teh library

Here are photos of my electronic library. Email me in case you want something from it. :) The comics are kinda few for they are mostly stored in discs. :)

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

Lexington Ghosts by Haruki Murakami

This is something that actually happened several years ago. I have altered the names on account of certain circumstances, but other than that it's entirely true.

I lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts for about 2 years. At that time, I got to know this architect--a handsome guy, just past fifty, about half of his hair was white. He wasn't very tall. He enjoyed swimming a lot, swam everyday, and consequently was in very good shape. He played tennis once in a while as well. As for his name--let's call him Casey. He was single, and lived in this old mansion in Lexington, a suburb of Boston, together with an extremely reticent, sallow-faced piano tuner. His name was Jeremy: probably mid-thirties, tall, slender as a willow, hair thinning a little. In addition to being a piano tuner he also played tolerably.

A few of my stories had been translated into English, and then had appeared in a magazine. Casey had read these and sent me a letter through my publisher.

"I'm very interested in your work, and curious what kind of person you are," he wrote. I don't usually meet people who send me fan mail (in my experience, these kinds of meetings are never very fun or interesting), but I thought that meeting this guy Casey would probably be OK. His letter was really interesting, and imbued with a his rich sense of humor. I also had the optimism that comes with living overseas. We lived quite close to each other. Still, all of these circumstances didn't match up to one other, peripheral reason. The single biggest reason I wanted to meet this guy Casey was that he was the owner of a magnificent collection of old jazz records.

"If you searched the whole country over, you probably wouldn't find a single private collection that is so complete. I understand that you like jazz a lot, or are at least interested in it," he wrote. Just so. I am certainly interested in it. After reading his letter, I wanted to see this record collection so badly I couldn't stand it. When I get ensnared by a collection of old jazz records, all my psychological powers of resistance disappear, like a horse bewitched by the scent of some special tree.

Casey's house was in Lexington. That's about 30 minutes by car from where I lived. When I called him, he faxed me a detailed map with directions. One afternoon in April, I got in my green Volkswagen and drove to his house alone. I quickly picked it out. It's was a huge, old three-story house. It had probably been standing there for at least 100 years. Even in Boston's swank residential neighborhoods, where stately mansions stand side-by-side and all have long histories, this splendid house particularly stuck out. It was good enough for a postcard.

The garden was like a vast forest, and blue jays jumped from branch to branch, raising their sharp, merry voices all the while. There was a new BMW parked in the driveway. When I parked the car behind the BMW, a large mastiff who had been sleeping on the welcome mat on the front porch slowly got to his feet and barked dutifully two or three times. His bark seemed to suggest "It's not that I really want to bark, so I'll do it sort of halfway."

Casey came out and shook my hand. He had a firm handshake that seemed to confirm something. While he was shaking my hand, he patted my shoulder gently with his other hand. This was a frequent mannerism of his. "Hi. I'm glad you came. It's really nice to meet you," he said. He was wearing a fashionable white Italian shirt buttoned all the way to the top, a light brown cashmere cardigan, and soft cotton pants. He also had on a pair of small Georgio Armani-style glasses. All very smart.

Casey took me inside, sat me down on a sofa in the living room, and brought out a freshly-made pot of excellent coffee.


Casey wasn't overly forward; he'd had a good upbringing and was well-educated. Having traveled all over the world when he was young, he was a great conversationalist. We got to be good friends, and I went over to his house to hang out about once a month. And he shared the blessing of that splendid record collection with me. When I was there, I was able to listen to incredibly rare and valuable music as much as I liked, which I otherwise never would have heard. Compared to that record collection, the stereo system wasn't so great, but the old vacuum-tube amp produced a warm, nostalgic sound.

Casey used the house's study as his office, and drew up building plans on a big computer there. But he didn't tell me very much about his work. "It's not particularly important," he said with a laugh, as if making an excuse. I have no idea what kind of buildings he designed. He never appeared to be particularly busy. The Casey I knew was always sitting on the sofa in the living room, his wine glass tilted elegantly, reading a book or straining to hear Jeremy's piano. Or perhaps sitting in his garden chair playing with the dog. It's just a feeling I have, but I think that he didn't work that hard.

His deceased father had been a nationally famous psychologist, and had written five or six books, all of which were well on their way to becoming classics. Also a devoted jazz fan, he was a close friend of Prestige Records founder and producer Bob Weinstock, and on account of that his collection of jazz vinyl from the 1940's to the 1960's was, as Casey 's letter had said, astonishingly complete. While it's sheer volume was particularly impressive, one couldn't complain about the outstanding quality of the records either. Almost all the records were first editions and in perfect condition. Neither the jackets nor the disks themselves had the slightest blemish. It was very close to miraculous. Casey took great care with their preservation, and he handled each one as if he were bathing an infant.

Casey had no siblings, and his mother died when he was young. His father had never remarried. Hence, when his father had succumbed to pancreatic cancer 15 years before, he alone had inherited the house and all it's various heirlooms, including the complete record collection. Because Casey respected his father more than anyone, and loved him too, he didn't get rid of a single record, and preserved the whole collection with great care, just as it was. Casey liked to listen to jazz, but he wasn't as ardent a fan as his father. He really preferred classical music, and whenever Seiji Ozawa was conducting the Boston Symphony, he and Jeremy never failed to attend.


After I had known him for about a year, Casey asked me to take care of his house while we was away. Although it happened very rarely, he had to go to London for about a week on business. When Casey went away on trips, Jeremy usually looked after the house, but this time he couldn't. Jeremy's mother, who lived in West Virginia, was in declining health, and a short time before he had gone back home. So Casey called me.

"Sorry to do this to you, but I couldn't think of anyone else," he said. "And while I say ‘house-sitter,' aside from giving Miles (that was the dog's name) his food twice a day, there's not really anything else to do. You can listen to whatever records you like. And there's plenty of food and drink, so help yourself."

It didn't sound like a bad proposition. I was living alone at that time on account of certain circumstances, and the house next to my apartment in Cambridge was under construction, so there was an unbearable racket everyday. I got some extra clothes, my MacIntosh Powerbook, and a couple of books and went to Casey's house early in the afternoon one Friday. Casey had just finished packing and was about to call a taxi.

Have a good time in London, I said

"Yeah, of course," Casey said smiling. "Enjoy the house and the records. It's not a bad place."


After Casey had gone, I went to the kitchen and fixed a cup of coffee. Then I set up my computer on a table in the music room, which adjoined the living room and, listening to some of the records Casey's father had left behind, I worked for about an hour. It seemed like I should be able to get a lot of work done during the coming week.

The desk, a huge mahogany affair, had drawers on either side. It was from quite an ancient time. It was by far the oldest thing in the room, and beside anything from a different era, like the MacIntosh I had brought with me, it seemed as if it had remained there unmoved for an unimaginably long period of time. After his father had died, Casey hadn't added so much as a postage stamp to the music room--it was as if he regarded it as some holy shrine or reliquary. While the whole house was prone to dust on account of it's age, in the music room it was as if the flow of time had stopped until moments before. It was in perfect order. There wasn't a speck of dust on the shelves, and the desk was polished to sparkling.

Miles came in and lay down at my feet. I patted his head a few times. He was a terribly lonely dog, and couldn't stand to be alone for very long. He'd been trained to sleep on his own bed in the kitchen, but the rest of the time he was always at someone's side, unaffectedly attaching himself to some part of his companion's body.

The living room and the music room were separated by a high door-less doorway. In the living room there was a large brick fireplace, and a very comfortable three-person leather sofa. There were four mismatched arm-chairs, and three coffee tables, also all distinct. A fancy, but now somewhat faded, Persian carpet had been laid on the floor, and from the high ceiling dangled a chandelier of ancient origin. I went in and sat down on the sofa, taking in my surroundings. The clock above the fireplace chopped up the minutes with a tick-tock that sounded like someone smashing a window on tip-toes.

The tall wooden bookshelves against the wall were lined art books and volumes on all sorts of specialties. A couple of oil paintings of some unknown coastline hung on three walls, kind of haphazardly. The general impression created by this scenery was somehow fitting. No human form could be seen in any of these pictures, just lonely sea-scapes. They looked as though, if you brought your ear up close enough, you'd be able to hear the sound of the chill wind and the rough seas. Splendid pieces, all, but not a one that particularly stood out. There wafted from each one the smell of moderate, New England-style, but still quite detached, Old Money.

The record shelf was against one broad wall of the music room, and all of those old records were lined up neatly, in alphabetical order according to the performers' names. Even Casey didn't know exactly how many there were. It's probably around six or seven thousand, he had said. But there are the same number again, packed in cardboard boxes and stored in the attic. "I wouldn't be surprised if the whole place sank into the ground someday on account of the weight of all those old records, like the House of Usher."

I set an old Lee Connitz 10" on the turntable, and as I sat at the desk writing, time passed comfortably and tranquilly. I had a very pleasant sensation, like I had buried myself in a perfectly-fitting mould. As time passed, I felt like I developed a special, carefully-constructed intimacy with this room. The reverberation of the music permeated everything: every nook of the room, every tiny cavity in the walls, right down to the creases in the curtains.

That evening I opened a bottle of Montepulciano that Casey had left specially for me, poured it into a crystal wine glass, and drank several glasses, sitting on the sofa reading a new-release novel I had just bought. Even disregarding Casey's recommendation, the wine was great. I got a wedge of Brie out of the refrigerator and ate about a quarter of it with crackers. All the while, it was quiet as a mouse. Apart from the tick-tock of the aforementioned clock, the only sound that could be heard was the occasional car passing on the street out front. The street closest to the house was just a cul-de-sac, though, so traffic was limited just to people in the neighborhood. When evening came, it dropped off to almost nothing. Coming from Cambridge, with it's noisy student crowds, it felt like I was at the bottom of the ocean. As per my usual, when the clock struck 11 I began to feel a little tired. Putting the book aside, I set my wine glass in the kitchen sink and said goodnight to Miles. The dog curled up on top of his bed with resignation and, after a slight groan, shut his eyes. I turned out the lights and went up to the guest bedroom on the second floor. I changed into my pajamas and was soon fast asleep.


When I woke up, I was in a formless void. I didn't know where I was. For a little while I was senseless, like a wilted vegetable. Like a vegetable that's forgotten and left forgotten in a dark cupboard for a long time. At length I finally remembered that I was house-sitting for Casey. Oh, yeah. I'm in Lexington. I fumbled around for the wristwatch I had left on the pillow. When I pushed the button, the time appeared with a blue glow. It was 1:15.

I quietly raised myself from the bed and turned on a small reading lamp. It took me a minute to find the switch. The lamp was made of polished glass in the shape of a lily, and produced a yellow light. I rubbed my temples strongly with the palms of both hands, heaved a big sigh, and looked around the inside of the brightened room. I inspected the walls, gazed across the carpet, and looked up at the ceiling. Then, like collecting beans that had spilled out on the floor, I gathered up the fragments of my consciousness one-by-one, and got reacquainted with the reality of my body. Gradually, I became aware of something: there was a sound. A low rumble, like waves crashing against the shore--that sound is what had roused me from my deep sleep.

Someone is downstairs.

I tip-toed to the door and held my breath. Soon, I could hear the sound of my own heartbeat. There was no mistaking that there was someone in the house besides me. And it wasn't just one or two people. A sound like music could also be faintly heard. I had no idea why. A cold sweat began to trickle from my armpits. What in the world had gone on while I was asleep?

The first thing that popped into my head was that this was some kind of elaborate practical joke. Casey had only pretended to go to London, but in reality had stayed behind, and had organized a party in the middle of the night just to scare me. No matter how I thought it about it though, I couldn't convince myself that Casey was the type to play such a childish prank. His sense of humor was more refined, more elegant.

Or perhaps--I thought, as I stood there still leaning on the door--the people down there were acquaintances of Casey's whom I didn't know. They knew that Casey was going out of town (but not that I was house-sitting for him), and had decided to stop by his house in his absence. At any rate, I was pretty sure that they weren't burglars. When burglars break into someone's house, they usually don't play their music so loud.

I took off my pajamas and picked up my pants. I put on my sneakers and pulled a sweater over my T-shirt. But I was only one person. I wanted something in my hands. Glancing around the room, nothing suitable presented itself. There wasn't a baseball bat or a set of fire tongs. The only things I could see were the bed, the dresser, a small book shelf, and a framed picture.

When I went out into the hall, I could hear the noise more clearly. The sound of cheerful old-time music floated up like steam into the hallway from the bottom of the stairs. The melody was quite familiar, but I couldn't remember the name of the tune.

I could hear voices, too. Since there were a lot of people's voices mixed up together, I couldn't make out what they were talking about. Occasionally there was a laugh. It was a pleasant, airy laugh. It seemed like there was a party going on downstairs, and by the sound of it, it was just getting good. As if coloring the whole scene, the clinking of champagne glasses and wine glasses resounded merrily. There were probably people dancing, too; I could hear what sounded like the rhythmical creaking of leather on the wood floor.

I crept down the hallway to the landing of the staircase. Leaning forward over the banister, I looked down. Light spilled out from the high vertical window in the foyer, filling it with a queer, ghastly light. There were no shadows. The doors that separated the living room from the hall were shut tight. I know that I had left them open when I went to bed. I am absolutely certain of that. There was no alternative but that someone had shut them after I had gone upstairs to bed.

I was completely at a loss about what to do. One possibility was to return to my second-floor bedroom and hide. Lock the door from the inside, crawl into bed and... When I considered the matter calmly, this seemed like the most prudent course of action. And yet, standing at the top of the stairs, listening to the sounds of that cheery music and laughter, it was something of a shock to realize that it seemed to be growing quieter, like ripples on the surface of a pond subsiding. Judging by that atmosphere, I surmised that perhaps these were not an ordinary kind of people.

I took one long, deep breath and descended the stairs to the entrance hall. The rubber soles of my sneakers silently passed from one of those old wooden steps to the next. When I came to the foyer, I immediately turned left and went into the kitchen. Turning on the lights, I opened a drawer and retrieved a heavy meat cleaver. Casey was a cooking enthusiast and had a set of expensive German-made kitchen knives. The finely-polished stainless steel blade gleamed voluptuous and true in my hand.

But when I tried to imagine myself walking into that rollicking party gripping an enormous meat cleaver, I quickly realized that it was a bad idea. I poured myself a glass of water from the tap and returned the meat cleaver to the drawer.

Wait:

What happened to the dog?

I realized for the first time that Miles was nowhere to be found. He wasn't on his usual pillow on the floor. Where in the world could he have gone? Wasn't it his job to bark or something if someone broke into the house in the middle of the night? Bending over, I felt the depression in the fur-covered pillow where he usually lay. No warmth remained. It seemed he'd gotten out of his bed long before and gone off somewhere.

I left the kitchen, went out into the foyer, and sat down on a small bench there. The music continued without a break and the conversation continued as well. Like waves, they swelled up from time to time, and then quieted down again, but they never stopped altogether. How many people were in there? It seemed like there had to be at least 15. Or maybe it was more like 20. At any rate, it seemed like that big living room was pretty nearly filled.

I thought for a second about whether I should throw open the doors and go in. That was a strange and difficult decision. I was the caretaker of the house after all, and as such it's management was my responsibility. On the other hand, I hadn't been invited .

I strained my ears to catch fragments of the conversation that crept through the cracks in the door, but it was impossible. The conversation blended into one monotonous whole, and I couldn't distinguish any individual words. While I knew that there was a conversation, it was like there was a thick plaster wall in front of me. There was no room for me to enter there. I stuck my hand in my pocket and pulled out a quarter. I twiddled it around in my fingers absently. That silver coin's solidity and reality restored me to my senses. Then something hit me, like a blow on the head from a fluffy mallet:

They were ghosts.

The folks assembled in the living room, listening to music and amiably chatting away weren't real people. The air pressure changed like a phase shift had taken place, and my ears were buzzing. I tried to swallow, but my throat had gone dry and I couldn't. I put the coin back in my pocket and looked around me. My heart began to thump heavily in my chest.

It seemed very odd that I hadn't realized this until now. How totally ridiculous to think that someone would break into the house and have a party. The sound of so many cars parking near the house, and the tramp of so many feet from the front gate to the house would certainly have woken me up. The dog probably would have barked. In short, there was no way that they could have entered the house.

I wanted Miles by my side. I wanted to put my hands around his big neck, smell that smell, feel the warmth of his skin. But the dog wasn't anywhere to be seen. I went and sat back down on the bench in the foyer by myself, as if I were under a spell. Naturally, I was terrified. But it surpassed the fear of any one particular thing. The fear was deep and mysterious like some vast desert.

Taking in a couple of deep breaths, I quietly replenished the air in my lungs. Little by little, my normal senses returned. It was a feeling like many cards were being turned over deep inside my consciousness.

Then I stood up, and muffling the sound of my footsteps exactly like before, I crept up the stairs. I returned to the bedroom and, without changing my clothes, got into bed.

The music and conversation meandered on. I couldn't sleep well, so I had no choice but to lie there, until almost day-break. Leaving the light on, I leaned against the headboard and stared at the ceiling, trying to hear the sounds of the never-ending party below. Eventually, I managed to fall asleep.


When I woke up the next morning, it was raining. It was a quiet drizzle, whose sole purpose was to soak the earth. The blue jays sang from under the eaves. The clock's hour hand showed a little before nine. The doors between the foyer and the living room were again standing open, as I had left them when I went to bed. The living room was not disordered. The book that I had been reading lay open on the couch. Fine cracker crumbs were still scattered across the top of the coffee table. Just as I had anticipated, there were no traces of the party.

Miles was curled up on the kitchen floor, sound asleep. He got up and I gave him his dog food. Shaking his ears, he ate greedily and with relish, as if nothing had happened.


The bizarre party in the middle of the night took place the first night I stayed at Casey's house. After that, nothing unusual transpired. Lexington's quiet, secretive nights returned without incident. But for some reason, almost every night I was there I'd wake up in the middle of the night. It was always between 1:00 and 2:00. I guess I was just high-strung, staying in someone else's house. Or perhaps I was anxious about a recurrence of that strange party.

When I woke up like this, I'd hold my breath, and strain to hear anything in the darkness. But there was never a sound. Occasionally, I'd hear the sound of leaves rustling in the garden. At those times I'd go downstairs and get a drink of water in the kitchen. Miles was always curled up asleep on the floor, and when he saw me he'd get up happily, wag his tail, and lay his head on my feet.

I'd take the dog with me into the living room, turn on the lights, and carefully look around. I never felt anything there, though. The sofa and the coffee table were always lined up silently in their places. Those cold oil paintings of the New England coast hung on the walls as always. I'd sit down on the couch for 10 or 15 minutes and just kill time. And when I wasn't able to discover any clue as to what had happened, I'd close my eyes and focus on my consciousness. But I couldn't feel anything. I was simply in the suburbs on a quiet and peaceful night. I'd open the window that looked out on the garden and breathe in the flower-laden spring air. The curtains would flap slightly in the night breeze, and in the woods, owls would hoot.

When Casey returned after a week in London, I decided not to say anything about what had happened that night, for the time being. I can't really explain why. I just had a feeling that it was better that way. Anyway.

"So, how was it? Anything happen while I was gone?" Casey asked me as we stood in the foyer.

"No, nothing special. It was really quiet and I got a lot of work done." That was totally the truth.

"That's great," Casey said with a happy look on his face. Then he pulled a bottle of expensive scotch out of his bag that he'd gotten for me as a souvenir. We shook hands and parted, and I drove the Volkswagen back to my apartment in Cambridge.

After that, I didn't see Casey for about six months. We talked on the phone a few times. Jeremy's mother had died, so that reticent piano tuner had returned to West Virginia permanently. At that time, I was in the final stages of a long novel, so except for matters of utter necessity, I didn't have room to meet anyone or go anywhere. I was spending more than twelve hours a day at my desk working, and I don't think I was ever more that a kilometer away from my house.

The last time I met Casey was at a cafe near the Charles River boathouse. I walked there to meet him and we had a cup of coffee together. I don't know why, but Casey had aged considerably since our last meeting. He was almost unrecognizable. He looked like he had gained ten years. The white in his hair had increased, and he had dark bags under his eyes. The backs of his hands had also become more wrinkled. I couldn't reconcile him with the Casey I had known before, who had always taken such care about his appearance. Perhaps he had some kind of disease. But Casey didn't say anything about it, so I didn't ask.

Jeremy probably won't come back to Lexington, Casey said to me with a sinking voice, gently shaking his head from left to right. I call West Virginia once in a while and talk to him on the phone. The shock of his mother's death changed him somehow, he said. He's different from the Jeremy of the old days. He only talks about the constellations now. From beginning to end, this unfortunate astrology talk. How the constellations are positioned today, and so what it's OK to do today, what should be avoided, that kind of thing. When he was here, he never mentioned the stars even once.

"I'm really sorry," I said. But I didn't really know who in the world he was talking about.

"When my mother died, I was only ten years old," Casey began, his eyes fixed on his coffee cup. "Since I didn't have any brothers of sisters, it was just the two of, my father and I, left behind. She died in a yachting accident in the early fall one year. We were totally unprepared psychologically for the shock of my mother's death. She was young and vivacious; more than ten years younger than my father. It had never occurred to either my father or myself that one day my mother would die. But then one day she was suddenly gone from this world. Poof. Like she'd vanished into thin air. She was clever and gorgeous and everybody liked her. She like to go out walking, and had a great stride, with her back stretched, her chin thrust forward slightly, and both hands clasped behind her. She walked with such an air of pleasure. She usually sang songs while she walked. I loved to go walking with her, the two of us together. Whenever I think of my mother, I see her walking along the boardwalk by the sea in Newport, bathed in the vivid light of a summer morning. The hem of her long summer dress fluttered coolly in the breeze. It was a cotton flower-print dress. That scene is burned into my mind like a photograph.

"She was very dear to my father, and he valued her tremendously. I think he probably loved her even more deeply than he loved me. He was that kind of person. He loved things that he had gained by his own hand. To him, I was something obtained by a natural string of events. This is not to say that he didn't love me: I was his one and only son. But he never loved me as much as he loved my mother. This is something I understood well. There was no one that my father loved like my mother. After my mother died, he never remarried.

"For three weeks after my mother's funeral, my father slept continuously. That's not an exaggeration. Literally, for three weeks straight.

"Occasionally, he would stagger out of bed and, without saying anything, drink a glass of water and eat a little food. He looked like a sleepwalker or a ghost. It was always only for the shortest possible time, and then he'd get back into bed. With the shutters shut tight, and the air stagnant in that dark room, he slept like an enchanted princess. He hardly moved at all. He didn't roll over and his expression remained the same. Being very uneasy about him, I went back to his side time after time to check up on him. I was afraid he would suddenly die in his sleep. When I came in to fluff his pillow and bring him food, I looked closely at his face.

"But he didn't die. He just slept deeply, like a stone buried in the ground. I think he probably didn't dream. In that dark, quiet room, only the sound of his regular breathing could be heard. That sleep, so long and deep, was unlike anything I had ever seen. He looked like a person departed for another world. I remember being very afraid. Completely alone in that huge mansion, I felt like I had been abandoned by the whole world.

"15 years ago, when my father passed away, I was obviously very sad, but frankly I wasn't that surprised. My father looked just the same dead as he had during that deep sleep. He's just like he was then, I thought to myself. It was deja vu. This overwhelming deja vu, like something deep inside of me had shifted. From a distance of 30 years, I retraced the past just as it had been. Only this time, I couldn't hear the sound of his breathing.

"I loved my father. I loved him more than anyone else in the world. I respected him, too. But even more than that, I was strongly bound to him, both emotionally and spiritually. I know this may sound strange, but when my father died I, too, got in bed and slept for many days, exactly like my father had when my mother died. It was like I had succeeded to some special ritual of my bloodline.

"It probably lasted for about two weeks. During that time I slept and slept and slept... I slept until time decayed and melted away into nothing. No matter how much I slept, it was never enough. At that time, the world of sleep was the real world, and the everyday world became nothing more than a vain and temporary place. It was a superficial world devoid of the color of life. I thought that I didn't want to live anymore in such a world. Gradually, I came to understand what I imagine my father must have felt like when my mother died. Do you get what I'm saying? Things take on a different shape all together. Without these new shapes, they can't exist."

Casey was then silent for a moment as if he was thinking about something. It was late fall, and the sound of acorns falling and hitting the ground with a thud occasionally reached my ears.

"There's only one thing I can say," Casey said raising his head, his familiar stylish smile returning to his lips. "When I die, there is not one person in the world who will have to sleep that deep sleep."


Sometimes I think about the Lexington ghosts: about their unknown character and number, and about that lively party they had in the living room of Casey's old mansion in the middle of the night. And I think about Casey and his long, solitary deep sleep, as if in preparation for death, in the second floor bedroom, with the shutters shut tight. And I think about his father. I think about Miles, the lonely dog, and that breathtaking record collection. Jeremy playing Shubert. The blue BMW wagon parked in front of the front door. But they all have the feeling of things that happened a terribly long time ago in a place terribly far away. Even though they just happened recently.

I've never told these things to anyone until now. Whenever I try to think about it, although it seems like a very strange tale indeed, perhaps on account of the distance, it doesn't seem very strange to me at all.

Translated by Christopher Allison