South Of The Border, West Of The Sun Part 13

The reason I didn't want to hear that tune again had nothing to do with memories of Shimamoto. The song The song just didn't do to me what it used to just didn't do to me what it used to. Why, I can't say. The special something I'd found ages ago in that melody was no longer there. It was still a beautiful tune, but nothing more. And I had no intention of lingering over the corpse of a beautiful song.

"What are you thinking about?" Yukiko asked me as she came into the room.

It was two-thirty in the morning. I was lying on the sofa, staring at the ceiling.

"I was thinking about a desert," I said.

"A desert?" she asked. She'd sat down next to my feet and was looking at me. "What kind of desert?"

"Just a regular desert. With sand dunes and a few cactuses. Lots of things are there, living there."

"Am I included in this desert too?" she asked.

"Of course you are," I said. "All of us are living there. But actually what's really living is the desert itself. Like in the movie."

"What movie?"

"The Disney film The Living Desert The Living Desert. A doc.u.mentary about the desert. Didn't you see it when you were little?"

"No," she said. I thought that was a bit strange. Everybody in my elementary school had been herded off to the movie theater to watch it. But Yukiko was five years younger than me. She might have been too young to see it when it came out "Why don't we rent it next Sunday and watch it together? It's a good movie. The scenery's beautiful, and there're all sorts of animals and flowers. The kids will like it."

Yukiko smiled at me. It had been such a long time since I'd seen her smile.

"Do you want to leave me?" she asked.

"Yukiko, I love you," I said.

"Maybe you do, but I'm asking you whether you want to leave me. The answer is either yes or no. I won't accept any other."

"I don't want to leave you," I said. I shook my head. "I probably don't have the right to say this, but I don't want to leave you. If I left you now, I don't know what would happen to me. I don't want to be lonely ever again. I'd rather die."

She stretched out a hand and placed it on my chest. And looked deep into my eyes. "Forget about rights. I don't think anyone has those kinds of rights," she said.

Feeling the warmth of her hand on my chest, I thought of death. I might very well have died on that day on the highway with Shimamoto. If I had, my body would not exist I would be gone, lost forever. Like so many other things. But here I am. And here is Yukiko's warm hand on my chest "Yukiko," I said, "I love you very much. I loved you from the first day I met you, and I still feel the same. If I hadn't met you, my life would have been unbearable. For that I am grateful beyond words. Yet here I am, hurting you. Because I'm a selfish, hopeless, worthless human being. For no apparent reason, I hurt the people around me and end up hurting myself. Ruining someone else's life and my own. Not because I like to. But that's how it ends up."

"No argument there," Yukiko said quietly. Traces of her smile remained at the corners of her mouth. "You are definitely a selfish, hopeless person, and yes, you have hurt me."

I looked at her for a while. Nothing in her words seemed to blame me. She was neither angry nor sad. She was merely explaining the obvious.

I took my time, trying to find the right words. "I always feel like I'm struggling to become someone else. Like I'm trying to find a new place, grab hold of a new life, a new personality. I guess it's part of growing up, yet it's also an attempt to reinvent myself. By becoming a different me, I could free myself of everything. I seriously believed I could escape myselfas long as I made the effort. But I always. .h.i.t a dead end. No matter where I go, I still end up me. What's missing never changes. The scenery may change, but I'm still the same old incomplete person. The same missing elements torture me with a hunger that I can never satisfy. I guess that lack itself is as close as I'll come to defining myself. For your sake, I'd like to become a new person. It may not be easy, but if I give it my best shot, perhaps I can can manage to change. The truth is, though, if put in the same situation again, I might very well do the same thing all over. I might very well hurt you all over again. I can't promise anything. That's what I meant when I said I had no right I just don't have the confidence to win over that force in me." manage to change. The truth is, though, if put in the same situation again, I might very well do the same thing all over. I might very well hurt you all over again. I can't promise anything. That's what I meant when I said I had no right I just don't have the confidence to win over that force in me."

"And you've always been trying to escape that force?"

"I think so," I said.

Her hand still rested on my chest "You poor man," she said. As if she were reading aloud something written large on a wall. Maybe it really was written on the wall, I thought.

"I don't know what to say," I said. "I know I don't want to leave you. But I don't know if that's the correct answer. I don't even know if that's something I myself can choose. Yukiko, you're suffering. I can see that I can feel your hand here. But there's something beyond what can be seen or felt Call it feelings. Or possibilities. These well up from somewhere and are mixed together inside me. They're not something I can choose or can give an answer to."

Yukiko was silent for a long time. Every so often, a truck rolled by outside. I looked out the window but could see nothing. Just the unnamed time and s.p.a.ce linking night and dawn.

"The last few weeks, I really did think I would die," Yukiko said. "I'm not saying this to threaten you. It's a fact. That's how lonely and sad I was. Dying is not that hard. Like the air being sucked slowly out of a room, the will to live was slowly seeping out of me. When you feel like that, dying doesn't seem like such a big deal. I never even thought of the children. What would happen to them after I died didn't enter my mind. That's how lonely I felt You didn't know that did you? You have never seriously given it any thought, have you? What I was feeling, what I was thinking, what I might do."

I didn't say anything. She took her hand away from my chest and laid it in her lap.

"Anyhow, the reason I didn't die, the reason I'm still alive, is that I thought if you were to come back to me, I would be able to take you back. It's not a question of rights, or right or wrong. Maybe you are a hopeless person. A worthless person. And you might very well hurt me again. But that's not what's important here. You don't understand a thing."

"Most likely I don't," I said.

"And you don't ask anything," she said.

I opened my mouth to say something, but the words wouldn't come out. She was right: I never did ask her anything. Why didn't I? I had no idea.

"Rights are what you build from here on out," Yukiko said. "Or rather, we we build. We thought we'd constructed a lot together, but actually we hadn't made a thing. Life went too smoothly. We were too happy. Don't you think so?" build. We thought we'd constructed a lot together, but actually we hadn't made a thing. Life went too smoothly. We were too happy. Don't you think so?"

I nodded.

Yukiko folded her arms over her chest and looked at me. "I used to have dreams too, you know. But somewhere along the line they disappeared. Before I met you. I killed them. I crushed them and threw them away. Like some internal organ you no longer need and you rip out of your body. I don't know whether that was the right thing to do. But it was the only thing I could do at the time.... Sometimes I have this dream. The same dream over and over. Someone is carrying something in both hands, and comes up to me and says, 'Here, you've forgotten something.' I've been very happy living with you. I've wanted for nothing and never had any complaints. Still, something is chasing me. I wake up in the middle of the night, covered in sweat I'm being chased by what I threw away. You think you're the only one being chased, but you're wrong. You're not the only one who's thrown away something, who's lost something. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"I think so," I said.

"Maybe you will hurt me again. I don't know how I'll react then. Or maybe next time I'll hurt you. No one can promise anything. Neither of us can make any promises. But I do still love you."

I held her and stroked her hair.

"Yukiko," I said, "tomorrow let's begin again. It's too late today. I want to start out the right way, with a brand-new day."

Yukiko looked at me for a while. "I think that you still haven't asked me anything."

"I'd like to start a new life beginning tomorrow. What do you think?" I asked.

"I think that's a good idea," she said, a faint smile on her lips.

After Yukiko went back to the bedroom, I lay for a while on the sofa, staring at the ceiling. It was an ordinary apartment ceiling, nothing special. But still I stared at it closely. Every once in a while, a car's headlights would shine on it I had no more illusions. The feel of Shimamoto's b.r.e.a.s.t.s, her voice, the scent of her skin-all had faded. Izumi's expressionless face floated across my mind. And the feel of the taxi's window separating us. I closed my eyes and thought of Yukiko. Again and again I thought over what she had said. Eyes closed, I listened to the movements within my body. I might very well be changing. And I had to change.

I don't know if I have the strength to care for Yukiko and the children, I thought. No more visions can help me, weaving special dreams just for me. As far as the eye can see, the void is simply thata void. I've been in that void before and forced myself to adjust And now, finally, I end up where I began, and I'd better get used to it No one will weave dreams for meit is my turn to weave dreams for others. That's what I have to do. Such dreams may have no power, but if my own life is to have any meaning at all, that is what I have to do.

Probably.

As the dawn approached, I gave up trying to sleep. I threw a cardigan over my pajamas, padded out to the kitchen, and made some coffee. I sat at the kitchen table and watched the sky grow lighter by the minute. It had been a long time since I'd seen the dawn. At one end of the sky a line of blue appeared, and like blue ink on a piece of paper, it spread slowly across the horizon. If you gathered together all the shades of blue in the world and picked the bluest, the epitome of blue, this was the color you would choose. I rested my elbows on the table and looked at that scene, my mind blank. When the sun showed itself over the horizon, that blue was swallowed up by ordinary sunlight A single cloud floated above the cemetery, a pure white cloud, its edges distinct A cloud so sharply etched you could write on it A new day had begun. But what this day would bring, I had no idea.

I would take my daughters to nursery school and go swimming. The same as always. I remembered the pool I used to swim in during junior high. The smell of the place, the way voices echoed off the ceiling. I was in the midst of becoming something new. Standing in front of the mirror, I could see the changes in my body. At night, in the stillness, I swore I could hear the sound of my flesh growing. I was about to be clothed in a new self, about to step into a place where I'd never been.

Sitting at the kitchen table, I watched the single cloud over the cemetery. The cloud didn't move an inch. It was stationary, nailed to the spot. Time to wake my daughters. It was well past dawn, and they had to get up. They were the ones who needed this new day, much more than I ever would. I'd go to their bedroom, pull back the covers, rest my hand on their warm bodies, and announce the beginning of a new day. That's what I had to do. But somehow I couldn't stand up from the kitchen table. All strength was drained from my body, as if someone had snuck up behind me and silently pulled the plug. Both elbows on the table, I covered my face with my palms.

Inside that darkness, I saw rain falling on the sea. Rain softly falling on a vast sea, with no one there to see it The rain strikes the surface of the sea, yet even the fish don't know it is raining.

Until someone came and lightly rested a hand on my shoulder, my thoughts were of the sea.

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

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 Sh.o.r.e

Norwegian Wood

South of the Border, West of the Sun

Sputnik Sweetheart

A Wild Sheep Chase

The Wind-Up Bird ChronicleNonfiction

Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the j.a.panese Psyche

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

ALSO BY H HARUKI M MURAKAMI.

AFTER DARKMurakami's trademark humor and psychological insight are here distilled with an extraordinary, harmonious mastery. Combining the pyrotechnical genius that made Kafka on the Sh.o.r.e Kafka on the Sh.o.r.e and and The Wind-up Bird Chronicle The Wind-up Bird Chronicle international bestsellers, with a moving infusion of heart, Murakami has produced one of his most enchanting fictions yet. international bestsellers, with a moving infusion of heart, Murakami has produced one of his most enchanting fictions yet.Fiction/978-0307-27873-9AFTER THE QUAKESet 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 G.o.d 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/978-0-375-71327-9BLIND WILLOW, SLEEPING WOMANThis 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 s.e.xuality, or the glow of a firefly, or the impossible distances between those who ought to be closest of all.Fiction/Short Stories/978-1-4000-9608-4DANCE DANCE DANCEAs he searches for a mysteriously vanished girlfriend, Murakami's protagonist plunges into a wind tunnel of s.e.xual 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/978-0-679-75379-7THE ELEPHANT VANISHESWith his genius for dislocation, Murakami makes this collection of stories a determined a.s.sault 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/978-0-679-75053-6HARD-BOILED WONDERLAND AND THE END OF THE WORLDj.a.pan'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 monsters collide to dazzling effect.Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-74346-0KAFKA ON THE Sh.o.r.eThis 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/978-1-4000-7927-8NORWEGIAN WOODToru, 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 s.e.xually liberated young woman.Fiction/Literature/978-0-375-70402-4SOUTH OF THE BORDER, WEST OF THE SUNBorn 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/978-0-679-76739-8SPUTNIK SWEETHEARTA college student, identified only as "K," falls in love with his cla.s.smate, 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/978-0-375-72605-7UNDERGROUNDIt 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 j.a.panese psyche.Fiction/978-0-375-72580-7WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNINGWhile training for the New York City Marathon, Haruki Murakami decided to keep a journal of his progress. The result is a beautiful memoir about his intertwined obsessions with running and writing, full of vivid memories and insights, including the eureka moment when he decided to become a writer. By turns funny and sobering, playful and philosophical, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is rich and revelatory, both for fans of this masterful yet guardedly private writer and for the expanding population who find similar satisfaction in athletic pursuit. is rich and revelatory, both for fans of this masterful yet guardedly private writer and for the expanding population who find similar satisfaction in athletic pursuit.Memoir/Running/978-0-307-38983-1A WILD SHEEP CHASEA twenty-something advertising executive receives a postcard and appropriates its image for an insurance company's advertis.e.m.e.nt. What he doesn't realize is that included in the pastoral scene is a mutant sheep with a star on its back, and in using this photo he has unwittingly captured the attention of a man in black who offers a menacing ultimatum: find the sheep or face dire consequences.Fiction/Literature/978-0-375-71894-6THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLEThe Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II. In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II. In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo.Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-77543-0