The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (80 page)

It takes her some time to reply to this. I imagine her sitting in front of the keyboard, biting her lip and thinking. Finally, the cursor begins to dart across the screen in response to the movement of her fingers.

>Everything I wanted to say to you I wrote in the letter I sent. What I most want you to understand is that, in many ways, I am no longer the Kumiko you knew. People change for all sorts of reasons, and in some cases the transformation makes them go bad. That is why I don’t want to see you. And that is why I don’t want to come back to you
.

The cursor halts and remains blinking in one spot, searching for words. I keep my eyes fixed on it for ten seconds, twenty seconds, waiting for it to form new words on the screen. The transformation makes them go bad?

If possible, I would like you to forget about me as soon as you can. The best thing for both of us would be if you were to complete the formalities for divorce and begin a whole new life. It doesn’t matter where I am now or what I am doing. The most important thing is that, for whatever reason, you and I have already been separated into two entirely different worlds. And there is no way we can ever go back to being what we were. Please try to understand how painful it is for me to be communicating with you like this. You probably can’t imagine how it tears me apart.

I reread Kumiko’s words several times. I find in them no sign of hesitation, no suggestion they come from anything but the deepest, most painful conviction. She has probably rehearsed them in her mind any number of times. But still, I have to find a way to shake this impenetrable wall of hers, if only to make it tremble. I go back to the keyboard.

>What you say is somewhat vague and difficult for me to grasp. You say you’ve gone bad, but what does that mean in concrete terms? I just don’t understand. Tomatoes go bad. Umbrellas go bad. That I can understand. Tomatoes rot and umbrellas get bent out of shape. But what does it mean to say that you have “gone bad”? It doesn’t give me any concrete image. You said in your letter that you had sex with somebody other than me, but could that make you “go bad”? Yes, of course it was a shock to me. But that is a little different from making a human being “go bad,” I would think.

A long pause follows. I begin to worry that Kumiko has disappeared somewhere. But then her letters begin to line up on the screen.

>You may be right, but there is more to it than that
.

Another deep silence follows. She is choosing her words carefully, pulling them out of a drawer.

That is just one manifestation. “Going bad” is something that happens over a longer period of time. It was something decided in advance, without me, in a pitch-dark room somewhere, by someone else’s hand. When I met and married you, it seemed to me that I had a whole new set of possibilities. I hoped that I might be able to escape through an opening somewhere. But I guess that was just an illusion. There are signs for everything, which is why I tried so hard to find our cat when he disappeared that time
.

I keep staring at the message on the screen, but still no Send mark appears. My own machine is still set to Receive. Kumiko is thinking about what to write next.
“Going bad” is something that happens over a longer period of time.
What is she trying to tell me? I concentrate my attention on the screen, but all I find there is a kind of invisible wall. Once more the letters begin to line up on the screen.

I want you to think about me this way if you
can: that I am slowly dying of an incurable disease—one that causes my face and body gradually to disintegrate. This is just a metaphor, of course. My face and body are not actually disintegrating. But this is something very close to the truth. And that is why I don’t want to show myself to you. I know that a vague metaphor like this is not going to help you understand everything about the situation in which I find myself. I don’t expect it to convince you of the truth of what I am saying. I feel terrible about this, but there is simply nothing more I can say. All you can do is accept it.

An incurable disease
.

I check to be sure that I am in the Send mode and start typing.

>If you say you want me to accept your metaphor, I don’t mind accepting it. But there is one thing that I simply cannot understand. Even supposing that you have, as you say, “gone bad” and that you have “an incurable disease,” why of all people did you have to go to Noboru Wataya with it? Why didn’t you stay here with me? Why aren’t we together? Isn’t that what we got married for?

Silence. I can almost feel its weight and hardness in my hands. I fold my hands on the desk and take several deep breaths. Then the answer comes.

>The reason I am here, like it or not, is because this is the proper place for me. This is where I have to be. I have no right to choose otherwise. Even if I wanted to see you, I couldn’t do it. Do you think I DON’T want to see you?

There is a blank moment in which she seems to be holding her breath. Then her fingers start to move again.

So please, don’t torture me about this any longer. If there is any one thing that you can do for me, it would be to forget about my existence as quickly as possible. Take those
years that we lived together and push them outside your memory as if they never existed. That, finally, is the best thing you can do for both of us. This is what I truly believe.

To this I reply:

>You say you want me to forget everything. You say you want me to leave you alone. But still, at the same time, from somewhere in this world, you are begging for my help. That voice is faint and distant, but I can hear it distinctly on quiet nights. It IS your voice: I’m sure of that. I can accept the fact that one Kumiko is trying hard to get away from me, and she probably has her reasons for doing so. But there is another Kumiko, who is trying just as hard to get close to me. That is what I truly believe. No matter what you may say to me here, I have to believe in the Kumiko who wants my help and is trying to get close to me. No matter what you tell me, no matter how legitimate your reasons, I can never just forget about you, I can never push the years we spent together out of my mind. I can’t do it because they really happened, they are part of my life, and there is no way I can just erase them. That would be the same as erasing my own self. I have to know what legitimate reason there could be for doing such a thing.

Another blank period goes by. I can feel her silence through the monitor. Like heavy smoke, it creeps in through a corner of the screen and drifts across the floor. I know about these silences of Kumiko’s. I’ve seen them, experienced them any number of times in our life together. She’s holding her breath now, sitting in front of the computer screen with brows knit in total concentration. I reach out for my cup and take a sip of cold coffee. Then, with the empty cup between my hands, I hold my breath and stare at the screen the way Kumiko is doing. The two of us are linked together by the heavy bonds of silence that pass through the wall separating our two worlds. We need each other more than anything, I feel without a doubt.

>I don’t know.