Haruki Murakami - A Wild Sheep Chase

“Good as done.”

“Glad I got to see you.”

A moment’s pause came between us.

“Goodbye,” said the Rat.

“See you,” said I.

Still snug in the blanket, I closed my eyes and listened. The Rat’s shoes scuffed across the floor, the door opened. Freezing cold air entered the room. Not a breeze, but a slow-spreading, sinking chill.

The Rat stood in the open doorway for a moment. He seemed to be staring at something, not the scenery outside, not the room interior, not me, some completely other thing. The doorknob or the tip of his shoe, something. Then, as if closing the door of time, the door swung shut with a click.

Afterward all was silent. There was nothing else left but silence.

After the Rat disappeared, an unbearable cold spread throughout the house. I tried to throw up, but nothing would come, only gasps of stale breath.

I went upstairs, took off my sweater, and burrowed under the covers. I was swept by alternating waves of chills and fever. With each wave the room would swell and contract. My blanket and underwear were soaked in sweat, which congealed into a cold, constricting skin.

“Wind the clock at nine,” someone whispers in my ear. “Green cord to green cord … red cord to red cord … get the hell out by nine-thirty.”

“Don’tworry,” says the Sheep Man. “It’llgofine.”

“The cells replace themselves,” says my ex-wife. She is holding a white lace slip in her right hand.

My head rocks.

Red cord to red cord … green cord to green cord …

“You don’t understand a thing, do you?” accuses my girlfriend.

No, I don’t understand a thing.

There comes the sound of waves. Heavy winter waves. A lead-gray sea specked with whitecaps. Frozen seagulls.

I am in the airtight exhibition room of the aquarium. Row upon row of whales’ penises on display. It’s hot and stuffy. Someone better open a window.

Someone opens a window. Shivering cold. Seagull cries, sharp piercing voices ripping at my flesh.

“Remember the name of your cat?”

“Kipper,” I reply.

“No, it’s not Kipper,” the chauffeur says. “The name’s already changed. Names change all the time. I bet you can’t even remember your own name.”

Shivering cold. And seagulls, far too many seagulls.

“Mediocrity walks a long, hard path,” says the man in the black suit. “Green cord via red cord, red cord via green cord.”

“Heardanythingaboutthewar?” asks the Sheep Man.

The Benny Goodman Orchestra strikes up “Air Mail Special.” Charlie Christian takes a long solo. He is wearing a soft cream-colored hat.

Birds were singing.

Sunlight spilled in stripes across the bed from between the shutter slats. My watch lying on the floor read 7:35. My blanket and shirt were as wet as if they’d been soaked in a bucket of water.

My head was still fuzzy, but the fever had gone. Outside, the world was a snowswept landscape. The pasture gleamed positively silver in the new morning light. I went downstairs and took a hot shower. My face was pale, my cheeks stripped of their flesh overnight. I coated my entire face with three times the necessary amount of shaving cream, and I proceeded to shave methodically. Then I went and pissed so much I could hardly believe it myself.

I was so exhausted from the piss that I collapsed on the chaise longue for fifteen minutes. The birds kept on singing. The snow had begun to melt and drip from the eaves. Occasionally in the background there’d be a sharp creaking.

It was almost on eight-thirty by the time I got up. I drank two glasses of grape juice, ate a whole apple. Then I picked out a bottle of wine, a large Hershey bar, and two more apples from the cellar.

I packed my things. The room took on a forlorn air. Everything was coming to an end.

Checking with my watch, at nine o’clock I wound up the three weights of the grandfather clock. Then I slid the heavy timepiece around and connected the four cords behind. Green cord to green cord, red cord to red cord.

The cords came out of four holes drilled in the back. One pair above, one pair below. The cords were secured with twists of the same wire I’d seen in the jeep. I pushed the grandfather clock back in place, then went to the mirror and bid farewell to myself.

“Hope all goes well,” I said.

“Hope all goes well,” the other I said.

I crossed the middle of the pasture the same way as I had come. The snow crunched beneath my feet. The pasture looked like a silver volcanic lake. Not a footprint anywhere. Only mine which, when I turned around, led back in a trail to the house. My tracks meandered all over the place. It’s not easy to walk in a straight line.

From this far off, the house looked almost like a living thing. Cramped and hunched over, it twisted to shake the snow down from its gabled roof. A block of snow slid off the roof and dashed to the ground with a thud.

I kept walking across the pasture. On through the endless birch woods, across the bridge, around the base of the conical peak, onto the unlucky bend in the road.

Miraculously, the snow on the curve had not frozen to the road. No matter, I was sure that as carefully as I stepped, I would get dragged to the bottom of that sheer drop. It was an effort just to keep walking until I cleared that curved ledge clinging to the crumbling cliff face. My armpits were soaked with sweat. A regular childhood nightmare.

Off to the right were the flatlands. They too were covered in snow, the Junitaki River glistening right down the middle. I thought I could hear a steam whistle in the distance. It was marvelous, actually.

I took a breath and hitched up my backpack, then set off down the gentle slope. At the next bend was a brand-new jeep. In front of the jeep, the Boss’s black-suited secretary.

“I have been waiting for you,” said the man in the black suit. “Albeit only for twenty minutes.”

“How’d you know?”

“The place? Or the time?”

“The time,” I said, setting down my backpack.

“How do you think I got to be the Boss’s secretary? Diligence? IQ? Tact? No. I am the Boss’s secretary because of my special capacities. Sixth sense. I believe that’s what you would call it.”

He was wearing a beige down jacket over ski pants and green Ray-Ban glasses.

“We used to have many things in common, the Boss and I. Things that reached beyond rationality and logic and morality.”

“Used to?”

“The Boss died a week ago. We had a beautiful funeral. All Tokyo is turned upside down now, trying to decide a successor. The whole mediocre lot of them running around like fools.”

I sighed. The man took a silver cigarette case out of his jacket pocket, removed a plain-cut cigarette, and lit up.

“Smoke?”

“No thanks,” I said.

“But I must say you did your stuff. Much more than I expected. Honestly, you surprised me. At first, I thought I might have to help you along and give you hints when you got stuck. Which makes your coming across the Sheep Professor an even greater stroke of genius. I almost wish you would consider working for me.”

“So I take it you knew about this place here from the very beginning?”