5



Hooked on Lemon Drops

*

Flightless Bird and WaterIess Well



After doing the breakfast dishes, I rode my bike to the cleaner's by the station. The
owner- a thin man in his late forties, with deep wrinkles in his forehead- was listening to a
tape of the Percy Faith orchestra on a boom box that had been set on a shelf. It was a
large JVC, with some kind of extra woofers attached and a. mound of cassette tapes
standing by. The orchestra was performing "Tara's Theme," making the most of its lush
string section. The owner himself was in the back of the shop, whistling along with the

music as he ran a steam iron over a shirt, his movements sharp and energetic. I
approached the counter and announced with suitable apologies that I had brought a
necktie in late last year and forgotten to pick it up. To his peaceful little world at nine-
thirty in the morning, this must have been tantamount to the arrival of a messenger
bearing ter rible news in a Greek tragedy.
"No ticket, either, I suppose," he said, in a strangely distant voice. He was talking not
to me but to the calendar on the wall by the counter. The photo for June showed the Alps-
a green valley, cows grazing, a hard- edged white cloud floating against Mont Blanc or
the Matterhorn or something. Then he looked at me with an expression on his face that all
but said, If you were going to forget the damned thing, you should have forgotten it! It
was a direct and eloquent look.
"End of the year, huh? That's a toughie. We're talkin' more than six months ago. All
right, I'll have a look, but don't expect me to find it."
He switched off his iron, set it on the ironing board, and, whistling along with the
theme from A Summer Place, started to rummage through the shelves in the back room.
Back in high school, I had taken my girlfriend to see A Summer Place. It starred Troy
Donahue and Sandra Dee. We saw it in a revival theater on a double bill with Connie
Francis's Follow the Boys. It had been pretty bad, as far as I could remember, but hearing
the music now in a cleaner's, thirteen years later, I could bring back only good memories
from that time.
"That was a blue polka-dot necktie?" asked the owner. "Name Okada?"
"That's it," I said.
"You're in luck."



As soon as I got home, I phoned Kumiko at work. "They had the tie," I said.
"Incredible," she said. "Good for you!"
It sounded artificial, like praise for a son bringing home good grades. This made me
feel uneasy. I should have waited until her lunch break to phone.
"I'm so relieved," she said. "But I've got someone on hold right now. Sorry. Could
you call me back at noon?"
"That I will," I said.
After hanging up, I went out to the veranda with the morning paper. As always, I lay
on my stomach with the want ads spread out before me, taking all the time I needed to
read them from one end to the other, the columns filled with incomprehensible codes and
clues. The variety of professions in this world was amazing, each assigned its place amid
the paper's neat rows, as on a new graveyard map.
As happened each morning, I heard the wind-up bird winding its spring in a treetop
somewhere. I closed the paper, sat up with my back against a post, and looked at the
garden. Soon the bird gave its rasping cry once more, a long creaking sort of sound that
came from the top of the neighbor's pine tree. I strained to see through the branches, but
there was no sign of the bird, only its cry. As always. And so the world had its spring
wound for the day.
Just before ten, it started to rain. Not a heavy rain. You couldn't really be sure it was
raining, the drops were so fine, but if you looked hard, you could tell. The world existed

in two states, raining and nonraining, and there should be a line of demarcation between
the two. I remained seated on the veranda for a while, staring at the line that was
supposed to be there.
What should I do with the time until lunch? Go for a swim at the nearby ward pool or
to the alley to look for the cat? Leaning against the veranda post, watching the rain fall in
the garden, I went back and forth between the two. Pool. Cat.
The cat won. Malta Kano had said that the cat was no longer in the neighborhood. But
that morning I had an indefinable urge to go out and look for it. Cat hunting had become
a part of my daily routine. And be sides, Kumiko might be cheered somewhat to learn that
I had given it a try. I put on my light raincoat. I decided not to take an umbrella. I put on
my tennis shoes and left the house with the key and a few lemon drops in my coat pocket.
I cut across the yard, but just as I set one hand on the cinder- block wall, a phone rang. I
stood still, straining my ears, but I couldn't tell whether it was our phone or a neighbor's.
The minute you leave your house, all phones sound alike. I gave up and climbed over the
wall.
I could feel the soft grass through the thin soles of my tennis shoes. The alley was
quieter than usual. I stood still for a while, holding my breath and listening, but I couldn't
hear a thing. The phone had stopped ringing. I heard no bird cries or street noises. The
sky was painted over, a perfect uniform gray. On days like this the clouds probably
absorbed the sounds from the surface of the earth. And not just sounds. All kinds of
things. Perceptions, for example.
Hands shoved into the pockets of my raincoat, I slipped down the narrow alley.
Where clothes -drying poles jutted out into the lane, I squeezed sid eways between the
walls. I passed directly beneath the eaves of other houses. In this way I made my silent
way down this passage reminiscent of an abandoned canal. My tennis shoes on the grass
made no noise at all. The only real sound I heard on my brief journey was that of a radio
playing in one house. It was tuned to a talk show discussing callers' problems. A middle-
aged man was complaining to the host about his mother- in- law. From the snatches I
caught, the woman was sixty- eight and crazy about horse racing. Once I was past the
house, the sound of the radio began to fade until there was nothing left, as if what had
gradually faded into nothingness was not only the sound of the radio but the middle- aged
man and his horse-obsessed mother-in- law, both of whom must exist somewhere in the
world.
I finally reached the vacant house. It stood there, hushed as ever.
(Against the background of gray, low-hanging clouds, its second-story storm shutters
nailed shut, the house loomed as a dark, shadowy pres ence. It could have been a huge
freighter caught on a reef one stormy night long ago and left to rot. If it hadn't been for
the increased height of the grass since my last visit, I might have believed that time had
stopped in this one particular place. Thanks to the long days of rain, the blades of grass
glowed with a deep -green luster, and they gave off the smell of wild- ness unique to
things that sink their roots into the earth. In the exact center of this sea of grass stood the
bird sculpture, in the very same pose I had seen it in before, with its wings spread, ready
to take off. This was one bird that could never take off, of course. I knew that, and the
bird knew that. It would go on waiting where it had been set until the day it was carted
off or smashed to p ieces. No other possibilities existed for it to leave this garden. The
only thing moving in there was a small white butterfly, fluttering across the grass some

weeks behind season. It made uncertain progress, like a searcher who has forgotten what
he was searching for. After five minutes of this fruitless hunt, the butterfly went off
somewhere.
Sucking on a lemon drop, I leaned against the chain- link fence and looked at the
garden. There was no sign of the cat. There was no sign of anything. The place looked
like a still, stagnant pool in which some enor mous force had blocked the natural flow.
I felt the presence of someone behind me and whirled around. But there was no one.
There was only the fence on the other side of the alley, and the small gate in the fence,
the gate in which the girl had stood. But it was closed now, and in the yard was no trace
of anyone. Everything was damp and silent. And there were the smells: Grass. Rain. My
raincoat. The lemon drop under my tongue, half melted. They all came together in a
single deep breath. I turned to survey my surroundings once more, but there was no one.
Listening hard, I caught the muffled chop of a distant helicopter. People were up there,
flying above the clouds. But even that sound drew off into the distance, and silence
descended once again.
The chain- link fence surrounding the vacant house had a gate, also of chain link, not
surprisingly. I gave it a tentative push. It opened with almost disappointing ease, as if it
were urging me to come in. "No problem," it seemed to be telling me. "Just walk right
in." I didn't have to rely on the detailed knowledge of the law that I had acquired over
eight long years to know that it could be a very serious problem indeed. If a neighbor
spotted me in the vacant house and reported me to the police, they would show up and
question me. I would say I was looking for my cat; it had disappeared, and I was looking
for it all over the neighborhood. They would demand to know my address and
occupation. I would have to tell them I was out of work. That would make them all the
more sus picious. They were probably nervous about left-wing terrorists or some thing,
convinced that left- wing terrorists were on the move all over Tokyo, with hidden arsenals
of guns and homemade bombs. They'd call Kumiko at her office to verify my story.
She'd be upset.
Oh, what the hell. I went in, pulling the gate closed behind me. If something was
going to happen, let it happen. If something wanted to happen, let it happen.
I crossed the garden, scanning the area. My tennis shoes on the grass were as
soundless as ever. There were several low fruit trees, the names of which I did not know,
and a generous stretch of lawn. It was all overgrown now, hiding everything. Ugly
maypop vines had crawled all over two of the fruit trees, which looked as if they had
been strangled to death. The row of osmanthus along the fence had been turned a ghastly
white from a coating of insects' eggs. A stubborn little fly kept buzzing by my ear for a
time.
Passing the stone statue, I walked over to a nested pile of white plastic lawn chairs
under the eaves. The topmost chair was filthy, but the next one down was not bad. I
dusted it off with my hand and sat on it. The overgrown weeds between here and the
fence made it impossible for me to be seen from the alley, and the eaves sheltered me
from the rain. I sat and' whistled and watched the garden receiving its bounty of fine
raindrops. At first I was unaware of what tune I was whistling, but then I realized it was
the overture to Rossini's Thieving Magpie, the same tune I had been whistling when the
strange woman called as I was cooking spaghetti.
Sitting here in the garden like this, with no other people around, looking at the grass

and the stone bird, whistling a tune (badly), I had the feeling that I had returned to my
childhood. I was in a secret place where no one could see me. This put me in a quiet
mood. I felt like throwing a stone- a small stone would be OK- at some target. The stone
bird would be a good one. I'd hit it just hard enough to make a little clunk. I used to play
by myself a lot like that when I was a kid. I'd set up an empty can, back way off, and
throw rocks until the can filled up. I could do it for hours. Just now, though, I didn't have
any rocks at my feet. Oh, well. No place has everything you need.
I pulled up my feet, bent my knees, and rested my chin on my hand. Then I closed my
eyes. Still no sounds. The darkness behind my closed eyelids was like the cloud - covered
sky, but the gray was somewhat deeper. Every few minutes, someone would come and
paint over the gray with a different-textured gray- one with a touch of gold or green or
red. I was impressed with the variety of grays that existed. Human beings were so
strange. All you had to do was sit still for ten minutes, and you could see this amazing
variety of grays.
Browsing through my book of gray color samples, I started whistling again, without a
thought in my head.
"Hey," said someone.
I snapped my eyes open. Leaning to the side, I stretched to see the gate above the
weed tops. It was open. Wide open. Someone had followed me inside. My heart started
pounding.
"Hey," the someone said again. A woman's voice. She stepped out from behind the
statue and started toward me. It was the girl who had been sunbathing in the yard across
the alley. She wore the same light-blue Adidas T- shirt and short pants. Again she walked
with a slight limp. The one thing different from before was that she had taken off her sun-
glasses.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
"Looking for the cat," I said.
"Are you sure? It doesn't look that way to me. You're just sitting there and whistling
with your eyes closed. It'd be kinda hard to find much of anything that way, don't you
think?"
I felt myself blushing.
"It doesn't bother me," she went on, "but somebody who doesn't know you might
think you were some kind of pervert." She paused. "You're not a pervert, are you?"
"Probably not," I said.
She approached me and undertook a careful study of the nested lawn chairs, choosing
one without too much dirt on it and doing one more close inspection before setting it on
the ground and lowering herself into it.
"And your whistling's terrible," she said. "I don't know the tune, but it had no
melody at all. You're not gay, are you?"
"Probably not," I said. "Why?"
"Somebody told me gays are lousy whistlers. Is that true?"
"Who knows? It's probably nonsense."
"Anyway, I don't care even if you are gay or a pervert or anything. By the way,
what's your name? I don't know what to call you."
"Toru Okada," I said. She repeated my name to herself several times. "Not much of a
name, is it?" she said.

"Maybe not," I said. "I've always thought it sounded kind of like some prewar
foreign minister: Toru Okada. See?"
"That doesn't mean anything to me. I hate history. It's my worst sub ject. Anyhow,
never mind. Haven't you got a nickname? Something eas ier than Toru Okada?"
I couldn't recall ever having had a nickname. Never once in my life. Why was that?
"No nickname," I said. "Nothing? 'Bear'? Or 'Frog'?" "Nothing."
"Gee," she said. "Think of something."
"Wind-up bird," I said.
"Wind-up bird?" she asked, looking at me with her mouth open. "What is that?"
"The bird that winds the spring," I said. "Every morning. In the tree-tops. It winds the
world's spring. Creeeak." She went on staring at me.
I sighed. "It just popped into my head," I said. "And there's more. The bird comes
over by my place every day and goes Creeeak in the neighbor's tree. But nobody's ever
seen it."
"That's neat, I guess. So anyhow, you'll be Mr. Wind-Up Bird. That's not very easy
to say, either, but it's way better than Toru Okada."
"Thank you very much."
She pulled her feet up into the chair and put her chin on her knees. "How about your
name?" I asked.
"May Kasahara. May ... like the month of May."
"Were you born in May?"
"Do you have to ask? Can you imagine the confusion if somebody born in June was
named May?"
"I guess you're right," I said. "I suppose you're still out of school?"
"I was watching you for a long time," she said, ignoring my question.
"From my room. With my binoculars. I saw you go in through the gate. I keep a little
pair of binoculars handy, for watching what goes on in the alley. All kinds of people go
through there. I'll bet you didn't know that.
And not just people. Animals too. What were you doing here by yourself all that
time?"
"Spacing out," I said. "Thinking about the old days. Whistling." May Kasahara bit a
thumbnail.
"You're kinda weird," she said.
"I'm not weird. People do it all the time."
"Maybe so, but they don't do it in a neighbor's vacant house. You can stay in your
own yard if all you want to do is space out and think about the old days and whistle." She
had a point there.
"Anyhow, I guess Noboru Wataya never came home, huh?" I shook my head.
"And I guess you never saw him, either, after that?" I asked.
"No, and I was on the lookout for him, too: a brown- striped tiger cat. Tail slightly
bent at the tip. Right?"
From the pocket of her short pants she took a box of Hope regulars land lit up with a
match. After a few puffs, she stared right at me and said, "Your hair's thinning a little,
isn't it?"
My hand moved automatically to the back of my head.
"Not there, silly," she said. "Your front hairline. It's higher than it should be, don't

you think?"
"I never really noticed."
"Well, I did," she said. "That's where you're going to go bald. Your hairline's going
to move up and up like this." She grabbed a handful of her own hair in the front and
thrust her bare forehead in my face. "You'd better be careful."
I touched my hairline. Maybe she was right. Maybe it had receded somewhat. Or was
it my imagination? Something new to worry about.
"What do you mean?" I asked. "How can I be careful?"
"You can't, I guess. There's nothing you can do. There's no way to prevent baldness.
Guys who are going to go bald go bald. When their time comes, that's it: they just go
bald. There's nothing you can do to stop it. They tell you you can keep from going bald
with proper hair care, but that's bullshit. Look at the bums who sleep in Shinjuku Station.
They've all got great heads of hair. You think they're washing it every day with Clinique
or Vidal Sassoon or rubbing Lotion X into it? That's what the cosmetics makers will tell
you, to get your money."
"I'm sure you're right," I said, impressed. "But how do you know so much about
baldness?"
"I've been working part time for a wig company. Quite a while now. You kno w I
don't go to school, and I've got all this time to kill. I've been doing surveys and
questionnaires, that kind of stuff. So I know all about men losing their hair. I'm just
loaded with information."
"Gee," I said.
"But you know," she said, dropping her cigarette butt on the ground and stepping on
it, "in the company I work for, they won't let you say anybody's 'bald.' You have to say
'men with a thinning problem.' 'Bald' is discriminatory language. I was joking around
once and suggested 'gentlemen who are follically challenged,' and boy, did they get mad!
'This is no laughing matter, young lady,' they said. They're so damned seeerious. Did
you know that? Everybody in the whole damned world is so damned serious."
I took out my lemon drops, popped one in my mouth, and offered one to May
Kasahara. She shook her head and took out a cigarette.
"Come to think of it, Mr. Wind -Up Bird," she said, "you were unemployed. Are you
still?"
"Sure am."
"Are you serious about working?"
"Sure am." No sooner had the words left my mouth than I began to wonder how true
they were. "Actually, I'm not so sure," I said. "I think I need time. Time to think. I'm not
sure myself what I need. It's hard to explain."
Chewing on a nail, May Kasahara looked at me for a while. "Tell you what, Mr.
Wind- Up Bird," she said. "Why don't you come to work with me one day? At the wig
company. They don't pay much, but the work's easy, and you can set your own hours.
What do you say? Don't think about it too much, just do it. For a change of pace. It might
help you fig ure out all kinds of things."
She had a point there. "You've got a point there," I said.
"Great!" she said. "Next time I go, I'll come and get you. Now, where did you say
your house is?"
"Hmm, that's a tough one. Or maybe not. You just keep going and going down the

alley, taking all the turns. On the left you'll see a house with a red Honda Civic parked in
back. It's got one of those bumper stick ers 'Let There Be Peace for All the Peoples of the
World.' Ours is the next house, but there's no gate opening on the alley. It's just a cinder -
block wall, and you have to climb over it. It's about chin height on me."
"Don't worry. I can get over a wall that high, no problem."
"Your leg doesn't hurt anymore?"
She exhaled smoke with a little sighing kind of sound and said, "Don't worry. It's
nothing. I limp when my parents are around because I don't want to go to school. I'm
faking. It just sort of turned into a habit. I do it even when nobody's looking, when I'm in
my room all by myself. I'm a perfectionist. What is it they say-'Fool yourself to fool
others'? But anyhow, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, tell me, have you got guts?"
"Not really, no."
"Never had 'em?"
"No, I was never one for guts. Not likely to change, either."
"How about curiosity?"
"Curiosity's another matter. I've got some of that."
"Well, don't you think guts and curiosity are kind of similar?" said May Kasahara.
"Where there's guts there's curiosity, and where there's curiosity there's guts. No?"
"Hmm, maybe they are kind of similar," I said. "Maybe you're right. Maybe they do
overlap at times."
"Times like when you sneak into somebody's backyard, say."
"Yeah, like that," I said, rolling a lemon drop on my tongue. "When you sneak into
somebody's backyard, it does seem that guts and curiosit y are working together.
Curiosity can bring guts out of hiding at times, maybe even get them going. But curiosity
usually evaporates. Guts have to go for the long haul. Curiosity's like a fun friend you
can't really trust. It turns you on and then it leaves you to make it on your own- with
whatever guts you can muster."
She thought this over for a time. "I guess so," she said. "I guess that's one way to
look at it." She stood up and brushed off the dirt clinging to the seat of her short pants.
Then she looked down at me. "Tell me, Mr. Wind - Up Bird, would you like to see the
well?"
"The well?" I asked. The well?
"There's a dried -up well here. I like it. Kind of. Want to see it?"



We cut through the yard and walked around to the side of the house. It was a round
well, maybe four and a half feet in diameter. Thick planking, cut to shape and size, had
been used to cap the well, and two concrete blocks had been set on the round wooden cap
to keep it in place. The well curb stood perhaps 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 the objects 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."