The bird fell silent after winding the spring several times in a row. The boy wondered whether anyone else had heard the cry. Had his father and mother heard it? His grandmother? If not, he could tell them all about it in the morning: a bird that sounded just like the winding of a spring was sitting in the pine tree last night at two o’clock. If only he could catch a glimpse of it! Then he could tell everybody its name.
But the bird never raised its cry again. It fell silent as a stone, up there in the branches of the pine bathed in moonlight. Soon a chill wind blew into the room, as if giving him some kind of warning. The boy shuddered and closed the window. This was a different kind of bird, he knew, not some sparrow or pigeon, which showed itself to people without hesitation. He had read in his encyclopedia that most nocturnal birds were cunning and cautious. The bird probably knew that he was on the lookout for it. It would never come out as long as he waited for it to appear. The boy wondered if he should go to the bathroom. That would mean walking down the long, dark corridor. No, he would just go back to bed. It was not so bad that he couldn’t wait until morning.
The boy turned the light out and closed his eyes, but thoughts of the bird in the pine tree kept him awake. The bright moonlight spilled in from beneath the curtains as if in invitation. When the wind-up bird cried one more time, the boy leaped out of bed. This time he did not turn on the light, but slipping a cardigan over his pajamas, he climbed onto the chair by the window. Parting the curtains just the tiniest bit, he peered up into the pine tree. This way, the bird would not notice that he was there.
•
What the boy saw this time, though, was the outline of two men. He caught his breath. The men knelt like two black shadows at the base of the pine tree. Both wore dark clothing. One had no hat on, the other wore what looked like a felt hat with a brim. Why are these strange men here in our garden in the middle of the night? the boy wondered. Why wasn’t the dog barking at them? Maybe he ought to tell his parents right away. But his curiosity held him at the window. He wanted to see what the men were doing.
Then, without warning, the wind-up bird cried out again. More than once, it sent its long, creaking sound out into the night. But the men did not seem to notice. They never budged, never looked up. They remained kneeling at the base of the tree, face-to-face. They seemed to be discussing something in low tones, but with the branches blocking the moonlight, the boy could not make out their faces. Before long, the two men stood up at the same moment. There was a good eight-inch difference in their heights. Both men were thin, and the tall one (the one with the hat) wore a long coat. The short one had on more form-fitting clothes.
The shorter man approached the pine tree and stood there, looking up into the branches. After a while, he began patting and grabbing the trunk with both hands as if inspecting it, until, all at once, he jumped up onto it. Then, with no effort whatever (or so it seemed to the boy), he came zipping up the tree like a circus performer. The boy knew this tree like an old friend. He knew that climbing it was no easy feat. Its trunk was smooth and slippery, and there was nothing to hold on to until you got up fairly high. But why was the man climbing the tree in the middle of the night? Was he trying to catch the wind-up bird?
The tall man stood at the base of the tree, looking up. Soon after, the small man disappeared from view. The branches rustled now and then, which meant that he must still be climbing up the tall pine. The wind-up bird would be sure to hear him coming and fly away. The man might be good at climbing trees, but the wind-up bird would not be that easy to capture. If he was lucky, though, the boy was hoping he might be able to catch a glimpse of the wind-up bird as it took off. He held his breath, waiting for the sound of wings. But the sound of wings never came, nor was there any cry.
•
There was no sound or movement for a very long time. Everything was bathed in the white, unreal light of the moon, the yard like the wet bottom of a sea from which the water has just been suddenly removed. Entranced, motionless, the boy went on staring at the pine tree and the tall man left behind. He could not have torn his eyes away if he had tried. His breath clouded the glass. Outdoors, it must be cold. The tall man stood looking up, hands on hips, never moving, as if he had frozen in place. The boy imagined that he was worried about his shorter companion, waiting for him to accomplish some mission and come climbing down out of the pine tree. Nor would it have been strange for the man to be worried: the boy knew that the tall tree was harder to climb down than up. But then, all of a sudden, the tall man stalked off into the night, as if abandoning the whole project.
The boy felt that now he was the only one left behind. The small man had disappeared into the pine tree, and the tall one had gone off somewhere. The wind-up bird maintained its silence. The boy wondered if he should wake his father. But he knew he could not get him to believe this. “I’m sure you just had another dream,” his father would say. It was true, the boy did often dream, and he often mistook his dreams for reality, but he didn’t care what anybody said: this was real—the wind-up bird and the two men in black. They had just disappeared all of a sudden, that was all. His father would believe him if he did a good job of explaining what had happened.
It was then that the boy realized: the small man looked a lot like his father. Of course, he was too short to be his father, but aside from that, he was exactly the same: the build, the movements. But no, his father could never climb a tree that way. He wasn’t that agile or strong. The more he thought about it, the more confused the boy became.
The tall man came back to the base of the tree. Now he had something in his hands—a shovel and a large cloth bag. He set the bag down on the ground and started digging near the roots of the tree. The shovel cut into the earth with a sharp, clean sound. Now everybody was bound to wake up, the boy thought. It was such a big, clear sound!
But no one woke up. The man went on digging without a break, seemingly unconcerned that anyone might hear him. Though tall and thin, he was far more powerful than he looked, judging from the way he used that shovel. He worked steadily, without wasted motion. Once he had the size hole he wanted, the man leaned the shovel against the tree and stood there looking down. He never once looked up, as though he had forgotten all about the man who had climbed the tree. The only thing on his mind now was the hole, it seemed. The boy did not like this. He would have been worried about the man in the tree.
The boy could tell from the mound of earth the man had dug out that the hole itself was not very deep—maybe just up over his own knees. The man seemed satisfied with the shape and size of the hole. He turned to the bag and gently lifted a blackish, cloth-wrapped object from inside it. The way the man held it, it seemed soft and limp. Maybe the man was about to bury some kind of corpse in the hole. The thought made the boy’s heart race. But the thing in the cloth was no bigger than a cat. If human, it could only be an infant. But why did he have to bury something like that in my yard? thought the boy. He swallowed the saliva that he had unconsciously allowed to collect in his mouth. The loud gulp he made frightened the boy himself. It might have been loud enough for the man to hear outside.
Just then, as if aroused by the boy’s gulp, the wind-up bird cried out, winding an even bigger spring than before: Creeeak. Creeeak.
When he heard this cry, the boy felt intuitively that something very important was about to happen. He bit his lip and unconsciously scratched the skin of his arms. He should never have seen any of this, he felt. But now it was too late. Now it was impossible for him to tear his eyes away from the scene before him. He parted his lips and pressed his nose against the cold windowpane, transfixed by the strange drama that was now unfolding in his yard. He was no longer hoping for other members of the family to get out of bed. No one would wake up anyway, no matter how big a sound they made out there. I’m the only person alive who can hear these sounds. It was that way from the start.
The tall man bent over and, handling it with the utmost care, laid the thing in the black cloth in t
he bottom of the hole. Then he rose to his full height and stared down at it lying there. The boy could not make out the look on the man’s face beneath the brim of his hat, but he seemed somehow to be wearing a grim, even a solemn, expression. Yes, it had to be some kind of corpse, thought the boy. Before long, the man reached a point of decision, lifted the shovel, and began filling in the hole. When he was through shoveling, he lightly tamped the earth beneath his feet and smoothed it over. Then he set the shovel against the trunk of the tree and, with the cloth bag in his hand, moved away with slow steps. He never looked back. He never looked up into the tree. And the wind-up bird never cried again.
The boy turned to look at the clock on his wall. Squinting in the darkness, he could just barely make out the time as two-thirty. He kept watch on the pine tree for another ten minutes through the opening in the curtains, in case something should move out there, but an intense sleepiness overtook him all at once, as if a heavy iron lid were closing over his head. He wanted to know what would happen with the short man up in the tree and the wind-up bird, but he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer. Struggling to slip off the cardigan before he lost consciousness, he burrowed under the covers and sank into sleep.
Buying New Shoes
•
The Thing That Came Back Home
I walked from the Akasaka subway station down a lively street lined with restaurants and bars to the place where the office building stood, a short way up a gentle slope. It was an unremarkable building, neither new nor old, big nor small, elegant nor dilapidated. A travel agency occupied part of the ground floor, its large window displaying posters of Mykonos and a San Francisco cable car. Both posters looked faded from long duty in the window. Three members of the firm were hard at work on the other side of the glass, talking on the telephone or typing at a computer keyboard. Pretending to be looking at the posters, I killed time watching the office scene while waiting for the hour to strike four exactly. For some reason, both Mykonos and San Francisco seemed light-years from where I stood.
The more I looked at this building, the more I realized how ordinary it was, as if it had been built to match the pencil sketch a small child might do if told to “draw a building,” or as if it had been consciously designed to be inconspicuous in its surroundings. As carefully as I had been checking the addresses in my search for the place, I came close to passing it by, it was so plain. The building’s unobtrusive main entrance stood near the door to the travel agency. Skimming the nameplates, I got the impression that most of the offices were occupied by small-scale businesses—law offices, architects, importers, dentists. Several of the nameplates were shiny enough for me to be able to see my face in them, but the one for Room 602 had changed with age to an indistinct color. The woman had obviously had her office here for some time. “Akasaka Fashion Design,” read the inscription. The sheer age of the nameplate helped to temper my misgivings.
A locked glass door stood between the entryway and the elevator. I rang the bell for 602 and looked around for the closed-circuit TV camera I assumed must be sending my image to a monitor inside. There was a small, camera-like device in a corner of the entryway ceiling. Soon the buzzer sounded, unlocking the door, and I went inside.
I took the absolutely unadorned elevator to the sixth floor and, after a few uncertain moments in the absolutely unadorned corridor, found the door of 602. First checking to be certain that the sign on the door said “Akasaka Fashion Design,” I gave the bell exactly one short ring.
The door was opened by a slim young man with short hair and extremely regular features. He was possibly the handsomest man I had ever seen in my life. But even more than his features, what caught my eye was his clothing. He wore a shirt of almost painful whiteness and a deep-green necktie with a fine pattern. Not only was the necktie itself stylish, but it had been tied in a perfect knot, every twist and dip exactly as one might see in a men’s fashion magazine. I could never have tied a tie so well, and I found myself wondering how he did it. Was it an inborn talent or the fruits of disciplined practice? His pants were dark gray, and he wore brown tasseled loafers. Everything looked brand-new, as if he had just put it on for the first time a few minutes before.
He was somewhat shorter than I. The hint of a smile played about his lips, as if he had just heard a joke and was smiling now in the most natural way. Nor had the joke been a vulgar one: it was the kind of elegant pleasantry that the minister of foreign affairs might have told the crown prince at a garden party a generation ago, causing the surrounding listeners to titter with delight. I began to introduce myself, but he gave his head a slight shake to signal that it was unnecessary for me to say anything. Holding the door open inward, he ushered me in, and after a quick glance up and down the hall, he closed the door, saying nothing all the while. He looked at me with eyes narrowed as if to apologize for being unable to speak because of the nervous black panther sleeping by his side. Which is not to say that there was a black panther sleeping by his side: he just looked as if there were.
I was standing now in a reception room with a comfortable-looking leather sofa and chair, an old-fashioned wooden coatrack, and a floor lamp. There was a single door in the far wall, which looked as if it must lead to the next room. Beside the door, facing away from the wall, was a simple oak desk that supported a large computer. The table standing in front of the sofa might have been just large enough to hold a telephone book. A pleasant pale-green carpet covered the floor. From hidden speakers, at low volume, flowed the strains of a Haydn quartet. The walls bore several lovely prints of flowers and birds. One glance told you this was an immaculate room, with no hint of disorder. Shelves affixed to one wall held fabric samples and fashion magazines. The office’s furnishings were neither lavish nor new, but had the comforting warmth of the old and familiar.
The young man showed me to the sofa, then went around to the other side of the desk and sat down facing me. Holding his palms out toward me, he signaled for me to wait awhile. Instead of saying “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he produced a slight smile, and instead of saying “It will not take long,” he held up one finger. He seemed to be able to express himself without words. I nodded once to signal that I understood. For one to have spoken in his presence would have seemed inappropriate and vulgar.
As if holding a broken object, he picked up a book lying next to the computer and opened it to where he had left off. It was a thick black book without a dust jacket, so I could not make out the title. From the moment he opened it, you could see that the young man’s concentration on his book was total. He seemed to have forgotten that I was there. I would have liked to read something too, to pass the time, but nothing had been provided for that. I crossed my legs, settled into the sofa, and listened to Haydn (though if pressed, I could not have sworn it was Haydn). It was fairly nice music, but the kind that seems to melt into air the moment it emerges from its source. On the young man’s desk, aside from the computer, was an ordinary black telephone, a pencil tray, and a calendar.
I was wearing virtually the same outfit I had had on the day before—baseball jacket, hooded sweatshirt, blue jeans, and tennis shoes. I had just grabbed whatever came to hand before leaving the house. In this immaculate, orderly room, in the presence of this immaculate, handsome youth, my tennis shoes looked especially dirty and worn out. No, they were dirty and worn out, the heels practically gone, the color an indeterminate gray, the uppers full of holes. These shoes had been through a lot, soaking up everything in their path with fatal certainty. I had worn them every day for the past year, climbing over the back wall countless times, stepping in dog shit now and then on trips down the alley, climbing down to the bottom of the well. No wonder they were dirty and worn out. Not since quitting my job had it occurred to me to think about what shoes I had on. Studying them so closely this way, I felt with new intensity just how alone I was, just how far the world had left me behind. It was time for me to buy a new pair of shoes, I told myself. These were just too awful.
Before long, the Haydn came to an end—an abrupt and messy end. After a short pause, some kind of Bach harpsichord piece started (though I couldn’t have sworn this was Bach, either). I crossed and recrossed my legs. The telephone rang. The young man marked the place he was reading with a slip of paper, pushed his book aside, and picked up the receiver. He held it to his ear and gave a slight nod. Focusing on his desktop calendar, he marked it with a pencil. Then he held the receiver near the surface of the desk and rapped his knuckles twice against the wood as if knocking on a door. After this, he hung up. The call had lasted some twenty seconds, during which the young man had spoken not a word. In fact, he had not made a sound with his voice since letting me into the room. Was he unable to talk? Certainly he could hear, judging from the way he had answered the phone and listened to what was being said at the other end.
He sat looking at his phone for a while as if in thought. Then he rose without a sound, walked around his desk, making straight for where I was sitting, and sat down next to me. He then placed his hands on his knees in perfect alignment. They were slim, refined hands, as one might have imagined from his face. His knuckles and finger joints did have a few wrinkles; there was no such thing as fingers without wrinkles: they needed a few, at least, to move and bend. But his fingers did not have many wrinkles—no more than the minimum necessary. I looked at his hands as unobtrusively as I could. This young man must be the woman’s son, I thought. His fingers were shaped like hers. Once that thought entered my mind, I started to notice other points of resemblance: the small, rather sharp nose, the crystalline clarity of the eyes. The pleasant smile had begun to play about his lips again, appearing and disappearing with all the naturalness of a seaside cave at the mercy of the waves. Soon he rose to his feet, in the same swift manner with which he had sat down beside me, and his lips silently formed the words “This way, please.” Despite the absence of sound, it was clear to me what he wanted to say. I stood and followed him. He opened the inner door and guided me through it.