Haruki Murakami - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

And how are you going to do that? the woman asked. How are you going to take me out of here, Mr. Okada?

The way they do in the fairy tales, I said. By breaking the spell.

Oh, I see, said the voice. But wait a minute, Mr. Okada. You seem to think that I am Kumiko. You want to take me home as Kumiko. But what if I'm not Kumiko? What will you do then? You may be preparing to take home someone else entirely. Are you absolutely sure of what you're doing? Shouldn't you think it over one more time?

I made a fist around the flashlight in my pocket. This couldn't possibly be anyone but Kumiko, I thought. But I couldn't prove it. It was finally nothing but a hypothesis. Sweat oozed from the hand in my pocket.

I'm going to take you home, I said again, my voice dry. That's what I came here to do.

I heard movement in the sheets. She was changing her position in the bed. Can you say that for sure? Without a doubt? she asked, pressing me for confirmation. Yes, I can say it for sure. I'm going to take you home. And you have no second thoughts? No, none. My mind is made up, I said. She followed this with a long silence, as if checking on the truth of something. Then, to mark the end of this stage in our conversation, she let out a long breath. I'm going to give you a present, she said. Its not much of a present, but it may come in handy. Don't turn on the light now, but reach over here-very, very slowly-over to the night table.

I left my chair, and gauging the depth of the emptiness, I stretched my right hand out in the dark. I could feel the airs sharp thorns against my fingertips. And then I touched the thing. When I realized what it was, the air seemed to lodge in the back of my throat. The present was a baseball bat.

I took hold of the grip and held the bat out straight. It was almost certainly the bat I had taken from the young man with the guitar case. The grip and the weight were right. This had to be it. But as I felt it over more carefully, I found that there was something, some kind of debris, stuck to it just above the brand. It felt like a human hair. I took it between my fin- gertips. Judging from the thickness and hardness, it had to be a real human hair. Several such hairs were stuck to the bat, with what seemed to be congealed blood. Someone had used this bat to smash someone else-probably Noboru Wataya-in the head. It took an effort for me to expel the air caught in my throat.

That is your bat, isn't it? she asked.

Probably, I said, struggling to keep calm. My voice had begun to take on a somewhat different tone in the deep darkness, as if someone lurking down here were speaking in my place. I cleared my throat, and after checking to be sure that the one speaking was the real me, I continued: But somebody seems to have used this to beat someone.

The woman kept her mouth sealed. Sitting down, I lowered the bat and held it between my legs. I'm sure you know whats going on, I said. Somebody used this bat to crush Noboru Wataya's skull. The news I saw on TV was true. Noboru Wataya is in the hospital in critical condition. He might die.

Hes not going to die, said Kumiko's voice, without emotion. She might have been reporting a historical fact from a book. He may not regain consciousness, though. He may just continue to wander through darkness, but what kind of darkness that would be, no one knows.

I felt for the glass at my feet and picked it up. I poured its contents into my mouth and, without thinking, swallowed. The tasteless liquid passed through my throat and down my gullet. I felt a chill for no reason, then an unpleasant sensation as if something far away were moving slowly in my direction through a long darkness. As I had known it would, my heart started beating faster.

We don't have much time, I said. Just tell me this if you can: where are we?

You've been here before, and you found the way in here- alive and unharmed. You should know where this is. And anyhow, it doesn't matter anymore. The important thing- Just then there was a knock on the door-a hard, dry sound, like someone driving a nail into the wall, two loud raps followed by two more. It was the same knock I had heard before. The woman gasped.

You've got to get out of here, she said, in a voice that was unmistakably Kumiko's. If you go now, you can still pass through the wall.

I had no idea if what I was thinking was right or wrong, but I knew that as long as I was down here, I had to defeat this thing. This was the war that I would have to fight.

I'm not running away this time, I said to Kumiko. I'm going to take you home.

I set my glass on the floor, put my wool hat on, and took the bat from between my knees.

Then I started slowly for the door.

Lighting my way along the floor and keeping my steps soundless, I moved toward the door. The bat was in my right hand. I was still walking when the knocks came again: two knocks, then two more. Harder this time, and more violent. I pressed myself against the side wall where I would be hidden by the door when it opened. There I waited, keeping my breath in check.

When the sound of the knocks faded, deep silence descended on everything again, as if nothing had happened. I could feel the presence of someone on the other side of the door, though. This someone was standing there the way I was, keeping his breath in check and listening, trying to hear the sound of breathing or the beating of a heart, or to read the movement of a thought. I tried to keep my breath from agitating the surrounding air. I am not here, I told myself. I am not here. I am not anywhere.

The key turned in the lock. He made each movement with the utmost caution, stretching out the time it took to perform any one act so that the sounds involved would become isolated from each other, their meaning lost. The doorknob turned, and this was followed by the almost imperceptible sound of hinges rotating. The contractions of my heart began to speed up. I tried to quell the disturbance this caused, but without success.

Someone came into the room, sending ripples through the air. I made a conscious effort to sharpen each of my five senses and caught the faint smell of a foreign body-a strange mixture of thick clothing, suppressed breathing, and overwrought nerves steeped in silence. Did he have the knife in his hand? I had to assume that he did. I remembered its vivid white gleam. Holding my breath, obliterating my presence, I tightened my grip on the bat.

Once inside, the someone closed the door and locked it from within. Then he stood there, back to the door, waiting and watching. My hands on the bat were drenched with sweat. I would have liked to wipe my palms on my pants, but the slightest extra movement could have had fatal results. I brought to mind the sculpture that had stood in the garden of the abandoned Miyawaki house. In order to obliterate my presence here, I made myself one with that image of a bird. There, in the sun-drenched summer garden, I was the sculpture of a bird, frozen in space, glaring at the sky.

The someone had brought his own flashlight. He switched it on, and its straight, narrow beam cut through the darkness. The light was not strong. It came from the same kind of penlight I was carrying. I waited for the beam to pass me as he walked into the room, but he made no effort to move. The light began to pick out items in the room, one after another-the flowers in the vase, the silver tray lying on the table (giving off its sensual gleam again), the sofa, the floor lamp.... It swung past my nose and came to rest on the floor a few inches beyond the tips of my shoes, licking every corner of the room like the tongue of a snake. I waited for what felt like an eternity. Fear and tension drilled into my consciousness with intense pain.