Clippings

「どうして納屋を焼くんだろう？」
「変ですか？」
「わからないな。君は納屋を焼くし、僕は納屋を焼かない。そのあいだにはいわば歴然とした違いがあるし、僕としてはどちらが変かというよりは、まずその違いがどういうものはっきりさせておきたいんだ。それに納屋の話は君が先に持ち出したんだよ」

“Why do you burn barns?”
“Do you think its weird?”
“I don’t know. You burn barns. I don’t burn barns. There’s this glaring difference, and to me, rather than say which of us is strange, first of all I’d like to clear up just what that difference is. Anyway, you were the one who brought the subject up in the first place.”

Noboru Watanabe, where are you? I thought. Did the wind-up bird forget to wind your spring?
It sounded almost like a poem.

Noboru Watanabe,
Where are you?
Did the wind-up bird
Forget to wind your spring?

I had barely finished half of my beer when the phone began to ring.
“Get it, will you?” I shouted towards the darkness of the living room.
“No! You get it.” She said.
“I don’t want to.”

Her reply never came. The phone continued to ring, the sound stirring up the dust that floated in the darkness. Neither I nor my wife said a word. I drank my beer, she went on crying soundlessly. I counted twenty rings before I gave up. There was no point in counting forever.