NEW YORK MIINING DISASTER
By MURAKAMI Haruki
Translated by Philip Gabriel
They blew out their lamps to save on air, and darkness surrouhem. No one spoke. All they could hear in the dark was the sound of water dripping from the ceiling every five seds.
「O.K., everybody, try not to breathe so much. We don』t have enough air left,」 an old miner said. He held his voice to a whisper, but even so the wooden beams on the ceiling of the tunnel creaked faintly. In the dark, the miners huddled together, straining to hear one sound. The sound of pickaxes. The sound of life.
They waited for hours. Reality began to melt away in the darkness. Everything began to feel as if it were happening a long time ago, in a world far away. Or was it happening iure, in a different far-off world?
Outside, people were digging a hole, trying to reach them. It was like a se from a movie.
A friend of mine has a habit of going to the zoo whehere』s a typhoon. He』s been doing this for ten years. At a time when most people are closing their storm shutters or running our to stock up on mineral water or cheg to see if their radios and flashlights are w, my friend s himself in an army-surplus poncho from the Vietnam War, stuffs a couple of s of beer into his pockets, as off. He lives about a fifteen-minute walk away.
If he』s unlucky, the zoo is closed, 「owing to i weather,」 and its gates are locked. When this happens, my friend sits down ooatue of a squirrel o the entrance, drinks his lukewarm beer, and then heads bae.
But when he makes it there in time he pays the entrance fee, lights a soggy cigarette, and surveys the animals, one by one. Most of them have retreated their shelters. Some stare blankly at the rain. Others are more animated, jumping around in the gale-force winds.
Some are frightened by the sudden drop in barometric pressure; others turn vicious.
My friend makes a point of drinking his first beer in front of the Bengal tiger cage. (Bengal tigers always react the most violently to storms.) He drinks his sed oside the gorilla cage. Most of the time the gorillas aren』t the least bit disturbed by the typhoon. They stare at him calmly as he sits like a mermaid on the crete floor sipping his beer, and you』d swear they actually felt sorry for him.
「It』s like being in aor when it breaks down and you』re trapped ih strangers,」 my friend tells me.
Typhoons aside, my friend』s no different from anyone else. He works for an export pany, managing fn iments. It』s not one of the better firms, but it does well enough. He lives alone in a little apartment as a new girlfriend every six months. Why he insists on having a new one every six months (and it』s always exactly six months) I』ll never uand. The girls all look the same, as if they were perfect es of one another. I 』t tell them apart.
My friend owns a nice used car, the collected works of Balzad a black suit, a black tie, and black shoes that are perfect for attending funerals. Every time someone dies, I call him and ask if I borrow them, even though the suit and the shoes are one size too big for me.
「Sorry to bother you again,」 I said the last time I called. 「Another funeral』s e up.
「Help yourself. You must be in a hurry,」 he answered. 「Why don』t you e ht away?」
When I arrived, the suit and tie were laid out oable, ly pressed, the shoes were polished, and the fridge was full of cold imported beer. That』s the kind of