Midori laughed and patted me on the back. "Never mind," she said. "It really doesn't matter."

ONE STRANGE THING after another came up that Sunday afternoon. A fire broke out near Midori's house and when we went up to the third-floor after another came up that Sunday afternoon. A fire broke out near Midori's house and when we went up to the third-floor laundry deck to watch, we sort of kissed. It sounds stupid when I put it that way, but that was how things worked out. laundry deck to watch, we sort of kissed. It sounds stupid when I put it that way, but that was how things worked out.

We were drinking coffee after the meal and talking about the university when we heard the sound of sirens. They got louder and louder and seemed to be increasing in number. Lots of people ran by the store, some of them shouting. Midori went to a room that faced the street, opened the window, and looked down. "Wait here a minute," she said, and disappeared, after which I heard feet pounding up stairs.

I sat there drinking coffee alone and trying to remember where Uruguay was. Let's see, Brazil was over here, and Venezuela there, and Colombia somewhere over here, but the location of Uruguay I couldn't manage to recall. Midori came down a few minutes later and urged me to hurry somewhere with her. I followed her to the end of the hall and climbed a steep, narrow stairway to a wooden deck with bamboo laundry poles. The deck was higher than most of the surrounding rooftops and gave a good view of the neighborhood. Huge clouds of black smoke shot up from a place three or four houses away and flowed with the breeze out toward the main street. A burning smell filled the air.

"It's Sakamoto's place," said Midori, leaning over the railing. "They used to make traditional door fittings and stuff. They went out of business, though."

I leaned over the railing with her and strained to see what was going on. A three-story building blocked our view of the exact fire scene, but there seemed to be three or four fire engines over there working on the blaze. No more than two of them could squeeze into the narrow lane where the house was burning, the rest standing by on the main street. The usual crowd of gawkers filled the area.

"Hey, maybe you should gather your valuables together and get ready to evacuate this place," I said to Midori. "The wind's blowing the other way now, but it could change any time, and you've got a gas station right there. I'll help you pack."

"What valuables?" said Midori.

"Well, you must have something you'd want to save-pa.s.sbooks, seals, legal papers, stuff like that. Emergency cash."

"Forget it. I'm not running away."

"Even if this place burns?"

"You heard me. I don't mind dying."

I looked her in the eye, and she looked straight at me. I couldn't tell if she was serious or joking. We stayed like that for a while, and soon I stopped worrying.

"O.K.," I said. "I get it. I'll stay with you."

"You'll die with me?" Midori asked with shining eyes.

"h.e.l.l, no," I said. "I'll run if it gets dangerous. If you want to die, you can do it alone."

"Cold-hearted b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"

"I'm not going to die with you just because you made lunch for me. Of course, if it had been dinner ..."

"Oh, well ... Anyhow, let's stay here and watch for a while. We can sing songs. And if something bad happens, we can think about it then."

"Sing songs?"

Midori brought two floor pillows, four cans of beer, and a guitar from downstairs. We drank and watched the black smoke rising. Midori strummed and sang. I asked her if she didn't think this might anger the neighbors. Drinking beer and singing while you watched a local fire from the laundry deck didn't seem like the most admirable behavior I could think of.

"Forget it," she said. "We never worry about what the neighbors might think."

She sang some of the folk songs she had played with her group. I would have been hard-pressed to say she was good, but she did seem to enjoy her own music. She went through all the old standards-"Lemon Tree," "Puff (the Magic Dragon)," "Five Hundred Miles," "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" "Michael, Row the Boat Ash.o.r.e." At first she tried to get me to sing ba.s.s harmony, but I was so bad she gave up and sang alone to her heart's content. I worked on my beer and listened to her sing and kept an eye on the fire. It flared up and died down several times. People were yelling and giving orders. A newspaper helicopter clattered overhead, took pictures, and flew away. I worried that we might be in the picture. A policeman screamed through a loudspeaker for gawkers to pull back. A little kid was crying for his mother. Gla.s.s shattered somewhere. Before long the wind started shifting unpredictably, and white ash flakes would fall out of the air around us, but Midori went on sipping and singing. After she had gone through most of the songs she knew, she sang an old one that she said she had written herself.

I'd love to cook a stew for you But I have no pot.

I'd love to knit a scarf for you But I have no wool.

I'd love to write a poem for you But I have no pen.

"It's called 'I Have Nothing,'" Midori announced. It was a truly terrible song, both words and music.

I listened to this musical mess with thoughts of how the house would blow apart in the explosion if the gas station caught fire. Tired of singing, Midori put her guitar down and slumped against my shoulder like a cat in the sun.

"How did you like my song?" she asked.

I answered cautiously, "It was unique and original and very expressive of your personality."

"Thanks," she said. "The theme is that I have nothing."

"Yeah, I kinda thought so."

"You know," she said, "when my mother died ..."

"Yeah?"

"I didn't feel the least bit sad."

"Oh."

"And I didn't feel sad when my father left, either."

"Yeah?"

"It's true. Don't you think I'm terrible? Cold-hearted?"

"I'm sure you've got your reasons."

"My reasons. Hmm. Things were pretty complicated in this house. But I always thought, I mean, they're my mother and father, of course I'd be sad if they died or I never saw them again. But it didn't happen that way. I didn't feel anything. Not sad, not lonely. I hardly even think of them. Sometimes I'll have dreams, though. Sometimes my mother will be glaring at me out of the darkness and she'll accuse me of being happy she died. But I'm not not happy she died. I'm just not very sad. And to tell the truth, I never shed a single tear. I cried all night when my cat died, though, when I was little." happy she died. I'm just not very sad. And to tell the truth, I never shed a single tear. I cried all night when my cat died, though, when I was little."

Why so much smoke? I wondered. I couldn't see flames, and the burning area didn't seem to be spreading. There was just this column of smoke winding up into the sky. What could have kept burning so long?

"But I'm not the only one to blame," Midori continued. "It's true I've got a cold streak. I recognize that. But if they-my father and mother-had loved me a little more, I would have been able to feel more-to feel real sadness, for example."

"Do you think you weren't loved enough?"

She tilted her head and looked at me. Then she gave a sharp, little nod. "Somewhere between 'not enough' and 'not at all.' I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it-to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once. But they never gave that to me. Never, not once. If I tried to cuddle up and beg for something, they'd just shove me away and yell at me. 'No! That costs too much!' It's all I ever heard. So I made up my mind I was going to find someone who would love me unconditionally three hundred and sixty-five days a year. I was still in elementary school at the time-fifth or sixth grade-but I made up my mind once and for all."

"Wow," I said. "And did your search pay off?"

"That's the hard part," said Midori. She watched the rising smoke for a while, thinking. "I guess I've been waiting so long I'm looking for perfection. That makes it tough."

"Waiting for the perfect love?"

"No, even I know better than that. I'm looking for selfishness. Perfect selfishness. Like, say I tell you I want to eat strawberry shortcake. And you stop everything you're doing and run out and buy it for me. And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and hold this strawberry shortcake out to me. And I say I don't want it anymore and throw it out the window. That's what I'm looking for."

"I'm not sure that has anything to do with love," I said with some amazement.

"It does," she said. "You just don't know it. There are times in a girl's life when things like that are incredibly important."

"Things like throwing strawberry shortcake out the window?"

"Exactly. And when I do it, I want the man to apologize to me. 'Now I see, Midori. What a fool I've been! I should have known that you would lose your desire for strawberry shortcake. I have all the intelligence and sensitivity of a piece of donkey s.h.i.t. To make it up to you, I'll go out and buy you something else. What would you like? Chocolate mousse? Cheesecake?'"

"So then what?"

"So then I'd give him all the love he deserves for what he's done."

"Sounds crazy to me."

"Well, to me me, that's what love is. Not that anyone can understand me, though." Midori gave her head a little shake against my shoulder. "For a certain kind of person, love begins from something tiny or silly. From something like that or it doesn't begin at all."

"I've never met a girl who thinks like you."

"A lot of people tell me that," she said, digging at a cuticle. "But it's the only way I know how to think. Seriously. I'm just telling you what I believe. It's never crossed my mind that my way of thinking is different from other people's. I'm not trying trying to be different. But when I speak out honestly, everybody thinks I'm kidding or playacting. When that happens, I feel like everything's such a pain!" to be different. But when I speak out honestly, everybody thinks I'm kidding or playacting. When that happens, I feel like everything's such a pain!"

"And you want to let yourself die in a fire?"

"Hey, no, that's different. It's just a matter of curiosity."

"What? Dying in a fire?"

"No, I just wanted to see how you'd react," Midori said. "But dying itself, I'm not afraid of. Really. Like here, I'd just be overcome with smoke and lose consciousness and die before I knew it. That doesn't frighten me at all, compared with the way I saw my mother and a few relatives die. All All my relatives die after suffering with some terrible illness. It's in the blood, I guess. It's always a my relatives die after suffering with some terrible illness. It's in the blood, I guess. It's always a long, long long, long process, and at the end you almost can't tell whether the person is alive or dead. All that's left is pain and suffering." process, and at the end you almost can't tell whether the person is alive or dead. All that's left is pain and suffering."

Midori put a Marlboro between her lips and lit it.

"That's the kind of death that frightens me. The shadow of death slowly, slowly eats away at the region of life, and before you know it everything's dark and you can't see, and the people around you think of you as more dead than alive. I hate that. I couldn't stand it."

ANOTHER HALF HOUR, and the fire was out. They had apparently kept it from spreading and prevented any injuries. All but one of the fire engines returned to base, and the crowd dispersed, buzzing with conversation. One police car remained to direct traffic, its rooftop light spinning. Two crows had settled onto nearby light poles to observe the activity below.

Midori seemed drained of energy. Limp, she stared off at the sky, and she hardly spoke.

"Tired?" I asked.

"Not really," she said. "I just sort of let myself go limp and s.p.a.ced out. First time in a long time."

She looked into my eyes, and I into hers. I put my arm around her and kissed her. The slightest twinge went through her shoulders, and then she relaxed and closed her eyes for several seconds. The early autumn sun cast the shadow of her lashes on her cheek, and I could see it trembling in outline.

It was a soft and gentle kiss, one not meant to lead beyond itself. I would probably not have kissed Midori that day if we hadn't spent the afternoon on the laundry deck in the sun, drinking beer and watching a fire, and she probably felt the same. After a long time of watching the glittering rooftops and the smoke and the red dragonflies and other things, we had felt something warm and close, and we both probably wanted, half-consciously, to preserve that mood in some form. It was that kind of kiss. But as with all kisses, it was not without a certain element of danger.

The first to speak was Midori. She held my hand and told me, with what seemed like some difficulty, that she was seeing someone. I said that I had sensed as much.

"Do you have a girl you like?" she asked.

"I do," I said.

"But you're always free on Sundays, right?"

"It's very complicated," I said.

And then I realized that the brief spell of the early autumn afternoon had vanished.

AT FIVE I I SAID SAID I had to go to work and suggested that Midori go out with me for a snack. She said she had to stay home in case her phone call came. I had to go to work and suggested that Midori go out with me for a snack. She said she had to stay home in case her phone call came.

"I hate waiting at home all day for a call. When I spend the day alone, I feel as if my flesh is rotting little by little-rotting and melting until there's nothing left but a green puddle that gets sucked down into the earth. And all that stays behind are my clothes. That's how it feels to me, waiting indoors all day."

"I'll keep you company next time you have to wait for a call," I said. "As long as lunch is included."

"Great," she said. "I'll fix another fire for dessert."

MIDORI DIDN'T COME to the next day's History of Drama lecture. I went to the cafeteria after cla.s.s and ate a cold, tasteless lunch alone. Then I sat in the sun and observed the campus scene. Two women students next to me were carrying on a long conversation, standing the whole time. One cradled a tennis racquet to her breast with all the loving care she might give a baby, while the other held some books and a Leonard Bernstein LP. Both girls were pretty and were obviously enjoying talking to each other. From the direction of the student club building came the sound of a ba.s.s voice practicing scales. Here and there stood groups of four or five students expressing whatever opinions they happened to hold, laughing and shouting to one another. In the parking lot was a bunch of guys on skateboards. A professor with a leather briefcase in his arms crossed the parking lot, avoiding the skateboarders. In the quadrangle a helmeted girl student knelt on the ground, painting huge characters on a sign with something about American imperialism invading Asia. It was the usual noontime university scene, but as I sat watching it with renewed attention, I became aware of a certain fact. In his or her own way, each person I saw before me looked happy. Whether they were really happy or just looked it, I couldn't tell. But they did look happy on this pleasant early afternoon at the end of September, and because of that I felt a kind of loneliness that was new to me, as if I were the only one here who was not truly part of the scene. to the next day's History of Drama lecture. I went to the cafeteria after cla.s.s and ate a cold, tasteless lunch alone. Then I sat in the sun and observed the campus scene. Two women students next to me were carrying on a long conversation, standing the whole time. One cradled a tennis racquet to her breast with all the loving care she might give a baby, while the other held some books and a Leonard Bernstein LP. Both girls were pretty and were obviously enjoying talking to each other. From the direction of the student club building came the sound of a ba.s.s voice practicing scales. Here and there stood groups of four or five students expressing whatever opinions they happened to hold, laughing and shouting to one another. In the parking lot was a bunch of guys on skateboards. A professor with a leather briefcase in his arms crossed the parking lot, avoiding the skateboarders. In the quadrangle a helmeted girl student knelt on the ground, painting huge characters on a sign with something about American imperialism invading Asia. It was the usual noontime university scene, but as I sat watching it with renewed attention, I became aware of a certain fact. In his or her own way, each person I saw before me looked happy. Whether they were really happy or just looked it, I couldn't tell. But they did look happy on this pleasant early afternoon at the end of September, and because of that I felt a kind of loneliness that was new to me, as if I were the only one here who was not truly part of the scene.

Come to think of it, what scene had had I been part of in recent years? The last one I could remember was a billiards parlor near the harbor, where Kizuki and I shot pool together in a mood of total friendship. Kizuki died that night, and ever since then a cold, stiffening wind had come between me and the world. This boy Kizuki: what had his existence meant to me? To this question I could find no answer. All I knew-with absolute certainty-was that Kizuki's death had robbed me forever of a part of my adolescence. But what that meant, and what would come from it, were far beyond my understanding. I been part of in recent years? The last one I could remember was a billiards parlor near the harbor, where Kizuki and I shot pool together in a mood of total friendship. Kizuki died that night, and ever since then a cold, stiffening wind had come between me and the world. This boy Kizuki: what had his existence meant to me? To this question I could find no answer. All I knew-with absolute certainty-was that Kizuki's death had robbed me forever of a part of my adolescence. But what that meant, and what would come from it, were far beyond my understanding.

I sat there for a long time, watching the campus and the people pa.s.sing through it, and hoping, too, that I might see Midori. But she never appeared, and when the noon break ended, I went to the library to prepare for my German cla.s.s. appeared, and when the noon break ended, I went to the library to prepare for my German cla.s.s.

NAGASAWA CAME TO MY ROOM that Sat.u.r.day afternoon and suggested we have one of our nights on the town. He would arrange an overnight pa.s.s for me. I said I would go. I had been feeling especially foggy-brained for the past week and was ready to sleep with anybody, it didn't matter much who. that Sat.u.r.day afternoon and suggested we have one of our nights on the town. He would arrange an overnight pa.s.s for me. I said I would go. I had been feeling especially foggy-brained for the past week and was ready to sleep with anybody, it didn't matter much who.

Late in the afternoon I showered and shaved and put on fresh clothes-a polo shirt and cotton jacket-then had dinner with Nagasawa in the dining hall and the two of us caught a bus to Shinjuku. We walked around a lively section for a while, then went to one of our regular bars and sat there waiting for a likely pair of girls. The girls tended to come in pairs to this bar-except on this particular evening. We stayed there almost two hours, sipping whiskey and sodas at a rate that kept us sober. Finally, two friendly looking girls took seats at the bar, ordering a gimlet and a margarita. Nagasawa approached them right away, but they said they were waiting for their boyfriends. Still, the four of us enjoyed a nice chat until their dates showed up and the girls joined them.

Nagasawa took me to another bar to try our luck, a small place in a kind of cul-de-sac, where most of the customers were already drunk and noisy. A group of three girls occupied a table at the back. We joined them and enjoyed a little conversation, the five of us getting into a nice mood, but when Nagasawa suggested we go to a different place to drink, the girls said it was almost curfew time and they had to go back to their dorms. So much for our "luck." We tried one more place with the same results. For some reason, the girls were just not coming our way.

When eleven-thirty rolled around, Nagasawa was ready to give up. "Sorry I dragged you around for nothing," he said.

"No problem," I said. "It was worth it to me just to see you have your off days sometimes, too."

"Maybe once a year," he admitted.

In fact, I didn't care about getting laid anymore. Wandering around Shinjuku on a noisy Sat.u.r.day night, observing the mysterious energy created by a mix of s.e.x and alcohol, I began to feel that my own desire was a puny thing.

"What are you going to do now, Watanabe?"

"Maybe go to an all-nighter," I said. "I haven't seen a movie in a long time."

"I'll be going to Hatsumi's, then," said Nagasawa. "Do you mind?"

"h.e.l.l, no," I said. "Why should I mind?"

"If you'd like, I could introduce you to a girl who'd let you spend the night."

"Nah, I really am in the mood for some movies."

"Sorry," said Nagasawa. "I'll make it up to you some time." And he disappeared into the crowd. I went into a fast-food place for a cheeseburger and some coffee to kill the buzz, then went to see The Graduate The Graduate in an old rep house. I didn't think it was all that good, but I didn't have anything better to do, so I stayed and watched it again. Emerging from the theater at four in the morning, I wandered along the chilly streets of Shinjuku, thinking. in an old rep house. I didn't think it was all that good, but I didn't have anything better to do, so I stayed and watched it again. Emerging from the theater at four in the morning, I wandered along the chilly streets of Shinjuku, thinking.

When I tired of walking, I went to an all-night coffeehouse and waited with a book and a cup of coffee for the morning trains to start. Before long, the place became crowded with people who, like me, were waiting for those first trains. A waiter came to ask me apologetically if I would mind sharing my table. I said it would be all right. It didn't matter to me who sat across from me: I was just reading a book.

My companions at the table turned out to be two girls. They looked to be about my age. Neither of them was a knockout, but they weren't bad. Both were reserved in the way they dressed and made up: they were definitely not the type to be wandering around Shinjuku at five in the morning. I guessed that they had just happened to miss the last train. They seemed relieved to be seated with me: I was neatly dressed, had shaved in the evening, and to top things off I was absorbed in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain The Magic Mountain.