plaster walls, no paintings, no photos, not even a calendar. Just pure white walls. A single bulb dangles from the ceiling, with a simple glass shade that's discolored by heat.
The room has been nicely cleaned. I run my finger over the tabletop and the window frame and there's no dust at all. The windows, too, are sparkling clean. The pots, plates, and various utensils in the kitchen aren't new, but it's clear they've been well cared for and are all clean. Next to the work space in the kitchen are two old electric hot plates. I switch one of them on, and right away the coil turns red.
There's an old color TV in a heavy wooden cabinet that I'm guessing is fifteen or twenty years old. There's no remote control. It looks like something that was thrown away and then retrieved. Which could be said of all the electric items, all of which look like they were saved from the trash. Not that they were dirty or anything, or didn't work, just that they're all faded and out of date.
I turn on the switch on the TV, and an old movie's playing, The Sound of Music. My teacher took us all to see it on a widescreen movie theater when I was in grade school. No adults were around to take me to the theater, so it's one of the few movies I saw when I was a kid. On TV they're at the part where the difficult, uptight father, Captain von Trapp, has gone to Vienna on business, and Maria, the children's tutor, takes them on an outing in the mountains. They all sit together on the grass and she plays guitar and they sing a couple of harmless songs. It's a famous scene. I plant myself in front of the TV, glued to the movie. Just like when I first saw it, I wonder how things would've turned out if I'd had someone like Maria with me. Needless to say, nobody like that ever showed up in my life.
I flash back to reality. Why in the world do I have to watch The Sound of Music right now? Why that movie? Maybe the people here have hooked up some sort of satellite dish and can get the signal from a station. Or is it a videotape being played somewhere and shown on this set? I'd guess it's a tape, because when I change channels the other ones show only sandstorms. A vicious sandstorm's exactly what it reminds me of, the gravelly white, inorganic static.
They're singing 'Edelweiss' when I turn off the set. Quiet returns to the room. I'm thirsty, so I go to the kitchen and drink some milk from the jug. The milk's thick and fresh, and tastes a hundred times better than those packs of milk you buy in convenience stores. As I down glass after glass, I suddenly remember the scene in Francois Truffaut's film 400 Blows where Antoine runs away from home and, early one morning, gets hungry and steals a bottle of milk that's been delivered to somebody's front door, then drinks it as he makes his getaway. It's a large bottle, so it takes him a while to drink it all down. A sad, distressing scene-though it's hard to believe that just drinking milk could be so sad. That's another one of the few movies from my childhood. I was in fifth grade, and the title caught my attention, so I took the train to Ikebukuro alone, saw the film, then rode the train back. As soon as I got out of the theater, I bought some milk and drank it. I couldn't help it.
After drinking all that milk now I get sleepy. An overwhelming, almost nauseous sleepiness comes over me. My thoughts slow down, and finally stop, like a train pulling into a station, and I can't think straight anymore, like the core of my body's coagulating. I walk into the bedroom, make a tangle out of getting my pants and shoes off, then slump down on the bed, bury my face in the pillow, and close my eyes. The pillow smells like the sunlight, a precious smell. I quietly breathe it in, breathe it out, and fall asleep before I know it.
When I wake up it's dark all around. I open my eyes and try to figure out where I am. Two soldiers led me through the forest to a small town next to a stream, right? Slowly my memory's coming back. The scene comes into focus, and I hear a familiar melody. 'Edelweiss.' Out in the kitchen there's a faint, intimate clattering of pots and pans. Light spills into the bedroom through a crack in the door, forming a yellow line on the floor. Kind of an old-fashioned, powdery yellow light.
I try to get out of bed but my body's numb all over. I take a deep breath and look up at the ceiling. I hear the sound of plates, of someone scurrying busily across the floor, preparing a meal for me, I imagine. I'm finally able to stand up. Though it takes a while, I struggle into my pants, my socks and shoes. Quietly I grab the knob and open the door.
A young girl's in the kitchen cooking. Her back to me, she's leaning over a pot, tasting the food with a spoon, but when she hears the door open she looks up and turns around. It's her. The same girl who visited my room in the library and gazed at the painting on the wall. The fifteen-year-old Miss Saeki. She's wearing the same clothes, a long-sleeved, light blue dress. The only thing different is now her hair's pinned back. She gives me a small, warm smile, and a powerful emotion overwhelms me, like the whole world's been turned upside down, like everything tangible had fallen apart but has now been put back together. But this girl is no illusion, certainly no ghost. She's a living, breathing young girl, someone you can touch, standing in a real kitchen at twilight, cooking me a real meal. Her small breasts jut beneath her dress, her neck as white as porcelain fresh from the kiln. It's all real.
'Oh, you're awake?' she asks.
No voice comes out of me. I'm still trying to pull myself together.
'You seem to have slept very well,' she says. She turns back to tasting the dish. 'If you didn't wake up I was going to put the meal on the table and leave.'
'I wasn't planning to sleep so much,' I finally manage to say.
'You came all the way through the forest,' she says, 'so you must be hungry.'
'I'm not sure. But I think I am.' I want to reach out and see if I can actually touch her. But I can't. I just stand there, drinking her in. I listen to the sounds she makes as she bustles around the kitchen.
She ladles hot stew onto a plain white plate and carries it over to the table. There's a bowl of salad, too, tomatoes and greens, and a large loaf of bread. There are potatoes and carrots in the stew. The fragrance brings back fond memories. I breathe it all in deeply and realize I'm starving. I have to eat something. As I pick up a scuffed fork and spoon and begin eating, the girl sits in a chair to the side and watches me with a serious expression on her face, like watching me eat is a critical part of her job. Occasionally she brushes back her hair.
'They told me you're fifteen,' she says.
'That's right,' I reply, buttering a slice of bread. 'I just turned fifteen.'
'I'm fifteen too,' she says.
I nod. I know that, I almost say. But it's too soon to say that. I take another bite.
'I'll be making the meals here for a while,' she says. 'The cleaning and washing as well. There are clothes in the dresser in the bedroom, so feel free to help yourself. You can just put your laundry in the basket and I'll take care of it.'
'Somebody gave you these jobs?'
She looks fixedly at me but doesn't answer. It's like my question's taken a wrong turn and been sucked into some nameless space.
'What's your name?' I ask, trying a different tack.
She shakes her head slightly. 'I don't have a name. We don't have names here.'
'But if you don't have a name, how can I call you?'
'There's no need to call me,' she says. 'If you need me, I'll be here.'
'I guess I don't need my name here, either.'
She nods. 'You're you, you see, and nobody else. You are you, right?'
'I guess so,' I say. Though I'm not so sure. Am I really me?
All the while she's steadily gazing at me.
'Do you remember the library?' I come right out and ask her.
'The library?' She shakes her head. 'No… There's a library far away, but not here.'
'There's a library?'
'Yes, but there aren't any books in it.'
'If there aren't any books, then what is there?'
She tilts her head but doesn't respond. Again my question's taken a wrong turn and vanished.
'Have you ever been there?'
'A long time ago,' she says.
'But it's not for reading books?'
She nods. 'There aren't any books there.'
I eat in silence for a time. The stew, the salad, the bread. She doesn't say anything either, just observes me with that serious look.
