36




The Story of the Duck People
*
Shadows and Tears
*
(May Kasahara's Point of View: 6)



Hi, again, Mr. Wind-Up Bird.
Hey, are these letters really getting to you?
I mean, I've been writing you tons and tons of letters, and I'm really starting to
wonder if they ever reach you. The address I've been using is a "kind of" kind of thing,
and I don't put a return address on the envelope, so maybe they're just piling up on the
"little letter lost" shelf in a post office somewhere, unread and all covered with dust. Up
to now, I figured: OK, if they're not getting through, they're not getting through, so
what? I've been scratching away at these things, but the important thing was for me to
put my thoughts down on paper. It's easy for me to write if I think I'm writing to you, Mr.
Wind- Up Bird, I don't know why. Hey, yeah, why is that?
But this letter is one I really want you to read. I hope and pray it gets to you.

Now I'm going to write about the duck people. Yes, I know this is the first time I've
mentioned them, but here goes.
I told you before how this factory I'm working in has this huge property, with woods
and a pond and stuff. It's great for taking walks. The pond's a pretty big one, and that's
where the duck people live, maybe twelve birds altogether. I don't know how their family
is organized. I suppose they've got their internal arrangements, with some members
getting along better with some and not so well with others, but I've never seen them fight.
It's December, so ice has started to form on the pond, but not such thick ice. Even
when it's cold, there's still enough open water left so the ducks can swim around a little
bit. When it's cold enough for thick ice, I'm told, some of the girls cone here to ice-skate.
Then the duck people (yes, I know it's a weird expression, but I've gotten in the habit of
using it, so it just comes out) will have to go somewhere else. I don't like ice-skating, so
I'm kind of hoping there won't be any ice, but I don't think it's going to do any good. I
mean, it gets really cold in this part of the country, so as long as they go on living here,
the duck people are going to have to resign themselves to it.
I come here every weekend these days and kill time watching the duck people. When
I'm doing that, two or three hours can go by before I know it. I go out in the cold, armed
head to foot like some kind of polar-bear hunter: tights, hat, scarf, boots, fur-trimmed
coat. And I spend hours sitting on a rock all by myself, spacing out, watching the duck
people. Sometimes I feed them old bread. Of course, there's nobody else here with the
time to do such crazy things.
You may not know this, Mr. Wind -Up Bird, but ducks are very pleasant people to
spend time with. I never get tired of watching them. I'll never understand why everybody
else bothers to go somewhere way far away and pay good money to see some stupid

movie instead of enjoying these people. Like sometimes they'll come flapping through the
air and land on the ice, but their feet slide and they fall over. It's like a TV comedy! They
make me laugh even with nobody else around. Of course, they're not clowning around
trying to make me laugh. They're doing their best to live very serious lives, and they just
happen to fall down sometimes. I think that's neat.
The duck people have these flat orange feet that are really cute, like they're wearing
little kids' rain boots, but they're not made for walking on ice, I guess, because I see them
slipping and sliding all over the place, and some even fall on their bottoms. They must
not have nonslip treads. So winter is not a really fun season for the duck people,
probably. I wonder what they think, deep down inside, about ice and stuff. I bet they don't
hate it all that much. It just seems that way to me from watching them. They look like
they're living happily enough, even if it's win ter, probably just grumbling to themselves,
"Ice again? Oh, well..." That's another thing I really like about the duck people.
The pond is in the middle of the woods, far from everything. Nobody (but me, of
course!) bothers to walk all the way over here at this time of year, except on unusually
warm days. I walk down the path through the woods, and my boots crunch on the ice
that's left from a recent snowfall. I see lots of birds all around. When I've got my collar
up and my scarf wrapped round and round under my chin, and my breath makes white
puffs in the air, and I've got a chunk of bread in my pocket, and I'm walking down the
path in the woods, thinking about the duck people, I get this really warm, happy feeling,
and it hits me that I haven't felt happy like this for a long, long time.
OK, that's enough about the duck people.

To tell you the truth, I woke up an hour ago from a dream about you, Mr. Wind-Up
Bird, and I've been sitting here, writing you this letter. Right now it's (I look at my clock)
exactly 2:18 a.m. I got into bed just before ten o'clock, as usual, said "Good night,
everybody" to the duck people, and fell fast asleep, but then, a little while ago, I woke up-
bang! Actually, I'm not sure it was a dream. I mean, I don't remember anything I was
dreaming about. Maybe I wasn't dreaming. But whatever it was, J heard your voice right
next to my ear. You were calling to me over and over in this really loud voice. That's
what shocked me awake.
The room wasn't dark when I opened my eyes. Moonlight was pouring through the
window. This great big moon like a stainless-steel tray was hanging over the hill. It was
so huge, it looked as if I could have reached out and written something on it. And the
light coming in the window looked like a big, white pool of water. I sat up in bed, racking
my brains, trying to figure out what had just happened. Why had you been calling my
name in such a sharp, clear voice? My heart kept pounding for the longest time. If I had
been in my own house, I would have gotten dressed-even if it was the middle of the night-
and run down the alley to your house, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. But out here, a million miles
away in the mountains, I couldn't run anywhere, right?
So then you know what I did?
I got naked. Ahem. Don't ask me why. I'm really not sure myself. So just be quiet and
listen to the rest. Anyhow, I took every stitch of clothing off and got out of bed. And I got
down on my knees on the floor in the white moonlight. The heat was off and the room
must have been cold, but I didn't feel cold. There was some kind of special something in
the moonlight that was coming in the window, and it was wrapping my body in a thin,

protective, skintight film. At least that's how I felt. I just stayed there naked for a while,
spacing out, but then I took turns holding different parts of my body out to be bathed in
the moonlight. I don't know, it just seemed like the most natural thing to do. The
moonlight was so absolutely, in credibly beautiful that I couldn't not do it. My head and
shoulders and arms and breasts and tummy and legs and bottom and, you know, around
there: one after another, I dipped them in the moonlight, like taking a bath.
If somebody had seen me from outside, they'd have thought it was very, very strange.
I must have looked like some kind of full-moon pervert going absolutely bonkers in the
moonlight. But nobody saw me, of course. Though, come to think of it, maybe that boy on
the motorcycle was somewhere, looking at me. But that's OK. He's dead. If he wanted to
look, and if he'd be satisfied with that, I'd be glad to let him see me.
But anyhow, nobody was looking at me. I was doing it all alone in the moon light. And
every once in a while, I'd close my eyes and think about the duck people, who were
probably sleeping near the pond somewhere. I'd think about the warm, happy feeling that
the duck people and I had created together in the daytime. Because, finally, the duck
people are an important kind of magic kind of protective amulet kind of thing for me.
I stayed kneeling there for a long time after that, just kneeling all alone, all naked, in
the moonlight. The light gave my skin a magical color, and it threw a sharp black shadow
of my body across the floor, all the way to the wall. It didn't look like the shadow of my
body, but one that belonged to a much more mature woman. It wasn't a virgin like me, it
didn't have my corners and angles but was fuller and rounder, with much bigger breasts
and nipples. But it was the shadow that I was making--just stretched out longer, with a
different shape. When I moved, it moved. For a while, I tried moving in different ways
and watching very, very carefully to see what the connection was between me and my
shadow, trying to figure out why it should look so different. But I couldn't figure it out,
finally. The more I looked, the stranger it seemed.
Now, here comes the part that's really hard to explain, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. I doubt if I
can do it, but here goes.
Well, to make a long story short, all of a sudden I burst into tears. I mean, if it was
like in a film scenario or something, it'd go: "May Kasahara: Here, with no warning,
covers face with hands, wails aloud, collapses in tears." But don't be too shocked. I've
been hiding it from you all this time, but in fact, I'm the world's biggest crybaby. I cry for
anything. It's my secret weakness. So for me, the sheer fact that I burst out crying for no
reason at all was not such a surprise. Usually, though, I just have myself a little cry, and
then I tell myself it's time to stop. I cry easily, but I stop just as easily. Tonight, though, I
just couldn't stop. The cork popped, and that was that. I didn't know what had started
me, so I didn't know how to stop myself. The tears just came gushing out, like blood from
a huge wound. I couldn't believe the amount of tears I was producing. I seriously started
to worry I might get dehydrated and turn into a mummy if this kept up.
I could actually see and hear my tears dripping down into the white pool of
moonlight, where they were sucked in as if they had always been part of the light. As they
fell, the tears caught the light of the moon and sparkled like beautiful crys tals. Then I
noticed that my shadow was crying too, shedding clear, sharp shadow tears. Have you
ever seen the shadows of tears, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? They're nothing like ordinary
shadows. Nothing at all. They come here from some other, distant world, especially for
our hearts. Or maybe not. It struck me then that the tears my shadow was shedding might

be the real thing, and the tears that I was shedding were just shadows. You don't get it,
I'm sure, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. When a naked seventeen -year-old girl is shedding tears in
the moonlight, anything can happen. It's true.

So that's what happened in this room about an hour ago. And now I'm sitting at my
desk, writing a letter to you in pencil, Mr. Wind-Up Bird (with my clothes on, of course!).
Bye-bye, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. I don't quite know how to put this, but the duck people in
the woods and I are praying for you to be warm and happy. If anything happens to you,
don't hesitate to call me out loud again.
Good night.