Now I’m going to write about the duck people. Yes, I know this is the first time I’ve mentioned them, but here goes.
I told you before how this factory I’m working in has this huge property, with woods and a pond and stuff. It’s great for taking walks. The pond’s a pretty big one, and that’s where the duck people live, maybe twelve birds altogether. I don’t know how their family is organized. I suppose they’ve got their internal arrangements, with some members getting along better with some and not so well with others, but I’ve never seen them fight.
It’s December, so ice has started to form on the pond, but not such thick ice. Even when it’s cold, there’s still enough open water left so the ducks can swim around a little bit. When it’s cold enough for thick ice, I’m told, some of the girls cone here to ice-skate. Then the duck people (yes, I know it’s a weird expression, but I’ve gotten in the habit of using it, so it just comes out) will have to go somewhere else. I don’t like ice-skating, so I’m kind of hoping there won’t be any ice, but I don’t think it’s going to do any good. I mean, it gets really cold in this part of the country, so as long as they go on living here, the duck people are going to have to resign themselves to it.
I come here every weekend these days and kill time watching the duck people. When I’m doing that, two or three hours can go by before I know it. I go out in the cold, armed head to foot like some kind of polar-bear hunter: tights, hat, scarf, boots, fur-trimmed coat. And I spend hours sitting on a rock all by myself, spacing out, watching the duck people. Sometimes I feed them old bread. Of course, there’s nobody else here with the time to do such crazy things.
You may not know this, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, but ducks are very pleasant people to spend time with. I never get tired of watching them. I’ll never understand why everybody else bothers to go somewhere way far away and pay good money to see some stupid movie instead of enjoying these people. Like sometimes they’ll come flapping through the air and land on the ice, but their feet slide and they fall over. It’s like a TV comedy! They make me laugh even with nobody else around. Of course, they’re not clowning around trying to make me laugh. They’re doing their best to live very serious lives, and they just happen to fall down sometimes. I think that’s neat.
The duck people have these flat orange feet that are really cute, like they’re wearing little kids’ rain boots, but they’re not made for walking on ice, I guess, because I see them slipping and sliding all over the place, and some even fall on their bottoms. They must not have nonslip treads. So winter is not a really fun season for the duck people, probably. I wonder what they think, deep down inside, about ice and stuff. I bet they don’t hate it all that much. It just seems that way to me from watching them. They look like they’re living happily enough, even if it’s winter, probably just grumbling to themselves, “Ice again? Oh, well…” That’s another thing I really like about the duck people.
The pond is in the middle of the woods, far from everything. Nobody (but me, of course!) bothers to walk all the way over here at this time of year, except on unusually warm days. I walk down the path through the woods, and my boots crunch on the ice that’s left from a recent snowfall. I see lots of birds all around. When I’ve got my collar up and my scarf wrapped round and round under my chin, and my breath makes white puffs in the air, and I’ve got a chunk of bread in my pocket, and I’m walking down the path in the woods, thinking about the duck people, I get this really warm, happy feeling, and it hits me that I haven’t felt happy like this for a long, long time.
OK, that’s enough about the duck people.
from The Story of the Duck People
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Shadows and Tears
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(May Kasahara’s Point of View: 6) /The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
