Then it hit me: that was probably when things started to change. Yes, definitely. That had been a turning point. After that, the flow around me had begun to evidence a change. Now that I thought about it, that abortion had been an event of great significance for the two of us. At the time, however, I had not been able to perceive its true importance. I had been all too distracted by the act of abortion itself, while the genuinely important thing may have been something else entirely.
I had to do it, she said. I felt it was the right thing to do, the best thing for both of us. But theres something else, something you don't know about, something I cant put into words just yet. I'm not hiding anything from you. I just cant be sure whether or not its something real. Which is why I cant put it into words yet. Back then, she couldn't be sure that that something was real. And that something, without a doubt, had been more connected with the pregnancy than with the abortion. Maybe it had had something to do with the child in her womb. What could it have been? What had sent her into such confusion? Had she had relations with another man and refused to give birth to his baby? No, that was out of the question. She herself had declared that it was out of the question. It had been my child, that was certain. But still, there had been something she was unable to tell me. And that something was inseparably connected to her decision to leave me. Everything had started from that.
But what the secret was, what had been concealed there, I had no idea. I was the only one left alone, the only one in the dark. All I knew for certain was that as long as I failed to solve the secret of that something, Kumiko would never come back to me. Gradually, I began to sense a quiet anger growing inside my body, an anger directed toward that something that remained invisible to me. I stretched my back, drew in a deep breath, and calmed the pounding of my heart. Even so, the anger, like water, seeped soundlessly into every corner of my body. It was an anger steeped in sorrow. There was no way for me to smash it against something, nothing I could do to dispel it.
The man went on walking at the same steady pace. He crossed the Odakyu Line tracks, passed through a block of shops, through a shrine, through a labyrinth of alleys. I followed after him, adjusting my distance in each situation so as to keep him from spotting me. And it was clear that he had not spotted me. He never once looked around. There was definitely something about this man that made him different from ordinary people. Not only did he never look back; he never once looked to either side. He was so utterly concentrated: what could he be thinking about? Or was he, rather, thinking about absolutely nothing?
Before long, the man entered a hushed area of deserted streets lined with two-story wood- frame houses. The road was narrow and twisted, and the run-down houses were jammed up against each other on either side. The lack of people here was almost weird. More than half the houses were vacant. Boards were nailed across the front doors of the vacant houses, and notices of planned construction were posted outside. Here and there, like missing teeth, were vacant lots filled with summer weeds and surrounded by chain-link fences. There was probably a plan to demolish this whole area in the near future and put up some new high-rises. Pots of morning glories and other flowers crammed the little space outside one of the few houses that were occupied. A tricycle lay on its side, and a towel and a child's bathing suit were being dried in the second-story window. Cats lay everywhere-beneath the windows, in the doorway-watching me with weary eyes. Despite the bright early-evening hour, there was no sign of people. The geography of this place was lost on me. I couldn't tell north from south. I guessed that I was in the triangular area between Yoyogi and Sendagaya and Harajuku, but I could not be sure.
It was, in any case, a forgotten section of the city. It had probably been overlooked because the roads were so narrow that cars could hardly pass through. The hands of the developers had not reached this far. Stepping in here, I felt as if time had turned back twenty or thirty years. I realized that at some point, the constant roar of car engines had been swallowed up and was gone now. Carrying his guitar case, the man had made his way through the maze of streets until he came to a wood-frame apartment house. He opened the front door, went inside, and closed the door behind him. As far as I could see, the door had not been locked.
I stood there for a time. The hands of my watch showed six-twenty. I leaned against the chain-link fence of the vacant lot across the street, observing the building. It was a typical two-floor wood-frame apartment building. The look of the entrance and the layout of the rooms gave it away. I had lived in a building like this for a time when I was a student. There had been a shoe cabinet in the entryway, a shared toilet, a little kitchen, and only students or single working people lived there. This particular building, though, gave no sense of anyone living there. It was totally devoid of sound or movement. The plastic-veneer door carried no nameplate. Where it had apparently been removed, there was a long, narrow blank spot. All the windows of the place were shut tight, with curtains drawn, despite the lingering afternoon heat.
This apartment house, like its neighbors, was probably scheduled for demolition soon, and no one lived there any longer. But if that was true, what was the man with the guitar case doing here? I expected to see a window slide open after he went inside, but still nothing moved.
I couldn't just go on hanging around forever in this deserted alley. I walked over to the front door and gave it a push. I had been right: it was not locked, and it opened easily to the inside. I stood in the doorway a moment, trying to get a sense of the place, but I could hardly make out anything in the gloomy interior. With the windows all closed, the place was filled with hot, stale air. The moldy smell here reminded me of the air at the bottom of the well. My armpits were streaming in the heat. A drop of sweat ran down behind my ear. After a moments hesitation, I stepped inside and quietly closed the door behind me. By checking the name tags (if there were any) on the mailboxes or the shoe cabinet, I intended to see if anyone was still living here, but before I could do so I realized that someone was there. Someone was watching me.
Immediately to the right of the entrance stood a tall shoe cabinet or some such thing, and the someone was standing just beyond it, as if to hide. I held my breath and peered into the gloomy warmth. The person standing there was the young man with the guitar case. He had obviously been hiding behind the shoe cabinet from the time he came inside. My heart pounded at the base of my throat like a hammer smashing a nail. What was he doing there? Waiting for me?
Hello there, I forced myself to say. I was hoping to ask you- But the words were barely out of my mouth when something slammed into my shoulder. Hard. I couldn't tell what was happening. All I felt at the moment was a physical impact of blinding intensity. I went on standing there, confused. But then, in the next second, I realized what was going on. With the agility of a monkey, the man had leaped out from behind the shoe cabinet and hit me with a baseball bat. While I stood there in shock, he raised the bat again and swung it at me. I tried to dodge, but I was too late. This time the bat hit my left arm. For a moment, the arm lost all feeling. There was no pain, nothing at all. It was as if the whole arm had just melted into space.