And, indeed, the boy never came back.
After his parents had pleaded with them repeatedly, the town police finally pulled out all the stops to investigate, but could find nothing. Yellow Submarine Boy was nowhere to be found in the town. And, of course, he never showed up at the library. They checked security footage from the railroad station, but there was no sign of him having boarded a train or bus. (Local train and bus lines were basically the only means of public transportation out of town.) In his father’s words he truly vanished like smoke. As far as the mother knew, the boy had taken no other clothes or luggage, and all he had were a few coins for lunch money. It was totally baffling. Two days passed in this way, then three.
Perhaps the only one who had any idea at all of where he had gone was me. The boy had found a way to get to the walled-in town (though I had no idea how) and had gone there. Like I had done so long ago, he went through a secret passageway inside him, traveling to another world.
This was just personal conjecture on my part, of course. I had no proof and couldn’t explain it logically. But I was sure that the boy had already made the transition over to that town. No doubt about it. There was no other explanation for such a complete and total disappearance. He had wanted with all his heart to go to that town, longed for it, and his uncanny, inborn powers of concentration had likely made it possible. Put another way, he possessed the qualifications to reach that town. The same qualifications I myself used to have.
I pictured Yellow Submarine Boy entering that town.
He’d meet up with the powerful Gatekeeper at the gate, have his shadow ripped away, and his eyes injured. Just as it had been for me. The town needed a Dream Reader, and I imagined him smoothly taking over as my successor. And probably—no, undoubtedly—he would be a far more able and effective Dream Reader than I ever was. He had the ability to immediately grasp every detail, combined with tremendous powers of concentration that never flagged or lost interest. And through the massive amount of information he’d already infused into his mind, he himself had become a kind of living library—a massive reservoir of knowledge.
I tried picturing the scene of the boy in his Yellow Submarine parka, in an inner room in that library, reading old dreams. Would that girl sit beside him? Would she have lit the stove, warmed the room for him, and prepared strong green herbal tea to heal his weakened eyes? A faint sadness came over me as the thought arose. Like colorless water, utterly devoid of warmth, my heart was quietly immersed in that sadness.
On Monday, I got a late-morning phone call at my house. It was my day off, so I was still in bed. I’d been awake for a few hours but just didn’t feel like getting up. A long thin line of sunlight slanted in through a gap in the curtains, as if criticizing my laziness.
I never got phone calls. There was really no one here in town who called me. The sound of the phone ringing in the morning on my day off was jarring, unreal. So I didn’t get up to answer it. I just lay there, listening to this bell ring on and on. It rang twelve times, then seemed to give up.
A minute later, though, and it was ringing all over again. It sounded a bit louder, more piercing, than before—though I must have been imagining that. It rang ten times and now it was my turn to give up. I got out of bed and answered it.
“Hello,” a woman’s voice said.
At first I didn’t know who it was. The voice of a woman who was neither young nor old. Neither high pitched nor low. I was sure I’d heard it before but couldn’t connect the voice with any person. But then the tangled memories somehow linked up, and I knew who it was. The owner of the coffee shop.
“Good morning,” I said, wringing out the words from deep in my throat.
“Are you okay? Your voice sounds different from usual.”
I gently cleared my throat. “I’m okay. I just couldn’t get the words out.”
“That’s because you’ve lived alone so long. If you don’t talk to anyone for a while it’s hard sometimes to get the words out. Like they’re stuck in your throat.”
“Does that happen to you?”
“Sometimes. I’m just a beginner at living alone.”
A short silence followed. And then she spoke.
“This morning two nice-looking young men came to the shop. To have coffee.”
“Sounds like the first line in a Hemingway short story,” I said. She chuckled.
“It’s not that hard-boiled,” she said. “To be more precise about it, those two didn’t come to my shop to drink coffee. They wanted to talk with me. They ordered coffee while they were at it.”
“They wanted to talk with you,” I said. “Was this part of a pickup line?”
“No, I doubt it. Unfortunately, maybe I should say. At any rate, the two of them were a bit young for me.”
“How old were they? Those two?”
“One was mid-twenties. The other around twenty or so, I’d say.”
“So not too young for you.”
“Thank you. That’s kind of you to say that,” she said, her voice nearly devoid of expression.
“So what did the two of them and you talk about? Apart from any possible attraction.”
“They are actually the Wednesday Boy’s older brothers.”
“The Wednesday Boy?”
“You know—that odd boy who barged in here once and asked me to tell him the date I was born.”
I shifted the phone to my other hand. And got my breathing under control.
“That boy’s older brothers came to your shop…But why?”
“They’re searching for their missing brother. They’ve been standing around outside the station, showing everyone a photo of their brother, asking people if anyone’s seen him.”
“And they came into your shop, ordered coffee, and asked you the same thing.”
“They asked me, ‘Have you seen this boy?’ And I told them, ‘Yes, I have.’ And I explained, briefly, what happened then. How he asked me my birth date, and when I told him, he said it was a Wednesday. I checked later, and sure enough, it was. But that all happened before he was spirited away, so I don’t think it helped much with the search.”
“Spirited away?”
“Yes, those were the words they used. Our younger brother disappeared from our home, they said, but it wasn’t like he ran away or anything. He vanished in the middle of the night, like he’d been spirited away. That’s what they said.”
“Spirited away—now that’s a pretty old term.”
“It is, but in a little town in the mountains like this it sounds right,” she said. “I assume you’re aware of that, that the boy has disappeared?”
“Yes, I’m aware of it.”
“When I told them this, they seemed puzzled. Their brother is very shy and wouldn’t go into a place he wasn’t familiar with. They asked, ‘Why did he come into this shop on that day?’ So I explained. I said it was probably because you, the new head librarian of the town library, were sitting at the counter, drinking freshly brewed coffee. He must have spotted you from outside, through the window, and came in. Since he seemed to have something he needed from you.”
I didn’t know how to respond, so kept silent.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have said all that?”
“No, not at all. He came into the shop because I was there, and he saw me.”
Or maybe he’d been following me that morning.
“And while he was at it, he told me which day of the week I was born on.”
“Telling people the day of the week they were born is like his way of saying hello to people he’s meeting for the first time. His way of showing closeness to the other person.”
“A pretty unique way of saying hello, I would say.”
“For sure.”
“Those two pleasant young men wanted to know the reason why their unique kid brother was so interested in you, the newcomer.”
“They must find that unexpected, since the boy isn’t interested in very many people. Why him? they must be wondering.”
“I suppose so. From the way they talked, it sounded like the boy didn’t have much interest in his brothers either. They lived under the same roof but might never have had a good heart-to-heart talk. That’s just a personal impression, though.”
“You’re very observant.”
“It’s not being observant, but if you work in this business you start to pick up on things. All kinds of people come here and talk about all types of topics. I just listen and nod my head. I generally forget what they talked about, but my impression of them remains.”
“I see.”
“Which is why I think those two polite, handsome young men might be visiting the library sometime soon to meet you. To pick up a clue about where their missing brother might be.”
“I’m okay with that, of course. To talk with the two of them. But it might not help their search.”
“Because he was spirited away?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “From what you said, though, it sounds like those brothers are really doing all they can to find their brother.”
“As soon as they heard that their younger brother was missing, they rushed back home from Tokyo to help their parents, who were at a total loss, and helped out in the search. The oldest brother took time off work, as did the younger brother, who took a leave of absence from university, and though they haven’t found any clues yet they’re doing everything they can to search for him, the two of them working together. It’s like they’re—how should I put it?—compensating for something.”
Like they’re compensating for something. Makes sense. I got the same feeling when I was talking with the boy’s father.
“Today’s Monday, so the library’s closed, right?”
“That’s right. That’s why I’m home at this hour.”
“Oh, right. One more important thing I forgot to say,” she said as if suddenly recalling.
“What could that be?”
“I just now got in some blueberry muffins, hot from the oven.”
I could envision black coffee, steam rising, and soft, warm blueberry muffins. The image roused me, and a healthy appetite returned. Like a stray cat that has wandered back home.
“I’ll be there in thirty minutes,” I said. “Could you hold two blueberry muffins for me? I’ll eat one there, and take the other to go.”
“Okay, I’ll hold two blueberry muffins for you. One to go.”