On Tuesday, as I was sitting on the sofa, an old man came down the stairs. Midseventies, I’d say, with gray hair and glasses. He was wearing sandals, gray slacks, and a long-sleeved shirt. His clothes were spotless and neatly ironed. The old man was tall and had good posture. He looked to me like a recently retired elementary-school principal.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello,” I replied.
“Do you mind if I smoke here?”
“Not at all,” I said. “Go right ahead.”
The old man sat down beside me and pulled a pack of Seven Stars from a trouser pocket. He struck a match, lit his cigarette, then blew out the match and placed it in the ashtray.
“I live on the twenty-sixth floor,” he said, slowly exhaling smoke. “With my son and his wife. They say the place gets all smoky, so I always come here when I want to have a cigarette. Do you smoke?”
“I quit twelve years ago,” I told him.
“I should quit, too,” the old man said. “I smoke only a couple of cigarettes a day, so it shouldn’t be too hard. But, you know, going to the store to buy cigarettes, coming down here for a smoke—it helps pass the time. Gets me up and moving and keeps me from thinking too much.”
“You keep smoking for your health is what you’re saying,” I said.
“Exactly,” the old man said with a serious look.
“You said you live on the twenty-sixth floor?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know Mr. Kurumizawa in 2609?”
“I do. He wears glasses and works at Salomon Brothers, I believe?”
“Merrill Lynch,” I corrected him.
“That’s right—Merrill Lynch,” the old man said. “I’ve talked with him here. He uses this sofa sometimes.”
“What does he do here?”
“I don’t really know. He sort of just sits here, staring off into space. I don’t believe he smokes.”
“He looks like he’s thinking about something?”
“I’m not sure if I could tell the difference—between just staring into space and thinking. We’re usually thinking all the time, aren’t we? Not that we live in order to think, but the opposite isn’t true, either—that we think in order to live. I believe, contrary to Descartes, that we sometimes think in order not to be. Staring into space might unintentionally actually have the opposite effect. At any rate, it’s a difficult question.”
The old man took a deep drag on his cigarette.
“Did Mr. Kurumizawa ever mention any problems at work or at home?” I asked.
The old man shook his head and dropped his cigarette into the ashtray. “As I’m sure you know, water always picks the shortest route to flow down. Sometimes, though, the shortest route is actually formed by the water. The human thought process is a lot like that. At least, that’s my impression. But I haven’t answered your question. Mr. Kurumizawa and I never once talked about such deep things. We just chatted—about the weather, the apartment association’s regulations, things of that nature.”
“I understand. Sorry to have taken up your time,” I said.
“Sometimes we don’t need words,” the old man said, as if he hadn’t heard me. “Rather, it’s words that need us. If we were no longer here, words would lose their whole function. Don’t you think so? They would end up as words that are never spoken, and words that aren’t spoken are no longer words.”
“Exactly,” I said. “It’s sort of like a Zen koan.”
“That’s right,” the old man said, nodding, and stood up to go back to his apartment. “Take care now,” he said.
“Goodbye,” I replied.
After two the following Friday afternoon, as I made my way to the landing between the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth floors, I found a little girl sitting on the sofa, gazing at herself in the mirror as she sang a song. She looked just old enough to have started elementary school. She was wearing a pink T-shirt and denim shorts, with a green daypack on her back and a hat in her lap.
“Hi there,” I said.
“Hi,” she said, and stopped singing.
I wanted to sit down on the sofa beside her, but if anybody passed by and saw us they might think something strange was going on, so instead I leaned against the windowsill, keeping a distance between us.
“Is school over?” I asked.
“Don’t want to talk ’bout school,” she said in no uncertain terms.
“Well, then, we won’t,” I said. “Do you live in this building?”
“Yes,” she said. “On the twenty-seventh floor.”
“You don’t walk all the way up, do you?”
“The elevator’s stinky,” the girl said. “The elevator’s stinky, so I’m walking up to the twenty-seventh floor.” She looked at herself in the mirror and gave a big nod. “Not always, but sometimes.”
“Don’t you get tired?”
She didn’t answer. “You know something? Of all the mirrors in the staircase, this one reflects the best. It’s not at all like the mirrors in our apartment.”
“How do you mean?”
“Take a look yourself,” the little girl said.
I took a step forward, faced the mirror, and looked for a while at my reflection. And, sure enough, the image of me reflected in the mirror was a few degrees removed from what I was used to seeing. The me in the mirror looked plumper and happier. As if I’d just polished off a stack of hot pancakes.
“Do you have a dog?” the little girl asked.
“No, I don’t. I do have some tropical fish.”
“Hmm,” she said. Her interest in tropical fish seemed nonexistent.
“Do you like dogs?” I asked.
She didn’t respond, but asked a different question. “Do you have any children?”
“No, I don’t,” I answered.
She eyed me suspiciously. “Mom says never talk to men who don’t have children. Mom says there’s a likely-hood they’re weird.”
“Not necessarily,” I said, “though I do agree with your mom that you have to be careful when you talk to men you don’t know.”
“But I don’t think you’re weird.”
“I don’t either.”
“You’re not going to show me your weenie, are you?”
“No.”
“And you don’t collect little girls’ underpants?”
“No way.”
“Do you collect anything?’
I had to think about it. I did collect first editions of modern poetry, but bringing that up here wouldn’t get us anywhere. “No, I don’t really collect anything. How about you?”
The girl gave it some thought, and shook her head a couple of times. “I don’t collect anything, either.”
We were silent for a moment.
“Hey, at Mister Donut which doughnut do you like the best?”
“Old-fashioned,” I said right away.
“I don’t know that one,” the girl said. “You know which ones I like? I like full moons and bunny whips.”
“I’ve never heard of those.”
“They’re the ones with fruit or sweet bean paste inside. They’re great. But Mom says if you eat sweets all the time you end up dumb, so she doesn’t buy them for me much.”
“They sound delicious,” I said.
“What are you doing here? I saw you yesterday,” the girl said.
“I’m looking for something.”
“What is it?”
“I have no idea,” I admitted. “I imagine it’s like a door.”
“A door?” the little girl repeated. “What kind of door? There are all shapes and colors of doors.”
I thought about this. What sort of shape and color? Come to think of it, I’d never once thought about the shape and color of doors. “I don’t know. I wonder what shape and color it might be. Maybe it isn’t even a door.”
“You mean maybe it’s an umbrella or something?”
“An umbrella?” I said. “Hmm. No reason it can’t be an umbrella, I suppose.”
“But umbrellas and doors are different shapes and sizes, and what they do is different.”
“That’s right. But I’m sure I’ll recognize it when I see it. Like, ‘Hey! This is it!’ Whether it’s an umbrella, a door, or even a doughnut.”
“Hmm,” the little girl said. “Have you been looking for a long time?”
“For a long time. Since before you were born.”
“Is that right?” the little girl said, staring at her palm for a while. “How ’bout I help you find it?”
“I’d really like that,” I said.
“So I should look for something, I don’t know what it is but it might be a door or an umbrella or a doughnut or an elephant?”
“Exactly,” I said. “But when you see it you’ll know that’s it.”
“Sounds like fun,” she said. “But I have to go home now. I have a ballet lesson.”
“See you later,” I said. “Thanks for talking with me.”
“Tell me again the name of the doughnut you like?”
“Old-fashioned.”
Frowning, the girl repeated the words “old-fashioned” over and over. Then she stood and vanished up the stairs, singing all the while. I closed my eyes, gave myself up once more to the flow, letting time be pointlessly whittled away.
One Saturday morning I got a call from my client.
“My husband’s been found,” she began, skipping a greeting. “I was contacted by the police around noon yesterday. They found him sleeping on a bench in a waiting room in Sendai Station. He didn’t have any money on him, or ID, but after a while he remembered his name, address, and phone number. I flew to Sendai right away. It’s my husband, all right.”
“But why would he be in Sendai?” I asked her.
“He has no idea how he got there. He just woke up on a bench in Sendai Station with a railroad employee shaking his shoulder. How he got all the way to Sendai without any money, how he ate the last twenty days—he doesn’t remember a thing.”
“How was he dressed?”
“He had on the same clothes as when he left our apartment. He had a beard and he’d lost more than twenty pounds. He’d also lost his glasses somewhere. I’m calling from a hospital in Sendai right now. They’re running some tests. CAT scan, X-rays, neurological exams. But his mind seems entirely fine, and nothing is physically wrong with him. But his memory’s gone. He remembers leaving his mother’s place and walking up the stairs, but, after that, nothing. Anyway, we should be able to come back to Tokyo tomorrow.”
“That’s great news.”
“I really appreciate all you’ve done trying to find him, I really do. But now that things have turned out this way I don’t need you to continue the investigation.”
“I guess not,” I said.
“The whole thing’s been so crazy and incomprehensible, but at least I have my husband back safe and sound, and that’s all that matters.”
“Of course,” I said. “That’s what’s important.”
“Are you sure, now, that you won’t accept anything for your services?”
“As I told you the first time we met, I can’t accept any kind of payment whatsoever. So please don’t trouble yourself over that. I do appreciate the sentiment, though.”
Silence. A refreshing silence that implied we’d come to a mutual understanding. I played my own role in supporting this, appreciating the calm.
“Take care of yourself, then,” the woman finally said and hung up, her tone carrying with it a hint of sympathy.
I put down the phone. For a while I sat there, slowly twirling a brand-new pencil, staring at the blank memo pad in front of me. The white pad reminded me of a freshly washed sheet just back from the laundry. The sheet made me think of a calico cat stretched out on it for a pleasant nap. That image—of a napping cat on a freshly laundered sheet—helped me relax. I started to search my memory, and I carefully wrote down on my memo pad, one by one, all the salient points the woman had made: Sendai Station, Friday around noon, telephone, lost twenty pounds, same clothes, lost his glasses, memory of twenty days gone.
Memory of twenty days gone.
I laid the pencil on the desk, leaned back in my chair, and stared up at the ceiling. The ceiling boards had some irregular spots here and there, and if I squinted it looked like a celestial chart. I gazed up at this imaginary starry night and wondered if maybe I should start smoking again—for my health. My head was filled with the click of the woman’s high heels on the stairway.
“Mr. Kurumizawa,” I said aloud to a corner of the ceiling. “Welcome back to the real world. Back to the three sides of your beautiful triangular world—your panic-attack-prone mother, your wife, with her ice-pick heels, and good old Merrill Lynch.”
I imagine my search will continue—somewhere. A search for something that could very well be shaped like a door. Or maybe something closer to an umbrella, or a doughnut. Or an elephant. A search that, I hope, will take me where I’m likely to find it.
—TRANSLATED BY PHILIP GABRIELc