28



You Just Can't Trust a House
(May Kasahara's Point of View: 5)


*


How are you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird?
I said at the end of my last letter that I had said just about everything I wanted to say
to you- pretty much as if that were going to be "it." Remember? I did some more thinking
after that, though, and I started to get the feeling that I ought to write a little more. So
here I am, creeping around in the middle of the night like a cockroach, sitting at my desk
and writing to you again.

I don't know why, but I think about the Miyawaki family a lot these days- the poor
Miyawakis who used to live in that vacant house, and then the bill col lectors came after
them, and they all went off and killed themselves. I'm pretty sure I saw something about
how only the eldest daughter didn't die and now nobody knows where she is.... Whether
I'm working, or in the dining hall, or in my room listening to music and reading a book,
the image of that family pops into my head. Not that I'm haunted by it or anything, but
whenever there's an opening (and my head has lots of openings!) it comes creeping in
and sticks around for a while, the way smoke from a bonfire can come in through the
window. It's been happening all the time this past week or so.
I lived in our house on the alley from the time I was born, and I grew up looking at
the house on the other side. My window looks right at it. They gave me my own room
when I started primary school. By then, the Miyawakis had already built their new house
and were living in it. I could always see some member of the family in the house or yard,
tons of clothes drying out back on nice days, the two girls there, yelling out the name of
their big, black German shepherd (what was his name?). And when the sun went down,
the lights would come on inside the house, looking warm and cozy, and then later the
lights would go out one at a time. The older girl took piano lessons, the younger one
violin (the older one was older than me, the younger one younger). They'd have, like,
parties and things on birth days and Christmas, and lots of friends would come over, and
it was happy and lively there. People who have seen the place only when it was a vacant
ruin couldn't imagine what it was like before.
I used to see Mr. Miyawaki pruning trees and things on weekends. He seemed to
enjoy doing all kinds of chores himself, things that took time, like cleaning the gutters or
walking the dog or waxing his car. I'll never understand why some people enjoy those
things, they're such a pain, but everybody's different, I guess, and I suppose every family
ought to have at least one person like that. The whole family used to ski, so every winter
they'd strap their skis to the roof of this big car and go off somewhere, looking like they
were going to have the greatest time (I hate skiing myself, but anyhow).
This makes them sound like a typical, ordinary happy family, I suppose, but that's
really just what they were: a typical, ordinary happy family. There was absolutely
nothing about them that would make you raise your eyebrows and say, "Yeah, OK, but
how about that?"
People in the neighborhood used to whisper, "I wouldn't live in a creepy place like
that if you gave it to me free," but the Miyawakis lived such a peaceful life there, it could
have been a picture in a frame without a speck of dust on it. They were the ones in the

fairy tale who got to live "happily ever after." At least compared to my family, they
seemed to be living ten times as happily ever after. And the two girls seemed really nice
whenever I met them outside. I used to wish that I had sisters like them. The whole family
always seemed to be laughing- including the dog.
I could never have imagined that you could blink one day and all of this would be
gone. But that's just what happened. One day I noticed that the whole family- the
German shepherd with them-had disappeared as if a gust of wind had just blown them
away, leaving only the house behind. For a while-maybe a week -no one in the
neighborhood noticed that the Miyawakis had disappeared. It did cross my mind at first
that it was strange the lights weren't going on at night, but I figured they must be off on
one of their family trips. Then my mother heard people saying that the Miyawakis seemed
to have "absconded." I remember asking her to explain to me what the word meant.
Nowadays we just say "run away," I guess.
Whatever you call it, once the people who lived there had disappeared, the whole
look of the house changed. It was almost creepy. I had never seen a vacant house before,
so I didn't know what an ordinary vacant house looked like, but I guess I figured it w ould
have a sad, beaten sort of look, like an abandoned dog or a cicada's cast-off shell. The
Miyawakis' house, though, was nothing like that. It didn't look "beaten" at all. The
minute the Miyawakis left, it got this know -nothing look on its face, like, "I never heard
of anybody called Miyawaki." At least that's how it looked to me. It was like some stupid,
ungrateful dog. As soon as they were gone, it turned into this totally self-sufficient vacant
house that had nothing at all to do with the Miyawaki fam ily's happiness. It really made
me mad! I mean, the house must have been just as happy as the rest of the family when
the Miyawakis were there. I'm sure it enjoyed being cleaned so nicely and taken care of,
and it wouldn't have existed at all if Mr. Miyawaki hadn't been nice enough to build it in
the first place. Don't you agree? You just can't trust a house.
You know as well as I do what the place was like after that, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. The
house was abandoned, with no one to live in it, and all smeared with bird shit and stuff.
That was all I had to look at from my window for years when I was at my desk, studying-
or pretending to be studying. On clear days, rainy days, snowy days, or in typhoons, it
was right there, outside my window, so I couldn't help but see it when I looked out. And
strangely enough, as the years went by, I tried less and less not to notice it. I could-and
often did-spend whole half hours at a time with my elbow on my desk, doing nothing but
look at that vacant house. I don't know-not very long ago the place had been overflowing
with laughter, and clean white clothes had been flapping in the wind like in a commercial
for laundry detergent (I wouldn't say Mrs. Miyawaki was "abnormal" or anything, but
she liked to do laundry-way more than most ordinary people). All of that was gone in a
flash, the yard was covered with weeds, and there was nobody left to remember the happy
days of the Miyawaki family. To me that seemed sooo strange!

Let me just say this: I wasn't especially friendly with the Miyawaki family. In fact, I
hardly ever talked to any of them, except to say "Hi" on the street. But because I spent so
much time and energy watching them from my window every day, I felt as if the family's
happy doings had become a part of me. You know how in the corner of a family photo
there'll be a glimpse of this person who has nothing to do with them. So sometimes I get
this feeling like part of me "absconded" with the Miyawakis and just disappeared. I

guess that's pretty weird, huh, to feel like part of you is gone because it "absconded"
with people you hardly know?

As long as I've started telling you one weird thing, I might as well tell you an other
one. Now, this one is really weird!
Lately, I sometimes feel like I have turned into Kumiko. I am actually Mrs. Wind-Up
Bird, and I've run away from you for some reason and I'm hiding here in the mountains,
working in a wig factory. For all kinds of complicated reasons, I have to use the name
"May Kasahara" as an alias and wear this mask and pretend I'm not Kumiko. And
you're just sitting there on that sad little veranda of yours, waiting for me to come back. I
don't know-I really feel like that.
Tell me, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, do you ever get obsessed with these delusions? Not to
boast or anything, but I do. All the time. Sometimes, when they're really bad, I'll spend
the whole workday wrapped up in a cloud of delusion. Of course, I'm just performing
these simple operations, so it doesn't get in the way of my work, but the other girls
sometimes give me strange looks. Or maybe I say crazy things to myself out loud. I hate
that, but it doesn't do any good to try and fight it. When a delusion wants to come, it
comes, like a period. And you can't just meet it at the front door and say, "Sorry, I'm
busy today, try me later." Anyway, I hope it doesn't bother you, Mr. Wind -Up Bird, that I
sometimes pretend I'm Kumiko. I mean, I'm not doing it on purpose.

I'm getting really really really tired. I'm going to go to sleep now for three or four
hours-I mean out cold-then get up and work hard from morning to night. I'll put in a
good day making wigs with the other girls, listening to some kind of harmless music.
Please don't worry about me. I'm good at doing all kinds of things even when I'm in the
middle of a delusion. And in my own way, I'm saying little prayers for you, hoping that
everything works out for you, that Kumiko comes back and you can have your quiet,
happy life again.
Goodbye.