29



A Vacant House Is Born

*


Nine o'clock, then ten o'clock, arrived the next morning, with no sign of Cinnamon.
Nothing like this had ever happened before.. He had never missed a single day, from the
time I started "working" in this place. At exactly nine o'clock each morning, the gate
would open and the bright glare of the Mercedes's hood ornament would appear. This
simultaneously mundane and theatrical appearance of Cinnamon would mark the clear

begin ning of each day for me. I had become accustomed to this fixed daily routine the
way people become accustomed to gravity or barometric pressure. There was a kind of
warmth to Cinnamon's punctilious regularity, something be yond mere mechanical
predictability, something that gave me comfort and encouragement. Which is why a
morning without Cinnamon's appearance was like a well-executed landscape painting
that lacked a focal point.
I gave up waiting for him, left the window, and peeled myself an apple as a substitute
for breakfast. Then I peeked into Cinnamon's room to see if there might be any messages
on the computer, but the screen was as dead as ever. All I could do at that point was
follow Cinnamon's example and listen to a tape of Baroque music while doing laundry,
vacuuming the floors, and cleaning windows. To kill time, I purposely performed each
function slowly and carefully, going so far as to clean the blades of the kitchen exhaust
fan, but still the time refused to move.
I ran out of things to do by eleven o'clock, so I stretched out on the fitting room sofa
and gave myself up to the languid flow of time. I tried to tell myself that Cinnamon had
been delayed by some minor matter. Maybe the car had broken down, or he had been
caught in an incredible traffic jam. But I knew that couldn't be true. I would have bet all I
had on it. Cinnamon's car would never break down, and he always took the pos sibility of
traffic jams into account. Plus, he had the car phone to call me on in case of an
unforeseen emergency in traffic. No, Cinnamon was not here because he had decided not
to come here.



I tried calling Nutmeg's Akasaka office just before one, but there was no answer. I
tried again and again, with the same results. Then I tried Ushikawa's office but got only a
message that the number had been disconnected. This was strange. I had called him at
that number just two days earlier. I gave up and went back to the fitting room sofa again.
All of a sudden in the last two days there seemed to be a conspiracy against contact with
me.
I went back to the window and peeked outside through the curtain. Two energetic-
looking little winter birds had come to the yard and were perched on a branch, glancing
wide- eyed at the area. Then, as if they had suddenly become fed up with everything there,
they flew off. Nothing else seemed to be moving. The Residence felt like a brand -new
vacant house.



I did not go back there for the next five days. For some reason, I seemed to have lost
any desire to go down in to the well. I would be losing the well itself before long. The
longest I could afford to keep the Residence going without clients was two months, so I
ought to be using the well as much as possible while it was still mine. I felt stifled. All of
a sudden, the place seemed wrong and unnatural.
I walked around aimlessly without going to the Residence. In the afternoons I would
go to the Shinjuku west exit plaza and sit on my usual bench, killing time doing nothing
in particular, but Nutmeg never appeared before me there. I went to her Akasaka office

once, rang the bell by the elevator and stared into the closed circuit camera, but no reply
ever came. I was ready to give up. Nutmeg and Cinnamon had obviously decided to cut
all ties with me. This strange mother and son had deserted the sinking ship for someplace
safer. The intensity of the sorrow this aroused in me took me by surprise. I felt as if I had
been betrayed in the end by my own family.