Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki And His Years Of Pilgrimage Part 18

Yuzu was found inside her apartment in Hamamatsu, strangled to death with a cloth belt. Tsukuru had read the details in old newspapers and magazines. He'd searched online, too, to find out more about the case.

Robbery wasn't involved. Her purse, with cash still in it, was found nearby. And there were no signs she'd been a.s.saulted. Nothing was disturbed in her apartment, and there were no signs of a struggle. Residents on the same floor had heard no suspicious sounds. There were a couple of menthol cigarette b.u.t.ts in an ashtray, but these turned out to be Yuzu's. (Tsukuru had frowned at this. Yuzu smoked?) The estimated time of death was between 10 p.m. and midnight, a night when it rained till dawn, a cold rain for a May night. Her body was discovered in the evening, three days later. She'd lain there for three days, on the faux tile flooring of her kitchen.

They never discovered the motive for the murder. Someone had come late at night, strangled her without making a sound, not stolen or disturbed anything else, and then left. The door locked automatically. It was unclear whether she had opened it from the inside or if the murderer had a duplicate key. She lived alone in the apartment. Coworkers and neighbors said she didn't seem to have any close friends. Except for her older sister and mother, who occasionally visited from Nagoya, she was always alone. She wore simple clothes and struck everyone who knew her as rather meek and quiet. She was enthusiastic about her job, and was well liked by her students, but outside of work, she seemed to have no friends.

No one had any idea what had led to her death, why she had ended up strangled. The police investigation petered out without any suspects coming to light. Articles about the case grew steadily shorter, and finally vanished altogether. It was a sad, painful case. Like cold rain falling steadily until dawn.

"An evil spirit possessed her," Eri said softly, as if revealing a secret. "It clung to her, breathing coldly on her neck, slowly driving her in a corner. That's the only thing that can explain all that happened to her. What happened with you, her eating disorder, what happened in Hamamatsu. I never actually wanted to put it into words. It's like, if I did, it would really exist. So I kept it to myself all this time. I decided to never talk about it, until the day I died. But I don't mind telling you this now, since we'll probably never see each other again. And you need to know this. It was an evil spirit-or something close to it. In the end, Yuzu couldn't escape."

Eri sighed deeply and stared at her hands on the table. Her hands were visibly shaking, rather severely. Tsukuru turned his gaze away and looked out the window, past the fluttering curtain. The silence that settled on the room was oppressive, full of a deep sadness. Unspoken feelings were as heavy and lonely as the ancient glacier that had carved out the deep lake.

"Do you remember Liszt's Years of Pilgrimage? Yuzu used to play one of the pieces a lot," Tsukuru said after a time to break the silence.

" 'Le mal du pays.' I remember it well," Eri said. "I listen to it sometimes. Would you like to hear it?"

Tsukuru nodded.

Eri stood up, went over to the small stereo set in the cabinet, selected a CD from the pile of discs, and inserted it into the player. "Le mal du pays" filtered out from the speakers, the simple opening melody, softly played with one hand. Eri sat back down across from him, and the two of them silently listened to the music.

Listening to the music here, next to a lake in Finland, it had a different sort of charm from when he heard it back in his apartment in Tokyo. But no matter where he listened to it, regardless of whether he heard it on a CD or an old LP, the music remained the same, utterly engaging and beautiful. Tsukuru pictured Yuzu at the piano in her parlor, playing the piece, leaning over the keyboard, eyes closed, lips slightly open, searching for words that don't make a sound. She was apart from herself then, in some other place.

The piece ended, there was a pause, then the next piece began. "The Bells of Geneva." Eri touched the remote control and lowered the volume.

"It strikes me as different from the performance I always listen to at home," Tsukuru said.

"Which pianist do you listen to?"

"Lazar Berman."

Eri shook her head. "I've never heard his version."

"It's a little more elegant than this one. I like this performance, it's wonderful, but the style of this version makes it sound more like a Beethoven sonata than Liszt."

Eri smiled. "That would be because it's Alfred Brendel. Maybe it's not so elegant, but I like it all the same. I guess I'm used to this version, since it's the one I always listen to."

"Yuzu played this piece so beautifully. She put so much feeling into it."

"She really did. She was very good at pieces this length. In longer pieces she sort of ran out of energy halfway through. But everyone has their own special qualities. I always feel like a part of Yuzu lives on in this music. It's so vibrant, so luminous."

When Yuzu was teaching the children at the school, Tsukuru and Ao usually played soccer with the boys in the small playground outside. They divided into two teams and tried to shoot the ball into the opposite goal (which was usually constructed from a couple of cardboard boxes). As he pa.s.sed the ball, Tsukuru would half listen to the sound of children playing scales that filtered out the window.

The past became a long, razor-sharp skewer that stabbed right through his heart. Silent silver pain shot through him, transforming his spine to a pillar of ice. The pain remained, unabated. He held his breath, shut his eyes tight, enduring the agony. Alfred Brendel's graceful playing continued. The CD shifted to the second suite, "Second Year: Italy."

And in that moment, he was finally able to accept it all. In the deepest recesses of his soul, Tsukuru Tazaki understood. One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone. They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds. Pain linked to pain, fragility to fragility. There is no silence without a cry of grief, no forgiveness without bloodshed, no acceptance without a pa.s.sage through acute loss. That is what lies at the root of true harmony.

"Tsukuru, it's true. She lives on in so many ways." Eri's voice, from the other side of the table, was husky, as if forced from her. "I can feel it. In all the echoes that surround us, in the light, in shapes, in every single ..."

Eri covered her face with her hands. No other words came. Tsukuru wasn't sure if she was crying or not. If she was, she did so silently.

While Ao and Tsukuru played soccer, Eri and Aka did their best to keep the other children from interrupting Yuzu's piano lessons. They did whatever they could to occupy the kids-they read books, played games, went outside, and sang songs. Most of the time, though, these attempts failed. The children never tired of trying to disrupt the piano lessons. They found this much more interesting than anything else. Eri and Aka's fruitless struggle to divert them was fun to watch.

Almost without thinking, Tsukuru stood up and went around to the opposite side of the table. Without a word he laid his hand on Eri's shoulder. She still had her face in her hands. As he touched her, he felt her trembling, a trembling the eye couldn't detect.

"Tsukuru?" Eri's voice leaked out from between her fingers. "Could you do something for me?"

"Of course," Tsukuru said.

"Could you hold me?"

Tsukuru asked her to stand up, then drew her to him. Her full b.r.e.a.s.t.s lay tightly against his chest, as if testimony to something. Her hands were warm where she held his back, her cheek soft and wet as it pressed against his neck.

"I don't think I'll ever go back to j.a.pan again," Eri murmured. Her warm, damp breath brushed his ear. "Everything I see would remind me of Yuzu. And of our-"

Tsukuru said nothing, only continued to hold her tightly against him.

Their embrace would be visible through the open window. Someone might pa.s.s by and see them. Edvard and his children might be back at any moment. But that didn't matter. They didn't care what others thought. He and Eri had to hold each other now, as much as they wanted. They had to let their skin touch, and drive away the long shadow cast by evil spirits. This was, no doubt, why he'd come here in the first place.

They held each other for a long time-how long he couldn't say. The white curtain at the window went on flapping in the breeze that came from across the lake. Eri's cheeks stayed wet, and Alfred Brendel went on playing the "Second Year: Italy" suite. "Petrarch's Sonnet 47," then "Petrarch's Sonnet 104." Tsukuru knew every note. He could have hummed it all if he'd wanted to. For the first time he understood how deeply he'd listened to this music, and how much it meant to him.

They didn't speak. Words were powerless now. Like a pair of dancers who had stopped mid-step, they simply held each other quietly, giving themselves up to the flow of time. Time that encompa.s.sed both past and present, and even a portion of the future. Nothing came between their two bodies, as her warm breath brushed his neck. Tsukuru shut his eyes, letting the music wash over him as he listened to Eri's heartbeat. The beating of her heart kept time with the slap of the little boat against the pier.

They sat back down again, across from each other at the table, and took turns opening up about what was in their hearts. Things they had not put into words for ages, things they'd been holding back deep in their souls. Removing the lids on their hearts, pulling open the doors of memory, revealing honest feelings, as the other, all the while, listened quietly.

Eri spoke first.

"In the end I abandoned Yuzu. I had to get away from her. I wanted to get as far away as I could from whatever it was that possessed her. That's why I got into pottery, married Edvard, and moved to Finland. I didn't plan it, of course, it just turned out that way. I did sort of have the feeling that doing so meant I'd never have to take care of Yuzu again. I loved her more than I loved anyone-she was like another self-so I wanted to help her as much as I could. But I was exhausted. Taking care of her for so long had completely worn me out. And no matter how much I tried to help her, I couldn't stop her retreat from reality. It was awful for me. If I'd stayed in Nagoya, I think my mind would have started to go, too. I don't know, maybe I'm just making excuses?"

"You're just saying how you felt. That's different from making excuses."

Eri bit her lip. "But the fact remains that I abandoned her. And Yuzu went by herself to Hamamatsu and was murdered. She had the most slender, lovely neck, do you remember? Like a pretty bird, the kind of neck that could snap so easily. If I'd been in j.a.pan that probably would never have happened to her. I would never have let her go off to some town she didn't know, all by herself."

"Perhaps. But even if it hadn't been then, the same thing might have happened later, in some other place. You weren't Yuzu's guardian. You couldn't keep watch over her every second of every day. You had your own life. There's only so much you could have done."

Eri shook her head. "I told myself that, I don't know how many times. But it didn't help. A part of me wanted to get far away from her, to protect myself. I can't deny that. Apart from the question of her being saved or not, I had to deal with my own conflict. And in the process, I lost you, too. In giving priority to the problems Yuzu had, I had to abandon Tsukuru Tazaki, who had done nothing wrong. I wounded you deeply, all because it suited the situation as I saw it. Even though I loved you so much ..."

Tsukuru didn't say a word.

"But that's not the whole story," Eri said.

"No?"

"Truthfully, I didn't abandon you just because of Yuzu. That's a superficial justification. I did it because I'm a coward. I didn't have any confidence in myself as a woman. I was sure that no matter how much I loved you, you would never reciprocate. I was sure you were in love with Yuzu. That's why I was able to cut you off so cruelly. I did it to sever my feelings for you. If I had only had a little more confidence and courage, and no stupid pride, I never would have abandoned you like that, no matter what the circ.u.mstances. But something was wrong with me back then. I know I did something terrible. And I am truly sorry for it."

Silence descended on them.

"I should have apologized to you a long time ago," Eri finally said. "I know that very well. But I just couldn't. I was too ashamed of myself."

"You don't need to worry about me anymore," Tsukuru said. "I survived the crisis. Swam through the night sea on my own. Each of us did what we had to do, in order to survive. I get the feeling that, even if we had made different decisions then, even if we had chosen to do things differently, we might have still ended up pretty much where we are now."

Eri bit her lip and considered this. "Will you tell me one thing?" she said after a while.

"Name it."

"If I had come right out then and told you I loved you, would you have gone out with me?"

"Even if you'd said that right to my face, I probably wouldn't have believed it," Tsukuru said.

"Why not?"

"I couldn't imagine anyone saying they loved me, or wanting to be my girlfriend."

"But you were kind, cool, and calm, and you'd already figured out your path in life. Plus you were good-looking."

Tsukuru shook his head. "I have a really boring face. I've never liked my looks."

Eri smiled. "Maybe you're right. Maybe you really do have a very boring face and something was wrong with me. But at least for a silly sixteen-year-old girl, you were handsome enough. I dreamed about how wonderful it would be to have a boyfriend like you."

"Can't claim to have much of a personality either."

"Everyone alive has a personality. It's just more obvious with some people than with others." Eri's eyes narrowed and she looked straight at him. "So, tell me-how would you have replied? Would you have let me be your girlfriend?"

"Of course I would have," Tsukuru said. "I really liked you. I was really attracted to you, in a different way from how I was attracted to Yuzu. If you had told me then how you felt, of course I would have loved for you to be my girlfriend. And I think we would have been happy together."

The two of them would have likely been a close couple, with a fulfilling love life, Tsukuru decided. There would have been so much they could have shared. On the surface, their personalities seemed so different-Tsukuru introverted and reticent, Eri sociable and talkative-yet they both shared a desire to create and build things with their own hands, things that were meaningful. Tsukuru had the feeling, though, that this closeness would have been short-lived. An unavoidable fissure would have grown between what he and Eri wanted from their lives. They were still in their teens then, still discovering their own paths, and eventually they would have reached a fork and gone off in separate directions. Without fighting, without hurting each other, naturally, calmly. And it did turn out that way, didn't it, Tsukuru thought, with him going to Tokyo and building stations, and Eri marrying Edvard and moving to Finland.

It wouldn't have been strange if things had worked out that way. It was entirely possible. And the experience would never have been a negative one for either of them. Even if they were no longer lovers, they would have remained good friends. In reality, though, none of this ever happened. In reality something very different happened. And that fact was more significant now than anything else.

"Even if you're not telling the truth, I'm happy you would say that," Eri said.

"I am too telling the truth," Tsukuru said. "I wouldn't joke about something like that. I think we would have had a wonderful time together. And I'm sorry it never happened. I really am."

Eri smiled, with no trace of sarcasm.

Tsukuru remembered the erotic dream he often had of the two girls. How they were always together, but how it was always Yuzu whose body he came inside. Not once did he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e inside Eri. He wasn't sure of the significance, but he did know he couldn't tell Eri about it. No matter how honestly you open up to someone, there are still things you cannot reveal.

When he thought about those dreams, and Yuzu's insistence that he had raped her (and her insistence that she was carrying his baby), he found he couldn't totally dismiss it out of hand as some made-up story, or say that he had no idea what she was talking about. It might have all been a dream, but he still couldn't escape the feeling that, in some indefinable way, he was responsible. And not just for the rape, but for her murder. On that rainy May night something inside of him, unknown to him, may have slipped away to Hamamatsu and strangled that thin, lovely, fragile neck.

He could see himself knocking on the door of her apartment. "Can you let me in?" he says, in this vision. "I have something I need to say." He's wearing a wet black raincoat, the smell of heavy night rain hovering about him.

"Tsukuru?" Yuzu asks.

"There's something I need to talk with you about," he says. "It's very important. That's why I came to Hamamatsu. It won't take long. Please open the door." He keeps on addressing the closed door. "I'm sorry about showing up like this, without calling. But if I had contacted you beforehand, you probably wouldn't have seen me."

Yuzu hesitates, then quietly slips the chain off the lock. His right hand tightly grips the belt inside his pocket.

Tsukuru grimaced. Why did he have to imagine this horrid scene? And why did he have to be the one who strangled her?

There were no reasons at all why he would have done that, of course. Tsukuru had never wanted to kill anyone, ever. But maybe he had tried to kill Yuzu, in a purely symbolic way. Tsukuru himself had no idea what deep darkness lay hidden in his heart. What he did know was that inside Yuzu, too, lay a deep, inner darkness, and that somewhere, on some subterranean level, her darkness and his may have connected. And being strangled was, perhaps, exactly what Yuzu had wanted. In the mingled darkness between them, perhaps he had sensed that desire.

"You're thinking about Yuzu?" Eri asked.

"I've always thought of myself as a victim," Tsukuru said. "Forced, for no reason, to suffer cruelly. Deeply wounded emotionally, my life thrown off course. Truthfully, sometimes I hated the four of you, wondering why I was the only one who had to go through that awful experience. But maybe that wasn't the case. Maybe I wasn't simply a victim, but had hurt those around me, too, without realizing it. And wounded myself again in the counterattack."

Eri gazed at him without a word.

"And maybe I murdered Yuzu," Tsukuru said honestly. "Maybe the one who knocked on her door that night was me."

"In a certain sense," Eri said.

Tsukuru nodded.

"I murdered Yuzu too," Eri said. "In a sense." She looked off to one side. "Maybe I was the one who knocked on her door that night."

Tsukuru looked at her nicely tanned profile. He'd always liked her slightly upturned nose.

"Each of us has to live with that burden," Eri said.

The wind had died down for the moment and now the white curtain at the window hung still. The boat had stopped rattling against the pier. The only thing he could hear was the calls of birds, singing a melody he'd never heard before.

Eri listened to the birds for a while, picked up the barrette, pinned her hair back again, and gently pressed her fingertips against her forehead. "What do you think about the work Aka is doing?" she asked. Like a weight had been removed, the flow of time grew a fraction lighter.

"I don't know," Tsukuru said. "The world he lives in is so far removed from mine, it's hard for me to say whether it's good or bad."

"I certainly don't like what he's doing. But that doesn't mean I can cut him off. He used to be one of my very best friends, and even now I still consider him a good friend. Though I haven't seen him in seven or eight years."

She put her hand to her hair again. "Every year Aka donates a large sum of money to that Catholic facility that supported the school where we volunteered. The people there are really grateful for what he does. The school's barely managing financially. But n.o.body knows he's donating. He insists on remaining anonymous. I'm probably the only person besides the people who run the school who knows he's donating so much. I found out about it just by chance. You know, Tsukuru, he's not a bad person. I want you to understand that. He just pretends to be bad, that's all. I don't know why. He probably has to."

Tsukuru nodded.

"And the same holds true for Ao," Eri said. "He still has a very pure heart. It's just that it's hard to survive in the real world. They've both been more successful than most, in their different fields. They put in a lot of honest, hard work. What I'm trying to say is, it wasn't a waste for us to have been us-the way we were together, as a group. I really believe that. Even if it was only for a few short years."

Eri held her face in her hands again. She was silent for a time, then looked up and continued.

"We survived. You and I. And those who survive have a duty. Our duty is to do our best to keep on living. Even if our lives are not perfect."

"The most I can do is keep building railroad stations."

"That's fine. That's what you should keep doing. I'm sure you build very wonderful, safe stations that people enjoy using."

"I hope so," Tsukuru said. "We're not supposed to do this, but when I'm overseeing construction for one section of a station, I always put my name on it. I write it in the wet concrete with a nail. Tsukuru Tazaki. Where you can't see it from the outside."

Eri laughed. "So even after you're gone, your wonderful stations remain. Just like me putting my initials on the back of my plates."

Tsukuru raised his head and looked at Eri. "Is it okay if I talk about my girlfriend?"

"Of course," Eri said. A charming smile rose to her lips. "I'd love to hear all about this wise, older girlfriend of yours."

Tsukuru told her about Sara. How he had found her strangely attractive from the first time he saw her, and how they made love on their third date. How she had wanted to know everything about the group of friends he'd had in Nagoya. How when he saw her the last time, he'd been impotent. Tsukuru told Eri about it all, hiding nothing. About how Sara had pushed him to visit his former friends in Nagoya and to travel to Finland. She'd told him that unless he did so, he'd never overcome the emotional baggage he still carried. Tsukuru felt he loved Sara. And he thought he would like to marry her. This was probably the first time he'd ever felt such strong emotions about someone. But she seemed to have an older boyfriend. When he saw her walking with him on the street she had looked so happy, so content, and he wasn't sure he could ever make her that happy.