36

The Story of the Duck People

* Shadows and Tears * (May Kasaharas Point of View: 6) Hi, again, Mr. Wind-Up Bird.

Hey, are these letters really getting to you?

I mean, Ive been writing you tons and tons of letters, and Im really starting to wonder if they ever reach you. The address Ive been using is a kind of kind of thing, and I dont put a return address on the envelope, so maybe theyre 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 theyre not getting through, theyre not getting through, so what? Ive been scratching away at these things, but the important thing was for me to put my thoughts down on paper. Its easy for me to write if I think Im writing to you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, I dont 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 Im going to write about the duck people. Yes, I know this is the first time Ive mentioned them, but here goes.

I told you before how this factory Im working in has this huge property, with woods and a pond and stuff. Its great for taking walks. The ponds a pretty big one, and thats where the duck people live, maybe twelve birds altogether. I dont know how their family is organized. I suppose theyve got their internal arrangements, with some members getting along better with some and not so well with others, but Ive never seen them fight.

Its December, so ice has started to form on the pond, but not such thick ice. Even when its cold, theres still enough open water left so the ducks can swim around a little bit. When its cold enough for thick ice, Im told, some of the girls cone here to ice-skate. Then the duck people (yes, I know its a weird expression, but Ive gotten in the habit of using it, so it just comes out) will have to go somewhere else. I dont like ice-skating, so Im kind of hoping there wont be any ice, but I dont think its 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 Im 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, theres 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. Ill 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 theyll come flapping through the air and land on the ice, but their feet slide and they fall over. Its like a TV comedy! They make me laugh even with nobody else around. Of course, theyre not clowning around trying to make me laugh. Theyre doing their best to live very serious lives, and they just happen to fall down sometimes. I think thats neat.

The duck people have these flat orange feet that are really cute, like theyre wearing little kids rain boots, but theyre 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 dont hate it all that much. It just seems that way to me from watching them. They look like theyre living happily enough, even if its winter, probably just grumbling to themselves, Ice again? Oh, well... Thats 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 thats left from a recent snowfall. I see lots of birds all around. When Ive got my collar up and my scarf wrapped round and round under my chin, and my breath makes white puffs in the air, and Ive got a chunk of bread in my pocket, and Im 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 havent felt happy like this for a long, long time.

OK, thats 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 Ive been sitting here, writing you this letter. Right now its (I look at my clock) exactly 2:18 a.m. I got into bed just before ten oclock, 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, Im not sure it was a dream. I mean, I dont remember anything I was dreaming about. Maybe I wasnt 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. Thats what shocked me awake.

The room wasnt 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 couldnt run anywhere, right?

So then you know what I did?

I got naked. Ahem. Dont ask me why. Im 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 didnt 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 thats 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 dont know, it just seemed like the most natural thing to do. The moonlight was so absolutely, in- credibly beautiful that I couldnt 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, theyd 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 thats OK. Hes dead. If he wanted to look, and if hed be satisfied with that, Id be glad to let him see me.

But anyhow, nobody was looking at me. I was doing it all alone in the moonlight. And every once in a while, Id close my eyes and think about the duck people, who were probably sleeping near the pond somewhere. Id 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 didnt look like the shadow of my body, but one that belonged to a much more mature woman. It wasnt a virgin like me, it didnt 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 couldnt figure it out, finally. The more I looked, the stranger it seemed.

Now, here comes the part thats 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, itd go: May Kasahara: Here, with no warning, covers face with hands, wails aloud, collapses in tears. But dont be too shocked. Ive been hiding it from you all this time, but in fact, Im the worlds biggest crybaby. I cry for anything. Its 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 its time to stop. I cry easily, but I stop just as easily. Tonight, though, I just couldnt stop. The cork popped, and that was that. I didnt know what had started me, so I didnt know how to stop myself. The tears just came gushing out, like blood from a huge wound. I couldnt 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 crystals. 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? Theyre 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 dont get it, Im sure, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. When a naked seventeen-year-old girl is shedding tears in the moonlight, anything can happen. Its true.

So thats what happened in this room about an hour ago. And now Im 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 dont 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, dont hesitate to call me out loud again.

Good night.