I’m giving this job everything I’ve got. Not to boast, but I’ve even been named worker of the month. I told you, I may not look it, but I’m really good at handiwork. We divide up into teams when we work, and any team I join improves its figures. I do things like helping the slower girls when I’m finished with my part of a job. So now I’m popular with the other girls. Can you believe it? Me, popular! Anyway, what I wanted to tell you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, is that all I’ve been doing since I came to this factory is work, work, work. Like an ant. Like the village blacksmith. Have I made myself clear so far?
Anyway, the place where I do my actual work is really weird. It’s huge, like a hangar, with a great, high roof, and wide open. A hundred and fifty girls sit lined up working there. It’s quite a sight. Of course, they didn’t have to put up such a monster factory. It’s not as if we’re building submarines or anything. They could have divided us up into separate rooms. But maybe they figured it would increase our sense of communal solidarity to have that many people working together in one place. Or maybe it’s just easier for the bosses to oversee the whole bunch of us at once. I’ll bet they’re using whatchamacallit psychology on us. We’re divided up into teams, surrounding workbenches just like the ones in science class where you dissect frogs, and one of the older girls sits at the end as team leader. It’s OK to talk as long as you keep your hands moving (I mean, you can’t just shut up and do this stuff all day long), but if you talk or laugh too loud or get too engrossed in your conversation, the team leader will come over to you with a frown and say, “All right, Yumiko, let’s keep the hands moving, not the mouth. Looks like you’re falling behind,” So we all whisper to each other like burglars in the night.
They pipe music into the factory. The style changes, depending on the time of day. If you’re a big fan of Barry Manilow or Air Supply, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, you might like this place.
It takes me a few days to make one of “my” wigs. The time differs according to the grade of the product, of course, but you have to measure the time it takes to make a wig in days. First you divide the base into checkerboard squares, and then you plant hair into one square after another in order. It’s not assembly line work, though, like the factory in Chaplin’s movie, where you tighten one bolt and then the next one comes; each wig is “mine.” I almost feel like signing and dating each one when I’m through with it. But I don’t, of course: they’d just get mad at me. It’s a really nice feeling to know, though, that someone out there in the world is wearing the wig I made on his head. It sort of gives me a sense of, I don’t know, connectedness.
Life is so strange, though. If somebody had said to me three years ago, “Three years from now, you’re going to be in a factory in the mountains making wigs with a lot of country girls,” I would have laughed in their face. I could never have imagined this. And as for what I’ll be doing three years from now: nobody knows the answer to that one, either. Do you know what you’re going to be doing three years from now, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? I’m sure you don’t. Forget about three years: I’d be willing to bet all the money I’ve got here that you don’t know what you’ll be doing a month from now!
The girls around me, though, know pretty much where they’ll be in three years. Or at least they think they do. They think they’re going to save the money they make here, find the right guy after a few years, and be happily married.
The guys these girls are going to marry are mostly farmers’ sons or guys who will inherit the store from their fathers or guys working in small local companies. Like I said before, there’s a chronic shortage of young women here, so they get “bought up” pretty quickly. It would take some really bad luck for anybody to be left over, so they all find somebody or other to marry. It’s really something. And as I said in my last letter, most people quit work when they get married. Their job in the wig factory is just a stage that fills the few years’ gap between graduating from high school and getting married—kind of like a room they come into, stay in a little while, then leave.
Not only does the wig company not mind this; they seem to prefer to have the girls work just a few years and quit when they get married. It’s a lot better for them to have a constant turnover in workers rather than to have to worry about salaries and benefits and unions and stuff like that. The company takes somewhat better care of the girls with ability who become team leaders, but the other, ordinary girls are just consumer goods to them. There’s a tacit understanding, then, between the girls and the company that they will get married and quit. So for the girls, imagining what is going to happen three years from now involves only one of two possibilities: they’ll either be looking for a mate while they go on working here, or they will have quit work to get married. Talk about simplicity!
There just isn’t anybody around here like me, who is thinking to herself, I don’t know what’s going to happen to me three years from now. They are all good workers. Nobody does a half-baked job or complains about the work. Now and then, I’ll hear somebody griping about the cafeteria food, that’s all. Of course, this is work we’re talking about, so it can’t be fun all the time; you might have somebody putting in her hours from nine to five because she has to, even though she really wants to run off for the day, but for the most part, I think they’re enjoying the work. It must be because they know this is a finite period suspended between one world and another. That’s why they want to have as much fun as possible while they’re here. Finally, this is just a transition point for them.
Not for me, though. This is no time of suspension or transition for me. I have absolutely no idea where I’m going from here. For me, this could be the end of the line. Do you see what I mean? So strictly speaking, I am not enjoying the work here. All I’m doing is trying to accept the work in every possible way. When I’m making a wig, I don’t think about anything but making that wig. I’m deadly serious—enough so that I break out in a sweat all over.
I don’t quite know how to put this, but lately I’ve been sort of thinking about the boy who got killed in the motorcycle accident. To tell you the truth, I haven’t thought too much about him before. Maybe the shock of the accident twisted my memory or something in a weird way, because all I remembered about him were these weird kinds of things, like his smelly armpits or what a totally dumb guy he was or his fingers trying to get into strange places of mine. Every once in a while, though, something not so bad about him comes back to me. Especially when my mind is empty and I’m just planting hairs in a wig base, these things come back to me out of nowhere. Oh, yeah, I’ll think, he was like that. I guess time doesn’t flow in order, does it—A, B, C, D? It just sort of goes where it feels like going.
Can I be honest with you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? I mean, really, really, really honest? Sometimes I get sooo scared! I’ll wake up in the middle of the night all alone, hundreds of miles away from anybody, and it’s pitch dark, and I have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen to me in the future, and I get so scared I want to scream. Does that happen to you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? When it happens, I try to remind myself that I am connected to others—other things and other people. I work as hard as I can to list their names in my head. On the list, of course, is you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. And the alley, and the well, and the persimmon tree, and that kind of thing. And the wigs that I’ve made here with my own hands. And the little bits and pieces I remember about the boy. All these little things (though you’re not just another one of those little things, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, but anyhow …) help me to come back “here” little by little. Then I start to feel sorry I never really let my boyfriend see me naked or touch me. Back then, I was absolutely determined not to let him put his hands on me. Sometimes, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, I think I’d like to stay a virgin the rest of my life. Seriously. What do you think about that?
Bye-bye, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. I hope Kumiko comes back soon.
The World’s Exhaustion and Burdens
•
The Magic Lamp
The phone rang at nine-thirty at night. I
t rang once, then stopped, and started ringing again. This was to be Ushikawa’s signal.
“Hello, Mr. Okada,” said Ushikawa’s voice. “Ushikawa here. I’m in your neighborhood and thought I might drop by, if it would be all right with you. I know it’s late, but there’s something I wanted to talk to you about in person. What do you say? It has to do with Ms. Kumiko, so I thought you might be interested.”
I pictured Ushikawa’s expression at the other end of the line as I listened to him speaking. He had a self-satisfied smile on his face, lips curled and filthy teeth exposed, as if to say, I know this is an offer you can’t refuse; and unfortunately, he was right.
•
It took him exactly ten minutes to reach my house. He wore the same clothes he’d had on three days earlier. I could have been mistaken about that, but he wore the same kind of suit and shirt and necktie, all grimy and wrinkled and baggy. These disgraceful articles of clothing looked as if they had been forced to accept an unfair portion of the world’s exhaustion and burdens. If, through some kind of reincarnation, it were possible to be reborn as Ushikawa’s clothing, with a guarantee of rare glory in the next rebirth, I would still not want to do it.
After asking my permission, Ushikawa helped himself to a beer in the refrigerator, checking first to see that the bottle felt properly chilled before he poured the contents into a glass he found nearby. We sat at the kitchen table.
“All right, then,” said Ushikawa. “In the interest of saving time, I will dispense with the small talk and plunge directly into the business at hand. You would like to talk with Ms. Kumiko, wouldn’t you, Mr. Okada? Directly. Just the two of you. I believe that is what you have been wanting for some time now. Your first priority. Am I right?”
I gave this some thought. Or I paused for a few moments, as if giving it some thought.
“Of course I want to talk with her if that is possible.”
“It is not impossible,” said Ushikawa softly, with a nod.
“But there are conditions attached …?”
“There are no conditions attached.” Ushikawa took a sip of his beer. “I do have a new proposition for you this evening, however. Please listen to what I have to say, and give it careful consideration. It is something quite separate from the question of whether or not you talk to Ms. Kumiko.”
I looked at him without speaking.
“To begin with, then, Mr. Okada, you are renting that land, and the house on it, from a certain company, are you not? The ‘hanging house,’ I mean. You are paying a rather large sum for it each month. You have not an ordinary lease, however, but one with an option to buy some years hence. Correct? Your contract is not a matter of public record, of course, and so your name does not appear anywhere—which is the point of all the machinations. You are, however, the de facto owner of the property, and the rent you pay accomplishes the same thing as mortgage payments. The total sum you are to pay—let’s see—including the house, comes to something in the neighborhood of eighty million yen, does it not? At this rate, you should be able to take title to the land and the building in something less than two years. That is very impressive! Very fast work! I have to congratulate you.”
Ushikawa looked at me for confirmation of everything he had been saying, but I remained silent.
“Please don’t ask me how I know all these details. You dig hard enough, you find what you want to know—if you know how to dig. And I have a pretty good idea who is behind the dummy company. Now, that was a tough one! I had to crawl through a labyrinth for it. It was like looking for a stolen car that’s been repainted and had new tires put on and the seats recovered and the serial number filed off the engine. They covered all the bases. They’re real pros. But now I have a pretty good idea of what’s going on—probably better than you do, Mr. Okada. I’ll bet you don’t even know who it is you’re paying the money back to, right?”
“That’s all right. Money doesn’t come with names attached.”
Ushikawa laughed. “You’re absolutely right, Mr. Okada. Money does not come with names attached. Very well said! I’ll have to write that down. But finally, Mr. Okada, things don’t always go the way you want them to. Take the boys at the tax office, for example. They’re not very bright. They only know how to squeeze taxes out of places that have names attached. So they go out of their way to stick names on where there aren’t any. And not just names, but numbers too. They might as well be robots, for all the emotion that’s involved in the process. But that is exactly what this capitalist society of ours is built on.… Which leads us to the conclusion that the money that you and I are now talking about does indeed have a name attached, and a very excellent name it is.”
I looked at Ushikawa’s head as he spoke. Depending on the angle, the light produced some strange dents in his scalp.
“Don’t worry,” he said, with a laugh. “The tax man won’t be coming here. And even if he did come, with this much of a labyrinth to crawl through, he’d be bound to smash into something. Wham! He’d raise a huge bump on his head. And finally, it’s just a job for him: he doesn’t want to hurt himself doing it. If he can get his money, he’d rather do it the easy way than the hard way: the easier the better. As long as he gets what he’s looking for, the brownie points are the same. Especially if his boss tells him to take the easy way, any ordinary person is going to choose that. I managed to find what I did because it was me doing the searching. Not to boast or anything, but I’m good. I may not look it, but I’m really good. I know how to avoid injury. I know how to slip down the road at night when it’s pitch black out.
“But to tell you the truth, Mr. Okada (and I know you’re one person I can really open up to), not even I know what you’re doing in that place. I do know the people who visit you there are paying an arm and a leg. So you must be doing something special for them that’s worth all that money. That much is as clear as counting crows on snow. But exactly what it is you do, and why you’re so stuck on that particular piece of land, I have no idea. Those are the two most important points in all this, but they are the very things most hidden, like the center of a palmist’s signboard. That worries me.”
“Which is to say, that’s what worries Noboru Wataya,” I said.
Instead of answering, Ushikawa started pulling on the matted fuzz above his ears.
“This is just between you and me, Mr. Okada, but I have to confess I really admire you. No flattery intended. This may sound odd, but you’re basically a really ordinary guy. Or to put it even more bluntly, there’s absolutely nothing special about you. Sorry about that, but don’t take it the wrong way. It’s true, though, in terms of how you fit in society. Meeting you face-to-face and talking with you like this, though, I’m very, very impressed with you—with how you handle yourself. I mean, look at the way you’ve managed to shake up a man like Dr. Wataya! That’s why I’m just the carrier pigeon. A completely ordinary person couldn’t pull this off.
“That’s what I like about you. I’m not making this up. I may be worthless scum, but I don’t lie about things like that. And I don’t think of you in completely objective terms, either. If there’s nothing special about you in terms of how you fit in society, I’m a hundred times worse. I’m just an uneducated twerp from an awful background. My father was a tatami maker in Funabashi, an alcoholic, a real bastard. I used to wish he’d die and leave me alone, I was such a miserable kid, and I ended up getting my wish, for better or worse. Then I went through storybook poverty. I don’t have a single pleasant memory from childhood, never had a kind word from either parent. No wonder I went bad! I managed to squeak through high school, but after that it was the school of hard knocks for me. Lived on my wits, what little I had. That’s why I don’t like members of the elite or official government types. All right: I hate ’em. Walk right into society through the front door, get a pretty wife, self-satisfied bastards. I like guys like you, Mr. Okada, who’ve done it all on their own.”
Ushikawa struck a match and lit a fresh cigarette.
r /> “You can’t keep it up forever, though. You’re going to burn out sooner or later. Everybody does. It’s the way people are made. In terms of evolutionary history, it was only yesterday that men learned to walk around on two legs and get in trouble thinking complicated thoughts. So don’t worry, you’ll burn out. Especially in the world that you’re trying to deal with: everybody burns out. There are too many tricky things going on in it, too many ways of getting into trouble. It’s a world made of tricky things. I’ve been working in that world since the time of Dr. Wataya’s uncle, and now the Doctor has inherited it, lock, stock, and barrel. I used to do risky stuff for a living. If I had kept it up, I’d be in jail now—or dead. No kidding. The Doctor’s uncle picked me up in the nick of time. So these little eyes of mine have seen a hell of a lot. Everybody burns out in this world: amateur, pro, it doesn’t matter, they all burn out, they all get hurt, the OK guys and the not-OK guys both. That’s why everybody takes out a little insurance. I’ve got some too, here at the bottom of the heap. That way, you can manage to survive if you burn out. If you’re all by yourself and don’t belong anywhere, you go down once and you’re out. Finished.
“Maybe I shouldn’t say this to you, Mr. Okada, but you’re ready to go down. It’s a sure thing. It says so in my book, in big, black letters about two or three pages ahead: ‘TORU OKADA READY TO FALL.’ It’s true. I’m not trying to scare you. I’m a whole lot more accurate in this world than weather forecasts on TV. So all I want to tell you is this: There’s a time when things are right for pulling out.”
Ushikawa closed his mouth at that point and looked at me. Then he went on:
“So let’s stop all this feeling each other out, Mr. Okada, and get down to business.… Which brings us to the end of a very long introduction, so now I can make you the offer I came here to make.”