to put it, but please try to think of me like that. I can promise you one thing, though. I will not be letting myself into your house again. You are quite right: that is not a proper way to behave. I should go down on my knees and beg to be let in. This time I had no choice. Please try to understand. I am not always so reckless. Appearances to the contrary, I am an ordinary human being. From now on, I will do as other people do and call beforehand. That should be all right, don't you think? I will ring once, hang up, then ring again. You'll know its me that way, and you can tell yourself, Oh, its that stupid Ushikawa again, when you pick up the phone. But do pick up the phone.

Otherwise, I will have no choice but to let myself in again. Personally, I would rather not do such a thing, but I am being paid to wag my tail, so when my boss says Do it! I have to try my best to do it. You understand.

I said nothing to him. Ushikawa crushed what was left of his cigarette in the bottom of the cat food can, then glanced at his watch as if suddenly recalling something. Oh, my, my, my- look how late it is! First I come barging in, then I talk you to death and take your beer. Please excuse me. As I said earlier, I don't have anybody to go home to, so when I find someone I can talk to, I settle in for the night. Sad, don't you think? I tell you, Mr. Okada, living alone is not something you should do for long. What is it they say? No man is an island. Or is it The devil finds mischief for idle hands?

After sweeping some imaginary dust from his lap, Ushikawa stood up slowly.

No need to see me out, he said. I let myself in, after all; I can let myself out. I'll be sure to lock the door. One last word of advice, though, Mr. Okada, though you may not want to hear this: There are things in this world it is better not to know about. Of course, those are the very things that people most want to know about. Its strange. I know I'm being very general.... I wonder when well meet again? I hope things are better by then. Oh, well, good night.

The quiet rain continued through the night, tapering off toward dawn, but the sticky presence of the strange little man, and the smell of his unfiltered cigarettes, remained in the house as long as the lingering dampness.

14 Cinnamon's Strange Sign Language The Musical Offering

Cinnamon stopped talking once and for all just before his sixth birthday, Nutmeg said to me. It was the year he should have entered elementary school. All of a sudden, that February, he stopped talking. And as strange as it may seem, it was night before we noticed that he hadn't said a word all day. True, he was never much of a talker, but still. When it finally occurred to me what was happening, I did everything I could to make him speak. I talked to him, I shook him; nothing worked. He was like a stone. I didn't know whether he had suddenly lost the power to speak or he had decided on his own that he would stop speaking.

And I still don't know. But he's never said another word-never made another sound. Hell never scream if he's in pain, and you can tickle him but hell never laugh out loud.

Nutmeg took her son to several different ear, nose, and throat specialists, but none of them could locate the cause. All they could determine was that it was not physical. Cinnamon could hear perfectly well, but he wouldn't speak. All the doctors concluded that it must be psychological in origin. Nutmeg took him to a psychiatrist friend of hers, but he also was unable to determine a cause for Cinnamon's continued silence. He administered an IQ. test, but there was no problem there. In fact, he turned out to have an unusually high IQ. The doctor could find no evidence of emotional problems, either. Has he experienced some kind of unusual shock? the psychiatrist asked Nutmeg. Try to think. Could he have witnessed something abnormal or been subjected to violence at home? But Nutmeg could think of nothing. One day her son had been normal in every way: he had eaten his meals in the normal way, had normal conversations with her, gone to bed when he was supposed to, had no trouble falling asleep. And the next morning he had sunk into a world of deep silence. There had been no problems in the home. The child was being brought up under the ever watchful gaze of Nutmeg and her mother, neither of whom had ever raised a hand to him. The doctor concluded that the only thing they could do was observe him and hope that something would turn up. Unless they knew the cause, there was no way to treat him. Nutmeg should bring Cinnamon to see the doctor once a week, in the course of which they might figure out what had happened. It was possible that he would just start speaking again, like someone waking from a dream. All they could do was wait. True, the child was not speaking, but there was nothing else wrong with him....

And so they waited, but Cinnamon never again rose to the surface of his deep ocean of silence.

Its electric motor producing a low hum, the front gate began to swing inward at nine o'clock in the morning, and Cinnamon's Mercedes-Benz 500SEL pulled into the driveway. The car phones antenna protruded from the back window like a newly sprouted tentacle. I watched through a crack in the blinds. The car looked like some kind of huge migratory fish, afraid of nothing. The brand-new black tires traced a silent arc over the concrete surface and came to a stop in the designated spot. They traced exactly the same arc every morning and stopped in exactly the same place with probably no more than two inches variation.

I was drinking the coffee that I had brewed for myself a few minutes earlier. The rain had stopped, but gray clouds covered the sky, and the ground was still black and cold and wet. The birds raised sharp cries as they flitted back and forth in search of worms on the ground. The drivers door opened after a short pause, and Cinnamon stepped out, wearing sunglasses. After a quick scan of the area, he took the glasses off and slipped them into his breast pocket. Then he closed the car door. The precise sound of the big Mercedes' door latch was different from the sounds other car doors made. For me, this sound marked the beginning of another day at the Residence.

I had been thinking all morning about Ushikawa's visit the night before, wondering whether I should tell Cinnamon that Ushikawa had been sent by Noboru Wataya to get me to pull out of the activities conducted at this house. In the end, though, I decided not to tell him- for the time being, at least. This was something that had to be settled between Noboru Wataya and me. I didn't want to have any third parties involved.

Cinnamon was stylishly dressed, as always, in a suit. All his suits were of the finest quality, tailored to fit him perfectly. They tended to be rather conservative in cut, but on him they looked youthful, as if magically transformed into the latest fashion.

He wore a new tie, of course, one to match that days suit. His shirt and shoes were different as well. His mother, Nutmeg, had probably picked everything out for him, in her usual way. His outfit was as spotless, top to bottom, as the Mercedes he drove. Each time he showed up in the morning, I found myself admiring him-or, I might even say, moved by him. What kind of being could possibly lie hidden beneath that perfect exterior?

Cinnamon took two paper shopping bags full of food and other necessities out of the trunk and held them in his arms as he entered the Residence. Embraced by him, even these ordinary paper bags from the supermarket looked elegant and artistic. Maybe he had some special way of holding them. Or possibly it was something more basic than that. His whole face lit up when he saw me. It was a marvelous smile, as if he had just come out into a bright opening after a long walk in a deep woods. Good morning, I said to him. Good morning, he did not say to me, though his lips moved. He proceeded to take the groceries out of the bags and arrange them in the refrigerator like a bright child committing newly acquired knowledge to memory. The other supplies he arranged in the cupboards. Then he had a cup of coffee with me. We sat across from each other at the kitchen table, just as Kumiko and I had done every morning long before.

Cinnamon never spent a day in school, finally, said Nutmeg. Ordinary schools wouldn't accept a child who didn't speak, and I felt it would be wrong to send him to a school with nothing but handicapped children. The reason for his being unable to speak-whatever it was- I knew was different from other children's reasons. And besides, he never showed any sign of wanting to go to school. He seemed to like it best to stay home alone, reading or listening to classical music or playing in the yard with the dog we had then. He would go out for walks too, sometimes, but not with much enthusiasm, because he didn't like to see children his own age.

Nutmeg studied sign language and used that to talk with Cinnamon. When sign language was not enough, they would converse in writing. One day, though, she realized that she and her son were able to convey their feelings to each other perfectly well without resorting to such indirect methods. She knew exactly what he was thinking or requesting with only the slightest gesture or change of expression. From that point on, she ceased to be overly concerned about Cinnamon's inability to speak. It certainly wasn't obstructing any mental exchange between mother and son. The absence of spoken language did, of course, give her an occasional sense of physical inconvenience, but it never went beyond the level of inconvenience, and in a sense it was this very inconvenience that purified the quality of the communication between the two.

During lulls between jobs, Nutmeg would teach Cinnamon how to read and write and do arithmetic. But in fact, there was not that much that she had to teach him. He liked books, and he would use them to teach himself what he needed to know. She was less a teacher for him than the one who chose the books he needed. He liked music and wanted to play the piano, but after learning the basic finger movements in a few months with a professional piano teacher, he used only manuals and recorded tapes to bring himself to a high level of technical accomplishment for one so young. He loved to play Bach and Mozart, and aside from Poulenc and Bartok, he showed little inclination to play anything beyond the Romantics. During his first six years of study, his interests were concentrated on music and reading, but from the time he reached middle school age, he turned to the acquisition of languages, beginning with English and then French. In both cases, he taught himself enough to read simple books after six months of study. He had no intention of learning to converse in either language, of course; he wanted only to be able to read books. Another activity he loved was tinkering with complicated machinery. He bought a complete collection of professional tools, with which he was able to build radios and tube amplifiers, and he enjoyed taking clocks apart and fixing them.

Everyone around him-which is to say, his mother, his father, and his grandmother (Nutmeg's mother)-became accustomed to the fact that he never spoke, and ceased to think of it as unnatural or abnormal. After a few years, Nutmeg stopped taking her son to the psychiatrist. The weekly consultations were doing nothing for his symptoms, and as the doctors had noted in the beginning, aside from his not speaking, there was nothing wrong with him. Indeed, he was a virtually perfect child. Nutmeg could not recall ever having had to force him to do anything or to scold him for doing anything he shouldn't have done. He would decide for himself what he had to do and then he would do it, flawlessly, in his own way. He was so different from other children- ordinary children- that even comparing him with them was all but meaningless. He was twelve when his grandmother died (an event that caused him to go on crying, soundlessly, for several days), after which he took it upon himself to do the cooking, laundry, and cleaning while his mother was at work. Nutmeg wanted to hire a housekeeper when her mother died, but Cinnamon would not hear of it. He refused to have a stranger come in and disrupt the order of the household. It was Cinnamon, then, who ran the house, and he did so with a high degree of precision and discipline.

Cinnamon spoke to me with his hands. He had inherited his mothers slender, well-shaped fingers. They were long, but not too long. He held them up near his face and moved them without hesitation, and like some kind of sensible, living creatures they communicated his messages to me.

As Nutmeg had said, I had no trouble understanding the words that his fingers conveyed. I was unacquainted with sign language, but it was easy for me to follow his complex, fluid movements. It may have been Cinnamon's skill that brought his meaning out so naturally, just as a play performed in a foreign language can be moving. Or then again, perhaps it only seemed to me that I was watching his fingers move but was not actually doing so. The moving fingers were perhaps no more than a decorative facade, and I was half-consciously watching some other aspect of the building behind it. I would try to catch sight of the boundary between the facade and the background whenever we chatted across the breakfast table, but I could never quite manage to see it, as if any line that might have marked the border between the two kept moving and changing its shape.

After our short conversations-or communications-Cinnamon would take his suit jacket off, put it on a hanger, tuck his necktie inside the front of his shirt, and then do the cleaning or cooking. As he worked, he would listen to music on a compact stereo. One week he would listen to nothing but Rossini's sacred music, and another week Vivaldi's concertos for wind instruments, repeating them so often that I ended up memorizing the melodies.

Cinnamon worked with marvelous dexterity and no wasted motion. I used to offer to lend him a hand at first, but he would only smile and shake his head. Watching how he went about his chores, I became convinced that things would progress far more smoothly if I left everything to him. It became my habit after that to avoid getting in his way. I would read a book on the fitting room sofa while he was doing his morning chores.

The Residence was not a big house, and it was minimally furnished. No one actually lived there, so it never got particularly dirty or untidy. Still, every day Cinnamon would vacuum every inch of the place, dust the furniture and shelves, clean the windowpanes, wax the table, wipe the light fixtures, and put everything in the house back where it belonged. He would arrange the dishes in the china cabinet and line up the pots according to size, align the edges of the linens and towels, point all coffee cup handles in the same direction, reposition the bar of soap on the bathroom sink, and change the towels even if they showed no sign of having been used. Then he would gather the trash into a single bag, cinch it closed, and take it out. He would adjust the time on the clocks according to his watch (which, I would have been willing to bet, was no more than three seconds off). If, in the course of his cleaning, he found anything the slightest bit out of place, he would put it back where it belonged with precise and elegant movements. I might test him by shifting a clock a half inch to the left on its shelf, and the next morning he would be sure to move it a half inch back to the right.

In none of this behavior did Cinnamon give the impression of obsessiveness. He seemed to be doing only what was natural and right. Perhaps in Cinnamon's mind there was a vivid imprint of the way this world-or at least this one little world here- was supposed to be, and for him to keep it that way was as natural as breathing. Perhaps he saw himself as lending just the slightest hand when things were driven by an intense inner desire to return to their original forms.

Cinnamon prepared food, stored it in the refrigerator, and indicated to me what I ought to have for lunch. I thanked him. He then stood before the mirror, straightened his tie, inspected his shirt, and slipped into his suit coat. Finally, with a smile, he moved his lips to say goodbye, took one last look around, and went out through the front door. Sitting behind the wheel of the Mercedes-Benz, he slipped a classical tape into the deck, pressed the remote- control button to open the front gate, and drove out, tracing back over the same arc he had made when he arrived. Once the car had passed through, the gate closed. I watched through a crack in the blind, holding a cup of coffee, as before. The birds were no longer as noisy as they had been when Cinnamon arrived. I could see where the low clouds had been torn in spots and carried off by the wind, but above them was yet another, thicker layer of cloud.

I sat at the kitchen table, setting my cup down and surveying the room upon which Cinnamon's hands had imposed such a beautiful sense of order. It looked like a large, three- dimensional still life, disturbed only by the quiet ticking of the clock. The clocks hands showed ten-twenty. Looking at the chair that Cinnamon had occupied earlier, I asked myself once again whether I had done the right thing by not telling them about Ushikawa's visit the night before. Might it not impair whatever sense of trust there might be between Cinnamon and me or Nutmeg and me?

I preferred, though, to watch for a while to see how things would develop. What was it about my activities here that disturbed Noboru Wataya so? Which of his tails was I stepping on? And what kind of countermeasures would he adopt? If I could find the answers to these questions, I might be able to draw a little closer to his secret. And as a result, I might be able to draw closer to where Kumiko was.

As the hands of the clock were verging on eleven (the clock that Cinnamon had slid a half inch to the right, back to its proper place), I went out to the yard to climb down into the well.

I told Cinnamon the story of the submarine and the zoo when he was little-about what I had seen from the deck of the transport ship in August of 1945 and how the Japanese soldiers shot the animals in my fathers zoo all the while an American submarine was training its cannon on us and preparing to sink our ship. I had kept that story to myself for a very long time and never told it to anyone. I had wandered in silence through the gloomy labyrinth that spread out between illusion and truth. When Cinnamon was born, though, it occurred to me that he was the only one I could tell my story to. And so, even before he could understand words, I began telling it to him over and over again, in a near whisper, telling him everything I could remember, and as I spoke, the scenes would come alive to me, in vivid colors, as if I had pried off a lid and let them out.

As he began to understand language, Cinnamon asked me to tell him the story again and again. I must have told it to him a hundred, two hundred, five hundred times, but not just repeating the same thing every time. Whenever I told it to him, Cinnamon would ask me to tell him some other little story contained in the main story. He wanted to know about a different branch of the same tree. I would follow the branch he asked for and tell him that part of the story. And so the story grew and grew.

In this way, the two of us went on to create our own interlocking system of myths. Do you see what I mean? We would get carried away telling each other the story every day. We would talk for hours about the names of the animals in the zoo, about the sheen of their fur or the color of their eyes, about the different smells that hung in the air, about the names and faces of the individual soldiers, about their birth and childhood, about their rifles and the weight of their ammunition, about the fears they felt and their thirst, about the shapes of the clouds floating in the sky....

I could see all the colors and shapes with perfect clarity as I told the story to Cinnamon, and I was able to put what I saw into words-the exact words I needed-and convey them all to him. There was no end to any of this. There were always more details that could be filled in, and the story kept growing deeper and deeper and bigger and bigger.

Nutmeg smiled as she spoke of those days long ago. I had never seen such a natural smile on her face before.

But then one day it ended, she said. Cinnamon stopped sharing stories with me that February morning when he stopped talking.

Nutmeg paused to light a cigarette.

I know now what happened. His words were lost in the labyrinth, swallowed up by the world of the stories. Something that came out of those stones snatched his tongue away. And a few years later, the same thing killed my husband.

The wind grew stronger than it had been in the morning, sending one heavy gray cloud after another on a straight line east. The clouds looked like silent travelers headed for the edge of the earth. In the bare branches of the trees in the yard, the wind would give a short, wordless moan now and then. I stood by the well, looking up at the sky. Kumiko was probably somewhere looking at them too. The thought crossed my mind for no reason. It was just a feeling I had.

I climbed down the ladder to the bottom of the well and pulled the rope to close the lid. After taking two or three deep breaths, I gripped the bat and gently lowered myself to a sitting position in the darkness. The total darkness. Yes, that was the most important thing. This unsullied darkness held the key. It was kind of like a TV cooking program. Everybody got that now? The secret to this recipe is total darkness. Make sure you use the thickest kind you can buy. And the strongest bat you can put your hands on, I added, smiling for a moment in the darkness.

I could feel a certain warmth in the mark on my cheek. It told me that I was drawing a little closer to the core of things. I closed my eyes. Still echoing in my ears were the strains of the music that Cinnamon had been listening to repeatedly as he worked that morning. It was Bach's Musical Offering, still there in my head like the lingering murmur of a crowd in a high-ceilinged auditorium. Eventually, though, silence descended and began to burrow its way into the folds of my brain, one after another, like an insect laying eggs. I opened my eyes, then closed them again. The darknesses inside and out began to blend, and I began to move outside of my self, the container that held me.

As always.

15 This Could Be the End of the Line (May Kasahara's Point of View: 3)

Hi, again, Mr. Wind-Up Bird.

Last time, I got as far as telling you about how I'm working in this wig factory in the mountains far away with a lot of local girls. This is the continuation of that letter.

Lately, its really been bothering me that, I don't know, the way people work like this every day from morning to night is kind of weird. Hasn't it ever struck you as strange? I mean, all I do here is do the work that my bosses tell me to do the way they tell me to do it. I don't have to think at all. Its like I just put my brain in a locker before I start work and pick it up on the way home. I spend seven hours a day at a workbench, planting hairs into wig bases, then I eat dinner in the cafeteria, take a bath, and of course I have to sleep, like everybody else, so out of a twenty-four-hour day, the amount of free time I have is like nothing. And be- cause I'm so tired from work, the free time I have I mostly spend lying around in a fog. I don't have any time to sit and think about anything. Of course, I don't have to work on weekends, but then I have to do the laundry and cleaning I've let go, and sometimes I go into town, and before I know it the weekend is over. I once made up my mind to keep a diary, but I had nothing to write, so I quit after a week. I mean, I just do the same thing over and over again, day in, day out.

But still- but still- it absolutely does not bother me that I'm now just a part of the work I do. I don't feel the least bit alienated from my life. If anything, I sometimes feel that by concentrating on my work like this, with all the mindless determination of an ant, I'm getting closer to the real me. I don't know how to put it, but its kind of like by not thinking about myself I can get closer to the core of my self. That's what I mean by kind of weird.

I'm giving this job everything I've got. Not to boast, but I've even been named worker of the month. I told you, I may not look it, but I'm really good at handiwork. We divide up into teams when we work, and any team I join improves its figures. I do things like helping the slower girls when I'm finished with my part of a job. So now I'm popular with the other girls.

Can you believe it? Me, popular! Anyway, what I wanted to tell you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, is that all I've been doing since I came to this factory is work, work, work. Like an ant. Like the village blacksmith. Have I made myself clear so far?

Anyway, the place where I do my actual work is really weird. Its huge, like a hangar, with a great, high roof, and wide open. A hundred and fifty girls sit lined up working there.

Its quite a sight. Of course, they didn't have to put up such a monster factory. Its not as if were building submarines or anything. They could have divided us up into separate rooms.

But maybe they figured it would increase our sense of communal solidarity to have that many people working together in one place. Or maybe its just easier for the bosses to oversee the whole bunch of us at once. I'll bet they're using whatchamacallit psychology on us. Were divided up into teams, surrounding workbenches just like the ones in science class where you dissect frogs, and one of the older girls sits at the end as team leader. Its OK to talk as long as you keep your hands moving (I mean, you cant just shut up and do this stuff all day long), but if you talk or laugh too loud or get too engrossed in your conversation, the team leader will come over to you with a frown and say, All right, Yumiko, lets keep the hands moving, not the mouth. Looks like you're falling behind, So we all whisper to each other like burglars in the night.

They pipe music into the factory. The style changes, depending on the time of day. If you're a big fan of Barry Manilow or Air Supply, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, you might like this place.

It takes me a few days to make one of my wigs. The time differs according to the grade of the product, of course, but you have to measure the time it takes to make a wig in days. First you divide the base into checkerboard squares, and then you plant hair into one square after another in order. Its not assembly line work, though, like the factory in Chaplin's movie, where you tighten one bolt and then the next one comes; each wig is mine. I almost feel like signing and dating each one when I'm through with it- But I don't, of course: they'd just get mad at me. Its a really nice feeling to know, though, that someone out there in the world is wearing the wig I made on his head. It sort of gives me a sense of, I don't know, connectedness.

Life is so strange, though. If somebody had said to me three years ago, Three years from now, you're going to be in a factory in the mountains making wigs with a lot of country girls, I would have laughed in their face. I could never have imagined this. And as for what I'll be doing three years from now: nobody knows the answer to that one, either. Do you know what you're going to be doing three years from now, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? I'm sure you don't. Forget about three years: Id be willing to bet all the money I've got here that you don't know what you'll be doing a month from now!

The girls around me, though, know pretty much where they'll be in three years. Or at least they think they do. They think they're going to save the money they make here, find the right guy after a few years, and be happily married.

The guys these girls are going to marry are mostly farmers sons or guys who will inherit the store from their fathers or guys working in small local companies. Like I said before, theres a chronic shortage of young women here, so they get bought up pretty quickly. It would take some really bad luck for anybody to be left over, so they all find somebody or other to marry. Its really something. And as I said in my last letter, most people quit work when they get married. Their job in the wig factory is just a stage that fills the few years gap between graduating from high school and getting married- kind of like a room they come into, stay in a little while, then leave.

Not only does the wig company not mind this; they seem to prefer to have the girls work just a few years and quit when they get married. Its a lot better for them to have a constant turnover in workers rather than to have to worry about salaries and benefits and unions and stuff like that. The company takes somewhat better care of the girls with ability who become team leaders, but the other, ordinary girls are just consumer goods to them. Theres a tacit understanding, then, between the girls and the company that they will get married and quit. So for the girls, imagining what is going to happen three years from now involves only one of two possibilities: they'll either be looking for a mate while they go on working here, or they will have quit work to get married. Talk about simplicity!

There just isn't anybody around here like me, who is thinking to herself, I don't know whats going to happen to me three years from now. They are all good workers. Nobody does a half-baked job or complains about the work. Now and then, I'll hear somebody griping about the cafeteria food, thats all. Of course, this is work were talking about, so it cant be fun all the time; you might have somebody putting in her hours from nine to five because she has to, even though she really wants to run off for the day, but for the most part, I think they're enjoying the work. It must be because they know this is a finite period suspended between one world and another. That's why they want to have as much fun as possible while they're here. Finally, this is just a transition point for them.

Not for me, though. This is no time of suspension or transition for me. I have absolutely no idea where I'm going from here. For me, this could be the end of the line. Do you see what I mean? So strictly speaking, I am not enjoying the work here. All I'm doing is trying to accept the work in every possible way. When I'm making a wig, I don't think about anything but making that wig. I'm deadly serious- enough so that I break out in a sweat all over.

I don't quite know how to put this, but lately I've been sort of thinking about the boy who got killed in the motorcycle accident. To tell you the truth, I haven't thought too much about him before. Maybe the shock of the accident twisted my memory or something in a weird way, because all I remembered about him were these weird kinds of things, like his smelly armpits or what a totally dumb guy he was or his fingers trying to get into strange places of mine.

Every once in a while, though, something not so bad about him comes back to me. Especially when my mind is empty and I'm just planting hairs in a wig base, these things come back to me out of nowhere. Oh, yeah, I'll think, he was like that. I guess time doesn't flow in order, does it- A, B, C, D? It just sort of goes where it feels like going.

Can I be honest with you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? I mean, really, really, really honest?

Sometimes I get sooo scared! I'll wake up in the middle of the night all alone, hundreds of miles away from anybody, and its pitch dark, and I have absolutely no idea whats going to happen to me in the future, and I get so scared I want to scream. Does that happen to you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? When it happens, I try to remind myself that I am connected to others- other things and other people. I work as hard as I can to list their names in my head. On the list, of course, is you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. And the alley, and the well, and the persimmon tree, and that kind of thing. And the wigs that I've made here with my own hands. And the little bits and pieces I remember about the boy. All these little things (though you're not just another one of those little things, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, but anyhow ... ) help me to come back here little by little. Then I start to feel sorry I never really let my boyfriend see me naked or touch me. Back then, I was absolutely determined not to let him put his hands on me. Sometimes, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, I think Id like to stay a virgin the rest of my life. Seriously. What do you think about that?

Bye-bye, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. I hope Kumiko comes back soon.

16 The Worlds Exhaustion and Burdens The Magic Lamp

The phone rang at nine-thirty at night. It rang once, then stopped, and started ringing again. This was to be Ushikawa's signal.

Hello, Mr. Okada, said Ushikawa's voice. Ushikawa here. I'm in your neighborhood and thought I might drop by, if it would be all right with you. I know its late, but theres something I wanted to talk to you about in person. What do you say? It has to do with Ms. Kumiko, so I thought you might be interested.

I pictured Ushikawa's expression at the other end of the line as I listened to him speaking. He had a self-satisfied smile on his face, lips curled and filthy teeth exposed, as if to say, I know this is an offer you cant refuse; and unfortunately, he was right.

It took him exactly ten minutes to reach my house. He wore the same clothes he'd had on three days earlier. I could have been mistaken about that, but he wore the same kind of suit and shirt and necktie, all grimy and wrinkled and baggy. These disgraceful articles of clothing looked as if they had been forced to accept an unfair portion of the worlds exhaustion and burdens. If, through some kind of reincarnation, it were possible to be reborn as Ushikawa's clothing, with a guarantee of rare glory in the next rebirth, I would still not want to do it.

After asking my permission, Ushikawa helped himself to a beer in the refrigerator, checking first to see that the bottle felt properly chilled before he poured the contents into a glass he found nearby. We sat at the kitchen table.

All right, then, said Ushikawa. In the interest of saving time, I will dispense with the small talk and plunge directly into the business at hand. You would like to talk with Ms. Kumiko, wouldn't you, Mr. Okada? Directly. Just the two of you. I believe that is what you have been wanting for some time now. Your first priority. Am I right?

I gave this some thought. Or I paused for a few moments, as if giving it some thought. Of course I want to talk with her if that is possible. It is not impossible, said Ushikawa softly, with a nod. But there are conditions attached ... ?

There are no conditions attached. Ushikawa took a sip of his beer. I do have a new proposition for you this evening, however. Please listen to what I have to say, and give it careful consideration. It is something quite separate from the question of whether or not you talk to Ms. Kumiko.

I looked at him without speaking.

To begin with, then, Mr. Okada, you are renting that land, and the house on it, from a certain company, are you not? The hanging house, I mean. You are paying a rather large sum for it each month. You have not an ordinary lease, however, but one with an option to buy some years hence. Correct? Your contract is not a matter of public record, of course, and so your name does not appear anywhere-which is the point of all the machinations. You are, however, the de facto owner of the property, and the rent you pay accomplishes the same thing as mortgage payments. The total sum you are to pay- lets see- including the house, comes to something in the neighborhood of eighty million yen, does it not? At this rate, you should be able to take title to the land and the building in something less than two years. That is very impressive! Very fast work! I have to congratulate you.

Ushikawa looked at me for confirmation of everything he had been saying, but I remained silent.

Please don't ask me how I know all these details. You dig hard enough, you find what you want to know-if you know how to dig. And I have a pretty good idea who is behind the dummy company. Now, that was a tough one! I had to crawl through a labyrinth for it. It was like looking for a stolen car thats been repainted and had new tires put on and the seats recovered and the serial number filed off the engine. They covered all the bases. They're real pros. But now I have a pretty good idea of whats going on- probably better than you do, Mr. Okada. I'll bet you don't even know who it is you're paying the money back to, right?

That's all right. Money doesn't come with names attached.

Ushikawa laughed. You're absolutely right, Mr. Okada. Money does not come with names attached. Very well said! I'll have to write that down. But finally, Mr. Okada, things don't always go the way you want them to. Take the boys at the tax office, for example. They're not very bright. They only know how to squeeze taxes out of places that have names attached. So they go out of their way to stick names on where there aren't any. And not just names, but numbers too. They might as well be robots, for all the emotion thats involved in the process. But that is exactly what this capitalist society of ours is built on.... Which leads us to the conclusion that the money that you and I are now talking about does indeed have a name attached, and a very excellent name it is.

I looked at Ushikawa's head as he spoke. Depending on the angle, the light produced some strange dents in his scalp.

Don't worry, he said, with a laugh. The tax man wont be coming here. And even if he did come, with this much of a labyrinth to crawl through, he'd be bound to smash into something. Wham! He'd raise a huge bump on his head. And finally, its just a job for him: he doesn't want to hurt himself doing it. If he can get his money, he'd rather do it the easy way than the hard way: the easier the better. As long as he gets what he's looking for, the brownie points are the same. Especially if his boss tells him to take the easy way, any ordinary person is going to choose that. I managed to find what I did because it was me doing the searching. Not to boast or anything, but I'm good. I may not look it, but I'm really good. I know how to avoid injury. I know how to slip down the road at night when its pitch black out.

But to tell you the truth, Mr. Okada (and I know you're one person I can really open up to), not even I know what you're doing in that place. I do know the people who visit you there are paying an arm and a leg. So you must be doing something special for them thats worth all that money. That much is as clear as counting crows on snow. But exactly what it is you do, and why you're so stuck on that particular piece of land, I have no idea. Those are the two most important points in all this, but they are the very things most hidden, like the center of a palmists signboard. That worries me.

Which is to say, thats what worries Noboru Wataya, I said. Instead of answering, Ushikawa started pulling on the matted fuzz above his ears. This is just between you and me, Mr. Okada, but I have to confess I really admire you.

No flattery intended. This may sound odd, but you're basically a really ordinary guy. Or to put it even more bluntly, theres absolutely nothing special about you. Sorry about that, but don't take it the wrong way. Its true, though, in terms of how you fit in society. Meeting you face-to-face and talking with you like this, though, I'm very, very impressed with you-with how you handle yourself. I mean, look at the way you've managed to shake up a man like Dr. Wataya! That's why I'm just the carrier pigeon. A completely ordinary person couldn't pull this off.

That's what I like about you. I'm not making this up. I may be worthless scum, but I don't lie about things like that. And I don't think of you in completely objective terms, either. If theres nothing special about you in terms of how you fit in society, I'm a hundred times worse. I'm just an uneducated twerp from an awful background. My father was a tatami maker in Funabashi, an alcoholic, a real bastard. I used to wish he'd die and leave me alone, I was such a miserable kid, and I ended up getting my wish, for better or worse. Then I went through storybook poverty. I don't have a single pleasant memory from childhood, never had a kind word from either parent. No wonder I went bad! I managed to squeak through high school, but after that it was the school of hard knocks for me. Lived on my wits, what little I had. That's why I don't like members of the elite or official government types. All right: I hate em. Walk right into society through the front door, get a pretty wife, self-satisfied bas- tards. I like guys like you, Mr. Okada, who've done it all on their own.

Ushikawa struck a match and lit a fresh cigarette. You cant keep it up forever, though. You're going to burn out sooner or later.

Everybody does. Its the way people are made. In terms of evolutionary history, it was only yesterday that men learned to walk around on two legs and get in trouble thinking complicated thoughts. So don't worry, you'll burn out. Especially in the world that you're trying to deal with: everybody burns out. There are too many tricky things going on in it, too many ways of getting into trouble. Its a world made of tricky things. I've been working in that world since the time of Dr. Wataya's uncle, and now the Doctor has inherited it, lock, stock, and barrel. I used to do risky stuff for a living. If I had kept it up, Id be in jail now- or dead. No kidding. The Doctors uncle picked me up in the nick of time. So these little eyes of mine have seen a hell of a lot. Everybody burns out in this world: amateur, pro, it doesn't matter, they all burn out, they all get hurt, the OK guys and the not-OK guys both. That's why everybody takes out a little insurance. I've got some too, here at the bottom of the heap. That way, you can manage to survive if you burn out. If you're all by yourself and don't belong anywhere, you go down once and you're out. Finished.

Maybe I shouldn't say this to you, Mr. Okada, but you're ready to go down. Its a sure thing. It says so in my book, in big, black letters about two or three pages ahead: TORU OKADA READY TO FALL. Its true. I'm not trying to scare you. I'm a whole lot more accurate in this world than weather forecasts on TV. So all I want to tell you is this: Theres a time when things are right for pulling out.

Ushikawa closed his mouth at that point and looked at me. Then he went on: So lets stop all this feeling each other out, Mr. Okada, and get down to business.... Which brings us to the end of a very long introduction, so now I can make you the offer I came here to make.

Ushikawa put both hands on the table. Then he flicked his tongue over his lips.

So lets say I've just told you that you ought to cut your ties with that land and pull out of the deal. But maybe you cant pull out, even if you want to. Maybe you're stuck until you pay off your loan. Ushikawa cut himself short and gave me a searching look. If moneys a problem, we've got it to give you. If you need eighty million yen, I can bring you eighty million yen in a nice, neat bundle. That's eight thousand ten-thousand-yen bills. You can pay off whatever you owe and pocket the rest, free and clear. Then its party time! Hey, what do you say?

So then the land and building belong to Noboru Wataya? Is that the idea?

Yes, I guess it is, the way things work. I suppose there are a lot of annoying details that will have to be taken care of, though....

I gave his proposal some thought. You know, Ushikawa, I really don't get it. I don't see why Noboru Wataya is so eager to get me away from that property. What does he plan to do with it once he owns it?

Ushikawa slowly rubbed one cheek with the palm of his hand. Sorry, Mr. Okada, I don't know about things like that. As I mentioned to you at first, I'm just a stupid carrier pigeon. My master tells me what to do, and I do it. And most of the jobs he gives me are unpleasant. When I used to read the story of Aladdin, Id always sympathize with the genie, the way they worked him so hard, but I never dreamed Id grow up to be like him. Its a sad story, let me tell you. But finally, everything I have said to you is a message I was sent to deliver. It comes from Dr. Wataya. The choice is up to you. So what do you say? What kind of answer should I carry back?

I said nothing.

Of course, you will need time to think. That is fine. We can give you time. I don't mean for you to decide right now, on the spot. I would like to say take all the time you want, but I'm afraid we cant be that flexible. Now, let me just say this, Mr. Okada. Let me give you my own personal opinion. A nice, fat offer like this is not going to sit on the table forever. You could look away for a second, and it might be gone when you looked back. It could evaporate, like mist on a windowpane. So please give it some serious thought- in a hurry. I mean, its not a bad offer. Do you see what I mean?

Ushikawa sighed and looked at his watch. Oh, my, my, my- I've got to be going.

Overstayed my welcome again, I'm afraid. Enjoyed another beer. And as usual, I did all the talking. Sorry about that. I'm not trying to make excuses, but, I don't know, when I come here I just seem to settle in. You have a comfortable house here, Mr. Okada. That must be it.

Ushikawa stood up and carried his glass and beer bottle and ashtray to the kitchen sink.

I'll be in touch with you soon, Mr. Okada. And I'll make arrangements for you to talk with Ms. Kumiko, that I promise. You can look forward to it soon.

After Ushikawa left, I opened the windows and let the accumulated cigarette smoke out.

Then I drank a glass of water. Sitting on the sofa, I cuddled the cat, Mackerel, on my lap. I imagined Ushikawa removing his disguise when he was one step beyond my door, and flying back to Noboru Wataya. It was a stupid thing to imagine.

17 The Fitting Room A Successor

Nutmeg knew nothing about the women who came to her. None of them offered information about herself, and Nutmeg never asked. The names with which they made their appointments were obviously made up. But around them lingered that special smell produced by the combination of power and money. The women themselves never made a show of it, but Nutmeg could tell from the style and fit of their clothes that they came from backgrounds of privilege.

She rented space in an office building in Akasaka-an inconspicuous building in an inconspicuous place, out of respect for her clients hyperactive concern for their privacy.

After careful consideration, she decided to make it a fashion design studio. She had, in fact, been a fashion designer, and no one would have found it suspicious for a variety of women to be coming to see her in substantial numbers. Her clients were all women in their thirties to fifties of a sort that could be expected to wear expensive, tailor-made clothes. She stocked the room with clothing and design sketches and fashion magazines, brought in the tools and workbenches and mannequins needed for fashion design, and even went so far as to design a few outfits to give the place an air of authenticity. The smaller of the two rooms she designated as the fitting room. Her clients would be shown to this fitting room, and on the sofa they would be fitted by Nutmeg.

Her client list was compiled by the wife of the owner of a major department store. The woman had chosen a very carefully limited number of trustworthy candidates from among her wide circle of friends, convinced that in order to avoid any possibility of scandal, she would have to make this a club with an exclusive membership. Otherwise, news of the arrangement would be sure to spread quickly. The women chosen to become members were warned never to reveal anything about their fitting to outsiders. Not only were they women of great discretion, but they knew that if they broke their promise they would be permanently expelled from the club.

Each client would telephone to make an appointment for a fitting and show up at the designated time, knowing that she need not fear encountering any other client, that her privacy would be protected absolutely. Honoraria were paid on the spot, in cash, their size having been determined by the department store owners wife-at a level much higher than Nutmeg would have imagined, though this never became an obstacle. Any woman who had been fitted by Nutmeg always called for another appointment, without exception. You don't have to let the money be a burden to you, the department store owners wife explained to Nutmeg. The more they pay, the more assured these women feel. Nutmeg would go to her office three days a week and do one fitting a day. That was her limit.

Cinnamon became his mothers assistant when he turned sixteen. By then, it had become difficult for Nutmeg to handle all the clerical tasks herself, but she had been reluctant to hire a complete stranger. When, after much deliberation, she asked him to help her with her work, he agreed immediately without even asking what kind of work it was she did. He would go to the office each morning at ten o'clock by cab (unable to bear being with others on buses or subway trains), clean and dust, put everything where it belonged, fill the vases with fresh flowers, make coffee, do whatever shopping was needed, put classical music on the cassette player at low volume, and keep the books.

Before long, Cinnamon had made himself an indispensable presence at the office. Whether clients were due that day or not, he would put on a suit and tie and take up his position at the waiting room desk. None of the clients complained about his not speaking. It never caused them any inconvenience, and if anything, they preferred it that way. He was the one who took their calls when they made appointments. They would state their preferred time and date, and he would knock on the desktop in response: once for no and twice for yes. The women liked this concision. He was a young man of such classic features that he could have been turned into a sculpture and displayed in a museum, and unlike so many other handsome young men, he never undercut his image when he opened his mouth. The women would talk to him on their way in and out, and he would respond with a smile and a nod. These conversations relaxed them, relieving the tensions they had brought with them from the outer world and reducing the awkwardness they felt after their fittings. Nor did Cinnamon himself, who ordinarily disliked contact with strangers, appear to find it painful to interact with the women.

At eighteen, Cinnamon got his drivers license. Nutmeg found a kindly driving instructor to give him private lessons, but Cinnamon himself had already been through every available instruction book and absorbed the details. All he needed was the practical know-how that couldn't be obtained from books, and this he mastered in a few days at the wheel. Once he had his license, he pored over the used-car books and bought himself a Porsche Carrera, using as a down payment all the money he had saved working for his mother (none of which he ever had to use for living expenses). He made the engine shine, bought all new parts through mail order, put new tires on, and generally brought the cars condition to racing level. All he ever did with it, though, was drive it over the same short, jam-packed route every day from his home in Hiroo to the office in Akasaka, rarely exceeding forty miles an hour. This made it one of the rarer Porsche 911's in the world.

Nutmeg continued her work for more than seven years, during which time she lost three clients: the first was killed in an automobile accident; the second suffered permanent expulsion for a minor infraction; and the third went far away in connection with her husbands work. These were replaced by four new clients, all the same sort of fascinating middle-aged women who wore expensive clothing and used aliases. The work itself did not change during the seven years. She went on fitting her clients, and Cinnamon went on cleaning the office, keeping the books, and driving the Porsche. There was no progress, no retrogression, only the gradual aging of everyone involved. Nutmeg was nearing fifty, and Cinnamon turned twenty. Cinnamon seemed to enjoy his work, but Nutmeg was gradually overcome by a sense of powerlessness. Over the years, she went on fitting the something that each of her clients carried within. She never fully understood what it was that she did for them, but she continued to do her best. The somethings, meanwhile, were never cured. She could never make them go away; all that her curative powers could do was reduce their activity somewhat for a time. Within a few days (usually, from three to ten days), each something would start up again, advancing and retreating over the short span but growing unmistakably larger over time-like cancer cells. Nutmeg could feel them growing in her hands. They would tell her: You're wasting your time; no matter what you do, we are going to win in the end. And they were right. She had no hope of victory. All she could do was slow their progress somewhat, to give her clients a few days of peace.

Nutmeg would often ask herself, Is it not just these women? Do all the women of the world carry this kind of something inside them? And why are the ones who come here all middle-aged women? Do I have a something inside me as well?

But Nutmeg did not really want to know the answers to her questions. All she could be sure of was that circumstances had somehow conspired to confine her in her fitting room.

People needed her, and as long as they went on needing her, she could not get out. Sometimes her sense of powerlessness would be deep and terrible, and she would feel like an empty shell.

She was being worn down, disappearing into a dark nothingness. At times like this, she would open herself to her quiet son, and Cinnamon would nod as he listened intently to his mothers words. He never said anything, but speaking to him like this enabled her to attain an odd kind of peace. She was not entirely alone, she felt, and not entirely powerless. How strange, she thought: I heal others, and Cinnamon heals me. But who heals Cinnamon? Is he like a black hole, absorbing all pain and loneliness by himself? One time-and only that once-she tried to search inside him by placing her hand on his forehead the way she did to her clients when she was fitting them. But she could feel nothing.

Before long, Nutmeg felt that she wanted to leave her work. I don't have much strength left. If I keep this up, I will burn out completely. I'll have nothing left at all. But people continued to have an intense need for her fitting. She could not bring herself to abandon her clients just to suit her own convenience.

Nutmeg found a successor during the summer of that year. The moment she saw the mark on the cheek of the young man who was sitting in front of a building in Shinjuku, she knew.

18 A Stupid Tree Frog Daughter (May Kasahara's Point of View: 4)

Hi, again, Mr. Wind-Up Bird.

Its two-thirty in the morning. All my neighbors are sound asleep, but I cant sleep tonight, so I'm up, writing this letter to you. To tell you the truth, sleepless nights are as unusual for me as sumo wrestlers who look good in berets. Usually, 1 just slip right into sleep when the time comes, and slip right out when its time to wake up. I do have an alarm clock, but I almost never use it. Every rare once in a while, though, this happens: I wake up in the middle of the night and cant get back to sleep.

I'm planning to stay at my desk, writing this letter to you, until I get sleepy, so I don't know if this is going to be a long letter or a short one. Of course, I never really know that anytime I write to you until I get to the end.

Anyway, it seems to me that the way most people go on living (I suppose there are a few exceptions), they think that the world or life (or whatever) is this place where everything is (or is supposed to be) basically logical and consistent. Talking with my neighbors here often makes me think that. Like, when something happens, whether its a big event that affects the whole society or something small and personal, people talk about it like, Oh, well, of course, that happened because such and such, and most of the time people will agree and say, like, Oh, sure, I see, but I just don't get it. A is like this, so thats why B happened. I mean, that doesn't explain anything. Its like when you put instant rice pudding mix in a bowl in the microwave and push the button, and you take the cover off when it rings, and there you've got rice pudding. I mean, what happens in between the time when you push the switch and when the microwave rings? You cant tell whats going on under the cover. Maybe the instant rice pudding first turns into macaroni gratin in the darkness when nobody's looking and only then turns back into rice pudding. We think its only natural to get rice pudding after we put rice pudding mix in the microwave and the bell rings, but to me thats just a presumption. I would be kind of relieved if, every once in a while, after you put rice pudding mix in the microwave and it rang and you opened the top, you got macaroni gratin. I suppose Id be shocked, of course, but I don't know, I think Id be kind of relieved too. Or at least I think I wouldn't be so upset, because that would feel, in some ways, a whole lot more real.

Why more real? Trying to explain that logically, in words, would be very, very, very hard, but maybe if you take the path my life has followed as an example and really think about it, you can see that it has had almost nothing about it that you could call consistency. First of all, its an absolute mystery how a daughter like me could have been born to two parents as boring as tree frogs. I know its a little weird for me to be saying this, but I'm a lot more serious than the two of them combined. I'm not boasting or anything; its just a fact. I don't mean to say that I'm any better than they are, but I am a more serious human being. If you met them, you'd know what I mean, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. Those people believe that the world is as consistent and explainable as the floor plan of a new house in a high-priced development, so if you do everything in a logical, consistent way, everything will turn out right in the end. That's why they get upset and sad and angry when I'm not like that.

Why was I born into this world as the child of such absolute dummies? And why didn't I turn into the same kind of stupid tree frog daughter even though I was raised by those people? I've been wondering and wondering about that ever since I can remember. But I cant explain it. It seems to me there ought to be a good reason, but its a reason that I cant find. And there are tons of other things that don't have logical explanations. For example, Why does everybody hate me? I didn't do anything wrong. I was just living my life in the usual way. But then, all of a sudden, one day I noticed that nobody liked me. I don't understand it.

So then one disconnected thing led to another disconnected thing, and thats how all kinds of stuff happened. Like, I met the boy with the motorcycle and we had that stupid accident. The way I remember it-or the way those things are all lined up in my head- theres no This happened this way, so naturally that happened that way. Every time the bell rings and I take off the cover, I seem to find something I've never seen before.

I don't have any idea whats happening to me, and before I know it I'm not going to school anymore and I'm hanging around the house, and thats when I meet you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. No, before that I'm doing surveys for a wig company. But why a wig company? That's another mystery. I cant remember. Maybe I hit my head in the accident, and the position of my brain got messed up. Or maybe the psychological shock of it started me covering up all kinds of memories, the way a squirrel hides a nut and forgets where he's buried it. (Have you ever seen that happen, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? I have. When I was little. I thought the stupid squirrel was sooo funny! It never occurred to me the same thing was going to happen to me.) So anyhow, I started doing surveys for the wig company, and thats what gave me this fondness for wigs like they were my destiny or something. Talk about no connection! Why wigs and not stockings or rice scoops? If it had been stockings or rice scoops, I wouldn't be working hard in a wig factory like this. Right? And if I hadn't caused that stupid bike accident, I probably wouldn't have met you in the back alley that summer, and if you hadn't met me, you probably would never have known about the Miyawaki's well, so you wouldn't have gotten that mark on your face, and you wouldn't have gotten mixed up in all those strange things... probably. When I think about it like this, I cant help asking myself, Where is there any logical consistency in the world?

I don't know-maybe the world has two different kinds of people, and for one kind the world is this completely logical, rice pudding place, and for the other its all hit-or-miss macaroni gratin. I bet if those tree frog parents of mine put rice pudding mix in the microwave and got macaroni gratin when the bell rang, they'd just tell themselves, Oh, we must have put in macaroni gratin mix by mistake, or they'd take out the macaroni gratin and try to convince themselves, This looks like macaroni gratin, but actually its rice pudding. And if I tried to be nice and explain to them that sometimes, when you put in rice pudding mix, you get macaroni gratin, they would never believe me. They'd probably just get mad. Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird?

Remember when I kissed your mark that time? I've been thinking about that ever since I said goodbye to you last summer, thinking about it over and over, like a cat watching the rain fall, and wondering what was that all about? I don't think I can explain it myself, to tell you the truth. Sometime way in the future, maybe ten years or twenty years from now, if we have a chance to talk about it, and if I'm more grown up and a lot smarter than I am now, I might be able to tell you what it meant. Right now, though, I'm sorry to say, I think I just don't have the ability, or the brains, to put it into the right words.

One thing I can tell you honestly, though, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, is that I like you better without the mark on your face. No; wait a minute; thats not fair. You didn't put the mark there on purpose. Maybe I should say that even without your mark, you're good enough for me. Is that it? No, that doesn't explain anything.

Heres what I think, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. That mark is maybe going to give you something important. But it also must be robbing you of something. Kind of like a trade-off. And if everybody keeps taking stuff from you like that, you're going to be worn away until theres nothing left of you. So, I don't know, I guess what I really want to say is that it wouldn't make any difference to me if you didn't have that thing.

Sometimes I think that the reason I'm sitting here making wigs like this every day is because I kissed your mark that time. Its because I did that that I made up my mind to leave that place, to get as far away as I could from you. I know I might be hurting you by saying this, but I think its true. Still, though, its because of that that I was finally able to find the place where I belong. So, in a sense, I am grateful to you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. I don't suppose its much fun to have somebody be in a sense grateful to you, though, is it?

So now I feel like I've said just about everything I have to say to you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. Its almost four o'clock in the morning. I have to get up at seven-thirty, so maybe I'll be able to sleep three hours and a little bit. I hope I can get to sleep right away. Anyhow, I'm going to end this letter here. Goodbye, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. Please say a little prayer so I can get to sleep.

19 The Subterranean Labyrinth Cinnamon's Two Doors

Theres a computer in that house, isn't there, Mr. Okada? I don't know who's using it, though, said Ushikawa.

It was nine o'clock at night, and I was sitting at the kitchen table, with the phone to my ear.

There is, I said, and left it at that.

Ushikawa made a sniffling sound. I know that much from my usual snooping, he said.

Of course, I'm not saying anything one way or another about the fact that you've got a computer there. Nowadays, anybody doing any kind of brainwork has to have a computer.

Theres nothing weird about it.

To make a long story short, though, the idea kind of hit me that it might be good if I could contact you through the computer. So I looked into it, but damn, its a hell of a lot more complicated than I imagined. Just calling up on an ordinary phone line wouldn't make the connection. Plus, you need a special password for access. No password, and the door doesn't budge. That did it for me.

I kept silent.

Now, don't get me wrong, Mr. Okada. I'm not trying to crawl inside your computer and fool around in there. I don't have anything like that in mind. With all the security you've got in place, I couldn't pull data out even if I wanted to. No, that was never an issue. All I have in mind is trying to set up a conversation between you and Ms. Kumiko. I promised you Id do that, remember, that Id do what I could to help you and her talk to each other directly. Its been a long time since she left your house, and its a bad idea to leave things hanging like this. The way it stands now, your life is probably just going to get weirder and weirder. Its al- ways best for people to talk to each other face-to-face, to open themselves up. Otherwise, misunderstandings are bound to arise, and misunderstandings make people unhappy....

Anyhow, thats how I tried to appeal to Ms. Kumiko. I did everything I could.

But I just couldn't get her to agree. She insisted she wouldn't talk to you directly- not even on the phone (since a face-to-face meeting was out of the question). Not even on the phone! I was ready to give up. I tried every trick in the book, but her mind was made up. Like a rock.

Ushikawa paused for me to react, but I said nothing.

Still, I couldn't just take her at her word and back off. Dr. Wataya would really give it to me if I started acting like that. The other person can be a rock or a wall, but I'll find that one tiny point of compromise. That's our job: finding that point of compromise. If they wont sell you the refrigerator, make them sell you some ice. So I racked my brains trying to find some way to pull this off. Let me tell you, thats what makes us human- coming up with a million different ideas. So all of a sudden, a good one popped up in my foggy brain, like a star showing through a break in the clouds. That's it! I told myself. Why not have a conversation on computer screens? You know: put words on the screen with a keyboard. You can do that, cant you, Mr. Okada?

I had used a computer when I worked in the law firm, researching precedents, looking up personal data for clients, and communicating with E-mail. Kumiko had also used computers at work. The health food magazine she edited had computer files on recipes and nutritional analyses.

It wouldn't work on just any old computer, continued Ushikawa, but with our machine and yours, you ought to be able to communicate at a pretty fast pace. Ms. Kumiko says shes willing to talk with you that way. It was as much as I could get her to bend. Trading messages real time, it would almost be like talking to each other. That's the one last point of compromise I could come up with. Squeezing wisdom out of a monkey. What do you say? You may not be too crazy about the idea, but I literally put my brains on the rack for that one. Let me tell you, its tiring work thinking that hard with brains you don't even have!

I silently shifted the receiver to my left hand. Hello? Mr. Okada? Are you listening? I'm listening, I said. All right, then: the one thing I need from you is the password to access your computer.

Then I can set up a conversation between you and Ms. Kumiko. What do you say? Id say there are some practical problems standing in the way. Oh? And what might those be? Well, first of all, how can I be sure the other person is Kumiko? When you're talking on the computer screen, you cant see other peoples faces or hear their voices. Someone else could be sitting at the keyboard, pretending to be Kumiko.

I see what you mean, said Ushikawa, seemingly impressed. I never thought of that. But I'm sure there must be some way around it. Not to flatter you, but its good to view things with skepticism, to have your doubts. I doubt, therefore I am. All right, then: how about this? You start out by asking a question that only Ms. Kumiko would know the answer to. If the other person can come up with the answer, it must be Kumiko. I mean, you lived together as man and wife for several years; there must be a few things that only the two of you would know.

What Ushikawa was saying made sense. That would probably work, I said, but I don't know the password. I've never touched that machine.

Nutmeg had told me that Cinnamon had customized every inch of the computers system. He had compiled his own complex database and protected it from outside access with a secret code and other ingenious devices. Fingers on the keyboard, Cinnamon was absolute ruler over this three-dimensional subterranean labyrinth. He knew every one of its intertwined passages and could leap from one to another with the stroke of a key. For an uninformed invader (which is to say, anyone but Cinnamon) to grope his way through the labyrinth, past the alarms and traps, to where important data lay, would have taken months, according to Nut- meg. Not that the computer installed in the Residence was especially big: it was the same class of machine as the one in the Akasaka office. Both were hard-wired to the mainframe they had at home, though. There Cinnamon no doubt stored their client data and did their complex double bookkeeping, but I imagined that he kept something more in there than the secrets connected with the work that he and Nutmeg had done over the years.

What led me to believe this, was the depth of the commitment to his machine that Cinnamon displayed on occasion when he was in our special Residence. He normally stayed shut up in the small office he had there, but every now and then he would leave the door ajar, and I was able to observe him at work- not without a certain guilty sense of invading someones privacy. He and his computer seemed to be moving together in an almost erotic union. After a burst of strokes on the keyboard, he would gaze at the screen, his mouth twisted in apparent dissatisfaction or curled with the suggestion of a smile. Sometimes he seemed deep in thought as he touched one key, then another, then another; and sometimes he ran his fingers over the keys with all the energy of a pianist playing a Liszt etude. As he engaged in silent conversation with his machine, he seemed to be peering through the screen of his monitor into another world, with which he shared a special intimacy. I couldn't help but feel that reality resided for him not so much in the earthly world but in his subterranean labyrinth. Perhaps in that world Cinnamon had a clear, ringing voice, with which he spoke eloquently and laughed and cried aloud.

Cant I access your computer from the one here? I asked Ushikawa. Then you wouldn't need a password.

No, that wouldn't work. Your transmissions might reach here, but transmissions from here wouldn't reach there. The problem is the password-the open sesame. Without that, theres nothing we can do. The door wont open for the wolf, no matter how hard he tries to disguise his voice. He can knock and say, Hi, its me, your friend Rabbit, but if he hasn't got the password, he gets turned away at the door. Were talking about an iron maiden here.

Ushikawa struck a match at his end and lit a cigarette. I pictured his snaggled yellow teeth and drooping mouth.

Its a three-character alphanumeric password. You have ten seconds to input it after the prompt shows. Get it wrong three times, and access is denied, plus the alarm goes off. Not that there are any sirens that ring or anything, but the wolf leaves his footprints, so you know he was there. Clever, huh? If you calculate all possible permutations and combinations of twenty-six letters and ten numbers, its practically infinite. You just have to know the password, or theres nothing you can do.

I thought this over for a time without replying. Any good ideas, Mr. Okada? After the client was driven away in the back seat of the Mercedes the following afternoon, I walked into Cinnamon's small office, sat down in front of his computer, and flipped the switch. The cool blue light of the monitor came on with a simple message: Enter password within ten seconds.

I input the three-letter word that I had prepared: zoo The computer beeped once and displayed an error message: Incorrect password. Enter password within ten seconds. The ten seconds started counting down on the screen. I changed to upper case and input the same letters: ZOO Again I was refused access: Incorrect password. Enter correct password within ten seconds. If incorrect password is input once more, access will automatically be denied.

Again the ten seconds began counting down on the screen. This time I made only the Z uppercase. It was my last chance.

Zoo Instead of an error message, a menu screen opened, with the instruction: Choose one of the following programs.

I released a long, slow breath, then began scrolling through the long list of programs until I came to communications software. Highlighting this, I pressed the mouse button.

Choose one of the following programs.

I chose Chat Mode and clicked the mouse.

Enter password within ten seconds.

This was an important junction for Cinnamon to lock out access to his computer. And if the junction was important, the password itself ought to be important. I typed in: SUB The screen read: Incorrect password.

Input correct password within ten seconds.

The countdown began: 10,9,8. . .

I tried the combination of upper- and lowercase letters that had worked the first time: Sub A prompt flashed on the screen: Input telephone number.

I folded my arms and let my eyes take in this new message. Not bad. I had succeeded in opening two doors in Cinnamon's labyrinth. No, not bad at all. Zoo and Sub would do it.

I clicked on Exit and returned to the main menu, then chose Shutdown, which brought up the following options: Record procedures in Operations File? Y/N (Y) As instructed by Ushikawa, I chose No to avoid leaving a record of the procedures I had just executed.

The screen quietly died. I wiped the sweat from my forehead. After checking to be certain that I had left the keyboard and mouse exactly as I had found them, I moved away from the now cold monitor.

20 Nutmeg's Story

Nutmeg Akasaka took several months to tell me the story of her life. It was a long, long story, with many detours, so that what I am recording here is a very simplified (though not necessarily short) summary of the whole. I cannot honestly claim with confidence that it contains the essence of her story, but it should at least convey the outline of important events that occurred at crucial points in her life.

Nutmeg and her mother escaped from Manchuria to Japan, their only valuables the jewelry they were able to wear on their bodies. They traveled up from the port of Sasebo to Yokohama, to stay with the mothers family, which had long owned an import-export business primarily focused on Taiwan. Prosperous before the war, they had lost most of their business when Japan lost Taiwan. The father died of heart disease, and the family's second son, who had been second in command, was killed in an air raid just before the war ended. The eldest son left his teaching post to carry on the family business, but never temperamentally suited to a life of commerce, he was unable to recoup the family fortunes. They still had their comfortable house and land, but it was not a pleasant place for Nutmeg and her mother to live as extra mouths to feed during those straitened postwar years. They were always at pains to keep their presence as unobtrusive as possible, taking less than the others at mealtimes, waking earlier than the others each morning, taking on an outsize share of the household chores. Every piece of clothing the young Nutmeg wore was a hand-me- down from her older cousins-gloves, socks, even underwear. For pencils, she collected the others cast-off stubs. Just waking up in the morning was painful to her. The thought that a new day was starting was enough to make her chest hurt.

She wanted to get out of this house, to live alone with her mother someplace where they didn't always have to feel so constrained, even if it meant living in poverty. But her mother never tried to leave. My mother had always been an active person, said Nutmeg, but after we escaped from Manchuria, she was like an empty shell. It was as if the very strength to go on living had evaporated from inside her. She could no longer rouse herself for anything. All she could do was tell Nutmeg over and over about the happy times they used to have. This left to Nutmeg the task of finding for herself the resources to go on living.

Nutmeg did not dislike studying as such, but she had almost no interest in the courses they offered in high school. She couldn't believe that it would do her any good to stuff her head full of historical dates or the rules of English grammar or geometric formulas. What she wanted more than anything was to learn a useful skill and make herself independent as soon as possible. She was in a place far away from her classmates and their comfortable enjoyment of high school life.

The only thing she cared about was fashion. Her mind was filled with thoughts of clothing from morning to night. Not that she had the wherewithal to dress in style: she could only read and reread the fashion magazines she managed to find, and to fill notebooks with drawings of dresses in imitation of those she found in the magazines or clothes she had dreamed up herself. She had no idea what it was about the fancy dresses that so captivated her imagination. Perhaps, she said, it came from her habit of always playing with the huge wardrobe that her mother had in Manchuria. Her mother was a genuine clotheshorse. She had had more kimonos and dresses than room in their chests to store them, and the young Nutmeg would always pull them out and touch them whenever she had a chance. Most of those dresses and kimonos had had to remain in Manchuria when the two of them left, and whatever they had been able to stuff into rucksacks they had had to exchange along the way for food. Her mother would spread out the next dress to be traded, and sigh over it before letting it go.

Designing clothes was my secret little door to a different world, said Nutmeg, a world that belonged only to me. In that world, imagination was everything. The better you were able to imagine what you wanted to imagine, the farther you could flee from reality. And what I really liked about it was that it was free. It didn't cost a thing. It was wonderful! Imagining beautiful clothes in my mind and transferring the images to paper was not just a way for me to leave reality behind and steep myself in dreams, though. I needed it to go on living. It was as natural and obvious to me as breathing. So I assumed that everyone else was doing it too. When I realized that everyone else was not doing it-that they couldn't do it even if they tried- I told myself, I'm different from other people, so the life I live will have to be different from theirs.

Nutmeg quit high school and transferred to a school of dressmaking. To raise the money for her tuition, she begged her mother to sell one of her last remaining pieces of jewelry. With that, she was able to study sewing and cutting and designing and other such useful skills for two years. When she graduated, she took an apartment and started living alone. She put herself through a professional fashion design school by waiting on tables and taking odd jobs sewing and knitting. And when she had finally graduated from this school, she went to work for a manufacturer of quality ladies garments, where she succeeded in having herself assigned to the design department.

There was no question but that she had an original talent. Not only could she draw well, but her ideas and her point of view were different from those of other people. She had a clear image of precisely what she wanted to make, and it was not something she had borrowed from anyone else: it was always her own, and it always came out of her quite naturally. She pursued the tiny details of her image with all the intensity of a salmon swimming upstream through a great river to its source. She had no time for sleep. She loved her work and dreamed only of the day she could become an independent designer. She never thought about having fun outside of work: in fact, she didn't know how to do any of the things people did to have fun.

Before long, her bosses came to recognize the quality of her work and took an interest in her extravagant, free-flowing lines. Her years of apprenticeship thus came to an end, and she was given full discretion as the head of her own small section-a most unusual promotion.

Nutmeg went on to compile a magnificent record of accomplishment year after year. Her talent and energy caught the interest of people not only within the company but throughout the industry. The world of fashion design was a closed world, but at the same time it was a fair one, a society ruled by competition. A designers power was determined by one thing alone: the number of advance orders that came in for the clothing that he or she had designed. There was never any doubt about who had won and who had lost: the figures told the whole story. Nutmeg never felt that she was competing with anyone, but her record could not be denied.

She worked with total dedication until her late twenties. She met many people through her work, and several men showed interest in her, but their relationships proved short and shallow. Nutmeg could never take a deep interest in living human beings. Her mind was filled with images of clothing, and a mans designs had a far more visceral impact on her than the man himself ever could.

When she turned twenty-seven, though, Nutmeg was introduced to a strange-looking man at an industry New Years party. The mans features were regular enough, but his hair was a wild mass, and his nose and chin had the hard sharpness of stone tools. He looked more like some phony preacher than a designer of womens clothing. He was a year younger than Nutmeg, as thin as a wire, and had eyes of bottomless depth, from which he looked at people with an aggressive stare that seemed deliberately designed to make them feel uncomfortable. In his eyes, though, Nutmeg was able to see her own reflection. At the time, he was an unknown but up-and-coming designer, and the two were meeting for the first time. She had, of course, heard people talking about him. He had a unique talent, they said, but he was arrogant and egotistical and argumentative, liked by almost no one.

We were two of a kind, she said. Both born on the continent. He had also been shipped back after the war, in his case from Korea, stripped of possessions. His father had been a professional soldier, and they experienced serious poverty in the postwar years. His mother had died of typhus when he was very small, and I suppose thats what led to his strong interest in womens clothing. He did have talent, but he had no idea how to deal with people. Here he was, a designer of womens clothing, but when he came into a womans presence, he would turn red and act crazy. In other words, we were both strays who had become separated from the herd.

They married the following year, 1963, and the child they gave birth to in the spring of the year after that (the year of the Tokyo Olympics), was Cinnamon. His name was Cinnamon, wasn't it? No sooner was Cinnamon born than Nutmeg brought her mother into the house to take care of him. She herself had to work nonstop from morning to night and had no time to be caring for infants. Thus Cinnamon was more or less raised by his grandmother.

It was never clear to Nutmeg whether she had ever truly loved her husband as a man. She lacked any criterion by which to make such a judgment, and this was true for her husband also. What had brought them together was the power of a chance meeting and their shared passion for fashion design. Still, their first ten years together was a fruitful time for both. As soon as they were married, they quit their respective companies and set up their own independent design studio in a small apartment in a small, west-facing building just behind Aoyama Avenue. Poorly ventilated and lacking air-conditioning, the place was so hot in summer that the sweat would make their pencils slip from their grasps. The business did not go smoothly at first. Nutmeg and her husband were both almost shockingly lacking in practical business sense, as a result of which they were easily duped by unscrupulous members of the industry, or they would fail to secure orders because they were ignorant of standard practice or would make unimaginably simple mistakes that kept them from getting on track. Their debts mounted up so greatly that at one point it seemed the only solution would be to abscond. The breakthrough came when Nutmeg happened to meet a capable business manager who recognized their talent and could serve them with integrity. From that point on, the company developed so well that all their previous troubles began to seem like a bad dream. Their sales doubled each year until, by 1970, the little company they had started on a shoestring had become a miraculous success-so much so that it surprised even the arrogant, aloof young couple who had started it. They increased their staff, moved to a big building on the avenue, and opened their own shops in such fashionable neighborhoods as the Ginza, Aoyama, and Shinjuku. Their original line of designer clothes figured often in the mass media and became widely known.

Once the company had reached a certain size, the nature of the work they divided between themselves began to change. While designing and manufacturing clothes might be a creative process, it was also, unlike sculpting or novel writing, a business upon which the fortunes of many people depended. One could not simply stay at home and create whatever one liked. Someone would have to go out and present the company's face to the world. This need only increased as the size of the company's transactions continued to grow. One of them would have to appear at parties and fashion shows to give little speeches and hobnob with the guests, and to be interviewed by the media. Nutmeg had absolutely no intention of taking on that role, and so her husband became the one to step forward. Just as poor at socializing as she was, he found the whole thing excruciating at first. He was unable to speak well in front of a lot of strangers, and so he would come home from each such event exhausted. After six months of this, however, he noticed that he was finding it less painful. He was still not much of a speaker, but people did not react to his brusque and awkward manner the way they had when he was young; now they seemed to be drawn to him. They took his curt style (which derived from his naturally introverted personality) as evidence not of arrogant aloofness but rather of a charming artistic temperament. He actually began to enjoy this new position in which he found himself, and before long he was being celebrated as a cultural hero of his time.

You've probably heard his name, Nutmeg said. But in fact, by then I was doing two- thirds of the design work myself. His bold, original ideas had taken off commercially, and he had already come up with more than enough of them to keep us going. It was my job to develop and expand them and give them form. No matter how large the company grew, we never hired other designers. Our support staff expanded, but the crucial part we did ourselves. All we wanted was to make the clothing we wanted to make, not worry about the class of people who would buy it. We did absolutely no market research or cost calculations or strategy planning. If we decided we wanted to make something a certain way, we designed it that way, used the best materials we could find, and took all the time we needed to make it. What other houses could do in two steps, we did in four. Where they used three yards of cloth, we used four. We personally inspected and passed every piece that left our shop. What didn't sell we disposed of. We sold nothing at discount. Our prices were on the high side, of course. Industry people thought we were crazy, but our clothing became a symbol of the era, right along with Peter Max, Woodstock, Twiggy, Easy Rider, and all that. We had so much fun designing clothes back then! We could do the wildest things, and our clients were right there with us. It was as if we had sprouted great big wings and could fly anywhere we liked.

Just as their business was hitting its stride, however, Nutmeg and her husband began to grow more distant. Even as they worked side by side, she would sense now and then that his heart was wandering somewhere far away. His eyes seemed to have lost that hungry gleam they once had. The violent streak that used to make him throw things now almost never surfaced. Instead, she would often find him staring off into space as if deep in thought. The two of them hardly ever talked outside the workplace, and the nights when he did not come home at all grew in number. Nutmeg sensed that he had several women in his life now, but this was not a source of pain for her. She thought of it as inevitable, because they had long since ceased having physical relations (mainly because Nutmeg had lost the desire for sex).

It was late in 1975, when Nutmeg was forty and Cinnamon eleven, that her husband was killed. His body was found in an Akasaka hotel room, slashed to bits. The maid found him when she used her passkey to enter the room for cleaning at eleven in the morning. The lavatory looked as if it had been the site of a blood bath. The body itself had been virtually drained dry, and it was missing its heart and stomach and liver and both kidneys and pancreas, as if whoever had killed him had cut those organs out and taken them somewhere in plastic bags or some such containers. The head had been severed from the torso and set on the lid of the toilet, facing outward, the face chopped to mincemeat. The killer had apparently cut and chopped the head first, then set about collecting the organs.

To cut the organs out of a human being must have taken some exceptionally sharp implements and considerable technical skill. Several ribs had had to be cut out with a saw-a time-consuming and bloody operation. Nor was it clear why anyone would have gone to so much trouble.

Taken up with the holiday rush, the clerk at the front desk recalled only that Nutmeg's husband had checked into his twelfth-floor room at ten o'clock the previous night with a woman-a pretty woman perhaps thirty years of age, wearing a red overcoat and not particularly tall. She had been carrying nothing more than a small purse. The bed showed signs of sexual activity. The hair and fluid recovered from the sheets were his pubic hair and semen. The room was full of fingerprints, but too many to be of use in the investigation. His small leather suitcase held only a change of underwear, a few toilet articles, a folder holding some work-related documents, and one magazine. More than one hundred thousand yen in cash and several credit cards remained in his wallet, but a notebook that he should have had was missing. There were no signs of struggle in the room.

The police investigated all his known associates but could not come up with a woman who fit the hotel clerks description. The few women they did find had no causes for deep- seated hatred or jealousy, and all had solid alibis. There were a good number of people who disliked him in the fashion world (not a world known for its warm, friendly atmosphere, in any case), but none who seemed to have hated him enough to kill him, and no one who would have had the technical training to cut six organs out of his body.

The murder of a well-known fashion designer was of course widely reported in the press, and with some sensationalism, but the police used a number of technicalities to suppress the information about the taking of the organs, in order to avoid the glare of publicity that would surround such a bizarre murder case. The prestigious hotel seems also to have exerted some pressure to keep its association with the affair to a minimum. Little more was released than the fact that he had been stabbed to death in one of their rooms. Rumors circulated for a while that there had been something abnormal involved, but nothing more specific ever emerged. The police conducted a massive investigation, but the killer was never caught, nor was a motive established.

That hotel room is probably still sealed, said Nutmeg.

The spring of the year after her husband was killed, Nutmeg sold the company-complete with retail stores, inventory, and brand name-to a major fashion manufacturer. When the lawyer who had conducted the negotiations for her brought the contract, Nutmeg set her seal to it without a word and with hardly a glance at the sale price.

Once she had let the company go, Nutmeg discovered that all trace of her passion for the designing of clothes had evaporated. The intense stream of desire had dried up, where once it had been the meaning of her life. She would accept an occasional assignment and carry it off with all the skill of a first-rate professional, but without a trace of joy. It was like eating food that had no taste. She felt as if they had plucked out her own innards. Those who knew her former energy and skill remembered Nutmeg as a kind of legendary presence, and requests never ceased to come from such people, but aside from the very few that she could not refuse, she turned them all down. Following the advice of her accountant, she invested her money in stocks and real estate, and her property expanded in those years of growth.

Not long after she sold the company, her mother died of heart disease. She was wetting down the pavement out front on a hot August afternoon, when suddenly she complained she felt bad. She lay down and slept, her snoring disturbingly loud, and soon she was dead. Nutmeg and Cinnamon were left alone in the world. Nutmeg closed herself up in the house for over a year, spending each day on the sofa, looking at the garden, as if trying to recoup all the peace and quiet that she had missed in her life thus far. Hardly eating, she would sleep ten hours a day. Cinnamon, who would normally have begun middle school, took care of the house in his mothers stead, playing Mozart and Haydn sonatas between chores and studying several languages.

This nearly blank, quiet space in her life had gone on for one year when Nutmeg happened by chance to discover that she possessed a certain special power, a strange ability of which she had had no awareness. She imagined that it might have welled up inside her to replace the intense passion for design that had so wholly evaporated. And indeed, this power became her new profession, though it was not something she herself had sought out.

The first beneficiary of her strange power was the wife of a department store owner, a bright, energetic woman who had been an opera singer in her youth. She had recognized Nutmeg's talent long before she became a famous designer, and she had watched over her career. Without this womans support, Nutmeg's company might have failed in its infancy. Because of their special relationship, Nutmeg agreed to help the woman and her daughter choose and coordinate their outfits for the daughters wedding, a task that she did not find taxing.

Nutmeg and the woman were chatting as they waited for the daughter to be fitted when, without warning, the woman suddenly pressed her hands to her head and knelt down on the floor unsteadily. Nutmeg, horrified, grabbed her to keep her from falling and began stroking the womans right temple. She did this by reflex, without thought, but no sooner had her palm started moving than she felt a certain something there, as if she were feeling an object inside a cloth bag.

Confused, Nutmeg closed her eyes and tried to think about something else. What came to her then was the zoo in Hsinching - the zoo on a day when it was closed and she was there all by herself, something only she was permitted as the chief veterinarians daughter. That had been the happiest time of her life, when she was protected and loved and reassured. It was her earliest memory. The empty zoo. She thought of the smells and the brilliant light, and the shape of each cloud floating in the sky. She walked alone from cage to cage. The season was autumn, the sky high and clear, and flocks of Manchurian birds were winging from tree to tree. That had been her original world, a world that, in many senses, had been lost forever. She did not know how much time passed like this, but eventually the woman raised herself to her full height and apologized to Nutmeg. She was still disoriented, but her headache seemed to be gone, she said. Some days later, Nutmeg was amazed to receive a far larger payment than she had anticipated for the job she had done.

The department store owners wife called Nutmeg about a month after the event, inviting her out to lunch. After they had finished eating, she suggested that they go to her home, where she said to Nutmeg, I wonder if you would mind putting your hand on my head the way you did before. Theres something I want to check. Nutmeg had no particular reason to refuse. She sat next to the woman and placed her palm on the womans temple. She could feel that same something she had felt before. Now she concentrated all her attention on it to get a better sense of its shape, but the shape began to twist and change. Its alive! Nutmeg felt a twinge of fear. She closed her eyes and thought about the Hsinching zoo. This was not hard for her. All she had to do was bring back the story she had told Cinnamon and the scenes she had described for him. Her consciousness left her body, wandered for a while in the spaces between memory and story, then came back. When she regained consciousness, the woman took her hand and thanked her. Nutmeg asked nothing about what had just happened, and the woman offered no explanations. As before, Nutmeg felt a mild fatigue, and a light film of sweat clung to her forehead. When she left, the woman thanked her for taking the time and trouble to visit and tried to hand her an envelope containing money, but Nutmeg refused to take it-politely, but firmly. This is not my job, she said, and besides, you paid me too much last time. The woman did not insist.

Some weeks later, the woman introduced Nutmeg to yet another woman. This one was in her mid-forties. She was small and had sharp, sunken eyes. The clothing she wore was of exceptionally high quality, but aside from a silver wedding band, she used no accessories. It was clear from the atmosphere she projected that she was no ordinary person. The department store owners wife had told Nutmeg, She wants you to do for her the same thing you did for me. Now, please don't refuse, and when she gives you money, don't say anything, just take it. In the long run, it will be an important thing for you-and for me.

Nutmeg went to an inner room with the woman and placed her palm on the womans temple as she had done before. There was a different something inside this woman. It was stronger than the one inside the department store owners wife, and its movements were more rapid. Nutmeg closed her eyes, held her breath, and tried to quell the movement. She concentrated more strongly and pursued her memories more vividly. Burrowing into the tiniest folds she found there, she sent the warmth of her memories into the something.

And before I knew it, that had become my work, said Nutmeg. She realized that she had been enfolded by a great flow. And when he grew up, Cinnamon became his mothers assistant.

21 The Mystery of the Hanging House: 2

SETAGAYA, TOKYO: THE PEOPLE OF THE HANGING HOUSE Famous Politicians Shadow: Now You See It, Now You Don't Amazing, Ingenious Cloak of Invisibility- What Secret Is It Hiding?

[From The - Weekly, November 21] As first revealed in the October 7 issue of this magazine, there is a house in a quiet Setagaya residential neighborhood known to locals as the hanging house. All those who ever lived there have been visited by misfortune and ended their lives in suicide, the majority by hanging.

[Summary of earlier article omitted] Our investigations have led us to only one solid fact: namely, that there is a brick wall standing at the end of every route we have taken in attempting to learn the identity of the new owner of the hanging house. We managed to find the construction company that built the house, but all attempts to get information from them were rejected. The dummy company through which the lot was purchased is legally 100% clean and offers no opening. The whole deal was set up with such clever attention to detail, we can only assume there was some reason for that.

One other thing that aroused our curiosity was the accounting firm that assisted in setting up the dummy company that bought the land. Our investigations have shown us that the firm was established five years ago as a kind of shadow subcontractor to an accounting firm well known in political circles. The prominent accounting firm has several of these subcontractors, each designed to handle a particular kind of job and to be dropped like a lizards tail in case of trouble. The accounting firm itself has never been investigated by the Prosecutors Office, but according to a political reporter for a certain major newspaper, Its name has come up in any number of political scandals, so of course the authorities have their eye on it. Its not hard to guess, then, that there is some kind of connection between the new resident of the hanging house and some powerful politician. The high walls, the tight security using the latest electronic equipment, the leased black Mercedes, the cleverly set-up dummy company: this kind of know-how suggests to us the involvement of a major political figure.

Total Secrecy Our news team did a survey of the movements into and out of the hanging house by the black Mercedes. In one ten-day period, the car made a total of twenty-one visits to the house, or approximately two visits per day. They observed a regular pattern to these visits. First, the car would show up at nine o'clock in the morning and leave at ten-thirty. The driver was very punctual, with no more than five minutes variation from day to day. In contrast to the predictability of these morning visits, however, the others were highly irregular. Most were recorded to have occurred between one and three in the afternoon, but the times in and out varied considerably. There was also considerable variation in the length of time the car would remain parked in the compound, from under twenty minutes to a full hour.

These facts have led us to the following suppositions: 1. The cars regular a.m. visits: These suggest that someone is commuting to this house. The identity of the commuter is unclear, however, owing to the black tinted glass used all around the car.

2. The cars irregular p.m. visits: These suggest the arrival of guests and are probably tailored to the guests convenience. Whether these guests arrive singly or with others is unclear.

3. There seems to be no activity in the house at night. It is also unclear whether or not anyone lives there. From outside the wall, it is impossible to tell if any lights are being used.

One more important point: The only thing to enter or leave the property during our ten- day survey was the black Mercedes: no other cars, no people on foot. Common sense tells us that something strange is going on here. The someone living in the house never goes out to shop or to take walks. People arrive and depart exclusively in the large Mercedes with dark- tinted windows. In other words, for some reason, they do not want their faces seen, under any circumstances. What could be the reason for this? Why must they go to so much trouble and expense in order to do what they do in total secrecy?

We might add here that the front gate is the only way in and out of the property. A narrow alley runs behind the lot, but this leads nowhere. The only way into or out of this alley is through someones private property. According to the neighbors, none of the residents is presently using the alley, which is no doubt why the house has no gate to the back alley. The only thing there is the towering wall, like huge castle ramparts.

Several times during the ten days, the button on the intercom at the front gate was pushed by people who appeared to be newspaper canvassers or salesmen, but with no response what- ever. If there was anyone inside, it is conceivable that a closed-circuit video camera was being used to screen visitors. There were no deliveries of mail or by any of the express services.

For these reasons, the only investigative route left open to us was to tail the Mercedes and determine its destination. Following the shiny, slow-moving car through city traffic was not difficult, but we could get only as far as the entrance to the underground parking lot of a first- class Akasaka hotel. A uniformed guard was stationed there, and the only way in was with a special pass card, so our car was unable to follow the Mercedes inside. This particular hotel is the site of numerous international conferences, which means that many VIPs stay there, as do many famous entertainers from abroad. To ensure their security and privacy, the VIP parking lot is separate from that for ordinary guests, and several elevators have been reserved for VIPs exclusive use, with no external indicators of their movements. This makes it possible for these special guests to check in and out unobtrusively. The Mercedes is apparently parked in one of the VIP spaces. According to the hotel managements brief, carefully measured response to this magazines inquiries, these special spaces are ordinarily leased at a special rate only to uniquely qualified corporate entities after a thoroughgoing background check, but we were unable to obtain any detailed information on either the conditions of use or the users themselves.

The hotel has a shopping arcade, several cafes and restaurants, four wedding halls, and three conference halls, which means that it is in use day and night by a wide variety of people in large numbers. To determine the identities of the passengers in the Mercedes in a place like that would be impossible without special authority. People could alight from the car, take one of the nearby exclusive elevators, get off at any floor they liked, and blend in with the crowd. It should be clear from all this that a system for maintaining absolute secrecy is solidly in place. We can glimpse here an almost excessive use of money and political power. As can be seen from the hotel managements explanation, it is no easy matter to lease and use one of these VIP parking spaces. Contributing to the need for thoroughgoing background checks, no doubt, are the plans of security authorities involved with the protection of foreign dignitaries, which means that some political connections would have to be involved. Just having a lot of money would not be enough, though it goes without saying that all of this would take quite a lot of money.

[Omitted here: conjectures that the property is being used by a religious organization with the backing of a powerful politician]

22 Jellyfish from All Around the World Things Metamorphosed

I sit down in front of Cinnamon's computer at the appointed time and use the password to access the communications program. Then I input the numbers I've been given by Ushikawa.

It will take five minutes for the circuits to connect. I start sipping the coffee I have prepared and work to steady my breathing. The coffee is tasteless, though, and the air I inhale has a harsh edge to it.

Finally, the computer beeps and a message appears on the screen, informing me that the connection has been made and the computer is ready be two-way communication. I specify that this is to be a collect call. If . am careful to prevent a record of this transaction from being made, I should be able to keep Cinnamon from finding out that I used the computer (though of this I am anything but confident: this is his labyrinth; I'm nothing but a powerless stranger here).

A far longer time goes by than I had anticipated, but finally the message appears that the other party has accepted the charges. Beyond this screen, at the far end of the cable that creeps through Tokyo's underground darkness, may be Kumiko. She, too, should be sitting before a monitor, with her hands on a keyboard. In reality, all I can see is my monitor, which sits there making a faint electronic squeal. I click on the box to choose Send mode and type the words that I have been rehearsing over and over in my brain.

>I have one question for you. Its not much of a question, but I need proof that its really you out there. Here it is: The first time we went out together, long before we were married, we went to the aquarium. I want you to tell me what you were most fascinated to see there.

Iclickonthesymbolforsendingthetext(I want you to tell me what you were most fascinated to see there . - .ThenIswitchtoReceivemode.

The answer comes back after a short, silent interval. It is a short answer.

>Jellyfish. Jellyfish from all around the world .< My question and the answer to it are lined up on the upper and lower halves of the screen.

Istareatthemforawhile.Jellyfish from all around the world.

>Let me start with the good news. The cat came back this spring. All of a sudden. He was kind of emaciated, but he was healthy and unharmed. Hes stayed home ever since. I know I should have consulted with you before I did this, but I gave him a new name. Mackerel. Like the fish. Were getting along together just fine. This is good news, I guess.< A delay follows. I cant tell whether it is due to the time lag inherent in this form of communication or a silence on Kumiko's part.

>I'm so happy to hear the cat is still alive! I was worried about him.< I take a sip of coffee to moisten my now dry mouth. Then I start typing again.

>Now for the bad news. Actually, aside from the fact that the cat is back, it seems that everything else is going to be bad news. First of all, I still haven't been able to solve any riddles.

I reread what I have written, then continue to type.

First riddle: Where are you now? What are you doing there? Why do you continue to stay away from me? Why don't you want to see me? Is there some reason for that? I mean, there are so many things that you and I have to talk about face-to-face. Don't you think so?< It takes her some time to reply to this. I imagine her sitting in front of the keyboard, biting her lip and thinking. Finally, the cursor begins to dart across the screen in response to the movement of her fingers.

>Everything I wanted to say to you I wrote in the letter I sent. What I most want you to understand is that, in many ways, I am no longer the Kumiko you knew. People change for all sorts of reasons, and in some cases the transformation makes them go bad. That is why I don't want to see you. And that is why I don't want to come back to you.

The cursor halts and remains blinking in one spot, searching for words. I keep my eyes fixed on it for ten seconds, twenty seconds, waiting for it to form new words on the screen. The transformation makes them go bad?

If possible, I would like you to forget about me as soon as you can. The best thing for both of us would be if you were to complete the formalities for divorce and begin a whole new life. It doesn't matter where I am now or what I am doing. The most important thing is that, for whatever reason, you and I have already been separated into two entirely different worlds. And there is no way we can ever go back to being what we were. Please try to understand how painful it is for me to be communicating with you like this. You probably cant imagine how it tears me apart.< I reread Kumiko's words several times. I find in them no sign of hesitation, no suggestion they come from anything but the deepest, most painful conviction. She has probably rehearsed them in her mind any number of times. But still, I have to find a way to shake this impenetrable wall of hers, if only to make it tremble. I go back to the keyboard.

>What you say is somewhat vague and difficult for me to grasp. You say you've gone bad, but what does that mean in concrete terms? I just don't understand. Tomatoes go bad. Umbrellas go bad. That I can understand. Tomatoes rot and umbrellas get bent out of shape. But what does it mean to say that you have gone bad? It doesn't give me any concrete image. You said in your letter that you had sex with somebody other than me, but could that make you go bad? Yes, of course it was a shock to me. But that is a little different from making a human being go bad, I would think.< A long pause follows. I begin to worry that Kumiko has disappeared somewhere. But then her letters begin to line up on the screen.

>You may be right, but there is more to it than that.

Another deep silence follows. She is choosing her words carefully, pulling them out of a drawer.

That is just one manifestation. Going bad is something that happens over a longer period of time. It was something decided in advance, without me, in a pitch-dark room somewhere, by someone else's hand. When I met and married you, it seemed to me that I had a whole new set of possibilities. I hoped that I might be able to escape through an opening somewhere. But I guess that was just an illusion. There are signs for everything, which is why I tried so hard to find our cat when he disappeared that time.

I keep staring at the message on the screen, but still no Send mark appears. My own machineisstillsettoReceive.Kumikoisthinkingaboutwhattowritenext.Going bad is something that happens over a longer period of time. Whatisshe trying to tell me? I concentrate my attention on the screen, but all I find there is a kind of invisible wall. Once more the letters begin to line up on the screen.

I want you to think about me this way if you can: that I am slowly dying of an incurable disease-one that causes my face and body gradually to disintegrate. This is just a metaphor, of course. My face and body are not actually disintegrating. But this is something very close to the truth. And that is why I don't want to show myself to you. I know that a vague metaphor like this is not going to help you understand everything about the situation in which I find myself. I don't expect it to convince you of the truth of what I am saying. I feel terrible about this, but there is simply nothing more I can say. All you can do is accept it.< An incurable disease. I check to be sure that I am in the Send mode and start typing. >If you say you want me to accept your metaphor, I don't mind accepting it. But there is one thing that I simply cannot understand. Even supposing that you have, as you say, gone bad and that you have an incurable disease, why of all people did you have to go to Noboru Wataya with it? Why didn't you stay here with me? Why aren't we together? Isn't that what we got married for?< Silence. I can almost feel its weight and hardness in my hands. I fold my hands on the desk and take several deep breaths. Then the answer comes.

>The reason I am here, like it or not, is because this is the proper place for me. This is where I have to be. I have no right to choose otherwise. Even if I wanted to see you, I couldn't do it. Do you think I DON'T want to see you?

There is a blank moment in which she seems to be holding her breath. Then her fingers start to move again.

So please, don't torture me about this any longer. If there is any one thing that you can do for me, it would be to forget about my existence as quickly as possible. Take those years that we Lived together and push them outside your memory as if they never existed. That, finally, is the best thing you can do for both of us. This is what I truly believe.< To this I reply: >You say you want me to forget everything. You say you want me to leave you alone. But still, at the same time, from somewhere in this world, you are begging for my help. That voice is faint and distant, but I can hear it distinctly on quiet nights. It IS your voice: I'm sure of that. I can accept the fact that one Kumiko is trying hard to get away from me, and she probably has her reasons for doing so. But there is another Kumiko, who is trying just as hard to get close to me. That is what I truly believe. No matter what you may say to me here, I have to believe in the Kumiko who wants my help and is trying to get close to me. No matter what you tell me, no matter how legitimate your reasons, I can never just forget about you, I can never push the years we spent together out of my mind. I cant do it because they really happened, they are part of my life, and there is no way I can just erase them. That would be the same as erasing my own self. I have to know what legitimate reason there could be for doing such a thing.< Another blank period goes by. I can feel her silence through the monitor. Like heavy smoke, it creeps in through a corner of the screen and drifts across the floor. I know about these silences of Kumiko's. I've seen them, experienced them any number of times in our life together. Shes holding her breath now, sitting in front of the computer screen with brows knit in total concentration. I reach out for my cup and take a sip of cold coffee. Then, with the empty cup between my hands, I hold my breath and stare at the screen the way Kumiko is doing. The two of us are linked together by the heavy bonds of silence that pass through the wall separating our two worlds. We need each other more than anything, I feel without a doubt.

>I don't know .< >Well, I DO know. I set my coffee cup down and type as quickly as I can, as if to catch the fleeting tail of time.

I know this. I know that I want to find my way to where you are - you, the Kumiko who wants me to rescue her. What I do not know yet, unfortunately, is how to get there and what it is thats waiting for me there. In this whole long time since you left, I've lived with a feeling as if I had been thrown into absolute darkness. Slowly but surely, though, I am get- ting closer to the core, to that place where the core of things is located. I wanted to let you know that. I'm getting closer to where you are, and I intend to get closer still.< I rest my hands on the keyboard and wait for her answer.

>I don't understand any of this.

Kumiko types this and ends our conversation: Goodbye.<<< The screen informs me that the other party has left the circuit. Our conversation is finished. Still, I go on staring at the screen, waiting for something to happen. Maybe Kumiko will change her mind and come back on-line. Maybe shell think of something she forgot to say. But she does not come back. I give up after twenty minutes. I save the file, then go to the kitchen for a drink of cold water. I empty my mind out for a while, breathing steadily by the refrigerator. A terrible quiet seems to have descended on everything. I feel as if the world is listening for my next thought. But I cant think of anything. Sorry, but I just cant think of anything.

I go back to the computer and sit there, carefully rereading our entire exchange on the glowing tube from beginning to end: what I said, what she said, what I said to that, what she said to that. The whole thing is still there on the screen, with a certain graphic intensity. As my eyes follow the rows of characters she has made, I can hear her voice. I can recognize the rise and fall of her voice, the subtle tones and pauses. The cursor on the last line keeps up its blinking with all the regularity of a heartbeat, waiting with bated breath for the next word to be sent. But there is no next word.

After engraving the entire conversation in my mind (having decided I had better not print it out), I click on the box to exit communications mode. I direct the program to leave no record in the operations file, and after checking to be sure that this has been done, I cut the switch. The computer beeps, and the monitor screen goes dead white. The monotonous mechanical drone is swallowed up in the silence of the room, like a vivid dream ripped out by the hand of nothingness.

I don't know how much time has gone by since then. But when I realize where I am, I find myself staring at my hands lying on the table. They bear the marks of having had eyes sharply focused on them for a long time.

Going bad is something that happens over a Longer period of time.

How long a period of time is that?

23 Counting Sheep The Thing in the Center of the Circle

A few days after Ushikawa's first visit, I asked Cinnamon to bring me a newspaper whenever he came to the Residence. It was time for me to begin getting in touch with the reality of the outside world. Try as you might to avoid it, when it was time, they came for you.

Cinnamon nodded, and every day after that he would arrive with three newspapers.

I would look through the papers in the morning after breakfast. I had not bothered with newspapers for such a long time that they now struck me as strange-cold and empty. The stimulating smell of the ink gave me a headache, and the intensely black little gangs of type seemed to stab at my eyes. The layout and the headlines type style and the tone of the writing seemed unreal to me. I often had to put the paper down, close my eyes, and release a sigh. It couldn't have been like this in the old days. Reading a newspaper must have been a far more ordinary experience for me than this. What had changed so much about them? Or rather, what had changed so much about me?

After I had been reading the papers for a while, I was able to achieve a clear understanding of one fact concerning Noboru Wataya: namely, that he was constructing an ever more solid position for himself in society. At the same time that he was conducting an ambitious program of political activity as one of the up-and-coming new members of the House of Representatives, he was constantly making public pronouncements as a magazine columnist and a regular commentator on TV. I would see his name everywhere. For some reason I could not fathom, people were actually listening to his opinions-and with ever increasing enthusiasm. He was brand-new on the political stage, but he was already being celebrated as one of the young politicians from whom great things could be expected. He was named the country's most popular politician in a poll conducted by a womens magazine. He was hailed as an activist intellectual, a new type of intelligent politician that had not been seen before.

When I had read as much as I could stand about current events and Noboru Wataya's prominent place in them, I turned to my growing collection of books on Manchukuo. Cinnamon had been bringing me everything he could find on the subject. Even here, though, I could not escape the shadow of Noboru Wataya. That day it emerged from the pages of a book on logistical problems. Published in 1978, the library copy had been borrowed only once before, when the book was new, and returned almost immediately. Perhaps only acquaintances of Lieutenant Mamiya were interested in logistical problems in Manchukuo.

As early as 1920, according to the author, Japans imperial army was looking into the possibility of amassing a huge inventory of winter survival gear in anticipation of all-out war with the Soviets. Equipping the army to fight in bitter cold was viewed as an urgent matter because they lacked the experience of having fought a real battle anyplace with such extreme winter cold as Siberia. If a border dispute led suddenly to a declaration of war against the Soviet Union (which was by no means out of the question in those days), the army was simply unprepared to persevere in a winter campaign. For this reason, a research team was established within the General Staff Office to prepare to fight a hypothetical war with the Soviet Union, the logistics section being charged with investigating the procurement of special winter clothing. In order to grasp what real cold was like, they went to the far northern island of Sakhalin, long a point of dispute with Czarist Russia and then the Soviet Union, and used an actual fighting unit to test insulated boots and coats and underwear. They ran thoroughgoing tests on equipment currently in use by the Soviet Army and on the kind of clothing that Napoleons army had used in its Russian campaign, reaching the conclusion that it would be impossible for the Japanese Army to survive a winter in Siberia with its present equipment. They estimated that some two-thirds of the foot soldiers on the front lines would be put out of commission by frostbite. The army's current survival gear had been manufactured with the somewhat gentler northern China winters in mind, and it was lacking in terms of absolute numbers as well. The research team calculated the number of sheep necessary to manufacture sufficient effective winter clothing to outfit ten divisions (the joke making the rounds of the team then being that they were too busy counting sheep to sleep), and they submitted this in their report, along with estimates of the scale of mechanical equip- ment that would be needed to process the wool.

The number of sheep on the Japanese home islands was clearly insufficient for fighting an extended war in the northern territories against the Soviet Army in the event of economic sanctions or an actual blockade against Japan, and thus it was imperative that Japan secure both a stable supply of wool (and of rabbit and other pelts) in the Manchuria-Mongolia region and the mechanical equipment for processing it, said the report. The man dispatched to make on-the-spot observations in Manchukuo in 1932, immediately after the founding of the puppet regime there, was a young technocrat newly graduated from the Military Staff College with a major in logistics; his name was Yoshitaka Wataya.

Yoshitaka Wataya! This could only have been Noboru's uncle. There just weren't that many Wataya's in the world, and the name Yoshitaka was the clincher.

His mission was to calculate the time that would be needed before such stable supplies of wool could be secured in Manchukuo. Yoshitaka Wataya seized upon this problem of cold- weather clothing as a model case for modern logistics and carried out an exhaustive numerical analysis.

When he was in Mukden, Yoshitaka Wataya sought an introduction to- and spent the entire night drinking and talking with- Lieutenant General Kanji Ishiwara.

Kanji Ishiwara. Another name I knew well. Noboru Wataya's uncle had been in touch with Kanji Ishiwara, the ringleader the year before of the staged Chinese attack on Japanese troops known as the Manchurian Incident, the event that had enabled Japan to turn Manchuria into Manchukuo-and that later would prove to have been the first act in fifteen years of war.

Ishiwara had toured the continent and become convinced not only that all-out war with the Soviet Union was inevitable but that the key to winning that war lay in strengthening Japans logistical position by rapidly industrializing the newly formed empire of Manchukuo and establishing a self-sufficient economy. He presented his case to Yoshitaka Wataya with eloquence and passion. He argued, too, the importance of bringing farmers from Japan to systematize Manchukuo's farming and cattle industries and to raise the level of their efficiency.

Ishiwara was of the opinion that Japan should not turn Manchukuo into another undisguised Japanese colony, such as Korea or Taiwan, and should instead make Manchukuo a new model Asian nation. In his recognition that Manchukuo would ultimately serve as a logistical base for war against the Soviet Union-and even against the United States and England-Ishiwara was, however, admirably realistic. He believed that Japan was now the only Asian nation with the capability of fighting the coming war against the West (or, as he called it, the Final War) and that the other countries had the duty to cooperate with Japan for their own liberation from the West. No other officer in the Imperial Army at that time had Ishiwara's combination of a profound interest in logistics and great erudition. Most other Japanese officers dismissed logistics as an effeminate discipline, believing instead that the proper Way for his majesty's warriors was to fight with bold self-abandonment no matter how ill-equipped one might be; that true martial glory lay in conquering a mighty foe when outnumbered and poorly armed. Strike the enemy and advance too swiftly for supplies to keep up: that was the path of honor.

To Yoshitaka Wataya, the complete technocrat, this was utter nonsense. Starting a long- term war without logistical backing was tantamount to suicide, in his view. The Soviets had vastly expanded and modernized their military capability through Stalins five-year plan of in- tensive economic development. The five bloody years of the First World War had destroyed the old worlds values, and mechanized war had revolutionized European thinking with regard to strategy and logistics. Having been stationed for two years in Berlin, Yoshitaka Wataya knew the truth of this with every bone in his body, but the mentality of the greater part of Japans military men had not outgrown the intoxication of their victory in the Russo-Japanese War, nearly thirty years before.

Yoshitaka Wataya went home to Japan a devoted admirer of Ishiwara's arguments, his worldview, and the charismatic personality of the man himself, and their close relationship lasted many years. He often went to visit Ishiwara, even after the distinguished officer had been brought back from Manchuria to take command of the isolated fortress in Maizuru. Yoshitaka Wataya's precise and meticulous report on sheep farming and wool processing in Manchukuo was submitted to headquarters shortly after he returned to Japan, and it received high praise. With Japans painful defeat in the 1939 battle of Nomonhan, however, and the strengthening of U.S. and British economic sanctions, the military began to shift its attention southward, and the activities of the research team waging hypothetical war against the Soviet Union were allowed to peter out. Of course, one factor behind the decision to finish off the battle of Nomonhan quickly in early autumn and not allow it to develop into a full-scale war was the research teams conclusive report that we are unable to wage a winter campaign against the Soviet Army given our current state of preparedness. As soon as the autumn winds began to blow, Imperial Headquarters, in a move unusual for the normally face- obsessed Japanese Army, washed its hands of the fighting and, through diplomatic negotiations, ceded the barren Hulunbuir Steppe to Outer Mongolian and Soviet troops.

In a footnote, the author pointed out that Yoshitaka Wataya had been purged from holding public office by MacArthur's Occupation after the war and for a time had lived in seclusion in his native Niigata, but he had been persuaded by the Conservative Party to run for office after the purge was lifted and served two terms in the Upper House before changing to the Lower House. A calligraphic scroll of Kanji Ishiwara's hung on the wall of his office.

I had no idea what kind of Diet member Noboru Wataya's uncle had been or what he had accomplished as a politician. He did serve as a cabinet minister once, and he seems to have been highly influential with the people of his district, but he never became a leader in national politics. Now his political constituency had been inherited by his nephew, Noboru Wataya.

I put the book away and, folding my arms behind my head, stared out the window in the vague direction of the front gate. Soon the gate would open inward and the Mercedes-Benz would appear, with Cinnamon at the wheel. He would be bringing another client. These clients and I were joined by the mark on my cheek. Cinnamon's grandfather (Nutmeg's fa- ther) and I were also joined by the mark on my cheek. Cinnamon's grandfather and Lieutenant Mamiya were joined by the city of Hsinching. Lieutenant Mamiya and the clairvoyant Mr. Honda were joined by their special duties on the Manchurian-Mongolian border, and Kumiko and I had been introduced to Mr. Honda by Noboru Wataya's family. Lieutenant Mamiya and I were joined by our experiences in our respective wells-his in Mongolia, mine on the property where I was sitting now. Also on this property had once lived an army officer who had commanded troops in China. All of these were linked as in a circle, at the center of which stood prewar Manchuria, continental East Asia, and the short war of 1939 in Nomonhan. But why Kumiko and I should have been drawn into this historical chain of cause and effect I could not comprehend. All of these events had occurred long before Kumiko and I were born.

I sat at Cinnamon's desk and placed my hands on the keyboard. The feel of my fingers on the keys was still fresh from my conversation with Kumiko. That computer conversation had been monitored by Noboru Wataya, I was sure. He was trying to learn something from it. He certainly hadn't arranged for us to make contact that way out of the goodness of his heart. He and his men were almost certainly trying to use the access they had gained to Cinnamon's computer through the communications link in order to learn the secrets of this place. But I was not worried about that. The depths of this computer were the very depths of Cinnamon himself. And they had no way of knowing how incalculably deep that was.

24 The Signal Turns Red The Long Arm Reaches Out

Cinnamon was not alone when he arrived at nine o'clock the next morning. Beside him in the passenger seat was his mother, Nutmeg Akasaka. She had not been here in over a month.

She had arrived with Cinnamon unannounced that time too, had breakfast with me, and left after an hour or so of small talk.

Cinnamon hung up his suit coat and, while listening to a Handel Concerto Grosso (for the third day in a row), he went to the kitchen to make tea and toast for his mother, who had not yet eaten breakfast. He always made perfect toast, like something to be used in a commercial.

Then, while Cinnamon straightened up the kitchen as usual, Nutmeg and I sat at a small table, drinking tea. She ate only one slice of toast, with a little butter. Outside, a cold, sleety rain was falling. Nutmeg said little, and I said little-a few remarks about the weather. She seemed to have something she wanted to say, though. That much was clear from the look on her face and the way she spoke. She tore off stamp-sized pieces of toast and transported them, one at a time, to her mouth. We looked out at the rain now and then, as if it were our longtime mutual friend.

When Cinnamon had finished with the kitchen and started his cleaning, Nutmeg led me to the fitting room. This one had been made to look exactly like the fitting room in the Akasaka office. The size and shape were virtually identical. The window here also had two layers of curtains and was gloomy even during the day. The curtains were never open more than ten minutes at a time, while Cinnamon was cleaning the room. There was a leather sofa here, a glass vase, with flowers, on the table, and a tall floor lamp. In the middle of the room stood a large workbench, on which lay a pair of scissors, scraps of cloth, a wooden box stuffed with needles and thread, pencils, a design book (in which a few actual design sketches had been drawn), and several professional tools, the names and purposes of which I did not know. A large full-length mirror hung on the wall, and one corner of the room was partitioned off by a screen for changing. The clients who visited the Residence were always shown to this room.

Why Cinnamon and his mother had had to make an exact reproduction of the original fitting room in this house I had no idea. Here there was no need for such camouflage.

Maybe they (and their clients) had become so accustomed to the look of the fitting room in the Akasaka office that they were unable to come up with any new ideas for decorating this place. Of course, they could just as well ask, Whats wrong with a fitting room? Whatever the reason for having it, I myself was pleased with it. It was the fitting room, not any other room, and I felt a strange sense of security there, surrounded by all kinds of dressmaking tools. It was an unreal setting, but not an unnatural one. Nutmeg had me sit on the leather sofa, and she sat down next to me. So. How are you feeling? she asked. Not bad, I answered. Nutmeg was wearing a bright-green suit. The skirt was short, and the large hexagonal buttons came up to the throat like one of those old Nehru jackets. The shoulders had pads the size of dinner rolls. The look reminded me of a science fiction movie I had seen a long time ago, set in the near future. Almost all the women in the movie wore suits like this and lived in a futuristic city.

Nutmeg's earrings were large plastic things, the same exact color as her suit. They were a unique deep green that seemed to have been made from a combination of several colors, and so they had probably been special-ordered to match the suit. Or perhaps the opposite was true: the suit had been made to match the earrings-like making a niche in the wall the exact shape of a refrigerator. Maybe not a bad way to look at things, I thought. She had come in wearing sunglasses in spite of the rain, and their lenses had almost certainly been green. Her stockings were green too. Today was obviously green day.

With her usual series of smooth linked movements, Nutmeg drew a cigarette from her bag, put it in her mouth, and lit it with her cigarette lighter, curling her lip just slightly. The lighter, at least, was not green but the expensive-looking slim gold one she always used. It did go very well with the green, though. Nutmeg then crossed her green-stockinged legs. Checking her knees carefully, she adjusted her skirt. Then, as if it were an extension of her knees, she looked at my face.

Not bad, I said again. The same as always. Nutmeg nodded. You're not tired? You don't feel as if you need some rest? No, not especially. I think I've gotten used to the work. Its a lot easier for me now than it was at first. Nutmeg said nothing to that. The smoke of her cigarette rose straight up like an Indian fakirs magic rope, to be sucked in by the ceiling ventilator. As far as I knew, this ventilator was the worlds quietest and strongest.

How are you doing? I asked. Me? Are you tired? Nutmeg looked at me. Do I look tired? She had in fact looked tired to me from the moment our eyes first met. When I told her this, she gave a short sigh. There was another article about this place in a magazine that came out this morning-part of the Mystery of the Hanging House series. Sounds like the title of a horror movie. That's the second one, isn't it? I said. It certainly is, said Nutmeg. And in fact, another magazine carried a related article not too long ago, but fortunately no one seems to have noticed the connection. So far. Did something new come out? About us? She reached toward an ashtray and carefully crushed out her cigarette. Then she gave her head a little shake. Her green earrings fluttered like butterflies in early spring. Not really, she said, then paused. Who we are, what were doing here: no one knows yet. I'll leave you a copy, so you can read it if you're interested. But what Id really like to ask you about is something that somebody whispered to me the other day: that you have a brother-in-law who's a famous young politician. Is it true?

Unfortunately, it is, I said. My wifes brother. Meaning the brother of the wife who is no longer with you? That's right. I wonder if he's caught wind of what you're doing here?

He knows I come here every day and that I'm doing something. He had somebody investigate for him. I think he was worried about what I might be doing. But I don't think he's figured out anything else yet.

Nutmeg thought about my answer for a while. Then she raised her face to mine and asked, You don't like this brother-in-law of yours very much, do you?

Not very much, no. And he doesn't like you. To put it mildly. And now he's worried about what you're doing here. Why is that? If it comes out that his brother-in-law is involved with something suspicious, it could turn into a scandal for him. Hes the man of the moment, after all. I suppose its natural that he would worry about such things.

So he couldn't be the one leaking information about this place to the mass media, then, could he?

To be quite honest, I don't know what Noboru Wataya has in mind. But common sense tells me he'd have nothing to gain by leaking things to the press. He'd be more likely to want to keep things under wraps.

For a long time, Nutmeg went on turning the slim gold lighter in her fingers. It looked like a gold windmill on a day with little wind.

Why haven't you said anything to us about this brother-in-law of yours? Nutmeg asked.

It isn't just you. I try not to mention him to anybody, I said. We haven't liked each other from the beginning, and now we practically hate each other. I wasn't hiding him from you. I just didn't think there was any need to bring up the subject.

Nutmeg released a somewhat longer sigh. You should have told us. Maybe I should have, I said. I'm sure you can imagine whats involved here. We have clients coming to us from politics and business. Powerful people. And famous people. Their privacy has to be protected. That's why we've taken such extreme precautions. You know that much. I nodded.

Cinnamon has gone to a lot of time and trouble to put together the precise and complicated system we have for maintaining our secrecy- a labyrinth of dummy companies, books under layers of camouflage, a totally anonymous parking space in that hotel in Akasaka, stringent management of the clientele, control of income and expenses, design of this house: his mind gave birth to all of this. Until now, the system has worked almost perfectly in accordance with his calculations. Of course, it takes a lot of money to support such a system, but money is no problem for us. The important thing is that the women who come to us can feel secure that they will be protected absolutely.

What you're saying is that that security is being undermined. Yes, unfortunately. Nutmeg picked up a box of cigarettes and took one out, but she just held it for a long time between her fingers without lighting it. And to make matters worse, I have this fairly famous politician for a brother-in-law, which only increases the possibility of scandal. Exactly, said Nutmeg, curling her lip slightly. So what is Cinnamon's analysis of the situation?

Hes not saying anything. Like a big oyster on the bottom of the sea. He has burrowed inside himself and locked the door, and he's doing some serious thinking.

Nutmeg's eyes were fixed on mine. At last, as though recalling that it was there in her hand, she lit her cigarette. Then she said, I Still think about it a lot-about my husband and the way he was killed. Why did they have to murder him? Why did they have to smear the hotel room with blood and tear out his insides and take them away? I just cant think of any reason for doing such a thing. My husband was not the kind of person who had to be killed in such an unusual way.

But my husbands death is not the only thing. All these inexplicable events that have occurred in my life so far- the intense passion that welled up inside me for fashion design and the way it suddenly disappeared; the way Cinnamon stopped speaking; the way I became swept up in this strange work we do- its as though they were all ingeniously programmed from the start for the very purpose of bringing me here, where I am today. Its a thought I cant seem to shake off. I feel as if my every move is being controlled by some kind of incredibly long arm thats reaching out from somewhere far away, and that my life has been nothing more than a convenient passageway for all these things moving through it.

The faint sounds of Cinnamon's vacuuming came from the next room. He was performing his tasks in his usual concentrated, systematic manner. Haven't you ever felt that way?

Nutmeg asked me.

I don't feel that I've been swept up in anything, I said. I'm here now because it was necessary for me to be here.

So you could blow the magic flute and find Kumiko?

That's right.

You have something you're searching for, she said, slowly recrossing her green- stockinged legs. And everything has its price.

I remained silent.

Then, at last, Nutmeg announced her conclusion: We've decided not to bring any clients here for a while. It was Cinnamon's decision. Because of the magazine articles and your brother-in-laws entry on the scene, the signal has changed from yellow to red. Yesterday we canceled all remaining appointments, beginning with todays.

How long will a while be?

Until Cinnamon can patch the holes in the system and we can be sure that any crisis has been completely bypassed. Sorry, but we don't want to take any chances-none at all.

Cinnamon will come here every day, as he always has, but there will be no more clients.

By the time Cinnamon and Nutmeg left, the morning rain had cleared. Half a dozen sparrows were washing their feathers in a puddle in the driveway. When Cinnamon's Mercedes disappeared and the automatic gate closed, I sat at the window, looking at the cloudy winter sky beyond the tree branches. Nutmeg's words came to mind: some kind of in- credibly long arm thats reaching out from somewhere far away. I imagined the arm reaching down from the dark, low-hanging clouds- like an illustration from a sinister picture book.

25 Triangular Ears Sleigh Bells

I spent the rest of the day reading about Manchukuo. There was no need for me to hurry back to the house. Thinking I might be late, I had given Mackerel two days worth of dried cat food when I left in the morning. He might not like it much, but at least he wouldn't starve.

This made the thought of dragging myself home that much less appealing. I wanted to lie down and take a nap. I took a blanket and pillow from a cabinet, spread them on the sofa in the fitting room, and turned out the light. Then I lay down, closed my eyes, and began thinking about Mackerel. I wanted to fall asleep thinking about the cat. He was something that had come back to me. He had managed to come back to me from somewhere far away. That had to be a kind of blessing. As I lay there with my eyes closed, I thought about the soft touch of the pads beneath the cats paws, the cold triangular ears, the pink tongue. In my mind, Mackerel had curled up and was sleeping quietly. I felt his warmth with the palm of my hand.

I could hear his regular breathing. I was far more on edge than usual, but sleep still came to me before too long, a deep sleep without dreams.

I awoke in the middle of the night. I thought I had heard sleigh bells somewhere far away, as in the background of Christmas music.

Sleigh bells?

I sat up on the sofa and felt for my watch on the coffee table. The luminous hands showed one-thirty. I must have slept more soundly than I had expected to. I sat still and listened hard, but the only sound I could hear was the faint, dry thumping of my own heart. Maybe I had imagined the sleigh bells. Maybe I had been dreaming, after all. I decided, still, to check the house. I stepped into my slippers and padded my way into the kitchen. The sound grew more distinct when I left the room. It really did sound like sleigh bells, and it seemed to be coming from Cinnamon's office. I stood by the door for a while, listening, then gave a knock. Cinnamon might have come back to the Residence while I was sleeping. But there was no answer. I opened the door a crack and looked inside.

Somewhere around waist height in the darkness, I could see a whitish glow with a square shape. It was the glow of the computer screen, and the bell sound was the machines repeated beeping (a new kind of beep, which I had not heard before). The computer was calling out to me. As if drawn toward it, I sat down in front of the glow and read the message on the screen: You have now gained access to the program The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Choose a document (1-16).

Someone had turned the computer on and accessed documents titled The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. There should have been no one in the Residence besides me. Could someone have started it from outside the house? If so, it could only have been Cinnamon. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle?

The light, cheery sound, like sleigh bells, continued to emanate from the computer, as if this were Christmas morning. It seemed to be urging me to make a choice. After some hesitation, I picked #8 for no particular reason. The ringing immediately stopped, and a document opened on the screen like a horizontal scroll painting being spread out before me.

26 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle #8 (or, A Second Clumsy Massacre)

The veterinarian woke before 6:00 a.m. After washing his face in cold water, he made himself breakfast. Daybreak came at an early hour in summer, and most of the animals in the zoo were already awake. The open window let in their cries and the breeze that carried their smells, which told him the weather without his having to look outside. This was part of his routine. He would first listen, then inhale the morning air, and so ready himself for each new day.

Today, however, should have been different from the day before. It had to be different. So many voices and smells had been lost! The tigers, the leopards, the wolves, the bears: all had been liquidated- eliminated-by soldiers the previous afternoon. Now, after a night of sleep, those events seemed like part of a sluggish nightmare he had had long ago. But he knew they had actually happened. His ears still felt a dull ache from the roar of the soldiers rifles. That could not be a dream. It was August now, the year was 1945, and he was here in the city of Hsinching, where the Soviet troops that had burst across the border were pressing closer every hour. This was reality- as real as the sink and toothbrush he saw in front of him.

The sound of the elephants trumpeting gave him some sense of relief. Ah, yes- the elephants had survived. Fortunately, the young lieutenant in charge of the platoon had had enough normal human sensitivity to remove the elephants from the list, thought the veterinarian as he washed his face. Since coming to Manchuria, he had met any number of stiff-necked, fanatical young officers from his homeland, and the experience always left him shaken. Most of them were farmers sons who had spent their youthful years in the depressed thirties, steeped in the tragedies of poverty, while a megalomaniac nationalism was hammered into their skulls. They would follow without a second thought the orders of a superior, no matter how outlandish. Commanded in the name of the emperor to dig a hole through the earth to Brazil, they would grab a shovel and set to work. Some people called this purity, but the veterinarian had other words for it. An urban doctors son, educated in the relatively liberal atmosphere of the twenties, the veterinarian could never understand those young officers. Shooting a couple of elephants with small arms should have been far easier than digging through the earth to Brazil, but the lieutenant in charge of the firing squad, though he spoke with a slight country accent, seemed to be a more normal human being than the other young officers the veterinarian had met-better educated and more reasonable. The veterinarian could sense this from the way the young man spoke and handled himself.

In any case, the elephants had not been killed, and the veterinarian told himself he should probably be grateful. The soldiers, too, must have been glad to be spared the task. The Chinese workers may have regretted the omission-they had missed out on a lot of meat and ivory.

The veterinarian boiled water in a kettle, soaked his beard in a hot towel, and shaved. Then he ate breakfast alone: tea, toast and butter. The food rations in Manchuria were far from sufficient, but compared with those elsewhere, they were still fairly generous. This was good news both for him and for the animals. The animals showed resentment at their reduced allotments of feed, but the situation here was far better than in Japanese homeland zoos, where foodstuffs had already bottomed out. No one could predict the future, but for now, at least, both animals and humans were being spared the pain of extreme hunger.

He wondered how his wife and daughter were doing. If all went according to plan, their train should have arrived in Pusan by now. There his cousin lived who worked for the railway company, and until the veterinarians wife and daughter were able to board the transport ship that would carry them to Japan, they would stay with the cousins family. The doctor missed seeing them when he woke up in the morning. He missed hearing their lively voices as they prepared breakfast. A hollow quiet ruled the house. This was no longer the home he loved, the place where he belonged. And yet, at the same time, he could not help feeling a certain strange joy at being left alone in this empty official residence; now he was able to sense the implacable power of fate in his very bones and flesh. Fate itself was the doctors own fatal disease. From his youngest days, he had had a weirdly lucid awareness that I, as an individual, am living under the control of some outside force. This may have been owing to the vivid blue mark on his right cheek. While still a child, he hated this mark, this imprint that only he, and no one else, had to bear upon his flesh. He wanted to die whenever the other children taunted him or strangers stared at him. If only he could have cut away that part of his body with a knife! But as he matured, he gradually came to a quiet acceptance of the mark on his face that would never go away. And this may have been a factor that helped form his attitude of resignation in all matters having to do with fate.

Most of the time, the power of fate played on like a quiet and monotonous ground bass, coloring only the edges of his life. Rarely was he reminded of its existence. But every once in a while, when the balance would shift (and what controlled the balance he never knew: he could discover no regularity in those shifts), the force would increase, plunging him into a state of near-paralytic resignation. At such times, he had no choice but to abandon everything and give himself up to the flow. He knew from experience that nothing he could do or think would ever change the situation. Fate would demand its portion, and until it received that portion, it would never go away. He believed this with his whole heart.

Not that he was a passive creature; indeed, he was more decisive than most, and he always saw his decisions through. In his profession, he was outstanding: a veterinarian of exceptional skill, a tireless educator. He may have lacked a certain creative spark, but in school he always had superior grades and was chosen to be the leader of the class. In the workplace, too, others acknowledged his superiority, and his juniors always looked up to him. He was certainly no fatalist, as most people use the word. And yet never once in his life had he experienced the unshakable certainty that he and he alone had arrived at a decision. He always had the sense that fate had forced him to decide things to suit its own convenience. On occasion, after the momentary satisfaction of having decided something of his own free will, he would see that things had been decided beforehand by an external power cleverly camouflaged as free will, mere bait thrown in his path to lure him into behaving as he was meant to. The only things that he had decided for himself with complete independence were the kind of trivial matters which, on closer inspection, revealed themselves to require no decision making at all. He felt like a titular head of state who did nothing more than impress the royal seal on documents at the behest of a regent who wielded all true power in the realm-like the emperor of this puppet empire of Manchukuo.

The doctor loved his wife and child. They were the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to him in his life-especially his daughter, for whom his love bordered on obsession. For them, he would have gladly given up his life. Indeed, he had often imagined doing so, and the deaths he had endured for them in his mind seemed the sweetest deaths imaginable. At the same time, however, he would often come home from work and, seeing his wife and daughter there, think to himself, These people are, finally, separate human beings, with whom I have no connection. They were something other, something of which he had no true knowledge, something that existed in a place far away from the doctor himself. And whenever he felt this way, the thought would cross his mind that he himself had chosen neither of these people on his own-which did not prevent him from loving them unconditionally, without the slightest reservation. This was, for the doctor, a great paradox, an insoluble contradiction, a gigantic trap that had been set for him in his life.

The world he belonged to became far simpler, far easier to understand, though, once he was left alone in his residence at the zoo. All he had to think about was taking care of the animals. His wife and daughter were gone. There was no need to think about them for now. The veterinarian and his fate could be alone together.

And it was fate above all, the gigantic power of fate, that held sway over the city of Hsinching in August of 1945-not the Kwantung Army, not the Soviet Army, not the troops of the Communists or of the Kuomintang. Anyone could see that fate was the ruler here and that individual will counted for nothing. It was fate that had spared the elephants and buried the tigers and leopards and wolves and bears the day before. What would it bury now, and what would it spare? These were questions that no one could answer.

The doctor left his residence to prepare for the morning feeding. He assumed that no one would show up for work anymore, but he found two Chinese boys waiting for him in his office. He did not know them. They were thirteen or fourteen years old, dark-complected and skinny, with roving animal eyes. They told us to help you, said one boy. The doctor nodded. He asked their names, but they made no reply. Their faces remained blank, as if they had not heard the question. These boys had obviously been sent by the Chinese people who had worked here until the day before. Those people had probably ended all contact with Japanese now, in anticipation of changes to come, but assumed that children would not be held accountable. The boys had been sent as a sign of goodwill. The workers knew that he could not care for the animals alone.

The veterinarian gave each boy two cookies, then put them to work helping him feed the animals. They led a mule-drawn cart from cage to cage, providing each animal with its particular feed and changing its water. Cleaning the cages was out of the question. The best they could manage was a quick hose-down to wash away the droppings. The zoo was closed, after all: no one would complain if it stank a little.

As it turned out, the absence of the tigers, leopards, bears, and wolves made the job far easier. Caring for big carnivores was a major effort-and dangerous. As bad as the doctor felt when passing their empty cages, he could not suppress a sense of relief to have been spared that job.

They started the work at eight o'clock and finished after ten. The boys then disappeared without a word. The veterinarian felt exhausted from the hard physical labor. He went back to the office and reported to the zoo director that the animals had been fed.

Just before noon, the young lieutenant came back to the zoo, leading the same eight soldiers he had brought with him the day before. Fully armed again, they walked with a metallic clinking that could be heard far in advance of their arrival. Again their shirts were blackened with sweat, and again the cicadas were screaming in the trees. Today, however, they had not come to kill animals. The lieutenant saluted the director and said, We need to know the current status of the zoos usable carts and draft animals. The director informed him that they had exactly one mule and one wagon. We contributed our only truck and two horses two weeks ago, he noted. The lieutenant nodded and announced that he would immediately commandeer the mule and wagon, as per orders of Kwantung Army Headquarters.

Wait just a minute, the veterinarian interjected. We need those to feed the animals twice a day. All our local people have disappeared. Without that mule and wagon, our animals will starve to death. Even with them, we can barely keep up.

Were all just barely keeping up, sir, said the lieutenant, whose eyes were red and whose face was covered with stubble. Our first priority is to defend the city. You can always let the animals out of their cages if need be. We've taken care of the dangerous meat-eaters. The others pose no security risk. These are military orders, sir. You'll just have to manage as you see fit.

Cutting the discussion short, the lieutenant had his men take the mule and wagon. When they were gone, the veterinarian and the director looked at each other. The director sipped his tea, shook his head, and said nothing.

Four hours later, the soldiers were back with the mule and wagon, a filthy canvas tarpaulin covering the mounded contents of the wagon. The mule was panting, its hide foaming with the afternoon heat and the weight of the load. The eight soldiers marched four Chinese men ahead of them at bayonet point-young men, perhaps twenty years old, wearing baseball uniforms and with their hands tied behind their backs. The black-and-blue marks on their faces made it obvious that they had been severely beaten. The right eye of one man was swollen almost shut, and the bleeding lips of another had stained his baseball shirt bright red. The shirtfronts had nothing written on them, but there were small rectangles where the name patches had been torn off. The numbers on their backs were 1, 4, 7, and 9. The veterinarian could not begin to imagine why, at such a time of crisis, four young Chinese men would be wearing baseball uniforms, or why they had been so badly beaten and dragged here by Japanese troops. The scene looked like something not of this world-a painting by a mental patient.

The lieutenant asked the zoo director if he had any picks and shovels he could let them use. The young officer looked even more pale and haggard than he had before. The veterinarian led him and his men to a tool-shed behind the office. The lieutenant chose two picks and two shovels for his men. Then he asked the veterinarian to come with him, and leaving his men there, walked into a thicket beyond the road. The veterinarian followed. Wherever the lieutenant walked, huge grasshoppers scattered. The smell of summer grass hung in the air. Mixed in with the deafening screams of cicadas, the sharp trumpeting of elephants now and then seemed to sound a distant warning.

The lieutenant went on among the trees without speaking, until he found a kind of opening in the woods. The area had been slated for construction of a plaza for small animals that children could play with. The plan had been postponed indefinitely, however, when the worsening military situation caused a shortage of construction materials. The trees had been cleared away to make a circle of bare ground, and the sun illuminated this one part of the woods like stage lighting. The lieutenant stood in the center of the circle and scanned the area. Then he dug at the ground with the heel of his boot.

Were going to bivouac here for a while, he said, kneeling down and scooping up a handful of dirt.

The veterinarian nodded in response. He had no idea why they had to bivouac in a zoo, but he decided not to ask. Here in Hsinching, experience had taught him never to question military men. Questions did nothing but make them angry, and they never gave you a straight answer in any case.

First we dig a big hole here, the lieutenant said, speaking as if to himself. He stood up and took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. Putting a cigarette between his lips, he offered one to the doctor, then lit both with a match. The two concentrated on their smoking to fill the silence. Again the lieutenant began digging at the ground with his boot. He drew a kind of diagram in the earth, then rubbed it out. Finally, he asked the veterinarian, Where were you born?

In Kanagawa, the doctor said. In a town called Ofuna, near the sea. The lieutenant nodded. And where were you born? the veterinarian asked. Instead of answering, the lieutenant narrowed his eyes and watched the smoke rising from between his fingers. No, it never pays to ask a military man questions, the veterinarian told himself again. They like to ask questions, but they'll never give you an answer. They wouldn't give you the time of day-literally.

Theres a movie studio there, said the lieutenant.

It took the doctor a few seconds to realize the lieutenant was talking about Ofuna. That's right. A big studio. I've never been inside, though.

The lieutenant dropped what was left of his cigarette on the ground and crushed it out. I hope you make it back there, he said. Of course, theres an ocean to cross between here and Japan. Well probably all die over here. He kept his eyes on the ground as he spoke. Tell me, Doctor, are you afraid of death?

I guess it depends on how you die, said the veterinarian, after a moments thought.

The lieutenant raised his eyes and looked at the veterinarian as if his curiosity had been aroused. He had apparently been expecting another answer. You're right, he said. It does depend on how you die.

The two remained silent for a time. The lieutenant looked as if he might just fall asleep there, standing up. He was obviously exhausted. An especially large grasshopper flew over them like a bird and disappeared into a distant clump of grass with a noisy beating of wings. The lieutenant looked at his watch.

Time to get started, he said to no one in particular. Then he spoke to the veterinarian. Id like you to stay around for a while. I might have to ask you to do me a favor.

The veterinarian nodded.

The soldiers led the Chinese prisoners to the opening in the woods and untied their hands. The corporal drew a large circle on the ground, using a baseball bat-though why a soldier would have a bat the veterinarian found another mystery-and ordered the prisoners in Japanese to dig a deep hole the size of the circle. With the picks and shovels, the four men in baseball uniforms started digging in silence. Half the squad stood guard over them, while the other half stretched out beneath the trees. They seemed to be in desperate need of sleep; no sooner had they hit the ground in full gear than they began snoring. The four soldiers who re- mained awake kept watch over the digging nearby, rifles resting on their hips, bayonets fixed, ready for immediate use. The lieutenant and the corporal took turns overseeing the work and napping under the trees.

It took less than an hour for the four Chinese prisoners to dig a hole some twelve feet across and deep enough to come up to their necks. One of the men asked for water, speaking in Japanese. The lieutenant nodded, and a soldier brought a bucket full of water. The four Chinese took turns ladling water from the bucket and gulping it down. They drank almost the entire bucketful. Their uniforms were smeared black with blood, mud, and sweat.

The lieutenant had two of the soldiers pull the wagon over to the hole. The corporal yanked the tarpaulin off, to reveal four dead men piled in the wagon. They wore the same baseball uniforms as the prisoners, and they, too, were obviously Chinese. They appeared to have been shot, and their uniforms were covered with black bloodstains. Large flies were beginning to swarm over the corpses. Judging from the way the blood had dried, the doctor guessed they had been dead for close to twenty-four hours.

The lieutenant ordered the four Chinese who had dug the hole to throw the bodies into it. Without a word, faces blank, the men took the bodies out of the wagon and threw them, one at a time, into the hole. Each corpse landed with a dull thud. The numbers on the dead mens uniforms were 2, 5, 6, and 8. The veterinarian committed them to memory.

When the four Chinese had finished throwing the bodies into the hole, the soldiers tied each man to a nearby tree. The lieutenant held up his wrist and studied his watch with a grim expression. Then he looked up toward a spot in the sky for a while, as if searching for something there. He looked like a stationmaster standing on the platform and waiting for a hopelessly overdue train. But in fact he was looking at nothing at all. He was just allowing a certain amount of time to go by. Once he had accomplished that, he turned to the corporal and gave him curt orders to bayonet three of the four prisoners (numbers 1, 7, and 9).

Three soldiers were chosen and took up their positions in front of the three Chinese. The soldiers looked paler than the men they were about to kill. The Chinese looked too tired to hope for anything. The corporal offered each of them a smoke, but they refused. He put his cigarettes back into his shirt pocket. Taking the veterinarian with him, the lieutenant went to stand somewhat apart from the other soldiers. You'd better watch this, he said. This is another way to die. The veterinarian nodded. The lieutenant is not saying this to me, he thought. Hes saying it to himself. In a gentle voice, the lieutenant explained, Shooting them would be the simplest and most efficient way to kill them, but we have orders not to waste a single bullet-and certainly not to waste bullets killing Chinese. Were supposed to save our ammunition for the Russians. Well just bayonet them, I suppose, but thats not as easy as it sounds. By the way, Doctor, did they teach you how to use a bayonet in the army?

The doctor explained that as a cavalry veterinarian, he had not been trained to use a bayonet.

Well, the proper way to kill a man with a bayonet is this: First you thrust it in under the ribs-here. The lieutenant pointed to his own torso just above the stomach. Then you drag the point in a big, deep circle inside him, to scramble the organs. Then you thrust upward to puncture the heart. You cant just stick it in and expect him to die. We soldiers have this drummed into us. Hand-to-hand combat using bayonets ranks right up there along with night assaults as the pride of the Imperial Army-though mainly, its a lot cheaper than tanks and planes and cannons. Of course, you can train all you want, but finally what you're stabbing is a straw doll, not a live human being. It doesn't bleed or scream or spill its guts on the ground. These soldiers have never actually killed a human being that way. And neither have I.

The lieutenant looked at the corporal and gave him a nod. The corporal barked his order to the three soldiers, who snapped to attention. Then they took a half-step back and thrust out their bayonets, each man aiming his blade at his prisoner. One of the young men (number 7) growled something in Chinese that sounded like a curse and gave a defiant spit- which never reached the ground but dribbled down the front of his baseball uniform.

At the sound of the next order, the three soldiers thrust their bayonets into the Chinese men with tremendous force. Then, as the lieutenant had said, they twisted the blades so as to rip the mens internal organs, and thrust the tips upward. The cries of the Chinese men were not very loud-more like deep sobs than screams, as if they were heaving out the breath left in their bodies all at once through a single opening. The soldiers pulled out their bayonets and stepped back. The corporal barked his order again, and the men repeated the procedure exactly as before-stabbing, twisting, thrusting upward, withdrawing. The veterinarian watched in numbed silence, overtaken by the sense that he was beginning to split in two. He became simultaneously the stabber and the stabbed. He could feel both the impact of the bayonet as it entered his victims body and the pain of having his internal organs slashed to bits.

It took much longer than he would have imagined for the Chinese men to die. Their sliced-up bodies poured prodigious amounts of blood on the ground, but even with their organs shredded, they went on twitching slightly for quite some time. The corporal used his own bayonet to cut the ropes that bound the men to the trees, and then he had the soldiers who had not participated in the killing help drag the fallen bodies to the hole and throw them in. These corpses also made a dull thud on impact, but the doctor couldn't help feeling that the sound was different from that made by the earlier corpses-probably because they were not entirely dead yet.

Now only the young Chinese prisoner with the number 4 on his shirt was left. The three pale-faced soldiers tore broad leaves from plants at their feet and proceeded to wipe their bloody bayonets. Not only blood but strange-colored body fluids and chunks of flesh adhered to the blades. The men had to use many leaves to return the bayonets to their original bare- metal shine.

The veterinarian wondered why only the one man, number 4, had been left alive, but he was not going to ask questions. The lieutenant took out another cigarette and lit up. He then offered a smoke to the veterinarian, who accepted it in silence and, after putting it between his lips, struck his own match. His hand did not tremble, but it seemed to have lost all feeling, as if he were wearing thick gloves.

These men were cadets in the Manchukuo Army officer candidate school, said the lieutenant. They refused to participate in the defense of Hsinching. They killed two of their Japanese instructors last night and tried to run away. We caught them during night patrol, killed four of them on the spot and captured the other four. Two more escaped in the dark. The lieutenant rubbed his beard with the palm of his hand. They were trying to make their getaway in baseball uniforms. I guess they figured they'd be arrested as deserters if they wore their military uniforms. Or maybe they were afraid of what communist troops would do to them if they were caught in their Manchukuo uniforms. Anyway, all they had in their barracks to wear besides their cadet outfits were uniforms of the officer candidate school baseball team. So they tore off the names and tried to get away wearing these. I don't know if you know, but the school had a great team. They used to go to Taiwan and Korea for friendship games. That guy-and here the lieutenant motioned toward the man tied to the tree-was captain of the team and batted cleanup. We think he was the one who organized the getaway. He killed the two instructors with a bat. The instructors knew there was trouble in the barracks and weren't going to distribute weapons to the cadets until it was an absolute emergency. But they forgot about the baseball bats. Both of them had their skulls cracked open. They probably died instantly. Two perfect home runs. This is the bat.

The lieutenant had the corporal bring the bat to him. He passed the bat to the veterinarian. The doctor took it in both hands and held it up in front of his face the way a player does when stepping into the batters box. It was just an ordinary bat, not very well made, with a rough finish and an uneven grain. It was heavy, though, and well broken in. The handle was black with sweat. It didn't look like a bat that had been used recently to kill two human beings. After getting a feel for its weight, the veterinarian handed it back to the lieutenant, who gave it a few easy swings, handling it like an expert.

Do you play baseball? the lieutenant asked the veterinarian. All the time when I was a kid. Too grown up now? No more baseball for me, the veterinarian said, and he was on the verge of asking, How about you, Lieutenant? when he swallowed the words. I've been ordered to beat this guy to death with the same bat he used, the lieutenant said in a dry voice as he tapped the ground with the tip of the bat. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Just between you and me, I think the order stinks. What the hell good is it going to do to kill these guys? We don't have any planes left, we don't have any warships, our best troops are dead. Some kind of special new bomb wiped out the whole city of Hiroshima in a split second. Were either going to be swept out of Manchuria or well all be killed, and China will belong to the Chinese again. We've already killed a lot of Chinese, and adding a few bodies to the count isn't going to make any difference. But orders are orders. I'm a soldier, and I have to follow orders. We killed the tigers and leopards yesterday, and today we have to kill these guys. So take a good look, Doctor. This is another way for people to die. You're a doctor, so you're probably used to knives and blood and guts, but you've probably never seen anyone beaten to death with a baseball bat.

The lieutenant ordered the corporal to bring player number 4, the cleanup batter, to the edge of the hole. Once again they tied his hands behind his back, then they blindfolded him and had him kneel down on the ground. He was a tall, strongly built young man with massive arms the size of most peoples thighs. The lieutenant called over one young soldier and handed him the bat. Kill him with this, he said. The young soldier stood at attention and saluted before taking the bat, but having taken it in his hands, he just went on standing there, as if stupefied. He seemed unable to grasp the concept of beating a Chinese man to death with a baseball bat. Have you ever played baseball? the lieutenant asked the young soldier (the one who would eventually have his skull split open with a shovel by a Soviet guard in a mine near Irkutsk).

No, sir, never, replied the soldier, in a loud voice. Both the village in Hokkaido where he was born and the village in Manchuria where he grew up had been so poor that no family in either place could have afforded the luxury of a baseball or a bat. He had spent his boyhood running around the fields, catching dragonflies and playing at sword fighting with sticks. He had never in his life played baseball or even seen a game. This was the first time he had ever held a bat.

The lieutenant showed him how to hold the bat and taught him the basics of the swing, demonstrating himself a few times. See? Its all in the hips, he grunted through clenched teeth. Starting from the back-swing, you twist from the waist down. The tip of the bat follows through naturally. Understand? If you concentrate too much on swinging the bat, your arms do all the work and you lose power. Swing from the hips.

The soldier didn't seem fully to comprehend the lieutenants instructions, but he took off his heavy gear as ordered and practiced his swing for a while. Everyone was watching him. The lieutenant placed his hands over the soldiers to help him adjust his grip. He was a good teacher. Before long, the soldiers swing, though somewhat awkward, was swishing through the air. What the young soldier lacked in skill he made up for in muscle power, having spent his days working on the farm.

That's good enough, said the lieutenant, using his hat to wipe the sweat from his brow. OK, now, try to do it in one good, clean swing. Don't let him suffer.

What he really wanted to say was, I don't want to do this any more than you do. Who the hell could have thought of anything so stupid? Killing a guy with a baseball bat... But an officer could never say such a thing to an enlisted man.

The soldier stepped up behind the blindfolded Chinese man where he knelt on the ground. When the soldier raised the bat, the strong rays of the setting sun cast the bats long, thick shadow on the earth. This is so weird, thought the veterinarian. The lieutenant was right: I've never seen a man killed with a baseball bat. The young soldier held the bat aloft for a long time. The doctor saw its tip shaking.

The lieutenant nodded to the soldier. With a deep breath, the soldier took a backswing, then smashed the bat with all his strength into the back of the Chinese cadets head. He did it amazingly well. He swung his hips exactly as the lieutenant had taught him to, the brand of the bat made a direct hit behind the mans ear, and the bat followed through perfectly. There was a dull crushing sound as the skull shattered. The man himself made no sound. His body hung in the air for a moment in a strange pose, then flopped forward. He lay with his cheek on the ground, blood flowing from one ear. He did not move. The lieutenant looked at his watch. Still gripping the bat, the young soldier stared off into space, his mouth agape.

The lieutenant was a person who did things with great care. He waited for a full minute. When he was certain that the young Chinese man was not moving at all, he said to the veterinarian, Could you do me a favor and check to see that he's really dead?

The veterinarian nodded, walked over to where the young Chinese lay, knelt down, and removed his blindfold. The mans eyes were open wide, the pupils turned upward, and bright- red blood was flowing from his ear. His half-opened mouth revealed the tongue lying tangled inside. The impact had left his neck twisted at a strange angle. The mans nostrils had expelled thick gobs of blood, making black stains on the dry ground. One particularly alert- and large-fly had already burrowed its way into a nostril to lay eggs. Just to make sure, the veterinarian took the mans wrist and felt for a pulse. There was no pulse-certainly not where there was supposed to be one. The young soldier had ended this burly mans life with a single swing of a bat-indeed, his first-ever swing of a bat. The veterinarian glanced toward the lieutenant and nodded to signal that the man was, without a doubt, dead. Having completed his assigned task, he was beginning slowly to rise to his full height, when it seemed to him that the sun shining on his back suddenly increased in intensity.

At that very moment, the young Chinese batter in uniform number 4 rose up into a sitting position, as if he had just come fully awake. Without the slightest uncertainty or hesitation-or so it seemed to those watching-he grabbed the doctors wrist. It all happened in a split second. The veterinarian could not understand: this man was dead, he was sure of it. But now, thanks to one last drop of life that seemed to well up from nowhere, the man was gripping the doctors wrist with the strength of a steel vise. Eyelids stretched open to the limit, pupils still glaring upward, the man fell forward into the hole, dragging the doctor in after him. The doctor fell in on top of him and heard one of the mans ribs crack as his weight came down. Still the Chinese ballplayer continued to grip his wrist. The soldiers saw all this happening, but they were too stunned to do anything more than stand and watch. The lieutenant recovered first and leaped into the hole. He drew his pistol from his holster, set the muzzle against the Chinese mans head, and pulled the trigger twice. Two sharp, overlapping cracks rang out, and a large black hole opened in the mans temple. Now his life was completely gone, but still he refused to release the doctors wrist. The lieutenant knelt down and, pistol in one hand, began the painstaking process of prying open the corpses fingers one at a time. The veterinarian lay there in the hole, surrounded by eight silent Chinese corpses in baseball uniforms. Down in the hole, the screeching of cicadas sounded very different from the way it sounded aboveground.

Once the veterinarian had been freed from the dead mans grasp, the soldiers pulled him and the lieutenant out of the grave. The veterinarian squatted down on the grass and took several deep breaths. Then he looked at his wrist. The mans fingers had left five bright-red marks. On this hot August afternoon, the veterinarian felt chilled to the core of his body. I'll never get rid of this coldness, he thought. That man was truly, seriously, trying to take me with him wherever he was going.

The lieutenant reset the pistols safety and carefully slipped the gun into its holster. This was the first time he had ever fired a gun at a human being. But he tried not to think about it. The war would continue for a little while at least, and people would continue to die. He could leave the deep thinking for later. He wiped his sweaty right palm on his pants, then ordered the soldiers who had not participated in the execution to fill in the hole. A huge swarm of flies had already taken custody of the pile of corpses.

The young soldier went on standing where he was, stupefied, gripping the bat. He couldn't seem to make his hands let go. The lieutenant and the corporal left him alone. He had seemed to be watching the whole bizarre series of events-the dead Chinese suddenly grabbing the veterinarian by the wrist, their falling into the grave, the lieutenants leaping in and finishing him off, and now the other soldiers filling in the hole. But in fact, he had not been watching any of it. He had been listening to the wind-up bird. As it had been the previous afternoon, the bird was in a tree somewhere, making that creeeak, creeeak sound as if winding a spring. The soldier looked up, trying to pinpoint the direction of the cries, but he could see no sign of the bird. He felt a slight sense of nausea at the back of his throat, though nothing as violent as yesterdays.

As he listened to the winding of the spring, the young soldier saw one fragmentary image after another rise up before him and fade away. After they were disarmed by the Soviets, the young paymaster lieutenant would be handed over to the Chinese and hanged for his responsibility in these executions. The corporal would die of the plague in a Siberian con- centration camp: he would be thrown into a quarantine shed and left there until dead, though in fact he had merely collapsed from malnutrition and had not contracted the plague-not, at least, until he was thrown into the shed. The veterinarian with the mark on his face would die in an accident a year later. A civilian, he would be taken by the Soviets for cooperating with the military and sent to another Siberian camp to do hard labor. He would be working in a deep shaft of a Siberian coal mine when a flood would drown him, along with many soldiers.

And I..., thought the young soldier with the bat in his hands, but he could not see his own future. He could not even see the events that were transpiring before his very eyes. He now closed his eyes and listened to the call of the wind-up bird.

Then, all at once, he thought of the ocean-the ocean he had seen from the deck of the ship that brought him from Japan to Manchuria. He had never seen the ocean before, nor had he seen it since. That had happened eight years ago. He could still remember the smell of the salt air. The ocean was one of the greatest things he had ever seen in his life- bigger and deeper than anything he had imagined. It changed its color and shape and expression according to time and place and weather. It aroused a deep sadness in his heart, and at the same time it brought his heart peace and comfort. Would he ever see it again? He loosened his grip and let the bat fall to the ground. It made a dry sound as it struck the earth. After the bat left his hands, he felt a slight increase in his nausea.

The wind-up bird went on crying, but no one else could hear its call.

Here ended The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle #8.

27 Cinnamon's Missing Links

Here ended The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle #8.

I exited the document to the original menu and clicked on The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle #9. I wanted to read the continuation of the story. But instead of a new document, I saw this message: Access denied to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle #9 based on Code R24.

Choose another document.

I chose #10, but with the same results.

Access denied to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle #10 based on Code R24.

Choose another document.

The same thing happened with #11-and with all the other documents, including #8. I had no idea what this Code R24 was, but it was obviously blocking access to everything now.

At the moment I had opened The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle #8, I probably could have had access to any one of them, but #8 having been opened and closed, the doors were locked to all of them now. Maybe this program did not permit access to more than one document at a time.

I sat in front of the computer, wondering what to do next. But there was nothing I could do next. This was a precisely articulated world, which had been conceived in Cinnamon's mind and which functioned according to his principles. I did not know the rules of the game. I gave up trying and shut down the computer.

Without a doubt, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle #8 was a story told by Cinnamon. He had put sixteen stories into the computer under the title The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and it just so happened that I had chosen and read #8. Judging from the length of the one story, sixteen such stories would have made a fairly thick book if set in type.

What could #8 signify? The word chronicle in the title probably meant that the stories were related in chronological order, #8 following #7, #9 following #8, and so on. That was a reasonable assumption, if not necessarily true. They could just as well have been arranged in a different order. They might even run backward, from the present to the past. A bolder hypothesis might make them sixteen different versions of the same story told in parallel. In any case, the one I had chosen was a sequel to the story that Cinnamon's mother, Nutmeg, had told me about soldiers killing animals in the Hsinching zoo in August 1945. It was set in the same zoo on the following day, and again the central character was Nutmeg's father, Cinnamon's grandfather, the nameless veterinarian.

I had no way of telling how much of the story was true. Was every bit of it Cinnamon's creation, or were parts of it based on actual events? Nutmeg had told me that absolutely nothing was known about what happened to her father after she saw him last. Which meant that the story could not be entirely true. Still, it was conceivable that some of the details were based on historical fact. It was possible that during such a time of chaos, a number of cadets from the Manchukuo Army officer candidate school were executed and buried in a hole in the Hsinching zoo and that the Japanese officer in charge of the operation had been executed after the war. Incidents of desertion and rebellion by Manchukuo Army troops were by no means rare at the time, and although it was rather strange to have the murdered Chinese cadets dressed in baseball uniforms, this could have happened as well. Knowing such facts, Cinnamon might have combined them with the image he had of his grandfather and made up its own story.

But why, finally, had Cinnamon written such stories? And why stories? Why not some other form? And why had he found it necessary to use the word chronicle in the title? I thought about these things while seated on the fitting room sofa, turning a colored design pencil over and over in my hand.

I probably would have had to read all sixteen stories to find the answers to my questions, but even after a single reading of #8, I had some idea, however vague, of what Cinnamon was looking for in his writing. He was engaged in a serious search for the meaning of his own existence. And he was hoping to find it by looking into the events that had preceded his birth.

To do that, Cinnamon had to fill in those blank spots in the past that he could not reach with his own hands. By using those hands to make a story, he was trying to supply the missing links. From the stories he had heard repeatedly from his mother, he derived further stories in an attempt to re-create the enigmatic figure of his grandfather in a new setting. He inherited from his mothers stories the fundamental style he used, unaltered, in his own stories: namely, the assumption that fact may not be truth, and truth may not be factual. The question of which parts of a story were factual and which parts were not was probably not a very important one for Cinnamon. The important question for Cinnamon was not what his grandfather did but what his grandfather might have done. He learned the answer to this question as soon as he succeeded in telling the story.

His stories used wind-up bird as a key phrase, and they almost certainly brought the narrative up to the present day in the form of a chronicle (or perhaps not in the form of a chronicle). But wind-up bird was not a term invented by Cinnamon. It was a phrase spoken unconsciously by his mother, Nutmeg, in a story she told me in the Aoyama restaurant where we ate together. Nutmeg almost certainly did not know at that time that I had been given the name Mr. Wind-Up Bird. Which meant that I was connected with their story through some chance conjunction.

I could not be certain of this, however. Nutmeg might possibly have known that I was called wind-up bird. The words might have affected her story (or, rather, their story), might have eaten their way into it on an unconscious level. This story jointly possessed by mother and son might not exist in a single fixed form but could go on taking in changes and growing as a story does in oral transmission.

Whether by chance conjunction or not, the wind-up bird was a powerful presence in Cinnamon's story. The cry of this bird was audible only to certain special people, who were guided by it toward inescapable ruin. The will of human beings meant nothing, then, as the veterinarian always seemed to feel. People were no more than dolls set on tabletops, the springs in their backs wound up tight, dolls set to move in ways they could not choose, moving in directions they could not choose. Nearly all within range of the wind-up birds cry were ruined, lost. Most of them died, plunging over the edge of the table.

Cinnamon had almost certainly monitored my conversation with Kumiko. He probably knew everything that went on in this computer. He had probably waited until I had finished before presenting me with the story of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. This had clearly not happened by chance or a sudden whim. Cinnamon had run the machine with a definite purpose in mind and shown me one story. He had also made sure I knew that there might possibly exist a whole, huge cluster of stories.

I lay down on the sofa and looked at the ceiling of the fitting room in the half-dark. The night was deep and heavy, the area almost painfully quiet. The white ceiling looked like a thick white cap of ice that had been set on top of the room.

Cinnamon's grandfather, the nameless veterinarian, and I had a number of unusual things in common-a mark on the face, a baseball bat, the cry of the wind-up bird. And then there was the lieutenant who appeared in Cinnamon's story: he reminded me of Lieutenant Mamiya. Lieutenant Mamiya had also been assigned to Kwantung Army Headquarters in Hsinching at that time. The real Lieutenant Mamiya, however, was not a paymaster officer but belonged to the mapmaking corps, and after the war he was not hanged (fate had denied him death at all) but rather returned to Japan, having lost his left hand in battle. Still, I could not shake off the impression that the officer who had directed the executions of the Chinese cadets had really been Lieutenant Mamiya. At least if it had been Lieutenant Mamiya, that would not have been the least bit strange.

Then there was the problem of the baseball bats. Cinnamon knew that I kept a bat in the bottom of the well. Which meant that the image of the bat could have eaten its way into his story the same way the words wind-up bird chronicle could have. Even if this was true, however, there was still something about the bat that could not be explained so simply: the man with the guitar case who attacked me with the bat in the entryway of the abandoned apartment house. This was the man who had made a show of burning the palm of his hand in a candle flame in a bar in Sapporo and who later hit me with the bat, only to have me beat him with it. He was the one who had surrendered the bat to me.

And finally, why did I have burned into my face a mark the same color and shape as that of Cinnamon's grandfather? Was this, too, something that came up in their story as a result of my presence having eaten its way into it? Did the actual veterinarian not have a mark on his face? Nutmeg certainly had no need to make up such a thing in describing her father to me.

The very thing that had led her to find me on the streets of Shinjuku was this mark that we possessed in common. Everything was intertwined, with the complexity of a three- dimensional puzzle-a puzzle in which truth was not necessarily fact and fact not necessarily truth.

I stood up from the sofa and went to Cinnamon's small office once again. There I sat at the desk, elbows resting on the table, and stared at the computer screen. Cinnamon was probably inside there. In there, his silent words lived and breathed as stories. They could think and seek and grow and give off heat. But the screen before me remained as deep in death as the moon, hiding Cinnamon's words in a labyrinthine forest. Neither the monitors screen nor Cinnamon himself, behind it, tried to tell me any more than I had already been told.

28 You Just Cant Trust a House (May Kasahara's Point of View: 5)

How are you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird?

I said at the end of my last letter that I had said just about everything I wanted to say to you- pretty much as if that were going to be it. Remember? I did some more thinking after that, though, and I started to get the feeling that I ought to write a little more. So here I am, creeping around in the middle of the night like a cockroach, sitting at my desk and writing to you again.

I don't know why, but I think about the Miyawaki family a lot these days- the poor Miyawaki's who used to live in that vacant house, and then the bill collectors came after them, and they all went off and killed themselves. I'm pretty sure I saw something about how only the eldest daughter didn't die and now nobody knows where she is.... Whether I'm working, or in the dining hall, or in my room listening to music and reading a book, the image of that family pops into my head. Not that I'm haunted by it or anything, but whenever theres an opening (and my head has lots of openings!) it comes creeping in and sticks around for a while, the way smoke from a bonfire can come in through the window. Its been happening all the time this past week or so.

I lived in our house on the alley from the time I was born, and I grew up looking at the house on the other side. My window looks right at it. They gave me my own room when I started primary school. By then, the Miyawaki's had already built their new house and were living in it. I could always see some member of the family in the house or yard, tons of clothes drying out back on nice days, the two girls there, yelling out the name of their big, black German shepherd (what was his name?). And when the sun went down, the lights would come on inside the house, looking warm and cozy, and then later the lights would go out one at a time. The older girl took piano lessons, the younger one violin (the older one was older than me, the younger one younger). They'd have, like, parties and things on birthdays and Christmas, and lots of friends would come over, and it was happy and lively there. People who have seen the place only when it was a vacant ruin couldn't imagine what it was like before.

I used to see Mr. Miyawaki pruning trees and things on weekends. He seemed to enjoy doing all kinds of chores himself, things that took time, like cleaning the gutters or walking the dog or waxing his car. I'll never understand why some people enjoy those things, they're such a pain, but everybody's different, I guess, and I suppose every family ought to have at least one person like that. The whole family used to ski, so every winter they'd strap their skis to the roof of this big car and go off somewhere, looking like they were going to have the greatest time (I hate skiing myself, but anyhow).

This makes them sound like a typical, ordinary happy family, I suppose, but thats really just what they were: a typical, ordinary happy family. There was absolutely nothing about them that would make you raise your eyebrows and say, Yeah, OK, but how about that?

People in the neighborhood used to whisper, I wouldn't live in a creepy place like that if you gave it to me free, but the Miyawaki's lived such a peaceful life there, it could have been a picture in a frame without a speck of dust on it. They were the ones in the fairy tale who got to live happily ever after. At least compared to my family, they seemed to be living ten times as happily ever after. And the two girls seemed really nice whenever I met them outside. I used to wish that I had sisters like them. The whole family always seemed to be laughing- including the dog.

I could never have imagined that you could blink one day and all of this would be gone. But thats just what happened. One day I noticed that the whole family- the German shepherd with them-had disappeared as if a gust of wind had just blown them away, leaving only the house behind. For a while-maybe a week-no one in the neighborhood noticed that the Miyawaki's had disappeared. It did cross my mind at first that it was strange the lights weren't going on at night, but I figured they must be off on one of their family trips. Then my mother heard people saying that the Miyawaki's seemed to have absconded. I remember asking her to explain to me what the word meant. Nowadays we just say run away, I guess.

Whatever you call it, once the people who lived there had disappeared, the whole look of the house changed. It was almost creepy. I had never seen a vacant house before, so I didn't know what an ordinary vacant house looked like, but I guess I figured it would have a sad, beaten sort of look, like an abandoned dog or a cicadas cast-off shell. The Miyawaki's house, though, was nothing like that. It didn't look beaten at all. The minute the Miyawaki's left, it got this know-nothing look on its face, like, I never heard of anybody called Miyawaki. At least thats how it looked to me. It was like some stupid, ungrateful dog. As soon as they were gone, it turned into this totally self-sufficient vacant house that had nothing at all to do with the Miyawaki family's happiness. It really made me mad! I mean, the house must have been just as happy as the rest of the family when the Miyawaki's were there. I'm sure it enjoyed being cleaned so nicely and taken care of, and it wouldn't have existed at all if Mr. Miyawaki hadn't been nice enough to build it in the first place. Don't you agree? You just cant trust a house.

You know as well as I do what the place was like after that, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. The house was abandoned, with no one to live in it, and all smeared with bird shit and stuff. That was all I had to look at from my window for years when I was at my desk, studying-or pretending to be studying. On clear days, rainy days, snowy days, or in typhoons, it was right there, outside my window, so I couldn't help but see it when I looked out. And strangely enough, as the years went by, I tried less and less not to notice it. I could-and often did-spend whole half hours at a time with my elbow on my desk, doing nothing but look at that vacant house. I don't know-not very long ago the place had been overflowing with laughter, and clean white clothes had been flapping in the wind like in a commercial for laundry detergent (I wouldn't say Mrs. Miyawaki was abnormal or anything, but she liked to do laundry-way more than most ordinary people). All of that was gone in a flash, the yard was covered with weeds, and there was nobody left to remember the happy days of the Miyawaki family. To me that seemed sooo strange!

Let me just say this: I wasn't especially friendly with the Miyawaki family. In fact, I hardly ever talked to any of them, except to say Hi on the street. But because I spent so much time and energy watching them from my window every day, I felt as if the family's happy doings had become a part of me. You know how in the corner of a family photo there'll be a glimpse of this person who has nothing to do with them. So sometimes I get this feeling like part of me absconded with the Miyawaki's and just disappeared. I guess thats pretty weird, huh, to feel like part of you is gone because it absconded with people you hardly know?

As long as I've started telling you one weird thing, I might as well tell you another one.

Now, this one is really weird!

Lately, I sometimes feel like I have turned into Kumiko. I am actually Mrs. Wind-Up Bird, and I've run away from you for some reason and I'm hiding here in the mountains, working in a wig factory. For all kinds of complicated reasons, I have to use the name May Kasahara as an alias and wear this mask and pretend I'm not Kumiko. And you're just sitting there on that sad little veranda of yours, waiting for me to come back. I don't know-I really feel like that.

Tell me, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, do you ever get obsessed with these delusions? Not to boast or anything, but I do. All the time. Sometimes, when they're really bad, I'll spend the whole workday wrapped up in a cloud of delusion. Of course, I'm just performing these simple operations, so it doesn't get in the way of my work, but the other girls sometimes give me strange looks. Or maybe I say crazy things to myself out loud. I hate that, but it doesn't do any good to try and fight it. When a delusion wants to come, it comes, like a period. And you cant just meet it at the front door and say, Sorry, I'm busy today, try me later. Anyway, I hope it doesn't bother you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, that I sometimes pretend I'm Kumiko. I mean, I'm not doing it on purpose.

I'm getting really really really tired. I'm going to go to sleep now for three or four hours-I mean out cold-then get up and work hard from morning to night. I'll put in a good day making wigs with the other girls, listening to some kind of harmless music. Please don't worry about me. I'm good at doing all kinds of things even when I'm in the middle of a delusion. And in my own way, I'm saying little prayers for you, hoping that everything works out for you, that Kumiko comes back and you can have your quiet, happy life again.

Goodbye.

29 A Vacant House Is Born

Nine o'clock, then ten o'clock, arrived the next morning, with no sign of Cinnamon.

Nothing like this had ever happened before.. He had never missed a single day, from the time I started working in this place. At exactly nine o'clock each morning, the gate would open and the bright glare of the Mercedes' hood ornament would appear. This simultaneously mundane and theatrical appearance of Cinnamon would mark the clear beginning of each day for me. I had become accustomed to this fixed daily routine the way people become accustomed to gravity or barometric pressure. There was a kind of warmth to Cinnamon's punctilious regularity, something beyond mere mechanical predictability, something that gave me comfort and encouragement. Which is why a morning without Cinnamon's appearance was like a well-executed landscape painting that lacked a focal point.

I gave up waiting for him, left the window, and peeled myself an apple as a substitute for breakfast. Then I peeked into Cinnamon's room to see if there might be any messages on the computer, but the screen was as dead as ever. All I could do at that point was follow Cinnamon's example and listen to a tape of Baroque music while doing laundry, vacuuming the floors, and cleaning windows. To kill time, I purposely performed each function slowly and carefully, going so far as to clean the blades of the kitchen exhaust fan, but still the time refused to move.

I ran out of things to do by eleven o'clock, so I stretched out on the fitting room sofa and gave myself up to the languid flow of time. I tried to tell myself that Cinnamon had been delayed by some minor matter. Maybe the car had broken down, or he had been caught in an incredible traffic jam. But I knew that couldn't be true. I would have bet all I had on it. Cinnamon's car would never break down, and he always took the possibility of traffic jams into account. Plus, he had the car phone to call me on in case of an unforeseen emergency in traffic. No, Cinnamon was not here because he had decided not to come here.

I tried calling Nutmeg's Akasaka office just before one, but there was no answer. I tried again and again, with the same results. Then I tried Ushikawa's office but got only a message that the number had been disconnected. This was strange. I had called him at that number just two days earlier. I gave up and went back to the fitting room sofa again. All of a sudden in the last two days there seemed to be a conspiracy against contact with me.

I went back to the window and peeked outside through the curtain. Two energetic-looking little winter birds had come to the yard and were perched on a branch, glancing wide-eyed at the area. Then, as if they had suddenly become fed up with everything there, they flew off. Nothing else seemed to be moving. The Residence felt like a brand-new vacant house.

I did not go back there for the next five days. For some reason, I seemed to have lost any desire to go down into the well. I would be losing the well itself before long. The longest I could afford to keep the Residence going without clients was two months, so I ought to be using the well as much as possible while it was still mine. I felt stifled. All of a sudden, the place seemed wrong and unnatural.

I walked around aimlessly without going to the Residence. In the afternoons I would go to the Shinjuku west exit plaza and sit on my usual bench, killing time doing nothing in particular, but Nutmeg never appeared before me there. I went to her Akasaka office once, rang the bell by the elevator and stared into the closed circuit camera, but no reply ever came. I was ready to give up. Nutmeg and Cinnamon had obviously decided to cut all ties with me. This strange mother and son had deserted the sinking ship for someplace safer. The intensity of the sorrow this aroused in me took me by surprise. I felt as if I had been betrayed in the end by my own family.

30 Malta Kano's Tail Boris the Manskinner

In my dream (though I didn't know it was a dream), I was seated across the table from Malta Kano, drinking tea. The rectangular room was too long and wide to see from end to end, and arranged in it in perfectly straight lines were five hundred or more square tables. We sat at one of the tables in the middle, the only people there. Across the ceiling, as high as that of a Buddhist temple, stretched countless heavy beams, from all points of which there hung, like potted plants, objects that appeared to be toupees. A closer look showed me that they were actual human scalps. I could tell from the black blood on their undersides. They were newly taken scalps that had been hung from the beams to dry. I was afraid that the still-fresh blood might drip into our tea. Blood was dripping all around us like raindrops, the sound reverberating in the cavernous room. Only the scalps hanging above our table seemed to have dried enough so that there was no sign of blood dripping down from them.

The tea was boiling hot. Placed beside the teaspoons in each of our saucers were three lurid green lumps of sugar. Malta Kano dropped two of the lumps into her tea and stirred, but they would not melt. A dog appeared from nowhere and sat down beside our table. Its face was that of Ushikawa. It was a big dog, with a chunky black body, but from the neck up it was Ushikawa, only the shaggy black fur that covered the body also grew on the face and head. Well, well, if it isn't Mr. Okada, said the dog-shaped Ushikawa. And will you look at this: a full head of hair. It grew there the second I turned into a dog. Amazing. I've got much bigger balls now than I used to have, and my stomach doesn't hurt anymore. And look: No glasses! No clothes! I'm so happy! I cant believe I didn't think of this before. If only I had become a dog a long time ago! How about you, Mr. Okada? Why don't you give it a try?

Malta Kano picked up her one remaining green sugar lump and hurled it at the dog. The lump thudded into Ushikawa's forehead and drew ink-black blood that ran down Ushikawa's face. This seemed to cause Ushikawa no pain. Still smiling, without a word, he raised his tail and strode away. It was true: his testicles were grotesquely huge.

Malta Kano was wearing a trench coat. The lapels were closed tightly across the front, but from the subtle fragrance of a womans naked flesh I could tell she was wearing nothing underneath. She had her red vinyl hat on, of course. I lifted my cup and took a sip of tea, but it had no taste. It was hot, nothing more.

I am so glad you could come, said Malta Kano, sounding genuinely relieved. Hearing it for the first time in quite a while, I thought her voice seemed somewhat brighter than it had before. I was calling you for days, but you always seemed to be out. I was beginning to worry that something might have happened to you. Thank goodness you are all right. What a relief it was to hear your voice! In any case, I must apologize for having been out of touch so long. I cant go into detail on everything that has occurred in my life in the meantime, especially on the phone like this, so I will just summarize the important points. The main thing is that I have been traveling all this time. I came back a week ago. Mr. Okada? Mr. Okada? Can you hear me?

Yes, I can hear you, I said, suddenly realizing that I was holding a phone to my ear. Malta Kano, on her side of the table, was also holding a receiver. Her voice sounded as if it were coming through a bad connection on an international call.

I was away from Japan the whole time, on the island of Malta in the Mediterranean. All of a sudden one day, the thought crossed my mind, Oh, yes! I must return to Malta and bring myself near its water. The time for that has come! This happened just after I last talked to you, Mr. Okada. Do you remember that conversation? I was looking for Creta at the time. In any case, I really did not mean to be away from Japan so long. I was planning on two weeks or so. Which is why I did not contact you.

I told hardly anyone I was going, just boarded the plane with little more than the clothes I was wearing. Once I arrived, however, I found myself unable to leave. Have you ever been to Malta, Mr. Okada?

I said that I had not. I remembered having had virtually the same conversation with this same person some years before.

Mr. Okada? Mr. Okada? Yes, I'm still here, I said. It seemed to me there was something I had to tell Malta Kano, but I could not remember what it was. It finally came back to me after I cocked my head and thought about it for a while. I switched hands on the receiver and said, Oh, yes, theres something I've been meaning to call you about for a long time. The cat came back.

After four or five seconds of silence, Malta Kano said, The cat came back?

Yes. Cat hunting was more or less what brought us together originally, so I thought Id better let you know.

When did the cat come back? Early this spring. Its been with me ever since. Is there anything different about its appearance? Anything that has changed since before it disappeared? Changed?

Come to think of it, I kind of had the feeling that the shape of the tail was a little different, I said. When I petted the cat the day it came back, it seemed to me the tail used to have more of a bend in it. I could be wrong, though. I mean, it was gone close to a year.

You are sure it is the same cat?

Absolutely sure. I had that cat for a very long time. Id know if it was the same one or not.

I see, said Malta Kano. To tell you the truth, though, I am sorry, but I have the cats real tail right here.

Malta Kano put the receiver down on the table, then she stood and stripped off her coat. As I had suspected, she was wearing nothing underneath. The size of her breasts and the shape of her pubic hair were much the same as Creta Kanos. She did not remove her red vinyl hat. She turned and showed her back to me.. There, to be sure, attached above her buttocks, was a cats tail. Proportioned to her body, it was much larger than the original, but its shape was the same as Mackerels tail. It had the same sharp bend at the tip, but this one was far more convincingly real than Mackerels.

Please take a close look, said Malta Kano. This is the actual tail of the cat that disappeared. The one the cat has now is an imitation. It may look the same, but if you examine it closely, you will find that it is different.

I reached out to touch her tail, but she whipped it away from my hand. Then, still naked, she jumped up onto one of the tables. Into my extended palm fell a drop of blood from the ceiling. It was the same intense red as Malta Kano's vinyl hat.

Creta Kano's baby's name is Corsica, Mr. Okada, said Malta Kano from atop her table, her tail twitching sharply.

Corsica?

No man is an island. That Corsica, piped up the black dog, Ushikawa, from somewhere.

Kano's baby? I woke up, soaked in sweat.

It had been a very long time since I last had a dream so long and vivid and unified. And strange. My heart went on pounding audibly for a while after I woke up. I took a hot shower and changed into fresh pajamas. The time was something after one in the morning, but I no longer felt sleepy. To calm myself, I took an old bottle of brandy from the back of the kitchen cabinet, poured a glass, and drank it down.

Then I went to the bedroom to look for Mackerel. The cat was curled up under the quilt, sound asleep. I peeled back the quilt and took the cats tail in my hand to study its shape. I ran my fingers over it, trying to recall the exact angle of the bent tip, when the cat gave an annoyed stretch and went back to sleep. I could no longer say for sure that this was the same exact tail the cat had had when it was called Noboru Wataya. Somehow, the tail on Malta Kano's bottom seemed far more like the real Noboru Wataya cats tail. I could still vividly recall its shape and color in the dream.

Kano's baby's name is Corsica, Malta Kano had said in my dream.

I did not stray far from the house the next day. In the morning, I stocked up on food at the supermarket by the station and made myself lunch. I fed the cat some large fresh sardines. In the afternoon, I took a long-delayed swim in the ward pool. Not many people were there. They were probably busy with New Years preparations. The ceiling speakers were playing Christmas music. I had swum a leisurely thousand meters, when I got a cramp in my instep and decided to quit. The wall over the pool had a large Christmas ornament.

At home, I was surprised to find a letter in the mailbox-a thick one. I knew who had sent it without having to look at the return address. The only person who wrote to me in such a fine hand with an old-fashioned writing brush was Lieutenant Mamiya.

His letter opened with profuse apologies for his having allowed so much time to go by since his last letter. He expressed himself with such extreme politeness that I almost felt I was the one who ought to apologize.

I have been wanting to tell you another part of my story and have thought for months about writing to you, but many things have come up to prevent me from sitting at my desk and taking pen in hand. Now, almost before I realized it, the year has nearly run its course. I am growing old, however, and could die at any moment. I cant postpone the task indefinitely. This letter might be a long one- not too long for you, I hope, Mr. Okada.

When I delivered Mr. Hondo's memento to you last summer, I told you a long story about my time in Mongolia, but in fact there is even more to tell- a sequel, as it were. There were several reasons for my not having included this part when I told you my story last year. First of all, it would have made the tale too long if I had related it in its entirety. You may recall that I had some pressing business, and there simply wasn't time for me to tell you everything. Perhaps more important, I was still not emotionally prepared then to tell the rest of my story to anyone, to relate it fully and honestly.

After I left you, however, I realized that I should not have allowed practical matters to stand in the way. I should have told you everything to the very end without concealment.

I took a machine gun bullet during the fierce battle of August 13, 1945, on the outskirts of Hailar, and as I lay on the ground I lost my left hand under the treads of a Soviet T34 tank. They transferred me, unconscious, to the Soviet military hospital in Chita, where the surgeons managed to save my life. As I mentioned before, I had been attached to the Military Survey Corps of the Kwantung Army General Staff in Hsinching, which had been slated to withdraw to the rear as soon as the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. Determined to die, however, I had had myself transferred to the Hailar unit, near the border, where I offered myself up as a human bullet, attacking a Soviet tank with a land mine in my arms. As Mr. Honda had prophesied on the banks of the Khalkha River, though, I was not able to die so easily. I lost only my hand, not my life. All the men under my command, I believe, were killed, however. We may have been acting under orders, but it was a stupid, suicidal attack. Our little portable mines couldn't have done a thing to a huge T34.

The only reason the Soviet Army took such good care of me was that, as I lay delirious, I said something in Russian. Or so they told me afterward. I had studied basic Russian, as I have mentioned to you, and my post in the Hsinching General Staff Office gave me so much spare time, I used it to polish what I knew. I worked hard, so that by the time the war was winding down, I could carry on a fluent conversation in Russian. Many White Russians lived in Hsinching, and I knew a few Russian waitresses, so I was never at a loss for people to practice on. My Russian seems to have slipped out quite naturally while I was unconscious.

The Soviet Army was planning from the outset to send to Siberia any Japanese prisoners of war they took in occupying Manchuria, to use them as forced laborers as they had done with German soldiers after the fighting ended in Europe. The Soviets may have been on the winning side, but their economy was in a critical state after the long war, and the shortage of workers was a problem everywhere. Securing an adult male workforce in the form of prisoners of war was one of their top priorities. For this, they would need interpreters, and the number of these was severely limited. When they saw that I seemed to be able to speak Russian, they shipped me to the hospital in Chita instead of letting me die. If I hadn't babbled something in Russian, I would have been left out there to die on the banks of the Hailar, and that would have been that. I would have been buried in an unmarked grave. Fate is such a mysterious thing!

After that, I was subjected to a grueling investigation and given several months of ideological training before being sent to a Siberian coal mine to serve as an interpreter. I will omit the details of that period, but let me say this about my ideological training. As a student before the war, I had read several banned Marxist books, taking care to hide them from the police, and I was not entirely unsympathetic to the communist line, but I had seen too much to swallow it whole. Thanks to my work with intelligence, I knew very well the bloody history of oppression in Mongolia carried out by Stalin and his puppet dictators. Ever since the Revolution, they had sent tens of thousands of Lamaist priests and landowners and other forces of opposition to concentration camps, where they were cruelly liquidated. And the same kind of thing had happened in the Soviet Union itself. Even if I could have believed in the communist ideology, I could no longer believe in the people or the system that was responsible for putting that ideology and those principles into practice. I felt the same way about what we Japanese had done in Manchuria. I'm sure you cant imagine the number of Chinese laborers killed in the course of constructing the secret base at Hailar- killed purposely so as to shut them up, to protect the secrecy of the bases construction plans.

Besides, I had witnessed that hellish skinning carried out by the Russian officer and his Mongolian subordinates. I had been thrown into a Mongolian well, and in that strange, intense light I had lost any passion for living. How could someone like me believe in ideology and politics? As an interpreter, I worked as a liaison between Japanese prisoners of war in the mine and their Soviet captors. I don't know what it was like in the other Siberian concentration camps, but in the mine where I worked, streams of people were dying every day. Not that there was any dearth of causes: malnutrition, overwork, cave-ins, floods, unsanitary conditions that gave rise to epidemics, winter cold of unbelievable harshness, violent guards, the brutal suppression of the mildest resistance. There were cases, too, of lynchings of Japanese by their fellow Japanese. What people felt for each other under such circumstances was hatred and doubt and fear and despair.

Whenever the number of deaths increased to the point where the labor force was declining, they would bring in whole trainloads of new prisoners of war. The men would be dressed in rags, emaciated, and a good quarter of them would die within the first few weeks, unable to withstand the harsh conditions in the mine. The dead would be thrown into abandoned mine shafts. There was no way to dig graves for them all. The earth was frozen solid there year round. Shovels couldn't dent it. So the abandoned mine shafts were perfect for disposing of the dead. They were deep and dark, and because of the cold, there was no smell. Now and then, we would put a layer of coal over the bodies. When a shaft filled up, they would cap it with dirt and rocks, then move on to the next shaft.

The dead were not the only ones thrown into the shafts. Sometimes living men would be thrown in to teach the rest of us a lesson. Any Japanese soldier who showed signs of resistance would be taken out by Soviet guards and beaten to a pulp, his arms and legs broken before they dropped him to the bottom of the pit. To this day, I can still hear their pitiful screams. It was a literal living hell.

The mine was run as a major strategic facility by politburo members dispatched from Party Central and policed by the army with maximum security. The top man was said to be from Stalins own hometown, a cold, hard party functionary still young and full of ambition. His only concern was to raise production figures. The consumption of laborers was a matter of indifference to him. As long as the production figures went up, Party Central would recognize his mine as exemplary and reward him with an expanded labor force. No matter how many workers died, they would always be replaced. To keep the figures rising, he would authorize the digging of veins that, under ordinary circumstances, would have been considered too dangerous to work. Naturally, the number of accidents continued to rise as well, but he didn't care about that.

The director was not the only coldhearted individual running the mine. Most of the guards inside the mine were former convicts, uneducated men of shocking cruelty and vindictiveness. They displayed no sign of sympathy or affection, as if, living out here on the edge of the earth, they had been transformed over the years by the frigid Siberian air into some kind of subhuman creatures. They had committed crimes and been sent to Siberian prisons, but now that they had served out their long sentences, they no longer had homes or families to go back to. They had taken local wives, made children with them, and settled into the Siberian soil.

Japanese prisoners of war were not the only ones sent to work in the mine. There were many Russian criminals as well, political prisoners and former military officers who had encountered Stalins purges. Not a few of these men were well-educated, highly refined individuals. Among the Russians were a very few women and children, probably the scattered remains of political prisoners families. They would be put to work collecting garbage, washing clothes, and other such tasks. Young women were often used as prostitutes. Besides the Russians, the trains would bring Poles, Hungarians, and other foreigners, some with dusky skins (Armenians and Kurds, I should imagine). The camp was partitioned into three living areas: the largest one, where Japanese prisoners of war were kept together; the area for other criminals and prisoners of war; and the area of noncriminals. In this last there lived regular miners and mining professionals, officers and guards of the military guard detachment, some with families, and ordinary Russian citizens. There was also a large army post near the station. Prisoners of war and other prisoners were forbidden to leave their assigned areas. The areas were divided from each other by massive barbed-wire fences and patrolled by soldiers carrying machine guns.

As a translator with liaison duties, 1 had to visit headquarters each day and was basically free to move from area to area as long as I showed my pass. Near headquarters was the train station, and a kind of one-street town with a few shabby stores, a bar, and an inn for officials and high-ranking officers on inspection tours. The square was lined with horse troughs, and a big red flag of the USSR flew from a flagpole in the center. Beneath the flag was parked an armored vehicle, with a machine gun, against which there was always leaning a bored- looking young soldier in full military gear. The newly built military hospital was situated at the far end of the square, with a large statue of Joseph Stalin at its entrance.

There is a man I must tell you about now. I encountered him in the spring of 1947, probably around the beginning of May, when the snow had finally melted. A year and a half had already passed since I was sent to the mine. When I first saw him, the man was wearing the kind of uniform they gave to all the Russian prisoners. He was involved in repair work at the station with a group of some ten of his compatriots. They were breaking up rocks with sledgehammers and spreading the crushed rock over the roadway. The clanging of the hammers against the hard rocks reverberated throughout the area. I was on my way back from delivering a report to the mine headquarters when I passed the station. The noncommissioned officer directing the work stopped me and ordered me to show my pass. I took it from my pocket and handed it to him. The sergeant, a large man, focused a deeply suspicious gaze on the pass for some time, but he was obviously illiterate. He called over one of the prisoners at work on the road and told the man to read it aloud. This particular prisoner was different from the others in his group: he had the look of a well-educated man. And it was him. When I saw him, I could feel the blood drain from my face. I could hardly breathe- literally. I felt as if I were underwater, drowning. My breath would not come.

This educated prisoner was none other than the Russian officer who had ordered the Mongolian soldiers to skin Yamamoto alive on the bank of the Khalkha River. He was emaciated now, largely bald, and missing a tooth in front. Instead of his spotless officers uniform, he wore filthy prison garb, and instead of shiny boots, he wore cloth shoes that were full of holes. The lenses of his eyeglasses were dirty and scratched, the frame was twisted. But it was the same man, without a doubt. There was no way I could have failed to recognize him. And he, in turn, was staring hard at me, his curiosity first aroused, no doubt, by my own stunned expression. Like him, I had also aged and wasted away in the nine intervening years. I even had a few white hairs now. But he seemed to recognize me nonetheless. A look of astonishment crossed his face. He must have assumed that I had rotted away in the bottom of a Mongolian well. And I, of course, never dreamed that I would run across him in a Siberian mining camp, wearing prisoners garb.

A moment was all it took him to regain his composure and begin reading my pass in calm tones to the illiterate sergeant, who had a machine gun slung from his neck. He read my name, my job as translator, my qualification to move among camp areas, and so on. The sergeant returned my pass and signaled me with a jerk of the chin to go. I walked on a short way and turned around. The man was looking at me. He seemed to be wearing a faint smile, though it might have been my imagination. The way my legs were shaking, I couldn't walk straight for a while. All the terror I had experienced nine years before had come back to me in an instant.

I imagined that the man had fallen from grace and been sent to this Siberian prison camp. Such things were not at all rare in the Soviet Union back then. Vicious struggles were going on within the government, the party, and the military services, and Stalins pathological suspiciousness pursued the losers without mercy stripped of their positions, such men would be tried in kangaroo courts and either summarily executed or sent to the concentration camps, though finally which group was the more fortunate only a god could say. An escape from death led only to slave labor of unimaginable cruelty. We Japanese prisoners of war could at least hope to return to our homeland if we survived, but exiled Russians knew no such hope. Like the others, this man would end with his bones rotting in the soil of Siberia.

Only one thing bothered me about him, though, and that was that he now knew my name and where to find me. Before the war, I had participated (all unknowingly, to be sure) in that secret operation with the spy Yamamoto, crossing the Khalkha River into Mongolian territory for espionage activities. If the man should leak this information, it could put me in a very uncomfortable position. Finally, however, he did not inform on me. No, as I was to discover later, he had far more grandiose plans for me.

I spotted him a week later, outside the station. He was in chains still, wearing the same filthy prison clothes and cracking rocks with a hammer. I looked at him, and he looked at me. He rested his hammer on the ground and turned my way, standing as tall and straight as he had when in military uniform. This time, unmistakably, he wore a smile on his face- a faint smile, but still a smile, one suggesting a streak of cruelty that sent chills up my spine. It was the same expression he had worn as he watched Yamamoto being skinned alive. I said nothing and passed on.

I had one friend at the time among the officers in the camps Soviet Army headquarters. Like me, he had majored in geography in college (in Leningrad). We were the same age, and both of us were interested in making maps, so we would find pretexts now and then for sharing a little shoptalk. He had a personal interest in the strategic maps of Manchuria that the Kwantung Army had been making. Of course, we couldn't have such conversations when his superiors were around. We had to snatch opportunities to enjoy this professional patter in their absence. Sometimes he would give me food or show me pictures of the wife and children he had left behind in Kiev. He was the only Russian I felt at all close to during the period I was interned in the Soviet Union.

One time, in an offhand manner, I asked him about the convicts working by the station. One man in particular had struck me as different from the usual inmate, I said; he looked as if he might once have held an important post. I described his appearance. The officer-whose name was Nikolai-said to me with a scowl, That would be Boris the Manskinner. You'd better not have anything to do with him.

Why was that? I asked. Nikolai seemed hesitant to say more, but he knew I was in a position to do him favors, so finally, and reluctantly, he told me how Boris the Manskinner had been sent to this mine. Now, don't tell anyone I told you, he warned me. That guy can be dangerous. I'm not kidding--they don't come any worse. I wouldn't touch him with a ten- foot pole.

This is what Nikolai told me. The real name of Boris the Manskinner was Boris Gromov. Just as I had imagined, he had been a major in the NKVD. They had assigned him to Ulan Bator as a military adviser in 1938, the year Choybal-san took power as prime minister. There he organized the Mongolian secret police, modeling it after Beria's NKVD, and he distinguished himself in suppressing counterrevolutionary forces. They would round people up, throw them into concentration camps, and torture them, liquidating anyone of whom they had the slightest suspicion.

As soon as the battle of Nomonhan ended and the Far Eastern crisis was averted, Boris was called back to Moscow and reassigned to Soviet-occupied Eastern Poland, where he worked on the purging of the old Polish Army. That is where he earned the nickname Boris the Manskinner. Skinning people alive, using a man they said he brought with him from Mongolia, was his special form of torture. The Poles were scared to death of him, needless to say. Anyone forced to watch a skinning would confess everything without fail. When the German Army suddenly burst across the border and the war started with Germany, he pulled back from Poland to Moscow. Lots of people were arrested then on suspicion of having colluded with Hitler. They would be executed or sent to prison camps. Here, again, Boris distinguished himself as Beria's right-hand man, employing his special torture. Stalin and Beria had to cook up their internal-conspiracy theory, covering up their own responsibility for having failed to predict the Nazi invasion in order to solidify their positions of leadership. A lot of people died for nothing while being cruelly tortured. Boris and his man were said to have skinned at least five people then, and rumor had it that he proudly displayed the skins on the walls of his office.

Boris may have been cruel, but he was also very careful, which is how he survived all the plots and purges. Beria loved him as a son. But this may have been what led him to become a little too sure of himself and to overstep his bounds. The mistake he made was a fatal one. He arrested the commander of an armored battalion on suspicion of his having communicated secretly with one of Hitlers SS armored battalions during a battle in the Ukraine. He killed the man with torture, poking hot irons into every opening- ears, nostrils, rectum, penis, whatever. But the officer turned out to be the nephew of a high-ranking Communist Party official. Whats more, a thoroughgoing investigation by the Red Army General Staff showed the man to have been absolutely innocent of any wrongdoing. The party official blew up, of course, nor was the Red Army just going to withdraw quietly after such a blot on its honor. Not even Beria was able to protect Boris this time. They stripped him of his rank, put him on trial, and sentenced both him and his Mongolian adjutant to death. The NKVD went to work, though, and got his sentence reduced to hard labor in a concentration camp (though the Mongolian was hanged). Beria sent a secret message to Boris in prison, promising to pull strings in the army and the party: he would get him out and restore him to power after he had served a year in the camp. At least this was how Nikolai had heard it.

So you see, Mamiya, Nikolai said to me, keeping his voice low, everybody thinks Boris is going back to Moscow someday, that Beria is sure to save him before too long. Its true that Beria has to be careful: this camp is still run by the party and the army. But none of us can relax. The wind direction can shift just like that. And when it does, anybody who's given him a tough time here is in for it. The world may be full of idiots, but nobody's stupid enough to sign his own death warrant. We have to tiptoe around him. Hes an honored guest here. Of course, we cant give him servants and treat him as if he were in a hotel. For appearance sake, we have to put chains on his leg and give him a few rocks to crack, but in fact he has his own room and all the alcohol and tobacco he wants. If you ask me, he's like a poison snake. Keeping him alive is not going to do anybody any good. Somebody ought to sneak in there one night and slash his throat for him.

Another day when I was walking by the station, that big sergeant stopped me again. I started to take out my pass, but he shook his head and told me to go instead to the stationmasters office. Puzzled, I did as I was told and found in the office not the stationmaster but Boris Gromov. He sat at the desk, drinking tea and obviously waiting for me to arrive. I froze in the doorway. He no longer had leg irons on. With his hand, he gestured for me to come in.

Nice to see you, Lieutenant Mamiya. Its been years, he said cheerily, flashing a big smile. He offered me a cigarette, but I shook my head.

Nine years, to be precise, he continued, lighting up himself. Or is it eight? Anyhow, its wonderful to see you alive and well. What a joy to meet old friends! Especially after such a brutal war. Don't you agree? And how did you manage to get out of that well?

I just stood there, saying nothing.

All right, then, never mind. The important thing is that you did get out. And then you lost a hand somewhere. And then you learned to speak such fluent Russian! Wonderful, wonderful. You can always make do without a hand. What matters most is that you're alive.

Not by choice, I replied.

Boris laughed aloud. You're such an interesting fellow, Lieutenant Mamiya. You would choose not to live, and yet here you are, very much alive. Yes, a truly interesting fellow. But I am not so easily fooled. No ordinary man could have escaped from that deep well by himself- escaped and found his way back across the river to Manchuria. But don't worry. I wont tell anyone.

Enough about you, though. Let me tell you about myself. As you can see, I lost my former position and am now a mere prisoner in a concentration camp. But I do not intend to stay here on the edge of the earth forever, breaking rocks with a sledgehammer. I am as powerful as ever back at Party Central, and I am using that power to increase my power here day by day. And so I will tell you in all frankness that I want to have good relations with you Japanese prisoners of war. Finally, the productivity of this mine depends on you men- on your numbers and your hard work. We can accomplish nothing if we ignore your power, and that includes your own individual power, Lieutenant Mamiya. I want you to lend me some of what you have. You are a former intelligence officer of the Kwantung Army and a very brave man. You speak fluent Russian. If you would act as my liaison, I am in a position to do favors for yourself and your comrades. This is not a bad deal that I am offering you.

I have never been a spy, I declared, and I have no intention of becoming one now.

I am not asking you to become a spy, Boris said, as if to calm me down. All I'm saying is that I can make things easier for your people. I'm offering to improve relations, and I want you to be the go-between. Together, we can knock that shit-eating Georgian politburo son of a bitch out of his chair. I can do it, don't kid yourself. I'm sure you Japanese hate his guts. Once we get rid of him, you people will be able to have partial autonomy, you can form committees, you can run your own organization. Then at least you'll be able to stop the guards from dishing out brutal treatment anytime they like. That's what you've all been hoping for, isn't it?

Boris was right about that. We had been appealing to the camp authorities about these matters for a long time, and they would always turn us down flat.

And what do you want in return? I asked.

Almost nothing, he said, with a big smile, holding both arms out. All I am looking for is close, friendly relations with you Japanese prisoners of war. I want to eliminate a few of my party comrades, my tovarishes, with whom it seems I am unable to achieve any understanding, and I need your peoples cooperation to accomplish that. We have many interests in common, so why don't we join hands for our mutual benefit? What is it the Americans say? Give-and-take? If you cooperate with me, I wont do anything to your disadvantage. I have no tricks up my sleeve. I know, of course, that I am in no position to ask you to like me. You and I share some unpleasant memories, to be sure. But appearances aside, I am a man of honor. I always keep my promises. So why don't we let bygones be bygones?

Take a few days, think about my offer, and let me have a firm reply. I believe its worth a try. You men have nothing to lose, don't you agree? Now, make sure you mention this only to people you are absolutely sure you can trust. A few of your men are informers working with the politburo member. Make sure they don't catch wind of this. Things could turn sour if they found out. My power here is still somewhat limited.

I went back to my area and took one man aside to discuss Boris' offer. This fellow had been a lieutenant colonel in the army. He was a tough man with a sharp mind. Commander of a unit that had shut itself up in a Khingan Mountain fortress and refused to raise the white flag even after Japans surrender, he was now the unofficial leader of the camps Japanese prisoners of war, a force the Russians had to reckon with. Concealing the incident with Yamamoto on the banks of the Khalkha, I told him that Boris had been a high-ranking officer in the secret police and explained his offer. The colonel seemed interested in the idea of eliminating the present politburo member and securing some autonomy for the Japanese prisoners of war. I stressed that Boris was a cold-blooded and dangerous man, a past master of deceit and trickery who could not be taken at face value. You may be right, said the colonel, but so is our politburo friend: we have nothing to lose. And he was right. If something came out of the deal, it couldn't make things any worse for us than they already were, I thought. But I couldn't have been more wrong. Hell has no true bottom.

A few days later, I was able to arrange a private meeting between the colonel and Boris in a place away from prying eyes. I acted as interpreter. A secret pact resulted from their thirty- minute discussion, and the two shook hands. I have no way of knowing exactly what happened after that. The two avoided direct contact so as not to attract attention, and instead they seem to have engaged in a constant exchange of coded messages using some kind of secret means of communication. This ended my role as intermediary. Which was fine with me. If possible, I wanted nothing more to do with Boris. Only later would I realize that such a thing was anything but possible.

As Boris had promised, about a month later, Party Central removed the Georgian politburo member from office and sent a new member to take his place two days after that.

Another two days went by, and three Japanese prisoners of war were strangled during the night. They were found hanging from beams to make the deaths look like suicides, but these were clearly lynchings carried out by other Japanese. The three must have been the informers Boris had mentioned. There was never any investigation. By then, Boris practically had the camp in the palm of his hand.

31 The Bat Vanishes THE THIEVING MAGPIE Returns

Wearing a sweater and my pea coat, wool hat pulled down low almost to my eyes, I scaled the back wall and lowered myself into the alley. The sun would not be up for a while, and people were still asleep. I padded my way down the alley to the Residence.

Inside, the house was just as I had left it six days earlier, complete with dirty dishes in the sink. I found no written messages and nothing on the answering machine. The computer screen in Cinnamon's room was is cold and dead as before. The heat pump was keeping the place at normal room temperature. I took off my coat and gloves, then boiled water and made myself some tea. I had a few crackers and cheese for breakfast, washed the dishes in the sink, and put them away. Nine o'clock came again, with no sign of Cinnamon.

I went out to the yard, took the cover off the well, and leaned over to look inside. There was the same dense darkness. I knew the well now as if it were an extension of my own body: its darkness, its smell, and its quiet were part of me. In a sense, I knew the well better than I knew Kumiko. Her memory was still fresh, of course. If I closed my eyes, I could bring back the details of her voice, her face, her body, the way she moved. I had lived in the same house with her for six years, after all. But still, I felt there were things about her that I could not bring back so clearly. Or perhaps I simply could not be sure that what I was remembering was correct-just as I could not recall precisely the curve in the tail of the cat when he came back.

I sat on the well curb, thrust my hands into my coat pockets, and surveyed my surroundings once again. It felt as if a cold rain or snow might begin falling at any time. There was no wind, but the air had a deep chill to it. A flock of little birds raced back and forth across the sky in a complex pattern as if painting a coded hieroglyph up there, and then, with a rush, they were gone. Soon I heard the low rumble of a jet, but the plane stayed invisible above the thick layer of clouds. On such a dark, overcast day, I could go into the well without worrying that the sunlight would hurt my eyes when I came out.

Still, I went on sitting there for some time, doing nothing. I was in no hurry. The day had hardly begun. Noon would not be here for a while. I gave myself up to thoughts that came to me without order as I sat on the well curb. Where had they taken the bird sculpture that used to be in this yard? Was it decorating another yard now, still urged on by an endless, pointless impulse to soar into the sky? Or had it been discarded as trash when the Miyawaki's house was demolished last summer? I recalled the piece fondly. Without the sculpture of the bird, I felt, the yard had lost a certain subtle balance.

When I ran out of thoughts, after eleven, I climbed down the steel ladder into the well. I set foot on the well bottom and took a few deep breaths, as always, checking the air. It was the same as ever, smelling somewhat of mold but breathable. I felt for the bat where I had left it propped against the wall. It was not there. It was not anywhere. It had disappeared. Completely. Without a trace.

I lowered myself to the well floor and sat leaning against the wall, sighing.

Who could have taken the bat? Cinnamon was the only possibility. He was the only one who knew of its existence, and he was probably the only one who would think to climb down into the well. But what reason could he possibly have had for taking the bat away? This was something I could not comprehend-one of the many things I could not comprehend.

I had no choice today but to go ahead without the bat. That would be all right too. The bat was, finally, just a kind of protective talisman. Not having it with me would be no problem. I had managed to get into that room all right without it, hadn't I? Once I had presented myself with these arguments, I pulled on the rope that closed the lid of the well. I folded my hands on my knees and closed my eyes in the darkness.

As had happened last time, I was unable to achieve the mental concentration I wanted. All kinds of thoughts came crowding in, blocking the way. To get rid of them, I tried thinking about the pool- the twenty-five-meter indoor ward pool where I usually went for exercise. I imagined myself doing the crawl there, doing laps. I'm not trying for speed, just using a quiet, steady stroke, over and over. I bring my elbows out smoothly with a minimum of noise and splashing, then stroke gently, fingers first. I take water into my mouth and let it out slowly, as if breathing underwater. After a while, I feel my body flowing naturally through the water, as if its riding on a soft wind. The only sound reaching my ears is that of my own regular breathing. I'm floating on the wind like a bird in the sky, looking down at the earth below. I see distant towns and tiny people and flowing rivers. A sense of calm envelops me, a feeling close to rapture. Swimming is one of the best things in my life. It has never solved any problems, but it has done no harm, and nothing has ever ruined it for me. Swimming.

Just then I heard something. I realized I was hearing a low, monotonous hum in the dark, something like the droning of insect wings. But the sound was too artificial, too mechanical, to be that of insect wings. It had subtle variations in frequency, like tuning changes in a shortwave broadcast. I held my breath and listened, trying to catch its direction. It seemed to be coming from one fixed point in the darkness and, at the same time, from inside my own head. The border between the two was almost impossible to determine in the deep darkness.

While concentrating all my attention on the sound, I fell asleep. I had no awareness of feeling sleepy before that happened. All of a sudden, I was asleep, as if I had been walking down a corridor with nothing particular on my mind when, without warning, I was dragged into an unknown room. How long this thick, mudlike stupor enveloped me I had no idea. It couldn't have been very long. It might have been a moment. But when some kind of presence brought me back to consciousness, I knew I was in another darkness. The air was different, the temperature was different, the quality and depth of the darkness was different. This darkness was tainted with some kind of faint, opaque light. And a familiar sharp smell of pollen struck my nostrils. I was in that strange hotel room.

I raised my face, scanned my surroundings, held my breath.

I had come through the wall.

I was sitting on a carpeted floor, my back leaning against a cloth-covered wall. My hands were still folded atop my knees. As fearfully deep as my sleep had been just a moment before, my wakefulness now was complete and lucid. The contrast was so extreme that it took a moment for my wakefulness to sink in. The quick contractions of my heart were plainly audible. There was no doubt about it. I was here. I had finally made it all the way into the room.

In the fine-grained, multiveiled darkness, the room looked exactly as I remembered it. As my eyes became used to the darkness, though, I began to pick out slight differences. First, the telephone was in a different place. It had moved from the night table to the top of a pillow, in which it was now all but buried. Then I saw that the amount of whiskey in the bottle had gone down. There was just a little left in the bottom now. All the ice in the bucket had melted and was now nothing but old, cloudy water. The glass was dry inside, and when I touched it I realized it was coated with white dust. I approached the bed, lifted the phone, and put the receiver to my ear. The line was dead. The room looked as if it had been abandoned, forgotten for a very long time. There was no sense of a human presence there. Only the flowers in the vase preserved their strange vividness.

There were signs that someone had been lying in the bed: the sheets and covers and pillows were in slight disarray. I pulled back the covers and checked for warmth, but there was none. No smell of cosmetics remained, either. Much time seemed to have gone by since the person had left the bed. I sat on the edge of the bed, scanned the room again, and listened for sounds. But I heard nothing. The place was like an ancient tomb after grave robbers had carried off the body.

All of a sudden, the phone began to ring. My heart froze like a frightened cat. The airs sharp reverberations woke the floating grains of pollen, and the flower petals raised their faces in the darkness. How could the phone have been ringing? Only a few moments before, it had been as dead as a rock in the earth. I steadied my breathing, calmed the beating of my heart, and checked to make sure I was still there, in the room. I stretched out my hand, touched my fingers to the receiver, and hesitated a moment before lifting it from its cradle. By then, the phone had rung three or perhaps four times altogether.

Hello. The phone went dead as I lifted the receiver. The irreversible heaviness of death weighed in my hand like a sandbag. Hello, I said again, but my own dry voice came back to me unaltered, as if rebounding from a thick wall. I set the receiver down, then picked it up again and listened. There was no sound. I sat on the edge of the bed, trying to control my breathing as I waited for the phone to ring again. It did not ring. I watched the grains in the air return to unconsciousness and sink into the darkness. I replayed the sound of the telephone in my mind. I was no longer entirely certain that it had actually rung. But if I let doubts like that creep in, there would have been no end to them. I had to draw a line somewhere. Otherwise, my very existence in this place would have been open to question. The phone had rung; there could be no mistake. And in the next instant, it had gone dead. I cleared my throat, but that sound, too, died instantly in the air.

I stood up and made a circuit of the room. I studied the floor, stared up at the ceiling, sat on the table, leaned against the wall, gave the doorknob a quick twist, turned the switch of the floor lamp on and off. The doorknob didn't budge, of course, and the lamp was dead. The window was blocked from the outside. I listened for any sounds I could make out, but the silence was like a smooth, high wall. Still, I felt the presence of something here that was trying to deceive me, as if the others were holding their breath, pressing themselves flat against the wall, obliterating their skin color to keep me from knowing they were there. So I pretended not to notice. We were very good at fooling each other. I cleared my throat again and touched my fingers to my lips.

I decided to inspect the room once more. I tried the floor lamp again, but it produced no light. I opened the whiskey bottle and sniffed what was left inside. The smell was unchanged. Cutty Sark. I replaced the cap and returned the bottle to the table. I brought the receiver to my ear one more time, but the phone could not have been any deader than it was. I took a few slow steps to get a feel of the carpet against my shoes. I pressed my ear against the wall and concentrated all my attention in an attempt to hear any sounds that might have been coming through it, but there was, of course, nothing. I stepped to the door and, knowing that to do so was pointless, gave the knob a twist. It turned easily to the right. For a moment, I could not absorb this fact as a fact. Before, the knob had been so solid it could have been set in cement. I went back to square one and tried again, taking my hand from the knob, reaching out for it again, and turning it back and forth. It turned smoothly in my hand. This gave me the strangest feeling, as if my tongue were swelling inside my mouth.

The door was open.

I pulled the knob until the door swung in just enough for a blinding light to come streaming into the room. The bat. If only I had the bat, I would have felt more confident. Oh, forget the bat! I swung the door wide open. Checking left, then right, to be sure no one was there, I stepped outside. It was a long, carpeted corridor. A short way down the corridor, I could see a large vase filled with flowers. It was the vase I had hidden behind while the whistling waiter was knocking on this door. In my memory, the corridor was a long one, with many turns and branches along the way. I had managed to get here by coming across the waiter whistling his way down the corridor and following after him. The number plate on the door had identified this as Room 208.

Stepping carefully, I walked toward the vase. I hoped I could find my way to the lobby, where Noboru Wataya had been appearing on television. Many people had been in the lobby, moving to and fro. I might be able to find some clue there. But wandering through the hotel was like venturing into a vast desert without a compass. If I couldn't find the lobby and then was unable to find my way back to Room 208,1 might be sealed up inside this labyrinthine place, unable to return to the real world.

But now was no time for hesitation. It was probably my last chance. I had waited every day in the bottom of the well for six months, and now, at last, the door had opened before me. Besides, the well was going to be taken from me soon. If I failed now, all my time and effort would have been for nothing.

I turned several corners. My filthy tennis shoes moved soundlessly over the carpet. I couldn't hear a thing-no voices, no music, no TV, not even a ventilator fan or an elevator. The hotel was silent, like a ruin forgotten by time. I turned many corners and passed many doors.

The corridor forked again and again, and I had always gone right, on the assumption that if I chose to go back, I should be able to find the room by taking only lefts. By now, though, my sense of direction was gone. I felt no nearer to anything in particular. The numbers on the doors had no order, and they went by endlessly, so they were no help at all. They trickled away from my consciousness almost before they had registered in my memory. Now and then I felt I had passed some of them before. I came to a stop in the middle of the corridor and caught my breath. Was I circling back over and over the same territory, the way one does when lost in the woods?

As I stood there wondering what to do, I heard a familiar sound in the distance. It was the whistling waiter. He was in perfect tune. There was no one who could match him. As before, he was whistling the overture to Rossini's The Thieving Magpie-not an easy tune to whistle, but it seemed to give him no trouble. I proceeded down the corridor in the direction of the whistling, which grew louder and clearer. He appeared to be heading in my direction. I found a good-sized pillar and hid behind it.

The waiter carried a silver tray again, with the usual bottle of Cutty Sark and an ice bucket and two glasses. He hurried past me, facing straight ahead, with an expression on his face that suggested he was entranced by the sound of his own whistling. He never looked in my direction; he was in such a hurry that he couldn't spare a moments wasted motion. Everything is the same as before, I thought. It seemed my flesh was being carried back in time.

As soon as the waiter passed me, I followed him. His silver tray bobbed pleasantly in time with the tune he was whistling, now and then catching the glare of a ceiling light. He repeated the melody of The Thieving Magpie over and over like a magic spell. What kind of opera was The Thieving Magpie? I wondered. All I knew about it was the monotonous melody of its overture and its mysterious title. We had had a recording of the overture in the house when I was a boy. It had been conducted by Toscanini. Compared with Claudio Abbado's youthful, fluid, contemporary performance, Toscaninis had had a blood-stirring intensity to it, like the slow strangulation of a powerful foe who has been downed after a violent battle. But was The Thieving Magpie really the story of a magpie that engaged in thievery? If things ever settled down, I would have to go to the library and look it up in an encyclopedia of music. I might even buy a complete recording of the opera if it was available. Or maybe not. I might not care to know the answers to these questions by then.

The whistling waiter continued walking straight ahead, with all the mechanical regularity of a robot, and I followed him at a fixed distance. I knew where he was going without even having to think about it. He was delivering the fresh bottle of Cutty Sark and the ice and glasses to Room 208. And indeed, he came to a stop in front of Room 208. He shifted the tray to his left hand, checked the room number, drew himself up, and gave the door a perfunctory knock. Three knocks, then another three.

I couldn't tell whether there was any answer from within. I was hiding behind the vase, watching the waiter. Time passed, but the waiter went on standing at attention, as though planning to challenge the limits of endurance. He did not knock again but waited for the door to open. Eventually, as if in answer to a prayer, the door began to open inward.

32 The Job of Making Others Use Their Imaginations (The Story of Boris the Manskinner, Continued)

Boris kept his promise. We Japanese war prisoners were given partial autonomy and allowed to form a representative committee. The colonel was the committee chairman. From then on, the Russian guards, both civil and military, were ordered to cease their violent behavior, and the committee became responsible for keeping order in the camp. As long as we caused no trouble and met our production quotas, they would leave us alone. That was the ostensible policy of the new politburo member (which is to say, the policy of Boris). These reforms, at first glance so democratic, should have been great news for us prisoners of war.

But things were not as simple as they seemed. Taken up with welcoming the new reforms, we were too stupid to see the cunning trap that Boris had set for us. Supported by the secret police, Boris was in a far more powerful position than the new politburo member, and he proceeded to make over the camp and the town as he saw fit. Intrigue and terrorism became the order of the day. Boris chose the strongest and most vicious men from among the prisoners and the civilian guards (of which there was no small supply), trained them, and made them into his own personal bodyguards. Armed with guns and knives and clubs, this handpicked contingent would take care of anyone who resisted Boris, threatening and physically abusing them, sometimes even beating them to death on Boris' orders. No one could lay a hand on them. The soldiers sent out on an individual basis from regular army units to guard the mine would pretend not to see what was happening under their noses. By then, not even the army could touch Boris. Soldiers stayed in the background, keeping watch over the train station and their own barracks, opting an attitude of indifference with regard to what went on in the mine and the camp.

Boris' favorite among his handpicked guard was a prisoner known as The Tartar, who had supposedly been a Mongolian wrestling champion. The man stuck to Boris like a shadow.

He had a big burn scar on his right cheek, which people said he had gotten from torture.

Boris no longer wore prison clothes, and he moved into a neat little cottage that was kept clean for him by a woman inmate.

According to Nikolai (who was becoming increasingly reluctant to talk about anything), several Russians he knew had simply disappeared in the night. Officially, they were listed as missing or having been involved in accidents, but there /as no doubt they had been taken care of by Boris' henchmen. Peoples lives sere now in danger if they failed to follow Boris' orders or if they merely failed to please him. A few men tried to complain directly to Party Central about the abuses going on in camp, but that was the last anyone ever saw of them. I heard they even killed a little kid-a seven-year-old-to keep his parents in line. Beat him to death while they watched, Nikolai whispered to me, pale-faced.

At first Boris did nothing so crude as that in the Japanese zone. He concentrated his energies instead on gaining complete control over the Russian guards in the area and solidifying his foothold there. He seemed willing for the moment to leave the Japanese prisoners in charge of their own affairs. And so, for the first few months after the reform, we were able to enjoy a brief interval of peace. Those were tranquil days for us, a period of genuine calm. The committee was able to obtain some reduction in the harshness of the labor, however slight, and we no longer had to fear the violence of the guards. For the first time since our arrival, we were able to feel something like hope. People believed that things were going to get better.

Not that Boris was ignoring us during those few honeymoon months. He was quietly arranging his pieces to gain the greatest strategic advantage. He worked on the Japanese committee members individually, behind the scenes, using bribes or threats to bring them under his control. He avoided overt violence, proceeding with the utmost caution, and so no one noticed what he was doing. When we did finally notice, it was too late. Under the guise of granting us autonomy, he was throwing us off our guard while he fashioned a still more efficient system of control. There was an icy, diabolical precision to his calculations. He succeeded in eliminating random violence from our lives, only to replace it with a new kind of coldly calculated violence.

After six months of firming up his control structure, he changed direction and began applying pressure on us. His first victim was the man who had been the central figure on the committee: the colonel. He had confronted Boris directly to represent the interests of the Japanese prisoners of war on several issues, as a result of which he was eliminated. By that time, the colonel and a few of his cohorts were the only members of the committee who did not belong to Boris. They suffocated him one night, holding him down while one of them pressed a wet towel to his face. Boris ordered the job done, of course, though he never dirtied his own hands when it came to killing Japanese. He issued orders to the committee and had other Japanese do it. The colonels death was written off simply as the result of illness. We all knew who had killed him, but no one could talk about it. We knew that Boris had spies among us, and we had to be careful what we said in front of anyone. After the colonel was murdered, the committee voted for Boris' handpicked candidate to fill his chair.

The work environment steadily deteriorated as a result of the change in the makeup of the committee, until finally things were as bad as they had ever been. In exchange for our autonomy, we made arrangements with Boris on our production quotas, the setting of which became increasingly burdensome for us. The quota was raised in stages, under one pretext or another, until finally the work forced upon us became harsher than ever. The number of accidents also escalated, and many Japanese soldiers lent their bones to the soil of a foreign land, victims of reckless mining practices. Autonomy meant only that we Japanese now had to oversee our own labor in place of the Russians who had once done it.

Discontent, of course, only blossomed among the prisoners of war. Where we had once had a little society that shared its sufferings equally, a sense of unfairness grew up, and with it deep hatred and suspicion. Those who served Boris were given lighter duties and special privileges, while those who did not had to live a harsh life-if allowed to live at all. No one could raise his voice in complaint, for open resistance meant death. One might be thrown into an icy shed to die of cold and starvation, or have a wet towel pressed over ones face while asleep, or have the back of ones skull split open with a pick while working in the mine. Down there, you could end up at the bottom of a shaft. Nobody knew what went on in the darkness of the mine. People would just disappear.

I couldn't help feeling responsible for having brought Boris and the colonel together. Of course, if I hadn't become involved, Boris would have burrowed his way in among us sooner or later by some other route, with similar results, but such thoughts did little to ease my pain. I had made a terrible mistake.

Suddenly one day I was summoned to the building that Boris used as his office. I had not seen him for a very long time. He sat at a desk, drinking tea, as he had been doing the time I saw him in the stationmasters office. Behind him, standing at attention with a large-caliber automatic pistol in his belt, was The Tartar. When he entered the room, Boris turned around to the Mongolian and signaled for him to leave. The two of us were alone together.

So, then, Lieutenant Mamiya, I have kept my promise, you see.

Indeed, he had, I replied. What he said was unfortunately true. Everything he had promised me had come to pass. It was like a pact with the devil.

You have your autonomy, and I have my power, he said with a smile, holding his arms out wide. We both got what we wanted. Coal production has increased, and Moscow's happy. Who could ask for anything more? I am very grateful to you for having acted as my mediator, and I would like to do something for you in return.

There was no such need, I replied.

Nor is there any need for you to be so distant, Lieutenant. The two of us go way back, said Boris, smiling. I want you to work here with me. I want you to be my assistant. Unfortunately, this place has a critical shortage of men who can think. You may be missing a hand, but I can see that your sharp mind more than makes up for it. If you will work as my sery, I will be most grateful and do everything I can to see that you have as easy a time of it here as possible. That way, you will be sure to survive and make your way back to Japan. Working closely with me can only do you good.

Ordinarily, I would have rejected such an offer out of hand. I had no intention of selling out my comrades and securing an easy time of it for myself by working as Boris' assistant. And if turning him down meant that he would have me killed, that would have suited me fine. But the moment he presented his offer, I found a plan forming in my mind.

What kind of work do you want me to do? I asked.

What Boris had in mind for me was not a simple task. The number of chores waiting to be taken care of was huge, the single biggest job being the management of Boris' personal assets. Boris had been helping himself to a good forty percent of the foodstuffs, clothing, and medical supplies being sent to the camp by Moscow and the International Red Cross, stashing them in secret storehouses, and selling them to various takers. He had also been sending off whole trainloads of coal through the black market. There was a chronic shortage of fuel, the demand for it endless. He would bribe railroad workers and the stationmaster, moving trains almost at will for his own profit. Food and money could make the soldiers guarding the trains shut their eyes to what he was doing. Thanks to such business methods, Boris had amassed an amazing fortune. He explained to me that it was ultimately intended as operating capital for the secret police. Our activity, as he called it, required huge sums off the public record, and he was now engaged in procuring those secret funds. But this was a lie. Some of the money may have been finding its way to Moscow, but I was certain that well over half was being transformed into Boris' own personal fortune. As far as I could tell, he was sending the money to foreign bank accounts and buying gold.

For some inexplicable reason, he appeared to have complete faith in me. It seems not to have occurred to him that I might leak his secrets to the outside, which I now find very strange. He always treated his fellow Russians and other white men with the utmost suspicion, but toward Mongolians or Japanese he seemed to feel only the most openhanded trust. Perhaps he figured that I could do him no harm even if I chose to reveal his secrets. First of all, whom could I reveal them to? Everyone around me was his collaborator or his underling, each with his own tiny share in Boris' huge illegal profits. And the only ones who suffered and died because Boris was diverting their food, clothing, and medicine for his own personal gain were the powerless inmates of the camp. Besides, all mail was censored, and all contact with outsiders was prohibited.

And so I became Boris' energetic and faithful private sery. I completely made over his chaotic books and stock records, systematizing and clarifying the flow of goods and money. I created categorized ledgers that showed at a glance the amount and location of any one item and how its price was fluctuating. I compiled a long list of bribe takers and calculated the necessary expenses for each. I worked hard for Boris, from morning to night, as a result of which I lost what few friends I had. People thought of me (probably could not help but think of me) as a despicable human being, a man who had sold out to become Boris' faithful bootlicker. And sadly enough, they probably still think of me that way. Nikolai would no longer speak to me. The two or three other Japanese prisoners of war I had been close to would now turn aside when they saw me coming. Conversely, there were some who tried to approach me when they saw that I had become a favorite of Boris, but I would have nothing to do with them. Thus I became an increasingly isolated figure in the camp. Only the support of Boris kept me from being killed. No one could have gotten away with murdering one of his most prized possessions. People knew how cruel Boris could be; his fame as the manskinner had reached legendary proportions even here.

The more isolated I became, the more Boris came to trust me. He was happy with my efficient, systematic work habits, and he was not stinting in his praise.

You are a very impressive man, Lieutenant Mamiya. Japan will be sure to recover from her postwar chaos as long as there are many Japanese like you. My own country is hopeless. It was almost better under the czars. At least the czar didn't have to strain his empty head over a lot of theory. Lenin took whatever he could understand of Marx's theory and used it to his own advantage, and Stalin took whatever he could understand of Lenin's theory (which wasn't much) and used it to his own advantage. The narrower a mans intellectual grasp, the more power he is able to grab in this country. I tell you, Lieutenant, there is only one way to survive here. And that is not to imagine anything. A Russian who uses his imagination is done for. I certainly never use mine. My job is to make others use their imaginations. That's my bread and butter. Make sure you keep that in mind. As long as you are in here, at least, picture my face if you ever start to imagine something, and say to yourself, No, don't do that. Imagining things can be fatal. These are my golden words of advice to you. Leave the imagining to someone else.

Half a year slipped by like this. Now the autumn of 1947 was drawing to a close, and I had become indispensable to Boris. I was in charge of the business side of his activities, while The Tartar was in charge of the violent side. The secret police had yet to summon Boris back to Moscow, but by then he no longer seemed to want to go back. He had more or less transformed the camp and the mine into his own unimpeachable territory, and there he lived in comfort, steadily amassing a huge fortune, protected by his own private army. Perhaps, too, rather than bring him back to the center, the Moscow elite preferred to keep him there, firming up their foothold in Siberia. A continual exchange of letters passed between Boris and Moscow-not using the post office, of course: they would arrive on the train, in the hands of secret messengers. These were always tall men with ice-cold eyes. The temperature in a room seemed to drop whenever one of them walked in.

Meanwhile, the prisoners working the mine continued to die in large numbers, their corpses thrown into mine shafts as before. Boris did a thoroughgoing assessment of each prisoners potential, driving the physically weak ones hard and reducing their food rations at the outset so as to kill them off and reduce the number of mouths he had to feed. The food diverted from the weak went to the strong in order to raise productivity. Efficiency was everything in the camp: it was the law of the jungle, the survival of the fittest. And whenever the work force began to dwindle, freight cars would arrive packed with new convicts, like trainloads of cattle. Sometimes as much as twenty percent of the shipment would die on the way, but that was of no concern to anyone. Most of the new convicts were Russians and Eastern Europeans brought in from the West. Fortunately for Boris, Stalins politics of violence continued to function there.

My plan was to kill Boris. I knew, of course, that getting rid of this one man was no guarantee that our situation would improve in any way. It would continue to be one form of hell or another. But I simply could not allow the man to go on living in this world. As Nikolai had said, he was like a poisonous snake. Someone would have to cut his head off.

I was not afraid to die. If anything, I would have liked Boris to kill me as I killed him. But there could be no room for error. I had to wait for the one exact moment when I could have absolute confidence that I would kill him without fail, when I could end his life with a single shot. I continued to act the part of his loyal sery as I waited for the chance to spring on my prey. But as I said earlier, Boris was an extremely cautious man. He kept The Tartar by his side day and night. And even if he should give me a chance at him alone sometime, how was I to kill him, with my one hand and no weapon? Still I kept my vigil, waiting for the right mo- ment. If there was a god anywhere in this world, I believed, the chance would come my way.

Early in 1948, a rumor spread through camp that the Japanese prisoners of war were finally going to be allowed to go home, that a ship would be sent to repatriate us in the spring. I asked Boris about it.

It is true, Lieutenant Mamiya, he said. The rumor is true. You will all be repatriated before very long. Thanks in part to world opinion, we will not be able to keep you working much longer. But I have a proposition for you, Lieutenant. How would you like to stay in this country, not as a prisoner of war but as a free Soviet citizen? You have served me very well, and it will be extremely difficult for me to find a replacement for you. And you, for your part, will have a far more pleasant time of it if you stay with me than if you go back to endure hardship and poverty in Japan. They have nothing to eat, I am told. People are starving to death. Here you would have money, women, power-everything.

Boris had made this proposal in all seriousness. He was aware that it could be dangerous to let me go, knowing his secrets as I did. If I turned him down, he might rub me out to keep me from talking. But I was not afraid. I thanked him for his kind offer but said that I preferred to return to Japan, being concerned about my parents and sister. Boris shrugged once and said nothing further.

The perfect chance to kill him presented itself to me one night in March, as the day of repatriation was drawing near. The Tartar had gone out, leaving me alone with Boris just before nine o'clock at night. I was working on the books, as always, and Boris was at his desk, writing a letter. It was unusual for us to be in the office so late. He sipped a brandy now and then as he traced his fountain pen over the stationery. On the coat rack hung Boris' leather coat, his hat, and his pistol in a leather holster. The pistol was not the typical Soviet Army-issue monster but a German-made Walther PPK. Boris had supposedly taken it from a Nazi SS lieutenant colonel captured at the battle of the Danube Crossing. It had the lightning SS mark on the grip, and it was always clean and polished. I had often observed Boris working on the gun, and I knew that he kept it loaded, with eight shells in the magazine.

For him to have left the gun on the coat rack was most unusual He was careful to have it close at hand whenever he was working, concealed in the drawer of the right-hand wing of his desk. That night, however, he had been in a very good, very talkative mood for some reason, and because of that, perhaps, he had not exercised his usual caution. It was the kind of chance I could never hope for again. Any number of times, I had rehearsed in my mind how, with my one hand, I would release the safety catch and send the first cartridge into the chamber. Now, making my decision, I stood and walked past the coat rack, pretending to go for a form. Involved in his letter writing, Boris did not look my way. As I passed by, I slipped the gun out of the holster. Its small size fit my palm perfectly, its outstanding workmanship obvious from its heft and balance. I stood before Boris and released the safety. Then, holding the pistol between my knees, I pulled the slide with my right hand, sending a cartridge into the chamber. With my thumb, I pulled the hammer back. When he heard the small, dry sound it made, Boris looked up, to find me aiming the gun at his face.

He shook his head and sighed.

Too bad for you, Lieutenant, but the gun isn't loaded, he said after clicking the cap of his fountain pen into place. You can tell by the weight. Give it a little shake up and down.

Eight 7.65-millimeter cartridges weigh eighty grams. I didn't believe him. Without hesitation, I pointed the muzzle at his forehead and pulled the trigger. The only sound was a click. He was right: it wasn't loaded. I put the gun down and bit my lip, unable to think. Boris opened the desk drawer and took out a handful of shells, holding them on his palm for me to see. He had trapped me. The whole thing had been a ruse.

I have known for a long time that you wanted to kill me, he said softly. You have imagined yourself doing it, pictured it in your head any number of times, am I right? I am certain I advised you long ago never to use your imagination. It can only cost you your life. Ah, well, never mind. There is simply no way that you could ever kill me.

Boris took two of the shells from his palm and threw them at my feet. They clattered across the floor to where I stood.

Those are live shells, he said. This is no trick. Put them in the gun and shoot me. It will be your last chance. If you really want to kill me, take careful aim. But if you miss, you must promise never to reveal my secrets. You must tell no one in the world what I have been doing here. This will be our little deal.

I nodded to him. I made my promise.

Holding the pistol between my knees again, I pressed the release button, took out the magazine, and loaded the two cartridges into it. This was no easy feat with one hand-a hand that was trembling all the while. Boris observed my movements with a cool expression on his face. There was even the hint of a smile there. Once I had succeeded in thrusting the magazine back into the grip, I took aim between his eyes, forced my hand to stop trembling, and pulled the trigger. The room shook with the roar of the gun, but the bullet only passed by Boris' ear and slammed into the wall. White, pulverized plaster flew in all directions. I had missed from only six feet away. I was not a poor marksman. When stationed in Hsinching, I had done my target practice with a great deal of enthusiasm. And although I had only my right hand now, it was stronger than that of most people, and the Walther was the kind of well-balanced pistol that let you take precise, steady aim. I could not believe that I had missed. Once again I cocked the hammer and took aim. I sucked in one deep breath and told myself, You have to kill this man. By killing him, I could make it mean something that I had lived.

Take steady aim, now, Lieutenant Mamiya. Its your last bullet. Boris was still smiling. At that moment, The Tartar came running into the room, his big pistol drawn. Keep out of this, Boris barked at him. Let Mamiya shoot me. And if he manages to kill me, do whatever you like. The Tartar nodded and pointed the muzzle of his gun at me. Gripping the Walther in my right hand, I thrust it straight out, aimed for the middle of Boris' contemptuous, confident smile, and coolly squeezed the trigger. The pistol kicked, but I held it steady. It was a perfectly executed shot. But again the bullet grazed Boris' head, this time smashing the wall clock behind him into a million pieces. Boris never so much as twitched an eyebrow. Leaning back in his chair, he went on staring at me with his snakelike eyes. The pistol crashed to the floor.

For a moment, no one moved or spoke. Soon, though, Boris left his chair and bent over to retrieve the Walther from where I had dropped it. After a long, thoughtful look at the pistol in his hand, he returned it to its holster on the coat-rack. Then he patted my arm twice, as if to comfort me.

I told you you couldn't kill me, didn't I? Boris said. He took a pack of Camels from his pocket, put a cigarette between his lips, and lit it with his lighter. There was nothing wrong with your shooting. It was just that you couldn't kill me. You aren't qualified to kill me. That is the only reason you missed your chance. And now, unfortunately, you will have to bear my curse back to your homeland. Listen: Wherever you may be, you can never be happy. You will never love anyone or be loved by anyone. That is my curse. I will not kill you. But I do not spare you out of goodwill. I have killed many people over the years, and I will go on to kill many more. But I never kill anyone whom there is no need to kill. Goodbye, Lieutenant Mamiya. A week from now, you will leave this place for the port of Nakhodka. Bon voyage.

The two of us will never meet again.

That was the last I ever saw of Boris the Manskinner. The week after that, I left the concentration camp behind and was shipped by train to Nakhodka. After many convoluted experiences there, I finally reached Japan at the beginning of the following year.

To tell you the truth, I have no idea what this long, strange story of mine will mean to you, Mr. Okada. Perhaps it is nothing more than an old mans mutterings. But I wanted to- I had to- tell you my story. As you can see from having read my letter, I have lived my life in total defeat. I have lost. I am lost. I am qualified for nothing. Through the power of the curse, I love no one and am loved by no one. A walking shell, I will simply disappear into darkness.

Having managed at long last, however, to pass my story on to you, Mr. Okada, I will be able to disappear with some small degree of contentment.

May the life you lead be a good one, a life free of regrets.

33 A Dangerous Place The People Watching Television The Hollow Man

The door began to open inward. Holding the tray in both hands, the waiter gave a slight bow and went inside. I stayed in the shadows of the vase, waiting for him to come out and wondering what I would do when he did. I could go in as he came out. There was definitely someone inside Room 208. If things continued to develop as they had done before (which was exactly what was happening), the door should be unlocked. On the other hand, I could forget about the room for now and follow the waiter. That way, I could probably find my way to the place where he belonged.

I wavered between the two, but in the end I decided to follow the waiter. There was something dangerous lurking in Room 208, something that could have fatal consequences. I had all too clear a memory of the sharp rapping in the darkness and the violent white gleam of some knife-like thing. I had to be more careful. Let me first see where the waiter would lead me. Then I could come back to the room. But how was I supposed to do that? I thrust my hands in my pockets and found there, along with my wallet and change and handkerchief, a short ballpoint pen. I pulled the pen out and drew a line on my hand to make sure it had ink. I could use this to mark the walls as I followed the waiter. Then I could follow the marks back to the room. It should work.

The door opened and the waiter came out, hands empty. He had left everything inside the room, including the tray. After closing the door, he straightened himself and began whistling The Thieving Magpie as he hurried back along the route he had followed here. I stepped from my place in the shadows of the big vase and followed him. Wherever the corridor forked, I made a small blue X on the cream-colored wall. The waiter never looked back. There was something special about the way he walked. He could have been acting as a model for the World Hotel Waiter Walking-Style Championship. His walk all but proclaimed, This is how a hotel waiter is supposed to walk: head up, jaw thrust out, back straight, arms swinging rhythmically to the tune of The Thieving Magpie, taking long strides down the corridor. He turned many corners, went up and down many short flights of stairs, through stretches where the lighting was brighter or dimmer, past depressions in the walls that produced different kinds of shadows. I maintained a reasonable distance behind him to keep from being noticed, but following him was not particularly difficult. He might disappear for a moment as he turned a corner, but there was never any danger of my losing him, thanks to his vibrant whistling.

Just as a salmon migrating upstream eventually reaches a still pool, the waiter came out of the final corridor into the hotel lobby, the crowded lobby where I had seen Noboru Wataya on television. This time, however, the lobby was hushed, with only a handful of people sitting in front of a large television set, watching an NHK news broadcast. The waiter had stopped whistling as he neared the lobby, so as not to disturb people. Now he cut straight across the lobby floor and disappeared behind a door marked Staff Only.

Pretending to be killing time, I ambled around the lobby, sat on a few different sofas, looked up at the ceiling, checked the thickness of the rug beneath my feet. Then I went to a pay phone and put in a coin. This phone was as dead as the one in the room had been. I picked up a hotel phone and punched in 208, but this phone was also dead.

After that, I went to sit in a chair somewhat apart from where the people were watching television, to observe them unobtrusively. The group consisted of twelve people, nine men and three women, mostly in their thirties and forties, with two possibly in their early fifties. The men all wore suits or sports coats and conservative ties and leather shoes. Aside from some differences in height and weight, none had any distinguishing features. The three women were all in their early thirties, well dressed and carefully made up. They could have been on their way back from a high school reunion, except that they sat separately and gave no evidence of knowing each other. In fact, all the people in the group appeared to be strangers whose attention just happened to be locked on the same television screen. There were no exchanges of opinions or glances or nods.

I sat watching the news for a while from my place somewhat apart from theirs. The stories were of no special interest to me- a governor cutting a tape at the opening ceremony for a new road, a recall of children's crayons that had been discovered to contain a harmful substance, the death of a truck driver who had been hit by a tourist bus in Asahikawa because of icy roads and reduced visibility in a major snowstorm, with injuries to several of the tourists on their way to a hot-spring resort. The announcer read each of the stories in turn in a restrained voice, as though dealing out low-numbered cards. I thought about the television in the home of Mr. Honda, the fortune-teller. His set had always been tuned to NHK too.

These images of the news coming over the air were at the same time very real and very unreal to me. I felt sorry for the thirty-seven-year-old truck driver who had died in the accident. No one wants to die in agony of ruptured internal organs in a blizzard in Asahikawa. But I was not acquainted with the truck driver, and he did not know me. And so my sympathy for him had nothing personal about it. I could feel only a generalized kind of sympathy for a fellow human being who had met with a sudden, violent death. That generalized emotion might be very real for me and at the same time not real at all. I turned my eyes from the television screen and surveyed the big, empty lobby once more. I found nothing there to focus on. There were no hotel staff members present, and the small bar was not yet open. The only thing on the wall was a large oil painting of a mountain.

When I turned back to the television screen, there was a large close-up of a familiar face- Noboru Wataya's face. I sat up straight and turned my attention to the reporters words.

Something had happened to Noboru Wataya, but I had missed the beginning of the story. Soon the photo disappeared and the reporter came on-screen. He wore a tie and an overcoat, and he was standing at the entrance to a large building, with a mike in his hand.

... rushed to Tokyo Womens Medical University Hospital, where he is now in intensive care, but all we know is that he has not regained consciousness since his skull was fractured by an unknown assailant. Hospital authorities have refused to comment on whether or not his wounds are life-threatening. A detailed report on his condition is to be released sometime later. Reporting from the main entrance of Tokyo Womens Medical University...

And the broadcast returned to the studio, where the anchorman began to read a text that had just been handed to him. According to reports just in, Representative Noboru Wataya has sustained severe injuries to the head in what appears to have been an attack on his life. The young assailant burst into his office in Tokyo's Minato Ward at eleven-thirty this morning and, in the presence of the persons with whom Representative Wataya was meeting at the time, delivered several strong blows to the head with a baseball bat, inflicting severe injuries.

The screen showed a picture of the building that housed Noboru Wataya's office.

The man had posed as a caller to Representative Wataya's office, bringing the bat in inside a long cardboard mailing tube. Witnesses say the man pulled the bat out of the tube and attacked without a word of warning.

The screen showed the office where the crime had occurred. Chairs were scattered on the floor, and a black pool of blood could be seen nearby.

The attack came so suddenly that neither Representative Wataya nor the others with him had a chance to resist. After checking to be certain that Representative Wataya was unconscious, the assailant left the scene, still holding the baseball bat. Witnesses say the man, approximately thirty years of age, was wearing a navy-blue pea coat, a woolen ski hat, also navy, and dark glasses. He stood some five feet nine inches in height and had a bruiselike mark on his right cheek. Police are looking for the man, who seems to have managed to lose himself without a trace in the neighborhood crowds.

The screen showed police at the scene of the crime and then a lively Akasaka street scene. Baseball bat? Mark on the face? I bit my lip. Noboru Wataya was a rising star among economists and political commentators when, this spring, he inherited the mantle of his uncle, longtime Diet member Yoshitaka Wataya, and was elected to the House of Representatives. Widely hailed since then as an influential young politician and polemicist, Noboru Wataya was a freshman Diet member of whom much was expected. Police are launching a two-pronged investigation into the crime, assuming that it could have been either politically motivated or some kind of personal vendetta. To repeat this late-breaking story: Noboru Wataya, prominent freshman member of the House of Representatives, has been rushed to the hospital with severe head injuries after an attack late this morning by an unknown assailant. Details on his condition are not known at this time. And now, in other news- Someone appeared to have switched off the television at that point. The announcers voice was cut short, and silence enveloped the lobby. People began to relax their tensed postures. It was obvious that they had gathered in front of the television for the express purpose of hearing news about Noboru Wataya. No one moved after the set was switched off. No one made a sound.

Who could have hit Noboru Wataya with a bat? The description of the assailant sounded exactly like me-the navy pea coat and hat, the sunglasses, the mark on the cheek, height, age- and the baseball bat. I had kept my own bat in the bottom of the well for months, but it had disappeared. If that same bat was the one used to crush Noboru Wataya's skull, then someone must have taken it for that purpose.

Just then the eyes of one of the women in the group focused on me- a skinny, fishlike woman with prominent cheekbones. She wore white earrings in the very center of her long earlobes. She had twisted around in her chair and sat in that position for a long time, watching me, never averting her gaze or changing her expression. Next the bald man sitting beside her, letting his eyes follow her line of vision, turned and looked at me. In height and build, he resembled the owner of the cleaning store by the station. One by one, the other people turned in my direction, as if becoming aware for the first time that I was there with them. Subjected to their unwavering stares, I could not help but be aware of my navy-blue pea jacket and hat, my five-foot-nine-inch height, my age, and the mark on my right cheek. These people all seemed to know, too, that I was Noboru Wataya's brother-in-law and that I not only disliked but actively hated him. I could see it in their eyes. My grip tightened on the arm of my chair as I wondered what to do. I had not beaten Noboru Wataya with a baseball bat. I was not that kind of person, and besides, I no longer owned the bat. But they would never believe me, I was sure. They believed only what they saw on television.

I eased out of my chair and started for the corridor by which I had entered the lobby. I had to leave that place as soon as possible. I was not welcome there. I had taken only a few steps when I turned to see that several of the people had left their chairs and were coming after me. I sped up and cut straight across the lobby for the corridor. I had to find my way back to Room 208. The inside of my mouth was dry.

I had finally made it across the lobby and taken my first step into the corridor when, without a sound, all the lights in the hotel went out. A heavy curtain of blackness fell with the speed of an ax blow. Someone cried out behind me, the voice much closer to me than I would have expected, a stony hatred at its core.

I continued on in the darkness, edging forward cautiously with my hands against the wall. I had to get away from them. But then I bumped into a small table and knocked something over in the darkness, probably some kind of vase. It rolled, clattering, across the floor. The collision sent me down on all fours on the carpet. I scrambled to my feet and continued feeling my way along the corridor. Just then, the edge of my coat received a sharp yank, as if it had caught on a nail. It took me a moment to realize what was happening. Someone was pulling on my coat. Without hesitation, I slipped out of it and lunged ahead in the darkness. I felt my way around a corner, tripped up a stairway, and turned another corner, my head and shoulders bumping into things all the while. At one point, I missed my footing on a step and smashed my face against the wall. I felt no pain, though: only an occasional dull twinge behind the eyes. I couldn't let them catch me here.

There was no light of any kind, not even the emergency lighting that was supposed to come on in hotels in case of a power failure. After tearing my way through this featureless darkness, I came to a halt, trying to catch my breath, and listened for sounds from behind me. All I could hear, though, was the wild beating of my own heart. I knelt down for a moments rest. They had probably given up the chase. If I went ahead in the darkness now, I would probably end up lost in the depths of the labyrinth. I decided to stay here, leaning against the wall, and try to calm myself.

Who could have turned out the lights? I couldn't believe it had been a coincidence. It had happened the very moment I stepped into the corridor as people were catching up with me. Probably someone there had done it to rescue me from danger. I took my wool hat off, wiped the sweat from my face with my handkerchief, and put the hat back on. I was beginning to notice pain in different parts of my body, but I didn't seem to have any injuries as such. I looked at the luminous hands of my watch in the darkness, only to remember that the watch had stopped at eleven-thirty. That was the time I climbed down into the well, and it was also the time that someone had beaten Noboru Wataya in his office with a baseball bat.

Could I have been the one who did it?

Down here in the darkness like this, that began to seem like one more theoretical possibility to me. Perhaps, up there, in the real world, I had actually struck him with the bat and injured him severely, and I was the only one who didn't know about it. Perhaps the intense hatred inside me had taken the initiative to walk over there without my knowing it and administer him a drubbing. Did I say walk? I would have had to take the Odakyu Line to Shinjuku and transfer there to the subway in order to go to Akasaka. Could I have done such a thing without being aware of it? No, certainly not-unless there existed another me.

Mr. Okada, someone said close by in the darkness.

My heart leaped into my throat. I had no idea where the voice had come from. My muscles tensed as I scanned the darkness, but of course I could see nothing.

Mr. Okada. The voice came again. A mans low voice. Don't worry, Mr. Okada, I'm on your side. We met here once before. Do you remember?

I did remember. I knew that voice. It belonged to the man with no face. But I had to be careful. I was not ready to answer.

You have to leave this place as soon as possible, Mr. Okada. They'll come to find you when the lights go on. Follow me: I know a shortcut.

The man switched on a penlight. It cast a small beam, but it was enough to show me where to step. This way, the man urged me. I scrambled up from the floor and hurried after him.

You must be the one who turned out the lights for me, is that right? I asked the man from behind.

He did not answer, but neither did he deny it. Thanks, I said. It was a close call. They are very dangerous people, he said. Much more dangerous than you think. I asked him, Was Noboru Wataya really injured in some kind of beating? That is what they said on TV, the man replied, choosing his words carefully. I didn't do it, though, I said. I was down in a well at the time, alone. If you say so, I'm sure you are right, the man said matter-of-factly. He opened a door and, shining the flashlight on his feet, he began edging his way up the flight of stairs on the other side. It was such a long stairway that, midway through the process, I lost track of whether we were climbing or descending. I was not even sure this was a stairway.

Do you have someone who can swear that you were in the well at the time? the man asked without turning around.

I said nothing. There was no such person.

In that case, the wisest thing would be for you to run away. They have decided for themselves that you are the culprit.

Who are they?

Reaching the top of the stairs, the man turned right and, after a short walk, opened a door and stepped out into a corridor. There he stopped to listen for sounds. We have to hurry. Hold on to my jacket.

I grasped the bottom edge of his jacket as ordered.

The man with no face said, Those people are always glued to the television set. That is why you are so greatly disliked here. They are very fond of your wifes elder brother.

Do you know who I am? I asked. Yes, of course I do. So, then, do you know where Kumiko is now? The man said nothing. I kept a firm grip on the tail of the mans coat, as if we were playing some kind of game in the dark, rushing around another corner, down a short staircase, through a small secret door, through a low-ceilinged hidden passageway, into yet another corridor. The strange, intricate route taken by the faceless man felt like an endless journey through the bowels of a huge bronze figure.

Let me tell you this, Mr. Okada. I don't know everything that happens here. This is a big place, and my area of responsibility centers on the lobby. There is a lot that I don't know anything about.

Do you know about the whistling waiter?

No, I don't. There are no waiters here, whistling or otherwise. If you saw a waiter in here somewhere, he wasn't really a waiter: it was something pretending to be a waiter. I failed to ask you, but you wanted to go to Room 208, is that correct?

That is correct. I'm supposed to meet a certain woman there.

The man had nothing to say to that. He pressed for no details about the woman or what my business with her might be. He continued down the corridor with the confident stride of a man who knows his way around, dragging me like a tugboat along a complicated course.

Eventually, with no warning, he came to a stop in front of a door. I bumped into him from behind, all but knocking him over. His flesh, on impact, felt strangely light and airy, as if I had bumped into an empty cicada shell. He quickly straightened himself and used his pocket flashlight to illuminate the number on the door: 208.

This door is not locked, said the man. Take this light with you. I can walk back in the dark. Lock the door when you go in, and don't open it for anyone. Whatever business you have, get it over with quickly and go back where you came from. This place is dangerous.

You are an intruder here, and I am the only one on your side. Don't forget that.

Who are you? I asked.

The faceless man handed me the flashlight as if passing a baton. I am the hollow man, he said. Faceless face toward me, he waited in the darkness for me to speak, but I could not find the right words. Eventually, without a sound, he disappeared. He was right in front of me one second, swallowed up by darkness the next. I shone the light in his direction, but only the dull white wall came out of the darkness.

As the man had said, the door to Room 208 was unlocked. The knob turned soundlessly in my hand. I took the precaution of switching the flashlight off, then stepped in as quietly as I could. As before, the room was silent, and I could sense nothing moving inside. There was the faint crack of melting ice moving inside the ice bucket. I switched on the flashlight and turned to lock the door. The dry metallic tumbling of the lock sounded abnormally loud in the room.

On the table in the center stood the unopened bottle of Cutty Sark, clean glasses, and the bucket full of fresh ice. The silver-colored tray beside the vase shot the beam of the flashlight back with a sensual gleam, as if it had been waiting for me for a very long time. In response, it seemed, the smell of the flowers pollen became stronger for a moment. The air around me grew dense, and the pull of gravity seemed to increase. With my back against the door, I watched the movement around me in the beam of the flashlight.

This place is dangerous. You are an intruder here, and I am the only one on your side.

Don't forget that.

Don't shine that light on me, said a womans voice in the inner room. Do you promise not to shine that light on me?

I promise, I said.

34 The Light of a Firefly Breaking the Spell World Where Alarm Clocks Ring in the Morning

I promise, I said, but my voice had a certain artificial quality, as when you hear a recording of yourself speaking.

I want to hear you say it: that you wont shine your light on me. I wont shine the light on you. I promise. Do you really promise? You're telling me the truth?

I'm telling you the truth. I wont break my promise. All right, then, what Id really like you to do, if you don't mind, is pour two whiskeys on the rocks and bring them over here. Lots of ice, please. She spoke with the slightest hint of a playful, girlish lisp, but the voice itself belonged to a mature, sensual woman. I laid the penlight lengthwise on the table and in its light went about pouring the two whiskeys, taking a moment first to steady my breathing. I broke the seal on the Cutty Sark, used tongs to fill the two glasses, and poured the whiskey over the ice cubes. I had to think clearly about each task my hands were performing. Large shadows played over the wall with every movement.

I walked into the inner room, holding the two whiskeys in my right hand and lighting my way along the floor with the flashlight in my left. The air felt somewhat chillier than before. I must have worked up a sweat in my rush through the darkness, and now was beginning to cool off. I remembered that I had shed my coat along the way.

In keeping with my promise, I turned out the light and slipped it into my pocket. Then, by touch, I set one whiskey on the night table and took my own with me to the armchair by the bed. In the total darkness, I still remembered the layout of the room.

I seemed to hear the sliding of sheets against each other. She was raising herself in bed and leaning against the headboard, glass now in hand. She gave the glass a little shake, stirring the ice, and took a sip of whiskey. In the darkness, these were all like sound effects in a radio play. I inhaled the aroma of the whiskey in my hand, but I did not drink.

Its been a long time, I said. My voice sounded somewhat more like my own than it had before.

Has it? she said. I'm not sure what that means: time or a long time. As I recall, its been exactly one year and five months, I said. Well, well, she said, unimpressed. I cant recall... exactly. I set my glass on the floor and crossed my legs. You weren't here last time I came, were you? Of course I was. Right here. In bed. I'm always here. I'm sure I was in Room 208, though. This is Room 208, isn't it? She swirled the ice in her glass and gave a little laugh. And I'm sure you weren't so sure.

You were in another Room 208, thats for sure. There was a certain unsteadiness in her voice, which gave me a slightly unsettled feeling.

The alcohol might have been affecting her. I took my wool cap off and laid it on my knee. I said to her, The phone was dead, you know. Yes, I know, she said, with a hint of resignation. They cut it. They knew how I used to like to make calls.

Are they the ones who are keeping you here?

Hmm, I wonder. I don't really know, she said, with a little laugh. The disturbance in the air made her voice quaver slightly.

Facing in her direction, I said, I've been thinking about you for a very long time. Ever since I was last here. Thinking about who you are and what you're doing here.

Sounds like fun, she said.

I imagined all sorts of possibilities, but I cant be sure of anything yet. I'm still in the imagining stage.

Well, well, she said, as if impressed. So you cant be sure of anything yet, you're still in the imagining stage.

That's right, I said. And I might as well tell you this: I think you're Kumiko. I didn't realize it at first, but I'm becoming more and more convinced.

Oh, are you? she said, after a moments pause, sounding amused. So I'm Kumiko, am I?

For a moment, I lost all sense of direction, as if everything I was doing was off: I had come to the wrong place to say the wrong things to the wrong person. It was all a waste of time, a meaningless detour. But I managed to set myself straight in the dark. To perform a check on reality, I fastened my hands on the hat in my lap.

Yes, I think you are Kumiko. Because then all kinds of story lines work out. You kept calling me on the phone from here. You were trying to convey some kind of secret to me. A secret of Kumiko's. A secret that the real Kumiko in the real world couldn't bring herself to tell me. So you must have been doing it for her- in words like secret codes.

She said nothing for a while. She lifted her glass for another sip of whiskey, then said, I wonder. But if thats what you think, you may be right. Maybe I really am Kumiko. I'm still not sure, though. So, then, if its true ... if I really am Kumiko ... I should be able to talk with you here through her voice. Isn't that right? It makes things a little complicated, but do you mind?

No, I don't mind, I said. Once more my voice seemed to have lost a degree of calm and some sense of reality.

She cleared her throat in the darkness. Here goes, then. I wonder if it will work. Again she gave a little laugh. Its not easy, though. Are you in a hurry? Can you stay here awhile?

I don't really know, I said. Wait just a minute. Sorry. Ahem ... I'll be ready in a minute. I waited. So. You came here looking for me. You wanted to see me, is that it? Kumiko's earnest voice resounded in the darkness. I had not heard Kumiko's voice since that summer morning when I zipped her dress up.

She had been wearing new cologne behind the ears, cologne from someone else. She left the house that day and never came back. Whether the voice in the darkness was the real thing or a fake, it brought me back to that morning for a moment. I could smell the cologne and see the white skin of Kumiko's back. The memory was dense and heavy in the darkness-perhaps denser and heavier than in reality. I tightened my grip on my hat.

Strictly speaking, I didn't come here to see you. I came here to bring you back, I said. She released a little sigh in the darkness. Why do you want so badly to bring me back? Because I love you, I said. And I know that you love me and want me. You sound pretty sure of yourself, said Kumiko-or Kumiko's voice. There was nothing derisive about her tone of voice-but nothing warm about it, either. I heard the contents of the ice bucket in the next room shifting. I have to solve some riddles, though, if I'm going to get you back, I said. Isn't it a little late to be starting such things now? I thought you didn't have that much time. She was right. There was not much time left and too much to think about. I wiped the sweat from my brow with the back of my hand. This was probably my last chance, I told myself. I had to think.

I want you to help me, I said. I wonder, said Kumiko's voice. I may not be able to help you. But I'm willing to try. The first question is why you had to leave me. I want to know the real reason. I know what your letter said-that you had become involved with another man. I read it, of course. And read it and read it and reread it. And I suppose it does serve as some kind of explanation. But I cant believe its the real reason. It doesn't quite ring true. I'm not saying its a lie, but I cant help feeling its nothing but a kind of metaphor.

A metaphor?! She sounded truly shocked. Maybe I just don't get it, but if sleeping with other men is a metaphor for something, Id like to know what.

What I'm trying to say is that it seems to me to be nothing but an explanation for explanations sake. It doesn't lead anywhere. It just traces the surface. The more I read your letter, the more I felt that. There must be some other reason that is more basic-more real. And it almost certainly involves Noboru Wataya.

I could feel her eyes focused on me in the darkness and was struck by the thought that she might be able to see me.

Involves Noboru Wataya? How? asked Kumiko's voice.

Well, finally, the events I've been through have been tremendously complicated. All kinds of characters have come on the scene, and strange things have happened one after another, to the point where, if I try to think about them in order, I lose track. Viewed at more of a distance, though, the thread running through them is perfectly clear. What it all boils down to is that you have gone over from my world to the world of Noboru Wataya. That shift is the important thing. Even if you did, in fact, have sex with another man or other men, that is just a secondary matter. A front. That's what I'm trying to say.

She inclined her glass somewhat in the darkness. Staring hard toward the source of the sound, I felt as if I could catch a faint glimpse of her movements, but this was obviously an illusion.

People don't always send messages in order to communicate the truth, Mr. Okada, she said. The voice was no longer Kumiko's. Neither was it the original girlish voice. This was a new voice, which belonged to someone else. It had a poised, intelligent ring to it. ... just as people don't always meet others in order to reveal their true selves. Do you grasp my meaning, Mr. Okada?

But still, Kumiko was trying to communicate something to me. Whether or not it was the truth, she was looking to me for something, and that was the truth for me.

I sensed the darkness around me increasing in density, much as the evening tide comes to fullness without a sound. I had to hurry. I didn't . have much time left. They might come looking for me here once the lights came back on. I decided to risk putting into words the thoughts that had been slowly forming in my mind.

This is strictly a product of my own imagination, but I would guess that there was some kind of inherited tendency in the Wataya family bloodline. What kind of tendency I cant be sure, but it was some kind of tendency-something that you were afraid of. Which is why you were afraid of having children. When you got pregnant, you panicked because you were worried the tendency would show up in your own child. But you couldn't reveal the secret to me. The whole story started from there.

She said nothing but quietly placed her glass on the night table. I went on: And your sister, I'm sure, didn't die from food poisoning. No, it was more unusual than that. The one responsible for her death was Noboru Wataya, and you know that for a fact. Your sister probably said something to you about it before she died, gave you some kind of warning. Noboru Wataya probably had some special power, and he knew how to find people who were especially responsive to that power and to draw something out of them. He must have used that power in a particularly violent way on Creta Kano. She was able, one way or another, to recover, but your sister was not. She lived in the same house, after all: she had nowhere to run to. She couldn't stand it anymore and chose to die. Your parents have always kept her suicide a secret. Isn't that true?

There was no reply. The woman kept quiet in an attempt to obliterate her presence in the darkness.

I went on: How he managed to do it and what the occasion was I have no idea, but at some point Noboru Wataya increased his violent power geometrically. Through television and the other media, he gained the ability to train his magnified power on society at large. Now he is trying to bring out something that the great mass of people keep hidden in the darkness of their unconscious. He wants to use it for his own political advantage. Its a tremendously dangerous thing, this thing he is trying to draw out: its fatally smeared with violence and blood, and its directly connected to the darkest depths of history, because its final effect is to destroy and obliterate people on a massive scale.

She sighed in the darkness. I wonder if I could bother you to pour me another whiskey? she asked softly.

I walked over to the night table and picked up her empty glass. I could do that much in the dark without difficulty. I went into the other room and poured a new whiskey on the rocks with the aid of the flashlight.

What you just said was strictly a product of your own imagination, right? she asked.

That's right. I've strung a few separate ideas together, I said. Theres no way I can prove any of this. I don't have any basis for claiming that what I have said is true.

But still, Id like to hear the rest-if there is more to tell.

I went back into the inner room and put the glass on the night table. Then I switched off the flashlight and returned to my chair. There I concentrated my attention on telling the rest of my story.

You didn't know exactly what had happened to your sister, only that she had given you some kind of warning before she died. You were too small at the time to understand what it was about. But you did understand, in a vague sort of way. You knew that Noboru Wataya had somehow defiled and injured your sister. And you sensed the presence in your blood of some kind of dark secret, something from which you could not remain aloof. And so, in that house, you were always alone, always tense, struggling by yourself to live with your dormant, undefinable anxiety, like one of those jellyfish we saw in the aquarium.

After you graduated from college-and after all the trouble with your family- you married me and left the Wataya house. Our life was serene, and with each day that went by, you were able, bit by bit, to forget your dark anxiety. You went out into society, a new person, as you continued gradually to recover. For a while, it looked as though everything was going to work out for you. But unfortunately, it wasn't that simple. At some point you noticed that you were being drawn, unconsciously, toward that dark force that you thought you had left behind. And when you realized what was happening, you became confused. You didn't know what to do. Which is why you went to talk to Noboru Wataya, hoping to learn the truth. And you sought out Malta Kano, hoping that she could give you help. It was only to me that you could not open up.

I would guess that all this started after you became pregnant. That, I'm sure, was the turning point. Which is probably why I received my first warning from the guitar player in Sapporo the night you had the abortion. Getting pregnant may have stimulated and awakened the dormant something inside you. And that was exactly what Noboru Wataya had been waiting for. That may be the only way he is capable of sexually committing to a woman. That is why he was so determined to drag you back from my side to his, once that tendency began to surface in you. He had to have you. Noboru Wataya needed you to play the role your sister had once played for him.

When I finished speaking, a deep silence came to fill in the emptiness. I had given voice to everything that my imagination had taught me about Kumiko. Parts of it had come from vague thoughts I had had until then, and the rest had taken shape in my mind while I spoke in the darkness. Perhaps the power of darkness had filled in the blank spots in my imagination. Or perhaps this womans presence had helped. In either case, there was no solid basis for what I had imagined.

A very, very interesting story, said the woman. Again her voice had become the one with the girlish lisp. The speed with which her voice changed seemed to be increasing. Well, well, well. So I left you to go into hiding with my defiled body. Its like Waterloo Bridge in the mist, Auld Lang Syne, Robert Taylor and Vivien Leigh- I'm going to take you out of here, I said, cutting her off. I'm going to take you home, to the world where you belong, where cats with bent tails live, and there are little backyards, and alarm clocks ring in the morning.

And how are you going to do that? the woman asked. How are you going to take me out of here, Mr. Okada?

The way they do in the fairy tales, I said. By breaking the spell.

Oh, I see, said the voice. But wait a minute, Mr. Okada. You seem to think that I am Kumiko. You want to take me home as Kumiko. But what if I'm not Kumiko? What will you do then? You may be preparing to take home someone else entirely. Are you absolutely sure of what you're doing? Shouldn't you think it over one more time?

I made a fist around the flashlight in my pocket. This couldn't possibly be anyone but Kumiko, I thought. But I couldn't prove it. It was finally nothing but a hypothesis. Sweat oozed from the hand in my pocket.

I'm going to take you home, I said again, my voice dry. That's what I came here to do.

I heard movement in the sheets. She was changing her position in the bed. Can you say that for sure? Without a doubt? she asked, pressing me for confirmation. Yes, I can say it for sure. I'm going to take you home. And you have no second thoughts? No, none. My mind is made up, I said. She followed this with a long silence, as if checking on the truth of something. Then, to mark the end of this stage in our conversation, she let out a long breath. I'm going to give you a present, she said. Its not much of a present, but it may come in handy. Don't turn on the light now, but reach over here-very, very slowly-over to the night table.

I left my chair, and gauging the depth of the emptiness, I stretched my right hand out in the dark. I could feel the airs sharp thorns against my fingertips. And then I touched the thing. When I realized what it was, the air seemed to lodge in the back of my throat. The present was a baseball bat.

I took hold of the grip and held the bat out straight. It was almost certainly the bat I had taken from the young man with the guitar case. The grip and the weight were right. This had to be it. But as I felt it over more carefully, I found that there was something, some kind of debris, stuck to it just above the brand. It felt like a human hair. I took it between my fin- gertips. Judging from the thickness and hardness, it had to be a real human hair. Several such hairs were stuck to the bat, with what seemed to be congealed blood. Someone had used this bat to smash someone else-probably Noboru Wataya-in the head. It took an effort for me to expel the air caught in my throat.

That is your bat, isn't it? she asked.

Probably, I said, struggling to keep calm. My voice had begun to take on a somewhat different tone in the deep darkness, as if someone lurking down here were speaking in my place. I cleared my throat, and after checking to be sure that the one speaking was the real me, I continued: But somebody seems to have used this to beat someone.

The woman kept her mouth sealed. Sitting down, I lowered the bat and held it between my legs. I'm sure you know whats going on, I said. Somebody used this bat to crush Noboru Wataya's skull. The news I saw on TV was true. Noboru Wataya is in the hospital in critical condition. He might die.

Hes not going to die, said Kumiko's voice, without emotion. She might have been reporting a historical fact from a book. He may not regain consciousness, though. He may just continue to wander through darkness, but what kind of darkness that would be, no one knows.

I felt for the glass at my feet and picked it up. I poured its contents into my mouth and, without thinking, swallowed. The tasteless liquid passed through my throat and down my gullet. I felt a chill for no reason, then an unpleasant sensation as if something far away were moving slowly in my direction through a long darkness. As I had known it would, my heart started beating faster.

We don't have much time, I said. Just tell me this if you can: where are we?

You've been here before, and you found the way in here- alive and unharmed. You should know where this is. And anyhow, it doesn't matter anymore. The important thing- Just then there was a knock on the door-a hard, dry sound, like someone driving a nail into the wall, two loud raps followed by two more. It was the same knock I had heard before. The woman gasped.

You've got to get out of here, she said, in a voice that was unmistakably Kumiko's. If you go now, you can still pass through the wall.

I had no idea if what I was thinking was right or wrong, but I knew that as long as I was down here, I had to defeat this thing. This was the war that I would have to fight.

I'm not running away this time, I said to Kumiko. I'm going to take you home.

I set my glass on the floor, put my wool hat on, and took the bat from between my knees.

Then I started slowly for the door.

35 Just a Real Knife The Thing That Had Been Prophesied

Lighting my way along the floor and keeping my steps soundless, I moved toward the door. The bat was in my right hand. I was still walking when the knocks came again: two knocks, then two more. Harder this time, and more violent. I pressed myself against the side wall where I would be hidden by the door when it opened. There I waited, keeping my breath in check.

When the sound of the knocks faded, deep silence descended on everything again, as if nothing had happened. I could feel the presence of someone on the other side of the door, though. This someone was standing there the way I was, keeping his breath in check and listening, trying to hear the sound of breathing or the beating of a heart, or to read the movement of a thought. I tried to keep my breath from agitating the surrounding air. I am not here, I told myself. I am not here. I am not anywhere.

The key turned in the lock. He made each movement with the utmost caution, stretching out the time it took to perform any one act so that the sounds involved would become isolated from each other, their meaning lost. The doorknob turned, and this was followed by the almost imperceptible sound of hinges rotating. The contractions of my heart began to speed up. I tried to quell the disturbance this caused, but without success.

Someone came into the room, sending ripples through the air. I made a conscious effort to sharpen each of my five senses and caught the faint smell of a foreign body-a strange mixture of thick clothing, suppressed breathing, and overwrought nerves steeped in silence. Did he have the knife in his hand? I had to assume that he did. I remembered its vivid white gleam. Holding my breath, obliterating my presence, I tightened my grip on the bat.

Once inside, the someone closed the door and locked it from within. Then he stood there, back to the door, waiting and watching. My hands on the bat were drenched with sweat. I would have liked to wipe my palms on my pants, but the slightest extra movement could have had fatal results. I brought to mind the sculpture that had stood in the garden of the abandoned Miyawaki house. In order to obliterate my presence here, I made myself one with that image of a bird. There, in the sun-drenched summer garden, I was the sculpture of a bird, frozen in space, glaring at the sky.

The someone had brought his own flashlight. He switched it on, and its straight, narrow beam cut through the darkness. The light was not strong. It came from the same kind of penlight I was carrying. I waited for the beam to pass me as he walked into the room, but he made no effort to move. The light began to pick out items in the room, one after another-the flowers in the vase, the silver tray lying on the table (giving off its sensual gleam again), the sofa, the floor lamp.... It swung past my nose and came to rest on the floor a few inches beyond the tips of my shoes, licking every corner of the room like the tongue of a snake. I waited for what felt like an eternity. Fear and tension drilled into my consciousness with intense pain.

No thinking. You are not allowed to think, I told myself. You are not allowed to use your imagination. Lieutenant Mamiya had said that in his letter. Imagining things here can be fatal.

Finally, the flashlight beam began to move forward slowly, very slowly. The man seemed to be heading for the inner room. I tightened my grip on the bat. It was then I noticed that the sweat of my hands had dried. If anything, my hands were now too dry.

The man took one slow step forward, then stopped. Then one more step. He seemed to be checking his footing. He was closer to me than ever now. I took a breath and held it. Two more steps, and he would be where I wanted him. Two more steps, and I would be able to put an end to this walking nightmare. But then, without warning, the light disappeared.

Total darkness had swallowed everything again. He had turned off his flashlight. I tried to make my mind work quickly in the dark, but it would not work at all. An unfamiliar chill ran through me. He had realized that I was there.

Move, I told myself. Don't just stand there. I tried to dodge to the left, but my legs would not move. My feet were stuck to the floor, like the feet of the bird sculpture. I bent forward and barely managed to incline my stiffened upper body to the left. Just then, something slammed into my right shoulder, and something hard and cold as frozen rain stabbed me to the bone.

The impact seemed to revive me, and the paralysis went out of my legs. I sprang to the left and crouched in the darkness, feeling for my opponent. The blood was pounding through my body, every muscle and cell straining for oxygen. My right shoulder was going numb, but I had no pain. The pain would come later. I stayed absolutely still, and he did too. We faced each other in the darkness, holding our breaths. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear.

Again, without warning, the knife came. It slashed past my face like an attacking bee, the sharp point just catching my right cheek where the mark was. I could feel the skin tearing. No, he could not see me, either. If he could, he would have finished me off long before. I swung the bat in the darkness, aiming in the direction from which the knife had come, but it just swished through the air, striking nothing. The swing had been a good one, though, and the crisp sound helped me to loosen up somewhat. We were still an even match. The knife had cut me twice, but not badly. Neither of us could see the other. And though he had a knife, I had my bat.

Again, in our mutual blindness, breathing held in check, we felt each other out, waiting for some hint of movement. I could feel blood dripping down my face, but I was strangely free of fear. Its just a knife, I said to myself. Its just a cut. I waited. I waited for the knife to come my way again. I could wait forever. I drew my breath in and expelled it without a sound. Come on! I said to him in my mind. Move! I'm waiting for you to move. Stab me if you want to. I'm not afraid.

Again the knife came. It slashed the collar of my sweater. I could feel the point moving past my throat, but it never touched my skin. I twisted and jumped to the side, and almost too impatient to straighten up, I swung the bat through space. It caught him somewhere around the collarbone. Not enough to bring him down or break any bones, but I knew I had hurt him. I could feel him recoil from the blow, and I heard a loud gasp. I took a short backswing and went for him again-in the same direction at a slightly higher angle, where I had heard the breath drawn in.

It was a perfect swing. I caught him somewhere high on the neck. There was a sickening sound of cracking bone. A third swing hit home- the skull-and sent him flying. He let out a weird sound and slumped to the floor. He lay there making little gasps, but those soon stopped. I closed my eyes and, without thinking, aimed one final swing in the direction of the sound. I didn't want to do it, but I had no choice. I had to finish him off: not out of hatred or even out of fear, but as something I simply had to do. I heard something crack open in the darkness like a piece of fruit. Like a watermelon. I stood still, gripping the bat, holding it out in front of me. Then I realized I was trembling. All over. And there was no way I could stop it. I took one step back and pulled the flashlight from my pocket.

Don't! cried a voice in the darkness. Don't look at it! Kumiko's voice was calling to me from the inner room, trying to stop me from looking. But I had to look. I had to see it. I had to know what it was, this thing in the center of the darkness that I had just beaten to a pulp. Part of my mind understood what Kumiko was forbidding me to do. She was right: I shouldn't look at it. But I had the flashlight in my hand now, and that hand was moving on its own.

Please, I'm begging you to stop! she screamed. Don't look at it if you want to take me home again!

I clenched my teeth and quietly released the air I had locked in my lungs. Still the trembling would not subside. A sickening smell hung in the air-the smell of brains and violence and death. I had done this: I was the one who had made the air smell like this. I found the sofa and collapsed onto it. For a while, I fought against the nausea rising in my stomach, but the nausea won. I vomited everything in my stomach onto the carpet, and when that was gone I brought up stomach fluid, then air, and saliva. While vomiting, I dropped the bat on the floor. I could hear it rolling away in the darkness.

Once the spasms of my stomach began to subside, I wanted to take out my handkerchief to wipe my mouth, but I could not move my hand. I couldn't get up from the sofa. Lets go home, I said toward the darkness of the inner room. This is all over now. Lets go.

She didn't answer. There was no one in there anymore. I sank into the sofa and closed my eyes. I could feel the strength going out of me-from my fingers, my shoulders, my neck, my legs.... The pain of my wounds began to fade as well. My body was losing all sense of mass and substance. But this gave me no anxiety, no fear at all. Without protest, I gave myself up- surrendered my flesh-to some huge, warm thing that came naturally to enfold me. I realized then that I was passing through the wall of jelly. All I had to do was give myself up to the gentle flow. I'll never come back here again, I said to myself as I moved through the wall. Everything had come to an end. But where was Kumiko? Where did she go? I was supposed to bring her back from the room. That was the reason I killed the man. That was the reason I had to split his skull open like a watermelon. That was the reason I... But I couldn't think anymore. My mind was sucked into a deep pool of nothingness.

When I came to, I was sitting in the darkness again. My back was against the wall, as always. I had returned to the bottom of the well.

But it was not the usual well bottom. There was something new here, something unfamiliar. I tried to gather my faculties to grasp what was going on. What was so different? But my senses were still in a state of near-total paralysis. I had only a partial, fragmentary sense of my surroundings. I felt as if, through some kind of error, I had been deposited in the wrong container. As time passed by, though, I began to realize what it was.

Water. I was surrounded by water.

The well was no longer dry. I was sitting in water up to my waist. I took several deep breaths to calm myself. How could this be? The well was producing water-not cold water, though. If anything, it felt warm. I felt as if I were soaking in a heated pool. It then occurred to me to check my pocket. I wanted to know if the flashlight was still there. Had I brought it back with me from the other world? Was there any link between what had happened there and this reality? But my hand would not move. I couldn't even move my fingers. All strength had gone out of my arms and legs. It was impossible for me to stand.

I began a coolheaded assessment of my situation. First of all, the water came up only to my waist, so I didn't have to worry about drowning. True, I was unable to move, but that was probably because I had used up every ounce of strength. Once enough time had gone by, my strength would probably come back. The knife wounds didn't seem very deep, and the paralysis at least saved me from having to suffer with pain. The blood seemed to have stopped flowing from my cheek.

I leaned my head back against the wall and told myself, Its OK, don't worry. Everything had probably ended. All I had to do now was give my body some rest here, then go back to my original world, the world above-ground, where the sunlight overflowed.... But why had this well started producing water all of a sudden? It had been dried up, dead, for such a long time, yet now it had come back to life. Could this have some connection with what I had accomplished there? Yes, it probably did. Something might have loosened whatever it was that had been obstructing the vein of water.

Shortly after that, I encountered one ominous fact. At first I tried to resist accepting it as a fact. My mind came up with a list of possibilities that would enable me to do that. I tried to convince myself that it was a hallucination caused by the combination of darkness and fatigue. But in the end, I had to recognize its truth. However much I attempted to deceive myself, it would not go away.

The water level was rising.

The water had risen now from my waist to the underside of my bent knees. It was happening slowly, but it was happening. I tried again to move my body. With a concentrated effort, I tried to squeeze out whatever strength I could manage, but it was useless. The most I could do was bend my neck a little. I looked overhead. The well lid was still solidly in place. I tried to look at the watch on my left wrist, without success. The water was coming in from an opening-and with what seemed like increasing speed.

Where it had been barely seeping in at first, it was now almost gushing. I could hear it. Soon it was up to my chest. How deep was it going to get?

Be careful of water, Mr. Honda had said to me. I had never paid any heed to his prophecy. True, I had never forgotten it, either (you don't forget anything as weird as that), but I had never taken it seriously. Mr. Honda had been nothing more than a harmless episode for Kumiko and me. I would repeat his words as a joke now and then when something came up: Be careful of water. And we would laugh. We were young, and we had no need for prophecies. Just living was itself an act of prophecy. But Mr. Honda had been right. I almost wanted to laugh out loud. The water was rising, and I was in trouble.

I thought about May Kasahara. I used my imagination to picture her opening the well cover-with total reality and clarity. The image was so real and clear that I could have stepped right into it. I couldn't move my body, but my imagination still worked. What else could I do?

Hey, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, said May Kasahara. Her voice reverberated all up and down the well shaft. I hadn't realized that a well with water echoed more than one without water. What are you doing down there? Thinking again?

I'm not doing any one thing in particular, I said, facing upward. I haven't got time to explain now, but I cant move my body, and the water is rising in here. This isn't a dry well anymore. I might drown.

Poor Mr. Wind-Up Bird! said May Kasahara. You emptied yourself out trying so hard to save Kumiko. And you probably did save her. Right? And in the process, you saved lots of people. But you couldn't save yourself. And nobody else could save you. You used up your strength and your fate saving others. All your seeds were planted somewhere else, and now your bag is empty. Have you ever heard of anything so unfair? I feel sympathy for you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, from the bottom of my heart. Its true. But finally, it was a choice you made yourself. Do you know what I mean?

I do, I said.

I felt a dull throb in my right shoulder. It really happened, then, I told myself. The knife really cut me. It cut me as a real knife.

Are you afraid to die, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? asked May Kasahara.

Sure I am, I said. I could hear my voice reverberating in the well. It was my voice, and at the same time it wasn't. Sure I'm afraid when I think about dying down here in a dark well.

Goodbye, then, poor Mr. Wind-Up Bird, said May Kasahara. Sorry, theres nothing I can do for you. I'm far, far away.

Goodbye, May Kasahara, I said. You looked great in a bikini. May Kasahara's voice was very quiet as she said, Goodbye, poor Mr. Wind-Up Bird. The well cover closed tightly again. The image faded. But nothing happened. The image was not linked to anything. I shouted toward the well mouth, May Kasahara, where are you now when I need you?

The water was up to my throat. Now it was wrapped around my neck like a noose. In anticipation, I was beginning to find it difficult to breathe. My heart, now underwater, was working hard to tick off the time it had remaining. At this rate, I would have another five minutes or so before the water covered my mouth and nose and started filling my lungs. There was no way I could win. I had brought this well back to life, and I would die in its rebirth. It was not a bad way to die, I told myself. The world is full of much worse ways to die.

I closed my eyes and tried to accept my impending death as calmly as I could. I struggled to overcome my fear. At least I was able to leave a few things behind. That was the one small bit of good news. I tried to smile, without much success. I am afraid to die, though, I whispered to myself. These turned out to be my last words. They were not very impressive words, but it was too late to change them. The water was over my mouth now. Then it came to my nose. I stopped breathing. My lungs fought to suck in new air. But there was no more air. There was only lukewarm water.

I was dying. Like all the other people who live in this world.

36 The Story of the Duck People Shadows and Tears (May Kasahara's Point of View: 6)

Hi, again, Mr. Wind-Up Bird.

Hey, are these letters really getting to you?

I mean, I've been writing you tons and tons of letters, and I'm really starting to wonder if they ever reach you. The address I've been using is a kind of kind of thing, and I don't put a return address on the envelope, so maybe they're just piling up on the little letter lost shelf in a post office somewhere, unread and all covered with dust. Up to now, I figured: OK, if they're not getting through, they're not getting through, so what? I've been scratching away at these things, but the important thing was for me to put my thoughts down on paper. Its easy for me to write if I think I'm writing to you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, I don't know why. Hey, yeah, why is that?

But this letter is one I really want you to read. I hope and pray it gets to you.

Now I'm going to write about the duck people. Yes, I know this is the first time I've mentioned them, but here goes.

I told you before how this factory I'm working in has this huge property, with woods and a pond and stuff. Its great for taking walks. The ponds a pretty big one, and thats where the duck people live, maybe twelve birds altogether. I don't know how their family is organized. I suppose they've got their internal arrangements, with some members getting along better with some and not so well with others, but I've never seen them fight.

Its December, so ice has started to form on the pond, but not such thick ice. Even when its cold, theres still enough open water left so the ducks can swim around a little bit. When its cold enough for thick ice, I'm told, some of the girls cone here to ice-skate. Then the duck people (yes, I know its a weird expression, but I've gotten in the habit of using it, so it just comes out) will have to go somewhere else. I don't like ice-skating, so I'm kind of hoping there wont be any ice, but I don't think its going to do any good. I mean, it gets really cold in this part of the country, so as long as they go on living here, the duck people are going to have to resign themselves to it.

I come here every weekend these days and kill time watching the duck people. When I'm doing that, two or three hours can go by before I know it. I go out in the cold, armed head to foot like some kind of polar-bear hunter: tights, hat, scarf, boots, fur-trimmed coat. And I spend hours sitting on a rock all by myself, spacing out, watching the duck people. Sometimes I feed them old bread. Of course, theres nobody else here with the time to do such crazy things. You may not know this, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, but ducks are very pleasant people to spend time with. I never get tired of watching them. I'll never understand why everybody else bothers to go somewhere way far away and pay good money to see some stupid movie instead of enjoying these people. Like sometimes they'll come flapping through the air and land on the ice, but their feet slide and they fall over. Its like a TV comedy! They make me laugh even with nobody else around. Of course, they're not clowning around trying to make me laugh. They're doing their best to live very serious lives, and they just happen to fall down sometimes. I think thats neat.

The duck people have these flat orange feet that are really cute, like they're wearing little kids rain boots, but they're not made for walking on ice, I guess, because I see them slipping and sliding all over the place, and some even fall on their bottoms. They must not have nonslip treads. So winter is not a really fun season for the duck people, probably. I wonder what they think, deep down inside, about ice and stuff. I bet they don't hate it all that much. It just seems that way to me from watching them. They look like they're living happily enough, even if its winter, probably just grumbling to themselves, Ice again? Oh, well... That's another thing I really like about the duck people.

The pond is in the middle of the woods, far from everything. Nobody (but me, of course!) bothers to walk all the way over here at this time of year, except on unusually warm days. I walk down the path through the woods, and my boots crunch on the ice thats left from a recent snowfall. I see lots of birds all around. When I've got my collar up and my scarf wrapped round and round under my chin, and my breath makes white puffs in the air, and I've got a chunk of bread in my pocket, and I'm walking down the path in the woods, thinking about the duck people, I get this really warm, happy feeling, and it hits me that I haven't felt happy like this for a long, long time.

OK, thats enough about the duck people.

To tell you the truth, I woke up an hour ago from a dream about you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, and I've been sitting here, writing you this letter. Right now its (I look at my clock) exactly 2:18 a.m. I got into bed just before ten o'clock, as usual, said Good night, everybody to the duck people, and fell fast asleep, but then, a little while ago, I woke up-bang! Actually, I'm not sure it was a dream. I mean, I don't remember anything I was dreaming about. Maybe I wasn't dreaming. But whatever it was, J heard your voice right next to my ear. You were calling to me over and over in this really loud voice. That's what shocked me awake.

The room wasn't dark when I opened my eyes. Moonlight was pouring through the window. This great big moon like a stainless-steel tray was hanging over the hill. It was so huge, it looked as if I could have reached out and written something on it. And the light coming in the window looked like a big, white pool of water. I sat up in bed, racking my brains, trying to figure out what had just happened. Why had you been calling my name in such a sharp, clear voice? My heart kept pounding for the longest time. If I had been in my own house, I would have gotten dressed-even if it was the middle of the night-and run down the alley to your house, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. But out here, a million miles away in the mountains, I couldn't run anywhere, right?

So then you know what I did?

I got naked. Ahem. Don't ask me why. I'm really not sure myself. So just be quiet and listen to the rest. Anyhow, I took every stitch of clothing off and got out of bed. And I got down on my knees on the floor in the white moonlight. The heat was off and the room must have been cold, but I didn't feel cold. There was some kind of special something in the moonlight that was coming in the window, and it was wrapping my body in a thin, protective, skintight film. At least thats how I felt. I just stayed there naked for a while, spacing out, but then I took turns holding different parts of my body out to be bathed in the moonlight. I don't know, it just seemed like the most natural thing to do. The moonlight was so absolutely, in- credibly beautiful that I couldn't not do it. My head and shoulders and arms and breasts and tummy and legs and bottom and, you know, around there: one after another, I dipped them in the moonlight, like taking a bath.

If somebody had seen me from outside, they'd have thought it was very, very strange. I must have looked like some kind of full-moon pervert going absolutely bonkers in the moonlight. But nobody saw me, of course. Though, come to think of it, maybe that boy on the motorcycle was somewhere, looking at me. But thats OK. Hes dead. If he wanted to look, and if he'd be satisfied with that, Id be glad to let him see me.

But anyhow, nobody was looking at me. I was doing it all alone in the moonlight. And every once in a while, Id close my eyes and think about the duck people, who were probably sleeping near the pond somewhere. Id think about the warm, happy feeling that the duck people and I had created together in the daytime. Because, finally, the duck people are an important kind of magic kind of protective amulet kind of thing for me.

I stayed kneeling there for a long time after that, just kneeling all alone, all naked, in the moonlight. The light gave my skin a magical color, and it threw a sharp black shadow of my body across the floor, all the way to the wall. It didn't look like the shadow of my body, but one that belonged to a much more mature woman. It wasn't a virgin like me, it didn't have my corners and angles but was fuller and rounder, with much bigger breasts and nipples. But it was the shadow that I was making--just stretched out longer, with a different shape. When I moved, it moved. For a while, I tried moving in different ways and watching very, very carefully to see what the connection was between me and my shadow, trying to figure out why it should look so different. But I couldn't figure it out, finally. The more I looked, the stranger it seemed.

Now, here comes the part thats really hard to explain, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. I doubt if I can do it, but here goes.

Well, to make a long story short, all of a sudden I burst into tears. I mean, if it was like in a film scenario or something, it'd go: May Kasahara: Here, with no warning, covers face with hands, wails aloud, collapses in tears. But don't be too shocked. I've been hiding it from you all this time, but in fact, I'm the worlds biggest crybaby. I cry for anything. Its my secret weakness. So for me, the sheer fact that I burst out crying for no reason at all was not such a surprise. Usually, though, I just have myself a little cry, and then I tell myself its time to stop. I cry easily, but I stop just as easily. Tonight, though, I just couldn't stop. The cork popped, and that was that. I didn't know what had started me, so I didn't know how to stop myself. The tears just came gushing out, like blood from a huge wound. I couldn't believe the amount of tears I was producing. I seriously started to worry I might get dehydrated and turn into a mummy if this kept up.

I could actually see and hear my tears dripping down into the white pool of moonlight, where they were sucked in as if they had always been part of the light. As they fell, the tears caught the light of the moon and sparkled like beautiful crystals. Then I noticed that my shadow was crying too, shedding clear, sharp shadow tears. Have you ever seen the shadows of tears, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? They're nothing like ordinary shadows. Nothing at all. They come here from some other, distant world, especially for our hearts. Or maybe not. It struck me then that the tears my shadow was shedding might be the real thing, and the tears that I was shedding were just shadows. You don't get it, I'm sure, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. When a naked seventeen-year-old girl is shedding tears in the moonlight, anything can happen. Its true.

So thats what happened in this room about an hour ago. And now I'm sitting at my desk, writing a letter to you in pencil, Mr. Wind-Up Bird (with my clothes on, of course!).

Bye-bye, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. I don't quite know how to put this, but the duck people in the woods and I are praying for you to be warm and happy. If anything happens to you, don't hesitate to call me out loud again.

Good night.

37 Two Different Kinds of News The Thing That Disappeared

Cinnamon carried you here, said Nutmeg.

The first thing that came to me when I woke was pain, in different, twisted forms. The knife wound gave me pain, and all the joints and bones and muscles in my body gave me pain. Different parts of my body must have slammed up against things as I fled through the darkness. And yet the form of each of these different pains was still not quite right. They were somewhere close to pain, but they could not exactly be called pain.

Next I realized that I was stretched out on the fitting room sofa, wearing navy-blue pajamas that I had never seen before and covered with a blanket. The curtains were open, and bright morning sun streamed through the window. I guessed it must be around ten o'clock.

There was fresh air here, and time that moved forward, but why such things existed I could not quite comprehend.

Cinnamon brought you here, said Nutmeg. Your wounds are not that bad. The one on your shoulder is fairly deep, but it didn't hit any major blood vessels, fortunately. The ones on your face are just scrapes. Cinnamon used a needle and thread to sew up the others so you wont have scars. Hes good at that. You can take the stitches out yourself in a few days or have a doctor do it.

I tried to speak, but I couldn't make my voice work. All I could do was inhale and let the air out as a rasping sound.

You'd better not try to move or talk yet, said Nutmeg. She was sitting on a nearby chair with her legs crossed. Cinnamon says you were in the well too long- it was a very close call.

But don't ask me what happened. I don't know a thing. I got a call in the middle of the night, phoned for a taxi, and flew over here. The details of what went on before that I just don't know. Your clothes were soaking wet and bloody. We threw them away.

Nutmeg was dressed more simply than usual, as if she had indeed rushed out of the house.

She wore a cream-colored cashmere sweater over a mans striped shirt, and a wool skirt of olive green, no jewelry, and her hair was tied back. She looked a little tired but otherwise could have been a photo in a catalog. She put a cigarette between her lips and lit it with her gold lighter, making the usual clean, dry click, then inhaling with eyes narrowed. I really had not died, I reassured myself when I heard the sound of the lighter. Cinnamon must have pulled me out of the well in the nick of time.

Cinnamon understands things in a special way, said Nutmeg. And unlike you or me, he is always thinking very deeply about the potential for things to happen. But not even he imagined that water would come back to the well so suddenly. It had simply not been among the many possibilities he had considered. And because of that, you almost lost your life. It was the first time I ever saw that boy panic. She managed a little smile when she said that. He must really like you, she said. I couldn't hear what she said after that. I felt an ache deep behind my eyes, and my eyelids grew heavy. I let them close, and I sank down into darkness as if on an elevator ride.

It took two full days for my body to recover. Nutmeg stayed with me the whole time. I couldn't get up by myself, I couldn't speak, I could hardly eat. The most I could manage was a few sips of orange juice and a few slivers of canned peaches. Nutmeg would go home at night and come back in the morning. Which was fine, because I was out cold all night-and most of the day too. Sleep was obviously what I needed most for my recovery.

I never saw Cinnamon. He seemed to be consciously avoiding me. I would hear his car coming in through the gate whenever he would drop Nutmeg off or pick her up or deliver food or clothing- hear that special deep rumble that Porsche engines make, since he had stopped using the Mercedes- but he himself would not come inside. He would hand things to Nutmeg at the front door, then leave.

Well be getting rid of this place soon, Nutmeg said to me. I'll have to take care of the women again myself. Oh, well. I guess its my fate. I'll just have to keep going until I'm all used up-empty. And you: you probably wont be having anything to do with us anymore. When this is all over and you're well again, you'd better forget about us as soon as you can. Because ... Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you. About your brother-in-law. Noboru Wataya.

Nutmeg brought a newspaper from the next room and unfolded it on the table. Cinnamon brought this a little while ago. Your brother-in-law collapsed last night in Nagasaki. They took him to a hospital there, but he's been unconscious ever since. They don't know if hell recover.

Nagasaki? I could hardly comprehend what she was saying. I wanted to speak, but the words would not come out. Noboru Wataya should have collapsed in Akasaka, not Nagasaki. Why Nagasaki?

He gave a speech in Nagasaki, Nutmeg continued, and he was having dinner with the organizers afterward, when he suddenly went limp. They took him to a nearby hospital. They think it was some kind of stroke-probably some congenital weakness in a blood vessel in his brain. The paper says hell be bedridden for some time, that even if he regains consciousness he probably wont be able to speak, so thats probably the end of his political career. What a shame: he was so young. I'll leave the paper here. You can read it when you're feeling better.

It took me a while to absorb these facts as facts. The images from the TV news I had seen in the hotel lobby were still too vividly burned into my brain- Noboru Wataya's office in Akasaka, the police all over the place, the front door of the hospital, the reporter grim, his voice tense. Little by little, though, I was able to convince myself that what I had seen was news that existed only in the other world. I had not, in actuality, in this world, beaten Noboru Wataya with a baseball bat. I would not, in actuality, be investigated by the police or arrested for the crime. He had collapsed in public, in full view, from a stroke. There was no crime involved, no possibility of a crime. This knowledge came to me as a great relief. After all, the assailant described on television had borne a startling resemblance to me, and I had had absolutely no alibi.

There had to be some connection between my having beaten someone to death in the other world and Noboru Wataya's collapse. I clearly killed something inside him or something powerfully linked with him. He might have sensed that it was coming. What I had done, though, had failed to take Noboru Wataya's life. He had managed to survive on the brink of death. I should have pushed him over the brink. What would happen to Kumiko now? Would she be unable to break free while he was still alive? Would he continue to cast his spell over her from his unconscious darkness?

That was as far as my thoughts would take me. My own consciousness gradually slipped away, until I closed my eyes in sleep. I had a tense, fragmentary dream. Creta Kano was holding a baby to her breast. I could not see the baby's face. Creta Kano's hair was short, and she wore no makeup. She told me that the baby's name was Corsica and that half the baby's father was me, while the other half was Lieutenant Mamiya. She had not gone to Crete, she said, but had remained in Japan to bear and raise the child. She had only recently been able to find a new name for the baby, and now she was living a peaceful life growing vegetables in the hills of Hiroshima with Lieutenant Mamiya. None of this came as a surprise to me. In my dream, at least, I had foreseen it all.

How has Malta Kano been since I last saw her? I asked.

Creta Kano did not reply to this. Instead, she gave me a sad look, and then she disappeared.

On the morning of the third day, I was finally able to get out of bed by myself. Walking was still too hard for me, but I slowly regained the ability to speak. Nutmeg made me rice gruel. I ate that and a little fruit.

How is the cat doing? I asked her. This had been a matter of concern to me for some time.

Don't worry, Cinnamon is looking after him. He goes to your house every day to feed him and change his water. The only thing you have to worry about is yourself.

When are you going to get rid of this place?

As soon as we can. Probably sometime next month. I think you'll be seeing a little money out of it too. Well probably have to let it go for something less than we paid for it, so you wont get much, but your share should be a good percentage of what you paid on the mortgage. That should support you for a while. So you don't have to worry too much about money. You deserve it, after all: you worked hard here.

Is this house going to be torn down?

Probably. And they'll probably fill in the well again. Which seems like a waste now that its producing water again, but nobody wants a big, old-fashioned well like that these days. They usually just put in a pipe and an electric pump. That's a lot more convenient, and it takes up less space.

I don't suppose this place is jinxed anymore, I said. Its probably just an ordinary piece of property again, not the hanging house.

You may be right, said Nutmeg. She hesitated, then bit her lip. But that has nothing to do with me or with you anymore. Right? In any case, the important thing is for you to rest now and not bother with things that don't really matter. It will take a while until you're fully recovered.

Nutmeg showed me the article on Noboru Wataya in the morning paper she had brought with her. It was a small piece. Still unconscious, Noboru Wataya had been transported from Nagasaki to a large university hospital in Tokyo, where he was in intensive care, his condition unchanged. The report said nothing more than that. What crossed my mind at that point, of course, was Kumiko. Where could she be? I had to get back home. But I still lacked the strength to walk such a distance.

I made it as far as the bathroom sink late the next morning and saw myself in the mirror for the first time in three days. I looked terrible- less like a tired living being than a well- preserved corpse. As Nutmeg had said, the cut on my cheek had been sewn together with professional-looking stitches, the edges of the wound held in good alignment by white thread.

It was at least an inch in length but not very deep. It pulled somewhat if I tried to make a face, but there was little pain. I brushed my teeth and used an electric shaver on my beard. I couldn't trust myself to handle a razor yet. As the whiskers came off, I could hardly believe what I was seeing in the mirror. I set the shaver down and took a good look. The mark was gone. The man had cut my right cheek. Exactly where the mark had been. The cut was certainly there, but the mark was gone. It had disappeared from my cheek without a trace.

During the night of the fifth day, I heard the faint sound of sleigh bells again. It was a little after two in the morning. I got up from the sofa, slipped a cardigan over my pajamas, and left the fitting room. Passing through the kitchen, I went to Cinnamon's small office and peeked inside. Cinnamon was calling to me again from inside the computer. I sat down at the desk and read the message on the screen.

You have now gained access to the program The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Choose a document (1-17).

I clicked on #17, and a document opened up before me.

38 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle #17 (Kumiko's Letter)

There are many things I have to tell you. To tell them all would probably take a very long time-maybe years. I should have opened up to you long ago, confessed everything to you honestly, but unfortunately, I lacked the courage to do so. And I still harbored the groundless hope that things would not turn out so badly. The result has been this nightmare for us both.

Its all my fault. But it is also too late for explanations. We don't have enough time for that.

So what I want to do here is tell you the most important thing first.

And that is, I have to kill my brother, Noboru Wataya. I am going to go now to the hospital room where he is sleeping, to pull the plug on his life-support system. As his sister, I will be allowed to stay the night with him in place of a nurse. It will take a while before any- one notices that he has been disconnected. I had the doctor show me yesterday how it works. I intend to wait until I am sure he is dead, and then I will give myself up to the police. I will tell them I did what I thought was right but offer no more explanation than that. I will probably be arrested on the spot and tried for murder. The media will leap in, and people will offer opinions on death with dignity and other such matters. But I will keep silent. I will offer no explanation or defense. There is only one truth in all this, and that is that I wanted to end the life of a single human being, Noboru Wataya. They will probably lock me up, but the prospect doesn't frighten me. I have already been through the worst.

If it hadn't been for you, I would have lost my mind long ago. I would have handed myself over, vacant, to someone else and fallen to a point beyond hope of recovery. My brother, Noboru Wataya, did exactly that to my sister many years ago, and she ended up killing herself. He defiled us both. Strictly speaking, he did not defile our bodies. What he did was even worse than that.

The freedom to do anything at all was taken from me, and I shut myself up in a dark room, alone. No one chained me down or set a guard to watch over me, but I could not have escaped. My brother held me with yet stronger chains and guards- chains and guards that were myself. I was the chain that bit into my ankle, and I was the ruthless guard that never slept. Inside me, of course, there was a self that wanted to escape, but at the same time there was a cowardly, debauched self that had given up all hope of ever being able to flee from there, and the first self could never dominate the second because I had been so defiled in mind and body. I had lost the right to go back to you-not just because I had been defiled by my brother, Noboru Wataya, but because, even before that, I had defiled myself irreparably.

I told you in my letter that I had slept with a man, but in that letter I was not telling the truth. I must confess the truth to you here. I did not sleep with just one man. I slept with many other men. Too many to count. I myself have no idea what caused me to do such a thing. Looking back upon it now, I think it may have been my brothers influence. He may have opened some kind of drawer inside me, taken out some kind of incomprehensible something, and made me give myself to one man after another. My brother had that kind of power, and as much as I hate to acknowledge it, the two of us were surely tied together in some dark place.

In any case, by the time my brother came to me, I had already defiled myself beyond all cleansing. In the end, I even contracted a venereal disease. In spite of all this, as I mentioned in my letter, I was never able to feel at the time that I was wronging you in any way. What I was doing seemed entirely natural to me-though I can only imagine that it was not the real me that felt that way. Could this be true, though? Is the answer really so simple? And if so, what, then, is the real me? Do I have any sound basis for concluding that the me who is now writing this letter is the real me? I was never able to believe that firmly in my self, nor am I able to today.

I often used to dream of you- vivid dreams with clear-cut stories. In these dreams, you were always searching desperately for me. We were in a kind of labyrinth, and you would come almost up to where I was standing Take one more step! I'm right here! I wanted to shout, and if only you would find me and take me in your arms, the nightmare would end and everything would go back to the way it was. But I was never able to produce that shout. And you would miss me in the darkness and go straight ahead past me and disappear. It was always like that. But still, those dreams helped and encouraged me. At least I still had the power to dream, I knew. My brother couldn't prevent me from doing that. I was able to sense that you were doing everything in your power to draw nearer to me. Maybe someday you would find me, and hold me, and sweep away the filth that was clinging to me, and take me away from that place forever. Maybe you would smash the curse and set the seal so that the real me would never have to leave again. That was how I was able to keep a tiny flame of hope alive in that cold, dark place with no exit-how I was able to preserve the slightest remnant of my own voice.

I received the password for access to this computer this afternoon. Someone sent it to me special delivery. I am sending you this message from the machine in my brothers office. I hope it reaches you.

I have run out of time. The taxi is waiting for me outside. I have to leave for the hospital now, to kill my brother and take my punishment. Strange, I no longer hate my brother. I am calm with the thought that I will have to obliterate his life from this world. I have to do it for his sake too. And to give my own life meaning.

Take good care of the cat. I cant tell you how happy I am that he is back. You say his name is Mackerel? I like that. He was always a symbol of something good that grew up between us. We should not have lost him when we did.

I cant write anymore now. Goodbye.

39 Goodbye

I'm so sorry I couldn't show you the duck people, Mr. Wind-Up Bird!

May Kasahara looked truly sorry.

She and I were sitting by the pond, looking at its thick cap of ice. It was a big pond, with thousands of little cuts on its surface from ice-skate blades. May Kasahara had taken off from work especially for me this Monday morning. I had intended to visit her on Sunday, but a train accident had made me a day late. May Kasahara had wrapped herself in a fur-lined coat.

Her bright-blue woolen hat bore a geometrical design in white yarn and was topped with a little pom-pom. She had knitted the hat herself, and she said she would make one just like it for me before next winter. Her cheeks were red, her eyes as bright and clear as the surrounding air, which made me very happy: she was only seventeen, after all-the potential was there for almost limitless change.

The duck people all moved somewhere else after the pond froze over. I'm sure you would have loved them. Come back in the spring, OK? I'll introduce you.

I smiled. I was wearing a duffle coat that was not quite warm enough, with a scarf wrapped up to my cheeks and my hands thrust in my pockets. A deep chill ran through the forest. Hard snow coated the ground. My sneakers were sliding all over the place. I should have bought some kind of nonslip boots for this trip.

So you're going to stay here a while longer? I asked.

I think so. I might want to go back to school after enough time goes by. Or I might not. I don't know. I might just get married- no, not really. She smiled with a white puff of breath.

But anyhow, I'll stay for now. I need more time to think. About what I want to do, where I want to go. I want to take time and think about those things.

I nodded. Maybe thats what you really ought to do, I said.

Tell me, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, did you think about those kinds of things when you were my age?

Hmm. Maybe not. I must have thought about them a little bit, but I really don't remember thinking about things as seriously as you do. I guess I just figured if I went on living in the usual way, things would kind of work themselves out all right. But they didn't, did they? Unfortunately.

May Kasahara looked me in the eye, a calm expression on her face. Then she laid her gloved hands on her lap, one atop the other.

So, finally, they wouldn't let Kumiko out of jail? she asked.

She refused to be let out, I said. She figured shed be mobbed. Better to stay in jail, where she could have peace and quiet. Shes not even seeing me. She doesn't want to see anyone until everything is settled.

When does the trial start?

Sometime in the spring. Kumiko is pleading guilty. Shes going to accept the verdict, whatever it is. It shouldn't be a long trial, and theres a good possibility of a suspended sentence- or, at worst, a light one.

May Kasahara picked up a stone at her feet and threw it toward the middle of the pond. It clattered across the ice to the other side.

And you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird-you'll stay home and wait for Kumiko again? I nodded. That's good ... or is it? I made my own big white cloud in the cold air. I don't know-I guess its how we worked things out. It could have been a whole lot worse, I told myself. Far off in the woods that surrounded the pond, a bird cried. I looked up and scanned the area, but there was nothing more to hear. Nothing to see. There was only the dry, hollow sound of a woodpecker drilling a hole in a tree trunk.

If Kumiko and I have a child, I'm thinking of naming it Corsica, I said. What a neat name! said May Kasahara. As the two of us walked through the woods side by side, May Kasahara took off her right glove and put her hand in my pocket. This reminded me of Kumiko. She often used to do the same thing when we walked together in the winter, so we could share a pocket on a cold day. I held May Kasahara's hand in my pocket. It was a small hand, and warm as a sequestered soul.

You know, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, everybody's going to think were lovers. You may be right. So tell me, did you read all my letters? Your letters? I had no idea what she was talking about. Sorry, but I've never gotten a single letter from you. I got your address and phone number from your mother. Which wasn't easy: I had to stretch the truth quite a bit.

Oh, no! Where'd they all go? I must have written you five hundred letters! May Kasahara looked up to the heavens.

Late that afternoon, May Kasahara saw me all the way to the station. We took a bus into town, ate pizza at a restaurant near the station, and waited for the little three-car diesel train that finally pulled in. Two or three people stood around the big wood stove that glowed red in the waiting room, but the two of us stayed out on the platform in the cold. A clear, hard-edged winter moon hung frozen in the sky. It was a young moon, with a sharp curve like a Chinese sword. Beneath that moon, May Kasahara stood on tiptoe and kissed me on the cheek. I could feel her cold, thin lips touch me where my mark had been.

Goodbye, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, she murmured. Thanks for coming all the way out here to see me.

Hands thrust deep in my pockets, I looked into her eyes. I didn't know what to say.

When the train came, she slipped her hat off, took one step back, and said to me, If anything ever happens to you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, just call out to me in a really loud voice, OK? To me and the duck people.

Goodbye, May Kasahara, I said.

The arc of the moon stayed over my head long after the train had left the station, appearing and disappearing each time the train rounded a curve. I kept my eyes on the moon, and whenever that was lost to sight, I watched the lights of the little towns as they went past the window. I thought of May Kasahara, with her blue wool hat, alone on the bus taking her back to her factory in the hills. Then I thought of the duck people, asleep in the grassy shadows somewhere. And finally, I thought of the world that I was heading back to.

Goodbye, May Kasahara, I said. Goodbye, May Kasahara: may there always be something watching over you.

I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. But it was not until much later that I was able to get any real sleep. In a place far away from anyone or anywhere, I drifted off for a moment.