“Now we’ll be able to understand each other,” she said with quiet certainty. I sensed her settling comfortably into a chair and crossing her legs.
“I wonder,” I said. “What can you understand in ten minutes?”
“Ten minutes may be longer than you think,” she said.
“Are you sure you know me?”
“Of course I do. We’ve met hundreds of times.”
“Where? When?”
“Somewhere, sometime,” she said. “But if I went into that, ten minutes would never be enough. What’s important is the time we have now. The present. Don’t you agree?”
“Maybe. But I’d like some proof that you know me.”
“What kind of proof?”
“My age, say?”
“Thirty,” she answered instantaneously. “Thirty and two months. Good enough?”
That shut me up. She obviously did know me, but I had absolutely no memory of her voice.
“Now it’s your turn,” she said, her voice seductive. “Try picturing me. From my voice. Imagine what I’m like. My age. Where I am. How I’m dressed. Go ahead.”
“I have no idea,” I said.
“Oh, come on,” she said. “Try.”
I looked at my watch. Only a minute and five seconds had gone by. “I have no idea,” I said again.
“Then let me help you,” she said. “I’m in bed. I just got out of the shower, and I’m not wearing a thing.”
Oh, great. Telephone sex.
“Or would you prefer me with something on? Something lacy. Or stockings. Would that work better for you?”
“I don’t give a damn. Do what you like,” I said. “Put something on if you want to. Stay naked if you want to. Sorry, but I’m not interested in telephone games like this. I’ve got a lot of things I have to—”
“Ten minutes,” she said. “Ten minutes won’t kill you. It won’t put a hole in your life. Just answer my question. Do you want me naked or with something on? I’ve got all kinds of things I could put on. Black lace panties …”
“Naked is fine.”
“Well, good. You want me naked.”
“Yes. Naked. Good.”
Four minutes.
“My pubic hair is still wet,” she said. “I didn’t dry myself very well. Oh, I’m so wet! Warm and moist. And soft. Wonderfully soft and black. Touch me.”
“Look, I’m sorry, but—”
“And down below too. All the way down. It’s so warm down there, like butter cream. So warm. Mmm. And my legs. What position do you think my legs are in? My right knee is up, and my left leg is open just enough. Say, ten-oh-five on the clock.”
I could tell from her voice that she was not faking it. She really did have her legs open to ten-oh-five, her sex warm and moist.
“Touch the lips,” she said. “Slooowly. Now open them. That’s it. Slowly, slowly. Let your fingers caress them. Oh so slowly. Now, with your other hand, touch my left breast. Play with it. Caress it. Upward. And give the nipple a little squeeze. Do it again. And again. And again. Until I’m just about to come.”
Without a word, I put the receiver down. Stretching out on the sofa, I stared at the clock and released a long, deep sigh. I had spoken with her for close to six minutes.
The phone rang again ten minutes later, but I left it on the hook. It rang fifteen times. And when it stopped, a deep, cold silence descended upon the room. Just before two, I climbed over the cinder-block wall and down into the alley—or what we called the alley. It was not an “alley” in the proper sense of the word, but then, there was probably no word for what it was. It wasn’t a “road” or a “path” or even a “way.” Properly speaking, a “way” should be a pathway or channel with an entrance and an exit, which takes you somewhere if you follow it. But our “alley” had neither entrance nor exit. You couldn’t call it a cul-de-sac, either: a cul-de-sac has at least one open end. The alley had not one dead end but two. The people of the neighborhood called it “the alley” strictly as an expedient. It was some two hundred yards in length and threaded its way between the back gardens of the houses that lined either side. Barely over three feet in width, it had several spots at which you had to edge through sideways because of fences sticking out into the path or things that people had left in the way.
About this alley, the story was—the story I heard from my uncle, who rented us our house for next to nothing—that it used to have both an entrance and an exit and actually served the purpose of providing a shortcut between two streets. But with the rapid economic growth of the mid-fifties, rows of new houses came to fill the empty lots on either side of the road, squeezing it down until it was little more than a narrow path. People didn’t like strangers passing so close to their houses and yards, so before long, one end of the path was blocked off—or, rather, screened off—with an unassertive fence. Then one local citizen decided to enlarge his yard and completely sealed off his end of the alley with a cinder-block wall. As if in response, a barbed-wire barrier went up at the other end, preventing even dogs from getting through. None of the neighbors complained, because none of them used the alley as a passageway, and they were just as happy to have this extra protection against crime. As a result, the alley remained like some kind of abandoned canal, unused, serving as little more than a buffer zone between two rows of houses. Spiders spread their sticky webs in the overgrowth.
Why had Kumiko been frequenting such a place? I myself had walked down that “alley” no more than twice, and Kumiko was afraid of spiders at the best of times. Oh, what the hell—if Kumiko said I should go to the alley and look for the cat, I’d go to the alley and look for the cat. What came later I could think about later. Walking outside like this was far better than sitting in the house waiting for the phone to ring.
The sharp sunshine of early summer dappled the surface of the alley with the hard shadows of the branches that stretched overhead. Without wind to move the branches, the shadows looked like permanent stains, destined to remain imprinted on the pavement forever. No sounds of any kind seemed to penetrate this place. I could almost hear the blades of grass breathing in the sunlight. A few small clouds floated in the sky, their shapes clear and precise, like the clouds in medieval engravings. I saw everything with such terrific clarity that my own body felt vague and boundless and flowing … and hot!
I wore a T-shirt, thin cotton pants, and tennis shoes, but walking in the summer sun, I could feel a light film of sweat forming under my arms and in the hollow of my chest. The T-shirt and pants had been packed away in a box crammed with summer clothing until I pulled them out that morning, the sharp smell of mothballs penetrating my nostrils.
The houses that lined the alley fell into two distinct categories: older houses and those built more recently. As a group, the newer ones were smaller, with smaller yards to match. Their clothes-drying poles often protruded into the alley, making it necessary for me to thread my way through the occasional screen of towels and sheets and undershirts. Over some back walls came the clear sound of television sets and flushing toilets, and the smell of curry cooking.
The older houses, by contrast, gave hardly any sense of life. These were screened off by well-placed shrubs and hedges, between which I caught glimpses of manicured gardens.
An old, brown, withered Christmas tree stood in the corner of one garden. Another had become the dumping ground for every toy known to man, the apparent leavings of several childhoods. There were tricycles and toss rings and plastic swords and rubber balls and tortoise dolls and little baseball bats. One garden had a basketball hoop, and another had fine lawn chairs surrounding a ceramic table. The white chairs were caked in dirt, as if they had not been used for some months or even years. The tabletop was coated with lavender magnolia petals, beaten down by the rain.
I had a clear view of one living room through an aluminum storm door. It had a matching leather sofa and chairs, a large TV, a sideboard (atop which sat a tropical-fish tank and two trophies of some kind), and a decorative
floor lamp. The room looked like the set of a TV drama. A huge doghouse occupied a large part of another garden, but there was no sign of the dog itself, and the house’s door stood open. The screen of the doghouse door bulged outward, as if someone had been leaning against it for months at a time.
The vacant house that Kumiko had told me about lay just beyond the place with the huge doghouse. One glance was all I needed to see that it was empty—and had been for some time. It was a fairly new two-story house, yet its wooden storm shutters showed signs of severe aging, and the railings outside the second-story windows were caked with rust. The house had a cozy little garden, in which, to be sure, a stone statue of a bird stood. The statue rested on a base that came to chest height and was surrounded by a thick growth of weeds. Tall fronds of goldenrod were almost touching the bird’s feet. The bird—I had no idea what kind of bird it was supposed to be—had its wings open as if it wanted to escape from this unpleasant place as soon as possible. Aside from the statue, the garden had no decorative features. A pile of aging plastic lawn chairs stood against the house, and beside them an azalea bush displayed its bright-red blossoms, their color strangely unreal. Weeds made up the rest.
I leaned against the chest-high chain-link fence for a while, contemplating the garden. It should have been a paradise for cats, but there was no sign of cats here now. Perched on the roof’s TV antenna, a single pigeon lent its monotonous cries to the scene. The stone bird’s shadow fell on the surrounding undergrowth, breaking apart.
I took a lemon drop from my pocket, unwrapped it, and popped it into my mouth. I had taken my resignation from the firm as an opportunity to quit smoking, but now I was never without a pack of lemon drops. Kumiko said I was addicted to them and warned me that I’d soon have a mouthful of cavities, but I had to have my lemon drops. While I stood there looking at the garden, the pigeon on the TV antenna kept up its regular cooing, like some clerk stamping numbers on a sheaf of bills. I don’t know how long I stayed there, leaning against the fence, but I remember spitting my lemon drop on the ground when, half melted, it filled my mouth with its sticky sweetness. I had just shifted my gaze to the shadow of the stone bird when I sensed that someone was calling to me from behind.
I turned, to see a girl standing in the garden on the other side of the alley. She was small and had her hair in a ponytail. She wore dark sunglasses with amber frames, and a light-blue sleeveless T-shirt. The rainy season had barely ended, and yet she had already managed to give her slender arms a nice, smooth tan. She had one hand jammed into the pocket of her short pants. The other rested on a waist-high bamboo gate, which could not have been providing much support. Only three feet—maybe four—separated us.
“Hot,” she said to me.
“Yeah, right,” I answered.
After this brief exchange of views, she stood there looking at me. Then she took a box of Hope regulars from her pants pocket, drew out a cigarette, and put it between her lips. She had a small mouth, the upper lip turned slightly upward. She struck a match and lit her cigarette. When she inclined her head to one side, her hair swung away to reveal a beautifully shaped ear, smooth as if freshly made, its edge aglow with a downy fringe.
She flicked her match away and exhaled smoke through pursed lips. Then she looked up at me as if she had forgotten that I was there. I couldn’t see her eyes through the dark, reflective lenses of her sunglasses.
“You live around here?” she asked.
“Uh-huh.” I wanted to motion toward our house, but I had turned so many odd angles to get here that I no longer knew exactly where it was. I ended up pointing at random.
“I’m looking for my cat,” I explained, wiping a sweaty palm on my pants. “It’s been gone for a week. Somebody saw it around here somewhere.”
“What kind of cat?”
“A big tom. Brown stripes. Tip of the tail a little bent.”
“Name?”
“Noboru. Noboru Wataya.”
“No, not your name. The cat’s.”
“That is my cat’s name.”
“Oh! Very impressive!”
“Well, actually, it’s my brother-in-law’s name. The cat sort of reminds us of him. We gave the cat his name, just for fun.”
“How does the cat remind you of him?”
“I don’t know. Just in general. The way it walks. And it has this blank stare.”
She smiled now for the first time, which made her look a lot more childlike than she had seemed at first. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen. With its slight curl, her upper lip pointed up at a strange angle. I seemed to hear a voice saying “Touch me”—the voice of the woman on the phone. I wiped the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand.
“A brown-striped cat with a bent tail,” said the girl. “Hmm. Does it have a collar or something?”
“A black flea collar.”
She stood there thinking for ten or fifteen seconds, her hand still resting on the gate. Then she dropped what was left of her cigarette and crushed it under her sandal.
“Maybe I did see a cat like that,” she said. “I don’t know about the bent tail, but it was a brown tiger cat, big, and I think it had a collar.”
“When did you see it?”
“When did I see it? Hmm. No more than three or four days ago. Our yard is a kind of highway for the neighborhood cats. They all cut across here from the Takitanis’ to the Miyawakis’.”
She pointed toward the vacant house, where the stone bird still spread its wings, the tall goldenrod still caught the early-summer sun, and the pigeon went on with its monotonous cooing atop the TV antenna.
“I’ve got an idea,” she said. “Why don’t you wait here? All the cats eventually pass through our place on their way to the Miyawakis’. And somebody’s bound to call the cops if they see you hanging around like that. It wouldn’t be the first time.”
I hesitated.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m the only one here. The two of us can sit in the sun and wait for the cat to show up. I’ll help. I’ve got twenty-twenty vision.”
I looked at my watch. Two twenty-six. All I had to do today before it got dark was take in the laundry and fix dinner.
I went in through the gate and followed the girl across the lawn. She dragged her right leg slightly. She took a few steps, stopped, and turned to face me.
“I got thrown from the back of a motorcycle,” she said, as if it hardly mattered.
A large oak tree stood at the point where the yard’s lawn gave out. Under the tree sat two canvas deck chairs, one draped with a blue beach towel. Scattered on the other were a new box of Hope regulars, an ashtray and lighter, a magazine, and an oversize boom box. The boom box was playing hard-rock music at low volume. She turned the music off and took all the stuff out of the chair for me, dropping it on the grass. From the chair, I could see into the yard of the vacant house—the stone bird, the goldenrod, the chain-link fence. The girl had probably been watching me the whole time I was there.
The yard of this house was very large. It had a broad, sloping lawn dotted with clumps of trees. To the left of the deck chairs was a rather large concrete-lined pond, its empty bottom exposed to the sun. Judging from its greenish tinge, it had been without water for some time. We sat with our backs to the house, which was visible through a screen of trees. The house was neither large nor lavish in its construction. Only the yard gave an impression of large size, and it was well manicured.
“What a big yard,” I said, looking around. “It must be a pain to take care of.”
“Must be.”
“I used to work for a lawn-mowing company when I was a kid.”
“Oh?” She was obviously not interested in lawns.
“Are you always here alone?” I asked.
“Yeah. Always. Except a maid comes mornings and evenings. During the day it’s just me. Alone. Want a cold drink? We’ve got beer.”
“No, thanks.”
“Really? Don’t be shy.”
/>
I shook my head. “Don’t you go to school?”
“Don’t you go to work?”
“No work to go to.”
“Lost your job?”
“Sort of. I quit a few weeks ago.”
“What kind of job?”
“I was a lawyer’s gofer. I’d go to different government offices to pick up documents, put materials in order, check on legal precedents, handle court procedures—that kind of stuff.”
“But you quit.”
“Yeah.”
“Does your wife have a job?”
“She does.”
The pigeon across the way must have stopped its cooing and gone off somewhere. I suddenly realized that a deep silence lay all around me.
“Right over there is where the cats go through,” she said, pointing toward the far side of the lawn. “See the incinerator in the Takitanis’ yard? They come under the fence at that point, cut across the grass, and go out under the gate to the yard across the way. They always follow exactly the same route.”
She perched her sunglasses on her forehead, squinted at the yard, and lowered her glasses again, exhaling a cloud of smoke. In the interval, I saw that she had a two-inch cut next to her left eye—the kind of cut that would probably leave a scar the rest of her life. The dark sunglasses were probably meant to hide the wound. The girl’s face was not a particularly beautiful one, but there was something attractive about it, probably the lively eyes or the unusual shape of the lips.
“Do you know about the Miyawakis?” she asked.
“Not a thing,” I said.
“They’re the ones who lived in the vacant house. A very proper family. They had two daughters, both in a private girls’ school. Mr. Miyawaki owned a few family restaurants.”
“Why’d they leave?”
“Maybe he was in debt. It was like they ran away—just cleared out one night. About a year ago, I think. Left the place to rot and breed cats. My mother’s always complaining.”
“Are there so many cats in there?”
Cigarette in her lips, the girl looked up at the sky.
“All kinds of cats. Some losing their fur, some with one eye … and where the other eye used to be, a lump of raw flesh. Yuck!”
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Page 2
