The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (95 page)

I grasped the bottom edge of his jacket as ordered.

The man with no face said, “Those people are always glued to the television set. That is why you are so greatly disliked here. They are very fond of your wife’s elder brother.”

“Do you know who I am?” I asked.

“Yes, of course I do.”

“So, then, do you know where Kumiko is now?”

The man said nothing. I kept a firm grip on the tail of the man’s coat, as if we were playing some kind of game in the dark, rushing around another corner, down a short staircase, through a small secret door, through a low-ceilinged hidden passageway, into yet another corridor. The strange, intricate route taken by the faceless man felt like an endless journey through the bowels of a huge bronze figure.

“Let me tell you this, Mr. Okada. I don’t know everything that happens here. This is a big place, and my area of responsibility centers on the lobby. There is a lot that I don’t know anything about.”

“Do you know about the whistling waiter?”

“No, I don’t. There
are
no waiters here, whistling or otherwise. If you saw a waiter in here somewhere, he wasn’t really a waiter: it was
something
pretending to be a waiter. I failed to ask you, but you wanted to go to Room 208, is that correct?”

“That is correct. I’m supposed to meet a certain woman there.”

The man had nothing to say to that. He pressed for no details about the woman or what my business with her might be. He continued down the corridor with the confident stride of a man who knows his way around, dragging me like a tugboat along a complicated course.

Eventually, with no warning, he came to a stop in front of a door. I bumped into him from behind, all but knocking him over. His flesh, on impact, felt strangely light and airy, as if I had bumped into an empty cicada shell. He quickly straightened himself and used his pocket flashlight to illuminate the number on the door: 208.

“This door is not locked,” said the man. “Take this light with you. I
can walk back in the dark. Lock the door when you go in, and don’t open it for anyone. Whatever business you have, get it over with quickly and go back where you came from. This place is dangerous. You are an intruder here, and I am the only one on your side. Don’t forget that.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

The faceless man handed me the flashlight as if passing a baton. “I am the hollow man,” he said. Faceless face toward me, he waited in the darkness for me to speak, but I could not find the right words. Eventually, without a sound, he disappeared. He was right in front of me one second, swallowed up by darkness the next. I shone the light in his direction, but only the dull white wall came out of the darkness.

•

As the man had said, the door to Room 208 was unlocked. The knob turned soundlessly in my hand. I took the precaution of switching the flashlight off, then stepped in as quietly as I could. As before, the room was silent, and I could sense nothing moving inside. There was the faint crack of melting ice moving inside the ice bucket. I switched on the flashlight and turned to lock the door. The dry metallic tumbling of the lock sounded abnormally loud in the room. On the table in the center stood the unopened bottle of Cutty Sark, clean glasses, and the bucket full of fresh ice. The silver-colored tray beside the vase shot the beam of the flashlight back with a sensual gleam, as if it had been waiting for me for a very long time. In response, it seemed, the smell of the flowers’ pollen became stronger for a moment. The air around me grew dense, and the pull of gravity seemed to increase. With my back against the door, I watched the movement around me in the beam of the flashlight.

This place is dangerous. You are an intruder here, and I am the only one on your side. Don’t forget that
.

“Don’t shine that light on me,” said a woman’s voice in the inner room. “Do you promise not to shine that light on me?”

“I promise,” I said.

“I promise,” I said, but my voice had a certain artificial quality, as when you hear a recording of yourself speaking.

“I want to hear you say it: that you won’t shine your light on me.”

“I won’t shine the light on you. I promise.”

“Do you really promise? You’re telling me the truth?”

“I’m telling you the truth. I won’t break my promise.”

“All right, then, what I’d
really
like you to do, if you don’t mind, is pour two whiskeys on the rocks and bring them over here. Lots of ice, please.”

She spoke with the slightest hint of a playful, girlish lisp, but the voice itself belonged to a mature, sensual woman. I laid the penlight lengthwise on the table and in its light went about pouring the two whiskeys, taking a moment first to steady my breathing. I broke the seal on the Cutty Sark, used tongs to fill the two glasses, and poured the whiskey over the ice cubes. I had to think clearly about each task my hands were performing. Large shadows played over the wall with every movement.

I walked into the inner room, holding the two whiskeys in my right hand and lighting my way along the floor with the flashlight in my left. The air felt somewhat chillier than before. I must have worked up a sweat in my rush through the darkness, and now was beginning to cool off. I remembered that I had shed my coat along the way.

In keeping with my promise, I turned out the light and slipped it into my pocket. Then, by touch, I set one whiskey on the night table and took my own with me to the armchair by the bed. In the total darkness, I still remembered the layout of the room.

I seemed to hear the sliding of sheets against each other. She was raising herself in bed and leaning against the headboard, glass now in hand. She gave the glass a little shake, stirring the ice, and took a sip of whiskey. In the darkness, these were all like sound effects in a radio play. I inhaled the aroma of the whiskey in my hand, but I did not drink.

“It’s been a long time,” I said. My voice sounded somewhat more like my own than it had before.

“Has it?” she said. “I’m not sure what that means: ‘time’ or ‘a long time.’ ”

“As I recall, it’s been exactly one year and five months,” I said.

“Well, well,” she said, unimpressed. “I can’t recall … exactly.”

I set my glass on the floor and crossed my legs. “You weren’t here last time I came, were you?”

“Of course I was. Right here. In bed. I’m always here.”

“I’m sure I was in Room 208, though. This
is
Room 208, isn’t it?”

She swirled the ice in her glass and gave a little laugh. “And
I’m
sure you weren’t so sure. You were in
another
Room 208, that’s for sure.”

There was a certain unsteadiness in her voice, which gave me a slightly unsettled feeling. The alcohol might have been affecting her. I took my wool cap off and laid it on my knee.

I said to her, “The phone was dead, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” she said, with a hint of resignation. “
They
cut it. They knew how I used to like to make calls.”

“Are
they
the ones who are keeping you here?”

“Hmm, I wonder. I don’t really know,” she said, with a little laugh. The disturbance in the air made her voice quaver slightly.

Facing in her direction, I said, “I’ve been thinking about you for a very long time. Ever since I was last here. Thinking about who you are and what you’re doing here.”

“Sounds like fun,” she said.

“I imagined all sorts of possibilities, but I can’t be sure of anything yet. I’m still in the imagining stage.”

“Well,
well,”
she said, as if impressed. “So you can’t be sure of anything yet, you’re still in the imagining stage.”

“That’s right,” I said. “And I might as well tell you this: I think
you’re Kumiko. I didn’t realize it at first, but I’m becoming more and more convinced.”

“Oh,
are
you?” she said, after a moment’s pause, sounding amused. “So I’m Kumiko, am I?”

For a moment, I lost all sense of direction, as if everything I was doing was off: I had come to the wrong place to say the wrong things to the wrong person. It was all a waste of time, a meaningless detour. But I managed to set myself straight in the dark. To perform a check on reality, I fastened my hands on the hat in my lap.

“Yes, I think you are Kumiko. Because then all kinds of story lines work out. You kept calling me on the phone from here. You were trying to convey some kind of secret to me. A secret of Kumiko’s. A secret that the real Kumiko in the real world couldn’t bring herself to tell me. So you must have been doing it for her—in words like secret codes.”

She said nothing for a while. She lifted her glass for another sip of whiskey, then said, “I wonder. But if that’s what you think, you may be right. Maybe I really am Kumiko. I’m still not sure, though. So, then, if it’s true … if I really am Kumiko … I should be able to talk with you here through her voice. Isn’t that right? It makes things a little complicated, but do you mind?”

“No, I don’t mind,” I said. Once more my voice seemed to have lost a degree of calm and some sense of reality.

She cleared her throat in the darkness. “Here goes, then. I wonder if it will work.” Again she gave a little laugh. “It’s not easy, though. Are you in a hurry? Can you stay here awhile?”

“I don’t really know,” I said.

“Wait just a minute. Sorry. Ahem … I’ll be ready in a minute.”

I waited.

“So. You came here looking for me. You wanted to see me, is that it?”
Kumiko’s earnest voice resounded in the darkness.

I had not heard Kumiko’s voice since that summer morning when I zipped her dress up. She had been wearing new cologne behind the ears, cologne from someone else. She left the house that day and never came back. Whether the voice in the darkness was the real thing or a fake, it brought me back to that morning for a moment. I could smell the cologne and see the white skin of Kumiko’s back. The memory was dense and heavy in the darkness—perhaps denser and heavier than in reality. I tightened my grip on my hat.

“Strictly speaking, I didn’t come here to
see
you. I came here to
bring you back,”
I said.

She released a little sigh in the darkness. “Why do you want so badly to bring me back?”

“Because I love you,” I said. “And I know that you love me and want me.”

“You sound pretty sure of yourself,” said Kumiko—or Kumiko’s voice. There was nothing derisive about her tone of voice—but nothing warm about it, either.

I heard the contents of the ice bucket in the next room shifting.

“I have to solve some riddles, though, if I’m going to get you back,” I said.

“Isn’t it a little late to be starting such things now? I thought you didn’t have that much time.”

She was right. There was not much time left and too much to think about. I wiped the sweat from my brow with the back of my hand. This was probably my last chance, I told myself. I had to
think
.

“I want you to help me,” I said.

“I wonder,” said Kumiko’s voice. “I may not be able to help you. But I’m willing to try.”

“The first question is why you had to leave me. I want to know the
real
reason. I know what your letter said—that you had become involved with another man. I read it, of course. And read it and read it and reread it. And I suppose it does serve as some kind of explanation. But I can’t believe it’s the real reason. It doesn’t quite ring true. I’m not saying it’s a lie, but I can’t help feeling it’s nothing but a kind of metaphor.”

“A metaphor?!” She sounded truly shocked. “Maybe I just don’t get it, but if sleeping with other men is a metaphor for something, I’d like to know what.”

“What I’m trying to say is that it seems to me to be nothing but an explanation for explanation’s sake. It doesn’t lead anywhere. It just traces the surface. The more I read your letter, the more I felt that. There must be some other reason that is more basic—more
real
. And it almost certainly involves Noboru Wataya.”

I could feel her eyes focused on me in the darkness and was struck by the thought that she might be able to see me.

“Involves Noboru Wataya? How?” asked Kumiko’s voice.

“Well, finally, the events I’ve been through have been tremendously complicated. All kinds of characters have come on the scene, and strange things have happened one after another, to the point where, if I try to think about them in order, I lose track. Viewed at more of a distance, though, the thread running through them is perfectly clear. What it all
boils down to is that you have gone over from my world to the world of Noboru Wataya. That shift is the important thing. Even if you did, in fact, have sex with another man or other men, that is just a secondary matter. A front. That’s what I’m trying to say.”

She inclined her glass somewhat in the darkness. Staring hard toward the source of the sound, I felt as if I could catch a faint glimpse of her movements, but this was obviously an illusion.