Haruki Murakami - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Soon I found myself dissatisfied with the choppy little conversations we were fitting in between other things in the hospital area. I kept wishing I could meet her somewhere else, so that we could really talk to each other for a change. Finally, one day, I decided to ask her for a date.

I think both of us could use a change of air, I said. Lets get out of here and go someplace else-where there aren't any patients or clients.

Kumiko gave it some thought and said, The aquarium?

And so the aquarium is where we had our first date. Kumiko brought her mother a change of clothes that Sunday morning and met me in the hospital waiting room. It was a warm, clear day, and Kumiko was wearing a simple white dress under a pale-blue cardigan. I was always struck by how well she dressed even then. She could wear the plainest article of clothing and manage, with the roll of a sleeve or the curl of a collar, to transform it into something spectacular. It was a knack she had. And I could see that she took care of her clothing with an attention bordering on love. Whenever I was with her, walking beside her, I would find my- self staring in admiration at her clothes. Her blouses never had a wrinkle. Her pleats hung in perfect alignment. Anything white she wore looked brand-new. Her shoes were never scuffed or smudged. Looking at what she wore, I could imagine her blouses and sweaters neatly folded and lined up in her dresser drawers, her skirts and dresses in vinyl wrappers hanging in the closet (which is exactly what I found to be the case after we were married).

We spent that first afternoon together in the aquarium of the Ueno Zoo. The weather was so nice that day, I thought it might be more fun to stroll around the zoo itself, and I hinted as much to Kumiko on the train to Ueno, but she had obviously made up her mind to go to the aquarium. If that was what she wanted, it was perfectly all right with me. The aquarium was having a special display of jellyfish, and we went through them from beginning to end, viewing the rare specimens gathered from all parts of the world. They floated, trembling, in their tanks, everything from a tiny cotton puff the size of a fingertip to monsters more than three feet in diameter. For a Sunday, the aquarium was relatively uncrowded. In fact, it was on the empty side. On such a lovely day, anybody would have preferred the elephants and giraffes to jellyfish.

Although I said nothing to Kumiko, I actually hated jellyfish. I had often been stung by jellyfish while swimming in the ocean as a boy. Once, when swimming far out by myself, I wandered into a whole school of them. By the time I realized what I had done, I was surrounded. I never forgot the slimy, cold feeling of them touching me. In the center of that whirlpool of jellyfish, an immense terror overtook me, as if I had been dragged into a bottomless darkness. I wasn't stung, for some reason, but in my panic I gulped a lot of ocean water. Which is why I would have liked to skip the jellyfish display if possible and go to see some ordinary fish, like tuna or flounder.

Kumiko, though, was fascinated. She stopped at every single tank, leaned over the railing, and stayed locked in place as if she had forgotten the passage of time. Look at this, shed say to me. I never knew there were such vivid pink jellyfish. And look at the beautiful way it swims. They just keep wobbling along like this until they've been to every ocean in the world. Aren't they wonderful?

Yeah, sure. But the more I forced myself to keep examining jellyfish with her, the more I felt a tightness growing in my chest. Before I knew it, I had stopped replying to her and was counting the change in my pocket over and over, or wiping the corners of my mouth with my handkerchief. I kept wishing we would come to the last of the jellyfish tanks, but there was no end to them. The variety of jellyfish swimming in the oceans of the world was enormous. I was able to bear it for half an hour, but the tension was turning my head into mush. When, finally, it became too painful for me to stand leaning against the railing, I left Kumiko's side and slumped down on a nearby bench. She came over to me and, obviously very concerned, asked if I was feeling bad. I answered honestly that looking at the jellyfish was making me dizzy.

She stared into my eyes with a grave expression on her face. Its true, she said. I can see it in your eyes. They've gone out of focus. Its incredible-just from looking at jellyfish! Kumiko took me by the arm and led me out of the gloomy, dank aquarium into the sunlight.

Sitting in the nearby park for ten minutes, taking long, slow breaths, I managed to return to a normal psychological state. The strong autumn sun cast its pleasant radiance everywhere, and the bone-dry leaves of the ginkgo trees rustled softly whenever the breeze picked up. Are you all right? Kumiko asked after several minutes had gone by. You certainly are a strange one. If you hate jellyfish so much, you should have said so right away, instead of waiting until they made you sick.

The sky was high and cloudless, the wind felt good, the people spending their Sunday in the park all wore happy expressions. A slim, pretty girl was walking a large, long-haired dog. An old fellow wearing a felt hat was watching his granddaughter on the swing. Several couples sat on benches, the way we were doing. Off in the distance, someone was practicing scales on a saxophone.

Why do you like jellyfish so much? I asked.

I don't know. I guess I think they're cute, she said. But one thing did occur to me when I was really focused on them. What we see before us is just one tiny part of the world. We get into the habit of thinking, This is the world, but thats not true at all. The real world is in a much darker and deeper place than this, and most of it is occupied by jellyfish and things. We just happen to forget all that. Don't you agree?

Two-thirds of the earths surface is ocean, and all we can see of it with the naked eye is the surface: the skin. We hardly know anything about whats underneath the skin.

We took a long walk after that. At five o'clock, Kumiko said she had to go back to the hospital, so I took her there. Thank you for a lovely day, she said when we parted. There was a quiet glow in her smile that had not been there before. When I saw it, I realized that I had managed to draw a little closer to her in the course of the day-thanks, no doubt, to the jellyfish.

Kumiko and I continued to date. Her mother left the hospital without complications, and I no longer had to spend time there working on my clients will, but we would get together once a week for a movie or a concert or a walk. We drew closer to each other each time we met. I enjoyed being with her, and if we should happen to touch, I felt a fluttering in the chest. I often found it difficult to work when the weekend was drawing near. I was sure she liked me. Otherwise, she wouldn't see me every weekend.

Still, I was in no hurry to deepen my relationship with Kumiko. I sensed a kind of uncertainty in her. Exactly what it was I couldn't have said, but it would come out every now and then in her words or actions. I might ask her something, and a single breath would intervene before she answered-just the slightest hesitation, but in that split-second interval I sensed a kind of shadow.

Winter came, and then the new year. We went on seeing each other every week. I never asked about that something, and she never said a word. We would meet and go someplace and eat and talk about innocuous things.

One day I took a chance and said, You must have a boyfriend, don't you? Kumiko looked at me for a moment and asked, What makes you think so? Just a hunch, I said. We were walking through the wintry and deserted Shinjuku Imperial Gardens. What kind of hunch? I don't know. I get the feeling theres something you want to tell me. You should if you can. The expression on her face wavered the slightest bit-almost imperceptibly. There might have been a moment of uncertainty, but there had never been any doubt about her conclusion. Thanks for asking, she said, but I don't have anything that I want to make a special point of talking about.