I became aware of the sound quite recently, though I can't say with certainty when it started. There is a place in my memory that is dim and obscure, and the sound seems to have been hiding just there. At some point I suddenly realized that I was hearing it. It materialized out of nowhere, like the speckled pattern of microbes on the agar in a petri dish.
It was audible only at certain moments, and not necessarily when I wanted to hear it. I heard it once as I was staring out at the lights of the city from the window of the last bus of the evening, and another time at the entrance to the old museum, as a melancholy young woman handed me a ticket without looking up. The sound came suddenly and unpredictably.
But the one thing all these moments had in common was that I was thinking, in each case, about a particular place from my past-and that place was my old college dormitory, a simple, three-story building of reinforced concrete. The cloudy glass in the windows, the yellowed curtains, and the cracks in the walls all hinted at its advanced age, and though it was meant to house students, there was no sign of student life-no motorbikes, tennis rackets, sneakers, or anything of the kind. It was, in short, the mere shell of a building.
Still, it wasn't exactly a ruin, either. I could feel traces of life even in the decaying concrete, a warm, rhythmic presence that seeped quietly into my skin.
But the fact that I could recall the place so vividly six years after moving out was due, no doubt, to the sudden reappearances of the sound. I would hear it for the briefest moment whenever my thoughts returned to the dormitory. The world in my head would become white, like a wide, snow-covered plain, and from somewhere high up in the sky, the faint vibration began.
To be honest, I'm not sure you could even call it a sound. It might be more accurate to say it was a quaking, a current, even a throb. But no matter how I strained to hear it, everything about the sound-its source, its tone, its timbre-remained vague. I never knew how to describe it. Still, from time to time, I attempted analogies: the icy murmur of a fountain in winter when a coin sinks to the bottom; the quaking of the fluid in the inner ear as you get off a merry-go-round; the sound of the night passing through the palm of your hand still gripping the phone after your lover hangs up… But I doubted these would help anyone understand.
A call came from my cousin on a cold, windy afternoon in early spring.
"Sorry to phone you out of the blue," he said. At first, I didn't recognize his voice. "It's been almost fifteen years, so there's no reason you should remember, but I'll never forget how nice you were to me when I was little." He seemed anxious to explain himself. "You used to play with me at New Year's and during summer vacation…"
"It has been a long time!" I said, finally placing him. The call had caught me off guard.
"It really has," he said, letting out a sigh of relief. Then his tone became more formal. "I'm calling because I have a favor to ask." He got right to the point. Still, it wasn't immediately clear why a cousin, who was so much younger and had been out of touch for so long, should be calling to ask for something, nor could I imagine what I could possibly do to help him. Instead of answering, I waited for him to continue. "You see, I'm coming to college in Tokyo in April."
"You can't be that old already!" I blurted out, honestly astonished. He'd been a boy of four the last time I'd seen him.
"And I'm looking for a place to live, but I'm not having much luck. Which is why I thought of you."
"Me?"
"Yes, I remembered hearing that you lived in a good dormitory when you were in school." My years in the dormitory came back as we spoke, but the memories seemed as distant as those of playing with this young cousin.
"But how did you know that I lived in a dormitory?"
"You know how it is with families-people talk about these kinds of things," he said.
It was true that it had been a good place to live. It was quiet and well run, but without lots of strict rules; and the fees were so low that it almost seemed the owner had no interest in making money. Unlike most places, it was privately run, rather than by a corporation or a cooperative, so it was technically a boardinghouse rather than what might normally be called a dormitory. But it was unmistakably a student dorm. The high-ceilinged entrance hall, the steam pipes lining the corridors, the little brick flower beds in the courtyard-everything about it said "dormitory."
"Yes," I said, "but it was a long way from the station, and the rooms were old and small even back then." I made a point of listing the drawbacks first.
"That wouldn't bother me," he said, as if he'd already made up his mind. "I just need something cheap." This was natural enough, since his father, my uncle, had died when he was still little-in fact, that was one of the reasons we'd been out of touch all this time.
"I understand," I said. "In that case, it might suit you."
"Really?" he said, sounding delighted.
"I'll give them a call. It was never very popular and there were always empty rooms. I doubt you'd have trouble getting in-if it hasn't gone under since then. At any rate, you're welcome to stay with us until you find a place-you can come whenever you like."
"Thank you," he said. I could tell that he was smiling on the other end of the line.
That was how I came to renew my ties with the dormitory. The first thing I had to do was call the Manager, but I had completely forgotten the number. I tried looking in the yellow pages. I wasn't sure a tiny place like that would even have a listing, but there it was, flowery advertising copy and all: "Heat and air-conditioning, security system, fitness center, soundproof music room. All rooms with private bath, phone, and ample closet space. A green oasis in the heart of the city." And the telephone number tucked in almost as an afterthought.
The Manager himself answered. He lived on the premises and served as both landlord and building superintendent, but to the residents he was always "the Manager."
"I graduated six years ago, but I was there for four years…" He remembered me as soon as I mentioned my maiden name.
He sounded exactly as he always had. My memory of him was closely tied to his peculiar way of speaking, so there was something reassuring about hearing it again, completely unchanged after all these years. His voice was hoarse, and he seemed to be exhaling each word very slowly, as if he were doing deep-breathing exercises. It was an ephemeral sort of voice that seemed on the verge of being lost in the depths of those long, slow breaths.
"I'm calling because I have a cousin who'll be starting college this spring. He's looking for a place to live, and I was wondering whether you might have room."
"Is that so?" he stammered, sounding hesitant.
"Then you won't be able to take him?"
"No, I didn't say that," he muttered, but his voice trailed off again.
"Has the dormitory closed down?" I asked.
"No, we're still open. I have nowhere else to go, so as long as I'm around we'll be in business." There was something particularly emphatic in the way he said the word "business." "But things have changed since your time."
"What sorts of things?"
"Well, it's a bit difficult to explain, and I'm not quite sure I understand myself. But things are more complicated now, more difficult, you might say." As he coughed quietly at the other end of the line, I found myself wondering what sort of "complicated" or "difficult" circumstances a dormitory could fall into. "Actually," he continued, "we have very few residents now. I know there were some empty rooms in your day, but there are a lot more now. We can't serve meals anymore. Do you remember the cook who ran the dining hall?"
"Yes," I said, recalling the silent man who had labored away in the long, narrow kitchen.
"Well, I had to let him go. It was a shame, really- he was a fine cook. And we're only heating the large bath every other day. The deliverymen from the dry cleaner and the liquor store leave us off their route now, and we've given up all the dormitory events, even the cherry blossom picnic and the Christmas party." His voice seemed to be gradually fading away.
"That doesn't matter," I said. "That doesn't sound so 'difficult' or 'complicated.' " Something made me want to try to cheer him up.
"You're right," he said. "The changes mean nothing in themselves. They're just an outer manifestation, the skull housing the brain, and what I really mean to say is hidden somewhere in the pineal gland, deep in the cerebellum at the heart of the brain." He spoke cautiously, as if weighing every word. An illustration of the human brain in my elementary school science book came back to me as I tried to imagine what sorts of difficulties the dorm was facing, but I was still drawing a blank. "I can't tell you any more than that," he said. "But in some peculiar way the dormitory seems to be disintegrating. Still, it's not the sort of thing that forces us to turn away people like your cousin. So tell him he's welcome, by all means. I'm so happy you remembered your old dormitory. Have him come around to see me, and ask him to bring a copy of his family registry and the letter of acceptance from his university-oh, and a copy of his guarantor's signature."
"I'll tell him," I said, and hung up, feeling a bit confused.
Spring was cloudy that year, as if the sky were covered with a sheet of cold, frosted glass. Everything-the seesaws in the park, the clock-shaped flower bed in front of the station, the bicycles in the garage-was sealed in a dull, leaden light, and the city seemed unable to throw off the last vestiges of winter.
My life, too, seemed to be drifting in circles, as if caught in the listless season. In the morning, I would lie in bed, looking for any excuse to avoid getting up. When I finally did, I would make a simple breakfast and then spend most of the day doing patchwork. It was the most basic kind of occupation: I would lay scraps of fabric out on the table and sew them together one by one. In the evening, I made an equally simple dinner and then watched television. I never went out to meet people and had no deadlines or projects of any sort. Formless days passed one after the other, as if swollen into an indistinguishable mass by the damp weather.
It was a period of reprieve from all the usual concerns of daily life. My husband was away in Sweden, working on the construction of an undersea oil pipeline, and I was waiting until he was sufficiently settled to have me join him. Thus, I found myself rattling around in the empty days, like a silkworm in a cocoon.
Sometimes I would get anxious wondering about Sweden. I knew nothing about the country-what the people looked like, what they ate, what sorts of TV shows they watched. When I thought about the prospect of moving to a place that was, for me, so completely abstract, I wanted this reprieve to go on for as long as possible.
On one of these spring nights, a storm blew through the city. It was louder and more furious than anything I'd ever heard, and at first I thought I was having a nightmare. Lightning flashed in the midnight blue sky, followed by enormous crashes of thunder, as if huge dishes were being smashed into a million pieces. A wave would roll across the city and explode right over the roof of our house, and before the echo had died away, the next one would come. It was so loud and close, I felt I could reach out and catch it in my hand.
The storm went on and on. The shadows around my bed were so dark and deep that they might have come from the bottom of the ocean. When I held my breath, I could see them trembling slightly, as if the darkness itself were quaking with fear. But somehow, even though I was alone, I wasn't afraid. In the middle of the storm, I felt quite calm-the sort of peace that comes from being far away from everyday life. The storm had carried me off to a distant place that I could never have reached on my own. I had no idea where it was, but I knew that it was peaceful. I lay in the darkness listening to the storm, trying to see this far-off place.
The next day, my cousin arrived.
"I'm glad you came," I said. But it had been so long since I'd talked with someone his age that I had no idea what else to say.
"I hope I'm not putting you out," he answered, bowing slowly.
He had grown a great deal since I'd seen him last, and I was quiet for a time, studying the young man standing before me. The relaxed lines of his neck and arms were brought together neatly around his muscular frame. But it was the way he smiled that made the greatest impression. He did it discreetly, his head slightly bowed, as the index finger of his left hand played over the silver frames of his glasses. A soft breath escaped between his fingers, and you might almost have imagined you'd heard a melancholy sigh. But there was no doubt that he had smiled. I found myself watching him closely to avoid missing the slightest change of expression.
The conversation proceeded fitfully. I asked about his mother. He gave me a quick update on his life from age four to the present. I told him why my husband was away. At first, there were painfully long silences between each new topic, and I would cough or mutter meaningless pleasantries to fill them. But when we moved on to the topic of the times we'd spent together at our grandmother's house when we were children, the conversation flowed more easily. My cousin had a surprisingly clear memory of that time. He had little sense of the context of the events, but he could clearly recall specific moments in vivid detail.
"Do you remember how the river crabs used to come into the garden while we were sitting on the porch helping Grandmother clean string beans?" He seemed to be wandering back to a summer afternoon in the country.
"Of course," I said.
"Every time I found one, I'd yell for you to come catch it."
"I'll never forget the look you gave me when I told you that you could eat them. You'd never heard of catching something and eating it." He laughed out loud at this.
"When you put them in the pot to boil, they struggled for a while, trying to catch the edge with their pinchers, but then they'd get very still. Their shells turned bright orange. I loved to stand in the kitchen and watch them cook."
We went on for some time like this, comparing our versions of memorable moments, and each time I caught a glimpse of his remarkable smile, I felt myself opening up to him.
He had brought almost nothing with him to Tokyo, so we had to get the things he needed for the dorm. We made a shopping list on a sheet of notebook paper, numbering the items in order of importance. Then we discussed how to get as much as possible on his limited budget. We were forced to eliminate a number of things and try to make up for them in other ways. We gathered as much information as we could and then combed the city to find the best quality merchandise at the cheapest price. For example, a bicycle was at the top of his list, so we spent half a day going to five different shops to find a good, sturdy used bike. Then, we took an old bookshelf I had in storage and put a new coat of paint on it. I decided to buy his textbooks and some reference books as my gift to celebrate his entrance into the university.
The shopping took me back to my own student days, and it seemed to bring us closer together. As we gathered the items on the list, we felt the pleasure of accomplishing our task; and perhaps because it was such a modest goal to begin with, success left us with a sense of peace and contentment.
As a result of all this activity, I began to break out of my quiet cocoon existence. I made elaborate meals for my cousin and went with him on all his shopping trips. I even took him out to see the sights of Tokyo. The half-finished quilt lay balled up in the sewing basket, and a week passed in no time.
The day came for filing the official registration at the dormitory. It took an hour and a half and three transfers, but we finally arrived at the tiny station on the outskirts of the city. I hadn't been there since graduation, but it seemed that very little had changed in six years. The road outside the ticket gate sloped gradually up the hill. A young policeman stood in the door of the police box, while high school students on bicycles threaded their way through the shoppers in the arcade. In other words, it was much the same as every other sleepy Tokyo suburb.
"What's the Manager like?" my cousin asked as the noise of the station died away and we entered streets lined with houses.
"I'm not sure I know myself," I answered truthfully. "He's something of a mystery. He runs the dormitory, but I don't know exactly what that involves. It's hard to believe he makes any money from it, but at the same time it doesn't seem to be a front for a religious group or anything like that. It's on a fairly large piece of land, so it's a bit odd they haven't torn it down and built something more lucrative."
"It's lucky for me they haven't," my cousin said. "Maybe he runs it as a kind of public service."
"Could be," I said.
Twin girls, about elementary school age, played badminton at the side of the road. They were absolutely identical and were quite good at their game. The shuttlecock went back and forth in perfectly symmetrical arcs. A woman on the balcony of an apartment building was airing out a child's futon, and the faint ping of an aluminum bat came from the baseball diamond at the technical high school. All in all, an ordinary spring afternoon.
"The Manager lives in the dorm. His room is no bigger than the student rooms and not much more luxurious. He lives alone, and it seems he has no family. I never saw pictures of relatives, and I don't remember anyone ever coming to visit."
"About how old is he?" my cousin asked, and I suddenly realized that I'd never given any thought to the question. I tried to recall the Manager's face, but I had only the vague impression of a man who was no longer young. This was perhaps because he had cut himself off from so many things in life: from family and social status-perhaps even from something as mundane as age itself. He'd had no connection to anyone and had not seemed to belong anywhere.
"I suppose he's middle-aged," I said, for want of a better answer. "But I don't really know much about him. Even when you're living there, you won't see him very often. Maybe when you go to pay your rent, or report a burned-out lightbulb or a broken washing machine. Not often. But don't worry, he's nice enough."
"I'm sure he is," my cousin said.
Spring had arrived suddenly after the night of the storm. The clouds remained, but warmth in the air seemed to announce the change of seasons. My cousin clasped the envelope that held his registration materials firmly under his arm. Somewhere in the distance, a bird was singing.
"There's one thing I forgot to mention," I said, finally bringing up the subject that had been on my mind all day. My cousin turned to look at me, waiting expectantly for me to continue. "The Manager is missing one leg and both arms." There was a short silence.
"One leg and both arms," he repeated at last.
"His left leg, to be precise."
"What happened to him?"
"I'm not sure. An accident, I suppose. There were rumors-that he'd been caught in some machine or was in a car wreck. No one could ever manage to ask him, but it must have been something awful."
"That's for sure," my cousin said, looking down as he kicked a pebble.
"But he can do everything for himself-cook, get dressed, get around. He can use a can opener, a sewing machine, anything, so you won't even notice after a while. When you've been around him, it somehow doesn't seem to be very important. I just didn't want you to be shocked when you meet him."
"I see what you mean," my cousin said, kicking another pebble.
We made several turns and then crossed the street and began climbing a hill. We passed a beauty salon with old-fashioned wigs lined up in the window, a large house with a hand-lettered sign offering violin lessons, and a field of garden plots rented out by the city. These smelled wonderfully like soil. Everything seemed familiar to me, and yet it seemed almost miraculous that I should be walking here in this place from my past with this cousin whom I'd thought I would never see again. The memories of him as a small boy and memories from my days at the dormitory seemed to bleed together like the shades in a watercolor painting.
"I wonder what it's like living alone," my cousin said, as if talking to himself.
"Are you worried?" I asked.
"Not at all," he said, shaking his head. "Just a bit nervous perhaps, the way I always am when something changes. I had the same feeling when my father died, or when a girl I liked moved to a different school-even when the chicken I was raising was eaten by a stray cat."
"Well, I suppose living alone does feel a bit like losing something." I looked up at him. His profile was framed by the clouds as he stared off into the distance. It occurred to me that he was young to have lost so many important things: his chicken, his girl, his father. "Still, being alone doesn't mean you have to be miserable. In that sense it's different from losing something. You've still got yourself, even if you lose everything else. You've got to have faith in yourself and not get down just because you're on your own."
"I think I see what you mean," he said.
"So there's nothing to be nervous about," I said, patting him lightly on the back. He pushed at his glasses and gave me one of his smiles.
We walked on, talking from time to time and then falling silent. There was something else on my mind besides the Manager's physical condition. I kept thinking about what he'd said about the dormitory "disintegrating" in some "peculiar way," but I couldn't come up with a good way to mention this to my cousin. While I was still thinking, we turned the last corner and found ourselves in front of the dormitory.
It had clearly aged. There was no striking change in the overall appearance, but each individual detail-the doorknob in the front hall, the rails on the fire escape, the antenna on the roof-seemed older. It was probably just normal wear and tear, given how long I'd been away. But at the same time there was something deep and weary about the silence that hung over the place, something almost sinister that could not be explained away by the fact that it was spring break and the residents would be absent.
I paused for a moment at the gate, overcome more by this silence than by nostalgia. Weeds had grown up in the courtyard, and someone had left a helmet by the bicycle rack. When the wind blew, the grass seemed to whisper.
I looked from window to window, searching for any sign of life. They were all tightly closed, as if rusted shut, except one that stood open just a crack to reveal a bit of faded curtain. The dusty porch was littered with clothespins and empty beer cans. Still staring up at the building, I took a step forward and brushed lightly against my cousin. We looked at each other for a moment and then walked through the door.
Inside, everything was strangely unchanged. The pattern on the doormat, the old-fashioned telephone that took only ten-yen coins, the broken hinges on the shoe cupboard-it was all just as it had been when I'd lived here, except that the profound stillness made all these details seem somehow more solitary and forlorn. There were no students to be seen, and as we penetrated deeper into the building, the silence seemed to grow denser. Our footsteps were the only sound, and they were quickly muffled by the low plaster ceiling.
We had to pass through the dining hall to reach the Manager's room. As the Manager had said on the phone, it had been out of service since the cook had been let go, and everything was spotless and tidy. We made our way cautiously among the empty tables.
My cousin knocked on the Manager's door, and after a moment it opened haltingly, as if it were caught on something. His door had always opened this way, since the Manager had to bend over double to turn the knob between his chin and collarbone and then drag the door back with his torso.
"Welcome."
"Pleased to meet you."
"I'm sorry I've been so out of touch."
We muttered our respective greetings and bowed. The Manager wore a dark blue kimono, just as he always had. He had a prosthetic leg, but the sleeves hung empty at his sides. As he twisted his shoulder in the direction of the couch and told us to sit down, they flapped loosely against his body.
When I lived in the dormitory, I had always conducted my business with the Manager while standing in the doorway, so this was the first time I'd been in this room. I looked around with a certain curiosity. It was a small but well-organized space, and everything in it had been designed to make his life easier. Everything-the pens, the pencils, the dishes, the television-seemed to have been carefully arranged so that he would be able to manipulate it with his chin, his collarbone, or his leg. As a result, the room was completely bare above a certain height, except for a spot in the corner of the ceiling about six inches in diameter.
It took only a few minutes to complete the necessary paperwork. There was apparently nothing preventing my cousin from moving in, nor did the Manager mention the "peculiar disintegration" of the dormitory. After listening to the usual speech about the rules and regulations, my cousin signed the contract in his neat, angular handwriting. The contract was no more than a simple promise to obey the rules of the dormitory and live a "happy student life." As I watched him sign, I whispered the word "happy" to myself. It seemed too sentimental for a contract, and I wondered whether I had signed the same document when I lived here. I certainly didn't remember it. In fact, nothing about the scene seemed familiar, and I wondered how much I had forgotten about the dormitory.
"Well then, would you like some tea?" said the Manager. His voice was slightly hoarse, as it had always been. My cousin gave me a nervous glance, as if he wasn't sure how to respond, and I realized that it was difficult to imagine the Manager making tea. But I gave him a look that was intended to say, "Don't worry, he can do almost anything." My cousin turned to face the Manager again, but his lips were still fixed in an anxious smile.
The tea canister, teapot, thermos bottle, and cups were laid out in precise order. The Manager braced himself on his artificial leg and swung his right leg lightly up on the table. It happened in an instant, almost too quickly for the eye to see, but there it lay, like a tree felled in the forest. There was an odd contradiction between Manager's awkward posture now, bent over the table, and the deft movement that had got him into this position.
Next, he took the tea canister between his chin and collarbone and twisted it open, just as he had done with the doorknob. Lifting the canister, he poured the tea into the pot. This movement was exquisitely graceful. The degree of force applied, the angle of the canister, the quantity of tea-it was all perfect. The supple line of his jaw and the fixed plane of his collarbone functioned together like a precisely calibrated instrument that seemed to become a separate living thing as we watched.
The pale light from the courtyard filtered through the window. Tulips were blooming in the flower bed. A single orange petal had fallen on the dark earth. Everything was absolutely still except the Manager's jaw.
My cousin and I watched his preparations as if we were attending some solemn ritual. Pressing the button on the thermos with his toe, he filled the teapot with boiling water, and then, still using his toes, he grasped the pot and poured the tea into the cups. The sound of the thin trickle of hot tea fell into the silence of the room.
The Manager's foot was beautiful. Though he must have used it much more than one normally would, it was flawless, without a single cut or bruise. I studied the fleshy instep, the sole that looked so warm and alive, the translucent nails, the long toes-and I realized I had never considered a foot so closely or carefully, not even my own, which I could only vaguely recall.
I wondered what sort of hands the Manager would have had, and I found myself imagining ten strong fingers extending from broad, fleshy palms, fingers that would have been as graceful and precise as his toes. My eyes wandered to the empty spaces at the ends of his sleeves.
When he had finished preparing the tea, the Manager coughed quietly and removed his leg from the table.
"Please, help yourself," he said, looking down almost bashfully. We bowed and took our tea. My cousin held his cup in both hands and drained it slowly, almost as if he were saying a prayer.
When we had finished, we went to have a look at the room where my cousin would be living and then told the Manager we had to be going. He saw us to the door.
"We'll see you again soon," he said.
"I think I'll be very happy here," my cousin responded. As the Manager bowed, his leg squeaked unpleasantly, and the sound hung between us like a plaintive murmur.
Soon afterward, my cousin moved into the dormitory. It wasn't a complicated process, since he had very little besides the few items we had gathered. We packed these into a cardboard box and sent them by express delivery. Dismayed at the thought of returning to my cocoon existence, I puttered about in search of ways to delay his departure, even by a few minutes.
"I suppose college classes are completely different from high school," he said. "I'm worried I won't be able to keep up. Do you think you could help me with German?"
"Sorry, I took Russian."
"Too bad," he said. Despite his claim to be worried, he seemed quite cheerful as he packed. No doubt it was the prospect of the freedom that lay ahead.
"Let me know right away if you have any trouble. If you run out of money, or get sick, or get lost…"
"Lost?"
"Just for instance," I said. "And come to dinner now and then. I'll cook something you like and give you advice about your love life. I'm particularly good in that department." He smiled happily as he nodded to each of my requests.
Then he headed off once more for the dormitory, this time by himself. I can't say why, but this simple parting affected me more than I would have imagined. I watched him walking away, sweater over his shoulders, bag in hand, until he was no more than a tiny point in the distance. I watched, without so much as blinking, and I realized how utterly lonely I was. But all my staring couldn't prevent that distant point from vanishing like a snowflake dissolving in the sunlight.
After he left, I returned to my usual routine: long naps, simple meals, and my patchwork. I found the half-finished quilt in the sewing basket and ironed out the wrinkles. I added patch after patch in every color and pattern, lavender and yellow, gingham check and paisley. First I pinned the seams, and then I would carefully sew the piece to the quilt. I became so absorbed in simply adding one patch to the next that I sometimes forgot what I was making. Then I would spread out the pattern and remind myself that I was working on a quilt or a wall hanging or whatever- before returning to the patches.
I looked at my hand holding the needle, and I thought of the Manager's beautiful foot. I thought of the phantom hands that had disappeared to some unknown place, the tulips in the flower bed, the spot on the ceiling, the frames of my cousin's glasses. They had somehow been wedded in my mind-the Manager, the dormitory, and my cousin.
Soon after school started, I went to visit. It was a beautiful day, and the petals of the cherry blossoms had begun to fall like tiny butterflies settling to earth. Unfortunately, my cousin was still at the university, but I decided to look in on the Manager while I waited for him. We sat on the porch and ate the strawberry shortcake that I'd brought for my cousin.
Though the new semester had started, the dormitory was as quiet as ever. At one point I thought I heard footsteps from deep within the building, but the sound died away almost immediately. When I had lived here, there was always a radio playing somewhere, or laughter or a motorbike engine racing, but now it seemed that all signs of life had faded. The orange tulips in the flower bed had been replaced by deep red ones, and a honeybee flew in and out of the crimson petal cups.
"Is he getting along all right?" I asked, looking down at the shortcake.
"Yes, he seems fine," the Manager said. "He ties his books on the back of his bike every morning and rushes off to school." Grasping the fork with his toes, he scooped up a bite of cake and whipped cream.
The tiny dessert fork suited his foot. The curve of the ankle, the delicate movement of the toes, the luster of the nails-it all went perfectly with the glistening silver.
"He says he's playing team handball. He must be quite good."
"I don't think so," I said. "He played in high school, but his team was only second or third in the prefecture championships."
"But he certainly has the build to be an athlete. You don't see too many people with bodies like that," the Manager said. "I should know." The bite of cake that had been trembling on his fork was deposited in his mouth, and he chewed it with infinite care. "When I meet someone for the first time, I pay no attention to his looks or personality; the only thing that interests me is the body as a physical specimen." As he spoke, he scooped up another bite of cake. "I notice little irregularities right away: an imbalance between the biceps, signs of an old sprain in the ring finger, an oddly formed ankle. I catch those kinds of things in the first few seconds. When I remember someone, I think of the sum of the parts-the hands and feet, the neck, the shoulders and the chest, the hips, the muscles, the bones. There's no face involved. I'm particularly interested in the bodies of young people-given my line of work. But don't misunderstand me-I'm not interested in doing anything to them; to me, it's like looking at pictures in a medical dictionary. But I suppose that sounds strange."
I stared at my fork, unable to respond. The Manager swallowed the second bite of cake.
"I don't know how it feels to use four limbs. I suppose that's why I'm so fascinated by other people's bodies." I glanced at his artificial leg hanging over the edge of the porch. The dull metallic color peeked out between his sock and the hem of his kimono. He seemed to be enjoying his cake; after each bite he would lap the cream from the end of his fork and then carefully lick his lips.
"At any rate, I can assure you he has a marvelous body-perfect for team handball. Strong fingers to grip the ball, a flexible spine for the jump shot, long arms for blocking, powerful shoulders for the long pass…"
It seemed he could go on forever about my cousin's body. I listened uncomfortably as he formed his lips, still sticky from the whipped cream, around the words "spine" and "shoulders."
A soft breeze was blowing and the garden was filled with sunlight. The bee that had been hovering around the tulips flew between us and disappeared into the Manager's room, coming to rest in the middle of the spot on the ceiling. The spot seemed to have grown a good deal since I'd first seen it. It was still round, but the color had darkened, as if all the shades in the paint box had been mixed together. The transparent wings of the bee flashed brilliantly against the dark stain.
The Manager had been saving the strawberry on the top of his cake, but now he popped it in his mouth. There was still no sign of my cousin. I listened for his bike but heard only the droning of the bee's wings. The Manager began to cough quietly, as if he were muttering to himself.
In the end, I never saw my cousin that day. He phoned to say that he had something to do at the university and would be late getting home.
About ten days later, I paid my next visit to the dormitory. This time I decided to take an apple pie, but again I was unable to deliver the gift to my cousin.
"He just called to say that there was an accident on the train line and he was stuck somewhere." The Manager was out sweeping the yard with a bamboo broom.
"What kind of accident?"
"He said that someone jumped in front of the train."
"Oh," I said, clutching the pastry box to my chest. I pictured the body on the tracks, crushed like an overripe tomato, the hair tangled in the gravel, bits of bone scattered over the railroad ties.
Springtime had come to the dormitory. A gentle breeze softened even the broken bicycle abandoned in one corner of the garden. There was still a trace of warmth coming from the pie in the box.
"But you've come all this way," said the Manager. "You might as well stay awhile."
"Thank you," I said.
The garden was well tended, but the Manager worked the broom vigorously, sweeping the same spot again and again until he had gathered every leaf and twig. Bent over to hold the broom under his chin, he seemed lost in thought as he worked.
The bamboo scraped quietly in the dirt. I glanced up at my cousin's room and noticed a pair of tennis shoes hanging on the balcony.
"It's quiet around here," I said.
"It certainly is," the Manager agreed. The sound of the broom continued.
"How many students do you have now?"
"Very few," he said, a bit evasively.
"Other than my cousin, how many new students moved in this year?"
"He was the only one."
"But it must be lonely with so many empty rooms. I remember one time I didn't go home for the New Year's holiday, and I was so frightened I couldn't sleep." The Manager said nothing. "Are you advertising?" Still nothing. A deliveryman on a motorbike passed by outside the gate.
Suddenly, the Manager spoke up. "It's because of the rumor."
"The rumor?" I repeated, taken aback.
"It's the rumor that's keeping them away," he said, beginning his explanation as if he were telling a favorite story. "In February, one of the students suddenly disappeared. 'Disappeared' is the only way to describe it-it was as if he dissolved into thin air without so much as a whimper. I wouldn't have believed that a human being with a brain, a heart, with arms and legs and the power of speech could have simply vanished like that. There was nothing about him that suggested he would disappear. He was a freshman, studying mathematics. A brilliant student who had received a prestigious scholarship. He was popular, and he went out with his girlfriend from time to time. His father teaches at a university somewhere, and his mother writes children's books. There was a cute little sister, too. He seemed to have everything going for him. So it didn't make sense that he would suddenly vanish."
"There were no clues at all? A call, a note?"
The Manager shook his head.
"The police did a thorough investigation. They seemed to think he'd got himself mixed up in some sort of bad business, but there was no real evidence. When he disappeared, the only things he had with him were a mathematics text and a notebook."
The broom that had been propped on his shoulder fell to the ground, but he ignored it and went on with his story.
"The police called me in for questioning… I was apparently a suspect. They wanted to know everything I'd done during the week he disappeared. Every word of the conversations I'd had with him, what books I'd read and what they were about, who had called me and what they wanted, what I'd eaten, how often I'd been to the bathroom-everything. They took down every word, recopied it, edited it, read it back to me. It was like sifting through every grain of sand on the beach. It took them three weeks to go over one week of my life-but in the end it was all a waste of time. And I was completely exhausted. The stump on my leg got infected and hurt like the devil. But they never found him."
"But I don't understand," I said. "Had you done something to him? Why did they suspect you?"
"I don't know. But the residents and the neighbors knew that I'd been questioned, and that was enough. They didn't say anything to my face, but the rumors must have been cruel. And since then almost everyone has moved out."
"How awful!"
"Rumors have a life of their own. But what bothers me more is that enormous file they made on my private life. I have no idea where it ended up, and that gives me a sick feeling."
He closed his eyes and started coughing. He tried to say something, apologize perhaps, but ended up coughing even harder. Finally, he was bent double and gasping.
"Are you all right?" I asked, resting my hand on his back. As I did so, I realized that it was the first time I had ever touched him. The material of his kimono was coarse and thick, but the body under it was so fragile I was afraid it might break from the weight of my hand. The vibrations ran through me as he continued to cough. "You should lie down," I said, putting my arm around his shoulder. Without arms, his body felt slight and somehow bereft.
"Thank you. I've had this cough lately, and pain in my chest." His body was stiff. We stood for a moment as the bee buzzed around our feet. Eventually, as if summoning up its courage, it made a quick circle around our heads and flew away.
There were patches of sunlight in the garden, but the dormitory was dark. Only the windows caught the light, sparkling brilliantly. Somewhere, behind one of those windows, someone had disappeared; I was here on the porch, rubbing the Manager's back; and my cousin was held up because someone had thrown himself in front of a train. There was nothing to connect these three facts, but for some reason they had melted together in the reflection from the window.
The Manager finally caught his breath. "Could I ask a favor?" he said. "Would you mind coming with me to look at his room?" The request seemed so odd that I hesitated. "I go there from time to time," he continued. "I keep thinking we must have missed a clue. Maybe you'll notice something, seeing it for the first time."
He was still having trouble breathing. I told him I'd be happy to go with him.
But I didn't find anything, either. It was a perfectly ordinary dorm room, with a desk and chair, a bed, and a chest of drawers. It wasn't particularly neat and clean, nor was it messy. The traces of the student's life had been left just as they were. The sheets were wrinkled and a sweater was draped over the back of the chair. A notebook filled with numbers and symbols lay open on the desk, as if he had got up from his studies for just a moment to go get something to drink.
The bookshelf held a mixture of travel guides, mysteries, and books on mathematics. The calendar on the wall was still turned to February, with notes jotted down here and there-"Ethics paper due," "Seminar Party," "Tutoring"-and above a line drawn from the fourteenth to the twenty-third, "Ski Trip."
"What do you think?" the Manager said, glancing around the room.
"I'm sorry," I said, without looking at him. "I see the room of a normal, well-rounded student, but I can't tell much more."
We stood for some time without speaking, as if we thought the missing student might suddenly reappear if we waited long enough. Finally, the Manager spoke again.
"He disappeared on the thirteenth, the day before he was due to go skiing. He was so excited about the trip. He was learning to ski, and I suppose he was just getting to the point where it was fun. When I told him I liked to ski myself, he wanted to know all about how I did it-what kind of boot I wore on my fake leg, how I held the poles. There was something very innocent and childlike about him when it came to things like that."
I ran my finger over the square marked "13" on the calendar. The paper was cool and rough. A pair of skis was propped against the bookshelf, still in their cover. A ticket for the overnight bus to the ski slope was tucked into the pocket of his bag.
"There was something special about the fingers of his left hand," the Manager said. His gaze was fixed, as if he were trying to recapture the image of the boy that lingered in the room.
"His left hand?"
"That's right. He was left-handed-he did everything with his left: combed his hair, rubbed his eyes when he was tired, dialed the telephone. He also made delicious coffee, and he often invited me in for a cup. We would sit together right here." As he said this, the Manager sat down in the swivel chair at the desk. His leg made a loud creak.
"He would show me how to solve math problems. Simpler ones that anyone would find interesting, ones that had to do with everyday life: how a mountain as huge as Mount Fuji could be reflected in something as tiny as an eye, how to move an enormous temple bell with your little finger-things like that. I had no idea that you could use math to figure out that sort of thing." Though I was still standing behind him, I nodded and he went on.
"He'd always start by saying, 'It's pretty simple if you think about it this way…'; and no matter what kinds of naïve or stupid questions I asked, he never lost his patience. Actually, he seemed to love the questions. He always had a sharp pencil in his hand, and he'd scribble down numbers and symbols as he explained what formula he was using and why. His handwriting was rounded and neat-very easy to read. And in the end, a simple solution would appear, as if by magic. 'Pretty interesting, isn't it?' he'd say, smiling at me as he underlined the answer."
He took a deep breath before continuing.
"When he sat there with his pencil in his hand, he seemed to be spinning a beautiful web rather than just writing numbers. The strange mathematical symbols he wrote were like delicate little works of art, and even the regular numbers seemed extraordinary. I drank his coffee and listened to his explanations, and the whole time I couldn't take my eyes off of the beautiful fingers on his left hand. They were constantly in motion, as if moving made them happy. It wasn't a particularly masculine hand. The fingers were pale and slender- like exotic hothouse flowers. But each part seemed to have its own expressive quality-as if the nail on the ring finger could smile, or the joint of the thumb was shy."
His tone was so passionate that I could only nod. I looked once more at the things that had been left in the room-the pencil sharpener and the paper clips and the compass that the boy's pale fingers must have pinched and rubbed and held. The notebook on the desk looked expensive but well worn. It occurred to me that the wrinkles in the sheets would probably never be smoothed out, the sweater never put away in the drawer, the mathematics problems never completely solved.
The Manager began to cough again. The sound was so forlorn that I thought for a moment he was sobbing. The cough echoed in the empty room.
The next day I went to the library to learn more about the boy's disappearance. It was a small branch library in one corner of a park, the kind of place children go to find picture books. But they were able to get me all the newspapers from February 14, and I went through the articles in each local edition. The papers formed a sizable stack on the table in front of me.
There had been various noteworthy incidents that day. A housewife who had been painting her bathroom had died after being overcome by fumes. An elementary school student had been found trapped inside a refrigerator that had been left at a garbage dump. A sixty-seven-year-old man was arrested for swindling women he had pretended to marry. And an elderly woman was taken to the hospital after eating hallucinogenic mushrooms. Apparently, the world was full of complicated matters that I'd never dreamed of, but all these horrible misadventures were little more than fairy tales to me. What mattered at the moment was the boy's beautiful fingers.
No matter how much I read, however, I made little progress with the mountain of newspapers; and no matter how many articles I scanned, I found no mention of those hands. My own fingers were black with ink and my eyes were stinging. There were any number of poisonings and asphyxiations and swindles, but nothing to point me in the direction of the boy. I could tell from the light coming in the window that the sun was going down.
I don't know how long I was there, but at some point a man carrying a large ring of keys appeared in front of me.
"We're closing soon," he said, sounding apologetic.
"I'm sorry," I said, gathering up the newspapers. It was pitch black outside.
When I got home, there was a letter from my husband. The bright yellow envelope, the foreign woman on the stamp, and the unfamiliar letters on the postmark all reminded me that the letter had come from someplace far away. It was hiding at the bottom of the postbox.
The letter was long, with a detailed description of the large house where we would live in the small seaside town in Sweden. There was a market on Saturday mornings where you could get fresh vegetables, and a bakery near the station that made delicious bread. The sea, which was always stormy, was visible from the bedroom window, and squirrels came to play in the garden. It was a very pastoral sort of letter. And then on the last page there was an itemized list of things he wanted me to do:
Renew your passport.
Get an estimate from the moving company.
File a change of address form at the post office.
Go to say good-bye to the boss.
Go jogging every day. (You need to be in shape- it's damp and cold here.)
I read the letter several times, stopping here and there to reread a line and then going back to the beginning when I reached the end. But somehow I couldn't really understand what he was trying to say. The words-"market," "squirrel," "passport," "moving company"-were like obscure philosophical terms. The formulas written in the missing boy's notebook seemed much more real to me. The notebook held the reflection of the steaming coffee, the left hand, the Manager's watching eyes.
There was something irreconcilable between Sweden, wrapped up in the yellow envelope, and the Manager, coughing pitifully in his room at the dormitory; and yet they were together. There was nothing to do but put the letter in the back of the drawer.
Ten days later I went to check on the Manager again. This time I took custards. My cousin was off in the mountains at a handball camp.
It was raining after a long dry spell. The Manager was in bed, but he sat up as I lowered myself into a chair. I put the box of custards on the night table.
The Manager seemed even thinner than usual. I rarely noticed the empty spaces where his arms and leg should have been, but as he lay motionless in bed, the lack was inescapable. I sat watching him until my eyes began to ache from staring at nothing.
"How are you feeling?" I asked.
"Well enough," he said, smiling weakly for a moment.
"Have you been to the hospital?" I asked. He shook his head. "I don't mean to pry, but shouldn't you go see someone? You seem to be in a lot of pain."
"You aren't prying," the Manager said, shaking his head.
"I have a friend whose husband is a doctor. He's a dermatologist, but I'm sure he could give us the name of the right specialist. And I'd be happy to go with you."
"Thank you," he said. "It's good of you to be so concerned. But I'm fine. I know my own body."
"You're all right, then?" I said, pressing the point. "You'll get over this soon?"
"I'll never get over it." His tone was so matter-of-fact that I didn't understand at first. "It will keep getting worse. It's an irreversible condition, like late-stage cancer or muscular dystrophy. But in my case it's simpler. I've been living all these years in this unnatural body, and now it's just wearing out. It's like the rotten orange in the crate that ruins all the good fruit around it. At this point it seems to be my ribs-they're caving in on my heart and lungs."
He spoke slowly and deliberately, as if trying to avoid adding to the pain in his chest. At a loss for words, I stared at the raindrops making their way down the windowpane.
"I did go to see a doctor at one point," he continued. "One of the students who lived in the dormitory went on to become an orthopedist. He showed me the X-rays he'd taken. Have you ever seen an X-ray of your chest? Normally, the ribs are symmetrical, and the heart and lungs fit neatly inside. But the X-ray showed that my ribs are bent out of shape, like tree branches that have been hit by lightning. And the ones around my heart are the worst of all-it looked as if they were about to pierce right through it."
The Manager took a breath and tried to compose himself. His throat made a rasping sound. A silence settled between us, and I counted the raindrops on the window, gliding down one after the other. When I got to fifty, I looked back at him.
"Isn't there something they can do to keep the ribs from caving in?" I asked.
"It's too late," he said, without any hesitation. "They said it would help a bit if I lay quietly on my back, but there's not much they can do."
"What about surgery?"
"No operation can bring back my arms and leg, and as long as I have to do everything with my chin and collarbone and this one leg, my ribs will continue to contract."
"So there's nothing to be done?" I said. The Manager blinked instead of answering.
The rain continued. At times it was so fine it seemed to have stopped, but when I looked carefully, I could see that it was still falling.
Pale lavender tulips were blooming in the flower bed. Every time I came to visit, the tulips were a different color. The moist petals glistened like mouths smeared with lipstick. And as always, bees were buzzing around the flowers. I found myself wondering whether bees normally came out in the rain, having no recollection of having seen them on stormy days. But these were definitely bees.
They flew here and there in the rain-streaked garden. One would disappear from sight, high in the sky, while another flew down in the tangled grass. They were constantly in motion, but for some reason each one glistened brilliantly, and I could see every detail, down to the delicate patterns on wings so fine they seemed about to dissolve.
The bees would hesitate for a moment before approaching the tulips. Then, as if making up their minds, they came to rest on the thinnest edge of a petal, their striped abdomens quivering. The wings seemed to melt in the rain.
As we sat silently in the Manager's room, the buzzing seemed to grow. The thrumming, which had been muffled by the rain, became more and more distinct, filtering into my head like a viscous fluid seeping through the tubes of my inner ear.
Suddenly, a bee flew in through the open window above the veranda and came to rest on the spot in the corner. The spot had grown again and stood out vividly against the white ceiling. I was just going to ask about it when the Manager spoke.
"There is something you could do for me," he said, as the sound of the bee's wings died away.
"Anything at all," I said, putting my hand on the bed where his right hand would have been.
"Could you get my medicine?"
"Of course," I said. I took a packet of powder from the drawer of his nightstand and filled a glass from the pitcher of water that had been left by his bed. Everything he might need-the telephone, a box of tissues, the teapot and cups-had been brought from elsewhere in the apartment and arranged close to the bed. The change was minor, but to the Manager it must have seemed as though his world was shrinking along with the space in his chest. I watched a drop of water fall from the lip of the pitcher, and a chill went down my spine.
"I hope this helps," I said, trying to appear calm as I tore open the packet of powder.
"It's just to make me more comfortable," he said, his face expressionless. "To relax the muscles and soothe the nerves."
"But isn't there anything they can do?" I asked again.
The Manager thought for a moment. "As I've told you, the dormitory is in a period of irreversible degeneration. The process has already begun. It will take some time yet to reach the end-it's not a matter of simply throwing a switch and turning out the lights. But the whole place is collapsing. You may not be able to feel it; only those of us who are being sucked in with it can. But by the time we understand, we're too far along to turn back."
As he finished speaking, he tilted his head back and opened his mouth. It seemed delicate and almost feminine. On the undersides of the soft lips, two rows of even teeth were lined up like carefully planted seeds. His tongue was curled back in his throat.
I poured the powder into his mouth in a thin stream. Then he took the glass between his chin and collarbone, just as he had always done, and drank without spilling a drop, and I thought about his pitiful ribs, about the X-ray of translucent bones aimed at the heart.
Another letter came from my husband: "How are your preparations coming? I haven't heard from you, and I've been worried." There were more descriptions of Sweden: the supermarkets and the vegetation, museums and roadways-sunnier than in the last letter. And at the end, as before, was an itemized list of my "homework":
Contact the telephone company, the electric company, the gas company, and the city about the water.
Apply for an international driver's license.
Check into the tax code for overseas residents.
Reserve a storage unit.
Gather up as much nonperishable Japanese food as possible. (I'm beginning to get tired of the salty, tasteless food here.)
If you added these to the ones in the last letter, I now had ten tasks to complete. I tried reading them out loud to put them in some sort of order, but it didn't help. I had no idea how to prioritize or where to begin in order to get to Sweden.
I put the letter in the drawer and took out my quilting. I had no particular need now for a bedcover or a wall hanging, but I couldn't think of anything else I had to do.
Blue checks, and then black and white polka dots. Plain red, and green with a pattern of vines. Squares, rectangles, isosceles triangles, and right triangles. The quilt grew, but as I sat there in the stillness of the night, sewing patch after patch, I suddenly heard the thrumming of bees; and the sound, no matter how faint, would not go away.
I began to go to the dormitory every day to look after the Manager, and each time I took a different treat: madeleines, cookies, cream cakes, chocolates, yogurt, cheesecake. At last I got to the point where I had no idea what to take. The tulips bloomed, the bees buzzed, the stain on the ceiling grew larger, and the Manager, with each visit, grew rapidly weaker. He stopped going out to shop, and soon he was unable to prepare his own meals. He began to have difficulty feeding himself or even getting a drink of water, and, finally, he was barely able to sit up in bed.
I went to take care of him, but there wasn't much I could do. From time to time I would make him some soup or rub his back, but for the most part I simply sat in the chair next to his bed. His ribs were slowly caving in on his body, and I could only sit and watch.
It was the first time I had ever nursed someone, and the first time I'd seen someone deteriorate so quickly. It frightened me to think how things would end if he went on this way. I became unbearably sad when I imagined the moment his ribs would finally pierce his heart, or the weight of his artificial leg as it was removed from his cold body, or the deep silence in the dormitory when I was left all alone. The only one I could count on was my cousin, and I found myself praying he would come home soon from his handball camp.
That day, it began raining in the evening. I was feeding the Manager the pound cake I had brought him. He lay in bed, the covers pulled up to his chin, staring off into space. From the way the blanket rose and fell, it was obvious that he was having trouble breathing. Pinching off bits of cake in my fingers, I held them near his mouth. His lips parted only slightly, and when I had slid the cake in, he held it there without chewing, as if waiting for it to dissolve. Over and over, he pecked at bits of cake until the slice was gradually consumed. My thumb and index finger were shiny with butter.
"Thank you," he said, a bit of the cake clinging to his lips. "That was delicious."
"I'm glad you liked it," I said.
"Food actually tastes better when someone feeds it to you." He lay on his back without moving, as if his body had been stitched to the bed.
"I'll bring something else when I come next time."
"If there is a next time," he said, though the words were little more than a sigh. Unsure how to respond, I pretended I hadn't heard him and stared at the butter on my fingers.
I realized it was raining. The tulips in the flower bed were trembling and the bees' wings were damp. The tulips today were a deep blue, as if someone had spilled a bottle of ink on them.
"What an odd color for tulips," I murmured.
"I planted them with the boy who disappeared," the Manager said. "He came home one day with a bag of bulbs. He said he'd picked them out of the trash bin in back of a flower shop. They were tiny things, and I didn't think they'd amount to much…" His pupils shifted to look out the window. "But he was absolutely convinced they'd bloom. He dragged an old desk into the courtyard and laid out the bulbs on it. He divided up the different varieties and figured out how to fit them all in the flower bed. The plan came to him in an instant, and it turned out to be exactly right. He seemed to have a knack for that sort of thing. It was probably because he was a mathematician, but it still impressed me. There was a different number of bulbs for each color, but he came up with a way to fit them all in the bed, without a single one left over."
The evening shadows crept in from the corners of the room. The box of pound cake on the kitchen table disappeared into the darkness. The Manager looked away from the window and continued his story.
"We let the bulbs dry in the sun for a few days and then went out to plant them. No one had done anything with the flower bed for a long time, so the soil was as hard as a rock. He sprinkled it with the watering can and then broke it up with a tiny shovel, the kind kids use in a sandbox. It was the only one we had. He did everything with his left hand, of course, and in no time we had a bed full of rich, beautiful soil."
I sat quietly and listened.
"Finally, we were ready to plant. He dug shallow holes in the pattern he had worked out. Then he would put a bulb on his left palm and hold it in front of me, and I would push it in the hole with my chin. His hand was as beautiful covered with dirt as it had been holding a pencil and writing down numbers. The sunlight glistened on his palm, his fingers had red marks from the handle of the shovel. He held the bulbs cupped in his hand, and each time I brought my chin close, the pain in my chest was almost unbearable. The pattern of his fingerprints, the pale veins, the warmth of his skin, the smell-everything oppressed me. I held my breath and tried to hide these feelings as my chin nudged the bulb into the hole."
His gaze was fixed and unblinking as he finished his story. He sighed and shut his eyes, asking if I would let him rest awhile.
It was growing dark. The white sheets on the bed seemed to glow between us. The rain continued to fall, swallowed up by the darkness.
His breathing became slow and regular, and he fell gently off to sleep. I looked about at the objects in the room-the clock on the wall, the cushions, a magazine rack, the penholder-waiting for my eyes to adjust to the low light. Everything was still and quiet, as if it had fallen asleep with the Manager.
But in the silence, my ears suddenly sensed a vibration, and I knew instantly that it was the bees. It was a steady hum, a fixed wavelength. If I concentrated, I thought I could even hear the sound of wings rubbing together. It was a low, heavy sound, too deep to be confused with the rain, and it breathed inside me now, a monotone chant sung by the dormitory itself. Outside the window, the tulips and the bees faded into blackness.
Then a drop fell at my feet. It fell slowly, right in front of my eyes, so that even in the dim light I could sense its size and density. I looked up at the ceiling. The round spot had sprouted arms like an amoeba and had spread over my head. It had grown enormously and had begun to bulge down from the ceiling. Drops fell in a steady rhythm from the center.
"What could that be?" I murmured. I could tell that the liquid was thicker and heavier than the rain falling outside. It lay beaded on the carpet without sinking in.
I called quietly to the Manager, but he didn't answer. The wings buzzed in my ears as I reached timidly toward the drops. The first one skimmed the tip of my finger, but, summoning up my courage, I pushed my hand into the stream. The next drop landed in my palm.
It was cool. I sat with my hand frozen, wondering whether I should wipe the sticky drop with my handkerchief or crush it in my fist. More drops fell, one after another.
I stared at the pool accumulating in my hand, but I could not tell what it was. The Manager was asleep, my cousin was away at his camp, and the mathematician had vanished. I was alone.
The boy who solved math problems with a pencil, who planted bulbs with a tiny shovel-where had he gone? Drip. Why were the tulips such strange colors? Drop. Where was my cousin? Drip. How did the Manager know so much about my cousin's joints and muscles?
My hand felt heavy and numb. The pool grew in my palm.
"Blood?" I said aloud, though I could barely hear my voice over the hum of the wings.
Blood. So this is how it feels. I'd never seen it so fresh. I once saw a young woman hit by a car. I was ten, on my way home from the ice-skating rink. Blood was everywhere-on her high heels and her ripped stockings and all over the road. It was so thick it seemed to form little mounds-just like this.
I shook the Manager and called his name.
"Wake up!" I screamed. There was blood on the blanket, on the toes of my slippers. "Wake up! Please!" I called again.
I shook him harder, but his body had become a dark lump on the bed. He was so light I could have picked him up, but I couldn't wake him no matter how much I shouted.
But it was my cousin I was worried about. I wanted to see him again, see that shy smile and the way he poked at his glasses. I knew I had to go look for him now.
Groping my way from the Manager's room, I ran up the stairs. The lights were out, and night had crept into every corner of the building. Ignoring the sticky film on my hands and feet, I ran down the hall, breathing hard, my heart pounding. The sound of the bees filled my ears.
My cousin's door was locked. I grabbed the knob with both hands and tried to force it open, but I only managed to make it sticky.
I ran on to the mathematician's room. This time the door opened immediately, and I found everything exactly as it had been when I visited with the Manager. The skis and the bus ticket, the discarded sweater and the math notebook-everything was waiting quietly for his return. I looked in the wardrobe and under the bed, but it was no use. My cousin wasn't there.
I knew at last that I had to go look above the spot on the ceiling, to find out where the drops were falling from. The thought came to me with sudden clarity, as if I'd come to the important line in a poem. I went back down the stairs and found a flashlight in the shoe cupboard in the lobby. Then I went outside.
My hair and clothes were wet by the time I had crossed the courtyard. The rain was fine, but it settled over me like the strands of a chilly spider's web.
I gathered some empty crates that were scattered around the courtyard and stacked them under the Manager's window. I was wet and alone and teetering on a pile of boxes, but I was oddly calm. I had the feeling that I had somehow been lured into this unlikely predicament, but I tried to remind myself that it would all be over soon and the world would return to normal.
Above the window was a rusted grate covering an opening to the crawl space between floors. I pulled it free, and it dropped to the ground with a dull thud. The boxes swayed, and I clung to the window for a moment. I looked up, and the rain fell on my eyelids, on my cheeks and throat. My fingers were slippery, but I managed to turn on the flashlight and shine it into the crawl space-illuminating an enormous beehive.
At first, I didn't realize what it was. I had never seen a beehive so close. It lay over on its side in the long, low space, and it was unbelievably large, like an oddly shaped fruit, swollen all out of proportion. The surface was crusted with tiny lumps, overlaid with a tracing of fine lines. It had grown so huge that it had begun to split open in places, and honey spilled from the cracks, dripping slowly and thickly, just like blood.
The sound of wings filled my ears as I stared at the hive. I reached out for it. The honey flowed on, somewhere beyond the tips of my fingers.