For the next three hours, we sat at the subway entrance by the Wako Building, counting the bald-headed men who passed by. Looking down at the heads going up and down the subway stairs was the most accurate method of determining the degree of baldness of any one head. May Kasahara would say A or B or C, and I would write it down. She had obviously done this many times. She never fumbled or hesitated or corrected herself, but assigned each head to its proper category with great speed and precision, uttering the letters in low, clipped tones so as not to be noticed by the passersby. This called for some rapid-fire naming whenever a large group of bald heads passed by at once: CCBABCAAC-CBBB. At one point, an elegant-looking old gentleman (who himself possessed a full head of snow- white hair) stopped to watch us in action, Pardon me, he said to me after a while, but might I ask what you two are doing?
Survey, I said. What kind of survey? he asked. Social studies, I said. C A C A B C, said May Kasahara. The old gentleman seemed less than convinced, but he went on watching us until he gave up and wandered off somewhere. When the Mitsukoshi clock across the street signaled four o'clock, we ended our survey and went back to the Dairy Queen for a cup of coffee. It had not been strenuous work, but I found my neck and shoulders strangely stiff. Maybe it was from the covert nature of the job, a guilty feeling I had about counting bald men in secret. All the time we were on the subway heading back to company headquarters in Shimbashi, I found myself automatically assigning each bald head I saw to category A or B or C, which almost made me queasy. I tried to stop myself, but by then a kind of momentum had set in. We handed in our survey forms and received our pay - rather good pay for the amount of time and effort involved. I signed a receipt and put the money in my pocket. May Kasahara and I rode the subway to Shinjuku and from there took the Odakyu Line home. The afternoon rush hour was starting. This was my first ride on a crowded train in some time, but it hardly filled me with nostalgia.
Pretty good job, don't you think? said May Kasahara, standing next to me on the train. Its easy, pays not bad.
Pretty good, I said, sucking on a lemon drop. Go with me next time? We can do it once a week. Why not? I said. You know, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, May Kasahara said after a short silence, as if a thought had suddenly come to her, I bet the reason people are afraid of going bald is because it makes them think of the end of life. I mean, when your hair starts to thin, it must feel as if your life is being worn away ... as if you've taken a giant step in the direction of death, the last Big Consumption.
I thought about it for a while. That's one way to look at it, I'm sure, I said.
You know, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, I sometimes wonder what it must feel like to die little by little over a long period of time. What do you think?
Unsure exactly what she was getting at, I changed my grip on the hand strap and looked into her eyes. Can you give me a concrete example of what you mean by that-to die little by little?
Well... I don't know. You're trapped in the dark all alone, with nothing to eat, nothing to drink, and little by little you die....
It must be terrible, I said. Painful. I wouldn't want to die like that if I could help it.
But finally, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, isn't that just what life is? Aren't we all trapped in the dark somewhere, and they've taken away our food and water, and were slowly dying, little by little ... ?
I laughed. You're too young to be so ... pessimistic, I said, using the English word.
Pessi- what?
Pessimistic. It means looking only at the dark side of things.
Pessimistic ... pessimistic ... She repeated the English to herself over and over, and then she looked up at me with a fierce glare. I'm only sixteen, she said, and I don't know much about the world, but I do know one thing for sure. If I'm pessimistic, then the adults in this world who are not pessimistic are a bunch of idiots.
10 Magic Touch
Death in the Bathtub. Messenger with Keepsakes
We had moved into our present house in the autumn of the second year we were married.
The Koenji apartment we had lived in until then was slated for renovation. We looked for a cheap, convenient apartment to move into, but finding such a place was not easy with our budget. When he heard this, my uncle suggested that we move into a house he owned in Setagaya. He had bought it in his youth and lived there for ten years. He wanted to tear the old place down and put up something more functional, but architectural regulations prevented him from building the kind of house he wanted. He was waiting for a rumored relaxation of the rules to take effect, but if he left the place vacant in the meantime, he would have to pay the property taxes, and if he rented it to strangers, there could be trouble when he asked them to vacate. From us, he would take only a nominal rent to cover the taxes, but in return he wanted us to agree to give up the place with three months notice when the time came. We had no problem with that: the part about the taxes was not entirely clear to us, but we jumped at the chance to live in a real house, if only for a little while, paying the kind of rent we had been paying to live in an apartment (and a very cheap apartment at that). The house was pretty far from the nearest station on the Odakyu Line, but it was in a quiet residential neighborhood, and it had its own small yard. Even though it didn't belong to us, it gave us the feeling, once we moved in, that we were now part of a real household.
My mothers younger brother, this uncle of mine never made any demands on us. He was kind of a cool guy, I suppose, but there was something almost uncanny about him in the way he left us alone. Still, he was my favorite relative. He had graduated from a college in Tokyo and gone to work as a radio announcer, but when he got sick of the work after ten years, he quit the station and opened a bar on the Ginza. It was an almost austere little place, but it became widely known for the authenticity of its cocktails, and within a few years my uncle was running a string of bars and restaurants. Every one of his establishments did extremely welclass="underline" apparently, he had that special spark you need for business. Once, while I was still in college, I asked him why every place he opened was such a success. In the very same location where one restaurant had failed on the Ginza, he might open up the same kind of restaurant and do just fine. Why was that? He held the palms of both hands out for me to see. Its my magic touch, he said, without a hint of humor. And that was all he said.
Maybe he really did have a magic touch, but he also had a talent for finding capable people to work for him. He paid them high salaries and treated them well, and they in turn worked hard for him. When I know I've got the right guy, I put a wad of bills in his hand and let him do his thing, he once told me. You've got to spend your money for the things that money can buy, not worry about profit or loss. Save your energy for the things that money cant buy.
He married late in life. Only after he had achieved financial success in his mid-forties did he settle down. His wife was a divorcee, three or four years his junior, and she brought her own considerable assets to the marriage. My uncle never told me how he happened to meet her, and all I could tell about her was that she was a quiet sort of woman of good background. They had no children. She had apparently had no children with her first husband, either, which may have been the reason for the divorce. In any case, though not exactly a rich man, my uncle was in a position in his mid-forties where it was no longer necessary for him to break his back for money. In addition to the profits from his restaurants and bars, he had rental income from several houses and condos that he owned, plus steady dividend income from investments. With its reputation for respectable businesses and modest lifestyles, the family tended to see my uncle as something of a black sheep, and he had never shown much inclination for consorting with relatives. As his only nephew, though, I had always been of some concern to him, especially after my mother died the year I entered college and I had a falling-out with my father, who remarried. When I was living the lonely life of a poor college student in Tokyo, my uncle often treated me to dinner in one or another of his Ginza restaurants.