The City and Its Uncertain Walls

On his walk home, the protagonist is distracted and is surprised to find himself walking to the library. When he arrives, he goes to the subterranean office and finds the woodstove lit. He expects to see Mr. Koyasu, but the ghost is absent. As he waits, the protagonist considers whether he feels sexual desire for the coffee shop woman. He finds that he does but cannot determine if his feelings for her amount to love. He thinks of his lost girlfriend and expects that all the love in his life was used up on her. Just before midnight, Mr. Koyasu appears.

My. Koyasu apologizes, saying that he is weakening and believes the time for him to disappear permanently is near. The protagonist asks Mr. Koyasu for advice on whether it is ethical to help M** cross over to the walled-in town. Mr. Koyasu explains to the protagonist that he cannot bring the boy to the town and that it is also not his responsibility to do so. Mr. Koyasu asserts that the town is real, but different for each person. Through the protagonist’s explanations of the town, M** created his own version in his mind, and now must find his own way to it. The protagonist can help him, but the boy, who is strong and will survive, must discover what that help looks like. Mr. Koyasu begins to fade, and he tells the protagonist that this will be the last time they see each other. When he disappears, the protagonist feels a profound sense of loss.

** does not return to the library for days, worrying both the protagonist and Mrs. Soeda. They soon discover that M** disappeared the night before, seemingly from his bed, there being no evidence he left his house. M**’s father comes to the library to meet with the protagonist. M**’s father explains his son’s close relationship with Mr. Koyasu and admits that he never forged such a connection with his son. M**’s father heard that M** spoke with the protagonist and wants to know what about. The protagonist carefully explains that M** overheard him speaking to someone about a fictional town, and that he became obsessed with it. M**’s father knows about the town, having discovered M**’s map. The protagonist tells M**’s father that he believes it is unlikely M**’s obsession with the walled-in town is related to his disappearance, though he is privately sure it does.

M** remains missing, even after a police investigation. Though he has no evidence, the protagonist is sure the boy made it to the walled-in town. He thinks of how M** will be a better Dream Reader than he was, with his wealth of knowledge and powers of concentration. The woman from the coffee shop calls the protagonist to tell him that the older brothers of M** came into the coffee shop to ask her if she knew M**. She tells them he came into the shop one day to speak with the protagonist. She tells the protagonist to expect a visit from them soon and convinces him to come visit her at the shop.

At the coffee shop, the woman tells the protagonist that she wants to talk and asks if he can meet her when she closes the shop at 6. When he returns later, the protagonist watches the woman close the shop. She then smokes a menthol cigarette and drinks a glass of whiskey, calling it her end-of-day ritual. She expresses some anxiety about speaking with him before asking if he is interested in her sexually. When the protagonist says that he is, she is pleased, but confesses that she does not want to have sex, never having had any interest in it. She asks if the protagonist will continue seeing her despite this, and he agrees that he will. While she speaks, he remembers his teenage girlfriend, who told him that she wanted to be his but that her body and heart were in different places. He feels different times mixing together, and a new sadness arises in his heart.

The two brothers of M** meet with the protagonist to ask him about the fictitious town M** was obsessed with. They share their father’s theory that M** was spirited away, as the lack of evidence supports the idea that he disappeared, rather than died, though neither agrees that this really happened. The protagonist describes the town as well as he can, and the brothers ask many questions. They want to know why M** was obsessed with the town. The protagonist suggests that the lack of social skills that hinder M** in reality would not impact him in the walled-in town. He also believes M** would find an importance in reading there that he does not have in this world. The brothers entertain the idea that M** did make it to the town. The younger brother, a medical student studying neurosurgery and psychology, believes the wall of the town represents a person’s consciousness, and that like consciousness, the town is hidden.

In a dream, the protagonist wanders through a forest, searching for something. He encounters an abandoned building and enters to find a strange door. Inside, he finds a large, wooden doll. The doll looks like M** and wears his Yellow Submarine parka. The protagonist realizes that the boy left this behind so he could enter the walled-in town. The doll whispers, “More,” and when the protagonist leans in to hear, the doll bites his earlobe. The protagonist wakes, and though there are no marks on his ear, the pain is real. He believes M** was giving him a message.

The protagonist cannot determine what M** meant by this bite, and goes to the coffee shop the next morning. There, he asks the woman to look at his ear. She tells him there is no mark, and he asks her out for dinner again, feeling as though her attention heals him. At the library, the protagonist struggles to focus on work and watches as his office changes form. The walls come alive, as if they belong to an organ, and the dimensions of the room become distorted. He feels that the dream begins to bleed into reality and that the pain in his ear exists in two worlds.

At 6:30 that evening, the protagonist returns to the coffee shop. The woman is reading Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Marquez, and she tells the protagonist that she loves how he blends the real and unreal. The protagonist explains that this is magical realism, but she insists that with Marquez, it is all realism. The protagonist and the woman order a pizza and eat it at the coffee shop. Afterward, they go upstairs to her apartment and are soon kissing on the couch. He asks if she is comfortable with him waiting for her to be ready for sex.

He believes he is good at waiting, but on his walk home he wonders what he waits for. He surmises that possibly he was waiting for this coffee shop woman. He does not have the same intense feelings for her as he did his high school girlfriend, but he believes that, being older, and with less time ahead, he wants something different and more tender with her. He wishes he could speak with Mr. Koyasu and hear his advice. The protagonist thinks of the wall that lies between reality and unreality that allowed him to see Mr. Koyasu.

That night, the protagonist passes through that wall into unreality. He finds himself ankle deep in the river he played in as a child. It is summer, and as he walks upstream, he becomes younger, though his mind remains that of his mid-forties self. When he reaches a sandbank, he is 17 again and sees his high school girlfriend. He follows her up onto the sandbank and sits down next to her. He feels time freeze in this moment and wants to stay in it forever. When he holds her hand, he feels them become one. As the sun sets, he notices that he has no shadow, though he does not panic, sure it will be back soon. His girlfriend looks right at him and says, “The two of us are nothing more than someone else’s shadows” (406). The protagonist wakes, pulled back into reality.