Day after day I read old dreams in the back of the library. Other than the week I was laid up with a high fever, I didn’t take a day off. And you too were there every day (the town had no days of the week, and therefore no such thing as a weekend), helping me with my work. You wore faded, mended clothes, though they always seemed quite clean. Those plain, unadorned outfits highlighted your beauty and youth more than any other clothing could. Your skin was lustrous and taut and gave off a fresh glow under the light of the oil lamps. As if it had only just now come into being.
One night I had a strange dream. No, not a dream, but a scene from one of the old dreams I’d read in the stacks. Or perhaps one of the reminiscences the old man, the former soldier, had told me when I’d been sick, and my mind was hazy. Maybe it had been etched so strongly in my memory that my mind re-created it.
In that dream (or dream-like experience), I was a soldier. A war was on, and I wore an officer’s uniform and was leading a patrol. I had six soldiers under me, including a seasoned NCO. We were on a recon mission in the mountains where the war was taking place. I don’t know what season it was, but it wasn’t hot or cold.
Early in the morning we saw a group of people, all dressed in white, near the top of the mountain. There must have been about thirty of them. My patrol immediately took up combat positions, but we soon realized that wasn’t necessary. The people weren’t armed, and among them were elderly people, and women and children. We could have stopped them and questioned them about who they were and what they were doing, but since they wouldn’t have understood our language, I gave up on the idea. (We were fighting in a land far away from our homeland.)
The men and women were all dressed in the same white clothes. They wore rough, simple white outfits, as though they’d wrapped a sheet around themselves and fastened it with rope. No one had on shoes or sandals. They looked like some religious group. Or patients who’d escaped from a hospital. They didn’t look likely to harm anyone, but to play it safe, we followed them.
The people in white were climbing up a steep slope, utterly silent. A tall, thin old man was in the lead. He had long white hair down to his shoulders. The rest silently followed. They finally reached the peak. On the right-hand side was a sheer cliff, and they headed toward it. The white-haired old man jumped. Without a word, without any hesitation, like it was the most natural thing in the world, he held his arms slightly apart and leaped off the cliff. And the others followed suit, one after another, no indecision whatsoever. Like a flock of birds taking flight, they spread their white-clothed arms, and lightly leaped into the air. Women, children, not a single one left, all without expression. It almost made me think they might really be able to fly.
But of course they couldn’t fly. We rushed over to the edge of the cliff and gazed down below, fearful of what we’d see. The floor of the ravine was littered with dead bodies. The white clothes were spread wide like flags and dyed with splattered blood and brain matter. A rocky area at the bottom of the ravine stuck up like sharp fangs and had shattered the people’s heads to pieces. I’d seen many miserable dead bodies in battle, but something in this horrific, bloody scene made me want to avert my eyes. But what shook us most was their silence and expressionless faces as they leaped to their deaths. No matter what awful circumstances they were facing, could someone really face their death so calmly, so numbly?
“Why?” I asked the sergeant next to me. “Who were these people? And why would they have to do that?”
The sergeant shook his head. “Probably they wanted to obliterate their minds,” he said dryly. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Sometimes that’s the easiest thing to do.”
“My shadow seems to be dying,” I confessed to you one night at the library.
We were in front of the stove, seated across from each other at the table. That night with the herbal tea you’d also brought out a sweet apple dish sprinkled with white powder. Here this was a precious food. The Gatekeeper had most likely given you some apples and you’d made it specially for me.
“He won’t last very long,” I said. “Since he’s so weak.”
When you heard this, your face grew a bit cloudy. “I feel sorry for him,” you said, “but there’s nothing that can be done. A dark heart will, sooner or later, die and perish. You have to accept that.”
“Do you remember your shadow?”
You rubbed a slim finger on your forehead, as if tracing the plot of a story.
“As I said, my shadow was ripped away when I was very young and I haven’t met her since. So I don’t know what it means to have a shadow. Does not having one…cause problems?”
“I don’t really know. I haven’t had any particular problems since he was ripped away. But if my shadow is lost forever, I get the feeling that something else very important will be lost too.”
You gazed into my eyes. “What would that very important thing be?”
“I can’t really say. I can’t grasp what it is to lose your shadow forever.”
You opened the little door to the stove and added a few sticks of firewood, then used the bellows to stir up the fire.
“So your shadow wants something from you?”
“He wants to be together with me again. Then he will regain his vitality.”
“But if you and your shadow are together again, you can’t stay in this town.”
“Exactly.”
You can’t look up at the sky with a plate on your head, the Gatekeeper had told me.
“If that’s the case, then you have to give up on your shadow,” you said quietly. “I feel sorry for him, but you’ll get used to life in this town without one. After a while you’ll probably forget about him. Just like everyone does.”
I took a bite of the sweet apple dish and enjoyed the flavor. The sweet-sour taste spread through me. What delicious apples, I thought. I realized this was the first time since I’d come to the town that I thought anything tasted delicious.
Your eyes reflected the light from the stove. No, it wasn’t reflected light, but light that dwelled within you.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” you said. “Since you’ve come here you’ve done an excellent job. Everyone’s impressed. I’m sure things will continue to go well.”
I nodded.
Everyone’s impressed.