The three of us listening are flabbergasted and don't say a word. One of the women clears her throat, and the jarring sound reverberates through the room. The clock on the wall loudly ticks away the seconds.

"I'm very sorry," Oshima says, "but I'm in the middle of lunch. I'm having a tuna-spinach wrap and had eaten half of it when you asked me over. If I leave it much longer the neighborhood cats will make a grab for it. People throw away kittens they don't want in the woods near the sea, so this neighborhood is full of cats. If you don't mind I'd like to get back to my lunch. So excuse me, but please take your time and enjoy the library. Our library is open to everyone. As long as you follow the rules and don't bother the other patrons, feel free to do whatever you'd like. You can look at whatever you want. Go ahead and write whatever you like in your report. We won't mind. We don't receive any funding from anywhere and pretty much do things our own way. And that's the way we like it."

After Oshima leaves the two women share a look, then they both stare at me. Maybe they figure me for Oshima's lover or something. I don't say a word and start arranging catalog cards. The two of them whisper to each other in the stacks, and before long they gather their belongings and start to pull up stakes. Frozen looks on their faces, they don't say a word of thanks when I hand back their daypacks.

After a while Oshima finishes his lunch and comes back inside. He hands me two spinach wraps made of tuna and vegetables wrapped in a kind of green tortilla with a white cream sauce on top. I have these for lunch. I boil up some water and have a cup of Earl Grey to wash it down.

"Everything I said a while ago is true," Oshima tells me when I come back from lunch.

"So that's what you meant when you told me you were a special person?"

"I wasn't trying to brag or anything," he says, "but you understand that I wasn't exaggerating, right?"

I nod silently.

Oshima smiles. "In terms of sex I'm most definitely female, though my breasts haven't developed much and I've never had a period. But I don't have a penis or testicles or facial hair. In short, I have nothing. A nice no-extra-baggage kind of feeling, if you want to put a positive spin on it. Though I doubt you can understand how that feels."

"I guess not," I say.

"Sometimes I don't understand it myself. Like, what the heck am I, anyway? Really, what am I?"

I shake my head. "Well, I don't know what I am, either."

"A classic identity crisis."

I nod.

"But at least you know where to begin. Unlike me."

"I don't care what you are. Whatever you are, I like you," I tell him. I've never said this to anybody in my whole life, and the words make me blush.

"I appreciate it," Oshima says, and lays a gentle hand on my shoulder. "I know I'm a little different from everyone else, but I'm still a human being. That's what I'd like you to realize. I'm just a regular person, not some monster. I feel the same things everyone else does, act the same way. Sometimes, though, that small difference feels like an abyss. But I guess there's not much I can do about it." He picks up a long, sharpened pencil from the counter and gazes at it like it's an extension of himself. "I wanted to tell you all this as soon as I could, directly, rather than have you hear it from someone else. So I guess today was a good opportunity. It wasn't such a pleasant experience, though, was it?"

I nod.

"I've experienced all kinds of discrimination," Oshima says. "Only people who've been discriminated against can really know how much it hurts. Each person feels the pain in his own way, each has his own scars. So I think I'm as concerned about fairness and justice as anybody. But what disgusts me even more are people who have no imagination. The kind T. S. Eliot calls hollow men. People who fill up that lack of imagination with heartless bits of straw, not even aware of what they're doing. Callous people who throw a lot of empty words at you, trying to force you to do what you don't want to. Like that lovely pair we just met." He sighs and twirls the long slender pencil in his hand. "Gays, lesbians, straights, feminists, fascist pigs, communists, Hare Krishnas-none of them bother me. I don't care what banner they raise. But what I can't stand are hollow people. When I'm with them I just can't bear it, and wind up saying things I shouldn't. With those women-I should've just let it slide, or else called Miss Saeki and let her handle it. She would have given them a smile and smoothed things over. But I just can't do that. I say things I shouldn't, do things I shouldn't do. I can't control myself. That's one of my weak points. Do you know why that's a weak point of mine?"

"'Cause if you take every single person who lacks much imagination seriously, there's no end to it," I say.

"That's it," Oshima says. He taps his temple lightly with the eraser end of the pencil. "But there's one thing I want you to remember, Kafka. Those are exactly the kind of people who murdered Miss Saeki's childhood sweetheart. Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe. Of course it's important to know what's right and what's wrong. Individual errors in judgment can usually be corrected. As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned around. But intolerant, narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host, change form, and continue to thrive. They're a lost cause, and I don't want anyone like that coming in here."

Oshima points at the stacks with the tip of his pencil. What he means, of course, is the entire library.

"I wish I could just laugh off people like that, but I can't."

Chapter 20

It was already past eight p. m. when the eighteen-wheeler refrigerated truck pulled off the Tomei Highway and let Nakata out in the parking lot of the Fujigawa rest area. Canvas bag and umbrella in hand, he clambered down from the passenger seat to the asphalt.

"Good luck in finding another ride," the driver said, his head sticking out the window. "If you ask around, I'm sure you'll find something."

"Much obliged. Nakata appreciates all your help."

"Take it easy," the driver said, then waved and pulled back onto the highway.

Fu-ji-ga-wa, the driver had said. Nakata had no idea where Fu-ji-ga-wa was, though he did understand he'd left Tokyo and was heading west. No need for a compass or a map to tell him that, he knew it instinctively. Now if only a truck going west would give him a ride.

Nakata was hungry and decided to have a bowl of ramen in the rest area restaurant. The rice balls and chocolate in his bag he wanted to save for an emergency. Not being able to read, it took him a while to figure out how to purchase a meal. Before going into the dining hall you had to buy meal tickets from a vending machine, but he had to have somebody help him read the buttons. "My eyes are bad, so I can't see too well," he told a middle-aged woman, and she inserted the money for him, pushed the right button, and handed him his change. Experience had taught him it was better not to let on that he didn't know how to read. Because when he did, people stared at him like he was some kind of monster.

After his meal, Nakata, umbrella in hand, bag slung over his shoulder, made the rounds of the trucks in the parking lot, asking for a ride. I'm heading west, he explained, and I wonder if you'd be kind enough to give me a ride? But the drivers all took one look at him and shook their heads. An elderly hitchhiker was pretty unusual, and they were naturally wary of anything out of the ordinary. Our company doesn't allow us to pick up hitchhikers, they all said. Sorry.