39

Goodbye

* Im so sorry I couldnt show you the duck people, Mr. Wind-Up Bird!

May Kasahara looked truly sorry.

She and I were sitting by the pond, looking at its thick cap of ice. It was a big pond, with thousands of little cuts on its surface from ice-skate blades. May Kasahara had taken off from work especially for me this Monday morning. I had intended to visit her on Sunday, but a train accident had made me a day late. May Kasahara had wrapped herself in a fur-lined coat.

Her bright-blue woolen hat bore a geometrical design in white yarn and was topped with a little pom-pom. She had knitted the hat herself, and she said she would make one just like it for me before next winter. Her cheeks were red, her eyes as bright and clear as the surrounding air, which made me very happy: she was only seventeen, after all-the potential was there for almost limitless change.

The duck people all moved somewhere else after the pond froze over. Im sure you would have loved them. Come back in the spring, OK? Ill introduce you.

I smiled. I was wearing a duffle coat that was not quite warm enough, with a scarf wrapped up to my cheeks and my hands thrust in my pockets. A deep chill ran through the forest. Hard snow coated the ground. My sneakers were sliding all over the place. I should have bought some kind of nonslip boots for this trip.

So youre going to stay here a while longer? I asked.

I think so. I might want to go back to school after enough time goes by. Or I might not. I dont know. I might just get married- no, not really. She smiled with a white puff of breath.

But anyhow, Ill stay for now. I need more time to think. About what I want to do, where I want to go. I want to take time and think about those things.

I nodded. Maybe thats what you really ought to do, I said.

Tell me, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, did you think about those kinds of things when you were my age?

Hmm. Maybe not. I must have thought about them a little bit, but I really dont remember thinking about things as seriously as you do. I guess I just figured if I went on living in the usual way, things would kind of work themselves out all right. But they didnt, did they? Unfortunately.

May Kasahara looked me in the eye, a calm expression on her face. Then she laid her gloved hands on her lap, one atop the other.

So, finally, they wouldnt let Kumiko out of jail? she asked.

She refused to be let out, I said. She figured shed be mobbed. Better to stay in jail, where she could have peace and quiet. Shes not even seeing me. She doesnt want to see anyone until everything is settled.

When does the trial start?

Sometime in the spring. Kumiko is pleading guilty. Shes going to accept the verdict, whatever it is. It shouldnt be a long trial, and theres a good possibility of a suspended sentence- or, at worst, a light one.

May Kasahara picked up a stone at her feet and threw it toward the middle of the pond. It clattered across the ice to the other side.

And you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird-youll stay home and wait for Kumiko again? I nodded. Thats good ... or is it? I made my own big white cloud in the cold air. I dont know-I guess its how we worked things out. It could have been a whole lot worse, I told myself. Far off in the woods that surrounded the pond, a bird cried. I looked up and scanned the area, but there was nothing more to hear. Nothing to see. There was only the dry, hollow sound of a woodpecker drilling a hole in a tree trunk.

If Kumiko and I have a child, Im thinking of naming it Corsica, I said. What a neat name! said May Kasahara. As the two of us walked through the woods side by side, May Kasahara took off her right glove and put her hand in my pocket. This reminded me of Kumiko. She often used to do the same thing when we walked together in the winter, so we could share a pocket on a cold day. I held May Kasaharas hand in my pocket. It was a small hand, and warm as a sequestered soul.

You know, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, everybodys going to think were lovers. You may be right. So tell me, did you read all my letters? Your letters? I had no idea what she was talking about. Sorry, but Ive never gotten a single letter from you. I got your address and phone number from your mother. Which wasnt easy: I had to stretch the truth quite a bit.

Oh, no! Whered they all go? I must have written you five hundred letters! May Kasahara looked up to the heavens.

Late that afternoon, May Kasahara saw me all the way to the station. We took a bus into town, ate pizza at a restaurant near the station, and waited for the little three-car diesel train that finally pulled in. Two or three people stood around the big woodstove that glowed red in the waiting room, but the two of us stayed out on the platform in the cold. A clear, hard-edged winter moon hung frozen in the sky. It was a young moon, with a sharp curve like a Chinese sword. Beneath that moon, May Kasahara stood on tiptoe and kissed me on the cheek. I could feel her cold, thin lips touch me where my mark had been.

Goodbye, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, she murmured. Thanks for coming all the way out here to see me.

Hands thrust deep in my pockets, I looked into her eyes. I didnt know what to say.

When the train came, she slipped her hat off, took one step back, and said to me, If anything ever happens to you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, just call out to me in a really loud voice, OK? To me and the duck people.

Goodbye, May Kasahara, I said.

The arc of the moon stayed over my head long after the train had left the station, appearing and disappearing each time the train rounded a curve. I kept my eyes on the moon, and whenever that was lost to sight, I watched the lights of the little towns as they went past the window. I thought of May Kasahara, with her blue wool hat, alone on the bus taking her back to her factory in the hills. Then I thought of the duck people, asleep in the grassy shadows somewhere. And finally, I thought of the world that I was heading back to.

Goodbye, May Kasahara, I said. Goodbye, May Kasahara: may there always be something watching over you.

I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. But it was not until much later that I was able to get any real sleep. In a place far away from anyone or anywhere, I drifted off for a moment.