The neighborhood looked a little different to me. The people I passed on the street all had an unnatural, even artificial, look to them. I examined each face as I walked by, and I wondered what kind of people these could be. What kind of houses did they live in? What kind of families did they have? What kind of lives did they lead? Did they sleep with women other than their wives, or men other than their husbands? Were they happy? Did they know how unnatural and artificial they looked?
Signs of the morning’s accident were still fresh outside the cleaner’s: on the ground, the police chalk line; nearby, a few shoppers discussing the accident, with grave expressions on their faces. Inside, the cleaner’s shop looked the same as ever. The same black boom box played the same kind of mood music, while in back an old-fashioned air conditioner roared along and clouds of steam rose from the iron to the ceiling. The song was “Ebb Tide.” Robert Maxwell, harp. I thought how wonderful it would be if I could go to the ocean. I imagined the smell of the beach and the sound of waves breaking on the shore. Seagulls. Ice-cold cans of beer.
To the owner, I said only that I had forgotten my receipt. “I’m pretty sure I brought them in last Friday or Saturday: a blouse and skirt.”
“Okada … Okada …,” he said, and flipped through the pages of a college notebook. “Sure, here it is. One blouse, one skirt. But Mrs. Okada picked them up already.”
“She did?” I asked, taken aback.
“Yesterday morning. I clearly remember handing them to her myself. I figured she was on her way to work. Brought the receipt in too.”
I had no words to answer him with. I could only stare at him.
“Ask the missus,” he said. “She’s got ’em, no mistake.” He took a cigarette from the box on the register, put it in his mouth, and lit it with a lighter.
“Yesterday morning?” I asked. “Not evening?”
“Morning for sure. Eight o’clock. Your wife was the first customer of the day. I wouldn’t forget something like that. Hey, when your very first customer is a young woman, it puts you in a good mood, know what I mean?”
I was unable to fake a smile for him, and the voice that came out of me didn’t sound like my own. “Oh, well, I guess that takes care of that. Sorry, I didn’t know she picked them up.”
He nodded and glanced at me, crushed out the cigarette, from which he had taken no more than two or three puffs, and went back to his ironing. He seemed to have become interested in me, as if he wanted to tell me something but decided in the end to say nothing. And I, meanwhile, had things I wanted to ask him. How had Kumiko looked when she came for her cleaning? What had she been carrying? But I was confused and very thirsty. What I most wanted was to sit down somewhere and have a cold drink. That was the only way I would ever be able to think about anything again, I felt.
I went straight from the cleaner’s to the coffeehouse a few doors away and ordered a glass of iced tea. The place was cool inside, and I was the only customer. Small wall-mounted speakers were playing an orchestrated version of the Beatles’ “Eight Days a Week.” I thought about the seashore again. I imagined myself barefoot and moving along the beach at the water’s edge. The sand was burning hot, and the wind carried the heavy smell of the tide. I inhaled deeply and looked up at the sky. Stretching out my hands, palms upward, I could feel the summer sun burning into them. Soon a cold wave washed over my feet.
Viewed from any angle, it was odd for Kumiko to have picked things up from the cleaner’s on her way to work. For one thing, she would have had to squeeze onto a jam-packed commuter train holding freshly pressed clothing on hangers. Then she would have had to do it again on the way home. Not only would they be something extra to carry, but the cleaner’s careful work would have been reduced to a mass of wrinkles. Sensitive as Kumiko was about such things, I couldn’t imagine she would have done something so pointless. All she had to do was stop by on the way home from work. Or if she was going to be late, she could have asked me to pick them up. There was only one conceivable explanation: she had known she was not coming home. Blouse and skirt in hand, she had gone off somewhere. That way, she would have at least one change of clothing with her, and anything else she needed she could buy. She had her credit cards and her ATM card and her own bank account. She could go anywhere she wanted.
And she was with someone—a man. There was no other reason for her to leave home, probably.
This was serious. Kumiko had disappeared, leaving behind all her clothes and shoes. She had always enjoyed shopping to add to her wardrobe, to which she devoted considerable care and attention. For her to have abandoned it and left home with little more than the literal clothes on her back would have taken a major act of will. And yet without the slightest hesitation—it seemed to me—she had walked out of the house with nothing more in her hand than a blouse and skirt. No, her clothing was probably the last thing on her mind.
Leaning back in my chair, half listening to the painfully sanitized background music, I imagined Kumiko boarding a crowded commuter train with her clothes on wire hangers in the cleaner’s plastic bags. I recalled the color of the dress she was wearing, the fragrance of the cologne behind her ears, the smooth perfection of her back. I must have been exhausted. If I shut my eyes, I felt, I would float off somewhere else; I would end up in a wholly different place.
No Good News in This Chapter
•
I left the coffeehouse and wandered through the streets. The intense heat of the afternoon began to make me feel sick, even chilled. But the one place I didn’t want to go was home. The thought of waiting alone in that silent house for a phone call that would probably never come I found suffocating.
All I could think to do was go see May Kasahara. I went home, climbed the wall, and made my way down the alley to the back of her house. Leaning against the fence of the vacant house on the other side of the alley, I stared at the garden with its bird sculpture. May would notice me if I stood here like this. Aside from those few times when she was out working for the wig company, she was always at home, keeping watch over the alley from her room or while sunbathing in the yard.
But I saw no sign of May Kasahara. There was not a cloud in the sky. The summer sunlight was roasting the back of my neck. The heavy smell of grass rose from the ground, invading my lungs. I stared at the bird statue and tried to think about the stories my uncle had recently told me of the fates of those who had lived in this house. But all I could think of was the sea, cold and blue. I took several long, deep breaths. I looked at my watch. I was ready to give up for the day, when May Kasahara finally came out. She ambled slowly through her yard to where I stood. She wore denim shorts, a blue aloha shirt, and red thongs. Standing before me, she smiled through her sunglasses.
“Hello there, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. Find your cat—Noboru Wataya?”
“Not yet,” I said. “What took you so long to come out today?”
She thrust her hands into her hip pockets and looked all around, amused. “Look, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, I may have a lot of free time, but I don’t live to stand guard over this alley from morning to night. I have some things to keep me busy. But anyhow, I’m sorry. Were you waiting long?”
“Not so long. I got hot standing out here.”
May Kasahara stared hard at my face, then wrinkled her eyebrows slightly. “What’s wrong, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? You look terrible—like somebody who’s just been dug up out of the ground. Better come over here and rest in the shade for a while.”
She took me by the hand and led me into her yard. There she moved a canvas deck chair into the shade of the oak tree and sat me down on it. The thick green branches cast cool shadows that had the fragrance of life.
“Don’t worry, there’s nobody here, as usual,” she said. “You don’t have to be the least bit concerned. Take your time. Stop thinking and relax.”
“I do have one favor to ask you,” I said.
“Try me,” she said.
“I want you to make a call for me. Instead of me.”
/> Taking out a notepad and pen, I wrote down the number of Kumiko’s office. Then I tore off the page and handed it to her. The little vinyl-covered notepad was warm and damp with sweat. “All I want you to do is call this place and ask if Kumiko Okada is there, and if she’s not, ask if she came to work yesterday.”
May Kasahara took the paper and looked at it, with pursed lips. Then she looked at me. “Fine, I’ll take care of it. You just empty your head out and get horizontal. You are not allowed to move. I’ll be right back.”
Once she was gone, I stretched out and closed my eyes as ordered. I was soaked with sweat from head to foot. Trying to think, I felt a throbbing deep in my head, and I seemed to have a lump of string in the pit of my stomach. Every once in a while, a hint of nausea came over me. The neighborhood was absolutely silent. It suddenly occurred to me that I had not heard the wind-up bird for quite some time. When had I last heard it? Probably four or five days earlier. But my memory was uncertain. By the time I noticed, its cry had been missing too long to tell. Maybe it was a bird that migrated seasonally. Come to think of it, we had started hearing it about a month before. And for a time, the wind-up bird had continued each day to wind the spring of our little world. That had been the wind-up bird’s season.
After ten minutes, May Kasahara came back. She handed me a large glass. Ice clinked inside when I took it. The sound seemed to reach me from a distant world. There were several gates connecting that world with the place where I was, and I could hear the sound because they all just happened to be open at the moment. But this was strictly temporary. If even one of them closed, the sound would no longer reach my ears. “Drink it,” she said. “Lemon juice in water. It’ll clear your head.”
I managed to drink half and returned the glass to her. The cold water passed my throat and made its way down slowly into my body, after which a violent wave of nausea overtook me. The decomposing lump of string in my stomach began to unravel and make its way up to the base of my throat. I closed my eyes and tried to let it pass. With my eyes closed, I saw Kumiko boarding the train, with her blouse and skirt in hand. I thought it might be better to vomit. But I did not vomit. I took several deep breaths until the feeling diminished and disappeared altogether.
“Are you OK?” asked May Kasahara.
“Yeah, I’m OK,” I said.
“I made the call,” she said. “Told them I was a relative. That’s OK, isn’t it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“This person, Kumiko Okada, that’s Mrs. Wind-Up Bird, isn’t it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“They said she didn’t come to work—today or yesterday. Just took off without a word. It’s a real problem for them. She’s not the type to do this kind of thing, they said.”
“It’s true. She’s not the type.”
“She’s been gone since yesterday?”
I nodded.
“Poor Mr. Wind-Up Bird,” she said. She sounded as if she really did feel sorry for me. She put her hand on my forehead. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Not now,” I said. “But thanks.”
“Do you mind if I ask more? Or would you rather I didn’t?”
“Go ahead,” I said. “I’m not sure I can answer, though.”
“Did your wife run away with a man?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Maybe so. It’s possible.”
“But you’ve been living together all this time. How can you not be sure?”
She was right. How could I not be sure?
“Poor Mr. Wind-Up Bird,” she said again. “I wish I had something to say to help you, but I don’t know anything about married life.”
I got out of my chair. The effort required to stand was far greater than I would have imagined. “Thanks for everything. You’ve been a big help. I’ve got to go now. I should be at home in case word comes. Somebody might call.”
“As soon as you get home, take a shower. First thing. OK? Then put on clean clothes. And shave.”
“Shave?” I stroked my jaw. It was true: I had forgotten to shave. The thought hadn’t crossed my mind all morning.
“The little things are important, Mr. Wind-Up Bird,” May Kasahara said, looking into my eyes. “Go home and take a good look in the mirror.”
“I will,” I said.
“Mind if I come over later?”
“Fine,” I said. Then I added: “You’d be a big help.”
May Kasahara nodded in silence.
•
At home, I looked at my face in the mirror. It was true: I looked terrible. I got undressed, showered; gave myself a good shampoo, shaved, brushed my teeth, put aftershave lotion on my face, and went to the mirror again for a close examination. A little better than before, it seemed. My nausea was gone. My head was still a little foggy, though.
I put on short pants and a fresh polo shirt. I sat on the veranda, leaning against a pillar and watching the garden while my hair dried. I tried to put the events of recent days in order. First there was the call from Lieutenant Mamiya. That had been yesterday morning? Yes, no doubt about it: yesterday morning. Then Kumiko had left the house. I had zipped up her dress. Then I had found the cologne box. Then Lieutenant Mamiya had come and told me his strange war stories: how he had been captured by Outer Mongolian troops and thrown into a well. He had left me the keepsake from Mr. Honda. An empty box. Then Kumiko had failed to come home. She had picked up her cleaning that morning by the station and afterward just disappeared somewhere. Without a word to her company. So that was what had happened yesterday.
I could hardly believe that all that had happened in the course of a single day. It was too much for one day.
As I mulled these things over, I began to feel incredibly sleepy. This was not an ordinary kind of sleepiness. It was an intense, even violent, sleepiness. Sleep was stripping me of consciousness the way the clothes might be stripped from the body of an unresisting person. I went to the bedroom without thinking, took everything off but my underwear, and got in bed. I tried to look at the clock on the night table, but I couldn’t even turn my head sideways. I closed my eyes and fell instantly into a deep, bottomless sleep.
•
In my sleep, I was zipping up Kumiko’s dress. I could see her smooth white back. But by the time I had the zipper to the top, I realized it was not Kumiko but Creta Kano. She and I were the only ones in the room.
It was the same room as in the last dream: a room in the same hotel suite. On the table was a bottle of Cutty Sark and two glasses. There was also a stainless-steel ice bucket, full of ice. In the corridor outside, someone was passing by, speaking in a loud voice. I couldn’t catch the words, which seemed to be in a foreign language. An unlighted chandelier hung from the ceiling. The only illumination in this murky room came from lamps mounted on the wall. Again the windows had thick curtains that were closed tight.
Creta Kano was wearing a summer dress of Kumiko’s: pale blue, with an openwork pattern of birds. The skirt came to just above her knees. As always, her makeup was in the Jacqueline Kennedy style. On her left wrist she wore a matched pair of bracelets.
“How did you get that dress?” I asked. “Is it yours?”
Creta Kano looked at me and shook her head. When she did this, the curled tips of her hair moved in a pleasant way. “No, it is not mine,” she said. “I’m borrowing it. But don’t worry, Mr. Okada, this is not causing anyone any difficulty.”
“Where are we?” I asked.
Creta Kano didn’t answer. As before, I was sitting on the edge of the bed. I wore a suit and my polka-dot tie.
“You don’t have to think about a thing, Mr. Okada,” said Creta Kano. “There is nothing to worry about. Everything is going to be fine.”
And again, as before, she unzipped my fly, took out my penis, and put it in her mouth. The one thing different from before was that she did not take off her own clothing. She wore Kumiko’s dress the whole time. I tried to move, but it felt as if my body were tied down by invisible threads. I felt
myself growing big and hard inside her mouth.
I saw her fake eyelashes and curled hair tips moving. Her bracelets made a dry sound against each other. Her tongue was long and soft and seemed to wrap itself around me. Just as I was about to come, she suddenly moved away and began slowly to undress me. She took off my jacket, my tie, my pants, my shirt, my underwear, and made me lie down on the bed. Her own clothes she kept on, though. She sat on the bed, took my hand, and brought it under her dress. She was not wearing panties. My hand felt the warmth of her vagina. It was deep, warm, and very wet. My fingers were all but sucked inside.
“Won’t Noboru Wataya be here any minute?” I asked. “Weren’t you expecting to see him here?”
Instead of answering, Creta Kano touched my forehead. “You don’t have to think, Mr. Okada. We’ll take care of all that. Leave everything to us.”
“To us?” I asked, but there was no reply.
Then Creta Kano mounted me and used her hand to slip me inside her. Once she had me deep inside, she began a slow rotation of her hips. As she moved, the edges of the pale-blue dress caressed my naked stomach and thighs. With the skirts of the dress spread out around her, Creta Kano, riding atop me, looked like a soft, gigantic mushroom that had silently poked its face up through the dead leaves on the ground and opened under the sheltering wings of night. Her vagina felt warm and at the same time cold. It tried to envelop me, to draw me in, and at the same time to press me out. My erection grew larger and harder. I felt I was about to burst wide open. It was the strangest sensation, something that went beyond simple sexual pleasure. It felt as if something inside her, something special inside her, were slowly working its way through my organ into me.
With her eyes closed and her chin lifted slightly, Creta Kano rocked quietly forward and back as if she were dreaming. I could see her chest rising and falling with each breath beneath the dress. A few hairs had come loose and hung over her forehead. I imagined myself floating alone in the middle of a vast sea. I closed my eyes and listened, expecting to hear the sound of little waves hitting my face. My body was bathed in lukewarm ocean water. I sensed the gradual flow of the tide. It was carrying me away. I decided to do as Creta Kano had said and not think about anything. I closed my eyes, let the strength go out of my limbs, and gave myself up to the current.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Page 23