Hes not going to die, said Kumiko's voice, without emotion. She might have been reporting a historical fact from a book. He may not regain consciousness, though. He may just continue to wander through darkness, but what kind of darkness that would be, no one knows.
I felt for the glass at my feet and picked it up. I poured its contents into my mouth and, without thinking, swallowed. The tasteless liquid passed through my throat and down my gullet. I felt a chill for no reason, then an unpleasant sensation as if something far away were moving slowly in my direction through a long darkness. As I had known it would, my heart started beating faster.
We don't have much time, I said. Just tell me this if you can: where are we?
You've been here before, and you found the way in here- alive and unharmed. You should know where this is. And anyhow, it doesn't matter anymore. The important thing- Just then there was a knock on the door-a hard, dry sound, like someone driving a nail into the wall, two loud raps followed by two more. It was the same knock I had heard before. The woman gasped.
You've got to get out of here, she said, in a voice that was unmistakably Kumiko's. If you go now, you can still pass through the wall.
I had no idea if what I was thinking was right or wrong, but I knew that as long as I was down here, I had to defeat this thing. This was the war that I would have to fight.
I'm not running away this time, I said to Kumiko. I'm going to take you home.
I set my glass on the floor, put my wool hat on, and took the bat from between my knees.
Then I started slowly for the door.
35 Just a Real Knife
The Thing That Had Been Prophesied
Lighting my way along the floor and keeping my steps soundless, I moved toward the door. The bat was in my right hand. I was still walking when the knocks came again: two knocks, then two more. Harder this time, and more violent. I pressed myself against the side wall where I would be hidden by the door when it opened. There I waited, keeping my breath in check.
When the sound of the knocks faded, deep silence descended on everything again, as if nothing had happened. I could feel the presence of someone on the other side of the door, though. This someone was standing there the way I was, keeping his breath in check and listening, trying to hear the sound of breathing or the beating of a heart, or to read the movement of a thought. I tried to keep my breath from agitating the surrounding air. I am not here, I told myself. I am not here. I am not anywhere.
The key turned in the lock. He made each movement with the utmost caution, stretching out the time it took to perform any one act so that the sounds involved would become isolated from each other, their meaning lost. The doorknob turned, and this was followed by the almost imperceptible sound of hinges rotating. The contractions of my heart began to speed up. I tried to quell the disturbance this caused, but without success.
Someone came into the room, sending ripples through the air. I made a conscious effort to sharpen each of my five senses and caught the faint smell of a foreign body-a strange mixture of thick clothing, suppressed breathing, and overwrought nerves steeped in silence. Did he have the knife in his hand? I had to assume that he did. I remembered its vivid white gleam. Holding my breath, obliterating my presence, I tightened my grip on the bat.
Once inside, the someone closed the door and locked it from within. Then he stood there, back to the door, waiting and watching. My hands on the bat were drenched with sweat. I would have liked to wipe my palms on my pants, but the slightest extra movement could have had fatal results. I brought to mind the sculpture that had stood in the garden of the abandoned Miyawaki house. In order to obliterate my presence here, I made myself one with that image of a bird. There, in the sun-drenched summer garden, I was the sculpture of a bird, frozen in space, glaring at the sky.
The someone had brought his own flashlight. He switched it on, and its straight, narrow beam cut through the darkness. The light was not strong. It came from the same kind of penlight I was carrying. I waited for the beam to pass me as he walked into the room, but he made no effort to move. The light began to pick out items in the room, one after another-the flowers in the vase, the silver tray lying on the table (giving off its sensual gleam again), the sofa, the floor lamp.... It swung past my nose and came to rest on the floor a few inches beyond the tips of my shoes, licking every corner of the room like the tongue of a snake. I waited for what felt like an eternity. Fear and tension drilled into my consciousness with intense pain.
No thinking. You are not allowed to think, I told myself. You are not allowed to use your imagination. Lieutenant Mamiya had said that in his letter. Imagining things here can be fatal.
Finally, the flashlight beam began to move forward slowly, very slowly. The man seemed to be heading for the inner room. I tightened my grip on the bat. It was then I noticed that the sweat of my hands had dried. If anything, my hands were now too dry.
The man took one slow step forward, then stopped. Then one more step. He seemed to be checking his footing. He was closer to me than ever now. I took a breath and held it. Two more steps, and he would be where I wanted him. Two more steps, and I would be able to put an end to this walking nightmare. But then, without warning, the light disappeared.
Total darkness had swallowed everything again. He had turned off his flashlight. I tried to make my mind work quickly in the dark, but it would not work at all. An unfamiliar chill ran through me. He had realized that I was there.
Move, I told myself. Don't just stand there. I tried to dodge to the left, but my legs would not move. My feet were stuck to the floor, like the feet of the bird sculpture. I bent forward and barely managed to incline my stiffened upper body to the left. Just then, something slammed into my right shoulder, and something hard and cold as frozen rain stabbed me to the bone.
The impact seemed to revive me, and the paralysis went out of my legs. I sprang to the left and crouched in the darkness, feeling for my opponent. The blood was pounding through my body, every muscle and cell straining for oxygen. My right shoulder was going numb, but I had no pain. The pain would come later. I stayed absolutely still, and he did too. We faced each other in the darkness, holding our breaths. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear.
Again, without warning, the knife came. It slashed past my face like an attacking bee, the sharp point just catching my right cheek where the mark was. I could feel the skin tearing. No, he could not see me, either. If he could, he would have finished me off long before. I swung the bat in the darkness, aiming in the direction from which the knife had come, but it just swished through the air, striking nothing. The swing had been a good one, though, and the crisp sound helped me to loosen up somewhat. We were still an even match. The knife had cut me twice, but not badly. Neither of us could see the other. And though he had a knife, I had my bat.
Again, in our mutual blindness, breathing held in check, we felt each other out, waiting for some hint of movement. I could feel blood dripping down my face, but I was strangely free of fear. Its just a knife, I said to myself. Its just a cut. I waited. I waited for the knife to come my way again. I could wait forever. I drew my breath in and expelled it without a sound. Come on! I said to him in my mind. Move! I'm waiting for you to move. Stab me if you want to. I'm not afraid.
Again the knife came. It slashed the collar of my sweater. I could feel the point moving past my throat, but it never touched my skin. I twisted and jumped to the side, and almost too impatient to straighten up, I swung the bat through space. It caught him somewhere around the collarbone. Not enough to bring him down or break any bones, but I knew I had hurt him. I could feel him recoil from the blow, and I heard a loud gasp. I took a short backswing and went for him again-in the same direction at a slightly higher angle, where I had heard the breath drawn in.