three feet high, and close by grew a single old tree, as if standing guard. It was a fruit tree, but I couldn’t tell what kind.
Like most everything else connected with this house, the well looked as though it had been abandoned long before. Something about it felt as if it should be called “overwhelming numbness.” Maybe when people take their eyes off them, inanimate objects become even more inanimate.
Close inspection revealed that the well was in fact far older than theobjects that surrounded it. It had been made in another age, long before the house was built. Even the wooden cap was an antique. The well curb had been coated with a thick layer of concrete, almost certainly to strengthen a structure that had been built long before. The nearby tree seemed to boast of having stood there far longer than any other tree in the area.
I lowered a concrete block to the ground and removed one of the two half-moons that constituted the wooden cap. Hands on the edge of the well, I leaned over and looked down, but I could not see to the bottom. It was obviously a deep well, its lower half swallowed in darkness. I took a sniff. It had a slightly moldy smell.
“It doesn’t have any water,” said May Kasahara.
A well without water. A bird that can’t fly. An alley with no exit. And—
May picked up a chunk of brick from the ground and threw it into the well. A moment later came a small, dry thud. Nothing more. The sound was utterly dry, desiccated, as if you could crumble it in your hands. I straightened up and looked at May Kasahara. “I wonder why it hasn’t got any water. Did it dry up? Did somebody fill it in?”
She shrugged. “When people fill in a well, don’t they fill it all the way to the top? There’d be no point in leaving a dry hole like this. Somebody could fall in and get hurt. Don’t you think?”
“I think you’re right,” I said. “Something probably made the water dry up.”
I suddenly recalled Mr. Honda’s words from long before. “When you’re supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you’re supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom.” So now I had a well if I needed one.
I leaned over the edge again and looked down into the darkness, anticipating nothing in particular. So, I thought, in a place like this, in the middle of the day like this, there existed a darkness as deep as this. I cleared my throat and swallowed. The sound echoed in the darkness, as if someone else had cleared his throat. My saliva still tasted like lemon drops.
•
I put the cover back on the well and set the block atop it. Then I looked at my watch. Almost eleven-thirty. Time to call Kumiko during her lunch break.
“I’d better go home,” I said.
May Kasahara gave a little frown. “Go right ahead, Mr. Wind-Up Bird,” she said. “You fly on home.”
When we crossed the yard, the stone bird was still glaring at the sky with its dry eyes. The sky itself was still filled with its unbroken covering of gray clouds, but at least the rain had stopped. May Kasahara tore off a fistful of grass and threw it toward the sky. With no wind to carry them, the blades of grass dropped to her feet.
“Think of all the hours left between now and the time the sun goes down,” she said, without looking at me.
“True,” I said. “Lots of hours.”
On the Births of Kumiko Okada
and Noboru Wataya
•
Raised as an only child, I find it difficult to imagine how grown siblings must feel when they come in contact with each other in the course of leading their independent lives. In Kumiko’s case, whenever the topic of Noboru Wataya came up, she would get a strange look on her face, as if she had put some odd-tasting thing in her mouth by accident, but
exactly
what that look meant I had no way of knowing. In my own feelings toward her elder brother there was not a trace of anything positive. Kumiko knew this and thought it entirely reasonable. She herself was far
Like most everything else connected with this house, the well looked as though it had been abandoned long before. Something about it felt as if it should be called “overwhelming numbness.” Maybe when people take their eyes off them, inanimate objects become even more inanimate.
Close inspection revealed that the well was in fact far older than theobjects that surrounded it. It had been made in another age, long before the house was built. Even the wooden cap was an antique. The well curb had been coated with a thick layer of concrete, almost certainly to strengthen a structure that had been built long before. The nearby tree seemed to boast of having stood there far longer than any other tree in the area.
I lowered a concrete block to the ground and removed one of the two half-moons that constituted the wooden cap. Hands on the edge of the well, I leaned over and looked down, but I could not see to the bottom. It was obviously a deep well, its lower half swallowed in darkness. I took a sniff. It had a slightly moldy smell.
“It doesn’t have any water,” said May Kasahara.
A well without water. A bird that can’t fly. An alley with no exit. And—
May picked up a chunk of brick from the ground and threw it into the well. A moment later came a small, dry thud. Nothing more. The sound was utterly dry, desiccated, as if you could crumble it in your hands. I straightened up and looked at May Kasahara. “I wonder why it hasn’t got any water. Did it dry up? Did somebody fill it in?”
She shrugged. “When people fill in a well, don’t they fill it all the way to the top? There’d be no point in leaving a dry hole like this. Somebody could fall in and get hurt. Don’t you think?”
“I think you’re right,” I said. “Something probably made the water dry up.”
I suddenly recalled Mr. Honda’s words from long before. “When you’re supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you’re supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom.” So now I had a well if I needed one.
I leaned over the edge again and looked down into the darkness, anticipating nothing in particular. So, I thought, in a place like this, in the middle of the day like this, there existed a darkness as deep as this. I cleared my throat and swallowed. The sound echoed in the darkness, as if someone else had cleared his throat. My saliva still tasted like lemon drops.
•
I put the cover back on the well and set the block atop it. Then I looked at my watch. Almost eleven-thirty. Time to call Kumiko during her lunch break.
“I’d better go home,” I said.
May Kasahara gave a little frown. “Go right ahead, Mr. Wind-Up Bird,” she said. “You fly on home.”
When we crossed the yard, the stone bird was still glaring at the sky with its dry eyes. The sky itself was still filled with its unbroken covering of gray clouds, but at least the rain had stopped. May Kasahara tore off a fistful of grass and threw it toward the sky. With no wind to carry them, the blades of grass dropped to her feet.
“Think of all the hours left between now and the time the sun goes down,” she said, without looking at me.
“True,” I said. “Lots of hours.”
On the Births of Kumiko Okada
and Noboru Wataya
•
Raised as an only child, I find it difficult to imagine how grown siblings must feel when they come in contact with each other in the course of leading their independent lives. In Kumiko’s case, whenever the topic of Noboru Wataya came up, she would get a strange look on her face, as if she had put some odd-tasting thing in her mouth by accident, but
exactly
what that look meant I had no way of knowing. In my own feelings toward her elder brother there was not a trace of anything positive. Kumiko knew this and thought it entirely reasonable. She herself was far
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