The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (6 page)

I was in the middle of preparing lunch when the phone rang again. I had cut two slices of bread, spread them with butter and mustard, filled them with tomato slices and cheese, set the whole on the cutting board, and I was just about to cut it in half when the bell started ringing.

I let the phone ring three times and cut the sandwich in half. Then I transferred it to a plate, wiped the knife, and put that in the cutlery drawer, before pouring myself a cup of the coffee I had warmed up.

Still the phone went on ringing. Maybe fifteen times. I gave up and took it. I would have preferred not to answer, but it might have been Kumiko.

“Hello,” said a woman’s voice, one I had never heard before. It belonged neither to Kumiko nor to the strange woman who had called me the other day when I was cooking spaghetti. “I wonder if I might possibly be speaking with Mr. Toru Okada?” said the voice, as if its owner were reading a text.

“You are,” I said.

“The husband of Kumiko Okada?”

“That’s right,” I said. “Kumiko Okada is my wife.”

“And Mrs. Okada’s elder brother is Noboru Wataya?”

“Right again,” I said, with admirable self-control. “Noboru Wataya is my wife’s elder brother.”

“Sir, my name is Kano.”

I waited for her to go on. The sudden mention of Kumiko’s elder brother had put me on guard. With the blunt end of the pencil that lay by the phone, I scratched the back of my neck. Five seconds or more went by, in which the woman said nothing. No sound of any kind came from the receiver, as if the woman had covered the mouthpiece with her hand and was talking with someone nearby.

“Hello,” I said, concerned now.

“Please forgive me, sir,” blurted the woman’s voice. “In that case, I must ask your permission to call you at a later time.”

“Now wait a minute,” I said. “This is—”

At that point, the connection was cut. I stared at the receiver, then put it to my ear again. No doubt about it: the woman had hung up.

Vaguely dissatisfied, I turned to the kitchen table, drank my coffee, and ate my sandwich. Until the moment the telephone rang, I had been thinking of something, but now I couldn’t remember what it was. Knife in my right hand poised to cut the sandwich in half, I had definitely been thinking of something. Something important. Something I had been trying unsuccessfully to recall for the longest time. It had come to me at the very moment when I was about to cut the sandwich in two, but now it was gone. Chewing on my sandwich, I tried hard to bring it back. But it wouldn’t come. It had returned to that dark region of my mind where it had been living until that moment.

•

I finished eating and was clearing the dishes when the phone rang again. This time I took it right away.

Again I heard a woman saying “Hello,” but this time it was Kumiko.

“How are you?” she asked. “Finished lunch?”

“Yup. What’d you have?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Too busy. I’ll probably buy myself a sandwich later. What’d you have?”

I described my sandwich.

“I see,” she said, without a hint of envy. “Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you this morning. You’re going to get a call from a Miss Kano.”

“She already called,” I said. “A few minutes ago. All she did was mention our names—mine and yours and your brother’s—and hang up. Never said what she wanted. What was that all about?”

“She hung up?”

“Said she’d call again.”

“Well, when she does, I want you to do whatever she asks. This is really important. I think you’ll have to go see her.”

“When? Today?”

“What’s wrong? Do you have something planned? Are you supposed to see someone?”

“Nope. No plans.” Not yesterday, not today, not tomorrow: no plans at all. “But who is this Kano woman? And what does she want with me? I’d like to have some idea before she calls again. If it’s about a job for me connected with your brother, forget it. I don’t want to have anything to do with him. You know that.”

“No, it has nothing to do with a job,” she said, with a hint of annoyance. “It’s about the cat.”

“The cat?”

“Oh, sorry, I’ve got to run. Somebody’s waiting for me. I really shouldn’t have taken the time to make this call. Like I said, I haven’t even had lunch. Mind if I hang up? I’ll get back to you as soon as I’m free.”

“Look, I know how busy you are, but give me a break. I want to know what’s going on. What’s with the cat? Is this Kano woman—”

“Just do what she tells you, will you, please? Understand? This is serious business. I want you to stay home and wait for her call. Gotta go.”

And she went.

•

When the phone rang at two-thirty, I was napping on the couch. At first I thought I was hearing the alarm clock. I reached out to push the button, but the clock was not there. I wasn’t in bed but was on the couch, and it wasn’t morning but afternoon. I got up and went to the phone.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello,” said a woman’s voice. It was the woman who had called in the morning. “Mr. Toru Okada?”

“That’s me. Toru Okada.”

“Sir, my name is Kano,” she said.

“The lady who called before.”

“That is correct. I am afraid I was terribly rude. But tell me, Mr. Okada, would you by any chance be free this afternoon?”

“You might say that.”

“Well, in that case, I know this is terribly sudden, but do you think it might be possible for us to meet?”

“When? Today? Now?”

“Yes.”

I looked at my watch. Not that I really had to—I had looked at it thirty seconds earlier—but just to make sure. And it was still two-thirty.

“Will it take long?” I asked.

“Not so very long, I think. I could be wrong, though. At this moment in time, it is difficult for me to say with complete accuracy. I am sorry.”

No matter how long it might take, I had no choice. Kumiko had told me to do as the woman said: that it was serious business. If she said it was serious business, then it was serious business, and I had better do as I was told.

“I see,” I said. “Where should we meet?”

“Would you by any chance be acquainted with the Pacific Hotel, across from Shinagawa Station?”

“I would.”

“There is a tearoom on the first floor. I shall be waiting there for you at four o’clock if that would be all right with you, sir.”

“Fine,” I said.

“I am thirty-one years old, and I shall be wearing a red vinyl hat.”

Terrific. There was something weird about the way this woman talked, something that confused me momentarily. But I could not have said exactly what made it so weird. Nor was there any law against a thirty-one-year-old woman’s wearing a red vinyl hat.

“I see,” I said. “I’m sure I’ll find you.”

“I wonder, Mr. Okada, if you would be so kind as to tell me of any external distinguishing characteristics in your own case.”

I tried to think of any “external distinguishing characteristics” I might have. Did I in fact have any?

“I’m thirty, I’m five foot nine, a hundred and forty pounds, short hair, no glasses.” It occurred to me as I listed these for her that they hardly constituted external distinguishing characteristics. There could be fifty such men in the Pacific Hotel tearoom. I had been there before, and it was a big place. She needed something more noticeable. But I couldn’t think of anything. Which is not to say that I didn’t have any distinguishing characteristics. I owned a signed copy of Miles Davis’s
Sketches of Spain
. I had a slow resting pulse rate: forty-seven normally, and no higher than seventy with a high fever. I was out of work. I knew the names of all the brothers Karamazov. But none of these distinguishing characteristics was external.

“What might you be wearing?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t decided yet. This is so sudden.”

“Then please wear a polka-dot necktie,” she said decisively. “Do you think you might have a polka-dot necktie, sir?”

“I think I do,” I said. I had a navy-blue tie with tiny cream polka dots. Kumiko had given it to me for my birthday a few years earlier.

“Please be so kind as to wear it, then,” she said. “Thank you for agreeing to meet me at four o’clock.” And she hung up.

•

I opened the wardrobe and looked for my polka-dot tie. There was no sign of it on the tie rack. I looked in all the drawers. I looked in all the clothes storage boxes in the closet. No polka-dot tie. There was no way that that tie could be in our house without my finding it. Kumiko was such a perfectionist when it came to the arrangement of our clothes, my necktie couldn’t possibly be in a place other than where it was normally kept. And in fact, I found everything—both her clothes and mine—in perfect order. My shirts were neatly folded in the drawer where they belonged. My sweaters were in boxes so full of mothballs my eyes hurt just from opening the lid. One box contained the clothing she had worn in high school: a navy uniform, a flowered minidress, preserved like photos in an old album. What was the point of keeping such things? Perhaps she had simply brought them with her because she had never found a suitable opportunity to get rid of them. Or maybe she was planning to send them to Bangladesh. Or donate them someday as cultural artifacts. In any case, my polka-dot necktie was nowhere to be found.

Hand on the wardrobe door, I tried to recall the last time I had worn the tie. It was a rather stylish tie, in very good taste, but a bit too much for the office. If I had worn it to the firm, somebody would have gone on and on about it at lunch, praising the color or its sharp looks. Which would have been a kind of warning. In the firm I worked for, it was not good to be complimented on your choice of tie. So I had never worn it there. Rather, I put it on for more private—if somewhat formal—occasions: a concert, or dinner at a good restaurant, when Kumiko wanted us to “dress properly” (not that there were so many such occasions). The tie went well with my navy suit, and she was very fond of it. Still, I couldn’t manage to recall when I had last worn it.

I scanned the contents of the wardrobe again and gave up. For one reason or another, the polka-dot tie had disappeared. Oh, well. I put on my navy suit with a blue shirt and a striped tie. I wasn’t too worried. She might not be able to spot me, but all I had to do was look for a thirtyish woman in a red vinyl hat.

Dressed to go out, I sat on the sofa, staring at the wall. It had been a long time since I last wore a suit. Normally, this three-season navy suit would have been a bit too heavy for this time of year, but that particular day was a rainy one, and there was a chill in the air. It was the very suit I had worn on my last day of work (in April). Suddenly it occurred to me that there might be something in one of the pockets. In the inside breast pocket I found a receipt with a date from last autumn. It was some kind of taxi receipt, one I could have been reimbursed for at the office. Now, though, it was too late. I crumpled it up and threw it into the wastebasket.

I had not worn this suit once since quitting, two months earlier. Now, after such a long interval, I felt as if I were in the grip of a foreign substance. It was heavy and stiff, and seemed not to match the contours of my body. I stood and walked around the room, stopping in front of the mirror to yank at the sleeves and the coattails in an attempt to make it fit better. I stretched out my arms, took a deep breath, and bent forward at the waist, checking to see if my physical shape might have changed in the past two months. I sat on the sofa again, but still I felt uncomfortable.

Until this spring, I had commuted to work every day in a suit without its ever feeling strange. My firm had had a rather strict dress code, requiring even low-ranking clerks such as myself to wear suits. I had thought nothing of it.

Now, however, just sitting on the couch in a suit felt like some kind of immoral act, like faking one’s curriculum vitae or passing as a woman. Overcome with something very like a guilty conscience, I found it increasingly difficult to breathe.

I went to the front hall, took my brown shoes from their place on the shelf, and pried myself into them with a shoehorn. A thin film of dust clung to them.

•

As it turned out, I didn’t have to find the woman. She found me. When I arrived at the tearoom, I did a quick circuit, looking for the red hat. There were no women with red hats. My watch showed ten minutes left until four o’clock. I took a seat, drank the water they brought me, and ordered a cup of coffee. No sooner had the waitress left my table than I heard a woman behind me saying, “You must be Mr. Toru Okada.” Surprised, I spun around. Not three minutes had gone by since my survey of the room.

Under a white jacket she wore a yellow silk blouse, and on her head was a red vinyl hat. By reflex action, I stood and faced her. “Beautiful” was a word that might well have been applied to her. At least she was far more
beautiful than I had imagined from her telephone voice. She had a slim, lovely build and was sparing in her use of cosmetics. She knew how to dress—except for the red hat. Her jacket and blouse were finely tailored. On the collar of the jacket shone a gold brooch in the shape of a feather. She could have been taken for a corporate secretary. Why, after having lavished such care on the rest of her outfit, she would have topped it off with that totally inappropriate red vinyl hat was beyond me. Maybe she always wore it to help people spot her in situations like this. In that case, it was not a bad idea. If the point was to have her stand out in a room full of strangers, it certainly did its job.

She took the seat across the table from mine, and I sat down again.

“I’m amazed you knew it was me,” I said. “I couldn’t find my polka-dot tie. I
know
I’ve got it somewhere, but it just wouldn’t turn up. Which is why I wore this striped one. I figured I’d find you, but how did you know it was me?”

“Of course I knew it was you,” she said, putting her white patent-leather bag on the table. She took off her red vinyl hat and placed it over the bag, covering it completely. I had the feeling she was about to perform a magic trick: when she lifted the hat, the bag would have vanished.

“But I was wearing the wrong tie,” I protested.