Haruki Murakami - South of the Border, West of the Sun

“So, honestly, how was she?”

He was silent for a while. “First of all, I want you to realize something, okay? I was in the same class as her and thought she was pretty attractive. She was a nice girl. Nice personality, cute. Not a raving beauty but, you know, appealing. Am I right?”

I nodded.

“You really want me to tell the truth?”

“Go ahead,” I said.

“You’re not going to like this.”

“I don’t care. Just tell me the truth.”

He took another mouthful of whiskey. “I was jealous of you, always together with her. I wanted a girlfriend like that too. Now I can let it all out, I suppose. I never forgot her. Her face was engraved on my memory. That’s why, running into her out of the blue in an elevator—even eighteen years later?I knew right away. What I’m getting at is this: I have no reason to want to say anything bad about her. It was a shock for me too, you know. I didn’t want to admit it was true. Let me put it this way: She’s no longer attractive.”

I bit my lip. “What do you mean?”

“Most of the kids who live in that apartment building are afraid of her.”

“Afraid?” I repeated. I looked at him, uncomprehending. He must have chosen the wrong words. “What do you mean—afraid of her?”

“Hey, how about we call it a wrap? I didn’t really want to get into this anyway.”

“Wait a second—what does she do? Does she say things to the kids?”

“She doesn’t say anything to anybody. Like I said before.”

“So kids are afraid of her face?”

“That’s right,” he said.

“Does she have a scar or something?”

“No scars.”

“Well, then, what are they afraid of?”

He finished his whiskey and placed the glass on the counter. And looked at me for a good long time. He appeared flustered and more than a little confused. But something else was in his expression. I could catch a trace of his face as it was back in high school. He looked up for a while, staring off into the distance as if watching a stream flowing off and away. Finally he spoke. “I can’t explain it well; besides, I don’t want to. So don’t ask me any more, okay? You’d have to see it with your own eyes to understand. Someone who hasn’t actually seen it won’t understand anyway.”

I nodded, saying nothing more, just sipping at my vodka gimlet. His tone was calm, but any further inquiries I knew he would turn down point-blank.

He started to talk about the two years he worked in Brazil. You won’t believe it, he said, but I ran across one of my junior high classmates in São Paulo, of all places. Working at Toyota as an engineer.

His words blew right by me. When he left, he clapped me on the shoulder. “Well, the years change people in many ways, right? I have no idea what went on between you and her back then. But whatever it was, it wasn’t your fault. To some degree or other, everyone has that kind of experience. Even me. No joke. I went through the same thing. But there’s nothing you can do about it. Another person’s life is that person’s life. You can’t take responsibility. It’s like we’re living in a desert. You just have to get used to it Did you see that Disney film in elementary school– The Living Desert?”

“Yeah,” I answered.

“Our world’s exactly the same. Rain falls and the flowers bloom. No rain, they wither up. Bugs are eaten by lizards, lizards are eaten by birds. But in the end, every one of them dies. They die and dry up. One generation dies, and the next one takes over. That’s how it goes. Lots of different ways to live. And lots of different ways to die. But in the end that doesn’t make a bit of difference. All that remains is a desert.”

He went home, and I sat alone at the counter, drinking. After the bar was closed for the night, after all the customers had gone, even after the staff had straightened up the place and gone home themselves, I sat there, alone. I didn’t want to go home right away. I phoned my wife and told her I had something to take care of at work and would be late. I turned out the lights and sat in the dark, drinking whiskey. Too much trouble to get ice out, so I drank it straight.

Everyone just keeps on disappearing. Some things just vanish, like they were cut away. Others fade slowly into the mist. And all that remains is a desert .

When I left the bar, just before dawn, a light rain was falling on the main street in Aoyama. I was exhausted. Soundlessly, the rain soaked the rows of tall buildings, standing there like so many gravestones. I left my car in the bar’s parking lot and walked home. On the way, I sat down on a guardrail and watched a large crow that was cawing from the top of a traffic signal. The four a.m. streets looked shabby and filthy. The shadow of decay and disintegration lurked everywhere, and I was part of it. Like a shadow burned into a wall.

For ten days or so after the feature article with my name and photo appeared in Brutus , old acquaintances dropped by the bar to see me. Junior high and high school classmates. Up till then, I’d always wondered who on earth would possibly read all those magazines piled up at the front of every bookstore. But once I myself was featured in one, I discovered that more people than I’d ever imagined were glued to magazines. In hair salons, banks, coffee shops, trains, every place imaginable, people had magazines open in front of them, as if possessed. Maybe people are afraid they’ll have nothing to kill time with, so they just pick up whatever happens to be on hand. Beats me.

Anyway, I can’t say it was the most thrilling thing in the world to see these faces from the past. Not that I didn’t like talking with them. It put me in a pleasant, nostalgic mood. And they seemed happy to see me. But frankly I couldn’t care less about the subjects they brought up. How our old hometown had changed, what other classmates were up to now. As if I cared. I was too far removed from that place and time. Besides, everything they talked about brought back memories of Izumi. Every mention of my hometown made me picture her alone in that bleak apartment. She’s no longer attractive , my friend had said. The kids are afraid of her . I couldn’t get those two lines out of my head. And the fact that Izumi never forgave me.

I’d just wanted to give the bar a little free publicity, but not long after the article came out, I began seriously to regret allowing the magazine to report on it. The last thing I wanted was for Izumi to see the article. How would she feel if she saw me, blithely living a happy life, seemingly unscarred by our past?

A month later, though, the cast of old friends had petered out. Guess that’s one point in favor of magazines: You have your moment of fame, then poof! you’re forgotten. I breathed a sigh of relief. At least Izumi didn’t show. She wasn’t a Brutus subscriber, after all.

But a couple of weeks after that, after all the hubbub of the article had been forgotten, the last friend showed up.

Shimamoto.

It was the evening of the first Monday in November. And there, at the counter of the Robin’s Nest (the name of the jazz club, the title of an old tune I liked), she sat, quietly sipping a daiquiri. I was at the same counter, three seats down, completely oblivious to the fact that it was her. I’d observed that an extremely beautiful woman had come into the bar, but that was all. A new customer; I made a mental note. If I had seen her before, I would have remembered; that’s how outstanding she was. Before long, I figured, whoever she was waiting for would show up. Not that women never drank alone in the bar. Some single women seem to expect that men will put the moves on them; others seem more to be hoping for it I could always tell which was which. But a woman this beautiful would not be out drinking alone. A woman like this wasn’t the type to be thrilled by men making advances. She’d just find it a pain.