The Elephant Vanishes Part 3

"Sure," I say.

"Death. People dying. It's all so fascinating," the girl begins.

She's whispering right by my ear, so the words enter my body in a warm, moist stream of breath.

"How's that?" I ask.

The girl places a one-finger seal over my lips.

"No questions," she says. "I don't want to be asked anything just now. And don't open your eyes, either. Got it?"

I give a nod as indistinct as her voice.

She removes her finger from my lips, and the same finger now travels to my wrist.

"I think about what it would be like to cut the thing open with a scalpel. Not the corpse. That lump of death itself. There's got to be something like that in there somewhere, I just know it. Dull like a softball-and pliable-a paralyzed tangle of nerves. I'd like to remove it from the dead body and cut it open. I'm always thinking about it. Imagining what it'd be like inside. It'd probably be all gummy, like toothpaste that cakes up inside the tube, don't you think? That's okay, you don't have to answer. All gooey around the outside, getting tougher the further in. That's why the first thing I'd do once I cut through the outer skin is scoop out all the glop, and there inside where it starts to firm up would be this teeny little core. Like a superhard ball bearing, don't you think?"

The girl gives a couple of short coughs.

"Lately, it's all I think about. Probably 'cause I've got so much free time every day. But really, I do think so. If I've got nothing to do, my thoughts just wander off far away. I get so far off in my thoughts, it's hard to find my way back."

At this, the girl takes her finger away from my wrist to drink the rest of her cola. I can tell from the empty-gla.s.s sound of the ice.

"It's okay, I'm keeping an eye out for the cat. Don't worry. As soon as I see n.o.boru Watanabe, I'll let you know. So you can keep your eyes closed. n.o.boru Watanabe's bound to come walking through here any minute now. I mean, all the cats take the same route, so he's got to show up. Let's just imagine while we wait. Like, n.o.boru Watanabe's getting closer, closer. He's coming through the gra.s.s, sneaking under a wall, stopping and sniffing the flowers, getting closer every minute. Try and picture him."

I play along and try to see the cat in my mind's eye, but it's all I can do to conjure up even the blurriest backlit snapshot of a cat. The bright sun burns through my eyelids, dispersing any dark areas of the image; on top of which, no matter how I try I just can't recall the little fur face with any accuracy. My n.o.boru Watanabe is a failed portrait, somehow distorted and unnatural. Only the quirks are there; the basics are missing. I can't even remember how he walked.

The girl places her finger on my wrist once more and this time draws a pattern. An odd diagram of indeterminate configuration. While she diagrams my wrist, as if in unison I feel a wholly other variety of darkness infiltrating my mind. I must be falling asleep, I think. Not that I'm particularly sleepy, but something tells me I can't hold out against the inevitable. My body feels unseemingly heavy in the soft canvas curve of the deck chair.

Amid the gathering darkness, a clear image of n.o.boru Watanabe's four feet comes into my head. Four quiet brown paws with rubbery pads on the soles. Without a sound, they go traipsing over the terrain.

What terrain? Where?

I have no idea.

Mightn't you have a fatal blind spot somewhere? says the woman softly. says the woman softly.

I AWAKE TO AWAKE TO FIND FIND I'm alone. Gone is the girl from the deck chair nestled next to mine. The towel and cigarettes and magazines remain, but the cola and radio-ca.s.sette player have disappeared. I'm alone. Gone is the girl from the deck chair nestled next to mine. The towel and cigarettes and magazines remain, but the cola and radio-ca.s.sette player have disappeared.

The sun is slanting westward and I'm up to my ankles in the shade of the pine trees. The hands of my watch point to 3:40. I shake my head a few times as if rattling an empty can, get up from the chair, and take a look around. Everything looks the same as when I first saw it. Big lawn, dried-up pond, hedge, stone bird, goldenrod, TV aerial, no cat. No girl, either.

I plunk myself down on a shady patch of gra.s.s and run my palm over the green turf, one eye on the cat path, while I wait for the girl to return. Ten minutes later, there's still no sign of cat or girl. Not even a whiff of anything moving about. I'm stumped for what to do now. I feel like I must have aged something awful in my sleep.

I stand up again and glance over at the house. But there's no hint of anyone about. Only the western sun glaring off the bay window. There's nothing to do but cut across the gra.s.s into the pa.s.sage and beat a path home. So I didn't find the cat. Well, at least I tried.

BACK HOME. I take in the dry laundry and throw together the makings of a simple meal. Then I collapse onto the living-room floor, my back against the wall, to read the evening paper. At 5:30, the telephone rings twelve times, but I don't pick up the receiver. After the ringing has died away, a lingering hollowness hovers about the dark room like drifting dust. The clock atop the TV strikes an invisible panel of s.p.a.ce with its brittle claws. A regular wind-up toy world this is, I think. Once a day the wind-up bird has to come and wind the springs of this world. Alone in this fun house, only I grow old, a pale softball of death swelling inside me. Yet even as I sleep somewhere between Saturn and Ura.n.u.s, wind-up birds everywhere are busy at work fulfilling their appointed rounds.

I consider writing a poem about the wind-up bird. But no first lines come. Besides, I find it hard to believe that high-school girls would be terribly thrilled to read a poem about the wind-up bird. They don't even know that any such thing as a wind-up bird exists.

IT'S SEVEN-THIRTY when my wife comes home. when my wife comes home.

"Sorry, I had to work late," she apologizes. "I had the darnedest time tracking down one pupil's tuition record. The part-time girl is so lame, it all falls to me."

"Never mind," I say. Then I step into the kitchen, panfry a piece of fish in b.u.t.ter, and prepare a salad and miso soup. Meanwhile, my wife reads the evening paper at the kitchen table.

"Say, weren't you home at five-thirty?" she asks. "I tried calling to tell you I'd be a little late."

"I ran out of b.u.t.ter and went out to buy some," I lie.

"Did you remember to go to the bank?"

"Natch," I reply.

"How about the cat?"

"Not a trace."

"Oh," says my wife.

I EMERGE EMERGE from an after-dinner bath to find my wife sitting all alone in the darkened living room. I throw on a gray s.h.i.+rt and fumble through the dark to reach where she's been dumped like a piece of luggage. She looks so utterly forsaken. If only they'd left her in another spot, she might have seemed a little happier. from an after-dinner bath to find my wife sitting all alone in the darkened living room. I throw on a gray s.h.i.+rt and fumble through the dark to reach where she's been dumped like a piece of luggage. She looks so utterly forsaken. If only they'd left her in another spot, she might have seemed a little happier.

Drying my hair with a bath towel, I take a seat on the sofa opposite her.

"What's the matter?" I ask.

"The cat's dead, I just know it," my wife says.

"Oh c'mon," I protest. "He's just off exploring. Soon enough he'll get hungry and head on back. The same thing happened once before, remember? That time when we were still living in Koenji-"

"This time it's different. I can feel it. The cat's dead and rotting away in the weeds. Did you search the gra.s.s in the yard of the vacant house?"

"Hey now, stop it. It may be a vacant house, but it's somebody else's house. I'm not about to go trespa.s.sing."

"You killed it!" my wife accuses.

I heave a sigh and give my head another once-over with the towel.

"You killed it with that look of yours!" she repeats from the darkness.

"How does that follow?" I say. "The cat disappeared of its own doing. It's not my fault. That much you've got to see."

"You! You never liked that cat, anyway!"

"Okay, maybe so," I admit. "At least I wasn't as crazy about the cat as you were. Still, I never mistreated it. I fed it every day. Just because I wasn't enthralled with the little b.u.g.g.e.r doesn't mean I killed it. Start saying things like that and I end up having killed half the people on earth."

"Well, that's you all over," my wife delivers her verdict. "That's just so you. Always, always that way. You kill everything without ever playing a hand."

I'm about to counter when she bursts into tears. I can the speech and toss the towel into the bathroom basket, go to the kitchen, take a beer out of the refrigerator, and chug. What an impossible day it's been! One impossible day, of an impossible month, of an impossible year.

n.o.boru Watanabe, where have you gone?, I think. Didn't the wind-up bird wind your spring?

A regular poem that is: n.o.boru Watanabe Where have you gone?

Didn't the wind-up bird Wind your spring?

I've not finished half my beer when the telephone begins to ring.

"Get that, will you?" I shout into the living-room darkness.

"No way! You get it yourself," says my wife.

"I don't want to get it," I say.

No one answers it, and the telephone keeps on ringing. The ringing stirs up the loose dust floating in the dark. Neither my wife nor I venture one word. Me drinking my beer, my wife sobbing away. Twenty rings before I lose count and just let the thing ring. You can't keep counting forever.

-translated by Alfred Birnbaum

I'M STILL NOT SURE I made the right choice when I told my wife about the bakery attack. But then, it might not have been a question of right and wrong. Which is to say that wrong choices can produce right results, and vice versa. I myself have adopted the position that, in fact, I made the right choice when I told my wife about the bakery attack. But then, it might not have been a question of right and wrong. Which is to say that wrong choices can produce right results, and vice versa. I myself have adopted the position that, in fact, we never choose anything at all we never choose anything at all. Things happen. Or not.

If you look at it this way, it just so happens it just so happens that I told my wife about the bakery attack. I hadn't been planning to bring it up-I had forgotten all about it-but it wasn't one of those now-that-you-mention-it kind of things, either. that I told my wife about the bakery attack. I hadn't been planning to bring it up-I had forgotten all about it-but it wasn't one of those now-that-you-mention-it kind of things, either.

What reminded me of the bakery attack was an unbearable hunger. It hit just before two o'clock in the morning. We had eaten a light supper at six, crawled into bed at nine-thirty, and gone to sleep. For some reason, we woke up at exactly the same moment. A few minutes later, the pangs struck with the force of the tornado in The Wizard of Oz The Wizard of Oz. These were tremendous, overpowering hunger pangs.

Our refrigerator contained not a single item that could be technically categorized as food. We had a bottle of French dressing, six cans of beer, two shriveled onions, a stick of b.u.t.ter, and a box of refrigerator deodorizer. With only two weeks of married life behind us, we had yet to establish a precise conjugal understanding with regard to the rules of dietary behavior. Let alone anything else.

I had a job in a law firm at the time, and she was doing secretarial work at a design school. I was either twenty-eight or twenty-nine-why can't I remember the exact year we married?-and she was two years and eight months younger. Groceries were the last things on our minds.

We both felt too hungry to go back to sleep, but it hurt just to lie there. On the other hand, we were also too hungry to do anything useful. We got out of bed and drifted into the kitchen, ending up across the table from each other. What could have caused such violent hunger pangs?

We took turns opening the refrigerator door and hoping, but no matter how many times we looked inside, the contents never changed. Beer and onions and b.u.t.ter and dressing and deodorizer. It might have been possible to saute the onions in the b.u.t.ter, but there was no chance those two shriveled onions could fill our empty stomachs. Onions are meant to be eaten with other things. They are not the kind of food you use to satisfy an appet.i.te.

"Would madame care for some French dressing sauteed in deodorizer?"

I expected her to ignore my attempt at humor, and she did. "Let's get in the car and look for an all-night restaurant," I said. "There must be one on the highway."

She rejected that suggestion. "We can't. You're not supposed to go out to eat after midnight." She was old-fas.h.i.+oned that way.

I breathed once and said, "I guess not."

Whenever my wife expressed such an opinion (or thesis) back then, it reverberated in my ears with the authority of a revelation. Maybe that's what happens with newlyweds, I don't know. But when she said this to me, I began to think that this was a special hunger, not one that could be satisfied through the mere expedient of taking it to an all-night restaurant on the highway.

A special kind of hunger. And what might that be?

I can present it here in the form of a cinematic image.

One, I am in a little boat, floating on a quiet sea. Two Two, I look down, and in the water I see the peak of a volcano thrusting up from the ocean floor. Three Three, the peak seems pretty close to the water's surface, but just how close I cannot tell. Four Four, this is because the hypertransparency of the water interferes with the perception of distance.

This is a fairly accurate description of the image that arose in my mind during the two or three seconds between the time my wife said she refused to go to an all-night restaurant and I agreed with my "I guess not." Not being Sigmund Freud, I was, of course, unable to a.n.a.lyze with any precision what this image signified, but I knew intuitively that it was a revelation. Which is why-the almost grotesque intensity of my hunger notwithstanding-I all but automatically agreed with her thesis (or declaration).

We did the only thing we could do: opened the beer. It was a lot better than eating those onions. She didn't like beer much, so we divided the cans, two for her, four for me. While I was drinking the first one, she searched the kitchen shelves like a squirrel in November. Eventually, she turned up a package that had four b.u.t.ter cookies in the bottom. They were leftovers, soft and soggy, but we each ate two, savoring every crumb.

It was no use. Upon this hunger of ours, as vast and boundless as the Sinai Peninsula, the b.u.t.ter cookies and beer left not a trace.

Time oozed through the dark like a lead weight in a fish's gut. I read the print on the aluminum beer cans. I stared at my watch. I looked at the refrigerator door. I turned the pages of yesterday's paper. I used the edge of a postcard to sc.r.a.pe together the cookie crumbs on the tabletop.

"I've never been this hungry in my whole life," she said. "I wonder if it has anything to do with being married."

"Maybe," I said. "Or maybe not."

While she hunted for more fragments of food, I leaned over the edge of my boat and looked down at the peak of the underwater volcano. The clarity of the ocean water all around the boat gave me an unsettled feeling, as if a hollow had opened somewhere behind my solar plexus-a hermetically sealed cavern that had neither entrance nor exit. Something about this weird sense of absence-this sense of the existential reality of non-existence-resembled the paralyzing fear you might feel when you climb to the very top of a high steeple. This connection between hunger and acrophobia was a new discovery for me.

Which is when it occurred to me that I had once before had this same kind of experience. My stomach had been just as empty then.... When? ... Oh, sure, that was- "The time of the bakery attack," I heard myself saying.

"The bakery attack? What are you talking about?"

And so it started.

"I ONCE ATTACKED ONCE ATTACKED a bakery. Long time ago. Not a big bakery. Not famous. The bread was nothing special. Not bad, either. One of those ordinary little neighborhood bakeries right in the middle of a block of shops. Some old guy ran it who did everything himself. Baked in the morning, and when he sold out, he closed up for the day." a bakery. Long time ago. Not a big bakery. Not famous. The bread was nothing special. Not bad, either. One of those ordinary little neighborhood bakeries right in the middle of a block of shops. Some old guy ran it who did everything himself. Baked in the morning, and when he sold out, he closed up for the day."

"If you were going to attack a bakery, why that one?"

"Well, there was no point in attacking a big bakery. All we wanted was bread, not money. We were attackers, not robbers."

"We? Who's we?"

"My best friend back then. Ten years ago. We were so broke we couldn't buy toothpaste. Never had enough food. We did some pretty awful things to get our hands on food. The bakery attack was one."

"I don't get it." She looked hard at me. Her eyes could have been searching for a faded star in the morning sky. "Why didn't you get a job? You could have worked after school. That would have been easier than attacking bakeries."

"We didn't want to work. We were absolutely clear on that."

"Well, you're working now, aren't you?"

I nodded and sucked some more beer. Then I rubbed my eyes. A kind of beery mud had oozed into my brain and was struggling with my hunger pangs.

"Times change. People change," I said. "Let's go back to bed. We've got to get up early."

"I'm not sleepy. I want you to tell me about the bakery attack."

"There's nothing to tell. No action. No excitement."

"Was it a success?"