The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (35 page)

I did
not
see what she meant.

“Of course, I had relations with you too, Mr. Okada, but it was something done in the correct way, with a correct purpose. I was in no way defiled by that.”

I looked directly at her for several seconds, as if staring at a wall with colored blotches. “You had relations with me?”

“Yes,” she said. “The first time I only used my mouth, but the second time we had relations. In the same room both times. You remember, of course? We had so little time on the first occasion, we had to hurry. There was more time to spare on the second occasion.”

It was impossible for me to reply to her.

“I was wearing your wife’s dress the second time. The blue one. And bracelets like these on my left arm. Isn’t that true?” She held her left wrist, with the pair of bracelets, out toward me.

I nodded.

Creta Kano then said, “Of course, we did not have relations in reality. When you ejaculated, it was not into me, physically, but in your own consciousness. Do you see? It was a fabricated consciousness. Still, the two of us share the consciousness of having had relations with each other.”

“What’s the point of doing something like that?”

“To know,” she said. “To know more—and more deeply.”

I released a sigh. This was crazy. But she had been describing the scene of my dream with incredible accuracy. Running my finger around my mouth, I stared at the two bracelets on her left wrist.

“Maybe I’m not very smart,” I said, my voice dry, “but I really can’t claim to have understood everything you’ve been telling me.”

“In your second dream, when I was in the midst of having relations with you, another woman took my place. Isn’t that true? I have no idea who she was. But that event was probably meant to suggest something to you, Mr. Okada. This is what I wanted to convey to you.”

I said nothing in return.

“You should have no sense of guilt about having had relations with me,” said Creta Kano. “You see, Mr. Okada, I am a prostitute. I used to be a prostitute of the flesh, but now I am a prostitute of the mind. Things pass through me.”

At this point, Creta Kano left her seat and went down on her knees
beside me, clutching my hand in both of hers. She had soft, warm, very small hands. “Please hold me, Mr. Okada. Right here and now.”

We stood, and I put my arms around her. I honestly had no idea whether I should be doing this. But holding Creta Kano just then, just there, did not seem to be a mistake. I could not have explained it, but that was how I felt. I wrapped my arms around her slender body as if I were taking my first lesson in ballroom dancing. She was a small woman. The top of her head came just past the bottom of my chin. Her breasts pressed against my stomach. She held her cheek against my chest. And although she made no sound the whole time, she was crying. I could feel the warmth of her tears through my T-shirt. I looked down, to see her perfectly set hair trembling. I felt I was having a well-made dream. But it was not a dream.

After we had stayed in that position without moving for a very long time, she pulled away from me as if she had suddenly remembered something. Maintaining a distance, she looked at me.

“Thank you so much, Mr. Okada,” she said. “I will be going home now.” She had supposedly just been crying with some intensity, but her makeup had hardly been disturbed. The sense of reality was now strangely absent.

“Are you going to be coming into my dreams again sometime?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, with a gentle shake of the head. “Not even I can tell you that. But please have faith in me. Whatever might happen, please don’t be afraid of me or feel you must be on your guard where I am concerned. Will you promise me that, Mr. Okada?”

I answered with a nod.

Soon afterward, Creta Kano went home.

The darkness of night was thicker than ever. The front of my T-shirt was soaking wet. I stayed up until dawn, unable to sleep. I didn’t feel sleepy, for one thing, and in fact, I was afraid to sleep. I had the feeling that if I were to go to sleep, I would be enveloped in a flow of shifting sand that would carry me off to another world, from which I would never be able to return. I stayed on the sofa until morning, drinking brandy and thinking about Creta Kano’s story. Even after the night had ended, the presence of Creta Kano and the fragrance of Christian Dior eau de cologne lingered in the house like captive shadows.

The telephone rang at almost the exact moment I was falling asleep. I tried to ignore it, but as if it could read my mind, it kept up its stubborn ringing: ten times, twenty times—it was never going to stop. Finally, I opened one eye and looked at the clock. Just after six in the morning. Beyond the window shone the full light of day. The call might be from Kumiko. I got out of bed, went to the living room, and picked up the receiver.

“Hello,” I said, but the caller said nothing. Somebody was obviously there, but the person did not try to speak. I, too, kept silent. Concentrating on the earpiece, I could just make out the sound of breathing.

“Who is it?” I asked, but the silence continued at the other end.

“If this is the person who’s always calling, do me a favor and make it a little later,” I said. “No sex talk before breakfast, please.”

“The person who’s always calling?” blurted out the voice of May Kasahara. “Who do you talk about sex with?”

“Nobody,” I said.

“The woman you were holding in your arms last night? Do you talk about sex with her on the telephone?”

“No, she’s not the one.”

“Tell me, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, just how many women do you have hanging around you—aside from your wife?”

“That would be a very long story,” I said. “Anyhow, it’s six in the morning and I haven’t had much sleep. So you came to my house last night, huh?”

“And I saw you with her—holding each other.”

“That didn’t mean a thing,” I said. “How can I put it? It was a kind of little ceremony.”

“You don’t have to make excuses to me,” said May Kasahara. “I’m not your wife. It’s none of my business, but let me just say this: You’ve got a problem.”

“You may be right,” I said.

“You’re having a tough time now, I know that. But I can’t help thinking it’s something you brought on yourself. You’ve got some really basic problem, and it attracts trouble like a magnet. Any woman with any sense would get the hell away from you.”

“You may be right,” I said again.

May Kasahara maintained a brief silence on her end of the line. Then she cleared her throat once and said, “You came to the alley last night, didn’t you? Standing for a long time at the back of my house, like some amateur burglar … Don’t worry, I saw you there.”

“So why didn’t you come out?”

“A girl doesn’t always want to go out, you know, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. Sometimes she feels like being nasty—like, if the guy’s gonna wait, let him
really
wait.”

I grunted.

“But I still felt bad,” she went on. “So I dragged myself all the way to your house later—like an idiot.”

“And I was holding the woman.”

“Yeah, but isn’t she kinda cuckoo? Nobody dresses like that anymore. And that makeup of hers! She’s, like, in a time warp or something. She should go get her head examined.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, “she’s not cuckoo. Different people have different tastes.”

“Well, sure. People can have any taste they want. But ordinary people don’t go that far just for taste. She’s like—what?—right out of an old magazine: everything about her, from head to foot.”

To that I did not reply.

“Tell me, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, did you sleep with her?”

I hesitated a moment and said, “No, I didn’t.”

“Really?”

“Really. I don’t have that kind of
physical
relationship with her.”

“So why were you holding her?”

“Women feel that way sometimes: they want to be held.”

“Maybe so,” said May Kasahara, “but an idea like that can be a little dangerous.”

“It’s true,” I said.

“What’s her name?”

“Creta Kano.”

May Kasahara fell silent at her end. “You’re kidding, right?” she said at last.

“Not at all. And her sister’s name is Malta Kano.”

“Malta?! That can’t be her real name.”

“No, it isn’t. It’s her professional name.”

“What are they, a comedy team? Or do they have some connection with the Mediterranean Sea?”

“Actually, there
is
some connection with the Mediterranean.”

“Does the sister dress like a normal person?”

“Pretty much,” I said. “Her clothing is a lot more normal than Creta’s, at least. Except she always wears this red vinyl hat.”

“Something tells me she’s not exactly normal, either. Why do you always have to go out of your way to hang around with such off-the-wall people?”

“Now,
that
really would be a long story. If everything settles down sometime, I may be able to tell you. But not now. My head is too messed up. And things are even more messed up.”

“Yeah, sure,” she said, with a note of suspicion in her voice. “Anyway, your wife hasn’t come back yet, has she?”

“No, not yet.”

“You know, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, you’re a grown man. Why don’t you use your head a little bit? If your wife had changed her mind and come home last night, she would have seen you with your arms locked around this woman. Then what?”

“True, that was a possibility.”

“And if
she
had been the one making this call, not me, and you started talking about telephone sex, what would she have thought about that?”

“You’re right,” I said.

“I’m telling you, you’ve got a problem,” she said, with a sigh.

“It’s true, I do have a problem.”

“Stop agreeing with everything I say! It’s not as if you’re going to solve everything by admitting your mistakes. Whether you admit them or not, mistakes are mistakes.”

“It’s true,” I said. It
was
true.

“I can’t stand it anymore!” said May Kasahara. “Anyway, tell me, what did you want last night? You came to my house looking for something, right?”

“Oh, that. Never mind.”

“Never mind?”

“Yeah. Finally, it’s … never mind.”

“In other words, she gave you a hug, so you don’t need me anymore.”

“No, that’s not it. It just seemed to me—”

At which point May Kasahara hung up. Terrific. May Kasahara, Malta Kano, Creta Kano, the telephone woman, and Kumiko. May Kasahara was right: I had just a few too many women around me these days. And each one came packaged with her own special, inscrutable problem.

But I was too tired to think. I had to get some sleep. And there was something I would have to do when I woke up.

I went back to bed and fell asleep.

•

When I did wake up, I took a knapsack from the drawer. It was the one we kept for earthquakes and other emergencies that might require evacuation. Inside was a water bottle, crackers, a flashlight, and a lighter. The whole was a set that Kumiko had bought when we moved into this house, just in case the Big One should hit. The water bottle was empty, though, the crackers were soggy, and the flashlight’s batteries were dead. I filled the bottle with water, threw away the crackers, and put new batteries in the flashlight. Then I went to the neighborhood hardware store and bought one of those rope ladders they sell as emergency fire escapes. I thought about what else I might need, but nothing came to mind—besides lemon drops. I went through the house, shutting windows and turning off lights. I made sure the front door was locked, but then I reconsidered. Somebody might come looking for me while I was gone. Kumiko might come back. And besides, there was nothing here worth stealing. I left a note on the kitchen table: “Gone for a while. Will return. T.”

I wondered what it would be like for Kumiko to find this note. How would she take it? I crumpled it up and wrote a new one: “Have to go out for a while on important business. Back soon. Please wait. T.”

Wearing chinos, a short-sleeved polo shirt, and the knapsack, I stepped down into the yard from the veranda. All around me were the unmistakable signs of summer—the genuine article, without reservations or conditions. The glow of the sun, the smell of the breeze, the blue of the sky, the shape of the clouds, the whirring of the cicadas: everything announced the authentic arrival of summer. And there I was, a pack on my back, scaling the garden wall and dropping down into the alley.

Once, as a kid, I had run away from home on a beautiful summer morning just like this. I couldn’t recall what had led up to my decision to go. I was probably mad at my parents. I left home with a knapsack on my back and, in my pocket, all the money I had saved. I told my mother I would be hiking with some friends and got her to make a lunch for me. There were good hills for hiking just above our house, and kids often went climbing in them without adult supervision. Once I was out of the house, I got on the bus that I had chosen for myself and rode it to the end of the line. To me, this was a strange and distant town. Here I transferred to another bus and rode it to yet another strange and distant—still more distant—town. Without even knowing the name of the place, I got off the bus and wandered through the streets. There was nothing special about this particular town: it was a little more lively than the neighborhood where I lived, and a little more run-down. It had a street lined with shops, and a commuter train station, and a few small factories. A stream ran through the town, and facing the stream stood a movie house. A signboard out front announced they were showing a western. At noon I sat on a park bench and ate my lunch. I stayed in the town until early evening, and when the sun began to sink, my heart did too. This is your last chance to go back, I told myself. Once it gets completely dark, you might never be able to leave here. I went home on the same buses that had brought me there. I arrived before seven, and no one noticed that I had run away. My parents had thought I was out in the hills with the other kids.