25



Triangular Ears

*

Sleigh Bells



I spent the rest of the day reading about Manchukuo. There was no need for me to
hurry back to the house. Thinking I might be late, I had given Mackerel two days' worth
of dried cat food when I left in the morning. He might not like it much, but at least he
wouldn't starve. This made the thought of dragging myself home that much less
appealing. I wanted to lie down and take a nap. I took a blanket and pillow from a
cabinet, spread them on the sofa in the fitting room, and turned out the light. Then I lay
down, closed my eyes, and began thinking about Mackerel. I wanted to fall asleep
thinking about the cat. He was something that had come back to me. He had managed to
come back to me from somewhere far away. That had to be a kind of blessing. As I lay
there with my eyes closed, I thought about the soft touch of the pads beneath the cat's
paws, the cold triangular ears, the pink tongue. In my mind, Mackerel had curled up and
was sleeping quietly. I felt his warmth with the palm of my hand. I could hear his regular
breathing. I was far more on edge than usual, but sleep still came to me before too long, a
deep sleep without dreams.
I awoke in the middle of the night. I thought I had heard sleigh bells somewhere far
away, as in the background of Christmas music.
Sleigh bells?
I sat up on the sofa and felt for my watch on the coffee table. The luminous hands
showed one-thirty. I must have slept more soundly than I had expected to. I sat still and
listened hard, but the only sound I could hear was the faint, dry thumping of my own
heart. Maybe I had imagined the sleigh bells. Maybe I had been dreaming, after all. I
decided, still, to check the house. I stepped into my slippers and padded my way into the
kitchen. The sound grew more distinct when I left the room. It really did sound like sleigh
bells, and it seemed to be coming from Cinnamon's of fice. I stood by the door for a
while, listening, then gave a knock. Cinnamon might have come back to the Residence
while I was sleeping. But there was no answer. I opened the door a crack and looked
inside.

Somewhere around waist height in the darkness, I could see a whitish glow with a
square shape. It was the glow of the computer screen, and the bell sound was the
machine's repeated beeping (a new kind of beep, which I had not heard before). The
computer was calling out to me. As if drawn toward it, I sat down in front of the glow
and read the message on the screen:
You have now gained access to the program "The Wind -Up
Bird Chronicle." Choose a docu ment (1 - 16).
Someone had turned the computer on and accessed documents titled "The Wind-Up
Bird Chronicle." There should have been no one in the Residence besides me. Could
someone have started it from outside the house? If so, it could only have been Cinnamon.
"The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle"?
The light, cheery sound, like sleigh bells, continued to emanate from the computer, as
if this were Christmas morning. It seemed to be urging me to make a choice. After some
hesitation, I picked #8 for no particular reason. The ringing immediately stopped, and a
document opened on the screen like a horizontal scroll painting being spread out before
me.