Haruki Murakami - Hear the Wind Sing

“I’ll go and check.”

She rose from the bed, naked, opened the refrigerator and took out some old bread she’d found, made some simple sandwiches with lettuce and sausage, then brought them back to bed with some instant coffee. Being October, it was a really cold night, and when she crawled back into bed her body was completely chilled, like canned salmon.

“There wasn’t any mustard.”

“Mmm…delicious.”

Wrapped up in blankets in her futon, we munched on sandwiches as we watched an old movie on television.

It was The Bridge on the River Kwai.

In the end, when the bridge was bombed, she groaned for a little while.

“Why’d you go through all that just to build a bridge?” she said with her finger pointed to the dumbfounded, petrified Alec Guinness.

“So they could keep their pride.”

“Hmph,” she said with her mouth stuffed full of bread, as she thought for a moment on the subject of human pride. It was always this way, but I had no idea what the hell was going on inside her head.

“Hey, do you love me?”

“Sure.”

“You wanna get married?”

“Now? Right away?”

“Sometime…someday.”

“Of course I’d like to marry you.”

“But until I asked you about it, you’ve never breathed a word about it.”

“I forgot to tell you.”

“Hmm…how many kids do you want?”

“Three.”

“Boys? Girls?”

“Two girls and a boy.”

She washed down the bread in her mouth with some coffee and then fixed her eyes upon my face.

“LIAR!”

She said.

However, she was mistaken. I only lied once.

We went into a small restaurant near the harbor, finished a simple meal, and ordered a Bloody Mary and a bourbon.

“You wanna know the truth?” she asked.

“Last year, I dissected a cow.”

“Yeah?”

“When I ripped open its stomach, there was only a handful of grass inside. I put that grass in a plastic bag and took it home,

then set it on top of my desk. When I’m feeling bad about something, I stare at that lump of grass and think about this: why do cows take this unappetizing, miserable-looking food and reverently eat it, chewing their cud?”

She laughed a little, pursing her lips, then gazed at my face.

“I understand. I won’t say a word.”

I nodded.

“There’s something I want to ask you. Can I?”

“Go ahead.”

“Why do people die?”

“Because we’re evolving. One individual can’t withstand all the energy of evolution, so we go through the alternation of generations. Of course, that’s just one theory.”

“Even now, we’re evolving?”

“Little by little.”

“What’s the point of evolving?”

“There are many opinions about that. One thing that’s for sure is that the universe itself is evolving. Putting aside the question of whether or not it’s some kind of trend or willful intervention, the universe is evolving, and in the end, we’re merely a small part of that.” I pushed away my glass of whiskey and lit a cigarette.

“Where that energy comes from, nobody knows.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Spinning the ice around in her glass with her fingertip, she stared at the white tablecloth.

“Hey, after I die, a hundred years later, nobody’ll remember I even existed.”

“Looks that way.”

Leaving the restaurant, in the midst of a strangely vivid twilight, we walked slowly along the quiet lane of warehouses. Walking together, I could sense the smell of her hair conditioner. The wind, shaking the leaves of the willow trees, made me think just a little bit about the end of the summer. After walking for a while, she grabbed my hand with her five-fingered hand.

“When are you going back to Tokyo?”

“Next week. I’ve got a test.”

She was silent.

“I’ll be back in the winter. It’s just until around Christmas. My birthday’s on December 24th.”

She nodded, but she seemed to be thinking about something else.

“You’re a Capricorn?”

“Yeah, you?”

“Me too. January 10th.”

“Feels like an unlucky star to be born under. Same as Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah,” saying that, she grabbed my hand again.

“I’m feeling like I’ll get lonely once you’re gone.”

“We’ll definitely see each other again.”

She didn’t say anything to that.

One by one, the warehouses were really starting to look old, a deep greenish, smooth moss clinging there in the spaces between the bricks. There were sturdylooking iron bars set into the high, dark windows, on each heavily-rusted door hung the nameplate bearing the name of the trading company. The distinct smell of the ocean could be felt throughout the vicinity, interrupted by the row of warehouses, and then ended like a row of willow trees, or a pulled-out tooth. We crossed the overgrown harbor railroad tracks, sat on the steps of a warehouse storing concrete water-breakers that had fallen into disuse, and stared out at the ocean.

There were lights on at the dock in front of the shipbuilding company, next to that a Greek freighter unloading cargo with its waterline rising, floating there like it was abandoned. The white paint of the deck was red with rust, the sides of it encrusted with shells and resembling an injured person’s scabs. For a really long time, we stared in silence at the ocean and the sky and the ships. The evening wind crossed the ocean, and while it shook the grass, the darkness slowly replaced the faint night, and a few stars started to twinkle above the dock.

After the long silence, she made left hand into a fist, and nervously tapped her right palm over and over. She kept tapping it until her palm was red, and then she stared at as if she were disappointed.

“I hate everybody,” she spat out.

“You hate me too?”

“Sorry ‘bout that,” she said, blushing, and then as if pulling herself together, she set her hands back atop her knees.

“You’re not such a bad person.”

“That’s it?”

As if smiling slightly, she nodded, and making a series of small, shaking movements, lit a cigarette. The smoke flew on the ocean breeze, slipped through the sides of her hair, and then disappeared into the darkness.

“Keeping myself all alone, I could hear lots of people coming along and talking to me…people I know, people I don’t know, my father, my mother, my high school teachers, lots of people.”

I nodded.

“Usually, they say nothing but terrible things.

‘Fuck off,’ and other filthy things…”

“Like?”

“I don’t wanna say.”

She took just two drags of her cigarette before stamping it out under her leather sandal, then gently rubbed her eye with her fingertip.

“Do you think I’m sick?”

“Hard to say,” I said, inflecting it the way I’d say ‘I don’t know,’ and shook my head.

“If you’re worried, you should go see a doctor.”

“I’m okay. Don’t worry about me.”

She lit her second cigarette, then tried to laugh but couldn’t quite pull it off.

“You’re the first person I’ve talked to about this.”

I grasped her hand. Her hand was forever shaking slightly, her fingers and the spaces between oozing cold sweat.

“I really didn’t want to lie to you.”

“I know.”

We once again descended into silence, and as we listened to the small waves crashing against the breakers, we didn’t speak. It was a long time, longer than I can remember.

When I finally regained my senses, she was crying. I ran my finger along her tear-soaked cheek and then put my arms around her shoulders.

It’d been a long time since I’d felt the scent of summer. The smell of the ocean, the distant steam whistle, feeling the skin of a girl’s hand, the lemon scent of her conditioner, the evening wind, faint hopes, summer dreams…