The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (73 page)

Last time, I got as far as telling you about how I’m working in this wig factory in the mountains far away with a lot of local girls. This is the continuation of that letter
.

Lately, it’s really been bothering me that, I don’t know, the way people work like this every day from morning to night is kind of weird. Hasn’t it ever struck you as strange? I mean, all I do here is do the work that my bosses tell me to do the way they tell me to do it. I don’t have to think at all. It’s like I just put my brain in a locker before I start work and pick it up on the way home. I spend seven hours a day at a workbench, planting hairs into wig bases, then I eat dinner in the cafeteria, take a bath, and of course I have to sleep, like everybody else, so out of a twenty-four-hour day, the amount of free time I have is like nothing. And because I’m so tired from work, the “free time” I have I mostly spend lying around in a fog. I don’t have any time to sit and think about anything. Of course, I don’t have to work on weekends, but then I have to do the laundry and cleaning I’ve let go, and sometimes I go into town, and before I know it the weekend is over. I once made up my mind to keep a diary, but I had nothing to write, so I quit after a week. I mean, I just do the same thing over and over again, day in, day out
.

But still—but still—it absolutely does not bother me that I’m now just a part of the work I do. I don’t feel the least bit alienated from my life. If anything, I
sometimes feel that by concentrating on my work like this, with all the mindless determination of an ant, I’m getting closer to the “real me.” I don’t know how to put it, but it’s kind of like by not thinking about myself I can get closer to the core of my self That’s what I mean by “kind of weird.”

I’m giving this job everything I’ve got. Not to boast, but I’ve even been named worker of the month. I told you, I may not look it, but I’m really good at handiwork. We divide up into teams when we work, and any team I join improves its figures. I do things like helping the slower girls when I’m finished with my part of a job. So now I’m popular with the other girls. Can you believe it? Me, popular! Anyway, what I wanted to tell you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, is that all I’ve been doing since I came to this factory is work, work, work. Like an ant. Like the village blacksmith. Have I made myself clear so far?

Anyway, the place where I do my actual work is really weird. It’s huge, like a hangar, with a great, high roof, and wide open. A hundred and fifty girls sit lined up working there. It’s quite a sight. Of course, they didn’t have to put up such a monster factory. It’s not as if we’re building submarines or anything. They could have divided us up into separate rooms. But maybe they figured it would increase our sense of communal solidarity to have that many people working together in one place. Or maybe it’s just easier for the bosses to oversee the whole bunch of us at once. I’ll bet they’re using whatchamacallit psychology on us. We’re divided up into teams, surrounding workbenches just like the ones in science class where you dissect frogs, and one of the older girls sits at the end as team leader. It’s OK to talk as long as you keep your hands moving (I mean, you can’t just shut up and do this stuff all day long), but if you talk or laugh too loud or get too engrossed in your conversation, the team leader will come over to you with a frown and say, “All right, Yumiko, let’s keep the hands moving, not the mouth. Looks like you’re falling behind,” So we all whisper to each other like burglars in the night
.

They pipe music into the factory. The style changes, depending on the time of day. If you’re a big fan of Barry Manilow or Air Supply, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, you might like this place
.

It takes me a few days to make one of “my” wigs. The time differs according to the grade of the product, of course, but you have to measure the time it takes to make a wig in days. First you divide the base into checkerboard squares, and then you plant hair into one square after another in order. It’s not assembly line work, though, like the factory in Chaplin’s movie, where you tighten one bolt and then the next one comes; each wig is “mine.” I almost feel like signing and dating each one when I’m through with it. But I don’t, of course: they’d just get mad at me. It’s a really nice feeling to know, though, that someone out there in the world is
wearing the wig I made on his head. It sort of gives me a sense of, I don’t know, connectedness
.

Life is so strange, though. If somebody had said to me three years ago, “Three years from now, you’re going to be in a factory in the mountains making wigs with a lot of country girls,” I would have laughed in their face. I could never have imagined this. And as for what I’ll be doing three years from now: nobody knows the answer to that one, either. Do you know what you’re going to be doing three years from now, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? I’m sure you don’t. Forget about three years: I’d be willing to bet all the money I’ve got here that you don’t know what you’ll be doing a month from now!

The girls around me, though, know pretty much where they’ll be in three years. Or at least they think they do. They think they’re going to save the money they make here, find the right guy after a few years, and be happily married
.

The guys these girls are going to marry are mostly farmers’ sons or guys who will inherit the store from their fathers or guys working in small local companies. Like I said before, there’s a chronic shortage of young women here, so they get “bought up” pretty quickly. It would take some really bad luck for anybody to be left over, so they all find somebody or other to marry. It’s really something. And as I said in my last letter, most people quit work when they get married. Their job in the wig factory is just a stage that fills the few years’ gap between graduating from high school and getting married—kind of like a room they come into, stay in a little while, then leave
.

Not only does the wig company not mind this; they seem to prefer to have the girls work just a few years and quit when they get married. It’s a lot better for them to have a constant turnover in workers rather than to have to worry about salaries and benefits and unions and stuff like that. The company takes somewhat better care of the girls with ability who become team leaders, but the other, ordinary girls are just consumer goods to them. There’s a tacit understanding, then, between the girls and the company that they will get married and quit. So for the girls, imagining what is going to happen three years from now involves only one of two possibilities: they’ll either be looking for a mate while they go on working here, or they will have quit work to get married. Talk about simplicity!

There just isn’t anybody around here like me, who is thinking to herself, I don’t know what’s going to happen to me three years from now. They are all good workers. Nobody does a half-baked job or complains about the work. Now and then, I’ll hear somebody griping about the cafeteria food, that’s all. Of course, this is work we’re talking about, so it can’t be fun all the time; you might have somebody putting in her hours from nine to five because she has to, even though she really wants to run off for the day, but for the most part, I think they’re enjoying the
work. It must be because they know this is a finite period suspended between one world and another. That’s why they want to have as much fun as possible while they’re here. Finally, this is just a transition point for them
.

Not for me, though. This is no time of suspension or transition for me. I have absolutely no idea where I’m going from here. For me, this could be the end of the line. Do you see what I mean? So strictly speaking, I am not enjoying the work here. All I’m doing is trying to accept the work in every possible way. When I’m making a wig, I don’t think about anything but making that wig. I’m deadly serious—enough so that I break out in a sweat all over
.

I don’t quite know how to put this, but lately I’ve been sort of thinking about the boy who got killed in the motorcycle accident. To tell you the truth, I haven’t thought too much about him before. Maybe the shock of the accident twisted my memory or something in a weird way, because all I remembered about him were these weird kinds of things, like his smelly armpits or what a totally dumb guy he was or his fingers trying to get into strange places of mine. Every once in a while, though, something not so bad about him comes back to me. Especially when my mind is empty and I’m just planting hairs in a wig base, these things come back to me out of nowhere. Oh, yeah, I’ll think, he was like that. I guess time doesn’t flow in order, does it—A, B, C, D? It just sort of goes where it feels like going
.

Can I be honest with you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? I mean, really, really, really honest? Sometimes I get sooo scared! I’ll wake up in the middle of the night all alone, hundreds of miles away from anybody, and it’s pitch dark, and I have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen to me in the future, and I get so scared I want to scream. Does that happen to you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? When it happens, I try to remind myself that I am connected to others—other things and other people. I work as hard as I can to list their names in my head. On the list, of course, is you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. And the alley, and the well, and the persimmon tree, and that kind of thing. And the wigs that I’ve made here with my own hands. And the little bits and pieces I remember about the boy. All these little things (though you’re not just another one of those little things, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, but anyhow …) help me to come back “here” little by little. Then I start to feel sorry I never really let my boyfriend see me naked or touch me. Back then, I was absolutely determined not to let him put his hands on me. Sometimes, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, I think I’d like to stay a virgin the rest of my life. Seriously. What do you think about that?

Bye-bye, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. I hope Kumiko comes back soon
.

The phone rang at nine-thirty at night. It rang once, then stopped, and started ringing again. This was to be Ushikawa’s signal.

“Hello, Mr. Okada,” said Ushikawa’s voice. “Ushikawa here. I’m in your neighborhood and thought I might drop by, if it would be all right with you. I know it’s late, but there’s something I wanted to talk to you about in person. What do you say? It has to do with Ms. Kumiko, so I thought you might be interested.”

I pictured Ushikawa’s expression at the other end of the line as I listened to him speaking. He had a self-satisfied smile on his face, lips curled and filthy teeth exposed, as if to say, I know this is an offer you can’t refuse; and unfortunately, he was right.

•

It took him exactly ten minutes to reach my house. He wore the same clothes he’d had on three days earlier. I could have been mistaken about that, but he wore the same kind of suit and shirt and necktie, all grimy and wrinkled and baggy. These disgraceful articles of clothing looked as if they had been forced to accept an unfair portion of the world’s exhaustion and burdens. If, through some kind of reincarnation, it were possible to be reborn as Ushikawa’s clothing, with a guarantee of rare glory in the
next
rebirth, I would still not want to do it.

After asking my permission, Ushikawa helped himself to a beer in the refrigerator, checking first to see that the bottle felt properly chilled before he poured the contents into a glass he found nearby. We sat at the kitchen table.

“All right, then,” said Ushikawa. “In the interest of saving time, I will dispense with the small talk and plunge directly into the business at hand. You would like to talk with Ms. Kumiko, wouldn’t you, Mr. Okada? Directly. Just the two of you. I believe that is what you have been wanting for some time now. Your first priority. Am I right?”

I gave this some thought. Or I paused for a few moments, as if giving it some thought.

“Of course I want to talk with her if that is possible.”

“It is not impossible,” said Ushikawa softly, with a nod.

“But there are conditions attached …?”

“There are
no
conditions attached.” Ushikawa took a sip of his beer. “I do have a new proposition for you this evening, however. Please listen to what I have to say, and give it careful consideration. It is something quite separate from the question of whether or not you talk to Ms. Kumiko.”

I looked at him without speaking.

“To begin with, then, Mr. Okada, you are renting that land, and the house on it, from a certain company, are you not? The ‘hanging house,’ I mean. You are paying a rather large sum for it each month. You have not an ordinary lease, however, but one with an option to buy some years hence. Correct? Your contract is not a matter of public record, of course, and so your name does not appear anywhere—which is the point of all the machinations. You are, however, the de facto owner of the property, and the rent you pay accomplishes the same thing as mortgage payments. The total sum you are to pay—let’s see—including the house, comes to something in the neighborhood of eighty million yen, does it not? At this rate, you should be able to take title to the land and the building in something less than two years. That is
very
impressive! Very fast work! I have to congratulate you.”