Kafka on the Shore (29 page)

When he got closer he saw that they had surrounded someone lying on the ground and were punching, kicking, and generally trying their best to hurt him. Most of the men were unarmed, though one of them had a chain in his hand. Another held a black stick that looked like a policeman's baton. They wore unbuttoned short-sleeved shirts, some in T-shirts, others in running shirts, most of them with hair dyed blond or brown, some with tattoos on their arms. The young man they were beating and kicking was dressed much the same.

As Nakata approached, tapping the asphalt surface with the tip of his umbrella, a couple of the men turned around and glared at him. They relaxed when they saw it was just some harmless old man. "Why don't you beat it, Pops," one of them growled.

Unperturbed, Nakata walked over even closer. The man on the ground seemed to be bleeding from his mouth. "Blood's coming out," Nakata said. "He might die."

Caught off guard, the men didn't react right away.

"Maybe we should kill you too, while we're at it," the one with the chain said.

"Killing one or two—no skin off my nose."

"You can't kill someone for no reason," Nakata insisted.

"You can't kill someone for no reason," one of them mimicked, and his friends laughed.

"We got our reasons, pal," another man said. "And it ain't got nothin' to do with you whether we kill him or not. So take your worthless umbrella and hit the road, before it starts raining."

The man on the ground started crawling forward, and a young man with a shaved head came over and kicked him hard in the ribs with his work boots.

Nakata closed his eyes. He could feel something welling up inside him, beyond his control. He felt slightly nauseous. The memory of stabbing Johnnie Walker suddenly came back to him. His hand still remembered what it felt like to plunge a knife into a man's chest. Connections. Could this be one of those connections that Mr. Hagita was talking about? Eel = knife = Johnnie Walker? The men's voices sounded distorted, and he couldn't tell them apart anymore. Their voices blended together with the ceaseless drone of tires from the highway to make a strange tone. His heart surged blood to his extremities as night enveloped him.

Nakata looked up at the sky, then slowly opened his umbrella and held it over him. Very carefully he took a few steps backward, opening a space between himself and the gang. He looked around, then took a few more steps back.

The young men laughed when they saw this. "Hey, look at the cool old guy!" one of them said. "He's actually using his umbrella!"

But they didn't laugh for long. Suddenly, unfamiliar greasy objects began to rain down from the sky, striking the ground at their feet with a weird slap. The young men stopped kicking their prey and looked up at the sky. There weren't any clouds, but things were definitely falling one after another from a spot in the sky. At first in dribs and drabs, then gradually more and more fell, until before they knew it they were caught in a downpour. The objects pelting down from the sky were little black lumps about an inch and a half long. In the lights of the parking lot it looked like slick black snow falling on the men's shoulders, arms, and necks and sticking there. They desperately tried to yank the objects off, but couldn't.

"Leeches!" someone yelled.

As if given a signal, the men all shouted and raced across the parking lot to the restrooms. One of them, a young blond man, was knocked to the ground by a car he'd run in front of. He jumped up, slammed his fist on the hood of the car, and loudly cursed the driver. That was all, though, and he soon limped away toward the restrooms.

The leeches rained down hard for a time, then tapered off and stopped. Nakata folded up his umbrella, brushed off the leeches, and went over to see how the injured man was doing. A mound of the slimy creatures squirmed all around, so he couldn't get very close, and the man on the ground was buried in them. Looking closely, Nakata could see that he was bleeding from cut eyelids, and some of his teeth looked broken.

Nakata knew this was too much for him to handle by himself, so he hurried back to the restaurant and told one of the employees that a man was lying in the parking lot, hurt.

"You'd better call the police, or else he might die," he said.

Not long after this Nakata found a truck driver willing to give him a ride as far as Kobe. A sleepy-looking man in his mid-twenties, not very tall, with a ponytail, a pierced ear, and a Chunichi Dragons baseball team cap, he sat there in the restaurant, smoking and flipping through a comic book. A gaudy aloha shirt and oversize Nikes completed his wardrobe. He tapped his cigarette ashes into the leftover broth in his bowl of ramen, stared hard at Nakata, then gave a reluctant nod. "Yeah, okay. You can ride with me. You kind of remind me of my grandpa. The way you look, or maybe how you talk, kind of off the point.... At the end my grandpa got senile and died. A few years ago."

He went on to explain that they should get to Kobe by morning. He was delivering furniture to a department store warehouse there. As he pulled his truck out of the parking lot, they passed a car accident. A couple of patrol cars were already at the scene, red lights flashing, and a policeman with a signal light was directing traffic. It didn't appear to be much of an accident. A few cars had collided, the side of a minivan was dented, a car's taillight broken.

The truck driver stuck his head out the window and exchanged a few words with a patrolman, then rolled up his window. "He said a pile of leeches fell from the sky," he said, unmoved. "They got crushed by cars, the road got all slippery, and some drivers lost control. So go slow and take it easy, he told me. On top of that some local gang of bikers beat up somebody. Leeches and bikers—what a weird combination. Keeps the cops busy, at least."

He drove carefully toward the exit. Even going slow the truck slipped a couple of times, and the driver straightened it out with a subtle twist of the wheel. "Man, it really looks like a whole bunch fell down, and it's damn slippery. But, boy—leeches, that's pretty gross. Ever had a leech stick to you?"

"No, as far as Nakata can remember, I don't think so," Nakata responded.

"I was brought up in the mountains of Gifu, and it happened to me lots of times. I'd be walking in the woods and they'd fall down from the trees. Go wading in the streams and they'd stick to your legs. I know a thing or two about leeches, believe me. Once they get stuck on you they're hard to pull off. If you pull off a big sucker your skin comes off and you'll have a scar. So the best thing is to burn 'em off. Awful things, the way they suck your blood. And once they're filled up they get all soft and mushy. Pretty gross, huh?"

"Yes, it certainly is," Nakata agreed.

"But leeches aren't supposed to fall down from the sky into some rest area parking lot. I never heard of anything so stupid! The guys around here don't know the first thing about leeches. Leeches don't fall from the sky, now do they?"

Nakata was silent and didn't respond.

"A few years back a huge number of millipedes appeared all at once in Yamanashi Prefecture, and cars were slipping everywhere. Just like this, the road got all slippery and there were a lot of accidents. They got all over the tracks and the trains couldn't run either. But even millipedes aren't going to rain down from the sky. They crawl out from somewhere. Anybody can see that."

"A long time ago I lived in Yamanashi. During the war."

"No kidding," the driver said. "Which war was that?"

SCULPTOR KOICHI TAMURA STABBED TO DEATH

Found in Study, Floor a Sea of Blood

The world-renowned sculptor Koichi Tamura was found dead on the afternoon of the 30th in the study in his home in Nogata, Nakano Ward. The body was discovered by a female housekeeper. Mr. Tamura was found facedown, nude, covered in blood. There were signs of a struggle and the death is being treated as a homicide. The weapon used was a knife from the kitchen discovered beside the body.

The police estimate the time of death as the evening of the 28th, and since Mr. Tamura lived alone the body was only discovered two days later. Mr. Tamura suffered several deep stab wounds to the chest from the sharp steak knife, and it is believed he died almost instantly from massive loss of blood from injuries to the heart and lungs.

Several ribs were also broken from what appears to be massive blunt force. The police have not announced having found any fingerprints or anything left behind at the scene.

It also appears that there were no witnesses to the crime.

Since the house was undisturbed, and valuables and a wallet near the scene were not taken, police view the crime as a personal vendetta. Mr. Tamura's home is in a quiet residential neighborhood, but no one heard anything at the time of the murder, and neighbors were shocked at the news. Mr. Tamura had little to do with his neighbors and lived quietly, and no one noticed anything out of the ordinary around the time of the incident.

Mr. Tamura lived with his son (15), but according to the housekeeper the son hasn't been seen in some ten days. The son has also been absent from his junior high and police are tracing his whereabouts.

In addition to his residence, Mr. Tamura had an office and studio in Musashino City, and according to his secretary, until the day before the murder he was working on a new piece of sculpture as usual. On the day of the incident, there was a matter she had to contact him about, but every time she phoned his residence she got his message machine.

Mr. Tamura was born in Kokubunji, Tokyo. He entered the Dept. of Sculpture at Tokyo Arts Institute, and while still a student completed many innovative pieces that became the talk of the art world. His chief theme was the human subconscious, and his sculptures, which were in a unique style that challenged the conventional, were internationally acclaimed. His best known work was his major "Labyrinth" series, which explored, through an uninhibited expression of the imagination, the beauty and inspiration found in the meandering contours of labyrinths. He was at present a visiting professor at an art institute, and two years ago, at the exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York....

I stop reading at this point. There's a photo of our front gate, and one of my father in younger days, and they give the newspaper an ominous feeling. I fold it twice and put it on top of the table. Still sitting on the bed, I don't say anything, just press my fingertips against my eyes. A dull sound, at a constant frequency, pounds in my ears. I try shaking my head to get rid of it, but it won't go away.

I'm in my room in the library. It's seven p. m. Oshima and I have just shut the place up for the night, and a while ago Miss Saeki drove off in her Volkswagen Golf. It's just me and Oshima in the library now. And that irritating pounding in my ears.

"This paper's from two days ago. The article came out while you were up in the mountains. When I saw it I thought maybe this Koichi Tamura might be your father. A lot of the details fit. I should've shown it to you yesterday, but I wanted to wait until you got settled in."

I nod, still pressing my eyes. Oshima doesn't say anything more.

"I didn't kill him, you know."

"I know that," Oshima says. "On the day of the murder you were here at the library, reading until evening. You wouldn't have had enough time to go back to Tokyo, murder your father, and then get back to Takamatsu. It's impossible."

But I wasn't so sure. I did the math and figured out he was murdered the same night I woke up with my shirt covered in blood.

"But the paper does say the police are trying to locate you. As an important witness."

I nod.

"If you go to the police and prove to them you have a firm alibi, it'd make things a lot easier than trying to run around avoiding them. Of course I'll back you up."

"But if I do that, they'll take me back to Tokyo."

"I would think so. I mean, you still have to finish junior high—that's the law. You can't just go anywhere you want to at your age. The law says you still need a guardian."

I shake my head. "I don't want to explain anything to anybody. And I don't want to go back home to Tokyo, or back to school."

Quiet for a time, Oshima looks at me intently. "That's something you'll have to decide for yourself," he finally says in a calm tone. "I think you have a right to live however you want. Whether you're fifteen or fifty-one, what does it matter? But unfortunately society doesn't agree. So let's say you don't explain anything to anybody. You'll be constantly on the run from the police and society. Your life will be pretty harsh. You're only fifteen, with your whole life ahead of you. You're okay with that?"

I don't say anything.

Oshima picks up the paper and scans the article again. "According to this you're your father's only relative."

"I have a mother and an older sister," I explain, "but they left a long time ago, and I don't know where they are. Even if I did, I seriously doubt they'd come to the funeral."

"Well, if you're not there, I wonder who's going to take care of everything. The funeral, his business affairs."

"Like it said in the paper, he has a secretary at his office who's in charge of everything. She knows about his business, so I'm sure she can handle it. I don't want anything of his handed down to me. The house, his estate, whatever—they can get rid of it however they want." The only thing he's handed down to me, I think, are my genes.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," Oshima says, "but you don't seem too sad your father was murdered."

"No, I do feel sad. He's my father, after all. But what I really regret is that he didn't die sooner. I know that's a terrible thing to say...."

Oshima shakes his head. "No problem. Now more than ever you have the right to be honest."

"Well, I think..." My voice seems weak, lacking in authority. Unsure of where they're headed, my words are sucked into the void. Oshima comes over and sits down next to me.

"All kinds of things are happening to me," I begin. "Some I chose, some I didn't. I don't know how to tell one from the other anymore. What I mean is, it feels like everything's been decided in advance—that I'm following a path somebody else has already mapped out for me. It doesn't matter how much I think things over, how much effort I put into it. In fact, the harder I try, the more I lose my sense of who I am. It's like my identity's an orbit that I've strayed far away from, and that really hurts. But more than that, it scares me. Just thinking about it makes me flinch."