“From here on it’s a really complicated maze,” I said.
“You’re right,” said the sheep man. “There is a maze, now that I think of it. Can’t remember it too well, but we’ll figure something out.”
Hearing that made me a little uneasy. The tricky thing about mazes is that you don’t know if you’ve chosen the right path until the very end. If it turns out you were wrong, it’s usually too late to go back and start again. That’s the problem with mazes.
(23)
As I expected, the sheep man had to try a number of routes and retreat a number of times. Yet I could feel that, somehow, we were getting closer and closer to our destination. Sometimes he would stop to run his finger along the wall and lick it with a look of great concentration. Or squat to press his ear against the floor. Or converse in undertones with the spiders who built their webs along the ceiling. Faced with intersecting paths, he might spin in place, like a whirlwind, before choosing which one he would take. Such was the manner in which the sheep man recalled the route through the maze. A far cry from the way most people would remember.
All the while, time marched on. Dawn was drawing near, and the pitch-black night of the new moon seemed to be softening bit by bit.
The sheep man and I hurried along. We knew we had to reach the last door before daylight. Otherwise, the old man would wake to find us gone and would set off in pursuit.
“Think we can make it?” I asked.
“Yeah, it’s looking good. From here on out, it’s a piece of cake.”
It was clear that the sheep man knew the rest of the way. We raced down the corridors, turning first one way, then the other, without pause. Finally, the last corridor lay dead ahead. We could see a door at the end, and light leaking through its cracks.
“See, I told you,” the sheep man said proudly. “I had it figured out all along. All we have to do now is go through this door. Then you and I will be free.”
*
He opened the door and there was the old man, waiting for us.
(24)
It was the same room where I had first met him. Room 107, in the basement of the library. He sat there in front of his desk, his eyes fixed on me.
Next to the old man sat a big black dog. A dog with green eyes and a jewel-encrusted collar.
He had massive legs, and six claws on each paw. His ears forked at the tips, and his nose was a reddish-brown sunburned color. It was the same dog who had bitten me so many years before. My pet starling’s bloody body was clamped between his teeth.
I let out a small cry and started to collapse backward, but the sheep man caught me.
“We’ve been waiting and waiting,” the old man said. “What took you so long? Eh?”
“I can explain everything, sir,” began the sheep man.
“Silence, you fool,” thundered the old man. He pulled the willow switch from his back pocket and whipped it against the desk. The dog pricked up his ears, and the sheep man fell silent. The room grew deathly still.
“Now, then,” said the old man. “How shall I dispose of the two of you?”
“So you weren’t fast asleep, with the new moon and all?” I asked timidly.
“You’re a cheeky one, aren’t you,” the old man sneered. “I don’t know where you obtain your information, but I’m not so easy to fool. I can read the two of you as easily as I can a watermelon patch in broad daylight.”
The room went black before my eyes. My carelessness had ruined everything—even my pet starling had been sacrificed.
I had lost my good shoes, and I would never see my mother again.
“And you,” said the old man, pointing his switch straight at the sheep man. “I’m going to slice you up nice and fine and feed you to the centipedes.”
The sheep man hid behind me, trembling from head to foot.
(25)
“As for you, my young friend,” the old man said, pointing at me, “I’ll feed you to this dog. He’ll devour you alive. It will be a slow death. You’ll die screaming. But your brains are mine. They won’t be as creamy as they would have been if you had finished those books, but I’m not picky. I’ll suck up every last drop.”
The old man bared his teeth in a wicked smile. The dog’s green eyes glittered with excitement.
It was then that I realized that the starling between the dog’s teeth was growing.
When it reached the size of a chicken, it forced the dog’s jaws open like a car jack. The dog tried to howl, but it was too late. The dog’s mouth ripped—there was the sound of shattering bones. The old man frantically whipped the starling with his willow switch. But the bird’s body continued to swell until it was the size of a bull, pressing the old man fast against the wall. The small room filled with the sound of powerful wings.
Run. Now is your chance, said the starling. It was the voice of the girl.
“But what about you?” I asked the starling-who-was-the-girl.
Don’t worry about me. I’ll follow later. Quick, now. If you don’t hurry, you’ll be lost for eternity, said the girl-who-was-a-starling.
I did as she said. Grabbing the sheep man’s hand, I ran from the room. I never looked back.
It was early morning, and the library was deserted. We raced up the stairs and across the main hall to the Reading Room, forced open a window, and tumbled out. Then we ran as fast as we could to the park, where we collapsed on the lawn. We lay there, gasping for air with our eyes closed. I didn’t open mine for quite some time.
When I did, the sheep man was gone. I stood up and looked around. I called his name at the top of my lungs. But there was no reply. The morning sun was casting its first rays against the leaves of the trees. The sheep man had disappeared without a word to me. Just as the morning dew had evaporated.
(26)
My mother had set a hot breakfast on the table and was waiting for me when I got home. She didn’t ask me a thing. Not about why I hadn’t come home from school, or where I had spent the last three nights, or why I was shoeless—not a single question or complaint. It wasn’t like her at all.
My pet starling was gone. Only its empty cage remained. I didn’t ask what happened. It seemed best to avoid that topic altogether. My mother’s profile seemed to have darkened very slightly, as if shadows were gathering around her. But that may have been no more than my impression.
After that, I never visited the city library again. I knew I should seek out one of the big shots who ran the place to explain what had happened to me, and to tell him about the cell-like room hidden deep in the basement. Otherwise, another child might have to endure the awful experience that I went through. Nevertheless, the mere sight of the library building at dusk was enough to stop me in my tracks.
I do occasionally think about the new leather shoes I left behind in the basement, though. That leads me to memories of the sheep man and the beautiful voiceless girl. Did they really exist? How much of what I remember really happened? To be honest, I can’t be certain. All I know for sure is that I lost my shoes and my pet starling.
My mother died last Tuesday. She had been suffering from a mysterious illness, and that morning she quietly slipped away. There was a simple funeral, and now I am totally alone. No mother. No pet starling. No sheep man. No girl. I lie here by myself in the dark at two o’clock in the morning and think about that cell in the library basement. About how it feels to be alone, and the depth of the darkness surrounding me. Darkness as pitch black as the night of the new moon.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages, and the most recent of his many international honors is the Jerusalem Prize, whose previous recipients include J. M. Coetzee, Milan Kundera, and V. S. Naipaul.
ALSO BY HARUKI MURAKAMI
FICTION 1Q84 * After Dark * After the Quake * Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman * Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage * Dance Dance Dance * The Elephant
Vanishes * Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World * Kafka on the Shore * Norwegian Wood * South of the Border, West of the Sun * Sputnik Sweetheart * A Wild Sheep Chase * The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
NONFICTION * Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche * What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir
Haruki Murakami, The Strange Library
(Series: # )
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