Haruki Murakami - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

I went on sitting in the same position for some time after the young man left the room. The darkness in which I sat had something strange about it. In my being unable to see anything, it was the same as the darkness I had experienced in the well, but otherwise it had a certain quality that made it entirely different. It had no direction or depth, no weight or tangibility. It was less like darkness and more like nothingness. I had merely been rendered temporarily blind by artificial means. I felt my muscles stiffening, my mouth and throat going dry. What was going to happen to me? But then I recalled the touch of the young mans fingers. Don't worry, they had told me. For no clear reason, I felt that those words of his were something I could believe in.

The room was so utterly still that when I held my breath I was overtaken by a sense that the world had stopped in its tracks and everything would eventually be swallowed up by water, sinking to eternal depths. But no, the world was apparently still moving. Before long, a woman opened the door and stepped quietly into the room.

I knew it was a woman from the delicate fragrance of her perfume. This was not a scent a man would wear. It was probably expensive perfume. I tried to recall the scent, but I could not do so with confidence. Suddenly robbed of my sight, I found my sense of smell had also been thrown off balance. The one thing I could be sure of was that the perfume I was smelling now was different from that of the well-dressed woman who had directed me to this place. I could hear the slight sound of the womans clothes rustling as she crossed the room and gently lowered herself onto the sofa, to my right. So lightly did she settle into the cushions of the sofa that it was clear she was a small woman.

Sitting there, the woman stared straight at me. I could feel her eyes focused on my face. You really can feel someone looking at you, even if you cant see, I realized. The woman, never moving, went on staring at me for a long time. I sensed her slow, gentle breathing but could not hear a sound. I remained in the same position, facing straight ahead. The mark on my cheek felt slightly feverish to me. The color was probably more vivid than usual. Eventually, the woman reached out and placed her fingertips on my mark, very carefully, as if inspecting some valuable, fragile thing. Then she began to caress it.

I didn't know how to react to this, or how I was expected to react. I had only the most distant sense of reality. I felt strangely detached, as if trying to leap from one moving vehicle to another that was moving at a different speed. I existed in the empty space between the two, a vacant house. I was now a vacant house, just as the Miyawaki house had once been. This woman had come into the vacant house and, for some unknown reason, was running her hands all over the walls and pillars. Whatever her reason might be, vacant house that I was (and I was that and nothing more), I could do nothing (I needed to do nothing) about it. Once that thought crossed my mind, I was able to relax somewhat.

The woman said nothing. Aside from the sound of rustling clothes, the room was enveloped in a deep silence. The woman traced her fingertips over my skin as if trying to read some minute secret script that had been engraved there ages ago.

Finally, she stopped caressing my mark. She then stood up, came around behind me, and, instead of her fingertips, used her tongue. Just as May Kasahara had done in the garden last summer, she licked my mark. The way she did it, however, was far more mature than the way May Kasahara had done it. Her tongue moved and clung to my flesh with far greater skill. With varying pressure, changing angles, and different movements, it tasted and sucked and stimulated my mark. I felt a hot, moist throbbing below the waist. I didn't want to have an erection. To do so would have been all too meaningless. But I couldn't stop myself.

I struggled to superimpose my own image upon that of a vacant house. I thought of myself as a pillar, a wall, a ceiling, a floor, a roof, a window, a door, a stone. It seemed the most reasonable thing to do.

I close my eyes and separate from this flesh of mine, with its filthy tennis shoes, its weird goggles, its clumsy erection. Separating from the flesh is not so difficult. It can put me far more at ease, allow me to cast off the discomfort I feel. I am a weed-choked garden, a flightless stone bird, a dry well. I know that a woman is inside this vacant house that is myself. I cannot see her, but it doesn't bother me anymore. If she is looking for something inside here, I might as well give it to her.

The passage of time becomes increasingly unclear. Of all the kinds of time available to me here, I lose track of which kind I am using. My consciousness goes gradually back into my flesh, and in turn the woman seems to be leaving. She leaves the room as quietly as she came in. The rustle of clothing. The shimmering smell of perfume. The sound of a door opening, then closing. Part of my consciousness is still there as an empty house. At the same time, I am still here, on this sofa, as me. I think, What should I do now? I cant decide which one is reality. Little by little, the word here seems to split in two inside me. I am here, but I am also here. Both seem equally real to me. Sitting on the sofa, I steep myself in this strange separation.

Soon the door opened and someone came into the room. I could tell from the footsteps that it was the young man. He came around behind me and took off the goggles. The room was dark, the only light the single bulb of the floor lamp. I rubbed my eyes with my palms, making them accustomed to the world of reality. The young man was now wearing a suit coat. Its deep gray, with hints of green, was a perfect match for the color of his tie. With a soft smile, he took my arm, helped me to stand, and guided me to the back door of the room. He opened the door to reveal a bathroom on the other side. It had a toilet and, beyond the toilet, a small shower stall. The toilet lid was down, and he had me sit on top of it while he turned the shower on. He waited for the hot water to begin flowing, then he gestured for me to take a shower. He unwrapped a fresh bar of soap and handed the cake to me. Then he went out of the bathroom and closed the door. Why did I have to take a shower here? I didn't get it.

I finally got it as I was undressing. I had come in my underpants. I stepped into the hot shower and washed myself with the new green soap. I rinsed away the semen sticking to my pubic hair. I stepped out of the shower and dried myself with a large towel. Beside the towel I found a pair of Calvin Klein boxer shorts and a T-shirt, both still in their vinyl wrappers and both my size. Maybe they had planned for me to come in my pants. I stared at myself in the mirror for a while, but my head was not working right. I threw my soiled underwear into a wastebasket and put on the clean, white new underpants, the clean, white new T-shirt. Then I put on my jeans and slipped my sweatshirt over my head. I put on my socks and my dirty tennis shoes and finally my baseball jacket. Then I stepped out of the bathroom.

The young man was waiting for me outside and guided me to the original waiting room.

The room looked as it had earlier. On the desk lay the same opened book, next to which stood the computer. Anonymous classical music flowed from the speakers. The young man had me sit on the sofa and brought me a glass of chilled mineral water. I drank half the glass.

I seem to be tired, I said. The voice didn't sound like mine. Nor had I been intending to say any such thing. The words had come out of nowhere, without reference to my will. The voice was definitely mine, though.

The young man nodded. He took a white envelope from the inner pocket of his suit coat and slipped it into the inner pocket of my baseball jacket. Then he nodded once again. I looked outside. The sky was dark, and the street was aglow with neon signs, the light from office building windows, street lamps, and headlights. The thought of staying in this room any longer became increasingly intolerable. Without a word, I stood up, crossed the room, opened the door, and went out. The young man watched me from the place where he stood by his desk, but he remained as silent as ever and made no attempt to stop me from leaving.