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Bye-bye, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. I hope Kumiko comes back soon.

16 The Worlds Exhaustion and Burdens

The Magic Lamp

The phone rang at nine-thirty at night. It rang once, then stopped, and started ringing again. This was to be Ushikawa's signal.

Hello, Mr. Okada, said Ushikawa's voice. Ushikawa here. I'm in your neighborhood and thought I might drop by, if it would be all right with you. I know its late, but theres something I wanted to talk to you about in person. What do you say? It has to do with Ms. Kumiko, so I thought you might be interested.

I pictured Ushikawa's expression at the other end of the line as I listened to him speaking. He had a self-satisfied smile on his face, lips curled and filthy teeth exposed, as if to say, I know this is an offer you cant refuse; and unfortunately, he was right.

It took him exactly ten minutes to reach my house. He wore the same clothes he'd had on three days earlier. I could have been mistaken about that, but he wore the same kind of suit and shirt and necktie, all grimy and wrinkled and baggy. These disgraceful articles of clothing looked as if they had been forced to accept an unfair portion of the worlds exhaustion and burdens. If, through some kind of reincarnation, it were possible to be reborn as Ushikawa's clothing, with a guarantee of rare glory in the next rebirth, I would still not want to do it.

After asking my permission, Ushikawa helped himself to a beer in the refrigerator, checking first to see that the bottle felt properly chilled before he poured the contents into a glass he found nearby. We sat at the kitchen table.

All right, then, said Ushikawa. In the interest of saving time, I will dispense with the small talk and plunge directly into the business at hand. You would like to talk with Ms. Kumiko, wouldn't you, Mr. Okada? Directly. Just the two of you. I believe that is what you have been wanting for some time now. Your first priority. Am I right?

I gave this some thought. Or I paused for a few moments, as if giving it some thought. Of course I want to talk with her if that is possible. It is not impossible, said Ushikawa softly, with a nod. But there are conditions attached ... ?

There are no conditions attached. Ushikawa took a sip of his beer. I do have a new proposition for you this evening, however. Please listen to what I have to say, and give it careful consideration. It is something quite separate from the question of whether or not you talk to Ms. Kumiko.

I looked at him without speaking.

To begin with, then, Mr. Okada, you are renting that land, and the house on it, from a certain company, are you not? The hanging house, I mean. You are paying a rather large sum for it each month. You have not an ordinary lease, however, but one with an option to buy some years hence. Correct? Your contract is not a matter of public record, of course, and so your name does not appear anywhere-which is the point of all the machinations. You are, however, the de facto owner of the property, and the rent you pay accomplishes the same thing as mortgage payments. The total sum you are to pay- lets see- including the house, comes to something in the neighborhood of eighty million yen, does it not? At this rate, you should be able to take title to the land and the building in something less than two years. That is very impressive! Very fast work! I have to congratulate you.

Ushikawa looked at me for confirmation of everything he had been saying, but I remained silent.

Please don't ask me how I know all these details. You dig hard enough, you find what you want to know-if you know how to dig. And I have a pretty good idea who is behind the dummy company. Now, that was a tough one! I had to crawl through a labyrinth for it. It was like looking for a stolen car thats been repainted and had new tires put on and the seats recovered and the serial number filed off the engine. They covered all the bases. They're real pros. But now I have a pretty good idea of whats going on- probably better than you do, Mr. Okada. I'll bet you don't even know who it is you're paying the money back to, right?

That's all right. Money doesn't come with names attached.

Ushikawa laughed. You're absolutely right, Mr. Okada. Money does not come with names attached. Very well said! I'll have to write that down. But finally, Mr. Okada, things don't always go the way you want them to. Take the boys at the tax office, for example. They're not very bright. They only know how to squeeze taxes out of places that have names attached. So they go out of their way to stick names on where there aren't any. And not just names, but numbers too. They might as well be robots, for all the emotion thats involved in the process. But that is exactly what this capitalist society of ours is built on.... Which leads us to the conclusion that the money that you and I are now talking about does indeed have a name attached, and a very excellent name it is.

I looked at Ushikawa's head as he spoke. Depending on the angle, the light produced some strange dents in his scalp.

Don't worry, he said, with a laugh. The tax man wont be coming here. And even if he did come, with this much of a labyrinth to crawl through, he'd be bound to smash into something. Wham! He'd raise a huge bump on his head. And finally, its just a job for him: he doesn't want to hurt himself doing it. If he can get his money, he'd rather do it the easy way than the hard way: the easier the better. As long as he gets what he's looking for, the brownie points are the same. Especially if his boss tells him to take the easy way, any ordinary person is going to choose that. I managed to find what I did because it was me doing the searching. Not to boast or anything, but I'm good. I may not look it, but I'm really good. I know how to avoid injury. I know how to slip down the road at night when its pitch black out.

But to tell you the truth, Mr. Okada (and I know you're one person I can really open up to), not even I know what you're doing in that place. I do know the people who visit you there are paying an arm and a leg. So you must be doing something special for them thats worth all that money. That much is as clear as counting crows on snow. But exactly what it is you do, and why you're so stuck on that particular piece of land, I have no idea. Those are the two most important points in all this, but they are the very things most hidden, like the center of a palmists signboard. That worries me.

Which is to say, thats what worries Noboru Wataya, I said. Instead of answering, Ushikawa started pulling on the matted fuzz above his ears. This is just between you and me, Mr. Okada, but I have to confess I really admire you.

No flattery intended. This may sound odd, but you're basically a really ordinary guy. Or to put it even more bluntly, theres absolutely nothing special about you. Sorry about that, but don't take it the wrong way. Its true, though, in terms of how you fit in society. Meeting you face-to-face and talking with you like this, though, I'm very, very impressed with you-with how you handle yourself. I mean, look at the way you've managed to shake up a man like Dr. Wataya! That's why I'm just the carrier pigeon. A completely ordinary person couldn't pull this off.

That's what I like about you. I'm not making this up. I may be worthless scum, but I don't lie about things like that. And I don't think of you in completely objective terms, either. If theres nothing special about you in terms of how you fit in society, I'm a hundred times worse. I'm just an uneducated twerp from an awful background. My father was a tatami maker in Funabashi, an alcoholic, a real bastard. I used to wish he'd die and leave me alone, I was such a miserable kid, and I ended up getting my wish, for better or worse. Then I went through storybook poverty. I don't have a single pleasant memory from childhood, never had a kind word from either parent. No wonder I went bad! I managed to squeak through high school, but after that it was the school of hard knocks for me. Lived on my wits, what little I had. That's why I don't like members of the elite or official government types. All right: I hate em. Walk right into society through the front door, get a pretty wife, self-satisfied bas- tards. I like guys like you, Mr. Okada, who've done it all on their own.