The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (44 page)

Then it occurred to me to worry about the air. I had been down in the bottom of this deep, narrow concrete tube over two days now, and to make matters worse, the top had been sealed. There was no circulation to speak of. The air around me suddenly began to feel heavy and oppressive. I couldn’t tell whether this was my imagination playing tricks on me
or the air really was heavier because of the lack of oxygen. To find out, I made several large inhalations and exhalations, but the more I breathed, the worse it felt. Fear made the sweat gush out of me. Once I started thinking about the air, death invaded my mind as something real and imminent. It rose like black, silent water, seeping into every corner of my consciousness. Until now, I had been thinking about the possibility of starvation, for which there was still plenty of time. Things would happen much more quickly if the oxygen gave out.

What would it feel like to die of asphyxiation? How long would it take? Would it be a slow, agonizing process, or would I gradually lose consciousness and die as if falling asleep? I imagined May Kasahara coming to the well and finding me dead. She would call out to me several times, and when there was no answer she would drop a few pebbles into the well, thinking I was asleep. But I would not wake up. Then she would realize that I was dead.

I wanted to shout for someone. I wanted to scream that I was shut up inside here. That I was hungry. That the air was going bad. I felt as if I had reverted to being a helpless little child. I had run away on a whim and would never be able to find my home again. I had forgotten the way. It was a dream I had had any number of times. It was the nightmare of my youth—going astray, losing the way home. I had forgotten all about those nightmares years ago. But now, in the bottom of this deep well, they came to life again with terrible vividness. Time moved backward in the dark, to be swallowed by a different kind of time.

I took the canteen from my knapsack, unscrewed the top, and, with the greatest care, so as not to spill a single drop, let a small amount of water find its way into my mouth. I kept it there for a long time, savoring the moisture, then swallowed it as slowly as possible. A loud sound came from my throat as the water passed through, as if some hard, heavy object had fallen to the floor, but it was just the sound I made by swallowing a few drops of water.

•

“Mr. Okada!”

Someone was calling me. I heard the voice in my sleep. “Mr. Okada! Mr. Okada! Please wake up!”

It sounded like Creta Kano. I managed to open my eyes, but that changed nothing. I was still surrounded by darkness and couldn’t see a thing. There was no clear border between sleep and wakefulness. I tried to raise myself, but there was not enough strength in my fingers. My body
felt cold and shriveled and dull, like a cucumber long forgotten in the back of the refrigerator. My mind was wrapped tight in exhaustion and weakness. I don’t care, do what you want, I’ll get a hard-on in my mind again and come in reality. Go ahead, if that’s what you want. In my clouded consciousness, I waited for her hands to loosen my belt. But Creta Kano’s voice was coming from somewhere far overhead. “Mr. Okada! Mr. Okada!” it called. I looked up, to find half the well cover open and above it a beautiful, starry sky, a sky shaped like a half-moon.

“I’m here!”

I raised myself and managed to stand. Looking up, I shouted again, “I’m here!”

“Mr. Okada!” said the
real
Creta Kano. “Are you down there?”

“Yes, I’m here!”

“How did
that
happen?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you very well. Can you speak a little louder?”

“It’s a long story!” I shouted. “I’ll tell you about it after I get out of here. Right now, I can’t speak very loudly.”

“Is this your rope ladder up here?”

“Yes, it is.”

“How did you manage to raise it from there? Did you throw it?”

“Of course not!” Why would I have done such a thing?
How
could I have done such a thing? “Of course not! Somebody pulled it up without telling me.”

“But that would just make it impossible for you to get out of there.”

“Of course it would,” I said, as patiently as I could manage. “That’s what happened. I can’t get out of here. So can you do me a favor and let the ladder down? That way, I
can
get out.”

“Yes, of course. I’ll do it now.”

“Wait a minute! Before you let it down, can you make sure it’s anchored to the base of the tree? Otherwise—”

But she was not responding. It seemed there was no one there anymore. I focused as hard as I could on the well mouth, but I couldn’t see anyone. I took the flashlight from my sack and aimed its beam aloft, but the light caught no human form. What it did reveal was the rope ladder, hanging where it belonged, as if it had been there all the time. I released a deep sigh, and as it left me, I felt a hard knot at the core of my body relax and melt away.

“Hey, there! Creta Kano!” I shouted, but there was still no answer.

The hands on my watch showed one-oh-seven. One-oh-seven at night, of course. The stars twinkling overhead told me that much. I slipped my knapsack on my back, took one deep breath, and started up. The unstable rope ladder was difficult to climb. With each exertion, every muscle, every bone and joint in my body, creaked and cried out. I took one careful step at a time, and soon there was a growing hint of warmth in the surrounding air, and then a distinct smell of grass. The cries of insects reached me now. I got my hands on the edge of the well curb and with one last effort pulled myself over, all but rolling onto the soft surface of the earth. That was it: I was aboveground again. For a while, I simply lay there on my back, thinking of nothing. I looked up at the sky and sucked the air deep into my lungs over and over—the thick, warmish air of a summer night, filled with the fresh smell of life. I could smell the earth, smell the grass. The smell alone was enough to give my palms the soft sensation of touching the earth and the grass. I wanted to take them both in my hands and devour them.

There were no longer any stars to be seen in the sky: not one. The stars up there were visible only from the bottom of a well. All that hung in the sky was a nearly full, corpulent moon.

How long I went on lying there I had no idea. For a long time, all I did was listen to the beating of my heart. I felt that I could go on living forever, doing only that—listening to the beating of my heart. Eventually, though, I raised myself from the ground and surveyed my surroundings. No one was there. The garden stretched out into the night, with the statue of the bird staring off at the sky, as always. No lights shone inside May Kasahara’s house. There was only one mercury lamp burning in her yard, casting its pale, expressionless light as far as the deserted alley. Where could Creta Kano have disappeared to?

In any case, the first thing to do was go home—to go home, drink something, eat something, and take a nice, long shower. I probably stank something awful. I had to get rid of that smell before anything else. Then I had to fill my empty stomach. Everything else would come later.

I followed the usual route back home, but to my eyes the alley looked different, unfamiliar. Maybe because of the strangely naked moonlight, signs of stagnation and putrefaction stood out with unusual intensity, and I could smell something like the rotting flesh of dead animals and the very definite stink of feces and urine. In many of the houses, people were still up, talking or eating while they watched television. From one window drifted the smell of greasy food, assaulting my brain and stomach. I
passed by a groaning air-conditioning unit and received a bath of lukewarm air. I heard the sound of a shower and saw the blurred shadow of a body on a bathroom window.

I managed to scale the wall behind my house and dropped down into the yard. From here, the house looked pitch dark and almost seemed to be holding its breath. It retained no sense of warmth or intimacy. It was supposed to be the house where I was carrying on my life day after day, but now it was just an empty building without a trace of humanity. If I had any home to go back to, though, this was it.

I stepped up to the veranda and slid open the glass door. Having been shut up for so long, the air was heavy and stagnant. It smelled like a mixture of overripe fruit and insecticide. The short note I had left on the kitchen table was still there. The dishes I had washed remained in the same arrangement on the drainboard. From the stack I took a glass and filled it over and over again, drinking water from the tap. The refrigerator had nothing special in it—a haphazard collection of leftovers and partly used ingredients: eggs, ham, potato salad, eggplant, lettuce, tomatoes, tofu, cream cheese, milk. I poured some of the milk on a bowl of cornflakes and ate that. I should have been starved, but after beholding actual food in the refrigerator, I felt hardly any hunger. If anything, I was a little nauseated. Still, to soften the pain of my empty stomach, I followed the cornflakes with a few crackers. These did nothing to make me want to eat more.

I went to the bathroom, took all my clothes off, and threw them into the washing machine. Stepping under a hot shower, I scrubbed every inch of my body and washed my hair. Kumiko’s nylon shower cap still hung in the bathroom. Her special shampoo was there, her conditioner, and the plastic brush she used for shampooing. Her toothbrush. Her floss. Everything looked the same as it had before she left. The only change brought about by her absence was that one simple fact: Kumiko was no longer there.

I stood before the mirror and examined my face. It was covered with black stubble. After a moment of hesitation, I decided not to shave. If I shaved now, I would probably cut myself. Tomorrow morning would be fine. I didn’t have to see anybody. I brushed my teeth, rinsed my mouth out several times, and left the bathroom. Then I opened a beer, took tomato and lettuce from the refrigerator, and made a salad. Once I had eaten that, I began to feel some desire for food, so I took out some potato salad, spread it between two pieces of bread, and ate it. I looked at the clock only once.
How many hours had I been down in the well? But just thinking about time made my head throb. No, I did not want to think about time. That was one thing I most wanted to avoid thinking about now.

I went to the toilet and took a long pee with my eyes closed. I could hardly believe how long it lasted. I felt I might pass out while I was standing there. Afterward, I went to the living room, stretched out on the sofa, and stared at the ceiling. It was the strangest feeling: my body was tired, but my mind was wide awake. I didn’t feel the least bit sleepy.

•

It suddenly occurred to me to check the mailbox. Someone might have written to me while I was in the well. I went to the entryway and found that a single letter had arrived. The envelope bore no return address, but the handwriting on the front was obviously Kumiko’s, each tiny character written—almost drawn—with great precision, like a design. It was a time-consuming style of writing, but it was the only way she knew. My eyes went immediately to the postmark. It was smudged and barely legible, but I could make out the character
taka
and possibly
matsu
. Takamatsu in Kagawa Prefecture? Kumiko didn’t know anyone in Takamatsu, as far as I was aware. The two of us had never gone there, and she had never said anything about having taken the ferry to Shikoku or crossed the new bridge. The name Takamatsu had simply never entered any of our conversations. Maybe it wasn’t Takamatsu.

In any case, I brought the letter to the kitchen, sat down at the table, and used a scissors to open the envelope, taking care not to cut the stationery within. To calm myself, I took a swallow of my leftover beer.

“You must have been shocked and worried when I disappeared so suddenly without a word,” Kumiko had written in her usual Mont Blanc blue-black ink. The paper was the standard thin letter paper sold everywhere.

I meant to write to you sooner and do a proper job of explaining everything, but the time slipped by while I went on brooding over how I could express my feelings precisely or explain my present situation so that you would understand. I feel very bad about this for you
.

You may have begun to suspect by now that I was seeing a man. I was sexually involved with him for close to three months. He was someone I met through work, someone you don’t know at all. Nor does it matter very much who he was. I will never see him again. For me, at least, it is over. This may or may not be of some comfort to you
.

Was I in love with him? There is no way I can answer that question. The question itself seems irrelevant. Was I in love with you? To that I can answer without hesitation: Yes. I was always extremely glad that I had married you. And I still feel that way. So why, you might ask, did I have to have an affair and, to top it off, run away from home? I asked myself the same question over and over again even while it was happening: Why do I have to be doing this?

There is no way I can explain it. I never had the slightest desire to take a lover or have an affair. Such thoughts were the farthest thing from my mind when I first started seeing him. We met a few times in connection with business, and though we did find it easy to talk to each other, the most that happened after that was an occasional remark on the phone that went beyond business. He was much older than I, had a wife and children, and was not particularly attractive to me as a man: it never occurred to me that I might become seriously involved with him
.

This is not to say that I was entirely free of thoughts about getting even with you. It still rankled me that you had once spent the night with a certain woman. I believed you when you said that you hadn’t done anything with her, but the mere fact that you hadn’t done anything with her didn’t make it right. It was just how I felt. But still, I didn’t have an affair in order to get even with you. I remember I once said I would, but that was only a threat. I slept with him because I wanted to sleep with him. Because I couldn’t bear not to sleep with him. Because I couldn’t suppress my own sexual desire
.