The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (94 page)

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 truckdriver 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 truckdriver 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 truckdriver, 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 reporter’s 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 Women’s 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 Women’s 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 announcer’s 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 moment’s 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 man’s 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.”