Haruki Murakami - Pinball, 1973

To which J smiled uneasily. "Thanks, but I don't touch the stuff. Not a drop."

"Oh, I didn't know."

"It's just my constitution. Can't handle it."

The Rat nodded a couple of times, then sipped his beer in silence. Once again it startled him how little he knew about the Chinese bartender. J was a terribly quiet man. He never volunteered a single thing about himself, and if anyone ever asked, he'd cautiously pull out a ready answer, smooth and innocuous, as if out of a drawer.

Everybody knew that J was a first-generation Chinese, which was not particularly rare as foreigners went in this town. In the Rat's high school soccer club, one forward and one back had been Chinese. No one made much of it.

"Kinda lonesome without music, huh?" said J, throwing the Rat the keys to the jukebox.

The Rat chose five numbers, returned to the counter, and continued with his beer. An old Wayne Newton song flowed from the speakers.

"Don'tcha have to be getting back home?" the Rat asked.

"I don't mind. It's not like somebody's waiting, ya know."

"Live alone?"

"Uh-huh."

The Rat pulled a cigarette out of his pocket, straightened it out, and lit up.

"There's only a cat," J said out of nowhere "An old cat, but a good friend to talk to."

"You talk things over, do you?"

J nodded a few times. "Uh-huh. Been together a long time so we can read each other's moods. I understand what makes the cat tick, the cat knows what makes me tick."

The Rat let out a soft grunt from behind his cigarette. The jukebox whirred, and "MacArthur Park" clicked into position.

"So tell me then, what does a cat think about?"

"All sorts of things. Just like you and me."

"Gee, that's tough," the Rat laughed.

J laughed too, then reflected a moment and ran his finger along the counter. "Crippled in one leg."

"Crippled?" the Rat asked.

"The cat, it's lame. Four winters ago, I think. It came home all covered with blood. The poor thing's paw was all pulpy like marmalade.

The Rat set his glass down on the counter and looked J in the face. "What on earth happened to it?"

"Don't know. I guess it got hit by a car. But y'know, it was somehow worse than that. Getting run over by a tire wouldn't do that. I mean, it looked as if it'd been mangled in a vise. Flat as a pancake. I'd almost bet it was someone's idea of a practical joke."

"Come on," the Rat said shaking his head in disbelief. "Who'd want to do that to a cat's paw?"

J tamped one of his filterless cigarettes over and over again on the counter, then put it to his lips and lit up.

"You said it. Not a reason in the world to crush a cat's paw. It's a real well-behaved cat, never done anything wrong. Nothing anyone would have to gain by crushing its paw. It's just senseless and cruel. But y'know, the world's full of that kind of groundless ill will. I'll never understand it, you'll never understand it. But it exists all the same. You might even say it's got us hemmed in.

The Rat nodded once more, his eyes fixed on his beer glass. "I just can't understand why."

"That's all right. If you can let it go at not understanding, that's the best anyone could expect."

So saying, J blew cigarette smoke out into the dark emptiness beyond the bar. He followed the white smoke with his eyes until it completely vanished in the air.

A long silence passed between the two of them. The Rat gazing at his glass, lost in thought, J running his finger back and forth along the counter top as usual. The jukebox began to play the last record. A soul ballad in falsetto.

"Say J," said the Rat, eyes still on the glass, "I've lived here for twenty-five years, and it seems to me I haven't really learned a thing."

J said nothing, but just stared at his fingers. Then he gave a little shrug. "Me, I've seen forty-five years, and I've only figured out one thing. That's this: if a person would just make the effort, there's something to be learned from everything. From even the most ordinary, commonplace things, there's always something you can learn. I read somewhere that they say there's even different philosophies in razors. Fact is, if it weren't for that, nobody'd survive."

The Rat nodded, then finished off the last inch of beer in his glass. The record ended, the jukebox clicked off, and the premises fell quiet again.

"I think I see what you're getting at, but" the Rat began, then swallowed the thought. But – the word was on his lips, there wasn't anything more he could say. So he smiled and stood up, thanked J and said, "Can I give you a lift home?"

"Nah, it's okay. My place is close by, and besides I like to walk."

"Well, now, you get some shut-eye. Regards to your cat."

"Thanks."

Climbing the stairs, he stepped out into the crisp autumn air. The Rat made his way to the parking lot, tapping the trees along the roadside lightly with his fist as he walked. He came to a halt in front of the parking meter, stared at it for no reason at all, then got in the car. After a few wrong turns, he found himself cruising toward the ocean. He stopped the car along the shore road in view of her apartment building. Half the apartments were still lit. In a few, shadows moved behind the curtains.

The woman's apartment was dark. Even her bedside lamp was out. Probably asleep. It was a terribly lonely feeling.

The sound of the waves seemed to be growing louder. Almost as if any minute now they would break over the seawall and wash the Rat – car and all – somewhere faraway. He switched on the car radio and let back the reclining seat, eyes closed, hands behind his head, half-listening to some deejay's drivel. He was dead tired, thanks to which, whatever emotions he might have had, simply came and went without gaining a foothold. The Rat began to relax and lay down his empty head on the mingled sounds of the waves and the deejay until sleep crept over him.

Thursday morning, the twins woke me up. Little did I notice that it was fifteen minutes earlier than usual as I shaved, drank my coffee, and read through the morning paper, still sticky with fresh ink.

"There's a favor we have to ask," said one of the twins.

"Do you think you could borrow a car this Sunday?" said the other.

"Perhaps," I said, "but where do you want to go?"

"The reservoir."

"The reservoir?"

They both nodded.

"What do you want to do at the reservoir?"

"Last rites."

"Whose?"

"The switch-panel's."

"I see," said I, and returned to the paper.

Unfortunately, on Sunday it began drizzling from the morning. To be sure, I had no way of knowing what kind of weather was most appropriate for a switch-panel's funeral. The twins didn't broach the subject of the rain, so I kept quiet.

Saturday night I borrowed my business partner's light blue Volkswagen. He insinuated that maybe I'd found myself a woman, to which I merely said

Umm.

The back seat of the bug was stained across one side, probably milk chocolate rubbed in by his kid, though it looked like bloodstains from a machine gun battle. My partner didn't have any decent cassettes for the car stereo, so we traveled the full hour and a half to the reservoir without any music, driving on and on without a word. As we drove, the rain came down harder and then weaker, then harder again, then weaker, alternating at regular intervals. It was enough to make you yawn, that rain.

The only sound was that of the high-speed whoosh of passing cars on the highway.

One of the twins sat in the front seat, the other sat in the back holding a shopping bag with a thermos bottle and the defunct switch-panel. The girls were properly somber in keeping with the funeral day. And I followed suit. We were even somber as we ate roast corn-on-the-cob at a roadside rest stop.