11



Hunger as Pain
*
K u m i k o ' s Long Letter
*


Bird as Prophet



I fell asleep a few times and woke up just as often. These were short, unsettled snatches of
sleep, as on an airplane. Whenever deep sleep was about to arrive, I would shrink back and
wake up; whenever full wakefulness was about to arrive, I would drift off into sleep, in
endless repetition. Without changes in the light, time wobbled by like a wagon with a loose
axle. My cramped, unnatural posture robbed my body of rest in small, accumulating doses.
Each time I woke, I would check the time on my watch. Its pace was heavy and uneven.
With nothing better to do, I would pick up the flashlight and shine it at random-at the
ground, at the walls, at the well cover. What I found there was always the same ground, the
same walls, the same well cover. The shadows cast by the moving beam would sway, stretch
and shrink, swell and contract. When I tired of this, I would spend time feeling my face,
probing every line and crevice, examining my features anew to learn their shape. I had never
been seriously concerned about the shape of my ears before this. If someone had told me to
draw a picture of my own ears-even a rough sketch-I would have been at a loss. Now, though,
I would have been able to reproduce every hollow and curve in accurate detail. I found it odd
how different the ears were. I had no idea how this had come about or what effect this lack of
symmetry might have (it probably had some effect).
The hands of my watch showed seven twenty-eight. I must have looked at my watch some
two thousand times since coming down here. Now it was seven twenty-eight at night, that
much was certain; at a ball game, it would be the bottom of the third or the top of the fourth.
When I was a kid, I used to like to sit up high in the outfield stands and watch the summer day
trying not to end. The sun had sunk below the western horizon, but the afterglow was still
brilliant and beautiful. The stadium lights stretched their long shadows across the field as if to
hint at something. First one and then another light would be turned on with the utmost caution
shortly after the game got going. Still, there was enough light in the sky to read a newspaper
by. The memory of the long day's glow remained at the door to keep the summer night from
entering.
With patience and persistence, though, the artificial illumination was winning its quiet
victory over the light of the sun, bringing forth a flood of festive colors. The brilliant green of
the playing field, the handsome black earth, the straight white lines newly drawn upon it, the
glinting varnish on the bats of players waiting for their turn at the plate, the cigarette smoke
floating in the beams of light (looking, on windless days, like souls wandering in search of
someone to take them in)-all these would begin to show up with tremendous clarity. The
young beer sellers would hold their hands up in the light, flashing bills tucked between their
fingers. The crowd would rise from their seats to follow the path of a high fly ball, their
voices rising with its arc or dissolving into a sigh. Small flocks of birds returning to their
roosts would fly past toward the sea. This was the stadium at seven-thirty in the evening.
I thought about the baseball games I had seen over the years. The Saint Louis Cardinals
had come to Japan once, when I was little, for a friendship game. I had seen that one with my
father from an infield seat. Before the game itself, the Cardinals players stood along the
perimeter of the field with baskets full of autographed tennis balls, throwing them into the
stands as fast as they could. People went crazy trying to grab a ball for themselves, but I just
stayed in my seat without moving, and before I knew it, I had a ball in my lap. It was a
magical happening: strange and sudden.
I looked at my watch again. Seven thirty-six. Eight minutes had gone by since the last
look. Just eight minutes. I took the watch off and held it against my ear. It was ticking away
just fine. I shrugged my shoulders in the darkness. Something strange was happening to my
sense of time. I decided not to look at my watch for a while. Maybe I didn't have anything


else to do, but it wasn't healthy to be looking at a watch this often. I had to make a
tremendous effort to keep myself from looking, though. The pain was like what I had felt
when I quit smoking. From the moment I decided to give up thinking about time, my mind
could think of nothing else. It was a kind of contradiction, a schizoid split. The more I tried to
forget about time, the more I was compelled to think about it. Before I knew it, my eyes
would be seeking out the watch on my left wrist. Whenever this happened, I would avert my
face, close my eyes, and struggle not to look. I ended up taking the watch off and stuffing it
into my knapsack. Even so, my mind went on groping for the watch inside the pack, where it
continued to tick off the time.
And so time flowed on through the darkness, deprived of advancing watch hands: time
undivided and unmeasured. Once it lost its points of demarcation, time ceased being a
continuous line and became instead a kind of formless fluid that expanded or contracted at
will. Within this kind of time, I slept and woke and slept and woke, and became slowly and
increasingly accustomed to life without timepieces. I trained my body to realize that I no
longer needed time. But soon I was feeling tremendous anxiety. True, I had been liberated
from the nervous habit of checking my watch every five minutes, but once the frame of
reference of time faded completely away, I began to feel as if I had been flung into the ocean
at night from the deck of a moving ship. No one noticed my screams, and the boat continued
its forward advance, moving farther and farther away until it was about to fade from view.
Abandoning the effort, I took the watch from the knapsack and returned it to my wrist.
The hands were pointing to six-fifteen. Probably six-fifteen a.m. The last time I had looked at
my watch, it had been seven thirty-six. Seven thirty-six at night. It seemed reasonable to
conclude that eleven hours had gone by since then. It could hardly have been twenty-three
hours. But I could not be sure. What was the essential difference between eleven hours and
twenty-three hours? Whichever it was- eleven or twenty-three-my hunger had become far
more intense. The sensation was nothing like what I had vaguely imagined an intense hunger
to be. I had assumed that hunger would be a feeling of absence. Instead, it was closer to pure
physical pain-utterly physical and utterly direct, like being stabbed or throttled. And the pain
was uneven. It lacked consistency. It would rise like a swelling tide until I was on the verge of
fainting, and then it would gradually recede.
To divert my attention from these intensely painful hunger pangs, I tried to concentrate
my thoughts on something else. But it was no longer possible for me to do any serious
thinking. Fragmentary thoughts would drift into my mind, then disappear just as quickly as
they had come. Whenever I tried to grab one, it would slip through my fingers like some
slimy, shapeless animal.
I stood up and stretched and took a deep breath. Every part of my body hurt. Every muscle
and joint cried out in pain from having been in an awkward position for so long. I stretched
myself slowly upward, then did some knee bends, but after ten of those I felt dizzy. Sitting
down again on the well floor, I closed my eyes. My ears were ringing, and sweat streamed
down my face. I wanted to hold on to something, but there was nothing to hold on to. I felt
like throwing up, but there was nothing inside me that I could have thrown up. I tried deep
breathing, hoping to refresh my mind by exchanging the air inside my body and giving my
circulation a charge, but the clouds in my mind refused to clear. My body's so weak now, I
thought, and in fact I tried saying the words aloud-"My body's so weak now"-but my mouth
had difficulty forming the words. If only I could see the stars, I thought, but I could not see
stars. May Kasahara had sealed the mouth of the well.
I assumed that May Kasahara would come to the well again sometime during the morning,
but she never did. I spent the time waiting for her to arrive, leaning against the wall. The sick
feeling stayed with me all morning, and my mind had lost the power to concentrate itself on
any thoughts, however briefly. The hunger pangs continued to come and go, and the darkness
around me grew thicker and thinner, and with each new wave another chunk of my ability to


concentrate would be taken away, like furniture being stripped a piece at a time by burglars in
an empty house.
Noon passed, and still May Kasahara did not appear. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep,
hoping to dream of Creta Kano, but my sleep was too shallow for dreams. Not long after I
gave up any effort to concentrate on thinking, all kinds of fragmentary memories began to
visit me. They arrived in silence, like water slowly filling an underground cavern. Places I had
gone, people I had met, wounds I had received, conversations I had had, things I had bought,
things I had lost: I was able to recall them all with great vividness and in amazing detail. I
thought of houses and apartments in which I had lived. I thought of their windows and closets
and furniture and lighting fixtures. I thought of teachers and professors I had had, all the way
from elementary school to college. Few if any of these memories had any connection with
each other. They were minute and meaningless and came in no chronological order. Now and
then, my recollections would be interrupted by another painful wave of hunger. But each
memory was incredibly vivid, jolting me physically with the force of a tornado.
I sat there watching my mind pursue these memories, until it brought to life an incident
that had occurred in the office some three or four years earlier. It had been a stupid, pointless
event, but the more time I filled with recreating its absurd details, the more annoyed I felt,
until the annoyance turned to outright anger. The anger that seized me was so intense that it
blotted out everything else-my fatigue, my hunger, my fears-causing me to tremble physically
and my breath to come in gasps. My heart pounded audibly, and the anger pumped my
bloodstream full of adrenaline. It had been an argument that started from a minor misun-
derstanding. The other guy had flung some nasty phrases at me, and I had managed to have
my say as well, but we both realized how pointless the whole thing had been and apologized
to each other, putting an end to the matter without any lingering hard feelings. These things
happen: you're busy, you're tired, and you let some careless remark slip out. I just forgot
about the whole thing. Down in the pitch blackness at the bottom of the well, though, far
removed from reality, the memory came back to life with searing vividness. I could feel the
heat of it against my skin, hear it sizzling my flesh. Why had my response to such an
outrageous comment been so feeble? Now I came up with all kinds of things I should have
said to the guy. I polished them, sharpened them, and the sharper they got, the angrier I got.
Then, all of a sudden, the possessing demon fell away, and none of this mattered anymore.
Why did I have to warm up stale memories like this? What good did it do? The other guy had
probably forgotten about the argument long since. I certainly had until this moment. I took a
deep breath, let my shoulders droop and my body sink back into the darkness. I tried pursuing
another memory, but once the incredibly intense anger passed, I had run out of memories. My
head was now as empty as my stomach.
Then, before I knew it, I was talking to myself, mumbling fragmentary thoughts that I
didn't know I was having. I couldn't stop myself. I heard my mouth forming words, but I
could hardly understand a thing I was saying. My mouth was moving by itself, automatically,
spinning long strings of words through the darkness, words the meaning of which I could not
grasp. They came out of one darkness, to be sucked into the next. My body was nothing but
an empty tunnel, a conduit for moving the words from there to here. They were definitely
fragments of thought, but thought that was happening outside my consciousness.
What was going on here? Were my nerves beginning to lose it? I looked at my watch. The
hands said three forty-two. Probably three forty-two in the afternoon. I pictured to myself
what the light looked like at three forty-two on a summer afternoon. I imagined myself in that
light. I listened for any sound my ears might pick up, but there was nothing: no cicada or bird
cries, no children's voices. Maybe, while I was down here in the well, the wind-up bird had
not wound the spring, and the world had stopped moving. Bit by bit, the spring had run down,
and at one certain point in time, all movement-the rivers' flow, the stirring of leaves, birds
flying through the sky-had stopped.


What was May Kasahara doing? Why didn't she come? She hadn't shown up here for a
very long time. The thought struck me that something terrible might have happened to her-a
traffic accident, say. In which case, there was no longer anyone in the world who knew I was
down here. And I really would die a slow death in the bottom of the well. I decided to look at
things differently. May Kasahara was not such a careless person. She was not about to let
herself get run over so easily. She was probably in her room now, scanning this yard every
once in a while with her binoculars and imagining me down here in the well. She was doing
this on purpose: letting a lot of time go by to give me a scare, to make me feel abandoned.
That was my guess. And if she was purposely letting a lot of time go by, then her plan was
succeeding admirably. I really was scared. I did feel abandoned. Whenever the thought struck
me that I might very well just rot down here in the dark over a long period of time, I could
hardly breathe with the fear that gripped me. The more time that went by, the more I would
weaken, until my hunger pangs became violent enough to kill me. Before that happened,
though, I might lose the ability to move my body at will. Even if someone were to lower the
rope ladder to me, I might not be able to climb it. All my hair and teeth might fall out.
Then it occurred to me to worry about the air. I had been down in the bottom of this deep,
narrow concrete tube over two days now, and to make matters worse, the top had been sealed.
There was no circulation to speak of. The air around me suddenly began to feel heavy and
oppressive. I couldn't tell whether this was my imagination playing tricks on me or the air
really was heavier because of the lack of oxygen. To find out, I made several large inhalations
and exhalations, but the more I breathed, the worse it felt. Fear made the sweat gush out of
me. Once I started thinking about the air, death invaded my mind as something real and im-
minent. It rose like black, silent water, seeping into every corner of my consciousness. Until
now, I had been thinking about the possibility of starvation, for which there was still plenty of
time. Things would happen much more quickly if the oxygen gave out.
What would it feel like to die of asphyxiation? How long would it take? Would it be a
slow, agonizing process, or would I gradually lose consciousness and die as if falling asleep?
I imagined May Kasahara coming to the well and finding me dead. She would call out to me
several times, and when there was no answer she would drop a few pebbles into the well,
thinking I was asleep. But I would not wake up. Then she would realize that I was dead.
I wanted to shout for someone. I wanted to scream that I was shut up inside here. That I
was hungry. That the air was going bad. I felt as if I had reverted to being a helpless little
child. I had run away on a whim and would never be able to find my home again. I had
forgotten the way. It was a dream I had had any number of times. It was the nightmare of my
youth-going astray, losing the way home. I had forgotten all about those nightmares years
ago. But now, in the bottom of this deep well, they came to life again with terrible vividness.
Time moved backward in the dark, to be swallowed by a different kind of time.
I took the canteen from my knapsack, unscrewed the top, and, with the greatest care, so as
not to spill a single drop, let a small amount of water find its way into my mouth. I kept it
there for a long time, savoring the moisture, then swallowed it as slowly as possible. A loud
sound came from my throat as the water passed through, as if some hard, heavy object had
fallen to the floor, but it was just the sound I made by swallowing a few drops of water.



"Mr. Okada!"
Someone was calling me. I heard the voice in my sleep. "Mr. Okada! Mr. Okada! Please
wake up!"
It sounded like Creta Kano. I managed to open my eyes, but that changed nothing. I was
still surrounded by darkness and couldn't see a thing. There was no clear border between
sleep and wakefulness. I tried to raise myself, but there was not enough strength in my


fingers. My body felt cold and shriveled and dull, like a cucumber long forgotten in the back
of the refrigerator. My mind was wrapped tight in exhaustion and weakness. I don't care, do
what you want, I'll get a hard-on in my mind again and come in reality. Go ahead, if that's
what you want. In my clouded consciousness, I waited for her hands to loosen my belt. But
Creta Kano's voice was coming from somewhere far overhead. "Mr. Okada! Mr. Okada!" it
called. I looked up, to find half the well cover open and above it a beautiful, starry sky, a sky
shaped like a half-moon.
"I'm here!"
I raised myself and managed to stand. Looking up, I shouted again,
"I'm here!"
"Mr. Okada!" said the real Creta Kano. "Are you down there?"
"Yes, I'm here!"
"How did that happen?"
"It's a long story."
"I'm sorry, I can't hear you very well. Can you speak a little louder?"
"It's a long story!" I shouted. "I'll tell you about it after I get out of here. Right now, I
can't speak very loudly."
"Is this your rope ladder up here?"
"Yes, it is."
"How did you manage to raise it from there? Did you throw it?"
"Of course not!" Why would I have done such a thing? How could I have done such a
thing? "Of course not! Somebody pulled it up without telling me."
"But that would just make it impossible for you to get out of there."
"Of course it would," I said, as patiently as I could manage. "That's what happened. I
can't get out of here. So can you do me a favor and let the ladder down? That way, I can get
out."
'"Yes, of course. I'll do it now."
"Wait a minute! Before you let it down, can you make sure it's anchored to the base of the
tree? Otherwise-"
But she was not responding. It seemed there was no one there anymore. I focused as hard
as I could on the well mouth, but I couldn't see anyone. I took the flashlight from my sack
and aimed its beam aloft, but the light caught no human form. What it did reveal was the rope
ladder, hanging where it belonged, as if it had been there all the time. I released a deep sigh,
and as it left me, I felt a hard knot at the core of my body relax and melt away.
"Hey, there! Creta Kano!" I shouted, but there was still no answer.
The hands on my watch showed one-oh-seven. One-oh-seven at night, of course. The stars
twinkling overhead told me that much. I slipped my knapsack on my back, took one deep
breath, and started up. The unstable rope ladder was difficult to climb. With each exertion,
every muscle, every bone and joint in my body, creaked and cried out. I took one careful step
at a time, and soon there was a growing hint of warmth in the surrounding air, and then a
distinct smell of grass. The cries of insects reached me now. I got my hands on the edge of the
well curb and with one last effort pulled myself over, all but rolling onto the soft surface of
the earth. That was it: I was aboveground again. For a while, I simply lay there on my back,
thinking of nothing. I looked up at the sky and sucked the air deep into my lungs over and
over-the thick, warmish air of a summer night, filled with the fresh smell of life. I could smell
the earth, smell the grass. The smell alone was enough to give my palms the soft sensation of
touching the earth and the grass. I wanted to take them both in my hands and devour them.
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.
This is not to say that I was entirely free of thoughts about getting even with you. It still
rankled me that you had once spent the night with a certain woman. I believed you when you
said that you hadn't done anything with her, but the mere fact that you hadn't done anything
with her didn't make it right. It was just how I felt. But still, I didn't have an affair in order to
get even with you. I remember I once said I would, but that was only a threat. I slept with him
because I wanted to sleep with him. Because 1 couldn't bear not to sleep with him. Because I
couldn't suppress my own sexual desire.
We had not seen each other for some time, when we met on a business matter. We
followed this with dinner and then went somewhere for a quick drink. Since I can't drink, of


course, all I had, to be sociable, was a glass of orange juice without a drop of alcohol in it. So
alcohol had nothing to do with what happened. We were just talking and eating in the most
ordinary way. But then one moment, by accident, we touched, and all I could think of was that
I wanted to be in his arms. The instant we touched, I knew that he wanted my body, and he
seemed to sense that I wanted his. It was a totally irrational, overwhelming charge of
electricity that passed between us. I felt as if the sky had fallen on me. My cheeks were
burning, my heart was pounding, and I had a heavy, melting feeling below the waist. I could
hardly sit straight on the barstool, it was so intense. At first I didn't realize what was
happening inside me, but soon I realized it was lust. I had such a violent desire for him that I
could hardly breathe. Without either of us being the first to suggest it, we walked to a nearby
hotel and went wild with sex.
Writing it out as graphically as this is probably going to hurt you, but I believe that, in the
long run, an honest, detailed account will be the best thing. It may be hard, but I want you to
bear the pain and read on.
What I did with him had virtually nothing to do with "love." All I wanted was to be held
by him and have him inside me. Never in my life had I experienced such a suffocating need for
a man's body. I had read about "unbearable desire" in books, but until that day I could never
really imagine what such a phrase meant.
Why this need arose in me so suddenly, why it happened not with you but with someone
else, I have no idea. But the desire I felt then was impossible to suppress, nor did I even try.
Please understand: not for a moment did it occur to me that I was betraying you in any way.
The sex I had in that hotel bed with him was something close to madness. To be totally honest,
I had never in my life felt anything so good. No, it wasn't that simple: it didn't just "feel
good." My flesh was rolling in hot mud. My mind sucked in the sheer pleasure to the point of
bursting-and then it burst. It was absolutely miraculous. It was one of the most wonderful
things that had ever happened to me.
And then, as you know, I kept it hidden all that time. You never realized that I was having
an affair. You never doubted me, even when I began coming home late. I'm sure you trusted
me completely. You thought I could never betray you. And for betraying this trust of yours, I
had no sense of guilt. I would call you from the hotel room and say that work was going to
keep me out late. I piled one lie on top of another, but they caused me no pain. It seemed like
the most natural thing in the world to do. My heart needed my life with you. The home I
shared with you was the place where I belonged. It was the world I belonged to. But my body
had this violent need for sex with him. Half of me was here, and half there. I knew that sooner
or later the break would have to come, but at the time, it felt as if this double life would go on
forever. Over here I was living peacefully with you, and over there I was making violent love
with him.
I want you to understand one thing, at least. This was never a matter of your being
sexually inferior to him or lacking in sex appeal, or my being tired of sex with you. It was just
that, at that time, my body experienced this violent, irrepressible hunger. I could do nothing
to resist it. Why such things happen I have no idea. All I can say is that it did happen. A few
times during the weeks that I was sleeping with him, I thought about having sex with you too.
It seemed unfair to me, for your sake, that I would sleep with him but not with you. But in
your arms, I had ceased to feel anything at all. You must have noticed. For close to two
months, I made up all kinds of excuses to avoid having sexual relations with you.
But then one day, he asked me to leave you for him. We were so perfectly matched, he
said, that there was no reason for us not to be together. He would leave his family, he said. I
asked him to give me time to think about it. But on the train home after I left him that night, I
realized that I no longer felt a thing for him. I don't understand it myself, but the moment he
asked me to join him, that special something inside me disappeared as if a strong wind had
come up and blown it away. My desire for him was gone without a trace.


That was when I started to feel guilty toward you. As I wrote earlier, I had felt nothing of
the sort the whole time I was feeling intense desire for him. All 1 had felt was how convenient
it was that you had noticed nothing. I thought I could get away with anything, as (ong as you
failed to notice. My connection with him belonged to a different world from my connection
with you. After my desire for him evaporated, though, I no longer knew where I was.
1 have always thought of myself as an honest person. True, I have my faults. But where
important things were concerned, I had never lied to anyone or deceived myself. 1 had never
hidden anything from you. That had been one small source of pride for me. But then, for
months, 1 went on telling you those fatal lies without a twinge of regret.
That very fact is what started to torment me. It made me feel as if I were an empty,
meaningless, worthless person. And in fact, that is probably what I am. But there is one other
thing, in addition, that continues to bother me, and that is: how did I suddenly come to feel
such intense, abnormal sexual desire for a man I didn't even love? This is what I simply
cannot grasp. If it hadn't been for that desire, I would still be enjoying my happy life with
you. And that man would still be a nice friend to chat with on occasion. But that feeling, that
incredible, overwhelming lust, tore down everything we had built up over the years. It took
away everything that was mine: it took away you, and the home that we had made together,
and my work. Why did such a thing have to happen?
After I had my abortion three years ago, I told you that there was something I had to say
to you. Do you remember? Perhaps I should have done it. Perhaps I should have told you
everything that was in my heart before things came to this. This might never have happened if
I had done so. But now that it has happened- even now-I don't believe that I would be able to
tell you what I was feeling then. And that is because it seems to me that once I put it into
words, things would be even more decisively ruined than they are now. Which is why 1 came
to feel that the best thing I could do was to swallow it all and disappear.
I am sorry to have to tell you this, but the fact is that I was never able to have true sexual
pleasure with you, either before or after we were married. I loved it when you held me in your
arms, but all I ever felt was a vague, far-off sense that almost seemed to belong to someone
else. This is in no way your fault. My inability to feel was purely and simply my own
responsibility. There was some kind of blockage inside me, which would always hold any
sexual feeling 1 had in check. When, for reasons I cannot grasp, that blocfeage was swept
away by sex with him, I no longer had any idea what I should do.
There was always something very close and delicate between us, you and me. It was there
from the very beginning. But now it has been lost forever. That perfect meshing of the gears,
that mythical something, has been destroyed. Because I destroyed it. Or more accurately,
some kind of something made me destroy it. I am terribly sorry it ever happened. Not
everyone is lucky enough to have such a chance as I had with you. I hate the thing that caused
all this to happen. You have no idea how much I hate it. I want to know precisely what it is. I
have to know precisely what it is. I have to search out its roots and judge and punish it.
Whether I actually have the strength to do so, I cannot be sure. One thing is certain, however:
this is my problem alone. It has nothing to do with you.
I have only one thing to ask of you, and that is this: please don't concern yourself about
me anymore. Please don't try to find me. Just forget about me and think about beginning a
new life. Where my family is concerned, I will do the proper thing: I will write to them and
explain that this is all my fault, that you are in no way responsible. They will not cause you
any trouble. Formal divorce proceedings will begin fairly soon, I think. That will be best for
both of us. So please don't protest. Just go along with them. As far as the clothing and other
things I have left behind are concerned, I'm sorry, but please just dispose of them or donate
them somewhere. Everything belongs to the past now. Anything I ever used in my life with you
I have no right to use now.
Goodbye.



I read the letter one more time from beginning to end and returned it to its envelope. Then
I took another can of beer from the refrigerator and drank it.
If Kumiko was planning to institute divorce proceedings, that meant she had no intention
of killing herself right away. That gave me some relief. But then I ran up against the fact that I
had not had sex with anyone for almost two months. As she had said in her letter, Kumiko had
resisted sleeping with me all that time. She had symptoms of a mild bladder infection, she
said, and the doctor had told her to refrain from sex for a while. And of course I had believed
her. I had no reason not to.
During those two months, I had had relations with women in my dreams- or in some
world that, within the limits of my vocabulary, I could only call a dream- with Creta Kano
and with the telephone woman. But now that I thought about it, two months had gone by since
the last time I had slept with a real woman in the real world. Lying on the sofa, staring at my
own hands atop my chest, I thought about the last time I had seen Kumiko's body. I thought
about the soft curve of her back when I zipped her dress up, and the smell of cologne behind
her ears. If what she said in the letter was the irrevocable truth, however, I would probably
never sleep with Kumiko again. She had written it with such clarity and finality: what else
could it be but the irrevocable truth?
The more I thought about the possibility that my relationship with Kumiko had become a
thing of the past, the more I began to miss the gentle warmth of that body that had once
belonged to me. I had enjoyed sleeping with her. Of course, I had enjoyed it before we were
married, but even after some years had gone by and the initial thrill had faded somewhat, I
enjoyed having sex with Kumiko. Her slender back, the nape of her neck, her legs, her
breasts-I could recall the touch of every part of her with present vividness. I could recall all
the things I had done for her and she had done for me in the course of our sexual union.
But now Kumiko had joined her body with that of someone I did not know-and with an
intensity I could hardly imagine. She had discovered in that a pleasure she had been unable to
obtain from sex with me. Probably, while she was doing it with him, she had squirmed and
writhed enough to make the bed toss and had released groans loud enough to be audible in the
next room. She had probably done things with him that she would never have done with me. I
went and opened the refrigerator, took out a beer, and drank it. Then I ate some potato salad.
Wanting to hear music, I turned on the FM radio, tuning in to a classical station at low
volume. "I'm so tired today," Kumiko would say. "I'm just not in the mood. I'm sorry.
Really."
I'd answer, "That's OK, no big deal." When Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings ended, a
little piano piece came on that sounded like something by Schumann. It was familiar, but I
couldn't recall the title. When it was over, the female announcer said it had been the seventh
of Schumann's Forest Scenes, titled "Bird as Prophet." I imagined Kumiko twisting her hips
beneath the other man, raising her legs, planting her fingernails in his back, drooling on the
sheets. The announcer explained that Schumann had created a scene of fantasy in which a
mysterious bird lived in the forest, foretelling the future.
What had I ever known about Kumiko? Soundlessly, I crushed the empty beer can in my
hand and threw it into the trash. Could it be true that the Kumiko I had thought I understood,
the Kumiko I had held close to me and joined my body with over the years as my wife-that
Kumiko was nothing but the most superficial layer of the person Kumiko herself, just as the
greater part of this world belongs in fact to the realm of the jellyfish? If so, what about those
six years we had spent together? What had they been? What had they meant?



I was reading Kumiko's letter yet again when the phone rang. The sound shot me out of


the sofa. Who could possibly be calling at two in the morning? Kumiko? No, she would never
call here. Probably May Kasahara. She had seen me leave the empty house and decided to
give me a call. Or possibly Creta Kano. She wanted to explain why she had disappeared. It
could be the telephone woman. She might be trying to convey some message to me. May
Kasahara had been right: there were just a few too many women around me. I wiped the sweat
from my face with a towel that lay nearby, and when I was ready I lifted the receiver. "Hello,"
I said. "Hello," came the voice from the other end. It did not belong to May Kasahara. Neither
was it Creta Kano's voice, or the voice of the enigmatic woman. It was Malta Kano.
"Hello," she said, "is that Mr. Okada? My name is Malta Kano. I wonder if you remember
me?"
"Of course. I remember you very well," I said, trying to still the pounding of my heart.
How could I not have remembered her?
"I must apologize for telephoning you so late at night. This is something of an emergency,
however. I fully recognized what a rude intrusion this would be and how angry it would make
you, but I felt compelled to place the call nevertheless. I am terribly sorry."
She need not be concerned, I assured her: I was up, in any case, and not the least bit
bothered.