Haruki Murakami - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

I could feel her eyes focused on me in the darkness and was struck by the thought that she might be able to see me.

Involves Noboru Wataya? How? asked Kumiko's voice.

Well, finally, the events I've been through have been tremendously complicated. All kinds of characters have come on the scene, and strange things have happened one after another, to the point where, if I try to think about them in order, I lose track. Viewed at more of a distance, though, the thread running through them is perfectly clear. What it all boils down to is that you have gone over from my world to the world of Noboru Wataya. That shift is the important thing. Even if you did, in fact, have sex with another man or other men, that is just a secondary matter. A front. That's what I'm trying to say.

She inclined her glass somewhat in the darkness. Staring hard toward the source of the sound, I felt as if I could catch a faint glimpse of her movements, but this was obviously an illusion.

People don't always send messages in order to communicate the truth, Mr. Okada, she said. The voice was no longer Kumiko's. Neither was it the original girlish voice. This was a new voice, which belonged to someone else. It had a poised, intelligent ring to it. ... just as people don't always meet others in order to reveal their true selves. Do you grasp my meaning, Mr. Okada?

But still, Kumiko was trying to communicate something to me. Whether or not it was the truth, she was looking to me for something, and that was the truth for me.

I sensed the darkness around me increasing in density, much as the evening tide comes to fullness without a sound. I had to hurry. I didn't . have much time left. They might come looking for me here once the lights came back on. I decided to risk putting into words the thoughts that had been slowly forming in my mind.

This is strictly a product of my own imagination, but I would guess that there was some kind of inherited tendency in the Wataya family bloodline. What kind of tendency I cant be sure, but it was some kind of tendency-something that you were afraid of. Which is why you were afraid of having children. When you got pregnant, you panicked because you were worried the tendency would show up in your own child. But you couldn't reveal the secret to me. The whole story started from there.

She said nothing but quietly placed her glass on the night table. I went on: And your sister, I'm sure, didn't die from food poisoning. No, it was more unusual than that. The one responsible for her death was Noboru Wataya, and you know that for a fact. Your sister probably said something to you about it before she died, gave you some kind of warning. Noboru Wataya probably had some special power, and he knew how to find people who were especially responsive to that power and to draw something out of them. He must have used that power in a particularly violent way on Creta Kano. She was able, one way or another, to recover, but your sister was not. She lived in the same house, after all: she had nowhere to run to. She couldn't stand it anymore and chose to die. Your parents have always kept her suicide a secret. Isn't that true?

There was no reply. The woman kept quiet in an attempt to obliterate her presence in the darkness.

I went on: How he managed to do it and what the occasion was I have no idea, but at some point Noboru Wataya increased his violent power geometrically. Through television and the other media, he gained the ability to train his magnified power on society at large. Now he is trying to bring out something that the great mass of people keep hidden in the darkness of their unconscious. He wants to use it for his own political advantage. Its a tremendously dangerous thing, this thing he is trying to draw out: its fatally smeared with violence and blood, and its directly connected to the darkest depths of history, because its final effect is to destroy and obliterate people on a massive scale.

She sighed in the darkness. I wonder if I could bother you to pour me another whiskey? she asked softly.

I walked over to the night table and picked up her empty glass. I could do that much in the dark without difficulty. I went into the other room and poured a new whiskey on the rocks with the aid of the flashlight.

What you just said was strictly a product of your own imagination, right? she asked.

That's right. I've strung a few separate ideas together, I said. Theres no way I can prove any of this. I don't have any basis for claiming that what I have said is true.

But still, Id like to hear the rest-if there is more to tell.

I went back into the inner room and put the glass on the night table. Then I switched off the flashlight and returned to my chair. There I concentrated my attention on telling the rest of my story.

You didn't know exactly what had happened to your sister, only that she had given you some kind of warning before she died. You were too small at the time to understand what it was about. But you did understand, in a vague sort of way. You knew that Noboru Wataya had somehow defiled and injured your sister. And you sensed the presence in your blood of some kind of dark secret, something from which you could not remain aloof. And so, in that house, you were always alone, always tense, struggling by yourself to live with your dormant, undefinable anxiety, like one of those jellyfish we saw in the aquarium.

After you graduated from college-and after all the trouble with your family- you married me and left the Wataya house. Our life was serene, and with each day that went by, you were able, bit by bit, to forget your dark anxiety. You went out into society, a new person, as you continued gradually to recover. For a while, it looked as though everything was going to work out for you. But unfortunately, it wasn't that simple. At some point you noticed that you were being drawn, unconsciously, toward that dark force that you thought you had left behind. And when you realized what was happening, you became confused. You didn't know what to do. Which is why you went to talk to Noboru Wataya, hoping to learn the truth. And you sought out Malta Kano, hoping that she could give you help. It was only to me that you could not open up.

I would guess that all this started after you became pregnant. That, I'm sure, was the turning point. Which is probably why I received my first warning from the guitar player in Sapporo the night you had the abortion. Getting pregnant may have stimulated and awakened the dormant something inside you. And that was exactly what Noboru Wataya had been waiting for. That may be the only way he is capable of sexually committing to a woman. That is why he was so determined to drag you back from my side to his, once that tendency began to surface in you. He had to have you. Noboru Wataya needed you to play the role your sister had once played for him.

When I finished speaking, a deep silence came to fill in the emptiness. I had given voice to everything that my imagination had taught me about Kumiko. Parts of it had come from vague thoughts I had had until then, and the rest had taken shape in my mind while I spoke in the darkness. Perhaps the power of darkness had filled in the blank spots in my imagination. Or perhaps this womans presence had helped. In either case, there was no solid basis for what I had imagined.

A very, very interesting story, said the woman. Again her voice had become the one with the girlish lisp. The speed with which her voice changed seemed to be increasing. Well, well, well. So I left you to go into hiding with my defiled body. Its like Waterloo Bridge in the mist, Auld Lang Syne, Robert Taylor and Vivien Leigh- I'm going to take you out of here, I said, cutting her off. I'm going to take you home, to the world where you belong, where cats with bent tails live, and there are little backyards, and alarm clocks ring in the morning.