Yôko Ogawa - The Diving Pool

"Thank you," he said, a bit of the cake clinging to his lips. "That was delicious."

"I'm glad you liked it," I said.

"Food actually tastes better when someone feeds it to you." He lay on his back without moving, as if his body had been stitched to the bed.

"I'll bring something else when I come next time."

"If there is a next time," he said, though the words were little more than a sigh. Unsure how to respond, I pretended I hadn't heard him and stared at the butter on my fingers.

I realized it was raining. The tulips in the flower bed were trembling and the bees' wings were damp. The tulips today were a deep blue, as if someone had spilled a bottle of ink on them.

"What an odd color for tulips," I murmured.

"I planted them with the boy who disappeared," the Manager said. "He came home one day with a bag of bulbs. He said he'd picked them out of the trash bin in back of a flower shop. They were tiny things, and I didn't think they'd amount to much…" His pupils shifted to look out the window. "But he was absolutely convinced they'd bloom. He dragged an old desk into the courtyard and laid out the bulbs on it. He divided up the different varieties and figured out how to fit them all in the flower bed. The plan came to him in an instant, and it turned out to be exactly right. He seemed to have a knack for that sort of thing. It was probably because he was a mathematician, but it still impressed me. There was a different number of bulbs for each color, but he came up with a way to fit them all in the bed, without a single one left over."

The evening shadows crept in from the corners of the room. The box of pound cake on the kitchen table disappeared into the darkness. The Manager looked away from the window and continued his story.

"We let the bulbs dry in the sun for a few days and then went out to plant them. No one had done anything with the flower bed for a long time, so the soil was as hard as a rock. He sprinkled it with the watering can and then broke it up with a tiny shovel, the kind kids use in a sandbox. It was the only one we had. He did everything with his left hand, of course, and in no time we had a bed full of rich, beautiful soil."

I sat quietly and listened.

"Finally, we were ready to plant. He dug shallow holes in the pattern he had worked out. Then he would put a bulb on his left palm and hold it in front of me, and I would push it in the hole with my chin. His hand was as beautiful covered with dirt as it had been holding a pencil and writing down numbers. The sunlight glistened on his palm, his fingers had red marks from the handle of the shovel. He held the bulbs cupped in his hand, and each time I brought my chin close, the pain in my chest was almost unbearable. The pattern of his fingerprints, the pale veins, the warmth of his skin, the smell-everything oppressed me. I held my breath and tried to hide these feelings as my chin nudged the bulb into the hole."

His gaze was fixed and unblinking as he finished his story. He sighed and shut his eyes, asking if I would let him rest awhile.

It was growing dark. The white sheets on the bed seemed to glow between us. The rain continued to fall, swallowed up by the darkness.

His breathing became slow and regular, and he fell gently off to sleep. I looked about at the objects in the room-the clock on the wall, the cushions, a magazine rack, the penholder-waiting for my eyes to adjust to the low light. Everything was still and quiet, as if it had fallen asleep with the Manager.

But in the silence, my ears suddenly sensed a vibration, and I knew instantly that it was the bees. It was a steady hum, a fixed wavelength. If I concentrated, I thought I could even hear the sound of wings rubbing together. It was a low, heavy sound, too deep to be confused with the rain, and it breathed inside me now, a monotone chant sung by the dormitory itself. Outside the window, the tulips and the bees faded into blackness.

Then a drop fell at my feet. It fell slowly, right in front of my eyes, so that even in the dim light I could sense its size and density. I looked up at the ceiling. The round spot had sprouted arms like an amoeba and had spread over my head. It had grown enormously and had begun to bulge down from the ceiling. Drops fell in a steady rhythm from the center.

"What could that be?" I murmured. I could tell that the liquid was thicker and heavier than the rain falling outside. It lay beaded on the carpet without sinking in.

I called quietly to the Manager, but he didn't answer. The wings buzzed in my ears as I reached timidly toward the drops. The first one skimmed the tip of my finger, but, summoning up my courage, I pushed my hand into the stream. The next drop landed in my palm.

It was cool. I sat with my hand frozen, wondering whether I should wipe the sticky drop with my handkerchief or crush it in my fist. More drops fell, one after another.

I stared at the pool accumulating in my hand, but I could not tell what it was. The Manager was asleep, my cousin was away at his camp, and the mathematician had vanished. I was alone.

The boy who solved math problems with a pencil, who planted bulbs with a tiny shovel-where had he gone? Drip. Why were the tulips such strange colors? Drop. Where was my cousin? Drip. How did the Manager know so much about my cousin's joints and muscles?

My hand felt heavy and numb. The pool grew in my palm.

"Blood?" I said aloud, though I could barely hear my voice over the hum of the wings.

Blood. So this is how it feels. I'd never seen it so fresh. I once saw a young woman hit by a car. I was ten, on my way home from the ice-skating rink. Blood was everywhere-on her high heels and her ripped stockings and all over the road. It was so thick it seemed to form little mounds-just like this.

I shook the Manager and called his name.

"Wake up!" I screamed. There was blood on the blanket, on the toes of my slippers. "Wake up! Please!" I called again.

I shook him harder, but his body had become a dark lump on the bed. He was so light I could have picked him up, but I couldn't wake him no matter how much I shouted.

But it was my cousin I was worried about. I wanted to see him again, see that shy smile and the way he poked at his glasses. I knew I had to go look for him now.

Groping my way from the Manager's room, I ran up the stairs. The lights were out, and night had crept into every corner of the building. Ignoring the sticky film on my hands and feet, I ran down the hall, breathing hard, my heart pounding. The sound of the bees filled my ears.

My cousin's door was locked. I grabbed the knob with both hands and tried to force it open, but I only managed to make it sticky.

I ran on to the mathematician's room. This time the door opened immediately, and I found everything exactly as it had been when I visited with the Manager. The skis and the bus ticket, the discarded sweater and the math notebook-everything was waiting quietly for his return. I looked in the wardrobe and under the bed, but it was no use. My cousin wasn't there.

I knew at last that I had to go look above the spot on the ceiling, to find out where the drops were falling from. The thought came to me with sudden clarity, as if I'd come to the important line in a poem. I went back down the stairs and found a flashlight in the shoe cupboard in the lobby. Then I went outside.

My hair and clothes were wet by the time I had crossed the courtyard. The rain was fine, but it settled over me like the strands of a chilly spider's web.

I gathered some empty crates that were scattered around the courtyard and stacked them under the Manager's window. I was wet and alone and teetering on a pile of boxes, but I was oddly calm. I had the feeling that I had somehow been lured into this unlikely predicament, but I tried to remind myself that it would all be over soon and the world would return to normal.