After drinking all that milk now I get sleepy. An overwhelming, almost nauseous sleepiness comes over me. My thoughts slow down, and finally stop, like a train pulling into a station, and I can't think straight anymore, like the core of my body's coagulating.
I walk into the bedroom, make a tangle out of getting my pants and shoes off, then slump down on the bed, bury my face in the pillow, and close my eyes. The pillow smells like the sunlight, a precious smell. I quietly breathe it in, breathe it out, and fall asleep before I know it.
When I wake up it's dark all around. I open my eyes and try to figure out where I am. Two soldiers led me through the forest to a small town next to a stream, right?
Slowly my memory's coming back. The scene comes into focus, and I hear a familiar melody. "Edelweiss." Out in the kitchen there's a faint, intimate clattering of pots and pans. Light spills into the bedroom through a crack in the door, forming a yellow line on the floor. Kind of an old-fashioned, powdery yellow light.
I try to get out of bed but my body's numb all over. I take a deep breath and look up at the ceiling. I hear the sound of plates, of someone scurrying busily across the floor, preparing a meal for me, I imagine. I'm finally able to stand up. Though it takes a while, I struggle into my pants, my socks and shoes. Quietly I grab the knob and open the door.
A young girl's in the kitchen cooking. Her back to me, she's leaning over a pot, tasting the food with a spoon, but when she hears the door open she looks up and turns around. It's her. The same girl who visited my room in the library and gazed at the painting on the wall. The fifteen-year-old Miss Saeki. She's wearing the same clothes, a long-sleeved, light blue dress. The only thing different is now her hair's pinned back.
She gives me a small, warm smile, and a powerful emotion overwhelms me, like the whole world's been turned upside down, like everything tangible had fallen apart but has now been put back together. But this girl is no illusion, certainly no ghost. She's a living, breathing young girl, someone you can touch, standing in a real kitchen at twilight, cooking me a real meal. Her small breasts jut beneath her dress, her neck as white as porcelain fresh from the kiln. It's all real.
"Oh, you're awake?" she asks.
No voice comes out of me. I'm still trying to pull myself together.
"You seem to have slept very well," she says. She turns back to tasting the dish.
"If you didn't wake up I was going to put the meal on the table and leave."
"I wasn't planning to sleep so much," I finally manage to say.
"You came all the way through the forest," she says, "so you must be hungry."
"I'm not sure. But I think I am." I want to reach out and see if I can actually touch her. But I can't. I just stand there, drinking her in. I listen to the sounds she makes as she bustles around the kitchen.
She ladles hot stew onto a plain white plate and carries it over to the table. There's a bowl of salad, too, tomatoes and greens, and a large loaf of bread. There are potatoes and carrots in the stew. The fragrance brings back fond memories. I breathe it all in deeply and realize I'm starving. I have to eat something. As I pick up a scuffed fork and spoon and begin eating, the girl sits in a chair to the side and watches me with a serious expression on her face, like watching me eat is a critical part of her job. Occasionally she brushes back her hair.
"They told me you're fifteen," she says.
"That's right," I reply, buttering a slice of bread. "I just turned fifteen."
"I'm fifteen too," she says.
I nod. I know that, I almost say. But it's too soon to say that. I take another bite.
"I'll be making the meals here for a while," she says. "The cleaning and washing as well. There are clothes in the dresser in the bedroom, so feel free to help yourself.
You can just put your laundry in the basket and I'll take care of it."
"Somebody gave you these jobs?"
She looks fixedly at me but doesn't answer. It's like my question's taken a wrong turn and been sucked into some nameless space.
"What's your name?" I ask, trying a different tack.
She shakes her head slightly. "I don't have a name. We don't have names here."
"But if you don't have a name, how can I call you?"
"There's no need to call me," she says. "If you need me, I'll be here."
"I guess I don't need my name here, either."
She nods. "You're you, you see, and nobody else. You are you, right?"
"I guess so," I say. Though I'm not so sure. Am I really me?
All the while she's steadily gazing at me.
"Do you remember the library?" I come right out and ask her.
"The library?" She shakes her head. "No... There's a library far away, but not here."
"There's a library?"
"Yes, but there aren't any books in it."
"If there aren't any books, then what is there?"
She tilts her head but doesn't respond. Again my question's taken a wrong turn and vanished.
"Have you ever been there?"
"A long time ago," she says.
"But it's not for reading books?"
She nods. "There aren't any books there."
I eat in silence for a time. The stew, the salad, the bread. She doesn't say anything either, just observes me with that serious look.
"How was the food?" she asks after I finish eating.
"It was really good."
"Even without any meat or fish?"
I point to the empty plate. "Well, I didn't leave anything, right?"
"I made it."
"It was really good," I repeat. It's the truth.
Being with her I feel a pain, like a frozen knife stuck in my chest. An awful pain, but the funny thing is I'm thankful for it. It's like that frozen pain and my very existence are one. The pain is an anchor, mooring me here. The girl stands up to boil some water and make tea. While I'm sitting at the table drinking it, she carries the dirty dishes out to the kitchen and starts washing them. I watch her do all this. I want to say something, but when I'm with her words no longer function as they're supposed to. Or maybe the meaning that ties them together has vanished? I stare at my hands and think of the dogwood outside the window, glinting in the moonlight. That's where the blade that's stabbing me in the heart is.
"Will I see you again?" I ask.
"Of course," the girl replies. "Like I said before, if you need me, I'll be here."
"You're not going to suddenly disappear?"
She doesn't say anything, just gazes at me with a strange look on her face, like Where-do-you-think-I'd-go?
"I've met you before," I venture. "In another land, in another library."
"If you say so," she says, touching her hair to check that it's still pinned back. Her voice is expressionless, like she's trying to let me know the topic doesn't interest her.
"I think I've come here to meet you one more time. You, and one other woman."
She looks up and nods seriously. "Going through the deep woods to get here."
"That's right. I had to see you and that other woman again."
"And you've met me."
I nod.
"It's like I told you," she says. "If you need me, I'll be here."
After she washes up, she puts the pots and plates back on the shelf and drapes a canvas bag across her shoulder. "I'll be back tomorrow morning," she tells me. "I hope you get used to being here soon."
I stand at the door and watch as she vanishes into the gloom. I'm alone again in the little cabin, inside a closed circle. Time isn't a factor here. Nobody here has a name.
She'll be here as long as I need her. She's fifteen here. Eternally fifteen, I imagine. But what's going to happen to me? Am I going to stay fifteen here? Is age, too, not a factor here?
I stand in the doorway long after she's disappeared, gazing vacantly at the scenery outside. There's no moon or stars in the sky. Lights are on in a few other buildings, spilling out of the windows. The same antique, yellowish
light that illuminates this room.
But I still can't see anybody else. Just the lights. Dark shadows widen their grip on the world outside. Farther in the distance, blacker than the darkness, the ridge rises up, and the forest surrounding this town like a wall.
Chapter 46
After Nakata's death, Hoshino couldn't pull himself away from the apartment. With the entrance stone there, something might happen, and when it did he wanted to be close enough that he could react in time. Watching over the stone had been Nakata's job, and now it was his. He set the AC in Nakata's room to the lowest possible temperature and turned it on full blast, checking that the windows were shut tight. The air in the room had that special solidity found only in a room with a corpse in it. "Not too cold for you, I hope?" he said to Nakata, who naturally didn't have an opinion one way or the other.
Hoshino plopped down on the living-room sofa, trying to pass the time. He didn't feel like listening to music or reading. Twilight came on, the room by degrees turning dark, but he didn't even get up to switch on the light. He felt completely drained, and once ensconced on the sofa couldn't rouse himself enough to get up. Time came slowly and passed slowly, so leisurely that at times he could swear it had stealthily doubled back on itself.
When his own grandfather died, he thought, it was hard, but nothing like this.
He'd suffered through a long illness, and they all knew it was just a matter of time. So when he did die, they were prepared. It makes a big difference whether or not you have a chance to steel yourself for the inevitable. But that's not the only difference, Hoshino concluded. There was something about Nakata's death that forced him to think long and hard.
Suddenly hungry, he went to the kitchen, defrosted some fried rice in the microwave, and ate half of it along with a beer. Afterward he went back to check on Nakata. Maybe he'd come back to life, he thought. But no, the old man was still dead.
The room was like a walk-in freezer, so cold you could store ice cream in there.
Spending a night in the same house as a corpse was a first, and Hoshino couldn't settle down. Not that he was scared or anything, he told himself. It didn't make his flesh crawl. He just didn't know how he should act with a dead man beside him. The flow of time is so different for the dead and the living. Same with sounds. That's why I can't calm down, he decided. But what can you do? Mr. Nakata's already gone over to the world of the dead, and I'm still in the land of the living. Of course there's going be a gap.
He got up from the sofa and sat down next to the stone. He started stroking it with his palms, like he was petting a cat.
"What the heck am I supposed to do?" he asked the stone. "I want to turn Mr. Nakata over to somebody who'll take care of him, but until I take care of you, I can't. You want to clue me in?"
But there was no reply. For the moment the stone was just a stone, and Hoshino understood this. He could ask till he was blue in the face but couldn't expect a response.
Even so, he sat beside the stone, rubbing it. He tossed out a couple questions, made an appeal to logic, and did his best to win the sympathy vote. Though he knew it was pointless, he couldn't think of an alternative. Mr. Nakata had sat here all the time talking to the stone, so why shouldn't he?
Still, talking to a stone, trying to get it to feel your pain—that's pretty pathetic, he thought. I mean, isn't that where they get that expression? As heartless as a stone?
He stood up, thinking he'd watch the news on TV, but thought better of it and sat down again beside the stone. Silence is probably best for now, he decided. Got to listen carefully, wait for whatever it is that's going to happen. "But waiting around isn't exactly my thing," Hoshino said to the stone. Come to think of it, I've always been the impatient type, and man have I paid for it! Always leaping before I look, always screwing things up. You're as antsy as a cat in heat, my grandpa used to tell me. But now I've got to sit tight and wait. Gut it out!
Everything was quiet except for the groan of the AC going full blast next door.
The clock showed nine, then ten, but nothing happened. Time passed, the night grew deeper, nothing else. Hoshino dragged his blankets into the living room, lay down on the sofa, and pulled them over him. He figured that it was better, even asleep, to be near the stone in case something happened. He turned off the light and shut his eyes.
"Hey, stone! I'm going to sleep now," he called out. "We'll talk again tomorrow. It's been a long day, and I need some shut-eye." Man, he thought, was that an understatement. Long did not begin to describe it. "Hey, Gramps!" he called out more loudly. "Mr. Nakata? You hear me?" No reply.
Hoshino sighed, closed his eyes, adjusted his pillow, and fell asleep. He slept the whole night without a break, without a single dream. In the next room, Nakata slept his own deep, dreamless, stone-hard sleep.
As soon as he got up, just past seven the next morning, Hoshino went right in to check on Nakata. As before, the AC was roaring full blast, blowing cold air into the room. And in the midst of that chilled room, Nakata was still dead. Compared to the night before, death seemed to have a tighter grip on him. His skin had grown ashen, his closed eyes more fixed and solemn. He wasn't about to come back to life, suddenly sit up, and say, My apologies, Mr. Hoshino. Nakata just fell asleep. I'm sorry. No need to worry, I'll take it from here—and then deal with the stone. That was never going to happen. Nakata's checked out for good, Hoshino thought, and that's a fact.
He started shivering from the cold, so he stepped out and shut the door, then went into the kitchen, brewed some coffee in the coffeemaker and drank two cups, made some toast and ate it with butter and jam. After eating he sat in the kitchen, smoked a couple of cigarettes, and gazed out the window. The clouds had blown away sometime during the night, leaving an unbroken sunny summer sky. The stone was in its customary spot next to the sofa. It didn't sleep a wink, didn't wake up, just crouched there, unmoving, the entire night. He tried picking it up and easily lifted it.
"Hey there," Hoshino said in a cheerful voice, "it's me. Your old pal Hoshino, remember? Looks like it's just you and me today."
The stone was—not unexpectedly—speechless.
"Ah, that's okay. Doesn't matter if you don't remember. We have lots of time to get to know each other—no need to rush."
He sat down beside the stone, started rubbing it, and wondered what sort of things you might talk about with a stone. Having a conversation with a stone was a first and he couldn't think of any appropriate topics. Best to avoid anything difficult this early in the morning, he figured. The day was long, and whatever popped into his head would be fine.
He gave it some thought and chose a favorite subject: girls. He reviewed each and every girl he'd ever slept with. If he stuck to the ones whose names he remembered, it didn't add up to all that many. He counted them off on his fingers. Six, all told. If I add the ones whose names I don't know, he thought, there'd be a lot more, but we'll put those on hold.
"I guess it's pretty pointless talking to a stone about girls I've slept with," he said.
"And I suppose you aren't exactly thrilled to hear all about my exploits first thing in the morning. But I can't think of anything else, okay? Who knows, maybe some lighter topic'll do you some good for a change. FYI and all that."
Hoshino related some episodes in as much detail as he could recall. The first was when he was in high school, back when he was into motorcycles and getting into trouble.
The girl was three years older than him and worked in a little bar in Gifu City. They pretty much lived together for a while. The girl was serious about the relationship, said she couldn't live without him. She phoned my parents, he remembered, but they were none too happy about it, and the whole thing was getting too intense, so once I graduated from high school I joined the Self-Defense Force. Right after I joined up I got stationed at a base in Yamanashi Prefecture, and the relationship fizzled out. I never saw her again.
"I guess lazy's my middle name," Hoshino explained to the stone. "And when things g
et sticky I tend to head for the door. Not to brag or anything, but I'm pretty quick on my feet. I've never followed anything to the bitter end. Which is sort of a problem, I suppose."
The second girl he met near the base in Yamanashi. He was off duty one day and helped her fix a flat on her Suzuki Alto. She was a year older than him and attending nursing school.
"She was a nice kid," Hoshino said to the stone. "Big breasts, a very warm person. And man, did she like to get it on! I was only nineteen, and we used to spend every day between the sheets. Problem was, she was jealous like you wouldn't believe. If I didn't see her on my days off she'd give me the third degree, ask where I went, what I did, who I was with. I told her the truth, but that didn't satisfy her. That's why we broke up. We were together for about a year, I guess.... I don't know how you are, but I can't stand anyone getting on my case. I feel like I can't breathe, and it makes me depressed. So I ran away. The cool thing about the SDF is you can always hole up on base till the whole thing blows over. And there's nothing anybody can do about it. If you want to dump a girl with no problems, going into the SDF's your ticket. Good thing to remember. But it's not all roses—not with digging foxholes and piling up sandbags and crap."
The more he talked, the more Hoshino realized how pointless his life had been.
Four of the six girls he'd gone out with had been nice. (The other two, if you looked at it objectively, had personality problems, he decided.) Most of them had treated him pretty well. No drop-dead beauties among them, though each was cute in her own way, and let him have sex whenever he felt like it. Never complained if he skipped foreplay and went straight to the main course. They fixed meals for him on his days off, bought him presents on his birthday, lent him money when he was a little short before payday—not that he ever remembered paying them back—and they never demanded anything in return. All this, and I was an ungrateful bastard, he concluded. I took everything for granted.