Other than that, though, the appearances and workings of the world remained unchanged from before the winds had started. The Himalayan cedars and chestnuts stood their open ground, aloof as if nothing had transpired. Laundry hung limply from plastic clotheslines. Atop the telephone poles, crows gave a flap or two of their wings, their beaks shiny as credit cards.

Meanwhile during all of this, my girlfriend had shown up and began to prepare the hot pot. She stood there in the kitchen cleaning the oysters, briskly chopping Chinese cabbage, arranging blocks of tofu just so, simmering broth.

I asked her whether she hadn’t tried telephoning at 2:36.

“I called, all right,” she answered while rinsing rice in a colander.

“I couldn’t hear a thing,” I said.

“Yeah, right, the wind was tremendous,” she said matter-of-factly.

I got a beer out of the refrigerator and sat down on the edge of the table to drink it.

“But, really, why all of a sudden this fury of wind, then, again, just like that, nothing?” I asked her.

“You got me,” she said, her back turned toward me as she shelled shrimps with her fingernails. “There’s lots we don’t know about the wind. Same as there’s lots we don’t know about ancient history or cancer or the ocean floor or outer space or sex.”

“Hmm,” I said. That was no answer. Still, it didn’t look like there was much chance of furthering this line of conversation with her, so I just gave up and watched the oyster hot pot’s progress.

“Say, can I touch your tummy?” I asked her.

“Later,” she said.

So until the hot pot was ready, I decided to pull together a few brief notes on the day’s events so I could write them up in my diary next week. This is what I jotted down:

• Fall of Roman Empire
• 1881 Indian Uprising
• Hitler’s Invasion of Poland

Just this, and even next week I’d be able to reconstruct what went on today. Precisely because of this meticulous system of mine, I have managed to keep a diary for twenty-two years without missing a day. To every meaningful act, its own system. Whether the wind blows or not, that’s the way I live.

—translated by Alfred Birnbaum

LEDERHOSEN

“MOTHER DUMPED MY FATHER,” a friend of my wife’s was saying one day, “all because of a pair of shorts.”

I’ve got to ask. “A pair of shorts?”

“I know it sounds strange,” she says, “because it is a strange story.”