The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (59 page)

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 building’s 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 nameplates
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 men’s 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 coatrack, 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 office’s 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 man’s 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 man’s 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 woman’s 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 man’s 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 woman’s 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 can’t 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.