The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (3 page)

I wore a T-shirt, thin cotton pants, and tennis shoes, but walking in the summer sun, I could feel a light film of sweat forming under my arms and in the hollow of my chest. The T-shirt and pants had been packed away in a box crammed with summer clothing until I pulled them out that morning, the sharp smell of mothballs penetrating my nostrils.

The houses that lined the alley fell into two distinct categories: older houses and those built more recently. As a group, the newer ones were smaller, with smaller yards to match. Their clothes-drying poles often protruded into the alley, making it necessary for me to thread my way through the occasional screen of towels and sheets and undershirts. Over some back walls came the clear sound of television sets and flushing toilets, and the smell of curry cooking.

The older houses, by contrast, gave hardly any sense of life. These were screened off by well-placed shrubs and hedges, between which I caught glimpses of manicured gardens.

An old, brown, withered Christmas tree stood in the corner of one garden. Another had become the dumping ground for every toy known to man, the apparent leavings of several childhoods. There were tricycles and toss rings and plastic swords and rubber balls and tortoise dolls and little baseball bats. One garden had a basketball hoop, and another had fine lawn chairs surrounding a ceramic table. The white chairs were caked in dirt, as if they had not been used for some months or even years. The tabletop was coated with lavender magnolia petals, beaten down by the rain.

I had a clear view of one living room through an aluminum storm door. It had a matching leather sofa and chairs, a large TV, a sideboard (atop which sat a tropical-fish tank and two trophies of some kind), and a decorative floor lamp. The room looked like the set of a TV drama. A huge doghouse occupied a large part of another garden, but there was no sign of the dog itself, and the house’s door stood open. The screen of the doghouse door bulged outward, as if someone had been leaning against it for months at a time.

The vacant house that Kumiko had told me about lay just beyond the place with the huge doghouse. One glance was all I needed to see that it was empty—and had been for some time. It was a fairly new two-story
house, yet its wooden storm shutters showed signs of severe aging, and the railings outside the second-story windows were caked with rust. The house had a cozy little garden, in which, to be sure, a stone statue of a bird stood. The statue rested on a base that came to chest height and was surrounded by a thick growth of weeds. Tall fronds of goldenrod were almost touching the bird’s feet. The bird—I had no idea what kind of bird it was supposed to be—had its wings open as if it wanted to escape from this unpleasant place as soon as possible. Aside from the statue, the garden had no decorative features. A pile of aging plastic lawn chairs stood against the house, and beside them an azalea bush displayed its bright-red blossoms, their color strangely unreal. Weeds made up the rest.

I leaned against the chest-high chain-link fence for a while, contemplating the garden. It should have been a paradise for cats, but there was no sign of cats here now. Perched on the roof’s TV antenna, a single pigeon lent its monotonous cries to the scene. The stone bird’s shadow fell on the surrounding undergrowth, breaking apart.

I took a lemon drop from my pocket, unwrapped it, and popped it into my mouth. I had taken my resignation from the firm as an opportunity to quit smoking, but now I was never without a pack of lemon drops. Kumiko said I was addicted to them and warned me that I’d soon have a mouthful of cavities, but I had to have my lemon drops. While I stood there looking at the garden, the pigeon on the TV antenna kept up its regular cooing, like some clerk stamping numbers on a sheaf of bills. I don’t know how long I stayed there, leaning against the fence, but I remember spitting my lemon drop on the ground when, half melted, it filled my mouth with its sticky sweetness. I had just shifted my gaze to the shadow of the stone bird when I sensed that someone was calling to me from behind.

I turned, to see a girl standing in the garden on the other side of the alley. She was small and had her hair in a ponytail. She wore dark sunglasses with amber frames, and a light-blue sleeveless T-shirt. The rainy season had barely ended, and yet she had already managed to give her slender arms a nice, smooth tan. She had one hand jammed into the pocket of her short pants. The other rested on a waist-high bamboo gate, which could not have been providing much support. Only three feet—maybe four—separated us.

“Hot,” she said to me.

“Yeah, right,” I answered.

After this brief exchange of views, she stood there looking at me.
Then she took a box of Hope regulars from her pants pocket, drew out a cigarette, and put it between her lips. She had a small mouth, the upper lip turned slightly upward. She struck a match and lit her cigarette. When she inclined her head to one side, her hair swung away to reveal a beautifully shaped ear, smooth as if freshly made, its edge aglow with a downy fringe.

She flicked her match away and exhaled smoke through pursed lips. Then she looked up at me as if she had forgotten that I was there. I couldn’t see her eyes through the dark, reflective lenses of her sunglasses.

“You live around here?” she asked.

“Uh-huh.” I wanted to motion toward our house, but I had turned so many odd angles to get here that I no longer knew exactly where it was. I ended up pointing at random.

“I’m looking for my cat,” I explained, wiping a sweaty palm on my pants. “It’s been gone for a week. Somebody saw it around here somewhere.”

“What kind of cat?”

“A big tom. Brown stripes. Tip of the tail a little bent.”

“Name?”

“Noboru. Noboru Wataya.”

“No, not
your
name. The cat’s.”

“That
is
my cat’s name.”

“Oh! Very impressive!”

“Well, actually, it’s my brother-in-law’s name. The cat sort of reminds us of him. We gave the cat his name, just for fun.”

“How does the cat remind you of him?”

“I don’t know. Just in general. The way it walks. And it has this blank stare.”

She smiled now for the first time, which made her look a lot more childlike than she had seemed at first. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen. With its slight curl, her upper lip pointed up at a strange angle. I seemed to hear a voice saying “Touch me”—the voice of the woman on the phone. I wiped the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand.

“A brown-striped cat with a bent tail,” said the girl. “Hmm. Does it have a collar or something?”

“A black flea collar.”

She stood there thinking for ten or fifteen seconds, her hand still
resting on the gate. Then she dropped what was left of her cigarette and crushed it under her sandal.

“Maybe I did see a cat like that,” she said. “I don’t know about the bent tail, but it was a brown tiger cat, big, and I think it had a collar.”

“When did you see it?”

“When
did
I see it? Hmm. No more than three or four days ago. Our yard is a kind of highway for the neighborhood cats. They all cut across here from the Takitanis’ to the Miyawakis’.”

She pointed toward the vacant house, where the stone bird still spread its wings, the tall goldenrod still caught the early-summer sun, and the pigeon went on with its monotonous cooing atop the TV antenna.

“I’ve got an idea,” she said. “Why don’t you wait here? All the cats eventually pass through our place on their way to the Miyawakis’. And somebody’s bound to call the cops if they see you hanging around like that. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

I hesitated.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m the only one here. The two of us can sit in the sun and wait for the cat to show up. I’ll help. I’ve got twenty-twenty vision.”

I looked at my watch. Two twenty-six. All I had to do today before it got dark was take in the laundry and fix dinner.

I went in through the gate and followed the girl across the lawn. She dragged her right leg slightly. She took a few steps, stopped, and turned to face me.

“I got thrown from the back of a motorcycle,” she said, as if it hardly mattered.

A large oak tree stood at the point where the yard’s lawn gave out. Under the tree sat two canvas deck chairs, one draped with a blue beach towel. Scattered on the other were a new box of Hope regulars, an ashtray and lighter, a magazine, and an oversize boom box. The boom box was playing hard-rock music at low volume. She turned the music off and took all the stuff out of the chair for me, dropping it on the grass. From the chair, I could see into the yard of the vacant house—the stone bird, the goldenrod, the chain-link fence. The girl had probably been watching me the whole time I was there.

The yard of this house was very large. It had a broad, sloping lawn dotted with clumps of trees. To the left of the deck chairs was a rather large concrete-lined pond, its empty bottom exposed to the sun. Judging from its greenish tinge, it had been without water for some time. We sat with our backs to the house, which was visible through a screen of trees.
The house was neither large nor lavish in its construction. Only the yard gave an impression of large size, and it was well manicured.

“What a big yard,” I said, looking around. “It must be a pain to take care of.”

“Must be.”

“I used to work for a lawn-mowing company when I was a kid.”

“Oh?” She was obviously not interested in lawns.

“Are you always here alone?” I asked.

“Yeah. Always. Except a maid comes mornings and evenings. During the day it’s just me. Alone. Want a cold drink? We’ve got beer.”

“No, thanks.”

“Really? Don’t be shy.”

I shook my head. “Don’t you go to school?”

“Don’t you go to work?”

“No work to go to.”

“Lost your job?”

“Sort of. I quit a few weeks ago.”

“What kind of job?”

“I was a lawyer’s gofer. I’d go to different government offices to pick up documents, put materials in order, check on legal precedents, handle court procedures—that kind of stuff.”

“But you quit.”

“Yeah.”

“Does your wife have a job?”

“She does.”

The pigeon across the way must have stopped its cooing and gone off somewhere. I suddenly realized that a deep silence lay all around me.

“Right over there is where the cats go through,” she said, pointing toward the far side of the lawn. “See the incinerator in the Takitanis’ yard? They come under the fence at that point, cut across the grass, and go out under the gate to the yard across the way. They always follow exactly the same route.”

She perched her sunglasses on her forehead, squinted at the yard, and lowered her glasses again, exhaling a cloud of smoke. In the interval, I saw that she had a two-inch cut next to her left eye—the kind of cut that would probably leave a scar the rest of her life. The dark sunglasses were probably meant to hide the wound. The girl’s face was not a particularly beautiful one, but there was something attractive about it, probably the lively eyes or the unusual shape of the lips.

“Do you know about the Miyawakis?” she asked.

“Not a thing,” I said.

“They’re the ones who lived in the vacant house. A very proper family. They had two daughters, both in a private girls’ school. Mr. Miyawaki owned a few family restaurants.”

“Why’d they leave?”

“Maybe he was in debt. It was like they ran away—just cleared out one night. About a year ago, I think. Left the place to rot and breed cats. My mother’s always complaining.”

“Are there so many cats in there?”

Cigarette in her lips, the girl looked up at the sky.

“All kinds of cats. Some losing their fur, some with one eye … and where the other eye used to be, a lump of raw flesh. Yuck!”

I nodded.

“I’ve got a relative with six fingers on each hand.
She’s
just a little older than me. Next to her pinkie she’s got this extra finger, like a baby’s finger. She knows how to keep it folded up so most people don’t notice. She’s really pretty.”

I nodded again.

“You think it’s in the family? What do you call it … part of the bloodline?”

“I don’t know much about heredity.”

She stopped talking. I sucked on my lemon drop and looked hard at the cat path. Not one cat had shown itself so far.

“Sure you don’t want something to drink?” she asked. “I’m going to have a Coke.”

I said I didn’t need a drink.

She left her deck chair and disappeared through the trees, dragging her bad leg slightly. I picked up her magazine from the grass and leafed through it. Much to my surprise, it turned out to be a men’s magazine, one of the glossy monthlies. The woman in the foldout wore thin panties that showed her slit and pubic hair. She sat on a stool with her legs spread out at weird angles. With a sigh, I put the magazine back, folded my hands on my chest, and focused on the cat path again.

•

A very long time went by before the girl came back, with a Coke in her hand. The heat was getting to me. Sitting under the sun, I felt my brain fogging over. The last thing I wanted to do was think.

“Tell me,” she said, picking up her earlier conversation. “If you were in love with a girl and she turned out to have six fingers, what would you do?”

“Sell her to the circus,” I answered.

“Really?”

“No, of course not,” I said. “I’m kidding. I don’t think it would bother me.”

“Even if your kids might inherit it?”

I took a moment to think about that.

“No, I really don’t think it would bother me. What harm would an extra finger do?”

“What if she had four breasts?”

I thought about that too.

“I don’t know.”

Four breasts? This kind of thing could go on forever. I decided to change the subject.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Sixteen,” she said. “Just had my birthday. First year in high school.”

“Have you been out of school long?”

“My leg hurts if I walk too much. And I’ve got this scar near my eye. My school’s very strict. They’d probably start bugging me if they found out I hurt myself falling off a motorcycle. So I’m out ‘sick.’ I could take a year off. I’m not in any hurry to go up a grade.”