Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman Page 0,113

instant-coffee jar. Inside were blades of grass, and a bit of water. He’d punched a few tiny air holes in the lid. It was still light out so the firefly looked more like some black bug you’d find at the beach. I peered in the jar and sure enough, a firefly it was. The firefly tried to climb up the slippery side of the glass jar, only to slip back down each time. It’d been a long time since I’d seen one so close up.

“I found it in the courtyard,” my roommate told me. “A hotel down the street let a bunch of fireflies out as a publicity stunt, and it must have made its way over here.” As he talked, he stuffed clothes and notebooks inside a small suitcase. We were already several weeks into summer vacation. I didn’t want to go back home, and he’d had to go out on some fieldwork, so we were just about the only ones left in the dorm. Fieldwork done, though, he was ready to go home.

“Why don’t you give it to a girl?” he added. “Girls like those things.”

“Thanks, good idea,” I said.

After sundown the dorm was silent. The flag was gone, and lights came on in the windows of the cafeteria. There were just a few students left, so only half the lights were lit. The lights on the right were off, the ones on the left were on. You could catch a faint whiff of dinner. Cream stew.

I took the instant-coffee jar with the firefly and went up to the roof. The place was deserted. A white shirt someone had forgotten to take in was pinned to the clothesline, swaying in the evening breeze like a cast-off skin. I climbed the rusty metal ladder in the corner of the roof to the top of the water tower. The cylindrical water tank was still warm from the heat it had absorbed during the day. I sat down in the cramped space, leaned against the railing, and looked down at the moon before me, just a day or two short of full. On the right, I could see the streets of Shinjuku, on the left, Ikebukuro. The headlights of the cars were a brilliant stream of light flowing from one part of the city to another. Like a cloud hanging over the streets, the city was a mix of sounds, a soft, low hum.

The firefly glowed faintly in the bottom of the jar. But its light was too weak, the color too faint. The way I remembered it, fireflies were supposed to give off a crisp, bright light that cuts through the summer darkness. This firefly might be growing weak, might be dying, I figured. Holding the jar by its mouth, I shook it a couple of times to see. The firefly flew for a second and bumped against the glass. But its light was still dim.

Maybe the problem wasn’t with the light, but with my memory. Maybe fireflies’ light wasn’t that bright after all. Was I just imagining it was? Or maybe, when I was a child, the darkness that surrounded me was deeper. I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t even recall when I had last seen a firefly.

What I could remember was the sound of water running in the night. An old brick sluice gate, with a handle you could turn around to open or close it. A narrow stream, with plants covering the surface. All around was pitch black, and hundreds of fireflies flew above the still water. A powdery clump of yellow light blazed above the stream, and shone in the water.

When was that, anyway? And where was it?

I had no idea.

Everything was mixed up, and confused.

I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths to calm myself. If I kept my eyes shut tight, at any moment my body would be sucked into the summer darkness. It was the first time I’d climbed the water tower after dark. The sound of the wind was clearer than it had ever been. The wind wasn’t blowing hard, yet strangely left a clear-cut trace as it rushed by me. Taking its time, night slowly enveloped the earth. The city lights might shine their brightest, but slowly, ever so slowly, night was winning out.

I opened the lid of the jar, took out the firefly, and put it on the edge of the water tower that stuck out an inch or two. It seemed like the firefly couldn’t grasp where it