“You can mail it to your aunt in Izu. Do not write your own name or any message whatsoever. Just put the address you’re sending it to. This is very important, so don’t forget.”
Kino looked at him in surprise. “You know my aunt?”
“Yes, I know her quite well. Actually, she asked me to keep an eye on you, to make sure that nothing bad happened. Seems like I fell down on the job, though.”
Who in the world is this man? Kino asked himself, but there was no way for him to know.
“Mr. Kino, when I know that it’s all right for you to return I’ll get in touch with you. Until then, stay away from here. Do you understand?”
—
That night, Kino packed for the trip. It’s best for you to leave before we have another long spell of rain. The announcement was so sudden, and its logic eluded him. But he trusted what Kamita had told him. Kamita’s words had a strange persuasive power that went beyond logic. Kino didn’t doubt him. He stuffed some clothes and toiletries into a medium-sized shoulder bag, the same bag he’d used on business trips. He knew exactly what he needed and what not to take with him for a long trip.
As dawn came, he pinned a notice to the front door: “Our apologies, but the bar will be closed for the time being.” Far away, Kamita had told him. But where he should actually go he had no idea. Should he head north? Or south? He didn’t even know which direction. He decided that he would start by retracing a route he often used to take when he was selling running shoes. He boarded a highway express bus and went to Takamatsu. He would make one circuit of Shikoku and then head over to Kyushu.
He checked into a business hotel near Takamatsu Station and stayed there for three days. He wandered around the town and went to see a few movies. The cinemas were deserted during the day, and the movies were, without exception, mind-numbing. When it got dark, he returned to his room and switched on the TV. He followed his aunt’s advice and watched educational programs, but got no useful information from them. The second day in Takamatsu was a Thursday, so he bought a postcard at a convenience store, affixed a stamp, and mailed it to his aunt. As Kamita had instructed him, he wrote only her name and address.
On the third night he suddenly decided to sleep with a prostitute. A taxi driver gave him the phone number of a girl to call. She was young, around twenty, with a sleek, beautiful body. But sex with her was, from start to finish, stale and dreary. He did it just to purge himself of lust, but instead it left him with an even greater thirst. “Think it over carefully,” Kamita had told him. “It’s a very important question, worth some serious thought.” But, no matter how seriously he considered it, Kino couldn’t work out what the problem was.
—
It rained that night. Not a strong rain, but a typical autumn rain that didn’t show any signs of letting up. Like a monotonous confession, there was no break, no variation. He no longer could even recall when it had begun. The rain brought with it a feeling of cold, damp helplessness. He couldn’t even bring himself to grab an umbrella and go out to eat dinner somewhere. He would rather go without eating. The window next to his bed was streaked with water drops, a ceaseless cycle of new drops replacing the old. Kino sat there, endlessly observing the fine transformation in the patterns on the glass. Beyond these patterns lay the random, dark cityscape. He poured himself some whiskey from a pocket flask, added an equal amount of water, and drank it. He had no ice. There was a machine down the hall, but he couldn’t even rouse himself to go there. The warmth of the drink fit his listlessness perfectly.
Kino was staying at a cheap business hotel near Kumamoto Station, in Kyushu. Low ceiling, narrow, cramped bed, tiny TV set, minuscule bathtub, crummy little fridge. Everything in the room seemed miniature, and he felt like some awkward, bumbling giant. Still, except for a trip to a nearby convenience store, he stayed holed up in the room all day. At the store, he purchased a small flask of whiskey, some mineral water, and some crackers to snack on. He lay on his bed, reading. When he got tired of reading, he watched TV. When he got tired of watching TV, he read.
It was his third day in Kumamoto now. He still had money in his savings account and, if he’d wanted to, he could have stayed in a much better hotel. But he felt that, for him, just now, this was the right place. If he stayed in a small space like this, he wouldn’t have to do any unnecessary thinking, and everything he needed was within reach. He was unexpectedly grateful for this. All he wished for was some music. Teddy Wilson, Vic Dickenson, Buck Clayton—sometimes he longed desperately to listen to their old-time jazz, with its steady, dependable technique and its straightforward chords. He wanted to feel the pure joy they had in performing, their wonderful optimism. That was the kind of music Kino sought, music that no longer existed. But his record collection was far away. He pictured his bar, quiet since he’d closed it. The alleyway, the large willow tree. People reading the sign he’d posted and leaving. What about the cat? If it came back, it would find its door boarded up. And were the snakes still silently encircling the house?
Straight across from his eighth-floor window was the window of a narrow, cheaply built office. From morning till evening, he watched people working there. Here and there the blinds were drawn and he could only catch fragmentary glimpses of what went on, and he had no idea what kind of business it was. Men in ties would pop in and out, while women tapped away at computer keyboards, answered the phone, filed documents. Not exactly the sort of scene to draw one’s interest. The features and the clothes of the people working there were ordinary, banal even. Kino watched them for hours for one simple reason: he had nothing else to do. And he found it unexpected, surprising, how happy the people sometimes looked. Some of them occasionally burst out laughing. Why? Working all day in such an unglamorous office, doing things that (at least to Kino’s eyes) seemed totally uninspired—how could they do that and still feel so happy? Was there some secret hidden there that he couldn’t comprehend? The thought made Kino anxious.
It was about time for him to move on again. Don’t stay in one place for long, Kamita had told him. Yet somehow Kino couldn’t bring himself to leave this cramped little Kumamoto hotel. He couldn’t think of anywhere he wanted to go. The world was a vast ocean with no landmarks, Kino a little boat that had lost its chart and its anchor. When he spread open the map of Kyushu, wondering where to go next, he felt nauseated, as if seasick. He lay down in bed and read a book, glancing up now and then to watch the people in the office across the way. As time passed his body seemed lighter, his skin more transparent.
The day before was a Monday, so he’d bought a postcard in the hotel gift shop with a picture of Kumamoto Castle, written his aunt’s name and address, and slapped on a stamp. He held the postcard for a while, vacantly gazing at the castle. A stereotypical photo, the kind you expect to see on a postcard: the castle keep towering grandly in front of a blue sky and puffy white clouds. “Also known as the Gingko Castle, it is one of the three most famous castles in Japan,” the caption read. No matter how long he looked at the photo, Kino could find no point of contact between himself and that castle. Then, on an impulse, he turned the postcard over and wrote a message to his aunt:
How are you? How is your back these days? As you can see, I’m still traveling around by myself. Sometimes I feel like I’m half transparent. As if you could see right through to my internal organs, like a freshly caught squid. Other than that, I’m doing okay. I hope to visit sometime. Kino
Kino wasn’t at all sure what had motivated him to write that. Kamita had strictly forbidden it. “Do not write your own name or any message whatsoever,” Kamita had cautioned him. “Just write the address you’re mailing it to. This is very important, so don’t forget.” But Kino couldn’t restrain himself. I have to somehow get connected to reality again, he thought, or else I won’t be me anymore. I’ll become a man who doesn’t exist. Almost automatically, Kino’s hand filled the small space on the postcard with tiny, fine printing. And, before he could change his mind, he hurried out to a mailbo
x near the hotel and slipped the postcard inside.
—
When he awoke, the clock next to his bed showed two fifteen. Someone was knocking on his door. Not a loud knock but a firm, compact sound, like that of a skilled carpenter pounding a nail. And whoever it was doing the knocking knew that the sound was reaching Kino’s ears. The sound dragged Kino out of a deep sleep until his consciousness was thoroughly, even cruelly, clear.
Kino knew who was knocking. The knocking wanted him to get out of bed and open the door. Forcefully, persistently. The person didn’t have the strength to open the door from the outside. The door had to be opened by Kino’s own hand, from the inside.
It struck him that this visit was exactly what he’d been hoping for, yet, at the same time, what he’d been fearing above all. The ambiguous ambiguity was precisely this, holding on to an empty space between two extremes. “You were hurt, a little, weren’t you?” his wife had asked. “I’m human, after all. I was hurt,” he’d replied. But that wasn’t true. Half of it, at least, was a lie. I wasn’t hurt enough when I should have been, Kino admitted to himself. When I should have felt real pain, I stifled it. I didn’t want to take it on, so I avoided facing up to it. Which is why my heart is so empty now. The snakes have grabbed that spot and are trying to hide their coldly beating hearts there.
“This was a comfortable place not just for me but for anybody,” Kamita had said. Kino finally understood what he meant.
Kino pulled the covers up, shut his eyes, and covered his ears with his hands, escaping into his own narrow little world. I’m not going to look, not going to listen, he told himself. But he couldn’t drown out the sound. Even if he ran to the far corners of the earth and stuffed his ears full of clay, as long as he was still alive, as long as he had a shred of consciousness remaining, those knocks would relentlessly track him down. It wasn’t a knocking on a door in a business hotel. It was a knocking on the door to his heart. A person couldn’t escape that sound. And there were so many hours until dawn—assuming, of course, that there still was a dawn.
He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but he realized that the knocking had stopped. The room was as hushed as the far side of the moon. Still, Kino remained under the covers. He had to be on his guard. He stayed as quiet as he could, perked up his ears, trying to catch a hint of something ominous in the silence. The being outside his door wouldn’t give up that easily. It was in no hurry. The moon wasn’t out. Only the withered constellations darkly dotted the sky. The world belonged, for a while longer, to those other beings. They had many different methods. They could get what they wanted in all kinds of ways. The roots of darkness could spread everywhere beneath the earth. Patiently taking their time, searching out weak points, they could break apart the most solid rock.
Finally, as Kino had expected, the knocks began once more. But this time they came from another direction. Much closer than before. Whoever was knocking was right outside the window by his bed. Clinging to the sheer wall of the building, eight stories up, face pressed against the window, tap-tap-tapping on the rain-streaked glass. He couldn’t picture it any other way.
The knocking kept the same beat. Twice. Then twice again. A short pause, then two more knocks. On and on without stopping. Like the sound of a heart beating with emotion.
The curtain was open. Before he fell asleep, he’d been watching the patterns the raindrops formed on the glass. Kino could imagine what he’d see now, if he stuck his head outside the covers. No—he couldn’t imagine it. He had to extinguish the ability to imagine anything. I shouldn’t look at it, he told himself. No matter how empty it may be, this is still my heart. There’s still some human warmth in it. Memories, like seaweed wrapped around pilings on the beach, wordlessly waiting for high tide. Emotions that, if cut, would bleed. I can’t just let them wander somewhere beyond my understanding.
“It’s written with the characters for ‘god’—kami—and ‘field’—‘god’s field’—but isn’t pronounced ‘Kanda,’ as you might expect. It’s pronounced ‘Kamita.’ I live nearby.”
“I’ll remember that,” the large man had said.
“Good idea. Memories can be helpful,” Kamita had said.
A sudden thought struck Kino: that Kamita was somehow connected with the old willow tree in the front yard. The tree that had protected him, and his little house. He didn’t grasp how this made sense, exactly, but once the thought took hold of him things fell into place.
Kino pictured the limbs of the tree, covered in green, sagging heavily down, nearly to the ground. In the summer, they provided cool shade to the yard. On rainy days, gold droplets glistened on their soft branches. On windless days the branches were sunk in deep, quiet thought; on windy days they swayed like a restless heart. Tiny birds flew over, screeching at one another, alighting neatly on the thin, supple branches only to take off again. For a moment after they flew away, the branches swayed back and forth, delightfully.
Under the covers, Kino curled up like a worm, shut his eyes tight, and thought of the willow. One by one, he pictured its qualities—its color and shape and movements. And he prayed for dawn to come. All he could do was wait like this, patiently, until it grew light out and the birds awoke and began their day. All he could do was trust in the birds, in all the birds, with their wings and beaks. Until then, he couldn’t let his heart go blank. That void, the vacuum created by it, would draw them in.
When the willow tree wasn’t enough, Kino thought of the slim gray cat, and her fondness for grilled seaweed. He remembered Kamita at the counter, lost in a book, young middle-distance runners going through gruelling repetition drills on a track, the lovely Ben Webster solo on “My Romance” (and the two scratches on the record). Memories can be helpful. And he remembered his wife in her new blue dress, her hair trimmed short. He hoped that she was living a healthy, happy life in her new home. Without, he hoped, any wounds on her body. She apologized right to my face, and I accepted that, he thought. I need to learn not just to forget but to forgive.
But the movement of time seemed not to be fixed properly. The bloody weight of desire and the rusty anchor of remorse were blocking its normal flow. Time was not an arrow flying in a straight line. The continuing rain, the confused hands of the clock, the birds still fast asleep, a faceless postal worker silently sorting through postcards, his wife’s lovely breasts bouncing violently in the air, something obstinately tapping on the window. As if luring him deeper into a suggestive maze, this ever-regular beat. Tap tap, tap tap, then once more—tap tap. “Don’t look away, look right at it,” someone whispered in his ear. “This is what your heart looks like.”
The willow branches swayed in the early summer breeze. In a small dark room, somewhere inside Kino, a warm hand was reaching out to him. Eyes shut, he felt that hand on his, soft and substantial. He’d forgotten this, had been apart from it for far too long. Yes, I am hurt. Very, very deeply. He said this to himself. And he wept. In that dark, still room.
All the while the rain did not let up, drenching the world in a cold chill.
Translated by Philip Gabriel
SAMSA IN LOVE
HE WOKE TO DISCOVER that he had undergone a metamorphosis and become Gregor Samsa.
He lay flat on his back on the bed, looking at the ceiling. It took time for his eyes to adjust to the lack of light. The ceiling seemed to be a common, everyday ceiling of the sort one might find anywhere. Once, it had been painted white, or possibly a pale cream. Years of dust and dirt, however, had given it the color of spoiled milk. It had no ornament, no defining characteristic. No argument, no message. It fulfilled its structural role but aspired to nothing further.
There was a tall window on one side of the room, to his left, but its curtain had been removed and thick boards nailed across the frame. An inch or so of space had been left between the horizontal boards, whether on purpose or not wasn’t clear; rays of morning sun shone through, casting a row of bright parallel lines on the floor. Why was the window barricaded in
such a rough fashion? Was a major storm or tornado in the offing? Or was it to keep someone from getting in? Or to prevent someone (him, perhaps?) from leaving?
Still on his back, he slowly turned his head and examined the rest of the room. He could see no furniture, apart from the bed on which he lay. No chest of drawers, no desk, no chair. No painting, clock, or mirror on the walls. No lamp or light. Nor could he make out any rug or carpet on the floor. Just bare wood. The walls were covered with wallpaper of a complex design, but it was so old and faded that in the weak light it was next to impossible to make out what the design was.
There was a door to his right, on the wall opposite the window. Its brass knob was discolored in places. It appeared that the room had once served as a normal bedroom. Yet now all vestiges of human life had been stripped away. The only thing that remained was his solitary bed in the center. And it had no bedding. No sheets, no coverlet, no pillow. Just an ancient mattress.
Samsa had no idea where he was, or what he should do. All he knew was that he was now a human whose name was Gregor Samsa. And how did he know that? Perhaps someone had whispered it in his ear while he lay sleeping? But who had he been before he became Gregor Samsa? What had he been?
The moment he began contemplating that question, however, something like a black column of mosquitoes swirled up in his head. The column grew thicker and denser as it moved to a softer part of his brain, buzzing all the way. Samsa decided to stop thinking. Trying to think anything through at this point was too great a burden.
In any case, he had to learn how to move his body. He couldn’t lie there staring up at the ceiling forever. The posture left him much too vulnerable. He had no chance of surviving an attack—by predatory birds, for example. As a first step, he tried to move his fingers. There were ten of them, long things affixed to his two hands. Each was equipped with a number of joints, which made synchronizing their movements very complicated. To make matters worse, his body felt numb, as though it were immersed in a sticky, heavy liquid, so that it was difficult to send strength to his extremities.