Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Page 33

We were all getting old. That much was as plain as the falling rain.

  34

  Skulls

  I SEE birds flying. They strafe the white frozen slope of the Western Hill and vanish from my field of vision. I warm my feet and hands at the stove and drink the hot tea the Colonel has brought me.

  “Are you going to read dreams tonight? The snow will be deep. It will be dangerous walking on the Hill. Perhaps you might rest a day,” he suggests.

  “I cannot lose a day,” I tell him.

  The Colonel shakes his head, goes out, and returns with a pair of snow boots.

  “Here, wear these. At least you not will slip.”

  I try them on. They fit well, a good sign.

  It is time to go. I wrap my scarf around my neck, pull on my gloves, borrow a cap from the Colonel. Then I slip the folded accordion into my pocket. I refuse to be without it.

  “Take care,” bids the old officer.

  As I had envisioned, the hole is filling with drifts of snow. Gone are the old men; gone too are their tools. If the snow continues like this, the hole will be brimming by tomorrow morning. I watch the bold white gusts, then begin down the Hill.

  Snow is falling thick and fierce. It is difficult to see more than a few yards ahead. I remove my glasses and pull my scarf to beneath my eyes. I hear birds crying overhead, above the squeak and crack of these boots. What do birds feel about snow? And the beasts, what do they think about this blizzard?

  I arrive at the Library a full hour early and find her waiting for the stove to heat the room. She brushes the snow from my coat and dislodges the snow caked between the spikes of the boots.

  Although I was here only yesterday, I am overcome with feelings of nostalgia at the yellow light through the frosted glass, the warm intimacy of the stove, the smell of coffee steaming out of the pot.

  “Would you care to eat now? Or perhaps a little later?”

  “I don’t want to eat. I’m not hungry,” I say.

  “Would you like coffee?”

  “Yes, please.”

  I pull off my gloves and hang them on the stove to dry. Then I thaw my fingers in front of the fire, while she pours two cups of coffee. She hands me a cup, then she sits down at the table to drink.

  “Bad snow outside. I could hardly see before me,” I say.

  “Yes. It will keep falling for the next few days. Until those clouds dead in the sky drop all their snow.”

  I drink half my coffee, then without a word, take a seat opposite her. Looking at her, I feel myself overcome with sadness again.

  “By the time it stops, there will be more snow on the ground than you have probably ever seen,” she says.

  “I may not be able to see it.”

  She raises her eyes from her cup to look at me.

  “What do you mean? Anyone can see snow.”

  “I will not be dreamreading today. Let’s just talk, the two of us,” I say. “There are many things I want to tell you and many things I want you to tell me. Is that all right?”

  She folds her hands on the table and looks at me blankly.

  “My shadow is dying,” I begin. “He cannot last out the winter. It’s only a matter of time. If my shadow dies, I lose my mind forever. That is why I must decide many things now. Things about myself, things that concern you. There is little time left to think about these things, but even if I could think as long as I liked, I’m sure I would reach the same conclusion. That is, I must leave here.”

  I take a sip of coffee and assure myself that my conclusion is not wrong. To be sure, either way I will be losing a part of me.

  “I will leave the Town tomorrow,” I speak again. “Exactly how and from where I don’t know. My shadow will tell me. He and I will leave together and go back to our world. I will drag my shadow after me as I once did. I will worry and suffer, grow old and die. I doubt you can understand, but I belong in that world, where I will be led around, even led astray, by my own mind.”

  She stares at me. No, she stares into the space I occupy.

  “Do you not like the Town?”

  “In the beginning, you said that if it was quiet I wanted, I would like it here. Yes, I am taken with the peace and tranquillity of the Town. I also know that if I stay on at the expense of my mind, that peace and tranquillity will become total. Very likely, I will regret leaving this Town for the rest of my life. Yet I cannot stay. My mind cannot forgive my gain at the sacrifice of my shadow and the beasts. Even as my mind dwindles this very instant, I cannot lie to it. That is totally beside the point. What I lose would be eternal. Do you understand?”

  She looks down at her hands for a long time. The steam has long since vanished from her coffee cup; not a thing in the room moves.

  “Will you never come back here?”

  I shake my head. “Once I leave here, I can never come back. That is clear. And should I return, the Gate would never open for me.”

  “And does that not matter to you?”

  “Losing you is most difficult for me, but the nature of my love for you is what matters. If it distorts into half-truth, then perhaps it is better not to love you. I must keep my mind but lose you.”

  The room is silent again, except for the crackling of the coals. Hanging by the stove are my coat and scarf and hat and gloves—items given to me here by the Town.

  “I considered helping my shadow escape alone, then staying behind myself,” I say. “Yet I would be driven into the Woods, sure never to see you again either. You cannot live in the Woods. Only those whose shadows have not been completely exterminated, who still bear traces of mind in them, can live in the Woods. I still have a mind. Not you. And for that reason, you can never need me.”

  She shakes her head.

  “No, I do not have this thing you call mind. Mother had mind, but I do not. And because Mother kept her mind, she was driven into the Woods. I never told you, but I remember very well when Mother was sent to the Woods. I still think about her from time to time. That if I had mind, too, I could be with Mother. And that if I had mind, I could want you as you want me.”

  “Even if it meant exile in the Woods? You would have a mind at such cost?”

  She meditates on her hands folded on the table before her, then unclasps them.

  “I remember Mother told me that if one has mind, nothing is ever lost, regardless where one goes. Is that true?”

  “I don’t know,” I tell her. “But true or not, that is what your mother believed. The question is whether you believe it.”

  “I think I can,” she says, gazing into my eyes.

  “You can?” I ask, startled. “You think you can believe that?”

  “Probably,” she says.

  “No. Think it over carefully. This is very important,” I say, “because to believe something, whatever it might be, is the doing of the mind. Do you follow? When you say you believe, you allow the possibility of disappointment. And from disappointment or betrayal, there may come despair. Such is the way of the mind. Do you know these things?”

  She shakes her head. “I cannot tell. I was merely thinking about Mother. Nothing more than that. I think that I can believe.”

  “Something in you must still be in touch with your mind! Although it is locked tightly in and cannot get out.”

  “When you say I still have mind in me, do you mean that they did not really kill my shadow, the same as with Mother?”

  “No, your shadow is dead and buried in the Apple Grove. But perhaps there are echoes of mind inside the memories of your mother, if you could only retrace them.”

  All is hushed, as if the swirling snow outside has swallowed all sound from the room, as the Wall holds its breath, straining to listen in.

  “Let’s talk about old dreams,” I change the subject. “Is it true that the beasts absorb what mind we give off each day? That this becomes old dreams?”

  “Why yes, of course. When our shadows die, the beasts breathe in mind.”

  “That means I should be able to read o
ut your mind from the old dreams.”

  “No, it is impossible. Our minds are not taken in whole. My mind is scattered, in different pieces among different beasts, all mixed with pieces from others. They cannot be untangled.”

  She is right. I have been dreamreading day after day and I have yet to understand even a fragment of one. And now, if I am to save my shadow, there are only twenty-one hours left. Twenty-one hours to gather the pieces of her mind. How can it be, here in this timeless Town, I have so little time? I close my eyes and breathe deeply. I must find the thread that pulls my concentration together, yet unravels the fabric.

  “We must go to the stacks,” I say.

  “The stacks?”

  “We must think while we look at the skulls. We may discover something.”

  I take her by the hand, and we step behind the counter to the door to the stacks. She turns on the dim light and the shelves of countless skulls float up through the gloom. Pallid shapes, covered thick with dust, jaws sprung at the same angle, eye sockets glaring vacuously, their silence hangs over the stacks like a ghostly mist. A chill creeps over my flesh again.

  “Do you really think you can read out my mind?” she asks me, face to face.

  “I think so,” I say, wishing to convince myself. “There has to be a way.”

  “It is like looking for lost drops of rain in a river.”

  “You’re wrong. The mind is not like raindrops. It does not fall from the skies, it does not lose itself among other things. If you believe in me at all, then believe this: I promise you I will find it. Everything depends on this.”

  “I believe you,” she whispers after a moment. “Please find my mind.”

  35

  Nail Clippers, Butter Sauce, Iron Vase

  IT was five-twenty-five when I pulled up in front of the library. Still early for our date, so I got out of the car and took a stroll down the misty streets. In a coffee shop I watched a golf match on television, then I went to an entertainment center and played a video game. The object of the game was to wipe out tanks invading from across the river. I was winning at first, but as the game went on, the enemy tanks bred like lemmings, crushing me by sheer number and destroying my base. An on-screen nuclear blast took care of everything, followed by the message GAME OVER—INSERT COIN.

  I slipped another hundred-yen coin into the slot. My base reappeared, completely unscathed, accompanied by a flourish of trumpets. Talk about a downhill struggle. I had to lose. If I didn’t, the game would go on forever. Not to worry. I was soon wiped out again, followed by the same nuclear blast, followed by the same GAME OVER—INSERT COIN.

  Next door was a hardware store, with a vast assortment of tools in the window. Wrench-and-screwdriver sets, power tack-guns, and drills, as well as a cased precision tool kit made in West Germany. Next to that was a set of some thirty woodcarving knives and gouges.

  I walked in to the store. After the buzzing and booming of the entertainment center, the hardware store seemed as quiet as the interior of an iceberg. Next to the razor sets, I found nail clippers arrayed like entomological specimens. I picked up the most featureless of the lot and took it over to the register.

  The thin-haired, middle-aged man at the counter put down the electric eggbeater that he was dismantling and instructed me on the use of the clippers.

  “Okay, watch carefully.” He showed me the simple three-step procedure and handed the clippers back to me. “Prime item,” he confided. “They’re made by Henkel, they’ll last you a lifetime. Never rust, good blade. Strong enough to clip a dog’s claws.”

  I put out two thousand eight hundred yen for the clippers. They came with a black leather case.

  The man immediately returned to his eggbeater disassembly. He had sorted screws of different sizes into clean white trays. They looked so happy.

  I returned to the car and listened to the Brandenburg Concertos while I waited. I thought about the screws and their happiness. Maybe they were glad to be free of the eggbeater, to be independent screws, to luxuriate on white trays. It did feel good to see them happy.

  On toward closing time, people started filing out of the library. Mostly high school students who were toting plastic sports bags like mine, but there were older people, too. At six o’clock, a bell sounded. And for the first time since I could remember, I was ravenous. I’d had very little to eat since the fun and games began. I pushed back the reclining seat and looked up at the low car ceiling as food of all kinds floated through my head. The screws on white trays became screws in white sauce alongside a few sprigs of watercress.

  Fifteen minutes later, my reference desk girlfriend emerged through the front door. She was wearing a dark blue velvet dress with a white lace collar and double-stranded silver necklace.

  “Is this your car?” she asked.

  “Nope, a rental. What do you think?”

  “Okay, I guess. Though it doesn’t really seem to be your style.”

  “I wouldn’t know. It was what they had at the car rental.”

  She inspected the car outside and in, opened the ashtray and checked the glove compartment.

  Then she asked, “Whose Brandenburg is this?”

  “Trevor Pinnock.”

  “Are you a Pinnock fan?”

  “Not especially,” I said. “The tape just caught my eye. It’s not bad.”

  “Richter’s is my favorite, but did you know Pablo Casals also has a version?””

  “Casals?”

  “It’s not what you’d expect the Brandenburg to sound like. It’s very interesting.”

  “I’ll look for it,” I said. “Where shall we eat?”

  “How about Italian?”

  “Great.”

  “I know a place that’s not too far and is really good.”

  “Let’s go. I’m so hungry I could eat screws.”

  “I’m hungry too,” she said, ignoring the screws. “Hmm, nice shirt.”

  “Thanks.”

  The restaurant was a fifteen-minute drive from the library, dodging cyclists and pedestrians on winding residential streets. Midway up a hill, amid homes with tall pines and Himalayan cedars and high walls, appeared an Italian restaurant. A white woodframe Western-style house that now functioned as a trattoria. The sign was so small you could easily have missed the place if you didn’t know it was there.

  The restaurant was tiny—three tables and four counter seats. We were shown to the table furthest back, where a side window gave us a view of plum trees.

  “Shall we have some wine?” she said.

  “Why don’t you choose,” I said. While she discussed the selection with the waiter, I gazed out at the plum tree. A plum tree growing at an Italian restaurant seemed somehow incongruous. But perhaps not. Maybe they had plum trees in Italy. Hell, they had otters in France.

  Having settled on an aperitivo, we opened our menus. We took our time making our selections. First, for antipasti, we chose insalata di gamberetti alle fragole, ostriche al vivo, mortadella di fegato, sepie al nero, melanzane alla parmigiana, and wakasagi marinata. For primi, she decided on a spaghetti al pesto genovese, and I decided on a tagliatelle alla casa.

  “How about splitting an extra maccheroni al sugo di pesce?” she suggested.

  “Sounds good to me,” I said.

  “What is the fish of the day?” she turned to ask the waiter.

  “Today we have fresh branzino—that’s suzuki,” pronounced the waiter, “which we steam in cartoccio and sprinkle with almonds.”

  “I’ll have that,” she said.

  “Me, too,” I said. “And for contorni, spinaci and risotto al funghi.”

  “Verdure cotte and risotto al pomodoro for me.”

  “I think you will find our risotti quite filling,” the waiter spoke up, a bit uneasily.

  “Maybe so, but I’ve barely eaten in days, and she’s got gastric dilation,” I explained.

  “It’s a regular black hole,” she confirmed.

  “Very well,” said the waiter.


  “For dessert, I’ll have granita di uva, crema fredda, sufflé al limone, and espresso,” she added before he could get away.

  “Why not—me too,” I said.

  After the waiter had at last finished writing down our order, she smiled at me.

  “You didn’t have to order so much just to keep pace with me, you know.”

  “No, I really am famished,” I said. “It’s been ages since I’ve been this hungry.”

  “Great,” she said. “I never trust people with no appetite. It’s like they’re always holding something back on you, don’t you think?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I said, I really wouldn’t.

  “ ‘I wouldn’t know’ seems to be a pet expression with you,” she observed.

  “Maybe so.”

  “And ‘maybe so’ is another.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Why are all your thoughts so uncertain?”

  I wouldn’t know, but maybe so, I repeated over and over in my head when the waiter arrived and with the air of the court chiropractor come to treat the crown prince’s slipped disc, reverently uncorked the wine and poured it into our glasses.

  “In L’Etranger, the protagonist had a habit of saying ‘It’s not my fault.’ Or so I seem to recall. Umm—what was his name now?”

  “Meursault,” I said.

  “That’s right, Meursault,” she repeated. “I read it in high school. But you know, today’s high school kids don’t read anything of the kind. We did a survey at the library not so long ago. What authors do you read?”

  “Turgenev.”

  “Turgenev wasn’t so great. He was an anachronist.”

  “Maybe so,” I said, “but I still like him. Flaubert and Thomas Hardy, too.”

  “You don’t read anything new?”

  “Sometimes I read Somerset Maugham.”

  “There aren’t many people who’d consider Somerset Maugham new,” she said, tipping back her glass. “The same as they don’t put Benny Goodman in jukeboxes these days either.”

  “I love Maugham. I’ve read The Razor’s Edge three times. Maybe it’s not a spectacular novel, but it’s very readable. Better that than the other way around.”