After work the evening of the first snowfall (near the end of November), I went into town to do just that. The snow was just a light sprinkling, but once it became heavier, the flimsy shoes I’d brought from Tokyo would have me slipping and sliding all over the place.
Whether I wished it or not, the first snowfall brought to mind that town surrounded by a wall. It snowed a lot there in the winter. And many unicorns died in the snow.
Okay, but what kind of shoes had I worn in that town?
The town had provided me with shoes (and all my clothes and everything else), and I’d worn those as I walked every day down the snowy roads. The snow didn’t accumulate much, but the road surface did freeze over and become slippery. But I never had a problem walking on it. I must have been given shoes that were made for walking on snowy roads, but I couldn’t recall anything about their shape and color. I wore them every day, so why was it that I couldn’t remember them?
There were lots of things about the town where my memory was fuzzy. Several things I could vividly remember, too vividly, yet as hard as I tried, some things had faded. And my snow boots were one of those. This spotty memory had me flustered and confused. Did I lose the memories over time, or did they not exist from the first? How much of what I remembered was the truth, and how much was fiction? How much had really happened, and how much was made up?
Not long after this, Mr. Koyasu showed up one day at the library. It was a little after eleven a.m. That day was gray and cloudy, and a light snow was falling. There was a gas stove in the head librarian’s office, but it wasn’t enough to heat up the whole room, so I had on a wool jacket and a scarf as I checked the account book. The slight chill in the room, though, didn’t bother me much. Downstairs the reading room was comfortably heated, and if it wasn’t crowded (it usually wasn’t) I could warm myself there for a short time.
And if pressed, maybe I like a touch of cold—where you can still stand it. Since that’s something I experienced all the time in that town behind a wall. The cold air surrounding me brought back the feelings I had living in that town.
On this day, Mr. Koyasu knocked at the door and came in. The first thing he did, as always, was remove his beret, adjust its shape, then place it on the fixed spot on a corner of the desk. He then smiled broadly at me and said hello. But he didn’t remove his scarf and gloves. Just his beret.
“This room’s always a bit chilly,” he said. “This little stove’s not enough to warm it up. You need to put in a bigger one.”
“Perhaps I find a little cold bracing, physically and mentally,” I said.
“When the full-blown winter starts, it’ll get even colder. I doubt you’ll be able to say you like a little cold then. I don’t think a city person like you can imagine how freezing cold it really gets around here.”
Mr. Koyasu removed his gloves, folded them, and put them in his jacket pocket, then rubbed his hands together in front of the stove to warm them up. Then he said, “When I was the head librarian, how do you think I got through the winter cold?”
“How did you?” I had no idea.
“This office was a bit too chilly for me,” Mr. Koyasu said. “I was born and raised here, but, how shall I put it? The cold does get to me. So, ah, during the winter I retreated to another room. I worked out of there.”
“Another room?”
“Yes. Another room that’s considerably warmer than here.”
“Is it in this library?”
“It is. It’s in this library.”
Mr. Koyasu removed the well-used checked scarf, meticulously folded it, and placed it beside the beret.
“It was, in a way, my little winter refuge. Would you care to see it?”
“Is that refuge warmer than here?”
Mr. Koyasu nodded several times. “Indeed, indeed. Considerably warmer than here, and quite comfortable. Ah, do you have a set of keys for the library?”
“I do.” I took the key ring with the set of keys from my desk drawer and showed it to him. Mrs. Soeda had given it to me the first day of work.
“Ah, splendid. Bring that and follow me, if you would.”
Mr. Koyasu briskly walked downstairs. I hurried to keep up. We walked through the sparsely populated reading room, passed in front of the main counter where Mrs. Soeda was seated, walked through the workroom (where a staff member was pasting registration labels on new books, with a look of utter concentration on her face), and continued down the corridor in back. No one looked up when we passed by. As if they didn’t even see us. It felt pretty strange. Like I’d become invisible.
Past the workroom was an area not used by the library, which Mrs. Soeda had shown me on our little tour. The hallway made a series of complex turns until we emerged in a dimly lit spot that I could hardly recall seeing before. Mr. Koyasu, however, knew where he was going and quickly walked down the hallway and stood before a small door.
“This is it,” he said. “The keys, please.”
I took out the hefty ring of keys. There were twelve keys, in different shapes, and other than a few main ones, I had no idea which doors they opened. Mr. Koyasu took the key ring, immediately chose one of the keys, stuck it in the door’s lock, and turned it. With an unexpectedly loud click the door unlocked.
“The room’s half underground. It’s a little dark, so please watch your step.”
Inside it was, indeed, dark. The stairs were wooden, and each step produced an unsettling creak. Mr. Koyasu went ahead and took each step cautiously. He walked down six steps, then reached up and, with a practiced hand, turned what seemed to be a knob there. With a snap, yellowish light appeared from a bulb hanging down from the ceiling.
The room was square, about thirteen feet per side. Wood floor, no carpeting. Across from the door, up on the wall, was a horizontal skylight window. That window must have been just above ground level. It hadn’t been cleaned for some time, apparently, as the glass was cloudy and grayish, and you could hardly see outside. Light shone in only faintly. There was a metal security grill on the outside, but it didn’t look very sturdy.
Inside the room was a single old wooden desk and two mismatched chairs, all of which looked like discards collected from here and there. That was the extent of the furniture in the room. Not a single decoration, the walls a light yellowed stucco, a single light fixture hanging from the ceiling. There was a small milk-colored shade covering the bulb, which was the sole source of illumination in the room.
What this room had been used for, I had no idea. Yet I felt a sort of enigmatic, suggestive feeling in the air. As if, long ago, a person had whispered some vital secret here to someone…
And then I spotted it. An old-fashioned black woodstove in a corner of the room.
I gasped. Reflexively I shut my eyes, took a deep breath, and then opened them again, and checked to make sure it really did exist. No mistake. This was no illusion. The stove was exactly the one—or maybe only looked like it—in the library in that town surrounded by a wall. A black cylindrical chimney ran from the stove into the wall. I stood there for a long time, rooted to the spot, speechless, staring at the stove.
“Is something the matter?” Mr. Koyasu asked me, his voice doubtful.
I took another deep breath. And then said, “Is this a woodstove?”
“Yes, as you can see. Your classic wood-burning stove. It’s been here forever. But it’s surprisingly useful.”
I stood there still, eyes riveted on the stove.
“You can actually use it?”
“Of course. Of course, it’s available to use,” Mr. Koyasu declared, his eyes sparkling. “Actually, I kept it roaring away every winter. There’s plenty of firewood stored in a different site on the grounds. So there’s no need to worry about that. An apple farmer nearby closed his business and was good enough to provide the wood from the old trees he’d cut down. A lumber dealer kindly sawed these into logs for firewood. When you burn them, it has a very pleasant apple tree fragrance. Ah, truly a wonderful fragrance. What do you say—shall we bring some firewood over and light it up?”
I gave it some thought and then shook my head. “No, it’s not worth it. It’s not that cold right now.”
“I see. But when you do need it, ah, you can use it right away, whenever you like. You can move out of that chilly office on the second floor and move in here. You’ll be able to work better here, too. Mrs. Soeda is well aware of all this.”
“What was this room originally used for?”
Mr. Koyasu tilted his head slightly and scratched his earlobe. “Well, I’m afraid I don’t know the answer. As you’re aware, this building used to be a sake brewery. Over half of it was renovated to use as a library, but the remainder, this section, was left as is. It was so long ago, so I’m sorry to say I don’t have any information on what this room was used for.”
I scanned the little room once more.
“But it’s okay for me to use both the room and the stove?”
Mr. Koyasu nodded emphatically.
“Of course you can. This is a part of our library, and you can use it however you wish. Ah, I’m sure you’ll like this woodstove. It’s quiet and very warm, and I can tell you that the sight of its red flames will warm you to the core.”
Mr. Koyasu and I left the square room, returned to the dimly lit corridor, passed by the counter where Mrs. Soeda sat, cut through the mostly deserted reading room, and arrived back at my second-floor office. And just as before, no one looked up as we passed by.
That afternoon my mind was filled with thoughts of that squarish room and the black, old-fashioned woodstove. And all the next day as well.