From the Wilderness

One morning in the rainy season, I went to bed at 6 a.m. after working all night and was on the verge of falling asleep when I was startled by the sound of my father’s voice coming through the air-conditioner next to my bed.

- Yukio Mishima

Ever since the device was embedded in my bedroom wall, my sleep has been frequently interrupted by the noise of construction in the neighborhood or electioneering from a passing campaign truck. No matter the season, the air-conditioner conducts sound from the outside as efficiently as if it were a speaker.

My parents live on the same property as me and my family, in a separate wing. At their advanced age, they wake up early; there are times when they get up before I’ve gone to bed.

My father was yelling at someone. “You there! We’re still sleeping here.

Be quiet.” There was no response. Only half awake and unaware of the time, I assumed that someone in the house had asked a tradesman, a carpenter maybe, to do some work, and that my father was worried the noise might disturb my sleep. If I was right about that, it was in fact his words of caution that had pulled me back from the brink of sleep and would have to be deemed the actual annoyance.

There was a brief interval of silence. My father’s objection must have been effective. I tried to fall asleep again.

His next words were sharper than before.

“Hey, you! I told you to knock it off!”

There was no answer to this, either, and I heard a noise like hammering on wood. I was getting angry. Some people are so inconsiderate! I thought.

“Hey! If you keep pounding on the door that way, you’ll break it!” my father yelled.

That was when I realized something abnormal was going on. Because I sleep during the day, my room has thick curtains to block the light. In order to read the clock on my bedside table I had to move my face close to the dial: it was nearly seven.

Suddenly, I heard a man’s shrill scream, and the pounding on the door became a flailing beyond the realm of anything normal. The sound was identical to the rapping at a door in the Kabuki theatre—“Open up! Open up!” I could almost see the violence in the fist, the fury as it rose and fell.