Haruki Murakami - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

A few days later, I was able to arrange a private meeting between the colonel and Boris in a place away from prying eyes. I acted as interpreter. A secret pact resulted from their thirty- minute discussion, and the two shook hands. I have no way of knowing exactly what happened after that. The two avoided direct contact so as not to attract attention, and instead they seem to have engaged in a constant exchange of coded messages using some kind of secret means of communication. This ended my role as intermediary. Which was fine with me. If possible, I wanted nothing more to do with Boris. Only later would I realize that such a thing was anything but possible.

As Boris had promised, about a month later, Party Central removed the Georgian politburo member from office and sent a new member to take his place two days after that.

Another two days went by, and three Japanese prisoners of war were strangled during the night. They were found hanging from beams to make the deaths look like suicides, but these were clearly lynchings carried out by other Japanese. The three must have been the informers Boris had mentioned. There was never any investigation. By then, Boris practically had the camp in the palm of his hand.

Wearing a sweater and my pea coat, wool hat pulled down low almost to my eyes, I scaled the back wall and lowered myself into the alley. The sun would not be up for a while, and people were still asleep. I padded my way down the alley to the Residence.

Inside, the house was just as I had left it six days earlier, complete with dirty dishes in the sink. I found no written messages and nothing on the answering machine. The computer screen in Cinnamon's room was is cold and dead as before. The heat pump was keeping the place at normal room temperature. I took off my coat and gloves, then boiled water and made myself some tea. I had a few crackers and cheese for breakfast, washed the dishes in the sink, and put them away. Nine o'clock came again, with no sign of Cinnamon.

I went out to the yard, took the cover off the well, and leaned over to look inside. There was the same dense darkness. I knew the well now as if it were an extension of my own body: its darkness, its smell, and its quiet were part of me. In a sense, I knew the well better than I knew Kumiko. Her memory was still fresh, of course. If I closed my eyes, I could bring back the details of her voice, her face, her body, the way she moved. I had lived in the same house with her for six years, after all. But still, I felt there were things about her that I could not bring back so clearly. Or perhaps I simply could not be sure that what I was remembering was correct-just as I could not recall precisely the curve in the tail of the cat when he came back.

I sat on the well curb, thrust my hands into my coat pockets, and surveyed my surroundings once again. It felt as if a cold rain or snow might begin falling at any time. There was no wind, but the air had a deep chill to it. A flock of little birds raced back and forth across the sky in a complex pattern as if painting a coded hieroglyph up there, and then, with a rush, they were gone. Soon I heard the low rumble of a jet, but the plane stayed invisible above the thick layer of clouds. On such a dark, overcast day, I could go into the well without worrying that the sunlight would hurt my eyes when I came out.

Still, I went on sitting there for some time, doing nothing. I was in no hurry. The day had hardly begun. Noon would not be here for a while. I gave myself up to thoughts that came to me without order as I sat on the well curb. Where had they taken the bird sculpture that used to be in this yard? Was it decorating another yard now, still urged on by an endless, pointless impulse to soar into the sky? Or had it been discarded as trash when the Miyawaki's house was demolished last summer? I recalled the piece fondly. Without the sculpture of the bird, I felt, the yard had lost a certain subtle balance.

When I ran out of thoughts, after eleven, I climbed down the steel ladder into the well. I set foot on the well bottom and took a few deep breaths, as always, checking the air. It was the same as ever, smelling somewhat of mold but breathable. I felt for the bat where I had left it propped against the wall. It was not there. It was not anywhere. It had disappeared. Completely. Without a trace.

I lowered myself to the well floor and sat leaning against the wall, sighing.

Who could have taken the bat? Cinnamon was the only possibility. He was the only one who knew of its existence, and he was probably the only one who would think to climb down into the well. But what reason could he possibly have had for taking the bat away? This was something I could not comprehend-one of the many things I could not comprehend.

I had no choice today but to go ahead without the bat. That would be all right too. The bat was, finally, just a kind of protective talisman. Not having it with me would be no problem. I had managed to get into that room all right without it, hadn't I? Once I had presented myself with these arguments, I pulled on the rope that closed the lid of the well. I folded my hands on my knees and closed my eyes in the darkness.

As had happened last time, I was unable to achieve the mental concentration I wanted. All kinds of thoughts came crowding in, blocking the way. To get rid of them, I tried thinking about the pool- the twenty-five-meter indoor ward pool where I usually went for exercise. I imagined myself doing the crawl there, doing laps. I'm not trying for speed, just using a quiet, steady stroke, over and over. I bring my elbows out smoothly with a minimum of noise and splashing, then stroke gently, fingers first. I take water into my mouth and let it out slowly, as if breathing underwater. After a while, I feel my body flowing naturally through the water, as if its riding on a soft wind. The only sound reaching my ears is that of my own regular breathing. I'm floating on the wind like a bird in the sky, looking down at the earth below. I see distant towns and tiny people and flowing rivers. A sense of calm envelops me, a feeling close to rapture. Swimming is one of the best things in my life. It has never solved any problems, but it has done no harm, and nothing has ever ruined it for me. Swimming.

Just then I heard something. I realized I was hearing a low, monotonous hum in the dark, something like the droning of insect wings. But the sound was too artificial, too mechanical, to be that of insect wings. It had subtle variations in frequency, like tuning changes in a shortwave broadcast. I held my breath and listened, trying to catch its direction. It seemed to be coming from one fixed point in the darkness and, at the same time, from inside my own head. The border between the two was almost impossible to determine in the deep darkness.

While concentrating all my attention on the sound, I fell asleep. I had no awareness of feeling sleepy before that happened. All of a sudden, I was asleep, as if I had been walking down a corridor with nothing particular on my mind when, without warning, I was dragged into an unknown room. How long this thick, mudlike stupor enveloped me I had no idea. It couldn't have been very long. It might have been a moment. But when some kind of presence brought me back to consciousness, I knew I was in another darkness. The air was different, the temperature was different, the quality and depth of the darkness was different. This darkness was tainted with some kind of faint, opaque light. And a familiar sharp smell of pollen struck my nostrils. I was in that strange hotel room.

I raised my face, scanned my surroundings, held my breath.

I had come through the wall.

I was sitting on a carpeted floor, my back leaning against a cloth-covered wall. My hands were still folded atop my knees. As fearfully deep as my sleep had been just a moment before, my wakefulness now was complete and lucid. The contrast was so extreme that it took a moment for my wakefulness to sink in. The quick contractions of my heart were plainly audible. There was no doubt about it. I was here. I had finally made it all the way into the room.