"Want me to help you get rid of it?"

"With your hand?"

"Uh-huh. To tell you the truth," said Naoko, "it's been sticking into me ever since we lay down. It hurts."

I pulled my hips away. "Better?"

"Thanks."

"You know?" I said.

"What?"

"I wish you would do it."

"O.K.," she said with a nice smile. Then she unzipped my pants and took my stiff p.e.n.i.s in her hand.

"It's warm," she said.

She started to move her hand, but I stopped her and unb.u.t.toned her blouse, reaching around to undo her bra strap. I kissed her soft, pink nipples. She closed her eyes and slowly started moving her fingers.

"Hey, you're pretty good at that," I said.

"Be a good boy and shut up," said Naoko.

--- AFTER I CAME, I held her in my arms and kissed her again. Naoko redid her bra and blouse, and I closed my zipper.

"Will that make it easier for you to walk?" she asked.

"I owe it all to you."

"Well, then, sir, if it suits you, shall we walk a little farther?"

"By all means."

We cut across the meadow, through a stand of trees, and across another meadow. Naoko talked about her dead sister, explaining that although she had hardly said anything about this to anyone, she felt she ought to tell me.

"She was six years older than me, and our personalities were totally totally different, but still we were very close. We never fought, not once. It's true. Of course, with such a big difference in our ages, there was nothing much for us to fight about." different, but still we were very close. We never fought, not once. It's true. Of course, with such a big difference in our ages, there was nothing much for us to fight about."

Her sister was one of those girls who are tops in everything-a super student, a super athlete, popular, a leader, kind, straightforward, the boys liked her, her teachers loved her, her walls were covered with certificates of merit. There's always one girl like that in any public school. "I'm not saying this because she's my sister, but she never let any of this spoil her or make her the least bit stuck-up or a show-off. It's just that, no matter what you gave her to do, she would naturally do it better than anyone else.

"So when I was little, I decided that I was going to be the sweet little girl." Naoko twirled a frond of plume gra.s.s as she spoke. "I mean, you know, I grew up hearing everybody talking about how smart she was and how good she was at sports and how popular she was. Of course I'm going to figure there's no way I could ever compete with her. My face, at least, was a little prettier than hers, so I guess my parents decided they'd bring me up cute. Right from the start they put me in that that kind of school. They dressed me in velvet dresses and frilly blouses and patent leather shoes and gave me piano lessons and ballet lessons. This just made my sister even crazier about me-you know: I was her cute little sister. She'd give me these cute little presents and take me everywhere with her and help me with my homework. She even took me along on dates. She was the best big sister anyone could ask for. kind of school. They dressed me in velvet dresses and frilly blouses and patent leather shoes and gave me piano lessons and ballet lessons. This just made my sister even crazier about me-you know: I was her cute little sister. She'd give me these cute little presents and take me everywhere with her and help me with my homework. She even took me along on dates. She was the best big sister anyone could ask for.

"n.o.body knew why she killed herself. The same as with Kizuki. Exactly the same. She was seventeen, too, and she never gave the slightest hint she was going to commit suicide. She didn't leave a note, either. Really, it was exactly the same, don't you think?" was going to commit suicide. She didn't leave a note, either. Really, it was exactly the same, don't you think?"

"Sounds like it."

"Everybody said she was too smart or she read too many books. And she did did read a lot. She had tons of books. I read a bunch of them after she died, and it was so sad. They had her comments in the margins and flowers pressed between the pages and letters from boyfriends, and every time I came across something like that I'd cry. I cried a lot." read a lot. She had tons of books. I read a bunch of them after she died, and it was so sad. They had her comments in the margins and flowers pressed between the pages and letters from boyfriends, and every time I came across something like that I'd cry. I cried a lot."

Naoko fell silent for a few seconds, twirling the gra.s.s again.

"She was the kind of person who took care of things by herself. She'd never ask anybody for advice or help. It wasn't a matter of pride, I think. She just did what seemed natural to her. My parents were used to this and figured she'd be O.K. if they left her alone. I would go to my sister for advice and she was always ready to give it, but she never went to anybody else. She did what needed to be done, on her own. She never got angry or moody. This is all true, I mean it, I'm not exaggerating. Most girls, when they have their period or something, will get grumpy and take it out on other people, but she never even did that. Instead of going into a bad mood, she would become very subdued. Maybe once in two or three months this would happen to her: she'd shut herself up in her room and stay in bed, take off from school, hardly eat a thing, turn the lights off, and s.p.a.ce out. She wouldn't be in a bad mood, though. When I came home from school, she'd call me into her room and sit me down next to her and ask me about my day. I'd tell her all the little things-like what kinds of games I played with my friends or what the teacher said or my test grades, stuff like that. She'd take in every detail and make comments and suggestions, but as soon as I left-to play with a friend, say, or go for a ballet lesson-she'd s.p.a.ce out again. After two days, she'd snap out of it just like that and go off to school. This kind of thing went on for, I don't know, maybe four years. My parents were worried at first and I think they went to a doctor for advice, but, I mean, she'd be perfectly fine after the two days went by, so they figured it'd work itself out if they left her alone, she was such a bright, steady girl.

"After she died, though, I heard my parents talking about a younger brother of my father's who had died long before. He had also been very bright, but he had stayed shut up in the house for four years four years-from the time he was seventeen until he was twenty-one. And then suddenly one day he left the house and jumped in front of a train. My father said, 'Maybe it's in the blood-from my side.'" day he left the house and jumped in front of a train. My father said, 'Maybe it's in the blood-from my side.'"

While Naoko was speaking, her fingers unconsciously teased the ta.s.sel of the plume gra.s.s, scattering its fibers to the wind. When the shaft was bare, she wound it around her fingers.

"I was the one who found my sister dead," she went on. "In autumn when I was in the sixth grade. November. On a dark, rainy day. My sister was a senior in high school at the time. I came home from my piano lesson at six-thirty and my mother was fixing dinner. She told me to tell my sister that dinner was ready. I went upstairs and knocked on her door and yelled, 'Dinner's ready,' but there was no answer. Her room was absolutely silent. I thought this was strange, so I knocked again and opened the door and peeked inside. I figured she was probably sleeping. She wasn't in bed, though. She was standing by the window, staring outside, with her neck bent at a kind of angle like this. Like she was thinking. The room was dark, the lights were out, and it was hard to see anything. 'What are you doing?' I said to her. 'Dinner is ready.' That's when I noticed that she looked taller than usual. What was going on? I wondered: it was so strange! Did she have high heels on? Was she standing on something? I moved closer and was just about to speak to her again when I saw it: there was a rope above her head. It came straight down from a beam in the ceiling-I mean it was amazingly straight, like somebody had drawn a line in s.p.a.ce with a ruler. My sister had a white blouse on-yeah, a simple white blouse like this one-and a gray skirt, and her toes were pointing down like a ballerina's, except there was a s.p.a.ce between the tip of her toes and the floor of maybe seven or eight inches. I took in every detail. Her face, too. I looked at her face. I couldn't help it. I thought: I've got to go right downstairs and tell my mother. I've got to scream. But my body ignored me. It moved on its own, separately from my conscious mind. It was trying to lower her from the rope while my mind was telling me to hurry downstairs. Of course, there was no way a little girl could have the strength to do such a thing, and so I just stood there, s.p.a.cing out, for maybe five or six minutes, a total blank, like something inside me had died. I just stayed that way, with my sister, in that cold, dark place until my mother came up to see what was going on."

Naoko shook her head.

"For three days after that I couldn't talk. I just lay in bed like a dead person, eyes wide open and staring into s.p.a.ce. I didn't know what was happening." Naoko pressed against my arm. "I told you in my letter, didn't I? I'm a far more flawed human being than you realize. My sickness is a lot worse than you think: it has far deeper roots. And that's why I want you to go on ahead of me if you can. Don't wait for me. Sleep with other girls if you want to. Don't let thoughts of me hold you back. Just do what you want to do. Otherwise, I might end up taking you with me, and that is the one thing I don't want to do. I don't want to interfere with your life. I don't want to interfere with anybody's life. Like I said before, I want you to come to see me every once in a while, and always remember me. That's all I want." eyes wide open and staring into s.p.a.ce. I didn't know what was happening." Naoko pressed against my arm. "I told you in my letter, didn't I? I'm a far more flawed human being than you realize. My sickness is a lot worse than you think: it has far deeper roots. And that's why I want you to go on ahead of me if you can. Don't wait for me. Sleep with other girls if you want to. Don't let thoughts of me hold you back. Just do what you want to do. Otherwise, I might end up taking you with me, and that is the one thing I don't want to do. I don't want to interfere with your life. I don't want to interfere with anybody's life. Like I said before, I want you to come to see me every once in a while, and always remember me. That's all I want."

"It's not not all all I I want, though," I said. want, though," I said.

"You're wasting your life being involved with me."

"I'm not wasting anything."

"But I might never recover. Will you wait for me forever? Can you wait ten years, twenty years?"

"You're letting yourself be scared by too many things," I said. "The dark, bad dreams, the power of the dead. You have to forget them. I'm sure you'll get well if you do."

"If I can," said Naoko, shaking her head.

"If you can get out of this place, will you live with me?" I asked. "Then I can protect you from the dark and from bad dreams. Then you'd have me instead of Reiko to hold you when things got difficult."

Naoko pressed still more firmly against me. "That would be wonderful," she said.

WE GOT BACK TO THE COFFEEHOUSE a little before three. Reiko was reading a book and listening to Brahms's second piano concerto on the radio. There was something wonderful about Brahms playing at the edge of a gra.s.sy meadow without a sign of people as far as the eye could see. Reiko was whistling along with the cello pa.s.sage opening the third movement. a little before three. Reiko was reading a book and listening to Brahms's second piano concerto on the radio. There was something wonderful about Brahms playing at the edge of a gra.s.sy meadow without a sign of people as far as the eye could see. Reiko was whistling along with the cello pa.s.sage opening the third movement.

"Backhaus and Bohm," she said. "I wore this record out once, a long time ago. Literally. I wore the grooves out listening to every note. I sucked the music right out of it."

Naoko and I ordered coffee.

"Do a lot of talking?" asked Reiko.

"Tons," said Naoko.

"Tell me all about his, uh, you know, later."

"We didn't do any of that," said Naoko, reddening.

"Really?" Reiko asked me. "Nothing?"

"Nothing," I said.

"Bo-o-o-ring!" she said with a bored look on her face.

"True," I said, sipping my coffee.

THE SCENE IN THE DINING HALL was the same as it had been the day before-the mood, the voices, the faces. Only the menu had changed. The balding man in white who, yesterday, had been talking about the secretion of gastric juices under weightless conditions joined the three of us at our table and talked for a long time about the correlation of brain size to intelligence. As we ate our soybean hamburger steaks, we heard all about the volume of Bismarck's brain and Napoleon's. He pushed his plate aside and used a ballpoint pen and notepaper to draw sketches of brains. He would start to draw, declare, "No, that's not quite it," and start a new one. This happened any number of times. When he was through, he carefully put the remaining notepaper away in a pocket of his white jacket and slipped the pen into his breast pocket. He had a total of three pens in that pocket, along with pencils and a ruler. When he was through eating, he repeated what he had told me the day before, "The winters here are nice. Make sure you come back when it's winter," and left the dining hall. was the same as it had been the day before-the mood, the voices, the faces. Only the menu had changed. The balding man in white who, yesterday, had been talking about the secretion of gastric juices under weightless conditions joined the three of us at our table and talked for a long time about the correlation of brain size to intelligence. As we ate our soybean hamburger steaks, we heard all about the volume of Bismarck's brain and Napoleon's. He pushed his plate aside and used a ballpoint pen and notepaper to draw sketches of brains. He would start to draw, declare, "No, that's not quite it," and start a new one. This happened any number of times. When he was through, he carefully put the remaining notepaper away in a pocket of his white jacket and slipped the pen into his breast pocket. He had a total of three pens in that pocket, along with pencils and a ruler. When he was through eating, he repeated what he had told me the day before, "The winters here are nice. Make sure you come back when it's winter," and left the dining hall.

"Is that guy a doctor or a patient?" I asked Reiko.

"Which do you think?"

"I really can't tell. In either case, he doesn't seem all that normal."

"He's a doctor," said Naoko. "Doctor Miyata."

"Yeah," said Reiko, "but I bet he's the craziest one here."

"Mr. Omura, the gatekeeper, is pretty crazy, too," answered Naoko.

"True," said Reiko, nodding as she stabbed her broccoli. "He does these wild calisthenics every morning, screaming nonsense at the top of his lungs. And before you came, Naoko, there was a girl in the business office, Miss Kinos.h.i.ta, who tried to kill herself. And last year they fired a male nurse, Tokushima, who had a terrible drinking problem."

"Sounds like patients and staff could trade places," I said.

"Right on," said Reiko, waving her fork in the air. "I guess you're finally starting to figure out how things work here."

"I guess."

"What makes us most normal," said Reiko, "is knowing that we're not normal."

BACK IN THE ROOM, Naoko and I played cards while Reiko practiced Bach on her guitar.

"What time are you leaving tomorrow?" Reiko asked me, taking a break and lighting a cigarette.

"Right after breakfast," I said. "The bus comes after nine. That way I can get back in time for tomorrow night's work."

"Too bad. It'd be nice if you could stay longer."

"If I hung around too long, I might end up living here," I said, laughing.

"Maybe so," Reiko said. Then, to Naoko, she said, "Oh, yeah, I've got to go get some grapes at Oka's. I totally forgot."

"Want me to go with you?" asked Naoko.

"How about letting me borrow your young Mr. Watanabe here?"

"Fine," said Naoko.

"Good. Let's just the two of us go for another nighttime stroll," said Reiko, taking my hand. "We were almost there yesterday. Let's go all the way tonight."

"Fine," said Naoko, t.i.ttering. "Do what you like."

The night air was cool. Reiko wore a pale blue cardigan over her shirt and walked with her hands shoved in the pockets of her jeans. Looking up at the sky, she sniffed the breeze like a dog. "Smells like rain," she said. I tried sniffing, too, but couldn't smell anything. True, there were lots of clouds in the sky obscuring the moon.

"If you stay here long enough, you can pretty much tell the weather by the smell of the air," said Reiko.

We entered the wooded area where the staff houses stood. Reiko told me to wait a minute and walked over to the front door of one house, where she rang the bell. A woman came to the door-no doubt the lady of the house-and stood there chatting and chuckling with Reiko. Then she ducked inside and came back with a large plastic bag. Reiko thanked her and said goodnight before returning to the spot where I was standing. thanked her and said goodnight before returning to the spot where I was standing.

"Look," she said, opening the bag.

The bag held a huge pile of grapes in cl.u.s.ters.

"Do you like grapes?"

"I sure do."

She handed me the topmost bunch. "It's O.K. to eat them. They're washed."

We walked along eating grapes and spitting the skins and seeds on the ground. The fruit was fresh and delicious.

"I give their boy piano lessons once in a while, and they give me different stuff. The wine we had was from them. I sometimes ask them to do a little shopping for me in town."

"I'd like to hear the rest of the story you were telling me yesterday," I said.

"Fine," said Reiko. "But if we keep coming home late, Naoko might start getting suspicious."

"I'm willing to risk it."

"O.K., then. I want a roof, though. It's a little chilly tonight."

She turned left as we approached the tennis courts. We went down a narrow stairway and came out to a spot where several storehouses stood like a block of row houses. Reiko opened the door of the nearest one, stepped in, and turned on the lights. "Come in," she said. "It's a nothing kind of place, though."

The storehouse contained neat rows of cross-country skis, boots, and poles, and on the floor were piled snow removal equipment and bags of rock salt.

"I used to come here all the time for guitar practice-when I wanted to be alone. Nice and cozy, isn't it?"

Reiko sat on the bags of rock salt and invited me to sit next to her. I did as I was told.

"Not much ventilation here, but mind if I smoke?"

"Sure, go ahead," I said.

"This is one habit I can't seem to break," she said with a frown, but she lit up with obvious enjoyment. Not many people enjoy tobacco as much as Reiko did. I ate my grapes, carefully peeling them one at a time and tossing the skins and seeds into a tin that served as a wastebasket.

"Now, let's see, how far did we get last night?" Reiko asked.

"It was a dark and stormy night, and you were climbing the steep cliff to grab the bird's nest."

"You're amazing, the way you can joke around with such a straight face," said Reiko. "Let's see, I think I had gotten to where I was giving piano lessons to the girl every Sat.u.r.day morning."

"That's it."

"a.s.suming you can divide everybody in the world into two groups-those who are good at teaching things to people, and those who are not-I pretty much belong to the first group," said Reiko. "I never thought so when I was young, and I guess I didn't want to think of myself that way, but I realized it was true when I had attained a degree of self-knowledge after I had reached a certain age. I'm good at teaching people things. Really good."