Hear the Wind Sing

8

I woke up at six in the morning, probably because I was thirsty. Waking up in someone else’s house, I always feel like I’m in someone else’s body with someone else’s soul stuffed inside. Eventually collecting myself, I rose from the narrow bed, and from the sink next to the door, like a camel, I drank glass after glass of water before returning to bed. From the open window, I could see just a tiny sliver of the ocean. The sunlight glimmered above the tiny waves, and I gazed upon the who-knowshow-many rusty freighters going nowhere in particular. It looked like it was going to be a hot day. All the nearby houses were sleeping quietly, and every once in a while the squeaking of the trains on the rails could be heard, and I thought I detected a faint trace of a radio playing the melody for morning calisthenics.

Still naked, I was leaning against the bed and, after lighting a cigarette, I let my eyes wander over to the girl sleeping next to me. From the southward-facing window, rays of sunlight illuminated the full spread of her body. She was sleeping with her bedsheets pushed down to below her knees. Occasionally, she would struggle when taking a breath, and her wellshaped breasts would jiggle up and down. Her body was well tanned, but over time, the dark color had begun to change, and with the clear tanlines of her swimsuit leaving those areas looking strangely white, she looked like her flesh was decaying.

Ten whole minutes after finishing my cigarette, I made an attempt to remember the girl’s name, but it was useless. First off, I couldn’t even remember if I’d known her name to begin with. I gave up, yawned, then went back to gazing at her body. She was a little younger than twenty, and she was a little on the slim side. I spread out my fingers and measured her from head to toe. She was eight handspans long, with a remainder of a thumb. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 158 centimeters, I’d say.

Under her right breast was a birthmark the size of a nickel, and on her abdomen a thin happy trail of pubic hair had sprung up like weeds along a river. As an added bonus, she only had four fingers on her left hand.