First Impressions Book Two: Bird as a Prophet

I have been enjoying The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle so far, although I think it's very strange. Toru Okada, who seems to be a very normal and rather monotone person who doesn't really have any interesting things happen to him, suddenly starts meeting the strangest people like Malta and Creta Kano, May Kasahara, then getting phone calls from the strange woman. He seems to go along with everything without thinking that anything is too weird; being set up with Malta Kano by his wife about the cat, going on a job with May Kasahara, etc. Book One seems like an introduction to something important and definite that will change Toru's life in Book Two and Book Three. Already the first sentence of Book Two shows us that something has changed in the plot, "Kumiko never came back that night." A short sentence that carries a sense of foreboding. Immediately the reader assumes, just like Toru, that Kumiko has left him for another man. There were foreshadowings in Book One to suggest the same thing; the expensive cologne she avoided talking about, the fact that she had been coming in late recently and that she had been having mood swings, all gave the readers an idea that Kumiko was perhaps hiding something. In Book Two, when Toru finds out that Kumiko never came back that night, he has a sense of helplesness that overwhelms him and frustrates the reader. His general reactions seem too neutral and nonchalant for someone who's wife seems to have just left and annoyed me. After searching the house, he even says, "There was nothing more for me to do." as if the situation is completely out of his hands. He makes breakfast and realizes that it is the first time in years that he had eaten breakfast alone, since both he an Kumiko usually made an effort to have breakfast together. The way Kumiko has run off seems strange however, because she doesn't take any clothes with her (which Toru states are very important to Kumiko) and she doesn't go to work that day, which hints that it may not be just a simple case of Kumiko running off with another man. It seems that she has disappeared. Only after he checks if she has taken any clothes with her, does Toru consider the possibility that she might have had an accident or something might have happened to her, but he discards them as unlikely.

Afterwards, Toru gets a phone call from Malta Kano about the cat (which he had completely forgotten about) and then she asks him if there's something else she can help him with, which is when Toru tells her that he thinks Kumiko has left him. The response he receives from Malta Kano give the reader the impression that she knows more than she tells Toru about the entire affair. That's when he asks her impatiently to give her "concrete facts", something that he can "see and touch" and not just vague responses, so Malta Kano tells him to wait for a phone call from someone who's name begins with O. Phone calls have a significant meaning in this novel, right from the very beginning when Toru gets the phone call from the strange woman, and just like Toru tells Malta Kano, "Waiting for a phone call is all I've been doing."

 Murakami seems to like to distract the reader in the middle of passages with random events. For example, right after Toru asks Malta Kano for "concrete facts" he says he can hear something falling through the phone; "something not very heavy - perhaps a single pearl - dropping onto a wooden floor. This was followed by a rubbing sound, as if a piece of tracing paper was being held in someone's fingertips and given a vigorous yank." The sound doesn't seem to be very important, just something that Toru hears in the background through the phone with Malta Kano, but Murakami adds it anyway with a lot of detail, perhaps to give a more realistic effect, but it could also be something significant later on. Do these descriptions really add anything to the story? They just seem to distract the reader before Murakami continues with the story.