Haruki Murakami - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Now, this one is really weird!

Lately, I sometimes feel like I have turned into Kumiko. I am actually Mrs. Wind-Up Bird, and I've run away from you for some reason and I'm hiding here in the mountains, working in a wig factory. For all kinds of complicated reasons, I have to use the name May Kasahara as an alias and wear this mask and pretend I'm not Kumiko. And you're just sitting there on that sad little veranda of yours, waiting for me to come back. I don't know-I really feel like that.

Tell me, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, do you ever get obsessed with these delusions? Not to boast or anything, but I do. All the time. Sometimes, when they're really bad, I'll spend the whole workday wrapped up in a cloud of delusion. Of course, I'm just performing these simple operations, so it doesn't get in the way of my work, but the other girls sometimes give me strange looks. Or maybe I say crazy things to myself out loud. I hate that, but it doesn't do any good to try and fight it. When a delusion wants to come, it comes, like a period. And you cant just meet it at the front door and say, Sorry, I'm busy today, try me later. Anyway, I hope it doesn't bother you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, that I sometimes pretend I'm Kumiko. I mean, I'm not doing it on purpose.

I'm getting really really really tired. I'm going to go to sleep now for three or four hours-I mean out cold-then get up and work hard from morning to night. I'll put in a good day making wigs with the other girls, listening to some kind of harmless music. Please don't worry about me. I'm good at doing all kinds of things even when I'm in the middle of a delusion. And in my own way, I'm saying little prayers for you, hoping that everything works out for you, that Kumiko comes back and you can have your quiet, happy life again.

Goodbye.

Nine o'clock, then ten o'clock, arrived the next morning, with no sign of Cinnamon.

Nothing like this had ever happened before.. He had never missed a single day, from the time I started working in this place. At exactly nine o'clock each morning, the gate would open and the bright glare of the Mercedes' hood ornament would appear. This simultaneously mundane and theatrical appearance of Cinnamon would mark the clear beginning of each day for me. I had become accustomed to this fixed daily routine the way people become accustomed to gravity or barometric pressure. There was a kind of warmth to Cinnamon's punctilious regularity, something beyond mere mechanical predictability, something that gave me comfort and encouragement. Which is why a morning without Cinnamon's appearance was like a well-executed landscape painting that lacked a focal point.

I gave up waiting for him, left the window, and peeled myself an apple as a substitute for breakfast. Then I peeked into Cinnamon's room to see if there might be any messages on the computer, but the screen was as dead as ever. All I could do at that point was follow Cinnamon's example and listen to a tape of Baroque music while doing laundry, vacuuming the floors, and cleaning windows. To kill time, I purposely performed each function slowly and carefully, going so far as to clean the blades of the kitchen exhaust fan, but still the time refused to move.

I ran out of things to do by eleven o'clock, so I stretched out on the fitting room sofa and gave myself up to the languid flow of time. I tried to tell myself that Cinnamon had been delayed by some minor matter. Maybe the car had broken down, or he had been caught in an incredible traffic jam. But I knew that couldn't be true. I would have bet all I had on it. Cinnamon's car would never break down, and he always took the possibility of traffic jams into account. Plus, he had the car phone to call me on in case of an unforeseen emergency in traffic. No, Cinnamon was not here because he had decided not to come here.

I tried calling Nutmeg's Akasaka office just before one, but there was no answer. I tried again and again, with the same results. Then I tried Ushikawa's office but got only a message that the number had been disconnected. This was strange. I had called him at that number just two days earlier. I gave up and went back to the fitting room sofa again. All of a sudden in the last two days there seemed to be a conspiracy against contact with me.

I went back to the window and peeked outside through the curtain. Two energetic-looking little winter birds had come to the yard and were perched on a branch, glancing wide-eyed at the area. Then, as if they had suddenly become fed up with everything there, they flew off. Nothing else seemed to be moving. The Residence felt like a brand-new vacant house.

I did not go back there for the next five days. For some reason, I seemed to have lost any desire to go down into the well. I would be losing the well itself before long. The longest I could afford to keep the Residence going without clients was two months, so I ought to be using the well as much as possible while it was still mine. I felt stifled. All of a sudden, the place seemed wrong and unnatural.

I walked around aimlessly without going to the Residence. In the afternoons I would go to the Shinjuku west exit plaza and sit on my usual bench, killing time doing nothing in particular, but Nutmeg never appeared before me there. I went to her Akasaka office once, rang the bell by the elevator and stared into the closed circuit camera, but no reply ever came. I was ready to give up. Nutmeg and Cinnamon had obviously decided to cut all ties with me. This strange mother and son had deserted the sinking ship for someplace safer. The intensity of the sorrow this aroused in me took me by surprise. I felt as if I had been betrayed in the end by my own family.

In my dream (though I didn't know it was a dream), I was seated across the table from Malta Kano, drinking tea. The rectangular room was too long and wide to see from end to end, and arranged in it in perfectly straight lines were five hundred or more square tables. We sat at one of the tables in the middle, the only people there. Across the ceiling, as high as that of a Buddhist temple, stretched countless heavy beams, from all points of which there hung, like potted plants, objects that appeared to be toupees. A closer look showed me that they were actual human scalps. I could tell from the black blood on their undersides. They were newly taken scalps that had been hung from the beams to dry. I was afraid that the still-fresh blood might drip into our tea. Blood was dripping all around us like raindrops, the sound reverberating in the cavernous room. Only the scalps hanging above our table seemed to have dried enough so that there was no sign of blood dripping down from them.

The tea was boiling hot. Placed beside the teaspoons in each of our saucers were three lurid green lumps of sugar. Malta Kano dropped two of the lumps into her tea and stirred, but they would not melt. A dog appeared from nowhere and sat down beside our table. Its face was that of Ushikawa. It was a big dog, with a chunky black body, but from the neck up it was Ushikawa, only the shaggy black fur that covered the body also grew on the face and head. Well, well, if it isn't Mr. Okada, said the dog-shaped Ushikawa. And will you look at this: a full head of hair. It grew there the second I turned into a dog. Amazing. I've got much bigger balls now than I used to have, and my stomach doesn't hurt anymore. And look: No glasses! No clothes! I'm so happy! I cant believe I didn't think of this before. If only I had become a dog a long time ago! How about you, Mr. Okada? Why don't you give it a try?

Malta Kano picked up her one remaining green sugar lump and hurled it at the dog. The lump thudded into Ushikawa's forehead and drew ink-black blood that ran down Ushikawa's face. This seemed to cause Ushikawa no pain. Still smiling, without a word, he raised his tail and strode away. It was true: his testicles were grotesquely huge.