Haruki Murakami - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Take steady aim, now, Lieutenant Mamiya. Its your last bullet. Boris was still smiling. At that moment, The Tartar came running into the room, his big pistol drawn. Keep out of this, Boris barked at him. Let Mamiya shoot me. And if he manages to kill me, do whatever you like. The Tartar nodded and pointed the muzzle of his gun at me. Gripping the Walther in my right hand, I thrust it straight out, aimed for the middle of Boris' contemptuous, confident smile, and coolly squeezed the trigger. The pistol kicked, but I held it steady. It was a perfectly executed shot. But again the bullet grazed Boris' head, this time smashing the wall clock behind him into a million pieces. Boris never so much as twitched an eyebrow. Leaning back in his chair, he went on staring at me with his snakelike eyes. The pistol crashed to the floor.

For a moment, no one moved or spoke. Soon, though, Boris left his chair and bent over to retrieve the Walther from where I had dropped it. After a long, thoughtful look at the pistol in his hand, he returned it to its holster on the coat-rack. Then he patted my arm twice, as if to comfort me.

I told you you couldn't kill me, didn't I? Boris said. He took a pack of Camels from his pocket, put a cigarette between his lips, and lit it with his lighter. There was nothing wrong with your shooting. It was just that you couldn't kill me. You aren't qualified to kill me. That is the only reason you missed your chance. And now, unfortunately, you will have to bear my curse back to your homeland. Listen: Wherever you may be, you can never be happy. You will never love anyone or be loved by anyone. That is my curse. I will not kill you. But I do not spare you out of goodwill. I have killed many people over the years, and I will go on to kill many more. But I never kill anyone whom there is no need to kill. Goodbye, Lieutenant Mamiya. A week from now, you will leave this place for the port of Nakhodka. Bon voyage.

The two of us will never meet again.

That was the last I ever saw of Boris the Manskinner. The week after that, I left the concentration camp behind and was shipped by train to Nakhodka. After many convoluted experiences there, I finally reached Japan at the beginning of the following year.

To tell you the truth, I have no idea what this long, strange story of mine will mean to you, Mr. Okada. Perhaps it is nothing more than an old mans mutterings. But I wanted to- I had to- tell you my story. As you can see from having read my letter, I have lived my life in total defeat. I have lost. I am lost. I am qualified for nothing. Through the power of the curse, I love no one and am loved by no one. A walking shell, I will simply disappear into darkness.

Having managed at long last, however, to pass my story on to you, Mr. Okada, I will be able to disappear with some small degree of contentment.

May the life you lead be a good one, a life free of regrets.

The door began to open inward. Holding the tray in both hands, the waiter gave a slight bow and went inside. I stayed in the shadows of the vase, waiting for him to come out and wondering what I would do when he did. I could go in as he came out. There was definitely someone inside Room 208. If things continued to develop as they had done before (which was exactly what was happening), the door should be unlocked. On the other hand, I could forget about the room for now and follow the waiter. That way, I could probably find my way to the place where he belonged.

I wavered between the two, but in the end I decided to follow the waiter. There was something dangerous lurking in Room 208, something that could have fatal consequences. I had all too clear a memory of the sharp rapping in the darkness and the violent white gleam of some knife-like thing. I had to be more careful. Let me first see where the waiter would lead me. Then I could come back to the room. But how was I supposed to do that? I thrust my hands in my pockets and found there, along with my wallet and change and handkerchief, a short ballpoint pen. I pulled the pen out and drew a line on my hand to make sure it had ink. I could use this to mark the walls as I followed the waiter. Then I could follow the marks back to the room. It should work.

The door opened and the waiter came out, hands empty. He had left everything inside the room, including the tray. After closing the door, he straightened himself and began whistling The Thieving Magpie as he hurried back along the route he had followed here. I stepped from my place in the shadows of the big vase and followed him. Wherever the corridor forked, I made a small blue X on the cream-colored wall. The waiter never looked back. There was something special about the way he walked. He could have been acting as a model for the World Hotel Waiter Walking-Style Championship. His walk all but proclaimed, This is how a hotel waiter is supposed to walk: head up, jaw thrust out, back straight, arms swinging rhythmically to the tune of The Thieving Magpie, taking long strides down the corridor. He turned many corners, went up and down many short flights of stairs, through stretches where the lighting was brighter or dimmer, past depressions in the walls that produced different kinds of shadows. I maintained a reasonable distance behind him to keep from being noticed, but following him was not particularly difficult. He might disappear for a moment as he turned a corner, but there was never any danger of my losing him, thanks to his vibrant whistling.

Just as a salmon migrating upstream eventually reaches a still pool, the waiter came out of the final corridor into the hotel lobby, the crowded lobby where I had seen Noboru Wataya on television. This time, however, the lobby was hushed, with only a handful of people sitting in front of a large television set, watching an NHK news broadcast. The waiter had stopped whistling as he neared the lobby, so as not to disturb people. Now he cut straight across the lobby floor and disappeared behind a door marked Staff Only.

Pretending to be killing time, I ambled around the lobby, sat on a few different sofas, looked up at the ceiling, checked the thickness of the rug beneath my feet. Then I went to a pay phone and put in a coin. This phone was as dead as the one in the room had been. I picked up a hotel phone and punched in 208, but this phone was also dead.

After that, I went to sit in a chair somewhat apart from where the people were watching television, to observe them unobtrusively. The group consisted of twelve people, nine men and three women, mostly in their thirties and forties, with two possibly in their early fifties. The men all wore suits or sports coats and conservative ties and leather shoes. Aside from some differences in height and weight, none had any distinguishing features. The three women were all in their early thirties, well dressed and carefully made up. They could have been on their way back from a high school reunion, except that they sat separately and gave no evidence of knowing each other. In fact, all the people in the group appeared to be strangers whose attention just happened to be locked on the same television screen. There were no exchanges of opinions or glances or nods.

I sat watching the news for a while from my place somewhat apart from theirs. The stories were of no special interest to me- a governor cutting a tape at the opening ceremony for a new road, a recall of children's crayons that had been discovered to contain a harmful substance, the death of a truck driver who had been hit by a tourist bus in Asahikawa because of icy roads and reduced visibility in a major snowstorm, with injuries to several of the tourists on their way to a hot-spring resort. The announcer read each of the stories in turn in a restrained voice, as though dealing out low-numbered cards. I thought about the television in the home of Mr. Honda, the fortune-teller. His set had always been tuned to NHK too.