Alone in such a deep forest, the person called me feels empty, horribly empty. Oshima once used the term hollow men. Well, that's exactly what I've become. There's a void inside me, a blank that's slowly expanding, devouring what's left of who I am. I can hear it happening. I'm totally lost, my identity dying. There's no direction where I am, no sky, no ground. I think of Miss Saeki, of Sakura, of Oshima. But I'm light-years away from them. It's like I'm looking through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars, and no matter how far I stretch out my hand, I can't touch them. I'm all alone in the middle of a dim maze. Listen to the wind, Oshima told me. I listen, but no wind's blowing. Even the boy named Crow has vanished.
Use your head. Think about what you've got to do.
But I can't think anymore. No matter how much I try, I wind up at a dead end in the maze. What is it inside me that makes up me? Is this what's supposed to stand up to the void?
If only I could wipe out this me who's here, right here and right now. I seriously consider it. In this thick wall of trees, on this path that's not a path, if I stopped breathing, my consciousness would silently be buried in the darkness, every last drop of my dark violent blood dripping out, my DNA rotting among the weeds. Then my battle would be over. Otherwise, I'll eternally be murdering my father, violating my mother, violating my sister, lashing out at the world forever. I close my eyes and try to find my center. The darkness that covers it is rough and jagged. There's a break in the dark clouds, like looking out the window to see the leaves of the dogwood gleaming like a thousand blades in the moonlight.
I feel something rearranging itself under my skin, and there's a tinkling sound in my head. I open my eyes and take a deep breath. I throw away the can of spray paint, the hatchet, the compass. From far away I hear them all clatter to the ground. I feel lighter. I slip the daypack off my shoulders and toss it aside. My sense of touch seems suddenly acute. The air around me's grown more transparent. My sense of the forest has grown more intense. Coltrane's labyrinthine solo plays on in my ears, never ending.
Thinking it over, I reach into the daypack and take out the hunting knife and stuff it in my pocket. The razor- sharp knife I stole from my father's desk. If need be, I could use it to slash my wrists and let every drop of blood inside me gush out onto the ground. That would destroy the device.
I head off into the heart of the forest, a hollow man, a void that devours all that's substantial. There is nothing left to fear. Not a thing.
And I head off into the heart of the forest.
Chapter 42
Once the two of them were alone, Miss Saeki offered Nakata a chair. He thought about it for a moment before sitting down. They sat there for a time without speaking, eyeing each other across the desk. Nakata placed his hiking hat on his lap and gave his short hair a good rub with his hand. Miss Saeki rested both hands on the desktop, quietly watching him go through his routine.
'Unless I'm mistaken, I think I've been waiting for you to come,' she said.
'I believe that's true,' Nakata replied. 'But it took some time for Nakata to get here. I hope I didn't make you wait too long. I did my best to get here as quickly as I could.'
Miss Saeki shook her head. 'No, it's perfectly all right. If you'd come any earlier, or any later, I would've been even more at a loss, I suppose. For me, right now is the perfect time.'
'Mr. Hoshino was very kind to me and helped me out a lot. If I had to do it alone it would've taken even longer. Nakata can't read, after all.'
'Mr. Hoshino is your friend, isn't he?'
'Yes,' Nakata replied, and nodded. 'I think he is. But to tell the truth, I'm not all too sure about that. Besides cats, I've never had what you would call a friend in my life.'
'I haven't had any friends either, for quite some time,' Miss Saeki said. 'Other than in memories.'
'Miss Saeki?'
'Yes?' she replied.
'Actually, I don't have any memories either. I'm dumb, you see, so could you tell me what memories are like?'
Miss Saeki stared at her hands on the desk, then looked up at Nakata again. 'Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.'
Nakata shook his head. 'That's a tough one. Nakata still doesn't understand. The only thing I understand is the present.'
'I'm the exact opposite,' Miss Saeki said.
A deep silence settled over the room.
Nakata was the one who broke it, lightly clearing his throat. 'Miss Saeki?'
'Yes?'
'You know about the entrance stone, don't you?'
'Yes, I do,' she said. She brushed the Mont Blanc pen on the desk with her fingers. 'I happened to come across it a long time ago. Perhaps it would've been better if I'd never known about it. But I had no choice in the matter.'
'Nakata opened it again a few days ago. The afternoon when there was lightning. Lots of lightning falling all over town. Mr. Hoshino helped me. I couldn't have done it myself. Do you know the day I'm talking about?'
Miss Saeki nodded. 'Yes, I remember.'
'I opened it because I had to.'
'I know. You did that so things would be restored to the way they should be.'
It was Nakata's turn to nod. 'Exactly.'
'And you had the right to do it.'
'Nakata doesn't know about that. In any case, it wasn't something I chose. I have to tell you this-I murdered someone in Nakano. I didn't want to kill anybody, but Johnnie Walker was in charge and I took the place of the fifteen-year-old boy who should've been there, and I murdered someone. Nakata had to do it.'
Miss Saeki closed her eyes, then opened them and looked him in the face. 'Did all that happen because I opened the entrance stone a long time ago? Does that still have an effect even now, distorting things?'
Nakata shook his head. 'Miss Saeki?'
'Yes?' she said.
'Nakata doesn't know about that. My role is to restore what's here now to the way it should be. That's why I left Nakano, went across a huge bridge, and came to Shikoku. And as I'm sure you're aware, you can't stay here anymore.'
Miss Saeki smiled. 'I know,' she said. 'It's what I've been hoping for, Mr. Nakata, for a long time. Something I longed for in the past, what I'm longing for right now. No matter how I tried, though, I couldn't grasp it. I simply had to sit and wait for that time-now, in other words-to come. It wasn't always easy, but suffering is something I've had to accept.'
'Miss Saeki,' Nakata said, 'I only have half a shadow. The same as you.'
'I know.'
'Nakata lost it during that war. I don't know why that had to happen, and why it had to be me… At any rate, a long time has passed since then, and it's nearly time for us to leave here.'
'I understand.'
'Nakata's lived a long time, but as I said, I don't have any memories. So this 'suffering' you talked about I don't rightly understand. But what I think is-no matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.'
'That's true,' Miss Saeki said. 'It hurt more and more to hold on to them, but I never wanted to let them go, as long as I was alive. It was the only reason I had to go on living, the only thing that proved I was alive.'
Nakata nodded silently.
'Living longer than I should have has only ruined many people and many things,' she went on. 'Just recently I had a sexual relationship with that fifteen-year-old boy you mentioned. In that room I became a fifteen-year-old girl again, and made love to him. I don't know if that was the right thing to do or not, but I couldn't help it. But
