The house crouched silently in the darkness like the shell of a giant animal. I unlocked the kitchen door, turned on the light, and changed the cats water. I took a can of cat food from the cabinet and opened it. Mackerel heard the sound and appeared from nowhere. He rubbed his head against my leg a few times, then started to tear into his food. While he was eating, I took a cold beer from the refrigerator. I always had supper in the residence-something that Cinnamon had prepared for me-and so the most I ever had here was a salad or a slice of cheese. Drinking my beer, I took the cat on my knees and confirmed his warmth and softness with my hands. Having spent the day in separate places, we both confirmed the fact that we were home.
Tonight, however, when I slipped my shoes off and reached out to turn the kitchen light on, I felt a presence. I stopped my hand in the darkness and listened, inhaling quietly. I heard nothing, but I caught the faint scent of tobacco. There was someone in the house, someone waiting for me to come home, someone who, a few moments earlier, had probably given up the struggle and lit a cigarette, taking no more than a few puffs and opening a window to let the smoke out, but still the smell remained. This could not be a person I knew. The house was still locked up, and I didn't know anyone who smoked, aside from Nutmeg Akasaka, who would hardly be waiting in the dark if she wanted to see me.
Instinctively, my hand reached out in the darkness, feeling for the bat. But it was no longer there. It was at the bottom of the well now. The sound my heart had started making was almost unreal, as if the heart itself had escaped from my chest and was beating beside my ear. I tried to keep my breathing regular. I probably didn't need the bat. If someone was here to hurt me, he wouldn't be sitting around inside. Still, my palms were itching with anticipation. My hands were seeking the touch of the bat. Mackerel came from somewhere in the darkness and, as usual, started meowing and rubbing his head against my leg. But he was not as hungry as always. I could tell from the sounds he made. I reached out and turned on the kitchen light.
Sorry, but I went ahead and gave the cat his supper, said the man on the living room sofa, with an easy lilt to his voice. I've been waiting a very long time for you, Mr. Okada, and the cat was all over my feet and meowing, so-hope you don't mind-I found a can of cat food in the cabinet and gave it to him. Tell you the truth, I'm not very good with cats.
He showed no sign of standing up. I watched him sitting there and said nothing.
I'm sure this was quite a shock to you-finding somebody in your house, waiting for you in the dark. I'm sorry. Really. But if I had turned the light on, you might not have come in. I'm not here to do you any harm, believe me, so you don't have to look at me that way. I just need to have a little talk with you.
He was a short man, dressed in a suit. It was hard to guess his height with him seated, but he couldn't have been five feet tall. Somewhere between forty-five and fifty years old, he looked like a chubby little frog with a bald head-a definite A in May Kasahara's classification system. He did have a few clumps of hair clinging to his scalp over his ears, but their oddly shaped black presence made the bare area stand out all the more. He had a large nose, which may have been somewhat blocked, judging from the way it expanded and contracted like a bellows with each noisy breath he took. Atop that nose sat a pair of thick-looking wire-rim glasses. He had a way of pronouncing certain words so that his upper lip would curl, revealing a mouthful of crooked, tobacco-stained teeth. He was, without question, one of the ugliest human beings I had ever encountered. And not just physically ugly: there was a certain clammy weirdness about him that I could not put into words-the sort of feeling you get when your hand brushes against some big, strange bug in the darkness. He looked less like an actual human being than like something from a long-forgotten nightmare.
Do you mind if I have a smoke? he asked. I was trying not to before, but sitting and waiting without a cigarette is like torture. Its a very bad habit.
Finding it difficult to speak, I simply nodded. The strange-looking man took an unfiltered Peace from his jacket pocket, put it between his lips, and made a loud, dry scratching sound as he lit it with a match. Then he picked up the empty cat food can at his feet and dropped the match into it. So he had been using the can as an ashtray. He sucked the smoke into his lungs with obvious pleasure, drawing his thick eyebrows into one shaggy line and letting out little moans. Each long puff made the end of the cigarette glow bright red like burning coal. I opened the patio door and let the outside air in. A light rain was falling. I couldn't see it or hear it, but I knew it was raining from the smell.
The man had on a brown suit, white shirt, and red tie, all of the same degree of cheapness, and all worn out to the same degree. The color of the suit was reminiscent of an amateur paint job on an old jalopy. The deep wrinkles in the pants and jacket looked as permanent as valleys in an aerial photograph. The white shirt had taken on a yellow tinge, and one button on the chest was ready to fall off. It also looked one or two sizes too small, with its top button open and the collar crooked. The tie, with its strange pattern of ill-formed ectoplasm, looked as if it had been left in place since the days of the Osmond Brothers. Anyone looking at him would have seen immediately that this was a man who paid absolutely no attention to the phenomenon of clothing. He wore what he wore strictly because he had no choice but to put something on when dealing with other people, as if he were hostile to the idea of wearing clothes at all. He might have been planning to wear these things the same way every day until they fell apart-like a highland farmer driving his donkey from morning to night until he kills it.
Once he had sucked all the nicotine he needed into his lungs, he gave a sigh of relief and produced a strange look on his face that hovered somewhere midway between a smile and a smirk. Then he opened his mouth.
Well, now, let me not forget to introduce myself. I am not usually so rude. The name is Ushikawa. That's ushi for bull and kawa for river. Easy enough to remember, don't you think? Everybody calls me Ushi. Funny: the more I hear that, the more I feel like a real bull. I even feel a kind of closeness whenever I happen to see a bull out in a field somewhere. Names are funny things, don't you think, Mr. Okada? Take Okada, for example. Now, theres a nice, clean name: hill-field. I sometimes wish I had a normal name like that, but unfortunately, a surname is not something you're free to pick. Once you're born into this world as Ushikawa, you're Ushikawa for life, like it or not. They've been calling me Ushi since the day I started kindergarten. Theres no way around it. You get a guy named Ushikawa, and people are bound to call him Ushi, right? They say a name expresses the thing it stands for, but I wonder if it isn't the other way around-the thing gets more and more like its name. Anyhow, just think of me as Ushikawa, and if you feel like it, call me Ushi. I don't mind.
I went to the kitchen and brought back a can of beer from the refrigerator. I did not offer any to Ushikawa. I hadn't invited him here, after all. I said nothing and drank my beer, and Ushikawa said nothing and drew deeply on his cigarette. I did not sit in the chair across from him but rather stood leaning against a pillar, looking down at him. Finally, he crushed his butt out in the empty cat food can and looked up at me.
I'm sure you're wondering how I got in here, Mr. Okada. True? You're sure you locked the door. And in fact, it was locked. But I have a key. A real key. Look, here it is.