Read Online The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami - Free Book Online Page B

into it, presented with it as an established fact. Now, however, I lived in a world that I had chosen through an act of will. It was my home. It might not be perfect, but the fundamental stance I adopted with regard to my home was to accept it,problems and all, because it was something I myself had chosen. If it had problems, these were almost certainly problems that had originated within me.
    “So what about the cat?” she asked. I summarized for her my meeting with Malta Kano in the hotel in Shinagawa. I told her about my polka-dot tie: that there had been no sign of it in the wardrobe. That Malta Kano had managed to find me in the crowded tearoom nonetheless. That she had had a unique way of dressing and of speaking, which I described. Kumiko enjoyed hearing about Malta Kano’s red vinyl hat, but when I was unable to provide a clear answer regarding the whereabouts of our lost cat, she was deeply disappointed.
    “Then she doesn’t know where the cat is, either?” Kumiko demanded. “The best she could do was tell you it isn’t in our neighborhood any longer?”
    “That’s about it,” I said. I decided not to mention anything about the “obstructed flow” of the place we lived in or that this could have some connection to the disappearance of the cat. I knew it would bother Kumiko, and for my own part, I had no desire to increase the number of things we had to worry about. We would have had a real problem if Kumiko insisted on moving because this was a “bad place.” Given our present economic situation, it would have been impossible for us to move.
    “That’s what she tells me,” I said. “The cat is not around here anymore.”
    “Which means it will never come home?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “She was vague about everything. All she came up with was little hints. She did say she’d get in touch with me when she found out more, though.”
    “Do you believe her?”
    “Who knows? I don’t know anything about this kind of stuff.”
    I poured myself some more beer and watched the head settle. Kumiko rested her elbow on the table, chin in hand.
    “She must have told you she won’t accept payment or gifts of any kind,” she said.
    “Uh-huh. That’s certainly a plus,” I said. “So what’s the problem? She won’t take our money, she won’t steal our souls, she won’t snatch the princess away. We’ve got nothing to lose.”
    “I want you to understand one thing,” said Kumiko. “That cat is very important to me. Or should I say to us. We found it the week after we got married. Together. You remember?”
    “Of course I do.”
    “It was so tiny, and soaking wet in the pouring rain. I went to meet you at the station with an umbrella. Poor little baby. We saw him on the way home. Somebody had thrown him into a beer crate next to the liquor store. He’s my very first cat. He’s important to me, a kind of symbol. I can’t lose him.”
    “Don’t worry. I know that.”
    “So where
is
he? He’s been missing for ten days now. That’s why I called my brother. I thought he might know a medium or clairvoyant or something, somebody who could find a missing cat. I know you don’t like to ask my brother for anything, but he’s followed in my father’s footsteps. He knows a lot about these things.”
    “Ah, yes, the Wataya family tradition,” I said as coolly as an evening breeze across an inlet. “But what’s the connection between Noboru Wataya and this woman?”
    Kumiko shrugged. “I’m sure she’s just somebody he happened to meet. He seems to have so many contacts these days.”
    “I’ll bet.”
    “He says she possesses amazing powers but that she’s pretty strange.” Kumiko poked at her macaroni casserole. “What was her name again?”
    “Malta Kano,” I said. “She practiced some kind of religious austerities on Malta.”
    “That’s it. Malta Kano. What did you think of her?”
    “Hard to say.” I looked at my hands, resting on the table. “At least she wasn’t