Haruki Murakami - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

It was then that the boy realized: the small man looked a lot like his father. Of course, he was too short to be his father, but aside from that, he was exactly the same: the build, the movements. But no, his father could never climb a tree that way. He wasn't that agile or strong. The more he thought about it, the more confused the boy became.

The tall man came back to the base of the tree. Now he had something in his hands-a shovel and a large cloth bag. He set the bag down on.the ground and started digging near the roots of the tree. The shovel cut into the earth with a sharp, clean sound. Now everybody was bound to wake up, the boy thought. It was such a big, clear sound!

But no one woke up. The man went on digging without a break, seemingly unconcerned that anyone might hear him. Though tall and thin, he was far more powerful than he looked, judging from the way he used that shovel. He worked steadily, without wasted motion. Once he had the size hole he wanted, the man leaned the shovel against the tree and stood there looking down. He never once looked up, as though he had forgotten all about the man who had climbed the tree. The only thing on his mind now was the hole, it seemed. The boy did not like this. He would have been worried about the man in the tree.

The boy could tell from the mound of earth the man had dug out that the hole itself was not very deep-maybe just up over his own knees. The man seemed satisfied with the shape and size of the hole. He turned to the bag and gently lifted a blackish, cloth-wrapped object from inside it. The way the man held it, it seemed soft and limp. Maybe the man was about to bury some kind of corpse in the hole. The thought made the boys heart race. But the thing in the cloth was no bigger than a cat. If human, it could only be an infant. But why did he have to bury something like that in my yard? thought the boy. He swallowed the saliva that he had unconsciously allowed to collect in his mouth. The loud gulp he made frightened the boy himself. It might have been loud enough for the man to hear outside.

Just then, as if aroused by the boys gulp, the wind-up bird cried out, winding an even bigger spring than before: Creeeak. Creeeak.

When he heard this cry, the boy felt intuitively that something very important was about to happen. He bit his lip and unconsciously scratched the skin of his arms. He should never have seen any of this, he felt. But now it was too late. Now it was impossible for him to tear his eyes away from the scene before him. He parted his lips and pressed his nose against the cold windowpane, transfixed by the strange drama that was now unfolding in his yard. He was no longer hoping for other members of the family to get out of bed. No one would wake up anyway, no matter how big a sound they made out there. I'm the only person alive who can hear these sounds. It was that way from the start.

The tall man bent over and, handling it with the utmost care, laid the thing in the black cloth in the bottom of the hole. Then he rose to his full height and stared down at it lying there. The boy could not make out the look on the mans face beneath the brim of his hat, but he seemed somehow to be wearing a grim, even a solemn, expression. Yes, it had to be some kind of corpse, thought the boy. Before long, the man reached a point of decision, lifted the shovel, and began filling in the hole. When he was through shoveling, he lightly tamped the earth beneath his feet and smoothed it over. Then he set the shovel against the trunk of the tree and, with the cloth bag in his hand, moved away with slow steps. He never looked back.

He never looked up into the tree. And the wind-up bird never cried again.

The boy turned to look at the clock on his wall. Squinting in the darkness, he could just barely make out the time as two-thirty. He kept watch on the pine tree for another ten minutes through the opening in the curtains, in case something should move out there, but an intense sleepiness overtook him all at once, as if a heavy iron lid were closing over his head. He wanted to know what would happen with the short man up in the tree and the wind-up bird, but he couldn't keep his eyes open any longer. Struggling to slip off the cardigan before he lost consciousness, he burrowed under the covers and sank into sleep.

I walked from the Akasaka subway station down a lively street lined with restaurants and bars to the place where the office building stood, a short way up a gentle slope. It was an unremarkable building, neither new nor old, big nor small, elegant nor dilapidated. A travel agency occupied part of the ground floor, its large window displaying posters of Mykonos and a San Francisco cable car. Both posters looked faded from long duty in the window.

Three members of the firm were hard at work on the other side of the glass, talking on the telephone or typing at a computer keyboard. Pretending to be looking at the posters, I killed time watching the office scene while waiting for the hour to strike four exactly. For some reason, both Mykonos and San Francisco seemed light-years from where I stood. The more I looked at this building, the more I realized how ordinary it was, as if it had been built to match the pencil sketch a small child might do if told to draw a building, or as if it had been consciously designed to be inconspicuous in its surroundings. As carefully as I had been checking the addresses in my search for the place, I came close to passing it by, it was so plain. The buildings unobtrusive main entrance stood near the door to the travel agency.

Skimming the nameplates, I got the impression that most of the offices were occupied by small-scale businesses-law offices, architects, importers, dentists. Several of the name-plates were shiny enough for me to be able to see my face in them, but the one for Room 602 had changed with age to an indistinct color. The woman had obviously had her office here for some time. Akasaka Fashion Design, read the inscription. The sheer age of the nameplate helped to temper my misgivings.

A locked glass door stood between the entryway and the elevator. I rang the bell for 602 and looked around for the closed-circuit TV camera I assumed must be sending my image to a monitor inside. There was a small, camera-like device in a corner of the entryway ceiling.

Soon the buzzer sounded, unlocking the door, and I went inside. I took the absolutely unadorned elevator to the sixth floor and, after a few uncertain moments in the absolutely unadorned corridor, found the door of 602. First checking to be certain that the sign on the door said Akasaka Fashion Design, I gave the bell exactly one short ring.

The door was opened by a slim young man with short hair and extremely regular features. He was possibly the handsomest man I had ever seen in my life. But even more than his features, what caught my eye was his clothing. He wore a shirt of almost painful whiteness and a deep-green necktie with a fine pattern. Not only was the necktie itself stylish, but it had been tied in a perfect knot, every twist and dip exactly as one might see in a mens fashion magazine. I could never have tied a tie so well, and I found myself wondering how he did it. Was it an inborn talent or the fruits of disciplined practice? His pants were dark gray, and he wore brown tasseled loafers. Everything looked brand-new, as if he had just put it on for the first time a few minutes before.

He was somewhat shorter than I. The hint of a smile played about his lips, as if he had just heard a joke and was smiling now in the most natural way. Nor had the joke been a vulgar one: it was the kind of elegant pleasantry that the minister of foreign affairs might have told the crown prince at a garden party a generation ago, causing the surrounding listeners to titter with delight. I began to introduce myself, but he gave his head a slight shake to signal that it was unnecessary for me to say anything. Holding the door open inward, he ushered me in, and after a quick glance up and down the hall, he closed the door, saying nothing all the while. He looked at me with eyes narrowed as if to apologize for being unable to speak because of the nervous black panther sleeping by his side. Which is not to say that there was a black panther sleeping by his side: he just looked as if there were.