The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

  I clenched my teeth and quietly released the air I had locked in my lungs. Still the trembling would not subside. A sickening smell hung in the air—the smell of brains and violence and death. I had done this: I was the one who had made the air smell like this. I found the sofa and collapsed onto it. For a while, I fought against the nausea rising in my stomach, but the nausea won. I vomited everything in my stomach onto the carpet, and when that was gone I brought up stomach fluid, then air, and saliva. While vomiting, I dropped the bat on the floor. I could hear it rolling away in the darkness.

  Once the spasms of my stomach began to subside, I wanted to take out my handkerchief to wipe my mouth, but I could not move my hand. I couldn’t get up from the sofa. “Let’s go home,” I said toward the darkness of the inner room. “This is all over now. Let’s go.”

  She didn’t answer.

  There was no one in there anymore. I sank into the sofa and closed my eyes.

  I could feel the strength going out of me—from my fingers, my shoulders, my neck, my legs.… The pain of my wounds began to fade as well. My body was losing all sense of mass and substance. But this gave me no anxiety, no fear at all. Without protest, I gave myself up—surrendered my flesh—to some huge, warm thing that came naturally to enfold me. I realized then that I was passing through the wall of jelly. All I had to do was give myself up to the gentle flow. I’ll never come back here again, I said to myself as I moved through the wall. Everything had come to an end. But where was Kumiko? Where did she go? I was supposed to bring her back from the room. That was the reason I killed the man. That was the reason I had to split his skull open like a watermelon. That was the reason I … But I couldn’t think anymore. My mind was sucked into a deep pool of nothingness.

  •

  When I came to, I was sitting in the darkness again. My back was against the wall, as always. I had returned to the bottom of the well.

  But it was not the usual well bottom. There was something new here, something unfamiliar. I tried to gather my faculties to grasp what was going on. What was so different? But my senses were still in a state of near-total paralysis. I had only a partial, fragmentary sense of my surroundings. I felt as if, through some kind of error, I had been deposited in the wrong container. As time passed by, though, I began to realize what it was.

  Water. I was surrounded by water.

  The well was no longer dry. I was sitting in water up to my waist. I took several deep breaths to calm myself. How could this be? The well was producing water—not cold water, though. If anything, it felt warm. I felt as if I were soaking in a heated pool. It then occurred to me to check my pocket. I wanted to know if the flashlight was still there. Had I brought it back with me from the other world? Was there any link between what had happened there and this reality? But my hand would not move. I couldn’t even move my fingers. All strength had gone out of my arms and legs. It was impossible for me to stand.

  I began a coolheaded assessment of my situation. First of all, the water came up only to my waist, so I didn’t have to worry about drowning. True, I was unable to move, but that was probably because I had used up every ounce of strength. Once enough time had gone by, my strength would probably come back. The knife wounds didn’t seem very deep, and the paralysis at least saved me from having to suffer with pain. The blood seemed to have stopped flowing from my cheek.

  I leaned my head back against the wall and told myself, It’s OK, don’t worry. Everything had probably ended. All I had to do now was give my body some rest here, then go back to my original world, the world aboveground, where the sunlight overflowed.… But why had this well started producing water all of a sudden? It had been dried up, dead, for such a long time, yet now it had come back to life. Could this have some connection with what I had accomplished there? Yes, it probably did. Something might have loosened whatever it was that had been obstructing the vein of water.

  •

  Shortly after that, I encountered one ominous fact. At first I tried to resist accepting it as a fact. My mind came up with a list of possibilities that would enable me to do that. I tried to convince myself that it was a hallucination caused by the combination of darkness and fatigue. But in the end, I had to recognize its truth. However much I attempted to deceive myself, it would not go away.

  The water level was rising.

  The water had risen now from my waist to the underside of my bent knees. It was happening slowly, but it was happening. I tried again to move my body. With a concentrated effort, I tried to squeeze out whatever strength I could manage, but it was useless. The most I could do was bend my neck a little. I looked overhead. The well lid was still solidly in place. I tried to look at the watch on my left wrist, without success.

  The water was coming in from an opening—and with what seemed like increasing speed. Where it had been barely seeping in at first, it was now almost gushing. I could hear it. Soon it was up to my chest. How deep was it going to get?

  Be careful of water, Mr. Honda had said to me. I had never paid any heed to his prophecy. True, I had never forgotten it, either (you don’t forget anything as weird as that), but I had never taken it seriously. Mr. Honda had been nothing more than a harmless episode for Kumiko and me. I would repeat his words as a joke now and then when something came up: “Be careful of water.” And we would laugh. We were young, and we had no need for prophecies. Just living was itself an act of prophecy. But Mr. Honda had been right. I almost wanted to laugh out loud. The water was rising, and I was in trouble.

  I thought about May Kasahara. I used my imagination to picture her opening the well cover—with total reality and clarity. The image was so real and clear that I could have stepped right into it. I couldn’t move my body, but my imagination still worked. What else could I do?

  “Hey, Mr. Wind-Up Bird,” said May Kasahara. Her voice reverberated all up and down the well shaft. I hadn’t realized that a well with water echoed more than one without water. “What are you doing down there? Thinking again?”

  “I’m not doing any one thing in particular,” I said, facing upward. “I haven’t got time to explain now, but I can’t move my body, and the water is rising in here. This isn’t a dry well anymore. I might drown.”

  “Poor Mr. Wind-Up Bird!” said May Kasahara. “You emptied yourself out trying so hard to save Kumiko. And you probably did save her. Right? And in the process, you saved lots of people. But you couldn’t save yourself. And nobody else could save you. You used up your strength and your fate saving others. All your seeds were planted somewhere else, and now your bag is empty. Have you ever heard of anything so unfair? I feel sympathy for you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, from the bottom of my heart. It’s true. But finally, it was a choice you made yourself. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I do,” I said.

  I felt a dull throb in my right shoulder. It really happened, then, I told myself. The knife really cut me. It cut me as a real knife.

  “Are you afraid to die, Mr. Wind-Up Bird?” asked May Kasahara.

  “Sure I am,” I said. I could hear my voice reverberating in the well. It was my voice, and at the same time it wasn’t. “Sure I’m afraid when I think about dying down here in a dark well.”

  “Goodbye, then, poor Mr. Wind-Up Bird,” said May Kasahara. “Sorry, there’s nothing I can do for you. I’m far, far away.”

  “Goodbye, May Kasahara,” I said. “You looked great in a bikini.”

  May Kasahara’s voice was very quiet as she said, “Goodbye, poor Mr. Wind-Up Bird.”

  The well cover closed tightly again. The image faded. But nothing happened. The image was not linked to anything. I shouted toward the well mouth, “May Kasahara, where are you now when I need you?”

  •

  The water was up to my throat. Now it was wrapped around my neck like a noose. In anticipation, I was beginning to find it difficult to breathe. My heart, now underwater, was working hard to tick off the time it had remaining. At this rate, I would have another five minutes or
so before the water covered my mouth and nose and started filling my lungs. There was no way I could win. I had brought this well back to life, and I would die in its rebirth. It was not a bad way to die, I told myself. The world is full of much worse ways to die.

  I closed my eyes and tried to accept my impending death as calmly as I could. I struggled to overcome my fear. At least I was able to leave a few things behind. That was the one small bit of good news. I tried to smile, without much success. “I am afraid to die, though,” I whispered to myself. These turned out to be my last words. They were not very impressive words, but it was too late to change them. The water was over my mouth now. Then it came to my nose. I stopped breathing. My lungs fought to suck in new air. But there was no more air. There was only lukewarm water.

  I was dying. Like all the other people who live in this world.

  The Story of the Duck People

  •

  Shadows and Tears

  •

  (May Kasahara’s Point of View: 6)

  Hi, again, Mr. Wind-Up Bird.

  Hey, are these letters really getting to you?

  I mean, I’ve been writing you tons and tons of letters, and I’m really starting to wonder if they ever reach you. The address I’ve been using is a “kind of” kind of thing, and I don’t put a return address on the envelope, so maybe they’re just piling up on the “little letter lost” shelf in a post office somewhere, unread and all covered with dust. Up to now, I figured: OK, if they’re not getting through, they’re not getting through, so what? I’ve been scratching away at these things, but the important thing was for me to put my thoughts down on paper. It’s easy for me to write if I think I’m writing to you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, I don’t know why. Hey, yeah, why is that?

  But this letter is one I really want you to read. I hope and pray it gets to you.

  Now I’m going to write about the duck people. Yes, I know this is the first time I’ve mentioned them, but here goes.

  I told you before how this factory I’m working in has this huge property, with woods and a pond and stuff. It’s great for taking walks. The pond’s a pretty big one, and that’s where the duck people live, maybe twelve birds altogether. I don’t know how their family is organized. I suppose they’ve got their internal arrangements, with some members getting along better with some and not so well with others, but I’ve never seen them fight.

  It’s December, so ice has started to form on the pond, but not such thick ice. Even when it’s cold, there’s still enough open water left so the ducks can swim around a little bit. When it’s cold enough for thick ice, I’m told, some of the girls come here to ice-skate. Then the duck people (yes, I know it’s a weird expression, but I’ve gotten in the habit of using it, so it just comes out) will have to go somewhere else. I don’t like ice-skating, so I’m kind of hoping there won’t be any ice, but I don’t think it’s going to do any good. I mean, it gets really cold in this part of the country, so as long as they go on living here, the duck people are going to have to resign themselves to it.

  I come here every weekend these days and kill time watching the duck people. When I’m doing that, two or three hours can go by before I know it. I go out in the cold, armed head to foot like some kind of polar-bear hunter: tights, hat, scarf, boots, fur-trimmed coat. And I spend hours sitting on a rock all by myself, spacing out, watching the duck people. Sometimes I feed them old bread. Of course, there’s nobody else here with the time to do such crazy things.

  You may not know this, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, but ducks are very pleasant people to spend time with. I never get tired of watching them. I’ll never understand why everybody else bothers to go somewhere way far away and pay good money to see some stupid movie instead of enjoying these people. Like sometimes they’ll come flapping through the air and land on the ice, but their feet slide and they fall over. It’s like a TV comedy! They make me laugh even with nobody else around. Of course, they’re not clowning around trying to make me laugh. They’re doing their best to live very serious lives, and they just happen to fall down sometimes. I think that’s neat.

  The duck people have these flat orange feet that are really cute, like they’re wearing little kids’ rain boots, but they’re not made for walking on ice, I guess, because I see them slipping and sliding all over the place, and some even fall on their bottoms. They must not have nonslip treads. So winter is not a really fun season for the duck people, probably. I wonder what they think, deep down inside, about ice and stuff. I bet they don’t hate it all that much. It just seems that way to me from watching them. They look like they’re living happily enough, even if it’s winter, probably just grumbling to themselves, “Ice again? Oh, well …” That’s another thing I really like about the duck people.

  The pond is in the middle of the woods, far from everything. Nobody (but me, of course!) bothers to walk all the way over here at this time of year, except on unusually warm days. I walk down the path through the woods, and my boots crunch on the ice that’s left from a recent snowfall. I see lots of birds all around. When I’ve got my collar up and my scarf wrapped round and round under my chin, and my breath makes white puffs in the air, and I’ve got a chunk of bread in my pocket, and I’m walking down the path in the woods, thinking about the duck people, I get this really warm, happy feeling, and it hits me that I haven’t felt happy like this for a long, long time.

  OK, that’s enough about the duck people.

  To tell you the truth, I woke up an hour ago from a dream about you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, and I’ve been sitting here, writing you this letter. Right now it’s (I look at my clock) exactly 2:18 a.m. I got into bed just before ten o’clock, as usual, said “Good night, everybody” to the duck people, and fell fast asleep, but then, a little while ago, I woke up—bang! Actually, I’m not sure it was a dream. I mean, I don’t remember anything I was dreaming about. Maybe I wasn’t dreaming. But whatever it was, I heard your voice right next to my ear. You were calling to me over and over in this really loud voice. That’s what shocked me awake.

  The room wasn’t dark when I opened my eyes. Moonlight was pouring through the window. This great big moon like a stainless-steel tray was hanging over the hill. It was so huge, it looked as if I could have reached out and written something on it. And the light coming in the window looked like a big, white pool of water. I sat up in bed, racking my brains, trying to figure out what had just happened. Why had you been calling my name in such a sharp, clear voice? My heart kept pounding for the longest time. If I had been in my own house, I would have gotten dressed—even if it was the middle of the night—and run down the alley to your house, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. But out here, a million miles away in the mountains, I couldn’t run anywhere, right?

  So then you know what I did?

  I got naked. Ahem. Don’t ask me why. I’m really not sure myself So just be quiet and listen to the rest. Anyhow, I took every stitch of clothing off and got out of bed. And I got down on my knees on the floor in the white moonlight. The heat was off and the room must have been cold, but I didn’t feel cold. There was some kind of special something in the moonlight that was coming in the window, and it was wrapping my body in a thin, protective, skintight film. At least that’s how I felt. I just stayed there naked for a while, spacing out, but then I took turns holding different parts of my body out to be bathed in the moonlight. I don’t know, it just seemed like the most natural thing to do. The moonlight was so absolutely, incredibly beautiful that I couldn’t not do it. My head and shoulders and arms and breasts and tummy and legs and bottom and, you know, around there: one after another, I dipped them in the moonlight, like taking a bath.

  If somebody had seen me from outside, they’d have thought it was very, very strange. I must have looked like some kind of full-moon pervert going absolutely bonkers in the moonlight. But nobody saw me, of course. Though, come to think of it, maybe that boy on the motorcycle was somewhere, looking at me. But that’s OK. He’s dead. If he wanted to look, and if he’d be satis
fied with that, I’d be glad to let him see me.

  But anyhow, nobody was looking at me. I was doing it all alone in the moonlight. And every once in a while, I’d close my eyes and think about the duck people, who were probably sleeping near the pond somewhere. I’d think about the warm, happy feeling that the duck people and I had created together in the daytime. Because, finally, the duck people are an important kind of magic kind of protective amulet kind of thing for me.

  I stayed kneeling there for a long time after that, just kneeling all alone, all naked, in the moonlight. The light gave my skin a magical color, and it threw a sharp black shadow of my body across the floor, all the way to the wall. It didn’t look like the shadow of my body, but one that belonged to a much more mature woman. It wasn’t a virgin like me, it didn’t have my corners and angles but was fuller and rounder, with much bigger breasts and nipples. But it was the shadow that I was making—just stretched out longer, with a different shape. When I moved, it moved. For a while, I tried moving in different ways and watching very, very carefully to see what the connection was between me and my shadow, trying to figure out why it should look so different. But I couldn’t figure it out, finally. The more I looked, the stranger it seemed.

  Now, here comes the part that’s really hard to explain, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. I doubt if I can do it, but here goes.

  Well, to make a long story short, all of a sudden I burst into tears. I mean, if it was like in a film scenario or something, it’d go: “May Kasahara: Here, with no warning, covers face with hands, wails aloud, collapses in tears.” But don’t be too shocked. I’ve been hiding it from you all this time, but in fact, I’m the world’s biggest crybaby. I cry for anything. It’s my secret weakness. So for me, the sheer fact that I burst out crying for no reason at all was not such a surprise. Usually, though, I just have myself a little cry, and then I tell myself it’s time to stop. I cry easily, but I stop just as easily. Tonight, though, I just couldn’t stop. The cork popped, and that was that. I didn’t know what had started me, so I didn’t know how to stop myself The tears just came gushing out, like blood from a huge wound. I couldn’t believe the amount of tears I was producing. I seriously started to worry I might get dehydrated and turn into a mummy if this kept up.