270
But just because I’m starved, I have no right to touch the food on the
table without
them there. It would be natural to think that, don’t you think?”
“Sure, I’d probably think that,” Tengo said. “Of course, it’s a dream, so I can’t be
sure what I would think.”
“But soon the sun goes down. The cottage grows dark inside. The surrounding
forest gets deeper and deeper. I want to turn the light on, but I don’t know how. I start
to feel uneasy. Then at some point I realize something strange: the amount of steam
rising from the food hasn’t decreased at all.
Hours have gone by, but it’s still nice and
hot. Then I start to think that something odd is going on. Something is wrong. That’s
where the dream ends.”
“You don’t know what happens after that?”
“I’m sure something must happen after that,” she said. “The sun goes down, I
don’t know how to go home, and I’m all alone in this weird cottage. Something is
about
to happen—and I get the feeling it’s not very good. But the dream always ends
there, and I keep having the same dream over and over.”
She stopped caressing his testicles and pressed her cheek against his chest. “My
dream might be suggesting something,” she said.
“Like what?”
She did not answer Tengo’s question. Instead, she asked her own question. “Would
you like to know what the scariest part of the dream is?”
“Yes, tell me.”
She let out a long breath that grazed Tengo’s nipple like
a hot wind blowing across
a narrow channel. “It’s that
I
might be the monster. The possibility struck me once.
Wasn’t it because they had seen
me
approaching that the people had abandoned their
dinner and run out of the house? And as long as I stayed there, they couldn’t come
back. In spite of that, I had to keep sitting in the cottage,
waiting for them to come
home. The thought of that is what scares me so much. It seems so hopeless, don’t you
think?”
“Or else,” Tengo said, “maybe it’s your own house, and your self ran away and
you’re waiting for it to come back.”
After the words
left his mouth, Tengo realized he should not have spoken them.
But it was too late to take them back. She remained silent for a long time, and then
she squeezed his testicles hard—so hard he could barely breathe.
“How could you say such a terrible thing?”
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Tengo managed to groan. “It just popped into my
head.”
She softened her grip on his testicles and released a sigh. Then she said, “Now tell
me
one of your dreams, Tengo.”
Breathing normally again, he said, “Like I said before, I almost never dream.
Especially these days.”
“You must have
some
dreams. Everybody in the world dreams to some extent. Dr.
Freud’s gonna feel bad if you say you don’t dream at all.”
“I may be dreaming, but I don’t remember my dreams after I wake up. I might
have a lingering sensation that I was
having
a dream, but I can never remember what
it was about.”
271
She slipped her open palm under Tengo’s
limp penis, carefully noting its weight,
as if the weight had an important story to tell her. “Okay, never mind the dreams. Tell
me about the novel you’re writing instead.”
“I prefer not to talk about a piece of fiction while I’m writing it.”
“Hey, I’m not asking you to tell me every last detail from beginning to end. Not
even I would ask for that. I know you’re a much more sensitive young man than your
build would suggest. Just tell me a little something—a part of the setting, or some
minor episode, anything at all. I want you to tell me something that nobody else in the
world knows—to make up for the terrible thing you said to me. Do you see what I’m
saying?”
“I think I might,” Tengo said uncertainly.
“Okay, go!”
With his penis still resting on the palm of her hand, Tengo began to speak. “The
story is about me—or about somebody modeled on me.”
“I’m sure it is,” she said. “Am I in it?”
“No, you’re not. I’m in a world that isn’t here.”
“So I’m not in the world that isn’t here.”
“And not just you. The people who are in this world are not in the world that isn’t
here.”
“How is the world that isn’t here different from this world? Can you tell which
world you’re in now?”
“Of course I can. I’m the one who’s writing it.”
“What I mean is,
for people
other
than you. Say, if I just happened to wander into
that world now, could I tell?”
“I think you could,” Tengo said. “For example, in the world that isn’t here, there
are two moons. So you can tell the difference.”
The setting of a world with two moons in the sky was something he had taken from
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