I was just wondering, did anything bad happen to you while you were here? Anything bad? Like what? Like you got sick or you split up with a woman or something. My uncle gave a hearty laugh on his end of the line. I split up with more than one woman, thats for sure. But not just while I was living there. Nah, I couldn't count that as something especially bad. Nobody I hated to lose, tell you the truth. As far as getting sick goes ... hmm. No, I don't think so. I had a little growth removed from the back of my neck, but thats about all I remember. The barber found it, said I ought to have it removed just to be safe. So I went to the doctor, but it turned out to be nothing much. That was the first time I went to see the doctor while I was living in that house-and the last. I ought to get a rebate on my health insurance!
No bad memories you associate with the place, then?
Nope, none, said my uncle, after he had thought about it for a moment. But whats this about, all of a sudden?
Nothing much, I said. Kumiko saw a fortune-teller the other day and came home with an earful about this house-that its unlucky, things like that, I lied. I think its nonsense, but I promised to ask you about it.
Hmm. What do they call it? House physiognomy? I don't know anything about that stuff. You couldn't tell by me. But I've lived in the place, and my impression is that its OK, it doesn't have any problems. Miyawaki's place is another matter, of course, but you're pretty far away from there.
What kind of people lived here after you moved out? I asked.
Lets see: after me a high school teacher and his family lived there for three years, and then a young couple for five years. He ran some kind of business, but I don't remember what it was. I cant swear that everybody lived a happy life in that house: I had a real estate agent managing the place for me. I never met the people, and I don't know why they moved out, but I never heard about anything bad that happened to any of them. I just assumed the place got a little small for them and they wanted to build their own houses, that kind of thing.
Somebody once told me that the flow of this place has been obstructed. Does that ring a bell?
The flow has been obstructed? I don't know what it means, either, I said. Its just what they told me. My uncle thought it over for a while. No, nothing comes to mind. But it might have been a bad idea to fence off both ends of the alley. A road without an entrance or exit is a strange thing, when you stop to think about it. The fundamental principle of things like roads and rivers is for them to flow. Block them and they stagnate.
I see what you mean, I said. Now, theres one more thing I need to ask you. Did you ever hear the cry of the wind-up bird in this neighborhood?
The wind-up bird, said my uncle. Whats that?
I explained simply about the wind-up bird, how it came to the tree out back once a day and made that spring-winding cry.
That's news to me, he said. I've never seen or heard one. I like birds, and I've always made a point of listening to their cries, but this is the first time I've ever heard of such a thing. You mean it has something to do with the house?
No, not really. I was just wondering if you'd ever heard of it.
You know, if you really want the lowdown on things like this- the people who lived there after me and that kind of stuff-you ought to talk to old Mr. Ichikawa, the real estate agent across from the station. That's Setagaya Dai-ichi Realtors. Tell him I sent you. He handled that house for me for years. Hes been living in the neighborhood forever, and he just might tell you everything you'd ever want to know. Hes the one who told me about the Miyawaki house. Hes one of those old guys that love to talk. You ought to go see him.
Thanks. I will, I said. So anyway, hows the job hunt going? Nothing yet. To tell you the truth, I haven't been looking very hard. Kumiko's working, and I'm taking care of the house, and were managing for now. My uncle seemed to be thinking about something for a few moments. Then he said, Let me know if it ever gets to the point where you just cant make it. I might be able to give you a hand.
Thanks, I said. I will. And so our conversation ended.
I thought about calling the old real estate broker and asking him about the background of this house and about the people who had lived here before me, but it seemed ridiculous even to be thinking about such nonsense. I decided to forget it.
The rain kept falling at the same gentle rate into the afternoon, wetting the roofs of the houses, wetting the trees in the yards, wetting the earth. I had toast and soup for lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon on the sofa. I wanted to do some shopping, but the thought of the mark on my face made me hesitate. I was sorry I hadn't let my beard grow. I still had some vegetables in the refrigerator, and there was canned stuff in the cupboard. I had rice and I had eggs. I could feed myself for another two or three days if I kept my expectations low.
Lying on the sofa, I did no thinking at all. I read a book, I listened to a classical music tape, I stared out at the rain falling in the garden. My cogitative powers seemed to have reached an all-time low, thanks perhaps to that long period of all-too-concentrated thinking in the dark well bottom. If I tried to think seriously about anything, I felt a dull ache in my head, as if it were being squeezed in the jaws of a padded vise. If I tried to recall anything, every muscle and nerve in my body seemed to creak with the effort. I felt I had turned into the tin man from The Wizard of Oz, my joints rusted and in need of oil.
Every now and then I would go to the lavatory and examine the condition of the mark on my face, but it remained unchanged. It neither spread nor shrank. The intensity of its color neither increased nor decreased. At one point, I noticed that I had left some hair unshaved on my upper lip. In my confusion at discovering the mark on my right cheek, I had forgotten to finish shaving. I washed my face again, spread on shaving cream, and took off what was left.
In the course of my occasional trips to the mirror, I thought of what Malta Kano had said on the phone: that I should be careful; that through experience, we come to believe that the image in the mirror is correct. To make certain, I went to the bedroom and looked at my face in the full-length mirror that Kumiko used whenever she got dressed. But the mark was still there. It was not just something in the other mirror.
I felt no physical abnormality aside from the mark. I took my temperature, but it was the same as always. Other than the fact that I felt little hunger, for someone who had not eaten in almost three days, and that I experienced a slight nausea every now and then (which was probably a continuation of what I had felt in the bottom of the well), my body was entirely normal.
The afternoon was a quiet one. The phone never rang. No letters arrived. No one came down the alley. No voices of neighbors disturbed the stillness. No cats crossed the garden, no birds came and called. Now and then a cicada would cry, but not with the usual intensity.
I began to feel some hunger just before seven o'clock, so I fixed myself a dinner of canned food and vegetables. I listened to the evening news on the radio for the first time in ages, but nothing special had been happening in the world. Some teenagers had been killed in an accident on the expressway when the driver of their car had failed in his attempt to pass another car and crashed into a wall. The branch manager and staff of a major bank were under police investigation in connection with an illegal loan they had made. A thirty-six-year-old housewife from Machida had been beaten to death with a hammer by a young man on the street. But these were all events from some other, distant world. The only thing happening in my world was the rain falling in the yard. Soundlessly. Gently. When the clock showed nine, I moved from the sofa to bed, and after finishing a chapter of the book I had started, I turned out the light and went to sleep.