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 wouldnt 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 cats 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 Cinnamons office. I stood by the door for a while, listening, then gave a knock. Cinna- mon 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 machines 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 document (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.