Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami; Jay Rubin

Author:Haruki Murakami; Jay Rubin
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307762702
Publisher: The Harvill Press
Published: 1994-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

The Only Bad Thing That Ever Happened

in May Kasahara’s House

•

May Kasahara on the Gooshy Source of Heat

“Hello, Mr. Wind-Up Bird,” said the woman’s voice. Pressing the receiver against my ear, I looked at my watch. Four o’clock in the afternoon. When the phone rang, I had been asleep on the sofa, drenched in sweat. It had been a short, unpleasant nap. And now there remained with me the physical sensation of someone’s having been sitting on top of me the whole time I was asleep. Whoever it was had waited until I was asleep, come to sit on top of me, and gotten up and gone away just before I woke.

“Hel-looo,” cooed the woman’s voice in a near whisper. The sound seemed to have to pass through some extra-thin air to reach me. “This is May Kasahara calling….”

“Hey,” I tried to say, but my mouth still wasn’t moving the way I wanted it to. The word may have come out sounding to her like some kind of groan.

“What are you doing now?” she asked, in an insinuating tone.

“Nothing,” I said, moving the mouthpiece away to clear my throat. “Nothing. Napping.”

“Did I wake you?”

“Sure you did. But that’s OK. It was just a nap.”

May Kasahara seemed to hesitate a moment. Then she said, “How about it, Mr. Wind-Up Bird: would you come over to my house?”

I closed my eyes. In the darkness hovered lights of different colors and shapes.

“I don’t mind,” I said.

“I’m sunbathing in the yard, so just let yourself in from the back.”

“OK.”

“Tell me, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, are you mad at me?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Anyhow, I’m going to take a shower and change, and then I’ll come over. I’ve got something I want to talk to you about.”

I took a quick cold shower to clear my head, turned on the hot water to wash, and finished off cold again. This did manage to wake me up, but my body still felt dull and heavy. My legs would begin trembling, and at several points during my shower I had to grab the towel bar or sit on the edge of the tub. Maybe I was more fatigued than I had thought.

After I stepped out of the shower and wiped myself down, I brushed my teeth and looked at myself in the mirror. The dark-blue mark was still there on my right cheek, neither darker nor lighter than before. My eyeballs had a network of tiny red lines, and there were dark circles under my eyes. My cheeks looked sunken, and my hair was in need of a trim. I looked like a fresh corpse that had just come back to life and dug its way out of the grave.

I put on a T-shirt and short pants, a hat and dark glasses. Out in the alley, I found that the hot day was far from over. Everything alive aboveground—everything visible—was gasping in hopes of a sudden shower, but there was no hint of a cloud in the sky. A blanket of hot, stagnant air enveloped the alley.

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