Fairness is a concept that holds only in limited situations. Yet we want the concept to extend to everything, in and out of phase. From snails to hardware stores to married life. Maybe no one finds it, or even misses it, but fairness is like love. What is given has nothing to do with what we seek.
I had my regrets, sure. Another form of rendering fairness, of tallying fairly. Yet why regret? Was it fair to everything I was leaving behind? Wasn’t that what I wanted?
I bought a pack of cigarettes, then phoned my apartment. Not that I expected anyone to answer, but I liked the idea of this being the last thing I did. I pictured the phone ringing on and on in an empty apartment. The image was so clear.
After only three rings, however, the chubby girl in pink came on the line.
“You still there?” I blurted out in surprise.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” she said. “I’ve gone and come back already. I wanted to finish the book I was reading.”
“The Balzac?”
“Right. It’s really fascinating. It was destined for me.”
“Tell me, is your grandfather all right?”
“Of course. Nothing to it. Grandfather was in top spirits. Sends his regards.”
“Likewise,” I said. “So what did your grandfather decide to do?”
“He’s gone to Finland. Too many problems if he stayed in Japan. He’d never get any research done. He’s going to set up a laboratory in Turku. Says it’s nice and quiet there. They even have reindeer.”
“And you didn’t go with him?”
“I decided to stay here and live in your apartment.”
“In my apartment?”
“Yes, that’s right. I really like the place. I’ll have the door fixed, put in a new refrigerator and video and stuff like that. Lots of broken things here. You wouldn’t mind if I changed the sheets and curtains to pink?”
“Be my guest.”
“I think I’ll subscribe to a newspaper. I’d like to know what’s on TV.”
“You know, it might be dangerous there. The System boys and Semiotecs might show up.”
“They don’t scare me. They’re only after Grandfather and you. What am I to them? Just now I sent away some gorilla and his little twerp of a trainer. Weird team.”
“How’d you manage that?”
“I shot the big guy’s ear off. Probably busted his eardrum.”
“Didn’t people come running at the sound of a gun?”
“No,” she said. “One shot could be a car backfiring. More than one shot would draw attention, but I know my stuff. One shot is all I need.”
“Oh.”
“By the way, once you lose consciousness, I’m thinking of putting you in deep freeze.”
“As you see fit. I sure won’t know,” I said. “I’m going to head out to Harumi Pier, so you can come and collect me there. I’m driving a white Carina 1800 GT Twin-Cam Turbo. I can’t describe the model, but there’ll be Bob Dylan on the stereo.”
“Bob Dylan?”
“He’s like, standing at the window, watching the rain—” I started to tell her, but then dropped it. “A singer with a rough voice.”
“With you in deep freeze, who knows? In time, maybe Grandfather will find a way to bring you back. I wouldn’t get my expectations up, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility.”
“With no consciousness, I won’t be expecting anything,” I pointed out. “But who’s going to do the freezing? You?”
“No problem. Deep freezing’s my specialty. I’ve frozen dozens of live dogs and cats. I’ll freeze you nice and neat and store you where no one will find you,” she said. “And if all goes well and you regain consciousness, will you sleep with me?”
“Sure,” I said. “If you still feel like sleeping with me by then.”
“Will you really?”
“Using all available technologies, if necessary,” I said. “Though I have no idea how many years from now that might be.”
“Well, at least I won’t be seventeen.”
“People age, even in deep freeze.”
“Take care,” she said.
“You too,” said I. “Good I got to talk to you.”
“Have I given you hope for returning to this world?”
“No, it’s not that. Of course, I’m grateful, but that’s not what I meant. I was just glad to be able to talk to you, to hear your voice again.”
“We can talk longer.”
“No, I don’t have much time left.”
“Listen,” she spoke. “Even if we lose you forever, I’ll always remember you, until the day I die. You won’t be lost from my mind. Don’t forget that.”
“I won’t,” I said. Then I hung up.
At eleven, I went to a park toilet and did my business, then left the park. I started the car and headed out toward the Bay, thinking about the prospect of being deep-frozen. Crossing Ginza, I looked for my librarian friend among the crowds of shoppers. She was nowhere to be seen.
When I got to the waterfront, I parked the car beside a deserted warehouse, smoked a cigarette and put Bob Dylan on auto-repeat. I reclined the seat, kicked both legs up on the steering wheel, breathing calmly. I felt like having a beer, but the beer was gone. The sun sliced through the windshield, sealing me in light. I closed my eyes and felt the warmth on my eyelids. Sunlight traveled a long distance to reach this planet; an infinitesimal portion of that energy was enough to warm my eyelids. I was moved. That something as insignificant as an eyelid had its place in the workings of the universe, that the cosmic order did not overlook this momentary fact. Was I any closer to appreciating Alyosha’s insights? Some limited happiness had been granted this limited life.
I wanted to think I gave the Professor and his chubby granddaughter and my librarian friend a little happiness. Could I have given happiness to anyone else? There wasn’t much time left, and I doubted anyone would dispute those rights after I was gone, but how about the Police-reggae taxi driver? He’d let us ride in his cab, mud and all. He deserved his share of happiness. He was probably behind the wheel right now, cruising around to his rock cassettes.
Straight ahead was the sea. Freighters, riding high in the water, their cargo unloaded. Gulls everywhere, like white smears. I thought about snails and suzuki in butter sauce and shaving cream and Blowing in the Wind. The world is full of revelations.
The early autumn sun glinted on the water, an enormous mirror ground to powder and scattered.
Dylan’s singing made me think of the girl at the car rental. Why sure, give her some happiness too. I pictured her in her company blazer—green, the color of baseball turf—white blouse, black bow tie. There she was, listening to Dylan, thinking about the rain.
I thought about rain myself. A mist so fine, it almost wasn’t rain. Falling, ever fair, ever equal, it gradually covered my consciousness in a filmy, colorless curtain.
Sleep had come.
Now I could reclaim all I’d lost. What’s lost never perishes. I closed my eyes and gave myself over to sleep.
Bob Dylan was singing A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, over and over.
40
Birds
SNOW is falling heavily by the time we reach our destination. The sky presses, thick and solid, upon us. The mass of swirling flecks gravitates toward the Southern Pool, an unblinking eye in a world of white. Or does the Pool beckon the flurries down, only to drink them under?
My shadow and I are speechless. How long we survey the scene, I do not know. The disquietive gurgling I heard the last time I was here is muffled under the moist air. The cloud ceiling sags so low, the darkened form of the Wall looms even higher, grim behind the snow. It is a landscape befitting the name the End of the World.
My shoulders grow white as we stand there. By now the snow will have concealed our footprints. My shadow brushes off the snow periodically and focuses on the surface of the water.
“This is the exit. It must be,” proclaims my shadow. “Nothing can keep us in this Town a
ny longer. We are free as the birds.”
My shadow looks up, then closes his eyes to receive a blessing of snowflakes. And as if heavy shackles have lifted away, I see my shadow regain strength. He walks toward me, however feebly, on his own.
“There’s a whole world the other side of this Pool,” he says. “Ready to take the plunge?”
I say nothing as the shadow crouches to unlace his boots.
“We’ll freeze to death standing here, so I guess we might as well do it. Let’s tie our belts together end to end. It won’t do us any good if one of us doesn’t make it.”
I remove my hat, this regimental issue from some past campaign, given to me by the Colonel. The cloth is worn and hopelessly faded. I brush off the brim, then put the hat back on my head.
“I have been thinking it over …,” I dredge up the words. “I’m not going.”
The shadow looks at me blankly.
“Forgive me,” I tell my shadow. “I know full well what staying here means. I understand it makes perfect sense to return to our former world, the two of us together, like you say. But I can’t bring myself to leave.”
The shadow thrusts both hands in his pockets. “What are you talking about? What was this promise that we made, that we’d escape from here? Why did I have you carry me here all this way? I knew it, it’s the woman.”
“Of course, she is part of it,” I say. “Part, though not all. I have discovered something that involves me here more than I ever could have thought. I must stay.”
My shadow sighs, then looks again heavenward.
“You found her mind, did you? And now you want to live in the Woods with her. You want to drive me away, is that it?”
“No, that is not it at all, not all of it,” I say. “I have discovered the reason the Town exists.”
“I don’t want to know,” he says, “because I already know. You yourself created this Town. You made everything here. The Wall, the River, the Woods, the Library, the Gate, everything. Even this Pool. I’ve known all along.”
“Then why did you not tell me sooner?”
“Because you’d only have left me here like this. Because your rightful world is there outside.” My shadow sits down in the snow and shakes his head from side to side. “But you won’t listen, will you?”
“I have responsibilities,” I say. “I cannot forsake the people and places and things I have created. I know I do you a terrible wrong. And yes, perhaps I wrong myself, too. But I must see out the consequences of my own doings. This is my world. The Wall is here to hold me in, the River flows through me, the smoke is me burning. I must know why.”
My shadow rises and stares at the calm surface of the Pool. He stands motionless amid the falling snow. Neither of us says a word. White puffs of breath issue from our mouths.
“I cannot stop you,” admits my shadow. “Maybe you can’t die here, but you will not be living. You will merely exist. There is no ‘why’ in a world that would be perfect in itself. Nor is surviving in the Woods anything like you imagine. You’ll be trapped for all eternity.”
“I am not so sure,” I say. “Nor can you be. A little by little, I will recall things. People and places from our former world, different qualities of light, different songs. And as I remember, I may find the key to my own creation, and to its undoing.”
“No, I doubt it. Not as long as you are sealed inside yourself. Search as you might, you will never know the clarity of distance without me. Still, you can’t say I didn’t try,” my shadow says, then pauses. “I loved you.”
“I will not forget you,” I reply.
Long after the Pool has swallowed my shadow, I stand staring at the water, until not a ripple remains. The water is as tranquil and blue as the eyes of the beasts. I am alone at the furthest periphery of existence. Here the world expires and is still.
I turn away from the Pool and begin the walk back. On the far side of the Western Hill is the Town. I know she waits for me in the Library with the accordion.
Through the driving snow, I see a single white bird take flight. The bird wings over the Wall and into the flurried clouds of the southern sky. All that is left to me is the sound of the snow underfoot.
Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into more than forty languages. The most recent of his many honors is the Franz Kafka Prize.
www.harukimurakami.com
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Alfred Birnbaum was born in 1957 and calls Tokyo his home. American by passport, he has lived in Japan since childhood. He is translator of Haruki Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase as well.
Books by Haruki Murakami
Fiction
After Dark
After the Quake
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Dance Dance Dance
The Elephant Vanishes
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Kafka on the Shore
Norwegian Wood
South of the Border, West of the Sun
Sputnik Sweetheart
A Wild Sheep Chase
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Nonfiction
Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese
Psyche
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
ALSO BY HARUKI MURAKAMI
AFTER DARK
Murakami’s trademark humor and psychological insight are here distilled with an extraordinary, harmonious mastery. Combining the pyrotechnical genius that made Kafka on the Shore and The Windup Bird Chronicle international bestsellers, with a moving infusion of heart, Murakami has produced one of his most enchanting fictions yet.
Fiction/978-0307-27873-9
AFTER THE QUAKE
Set at the time of the 1995 Kobe earthquake, Murakami’s characters emanate from a place where the human meets in the inhuman. An electronics salesman who has been abruptly deserted by his wife agrees to deliver an enigmatic package—and is rewarded with a glimpse of his true nature. A man who has been raised to view himself as the son of God pursues a stranger who may or not be his human father. A collection agent receives a visit from a giant talking frog who enlists his help in saving Tokyo from destruction.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-375-71327-9
BLIND WILLOW, SLEEPING WOMAN
This superb collection of stories generously express Murakami’s mastery of the form. Here are animated crows, a criminal monkey, and an ice man, as well as the dreams that shape us and the things we might wish for. Whether during a chance reunion in Italy, a romantic exile in Greece, or in the grip of everyday life, Murakami’s characters confront grievous loss, or sexuality, or the glow of a firefly, or the impossible distances between those who ought to be closest of all.
Fiction/Short Stories/978-1-4000-9608-4
DANCE DANCE DANCE
As he searches for a mysteriously vanished girlfriend, Murakami’s protagonist plunges into a wind tunnel of sexual violence and metaphysical dread in which he collides with call girls, plays chaperone to a lovely teenage psychic, and receives cryptic instructions from a shabby but oracular Sheep Man.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-75379-7
THE ELEPHANT VANISHES
With his genius for dislocation, Murakami makes this collection of stories a determined assault on the normal. A man sees his favorite elephant vanish into thin air; a newlywed couple suffers attacks of hunger that drive them to hold up a McDonald’s in the middle of the night; a young woman discovers that she has become irresistible to a little green monster who burrows up through her backyard.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-75053-6
HARD-BOILED WONDERLAND AND THE END OF THE WORLD
Japan’s most popular fiction writer hurtles into the consciousness of the West. Murakami draws readers into a narrative particle accelerator in which a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his undemure granddaughter, Bob Dylan, and various thugs, librarians, and subterranean mon
sters collide to dazzling effect.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-74346-0
KAFKA ON THE SHORE
This book is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home—either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister—and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that he cannot fathom. As their paths converge, Murakami enfolds readers in a world where cats talk, fish fall from the sky, and spirits slip out of their bodies to make love or commit murder.
Fiction/Literature/978-1-4000-7927-8
NORWEGIAN WOOD
Toru, a college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman. But their relationship is colored by the tragic death of their mutual best friend years before. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-375-70402-4
SOUTH OF THE BORDER, WEST OF THE SUN
Born into an affluent family, Hajime has arrived at middle age wanting for almost nothing. The postwar years have brought him a fine marriage, two daughters, and an enviable career. Yet a sense of inauthenticity about his success threatens his happiness. And a boyhood memory of a wise, lonely girl named Shimamoto clouds his heart.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-76739-8
SPUTNIK SWEETHEART
A college student, identified only as “K,” falls in love with his classmate, Sumire. But devotion to the writerly life precludes her from any personal commitments—until she meets Miu, an older and more sophisticated businesswoman. When Sumire disappears from an island off the coast of Greece, “K” is solicited to join the search party and finds himself beset by ominous, haunting visions.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-375-72605-7
UNDERGROUND
It was a clear spring day, Monday, March 20, 1995, when five members of the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo conducted chemical warfare on the Tokyo subway system using sarin, a poison gas twenty-six times as deadly as cyanide. The unthinkable had happened, a major urban transit system had become the target of a terrorist attack. In an attemp to discover why, Murakami talked to the people who lived through the catastrophe—from a Subway Authority employee with survivor guilt, to a fashion salesman with more venom for the media than for the perpetrators, to a young cult member who vehemently condemns the attack though he has not quit Aum. Through these and many other voices, Murakami exposes intriguing aspects of the Japanese psyche.