Vintage Murakami, Page 7

  “I haven’t thought of one yet.”

  THE three of them had dinner together as usual in Sayoko’s apartment. Humming the “Trout,” Sayoko boiled a pot of spaghetti and defrosted some tomato sauce while Junpei made a salad of green beans and onions. They opened a bottle of red wine and poured Sala a glass of orange juice. When they had finished eating and cleaning up, Junpei read to Sala from another picture book, but when bedtime came, she resisted.

  “Please, Mommy, do the bra trick,” she begged.

  Sayoko blushed. “Not now,” she said. “We have a guest.”

  “No we don’t,” Sala said. “Junpei’s not a guest.”

  “What’s this all about?” Junpei asked.

  “It’s just a silly game,” Sayoko said.

  “Mommy takes her bra off under her clothes, puts it on the table, and puts it back on again. She has to keep one hand on the table. And we time her. She’s great!”

  “Sala!” Sayoko growled, shaking her head. “It’s just a little game we play at home. It’s not meant for anybody else.”

  “Sounds like fun to me,” Junpei said.

  “Please, Mommy, show Junpei. Just once. If you do it, I’ll go to bed right away.”

  “Oh, what’s the use,” Sayoko muttered. She took off her digital watch and handed it to Sala. “Now, you’re not going to give me any more trouble about going to bed, right? OK, get ready to time me when I count to three.”

  Sayoko was wearing a baggy black crewneck sweater. She put both hands on the table and counted, “One . . . two . . . three!” Like a turtle pulling into its shell, she slipped her right hand up inside her sleeve, and then there was a light back-scratching kind of movement. Out came the right hand again, and the left hand went up its sleeve. Sayoko turned her head just a bit, and the left hand came out holding a white bra—a small one with no wires. Without the slightest wasted motion, the hand and bra went back up the sleeve, and the hand came out again. Then the right hand pulled in, poked around at the back, and came out again. The end. Sayoko rested her right hand on her left on the table.

  “Twenty-five seconds,” Sala said. “That’s great, Mommy, a new record! Your best time so far was thirty-six seconds.”

  Junpei applauded. “Wonderful! Like magic.”

  Sala clapped her hands, too. Sayoko stood up and announced, “All right, show time is over. To bed, young lady. You promised.”

  Sala kissed Junpei on the cheek and went to bed.

  SAYOKO stayed with her until her breathing was deep and steady, then rejoined Junpei on the sofa. “I have a confession to make,” she said. “I cheated.”

  “Cheated?”

  “I didn’t put the bra back on. I just pretended. I slipped it out from under my sweater and dropped it on the floor.”

  Junpei laughed. “What a terrible mother!”

  “I wanted to make a new record,” she said, narrowing her eyes with a smile. He hadn’t seen her smile in that simple, natural way for a long time. Time wobbled on its axis inside him, like curtains stirring in a breeze. He reached for Sayoko’s shoulder, and her hand took his. They came together on the sofa in a powerful embrace. With complete naturalness, they wrapped their arms around each other and kissed. It was as if nothing had changed since the time they were nineteen. Sayoko’s lips had the same sweet fragrance.

  “We should have been like this to begin with,” she whispered after they had moved from the sofa to her bed. “But you didn’t get it. You just didn’t get it. Not till the salmon disappeared from the river.”

  They took off their clothes and held each other gently. Their hands groped clumsily, as if they were having sex for the first time in their lives. They took their time, until they knew they were ready, and then at last he entered Sayoko and she drew him in.

  None of this seemed real to Junpei. In the half-light, he felt as if he were crossing a deserted bridge that went on and on forever. He moved, and she moved with him. Again and again he wanted to come, but he held back, fearing that, once it happened, the dream would end and everything would vanish.

  Then, behind him, he heard a slight creaking sound. The bedroom door was easing open. The light from the hallway took the shape of the door and fell on the rumpled bedclothes. Junpei raised himself and turned to see Sala standing against the light. Sayoko held her breath and moved her hips away, pulling him out. Gathering the sheets to her breast, she used one hand to straighten her hair.

  Sala was not crying or screaming. Her right hand gripping the doorknob, she just stood there, looking at the two of them but seeing nothing, her eyes focused on emptiness.

  Sayoko called her name.

  “The man told me to come here,” Sala said in a flat voice, like someone who has just been ripped out of a dream.

  “The man?” Sayoko asked.

  “The Earthquake Man. He came and woke me up. He told me to tell you. He said he has the box ready for everybody. He said he’s waiting with the lid open. He said I should tell you that, and you’d understand.”

  SALA slept in Sayoko’s bed that night. Junpei stretched out on the living room sofa with a blanket, but he could not sleep. The TV faced the sofa, and for a very long time he stared at the dead screen. They were inside there. They were waiting with the box open. He felt a chill run up his spine, and no matter how long he waited, it would not go away.

  He gave up trying to sleep and went to the kitchen. He made himself some coffee and sat at the table to drink it, but he felt something bunched up under one foot. It was Sayoko’s bra. He picked it up and hung it on the back of a chair. It was a simple, lifeless piece of white underwear, not particularly big. It hung over the kitchen chair in the predawn darkness like some anonymous witness who had wandered in from a time long past.

  He thought about his early days in college. He could still hear Takatsuki the first time they met in class saying, “Hey, let’s get something to eat,” in that warm way of his, and he could see Takatsuki’s friendly smile that seemed to say, Hey, relax. The world is just going to keep getting better and better. Where did we eat that time? Junpei wondered, and what did we have? He couldn’t remember, though he was sure it was nothing special.

  “Why did you choose me to go to lunch with?” Junpei had asked him that day. Takatsuki smiled and tapped his temple with complete confidence. “I have a talent for picking the right friends at the right times in the right place.”

  He was right, Junpei thought, setting his coffee mug on the kitchen table. Takatsuki did have an intuitive knack for picking the right friends. But that was not enough. Finding one person to love over the long haul of one’s life was quite a different matter from finding friends. Junpei closed his eyes and thought about the long stretch of time that had passed through him. He did not want to think of it as something he had merely used up without any meaning.

  As soon as Sayoko woke in the morning, he would ask her to marry him. He was sure now. He couldn’t waste another minute. Taking care not to make a sound, he opened the bedroom door and looked at Sayoko and Sala sleeping bundled in a comforter. Sala lay with her back to Sayoko, whose arm was draped on Sala’s shoulder. He touched Sayoko’s hair where it fell across the pillow, and caressed Sala’s small pink cheek with the tip of his finger. Neither of them stirred. He eased himself down to the carpeted floor by the bed, his back against the wall, to watch over them in their sleep.

  Eyes fixed on the hands of the wall clock, Junpei thought about the rest of the story for Sala—the tale of Masakichi and Tonkichi. He had to find a way out. He couldn’t just leave Tonkichi stranded in the zoo. He had to save him. He retraced the story from the beginning. Before long, the vague outline of an idea began to sprout in his head, and, little by little, it took shape.

  Tonkichi had the same thought as Sala: he would use the honey that Masakichi had collected to bake honey pies. It didn’t take him long to realize that he had a real talent for making crisp, delicious honey pies. Masakichi took the honey pies to town and sold them to the people there.
The people loved Tonkichi’s pies and bought them by the dozen. So Tonkichi and Masakichi never had to separate again: they lived happily ever after in the mountains, best friends forever.

  SALA would be sure to love the new ending. And so would Sayoko.

  I want to write stories that are different from the ones I’ve written so far, Junpei thought: I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love. But right now I have to stay here and keep watch over this woman and this girl. I will never let anyone—not anyone—try to put them into that crazy box—not even if the sky should fall or the earth crack open with a roar.

  —Translated by Jay Rubin

  LIEUTENANT MAMIYA’S LONG STORY: PART I

  from THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE

  I was shipped to Manchuria at the beginning of 1937, Lieutenant Mamiya began. I was a brand-new second lieutenant then, and they assigned me to the Kwantung Army General Staff in Hsin-ching. Geography had been my major in college, so I ended up in the Military Survey Corps, which specialized in mapmaking. This was ideal for me because, to be quite honest, the duties I was ordered to perform were among the easiest that anyone could hope for in the army.

  In addition to this, conditions in Manchuria were relatively peaceful—or at least stable. The recent outbreak of the China Incident had moved the theater of military operations from Manchuria into China proper. The China Expeditionary Forces were the ones doing the actual fighting now, while the Kwantung Army had an easy time of it. True, mopping-up operations were still going on against anti-Japanese guerrilla units, but they were confined to the interior, and in general the worst was over. All that the powerful Kwantung Army had to do was police our newly “independent” puppet state of Manchukuo while keeping an eye on the north.

  As peaceful as things supposedly were, it was still war, after all, so there were constant maneuvers. I didn’t have to participate in those, either, fortunately. They took place under terrible conditions. The temperature would drop to forty or fifty degrees below zero. One false step in maneuvers like that, and you could end up dead. Every single time they held such maneuvers, there would be hundreds of men in the hospital with frostbite or sent to a hot spring for treatment. Hsin-ching was no big city, but it was certainly an exotic foreign place, and if you wanted to have fun there, it provided plenty of opportunities. New single officers like me lived together in a kind of rooming house rather than in barracks. It was more like an extension of student life. I took it easy, thinking that I would have nothing to complain about if my military service ended like this, just one peaceful day after another.

  It was, of course, a make-believe peace. Just beyond the edges of our little circle of sunshine, a ferocious war was going on. Most Japanese realized that the war with China would turn into a muddy swamp from which we could never extricate ourselves, I believe—or at least any Japanese with a brain in his head realized this. It didn’t matter how many local battles we won: there was no way Japan could continue to occupy and rule over such a huge country. It was obvious if you thought about it. And sure enough, as the fighting continued, the number of dead and wounded began to multiply. Relations with America went from bad to worse. Even at home, the shadows of war grew darker with every passing day. Those were dark years then: 1937, 1938. But living the easy life of an officer in Hsin-ching, you almost wanted to ask, “War? What war?” We’d go out drinking and carousing every night, and we’d visit the cafés that had the White Russian girls.

  Then, one day late in April 1938, a senior officer of the general staff called me in and introduced me to a fellow in mufti named Yamamoto. He wore his hair short and had a mustache. He was not a very tall man. As for his age, I’d say he was in his mid-thirties. He had a scar on the back of his neck that looked as if it might have been made by a blade of some kind. The officer said to me: “Mr. Yamamoto is a civilian. He’s been hired by the army to investigate the life and customs of the Mongolians who live in Manchukuo. He will next be going to the Hulunbuir Steppe, near the Outer Mongolian border, and we are going to supply him with an armed escort. You will be a member of that detachment.” I didn’t believe a thing he was telling me. This Yamamoto fellow might have been wearing civilian clothes, but anybody could tell at a glance that he was a professional soldier. The look in his eyes, the way he spoke, his posture: it was obvious. I figured he was a high-ranking officer or had something to do with intelligence and was on a mission that required him to conceal his military identity. There was something ominous about the whole thing.

  Three of us were assigned to accompany Yamamoto— too few for an effective armed escort, though a larger group would have attracted the attention of the Outer Mongolian troops deployed along the border. One might have chosen to view this as a case of entrusting a sensitive mission to a few handpicked men, but the truth was far from that. I was the only officer, and I had zero battlefield experience. The only one we could count on for fighting power was a sergeant by the name of Hamano. I knew him well, as a soldier who had been assigned to assist the general staff. He was a tough fellow who had worked his way up through the ranks to become a noncommissioned officer, and he had distinguished himself in battle in China. He was big and fearless, and I was sure we could count on him in a pinch. Why they had also included Corporal Honda in our party I had no idea. Like me, he had just arrived from home, and of course he had no experience on the battlefield. He was a gentle, quiet soul who looked as if he would be no help at all in a fight. What’s more, he belonged to the Seventh Division, which meant that the general staff had gone out of their way to have him sent over to us specifically for this assignment. That’s how valuable a soldier he was, though not until much later did the reason for this become clear.

  I was chosen to be the commanding officer of the escort because my primary responsibility was the topography of the western border of Manchukuo in the area of the Khalkha River. My job was to make sure that our maps of the district were as complete as possible. I had even been over the area several times in a plane. My presence was meant to help the mission go smoothly. My second assignment was to gather more detailed topographical information on the district and so increase the precision of our maps. Two birds with one stone, as it were. To be quite honest, the maps we had in those days of the Hulunbuir Steppe border region with Outer Mongolia were crude things—hardly an improvement over the old Manchu dynasty maps. The Kwantung Army had done several surveys following the establishment of Manchukuo. They wanted to make more accurate maps, but the area they had to cover was huge, and western Manchuria is just an endless desert. National borders don’t mean very much in such a vast wilderness. The Mongolian nomads had lived there for thousands of years without the need—or even the concept—of borders.

  The political situation had also delayed the making of more accurate maps. Which is to say that if we had gone ahead and unilaterally made an official map showing our idea of the border, it could have caused a full-scale international incident. Both the Soviet Union and Outer Mongolia, which shared borders with Manchukuo, were extremely sensitive about border violations, and there had been several instances of bloody combat over just such matters. In our day, the army was in no mood for war with the Soviet Union. All our force was invested in the war with China, with none to spare for a large-scale clash with the Soviets. We didn’t have the divisions or the tanks or the artillery or the planes. The first priority was to secure the stability of Manchukuo, which was still a relatively new political entity. Establishment of the northern and northwestern borders could wait, as far as the army was concerned. They wanted to stall for time by keeping things indefinite. Even the mighty Kwantung Army deferred to this view and adopted a wait-and-see attitude. As a result, everything had been allowed to drift in a sea of vagueness.

  If, however, their best-laid plans notwithstanding, some unforeseen event should lead to war (which is exactly what did happen the following year at Nomonhan), we would need maps to
fight. And not just ordinary civilian maps, but real combat maps. To fight a war you need maps that show you where to establish encampments, the most effective place to set up your artillery, how many days it will take your infantry to march there, where to secure water, how much feed you need for your horses: a great deal of detailed information. You simply couldn’t fight a modern war without such maps. Which is why much of our work overlapped with the work of the intelligence division, and we were constantly exchanging information with the Kwantung Army’s intelligence section or the military secret service in Hailar. Everyone knew everyone else, but this Yamamoto fellow was someone I had never seen before.

  After five days of preparation, we left Hsin-ching for Hailar by train. We took a truck from there, drove it through the area of the Khandur-byo Lamaist temple, and arrived at the Manchukuo Army’s border observation post near the Khalkha River. I don’t remember the exact distance, but it was something like two hundred miles. The region was an empty wilderness, with literally nothing as far as the eye could see. My work required me to keep checking my map against the actual landforms, but there was nothing out there for me to check against, nothing that one could call a landmark. All I could see were shaggy, grass-covered mounds stretching on and on, the unbroken horizon, and clouds floating in the sky. There was no way I could have any precise idea where on the map we were. All I could do was guess according to the amount of time we had been driving.

  Sometimes, when one is moving silently through such an utterly desolate landscape, an overwhelming hallucination can make one feel that oneself, as an individual human being, is slowly coming unraveled. The surrounding space is so vast that it becomes increasingly difficult to keep a balanced grip on one’s own being. I wonder if I am making myself clear. The mind swells out to fill the entire landscape, becoming so diffuse in the process that one loses the ability to keep it fastened to the physical self. That is what I experienced in the midst of the Mongolian steppe. How vast it was! It felt more like an ocean than a desert landscape. The sun would rise from the eastern horizon, cut its way across the empty sky, and sink below the western horizon. This was the only perceptible change in our surroundings. And in the movement of the sun, I felt something I hardly know how to name: some huge, cosmic love.