Domestication

Okay. This is my dramatic night. But I will not fall to the I-do-everything-around-here crap. I'm just wildly pissed off.

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

Coraline
Copyright ©2002 by Neil Gaiman

Fairy tales are more than true: not because
they tell us that dragons exist, but because
they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
—G. K. Chesterton

I.
Coraline discovered the door a little while after they moved into the house.
It was a very old house—it had an attic under the roof and a cellar under the ground and an
overgrown garden with huge old trees in it.
Coraline's family didn't own all of the house—it was too big for that. Instead they owned part of
it.
There were other people who lived in the old house.
Miss Spink and Miss Forcible lived in the flat below Coraline's, on the ground floor. They were
both old and round, and they lived in their flat with a number of aging Highland terriers who had
names like Hamish and Andrew and Jock. Once upon a time Miss Spink and Miss Forcible had been actresses, as Miss Spink told Coraline the first time she met her.
“You see, Caroline,” Miss Spink said, getting Coraline's name wrong, “both myself and Miss Forcible were famous actresses, in our time. We trod the boards, luvvy. Oh, don't let Hamish eat the fruitcake, or he'll be up all night with his tummy.”
“It's Coraline. Not Caroline. Coraline,” said Coraline.
In the flat above Coraline's, under the roof, was a crazy old man with a big mustache. He told Coraline that he was training a mouse circus. He wouldn't let anyone see it.
“One day, little Caroline, when they are all ready, everyone in the whole world will see the wonders of my mouse circus. You ask me why you cannot see it now. Is that what you asked me?”
“No,” said Coraline quietly, “I asked you not to call me Caroline. It's Coraline.”
“The reason you cannot see the mouse circus,” said the man upstairs, “is that the mice are not yet ready and rehearsed. Also, they refuse to play the songs I have written for them. All the songs I have written for the mice to play gooompah oompah . But the white mice will only playtoodle oodle , like that. I am thinking of trying them on different types of cheese.”
Coraline didn't think there really was a mouse circus. She thought the old man was probably making it up.
The day after they moved in, Coraline went exploring.
She explored the garden. It was a big garden: at the very back was an old tennis court, but no one in the house played tennis and the fence around the court had holes in it and the net had mostly rotted away; there was an old rose garden, filled with stunted, flyblown rosebushes; there was a rockery that was all rocks; there was a fairy ring, made of squidgy brown toadstools which smelled dreadful if you accidentally trod on them.
There was also a well. On the first day Coraline's family moved in, Miss Spink and Miss
Forcible made a point of telling Coraline how dangerous the well was, and they warned her to be sure she kept away from it. So Coraline set off to explore for it, so that she knew where it was, to keep away from it properly.
She found it on the third day, in an overgrown meadow beside the tennis court, behind a clump of trees—a low brick circle almost hidden in the high grass. The well had been covered up by wooden boards, to stop anyone falling in. There was a small knothole in one of the boards, and Coraline spent an afternoon dropping pebbles and acorns through the hole and waiting, and counting, until she heard theplop as they hit the water far below.
Coraline also explored for animals. She found a hedgehog, and a snakeskin (but no snake), and a rock that looked just like a frog, and a toad that looked just like a rock.
There was also a haughty black cat, who sat on walls and tree stumps and watched her but slipped away if ever she went over to try to play with it.
That was how she spent her first two weeks in the house—exploring the garden and the grounds.
Her mother made her come back inside for dinner and for lunch. And Coraline had to make sure she dressed up warm before she went out, for it was a very cold summer that year; but go out she did, exploring, every day until the day it rained, when Coraline had to stay inside.
“What should I do?” asked Coraline.
“Read a book,” said her mother. “Watch a video. Play with your toys. Go and pester Miss Spink or Miss Forcible, or the crazy old man upstairs.”
“No,” said Coraline. “I don't want to do those things. I want to explore.”
“I don't really mind what you do,” said Coraline's mother, “as long as you don't make a mess.”
Coraline went over to the window and watched the rain come down. It wasn't the kind of rain you could go out in—it was the other kind, the kind that threw itself down from the sky and splashed where it landed. It was rain that meant business, and currently its business was turning the garden into a muddy, wet soup.
Coraline had watched all the videos. She was bored with her toys, and she'd read all her books.
She turned on the television. She went from channel to channel to channel, but there was nothing on but men in suits talking about the stock market, and talk shows. Eventually, she found something to watch: it was the last half of a natural history program about something called protective coloration. She watched animals, birds, and insects which disguised themselves as leaves or twigs or other animals to escape from things that could hurt them. She enjoyed it, but it
ended too soon and was followed by a program about a cake factory.
It was time to talk to her father.
Coraline's father was home. Both of her parents worked, doing things on computers, which meant that they were home a lot of the time. Each of them had their own study.
“Hello Coraline,” he said when she came in, without turning round.
“Mmph,” said Coraline. “It's raining.”
“Yup,” said her father. “It's bucketing down.”
“No,” said Coraline. “It's just raining. Can I go outside?”
“What does your mother say?”
“She says you're not going out in weather like that, Coraline Jones.”
“Then, no.”
“But I want to carry on exploring.”
“Then explore the flat,” suggested her father. “Look—here's a piece of paper and a pen. Count all the doors and windows. List everything blue. Mount an expedition to discover the hot water tank. And leave me alone to work.”
“Can I go into the drawing room?” The drawing room was where the Joneses kept the expensive(and uncomfortable) furniture Coraline's grandmother had left them when she died. Coraline wasn't allowed in there. Nobody went in there. It was only for best.
“If you don't make a mess. And you don't touch anything.”
Coraline considered this carefully, then she took the paper and pen and went off to explore the inside of the flat.
She discovered the hot water tank (it was in a cupboard in the kitchen).
She counted everything blue (153).
She counted the windows (21).
She counted the doors (14).
Of the doors that she found, thirteen opened and closed. The other—the big, carved, brown wooden door at the far corner of the drawing room—was locked.
She said to her mother, “Where does that door go?”
“Nowhere, dear.”
“It has to go somewhere.”
Her mother shook her head. “Look,” she told Coraline.
She reached up and took a string of keys from the top of the kitchen doorframe. She sorted through them carefully, and selected the oldest, biggest, blackest, rustiest key. They went into the drawing room. She unlocked the door with the key.
The door swung open.
Her mother was right. The door didn't go anywhere. It opened onto a brick wall.
“When this place was just one house,” said Coraline's mother, “that door went somewhere.
When they turned the house into flats, they simply bricked it up. The other side is the empty flat on the other side of the house, the one that's still for sale.”
She shut the door and put the string of keys back on top of the kitchen doorframe.
“You didn't lock it,” said Coraline.
Her mother shrugged. “Why should I lock it?” she asked. “It doesn't go anywhere.”
Coraline didn't say anything.
It was nearly dark outside now, and the rain was still coming down, pattering against the windows and blurring the lights of the cars in the street outside.
Coraline's father stopped working and made them all dinner.
Coraline was disgusted. “Daddy,” she said, “you've made arecipe again.”
“It's leek and potato stew with a tarragon garnish and melted Gruyère cheese,” he admitted.
Coraline sighed. Then she went to the freezer and got out some microwave chips and a
microwave minipizza.
“You know I don't like recipes,” she told her father, while her dinner went around and around and the little red numbers on the microwave oven counted down to zero.
“If you tried it, maybe you'd like it,” said Coraline's father, but she shook her head.
That night, Coraline lay awake in her bed. The rain had stopped, and she was almost asleep when something wentt-t-t-t-t-t. She sat up in bed.
Something went kreeee...
...aaaak
Coraline got out of bed and looked down the hall, but saw nothing strange. She walked down the hall. From her parents’ bedroom came a low snoring—that was her father—and an occasional sleeping mutter—that was her mother.
Coraline wondered if she'd dreamed it, whatever it was.
Something moved.
It was little more than a shadow, and it scuttled down the darkened hall fast, like a little patch of night.
She hoped it wasn't a spider. Spiders made Coraline intensely uncomfortable.
The black shape went into the drawing room, and Coraline followed it a little nervously.
The room was dark. The only light came from the hall, and Coraline, who was standing in the doorway, cast a huge and distorted shadow onto the drawing room carpet—she looked like a thin giant woman.
Coraline was just wondering whether or not she ought to turn on the lights when she saw the black shape edge slowly out from beneath the sofa. It paused, and then dashed silently across the carpet toward the farthest corner of the room.
There was no furniture in that corner of the room.
Coraline turned on the light.
There was nothing in the corner. Nothing but the old door that opened onto the brick wall.
She was sure that her mother had shut the door, but now it was ever so slightly open. Just a crack. Coraline went over to it and looked in. There was nothing there—just a wall, built of red bricks.
Coraline closed the old wooden door, turned out the light, and went to bed.
She dreamed of black shapes that slid from place to place, avoiding the light, until they were all gathered together under the moon. Little black shapes with little red eyes and sharp yellow teeth.
They started to sing,
We are small but we are many
We are many we are small
We were here before you rose
We will be here when you fall.
Their voices were high and whispering and slightly whiney. They made Coraline feel
uncomfortable.
Then Coraline dreamed a few commercials, and after that she dreamed of nothing at all.

II.
The next day it had stopped raining, but a thick white fog had lowered over the house.
“I'm going for a walk,” said Coraline.
“Don't go too far,” said her mother. “And dress up warmly.”
Coraline put on her blue coat with a hood, her red scarf, and her yellow Wellington boots.
She went out.
Miss Spink was walking her dogs. “Hello, Caroline,” said Miss Spink. “Rotten weather.”
“Yes,” said Coraline.
“I played Portia once,” said Miss Spink. “Miss Forcible talks about her Ophelia, but it was my
Portia they came to see. When we trod the boards.”
Miss Spink was bundled up in pullovers and cardigans, so she seemed more small and circular than ever. She looked like a large, fluffy egg. She wore thick glasses that made her eyes seem huge.
“They used to send flowers to my dressing room. Theydid ,” she said.
“Who did?” asked Coraline.
Miss Spink looked around cautiously, looking over first one shoulder and then over the other,peering into the mists as though someone might be listening.
“Men,” she whispered. Then she tugged the dogs to heel and waddled off back toward the house.
Coraline continued her walk.
She was three quarters of the way around the house when she saw Miss Forcible, standing at the door to the flat she shared with Miss Spink.
“Have you seen Miss Spink, Caroline?”
Coraline told her that she had, and that Miss Spink was out walking the dogs.
“I do hope she doesn't get lost—it'll bring on her shingles if she does, you'll see,” said Miss Forcible. “You'd have to be an explorer to find your way around in this fog.”
“I'm an explorer,” said Coraline.
“Of course you are, luvvy,” said Miss Forcible. “Don't get lost, now.”
Coraline continued walking through the gardens in the gray mist. She always kept in sight of the house. After about ten minutes of walking she found herself back where she had started.
The hair over her eyes was limp and wet, and her face felt damp.
“Ahoy! Caroline!” called the crazy old man upstairs.
“Oh, hullo,” said Coraline.
She could hardly see the old man through the mist.
He walked down the steps on the outside of the house that led up past Coraline's front door to the door of his flat. He walked down very slowly. Coraline waited at the bottom of the stairs.
“The mice do not like the mist,” he told her. “It makes their whiskers droop.”
“I don't like the mist much, either,” admitted Coraline.
The old man leaned down, so close that the bottoms of his mustache tickled Coraline's ear. “The mice have a message for you,” he whispered.
Coraline didn't know what to say.
“The message is this.Don't go through the door .” He paused. “Does that mean anything to you?”
“No,” said Coraline.
The old man shrugged. “They are funny, the mice. They get things wrong. They got your name wrong, you know. They kept saying Coraline. Not Caroline. Not Caroline at all.”
He picked up a milk bottle from the bottom of the stairs and started back up to his attic flat.
Coraline went indoors. Her mother was working in her study. Her mother's study smelled of flowers.
“What shall I do?” asked Coraline.
“When do you go back to school?” asked her mother.
“Next week,” said Coraline.
“Hmph,” said her mother. “I suppose I shall have to get you new school clothes. Remind me,dear, or else I'll forget,” and she went back to typing things on the computer screen.
“What shall Ido ?” repeated Coraline.
“Draw something,” Her mother passed her a sheet of paper and a ballpoint pen.
Coraline tried drawing the mist. After ten minutes of drawing she still had a white sheet of paper with
M T
S
I
—written on it in one corner in slightly wiggly letters. She grunted and passed it to her mother.
“Mm. Very modern, dear,” said Coraline's mother.
Coraline crept into the drawing room and tried to open the old door in the corner. It was locked once more. She supposed her mother must have locked it again. She shrugged.
Coraline went to see her father.
He had his back to the door as he typed. “Go away,” he said cheerfully as she walked in.
“I'm bored,” she said.
“Learn how to tap-dance,” he suggested, without turning around.
Coraline shook her head. “Why don't you play with me?” she asked.
“Busy,” he said. “Working,” he added. He still hadn't turned around to look at her. “Why don't you go and bother Miss Spink and Miss Forcible?”
Coraline put on her coat and pulled up her hood and went out of the house. She went downstairs.
She rang the door of Miss Spink and Miss Forcible's flat. Coraline could hear a frenzied woofing as the Scottie dogs ran out into the hall. After a while Miss Spink opened the door.
“Oh, it's you, Caroline,” she said. “Angus, Hamish, Bruce, down now, luvvies. It's only Caroline. Come in, dear. Would you like a cup of tea?”
The flat smelled of furniture polish and dogs.
“Yes, please,” said Coraline. Miss Spink led her into a dusty little room, which she called the parlor. On the walls were black-and-white photographs of pretty women, and theater programs in frames. Miss Forcible was sitting in one of the armchairs, knitting hard.
They poured Coraline a cup of tea in a little pink bone china cup, with a saucer. They gave her a dry Garibaldi biscuit to go with it.
Miss Forcible looked at Miss Spink, picked up her knitting, and took a deep breath. “Anyway,April. As I was saying: you still have to admit, there's life in the old dog yet.”
“Miriam, dear, neither of us is as young as we were.”
“Madame Arcati,” replied Miss Forcible. “The nurse inRomeo . Lady Bracknell. Character parts. They can't retire you from the stage.”
“Now, Miriam, weagreed, ” said Miss Spink. Coraline wondered if they'd forgotten she was there. They weren't making much sense; she decided they were having an argument as old and comfortable as an armchair, the kind of argument that no one ever really wins or loses but which can go on forever, if both parties are willing.
She sipped her tea.
“I'll read the leaves, if you want,” said Miss Spink to Coraline.
“Sorry?” said Coraline.
“The tea leaves, dear. I'll read your future.”
Coraline passed Miss Spink her cup. Miss Spink peered shortsightedly at the black tea leaves in the bottom. She pursed her lips.
“You know, Caroline,” she said, after a while, “you are in terrible danger.”
Miss Forcible snorted, and put down her knitting. “Don't be silly, April. Stop scaring the girl.
Your eyes are going. Pass me that cup, child.”
Coraline carried the cup over to Miss Forcible. Miss Forcible looked into it carefully, shook her head, and looked into it again.
“Oh dear,” she said. “You were right, April. Sheis in danger.”
“See, Miriam,” said Miss Spink triumphantly. “My eyes are as good as they ever were....”
“What am I in danger from?” asked Coraline.
Misses Spink and Forcible stared at her blankly. “It didn't say,” said Miss Spink. “Tea leaves aren't reliable for that kind of thing. Not really. They're good for general, but not for specifics.”
“What should I do then?” asked Coraline, who was slightly alarmed by this.
“Don't wear green in your dressing room,” suggested Miss Spink.
“Or mention the Scottish play,” added Miss Forcible.
Coraline wondered why so few of the adults she had met made any sense. She sometimes
wondered who they thought they were talking to.
“And be very, very careful,” said Miss Spink. She got up from the armchair and went over to the fireplace. On the mantelpiece was a small jar, and Miss Spink took off the top of the jar and began to pull things out of it. There was a tiny china duck, a thimble, a strange little brass coin, two paper clips and a stone with a hole in it.
She passed Coraline the stone with a hole in it.
“What's it for?” asked Coraline. The hole went all the way through the middle of the stone. She held it up to the window and looked through it.
“It might help,” said Miss Spink. “They're good for bad things, sometimes.”
Coraline put on her coat, said good-bye to Misses Spink and Forcible and to the dogs, and went outside.
The mist hung like blindness around the house. She walked slowly to the stairs up to her family's flat, and then stopped and looked around.
In the mist, it was a ghost-world.In danger? thought Coraline to herself. It sounded exciting. It didn't sound like a bad thing. Not really.
Coraline went back upstairs, her fist closed tightly around her new stone.

III.
The next day the sun shone, and Coraline's mother took her into the nearest large town to buy clothes for school. They dropped her father off at the railway station. He was going into London for the day to see some people.
Coraline waved him good-bye.
They went to the department store to buy the school clothes.
Coraline saw some Day-Glo green gloves she liked a lot. Her mother refused to buy them for her, preferring instead to buy white socks, navy blue school underpants, four gray blouses, and a dark gray skirt.
“But Mum,everybody at school's got gray blouses and everything.Nobody's got green gloves. I could be the only one.”
Her mother ignored her; she was talking to the shop assistant. They were talking about which kind of sweater to get for Coraline, and were agreeing that the best thing to do would be to get one that was embarrassingly large and baggy, in the hopes that one day she might grow into it.
Coraline wandered off and looked at a display of Wellington boots shaped like frogs and ducks and rabbits.
Then she wandered back.
“Coraline? Oh, there you are. Where on earth were you?”
“I was kidnapped by aliens,” said Coraline. “They came down from outer space with ray guns,but I fooled them by wearing a wig and laughing in a foreign accent, and I escaped.”
“Yes, dear. Now, I think you could do with some more hair clips, don't you?”
“No.”
“Well, let's say half a dozen, to be on the safe side,” said her mother.
Coraline didn't say anything.
In the car on the way back home, Coraline said, “What's in the empty flat?”
“I don't know. Nothing, I expect. It probably looks like our flat before we moved in. Empty rooms.”
“Do you think you could get into it from our flat?”
“Not unless you can walk through bricks, dear.”
“Oh.”
They got home around lunchtime. The sun was shining, although the day was cold. Coraline's mother looked in the fridge and found a sad little tomato and a piece of cheese with green stuff growing on it. There was only a crust in the bread bin.
“I'd better dash down to the shops and get some fish fingers or something,” said her mother. “Do you want to come?”
“No,” said Coraline.
“Suit yourself,” said her mother, and left. Then she came back and got her purse and car keys and went out again.
Coraline was bored.
She flipped through a book her mother was reading about native people in a distant country; how every day they would take pieces of white silk and draw on them in wax, then dip the silks in dye, then draw on them more in wax and dye them some more, then boil the wax out in hot water, and then finally, throw the now-beautiful cloths on a fire and burn them to ashes.
It seemed particularly pointless to Coraline, but she hoped that the people enjoyed it.
She was still bored, and her mother wasn't yet home.
Coraline got a chair and pushed it over to the kitchen door. She climbed onto the chair and reached up. She got down, then got a broom from the broom cupboard. She climbed back on the chair again and reached up with the broom.
Chink.
She climbed down from the chair and picked up the keys. She smiled triumphantly. Then she leaned the broom against the wall and went into the drawing room.
The family did not use the drawing room. They had inherited the furniture from Coraline's grandmother, along with a wooden coffee table, a side table, a heavy glass ashtray, and the oil painting of a bowl of fruit. Coraline could never work out why anyone would want to paint a bowl of fruit. Other than that, the room was empty: there were no knickknacks on the mantelpiece, no statues or clocks; nothing that made it feel comfortable or lived-in.
The old black key felt colder than any of the others. She pushed it into the keyhole. It turned smoothly, with a satisfying clunk .
Coraline stopped and listened. She knew she was doing something wrong, and she was trying to listen for her mother coming back, but she heard nothing. Then Coraline put her hand on the doorknob and turned it; and, finally, she opened the door.
It opened on to a dark hallway. The bricks had gone as if they'd never been there. There was a cold, musty smell coming through the open doorway: it smelled like something very old and very slow.
Coraline went through the door.
She wondered what the empty flat would be like—if that was where the corridor led.
Coraline walked down the corridor uneasily. There was something very familiar about it.
The carpet beneath her feet was the same carpet they had in her flat. The wallpaper was the same wallpaper they had. The picture hanging in the hall was the same that they had hanging in their hallway at home.
She knew where she was: she was in her own home. She hadn't left.
She shook her head, confused.
She stared at the picture hanging on the wall: no, it wasn't exactly the same. The picture they had in their own hallway showed a boy in old-fashioned clothes staring at some bubbles. But now the expression on his face was different—he was looking at the bubbles as if he was planning to do something very nasty indeed to them. And there was something peculiar about his eyes.
Coraline stared at his eyes, trying to figure out what exactly was different.
She almost had it when somebody said, “Coraline?”
It sounded like her mother. Coraline went into the kitchen, where the voice had come from. A woman stood in the kitchen with her back to Coraline. She looked a little like Coraline's mother.
Only...
Only her skin was white as paper.
Only she was taller and thinner.
Only her fingers were too long, and they never stopped moving, and her dark red fingernails were curved and sharp.
“Coraline?” the woman said. “Is that you?”
And then she turned around. Her eyes were big black buttons.
“Lunchtime, Coraline,” said the woman.
“Who are you?” asked Coraline.
“I'm your other mother,” said the woman. “Go and tell your other father that lunch is ready,”
She opened the door of the oven. Suddenly Coraline realized how hungry she was. It smelled wonderful. “Well, go on.”
Coraline went down the hall, to where her father's study was. She opened the door. There was a man in there, sitting at the keyboard, with his back to her.
“Hello,” said Coraline.
“I—I mean, she said to say that lunch is ready.”
The man turned around.
His eyes were buttons, big and black and shiny.
“Hello Coraline,” he said. “I'm starving.”
He got up and went with her into the kitchen. They sat at the kitchen table, and Coraline's other mother brought them lunch. A huge, golden-brown roasted chicken, fried potatoes, tiny green peas. Coraline shoveled the food into her mouth. It tasted wonderful.
“We've been waiting for you for a long time,” said Coraline's other father.
“For me?”
“Yes,” said the other mother. “It wasn't the same here without you. But we knew you'd arrive one day, and then we could be a proper family. Would you like some more chicken?”
It was the best chicken that Coraline had ever eaten. Her mother sometimes made chicken, but it was always out of packets or frozen, and was very dry, and it never tasted of anything. When Coraline's father cooked chicken he bought real chicken, but he did strange things to it, like stewing it in wine, or stuffing it with prunes, or baking it in pastry, and Coraline would always refuse to touch it on principle.
She took some more chicken.
“I didn't know I had another mother,” said Coraline, cautiously.
“Of course you do. Everyone does,” said the other mother, her black button eyes gleaming.
“After lunch I thought you might like to play in your room with the rats.”
“The rats?”
“From upstairs.”
Coraline had never seen a rat, except on television. She was quite looking forward to it. This was turning out to be a very interesting day after all.
After lunch her other parents did the washing up, and Coraline went down the hall to her other bedroom.
It was different from her bedroom at home. For a start it was painted in an off-putting shade of green and a peculiar shade of pink.
Coraline decided that she wouldn't want to have to sleep in there, but that the color scheme was an awful lot more interesting than her own bedroom.
There were all sorts of remarkable things in there she'd never seen before: windup angels that fluttered around the bedroom like startled sparrows; books with pictures that writhed and crawled and shimmered; little dinosaur skulls that chattered their teeth as she passed. A whole toy box filled with wonderful toys.
This is more like it, thought Coraline. She looked out of the window. Outside, the view was the same one she saw from her own bedroom: trees, fields, and beyond them, on the horizon, distant purple hills.
Something black scurried across the floor and vanished under the bed. Coraline got down on her knees and looked under the bed. Fifty little red eyes stared back at her.
“Hello,” said Coraline. “Are you the rats?”
They came out from under the bed, blinking their eyes in the light. They had short, soot-black fur, little red eyes, pink paws like tiny hands, and pink, hairless tails like long, smooth worms.
“Can you talk?” she asked.
The largest, blackest of the rats shook its head. It had an unpleasant sort of smile, Coraline thought.
“Well,” asked Coraline, “what do you do?”
The rats formed a circle.
Then they began to climb on top of each other, carefully but swiftly, until they had formed a pyramid with the largest rat at the top.
The rats began to sing, in high, whispery voices,
We have teeth and we have tails
We have tails we have eyes
We were here before you fell
You will be here when we rise.
It wasn't a pretty song. Coraline was sure she'd heard it before, or something like it, although she was unable to remember exactly where.
Then the pyramid fell apart, and the rats scampered, fast and black, toward the door.
The other crazy old man upstairs was standing in the doorway, holding a tall black hat in his hands. The rats scampered up him, burrowing into his pockets, into his shirt, up his trouser legs, down his neck.
The largest rat climbed onto the old man's shoulders, swung up on the long gray mustache, past the big black button eyes, and onto the top of the man's head.
In seconds the only evidence that the rats were there at all were the restless lumps under the man's clothes, forever sliding from place to place across him; and there was still the largest rat, who stared down, with glittering red eyes, at Coraline from the man's head.
The old man put his hat on, and the last rat was gone.
“Hello Coraline,” said the other old man upstairs. “I heard you were here. It is time for the rats to have their dinner. But you can come up with me, if you like, and watch them feed.”
There was something hungry in the old man's button eyes that made Coraline feel
uncomfortable.
“No, thank you,” she said. “I'm going outside to explore.”
The old man nodded, very slowly. Coraline could hear the rats whispering to each other, although she could not tell what they were saying.
She was not certain that she wanted to know what they were saying.
Her other parents stood in the kitchen doorway as she walked down the corridor, smiling identical smiles, and waving slowly. “Have a nice time outside,” said her other mother.
“We'll just wait here for you to come back,” said her other father.
When Coraline got to the front door, she turned back and looked at them. They were still watching her, and waving, and smiling.
Coraline walked outside, and down the steps.

Slumdog Millionaire

I've read about this indie film a few months ago somewhere in the web and it really made me interested with its story line. I really think its kind of cute. Then I found out that the lead role in the film is played by no other than Dev Patel, Anwar of Skins! Now that is really interesting.

Justin Timberlake and Beyonce in Saturday Night Live

JT in leotards and heels! Outrageously hilarious.

Pablo Banila on the net

http://showbizandstyle.inquirer.net/you/elife/view/20081115-172353/The-real-deal-on-Pablo-Banila

There are lots of things about Pablo Banila, and most of it wouldn't need to involve your ego. If you ever saw his avatar in your account's list of viewers, it doesn't mean he's stalking you, not even close to having a crush on you. So don't freak out just yet. Isn't it good enough that he didn't hack your account if he really has some evil motives against you (although he can undoubtedly do that)?


The real deal on Pablo Banila

By Bianca Consunji
Philippine Daily Inquirer


NO, he’s not a cyber-stalker. Or a group of psychology students doing a project. Or the government in disguise. Pablo Banila is a real person, but he’s not the crazy lowlife that people thought he was.

When the first Pablo Banila article came out in 2bU two weeks ago, we were swamped with hundreds of letters and blog comments from readers. The sentiments expressed in the mail were varied; they ranged from “Pablo Banila gives me the chills too,” to “He’s a psycho who not only views my Multiply site, but Friendster as well,” to “He’s actually a genius who was just misunderstood.”

Most of the readers were curious about his identity and wanted to know who he was, while a few thought an article about him was a waste of precious newspaper space. “Argh, you gave him more attention!” said a friend, wringing his hands. Another said, “Unbelievable, you made him famous! But in any case, he still gives off bad vibes and he’s still flooding my viewing history page with his gazillion accounts.” A blog reader was more blunt, saying, “Big deal. Slow news day?”

But in either case, Pablo Banila certainly caught your attention—and apparently, the article caught his too, because he e-mailed 2bU to give the real deal on his identity. He had explained his intentions in a UP Multiply blog at http://yoopee.multiply.com/journal/item/4805, but only a handful of internet users knew about it (compared to the millions of sites that he “visited”).

Pablo Banila—Paolo Bantolo in real life—has been called many names in the past couple of months, and a lot of them weren’t too nice. “Creepy” was the first thing that came to mind when Multiply and Friendster users first saw the avatar that showed a guy with matted chin-length hair and a sign that flashed, “Yes, Pablo Banila has a crush on you hahahaha! That’s why he viewed your homepage, cute nun!”

The reactions that the avatar elicited were interesting. Initially, people truly believed that the mysterious Pablo Banila had a crush on them, gender notwithstanding—until they visited his site and realized that they were duped.

“Before I opened up a guestbook, there were three general reactions from three kinds of people,” said Bantolo in an e-mail interview. “First, from the genuinely curious—people asking me if they do know me; in other words, people who did not bother reading my profile, the naked confession of everything I am.”

He added, “[The next were] from the genuinely infatuated—schoolgirls and baby boys telling me that I can be their boyfriend anytime! The rest were people with a sense of humor. Interestingly, most of my most passionate haters honestly believed that I had a crush on them until the grand opening of ‘Pablo Banila’s Never-ending Guestbook Party.’ [Then] they found out it wasn’t only them.”

The truth is, Pablo Banila never really visited every website where his avatar appeared—his bots did. An anonymous reader who identified himself as a retired hacker explained, “Pablo Banila actually is a programmer who uses a program called ‘web crawler.’ Web crawlers were originally used by search engines such as Google and Yahoo to automatically browse web pages on the internet. [This is done so they can] save the data on their database and make an index list of the web pages on the Internet.”

The reader added, “This is all done using a program. A program with a standard DSL connection can browse 10 sites every second, 600 sites every minute and 36,000 sites every hour—roughly 864,000 Multiply sites every day.”

Others who were already in the know admitted that he was a computer genius, if only slightly off his rocker. News that he came from top schools (Bantolo graduated from the Philippine Science High School and went on to study Computer Science at the University of the Philippines Diliman before transferring to New York University; he is currently a graduate student at California Riverside) only fueled the speculations about his being a crazy genius.

Others expressed their admiration and marveled at how he was able to pull off the scheme; others, like Multiply user “emocantbevanity” said, “He’s such a weirdo … why can’t he just get a life or something? Is he that much of a genius, that’s why he became a weirdo? Oh well, moral lesson—don’t be a genius and learn to socialize with other people so you wouldn’t become the country’s biggest weirdo!”

“I never thought of my viewing activity as stalking,” Bantolo said. “It was casual web surfing. What made the difference was my classic welcome message that penetrated the unawareness of the unspoken hope the viewing history promises in an avatar of a Lesbian in Shining Armor. I can honestly say that I wanted to meet new friends, and, ultimately, build a bridge of chance towards my one true love.”

According to Bantolo, he chose Multiply and Friendster “for the high demographic of Filipinos. And because I have not tried making new friends in other networks—but I will! Pretty soon!”

He added, “I wish I could click on millions of headshots for hours in a day, for that would’ve been like playing my favorite game, Counter-Strike; but that’s just impossible in my already inhumane schedule as a working student.”

And as for stalking—as soon as it was established that the only pages “Pablo Banila” visited were the homepages of the sites, which are essentially open to public viewing (as Multiply and Friendster have contacts-only lock options)—his viewing activities can hardly be counted as harassment.

Multiply user “agnestherese” said, “Pablo Banila is hardly a stalker. He only views homepages, not blogs or photos. I think that those who make such a big deal out of it, more specifically all the hate blogs, are self-centered or maybe just hurt when they found out that Pablo Banila has a crush on them … and everyone else.”

“Public domain is public domain,” Bantolo explained. “If they felt harassed in any way, it was because I kept exercising my right to view their public profile.” He further attributed the public’s fear and irritation to his “scarecrow headshot.”

He said, “People read about accusations, libel and death threats against me written on my guestbook. I am hated in exactly the same way other human beings discriminate against blacks, Muslims, and homosexuals.”

Bantolo added, “I performed the same routine using stereotypical images of innocence (young, attractive and female) at the same duration and received virtually no reaction.”

Actually, the entire issue is moot and academic, as “Pablo Banila” has already retired and given up his homepage-viewing days. But many users, unaware of what happened, remained in the dark for the past few weeks. As a final note, Bantolo quoted the California Penal Code’s definition of stalking:

Any person who willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly follows or harasses another person and makes a credible threat with the intent to place that person in reasonable fear for his or her safety is guilty of the crime of stalking.

“Credible threat” means a verbal or written threat, including that performed through the use of an electronic communication device.

He clarified, “I am not making a ‘credible threat’ nor do I intend to ‘place any person in reasonable fear for his or her safety.’”

E-mail the author at biancaconsunji@yahoo.com

Free Ebook Download(s)

Disclaimer: This is not a post where you can download free ebooks, it is however, a post where I will share my knowledge on how to find where one could download them for free.

Okay, this will not even a list because Google might find me and kick my ass real bad if they find me posting about piracy. However, it pains me real bad when people keep posting stupid questions at Yahoo! Answers. I mean, hello?! Can't nobody use search engines these days? One just has to put key words, and i mean KEY words, to get what they need. Cut some slack please.

So, in looking for ebooks, try using Yahoo! or Google first. Remember to put the title, author, and terms "ebook" or "download" to your query. I'm sure you're bound to get something.

If that doesn't work, use torrents. You will need a program like uTorrent to download shit, though, but it is worth it. To find an ebook torrent, you then need to add the term "torrent" to your search.

But if you want to do it library style, since you don't have a particular title in mind, there are tons of ebook downloading sites all over the place. One problem, though, is that most only offer classics and canon literature. You could try ebookplanet, ebookhood, projectgutenberg, and such.

If these still don't work, try searching other publishing places, like Scribd (I love this site), or other media sites like rapidshare or megaupload.

Then again, if you still haven't found your book, search for forums. But the problem here, since other users are "giving" away the ebook, you might need to follow some instructions or conditions (like sharing stuff you have) before they give you what you do want. This could be real hassle sometimes, but what the heck? You're not buying the book for chrissake!

If you still don't find what you're looking for, maybe it's not yet on the web and you should just go buy it at your local or online bookstore.

I hope this helps. Ü

Muse- Time is Running Out, Twilight version

I loved the song before this whole Twilight shebang kicked on me. Anyhow, Edward on it doesn't really hurt. haha

Twilight, at last

Oh yes, I've finally got myself read the Twilight book by Stephanie Meyer (and surprisingly finish it in a day).

It was cute, in a teeny-bopper novel kind of way. Ü I liked Edward, he was sweet.

Enough said.

Manila showing date is on the 26th of November. Lovely.

Pygmalion by John Updike

What he liked about his first wife was her gift of mimicry; after a party, theirs or another couple's, she would vivify for him what they had seen, the faces, the voices, twisting her pretty mouth into small contortions that brought back, for a dazzling instant, the presence of an absent acquaintance. "Well, if I reawy--how does Gwen talk?--if I re-awwy cared about conserwation--" And he, the husband, would laugh and laugh, even though Gwen was secretly his mistress and would become his second wife. What he liked about her was her liveliness in bed, and what he disliked about his first wife was the way she would ask to have her back rubbed and then, under his laboring hands, night after night, fall asleep.

For the first years of the new marriage, after he and Gwen had returned from a party he would wait, unconsciously, for the imitations, the recapitulation, to begin. He would even prompt, "What did you make of our hostess's brother?"

"Oh," Gwen would simply say, "he seemed very pleasant." Sensing with feminine intuition that he expected more, she might add, "Harmless. Maybe a little stuffy." Her eyes flashed as she heard in his expectant silence an unvoiced demand, and with that touching, childlike impediment of hers she blurted out, "What are you reawy after?"

"Oh, nothing. Nothing. It's just--Marguerite met him once a few years ago and she was struck by what a pompous nitwit he was. That way he has of sucking his pipestem and ending every statement with 'Do you follow me?'"

"I thought he was perfectly pleasant," Gwen said frostily, and turned her back to remove her silvery, snug party dress. As she wriggled it down over her hips she turned her head and defiantly added, "He had a lot to say about tax shelters."

"I bet he did," Pygmalion scoffed feebly, numbed by the sight of his wife frontally advancing, nude, toward him and their marital bed. "It's awfully late," he warned her.

"Oh, come on," she said, the lights out.

The first imitation Gwen did was of Marguerite's second husband, Ed; they had all unexpectedly met at a Save the Whales benefit ball, to which invitations had been sent out indiscriminately. "Oh-ho-ho," she boomed in the privacy of their bedroom afterward, "so you're my noble predecessor!" In aside she added, "Noble, my ass. He hates you so much you turned him on."

"I did?" he said. "I thought he was perfectly pleasant, in what could have been an awkward encounter."

"Yes, indeedy," she agreed, imitating hearty Ed, and for a dazzling second allowing the man's slightly glassy and slack expression of forced benignity to invade her own usually petite and rounded features. "Nothing awkward about us, ho ho," she went on, encouraged. "And tell me, old chap, why is it your child-support check is never on time anymore?"

He laughed and laughed, entranced to see his bride arrive at what he conceived to be proper womanliness--a plastic, alert sensitivity to the human environment, a susceptible responsiveness tugged this way and that by the currents of Nature herself. He could not know the world, was his fear, unless a woman translated it for him. Now, when they returned from a gathering, and he asked what she had made of so-and-so, Gwen would stand in her underwear and consider, as if onstage. "We-hell, my dear," she would announce in sudden, fluting parody, "if it wasn't for Portugal there rally wouldn't be a country left in Europe!"

"Oh, come on," he would protest, delighted to see her pretty features distort themselves into an uncanny, snobbish horsiness.

"How did she do it?" Gwen would ask, as if professionally intent. "Something with the chin, sort of rolling it from side to side without unclenching the teeth."

"You've got it!" he applauded.

"Of courses you knoaow," she went on in the assumed voice, "there used to be Greece, but now all these dreadful Arabs. . . ."

"Oh, yes, yes," he said, his face smarting from laughing so hard, so proudly. She had become perfect for him.

In bed she pointed out, "It's awfully late."

"Want a back rub?"

"Mmmm. That would be reawy nice." As his left hand labored on the smooth, warm, pliable surface, his wife--that small something in her that was all her own--sank out of reach; night after night, she fell asleep.

Note: See Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed., 2001, for a brief explanation of the Greek myth of Pygmalion.

Published in Trust Me by John Updike (Alfred A. Knopf, 1987). Rpt. in Literature: 150 Masterpieces of Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, edited by Beverly Lawn (New York: St. Martin's, 1991), 296-7.

A and P by John Updike

In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits. I'm in the third check-out slot, with my back to the door, so I don't see them until they're over by the bread. The one that caught my eye first was the one in the plaid green two-piece. She was a chunky kid, with a good tan and a sweet broad soft-looking can with those two crescents of white just under it, where the sun never seems to hit, at the top of the backs of her legs. I stood there with my hand on a box of HiHo crackers trying to remember if I rang it up or not. I ring it up again and the customer starts giving me hell. She's one of these cash-register-watchers, a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrows, and I knowit made her day to trip me up. She'd been watching cash registers forty years and probably never seen a mistake before.

By the time I got her feathers smoothed and her goodies into a bag -- she gives me alittle snort in passing, if she'd been born at the right time they would have burned her over in Salem -- by the time I get her on her way the girls had circled around the bread and were coming back, without a pushcart, back my way along the counters, in the aisle between the check-outs and the Special bins. They didn't even have shoes on. There was this chunky one, with the two-piece -- it was bright green and the seams on the bra were still sharp and her belly was still pretty pale so I guessed she just got it (the suit) -- there was this one, with one of those chubby berry-faces, the lips all bunched together under her nose, this one, and a tall one, with black hair that hadn't quite frizzed right, and one of these sunburns right across under the eyes, and a chin that was too long -- you know, the kind of girl other girls think is very "striking" and "attractive" but never quite makes it, as they very well know, which is why they like her so much -- and then the third one, that wasn't quite so tall. She was the queen. She kind of led them, the other two peeking around and making their shoulders round. She didn't look around, not this queen, she just walked straight on slowly, on these long white prima donna legs. She came down a little hard on her heels, as if she didn't walk in her bare feet that much, putting down her heels and then letting the weight move along to her toes as if she was testing the floor with every step, putting a little deliberate extra action into it. You never know for sure how girls' minds work (do you really think it's a mind in there or just a little buzz like a bee in a glassjar?) but you got the idea she had talked the other two into coming in here with her, and now she was showing them how to do it, walk slow and hold yourself straight.

She had on a kind of dirty-pink - - beige maybe, I don't know -- bathing suit with a little nubble all over it and, what got me, the straps were down. They were off her shoulders looped loose around the cool tops of her arms, and I guess as a result the suit had slipped a little on her, so all around the top of the cloth there was this shining rim. If it hadn't been there you wouldn't have known there could have been anything whiter than those shoulders. With the straps pushed off, there was nothing between the top of the suit and the top of her head except just her, this clean bare plane of the top of her chest down from the shoulder bones like a dented sheet of metal tilted in the light. I mean, it was more than pretty.

She had sort of oaky hair that the sun and salt had bleached, done up in a bun that was unravelling, and a kind of prim face. Walking into the A & P with your straps down, I suppose it's the only kind of face you can have. She held her head so high her neck, coming up out o fthose white shoulders, looked kind of stretched, but I didn't mind. The longer her neck was, the more of her there was.

She must have felt in the corner of her eye me and over my shoulder Stokesie in the second slot watching, but she didn't tip. Not this queen. She kept her eyes moving across the racks, and stopped, and turned so slow it made my stomach rub the inside of my apron, and buzzed to the other two, who kind of huddled against her for relief, and they all three of them went up the cat-and-dog-food-breakfast-cereal-macaroni-ri ce-raisins-seasonings-spreads-spaghetti-soft drinks- rackers-and- cookies aisle. From the third slot I look straight up this aisle to the meat counter, and I watched them all the way. The fat one with the tan sort of fumbled with the cookies, but on second thought she put the packages back. The sheep pushing their carts down the aisle -- the girls were walking against the usual traffic (not that we have one-way signs or anything) -- were pretty hilarious. You could see them, when Queenie's white shoulders dawned on them, kind of jerk, or hop, or hiccup, but their eyes snapped back to their own baskets and on they pushed. I bet you could set off dynamite in an A & P and the people would by and large keep reaching and checking oatmeal off their lists and muttering "Let me see, there was a third thing, began with A, asparagus, no, ah, yes, applesauce!" or whatever it is they do mutter. But there was no doubt, this jiggled them. A few house-slaves in pin curlers even looked around after pushing their carts past to make sure what they had seen was correct.

You know, it's one thing to have a girl in a bathing suit down on the beach, where what with the glare nobody can look at each other much anyway, and another thing in the cool of the A & P, under the fluorescent lights, against all those stacked packages, with her feet paddling along naked over our checkerboard green-and-cream rubber-tile floor.

"Oh Daddy," Stokesie said beside me. "I feel so faint."

"Darling," I said. "Hold me tight." Stokesie's married, with two babies chalked up on his fuselage already, but as far as I can tell that's the only difference. He's twenty-two, and I was nineteen this April.

"Is it done?" he asks, the responsible married man finding his voice. I forgot to say he thinks he's going to be manager some sunny day, maybe in 1990 when it's called the Great Alexandrov and Petrooshki Tea Company or something.

What he meant was, our town is five miles from a beach, with a big summer colony out on the Point, but we're right in the middle of town, and the women generally put on a shirt or shorts or something before they get out of the car into the street. And anyway these are usually women with six children and varicose veins mapping their legs and nobody, including them, could care less. As I say, we're right in the middle of town, and if you stand at our front doors you can see two banks and the Congregational church and the newspaper store and three real-estate offices and about twenty-seven old free-loaders tearing up Central Street because the sewer broke again. It's not as if we're on the Cape; we're north of Boston and there's people in this town haven't seen the ocean for twenty years.

The girls had reached the meat counter and were asking McMahon something. He pointed, they pointed, and they shuffled out of sight behind a pyramid of Diet Delight peaches. All that was left for us to see was old McMahon patting his mouth and looking after them sizing up their joints. Poor kids, I began to feel sorry for them, they couldn't help it.

Now here comes the sad part of the story, at:least my family says it's sad but I don't think it's sad myself. The store's pretty empty, it being Thursday afternoon, so there was nothing much to do except lean on the register and wait for the girls to show up again. The whole store was like a pinball machine and I didn't know which tunnel they'd come out of. After a while they come around out of the far aisle, around the light bulbs, records at discount of the Caribbean Six or Tony Martin Sings or some such gunk you wonder they waste the wax on, sixpacks of candy bars, and plastic toys done up in cellophane that faIl apart when a kid looks at them anyway. Around they come, Queenie still leading the way, and holding a little gray jar in her hand. Slots Three through Seven are unmanned and I could see her wondering between Stokes and me, but Stokesie with his usual luck draws an old party in baggy gray pants who stumbles up with four giant cans of pineapple juice (what do these bums do with all that pineapple juice' I've often asked myself) so the girls come to me. Queenie puts down the jar and I take it into my fingers icy cold. Kingfish Fancy Herring Snacks in Pure Sour Cream: 49¢. Now her hands are empty, not a ring or a bracelet, bare as God made them, and I wonder where the money's coming from. Still with that prim look she lifts a folded dollar bill out of the hollow at the center of her nubbled pink top. The jar went heavy in my hand. Really, I thought that was so cute.

Then everybody's luck begins to run out. Lengel comes in from haggling with a truck full of cabbages on the lot and is about to scuttle into that door marked MANAGER behind which he hides all day when the girls touch his eye. Lengel's pretty dreary, teaches Sunday school and the rest, but he doesn't miss that much. He comes over and says, "Girls, this isn't the beach."

Queenie blushes, though maybe it's just a brush of sunburn I was noticing for the first time, now that she was so close. "My mother asked me to pick up a jar of herring snacks." Her voice kind of startled me, the way voices do when you see the people first, coming out so flat and dumb yet kind of tony, too, the way it ticked over "pick up" and "snacks." All of a sudden I slid right down her voice into her living room. Her father and the other men were standing around in ice-cream coats and bow ties and the women were in sandals picking up herring snacks on toothpicks off a big plate and they were all holding drinks the color of water with olives and sprigs of mint in them. When my parents have somebody over they get lemonade and if it's a real racy affair Schlitz in tall glasses with "They'll Do It Every Time" cartoons stencilled on.

"That's all right," Lengel said. "But this isn't the beach." His repeating this struck me as funny, as if it hadjust occurred to him, and he had been thinking all these years the A & P was a great big dune and he was the head lifeguard. He didn't like my smiling -- -as I say he doesn't miss much -- but he concentrates on giving the girls that sad Sunday- school-superintendent stare.

Queenie's blush is no sunburn now, and the plump one in plaid, that I liked better from the back -- a really sweet can -- pipes up, "We weren't doing any shopping. We just came in for the one thing."

"That makes no difference," Lengel tells her, and I could see from the way his eyes went that he hadn't noticed she was wearing a two-piece before. "We want you decently dressed when you come in here."

"We are decent," Queenie says suddenly, her lower lip pushing, getting sore now that she remembers her place, a place from which the crowd that runs the A & P must look pretty crummy. Fancy Herring Snacks flashed in her very blue eyes.

"Girls, I don't want to argue with you. After this come in here with your shoulders covered. It's our policy." He turns his back. That's policy for you. Policy is what the kingpins want. What the others want is juvenile delinquency.

All this while, the customers had been showing up with their carts but, you know, sheep, seeing a scene, they had all bunched up on Stokesie, who shook open a paper bag as gently as peeling a peach, not wanting to miss a word. I could feel in the silence everybody getting nervous, most of all Lengel, who asks me, "Sammy, have you rung up this purchase?"

I thought and said "No" but it wasn't about that I was thinking. I go through the punches, 4, 9, GROC, TOT -- it's more complicated than you think, and after you do it often enough, it begins to make a lttle song, that you hear words to, in my case "Hello (bing) there, you (gung) hap-py pee-pul (splat)"-the splat being the drawer flying out. I uncrease the bill, tenderly as you may imagine, it just having come from between the two smoothest scoops of vanilla I had ever known were there, and pass a half and a penny into her narrow pink palm, and nestle the herrings in a bag and twist its neck and hand it over, all the time thinking.

The girls, and who'd blame them, are in a hurry to get out, so I say "I quit" to Lengel quick enough for them to hear, hoping they'll stop and watch me, their unsuspected hero. They keep right on going, into the electric eye; the door flies open and they flicker across the lot to their car, Queenie and Plaid and Big Tall Goony-Goony (not that as raw material she was so bad), leaving me with Lengel and a kink in his eyebrow.

"Did you say something, Sammy?"

"I said I quit."

"I thought you did."

"You didn't have to embarrass them."

"It was they who were embarrassing us."

I started to say something that came out "Fiddle-de-doo." It's a saying of my grand- mother's, and I know she would have been pleased.

"I don't think you know what you're saying," Lengel said.

"I know you don't," I said. "But I do." I pull the bow at the back of my apron and start shrugging it off my shoulders. A couple customers that had been heading for my slot begin to knock against each other, like scared pigs in a chute.

Lengel sighs and begins to look very patient and old and gray. He's been a friend of my parents for years. "Sammy, you don't want to do this to your Mom and Dad," he tells me. It's true, I don't. But it seems to me that once you begin a gesture it's fatal not to go through with it. I fold the apron, "Sammy" stitched in red on the pocket, and put it on the counter, and drop the bow tie on top of it. The bow tie is theirs, if you've ever wondered. "You'll feel this for the rest of your life," Lengel says, and I know that's true, too, but remembering how he made that pretty girl blush makes me so scrunchy inside I punch the No Sale tab and the machine whirs "pee-pul" and the drawer splats out. One advantage to this scene taking place in summer, I can follow this up with a clean exit, there's no fumbling around getting your coat and galoshes, I just saunter into the electric eye in my white shirt that my mother ironed the night before, and the door heaves itself open, and outside the sunshine is skating around on the asphalt.

I look around for my girls, but they're gone, of course. There wasn't anybody but some young married screaming with her children about some candy they didn't get by the door of a powder-blue Falcon station wagon. Looking back in the big windows, over the bags of peat moss and aluminum lawn furniture stacked on the pavement, I could see Lengel in my place in the slot, checking the sheep through. His face was dark gray and his back stiff, as if he'djust had an injection of iron, and my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter.

Honey Pie by Haruki Murakami

"So Masakichi got his paws full of honey—way more honey than he could eat by himself—and he put it in a pail, and do-o-own the mountain he went, all the way to the town, to sell his honey. Masakichi was the all-time No. 1 honey bear."

"Do bears have pails?" Sala asked.

"Masakichi just happened to have one," Junpei explained. "He found it lying by the road, and he figured it would come in handy sometime."

"And it did."

"It really did. So Masakichi went to the town and found a spot for himself in the square. He put up a sign: 'Deeelicious Honey. All Natural. One Cup ¥200.' "

"Can bears count money?"

"Absolutely. Masakichi lived with people when he was just a cub, and they taught him how to talk and how to count money. Masakichi was a very special bear. And so the other bears, who weren't so special, tended to shun him."

"Shun him?"

"Yeah, they'd go, like, 'Hey, what's with this guy, acting so special?' and keep away from him. Especially Tonkichi, the tough guy. He really hated Masakichi."

"Poor Masakichi!"

"Yeah, really. Meanwhile, the people would say, 'O.K., he knows how to count, and he can talk and all, but when you get right down to it he's just a bear.' So Masakichi didn't really belong to either world—the bear world or the people world."

"Didn't he have any friends?"

"Not a single friend. Bears don't go to school, you know, so there's no place for them to make friends."

"Do you have friends, Jun?" "Uncle Junpei" was too long for her, so Sala just called him Jun.

"Your daddy is my absolute bestest friend from a long, long time ago. And so's your mommy."

"That's good, to have friends."

"It is good," Junpei said. "You're right about that."

Junpei often made up stories for Sala before she went to bed. And whenever she didn't understand something she would ask him to explain. Junpei gave a lot of thought to his answers. Sala's questions were often sharp and interesting, and while he was thinking about them he could also come up with new twists to the story he was telling.

Sayoko brought a glass of warm milk.

"Junpei is telling me the story of Masakichi the bear," Sala said. "He's the all-time No. 1 honey bear, but he doesn't have any friends."

"Oh, really? Is he a big bear?" Sayoko asked.

Sala turned to Junpei with an uneasy stare. "Is Masakichi big?"

"Not so big," Junpei said. "In fact, he's kind of on the small side. For a bear. He's just about your size, Sala. And he's a very sweet-tempered little guy. When he listens to music, he doesn't listen to rock or punk or that kind of stuff. He likes to listen to Schubert, all by himself."

"He listens to music?" Sala asked. "Does he have a CD player or something?"

"He found a boom box lying on the ground one day. He picked it up and brought it home."

"How come all this stuff just happens to be lying around in the mountains?" Sala asked with a note of suspicion.

"Well, it's a very, very steep mountain, and the hikers get all faint and dizzy, and they throw away tons of stuff they don't need. Right there by the road, like, 'Oh, man, this pack is so heavy, I feel like I'm gonna die! I don't need this pail anymore. I don't need this boom box anymore.' "

"I know just how they feel," Sayoko said. "Sometimes you want to throw everything away."

"Not me," Sala said.

"That's because you're young and full of energy, Sala," Junpei said. "Hurry and drink your milk so I can tell you the rest of the story."

"O.K.," she said, wrapping her hands around the glass and drinking the warm milk with great care. Then she asked, "How come Masakichi doesn't make honey pies and sell them? I think the people in the town would like that better than just plain honey."

"An excellent point," Sayoko said with a smile. "His profits would be much greater that way."

"Plowing up new markets through value added," Junpei said. "This girl will be a real entrepreneur someday."



It was almost 2 A.M. by the time Sala went back to bed. Junpei and Sayoko waited for her to fall asleep, then went to split a can of beer at the kitchen table. Sayoko wasn't much of a drinker, and Junpei had to drive home.

"Sorry for dragging you out in the middle of the night," Sayoko said, "but I didn't know what else to do. I'm totally exhausted, and you're the only one who can calm her down. There was no way I was going to call Takatsuki."

Junpei nodded and took a swig of beer. "Don't worry about me," he said. "I'm awake till the sun comes up, and the roads are empty at this time of night. It's no big deal."

"You were working on a story?"

Junpei nodded.

"How's it going?"

"Like always. I write 'em. They print 'em. Nobody reads 'em."

"I read them. All of them."

"Thanks. You're a nice person," Junpei said. "But the short story is on its way out. Like the slide rule. Let's talk about Sala. Has she done this before?"

Sayoko nodded.

"A lot?"

"Almost every night. Sometime after midnight, she gets these hysterical fits and jumps out of bed. And I can't get her to stop crying. I've tried everything."

"Any idea what's wrong?"

Sayoko drank what was left of her beer and stared at the empty glass.

"I think she saw too many news reports on the earthquake. It was too much for a four-year-old. She wakes up at around the time of the quake. She says a man woke her up, somebody she doesn't know. The Earthquake Man. He tries to put her in a little box—too little for anyone to fit into. She tells him she doesn't want to get inside, and he starts pushing her—so hard her joints crack—and he tries to stuff her inside. That's when she screams and wakes up."

"The Earthquake Man?"

"He's tall and skinny and old. After she's had the dream, she goes around turning on every light in the house and looking for him: in the closets, in the shoe cupboard in the front hall, under the beds, in all the dresser drawers. I tell her it was just a dream, but she won't listen to me. And she won't go to bed until she's looked everywhere he could possibly hide. That takes at least an hour, by which time I'm wide awake. I'm so sleep-deprived I can hardly stand up, let alone work."

Sayoko almost never spilled out her feelings like this.

"Try not to watch the news," Junpei said. "The earthquake's all they're showing these days."

"I almost never watch TV anymore. But it's too late now. The Earthquake Man keeps coming."

Junpei thought for a while.

"What do you say we go to the zoo on Sunday? Sala says she wants to see a real bear."

Sayoko narrowed her eyes and looked at him. "Not bad. It just might change her mood. Let's do it—the four of us. It's been ages. You call Takatsuki, O.K.?"



Junpei was thirty-six, born and bred in the city of Kobe, where his father owned a pair of jewelry stores. He had a sister six years his junior. After a year at a private cram school, he had enrolled at Waseda University, in Tokyo. He had passed the entrance exams in both the business and the literature departments. He chose the literature department without the slightest hesitation and told his parents that he had entered the business department. They would never have paid for him to study literature, and Junpei had no intention of wasting four precious years studying the workings of the economy. All he wanted was to study literature, and then to become a writer.

At the university, Junpei made two friends, Takatsuki and Sayoko. Takatsuki came from the mountains of Nagano. Tall and broad-shouldered, he had been the captain of his high-school soccer team. It had taken him two years of studying to pass the entrance exam, so he was a year older than Junpei. Practical and decisive, he had the kind of looks that made people take to him right away, and he naturally assumed a leadership role in any group. But he had trouble reading books; he had entered the literature department because its exam was the only one he could pass. "What the hell," he said, in his positive way. "I'm going to be a newspaper reporter, so I'll let them teach me how to write."

Junpei did not understand why Takatsuki had any interest in befriending him. Junpei was the kind of person who liked to sit alone in his room reading books or listening to music, and he was terrible at sports. Awkward with strangers, he rarely made friends. Still, for whatever reason, Takatsuki seemed to have decided the first time he saw Junpei in class that he was going to make him a friend. He tapped Junpei on the shoulder and said, "Hey, let's get something to eat." And by the end of the day they had opened their hearts to each other.

Takatsuki used the same approach with Sayoko. Junpei was with Takatsuki when he tapped her on the shoulder and said, "Hey, what do you say the three of us go get something to eat?" And so their tight little group was born. Junpei, Takatsuki, and Sayoko did everything together. They shared lecture notes, ate lunch in the campus dining hall, talked about their future over coffee, took parttime jobs at the same place, went to latenight movies and rock concerts, walked all over Tokyo, and drank so much beer that they even got sick together. In other words, they behaved like first-year college students the world over.

Sayoko was a real Tokyo girl. She came from the old part of town, where the merchant class had lived for centuries, and her father ran a shop selling the exquisite little accessories that go with traditional Japanese dress. The business had been in the family for several generations, and it attracted an exclusive clientele that included several famous Kabuki actors. Sayoko had plans to go on to graduate school in English literature, and ultimately to an academic career. She read a lot, and she and Junpei were constantly exchanging novels and having intense conversations about them. Sayoko had beautiful hair and intelligent eyes. She expressed herself quietly and with simple honesty, but deep down she had great strength. She was always casually dressed, without makeup, but she had a unique sense of humor, and her face would crinkle up mischievously whenever she made some funny remark. Junpei found that look of hers incredible. He had never fallen in love until he met Sayoko. He had attended a boys' high school and had had almost no opportunities to meet girls.

But Junpei couldn't bring himself to express his feelings to Sayoko. He knew that there would be no going back once the words were spoken, and that Sayoko might take herself off somewhere far beyond his reach. At the very least, the perfectly balanced, comfortable relationship between Junpei, Takatsuki, and Sayoko would undergo a shift. So Junpei told himself to leave things as they were for now and watch and wait.

In the end, Takatsuki was the first to make a move. "I hate to throw this at you out of the blue, but I'm in love with Sayoko," he told Junpei. "I hope you don't mind." This was midway through September of their second year. Takatsuki explained that he and Sayoko had become involved, almost by accident, while Junpei was at home for the summer vacation.

Junpei fixed his gaze on Takatsuki. It took him a few moments to understand what had happened, but when he did it sank into him like a lead weight. He no longer had any choice in the matter. "No," he said, "I don't mind."

"I am so glad to hear that!" Takatsuki said with a huge smile. "You were the only one I was worried about. I mean, the three of us had such a great thing going, it was kind of like I beat you out. But, anyway, Junpei, this had to happen sometime. If not now, it was bound to happen sooner or later. The main thing is that I want the three of us to go on being friends. O.K.?"

Junpei spent the next several days in a fog. He skipped classes and work. He lay on the floor of his one-room apartment, eating nothing but the scraps in the refrigerator and slugging down whiskey whenever the impulse struck him. He thought about quitting university and going to some distant town where he knew no one and could spend the rest of his years doing manual labor. That would be the best life style for him, he decided.



On the fifth day of this, Sayoko came to Junpei's apartment. She was wearing a navy-blue sweatshirt and white cotton pants, and her hair was pinned back.

"Where have you been?" she asked. "Everybody's worried that you're dead in your room. Takatsuki asked me to check up on you. I guess he wasn't too keen on seeing the corpse himself."

Junpei said he had been feeling sick.

"Yeah," she said, "you've lost some weight, I think." She stared at him. "Want me to make you something to eat?"

Junpei shook his head. He didn't feel like eating, he said.

Sayoko opened the refrigerator and looked inside with a grimace. It held only two cans of beer, an old cucumber, and some baking soda. Sayoko sat down next to Junpei. "I don't know how to ask this, Junpei, but are you feeling bad about Takatsuki and me?"

Junpei said that he was not. And it was no lie. He was not feeling bad or angry. If, in fact, he was angry, it was at himself. For Takatsuki and Sayoko to become lovers was the most natural thing in the world. Takatsuki had all the qualifications. Junpei had none. It was that simple.

"Go halves on a beer?" Sayoko asked.

"Sure."

She took a can of beer from the refrigerator and divided the contents between two glasses, handing one to Junpei. They drank in silence, separately.

"It's kind of embarrassing to put this into words," she said, "but I want to stay friends with you, Junpei. Not just for now, but even after we get older. A lot older. I love Takatsuki, but I need you, too, in a whole different way. Does that make me selfish?"

Junpei was not sure how to answer that, but he shook his head.

Sayoko said, "To understand something and to put that something into a form that you can see with your own eyes are two completely different things. If you could manage to do both equally well, living would be a lot simpler."

Junpei looked at Sayoko in profile. He had no idea what she was trying to say. Why does my brain always work so slowly? he wondered. He looked up, and for a long time his half-focussed eyes traced the shape of a stain on the ceiling. How would the situation have developed if he had confessed his love to Sayoko before Takatsuki had confessed his? To this Junpei could find no answer. All he knew for sure was that such a thing would never have happened.

He heard the sound of tears falling on the tatami, an oddly magnified sound. For a moment, he wondered if he was crying without being aware of it. But then he realized that Sayoko was the one who was crying. She had hung her head between her knees, and now, though she made no sound, her shoulders were trembling.

Almost unconsciously, he reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. Then he drew her gently toward him. She did not resist. He wrapped his arms around her and pressed his lips to hers. She closed her eyes and let her lips part. Junpei caught the scent of tears and drew breath from her mouth. He felt the softness of her breasts against him. Inside, he felt some kind of switching of places. He even heard the sound it made—like joints creaking. But that was all. As if regaining consciousness, Sayoko moved her face back and down, pushing Junpei away.

"No," she said quietly, shaking her head. "We can't do this. It's wrong."

Junpei apologized. Sayoko said nothing. They remained that way, in silence, for a long time. The sound of a radio came in through the open window. It was a popular song. Junpei was sure that he would remember it till the day he died. But, in fact, try as he might after that, he was never able to recall the title or the melody.

"You don't have to apologize," Sayoko said. "It's not your fault."

"I think I'm confused," Junpei said honestly.

Sayoko reached out and laid her hand on Junpei's. "Come back to school, O.K.? Tomorrow? I've never had a friend like you before. You give me so much. I hope you realize that."

"So much, but not enough," he said.

"That's not true," she said. "That is so not true."



Junpei went to his classes the next day, and the tight-knit threesome of Junpei, Takatsuki, and Sayoko continued through graduation. Junpei's short-lived desire to disappear disappeared itself. By holding her in his arms that day in his apartment and pressing his lips to hers, Junpei had calmed something inside himself. At least he no longer felt confused. The decision had been made, even if he had not been the one to make it.

Sayoko sometimes introduced Junpei to a classmate of hers, and they would double-date. He saw a lot of one of the girls, and it was with her that he had sex for the first time, just before his twentieth birthday. But his heart was always somewhere else. He was respectful, kind, and tender to her, but never passionate or devoted. She eventually went elsewhere in search of true warmth. The same pattern repeated itself any number of times.

When he graduated, Junpei's parents discovered that he had been majoring in literature, not economics, and things turned ugly. His father wanted him to take over the family business, but Junpei had no intention of doing that. He wanted to stay in Tokyo and keep writing fiction. There was no room for compromise on either side, and a violent argument ensued. Words were spoken that should not have been. Junpei never saw his parents again, and he was convinced that it had to be that way. Unlike his sister, who always managed to compromise and get along with their parents, Junpei had done nothing but clash with them from the time he was a child.

Junpei took a series of part-time jobs that helped him to scrape by as he continued to write fiction. Whenever he finished a story, he showed it to Sayoko and got her honest opinion, then revised it according to her suggestions. Until she pronounced a piece good, he would rewrite it again and again, carefully and patiently. He had no other mentor, and he belonged to no writers' group.

When he was twenty-four, a story of his won an award from a literary magazine, and over the next five years Junpei was nominated for the coveted Akutagawa Prize four times, but he never actually won it. He remained the eternally promising candidate. A typical opinion from a judge on the prize committee would say, "For such a young author, this is writing of very high quality, with remarkable examples of both plot and psychological analysis. But the author has a tendency to let sentiment take over from time to time, and the work lacks both freshness and novelistic sweep."

Takatsuki would laugh when he read such opinions. "These guys are out of their minds. What the hell is 'novelistic sweep'? Real people don't use words like that. 'Today's sukiyaki was lacking in beefistic sweep.' Ever hear anybody say anything like that?"

Junpei published two volumes of short stories before he turned thirty: "Horse in the Rain" and "Grapes." "Horse in the Rain" sold ten thousand copies, "Grapes" twelve thousand. These were not bad figures for short-story collections, according to his editor. The reviews were generally favorable, but none gave his work passionate support. Most of Junpei's stories were about young people in situations of unrequited love. His style was lyrical, the plots rather old-fashioned. Readers of his generation were looking for a more inventive style and grittier plots. This was the age of video games and rap music, after all. Junpei's editor urged him to try a novel. If he never wrote anything but short stories, he would just keep dealing with the same material over and over again. Writing a novel could open up whole new worlds for a writer. As a practical matter, too, novels attracted far more attention than stories. Writing only short stories was a hard way to make a living.

But Junpei was a born short-story writer. He would shut himself in his room, let everything else go to hell, and turn out a first draft in three days of concentrated effort. After four more days of polishing, he would give the manuscript to Sayoko and his editor to read. Basically, though, the battle was won or lost in that first week. That was when everything that mattered in the story came together. His personality was suited to this way of working: total concentration of effort over a few short days. Junpei felt only exhaustion when he thought about writing a novel. How could he possibly maintain his concentration for months at a time? That kind of pacing eluded him.

Given his austere bachelor's life style, Junpei did not need much money. Once he had made what he needed for a given period, he would stop accepting work. He had only one silent cat to feed. His girlfriends were always the undemanding type, and when he grew bored with them he would come up with some pretext for ending the relationship. Sometimes, maybe once a month, he would wake at an odd time in the night with a feeling that was close to panic. I'm not going anywhere, he would tell himself. I can struggle all I want, but I'm never going to go anywhere. Then he would either force himself to go to his desk and write, or drink until he could no longer stay awake.

Takatsuki had landed the job he'd always wanted—reporting for a top newspaper. Since he never studied, his grades at the university were nothing to brag about, but the impression he made at interviews was overwhelmingly positive, and he had basically been hired on the spot. Sayoko had entered graduate school, as planned. They married six months after graduation, the ceremony as cheerful and busy as Takatsuki himself. They honeymooned in France, and bought a two-room condo a short commute from downtown. Junpei would come over for dinner a couple of times a week, and the newlyweds always welcomed him warmly. It was almost as if they were more comfortable with Junpei around than when they were alone together.

Takatsuki enjoyed his work at the newspaper. He was assigned first to the city desk, which kept him running from one scene of tragedy to the next. "I can see a corpse now and not feel a thing," he said. Bodies dismembered by trains, charred in fires, discolored with age, the bloated cadavers of drowning victims, gunshot victims with their brains splattered. "Whatever distinguished one lump of flesh from another when they were alive, it's all the same once they're dead," he said. "Just used-up shells."

Takatsuki was sometimes too busy to make it home before morning. Then Sayoko would call Junpei. She knew that he was often up all night.

"Are you working? Can you talk?"

"Sure," he would say. "I'm not doing anything special."

They'd discuss the books they had read, or things that had come up in their daily lives. Then they'd talk about the old days, when they were still free and spontaneous. Conversations like that would inevitably bring back memories of the time that Junpei had held Sayoko in his arms: the smooth touch of her lips, the softness of her breasts against him, the transparent early-autumn sunlight streaming onto the tatami floor of his apartment—these were never far from his thoughts.



Just after she turned thirty, Sayoko became pregnant. She was a graduate assistant at the time, but she took a break from her job to give birth to a baby girl. The three of them came up with all kinds of names for the baby, but decided in the end on one of Junpei's suggestions—Sala. "I love the sound of it," Sayoko told him. There were no complications with the birth, and that night Junpei and Takatsuki found themselves together without Sayoko for the first time in a long while. Junpei had brought over a bottle of single malt to celebrate, and they emptied it together at the kitchen table.

"Why does time shoot by like this?" Takatsuki asked with a depth of feeling that was rare for him. "It seems like only yesterday I was a freshman, and then I met you, and then I met Sayoko, and the next thing I know I'm a father. It's weird, like I'm watching a movie in fast-forward. You probably wouldn't understand, Junpei. You're still living the way you did in college. It's like you never stopped being a student, you lucky bastard."

"Not so lucky," Junpei said, but he knew how Takatsuki felt. Sayoko was a mother now. This was as big a shock for Junpei as it was for Takatsuki. The gears of life had moved ahead a notch with a loud ker-chunk, and Junpei knew that they would never turn back again. The one thing that he was not yet sure of was how he was supposed to feel about it.

"I couldn't tell you this before," Takatsuki said, "but I'm pretty sure Sayoko was more attracted to you than she was to me." He was drunk, but there was a more serious gleam in his eye than usual.

"That's crazy," Junpei said with a smile.

"Like hell it is. I know what I'm talking about. You know how to put words on a page, but you don't know shit about a woman's feelings. A drowned corpse does better than you. You had no idea how she felt about you, and I figured, what the hell, I was in love with her, and I had to have her. I still think she's the greatest woman in the world. I still think it was my right to have her."

"Nobody's saying it wasn't," Junpei said.

Takatsuki nodded. "But you still don't get it. Not really. When it comes to anything halfway important, you're so damn stupid. It's amazing to me that you can put a piece of fiction together."

"Yeah, well, that's a different thing."

"Anyhow, now there are four of us," Takatsuki said with a sigh. "Four of us. Four. Is that O.K.?"



Junpei learned just before Sala's second birthday that Takatsuki and Sayoko were on the verge of breaking up. Sayoko seemed apologetic when she broke the news to him. Takatsuki had had a lover since the time of Sayoko's pregnancy, and he hardly ever came home anymore, she explained.

Junpei couldn't seem to grasp what he was hearing, no matter how many details Sayoko was able to give him. Why would Takatsuki have wanted another woman? He had declared Sayoko to be the greatest woman in the world the night that Sala was born, and he had meant it. Besides, he was crazy about Sala. "I mean, I'm over at your house all the time, eating dinner with you guys, right? But I never sensed a thing. You were happiness itself—the perfect family."

"It's true," Sayoko said. "We weren't lying to you or putting on an act. But quite separately from that he got himself a girlfriend, and we can never go back to what we had. So we decided to split up. Don't let it bother you too much. I'm sure things will work out better now, in a lot of different ways."

Sayoko and Takatsuki were divorced some months later. They reached an agreement without the slightest problem: no recriminations, no disputed claims. Takatsuki went to live with his girlfriend; he came to visit Sala once a week, and they all agreed that Junpei would try to be present at those times. "It would make things easier for both of us," Sayoko told Junpei. He felt as if he had suddenly grown much older, though he had only just turned thirty-three.

Whenever they got together, Takatsuki was his usual talkative self, and Sayoko's behavior was perfectly natural, as though nothing had happened. If anything, she seemed even more natural than before, in Junpei's eyes. Sala had no idea that her parents were divorced. And Junpei played his assigned role perfectly. The three joked around as always and talked about the old days.

"Hey, Junpei, tell me," Takatsuki said, one January night when the two of them were walking home, their breath white in the chill air. "Do you have somebody you're planning to marry?"

"Not at the moment," Junpei said.

"No girlfriend?"

"Nope."

"What do you say you and Sayoko get together?"

Junpei squinted at Takatsuki as if at some too bright object. "Why?" he asked.

"What do you mean, 'why'? It's so obvious! If nothing else, you're the only man I'd want to be a father to Sala."

"Is that the only reason you think I should marry Sayoko?"

Takatsuki sighed and draped his thick arm around Junpei's shoulders.

"What's the matter? Don't you like the idea of marrying Sayoko? Or is it the thought of stepping in after me?"

"That doesn't bother me. I just wonder if you can make this like some kind of deal. It's a question of decency."

"This is no deal," Takatsuki said. "And it's got nothing to do with decency. You love Sayoko, right? You love Sala, too, don't you? That's the most important thing. I know you've got your own hangups. Fine. I grant you that. But to me it looks like you're trying to pull off your shorts without taking off your pants."

Junpei said nothing, and Takatsuki went into an unusually long silence. Shoulder to shoulder, they walked down the road to the station, heaving white breath into the night.

"In any case," Junpei said, "you're an absolute idiot."

"I have to give you credit," Takatsuki said. "You're right on the mark. I don't deny it. I'm ruining my own life. But I'm telling you, Junpei, I couldn't help it. There was no way I could put a stop to it. I don't know any better than you do why it had to happen. It just happened. And, if not here and now, something like it would have happened sooner or later."

Junpei felt as if he had heard the same speech before. "Do you remember what you said to me the night that Sala was born? That Sayoko was the greatest woman in the world, that you could never find anyone to take her place."

"And it's still true. Nothing has changed where that's concerned. But that very fact can sometimes make things go bad."

"I don't know what you mean by that," Junpei said.

"And you never will," Takatsuki said with a shake of the head. He always had the last word.



Two years went by. Sayoko never went back to teaching. Junpei got an editor friend of his to send her a story to translate, and she carried the job off with a certain flair. The editor was impressed enough to give her a substantial new piece the following month. The pay was not very good, but it added to what Takatsuki was sending and helped Sayoko and Sala to live comfortably.

They all went on meeting at least once a week, as they always had. Whenever urgent business kept Takatsuki away, Sayoko, Junpei, and Sala would eat together. The table was quiet without Takatsuki, and the conversation turned to oddly mundane matters. A stranger would have assumed that the three of them were just a typical family.

Junpei went on writing a steady stream of stories, bringing out his fourth collection, "Silent Moon," when he was thirty-five. It received one of the prizes reserved for established writers, and the title story was made into a movie. Junpei also produced a volume of music criticism, wrote a book on ornamental gardening, and translated a collection of John Updike's short stories. All were well received. Securing his position as a writer little by little, he had developed a steady readership and a stable income.

He continued to think seriously about asking Sayoko to marry him. On more than one occasion, he kept himself awake all night thinking about it, and for a time he was unable to work. But still he could not make up his mind. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed to him that his relationship with Sayoko had been consistently choreographed by others. His position was always passive. Takatsuki was the one who had picked the two of them out of his class and created the threesome. Then he had taken Sayoko, married her, made a child with her, and divorced her. And now Takatsuki was the one who was urging Junpei to marry her. Junpei loved Sayoko, of course. About that there was no question. And now was the perfect time for him to be united with her. She probably wouldn't turn him down. But Junpei couldn't help thinking that things were just a bit too easy. What was there left for him to decide? And so he went on wondering. And not deciding. And then the earthquake came.



Junpei was in Barcelona at the time, doing a story for an airline magazine. He returned to his hotel in the evening to find the TV news filled with images of collapsed buildings and black clouds of smoke. It looked like the aftermath of an air raid. Because the announcer was speaking in Spanish, it took Junpei a while to realize what city he was looking at. "You're from Kobe, aren't you?" his photographer asked.

But Junpei did not try to call his parents. The rift was too deep, and had gone on too long for there to be any hope of reconciliation. Junpei flew back to Tokyo and resumed his normal life there. He never turned on the television, and hardly looked at a newspaper. Whenever the subject of the earthquake came up, he would clamp his mouth shut. It was an echo from a past that he had buried long ago. He hadn't set foot on those streets since his graduation, but still the catastrophe laid bare wounds that were hidden somewhere deep inside him. It seemed to change certain aspects of his life—quietly, but completely. Junpei felt an entirely new sense of isolation. I have no roots, he thought. I'm not connected to anything.

Early on the Sunday morning that they had all planned to take Sala to the zoo to see the bears, Takatsuki called to say that he had to fly to Okinawa. He had managed at last to pry the promise of a one-on-one interview out of the governor. "Sorry, but you'll have to go to the zoo without me. I don't suppose Mr. Bear will be too upset if I don't make it."

So Junpei and Sayoko took Sala to the Ueno Zoo. Junpei held Sala in his arms and showed her the bears. She pointed to the biggest, blackest bear and asked, "Is that one Masakichi?"

"No, no, that's not Masakichi," Junpei said. "Masakichi is smaller than that, and he's smarter-looking, too. That's the tough guy, Tonkichi."

"Tonkichi!" Sala yelled again and again, but the bear paid no attention. Then she looked at Junpei and said, "Tell me a story about Tonkichi."

"That's a hard one," Junpei said. "There aren't that many interesting stories about Tonkichi. He's just an ordinary bear. He can't talk or count money like Masakichi."

"But I bet you can tell me something good about him. One thing."

"You're absolutely right," Junpei said. "There's at least one good thing to tell about even the most ordinary bear. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. Well, Tonchiki—"

"Tonkichi!" Sala corrected him with a touch of impatience.

"Ah, yes, sorry. Well, Tonkichi had one thing he could do really well, and that was catching salmon. He'd go to the river and crouch down behind a boulder and snap!—he would grab himself a salmon. You have to be really fast to do something like that. Tonkichi was not the brightest bear on the mountain, but he sure could catch more salmon than any of the other bears. More than he could ever hope to eat. But he couldn't go to town to sell his extra salmon, because he didn't know how to talk."

"That's easy," Sala said. "All he had to do was trade his extra salmon for Masakichi's extra honey."

"You're right," Junpei said. "And that's what Tonkichi decided to do. So Tonkichi and Masakichi started trading salmon for honey, and before long they got to know each other really well. Tonkichi realized that Masakichi was not such a stuck-up bear after all, and Masakichi realized that Tonkichi was not just a tough guy. Before they knew it, they were best friends. Tonkichi worked hard at catching salmon, and Masakichi worked hard at collecting honey. But then one day, like a bolt from the blue, the salmon disappeared from the river."

"A bolt from the blue?"

"Like a flash of lightning from a clear blue sky," Sayoko explained. "All of a sudden, without warning."

"All of a sudden the salmon disappeared?" Sala asked, with a sombre expression. "But why?"

"Well, all the salmon in the world got together and decided they weren't going to swim up that river anymore, because a bear named Tonkichi was there, and he was so good at catching salmon. Tonkichi never caught another decent salmon after that. The best he could do was catch an occasional skinny salmon and eat it, but the worst-tasting thing you could ever want to eat is a skinny salmon."

"Poor Tonkichi!" Sala said.

"And that's how Tonkichi ended up being sent to the zoo?" Sayoko asked.

"Well, that's a long, long story," Junpei said, clearing his throat. "But, basically, yes, that's what happened."

"Didn't Masakichi help Tonkichi?" Sala asked.

"He tried. They were best friends, after all. That's what friends are for. Masakichi shared his honey with Tonkichi—for free! But Tonkichi said, 'I can't let you do that. It'd be like taking advantage of you.' Masakichi said, 'You don't have to be such a stranger with me, Tonkichi. If I were in your position, you'd do the same thing for me, I'm sure. You would, wouldn't you?' "

"Sure he would," Sala said.

"But things didn't stay that way between them for long," Sayoko interjected.

"Things didn't stay that way between them for long," Junpei said. "Tonkichi told Masakichi, 'We're supposed to be friends. It's not right for one friend to do all the giving and the other to do all the taking: that's not real friendship. I'm leaving this mountain now, Masakichi, and I'll try my luck somewhere else. And if you and I meet up again somewhere, we will still be best friends.' So they shook hands and parted. But after Tonkichi came down from the mountain, he didn't know enough to be careful in the outside world, so a hunter caught him in a trap. That was the end of Tonkichi's freedom. They sent him to the zoo."

"Couldn't you have come up with a better ending? Like, everybody lives happily ever after?" Sayoko asked Junpei later.

"I haven't thought of one yet."



The three of them had dinner together, as usual, in Sayoko's apartment. 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 the kitchen, Junpei read to Sala from a picture book, but when bedtime came she resisted.

"Please, Mama, 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.

"Mama 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, Mama, 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? O.K., 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's head retracting into its shell, her right hand disappeared up 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, Mama, 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 joined 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, mischievous way for a long time. Time wobbled on its axis inside Junpei, 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 strong 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.

"We should have been like this to begin with," Sayoko 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 their clothes off and held each other gently. Their hands groped clumsily, as if they were both having sex for the first time. They took their time, until they knew they were ready, and then at last Junpei 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 himself 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 Junpei out. Gathering the sheet to her breasts, she used one hand to straighten the hair on her forehead.

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 were focussed on emptiness.

Sayoko called her name.

"The man said 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 would 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. Junpei knew that they were inside there. They were waiting with the box open. Junpei felt a chill run up his spine, and, no matter how long he waited, it did not go away.

He gave up trying to sleep and went to the kitchen. He made himself some coffee and sat at the kitchen table to drink it, but he felt something bunched up under one foot. It was Sayoko's bra, still lying there. He picked it up and hung it on the back of a chair. It was a simple, white piece of underwear, devoid of decoration. It hung on the kitchen chair in the predawn darkness like some anonymous witness who had wandered in from a time long past.

Junpei thought about his early days in college. He could still hear Takatsuki the first time they met, 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, "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 tapped his own temple with complete confidence. "I have a talent for picking the right friends at the right times in the right places."

And Takatsuki had not been wrong, Junpei thought, setting his coffee mug on the kitchen table. He 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 life was quite a different matter from finding friends. Junpei closed his eyes and thought about the stretch of time he had passed through. He did not want to think of it as something he had merely used up without any purpose.

As soon as Sayoko woke in the morning, he would ask her to marry him, Junpei decided. 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. Junpei 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 clock, Junpei thought about the rest of the story for Sala. He had to find a way to end the tale of Masakichi and Tonkichi. There had to be a way to save Tonkichi from the zoo. Junpei retraced the story from the beginning. Before long, 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 honey pies and bought them by the dozen. So Tonkichi and Masakichi never had to separate again: they lived happily ever after in the mountains.

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 that 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