Haruki Murakami - Pinball, 1973

Everybody was up to here in troubles, it seemed. Trouble fell like rain from the heavens, and we just couldn't get enough of it. We went around picking up the stuff and cramming our pockets full of it. Even now I can't figure out why we persisted in doing that. Maybe we mistook it for something else.

Sometimes we'd even get telegrams. Four o'clock in the morning a bike would pull up to the entrance, followed by footsteps tramping down the hall. Then there'd come a knock on someone's door. A pounding thud thud that always seemed to announce the arrival of the God of Death. Any number of people were cutting their lives short, going out of their heads, burying their hearts in the sludge of time, burning up their bodies with pointless thinking, making trouble for one another. Nineteen seventy was that kind of year. If indeed the human species was created to elevate itself dialectically, then that year had to have been some kind of object lesson.

* * *

I lived on the first floor next to the superintendent's apartment, and this girl with long hair lived upstairs by the stairwell. She was the house champion at receiving phone calls, and it somehow fell to me to be perpetually running up and down those fifteen slippery steps. And let me tell you, did she ever get all kinds of phone calls. Polite voices, officious voices, touchingly sad voices, overbearing voices, and they'd all be asking for her by name. I have long since managed to drive that name out of mind; I only remember it was a pathetically ordinary name.

She would always talk into the receiver in a low, tired monotone. A bare whisper of a voice you could hardly make out. She was pretty enough, I suppose, yet there was something dark and moody about her face. We'd pass on the street sometimes, but she'd never say a thing. She'd be walking with such an intense expression she might have been trudging down a path though the deepest jungle astride a white elephant.

* * *

She lived in the apartment house maybe half a year. The half-year from the beginning of autumn to the end of winter.

I'd answer the phone, climb the stairs, knock on her door, and call out, "Telephone!" Then, after a slight pause would come "Thanks." That's all I ever heard her say, "Thanks." But for that matter, I never said anything either except ''Telephone."

For me, it was a lonely season. Whenever I got home and took off my clothes, I felt as if any second my bones would burst through my skin. Like some unknown force inside me had taken a wrong turn somewhere, and was leading me off in some strange direction to another world.

The phone would ring. And I'd think, somebody's got something to tell somebody else. I almost never got calls myself. There wasn't anybody who'd have anything to say to me, at least not anybody I'd want to hear from.

Everyone had by then begun to live according to systems of their own making. If theirs were very different from mine, I'd get irritable; if they were too much alike, I'd get depressed. That's pretty much how it went.

* * *

The last phone call I took for her was at the end of winter. A bright, clear Saturday morning, the beginning of March. By "morning," I mean around ten o'clock, when the winter sun cast its clear light into every corner of my tiny room. I vaguely heard it ringing in my head as I lazed about, absently gazing down on the field of cabbages outside my bedside window. Patches of snow here and there on the dark black soil glistened like mirror-bright pockets of water. The last snow left by the last cold wave of the season.

Ten rings and no takers. The ringing stopped. Then not five minutes later it started again. Disgruntled, I threw on a cardigan over my pajamas, opened the door, and picked up the receiver.

"Miss ______, please," came a male voice. A flat, unmodulated voice; an utterly featureless voice you couldn't pin down if you tried. I improvised some reply, then slowly climbed the stairs to knock on her door.

"Telephone!"

"..... Thanks."

I returned to my room, stretched out on my bed and stared up at the ceiling. I heard her come downstairs and start talking in her usual dry whisper. It was a short call as hers went. Maybe fifteen seconds. There was the sound of her hanging up, then silence. Not even any footsteps.

Finally, after a longish pause, I heard the slow approach of footsteps, followed by a knocking on my door. Two knocks, time for one deep breath, then twice again.

On opening the door, I found her standing there in a bulky white sweater and jeans. For a second I thought I'd given her someone else's call, but she didn't say a word. She just stood there, arms folded tightly across her chest, shivering. She gave me this look – she might have been watching from a lifeboat as the ship went down. Or maybe it was the other way around.

"Can I come in? I could catch my death of cold out here."

Not knowing what to expect, I ushered her in and shut the door. She sat down in front of the heater, warming her hands as she gave the room the once-over.

"Awful empty room you've got here."

I nodded. It was practically empty. Just a bed by the window. Too big for a single, too small for a semi-double. Whatever it was, the bed wasn't something I'd bought for myself. A friend gave it to me. I really couldn't imagine why he'd give me a bed; I wasn't even that close to him. Hardly ever spoke to the guy. The son of a rich family from somewhere, he was beaten up in the school court-yard by louts from some other political faction, had his face kicked in with work boots, almost lost an eye, and withdrew from school. He was in convulsions the whole time I was walking him to the university infirmary, a real sorry sight. Some days later he said it was back home for him, and he gave me the bed.

"I bet you can't even fix yourself anything hot to drink," she said. I shook my head. I didn't have a thing. No coffee, no tea, no bancha . I didn't even have a kettle. Just one small saucepan I used every morning to heat water for shaving. She sighed and stood-up saying wait there, she'd be right back. She left the room, and five minutes later returned with a cardboard box under each arm. In the boxes were a half-year's supply of teabags and green tea, two boxes of biscuits, granulated sugar, a thermos pot, and a complete set of dishes, plus two Snoopy tumblers to boot. She plunked the boxes down on the bed, and boiled water for the thermos.

"How on earth do you manage to survive? You're practically Robinson Crusoe here!"

"No, it's not as much fun as that."

"I should think not."

I shut up and drank my hot tea.

"I'm giving you all this."

I choked on the tea. "You're what?"

"You had to answer so many of my phone calls. This is thanks."

"But what about you, don't you need this stuff?"

She shook her head repeatedly. "I'm moving tomorrow, so I won't be needing anything."

I gave the situation a silent moment's thought, but couldn't imagine what had happened.

"Good news? Bad news?"

"None too good, I'm afraid. I'm going to have to quit school and return to the old homefront."

The roomful of winter sunshine clouded over, then brightened again.

"But that's nothing you want to hear about. I don't even want to hear about it. Who'd want to use dishes from someone who left you with bad feelings, right?"

The next day, a cold rain fell from morning on. A fine rain, but it penetrated my raincoat and got my sweater wet all the same. The rain made everything dark and slick. The oversized trunk I carried, the suitcase she carried, her shoulder bag, everything. The taxi driver even growled, Would we be so kind as to not put the luggage on the seat?

The taxi was stuffy inside from the heater and cigarette smoke, and an old enka ballad crooned out of the car radio. A real oldie from the days of pop-up turn signals. Groves of leafless trees that might have just as well been undersea coral stretched out their damp branches from both sides of the road.