Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami
Sachi sits at the keyboard every night, moving her fingers almost automatically, and thinking of nothing else. Only the sounds of the piano pass through her mind—in one door and out the other. When she is not playing, she thinks about the three weeks she spends in Hanalei at the end of autumn. She thinks about the sound of the incoming waves and the sighing of the iron trees. The clouds carried along by the trade winds, the albatrosses sailing across the sky, their huge wings spread wide. And she thinks about what surely must await her there. That is all there is for her to think about now. Hanalei Bay.
—TRANSLATED BY JAY RUBIN
WHERE I’M LIKELY TO FIND IT
My husband’s father was run over by a streetcar three years ago and died,” the woman said, and paused.
I didn’t say a word, just looked her right in the eyes and nodded twice. During the pause, I glanced at the half-dozen pencils in the pen tray, checking to see how sharp they were. Like a golfer carefully selecting the right club, I deliberated over which one to use, finally picking one that wasn’t too sharp, or too worn, but just right.
“The whole thing’s a little embarrassing,” the woman said.
Keeping my opinion to myself, I laid a memo pad in front of me and tested the pencil by writing down the date and the woman’s name.
“There aren’t many streetcars left in Tokyo,” she went on.
“They’ve switched to buses most everywhere. The few that are left are kind of a memento of the past, I guess. And it was one of those that killed my father-in-law.” She gave a silent sigh. “This was the night of October first, three years ago. It was pouring that night.”
I noted down the basics of her story. Father-in-law, three years ago, streetcar, heavy rain, October 1, night. I like to take great care when I write, so it took a while to note all this down.
“My father-in-law was completely drunk at the time. Otherwise, he obviously wouldn’t have fallen asleep on a rainy night on the streetcar tracks.”
She fell silent again, lips closed, her eyes steadily gazing at me. She was probably wanting me to agree with her.
“He must have been pretty drunk,” I said.
“So drunk he passed out.”
“Did your father-in-law often drink that much?”
“You mean did he often drink so much that he passed out?”
I nodded.
“He did get drunk every once in a while,” she admitted. “But not all the time, and never so drunk that he’d fall asleep on the streetcar tracks.”
How drunk would you have to be to fall asleep on the rails of a streetcar line? I wondered. Was the amount a person drank the main issue? Or did it have more to do with why he was getting drunk in the first place?
“What you’re saying is that he got drunk sometimes, but usually not falling-down drunk?” I asked.
“That’s the way I see it,” she replied.
“May I ask your age, if you don’t mind?”
“You want to know how old I am?”
“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
The woman rubbed the bridge of her nose with her index finger. It was a lovely, perfectly straight nose. My guess was she had recently had plastic surgery. I used to go out with a woman who had the same habit. She’d had a nose job, and whenever she was thinking about something she rubbed the bridge with her index finger. As if she were making sure her brand-new nose was still there. Looking at this woman in front of me now brought on a mild case of déjà vu. Which, in turn, conjured up vague memories of oral sex.
“I’m not trying to hide my age or anything,” the woman said. “I’m thirty-five.”
“And how old was your father-in-law when he died?”
“Sixty-eight.”
“What did he do? His job, I mean.”
“He was a priest.”
“By priest you mean a Buddhist priest?”
“That’s right. A Buddhist priest. Of the Jodo sect. He was head of a temple in the Toshima Ward.”
“That must have been a real shock,” I said.
“That my father-in-law was run over by a streetcar?”
“Yes.”
“Of course it was a shock. Especially for my husband,” the woman said.
I noted some more things down on my memo pad. Priest, Jodo sect, 68.
The woman was sitting at one end of my love seat. I was in my swivel chair behind my desk. Two yards separated us. She had on a sharp-looking sage green suit. Her legs were beautiful, and her stockings matched her black high-heeled shoes. The stilettos looked like some kind of deadly weapon.
“So what you’ve come to ask me,” I said, “concerns your husband’s late father?”
“No. It’s not about him,” she said. She shook her head slightly a couple of times to emphasize the negative. “It’s about my husband.”
“Is he also a priest?”
“No, he works at Merrill Lynch.”
“The investment firm?”
“That’s right,” she replied, clearly a little irritated. What other Merrill Lynch is there? her tone implied. “He’s a stockbroker.”
I checked the tip of my pencil to see how worn it was, then waited for her to continue.
“My husband is an only son, and he was more interested in stock-trading than Buddhism, so he didn’t succeed his father as head priest of the temple.”
Which all makes perfect sense, don’t you think? her eyes said, but since I didn’t have an opinion one way or the other regarding Buddhism or stock-trading, I didn’t respond. Instead, I adopted a neutral expression that indicated that I was absorbing every word.
“After my father-in-law passed away, my mother-in-law moved into an apartment in our condo, in Shinagawa. A different unit in the same building. My husband and I live on the twenty-sixth floor, and she’s on the twenty-fourth. She lives alone. She’d lived in the temple with her husband, but after another priest came to take over she had to move. She’s sixty-three. And my husband, I should add, is forty. He’ll be forty-one next month, if nothing’s happened to him, that is.”
I made a memo of it all. Mother-in-law 24th floor, 63. Husband, 40, Merrill Lynch, 26th floor, Shinagawa. The woman waited patiently for me to finish.
“After my father-in-law died, my mother-in-law started having panic attacks. They seem to be worse when it’s raining, probably because her husband died on a rainy night. A fairly common thing, I imagine.”
I nodded.
“When the symptoms are bad, it’s like a screw’s come loose in her head. She calls us and my husband goes down the two floors to her place to take care of her. He tries to calm her down, to convince her that everything’s going to be all right. If my husband’s not at home, then I go.”
She paused, waiting for my reaction. I kept quiet.
“My mother-in-law’s not a bad person. I don’t have any negative feelings toward her. It’s just that she’s the nervous type, and has always relied too much on other people. Do you understand the situation?”
“I think so,” I said.
She crossed her legs, waiting for me to write something new on my pad. But I didn’t write anything down.
“She called us at ten one Sunday morning. Two Sundays—ten days—ago.”
I glanced at my desk calendar. “Sunday the third of September?”
“That’s right, the third. My mother-in-law called us at ten that morning,” the woman said. She closed her eyes as if recalling it. If we were in a Hitchcock movie, the screen would have started to ripple at this point and we’d have segued into a flashback. But this was no movie, and no flashback was forthcoming. She opened her eyes and went on. “My husband answered the phone. He’d been planning to play golf, but it had been raining hard since dawn, so he canceled. If only it hadn’t been raining, this never would have happened. I know I’m just second-guessing myself.”
September 3rd, golf, rain, canceled, mother-in-law—phoned. I wrote it all down.
“My mother-in-law said that she w
“What was he wearing?” I asked.
She rubbed her nose again lightly. “Chinos and a short-sleeved polo shirt. His shirt was dark gray. The trousers were cream-colored. Both items we’d bought from the J.Crew catalogue. My husband’s nearsighted and always wears glasses. Metal-framed Armanis. His shoes were gray New Balance. He didn’t have any socks on.”
I noted down all the details.
“Do you want to know his height and weight?”
“That would help,” I said.
“He’s five-eight, and weighs about one fifty-eight. Before we got married, he weighed about one thirty-five, but he’s put on some weight.”
I wrote down this information. I checked the tip of my pencil and exchanged it for another. I held the new pencil for a while, getting used to the feel.
“Do you mind if I go on?” she asked.
“Not at all,” I said.
She uncrossed and recrossed her legs. “I was getting ready to make pancakes when his mother called. I always make pancakes on Sunday morning. If he doesn’t play golf on Sundays, my husband eats a lot of pancakes. He loves them, with some crisp bacon on the side.”
No wonder the guy put on twenty pounds, I thought.
“Twenty-five minutes later my husband called me. He said his mother had settled down and he was on his way upstairs. ‘I’m starving,’ he told me. ‘Get breakfast ready so I can eat as soon as I get there.’ So I heated up the frying pan and started cooking the pancakes and bacon. I heated up the maple syrup as well. Pancakes aren’t difficult to make—it’s all a matter of timing and doing everything in the right order. I waited and waited, but he didn’t come home. The stack of pancakes on his plate was getting cold. I phoned my mother-in-law and asked her if my husband was still there. She said he’d left a long time ago.”
She brushed off an imaginary, metaphysical piece of lint on her skirt, just above the knee.
“My husband disappeared. He vanished into thin air. And I haven’t heard from him since. He disappeared somewhere between the twenty-fourth and twenty-sixth floors.”
“You contacted the police?”
“Of course I did,” she said, her lips curling a little in irritation. “When he wasn’t back by one o’clock, I phoned the police. But they didn’t put much effort into looking for him. A patrolman from the local police station came over, but when he saw there was no sign of a violent crime he couldn’t be bothered. ‘If he isn’t back in two days,’ he said, ‘go to the precinct and file a missing-persons report.’ The police seem to think that my husband wandered off somewhere on the spur of the moment, as if he were fed up with his life and just took off. But that’s ridiculous. I mean, think about it. My husband went down to his mother’s completely empty-handed—no wallet, driver’s license, credit cards, no watch. He hadn’t even shaved, for God’s sake. And he’d just phoned me and told me to get the pancakes ready. Somebody who’s running away from home wouldn’t call and ask you to make pancakes, would he?”
“You’re absolutely right,” I agreed. “But, tell me, when your husband went down to the twenty-fourth floor, did he take the stairs?”
“He never uses the elevator. He hates elevators. Says he can’t stand being cooped up in a confined place like that.”
“Still, you chose to live on the twenty-sixth floor of a high-rise?”
“We did. But he always uses the stairs. He doesn’t seem to mind—he says it’s good exercise and helps him to keep his weight down. Of course, it does take time.”
Pancakes, twenty pounds, stairs, elevator, I noted on my pad.
“So that’s the situation,” she said. “Will you take the case?”
No need to think about it. This was exactly the kind of case I’d been hoping for. I went through the motions of checking my schedule, though, and pretended to be shuffling a few things around. If you instantly agree to take a case, the client might suspect some ulterior motive.
“Luckily I’m free until later this afternoon,” I said, shooting my watch a glance. It was eleven thirty-five. “If you don’t mind, could you take me over to your building now? I’d like to see the last place you saw your husband.”
“I’d be happy to,” the woman said. She gave a small frown. “Does this mean you’re taking the case?”
“It does,” I replied.
“But we haven’t talked about the fee yet.”
“I don’t need any money.”
“I’m sorry?” she said, looking steadily at me.
“I don’t charge anything,” I explained, and smiled.
“But isn’t this your job?”
“No, it isn’t. This isn’t my profession. I’m just a volunteer, so I don’t get paid.”
“A volunteer?”
“Correct.”
“Still, you’ll need something for expenses…”
“No expenses needed. I’m totally a volunteer, so I can’t accept payment of any kind.”
The woman still looked perplexed.
“Fortunately, I have another source of income that provides enough to live on,” I explained. “I’m not doing this for the money. I’m just very interested in locating people who’ve disappeared. Or more precisely, people who’ve disappeared in a certain way. I won’t go into that—it’ll only complicate things. But I am pretty good at this sort of thing.”
“Tell me, is there some kind of religion or New Age thing behind all this?” she asked.
“Neither one. I don’t have a connection with any religion or New Age group.”
The woman glanced down at her shoes, perhaps contemplating how—if things got really weird—she might have to use the stiletto heels against me.
“My husband always told me not to trust anything that’s free,” the woman said. “I know this is rude to say, but he insisted there’s always a catch.”
“In most cases, I’d agree with him,” I said. “In our late-stage capitalist world, it’s hard to trust anything that’s free. Still, I hope you’ll trust me. You have to, if we’re going to get anywhere.”
She reached over for her Louis Vuitton purse, opened it with a refined click, and took out a thick sealed envelope. I couldn’t tell how much money was inside, but it looked like a lot.
“I brought something for expenses,” she said.
I shook my head. “I don’t accept any fee, gift, or payment of any kind. That’s the rule. If I did accept a fee or a gift, the actions I’ll be engaged in would be meaningless. If you have extra money and feel uncomfortable with not paying a fee, I suggest you make a donation to a charity—the Humane Society, the Fund for Traffic Victims’ Orphans, whichever group you like. If doing so makes you feel better.”
The woman frowned, took a deep breath, and returned the envelope to her purse. She placed the purse, once more fat and happy, back where it had been. She rubbed her nose again and looked at me, much like a retriever ready to spring forward and fetch a stick.
“The actions you’ll be engaged in,” she said in a somewhat dry tone.
I nodded and returned my worn pencil to the tray.
The woman with the sharp high heels took me to her building. She pointed out the door to her apartment (number 2609) and the door to her mother-in-law’s (number 2417). A broad staircase connected the two floors, and I could see that even a casual stroll between them would take no more than five minutes.
“One of the reasons my husband bought this condo was that the stairs are wide and well lit,” she said. “Most high-rise apartments skimp on the stairs. Wide staircases take up too much space, and, besides, most residents prefer the elevator. Condo developers like to spend their money on places that attract attention—a library, a marble lobby. My husband, though, insisted that the stairs were the critical element—the backbone of a building, he liked to say.
I have to admit, it really was a memorable staircase. On the landing between the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth floors, next to a picture window, there was a sofa, a wall-length mirror, a standing ashtray, and a potted plant. Through the window you could see the bright sky and a couple of clouds drifting by. The window was sealed and couldn’t be opened.
“Is there a space like this on every floor?” I asked.
“No. There’s a little lounge on every fifth floor, not on every floor,” she said. “Would you like to see our apartment and my mother-in-law’s?”
“Not right now.”
“Since my husband disappeared, my mother-in-law’s nerves have taken a turn for the worse,” she said. She fluttered her hand. “It was quite a shock for her, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
“Of course,” I agreed. “I don’t think I’ll have to bother her.”
“I really appreciate that. And I’d like it if you would keep this from the neighbors, too. I haven’t told anyone that my husband has vanished.”
“Understood,” I said. “Do you usually use these stairs yourself?”
“No,” she said, raising her eyebrows slightly, as if she’d been unreasonably criticized. “Normally I take the elevator. When my husband and I are going out together, he leaves first and then I take the elevator and we meet up in the lobby. And when we come home, I take the elevator by myself and he comes up on foot. It’d be dangerous to attempt all these stairs in heels, and it’s hard on you physically.”
“I imagine so.”
I wanted to investigate things on my own, so I asked her to go have a word with the building super. “Tell him that the guy wandering around between the twenty-fourth and twenty-sixth floors is doing an insurance investigation,” I instructed her. “If someone thinks I’m a thief casing the place and calls the police, that would put me in a bit of a spot. I don’t have any real reason to be loitering here, after all.”
“I’ll tell him,” the woman said. She disappeared up the stairs. The sound of her heels rang out like the pounding of nails to post some ominous proclamation, then gradually faded into silence. I was left alone.