There were no longer any stars to be seen in the sky: not one. The stars up there were visible only from the bottom of a well. All that hung in the sky was a nearly full, corpulent moon.
How long I went on lying there I had no idea. For a long time, all I did was listen to the beating of my heart. I felt that I could go on living forever, doing only that-listening to the beating of my heart. Eventually, though, I raised myself from the ground and surveyed my surroundings. No one was there. The garden stretched out into the night, with the statue of the bird staring off at the sky, as always. No lights shone inside May Kasahara's house. There was only one mercury lamp burning in her yard, casting its pale, expressionless light as far as the deserted alley. Where could Creta Kano have disappeared to?
In any case, the first thing to do was go home-to go home, drink something, eat something, and take a nice, long shower. I probably stank something awful. I had to get rid of that smell before anything else. Then I had to fill my empty stomach. Everything else would come later.
I followed the usual route back home, but to my eyes the alley looked different, unfamiliar. Maybe because of the strangely naked moonlight, signs of stagnation and putrefaction stood out with unusual intensity, and I could smell something like the rotting flesh of dead animals and the very definite stink of feces and urine. In many of the houses, people were still up, talking or eating while they watched television. From one window drifted the smell of greasy food, assaulting my brain and stomach. I passed by a groaning air- conditioning unit and received a bath of lukewarm air. I heard the sound of a shower and saw the blurred shadow of a body on a bathroom window.
I managed to scale the wall behind my house and dropped down into the yard. From here, the house looked pitch dark and almost seemed to be holding its breath. It retained no sense of warmth or intimacy. It was supposed to be the house where I was carrying on my life day after day, but now it was just an empty building without a trace of humanity. If I had any home to go back to, though, this was it.
I stepped up to the veranda and slid open the glass door. Having been shut up for so long, the air was heavy and stagnant. It smelled like a mixture of overripe fruit and insecticide. The short note I had left on the kitchen table was still there. The dishes I had washed remained in the same arrangement on the drainboard. From the stack I took a glass and filled it over and over again, drinking water from the tap. The refrigerator had nothing special in it-a haphazard collection of leftovers and partly used ingredients: eggs, ham, potato salad, eggplant, lettuce, tomatoes, tofu, cream cheese, milk. I poured some of the milk on a bowl of cornflakes and ate that. I should have been starved, but after beholding actual food in the refrigerator, I felt hardly any hunger. If anything, I was a little nauseated. Still, to soften the pain of my empty stomach, I followed the cornflakes with a few crackers. These did nothing to make me want to eat more.
I went to the bathroom, took all my clothes off, and threw them into the washing machine. Stepping under a hot shower, I scrubbed every inch of my body and washed my hair. Kumiko's nylon shower cap still hung in the bathroom. Her special shampoo was there, her conditioner, and the plastic brush she used for shampooing. Her toothbrush. Her floss. Every- thing looked the same as it had before she left. The only change brought about by her absence was that one simple fact: Kumiko was no longer there.
I stood before the mirror and examined my face. It was covered with black stubble. After a moment of hesitation, I decided not to shave. If I shaved now, I would probably cut myself. Tomorrow morning would be fine. I didn't have to see anybody. I brushed my teeth, rinsed my mouth out several times, and left the bathroom. Then I opened a beer, took tomato and lettuce from the refrigerator, and made a salad. Once I had eaten that, I began to feel some desire for food, so I took out some potato salad, spread it between two pieces of bread, and ate it. I looked at the clock only once.
How many hours had I been down in the well? But just thinking about time made my head throb. No, I did not want to think about time. That was one thing I most wanted to avoid thinking about now.
I went to the toilet and took a long pee with my eyes closed. I could hardly believe how long it lasted. I felt I might pass out while I was standing there. Afterward, I went to the living room, stretched out on the sofa, and stared at the ceiling. It was the strangest feeling: my body was tired, but my mind was wide awake. I didn't feel the least bit sleepy.
It suddenly occurred to me to check the mailbox. Someone might have written to me while I was in the well. I went to the entryway and found that a single letter had arrived. The envelope bore no return address, but the handwriting on the front was obviously Kumiko's, each tiny character written-almost drawn-with great precision, like a design. It was a time consuming style of writing, but it was the only way she knew. My eyes went immediately to the postmark. It was smudged and barely legible, but I could make out the character taka and possibly motsu. Takamatsu in Kagawa Prefecture? Kumiko didn't know anyone in Takamatsu, as far as I was aware. The two of us had never gone there, and she had never said anything about having taken the ferry to Shikoku or crossed the new bridge. The name Takamatsu had simply never entered any of our conversations. Maybe it wasn't Takamatsu.
In any case, I brought the letter to the kitchen, sat down at the table, and used a scissors to open the envelope, taking care not to cut the stationery within. To calm myself, I took a swallow of my leftover beer.
You must have been shocked and worried when I disappeared so suddenly without a word, Kumiko had written in her usual Mont Blanc blue-black ink. The paper was the standard thin letter paper sold everywhere.
I meant to write to you sooner and do a proper job of explaining everything, but the time slipped by while I went on brooding over how I could express my feelings precisely or explain my present situation so that you would understand. I feel very bad about this for you.
You may have begun to suspect by now that I was seeing a man. I was sexually involved with him for close to three months. He was someone I met through work, someone you don't know at all. Nor does it matter very much who he was. I will never see him again. For me, at least, it is over. This may or may not be of some comfort to you.
Was I in love with him? There is no way I can answer that question. The question itself seems irrelevant. Was I in love with you? To that I can answer without hesitation: Yes. I was always extremely glad that I had married you. And I still feel that way. So why, you might ask, did I have to have an affair and, to top it off, run away from home? I asked myself the same question over and over again even while it was happening: Why do I have to be doing this?
There is no way I can explain it. I never had the slightest desire to take a lover or have an affair. Such thoughts were the farthest thing from my mind when I first started seeing him. We met a few times in connection with business, and though we did find it easy to talk to each other, the most that happened after that was an occasional remark on the phone that went beyond business. He was much older than I, had a wife and children, and was not particularly attractive to me as a man: it never occurred to me that I might become seriously involved with him.